Longarm Giant #30: Longarm and the Ambush at Holy Defiance Read Online Free Page A

and let him drop to the floor. He turned the lever back to the right, saw the long, wood-handled brake, which looked much like the brake on a wagon, and hauled back on it. After a few seconds, he felt the locomotive tremble as the wood-and-metal brake jaws clamped over the iron wheels of all the cars.
    Only, the forward momentum was too great for the brakes. They wouldn’t hold. The lever leaped back upright, releasing the brake jaws and nearly tearing Longarm’s shoulders from their sockets.
    “Shit!”
the lawman shouted into the wind, grabbing the handle with both hands and hauling back and down on it once more.
    Again, he felt the engine tremble beneath his boots. It sort of hiccupped, but the handle jerked upward despite Longarm virtually hanging on it the way the engineer had been hanging over the dead-release.
    “Need some help?” The feminine voice had sounded from behind.
    Longarm glanced over his shoulder to see the girl he’dleft on the vestibule crawling over the wood stacked in the tender car. She’d thrown a thin, very low-cut, sleeveless pink dress on. The wind billowed it out in front, revealing her tender, sloping breasts, which jostled as she crawled, barefoot, across the wood.
    Longarm continued to wrestle with the brake lever, encouraged by the hiccups he felt through the iron grate of the locomotive floor whenever he got the brake engaged, though he was having a devil of a time
keeping
it engaged. The girl climbed over the bulkhead, winced at the dead men lying around Longarm, and came over to where Longarm was clutching the lever with both hands and leaning far back toward the floor, grunting and sighing and cursing through gritted teeth.
    Straight ahead, he saw the bridge and the canyon. It was sliding up on him fast as the train continued to barrel down the side of the pass, which was leveling out a little now though the train was still hammering along at forty or fifty miles an hour.
    That was just too fast. He had to get the speed down to half that or they were all doomed.
    The brakes screamed like a hundred terrified girls, but the jerking Longarm could feel meant they weren’t continuously engaged.
    “Let me help!” the girl shouted above the wind.
    She climbed on top of Longarm, her back to him, the brake handle between them. She propped her bare feet up on the front bulkhead, and pressed her body back and down against the brake handle and Longarm.
    He could feel her round rump against his crotch. Her hair blew around his face in the wind. It smelled faintly like sage and chokecherries. Her dress blew up in the wind, exposing the long, creamy length of her legs clear to her hips.
    The brakes screamed more shrilly than before. The engine shuddered violently as the jaws clamped down hard over all the iron wheels.
    Longarm looked through the golden cloud of the girl’s blowing hair. The locomotive was nearly level with the bridge now, and it was still swooping toward them but not quite as quickly as before. To both sides, the trees were thinning out, exposing the clay-colored boulders of the ridge still angling down toward the gorge.
    To the left of the rails, two gray coyotes watched the train from a stony ledge, ears raised curiously, one curveting as though it wanted to run but was too fascinated by the big iron, screeching contraption to hightail it just yet. Both brush wolves were wondering if the train would make it or pile up at the bottom of the gorge.
    The locomotive jerked and shuddered. The brakes squealed so shrilly that Longarm thought his eardrums would pop. The girl screamed as she threw her head back against Longarm’s chest, grinding the heels of her feet into the bulkhead and pressing her supple body down harder against Longarm and the brake handle.
    Longarm closed his eyes. He was about tapped out, the power in his body draining. His tense muscles were turning to putty.
    Gradually, the shuddering continued until Longarm lookedto both sides and saw nothing but clear, blue