Longarm Giant #30: Longarm and the Ambush at Holy Defiance (18 page)

Impossible to separate the tracks of the killers from the killed and then from those of the men who’d buried the fallen. There were several brown patches that were likely blood.

Haven dropped her horse’s reins and walked around for a time, quietly scanning the terrain, the breeze blowing her duster out away from her hips. Finally, at the southern edge of the tracks and scuffmarks, she turned to Longarm and hooked her gloved thumbs behind her cartridge belt. “If only the rocks could talk.”

Longarm was feeling the same frustration, realizing the long odds of ever finding answers to the questions that had driven him and her down here.

Five men were dead. He’d known none of them, but Sanders had told him they were all good lawmen. The marshals had just happened to be visiting the ranger post when Big Frank Three Wolves had told his story, so they’d ridden down here on a whim with the rangers.

Apparently, there were no witnesses to the killings. There was some stolen gold buried around here. Whether it was still here was anyone’s guess. The gold might or might not be the reason the three rangers and two federal lawmen had been murdered—gunned down where they’d been riding, apparently. Ambushed.

Yet another question pecked at Longarm’s brain.

Where were Captain Jack Leyton and Ranger Matt Sullivan, who’d ridden down here after the murders to investigate? So far, he’d spied no sign of them.

Had they gotten this far?

“Where did Big Frank say the gold was buried?” Haven asked, addressing her main concern.

Longarm looked past her to a rise of chalky hills to the
south, on the other side of what appeared another rock-strewn dry wash. “Over there. In one of those creases between the camelbacks. Santana told Big Frank it was between the two biggest humps, near a saguaro and a flat-topped boulder. Atop the boulder, one of Santana’s bunch carved a large ‘X,’ though that ‘X’ might be worn away by now, since they were here all of a decade ago.”

She turned to appraise the bluffs that looked bleached out in the midday light, then turned to Longarm and extended a hand toward the hot, dry-looking formations. “Shall we?”

“Why not?”

He stepped into his saddle and booted the roan across the rocky flat toward the broad wash running along the base of the far buttes. The wash was only slightly lower than the ground he now crossed, and delineated by a few ragged, dusty mesquites and cottonwoods, a few wind-twisted paloverdes. Haven’s horse clomped up from behind him, and she rode up beside him on his left.

Birds cheeped in the chaparral around them. There was a streak of red as a roadrunner dashed out from behind a barrel cactus to cross in front of the riders and then disappear in a nest of bone-white boulders piled like a fallen house of cards.

Longarm’s attention was drawn to a dark speck atop one of the hills growing larger before him, on the other side of the wash. Squinting, his keen vision revealed what appeared a steeple-crowned sombrero hovering over a rifle barrel extended in Longarm’s and Agent Delacroix’s general direction.

Longarm threw himself to his left, turning enough that his chest rammed Haven’s right shoulder as he kicked free of his stirrups. Sweeping the girl out of her own saddle, they flew down her horse’s left stirrup at the same time that what sounded like a distant cannon thundered.

Twisting yet again, Longarm landed on his back, drawing
Haven down on top of him, cushioning the girl’s fall, and saw dust blow up about twenty yards straight behind them, the heavy slug screeching as it ricocheted off a rock.

The horses continued walking straight ahead and then, realizing they were without riders, stopped and sort of half turned, reins dangling.

Longarm pushed Haven away from him, yelling, “Take cover!”

She wasted no time scrambling to her feet and then running toward a table-sized rock. Wincing at the ache in his back from his hard tumble to the ground, Longarm scrambled to his own feet as the rocketing blast of the heavy-caliber rifle sounded again, this slug tearing up rocks and sand only a foot in front of him. He jerked to his right and lunged for his horse, which was fiddle-footing nervously now, and shucked his Winchester from his saddle boot.

“Get outta here!” he yelled at the horse, smashing the rifle’s butt against its left wither.

He sent the horse running off in similar fashion, both sets of reins bouncing along the ground, and then ran toward where Haven was hunkered down behind the rock.

The big gun thundered again, the slug hammering the ground about two feet from Longarm’s pounding boots. Haven triggered one of her LeMats twice over the top of the rock, and Longarm hunkered down beside her, doffing his hat and edging a look over the rock toward the shooter.

“Don’t waste your bullets,” Longarm told the girl. “He’s way out of range of a handgun.”

“I know that,” she said snidely. “I was just trying to distract him so he wasn’t as likely to blow your head off.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention—”

The thunderous
whonk
of another heavy chunk of lead crashing into the ground a few feet in front of their boulder cut her off. It was followed a half second later by the explosion of the rifle.

“A Big Fifty, you think?” she asked.

“I think.” Longarm peeked over the top of the rock, saw the silhouetted figure on the bluff eject the spent shell casing from the Sharps’ breech.

He nudged her arm with the butt of his Winchester. “You know how to shoot one of these?”

“Of course. I just don’t carry one because I like to travel light and I usually have more use for my brains than bullets.” As the Big Fifty boomed again, she flinched and pulled her head down lower behind the rock. “In the future, I might reconsider.”

He held the long gun out to her. “Cover me. I’m going to try to run on up on him, get around him, find out what in the hell he’s so hot about.”

Haven holstered her LeMats, took Longarm’s Winchester, and smoothly racked a fresh cartridge into the breech.

He paused to wonder vaguely she’d acquired her facility with the weapon, and then handed her five extra cartridges from his belt loops. He slid his Colt from its holster. Looking over the top of the boulder once more, he saw the rifle-wielding, sombrero-clad ambusher hunkered low over his Sharps. Longarm pulled his head down as the big gun hammered another round, this one smashing into the rock behind which Longarm and Haven were hunkered.

Longarm felt the vibration through his shoulder.

Knowing the man had to eject the spent casing and slide a fresh .50-90 cartridge into the breech, he rose quickly and donned his hat.

“Keep him busy, but don’t get your head shot off!”

She cast him a faintly worried look through the dark brown hair blowing around her face, and this gave him pause. He’d never seen her worried before—only frustratingly forthright and headstrong.

“Be careful, Custis,” she said. “That’s a big damn gun.”

Longarm took off running toward the wash and the hills beyond.

Haven began firing the Winchester behind him. She was probably a good two hundred yards away from the man, shooting uphill, so the Winchester would be hard-pressed to hit its target even with an expert squeezing the trigger. But her shots blew up dust along the slope below the man, causing him to jerk his head down behind the rise he was lying against.

Longarm ran hard, tracing a zigzagging pattern in case the man opened up on him again. A Big Fifty could shoot upward of a thousand yards, and the .50-caliber cartridges loaded with ninety grains of black powder, designed for penetrating a thick buffalo hide, would punch a fist-sized hole in a man.

Longarm made it across the wash with the ambusher triggering only two rounds well behind him, while Haven was apparently reloading the Winchester. Longarm ran to the base of one of the hills, hunkered low, and looked up over his left shoulder, holding his Colt straight up in his right hand.

He couldn’t see the ambusher from this angle, but the bastard was near. Longarm waited.

The man had stopped shooting. Longarm looked out to where Haven crouched behind the rock. He could see only his rifle barrel poking up from behind the rock, but he knew she was keeping an eye on him.

He waved his gun hand broadly, indicating she should hold fire, and then he slipped into a crease between the hill directly behind him and the next one to the west—the one on which the ambusher lay. The gap was about twenty yards wide, stippled with brush and rocks.

A rattlesnake rattled at him from atop a flat rock, lifting its button tail as well as it flat, diamond-shaped head, sticking out its forked tongue. Longarm swung wide of the rock and turned and began climbing the ambusher’s hill, keeping an eye out for more snakes.

All he needed on top of getting ambushed was a load of the excruciatingly painful viper venom. If that happened, in minutes he’d be begging the ambusher to finish him.

He climbed the steep slope, his boot heels slipping in the chalky soil, using his free hand to grab clumps of short grass and shrub branches to steady his progress. When he gained the crest, he doffed his hat, peered down the opposite side, and cursed.

The ambusher was galloping at a slant up the next hill beyond, his black-and-white pinto working hard against the steep climb, lunging off its short rear legs. The rider was too far away for the Colt, but Longarm couldn’t help squeezing off a desperate round.

The slug blew up rock dust well below the rider, when the man was about twenty yards below the crest of the next hill. Gravel crunched behind Longarm. In the corner of his left eye, a shadow moved.

He swung around to see a big Mexican moving up on him, holding two Schofields in his hands, the barrels aimed at Longarm’s belly.

The man’s face was the texture of ancient, black leather. His eyes were washed-out blue, one more than the other,
and his two yellow front teeth were chipped. He wore a black sombrero, but his hat was lower crowned than his friend’s. He was dressed nearly all in black except for a brown-and-red calico shirt beneath his black vest, and he wore bandoliers crisscrossed on his chest, two empty holsters held up high above his hips and positioned for the cross draw.

“Are you prepared for death,
mi
amigo?” the man said, as he came up level with Longarm and placed his thumbs on his pistol hammers, preparing to rock them back. He squinted his eyes though they didn’t seem to focus. Bad eyesight, Longarm thought.

Suddenly, there was a smacking sound, and the man’s head tipped sharply to his left. His face crumpled in a deep scowl, and he triggered one of his Schofields into the ground. At the same time, the crack of a rifle reached Longarm’s ears, and the would-be assassin staggered sideways, dropping the pistol he’d fired and reaching out with that hand as though to grab something with which to break his fall.

He didn’t find it.

He fell hard and rolled onto his back, eyelids fluttering as life left him.

Quickly, his limbs and lids fell still, and he lay staring straight up at Longarm through his washed-out blue eyes, arms thrown out to both sides, legs slightly bent so that the rowels of his spurs touched. Blood leaked out the ragged hole in his right temple and dribbled onto the gravelly ground. The bullet must have exited the back of his head, behind his left ear, because the ground there was quickly growing red, as well.

Longarm turned back toward the west. The other rider had stopped his pinto on the opposite hillcrest, and he was facing Longarm now, clearly outlined in black against the sky. He stared toward the lawman and his dead partner, and then he swung his horse around and dropped down the far side of the hill and galloped out of sight.

Longarm turned toward where the shot had come from.

Agent Delacroix was walking across the broad, pale wash. She held the lawman’s Winchester on her shoulder. She kept her head down, likely watching for snakes, as she long-strode toward the hill and the man she’d left dead at Longarm’s boots.

“Nice shot,” he told her as she climbed the hill.

As she approached the crest of the hill, between strained breaths, she said, “The other one?”

“Gone.” Longarm knelt beside the dead man, patted his pockets, finding nothing but a small roll of Mexican greenbacks, a sack of chopped Mexican tobacco that smelled like pepper, stripped corn shucks for rolling, two knives in small sheaths, and ammunition.

Lots of ammunition.

There was nothing that identified him personally.

“A killer,” Longarm said. “A hired one, most likely. Wonder if whoever hired him knew his eyes were bad?”

“What would he be doing out here? He couldn’t have known we were coming.”

“Maybe he works for this Azrael feller who owns the ranch he’s on. Nothin’ to do but to ask him.” Longarm rose and looked around. “His horse must be around here somewhere. When we find it, we’ll tie him to it and haul him over to the Double D headquarters.”

Haven stood looking around, her hair and her duster billowing in the hot breeze. “While there’s still some light left, I’d like to look around here for the gold.”

“Might as well, though I doubt we’re gonna find it.”

“You never know. Big Frank might have it right.”

Longarm had just found too many holes in the story about the gold to believe that was true. Not that Big Frank had been lying. Santana was likely the liar. If the Mexican really had hid the gold here, the chance of it still being found here was damn slim.

Longarm found himself scrutinizing his partner admiringly. “That was a damn tough shot from that distance,” he said. “How’d you make it, anyways?”

“Why are you so surprised?”

“’Cause you’re a girl.”

He’d meant it as a joke, because she could obviously shoot her LeMats as well, and as willingly, as most men. She hadn’t seen the humor in the remark, however, and brandished a narrow-eyed look as she shoved his rifle at him, barrel-first. He took it, and watched her walk down the hill and into the crease in which Big Frank said that Santana’s gang had buried the gold.

Longarm mentally kicked his own ass. “When are you gonna learn to keep your whiskey funnel closed, old son?”