Longarm Giant #30: Longarm and the Ambush at Holy Defiance (21 page)

She sipped the bourbon, made a face, and turned to yell toward the doorway again when Vonda appeared with a stone pitcher and a wooden trivet.

“Hurry, hurry,” the girl said in her sultry voice, brushing past Longarm, filling his nostrils with the smell of…what? Ripe peaches? There was a tang to it. Maybe peach brandy?

She set the trivet on the table and the pitcher on the trivet and looked at Mrs. Azrael. “Can I have one?”

“You go help Angelina. Skedaddle with ya!”

“You know I’m all thumbs in the kitchen!” the girl responded angrily, fists on her hips.

“Use your fingers, then!”

The girl swung around, showing Longarm her pouting mouth and raking her sultry gaze across his shoulders as she brushed past him again, heading for the door.

Mrs. Azrael added branch water to both hers and Haven’s bourbons and offered some to Longarm, who waved her off. When she sat down on the couch once more, she looked at her husband, and said, “Poor Whip. Horse threw him last fall. Landed on a Mojave green rattlesnake. One of the men saw the whole thing. The snake chewed ole Whip’s eye out and the poison did somethin’ to his brain. I don’t know—maybe it gave him a stroke. He ain’t said a word since then, and he’s never given me a single look that said he recognized me. Brain’s plum mush. He’s just waitin’ to die, now, I reckon.”

She sipped her bourbon and shook her head sadly. “I sure never thought it would end like this, but you just never know what’s gonna happen to ya, the ones you love.”

She favored her invalid husband with a look so sad that it squeezed even Longarm’s jaded heart.

Longarm said, “Last fall, you say?”

Mrs. Azrael nodded.

Longarm glanced at Haven, who said, “You’re in charge of the ranch operations, then, Mrs. Azrael?”

“Me an’ Stretch, that’s right. We been runnin’ a tight ship. Stretch had his stompin’ days same as most young men—that’s when he hitched his star to that girl of his he found in a saloon in Benson—but he’s grown up now. Pretty
much, anyways, if you don’t count Friday nights in ole Kimble Dobson’s saloon in Holy Defiance.”

She cackled her crow-like laugh. “He’s headstrong, a good fighter…most of the time,” she added with a smile at Longarm, “but he’s got his pa’s good business sense, too. He does all the hirin’ and firin’. I just look after the books and keep up my garden. Angelina tends ole Whip. He’s in rubber pants now, you know. Can’t hardly feed himself. Still takes a snort of bourbon before bed, though. That’s how I know he ain’t all gone. Not just yet.”

“I do apologize for your trouble, ma’am,” Longarm said, feeling uncomfortable with the invalided Whip Azrael in the room, the sorry bastard’s lamps lit but no one in the house. The old rancher just stared into space, occasionally brushing a thumb across his nose, working his lips, and sighing.

“But getting down to brass tacks, Mrs. Azrael, you’ve had seven men killed on your land of late.”

“I know,” the old ranch woman said. “It’s just awful.” Her regret appeared genuine. “That ranger you hauled in over that purty barb was here just the other day.”

Longarm said, “With another ranger—correct?”

“With Ranger Jack Leyton, that’s right. He’s been here before. Him and Whip was pards in their day, spent some time in the cavalry together.”

“Leyton and Sullivan left here together, I take it?”

Mrs. Azrael nodded. “I sure hope nothin’ bad has become of Leyton. He’s a nice man. When we was havin’ the Apache trouble, all them years, he was a big help. He’d come down here and organize posses with the sheriff over at Holy Defiance. When there was a sheriff there, that is. Not there’s nothin’ much there but a saloon run by old Dobson and his ’Pache daughter that all the boys go to on the weekends.”

Haven sipped her drink, set the glass on the table before her, and crossed her legs with feminine grace, half turning to the old woman sitting on the other end of the sofa from her. “I assume you were here when the stage carrying the gold was robbed, Mrs. Azrael?”

“My, yes. We been here for twenty-five years, Miss Delacroix. Whip built this house himself. It wasn’t nothin’ but a
stone shack back then, and we spent more time fightin’ Apaches than herdin’ cattle, but we proved up on it, sure enough. Grieves me those men died on the Double D.”

She shook her head again. She was so tiny that she looked like a little brown doll leaning back in the sofa corner, bringing her drink to her lips often with both hands, and taking large drinks from it. The glass appeared the size of a canteen in her tiny hands scored with bulging, knotted veins.

Longarm sipped his own drink. “So you know it’s rumored that the gold is still on Double D range?”

“That’s the story, yes.” Mrs. Azrael waved a hand as though brushing away a fly. “Never seen it, though. I’m not so sure that Santana’s gang didn’t take it all and spend it somewhere. Or maybe there wasn’t even any gold to start with. That ole Santana rapscallion was a crower, he was. Haunted this border country for years, runnin’ stolen horses back and forth from Mexico, robbin’ freight outfits between Nogales and Tucson, much of it on the outlying areas of the Double D. This here’s a big spread, Marshal Long. Stretches across more than fifty thousand acres!”

“Oh, the gold was on the stage,” Haven said. “I’m quite sure of that. That’s why I’m here. Wells Fargo has a contract with the Pinkertons to find it and return it to its rightful owner. The missing gold has left a mark on Wells Fargo’s reputation, and Mr. Pinkerton wants it off his books.”

She paused, leaned forward to take another sip from her drink, and shook her hair back from her face. She turned to the ranch woman again and said, “Do you know that a gentleman called Big Frank Three Wolves claims to know the location of the hidden gold? At least, the location of little canyon it’s supposedly hidden in?”

“Oh, sure I do,” Mrs. Azrael said, waving her little hand again with annoyance. “That’s why them lawmen came down here, hopin’ to find it. And got themselves killed for their trouble. And that young one now, too—Sullivan. And probably Jack Leyton. Dirty shame!”

Longarm leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees. “You don’t have any idea who might have killed them?”

“Banditos, most like,” Mrs. Azrael said. “This country is still peppered with ’em. Maybe Apaches runnin’ off their reservation in the White Mountains. We still have problems with them rustlin’ our cattle. This is big country, Marshal Long. Still pretty damn wild, even with ole Geronimo in Florida.”

“And you’ve never seen the second dead man I hauled in here today?”

“I never got a good look at him, but I wouldn’t recognize half of Stretch’s men. They stay away from the house, and I stay away from the bunkhouse and let Stretch run things. He’s good at it!”

Longarm said, “Where were Leyton and Sullivan headed when they left the Double D—and when was it they left exactly.”

“Day before yesterday. Sullivan wanted to have another look at that draw where Santana hid the gold. Leyton thought it was a waste of time, and so did I, but Jack agreed they’d go out there an have another look-see and then ride around the range for a time, see if they could pick up the killers’ sign.”

A man’s voice had risen from somewhere in the house, faintly echoing. Boots clomped on floorboards. A female voice mingled with the man’s—softer, lower, deferring. The voice of Stretch’s wife, no doubt.

Mrs. Azrael lifted her chin and crowed, “Stretch! Get in here, Stretch! Let them girls
cook
!”

Stretch kept talking to someone half the house away. His tone was sharp, commanding. Suddenly, his wife’s voice rose sharply, as well, giving back as good as she’d been given, and the pair argued loudly and savagely for a few seconds before Mrs. Azrael called for her son once more.

Her grating voice made Longarm’s ears ring. Haven winced.

Stretch yelled, “I’m comin’, goddamnit, Ma!” His booming voice reverberated around the house, as did the pounding of his boots and the chinging of his spurs.

“Don’t you curse with visitors in this house, you peckerwood! And take them spurs off. How many time I gotta tell you?”

“Ah, hell!” Stretch said, his voice louder now as he entered the study. He stopped just inside the door and raised each boot in turn, unbuckling the spurs before dropping them with a raucous clatter near the door.

“Now come in here and meet our guests proper. They got a few questions for you, too.”

“I already answered all the damn questions I’m going to,” the firebrand said, walking into the room, his glowering stare on Longarm, who’d gained his feet and turned to face the man.

He wouldn’t put it past ole Stretch to try to deliver another sucker punch.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Stretch said, holding up his hands in mock innocence. “I don’t roughhouse in Ma’s house.”

He had a cut beneath his chin. It curled up over the outside edge of the chin, and the blood was smeared in his scraggly spade beard, around the beginnings of a scab. Apparently, he’d washed up, for his sandy, wet hair was slicked straight back from his forehead.

“Good to hear,” Longarm said.

“She might take me over her knee,” Stretch said, grinning and glancing at Agent Delacroix sitting on the couch opposite his mother. “Who’s that?” he asked, jerking his thumb at Haven.

“I can speak for myself,” Haven said curtly. “I am Agent Haven Delacroix of the Pinkerton Agency.”

Stretch looked at her, his lower jaw hanging slightly, and whistled.

“Oh, quit,” his mother cawed. “These folks are gonna think I didn’t raise you with a half ounce of manners!”

“You didn’t.” This from Vonda standing in the doorway behind Stretch, arms crossed beneath her breasts again, shoving them up so that they were half-revealed. They were as creamy as fresh milk.

Stretched whipped his head toward the girl. “Who invited you?”

“No one!” Mrs. Azrael said, jutting her arm. “Git back out to the kitchen and help Angelina so we can eat sometime tonight. I’m so hungry I could eat that bronc out in the breaking corral!”

Vonda slid her eyes from her husband to Longarm, gave her bottom lip a sensuous nibble, and then she turned her mouth corners down, dropped her arms from her breasts, and headed back down the hall, bare feet slapping angrily.

“And get some shoes on!” Stretch yelled at her.

“You go to hell, Stretch!” Vonda screeched.

“That girl,” said Mrs. Azrael. “Don’t know what this kid ever saw in her.”

Stretch looked at Longarm, grinning. “You know, don’t ya?”

Longarm dropped back down in his chair.

“She’s very pretty,” Haven said. “But she’s not why we’re here. We’re here…”

“About the dead lawmen,” Longarm said.

“And about the gold,” Haven added crisply.

“Ah, hell—that gold again. Christ!” Stretch walked over to the liquor cabinet. “I don’t think there ever was any gold in the first place. I think that old Santana was full of…” Catching himself, he cast a jeering grin over his shoulder at his mother. “Chili peppers.”

Mrs. Azrael snorted. “Quit tryin’ to charm this woman, Stretch. You’re married. Beside, she’s got too much class for you. Delacroix, Delacroix. Is that French?”

“Indeed, it is,” Haven said proudly.

“I knew it. You got clean lines. I bet you’re of noble birth. I am, too—back in Ireland.”

“Does that make me a nobleman?” Stretch asked, turning and leaning back against the liquor cabinet.

“You’re a cur.” Mrs. Azrael snorted, glancing at her husband, who sat staring out his one good eye at the cold fireplace. “You got ole Whip to thank for that. His blood’s murkier than a flooded gulch!”

She extended her empty glass to Stretch. “Refill,” she said, wagging the glass impatiently, slurring her words slightly. Her black eyes glittered.

Stretch’s big, sunburned face darkened with embarrassment, and as he stepped forward, he glanced sheepishly at Haven, who had her back to him. He took his mother’s glass and stomped back to the liquor cabinet.

“Who found the dead lawmen, Stretch?” Longarm asked the firebrand.

“A couple of the boys,” Stretch said, angrily clanking bottles and glasses.

“I’m going to want to talk to them.”

“They ain’t big talkers.”

“Just the same, we’ll palaver,” Longarm said, not liking the Double D foreman at all. His suspicions were running off their leash about Stretch. As the lanky foreman splashed more liquor into his mother’s water glass, Longarm said, “And you’ve never seen or heard of anyone having found the stolen gold…?”

“You need to ask that again?” Stretch scoffed.

“Just wanted to hear it plain from your gums. Seein’ as how five lawmen got murdered on your land when they came down here to look for it, I’m gonna need a whole lot of other things plain before I leave here.”

“I will, too,” Haven said.

As Stretch delivered the refilled glass to his mother, he scowled at Agent Delacroix. “Should a woman be in your line of work?”

Haven gave him a blank stare.

“You mind your manners, boy!” Mrs. Azrael said.
“Forgive him, Miss Delacroix. I tried to raise him right, but you can’t beat sense into a rock. I do hope you find your gold, though. You’re awfully pretty, and I’m pullin’ for you. And I’m just so sick of hearin’ about that
gold
!”

She looked at Longarm as Stretch resumed his position by the liquor cabinet. He’d already tossed back two shots of busthead and was now sipping his third. “I hope you find whoever killed them lawmen, Marshal. But I don’t hold out much hope. Double D Ranch is home to more than a few outlaw trails stretching between the Mogollon Rim and the White Mountains and Mexico. If you stay out there too long, sniffin’ around, you best be careful you don’t end up the same as them others.”

To Haven, she said, “Maybe you’d best stay here with me, Miss Delacroix. It ain’t safe out there for a man, much less a pretty girl.”

“We’ll protect you here,” Stretch said with a lascivious leer.

“I’m sure your wife would appreciate that, Mr. Azrael.”

Longarm looked at Stretch. “Any of your own men been shot out there?”

Stretch filled his mouth with whiskey, puffed out his cheeks, and swallowed. “Nope. Just lawmen like yourself. Like Ma says, best tread quiet out there.” He gave a cold smile, his eyes glittering now like his mother’s. “Bullets buzz around like blackflies out there, don’t ya know.”