by Tabor Evans
Chief Marshal Vail nodded his approval at his prized deputy’s instincts. Since Three Wolves apparently knew, or said he knew, where the loot had been buried, he might also know who killed the lawmen who’d ridden out to find it.
“He’s being held at the Arizona Rangers post in Broken Jaw in the Arizona Territory, about fifty miles across the line from New Mexico. Holy Defiance is another fifty or so miles southwest of Broken Jaw, west of Tombstone and Bisbee.”
“I’ll stop in at Broken Jaw and have a little palaver with this gent before heading on down to Holy Defiance.” Longarm rolled the cheroot around between his lips and bounced his fists off the arms of the red Moroccan leather chair. “When’s my train leave, Billy? Don’t reckon it’s gonna get any cooler down Arizona way. Sooner I get this job started, the sooner it’ll be over with.”
Billy grinned devilishly. “You mean, when does your and your partner’s train leave?” The chief marshal glanced at the banjo clock on the wall to his left. “In about one half hour.”
“Ah, dangit, Billy.”
Just then a knock sounded on the chief marshal’s door.
“Must be him now,” Billy said, raising his voice as he cast his gaze at the door. “Come in, Agent Delacroix!”
Longarm heard but did not see the door open behind him. He’d be looking at the Pinkerton agent’s no doubt pimple-scarred face long enough on the journey down to Arizona.
He did, however, look at Billy and wrinkle his brows curiously when Billy’s lower jaw dropped nearly down to his cluttered desk. Billy’s eyes opened nearly as wide as his mouth, and a rosy flush colored his otherwise pasty cheeks.
“Uh…” Billy said around an apparent frog in his throat, rising slowly from his chair. “Uhm…Harvey…Dela…Delacroix?”
Longarm smelled a subtle, cherrylike fragrance at the same time he heard a raspy, vaguely female voice behind him say, “No, it’s Haven. Haven Delacroix, Chief Marshal Vail. I’ve been sent here by the Pinkerton Agency, to join your deputy on the Arizona murder investigation. The one involving the stolen gold?”
Longarm jerked his head around. His heart turned a somersault in his chest.
The tall brunette whom Longarm had last seen lounging like a satisfied cat on her bed in the Grand Hotel in Leadville, naked as a jaybird, took two steps forward, extending her right hand toward Billy Vail. “I hope I’m not overly late. The stage from Leadville, where I was investigating a possible counterfeiting ring, got held up at a bridge failure around Conifer.”
Billy shook the young woman’s hand woodenly, staring at her as shiny-eyed as a love-struck schoolboy. Longarm stood slowly, feeling a grin like that of the cat that ate the canary flashing in his eyes and quirking his mouth corners.
“How do you do, Miss Delacroix?” Longarm said, taking his cigar in his left hand and extending the right one to the girl. “I’m just pleased as punch to make your acquaintance.”
She turned to him. Her eyes widened in mute horror. She gave a silent gasp. As she stared up at him, likely trying to convince herself that her imagination was playing a nasty trick on her, her exquisite face turned as frosty white as new-fallen snow on Christmas morning.
Longarm tensed himself to catch her if she fell, because Miss Haven Delacroix looked like she was about to drop dead right there at his feet in Billy Vail’s office.
Chapter 8
“Yes, sir…er, I mean, ma’am,” Longarm said, chuckling. “I thought for sure you was about to drop dead right there in Bily Vail’s office.”
“Shut up, you clod.”
She glowered at him from the seat facing him in the coach car of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe flyer heading through the rolling buttes south of Denver, climbing slowly toward Monarch Pass.
“God, I’ve never been so humiliated in all my life,” she said, hardening her delicate lower jaw and turning to stare out the window at the as-yet snow-tipped Front Range looming in the west. “What a sour bucketful of luck, that was.” She turned to him again, smoke fairly curling from the corners of those beautiful, crystal-clear hazel eyes. “Finding you in Chief Marshal Vail’s office, waiting for me! To travel to Arizona with you. My partner!”
She ground her jaws and groaned, turning her sharp gaze to the mountains once more.
“Well, hey,” Longarm said, thoroughly enjoying himself, “at least we broke the ice back in Leadville.” He chuckled.
She wasn’t listening. Turning to him, the nubs of her tapering cheeks flushed with horror, she said, “Do you think he knew? Do you think Chief Marshal Vail sensed that we’d met before?”
“You mean do I think he sensed that we rutted like a couple of horny old dogs two nights before our meeting in his office—two professionals about to be partnered up together on an official assignment?” He knew it was not to his credit that he so enjoyed how horrified she was having her nasty secrets known to those who knew her not only by name but were about to work with her. “Nah, I don’t think so. He was too busy starin’ at your tits. Besides, we weren’t there long. Shit, we got out of the Federal Building just in time to meet the train.”
“Please don’t talk like that. You’re a professional, for goodness sakes.”
Longarm stared at her. Would he ever cease to be surprised by this girl?
Scowling his amazement, he said, “Just the other night you were callin’ me…”
She silenced him with a cold, admonishing stare. Looking around to make sure none of the other passengers was listening, she leaned forward to say just loudly enough for him to hear above the low roar of the coach car, its iron wheels clacking over the rail seams, “Would you please stop bringing that up? How was I supposed to know you and I would be working together? Imagine my horror!”
“Ah, come on,” Longarm said, digging a small, flat traveling flask from his coat pocket. “It ain’t all that bad. You’re obviously a hardworking agent. If you weren’t, there ain’t no way ole Allan would have you on his role.”
“God, do you have to speak in that fashion?”
“Like what? Hell, I didn’t even curse that time.”
“In that lowly, country manner, is what I meant. You are a deputy United States marshal, Marshal Long. A professional lawman. You should speak like a man worthy of his station.”
Longarm studied her, trying not to take offense. He knew few other men who didn’t speak like he did. Those who didn’t were overeducated twerps or bankers. One and the same. You could throw attorneys on the same pile. She must have been spawned by one of those, so he’d have to give her a little leeway. Besides, it was hard to take umbrage with one so sexy and downright, soul-searingly beautiful, even if she was fully aware of her assets.
“As I was sayin’,” Longarm said, trying to keep his impatience out of his voice, “you’re obviously a hardworking agent. Just like hardworking men, includin’ myself, you like to let your hair down once in a while. Nothin’ wrong with it.”
She drew a frustrated breath and returned her gaze to the soot-stained window.
Longarm flicked the top off the travel flask and held it out to her. “Here, have a snort o’ rye. Take the knot out of your panties.”
She scowled at him. “I don’t drink when I’m on the job.”
“You ain’t on the job. You’re on a train. Have a sip. Take the edge off.”
“No, thank you. Don’t you think we should perhaps discuss the case we’re on?”
Longarm took two swallows from the travel flask, exhaled a long, satisfied breath, shoved the cork back in the flask’s mouth, and returned it to his coat pocket. “Let’s do that, though we have a ways to go before we roll into New Mexico. We could see if this combination’s pullin’ a saloon car, have us a couple of snorts back there and play a round of Red Dog.”
“I neither drink nor gamble when I’m on the job.”
“Which reminds me—why’d they send you out on this one?” Longarm leaned back in his seat and hiked a boot on his knee. “I assume the Pinkerton ladies mostly work u
ndercover, don’t they? I don’t see much need for ‘assuming a role’ here, as Pinkerton calls it.”
“True, that’s why Mr. Pinkerton originally began hiring female agents, but I do much more than assume roles, Marshal Long. I’m a detective, and I’m very good at it. As good as any of the men I know inside or outside of the service. Besides, I just happened to be the most indisposed agent closest to Denver at the time of the killings. That’s probably why they gave me the assignment.”
“I see no reason why you shouldn’t go ahead and call me Longarm, since we know each other better than most folks ever get around to.” He grinned.
She drew a deep breath and blinked her eyes, coolly tolerant. “Look, you mastodon. You must forget what happened back in Leadville. It certain will not be repeated. Not in the near future, not ever. We are two professionals working together, and that is all we are. So I will appreciate it if you’d respect me for the professional that I am and treat me accordingly. In exchange, I will do the same for you.”
Longarm plucked the flask out of his coat pocket again, giving a weary sigh. “Oh, all right. I reckon I’ll try to see it your way. There are five lawmen dead, after all.” As he popped the cork on the flask, he glanced at the well-filled corset of her traveling dress made of some shiny, spruce-green material. “But you’ll forgive me if it takes a while for me to forget two nights ago. That there was a tussle and a half!”
He tipped his head back, let the soothing rye wash down his throat, into his belly and deeper, into the regions where he’d been fighting a hard-on ever since he’d seen her again in Billy Vail’s office, of all places.
Haven’s cheeks reddened. She fought off the flush, however, and entwined her hands in her lap, beside the feathered green picture hat resting beside her supple left thigh. The manila folder containing the report rested against her opposite leg.
“Now, then, since our relationship has been clarified, let’s get down to brass tacks, shall we? I read a copy of the ranger’s report on my journey from Leadville, but it’s pretty thin, not to mention nearly illiterate. In your meeting with Marshal Vail, did he mention anything about the rangers having any suspicions as to who might have shot their men and the deputy marshals?”
“Billy didn’t say. But if it’s not in the report there, I reckon it’s a subject we’ll have to cover when we get to the ranger post in Broken Jaw. I know a few of the boys down there. They’re likely hell-bent on finding the men who shot their pards, and they’ll most likely want to be the ones who serve up the gun justice good and hot, but they’ll be as helpful as they can be.”
“If they had been able to serve up this gun justice, as you call it, they probably would have by now. Which means they must be pretty much in the dark about who killed those men.”
“Most likely.” Longarm sat back in his seat, tipped his hat brim down over his eyes. The rye had worked its magic on him. “Well, if you’ll forgive me, I reckon it’s time for a nap. We got a long pull ahead. Figured we’d ride horses from Belen. The train south of there is notoriously slow and the Southern Pacific west through Broken Jaw ain’t quite finished yet.”
He squinted one eye at her beneath his hat. “You can ride a horse, can’t you?”
“Of course I can ride. Just as well as you, Marshal Long.”
“Well, proof of that will be in the puddin’,” he said, chuckling ironically. “But I do apologize. This is the first time I’ve been paired up with a woman. I mean, professionally, of course.”
“Of course.” Haven rolled her eyes in disgust.
“Since I have my hoof in my mouth, anyway, I might as well go ahead and ask you if you have proper riding attire. That dress…while it does fit you dang nice…would be a little uncomfortable—”
“You worry about your own proper attire, Deputy,” she said crisply, “and I’ll worry about mine.”
“All right, all right.” Longarm pulled his hat down lower on his forehead. The improbability of their situation continued to amaze him, and he realized he was grinning again when he heard her say, “I realize this is all very amusing to you, Deputy Long, but I really must insist that you put the other night behind you. I know I have.”
He opened his left eye and was about to respond that he was dearly trying to do just that but held his tongue when he saw a group of men in dusty leather trail gear studying him and Agent Delacroix from their seats a few rows up from Longarm and on the left side of the aisle. Most of their attention was on the girl, of course, and they weren’t so much studying Haven as ogling her.
Speaking just loudly enough to be heard above the train’s irregular roar, he said, “Watch yourself.”
She’d immersed herself in the file but looked up at him curiously. He lifted his chin to indicate her admirers. She turned her head to follow his gaze, then turned back to him and gazed down once more at the open folder in her lap.
“Don’t worry, I’m capable of taking care of myself.”
“Yeah, I seen that little popper you had in Leadville.”
“That ‘little popper,’ as you call it, is quite the efficient weapon. I’ve turned many an hombre toe-down with it.”
Longarm arched a surprised brow at the girl. “‘Many an hombre toe-down’?” He snorted a laugh and closed his eyes, knowing that if any of the girl’s oglers approached he’d likely smell him before he heard him.
“What’s so funny about that, pray tell?”
“I do believe you’ve read too many yarns by Deadeye Dick, Miss Delacroix.”
“I thought you were going to take a nap, Marshal Long,” she said in a strained, admonishing tone, suggesting that she’d long come to the end of her leash regarding one Custis P. Long.
Longarm opened his right eye halfway, looked at the girl’s admirers once more through sun-bleached lashes. They occupied two seats, beneath a billowing cloud of cigarette and cigar smoke. There were five of them, and from what Longarm could see of them, they appeared well armed with both long guns, short guns, and knives.
A Mexican with a sweeping mustache grinned at the girl with his sombrero tipped back of his broad, sun-blistered forehead. Catching Longarm’s scrutinizing eyes on him, he blinked his own eye mockingly at the lawman and then spread his lips with a lascivious grin.
Longarm shook his head. He knew there’d be trouble. You couldn’t go anywhere in the West with a beautiful young woman, especially one as beautiful as Agent Delacroix, without there being trouble. He was surprised old Pinkerton allowed her to travel alone, doubly surprised that she’d been traveling alone and was still alive, not having been raped and shot and thrown in a deep ravine.
She may have been damn beautiful, but he’d had his fun with her in Leadville. And the novelty of the situation had worn itself out.
When it was all said and done, he worked better alone. Hell, he’d have preferred a male partner to one he was going to have to play bodyguard and nursemaid to…
He gave a fateful sigh and closed his right eye, allowing himself to tumble slowly into a light doze, one in which he could hear all the sounds around him but one that still offered a modicum of refreshment.
He had no idea how long he’d catnapped before the train shuddered suddenly, and the girl screamed shrilly.
Chapter 9
Longarm wasn’t fully awake before he realized his revolver was in his hand and he was sitting straight up, extending the gun out in front of him, swinging it from left to right, looking for a target. His heart was not hammering but warning bells were tolling in his head.
The girl sat straight across from him, a horrified look on her face. Only, the look of horror, he quickly realized, was because he was aiming his cocked Colt in her general direction.
Not because she was being accosted by the five brigands, because the five brigands were still seated where they’d been seated before. Three of the five, in fact, appeared to be sleeping while the other two were leaning forward, probably playing cards on their knees though Longarm couldn’t see below their seat
backs.
The train continued shuddering, rocking Longarm back in his seat, nudging the girl slightly forward in hers. Longarm looked outside past the tattered clouds of coal smoke sweeping past the windows. They were on a brown, sage-stippled plain, and they were slowing—likely for the little settlement of the appropriately named Jerkwater. Longarm had traveled this way more times than he could count, and they’d always stopped in Jerkwater to take on water after climbing and descending Monarch Pass.
Longarm depressed the Colt’s hammer, raised the barrel, instantly feeling the heat of chagrin rise in his cheeks. Then he heard what he must have heard in his sleep—the train whistle announcing their arrival in Jerkwater.
The girl continued to stare at him, maybe wondering what grade of crazy man she’d found herself being accompanied to Arizona with, but she didn’t say anything. Longarm returned his pistol to its holster and snapped the keeper thong home across the hammer.
When the train had come to a final, shuddering stop, all the passengers, of which there were only around a dozen, detrained to take advantage of Jerkwater’s amenities. There was only a small café run by a gnarled Mexican lady, a saloon run by a fat Swede, and a feed store that doubled as a dry goods and post office, last time Longarm was through here. The buildings were all lined up along the tracks, their primary function to patronize the trains and the few area ranchers.
Since the five men who’d been appraising Haven’s wares had also gotten off, and Longarm could see them now stretching and sauntering over in the direction of the saloon, he decided to get up and see what the Swede was serving for sandwiches. And a beer on a hot, dusty dry day of travel might be a welcome bit of nourishment, as well…
He told Haven his intentions.
“I’ll stay here,” she said. “I can’t sleep while the train is moving, so maybe I’ll indulge in a doze while it’s stopped.”
“Sandwich?” he offered. “A beer? The Swede don’t keep it cold, but he makes a right malty ale.”
