by Tabor Evans
Longarm half turned in time to see a fist arcing toward his face. He ducked, and Stretch’s right fist swiped Longarm’s hat from his head.
Stretch grunted, his pugnacious face acquiring a surprised look. It grew even more surprised when Longarm buried his own right fist in Stretch’s belly and then smashed an uppercut against the underside of Stretch’s chin that was carpeted in a light brown spade beard to match the mustache mantling his long, thin-lipped mouth.
Stretch toppled like a windmill in a midwestern twister, dust billowing.
Mrs. Azrael laughed behind Longarm. She sounded like a whipsaw chewing on a horseshoe. “There you go, Stretch! Now look what you done!”
The ranch woman laughed again, thoroughly satisfied, it appeared, with the state of the man whom Longarm assumed was her foreman. “I told you to get that hump out of your neck, ya damn tinhorn!”
Chapter 22
On his ass in the dirt and ground horse shit of the ranch yard, propped on his elbows, Stretch glowered up at Longarm. Bright diamonds of threat danced in his eyes.
Mrs. Azrael laughed and said, “Come on inside, Marshal. I do apologize for my ramrod’s inhospitality. He’s a firebrand, that one!”
Longarm picked up his hat and glanced once more at Stretch. The other men had moved up closer to the house, some of them taking fighting stances in case the dustup between Longarm and Stretch wasn’t finished. Stretch stayed where he was, however, his glaring gaze filled with both shock and a promise of retribution.
Longarm pinched his hat brim to him and then turned toward the house. Haven stood just outside the entrance portal to the garden, scowling up at Longarm, like a schoolmarm silently chastising an unruly student. He merely hiked a shoulder, and then Haven turned through the portal and followed Mrs. Azrael along a stone walk through the garden.
Longarm followed them both, noting the colorful flowers arranged in flower beds, transplanted shrubs, cacti, and a flowering crabapple tree. The garden appeared to ring the house. As Mrs. Azrael silently walked along the stone path, she stopped and tipped her head back to look up at the tall lawman, who towered over her. She placed a hand on her sombrero’s crown to keep it from falling off.
“You’re a big man, Marshal. Bigger than Stretch.” Her high cheeks covered in wrinkled and dimpled leather, stretched an admiring smile. “Takes one your size to give him his due, which he’s never had, as far as I know. If so, he’s never told his ma about it.”
“Ma?” Longarm said.
“Sure, sure. Stretch is my boy. Favors his father more than his black-Irish ma, don’t he?” She called through the portal where Stretch was swiping dust from his leather leggings with his hat. “Stretch, get cleaned up. Supper in an hour!”
The tall ranch foreman threw an indignant look over his shoulder and dragged his boots in frustration toward the corral, where the bronc rider was just now climbing back into the hurricane deck.
As Mrs. Azrael started climbing the steps to the house’s front gallery, she stopped again and said, “And this here is Stretch’s wife, Vonda.”
Longarm hadn’t seen anyone standing there before, but he saw her now, hovering near a whitewashed stone piling that supported the gallery’s red-tiled roof. He hadn’t seen the girl because, being ash-blond and dressed in a white, low-cut cotton dress, her pale shoulders bare, she’d blended in to the piling and the white clapboard house front.
Longarm’s heart twisted a little, when he saw the heavy-lidded stare the girl gave him, crooking one corner of her full rich mouth that was just the right size for her delicate, heart-shaped face. Her flawless skin told Longarm she probably wasn’t much over sixteen years old, if that, but her body was full-busted, with long legs and ripe hips.
Her eyes behind the heavy lids were the blue of a high-mountain lake at the height of spring. She was barefoot, and now she mashed the toes of one foot down on the other foot—an achingly sexy gesture. Her toes were pink and plump and somehow as alluring as the pale breasts that were half-revealed by the thin, cotton dress. The big lawman’s keen male eye told him this woman-child’s breasts would not be as large as Haven’s, but they’d be full and succulent beneath his tongue.
Had Mrs. Azrael said she belonged to Stretch?
Longarm knew an instant’s fleeting jealousy, which he thought he concealed well as he nodded once to the girl, giving a cordial, professional smile. “I’m Deputy United States Marshal Custis P. Long, and I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Vonda.”
Haven stepped up beside him and dipped her chin to the girl. “I am Haven Delacroix of the Pinkerton Agency.”
The girl kept her sultry, blue gaze on Longarm, continuing to mash her pink toes into the top of her opposite foot and lean beguilingly against the piling, as though she were imitating a cat pressing its body against a man’s ankle.
Mrs. Azrael said in her brusque, raspy tone, tossing her clawlike hand in an urgent wave, “Go on up and tell Angelina to bring ole Whip down. The marshal and Agent Delacroix want to talk to him. We’ll be in the parlor. When you’ve done that, fetch us a jug of fresh water from the well.”
The girl smiled at Longarm, who didn’t think she’d given Haven so much as a passing glance yet, and then pushed away from the porch post, did a fleet, little, dancer’s pirouette, her blond hair flying out from her neck, and then ran through the stout open door and into the house. Longarm heard her bare feet slapping on what he assumed were stone tiles.
“Please, come in,” Mrs. Azrael said, entering the house herself and doffing her straw sombrero. “And don’t mind Vonda. She’s cork-headed and lazy as a rich widow’s cat. Why on earth my son chose to marry her of all the girls he’s had at his beck and call is beyond my fathoming!”
Walking through the doorway behind Haven, Longarm reflected that it sure as hell wasn’t beyond his fathoming.
As he and Haven followed Mrs. Azrael through the cool, dark house, he got the impression that the place had once been much smaller—probably a settler’s cabin. Since then, it had been added onto in various fashions until now it was a sprawling maze.
In some parts, the floors were stone; in others, oak. The walls were adobe brick or fieldstone, a few consisting of vertical wood panels. Most were dark with soot from candles, coal oil, and wood smoke from several iron stoves and brick fireplaces.
The little woman led them into a large room with couches and large comfortable chairs, a desk in one corner. There were a few small bookcases, old-model rifles, an oil painting, and hunting trophies on the walls.
There was also a stout liquor cabinet made of oak, Longarm noticed. He was glad to see the rangy woman amble over to it, curling both feet in a little, as though her ankles were sore.
“Drinks all around?” she asked. She’d hung her sombrero on a peg somewhere in the dark house, and Longarm saw that she wore her coal-black hair very short, with a tortoiseshell comb holding it down in back.
“Why not?” Longarm looked at Haven, who stood with her hat in her hands.
She hesitated for a second then, giving Longarm a vaguely defiant look, said, “Sure.”
“I got some purty good busthead here,” said Mrs. Azrael. “How ’bout some bourbon? Whip used to order it by the case from Kentucky. No doubt played a part in his…”
She let her voice trail off as she looked over her shoulder at the study’s open doorway, through which a young, plump Mexican woman was pushing a wiry, little gray-haired man in a wheelchair.
“Accident,” Mrs. Azrael finished.
The young Mexican woman kept her eyes down as she rolled the little gray-haired man up to the striped rug fronting the cold fireplace and around which most of the chairs and one of the couches were arranged. “Obliged, Angelina,” Mrs. Azrael said. “Start supper, will you? There’ll be two more this evening.”
The Mexican girl did not respond but, keeping her cool, dark eyes lowered, merely turned and strolled back out the study door, leaving the little man in his chair facing the fireplace with al
l the expression of a blank adobe wall. He was almost as small as Mrs. Azrael, and he wore a black patch over one eye. His skin and his hair was as dry, thin, and as colorless as that of a corpse.
Mrs. Azrael continued pouring drinks at the cabinet. “Marshal Long, Agent Delacroix, meet my husband, Whip Azrael. Don’t take it personal if he don’t say howdy or shake hands.”
Longarm gazed down at the poor old hombre in the wheelchair, both the man’s knees together and leaning to one side. In his stockmen’s boots, gray suit, and a black string tie, he looked as though he were about ride into town for a night of card playing with his moneyed cronies.
But Longarm doubted Whip Azrael ever left the house much anymore. Or, if he did, he likely didn’t know it.
“What happened?” Longarm asked as Mrs. Azrael handed him and Haven their water glasses half-filled with bourbon.
The old woman turned to the door and croaked out, “Where’s that water, goddamnit, Vonda!” To her guests, she said, “Have a seat. Anywhere. Please!”
Longarm chose a leather chair near Whip Azrael, facing the unlit hearth. Haven lowered her fine body into the brocade-upholstered sofa on his left, a low wooden table between them. Mrs. Azrael sat on the couch’s opposite end, her glass in her clawlike hand.
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.”
Chapter 23
“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.
