by Tabor Evans
“I don’t know.” Longarm rolled the cigar around between his lips. “Somethin’ tells me you might be right. Somethin’ also tells me that them two that ambushed us are part of Stretch’s roll.”
“That would mean the one with the Big Fifty is here somewhere.”
“Possibly, unless Stretch told him to make himself scarce till we left.”
Haven groaned in frustration. “What is going on here? Why would his men have ambushed us? Ambushed the other lawmen? Where is Captain Leyton? Could all those killings and attempted killings have happened because Stretch thinks the gold is buried up that canyon, and he doesn’t want anyone else finding it first?”
“You said it yourself,” Longarm said. “Stretch ain’t all that bright. Why, you can see the rocks rollin’ around behind his eyes. And we seen how impulsive he is. You go on in and get some sleep. I’m gonna take a walk around, see if I can flush up some secrets. Sometimes the dark of night is the best time for that.”
“What out for Stretch. He might jump you again with a few of his men to back his play.”
Longarm chewed his cigar. “Worried about me?”
“I’m worried about ending up alone out here.”
“Don’t worry.” Longarm placed his hands on her shoulders. He was surprised that she let him kiss her forehead. “This ain’t my first rodeo. Give me an hour, and then…” He canted his head toward his dark shack. “You’ll know where to find me.”
“I’m tired,” she said dryly. “You need your sleep, too. Big day tomorrow. And probably the next day.” Primly, she added, “Good night, Marshal Long.”
She turned and strode off in the darkness.
Longarm gave a sardonic snort and whispered loudly, “Knock twice quick so’s I know it’s you!”
Chapter 25
Longarm left the garden through a wooden gate and strolled over to his shack.
He went inside and lit a lamp, throwing a shutter open so that anyone around and watching would see the light. He took a long drink of water from the jug that the housekeeper, Angelina, had provided, and then swept a hand through his hair beneath his hat. He slipped back outside and stole around the front of the shack to the far side, out of sight from the house.
Stepping carefully in the darkness, he walked back past the rear of the shack and kept striding, threading his way through the sage and greasewood. After a time, he arced back toward the main yard and found himself on the south end of it, gazing back toward the yard proper that was bathed in cool, blue starlight.
The house was on the right and about seventy yards away from him. The corrals, barns, and bunkhouse were on the left side of the yard.
Most drovers tended to keep the hours of the animals they tended, retiring and rising early, and these men appeared no exception. The long, L-shaped bunkhouse between one of the barns and the breaking corral was dark. He stood beside a cottonwood for several minutes, listening to all the little night sounds of which besides the breeze and the infrequent rattling of leaves, there were few.
Finally deciding he was alone out here, he decided to relight a half-smoked cigar and sit down against the tree to look around and mull over the situation. He’d just dug the cheroot out of his pocket, when he heard a sound off to his left.
It was a scraping sound mixed with…what? Panting?
He returned the cigar to his coat pocket and, adjusting his Colt high on his left hip, its butt angled across his belly, he strode into the brush and rocks on the yard’s north side. There were a couple of old stone buildings out here—probably a keeper shed for meat and maybe another storage shed of some kind. He walked between them and across a sandy wash.
The sounds he’d heard grew louder. They sounded like an animal digging.
He climbed up the other side of the wash and stopped. Before him, a small shadow jostled. The coyote was kicking up sand around a rock pile. No, not a coyote, he realized now, hearing the ragged breathing and faint, desperate mewling. A dog.
The shepherd-like cur of Mrs. Azrael?
Longarm moved forward, dropped to his haunches, one hand on his pistol butt in case he was wrong and it was really a wolf or a bobcat out here.
“Here, boy,” he whispered.
The dog froze, looked toward him. Starlight shone on its wet tongue hanging down over its lower jaw.
“Here, boy,” Longarm said. “Come on over here. What you doin’, old son?”
The dog whined and dropped to its belly beside the low pile of rocks, staring toward Longarm, panting. The lawman straightened and walked slowly over, keeping his hand on his pistol butt. The dog growled, rose, and backed away several feet, keeping its dark eyes glued to the big man walking toward it.
The rock piles, the lawman saw as he drew within a few feet, were graves. One had a homemade cross flanking it. The other wasn’t quite as large as the other, and it was not marked with a cross. The dog had been lying beside the unmarked grave, but now it slowly backed away from Prophet, mewling and groaning deep in its throat, pointed ears pricked.
It had dug a sizeable hole in the side of the unmarked grave, tossing sand over some of the rocks that had been mounded to keep predators away.
“It’s okay, boy,” Longarm said, dropping to his haunches once more and removing his hand from his Colt’s grips. “You’re only doin’ what dogs do, ain’t ya?”
The dog barked once, twice, three times, jerking its head and snapping its jaws. Longarm gritted his teeth as the barks echoed, cutting the quiet night open.
“Shhh!” he said, holding two fingers to his lips. “Enough o’ that!” he hissed, knowing the barks were likely heard by every pair of ears around the place. He would have left right then, but he wanted to get a better look at the graves—one marked while the other, curiously, was not.
Why wasn’t it?
The shaggy beast appeared ready to bark again, when a man’s voice called from the darkness in the direction of the bunkhouse, “Duff? That you, Duff? Here, boy!”
The dog yipped eagerly and took off running wide around Longarm and then angling toward the wash and the bunkhouse beyond. Longarm stayed hunkered down beside the graves. The dog’s soft foot thuds dwindled into silence. A man’s voice, not loud but clear and sharp in the quiet night, said, “What’re you doin’ over there? Better not be diggin’ up them graves. Git home, you mangy critter!”
The dog whined. There was a faint rustling. The animal had taken off running again. Longarm hoped it was obeying the man and was heading back to the main house.
Longarm stayed hunkered beside the graves, listening. When he heard no one coming over, he looked at the graves. Being fresh, they were most likely the graves of the two men Longarm had hauled onto the ranch headquarters earlier that day. Why was one marked with the traditional cross, the other not?
Which one was the ranger and which the man who’d been about to give Prophet a bellyful of lead?
Men who rode for the same ranch were usually pretty tight. When a man died riding for that brand, he was given a proper burial, which usually included at least a crudely fashioned cross with a properly fortified grave.
Longarm thought he knew who was buried beneath the cross. The answer to that question answered, or at least started to answer, a lot more. And it caused his suspicions about Stretch Azrael and the entire role of the Double D to buffet like red flags in the wind.
He turned and walked back toward the dry wash. When he’d crossed it, men’s voices sounded off to his left. He froze, turned his head toward the bunkhouse, his hand once more closing over his pistol grips. The voices continued—two men conversing in a low tone. They were roughly thirty to fifty yards away.
Longarm pressed up close to a paloverde and peered through its branches. Nothing but cactus and creosote shrubs between him and the rear of the bunkhouse. He brushed past the paloverde and walked toward the bunkhouse until he saw a privy behind it. Two shadows moved behind the privy. Pinpricks of dull orange light shone against the shadows.
Th
e smell of cigarette smoke touched Longarm’s nostrils. The voices were clearer now, from this distance, though the men were speaking in conspiratorial tones.
He stopped behind a mesquite, pressed a shoulder to the trunk, breathing shallowly and pricking his ears, picking out bits of the conversation as the men smoked and talked.
“…Boss don’t like it at all,” one man was saying. “All this snoopin’ around.”
Silence.
A throat was cleared.
“…Wanna do about it?”
“Same as before.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah, well, hell—what’re we gonna do?”
There were garbled sentences here as the two men turned their backs on Longarm, looking eastward toward the corrals in which the shadows of horses stood stone-still as the animals slept on their feet.
Slightly louder, one of the men said, “U.S. marshal and a Pinkerton? A woman?”
“Maybe we don’t need to kill the woman.”
“Yeah, she’ll likely light a shuck out of here if that big lawman gets beefed, eh?”
“That’s what I’m thinkin’.”
Just then a couple of coyotes started yipping and howling so loudly and closely that Longarm jerked with a start. It must have scared the two men behind the privy, too, because one said, “Shit!”
The other laughed.
After a few seconds, one of the men said, “Tomorrow mornin’, early, you ride out and tell…”
Just then the coyotes kicked up another racket. A small pack must have been hunting in another wash less than sixty yards behind the bunkhouse.
The men behind the privy tossed their quirleys and stepped out away from the bunkhouse, heading for the wash, speaking too softly now for Longarm to hear. They were probably heading out to scare the coyotes away, in case the predators decided to finish the dog’s job of digging up the fresh graves.
As the two men disappeared in the dark desert, Longarm walked straight west from the mesquite and then retraced his footsteps to the yard’s west edge. The men’s conversation bounced around in his head.
So, their boss wanted him dead. The boss of topic was most likely Stretch Azrael. That Stretch wanted Longarm dead was no big surprise. That alone wasn’t enough to clarify any of the mystery of the stolen gold or the dead lawmen. Longarm still didn’t have enough hard evidence to bring charges against anyone, including Stretch, for anything.
He needed to know why Stretch wanted him dead.
Trouble was, he needed to stay alive long enough to find out the reason. Confronting Stretch would do him no good. Stretch would merely play dumb—which wouldn’t be much of a stretch for ole Stretch…
At least it didn’t sound like the killers would go after Haven. The lawman was glad that he wouldn’t have to worry overmuch about her. He could concentrate on watching his own back and try to find out why it had a target on it.
One thing was sure—he’d watch to see which of the Double D men lit out from the ranch yard tomorrow morning and follow him. If Longarm could find out who that man was, and who he was riding out to pay a visit to, he’d be that much farther ahead of the game.
From them, he might be able to learn the ins and outs of whatever deadly game was being played out here at the Double D. And the location of the gold, if Stretch hadn’t spent it all yet…
“Stretch,” Longarm said under his breath as he wended his way back to his shack behind the main house, “I’m gonna run you to ground, old son. And then you’re gonna tell me a few things I wanna know!”
He slipped back into his shack and quickly turned the wick down on his lantern, so his shadow couldn’t be targeted against the light. The killers hadn’t sounded as though they’d come gunning for him tonight, but you could never predict when a killer would kill. Trying to do so would get you killed.
He stripped down to his balbriggans, leaned his rifle against the stone wall near his cot, and shoved his Colt under his pillow. He sat on the edge of the cot for a time, staring out the shack’s front window at the starlit desert night.
It was as quiet out there as the inside of a dry well on the darkest night of the year.
Just the same, he’d sleep like he usually did when he was on assignment—light as a feather.
He took another drink from the water jug and then rolled up in his blankets, the wooden cot creaking beneath his weight. He’d just drifted into the shallow ditch of a lawman’s slumber when something propelled him back to the surface, and he snapped his eyes open, staring at the shack’s dark ceiling.
Footsteps were growing louder as someone approached the shack. They sounded like butter in a hot skillet. The person was doing little to conceal his approach. Her approach.
Longarm grinned, felt his tense muscles relax.
He’d known she’d come.
Eager, ragged breaths sounded beneath the soft footfalls. A bare foot slapped the wooden floor of the shack’s front stoop. A quick double knock on the door.
“Yay-up,” Longarm said.
The hinges squealed softly as the door opened and a slender shadow moved toward him, closing the door behind her.
Chapter 26
Longarm looked toward the door.
It was too dark in the shack for him to see much of anything, but he detected an inky movement against the darkness. The floorboards squawked under Haven’s tread. There was a sibilant rustle as she removed whatever wrap she’d worn out here and let it drop to the floor.
Then he saw the pale blur of her naked body before him.
He smelled the unmistakable fragrance of woman. His cock throbbed.
“Hold on.”
He tossed the covers away, dropped his feet to the floor and quickly shucked out of his underwear.
He lay back on the cot and she was on him like a duck on a june bug, breathing hard and fast. She lowered her head to his, kissed him hungrily, almost painfully, grunting and sighing, and then pulled her head away.
“Christ, if I didn’t know better,” he said, chuckling, her saliva hot on his lips, “I’d say we hadn’t cavorted like two randy Northwoods bears just last night!”
She whipped around on top of him, and suddenly, her hot mouth was closing over his cock while her silky-haired snatch was pasted over his face. Her knees were splayed across his shoulders. He could smell the warm musk of her, and that coupled with the eager way she lapped him, gently kneading his balls with her hands, heightened his desire.
He lifted his hands to her round, tender ass, used his thumbs to spread her pussy wide until he could see the pale pink nubbin of her honeypot just off the end of his nose. He rammed his nose up hard inside it, and she withdrew her mouth from his cock and groaned.
He gave a devilish smile when he felt her knees tighten against his shoulders, and she shivered as though chilled. Sticking his tongue straight out, holding it rigid but curling the tip, he raked his thick mustache and his lips up and down her quivering slit.
She groaned louder, shivering and kneading his balls while sucking his cock wildly, sliding her mouth up and down and lapping the head before sliding it down once more.
The wet sucking sounds engorged him. When she’d brought him with her lips and tongue and hot breath to the edge of his precipice, he withdrew his tongue from her wet pussy and rolled out from under her.
She gave a groan of protest, but when he knelt atop the cot and shoved her down against it, she giggled. It wasn’t a raspy giggle but a high squeal. He grinned—she was loosening up more than usual—and brusquely positioned her sideways, her head near the foot of the cot. He lifted one of her long, creamy legs up and wedged her foot against his shoulder.
Reaching down, he found the sopping hair of her love nest, and used his hand to guide his cock through those wide-open, petal-soft doors.
“Oh!” she cried. “Oh! Ahhhh. Uhnnahhh-gawhhh!”
He rammed himself deep into her. He’d prepared her for this, so she shouldn’t be as tight as she was, but he enjoyed the slow in-and-ou
t work as he slowly pried open her womb once more for the full width and length of him.
A pale blur in the darkness, sprawled in a half twist before him, she sighed and panted and nodded her head slowly, grinding her hands into the cot, bunching his blankets in her fists. When she’d become more malleable, he worked faster, and soon her head was bobbing wildly on her shoulders while he fucked her long and hard, feeling the cot leap around on the floor beneath him.
Her foot beat against his shoulder, increasing his desire. Her toes flexed and curled.
“Fu-uck!” she said through a long, ululating sob. “Oh…oh…oh, fuck meeee!”
When his blood started to boil, his cock seemed to grow even larger inside her. He rose up high on his knees and thrust against her harder, harder, his hips slapping her ass loudly.
Her cunt was like a warm, wet, furry creature gently nibbling his rock-hard manhood. She grunted loudly, until he was afraid she’d awaken Mrs. Azrael and Stretch and Vonda. But when he began to explode inside her, she grew suddenly, almost eerily silent.
She tensed every muscle in her body and bowed her head as though in prayer.
Her pussy expanded and contracted as his cock fired its seed deep into her boiling womb. She ground her little foot into his shoulder.
Slowly, his spasming abated. He held her foot against him, and stopped thrusting, leaving his cock halfway inside her. Her threw his head and shoulders back, gulping deep draughts of the fresh air pushing through the open windows.
He lifted her foot to his lips, kissed the little toe.
He held the foot in front of his face, feeling a scowl carve deep lines across his forehead. The foot he held before him was smaller and plumper than the one he’d kissed last night. He looked down the length of creamy leg angling up from the cot in front of him.
Too creamy, and not long enough to belong to Haven Delacroix…
Then he saw the blond head atop the pale shoulders. Vaguely, he’d noticed the paleness of her before and thought it a trick of the moonlight. But there was no moon tonight.
