Longarm Giant #30: Longarm and the Ambush at Holy Defiance (11 page)

“Say, now…what you got there?”

Longarm glanced at his partner and turned his mouth corners down in disgust. “This here is Miss Haven Delacroix, Pinkerton Agent. She’s taggin’ along on account of the Pinkerton’s representing Wells Fargo in the matter of the stolen gold.”

He and Haven hadn’t exchanged more than three words since they’d left the springs, though they’d spent one night camped together afterward, in a crease in the hills a few miles south of it. Fortunately, the girl’s latest three admirers hadn’t shown up on their back trail, but Longarm wasn’t convinced they still wouldn’t. His lawman’s sixth sense told him they were being shadowed.

“Pinkerton agent, eh?” said Sanders, rising slowly, his stiff knees popping audibly, good eye riveted on the willowy, heart-twistingly beautiful brunette who had Longarm by the balls and knew it though Longarm was doing his best to convince her she didn’t.

A woman with that kind of power was a dangerous thing.

“Say, now, they’re comin’ in purtier packages these days, ain’t they? The last one I seen was uglier’n last year’s sin. Couldn’t hold his liquor, neither.”

“I can assure you I can hold my liquor,” Agent Delacroix told the ranger, giving a haughty little smile directed at Sanders but meant for Longarm as she added, “Though I, unlike some, prefer not to drink when I’m working.”

“You’re makin’ me thirsty,” Longarm said with a grunt, flaring his nostrils at her and trying not to even glance at the two generous lumps in her shirt.

“How could you be thirsty?” she said without looking at him. “You’ve been sneaking sips from that flask of yours since early this morning.”

“Sneaking sips!” Longarm said with an annoyed chuckle. “
I don’t sneak nothin’, and I had two drinks all day to cut the trail dust and make the company I been keepin’ somewhat
tolerable.
”

“Say, now…” said Roscoe Sanders, rolling his good eye between the two newcomers, deep lines cutting across his pale forehead and spoking his eye corners as he sized up the pair. He looked like he was watching two half-feral cats meet in an alley and was determining when the fur would fly.

With an air of impatience, Agent Delacroix said, “Getting down to business, Ranger Sanders, we understand that you’re incarcerating one Frank Three Wolves here, who may or may not have some information leading to the cache of stolen gold as well as to the killer or killers of the three rangers and two deputy United States marshals.” She offered a smile, which Longarm grudgingly had to admit was radiant. “Could we visit with this man, please?”

Sanders swallowed nervously as he stared at the woman, the deep, leathery tan of his craggy cheeks darkening with a schoolboy blush. “Well, sure, sure, ya can.” He grinned, showing tobacco-crusted teeth.

When he said nothing more but just stood staring at the woman and probably imagining doing much more, Longarm swung down from the roan’s back and said testily, “I take it he’s inside?”

Sanders raked his eyes from the girl reluctantly, frowning as though trying to understand what he’d just heard, then said, “Oh, no! He ain’t in the jailhouse. I got him over to Slim’s drawin’ drinks, as the boys from the Prickly Pear Ranch are in town, and Slim’s been laid up since the doc cut his appendix out.”

Longarm and Haven followed the ranger’s gaze to a saloon on the other side of the street and about half a block to the east, the direction from which they’d come. A crude, hand-painted board sign over the brush-roofed gallery announced simply:
SLIM’S
. There was a good dozen or so ranch ponies standing at the two hitch racks
fronting the place, their latigos drooping. A black-and-white collie dog lay on its side in the shade atop the gallery, sound asleep.

Haven scowled skeptically at Roscoe Sanders. “You have a prisoner working at a saloon? A man who might know the whereabouts of stolen gold as well as whom might have killed
five lawmen
?”

“Ah, heck, Miss…uh, what was the name again?”

“Delacroix.”

“Ah, heck, Miss Delacroix, Big Frank ain’t goin’ nowhere. He’s got nowhere to go and even if he tried, he wouldn’t make it as far as the livery barn.” Sanders snorted a laugh, brushed his fist across his nose, and walked down off the building’s sagging porch.

“Follow me—I’ll introduce you to Big Frank.” Sanders swung back around and thoughtfully fingered his chin. “You don’t mind goin’ into a saloon, do ya, Miss Delacroix? Slim’s place…well…there might be some business upstairs, if you get my drift?”

“I wouldn’t doubt it a bit if Slim’s place doubles as a sporting parlor, Rangers Sanders,” Haven said, reining her horse away from the ranger post. “I wasn’t born yesterday, and my investigations have more than a few times required me to enter drinking establishments possibly even more raggedy-heeled than that of Mr. Slim.”

Sanders glanced at Longarm, who merely shrugged.

Sanders brushed his fist across his nose again, fidgeting, obviously uneasy, and then spat to one side as he swung around and tramped on down the street, angling toward Slim’s, the mule ears of his boots flapping this way and that with his badly bowlegged stride. Longarm and Agent Delacroix followed the man, put their horses up to the less crowded of the two hitch racks, swung down, and looped their reins over the cottonwood crosstie polished to a smooth, silver shine.

Longarm had heard a loud commotion from inside the saloon when he’d passed on his and Haven’s way through
town a few minutes before. He heard it again now—a raucous din like only cowpunchers fresh off the ranch after payday could make.

Ranger Sanders stopped in front of the batwings, hooked a thumb at the doors. “Kinda rowdy in there. Maybe you’d like to wait out here, Miss Delacroix, while me and Custis talk to Big Frank.”

Longarm looked at her just now walking up the gallery steps and crouching down to pat the shaggy, dusty dog still lying there as though he’d run hard all day. He didn’t lift his head but merely flapped his tail against the gallery floor in acknowledgment of the woman’s ministrations.

“Boys will be boys. They don’t bother me at all.” She gave the dog one more pat, winked at Sanders, nearly causing the ranger’s knees to buckle, and then brushed past Longarm and pushed through the batwings.

The dog lifted his head suddenly, watching her go and giving a forlorn moan.

“Forget it, feller,” Longarm muttered to the dog. “That woman walking away is the best thing that ever happened to you. Let her keep on walkin’!”

He followed her and Sanders into the saloon. Most of the sweaty, dusty punchers seemed to be grouped around a table at the back of the room, holding up wads of greenbacks and yelling out bets. A big, long-haired man with Indian features—probably a half-breed—and wearing a white apron shuffled amongst them, delivering frothy beer mugs from a round tray. As he turned from the group at the back of the room and started toward the bar, he tripped on something and would have fallen if he hadn’t caught himself against a table.

Just then his molasses-dark eyes found Sanders, and he snapped out angrily, “Goddamnit, Roscoe, how’m I supposed to work when I keep trippin’ over this goddamn ball an’ chain?”

Just then, Longarm noticed two things about the big,
hawk-nosed half-breed with close-set, angry eyes. He had only one arm—the right one. And around one of his ankles was a stout iron shackle to which a six-foot length of chain trailed away to an iron ball hooked behind a chair leg.

Longarm had no sooner finished sizing up the half-breed than he saw what the cowboys were betting on at the back of the room. Apparently one of them was fucking a dark-haired girl bent forward across the table in front of him, the whore’s skirt pushed up around her waist, the cowboy’s denims and longhandles shoved down around his ankles.

He was crouched low over the whore, who was propped on her elbows on the table, leisurely resting her chin against the heel of her right hand as the waddie hammered away behind her. The whore was laughing and yelling encouragement in Spanish-accented English.

She was a big, comely girl, and her full, brown breasts raked their heavy nipples across the table beneath her.

The men around the hip-thrusting waddie were calling out times, betting on how long it would take him to finish, some cheering him on while others yelled for him to slow down and take his time.

One of the gamblers had him at twelve minutes while another—an older, short, wiry gent with pewter hair—had him at twenty. The little, older gent stood atop a chair near the whore’s head, yelling and stomping one boot as though to the beat of a mariachi band, his spurs ringing like rusty chimes.

Longarm looked at Haven, who stood to his left, staring toward the back of the room. “Are they doing what I think they’re doing?”

“Maybe you’d better wait outside.”

“Men are disgusting.” Haven drew a deep breath and turned to Sanders. “Mr. Three Wolves, please, Ranger?”

Sanders beckoned to the big half-breed, who had just returned his tray to the bar and was glaring at the old ranger. The half-breed had apparently noticed Haven, because his
eyes were riveted on the beautiful Pinkerton as he went over and picked up the iron ball and carried it down the bar to where the newcomers stood clomped at the end near the batwings.

“What do we have here?” he said.

Sanders said, “Can you take a break, Frank? These folks wanna talk to you.”

“Who are they?” Three Wolves had only glanced at Longarm, his gaze remaining on Haven.

“Law.”

“Really?” Big Frank’s dark eyes flashed surprise as they roamed up and down the woman’s busty frame clad in tight denims, long duster, and dusty stockman’s boots. “They sure don’t
look
like law!”

“Why don’t we have a drink?” Sanders said.

“I don’t drink while I’m working,” Haven said reproachfully.

“Don’t you ever get tired of the same old song?” Longarm looked at the half-breed. “I’ll have a beer and a shot of rye.”

Haven flared her nostrils with disdain.

Longarm, Agent Delacroix, and Roscoe Sanders took seats at a table near the front of the saloon, a good distance away from the festivities, which were continuing, Longarm couldn’t help noticing though the hip-thrusting waddie looked about ready to blow his load at any second. His face was red and swollen and he was shouting, “Ah, shit! Ah, shit—I ain’t gonna last!” while the whore said, “Two more minutes, Elwyn, and you will make Carmella one rich
puta!
”

She cackled wildly.

A couple of the waddies clapped. The little, pewter-haired cowboy on the chair was bellowing encouragement in a heavy Scandinavian accent. Apparently, a couple of the bettors had lost out and were slumping into chairs to ease their loss with beer and whiskey.

Three Wolves came from the bar carrying his iron ball as well as his beer, not an easy maneuver for a one-armed man. He’d already delivered beers and whiskey shots to Longarm and Sanders, and a glass of water to Agent Delacroix. He looked worn-out and angry but Haven’s appearance had gained his attention and tempered his owly mood. Like every other man who encountered her, he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

Haven looked at the iron ball as the half-breed dropped it onto the floor, and scowled at Sanders. She said, “Making a one-armed man serve drinks while chained to an iron ball. Is this your doing, Ranger Sanders?”

“That was my flash of brilliance, yes, sir. I mean,
ma’am.
” Sanders chuckled. “I figure Slim needed a barman, and Frank here wasn’t doin’ nothin’ but eatin’ and shittin’—pardon my language, miss—over at the jailhouse while we was waiting for you two to show up. So why not put him to work slingin’ drinks? The ball ain’t nothin’ personal, but Captain Leyton—that’s Captain
Jack
Leyton,” he told Longarm, “said to make sure he don’t escape. Don’t see how even ole fleet-footed Big Frank here could escape with an iron ball chained to his ankle!”

Sanders laughed.

“Oh, don’t go feelin’ sorry for ole Frank, Miss Delacroix. Frank’s strong as an ox and mean as a hydrophobic wildcat. He got himself in this here sichyation when he cut the head off a poor little, unsuspectin’ greaser he found diddlin’ his girl in their shack out by Diamondback Canyon. Stuck the head on a post in front of his place, as a warning to others who might get the same idea, and fed the rest of the little Mex to his hogs.”

Sanders pointed at the big half-breed, who sat glowering at him murderously, and laughed.

The half-breed looked as though he were about to dive across the table at Ranger Sanders, so Longarm said, “All right, all right—enough about Big Frank here and the Mex, fer now.” He fired a match to life on the marred tabletop and touched it to the cheroot sticking out of his mouth.

Haven said, “We’re here about the stolen gold, Mr. Three Wolves. And the dead lawmen.”

“I was locked up,” Big Frank Three Wolves said, his dark eyes flaring out of his big, broad, pockmarked face at Haven and then at Longarm. “I didn’t kill no one!”

“No, but you know who did, don’t ya?” Longarm smiled knowingly at the man through the smoke wafting about his head.

Haven sat staring at Three Wolves, one fine, pale hand wrapped around her water glass, one brow arched with interest.

Longarm waved the match out and tossed it on the floor. He continued: “I got a feelin’ you sent them down there, right into an ambush. Didn’t you?”

Three Wolves shook his head, the nostrils of his big nose flaring. “You got it wrong, mister.”

“Then tell me how it really went.”

“I killed the Mex, all right. Caught him with Estella. Everyone knows how I feel about her. I get back from a freight run to Tucson early, and I find Cruz an’ Estella…in my cabin, goin’ at it like a coupla wildcats.” He looked at Agent Delacroix as though for sympathy.

She jerked with a start as a shrill cry rose from the back of the room. The whore laughed. A roar went up, and the old, pewter-haired cowboy whistled and clapped his hands, leaping down from his chair and running over to congratulate Elwyn, who stumbled back away from the whore, his dick drooping between his bare thighs.

He looked as though he’d run a long ways over rough ground.