Three men were at the springs he’d been heading for. Two were mounted. One holding a canteen, with a second flask draped over his shoulder, was kneeling near a small trough down which the water trickled as it issued from a crack in the rocks. They’d all heard the clomping of Longarm’s and the girl’s horses, and they all had their hands on the butts of their own pistols and were gazing cautiously toward the newcomers.
Agent Delacroix rode up beside Longarm and, seeing the men by the spring, jerked back sharply on her own horse’s reins. She looked from Longarm to the strangers and back again. Longarm said nothing but kept his expression mild.
The two mounted men by the spring eyed the lawman and the girl suspiciously. The one with the canteens rose slowly, shoving a cork into the lip of the canteen he held in his left hand, smiling and nodding. “Afternoon.”
“Afternoon,” Longarm said.
“We was just ridin’ on,” said the man with the canteens, flicking his dung-brown eyes from Longarm to the girl and keeping them on Haven for about two beats too long.
“Good water.” He held up the canteen he’d just corked. “Help yourselves, friends.”
He pinched his hat brim to the girl and then turned and mounted a dun while the other two regarded Longarm and Agent Delacroix with cold, calculating expressions. All three were sun-browned and bearded Anglos in long, filthy dusters. They had the wild-eyed look of desperadoes, and the number of weapons they wore did nothing to temper the impression.
When they rode off, Longarm removed his hand from the walnut grips of his Colt. He watched the three ride on down the cactus-bristling hills to the south and into a shaded draw. They grew small beneath the vaulting, slightly darkening sky in which not a single cloud floated.
When they’d disappeared from view, Longarm swung down from the roan’s back. “We’ll fill with water here, ride on a few more miles, and camp.”
Feeling owly, he slipped the roan’s bit from its mouth so it could drink freely, and then unbuckled the saddle cinch so it could move around and get some air. He removed his two canteens from his saddle horn. He could feel the girl watching him pensively as he walked over to the spring.
“What’s eating you?” she said.
“Nothin’.” He didn’t want to talk about it. She was here now, and he had to shoot with the loads he’d been given.
Kneeling beside the spring and plucking the cork from one of the canteens, he lowered the flask to the pencil-thin stream trickling out of the rocks.
“You think I’m trouble,” she said.
Longarm gave a caustic snort.
“Well, I’m here now, and you’re just going to have to get used to it. Mr. Pinkerton has assigned me to represent the interests of Wells Fargo in this matter, and that’s exactly what I intend to do. If at all possible, I intend to see that the stolen gold is returned to its rightful owners.”
Longarm said nothing. There was no point arguing with the girl. Arguing with females of any stripe only got a man a headache. A bad one.
Standing over him, looking down at him with her fists on her hips, a canteen hanging from each shoulder, she tapped her right boot impatiently. “Oh, I see.”
Longarm glanced up at her. “See what?”
“I was just fine to have around as long as I could amuse you with my embarrassment. I was even finer to have around the other night in Leadville, wasn’t I?”
Longarm corked his filled canteen. “I’ll say you were!”
“But out here where I have a serious job to do, I’m trouble. Is that it?”
Despite knowing he was wasting his breath, Longarm glared up at her through one narrowed eye. “Yeah, that is it, Agent Delacroix. Women don’t belong out here. Especially ones as pretty as you. A lawman has enough trouble out here with the additional trouble of a pretty girl!”
“Is that really what has your longhandles in a bunch?” she asked.
Longarm didn’t say anything as he finished filling his second canteen.
“Or maybe it’s because you’re having such a hard time keeping your eyes off of my shirt?” Her smile had as little humor as an icicle hanging from a Dakota porch roof in February. “Maybe you’re not so afraid of the trouble I might attract from other men, but of the distraction I am to you. That’s why you suddenly think I shouldn’t be here, isn’t it? Because you can’t keep your eyes off of me, or stop thinking about the other night!”
Longarm felt his face heating up. His hands shook as he corked the second canteen and rose, trying hard to keep both his chagrin and his anger on a short leash. “Yeah,” he said, honestly, “maybe that is it!”
He stared down at her. She had him so damn worked up that he was having trouble finding the right words with which to defend himself.
Hell, truth be told, now that she’d laid out her view of it, he was having trouble understanding what it was he himself thought about the whole matter. His own embarrassment over her having read him so clearly, however, made him even angrier than her presence did.
She gave him a mock smoky look, half smiling as she turned her head to one side, drew her shoulders back, pushing her breasts out, and dropped her eyes to the buckle on his cartridge belt. Her gaze was brashly jeering. “Would you feel differently if I promised to sleep with you tonight?” Her lips broadened her smile, and she shook her head slowly. “And I don’t mean sleep.”
Longarm felt an instant, involuntary pull in his crotch. It was followed by a sharp burn of anger. At what, he wasn’t sure. He only knew that his knees felt far weaker than they’d ever felt when he was facing a whole passel of long-coulee riders, and his ears were fairly scalding the sides of his head. He wheeled and stomped over to his horse, hanging the canteen lanyards over his saddle horn.
“Fill your goddamn canteens,” he said through gritted teeth. “Then we’ll water the horses and hightail it before those three come back to get what they were thinking about getting when they saw you ride out from behind that rock.”
Digging a cheroot out of his shirt pocket with an angry-shaky hand, he added, “I don’t think they were just thinkin’ about sleepin’ with you, either, Agent Delacroix. They’re no doubt swinging back around us right now, chucklin’ about how they’re gonna skin them nice tight denims down your purty legs and hoist your knees up around your ears!”
That didn’t seem to faze her a bit. She uncorked her canteen. “I can take care of myself very well, Marshal Long. You saw how well back in Jerkwater.”
“You got damn lucky back in Jerkwater, lady. If I hadn’t been there, all five of ’em would have been on you, and I doubt even Annie Oakley could have kept her legs together against those odds.”
Hazel eyes fired javelins of hatred at him. “If you think I need your protection, Marshal Long, you’re badly mistaken.”
“Hah!”
Agent Delacroix’s pretty face turned as red as a rose. “Next time, you just sit still and leave it all up to me. Hell, you might even learn something about how to handle yourself out here!”
She wheeled from him angrily, adjusting the Lemats holstered on her hips, and dropped to one knee beside the spring to fill her canteens. As she filled the first one, she narrowed her eyes over her shoulder at him. “You know what I think has you madder than an old wet hen, Marshal?”
Longarm fired a lucifer to life on his cartridge belt. “I know you’re gonna tell me.”
“You feel challenged after having witnessed how capable I am. A strong woman out here in this man’s land threatens you.”