Longarm shrugged. “You can have whatever’s on him as long as you haul him out of here and bury him; same with his two pards in the hotel.”
The two men looked at each other, shrugged, and came on down the boardwalk to pull Jim Winter out of the stock tank. Longarm walked back toward the hotel. Footsteps rose on his right and a familiar voice called, “Who’s shootin’ over here?”
Longarm turned to see a skinny, stoop-shouldered figure tramping toward him. For a few seconds, he couldn’t place the bull-legged gent in a long nightshirt dangling to his bony knees, and a night sock, the tail of which hung down over his right shoulder.
“Custis, that you?”
Then Longarm saw the mule-eared boots not unlike his own, though far older, and he lifted his gaze to the drooping salt-and-pepper mustache brushing down past the old ranger’s chin. The last time Longarm had passed through Broken Jaw, there’d been no local lawman. It was up to the rangers manning the outpost to keep the town in trim. That must still be the setup. Longarm couldn’t help chuckling at Sanders’s costume, but then he remembered that his wick had nearly been trimmed.
“What kind of a town you runnin’, Roscoe?” he said. “A man can’t get a good night’s rest without three men tryin’ to beef him through his door!”
“Huh? Whuh?” Sanders stopped and looked around, befuddled, indignant. His craggy cheeks darkened, and he spat to one side as he poked an accusing finger at Longarm, who continued walking toward the hotel. “Custis, you’re trouble. Always have been, always will be! You pack it like most men pack tobacco!”
Longarm stopped at the bottom of the Arizona House’s front steps and stared up at Haven Delacroix standing atop the gallery, dressed in her thin pink wrap, her hair down, her LeMats in her hands.
Longarm shook his head and climbed the steps, growling, “Nah, the trouble’s right here.”
He glanced at her as he brushed past her. He vaguely noted the smell of booze on her but she looked sober enough now in the wake of the dustup. She arched a peevish brow. “You think I’m to blame for this?”
Longarm walked through the open door and into the hotel, not looking back as he said, “It wasn’t me they wanted to fuck.”
Chapter 17
Despite having his sleep so rudely interrupted, and not in the way he’d expected after hearing Haven’s footsteps in the hall outside his room, Longarm woke at the first flush of dawn. He was sure those first footsteps had been hers. She just hadn’t had the courage to knock on his door and ask him to let her in so they could carry on as they’d carried on in Leadville.
Too prideful. Typical of the moneyed class. Cynthia Larimer, of course, was the exception to the rule. Cynthia wouldn’t have knocked. She’d have broken the door down and taken him by force.
Longarm snorted at the thought, shaving in the cracked mirror propped atop his dresser. But it was probably a good thing that he and Haven hadn’t gotten together last night. They’d likely both have been filled full of buckshot.
He figured the three bushwhackers had learned which rooms they were both in by peeking at the hotel register while the stocky German had snoozed in his rocking chair behind the lobby desk. Their plan had likely been similar to the Jerkwater bushwhackers—get Longarm out of the way so they could have some uninterrupted time with the girl.
Yep, probably lucky that Longarm and Agent Delacroix hadn’t both been in his room. They would have died in each other’s arms. He shook his head and then lifted the razor once more to his left cheekbone. But what a way to go!
She was a danger, though, he reminded himself, as he continued scraping his face. He couldn’t let his guard down again. Men of nearly every stripe on the frontier would be tempted by such a prize as Agent Delacroix, and that made him, Longarm, a target.
There was nothing he could do about that now. He was stuck with her, so he might as well make the most of it. What had happened last night—at least, last night before he’d nearly got sent to Glory in a hail of buckshot—indicated that sooner or later she was going to cave under the wave of her own desires.
He grinned at the prospect as he dressed and set his hat on his head, adjusting it carefully over his left eye. With his rifle on one shoulder, his saddlebags slung over the other shoulder, he strode into the hall and closed the door behind him. She was just then emerging from her own room, her carpetbag and saddlebags slung over her shoulder, her LeMats holstered on her tautly curving hips.
Haven looked at him coolly, but he thought he detected an ever-so-slight bleariness at the edges of her eyes.
The bleariness of drink?
“Sleep well?” he asked her.
“Well enough.” She shook her hair back from her eyes. “You?”
“Like a log after your friends died.”
“No friends of mine.”
Longarm snorted and brushed past her, heading for the stairs. She grabbed his arm suddenly and pulled. She was no match for his strength. Instead of jerking him around, his static weight ended up pulling her up against him. Her cheeks flushed slightly, and she stepped back, glaring up at him, a little breathless.
“I’d just like to know what you’re problem is with me, Marshal Long. Come on. Out with it! Let’s clear the air before we continue this investigation!”
He stared down at her. She squinted up at him, fire in her eyes. Her breasts pushed out from behind her shirt, which she wore with one more button open than she’d had open the day before. He was sure of that, because he noticed such things about women.
Her bosom swelled as he gazed at it, not for a second trying to conceal his lust for her. Her lips were full and rich. She looked so damn tempting that he could find no words with which to respond to her demand. And then there was no way he could have said anything even if he’d found the words, because suddenly he’d grabbed her with his free arm, drew her to him brusquely, and closed his mouth over hers.
At first, she squirmed a little, tried to pull away. He held her fast, kept his mouth over hers, mashing his lips against hers, his tongue probing hungrily. She closed against him and started to return the kiss, opening her lips slightly.
But then, as though catching herself, she stepped back.
Glaring up at him, she gritted her teeth and slapped him. It was a resounding slap. But it didn’t hurt him. It thrilled him. Her passion was intoxicating in whatever form it came in. Flip sides of the same coin.
He had her, he knew. She knew it, too. Now, it was just a matter of time.
He grinned down at her. She wilted under his gaze, stepping back, lowering her tentative eyes to his broad chest. Her throat moved as she swallowed. The idea was hitting home with her now. She was as certain of it as he was, and it scared her as much as it thrilled her.
Just a matter of time…
“Best get our horses and ride out,” he said and continued on down the hall, digging a fresh cheroot out of his shirt pocket.
Only fifty miles lay between Jawbone and Defiance Wash as well as the town that had partly taken the wash’s name, Holy Defiance, but the trip would require a good two days. Roscoe Sanders had told Longarm he’d be traveling through rugged country, but the word was sorely inadequate for describing the terrain that Longarm found himself heading into.
It was all broken, rocky desert bristling with cactus and greasewood, scored by arroyos and broad canyons carved by ancient rivers long defunct, though their beds might have seen a little water during the summer storm season, or in the spring when the snows melted in the northern mountains. All around the old Apache trail that Longarm and Agent Delacroix followed were deep, shelving mesas and spinelike sandstone dikes.
To the south and west rose jumbled, craggy outlines of a half-dozen different mountain ranges mounded with chalkor clay-colored boulders and spiked with saguaros and nearly every other cactus native to the Sonoran Desert.