“Nice shot,” he told her as she climbed the hill.
As she approached the crest of the hill, between strained breaths, she said, “The other one?”
“Gone.” Longarm knelt beside the dead man, patted his pockets, finding nothing but a small roll of Mexican greenbacks, a sack of chopped Mexican tobacco that smelled like pepper, stripped corn shucks for rolling, two knives in small sheaths, and ammunition.
Lots of ammunition.
There was nothing that identified him personally.
“A killer,” Longarm said. “A hired one, most likely. Wonder if whoever hired him knew his eyes were bad?”
“What would he be doing out here? He couldn’t have known we were coming.”
“Maybe he works for this Azrael feller who owns the ranch he’s on. Nothin’ to do but to ask him.” Longarm rose and looked around. “His horse must be around here somewhere. When we find it, we’ll tie him to it and haul him over to the Double D headquarters.”
Haven stood looking around, her hair and her duster billowing in the hot breeze. “While there’s still some light left, I’d like to look around here for the gold.”
“Might as well, though I doubt we’re gonna find it.”
“You never know. Big Frank might have it right.”
Longarm had just found too many holes in the story about the gold to believe that was true. Not that Big Frank had been lying. Santana was likely the liar. If the Mexican really had hid the gold here, the chance of it still being found here was damn slim.
Longarm found himself scrutinizing his partner admiringly. “That was a damn tough shot from that distance,” he said. “How’d you make it, anyways?”
“Why are you so surprised?”
“’Cause you’re a girl.”
He’d meant it as a joke, because she could obviously shoot her LeMats as well, and as willingly, as most men. She hadn’t seen the humor in the remark, however, and brandished a narrow-eyed look as she shoved his rifle at him, barrel-first. He took it, and watched her walk down the hill and into the crease in which Big Frank said that Santana’s gang had buried the gold.
Longarm mentally kicked his own ass. “When are you gonna learn to keep your whiskey funnel closed, old son?”
After looking around carefully to make sure the first shooter hadn’t circled back around to wreak more havoc with his Sharps Big Fifty, Longarm followed his partner into the crease between the hills. The bottom was a dry watercourse dropping from a high ridge, the top of which he couldn’t see from his vantage, for the chasm twisted between high, stony walls.
He could see why Santana had led his men in here when the Apaches had attacked them—there were plenty of strewn boulders offering cover. They’d likely buried the gold in one of the many nooks and crannies amongst the rocks, and then either fought their way out of the chasm or rode on up and over the pass to safety on the eastern side.
“Remember, you’re looking for a boulder with a large ‘X’ scratched into it.”
“I remember,” the girl said with her customary strained tolerance.
“Just remindin’ ya.”
“Thank you,” she said as she continued walking up the watercourse, swinging her head from right to left and back again, scrutinizing every half-concealed pocket.
“Don’t mention it.” Longarm looked behind and between several boulders. “Where did you say the gold was headed when the stage was hit?”
“A bank in Tucson.”
“For what?”
“I don’t believe it’s in the report, was it?” she asked. “You read the same one I did. If my superiors know, they didn’t share the information with me.”
Longarm kept walking up the draw. “You sound testy. Was it the girl comment?”
She stopped and gave him a sidelong look, her eyes shaded from the blazing sun by her hat brim. “I could have told you that you have mighty poor hearing for a lawman, but I didn’t, did I?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You couldn’t hear that killer walking up behind you?”
Longarm felt a colicky burn in his gut. “He musta been particularly quiet. Besides, I was hearing the thuds of the horse of that first hombre—the one with the buffalo cannon.” He felt injured by her insult mostly because he knew she was right—he should have heard the second man walking up behind him, and he was damn lucky the man hadn’t just shot him from a distance. “Remember, Miss Fancy Britches, I’ve saved your hide a time or two myself.”
She stopped and looked back at him again, blinking slowly. “Once.”
“Twice. Once in Jerkwater, once in Broken Jaw.”
She laughed caustically. “I handled myself well both times!”
“Sure, but only because I culled the herd o’ them that was gunnin’ for ya. Only they wouldn’t have gunned ya till they’d had their fun with you.”
She turned to face him straight on from several yards up the rocky wash, between two boulders slanting like tables with missing legs. “Those were not the only two times men have tried to have their ways with me out here, Marshal Long. I’m accustomed to it. I expect it and am always prepared for it.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re always prepared to take on so many by your lonesome. Next time that many decide to skin your panties off your purty legs, I’ll just let ’em!”
“Quit calling my legs ‘purty’.”
“Pretty, then. What’s the difference?”
She raised her voice, and despite her usual restraint, it trembled slightly with barely controlled emotion. “I wasn’t mocking your uncultivated mode of speaking just then. What I meant was, I’d rather you stopped speaking about my legs or any other part of my body.”
“Your legs are damn purty, and I’ll mention ’em any time if I feel I need to in the course of defending myself from your harangues, Agent Delacroix!”
Longarm stared down his arm and extended a finger at her, as though he were aiming a rifle barrel. His face was flushed. He felt it grow even hotter when she just stared at him with mild amusement and then chuckled with even more hilarity.
Shaking her head, she turned away and continued walking up the wash.
Longarm lowered his arm, feeling ridiculous. He’d let himself be lured into her female trap, had been made to look foolish. And, somehow—he wasn’t quite sure how—she’d won the argument.
No wonder he had no intention of ever letting himself get hitched.
Well, since he couldn’t get any more trapped than he was: “And your tits are mighty nice, too!”
She ignored him and kept walking. He stood in place for a time, let himself cool down despite the stifling heat burning through his hat to seer the top of his head, and then continued looking around at the rocks and boulders and clumps of tough, wiry brown brush.
He’d just inspected the purple shadows between two stacked boulders at the ravine’s stony southern ridge, and was about to continue on up the wash, when he stopped suddenly. Haven stood at the far end of the stacked boulders, looking at him with a grim, meaningful cast to her gaze. She held her hands straight down at her sides.
“You come back to thank me for the compliment?” he asked her snidely.
She shook her head, took a step back, and half turned to indicate the wash beyond her. Longarm automatically brought his rifle down from his shoulder as he brushed past her and continued on up the draw, letting his right arm brush the side of the stacked boulders, and looked across their updraw side.
A man lay in the shadows, arms stretched nearly straight above his hatless head. His ankles and boots, worn to the color and texture of older moccasins, were crossed.
Longarm moved closer to the body, saw the thin, dark brown hair combed to the left, the ginger-colored eyes staring through half-closed lids. The man wore a grim smile on his mouth mantled with a brown, dragoon-style mustache. Around his neck was a bloody green neckerchief.