Behind the tightly wound cloth, a long, gaping wound shone. His throat had been cut. There didn’t appear any other wounds.
Longarm heard Haven’s boots on the gravel behind him, saw her shadow in the corner of his left eye. She came up beside him and stared down at the dead man.
Longarm looked at the Arizona Ranger’s badge pinned to the man’s cream cotton shirt, partly concealed by a suspender strap. “Matt Sullivan.”
“Captain Leyton’s likely around here somewhere, too.”
Longarm doffed his hat and ran a weary, frustrated hand down his face. “Likely.”
Haven dropped to a knee beside the dead man and pressed the back of her hand against his cheek with surprising tenderness. Her voice was matter-of-fact, however, when she said, “He hasn’t been dead for more than an hour. Wasn’t bushwhacked, though. Disarmed first, then killed. Your dead blind man must have slit his throat with one of those knives of his.”
Longarm shook his head. “Damn. If we’d gotten here an hour earlier…”
Haven straightened. “Someone doesn’t want anyone looking for that gold. Which must mean it’s still here.”
“Yeah, well, you worry about the gold. Me—I’m gonna worry about findin’ out who killed Sullivan and the others. Jack Leyton, most likely, too.”
“Since we’re on Double D land…”
“Yeah, we’d best load up these dead men. I’m gonna go pay a visit to the Double D headquarters.”
She scowled. “And me?”
“You best hole up out here. Not right here, but out here somewhere safe.”
“I’m riding to the Double D headquarters with you, Marshal Long.”
“No place for a woman. Specially one such as you.” Longarm let his eyes flick to her breasts.
She gave him a blandly stubborn look, her eyes faintly smiling.
Longarm blew a long sigh, switching his gaze to the dead Matt Sullivan and then back to his partner.
There was no point in arguing with such a woman. “Then I hope you’re ready for another fight, Miss Delacroix. A pitched battle, too, since ole Whip Azrael likely has a dozen or so men on his roll. Well-armed ones, too, judging by those we’ve met so far.”
Chapter 21
Longarm and Agent Delacroix looked up and down the wash for Captain Jack Leyton and/or Ranger Sullivan’s horse but saw no sign of either.
They did, however, find the horse of the man whom Haven had sent to heaven…or wherever pale-eyed bushwhackers went when they gave up the ghost. It was tethered in the crease between the hill on which the dead ambusher lay and the next rise south—the one over which the dead man’s partner with the Big Fifty had fled.
Longarm tied both dead men over the back of the grullo gelding, which to Longarm’s eye appeared to have some Spanish barb in it, owing to its deep flank, its short, strong loin and well-shaped head with liquid blue eyes. It wore no brand, but the lawman was still betting that the dead man was a Double D rider.
Maybe the horse had belonged to the dead man and was not part of the rancher’s remuda. It didn’t have to be.
If so, when Longarm delivered the dead man to the Double D headquarters, he’d likely find the man with the Big Fifty, too. He was looking forward to having a discussion with him as well as his boss, Whip Azrael. They had many things to discuss, Longarm and the rancher and the Big Fifty–wielding ambusher. Including the gold, which Longarm and Haven had given up looking for after they’d found the dead ranger.
It had been getting on in the day, and looking for the gold up that twisting canyon was like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack, especially with the dark afternoon shadows bleeding out from the stony walls.
Longarm and Agent Delacroix followed the stage road running parallel to Defiance Wash up into higher country marked by green foliage, including bunchgrass and gama grass, growing amongst the craggy, sun-bleached bluffs and mesas that Longarm assumed were part of the Black Puma Mountains. In the late afternoon, they crested a pass sheathed in pines and aspens, and the air was fresh and aromatic with the tang of pine resin and sage.
As they dropped down the pass, the wash became a shallow stream, the water looking lime green as it rippled over the pale rocks between stands of trees and leafy shrubs. After drinking, washing their faces, and refilling their canteens, they continued down the pass, dropping only for a couple of miles before large, dark, formidable-looking peaks appeared ahead, seeming to block the riders’ westward passage.
The stage road forked, one tine leading northwest around a humpbacked jog of low mountains turning spruce green and copper now in the west-angling light. The fork was marked with a wooden arrow announcing: BENSON 45 MI.
The other tine meandered southwest toward the high, menacing black peaks. It was marked: AZRAEL DOUBLE D—3 MI.
Longarm and Haven took the southwest fork and they soon found themselves in rolling, high-desert country, with two riders dropping down out of the hills to the north. They were coming fast and yelling, though Longarm couldn’t hear them above the clomping of the galloping mounts.
Stopping the roan as well as the barb that he trailed by its bridle reins, Longarm slid his Winchester out of its boot, cocked the weapon one-handed, and rested the barrel across his saddlebows. Haven glanced at him edgily as the two men galloped down out of the hills, their horses’ thuds and snorts growing louder, pale dust rising.
They came through a crease between the last knobs and reined up in the trail before Longarm and Haven. They both wore bandanas over their sun-leathered faces and rough trail garb, a couple of pistols each. Sheathed carbines were strapped to their saddles, both of which wore the Double D brand on their left withers.
The lawman didn’t say anything as the two men looked him and Haven over. Finally, one rode back behind Longarm and drew rein beside the barb. He looked at the two dead men and then at Longarm, who squeezed the neck of his cocked Winchester.
The Double D rider’s eyes flicked to the rifle resting across Longarm’s saddle.
“The Azraels don’t cotton to company.”
“They’ll cotton to ours. I’m a deputy U.S. marshal, and she’s a Pinkerton. One of the dead men behind me I’m guessin’ is one of yours, in which case I got a bone to pick with Whip Azrael, because the stiff’s partner tried to drill a fist-sized wad of lead through us both. The other’s a dead Arizona Ranger. I’m guessin’ he was killed by the same men.”
The man behind Longarm rode back up to where his partner waited.
The two men conferred too quietly for Longarm to hear. After a minute, they regarded Longarm and Haven obliquely, jerked their chins toward the trail ahead, and then kicked their horses into dusty lopes.
Longarm glanced at Haven, cocking a brow, silently informing her that now was the time to hang back if she’d had a change of heart about riding into a possible vipers’ nest. If she understood, she didn’t let on. They both touched heels to their horse’s flanks, heading up the trail and eating the dust of their guides.
After a half hour, a ranch portal appeared amongst the chaparral covering the relatively flat canyon bottom they were traversing. The Double D brand was burned into the portal’s thick plank crossbar adorned with several sets of deer and elkhorns. Beside the portal stood another sign warning: STRANGERS UNWELCOME.
As he rode beneath the crossbar, trailing the barb and the dead men, Longarm saw the ranch headquarters sprawled along the trail that soon became a broad, dusty yard—the house on the left, bunkhouse and several other outbuildings including a couple of barns and a maze of interconnected corrals on the right. There was a round breaking corral on the near right, constructed of ocotillo branches.