She sipped the bourbon, made a face, and turned to yell toward the doorway again when Vonda appeared with a stone pitcher and a wooden trivet.
“Hurry, hurry,” the girl said in her sultry voice, brushing past Longarm, filling his nostrils with the smell of…what? Ripe peaches? There was a tang to it. Maybe peach brandy?
She set the trivet on the table and the pitcher on the trivet and looked at Mrs. Azrael. “Can I have one?”
“You go help Angelina. Skedaddle with ya!”
“You know I’m all thumbs in the kitchen!” the girl responded angrily, fists on her hips.
“Use your fingers, then!”
The girl swung around, showing Longarm her pouting mouth and raking her sultry gaze across his shoulders as she brushed past him again, heading for the door.
Mrs. Azrael added branch water to both hers and Haven’s bourbons and offered some to Longarm, who waved her off. When she sat down on the couch once more, she looked at her husband, and said, “Poor Whip. Horse threw him last fall. Landed on a Mojave green rattlesnake. One of the men saw the whole thing. The snake chewed ole Whip’s eye out and the poison did somethin’ to his brain. I don’t know—maybe it gave him a stroke. He ain’t said a word since then, and he’s never given me a single look that said he recognized me. Brain’s plum mush. He’s just waitin’ to die, now, I reckon.”
She sipped her bourbon and shook her head sadly. “I sure never thought it would end like this, but you just never know what’s gonna happen to ya, the ones you love.”
She favored her invalid husband with a look so sad that it squeezed even Longarm’s jaded heart.
Longarm said, “Last fall, you say?”
Mrs. Azrael nodded.
Longarm glanced at Haven, who said, “You’re in charge of the ranch operations, then, Mrs. Azrael?”
“Me an’ Stretch, that’s right. We been runnin’ a tight ship. Stretch had his stompin’ days same as most young men—that’s when he hitched his star to that girl of his he found in a saloon in Benson—but he’s grown up now. Pretty much, anyways, if you don’t count Friday nights in ole Kimble Dobson’s saloon in Holy Defiance.”
She cackled her crow-like laugh. “He’s headstrong, a good fighter…most of the time,” she added with a smile at Longarm, “but he’s got his pa’s good business sense, too. He does all the hirin’ and firin’. I just look after the books and keep up my garden. Angelina tends ole Whip. He’s in rubber pants now, you know. Can’t hardly feed himself. Still takes a snort of bourbon before bed, though. That’s how I know he ain’t all gone. Not just yet.”
“I do apologize for your trouble, ma’am,” Longarm said, feeling uncomfortable with the invalided Whip Azrael in the room, the sorry bastard’s lamps lit but no one in the house. The old rancher just stared into space, occasionally brushing a thumb across his nose, working his lips, and sighing.
“But getting down to brass tacks, Mrs. Azrael, you’ve had seven men killed on your land of late.”
Chapter 23
“I know,” the old ranch woman said. “It’s just awful.” Her regret appeared genuine. “That ranger you hauled in over that purty barb was here just the other day.”
Longarm said, “With another ranger—correct?”
“With Ranger Jack Leyton, that’s right. He’s been here before. Him and Whip was pards in their day, spent some time in the cavalry together.”
“Leyton and Sullivan left here together, I take it?”
Mrs. Azrael nodded. “I sure hope nothin’ bad has become of Leyton. He’s a nice man. When we was havin’ the Apache trouble, all them years, he was a big help. He’d come down here and organize posses with the sheriff over at Holy Defiance. When there was a sheriff there, that is. Not there’s nothin’ much there but a saloon run by old Dobson and his ’Pache daughter that all the boys go to on the weekends.”
Haven sipped her drink, set the glass on the table before her, and crossed her legs with feminine grace, half turning to the old woman sitting on the other end of the sofa from her. “I assume you were here when the stage carrying the gold was robbed, Mrs. Azrael?”
“My, yes. We been here for twenty-five years, Miss Delacroix. Whip built this house himself. It wasn’t nothin’ but a stone shack back then, and we spent more time fightin’ Apaches than herdin’ cattle, but we proved up on it, sure enough. Grieves me those men died on the Double D.”
She shook her head again. She was so tiny that she looked like a little brown doll leaning back in the sofa corner, bringing her drink to her lips often with both hands, and taking large drinks from it. The glass appeared the size of a canteen in her tiny hands scored with bulging, knotted veins.
Longarm sipped his own drink. “So you know it’s rumored that the gold is still on Double D range?”
“That’s the story, yes.” Mrs. Azrael waved a hand as though brushing away a fly. “Never seen it, though. I’m not so sure that Santana’s gang didn’t take it all and spend it somewhere. Or maybe there wasn’t even any gold to start with. That ole Santana rapscallion was a crower, he was. Haunted this border country for years, runnin’ stolen horses back and forth from Mexico, robbin’ freight outfits between Nogales and Tucson, much of it on the outlying areas of the Double D. This here’s a big spread, Marshal Long. Stretches across more than fifty thousand acres!”
“Oh, the gold was on the stage,” Haven said. “I’m quite sure of that. That’s why I’m here. Wells Fargo has a contract with the Pinkertons to find it and return it to its rightful owner. The missing gold has left a mark on Wells Fargo’s reputation, and Mr. Pinkerton wants it off his books.”
She paused, leaned forward to take another sip from her drink, and shook her hair back from her face. She turned to the ranch woman again and said, “Do you know that a gentleman called Big Frank Three Wolves claims to know the location of the hidden gold? At least, the location of little canyon it’s supposedly hidden in?”
“Oh, sure I do,” Mrs. Azrael said, waving her little hand again with annoyance. “That’s why them lawmen came down here, hopin’ to find it. And got themselves killed for their trouble. And that young one now, too—Sullivan. And probably Jack Leyton. Dirty shame!”
Longarm leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees. “You don’t have any idea who might have killed them?”
“Banditos, most like,” Mrs. Azrael said. “This country is still peppered with ’em. Maybe Apaches runnin’ off their reservation in the White Mountains. We still have problems with them rustlin’ our cattle. This is big country, Marshal Long. Still pretty damn wild, even with ole Geronimo in Florida.”
“And you’ve never seen the second dead man I hauled in here today?”
“I never got a good look at him, but I wouldn’t recognize half of Stretch’s men. They stay away from the house, and I stay away from the bunkhouse and let Stretch run things. He’s good at it!”
Longarm said, “Where were Leyton and Sullivan headed when they left the Double D—and when was it they left exactly.”
“Day before yesterday. Sullivan wanted to have another look at that draw where Santana hid the gold. Leyton thought it was a waste of time, and so did I, but Jack agreed they’d go out there an have another look-see and then ride around the range for a time, see if they could pick up the killers’ sign.”
A man’s voice had risen from somewhere in the house, faintly echoing. Boots clomped on floorboards. A female voice mingled with the man’s—softer, lower, deferring. The voice of Stretch’s wife, no doubt.
Mrs. Azrael lifted her chin and crowed, “Stretch! Get in here, Stretch! Let them girls cook!”