“That’s disgusting. The way you were ogling that crazy wife of his was just as disgusting. Don’t you men have any pride at all? No sense of civility or moral integrity? Is every potential unwashed thought welcome fodder for your depraved minds?”
“This is obviously somethin’ that’s been eating you.”
“We’re out here to investigate murder and stolen gold, and you’re making eyes at the wife of one of the suspects.”
Longarm stopped and swung toward her. “Hey, just remember how we first met, Miss Santy Maria!”
She wagged her finger at him and narrowed a reproving eye. “I told you not to bring that up ever again.”
“How ’bout last night? I shouldn’t bring that up, either?”
“We were two mature, unattached adults enjoying each other’s company after hours. I saw nothing wrong with what we did, though I see no reason to be so uncouth as to discuss it in the light of day.”
Longarm scowled at her, felt himself wagging his head again in utter befuddlement. He’d never understand how her mind worked. It was even more complicated and vexing than most of her sex. She must have been raised pious as hell, her earthly soul riddled with holy guilt yet incapable of keeping her from falling prey to her own female cravings over and over.
“What do you got to be embarrassed about? We threw the blocks to each other, and we’ll probably do it again tonight.” Longarm grinned. “Got a room key?”
“Don’t you think we should discuss what we’ve learned from our visit so far, and what each of us thinks about these people and their possible involvement in the murders as well as the gold?”
“Shit, I don’t know nothin’ more than I did before we got here.”
Haven glanced back at the house. They were near the garden’s stone wall, and the house was about fifty yards away. No windows facing the garden showed light. Longarm thought that Stretch and Vonda had gone to bed, though he wasn’t sure about the quiet, plump, long-suffering housekeeper Angelina, who toiled tirelessly and apparently without complaint.
Haven kept her voice low as she said, “I, for one, am very suspicious of Stretch. I think he has the gold. Or he had it.”
“If Stretch had the gold,” Longarm said, firing a lucifer to life on the wall and touching the flame to a fresh three-for-a-nickel cheroot, “I doubt he’d still be here at the Double D. He’d have left a long time ago and been livin’ high on the hog.”
“Not necessarily. A fool like that might have spent it already. Frittered it away on cheap women like his wife, and on expensive whiskey and cards.”
“Jesus,” Longarm said with a dry chuckle, blowing smoke out over the wall toward his little shack hunched in the darkness amongst some still mesquites and Spanish bayonet. “It’s frightening how well you know the male way. I have to say, you have a point. But if the gold’s been spent, there ain’t no way to find it.”
“If the gold’s been spent, why were those lawmen killed?”
“Maybe ole Stretch and his dear old ma are right, and they were killed by banditos. We could ride out and within a half hour we’d probably flush a half dozen out of the first wash we came to.”
Longarm stared into the darkly bristling desert toward the steep peaks forming a black, jagged-topped wall beyond, blocking out the stars.
“What is it?” Haven said, standing just off his right shoulder, looking up at him curiously.
“I don’t know.” Longarm rolled the cigar around between his lips. “Somethin’ tells me you might be right. Somethin’ also tells me that them two that ambushed us are part of Stretch’s roll.”
“That would mean the one with the Big Fifty is here somewhere.”
“Possibly, unless Stretch told him to make himself scarce till we left.”
Haven groaned in frustration. “What is going on here? Why would his men have ambushed us? Ambushed the other lawmen? Where is Captain Leyton? Could all those killings and attempted killings have happened because Stretch thinks the gold is buried up that canyon, and he doesn’t want anyone else finding it first?”
“You said it yourself,” Longarm said. “Stretch ain’t all that bright. Why, you can see the rocks rollin’ around behind his eyes. And we seen how impulsive he is. You go on in and get some sleep. I’m gonna take a walk around, see if I can flush up some secrets. Sometimes the dark of night is the best time for that.”
“What out for Stretch. He might jump you again with a few of his men to back his play.”
Longarm chewed his cigar. “Worried about me?”
“I’m worried about ending up alone out here.”
“Don’t worry.” Longarm placed his hands on her shoulders. He was surprised that she let him kiss her forehead. “This ain’t my first rodeo. Give me an hour, and then…” He canted his head toward his dark shack. “You’ll know where to find me.”
“I’m tired,” she said dryly. “You need your sleep, too. Big day tomorrow. And probably the next day.” Primly, she added, “Good night, Marshal Long.”
She turned and strode off in the darkness.
Longarm gave a sardonic snort and whispered loudly, “Knock twice quick so’s I know it’s you!”
Chapter 25
Longarm left the garden through a wooden gate and strolled over to his shack.
He went inside and lit a lamp, throwing a shutter open so that anyone around and watching would see the light. He took a long drink of water from the jug that the housekeeper, Angelina, had provided, and then swept a hand through his hair beneath his hat. He slipped back outside and stole around the front of the shack to the far side, out of sight from the house.
Stepping carefully in the darkness, he walked back past the rear of the shack and kept striding, threading his way through the sage and greasewood. After a time, he arced back toward the main yard and found himself on the south end of it, gazing back toward the yard proper that was bathed in cool, blue starlight.
The house was on the right and about seventy yards away from him. The corrals, barns, and bunkhouse were on the left side of the yard.
Most drovers tended to keep the hours of the animals they tended, retiring and rising early, and these men appeared no exception. The long, L-shaped bunkhouse between one of the barns and the breaking corral was dark. He stood beside a cottonwood for several minutes, listening to all the little night sounds of which besides the breeze and the infrequent rattling of leaves, there were few.
Finally deciding he was alone out here, he decided to relight a half-smoked cigar and sit down against the tree to look around and mull over the situation. He’d just dug the cheroot out of his pocket, when he heard a sound off to his left.
It was a scraping sound mixed with…what? Panting?
He returned the cigar to his coat pocket and, adjusting his Colt high on his left hip, its butt angled across his belly, he strode into the brush and rocks on the yard’s north side. There were a couple of old stone buildings out here—probably a keeper shed for meat and maybe another storage shed of some kind. He walked between them and across a sandy wash.
The sounds he’d heard grew louder. They sounded like an animal digging.
He climbed up the other side of the wash and stopped. Before him, a small shadow jostled. The coyote was kicking up sand around a rock pile. No, not a coyote, he realized now, hearing the ragged breathing and faint, desperate mewling. A dog.
The shepherd-like cur of Mrs. Azrael?
Longarm moved forward, dropped to his haunches, one hand on his pistol butt in case he was wrong and it was really a wolf or a bobcat out here.