Leyton’s men had likely scouted the canyon well and had known exactly where to set up the Gatling gun where it could cut down the gold guards most efficiently.
They’d done their job well, judging by the carnage before Longarm now, who ran heavy-footed, wincing, Haven jogging beside him. They’d also worked quickly. They were gone, leaving blood and bullet-torn bodies to mark their passing.
The gold wagon sat, its tongue drooping, in the middle of the wash and at the center of the carnage. It was a nondescript Murphy freighter that would draw little attention. No one would suspect it was being used to haul a fortune in gold.
A dirty cream canvas cover had been stretched over the box; the canvas now hung in bullet-torn tatters from the wagon’s ash bows. The mules that had pulled it were gone, likely used to pull the wagon that Leyton and Mercado had brought for transporting the gold back down the wash and, probably, south to Mexico, where the outlaws intended to live as rich men.
Only dead men were left here. Dead men and several dead horses.
A ways down the sloping wash beyond the wagon, three live horses stood cropping grass along the base of the wash’s east wall, reins dangling. The saddle of one of the horses hung down the mount’s side.
The riders were bleeding out on the floor of the wash—twisted and slack, some grimacing up at the sky, teeth bared beneath mustaches—likely the same expressions they’d worn when they’d started hearing the savage hiccupping of the Gatling just before the bullets had shredded them.
The freight team had relied too heavily on the secrecy of their route. The mine administrators hadn’t hired enough guards and the guards they had hired—likely ex-cowpunchers or lawmen—hadn’t scouted the trail ahead of them thoroughly enough. Most of these men—three appeared Mexican, were older, judging by the liberal gray in their hair. They’d gone soft and careless, and they’d paid for it with their lives.
Longarm stared off down the wash, his own fateful grimace creasing his muddy, blood-crusted, swollen-eyed face.
No sign of the outlaws. As he stepped around the dead men and the wagon, he saw where the gang had pulled their own wagon up behind the gold wagon. He saw the boot prints they’d made when they’d switched the gold bars from the gold wagon to their own, probably smaller wagon, which they’d likely turned around before they’d hitched the team to it.
A couple of the outlaws must be good with mules. They’d switched the team quickly to the first wagon, while the other men had switched the gold, and then fogged off down the wash at a fast clip, heading for the border.
Longarm kicked a rock in frustration, cursed loudly, hearing the reverberation of the epithet dwindle gradually between the canyon’s stony walls.
“Custis,” Haven said sympathetically, “don’t blame yourself. You didn’t even know this was going to happen before last night. There’s really not much either of us—both of us together—could have done to stop it. We’ll have to alert the nearest ranger outpost, the army…”
“I’m going after ’em, goddamnit.” Longarm continued to stare down the wash. The gang was probably not yet a mile away though he couldn’t see them because of the bending floor of Cuchilo Gulch.
He looked at the three horses standing thirty yards away. They still had their saddles. Carbines even jutted from their scabbards. Leyton had struck so quickly that some of the guards hadn’t even had time to unsheath their weapons.
Longarm turned to Haven, tossed her LeMat to her. She grabbed it with one hand, keeping her eyes on Longarm, shaking her head fatefully. “No.”
“They’ll be in Mexico soon, and then I’ll never find ’em again.”
“Custis, there must be twenty of them altogether.”
“I’ve faced long odds before. I don’t expect you to. You’re a detective. This is law work.”
Longarm slitted his good eye at her, knowing that he probably didn’t look very threatening, as beat up as he was. “You go on back to Denver, report to Billy Vail for me. Tell him to send an army, if he has one lyin’ around somewhere.”
Longarm walked over to one of the dead men. The man had three pistols holstered on his body. Longarm took two Colts chambered for the .44 rounds he carried in his shell belt. He also took a bandolier wrapped around the man’s waist, and slung it over his head and shoulder so that it slanted across his chest.
He twirled the Colts on his fingers, liking the weight of the guns, both of them being the older-model Colt Navy with seven-and-a-half-inch barrels and ivory grips. They’d do.
He holstered one, wedged the other behind his cartridge belts, and took the man’s hat. It was a black slouch hat, not all that different from his own Stetson, which he’d left back in the stable at Holy Defiance. Habitually adjusting the angle of the hat, he walked on down the wash toward the three horses.
The mounts eyed him apprehensively, sidled away as he approached. He cooed to one—a coyote dun with one white front leg—and managed to grab its reins while the others trotted a ways off. Longarm swung up into the saddle, slid the Winchester carbine from its saddle boot, and held it up to inspect it.
An 1869 model. The mine company hadn’t outfitted its guards with the newest model weapons—that much was obvious. Leave it to large, greedy companies to cut corners even at the detriment of the folks on whose shoulders the company stood. But the gun would do.
Longarm levered a round into the chamber, off cocked the hammer, and rested the barrel against his saddlebows.
As far as he was concerned, a war had just broken out in southern Arizona. He’d go down fighting it.
Chapter 33
Longarm did not say good-bye to Haven. He didn’t see the point. He knew he’d be seeing the beautiful detective again in just a few minutes.
One, she wasn’t accustomed to taking orders from anyone but Allan Pinkerton himself, much less from Custis P. Long. Two, she wouldn’t leave him out here to go up against twenty cold-blooded killers alone.
It wasn’t in her to do that.
All that Longarm felt when he heard her clomping up behind him on one of the other two horses—a rangy cremello that she, not surprisingly, looked sexily regal on—was a poignant but fleeting sadness that he’d likely gotten her killed now, too. But if he was going to go down fighting beside a woman, he’d just as soon it be Haven Delacroix, who had as much grit or more than most men he knew, including seasoned lawmen.
They rode down the winding wash, following the deep, narrow furrows of the wagon heavily loaded with gold. The tracks of many shod horses shone in the damp sand and gravel along both sides of the furrows. A good twenty riders. It didn’t look as though Leyton and Mercado had lost even one man in the ambush, which didn’t surprise Longarm, having seen where the bushwhack had occurred.
When he and Haven had ridden hard for a quarter hour, the sides of the canyon dropped abruptly. The main wash disappeared into the greater desert stretching washboard flat toward Mexico, while another, shallower arroyo twisted off to the southeast.
Near where Longarm and Haven reached the shallow gully angling between sparse mesquites, the wagon tracks as well as the accompanying horse tracks swerved from the gold thieves’ nearly due-south course and headed west.
“West?” Longarm said. “What the hell? I thought they’d be headed for Mexico.”
Stopping the coyote dun, he swung down from the saddle and walked around to give the tracks a closer scrutiny. As he did, a horse whinnied nearby, and Longarm wheeled, bringing up the carbine he held in his right hand, thumbing the hammer back.