He and the others came up on the rocky bluffs from the south, heading straight for the rugged formation. A narrow arroyo led into them, and he followed it until the arroyo became little more than a rock- and cactus-strewn gulch, impassable by horseback.
The small party left its mounts in the shade of a couple of paloverde trees, then grabbed their canteens and arms and walked up into the bluffs. When he came to the north side of the formation, he stopped on a flat-topped boulder about halfway up the bluff from the ground and stared down at the gap through which he’d been riding when Vonda’s man had ambushed him.
Below and to his left was where his .44 rounds had deposited the dead man. The man himself was gone, though his hat remained hung up on a tuft of Spanish bayonet, and the rocks around were splattered with his blood. The man himself had likely been dragged off by a mountain lion.
Longarm inspected the crease below and the rocky bluff face rising on the other side of it. The gap was about seventy yards wide, and it was the only way through this rocky neck of the desert. Leyton and the other outlaws had to be headed for it.
“Ambush, eh?” said Dobson.
Longarm nodded. He studied the desert to the west, saw what appeared a murky mirage, but there was enough color in it to tell him it was most likely the wagon and its escorts heading toward him.
He regarded Dobson and Cocheta standing to his far left. They looked at him with grim expectance. Haven stood just off his left shoulder. “You all spread out along the side of this bluff. Hide good in the rocks. Don’t let them see you until the wagon’s straight below you.”
“We just gonna start shootin’?” Dobson asked. “Shoot ’em like ducks on a millpond?”
“Just like they did the mine company guards, that’s right.”
Dobson racked a round in his Henry rifle. “I like that.”
Cocheta’s copper irises glinted hungrily.
Longarm said, “I’m gonna go on over to the other side. We’ll catch them in a cross fire. No one shoot before I do. But after that, cut loose—tear down as many of those sons o’ bitches as you can.”
“You stay here, Custis,” Haven told him. “No point in you moving around any more than you have to. No offense, but you look half dead.”
She started down the slope with the rifle she’d taken off one of the dead gold guards. She stopped and turned back to Cocheta. “We’ll both go over there, we women,” she said with a cold, snide smile.
Cocheta looked at her. The Apache girl glanced at Longarm, turned back to Haven, hiked a shoulder, and canted her toward it, as if to say, “Why not?”
She followed Haven down the slope, both women moving gracefully, skipping from one boulder to the other. Sometimes Longarm wondered if Agent Delacroix didn’t have a little Indian blood in her herself.
At the bottom of the slope, they ducked low, scouted the desert to the west, and then ran crouching across the canyon. When they got to the other side, they began climbing quickly, spreading out until they’d both holed up in separate niches in the rocks about halfway up the bluff.
Longarm glanced at Dobson. “Shoot true.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” the saloon owner said, thumbing his glasses up his nose and moving off to Longarm’s right, weaving amongst the boulders, some of which were as large as small cabins.
Longarm settled into a near cleft in the rocks. The bottom of one boulder slanted over him. The side of one slanted on his right. A straight, low wall of rock abutted him on the left. He poked his head out of his pigeonhole to cast his gaze to the west.
He could see two lead riders now, both men holding rifles barrel up on their thighs. The wagon was behind them, being led by mules. The other riders flanked the wagon, spread out across the horse trail they were following.
They were within a hundred yards now, closing quickly. Longarm could hear the hoof thuds and the banging and rattling of the buckboard wagon that appeared to have a cream tarpaulin stretched over its box, concealing the gold and, most likely, the Gatling gun.
The men were talking loudly and laughing, apparently confident they weren’t being followed.
Or that they were riding into a trap.
At least, Longarm hoped it was a trap for the outlaws and not for himself, Haven, Cocheta, and Dobson.
He turned to the opposite slope and saw the two women crouched amongst the rocks with their rifles. He waved his own rifle slowly above his head, giving the “get ready” signal.
Chapter 34
Longarm doffed his hat and edged a peek around the slanting rock to his right.
The gang was close enough now that Longarm could see the distinguishing features of each rider. One of the lead riders was the black man, Tallahassee Smith, in the red-and-black-checked shirt, red neckerchief, and funnel-brimmed Stetson that Longarm had seen near the breaking corral when he and Haven had first ridden into the Double D headquarters.
The big, burly man riding to the black man’s right was Fuentes in his black, steeple-crowned sombrero, holding his Sharps Big Fifty across his saddlebows. The two were talking as they rode into the crease between the bluffs, about twenty feet ahead of the mules pulling the wagon. Longarm couldn’t hear what they were saying because of the wagon’s clattering and the team’s clomping hooves.
Ex-ranger Jack Leyton and Vonda rode in the wagon, Vonda driving, shaking the reins over the team’s backs.
Leyton leaned back with his elbows on the top of the seat back, boots propped on the dashboard, smoking a fat cigar and grinning. Longarm could see a glimpse of the man’s large, white teeth beneath his salt-and-pepper mustache and long-angling hawk’s nose, the glint of his self-satisfied eyes beneath the brim of his high-crowned Stetson.
Longarm pulled his head back into his niche, waiting for the outlaws to draw near enough for him to pick out a target and to take that first shot. Leyton would go first. Then…who? Vonda?
Why not? Her being a woman didn’t make her any less than a conniving, cold-blooded killer.
He’d pick Mercado out of the gang, and, if one of Longarm’s cohorts hadn’t taken him down by then, he’d make sure the Mexican bandito would be the next to snuggle with diamondbacks. Then the snake’s three heads will have been sliced off, removing the gang’s teeth.
Longarm just hoped that his partners would wait for his signaling shot before they cut loose with their own rifles. One misstep here, when they were so badly outgunned, would cost them their lives.
The clomping of horse and mule hooves grew louder. The wagon’s rattling grew more raucous, echoing off both rocky butte faces. The outlaws were talking in laughing, jubilant tones.
No, they thought they’d gotten off scot-free. And they were headed for the Double D. Why?
Maybe they thought it would be safer to hole up there for a while than to head across the border with a slow-traveling wagon loaded with gold, where they’d likely draw the attention of some wandering band of rurales. When word about the theft of the gold got out, they’d also likely be hunted by every bandito gang in northern Sonora and Chihuahua.
Longarm supposed that with the Gatling gun, the outlaws would have a fairly easy tome of dispatching Stretch’s loyal segment of ranch hands.
Or…was there something at the Double D that Vonda had discovered and wanted?
In the crease below Longarm’s niche, the rattling and thudding grew louder. Tallahassee Smith came into view, straight down the slope from Longarm. Fuentes rode on the other side of the black man.
Smith carried a Winchester Yellow Boy rifle with a buffalo head carved into the rear stock. And then the mules slid from right to left in the lawman’s vision field, and a second later he could see Vonda and Jack Leyton sitting the wagon’s wooden seat that jerked on metal springs.