“Ah, hell,” she said, mimicking him with a smile. “I’ve cut myself worse shaving.”
Longarm inspected her arm, then removed her neckerchief, wrapped it around her arm, pulled her to him, and kissed her. It was a wild, lingering kiss. He was damn glad she was alive. Losing such a sand rattler of a female as her would have grieved him no end.
When he pulled away from her, he braced himself for a slap. But she merely stared up at him with a smoky cast to her hazel eyes. “That’s a little unprofessional—don’t you think, Marshal Long?” She drew a breath, causing her breasts to rise sharply beneath her shirt, and swallowed, lifting her mouth corners.
“Yes, ma’am, I sure as hell do.” He winked at her and gained his feet. “I’m gonna see about the wagon.”
He walked to the west and swerved over to where Jack Leyton lay against the rock and the desert shrub. The man was still alive, chest rising and falling sharply as he breathed. Longarm looked down at him, saw the several holes his Winchester had punched through the killer’s body. He was alive, but he didn’t have long.
Leyton’s eyes stared up at Longarm with an odd blandness. “They…Mercado’s men…said they done kilt you, Custis. What are you, anyway—a damn cat?”
Longarm saw that one of the two pistols the man was carrying was his own double-action .44. He ripped it out of the ex-ranger’s holster and hefted it in his hand, glad to have it back. “Trophy, Jack?”
“Yeah,” Leyton said with a faint, sly grin. “Somethin’ like that.” He coughed up blood, gasped, said, “Good Lord, Custis—I think I’m dyin’ here!”
“Couldn’t happen to a more deserving son of a bitch, Jack.”
He turned away from the dying ex-ranger and walked over to the gold wagon. Gold bars, strewn amongst the wagon’s broken boards, steel chassis, and iron-shod wheels, glittered in the harsh sunlight. Beyond the rocks and wagon debris, a blond-haired figure was staggering away from Longarm. Vonda, holding her wounded arm, was heading west.
A pack of riders was galloping toward her from the same direction.
Chapter 35
Longarm paused as the riders thundered toward him.
He raised his carbine. Vonda stopped, looked forward, and then dropped to her knees, bowing her head as though in prayer.
Stretch Azrael was leading the pack of riders, which, Longarm was surprised to see, included his little, wiry, wizened-up mother on a smart-stepping palomino, in the saddle of which she appeared doll-sized. Mrs. Azrael was dressed for the trail in a cream shirt, denims, and an ornately stitched leather vest, with a flat-crowned, broad-brimmed hat on her black head, chin thong dangling down her spindly chest.
“Vonda, what in Christ?” Stretch yelled, hauling back on his grulla’s reins and leaping out of the saddle. He looked at his wounded, sobbing wife kneeling before him, and then at Longarm and the broke-up wagon behind the lawman.
Longarm doubted that Stretch had ever been at a loss for words before. Well, he certainly was now. He cuffed his hat brim back off his forehead and regarded Longarm incredulously.
“What’s goin’ on? She disappears in the middle of the night. I wake and eight of my riders are gone, including my first two lieutenants—slipped out around the same time as Vonda, not a word to anyone…”
“I told you she was about as good as rattlesnake ahead of a wildfire,” said Mrs. Azrael, looking down her nose at the blond girl sobbing before her and her son. The old ranch woman looked beyond Longarm at the gold. “What in God’s name did she get herself involved in?”
Longarm walked up behind Vonda. She had a pistol in the holster strapped to her right hip. He pulled the gun out, tossed it away, and she jerked her dirty, tear-streaked face at him, scowling savagely. “I should have killed you when I had the chance! Know why I didn’t?”
She laughed devilishly, glanced at Stretch, and then turned back to Longarm. “’Cause you satisfied me like I ain’t been satisfied since I moved out to the Double D—that’s why!”
Mrs. Azrael gave a disapproving chuff and clucked while she shook her head.
Stretch glared at Longarm, his face as red as an Arizona sunset.
Longarm turned to Vonda. “Why were you heading back to the Double D?”
“To get the gold!” she fairly screamed, laughing again and casting her hate-filled gaze at both Stretch and his still-mounted mother.
“What gold?” grunted Mrs. Azrael.
“The gold under your bed, you old hag!” This she screamed at the tops of her lungs, shaking her head wildly and clamping her hand over her bloody arm. “The gold your husband found where Santana buried it and was saving for when he decided to run off with your housekeeper—Senorita Angelina! Only, he got thrown by his horse before he could make his escape!”
Mrs. Azrael and Stretch just stared down at Vonda as though she were speaking some foreign tongue.
“How do you know he was going to run off with the housekeeper?” Longarm asked.
“Oh, I just guessed it…after I saw Angelina giving the old boy a blow job in his office, a few nights before he fell and turned his brains to mush. I seen ’em together before that. Many times! And I heard ’em talking about the gold many times, too, snickering to themselves while ole Whip had Angelina bent over his desk in his office! That’s when I started scheming to add the Wells Fargo gold to the plunder I got today—and could have damn near doubled in size if it weren’t for you, you son of a bitch of a crafty ole lawdog!”
Longarm stared down at the girl with an expression similar to the one on her husband’s and her mother-in-law’s faces.
“Old Whip saw the holdup,” the girl told Longarm, enjoying every minute of telling her story. Wounding the Azraels was at least some compensation for the bitter end of the trail she found herself facing. “He told as much to Angelina. I overheard him. He was hidden in the buttes near the stage.
“After the Indians attacked Santana, Whip went out and dug up the box, brought it back to the ranch, and hid it under his bed. Mrs. Azrael, you been sleepin’ on a hundred thousand dollars in gold coins for the past three years, you silly old bitch! Hah! And you and Stretch both thought you was so much smarter than me! Ha-ha-hahh!”
Vonda laughed like a witch ready to fly off on her broom, pointing a jeering finger at Stretch. “He didn’t tell his own son because he didn’t trust him! He was afraid Stretch would tell his mother, and old Whip just wanted to be rid of ’em both! I don’t know why he didn’t just take off right away. Maybe he was waiting for the right woman to come along…a puta like Angelina! I reckon you couldn’t satisfy Whip any better than Stretch could satisfy me, Mrs. Azrael!”
Vonda laughed even harder.
Then she fainted and fell face-first to the ground.
Stretch, Mrs. Azrael, and the seven riders behind them just stared down at Vonda as though at some creature that had winged in and landed here from outer space. Longarm swung around and walked back through the brush, looking over the wagon wreckage and the strewn gold.
He spied movement ahead. Haven was walking toward him, her wounded arm in a makeshift sling. The flaps of her tan duster were tucked behind the butts of her twin LeMats.
The Pinkerton agent was looking off to Longarm’s left, where Kimble Dobson sat his horse looking down at Cocheta. The Apache girl was standing over Jack Leyton, who was flopping around like a landed fish, blood spurting from the long, deep gash across his neck.
Cocheta leaned forward to wipe the blade of her bowie knife on the man’s trouser leg. When the blade was clean, she slid the knife back into its sheath on her hip and glanced at Longarm.