Tabor Evans - Longarm and the Ambush at Holy Defiance

Half a dozen men stood around the corral, leaning on the top poles and watching a hatless cowboy riding a bucking black bronc in hard-pounding circles. The onlookers, a couple of whom sat on the wide wooden gate, whooped and yelled and offered advice.

There were Anglos as well as Mexicans and one black man, who sat on a rock near the gate, a boot hiked on his knee, carefully building a quirley. He wore a red-and-white-checked shirt and sun-bleached sombrero. As the two strangers rode in with their guides, the black man half turned his head toward the others and moved his lips. The others swung their heads around to peer at the newcomers.

A shaggy dog with some German shepherd blood came running out from the direction of the house, barking wickedly and showing its fangs. A small, wizened figure in blue jeans walked out of a stone portal fronting the house and a shaded front patio and garden. A raspy voice of indeterminate sex yelled, “Rascal!” and the dog dropped instantly belly down on the ground but keeping its aggressive gaze on the strangers.

The denim-clad figure in a black shirt despite the heat, wearing a straw sombrero, continued to stride a little gimpily toward Longarm and Haven. The raspy, sexless voice said, “Who in the hell are you, and good Lord—what the hell are you packin’, mister?”

One of the two guides canted his head at Longarm and said, “Law, Mrs. Azrael.”

Missus, huh? Longarm thought he detected a couple of nubbin’ breasts behind the black shirt and knotted red neckerchief, but the rest of the person looked all male. The face beneath the sombrero was like a giant raisin. Black hair was pulled back tight beneath the hat. Longarm thought that her head might come up to his cartridge belt, but only because of the high heels of her child-sized stockmen’s boots.

“Who’s he packin’ on the hoss there?” Mrs. Azrael said, scrutinizing the barb with her coal-black eyes.

“Says one’s a ranger.”

“I’ll speak for myself,” Longarm said angrily. “One’s a dead ranger. The other man I got a nagging suspicion is one of yours, Mrs. Azrael. He tried to kill me. The other tried to kill both myself and my partner, Agent Delacroix, with a buffalo gun.”

He looked around the men now facing him from the corral. The bronc rider had dismounted and was watching from over the fence, the bronc standing slouched, reins drooping, its sides moving in and out as it breathed, in the corral’s center.

“I’d like to palaver with the son of a bitch out in your wood shed,” Longarm added. “Your husband, too, since he hired ’em.”

Mrs. Azrael looked at the men standing by the breaking corral and said in her toneless, nasal wheeze: “Stretch!”

One of the men—tall, with a funnel-brimmed hat and pinto-hide vest—stepped away from the corral and walked over to the barb. He pulled the dead men’s heads up by their hair, scrutinizing each slack face, then let the heads slap down against the barb’s ribs.

Stretch turned to Mrs. Azrael and hooked his thumbs behind the belt of his batwing chaps. “The ranger was here a few days ago. Him and the other one, Leyton. Askin’ about the five we planted over on Defiance Wash. The other one, the Mex, I wouldn’t know from Adam’s off-ox.”

“You never seen him before?” Longarm said skeptically.

Stretch turned his long face toward the lawman, scowling belligerently. “You heard me.”

“Who around here carries a Big Fifty?”

“No one,” Stretch said after a short, menacing pause, holding his glowering stare on the lawman.

Longarm could hear several of the other men speaking amongst themselves to his right. They were getting worked up. The black man sat on the rock, smoking and glaring toward the newcomers and their grisly cargo.

Longarm turned to Stretch, hooking his thumb over his shoulder. “That bastard and the one with the Big Fifty fired on us when we were on Double D range. Now, why would they do that?”

Stretch stepped toward Longarm, letting his arms hang loose at his sides. “You callin’ me a liar?”

“Get your back down, Stretch,” Mrs. Azrael said with an amused air, standing a few feet from Longarm with her fists on her hips. “If you’re a lawman, how come I don’t see a badge?”

“Badges make good targets. I keep mine in my wallet.” Longarm reached into the inside pocket of his brown frock coat and pulled out the black wallet of worn cowhide.

He opened it up to reveal the old, tarnished moon-and-star badge he’d been carrying for years. Mrs. Azrael moved in closer to scrutinize the nickeled tin and then looked at Longarm with her black eyes set deep in leathery sockets. She looked past him at Haven.

“She’s a Pinkerton?”

“That’s right.”

“A girl?”

Haven said affably, “Since gaining the age of twenty-three, I’d prefer to be called a woman.”

That seemed to win the leathery ranch woman’s heart. “Don’t blame ya bit, miss. Don’t blame ya a bit.”

“I’m Long,” Longarm said. “This is Agent Delacroix.”

“You both look hot and dusty. Miss Delacroix, I bet you’d like to freshen up. Marshal Long, you look like you could use a drink.”

Haven might have won the old ranch woman’s heart, but Mrs. Azrael hadn’t won his yet. “Mr. Azrael around?”

“Oh, he’s around. Upstairs napping at the moment. I’ll bring him down later, and you can talk to him for all the good you think it’ll do.” Mrs. Azrael beckoned. “Come on. Light and give them hosses a blow. You’re too far out in the high an’ rocky to head elsewhere this late in the day. You’re welcome to spend the night here at the Double D, and we’ll do what we can to answer your questions, though somethin’ tells me you’re not gonna ride out of here any more satisfied than that dead ranger and Captain Leyton were two days ago.”

Longarm swung down from his saddle, and Mrs. Azrael called for a few of the other men to tend the horses and to bury the two cadavers. The lawman had just started to follow Mrs. Azrael and Haven toward the ranch house, when Stretch stepped up to Longarm and said tightly, “Just so’s you know, lawman or not, I don’t like bein’ called a liar.”

Longarm half turned in time to see a fist arcing toward his face. He ducked, and Stretch’s right fist swiped Longarm’s hat from his head.

Stretch grunted, his pugnacious face acquiring a surprised look. It grew even more surprised when Longarm buried his own right fist in Stretch’s belly and then smashed an uppercut against the underside of Stretch’s chin that was carpeted in a light brown spade beard to match the mustache mantling his long, thin-lipped mouth.

Stretch toppled like a windmill in a midwestern twister, dust billowing.

Mrs. Azrael laughed behind Longarm. She sounded like a whipsaw chewing on a horseshoe. “There you go, Stretch! Now look what you done!”

The ranch woman laughed again, thoroughly satisfied, it appeared, with the state of the man whom Longarm assumed was her foreman. “I told you to get that hump out of your neck, ya damn tinhorn!”

Chapter 22

On his ass in the dirt and ground horse shit of the ranch yard, propped on his elbows, Stretch glowered up at Longarm. Bright diamonds of threat danced in his eyes.

Mrs. Azrael laughed and said, “Come on inside, Marshal. I do apologize for my ramrod’s inhospitality. He’s a firebrand, that one!”

Longarm picked up his hat and glanced once more at Stretch. The other men had moved up closer to the house, some of them taking fighting stances in case the dustup between Longarm and Stretch wasn’t finished. Stretch stayed where he was, however, his glaring gaze filled with both shock and a promise of retribution.