Tabor Evans - Longarm and the Ambush at Holy Defiance

Without looking at the hostler but keeping his gaze on the bunkhouse, Longarm said, “Who do you think killed the lawmen?”

“Mescins,” the man said matter-of-factly. “Banditos up from Mexico to haunt the stage trail. The stage line through there has suffered holdups for nigh on twenty years. Same for the freighting outfits. I don’t really see what keeps ’em in business. I guess just enough coaches get through between Las Cruces and Nogales or Tucson to make it worthwhile.”

“Well, I reckon I’ll just go out an have a sniff around, anyway, if you don’t mind.”

“Hell, I don’t give a shit. You ride out alone, though, you’ll likely end up as dead as them others.”

“Well, riding together didn’t do them a whole lot of good, did it?”

The hostler chuckled. “You got a point there, lawdog.”

Chapter 27

While the hostler continued talking, Longarm watched one of the men from the bunkhouse walk toward him. The man was smoking a quirley, and he wore a long, gray duster. He wore two big Colts over his belly, butts facing each other. The spurs on his high-topped boots rang as he walked, glowering beneath his high-crowned Stetson at Longarm.

“Well, look—that lawman’s up with the birds,” he said snidely to no one in particular. Thick wavy hair curled over his collar as he approached the barn.

“Mornin’ to ya, friend.” Longarm smiled and pinched his hat brim.

The man stopped in front of him, gave him a hard, belligerent stare, and then brushed past Longarm, sliding his elbow very lightly but with brash menace across Longarm’s belly, and headed into the barn. There was his quarry, the lawman thought as he remained outside, smoking, hearing the hostler and the newcomer talking desultorily inside the barn as the newcomer saddled a horse.

He was the one Longarm would follow. There was a chance the man was heading out on ranch business, but doubtful. The sun wasn’t even peeking above the eastern horizon yet. Besides, this man was better armed than most ranch hands, who didn’t weigh themselves or their horses down with excess iron.

Longarm was just finishing up his cigar when the man led his horse—a big Appaloosa—out of the barn and into the yard. He gave Longarm another cold look as he swung into the saddle to which a rifle scabbard was attached and cast yet another hostile look over his shoulder as he rode away. At the east end of the yard, he touched spurs to the Appy’s flanks, and the horse bounced into a trot and then lunged into a gallop.

Horse and rider disappeared around a bend in the trail twisting through the desert.

Longarm took the final drag from his cigar, wanting to appear in no hurry though he was genuinely eager to get after the man. Not wanting to tip his hand, he dropped the cheroot into the dust and ground it out with his boot. He went into the barn and saddled the fed and watered roan with painstaking casualness, humming under his breath while the hostler went about his chores.

Finally, he shoved his Winchester down into its saddle boot, and bid the hostler good day. The man only grunted as he climbed wall rungs into the hayloft.

Longarm led the roan outside, stepped into the saddle, and booted the horse westward across the yard at a fast but unhurried walk. He figured eyes were on him, so he’d ride west, the opposite direction from the other man, so as not to evoke too much suspicion. Later, when he was a couple of hundred yards west of the ranch yard, he turned off the trail that appeared to rise higher into the craggy, menacing Black Pumas, and made a broad circle around the headquarters.

An hour later, he rode to the top of a low mesa and swung down from his saddle, scanning the desert terrain stretching out to the east. The sun was above the horizon now, and Longarm was looking right into it, so he shaded his eyes.

He was starting to think he’d lost the man and that he’d have to go back to the main trail to pick up the rider’s tracks when he spied movement. No larger from this distance than Longarm’s thumb, the rider was galloping at an angle across the desert, heading south.

“There we go,” Longarm said, his heart lightening, and swung up onto the roan’s back.

He followed a deer trail down the sloping side of the mesa. When he reached the flat bottomland bristling with Sonoran chaparral, he put the horse into a hard gallop, keeping his quarry’s bobbing and weaving silhouette in front of him.

Occasionally the Double D rider would gallop up and over a rise, and Longarm would naturally lose sight of him. When this happened, Longarm slowed his pace, resting his horse as his quarry was probably also doing as he rode down the incline. When the man had left his field of vision, Longarm would look keenly around him, listening to every sound, wary for another ambush.

Over the course of the morning, the rider might have spied him and decided to shed the lawman from his trail.

Longarm rode for over an hour. The sun blasted down like liquid coals from the brassy sky unobscured by the smallest cloud. Nothing moved in the bright, shadowless land around him. All the animals were tucked away in their burrows.

Longarm shed his frock coat and wrapped it around his bedroll. He rolled the sleeves of his cotton shirt up his forearms and tipped his hat down low over his eyes.

Still, sweat ran down from his forehead and burned in his eyes. He dragged a handkerchief out of his back pocket, dampened it from his canteen, and dabbed at his eye corners to relieve the sting.

He rode between broad, rounded hills—low mountains, really, tufted with cactus. Beyond the mountain on his right lay another, lower hill on the far side of a crease between the two formations.

Nothing appeared out of sorts. The tracks of the man he was shadowing continued scoring the red dust before him, leading off in the same direction the man had been heading all morning. Longarm had not seen the man for nearly a half hour.

This fact laid a dry, cool hand of unease between Longarm’s shoulder blades. He’d almost been dry-gulched once on this assignment. He’d be damned if he’d let it almost happen again.

Ahead, the side of the second hill was about thirty feet high and steep. Almost straight up and down. The crest of the hill was a jumble of adobe-colored boulders of all shapes and sizes. There wasn’t a living thing around. Just rock.

Plenty of rocks to hide behind and effect an ambush.

Longarm shucked his Winchester from his saddle boot, swung his right boot over his saddle horn, and dropped straight down to the ground, landing quietly flatfooted. He wrapped his reins around the apple. Slowly, gritting his teeth, he levered a cartridge into the rifle’s breech and then tapped the butt plate against the roan’s hindquarters.

The horse gave an indignant whicker as it lurched ahead with a start, trotting on down the trail, obscuring the preceding horse’s tracks with its own.

Dust lifted like tan feathers behind it. Squinting against the dust, Longarm ran behind the horse, letting it slowly outdistance him. He ran crouching, holding the cocked Winchester across his chest with both hands, keeping within a few feet of the steep slope on his right, so he couldn’t be seen from its crest.

Ahead the horse clomped around a slight bend in the trail, following the curving face of the steep slope on its right. Longarm quickened his pace to keep the horse in sight. Just as he rounded the curve in the slope’s face, a rifle belched shrilly.

Dust plumed to the left of the horse and ahead a bit. Longarm knew that if he’d been in the saddle, however, the slug likely would have gone in one of his ears and out the other.

The horse buck-kicked fiercely and lunged into a hard gallop, empty stirrups flapping, bedroll bouncing. One of its reins came free of the saddle horn and bounced along the ground beside it.