Longarm Giant #30: Longarm and the Ambush at Holy Defiance

by Tabor Evans

  “Say again?”

  “That’s where they’re comin’ through.”

  “The gold train?”

  “I’m not talking about the Cinco de Mayo parade, Marshal.”

  Longarm beetled the brow over his widest eye. “How do you know?” His voice sounded a little funny due to the swelling of one side of his tongue, which he must have bit, and the puffiness of his lips.

  “Hell, I know everything that goes on within a hundred square miles of here.”

  “Where will I find Cochilo Gulch?”

  “Just this side of the pass from the Double D headquarters. Intersects with Defiance Wash.”

  “Near the graves?”

  “Damn near straight west—couple miles.”

  “Shit,” Longarm said, rubbing his chin.

  Dobson’s mouth slanted in a wolfish grin and he slid his eyes toward Cocheta’s door. “She give you a good workout?”

  He didn’t wait for a response. “Good. She’s been needin’ her ashes hauled. Them Apache wimmen, you know. Big appetite. I wouldn’t know personally, you understand. I consider myself the girl’s father as well as a gentleman. Since I spread the rumor about her bein’ a witch to keep her from bein’ overly pestered when she was younger, she don’t get many gentlemen callers.”

  “I understand.”

  “Go with God, Marshal. You’re gonna need him if you’re goin’ up against them killers. A good bit of luck, too.”

  “I’ll take both.”

  Dobson retreated into his room and closed the door. Longarm continued on down the hall and down the stairs. He left the saloon through a back door and hunched in the darkness for a time, getting his bearings and listening and watching for Leyton and Mercado’s men.

  The night was misty, and lightning flashed in the distance, but it appeared the main storm had rolled away to the east. The only sounds were the trickle of water from the eaves of the saloon and from the roofs of the empty buildings around him. The air was fresh and desert fragrant. Coyotes yapped in the distant mountains.

  Longarm touched the grips of the Remington, grateful for the gun. He had a chance now. Not much of one, maybe, but a better chance than he had a few hours ago. And the girl’s touch had soothed his aches and pains.

  He wasn’t so sure about Dobson’s being right about her not being a witch or a sorceress of some kind.

  Hearing or seeing nothing threatening around the saloon, he traced a broad semicircle around it to the south. He moved slowly because of all his sundry miseries and the steady ache in his head, and because he didn’t want to trip over something left behind by the town’s now-vanished inhabitants and kick up a racket that might get him killed.

  A hundred yards south of both the saloon and the whorehouse in which Leyton and Mercado’s bunch was holed up, he swung back west, wincing with the grating ache that each step evoked in his battered ribs.

  He came to the wash. It was flooded. Murky water slid driftwood, leaves, and other bits of flotsam quickly past Longarm in the darkness. He found another bridge farther west and crossed it, noting that the water had nearly swamped it.

  He stumbled around in the darkness behind the whorehouse before, following the smell of horses, he found the adobe stable hunched in the wet brush and dripping mesquites.

  Water slithered from the stable’s eaves as Longarm looked around carefully, and then very slowly, pressing a tongue to one corner of his mouth, opened one of the heavy wooden doors. He turned toward the whorehouse, which was dark and silent. Leyton and Mercado’s bunch appeared to be asleep—tired after a rainy night of beating hell out of a deputy U.S. marshal and then probably fucking themselves into mild comas.

  He could have done without the first part of that, but the last part was just fine with him. He’d get his horse and follow the flooded wash out of town and then ride as fast as he could in the darkness toward Cochilo Gulch to warn the gold train.

  The more lives he could save, the better. Later, if Leyton and Mercado got away from the trap Longarm hoped to spring on them, he’d get help in tracking them down. Thinking of Leyton caused him to clench his battered jaws. He’d run the turncoat killer down if he had to follow him into Mexico to do it.

  With one more careful glance at the back wall of the whorehouse, he stepped into the stable. The smell of horses, dung, and moist hay wafted over him. There was another smell, and he’d just identified the stench of a sweaty man when a gun hammer clicked a few inches away from his right ear.

  Longarm froze, his strained muscles tensing.

  The barrel of the gun was pressed to the side of his head, just above his right ear. The man holding the gun said in Spanish, “You think the boss wouldn’t post a guard in the stable, stupid gringo?”

  Another man to Longarm’s left chuckled delightedly. Longarm saw a big shadow with a steeple-brimmed sombrero, the whiteness of a bandage around the big Mex’s forehead.

  Fuentes.

  Dread didn’t have time to wash over Longarm. Both the guards laughed. And then the gun smashed down against the side of Longarm’s head, and before the searing pain had time to blossom throughout his body, everything went black once more.

  He woke to aching, miserable darkness just as black.

  He tried to move, but he could only lift his thundering head a couple of inches before his forehead pressed against solid wood rife with the smell of pine resin and gun oil. He wobbled from side to side, and suddenly realized as a fist of panic clenched his heart that he was in a pine box.

  The box was being carried. He could hear the snickers of the men carrying it, could hear their ragged breaths and the wet sucking sounds of their boots in the mud.

  There was another wet sound—the tinkling lapping of the wavelets he’d heard when he’d crossed the bridge over the flooded arroyo. He was near the wash.

  The thought had no sooner flicked across his mind than the bottom of the box slammed down on something yielding. The concussion caused Longarm’s forehead to smash against the top of his makeshift coffin—probably a rifle box, or maybe the box in which a Gatling gun had been housed—and set the bells in his ears to tolling louder.

  He drew a breath through gritted teeth as the box wobbled from side to side. His back was instantly cool. And then it was damp. Water was oozing through the box’s seams.

  That fist of panic squeezed the lawman’s heart more violently. The sons of bitches who’d been guarding the stable had dropped the box in the arroyo…

  The box lurched and pivoted and scraped against the sides of the wash. Locked in the small, dark, humid enclosure, Longarm felt the sensation of movement above all of the other myriad things he was feeling—most of them pounding pain. The panic of being drowned in a small box in which he had barely enough room to waggle his shoulders was growing quickly.

  In his mind’s eye, he saw the box hurling down the flooded wash, down the steep incline of the mountain on which the ghost town sat, bouncing off the sides of the cutbank. Steadily, he felt the water seeping through the slight gaps between the boards.

  It must have been a good two inches deep in his makeshift coffin by now, slowly crawling up his arms and legs, soaking his clothes. It would soon be over his face.

  He rammed his already battered head against the wooden lid but he couldn’t build up enough momentum in the tight confines. The lid didn’t budge. The two guards must have nailed it tight to the box; that must have been the pounding he’d heard when he’d been unconscious, though it had blended with the invisible little muscular man in his head smashing a ball-peen hammer against his brain.

  He was jerked sharply to one side, then to the other, and the coffin must have bounced off the bank or a rock as the floodwater continued hurling him ever down the steep incline. The water was now covering his shoulders. Longarm had never been a fan of water in the first place, and he cared even less for it now as it threatened to drown him in a sealed pine box!

  Panic was growing and growing, making his heart pound.

&nb
sp; The adrenaline coursing through his veins had dulled the pain in his head and body, and he continued to try to hammer his forehead against the coffin lid to no avail.

  He ground his molars as the box rose sharply on his right. It turned over completely, and suddenly he was facedown in the box as it continued to jerk and sway and bounce violently off both sides of the arroyo.

  He drew a sharp, involuntary breath, and sucked a pint of grit-laden water into his lungs for his effort. He lifted his head as far as he could, arching his back slightly, trying to keep his face above water, but he couldn’t do it. He heard himself blowing bubbles as he grunted and twisted his shoulders, sort of bucking as though he were making hard love to a woman, and then, as suddenly as it had gone over, the box righted itself once more and the water dropped down to around Longarm’s jaws.

  The trouble was he still had two lungs half full of water, and the more he gasped for air, the more he choked and coughed and felt unconsciousness closing over him like a slowly tightening, giant fist.

  The coffin swerved more sharply than it had so far and slammed violently, loudly against either a boulder or the side of the ravine. The coffin lid rose about three inches from the top of the box, showing the murky blueness of early morning.

  Desperately, Longarm crossed his arms on his chest and pushed his arms and head against the lid until it rose farther. With a giant, coughing grunt of panicked desperation, he sat up higher and finally blasted the lid off the coffin. It sailed off to the side as the box continued sliding on down the ravine.

  Instantly, the coffin overturned and sent the lawman tumbling headlong into the water. The coffin rolled to one side and then straight out away from him.

  He dropped his legs straight down in the stream, twisted around, and his chest slammed into a rock protruding from the side of the cutbank. His head about a foot above the water, he pressed a cheek against the cold, rough surface, and hugged the rock like a long-lost relative.

  The murky water streamed around his waist and on down the ravine. He held on to the rock for a long time as he coughed up the dirty water from his lungs, until he was finally able to suck a breath without choking on it.

  Feeling as though he might actually live to see the dawn of a new day, albeit painfully, he looked above the rock with his one good eye. The bank rose on his right. A root protruded from it. He grabbed the root and pulled, his weak arms feeling as though they’d tear out of their sockets.

  He kicked and clawed his way up the muddy side of the bank. When he finally lifted his head above the lip, breathing hard and rasping from the remaining water in his lungs and throat, he froze.

  His old friend, dread, seized him once more as he heard the ratcheting click of a gun hammer being drawn back.

  He looked up. The round, dark maw of a pistol glared back at him.

  Chapter 32

  The maw of the pistol tilted upward. The gun hammer clicked again as it was eased down against the firing pin, and Agent Haven Delacroix scowled at Longarm from beneath the wide brim of her light brown Stetson. “Custis?”

  Longarm heaved a sigh of relief, felt his cracked upper lip curl a grin. “What happened to Marshal Long?”

  “What in the hell are you doing?”

  “Making mud pies. Wanna help?”

  Behind her, her horse cropped weeds between a couple of boulders still damp from the previous night’s rain. It was dawn, the sun not yet up, the rolling, rocky, creosote-stippled desert relieved in misty blue shadows.

  Longarm extended a hand to the woman squatting before him. “Help me up?”

  She half straightened, extending a gloved hand to him. “You look awful!”

  When he stood before her, his soaked, muddy clothes sagging on him, he spat mud from his lips and said, “Ah, hell”—he gulped a breath—“I been hurt worse shaving.”

  “What happened?”

  “Long story.” Longarm felt weak, like he might pass out. His head pounded from all he’d been through. His heart was still hammering. He leaned forward, pressed hands to his knees, and took a deep breath.

  “You’d better sit down for a while.”

  He spat more grit, drew another breath, and shook his head. “No time. We gotta get to Cochilo Gulch, warn the gold train.”

  “The what?”

  “I’ll explain on the way. Where in the hell are we, anyway?”

  Longarm straightened, looked around at the purple hills and bluffs spilling rocks down their sides. Morning birds were chirping in the brush. The flooded wash gurgled and chugged against the sides of the wash behind him. The surrounding terrain looked vaguely familiar, but because of the near darkness and his scrambled brains, he couldn’t quite make it out.

  “We’re a half mile away from the canyon where Big Frank said Santana buried the gold. I rode out here yesterday from the Double D.”

  Longarm frowned at her. “Why?”

  “Why?” she said, grimacing as though she were dealing with a half-wit. “That’s my assignment, remember? To find the stolen Wells Fargo gold!”

  “Ah, Christ.” The exhausted, battered, and bloody lawman laughed without mirth. “There ain’t no fucking gold, Haven.”

  “Clean up your language, please,” she said, reverting to her prim daytime self and planting one fist on her comely, duster-clad hip. “And whatever are you talking about? Big Frank said it was there, and I believe him. I have to believe him. I’m finding that gold!”

  Longarm walked over to a flat-topped boulder and sagged onto it. He needed to get to Cochilo Gulch as fast as he could and be there when the gold train arrived, to warn the guards and drivers about the coming ambush by Leyton and Mercado. If he tried to ride out at just this moment, however, he was likely to pass out and tumble out of the saddle.

  He needed a breather, time to unscramble his brains and gather his wits.

  “Like I said, there ain’t no gold. Them rangers died for nothin’. No one was worried about them finding Santana’s gold. Vonda’s men saw ’em snoopin’ around out here, and the Double D riders shot ’em because they thought they was onto Leyton, Mercado, and Vonda’s plan to rob the gold being hauled out of Mexico from the secret American mine.”

  “Vonda Azrael?” Haven walked over to him and sandwiched his face in her hands. “Poor man. I’m afraid your ride down the arroyo has turned you into a blubbering fool. I mean, even more so than before.”

  “It’s true, damnit!”

  Haven shook her head, walked to her horse, removed the canteen from her saddle, popped the cork, and handed the flask to Longarm. “Maybe this will help.”

  “The only thing’s gonna help is a couple pulls from a whiskey bottle.” He took the canteen, anyway, and drank greedily, unable to stop himself. He hadn’t realized how thirsty he was in spite of all the mud he’d drunk in the wash.

  When he’d had his fill, he lowered the flask, sloshed around what water was left in it. “I hope you have more.”

  “Fortunately, I brought both of my canteens,” she said ironically, taking back the one he held out to her. “Now, suppose you tell me how you ended up in that flooded wash? Where’s your horse?”

  “My horse,” Longarm said. “Yeah, damn!” He looked at her steeldust idly chomping galleta grass. “I suppose that’s the only one you have?”

  “Two canteens,” she said in her patient way, dead certain she was dealing with a man who’d gone soft in his thinker box. “Only one horse. We’re gonna have to ride double back to the Double D.”

  “Not to the Double D,” he said, rising with effort from the boulder and unwrapping the steeldust’s reins from a creosote shrub. “Cochilo Gulch.”

  He groaned as he hauled himself into the saddle and then extended his hand to Agent Delacroix. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll explain the whole thing on the way. We have to get there ahead of Leyton and Mercado, not to mention Vonda.”

  “Vonda?” Haven said again, her voice pitched with the same disbelief as before as she took his hand, thrust a boot in
to the stirrup he freed for her, and hoisted herself onto the steeldust’s back behind him. “How in the world could that silly wife of Stretch’s have anything to do with robbing a gold shipment?”

  As he rode on along the flooded arroyo and then crossed it where it leveled out and became only a few feet deep, he told Haven about ex-ranger Jack Leyton, Mercado, and Vonda’s alliance. He outlined how Vonda, Mercado’s woman, married Stretch to get closer to the mine company’s secret gold-shipping route as well as to get her hands on the Azraels’ small fortune.

  He told her about how Leyton had by then already thrown in with Mercado because if you couldn’t beat the border bandits, why not join them and make some real money?

  But then Leyton had learned of the covert gold shipments from the secret mine in Mexico. He shared the information with Mercado and their female partner and former Texas saloon girl, Vonda.

  Now, likely knowing there was a whole lot more money to be had on Double D range than what was in Whip Azrael’s office safe and in Stretch’s remuda, Vonda arranged for Stretch to hire several men from her and Mercado’s gang, so they could all keep a sharp eye out for the gold train route without attracting suspicion from the rangers.

  “Incredible,” Haven said, riding behind Longarm as they made their way southwest, across the gradually lightening desert.

  “Yep.”

  Quickly, the sky turned from pink to salmon to yellow. Rocks and desert flora stood out in relief against the rolling buttes and mesas. As the sun climbed, steam snaked along the damp ground.

  Longarm followed a flooded wash toward Cochilo Gulch, rising and falling over the broken land, threading his way between rocky slopes and shelving mesa walls.

  He kept his eyes and ears open for Leyton’s men, who would be riding in from Holy Defiance in the east though he didn’t know by which route. He cursed to himself, knowing he wasn’t making good time. But he couldn’t push the steeldust overly hard on the wet desert terrain in the intensifying steamy heat, for fear of maiming or killing the beast.