Read Online Longarm Giant #30: Longarm and the Ambush at Holy Defiance by Tabor Evans - Free Book Online

handle on where the gold was buried?”
    “I’m told that one of the rangers heard from a man named Three Wolves a few weeks ago. Three Wolves apparently had known a couple of the killers, including the leader of the gang that robbed the stage—Rafael Santana. Three Wolves and Santana played poker together one night in Nogales, the night before Santana and his bunch were killed.
    “Three Wolves claimed that when Santana was about to lose his shirt to Three Wolves, Santana told him he knew where some gold was buried. When Three Wolves pressed the matter, Santana gave him some details about where exactly Santana’s bunch had buried the gold. Three Wolves kept what Santana had told him under his hat, only half believing it was true, I reckon. But he never did go looking for the gold himself. Don’t ask me why. Maybe you’ll find out when you get down there.
    “In the meantime, Three Wolves ran his own freighting service until about six weeks ago when he ran afoul of the rangers. Killed a man in a jealous rage, it seems. The rangers tracked him down and arrested him. Three Wolves exchanged the information about where the loot was buried for a promise of a possibly lighter sentence, and three rangers and two deputy marshals out of Prescott ended up deader’n last year’s Christmas goose for their trouble.”
    Longarm scowled dubiously as he exhaled smoke through his nostrils. “Where’s this Three Wolves feller now?”
    Chief Marshal Vail nodded his approval at his prized deputy’s instincts. Since Three Wolves apparently knew, orsaid he knew, where the loot had been buried, he might also know who killed the lawmen who’d ridden out to find it.
    “He’s being held at the Arizona Rangers post in Broken Jaw in the Arizona Territory, about fifty miles across the line from New Mexico. Holy Defiance is another fifty or so miles southwest of Broken Jaw, west of Tombstone and Bisbee.”
    “I’ll stop in at Broken Jaw and have a little palaver with this gent before heading on down to Holy Defiance.” Longarm rolled the cheroot around between his lips and bounced his fists off the arms of the red Moroccan leather chair. “When’s my train leave, Billy? Don’t reckon it’s gonna get any cooler down Arizona way. Sooner I get this job started, the sooner it’ll be over with.”
    Billy grinned devilishly. “You mean, when does your and your
partner’s
train leave?” The chief marshal glanced at the banjo clock on the wall to his left. “In about one half hour.”
    “Ah, dangit, Billy.”
    Just then a knock sounded on the chief marshal’s door.
    “Must be him now,” Billy said, raising his voice as he cast his gaze at the door. “Come in, Agent Delacroix!”
    Longarm heard but did not see the door open behind him. He’d be looking at the Pinkerton agent’s no doubt pimple-scarred face long enough on the journey down to Arizona.
    He did, however, look at Billy and wrinkle his brows curiously when Billy’s lower jaw dropped nearly down to his cluttered desk. Billy’s eyes opened nearly as wide as his mouth, and a rosy flush colored his otherwise pasty cheeks.
    “Uh…” Billy said around an apparent frog in his throat, rising slowly from his chair. “Uhm…Harvey…Dela…Delacroix?”
    Longarm smelled a subtle, cherrylike fragrance at the same time he heard a raspy, vaguely female voice behind him say, “No, it’s Haven.
Haven
Delacroix, Chief Marshal Vail. I’ve been sent here by the Pinkerton Agency, to joinyour deputy on the Arizona murder investigation. The one involving the stolen gold?”
    Longarm jerked his head around. His heart turned a somersault in his chest.
    The tall brunette whom Longarm had last seen lounging like a satisfied cat on her bed in the Grand Hotel in Leadville, naked as a jaybird, took two steps forward, extending her right hand toward Billy Vail. “I hope I’m not overly late. The stage from Leadville, where I was investigating a possible counterfeiting ring, got held up at