Longarm 183 Longarm on the Fever Coast

LONGARM ON THE FEVER COAST

By Tabor Evans

Synopsis:

Death at every turn... Escondrijo, Texas, is a sleepy seaport where not much usually happens. But now there's a federal prisoner being held in the town jail, and it's deputy marshal Long's duty to bring him back to Denver. But even before he starts, a pair of vicious back-shooters try to make sure he never finishes the job. At the same time, a mysterious epidemic is ravaging the entire Texas coast. Now Longarm has to dodge the blazing lead headed his way, get to the source of the strange fever afflicting the region--and get his man back to Colorado to see that justice is done. 183rd novel in the "Longarm" series, 1994.

CHAPTER 1

The funeral seemed at least as dignified and twice as sober as anyone was likely to remember the late Justice Elroy Bryce of the Denver Probate Court. His Honor had been one of those sneaky old drunks who'd never taken a false step, slurred one word, nor made a whole lot of sense as he'd presided over mostly routine cases.

Longarm had appeared before His Honor a time or two to ask if they could use a dead outlaw's own pocket money to bury him decently, the outlaw being intestate, and old Elroy had been neighborly enough. But U.S. Deputy Marshal Custis Long, as he was known officially, was there at the funeral more as a representative of his federal court. Nobody but his immediate superior, U.S. Marshal William Vail, would come right out and say what they thought of the poor old political hack. But Longarm felt sure he'd been stuck with the chore because he was well known to the locals gathered in the church as a federal man, thanks to those dumb features about him in the Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post. Things had gotten to where a lawman wound up on the infernal front pages every time he had to gun a foolish road agent. It felt dumb to be sitting up front, in a fresh-pressed tweed suit and cruelly starched white shirt, for Pete's sake, while some jasper a row back whispered, "That's the one they call Longarm, and I'll bet that's his famous.44-40 bulging under the left tail of his frock coat."

Longarm wondered what else they expected a lawman on duty to be wearing cross-draw in such an uncertain world, especially after putting many an owlhoot rider in jail, or in the ground, while packing a badge for six or eight years. Judges made enemies along the way as well. In addition, a pesky reporter had gotten a look at the guest invitations, and printed in his paper how the notorious Custis Long would show up.

Longarm had managed to crawfish out of being a pallbearer, with hardly a chance in the world if some sore loser threw down on him while he was helping to carry the coffin. But he still itched far more between his shoulder blades than that pesky starch called for. It was taking the preacher a million years to take his place at that damned pulpit and get cracking. Meanwhile, all sorts of suspicious characters filed by, supposedly to pay their last respects to that old dead drunk in that open mahogany casket.

The church organ wasn't doing a thing to speed things up. Longarm couldn't tell whether the short and pleasantly plump brunette over in the alcove was playing hunt-and-peck on the organ keys because she couldn't make out the score propped up so high, or because she couldn't reach the pumping pedals slung so low with her little legs. She was seated at such a sideways angle that he couldn't quite make out just what she was really up to. Nevertheless, she or anybody else seated at her organ had a clear shot at most anyone filing past that old dead drunk. So Longarm rose to his own imposing height and eased on over to give the little lady a hand, or in this case a foot.

"They got a separate hand pump manned by two choir-boys over at Fourteen Holy Martyrs," he confided casually as he calmly sat down beside her to feel for the foot pedals with his longer legs. "You just worry about the fingering of them fine chords and I'll keep the bellows full of air for 'em, ma'am. I answer to the handle of Custis Long and I ride for Marshal Billy Vail as a paid-up lawman, if you're worried about my innocent intentions."

The plump little brunette of about twenty or so favored him with a shy little smile, allowed she was Prunelia Farnam, and agreed she'd been having a time reaching the low pedals and high keyboard at once. She proceeded to play far better, and a tad faster, when he started rubbing his right leg against her left one. But there was no way for him to move to his left without hanging half his ass in midair, while she had plenty of room on the rest of the bench if she cared to shift her own.

She didn't seem to want to. Longarm mostly kept his desperately casual gray eyes on the crowd to their left as he stroked away at her and the organ to his right. She seemed to be breathing sort of fast, even though he'd taken over the harder chore, as she played a familiar church tune he didn't know the words to.

Leastways, he didn't know the words they'd doubtless put down on paper to be sung on such solemn occasions. Like many a country boy before him, Longarm had grown up memorizing more scandalous words to otherwise tedious songs sung by tedious elders. He and a freckle-faced kid who'd been killed a few summers later at Malvern Hill had sure enjoyed singing "Massa's in de cold, cold ground" as "Mah ass is in de cold, cold ground" right in front of the gals with the teacher leading. He'd never rightly figured whether the gals had been fooled or not. Gals often giggled while singing whether there was a joke worth laughing at or not.

But the gal next to him wasn't playing the song about some dead slaveholder's funeral. As he pumped away Longarm tried and failed to come up with the right words, or even the title of this one. But all that popped into his head was:

"While the organ peeled potatoes, Lard was rendered by the choir. While the sextant wrang the dish cloth, Someone set the church on fire!"

The plump brunette bumped his longer, leaner leg with a plump thigh deliberately, as she giggled. "Stop that! This is supposed to be a very solemn occasion and you mustn't make me laugh!"

So he tried not to. But the next thing he knew, as he was biting his own disrespectful tongue, he caught her mouthing the next verse under her breath. So it seemed only fair to sing along:

"Holy smoke, the preacher shouted. In the rush he lost his hair. Now his head resembles Heaven, For there is no parting there."

She botched a note, poked him with an elbow, and warned him with mock severity that she'd stand him in a corner if he didn't cut that out. Then she switched to another dirge, and Longarm had to stifle a laugh. For the only words he knew to that one were from a really filthy parody.

He resisted the impulse, even though he suspected she knew full well how the sillier version went. Young gals had been just as silly as anyone else growing up back home in West-by-God-Virginia.

So he just went on pumping her organ as she inspired his with a calico-covered thigh and the solemn notes of what he only recalled as "Cock of Ages."

Then they had to quit horsing around in the organ alcove for a spell as the preacher and some other professional liars said nice things about the old dead drunk in the fancy box. As he sat there, off to one side with Prunella, Longarm murmured a suggestion as to what they ought to play him out of the church with. She said she'd do it if he promised not to sing the dirty words to "Farther Along."

He assured her, "It's one of my favorite hymns sung straight. Most of 'em promise all sorts of things I ain't so sure they can ever deliver. But that more sensible one only suggests we'll all understand this confusion farther along in the mysterious hereafter."

He shot a somber glance at the raised lid of the old drunk's casket as he thoughtfully added, "Right now, the guest of honor in yonder box knows more about what lies yonder than the rest of us."

"If anybody does," she demurred in a wistful tone. "The poor old man wasn't able to make a lick of sense with his brain full of whiskey. How clear might it function full of embalming fluid?"

Longarm made a wry face and observed that that seemed to be a sort of scientific attitude for a church organist. To which she replied, "I'm here for the same reasons most everyone else was invited. The poor old thing was too important to send off with only the very few who cared about him. They asked me to play this organ because I said I knew a few hymns they didn't have the music for. After I see him out the front door with 'Farther Along' I'm calling it a day here. It looks like rain and the Methodist Burial Grounds on the south side of town are over a mile away."

Longarm sighed. "You're right about the coming rain. It's been a mighty wet green-up so far this year. But my boss, Marshal Vail, lent me his family surrey for the occasion, and it's a good thing we put up the side curtains this morning suspecting that early overcast of soggy intentions."

She shrugged, somehow moving her thigh against his in the process, as she softly replied, "It's too bad you feel obliged to drive out to the burial grounds then. With my luck the hansom I hail out front will have open sides and my skirts will surely get spotted by the time I'm home."

When he hesitated, weighing the odds of his being seriously missed in a crowd of rain-soaked strangers, she threw in, "Fortunately, I don't live far. So no matter how wet I get, I'll doubtless be snug and dry in my Turkish bathrobe, sipping hot chocolate by the fire, by the time the rest of you wade free of that fresh-laid sod out on the south side of town."

Longarm grimaced and quietly asked, "Might you have any toasting spits and marshmallows to go with that rainy-day fire, ma'am?"

She murmured, "My friends call me Pru, and I suppose we could stop along the way for fresh marshmallows if that would be your pleasure."

But it wasn't. So of course they didn't, as he drove her the other way through a serious April shower while everyone else headed out to the south in the wake of that rubber-tired hearse drawn by six black high-steppers. Billy Vail's less imposing surrey only rated a team of ill-matched bays. But Pru said they were sweet, and Longarm thought she might be as well when she suggested the horses would be better off rubbed down, fed, and watered in her own carriage house seeing that he might be staying long enough to toast some marshmallows.

He wasn't dumb enough to scout for a grocery shop open on a rainy Sabbath, or remark on her earlier admission that they'd not find any marshmallows once they got to her place on Logan Street. For he'd learned early on that there was nothing a mortal man could do to speed the pace of a woman with her mind made up. On the other hand, a total fool could change a woman's mind and cool her off by clumsy moves or the wrong words. So he hardly said anything as he and Billy Vail's team followed her directions. Sure enough, the next thing he knew the two of them were warming up before the coal fire in her bedchamber with nary a marshmallow or even that Turkish bathrobe to distract them. She did most of the work, on top, with the ruby glow from the coal fire inspiring a man to new heights as it rippled over her voluptuous torso and naked bouncing bubbles.

They naturally finished up in her four-poster across the room, with him on top, and then they shared one of his three-for-a-nickel cheroots with her tousled brown hair spread across his bare chest. He could have found out a lot more about her had he wanted. But he changed the subject to their more recent delights as she began to tell him the story of her life. He'd already figured she lived alone as a grown woman of some property on the fashionable side of Lincoln Street. So after that, anything else she had to tell a new lover figured to be depressing. Most men knew better than to brag about catching the clap off Arapaho squaws who beat them when they came home drunk. So he'd never figured out why gals felt they had to tell every young boy they met about getting screwed in the ass by an elder brother while their mothers beat them with horsewhips. So he assured old Pru he didn't care who'd been in the right or wrong during her recent divorce and property settlement. He put out their smoke, and put what she said she liked better back where she said she liked it best.

He wouldn't know what a mess he was in before he'd spent a good eighteen hours with her, laying, lying, or whatever. As another silly song suggested, if she'd had wings, he'd have screwed her flying!

It would have been rude to take leave of such a swell hostess right after she'd served him ham and eggs in bed even though it was a workday. So Longarm got to the Federal Building along about ten, still walking a mite funny. He didn't need the smirking typewriter-player in the front office to tell him what a chewing he was in for. He just sighed and said, "Don't try to understand it, Henry. Maybe someday, once you figure out why boys and girls are built different, you'll get out of the habit of showing up so early every damned old Monday morn!"

The skinny pale-faced clerk assured Longarm he liked women just fine, in moderation, and added, "You'd better get on back there and take your medicine like a man, Custis. Our boss is really pissed at you this time."

Longarm shrugged and strode on back to the oak-paneled private office of Marshal William Vail. He resisted the impulse to cast a guilty glance at the banjo clock on one wall. He sat uninvited in Billy Vail's field of fire and told the shorter, older, and stouter cuss on the far side of that cluttered desk, "Had to make certain your team was warm and dry after I washed down your surrey up in the carriage house at your place, Billy. Got a hell of a lot of 'dobe on the chassis, thanks to all that rain yesterday."

Billy Vail bit down on the stubby cigar in his bulldog mouth and replied, "Bullshit! You never drove that gal out to no graveyard along no dirty roads! You run her straight home from the funeral after carrying on scandalously with her in front of the whole damned congregation!"

Longarm tried, "I was only helping the lady pump the organ, for Pete's sake!"

Vail repressed a chuckle and managed to turn it into a snap as he replied, "Her husband's name is Paul, not Pete. But you sure as thunder did a heap for his sake. He's been trying to catch somebody pumping his wife's organs, and what'll you bet he had the two of you followed, and timed, by the detective firm he's had watching her a good six months or more!"

Longarm gulped. "Hold on. Old Pru assured me she was a grass widow, divorced from a jealous brute whose name seemed unimportant to me at the time."

Vail snapped, "You'll get to know him a heap, and vice versa, if we let him serve you with the papers he's likely having drawn up at this very moment. The gal didn't exactly lie to you. She just left out some truth. Prunella and Paul Farnam are sort of divorced, as of last month. But it won't be final till the end of ninety days."

Longarm smiled sheepishly. "She did seem anxious to get on with her, ah, new life. I ain't sure I follow your drift about this ninety-day shit, though. She told me the feelings had been mutual and her ex-husband had been a sport about the house and some mining property up to the Front Range."

Vail grimaced. "She meant Paul Farnam has a far slicker lawyer than she hired. Only I see she doesn't know it yet. Farnam figured he might lose a contested divorce, since his wife was far from the only resident of Colorado who considers him to be a total bastard. There's mining camps old Paul can't go to without a four-man bodyguard. So he gets good rates from that detective agency. As I get it from the courthouse gang, he slickered that passionate but dumb brunette by agreeing to an uncontested divorce and handsome property settlement with just one little provision in the small print."

Longarm sighed and said, "You mean they have her word in small print that she won't entertain overnight guests of the male persuasion under their mutual roof until such time as the court decrees she's free?"

Vail nodded. "Something like that. Knowing her nature even better than the rest of us, I'd say he and his lawyer figured she'd never hold out for ninety days. So tell me something about you, Have you ever suffered any serious fevers?"

Longarm blinked, hesitated but a moment, and replied, "Sure I have. Growing up hard-scrabble in West-by-God-Virginia, we sort of felt left out if we weren't served a dose of any ague going round, and there sure was a heap of 'em. Close to half the kids I started in the first grade with died of one damned fever or another, while the rest of us grew up immune to most. Sink or swim was all the medical science most of our folks could afford."

He glanced out the nearest window at the busy world outside as he caught himself muttering, "Old Warts Wilson died at Cold Harbor after living through the pox, and Hank Bronson licked the scarlet fever only to stop a round of.75 with his head at Shiloh. But that's all water under the bridge, and what have childhood agues to do with me getting hauled into divorce court like the fool that I am about frisky women?"

Vail said, "If you're not in town, you can't be served. If Paul Farnam doesn't serve some fool in less than ninety days and prove him a carnal correspondent in court within that time, your Prunella is off the hook, and more important, so's my senior deputy. I only wanted to make sure you had a sporting chance against the fevers of the Fever Coast. I got a half-failed mission down yonder, and seeing you're only fixing to get in a bigger mess here in Denver..."

"Hold on and back up," Longarm said with a puzzled frown. "I know they call that stretch of the Texican shore from, say, Brownsville to Galveston the Fever Coast because it's sort of lethal to man or beast from other parts. I've been down that way a time or two and I'm still breathing. But how can a mission be half-failed, Billy? Seems to me a man ought to carry out his mission all the way or consider it a total failure, fight?"

"Wrong," Billy Vail replied. "I sent Deputy Gilbert down to a seaport called Escondrijo, betwixt Brownsville and Corpus Christi. I sent him to pick up and transport a federal prisoner for Judge Dickerson down the hall. Gilbert got there to find his prisoner too sick to move from his cot in the town lockup. They told him it was a spring fever that seemed to be going round. Up to then a good half of them down with it had bounced back. So Gilbert hired a room across from the jail to wait his prisoner's fever out. Last I heard, the outlaw Judge Dickerson wants to hang has recovered his own health, whilst poor old Rod Gilbert's flat on his back with that same fool fever."

Leaning back in his swivel chair, Billy Vail relit his soggy old cigar. "To tell the truth, I'd planned on letting Gilbert get better and bring his man in before you got your own fool self in this worse fix. But seeing you have, what say we send you down to Escondrijo to see about getting both old boys back up this way in as much comfort as they both deserve?"

Longarm sighed. "I reckon it beats being hauled into a damned old divorce court any time of the year, and it might not be too hot in south Texas this early in the year. I'll just tell Henry out front, and tend me a few errands whilst he types up my travel orders and vouchers, right?"

"Wrong," Billy Vail replied again. "I've already told Henry what I want typed up for you, Gilbert, and your prisoner. I'll get word to Prunella Farnam later and save you the trouble and considerable risk of running back up yonder to warn her they'll be riding hard on her with spiteful intent. It ain't our worry if she can't hold out till you can help her with her organ some more when her dad-blamed divorce is final!"

Longarm smiled sheepishly and said, "Well, as long as somebody warns her ... It sure feels spooky working for a boss who reads my mind so good, Billy Vail."

To which Marshal Vail could only reply with a modest smile, "I reckon somebody has to do some thinking for you when it comes to women. Lord knows the pretty little things surely seem to confuse the shit out of you when left to study about 'em on your own!"

CHAPTER 2

Longarm spoke enough Border Mex to translate Escondrijo freely as "Hideout." So he wasn't too surprised to discover Escondrijo, Texas, was one of those places You just couldn't get to from most anywhere else without a whole lot of trouble.

The Lone Star and erstwhile Confederate State was commencing to attract more settlers and railroad tracks now that President Hayes had called a halt to Reconstruction and let those who best knew the Southwest run it their own way, as long as they remembered who'd won. So most of the Southern railroads had standardized their tracks to the same broad gauge, and Henry had managed to get Longarm by rail to the head of navigation on the Rio Grande. You had to go by steamboat from Brownsville to Escondrijo and beyond in any case. Railroads ran where there was profit to be made, across sensible terrain, and even if there had been enough settlers to matter, it would have been a bitch to lay track across the line of swamps and estuaries between Brownsville and Galveston with the construction methods of the day. So it made more sense to everyone if such freight and passengers as there were moved up and down the Fever Coast by boat, whether sail luggers out on the gulf, or steamers plying the inland waterway a good pilot could follow from lagoon to lagoon behind the sandy barrier islands that lay just offshore--as if to guard the low, swampy mainland from that mean Indian deity Hura Kan.

Longarm had known better than to head for south Texas in a three-piece tweed suit with summer coming in. The paddle-wheel passage down the lower Rio Grande was hot and sticky enough to a gent wearing no more than a thin cotton work shirt and well-washed jeans between his tobacco-brown Stetson and low-heeled stovepipe boots. Nobody along the border got excited by the sight of a sober gent packing a gun on one hip. He only sported his badge when he was up to answering pesky questions about his immediate intent.

He'd been fooled before about whether a lawman on such a routine mission might or might not need to do some riding. So this time, seeing he needed someplace to pack his possibles in any case, he'd brought along his personal McClellan saddle and army bridle with his roll, saddlebags, and Winchester '73 attached. Henry'd told him there was a Coast Guard station near Escondrijo, and so he'd doubtless be able to borrow a government mount there in the unlikely event he had to ride out after any escaped fever victims.

The paddle-wheel trip down to Brownsville was uneventful. He boarded a larger coastal steamer there without incident, just in time to be on his way north on the next tide just before suppertime, his cabin steward told him. So he tipped the helpful colored gent a generous two bits in hopes his cabin would stay locked, locked his baggage up for the moment, and ambled back out on deck to enjoy some salt air as well as a smoke. He naturally stationed himself to seaward on the shady side of the long promenade deck. His tobacco smoke still felt far cooler than the steamy breeze stirred up by the steamer's steaming at around six knots. There wasn't any shoreward sea breeze at the moment, and six knots of apparent breeze didn't do a lot for a man who'd just come down from the higher and drier climes of Colorado.

Traveling Denver folks often remarked on how thick and soggy the air felt, even on a dry day in, say, Frisco or Saint Lou. Most found San Antone a steam bath as early as April. Folks from that far north in Texas tried to avoid the gulf coast once the robin began to drift north to cooler summer climes.

"Doesn't it ever cool off down here?" a plaintive female voice was bleating from behind him. So Longarm turned with a smile, noting with regret that the willowy ash-blonde in the middy blouse and straw boater hadn't been talking to him at all--Her complaint seemed to be aimed at a pink-faced jasper in a rumpled white merchant marine cap and uniform. Longarm recognized him as the purser he'd had to check in with coming aboard. The poor bastard was sweating like a hog in that choke-collared linen suit as he somehow managed to assure the blond passenger, "Things will cool off a heap once the sun goes down, ma'am. The nights are way cooler along this coast, and as soon as we hit the more open waters of Laguna Madre the skipper will be ordering more speed."

Longarm doubted that. They'd swung north into the Laguna Madre if he was any judge of maps and if the distant shoreline to either side meant spit. But it would have been pointless as well as rude to call a ship's officer a bare-faced liar, or point out how hot and steamy most cabins figured to remain no matter how much steam they fed the twin screws back yonder. These coastal steamers got more cargo space by using the more modern screw drive, but the smaller boilers they could get by with had no more speed to offer. Steamers poking up and down the gulf coast made their money on stopping as often as possible, not by getting anywhere in such an all-fired hurry.

The sun was low, he could tell--not by looking to the west on the sunny side, but by admiring the first evening star in a purple sky to the east. It would still be some time before any evening breeze picked up its lazy heels. But he still drifted forward towards the dining salon as he finished his smoke. For whether traveling by rail or water, a man with a tumbleweed job soon learned to never be first or last to be seated for dinner.

The dining salon was already crowded as Longarm entered from a shady doorway and drifted to an empty table, on the sunny side but near an open window. His brow felt somewhat cooler as he hung up his hat and sat down by the window. The setting sun was still spiteful, but the faint breeze from the bow almost made up for it as a colored waiter, cheerful enough considering his white choke-collar jacket, came over to hand him a menu and fill a tumbler with ice water for him. How a gent used to this climate managed to keep his jacket no more rumpled than the linen tablecloths all around was a total mystery to a man feeling wilted as hell in a thin blue shirt with an open collar. Longarm was scanning the menu for something that looked safe as well as cooling when that same ash-blonde came over to ask if the seat across from him was taken. She seemed less distressed by his rough costume when he rose to his feet to assure her she was welcome to join him as long as she refrained from sipping the ice water.

As they both sat down, she frowned thoughtfully at his glass and asked what was wrong with sipping ice water on such a hot afternoon. He glanced about to make certain he wasn't insulting any of the help as he softly explained, "There's this French chemist called Pasture, I think, who's been studying on bitty invisible bugs that may spread plagues, and they call these waters the Fever Coast with reason, ma'am. I've been down this way before, and I've found it way safer to stick to hard liquor, or hot softer drinks such as tea or coffee. If you order either, make sure you're served stuff too hot to drink right off. Don't order iced desserts or salads down this way either, hear?"

She looked more amused than annoyed as she observed, "Oh, dear, and I was looking forward to the shrimp salad here. I take it you're some sort of physician, good sir?"

Longarm laughed easily. "Not hardly. I'm a federal deputy marshal. Name's Custis Long. So you go right ahead and order the iced shrimp if you've a mind to, and I'll tell 'em you died brave if you guessed wrong. The odds are better'n eight out of ten in your favor, ma'am. I just don't value the taste of shrimp cocktail that highly, having witnessed a few cases of food poisoning whilst passing through these parts in the past."

The willowy blonde made a wry face--it still remained fair to gaze upon--and decided, "Brrr, I don't think I like those odds myself. So what do you suggest, seeing you seem so familiar with the local cuisine?"

He replied without hesitation, "Anything Mex served hot, ma'am. I know hot tamales or chili con carne washed down with cold rum or hot coffee sounds dumb. But the Mex folk, who've lived down this way longer, hardly ever come down with food poisoning. Hot spicy grub must kill them bitty bugs that French chemist has been studying."

She studied the menu he'd handed her dubiously, telling him that she'd read about Louis Pasteur in a ladies' magazine devoted to female problems and getting the vote. Then she asked if he'd read anything about that other scientist blaming tropical fevers on the bites of bigger bugs, such as flies, ticks, and even mosquitoes.

He nodded. "Him too. You're talking about that Anglo-Cuban doctor, Carlos Finlay, who keeps saying yellow jack and Texas fever might be spread by bug bites. I don't see why they can't both be right. Meanwhile, I see that waiter coming back. So do you trust me to order for the both of us, Miss ...?"

"Colbert, Lenore Colbert," she said with a bemused smile. "I suppose I'll have to trust you when it comes to hot tamales and so forth. I've never eaten any Mexican food no matter which of those scientists may be right. I don't see how they could both be right, though."

The waiter was there by this time. So Longarm allowed they'd both go for chili con carne, tamales, and chicken enchiladas, knowing most Anglo palates could manage such beginner's fare. To drink, he ordered black coffee laced with white rum. As the waiter left, Longarm explained, "I don't hold with one cause for all fevers. It only stands to reason that fevers as different as, say, scarlet, yellow, and the ague or chills-and-fever can't be caused by the same whatever. We know now that the milk fever that killed Abe Lincoln's mother was inspired by poisonous snake-roots their milk cow had been into. For some reason the poison passes through the cow harmlessly to kill human folks who drink her milk. But you don't have to drink milk to come down with yellow jack or even the Texas fever northern cows die from. So maybe both Pasture and Carlos Finlay could be on to the truth. Or half the truth leastways. I suspect there's way more to coming down sick than modern medicine has a handle on. I know my own job's more complicated than some figure. I've wound up mighty confounded by two separate crimes I was trying to solve as the work of one outlaw. So what if folks get sick for all sorts of different reasons whilst the docs seek some common cause?"

She was staring past him in a desperately casual manner as she replied, "That's their problem. Don't look now but there's another man boring holes in your back with his cold steel eyes. You are on some sort of mission for the government, right?"

Longarm resisted the impulse to turn his head as he smiled at her uncertainly and replied, "I am, but it ain't no secret mission, and it wouldn't do anyone a lick of good if they managed to stop me. My office sent me down this way to pick up an owlhoot rider by the name of Clay Baldwin. He's already been arrested and they've been holding him at Escondrijo for us. He'd still be locked up if someone bored real holes in my back and threw me over the side. My boss would likely send two or three deputies to fetch Baldwin as soon as things got that serious. Might you have a bitty mirror in that bag across your lap, Miss Lenore?"

She said she did and, to her credit, never asked why a grown man might want to borrow such a thing. Meanwhile, the waiter got back with their orders. So it was easy enough for her to slip Longarm the small square mirror amid all the confusion atop their table.

As the waiter poured and laced their coffee and the gal across the way stared thunderstruck at the unfamiliar grub in front of her, Longarm found it easy enough to prop the mirror up against a saltshaker. Sure enough, an ugly galoot was staring mean as hell at him from another nearby table. The lean and hungry face failed to remind Longarm of anyone he was currently after. The stranger sat across from another cuss dressed for south Texas riding. But that didn't mean either had to be mixed up in beef or other produce. For it had been six or eight years since Longarm had been a serious cowhand, and wasn't he wearing shirt and jeans in this infernal climate?

The one staring mean at Longarm's back had his slate-gray Texas-creased hat on at the table. The one facing the other way had on a less dramatic Carlsbad with its crown crushed cavalry. Their matching white shirts, worn vestless, might have said they were a couple of Texas Rangers if Longarm had had recent trouble with the recently reorganized and often proddy Rangers. But he was on fair terms with the Ranger captain back in Brownsville, and didn't know if they even had a Ranger station up around Escondrijo. As in the case of federal deputies, the Texas Rangers worked out of widely spaced headquarters, mostly built near towns of some importance, and only chimed into local matters in other parts when a federal or state offense seemed too big for the local law to cope with. So Longarm doubted there'd be any cases the Rangers would be worried about this side of, say, Corpus Christi.

Escondrijo was on this side of Corpus Christi, and a day's ride away in a straight line from that more important stop. But moving along the Fever Coast by horse took longer, thanks to all the inlets and swamps there were to go around. By an ironic trick of geology, as the post office riders had known before coastal steamers got so common along the inland waterway, a rider could move much faster along the back dunes of Padre Island, an otherwise mighty lonely string bean of white sand and sea gull shit the winds and waves had piled a few miles out extending from Corpus Christi Pass all the way south to Matamoros in Old Mexico. They said it was healthier as well as a bit cooler out along the barrier sands. It was too bad nobody had yet come up with any way to make a living off no more than white sandy beaches and sunshine.

"What are these things that look like lengths of broomstick boiled in oil?" the blonde across the table was asking as Longarm tried in vain to make out what sort of hardware the sinister strangers had behind him. He adjusted the mirror as he assured her hot tamales were sort of big hollow noodles made of cornmeal and stuffed with spicy ground meat.

When she asked what kind of meat, he decided she'd feel better if he said it was likely beef. Beef was possible, and some folks felt odd about eating goats, cats, dogs, and such. The idea of all that red pepper in a hot tamale was to assure that the meat was safe to eat as well as impossible to identify by taste.

He knew he'd said the right thing when Lenore took an experimental taste, followed by a bigger bite and a sudden grab for her coffee to put out the fire, then a smaller but more relaxed nibble as she decided it was a tad spicy but good.

He dug into his own chili con carne to look busy, with his back to those jaspers in her mirror as he casually replied, "That's doubtless because we've a Texican chef on board, ma'am. Mex grub is peppered more along the border than anywhere north or south of it. I suspect Mexicans and Texicans are trying to prove something to one another. Left to themselves--say as far off as Durango, Mexico, or Durango, Colorado--cooks pepper just enough to make a dish sort of interesting. Further south in Old Mexico they cook lots of other ways, with bananas, rice, and such. I had a chicken basted with hot bitter-sweet chocolate down Mexico way one time. Reckon that's what they call an acquired taste and... I see that one in the lighter-gray Carlsbad is packing a two-gun buscadero rig, with the one gun I can make out from here a nickel-plated Schofield."

She said, "These beans are less spicy. What's a Schofield?"

He explained, "A revolver gun, ma'am. Mostly made by Smith & Wesson, but named after Brevet Colonel George Schofield of that Colored Tenth Cav. The colonel wasn't colored. He was the baby brother of General John M. Schofield, in charge of the U.S. Army Small Arms Board during the Grant Administration. Colonel George was stuck with a gross of Model 3 S&W horse pistols left over from an order for the Russian cavalry. It wouldn't be charitable at this late date to guess what the general got out of the deal. The younger Schofield, stuck with using the bargain six-guns in the field, made some improvements on the originals, rechambering 'em for army ammunition to begin with. So by the time they'd sold the first three thousand remodeled Russian cavalry guns to their own army, they were so delighted they renamed the gun the Schofield."

She was too polite to indicate she was sorry she'd asked. But he knew women would rather talk about clothes and such. Hence he added, more tersely, "Let's just say the Texas Rangers are issued the Colt.45 Peacemaker one at a time. A man packing two Schofields in tie-down holsters is showing off or expecting some serious fighting. Either way, I doubt they could be Rangers, and I'd be likely to recognize any well-known outlaws in these parts."

She suggested, "Maybe the one glaring at you just arrived from other parts. He certainly seems to recognize you!"

He volunteered to just get up and see what the cuss was so sore about if such rude staring was getting on the lady's nerves. But she pleaded, "Please don't! I can't stand public scenes, and it's not as if he's done or said anything wrong to either of us!"

So Longarm just went on eating, and a few minutes later, having started earlier, the two mysterious strangers finished, got up, and sauntered out of sight. But not before Longarm had made certain they were both loaded for bear. Neither looked dumb enough to carry six in the wheel on either hip. But assuming they, like him, preferred the hammer of a six-gun riding on one empty chamber, that still tallied out to twenty rounds for them and five for him in the first exchange. He'd left the derringer he usually carried in a vest pocket with his other possibles back in his stateroom. So maybe it was just as well he hadn't yelled at them over their dessert.

By the time he and the willowy blonde were having their own, a raisin pie fresh from the oven, the sun was setting in full glory and he'd learned she was a Boston gal headed home after attending the reading of a distant relative's will back in Brownsville. She said she meant to get off their coastal steamer and catch herself a train at Houston once they got there.

He didn't feel up to going into the details of moving between the offshore stop at Galveston and the inland rail yards of Houston. He tried not to sound wistful as he said, "I'll only be spending the one night ahead aboard this slow but steady tub if I'm lucky. Might get in in the wee small hours if the skipper keeps his word about putting on some speed."

She sipped the last of her coffee, her hair glowing as pretty as old gold in the fading light from her left as she replied she was sure they'd have been moving faster by this time had the skipper really cared about getting anywhere in a hurry. She added, "At least I booked a stateroom on the seaward side this time. I almost steamed myself to clam chowder coming down this coast a week ago."

He didn't say anything. But it was a good thing he wasn't playing poker with such a keen-eyed gal. For she demanded, "What did I say wrong, ah, Custis? Don't you think I should have booked myself a stateroom on the cooler side?"

To which he could only reply, since she'd asked, "If seaward was the cooler side, Miss Lenore. Winds blow from where it's cooler to where it's warmer. Come daybreak the sun-baked plains to our west will send hot air rising to suck in cooler air off the gulf to our east. But the gulf ain't all that cool as seawater goes. So once the plains cool off a tad under starlight, the warmer waters of the gulf ought to suck land breezes out to sea through such portholes as might be open on the landward side."

The Eastern gal stared across at him like a blue-eyed owl as she insisted, "But I was on that side, coming down the coast just a week ago, and as I said, I got steamed like a clam baked in seaweed!"

He chuckled at the memory of some clams he'd had that way the time he'd spent back East on Long Island with another blonde. He said, "I never told you the landward staterooms would be cool. I only meant they wouldn't be as hot and stuffy as the ones catching no breezes at all. You don't have to answer if you find this too indelicate, ma'am. But may I take it you were trying to sleep in a steamer stateroom this far south, at this time of the year, in, ah, modest attire?"

She blinked and said, "Well, of course I had my nightdress on, if that's what you mean! Would you have a lady retire under her sheets as bare as some sort of tropical savage?"

He managed not to grin too knowingly as he quietly replied, "I ain't sure how savage the old-time Coahuiltic were when they still owned this part of Texas, ma'am. But their Mex descendants don't retire under a sheet or anything else when it gets this hot. Seeing I'll be getting off come morning, I'd be proud to let you sleep in my stateroom instead."

He could tell, even by such poor light, how hard she blushed as she gasped, "You really are in a hurry, aren't you!"

He had to laugh. Before she could spring up and flounce out he quickly explained. "I only meant I was willing to swap with you for just this one night! I ain't that subtle when I ask a supper Companion right out to let me call her sweetheart."

It was her turn to smile, sort of dirty, as she said, "I'm sorry, Custis. I know you've behaved in a perfectly proper way since I first sat down here. Could it have really been less than two hours? How could I feel I've known you such a long while?"

He said, "Time drags out here on the water with nothing but one another to bother knowing. Meeting at sundown helped some. We've shared sunshine and shadow as well as plenty of grub and rum-laced coffee."

She smiled archly. "I'd better not have any more rum if you're to remember me as a lady who keeps her clothes on after dark."

Then she caught herself, blushed again, and softly said, "oh, I must have had more rum than I thought. I didn't mean to tease like that, Custis. I'm really not the sort of girl who takes anything off in mixed company. But I suppose you knew all the time I was just a flirty old maid, didn't you?"

He assured her, "I've been teased worse, and you ain't old enough to be ashamed of being a maid, if we both mean maid as a gal who's still innocent. Being innocent is what lots of gals brag about, at least to the age of twenty-nine or SO."

She looked away and murmured, "I'll be twenty-six this August, and I'm not sure I'm still bragging. But I can't help the way I was brought up, Custis. So unless the man I've been saving myself for comes along, I suppose I'll just wind up like that poor old Olivia Lee in the Congregational burial ground back home."

He had to allow he'd never heard tell of Miss Olivia Lee.

Lenore sighed. "I never knew her either. She died a long time ago. Her headstone reads, 'Here lies Olivia Lee, who died a virgin at ninety-three, God rest her poor soul!'"

Longarm didn't laugh. He didn't think such a fate was funny. But he didn't want the responsibilities that would surely go with busting any twenty-five-year-old cherry so far from home either. So he asked whether she wanted to swap staterooms or not, and once she said she could sure do with an even slightly cooler upper berth, he suggested they get busy with their baggage.

They did. Passengers signed for food and drink and settled with the purser before getting off. But Longarm still left some coins on the table to make up for their longer than usual stay there.

He escorted her to her stateroom first. She was traveling light for a gal who slept with duds on. So he needed no help with her two bags, and never sent for any. He led the way along a corridor running abeam from starboard to port, and put her bags on the floor inside his own cabin. Then he lifted his saddle from the bottom berth, saying, "I'll just tote this load over to your stateroom and we'll both be set. Would you like me to straighten out the purser about the switch, or would you rather thrash it out with him seeing as you'll be staying aboard long after I've gotten off and nobody will be likely to say anything dumb?"

She suggested whichever of them saw the purser first ought to work it out with the steamer line. He agreed that made sense, and backed out the narrow doorway to shift the weight of his heavily laden army saddle higher on his free hip. She came out after him, as if to keep him from getting lost on the way back to her old quarters. It would have sounded dumb, as well as rude, to tell her no girls were allowed. So he never did, and in no time at all his possibles were safely locked away, thanks to their swapping keys. Then the two of them were alone on the starboard promenade deck, staring seaward at the rising moon as they leaned against the rail together. He wanted to kiss her so bad he could taste it. But he didn't, He knew that once they got to swapping spit there'd be no reining in till he found out whether he might or might not go farther. Either way, somebody was likely to get hurt more than finding out would be worth. For Longarm knew all too well how good it could get with a pretty lady suffering from a case of pent-up passion, and even a pretty gal that just lay there had pissing beat by at least a furlong. But one night of love with the Queen of Sheba, played by the lovely Miss Ellen Terry, fresh from a perfumed bath, couldn't make up for that hurt look a man saw in the eyes of a gal he was really letting down.

So he softly suggested, "Land breeze ought to be fixing to start over on the port side, ma'am. Why don't I carry you back to my old stateroom before I go see whether those two you spotted at supper are packing two guns apiece for any sensible reason."

She tilted her face up to his in the moonlight, softly asking, "Isn't there anything else you'd rather do than fight, Custis?"

To which he could only reply, "There's plenty, starting with just minding my own beeswax, Miss Lenore. But they don't pay me to avoid fights, and like you said yourself, that one jasper in the big hat surely seems to be spoiling for one!"

CHAPTER 3

The combined smoking salon and taproom lay aft of the sleeping quarters for sensible reasons. There was no sign stating women were not allowed. But it was generally understood by the traveling public that such dimly lit and smoke-filled areas were not intended for the giggles of females or the patter of little feet. There was a ladies' salon up forward for that.

Longarm was glad. He'd pinned on his federal badge and unsnapped his pocket derringer from the more dangerous end of his watch chain, and had the sneaky two-shot.44 palmed in his big right fist as he came through the starboard entrance. His bigger.44-40 double-action was there for the world to see on his left hip, plain but hand-fitted grip forward, so he could draw as well sitting down, standing up, or astride.

The two he was looking for were across the salon against the bar. They both stood with their backs to the bar, as if they might have been expecting someone. Now that he could see the face of the one in the Carlsbad hat, he could see it was no improvement on the ugly mutt wearing the darker Texas hat, although that was still the one with the meanest expression. They were both heeled with double rigs, worn too low for trouble on horseback but just right for a stand-up showdown.

Longarm strode right over to them as, off to his left, an older gent dealing cards at a corner table muttered, "Oh, shit, I reckon we'll play this hand later, boys. This child is going out on deck for some fresh air and he strongly advises you all to follow!"

Longarm didn't worry about the action that followed to either side as he simply stopped two paces from the bar and casually but firmly stated, "I'd be Custis Long and I'm the law, federal. One of the nicer things about my job is that I don't have to shilly-shally with suspicious characters. So I'd like you gents to state your own names and tell me why you've been acting so suspicious."

As he'd hoped, they'd been braced for the usual bullshit involving narrow-eyed stares and veiled remarks leading up to what they had in mind. So they both froze as each waited for the other to say the first words or make the first move.

In the meantime both kept their hands politely clear of their four guns. So Longarm demanded, "Cat's got your tongues?"

The mean-eyed one in the bigger hat stared back even meaner as he came unstuck and croaked, "We know who you are, Longarm. Neither one of us is wanted by any federal court in the land."

Longarm said, "I already figured as much. Had either of you fit any wanted fliers I've read recently, I'd have come in with my side arm drawn. I don't shit around like those lawmen in Ned Buntline's wild and woolly magazines. I'm asking you once more to state your names and business. It's all the same to me whether you'd care to do as I say or fill your fists."

Somebody else tore out a side door as the more sensible-looking one in the paler hat gulped and protested, "Hold on, Longarm. You can't just throw down on law-abiding citizens for no good reason!"

Longarm insisted, "You're giving me good reason. The law gives me the right to ask anyone this side of President Hayes to state his name and business, and the right to arrest and hold him on suspicion for seventy-two hours maximum should he give me probable cause. As for whether you want to come quiet or shoot it out right here and now, I'm assuming anyone who tells a federal lawman to just go fuck himself isn't planning on coming quiet."

The one in the Carlsbad hat said quickly, "I'd be Hamp Godwynn and this would be Saul Reynolds, better known as Squint Reynolds for reasons you can see for your own self. We are poor but honest cowhands in search of honest employment."

"Aboard a coastal steamer, acting suspicious and packing two guns apiece in border bully rigs?"

The one called Squint replied, in a surprisingly boyish tenor, "It was border bullies we got armed against. We were just down this way to see if we could get hired on at that monstrous ranch some steamboat skipper started at the mouth of the Rio Grande. We found they mostly hired Mex buckaroos, the cheap bastards."

Longarm smiled thinly. "I reckon you mean vaqueros, and I know the big spread you just mentioned. Since I've no good reason to call any grown man here a liar, I'll only say you could've saved us all some needless sweat on a hot night by simply answering me sensibly in the first place. Now that we all know who's talking to whom, let's talk about all them dirty looks you boys were aiming my way earlier this evening at supper up forward."

Hamp Godwynn said, "Squint wasn't aiming dirty looks at you in particular, Longarm. He looks that mean-eyed at everybody, and I don't mind telling you we've had this conversation with other gents who took Squint's natural expression wrong."

Longarm considered, shrugged, and said, "We've all been out with a gal whose naturally flirty eyes drew unexpected as well as unwelcome attentions from others. But like I told one version of that flirty gal on one occasion, there's no need to back up a naturally troublesome expression with a chip on one's cold shoulder."

Squint Reynolds snapped, "We told you who we was and said we was sorry about scaring you. What more do you want, an egg in your beer?"

Longarm answered, firmly but not unkindly, "For your information, I ain't scared of you and your kin combined. But since you've given me information I can check out later, we'll just say no more about it for now. I'd offer to buy a round if I liked either one of you and it wasn't so blamed stuffy in here. But since I don't and it ain't, I'll just say buenoches and don't go glaring like that no more if we should meet at breakfast, hear?"

Then he left. He didn't have to crawfish backwards. There was a big glass window offering him a good view of everyone in the salon as he strode out to the starboard promenade deck.

Once he had, it didn't feel much cooler. But the promenade deck got its name because it went all the way round the upper passenger section of the combined freight and passenger steamer from stem to stern.

He was closer to the stern at the moment. So he got out a cheroot and lit it in the still-muggy air on that side. Then he ambled aft and rounded the last stern corner to discover that, just as he'd told pretty Lenore, a fairly strong land breeze was blowing from the west. It smelled of mesquite and was far from frigid. But at least it was dry and brisk enough to cool his face and sweat-soaked shirt as he strolled forward along the deserted portside deck. The staterooms he passed were built back to back, save for the few facing a companionway or warped into odder shapes by funnels, air-shafts, and ladderways. So most of them opened out to the promenade deck with ventilation jalousies built into lower door panels as well as their port shutters. That was what they called windows on a boat, whether they looked like portholes or not. So you could hear things going on inside as you passed many a stateroom, most by this time dark. Victorian folks didn't go to sleep with the chickens because of religious notions. Oil lamps gave off a lot of heat as they shed piss-poor light for reading. Hence, as in the case of the chickens, most Anglo-Americans of the era were early to bed and early to rise simply so they could see what they were doing. The Mexican folks on both sides of the border were the night owls. Not as many were interested in reading, and after that it was just too hot down this way during Yanqui business hours. So the "lazy Mex" broke his day up into short hard stints from the wee small hours to the heat of late morning, dozed off in the shade most of the afternoon, and often put in another eight or ten hours of work or play in the cool shades of evening.

Lenore Colbert had already told him she was a Yanqui gal. So he wasn't surprised to see she'd trimmed her lamp and likely turned in by the time he passed his old stateroom. He was tempted to pause for a few puffs on his smoke and see if he could hear her snoring, jerking off in bed, or whatever. But he never did. It made a man wistful enough to picture a pretty gal alone in bed, either decorous under the sheets, or spread-eagled atop them buck naked.

He could guess how the couple two staterooms up were most likely dressed for bed as he passed their dark shutters and heard a female voice cry out, "Ooh, that feels wicked and I know I'll surely burn in Hades when I die, but right now I want your tongue even deeper!"

Longarm chuckled silently and moved on, muttering, "Aw, with any luck all those French saints will put in a good word for you, ma'am. Those French are a caution for eating pussy and turning into saints, and there's nothing about that in the Ten Commandments to begin with. The sinners in Sodom wanted to screw boy angels in the ass. I never read what the folk in Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim were up to. The Good Book just don't say. But it must have been worse than they do in Dodge when the herds are in town because Dodge and even Frisco are still there, praise the Lord."

Others along the way seemed to be just screwing, snoring, or in one case arguing in bed about whether they could afford a new carpet in the front parlor. Then he passed the dining salon, shut for the night, and finally he was standing alone in the bows, where the combined air movements made him feel so good he wondered why nobody else was standing there with him. Then, reflecting on the night watch above him on the Texas deck, the black gang down below in the engine room, and most of the folks in the staterooms being the type to call ports on a steamer windows, he realized it only stood to reason a more experienced traveler would get to hog such comfort as there was aboard this tub on such a muggy night.

He finished his smoke, tossed the lit stub over the side to admire its firefly dive to the inky gulf waters, and resisted the temptation to light another. He'd been trying to cut down on tobacco. For some reason he found it tougher than refusing another drink after his legs warned him he'd had enough, or leaving a gal's skirts alone after she'd warned him she was married or, even more dangerous, a maiden pure. Yet anyone could see a man got more pleasure out of strong liquor or weak-willed women than tobacco had ever offered. So why in tarnation did a man on such a modest salary have to spend a whole nickel to smoke only three damned cheroots that neither made him feel like singing or coming?

On the other hand, he was already uncomfortable enough as he leaned on the rail in sweaty duds with half a hard-on. So he lit up some more, muttering, "Just this last one before we turn in for at least a few hours' sleep. Don't want folks thinking a drunk might be coming down the gangplank at 'em come morning."

As anyone who's ever tried to cut down on smoking knows, a smoke seems to burn down faster as soon as you tell it you don't mean to have another in the near future. So maybe a quarter hour later he watched that one diving to the sea as he reached absently for a third, another part of him pointing out, What the hell, may as well spend the whole nickel before we turn in."

But he shook his head firmly and told himself, "A man's word is a man's word. Who in Creation is a man supposed to trust if he breaks his damned word to his damned self?"

He toughed it out another ten minutes or so, then found himself on the move again, aimed for Lenore's starboard stateroom but drifting back along the port side, to windward, if only to postpone the stagnant heat to seaward by taking the long route round the stern.

The moon was shining on the far side. So Longarm moved aft along the darker deck as no more than an inky blur, thanks to passing on that third smoke. Hence they didn't spot him either as they kicked in a stateroom door further down And charged in shooting.

Longarm drew his own side arm and advanced on the confusion, getting there just as two dark blurs were backing out of his original stateroom through their own cloud of gunsmoke. So he demanded they freeze and fired almost in the same moment when neither did. He hit the nearest one and suspected he knew who it was as his target dropped faster than its big hat. He put another round in the son of a bitch before pegging his fifth and last shot at the sound of the other one's thudding boot heels. Then he crouched just inside the open doorway, reloading six in the wheel as he bawled loudly, "Everybody stay put inside in the name of the law!"

Then he asked more softly, "Are you all right, Miss Lenore?"

He got no reply as he sprang back up to chase after the one called Godwynn. Halfway back to the stern he heard a mighty splash, and nobody seemed on deck ahead of him as he rounded the last corner. So he swung back to peer back along the barely visible wake in the moonlight, muttering, "I hope there's plenty of sharks trailing this vessel if that was you I just heard, you bastard!"

By the time he got back to his shot-up stateroom the smoke had cleared and there were others out on deck despite his command to stay inside their rooms. He recognized the white uniform of the purser in the dim light and called out, "Deputy Long here. I reckon you noticed that gunplay just now. I'd be obliged if you'd have a look at the one on the deck betwixt us whilst I see about somebody nicer I was trying to do a favor for!"

He struck a match as he stepped inside. The small space still reeked of the brimstone breath of six-guns. He lit a wall fixture, and felt sorry he'd done so as he saw what lay atop the sheets of the upper berth. Lenore Colbert had taken his advice about flopping buck naked in such ventilation as might get through those jalousies near the head of the berth. So you could see every bullet hole in her willowy naked body, and they'd sure put enough in her. But she was bleeding too much to be sincerely dead. So he holstered his gun to move over to her, snatching up some bedding to rip into white bandages as he wondered, heartsick, where to start.

She was bleeding hardest from a wound under one shapely breast. He shoved a twist of cotton sheeting into it before he commenced an attempt to wrap a longer strip around her chest. A gal that skinny lifted easy and he tried to move her gently. But she moaned and said, "You're hurting me. What happened? Is that you, Custis?"

He said, "It is. You've been shot. I got one of 'em and it looks as if the other one dove overboard. Hold still and let me knot this dressing secure till we can find you a sawbones."

She protested, "Oh, Lord, I don't have any clothes on. Please trim that lamp. I can't have you seeing me naked!"

He said, "Already have, and I'm sure glad to see you've neither tattoos nor a tail, ma'am. I reckon that'll hold your left lung in you for now. Let's see about this other round you took under your floating rib."

"Don't look at my privates!" she pleaded as he removed his hat and gently covered her blond pubic hair with it while refraining from telling her he already had. It might have upset her as much to be told no man with a lick of sense had horny thoughts about even a great naked body shot so full of lead.

The purser came in, gasped in dismay at the sight of the bloody nude on the upper berth, and recovered to soberly state, "Our Mister Reynolds outside is beyond any need for medical attention. But I sent for the ship's surgeon in any case. Is the lady still alive and may one ask what she was doing in your stateroom if you weren't in here with her, Deputy Long?"

Longarm said, "For now let's say we swapped berths because she was suffering more than me from your great weather down this way. I got a better question. How did those two killers learn which stateroom I was supposed to be holed up in tonight?"

The purser sighed. "I told them. They were asking about you in the smoking salon a few minutes ago. I allowed that since I'd not seen you on deck and there was nothing else open you were likely in bed. The other one, Mister Godwynn, said he wanted to slip a note under your door and he seemed so friendly..."

"I follow your drift," Longarm snapped. "Now I'd like you to round up some armed and dangerous crewmen and make sure that was Godwynn I just heard going over the taff-rail. I chased him as far as the stern and lost him one way or the other."

The purser stated flatly, "If he went over the side he's done for. We're miles off either shore in a shark-infested lagoon. Even in the unlikely event he might make it ashore, there's nothing there if you get there!"

Longarm said, "I know Padre Island is a desert island with nothing to eat or a drop to drink for farther than any man could hope to walk in this climate. Tell me more about the mainland over to our west."

The purser thought and shrugged. "Not a whole lot for a man on foot and probably unarmed by now, even if he was serious about swimming that far. The marshy shores rise to soggy cattle country. A lot more salt grass than cows can eat, away from the rarer fresh water. His only hope, should he make it that way, would be if he could at least find some shade before high noon. Wherever the soil rises high enough above sea level you 're likely to find squatters of the Mex or Indian persuasion, if your luck holds out. Anglo squatters along the coast this far from anywhere are more likely to be outlaws who'd kill a man for his boots!"

Longarm finished knotting the bandage around Lenore's trim bare waist and growled, "That Godwynn rascal is an outlaw in his own right. So why are you still standing there? Didn't you just hear me tell you to find out which way he went?"

The purser left. Longarm was trying to figure out what needed bandaging next, and how, when Lenore opened her eyes again and said in a conversational tone, "I'm dying, Custis."

He tried to keep his own voice as calm as he told her, "No, you ain't. You're too pretty and we won't let you."

She sighed and said, "I know I'm pretty, and here I lie, naked as a jay with a handsome man, and I'm still fixing to die a goddamn virgin like poor old Olivia Lee back home!"

He removed his hat from her privates to replace it with a numb but friendly palm, not really feeling anything as he told her, "I just now told you there'd be no dying around here, virgin or not. There'll surely be a Coast Guard dispensary when we get to Escondrijo in just a few hours, and then they'll fix you up so's I can make sure you'll never in this world die a virgin, hear?"

She smiled wanly and softly asked, "Are you threatening to seduce me while I'm helpless, you great-looking brute?"

He chuckled fondly. "Nope. Only when you're well enough to get on top. For once you can, I mean to come in your sweet flesh till all our bones ache."

He was suddenly aware they had company as the dying girl smiled radiantly up at him, or maybe through him, to say, "Why, Custis, that was the nicest thing any man's ever said to me!"

Then she was dead. The white-clad figure that moved around him to feel Lenore's throat looked more like a nurse than any ship's surgeon. Longarm gulped and said, "I know what you just heard must have sounded disgusting, ma'am, but..."

"I know what you were trying to do," the plump and motherly gal said. "Few men would know how to be that comforting to a dying woman. It was very gallant of you, Deputy Long."

CHAPTER 4

Longarm had lived through a war or more. So unlike some peace officers, he was inclined to let less-than-lethal confusion simply pile up while he tried to grasp the overall pattern and watch for snipers. So as soon as the ship's surgeon, red-eyed and three sheets to the wind, joined them in his stateroom, Longarm left the dead Lenore to a drunk who couldn't hurt her and that nursing sister or whatever as he joined the search for her surviving killer--if the son of a bitch was still on board.

The purser led Longarm down to the cargo deck, where an officer had his deckhands poking about with bull's-eye lanterns. The officer was called a supercargo because he supervised the cargo, the way the purser supervised the passengers.

The partly open-sided cargo deck, like those of most coastal steamers and all riverboats, lay just above the waterline over the hollow-egg-crate construction of the shallow-draft hull. The supercargo said they'd already swept the mostly empty barn-like space. Longarm wanted to make certain, having found a life preserver missing. Longarm's first impression of the bulkhead further aft was that the steamer's boilers and machinery lay just beyond. But as the supercargo's gang went through the motions forward, Longarm paced from port to starboard and saw he was right about that companionway near his stateroom being longer. So he rejoined the gruff and somewhat older supercargo and said, "As big as this open cargo deck may seem, this vessel gets wider back behind that bulkhead, meaning you got more than half this level all filled up with coal bins and machinery?"

The supercargo shook his head, billed cap and all. "We've already checked the coal bins, and there's no way he could have gotten into the boiler room or engine compartment without the black gang noticing. There's not as much space for him to work with aft as you seem to imagine. Less than a third of this level holds anything besides cargo. More than a quarter of our length, beyond that bulkhead, is cold storage. We have what amounts to a swamping ice house, refrigerated with those newfangled ammonia and brine pipes. Didn't you know we picked up lots of fresh meat and produce along the way that would never make it to New Orleans or even Galveston in this heat without spoiling?"

Longarm said, "I do now. How do you get inside with, say, a lantern as well as a six-gun?"

The supercargo looked surprised, but pointed at a sort of icebox door off to one side. "That's the only inspection port at this end. Cargo's loaded into the refrigerated hold from the side, from the docks. So there's no way he could have-"

"You just said that smaller entrance allowed an inspector to get through," Longarm noted. "I'd surely be obliged if someone would lend me a lantern and show me how to open that latch. I got my own gun."

The supercargo insisted, even as he was leading the way over with his bull's-eye beam on the oaken port and its stout brass fittings, "Nobody could hide in there with the half-frozen fruit and crates of salad greens we've already cooled to just above zero centigrade."

Longarm shrugged and said, "I've been in colder places, in just my shirtsleeves, and it never killed me. Zero centigrade is a lot hotter than zero Fahrenheit. How come you keep your cold-storage cargo just above freezing?"

The supercargo handed Longarm his lantern. "Hold the beam on the latch while I unlock her, will you? If you freeze meat or produce all the way, the ice needles forming inside turn it all mushy and sooty-looking as it thaws. But ice don't form and stuff don't rot too much just above the freezing point of water."

Longarm nodded. "Some railroad men told me about freeze burn. For now I'm more interested in that fucking Hamp Godwynn, if that was his name."

The supercargo opened the port and let Longarm go ahead with the bull's-eye beam and six-gun as he observed, "We found no certain identification for either when we searched the stateroom they were sharing. They'd told the purser they were cattlemen. Their baggage neither proved it nor made liars out of them. They'd brought along stock saddles with their personal baggage lashed to them."

Longarm swept the beam ahead through the clearing fog stirred up by their entrance along with a blast of warm air. The mostly empty space was about the size of a dance hall, although with a far lower ceiling, but he'd never been to a dance where they had ice-frosted pipes running the length of the two longer walls. He didn't ask a dumb question about the ice on the refrigeration pipes. He knew the air next to ice could be somewhat warmer than freezing. The air in a plain old icebox felt about this cold. It was already raising a gooseflesh under Longarm's shirt as he asked the supercargo what sort of stock saddles they were talking about.

The seagoing Texican replied, "One was a Panhandle double rig, and the other was one of them Mex ropers with the exposed wooden swells and dally horn. You're talking to a man who loads a heap of beef along his weary way."

Longarm swept the beam up at the long rows of empty meat hooks as he thoughtfully mused, "They told me they were from other parts and just looking for work down by the border. They both packed their guns in border buscadero rigs as well. I sure wish folks wouldn't lie to the law so much."

He aimed his gun at some produce crates further back as he moved in on them, the supercargo trailing with his own gun out. But they only found citrus fruit and a fancy breed of salad greens for the New Orleans French-style of cooking back there. When Longarm asked, the supercargo explained that the little they had aboard up to now came from the Mexican farms around the mouth of the Rio Grande. He said the state and federal health authorities made such a fuss over meat out of Mexico, or anywhere near it, that the shipping company didn't want the bother.

Longarm said he'd heard about the current outbreak of hoof-and-mouth down Mexico way. "You were right about Hamp Godwynn not being refrigerated too. Let's get out of here before we almost freeze our own asses to zero centigrade!"

They ducked back outside. It was the first time since he'd been south of the Texas line that he welcomed the muggy heat of the gulf.

On the way back topside the supercargo admitted they hadn't been able to search any other staterooms because the rest of the passengers had retired for the night.

Longarm said they'd see about that, and proceeded to knock politely but firmly on doors. They found, as he'd hoped, that most law-abiding folks with nothing to hide but their privates were willing to let the law have a look around as long as they got to cover their privates first. The only couple who flatly refused to let Longarm in without a search warrant were the Hades-bound honeymooners he'd heard earlier. Longarm decided not to bend the U.S. Constitution all out of shape just to see what the woman looked like. It was almost bound to be a disappointment, and it was tough to picture them letting Godwynn in to watch.

The son of a bitch wasn't anywhere else on board that Longarm could come up with. So he drifted back to his own stateroom to see how they were doing with poor Lenore.

They'd done better than he'd expected. Somebody had stripped the ruined bloody bedding off the top berth, and the dead blonde was now reposing on the bar springs. That only seemed cruel till you noticed how someone had washed her off, smoothed her hair, and struggled her into a modest ivory flannel nightgown from her own baggage. Longarm felt sure the motherly nurse or whatever had done most of the work, although the boozy ship's surgeon was the one going on about how his company would wire home for her at the next port of call, and then carry her on to the end of the line on ice so someone of her own could meet or have the body met with there.

The motherly gal, a bit older and fatter than Longarm, said she'd drained such blood as those bullets had left in the dead gal and emptied her basin over the rail just outside. That was the first Longarm had noticed, in the soft lantern light, how someone had used face powder and rouge to keep Lenore's face from going that pallid beeswax shade dead faces got before they turned really funny colors. When Longarm asked where she'd learned so much about undertaking, she explained she'd been a Union army nurse in the war. She looked away as she added, "Making them look presentable before their dear ones saw them was the least we could do. Lord knows there was neither the medicine nor the medical skills to save a third of them."

He didn't say he'd been there. He wasn't being modest. He didn't want to remind her how long ago it had been. He was now in his thirties, and he'd had to lie about his age to be allowed to act so foolish. She'd have had to have been in her twenties and able to prove her good character and nursing skills to Sister Clara Barton, the boss of all the Union nurses, before they'd have let her put rouge on dead soldiers-blue. So he figured her for her early forties, give or take hard work and a healthy appetite.

They didn't talk more about the past till after some crewmen had come with an improvised pine coffin to carry poor Lenore down to the cold-storage hold. He told the purser not to bother making up the berth that night. He explained he was getting off in the morning to begin with and already had his own possibles in that other stateroom on the starboard side.

When he told the older army nurse he had a fifth of Maryland rye among those possibles, she dimpled at him and replied, "Lord love you, I could use a stiff drink, and we used to get Maryland rye fresh from the still when I was serving in that charnel house outside of Washington. But lest you feel you've wasted good whiskey, young sir, it's only fair to warn you I don't want anyone making all my bones ache."

Longarm smiled sheepishly and insisted, "I thought we'd agreed I was only trying to comfort a shot-up lady, ma'am. For the record and a lady's reputation, I never even kissed Miss Lenore. All that mush you may have misread sprang from an earlier conversation about a far older lady who died purer than she might have wanted."

The nurse said in that case she'd trust him for just one nightcap in his stateroom. They'd both figured out who he was by now. But along the way to the starboard side she surprised him a tad by introducing herself as Norma Richards, M.D.

He waited until they were in his stateroom with the lamp lit and door wide open before he casually asked, while pouring a tumbler to be shared, whether that wasn't a government nursing uniform she had on. She nodded, took a manly belt from the tumbler, and handed it to him. "It is. I put on my summer whites as soon as I saw how slow we were steaming. I put myself through medical school after the war. I knew I'd done almost nothing for those dying boys. Once I had my own M.D. degree I felt even less respect for some of the army surgeons I'd served under. I'm a good doctor. I don't usually drink this much and I'm interested in medicine. But since we both work for the same government, do I really have to go into why they'd only have me a lab technician with a nurse's rating?"

Longarm sipped some rye and gently replied, "We don't have many female deputies riding out of the Denver District Court, now that you mention it, Miss Norma. About the best a lady can do with our Justice Department is stenographer or prison matron. But I'll bet you're a good lab technician. I saw how slick you tidied up that poor Miss Lenore."

She shrugged and said, "Thank you, I think. I'm damned good. My specialty is bacteriology. It's a whole new science. We didn't know anything about disease germs during the war, and when I think of those poor boys shot full of holes in filthy uniforms and our primitive attempts to irrigate their wounds with pond water I... Could I have another drink? I don't know why that girl's death tonight got me so upset. I never knew her and I've seen so much worse in my time."

Longarm poured her a stiffer one as he said soothingly, "You'd have liked her had you known her, and like you said, it's been a while and you've a better notion what's been busted up inside. I've read about germs. I take it you don't treat gunshot wounds any more?"

She sipped some rye, shook her head, and explained. "Despite my womanly rank they have me supervising the setting up of new bacterial departments at army, navy, and Indian agency clinics down this way. I just finished teaching some hairy-chested male physicians down in Brownsville how to use a microscope properly. Ninety-nine percent of what you see wriggling in dirty ditch water seems to do nothing much at all. Some few one-celled microbes are now known to be helpful in baking bread and turning malted rye to gold, like we're drinking. A few others are really bad bugs. The ones causing the cholera look a bit like tadpoles. The ones that may cause the ague, or malaria, seem to look like either wriggle worms or doughnuts. They both show up in the blood of ague victims, and laugh if you like, I have my own theory they're two stages of the same organism. But when I sent in a paper to the Medical Journal they sent it back. They were too polite to call me a hysterical woman."

Longarm moved over to the doorway as he soberly replied, "I reckon if a catty-pillar could turn into a butterfly, a wriggle worm ought to manage turning into a doughnut, ma'am. But to tell the truth, I doubt anyone aboard this vessel died of the ague this evening."

There didn't seem to be anyone about outside, but you never knew for certain. So he shut the door before he moved back her way, saying, "I'm sure you're a swell doctor, Miss Norma, but right now I've other favors to ask of you, seeing we both work for the same government and all."

She put the empty tumbler aside on a corner washstand, regarding him with some alarm. "I haven't had that much to drink and I told you I didn't want to get on top, cowboy!"

Longarm chuckled. "Well, it's too blamed hot for me to consider doing all the work. But I wish you'd listen to my proposition before you cloud up and rain all over such a harmless cuss!"

So she listened, and he told her how he thought the two of them, working together, might turn the tables on a killer who had Longarm in a double bind.

As she hesitated, he insisted, "If he made it ashore my only hope is to wire up and down the coast for some posse riders as soon as I can. But if he's somehow managed to hole up aboard this big old tub with all its nooks and crannies..."

"I'll do as you ask," she said with a sigh. "So pour me another drink before I change my mind. All in all, I'd rather get on top."

They got into the sleepy port of Escondrijo by the gray if not really cold light of a gulf coast dawn. Few passengers were up at such an ungodly hour, and those who came out on deck to see what all the fuss was about were told not to go ashore unless, like Deputy Long, they intended to stay there until another coastal vessel put in. For this one was only staying long enough to take on some fresh beef from the one slaughterhouse in town, and save for the few crewmen putting a modest amount of cargo ashore, with Longarm's saddle perched atop a chest of drawers from Old Mexico, the whole crew seemed anxious to pitch in and wrestle the heavy sides of beef up the gangplank leading into the cold-storage hold. So it took less than an hour, and then they were on their way as the sun came up to shed more heat as well as light on things.

The next few hours passed uneventfully for those still aboard with clear consciences, and then they put in at the much larger port of Corpus Christi before the day had gotten really hot. So all went ashore who might want to go ashore, the sea breezes blowing so much cooler than usual that morning and the skipper allowing they'd be there a good two hours.

Corpus Christi was a county seat, with a Ranger station and a number of pottery kilns, grain silos, and such. Mostly it was an old Mexican settlement, not incorporated as an Anglo town until '52. So lots of the older buildings as well as the Spanish churches were interesting to Anglo eyes, while the seaside Mexican market smelled tempting to any sort of nose with the weather suddenly so nice. So most of the off-duty crewmen as well as all the passengers but those same two honeymooners came on down the gangplank long before the furtive Hamp Godwynn made a sudden move ashore, moving like a rat down a ship's hawser--in the opinion of a lawman who'd apparently gotten off at Escondrijo.

Longarm hadn't. He'd had good old Norma Richards go ashore with his stuff to look after it and wire the Texas Rangers from that Coast Guard station at Escondrijo, while he'd gone on, holed up in her stateroom with the Saratoga trunk she'd entrusted to him. That big old trunk had been handy to hide his face under as he'd gone down the gangplank with it on his back.

So now Norma's trunk, like Longarm, stood behind a pile of lumber in the shade of a dockside loading shed as he waited for the killer in the Carlsbad hat to sidewind within hailing range with his own narrowed eyes darting about as if he wasn't dead certain he'd guessed right.

Longarm called out cheerfully, "You guessed wrong, Godwynn. So grab some sky if you'd like to be taken alive."

Godwynn spun on one boot heel and ran back toward the gangplank, zigzagging back and forth in case Longarm had really meant that.

Longarm had. He'd liked that pretty blonde. So he fired as the son of a bitch zagged, hoping to bust his ass and leave him in shape to explain why they'd wanted to gun a federal lawman.

He hit his intended target about where he'd intended, smack in the right cheek of his frantic ass. The heavy.44-40 slug spun the running killer like a mighty clumsy ballerina who'd come down wrong from her twirling, but Godwynn managed to get his right-hand gun out as he landed flat on his back, rolled, and staggered back to his feet, only to yelp like a kicked pup as he tried to put some weight down under his gun hand.

As he fired blind, chipping splinters off the far end of Longarm's lumber pile, the tall deputy called out, "Give it up, you poor simp! I don't want you dead. But I don't want you making it back to your rat hole aboard that steamer either. So drop that dumb gun and-"

Godwynn fired more certainly at the sound of Longarm's voice. So Longarm fired again, aiming at the wounded man's other leg this time.

He saw he'd hit the leg, if not the bone, when Godwynn let go of his Schofield to grab for his thigh with both hands and stagger for that gangplank some more bawling like a baby.

As Longarm broke cover, all too aware Godwynn still had a gun in his left holster, a distant voice called out, "Halt and explain all this in the name of the Texas Rangers!"

Longarm kept covering Godwynn as he strode out into the open after him, shouting back, "I'm the law too, trying to arrest me a mighty unreasonable cuss on murder in the first!"

So the white-shirted Ranger appearing down by the far end of that loading shed yelled, "Hot damn, we got us a wire on that one!" Then he fired his own Peacemaker, and being well trained as a marksman, if not as a careful investigator, hit Godwynn high in the chest with his longer but heavier shot. It likely would have left the wounded killer in piss-poor shape to talk had it been a lighter slug than 230 grains of lead backed by fifty-odd grains of powder, the Rangers tending to load their own shells and admiring noise at least as much as the Mexican rurales.

"I wish you hadn't done that," Longarm grumbled as they both met up near the cadaver sprawled on the dock at their feet.

The younger Ranger shrugged and said, "We both heard you warn him to give it up. Like I said, the famous federal marshal they call Longarm wired an all-points want on this one from just down the coast. Seems he murdered some passenger aboard that very steamer a-hint you!"

Longarm said, "I know. I was there. I' m the one they call Longarm, and it was a government health worker I sent ashore in my place back at our last port of call. As she'd have wired you, this tricky son of a bitch could have swum ashore. But I figured he was hiding out somewhere on board. So I hid out just as good, and as you now see, he made a break for it here thinking I'd got off there."

The young Ranger made a wry face. "He must not have never hunted mice. Me and our old cat, when I was little, used to do what you just did. I'd stomp away whilst the smart old cat crouched silent by the mouse hole. Who was this mouse and how come he shot a lady aboard yonder steamer?"

Longarm hunkered down to go through the dead killer's pockets as he growled, "I suspicion he and his partner were out to get me and got her by mistake, God damn all three of us. I'm still working on it and... Damn it, his dead pard we put ashore at Escondrijo wasn't packing any infernal identification either!"

By this time lots of folks who'd ducked for cover at the sounds of gunplay were edging back out into the morning light. So Longarm added, "Stay here and make sure nobody steals the corpse whilst I go back aboard for their two stock saddles and possibles. All we can do now is put out as total a description of them and their gear as possible and hope for some answers."

The Ranger responded cheerfully, "Go ahead. Any number of my own pards ought to be here any minute, thanks to all that shooting. Ah, you'll tell the boys it was my bullet as finished the bastard, won't you?"

Longarm snorted, "You tell 'em. I was trying to take him alive. So he's all your own to keep and cherish. I got another boat to catch!"

CHAPTER 5

It wasn't that easy. He spent a good three hours making depositions for the local authorities, and then, once he was free to go to the Corpus Christi office of that same steam line, a prune-faced cuss in a wilted suit said he'd have to wire their main office in Galveston about his unusual request. When Longarm observed he hadn't needed special permission to just get aboard one of their coastal steamers down in Brownsville, the Corpus Christi booking agent explained, with a frosty smile, how the southbound steamer they expected around midnight was already overloaded with every stateroom spoken for.

Longarm said, "That's no problem, pard. I only got me and one old Saratoga trunk to get a hop, skip, and a jump down the coast. I don't mind standing up at the bar or, hell, the rail, till we get to Escondrijo. It was only a few hours coming up from there, and I was dying for a cool beer in that stuffy stateroom I'd holed up in."

The booking agent pursed his purple lips. "I'll have to clear it with the company. We're expecting heavy weather tonight and you wouldn't want to be by any rail in a full gale aboard a flat-bottomed coaster. They say those Chesapeake side-paddle steamers roll even worse in heavy weather, but I'll be damned if I can see how. So why don't you come back in a couple of hours and we ought to know by then if they'll have room for you."

Longarm frowned, "Well, I got some wires of my own I was saving till I got to Escondrijo and mayhaps some answers about a dead man they're holding on ice down yonder as well. But I'm missing something about coastal traffic. The boat I come north aboard was almost empty. Yet you say this night boat you're expecting will be filled to overloading?"

The older man nodded patiently. "That northbound was just starting out. The southbound will have gone most of the way to its last stop at Brownsville."

Longarm shook his head. "Texas produces food and fiber in bulk, and consumes manufactured goods from the east in far more modest amounts in far more compact form. So how many piano rolls or even pianos would it take to fill the shelter deck and cold-storage hold of a southbound coaster that should have delivered most of its passengers and cargo by the time it neared the end of its run?"

The prune-faced cuss shrugged. "I only go by what they wire me from Galveston. Maybe a lot of people are headed for the mouth of the Rio Grande with a lot of stuff. I hear things are picking up down that way, what with the end of Reconstruction and the price of beef going through the roof. They've been putting in orange groves along our side of the river as well. Seems oranges grow swell in a hot sunny clime as long as they get plenty of irrigation water for their thirsty roots."

Longarm didn't want to talk about growing oranges, or even cows, along the lower Rio Grande. So he muttered he'd be back before sundown, and headed for the Western Union across the plaza.

He wired Billy Vail a fuller report than Norma Richards would have sent from Escondrijo. Then he wired Norma, care of the Western Union office down her way, that he'd be back with her trunk in time for her to catch the next northbound, Lord willing and they were wrong about that coming storm.

He got over to the noisy but shaded and colorful Mexican market in time for a noonday snack, and ate on the fly as he strolled from one good smell to the other, buying dribs and drabs of this and that, which he polished off, sitting down at a small blue table in front of a cantina, with a tall cool schooner of cerveza. Mexican beer was the only thing that soft a man dared drink down there, unless it came to the table piping hot. The tamales, tapas, and such he'd picked up along the way had naturally been well cooked as well as fumigated with a ferocious amount of chili pepper.

As he sat there, enjoying the novelty of doing nothing about a damned thing for a spell, he became aware of two slightly ominous things at once. More than one passing Mexican called out casual warnings to secure the overhead awnings before el huricano arrived. And some Mexican kids kept peering around a taco stand at him as if he had two heads. He could only hope they found an Anglo sipping cerveza before a Mexican cantina an interesting novelty.

It was dumb for an Anglo with no fish to fry to hang around a Mexican neighborhood where he was getting stared at. So he finished his schooner sooner than he'd meant to, and got up to get going before anyone got up the nerve to act silly.

He thought someone already had when a ragged-ass boy in his teens with empty hands and an uncertain smile popped into view in front of him.

Longarm smiled back more coldly and growled, "No me jadas, muchacho. I don't want to marry your sister and these fucking boots are mine!"

The kid gulped and said, "I mean you no disrespect, senor. Pero you fit the description of an Anglo we were told to watch for here in Corpus Christi. We were wondering if by any chance you could be he."

Longarm moved casually to place his broader back against a 'dobe wall, and noticed nobody seemed out to edge around behind him as he replied, "Quien sabe? Everybody looks like somebody. Exactly who did you have in mind?"

The young Mexican said softly, "An Anglo lawman, a Deputy Long, known to our people as El Brazo Largo. He is said to despise El Presidente Diaz down in our old country as much as we do, despite his riding for Tio Sam. So La Bruja wishes him to know he is in danger he may know nothing about, and if you wish for to speak with her-"

"I'd rather you tell me here and now," Longarm cut in not too gently. "El Presidente Diaz is neither the first nor the last of your breed who ever tried to knife me in an alley, no offense. So I'll just pass on following you into any barrio for a powwow with a lady even you describe as what my folks call a witch."

The kid insisted, "La Bruja never comes out in the daytime. She seldom leaves her own residencia after dark. I do not know what it is La Bruja wishes for to warn you about. As you see, I am only her mozo de mandados. Pero she seemed most anxious for to have a word with you, and if you will not come with me I can only tell her I tried."

Longarm hesitated, then decided. "I ought to have my head examined for insufferable curiosity. But seeing it's broad daylight and you seem smart enough to know I'll take you with me no matter what your pals might hit me with... How far is this old witch of yours?"

The kid said the mysterious La Bruja lived on the far side of an old Catholic church across the plaza. So Longarm told the mozo to make sure his young pals didn't tag along too close, and repeated his warning with a thoughtful pat of his no-nonsense.44-40 as he let the kid lead the way.

As they crossed that plaza he got dust in his eye. The wind was really picking up now. It was the wrong time of the year for a hurricane down this way, if there was a right time to have a hurricane anywhere. But they did have summer storms along this coast that could qualify as mighty serious. So he hoped he wasn't fixing to get stranded here in Corpus Christi with good old Norma's trunk.

They circled the church, cut across a graveyard with some of the family tombs big enough to raise chickens in, and wound up in a maze of narrow walled-in alleys just crooked enough to make you wonder. Both the older and newer parts of Corpus Christi lay on flat enough coastal plain. But the old Spanish-speaking builders had been free thinkers, tossing up one casa wrapped around a pateo here and another there, then filling in the lopsided spaces between with smaller and cheaper tenement courts. It was tougher to tell, in such barrios, how high on the hog folks might live. For rich or poor, none of the property owners to either side sprang for proper sidewalks, and one flat stucco wall topped with broken glass set in the mortar looked much the same as any other, no matter what lay on the other side.

His young guide led him not through one of the more imposing oak- or cypress-wood street entrances, but into a slot between what looked like two separate properties. At the far end of the gloomy passageway a smaller but stout-looking door had been deep-set in thick masonry. The kid knocked and the door swung inward, as if they'd been expected. But there was nobody visible in the dimly lit vestibule or on the flight of stairs winding down and lit by one wall sconce. It wasn't too clear which of four possible fort-like properties one was under as the stairs gave way to a long candle-lit corridor that seemed to have been laid out by a drunk trying to build straight.

As they neared a darker archway someone lit a candle on the far side of the beaded curtain across it, as if they'd been waiting up until then in the dark. Longarm smiled thinly at the theatrics of La Bruja. He wondered what the priests at that church near the plaza thought of the spooky way their neighborhood witch carried on. He knew they'd given up, down Mexico way, on trying to wean their simple folk of reliance on an odd mishmash of Roman and Aztec cures for what ailed them. He had more personal respect for the Mexican medicine men who described themselves as curados, who dosed sick folks with weeds and prayed to Christian saints and more pleasant Indian spirits. The ones claiming brujeria or powers of black magic did more harm than good with their love potions and such. But since this old witch said she wanted to help a friend of La Revolucien, the least a man could do would be to listen politely. So he pasted a respectful smile across his face as he followed the kid through the beaded archway, to get smacked in the face with a disturbingly pleasant surprise.

La Bruja, if that was who he was smiling down on as she reclined on a chaise in an outfit of black Spanish lace over velvet, was a breathtaking brunette of indeterminate age and likely pure Spanish ancestry. Her skin was even paler than that ivory shade high-toned Spanish ladies strove for, to show off darker aristocratic blood in their veins. She didn't look sick, but poor young Lenore Colbert hadn't looked that pale the other night slaughtered and drained.

The beautiful but mighty spooky lady waved Longarm to a hassock on his side of a low-slung coffee table, and said coffee and cakes were on their way. As he removed his hat and took his seat Longarm reconsidered calling her a lady. For the hassock was doubtless low-slung on purpose, to make the average guest look up to La Bruja as she held court atop that higher chaise. Longarm was a lot taller than average, and she still managed to sort of look down on him even while she was half reclining on one shapely side.

But Longarm had been sent to see the C.O. a lot in his army days, and he knew the way you got back at them for playing such games was to pay no mind.

So he just sat there, a politely questioning smile on his face, until La Bruja said, "Perhaps I should get right to the point in your own Yanqui manner, El Brazo Largo. I understand we are both on simpatico terms with such leaders of La Revolucien as La Mariposa and El Gato?"

He shrugged. "Nobody with a lick of sense admires the current Administration of Old Mexico, senorita."

She sighed and said, "Senora, porfavor. I am proud of the things my late husband did for the cause of Libre Mexico before los rurales shot him down like a dog against a wall. He and his brave comrades all refused the blindfold and faced their executioners with all of the scorn they deserved!"

Longarm nodded soberly. "I'm sure your average rurale firing squad deserves all the scorn they can get, senora. But didn't you say something before about getting to the point of this visit?"

She didn't answer as a much darker maid with more Indian features came in with a real silver salver piled with almond cakes and a fine old silver service. There was some sort of family crest on the coffee urn. Longarm didn't try too hard to make it out. He didn't know too much about such notions to begin with, and family plate had a way of turning up far from its original family down Mexico way.

La Bruja dismissed her chica with a not unpleasant nod, and swung her satin slippers to the rug to sit properly as she poured a cup for Longarm. When he asked where her cup might be, she softly replied she didn't really care for coffee.

He could see she didn't mean to share the almond cakes with him either. So Longarm left both his coffee and cake untasted as well, murmuring something about just coming from the market and repeating his polite request they get to the point.

La Bruja said flatly, "An Anglo business associate of mine wants you dead. He offered me five hundred Yanqui dollars to have my own muchachos kill you. When I politely declined he raised the offer to a thousand."

Longarm whistled softly. "He must really want me dead. I've arrested many a gunslick who'd kill a man for less'n a hundred!"

La Bruja lay back on her chaise as if weary of the whole thing as she replied, "Not El Brazo Largo. I understand you got one of them on that steamer last night and killed the other one here in Corpus Christi this morning."

Longarm shook his head. "A frisky pup of a Ranger put the last fatal round in him. I was out to take him alive. I had an educated hunch they had to be working for somebody higher up, and I'd be much obliged if you'd tell me who that might be, seeing you surely know, senora."

La Bruja smiled reproachfully and sighed. "It was very cruel of God to leave us so far from Him and so close to el gringo. As I was just saying to that other one, your people and mine do not speak the same language even when they are speaking the same language. He was under the impression I was a mere criminal because I am required to bend just a few of your Yanqui laws in my efforts to fund political struggles in my own country. When I told him he would have to employ some other means, we parted on mutually agreeable terms. It would be foolish for wolves to fight in a world of sheep, and he knew none of us would betray his identity to anyone. I don't think he expected me to warn you like this, of course. But please do not ask me to tell you any more about him."

Longarm nodded soberly. "I'm commencing to follow your drift. You don't aim to have either the local Anglo underworld or my old pal El Gato sore at you. So I'll just thank you for the warning and see what I can work out on my own."

But as he leaned his weight forward to rise, La Bruja sat up some more and insisted, "You can't be seen on the streets of Corpus Christi in broad daylight! It's true, as your enemies say, you may be on the alert for typical Anglo riders. But an enemy clever enough to think a chico mejicano might have better luck ought to be able to hire other types you might not take for assassins until too late!"

"The gang's mostly dressed sort of cow, eh?" Longarm mused as he perched undecided on the edge of that low hassock.

To which La Bruja replied with a knowing laugh, "Do not try to get it out of me with a, how you say, process of elimination. I have been questioned by serious policemen and have the scars to prove it. Nobody gets anything out of me that I do wish them to know."

Longarm nodded soberly. "I was sort of wondering about the dim lighting in here, senora. I said I understood the bind you were in. I ain't going to try and beat the identity of that murderous pendejo out of a lady who's offered me food, shelter, and such pleasant company. But I got my own fish to fry, and whether we savvy the same old lingo or not, another lady they shot the other night in my place was pretty as well as innocent. She'd never done them a lick of harm and it's my duty to see they're punished."

La Bruja insisted, "But the men who killed her in your stateroom have been punished! You shot them both yourself! The people they might have been working for never ordered them to kill anyone but you. Can't you see that?"

Longarm smiled thinly. "I see this mastermind told you more than I might have about our earlier transactions. If he wanted me dead before I gunned a couple of his boys, he must have thought I was already after him. So why can't we say who he might be?"

La Bruja laughed lightly, a sort of surprising sound, and archly replied, "You are as clever as they say you are. But it won't work. I will tell you frankly, it does not matter to me and mine whether you are on one Anglo's trail or another's. I only wish to see you leave Corpus Christi alive and well, should anyone south of the border ever ask. As I said, it is still broad daylight outside. You will stay here until dark. After sundown we can send you on your way to anywhere but the waterfront. They will be waiting for you along the docks, expecting you to try and board that midnight steamer."

He grimaced. "I got to board it. It's the only way I can get back down the coast to Escondrijo with a big Saratoga trunk!"

She smiled. "We can lend you a wagon and give you a map you would not be able to buy in any shop. People who deal in stolen goods along these shores do not wish to go through tedious customs declarations. So certain land routes that may appear more devious are somewhat safer. To begin with, nobody who does not know which route a traveler is taking would be in any position to ambush him, no?"

Longarm shrugged. "Your offer would be more tempting if it was only my own hide I was worried about, senora. But I'm the law and I'm paid to worry more about lawbreakers. Since I choose to doubt you and your own gang have busted any laws more serious than those of Texas and Old Mexico, we'll say no more about it. But murder on the high seas, or even a federal waterway, can't be constitutional to begin with, and they were trying to interfere with a federal agent on a government mission in any case."

He frowned thoughtfully and added, "Now, that's sort of odd as soon as you study on it. Why in thunder would they be so anxious to interfere in such a mundane mission? They surely must have thought I was up to something else. That's happened before. There ain't nothing like a guilty conscience to make some crooks act guilty when it might have been smarter to just let a dumb lawman go on about his own dumb chores!"

La Bruja asked just what his mission might have been, if it hadn't been catching her so-called business associate.

He started to tell her, feeling no call to lie about a simple pickup of a prisoner. But as soon as he'd studied on it, he had to laugh. "Now who's pumping whom for secrets with innocent questions, no offense? It's been grand talking you in the dark, senora. But now I'd best go see if I can shed some daylight on all this skullduggery along the Fever Coast."

She rose with him, pleading, "Please don't go! There are too many of them out there for you or even your Ranger friends to handle! None of you know what you are up against and, look, if this is all some sort of mistake, as you suspect, you ought to be able to carry out your real mission in Escondrijo and be safely on your way home before they know where you've gone!"

He picked up his hat and put it on as she moved to block his way out with her petite pale form. "Stay! Just until sundown! Is there nothing I can do or say to keep you safe down here with me?"

He had to grin as he recalled a mighty similar scene from a swell spooky book he'd read a spell back. He said, "I don't reckon you really mean to offer me a chance at eternal life in odd company, if life is what they call Miss Carmilla's disturbing ways."

"Carmilla?" the pallid brunette demanded with a hurt look. "Are you comparing me to that... creature in that horror Story by that French writer named Le Fanu?"

Longarm shook his head. "Irish, ma'am. I know it's an odd name for an Irishman, but that's what Sheridan Le Fanu is. He's written a heap of swell spooky yarns, and his story about Carmilla, written in '72 or so, is only one of 'em. His story about Uncle Silas is really creepy. You say you've read the one about Miss Carmilla?"

La Bruja suddenly looked even smaller as she sighed. "In a Spanish translation. A vicious woman in one of those endearing attempts to be humorous gave me her copy, asking if it reminded me of anyone we knew. I am called La Bruja by more simple people because I seem to have powers they do not understand. I avoid the sunlight because there is a price on my head and because I suffer a condition that runs in some noble Spanish families. Sunlight hurts my eyes and makes my skin break out in a frightening rash. I assure you I do not enjoy the taste of blood."

She hadn't said she didn't know what it tasted like, and Carmilla had told that young English gal in the book she only wanted to suck out her blood because she really liked her.

He'd read other books, there being little else to do a week or so before payday and the Denver Public Library being so well stocked. So he nodded soberly and said, "I've read about that inherited condition. I reckon it runs in noble families because rich folks don't have to go out and work by broad day whether they can stand it or not. I can see how more fortunate families, nursing their delicate skins indoors all day, and only coming out after dark to attend society doings in maybe a coach with heavy window drapes, might give rise to sillier stories about mysterious society ladies such as Miss Carmilla. But I know you ain't that sort of gal, so..."

"I'm not a lesbian vampire who turns into a black panther at will or sleeps all day in her coffin! I'm not! I'm not! I'm only a poor widow with a delicate skin condition!"

He tried not to laugh. It would have been rude to point out she had a whole gang of Mex border bandits as well. But his eyes must've twinkled, and she must've read his amused, mocking expression wrong. For she was suddenly stepping out of the satin and lace around her trim ankles, in no more than her long black socks and slippers as she grabbed him by both shirtsleeves and stared up wildly demanding, "Do you really take me for some blood-sucking lesbian, El Brazo Largo?"

He hauled her in and kissed her good, as most men would have, before he recalled how someone in that book had been about to do just the same to Miss Carmilla when he noticed the graveyard mold on her breath. La Bruja's soft parted lips smelled more like the almond cakes she'd doubtless had enough of before he'd arrived. It didn't hurt a bit to have her tonguing him so teasingly. So he tongued her back, and cupped a bare buttock in each big palm to hug her tighter to his jeans as she rubbed her small proud cupcakes over the front of his thin shirt. But once they'd come up for air he felt obliged to ask about that chica coming back for the coffee service neither one of them had bothered with.

La Bruja puffed reassuringly that nobody ever pestered her and her guest unless she wanted them to, and asked him to follow her lead from such faint light as there was by her coffee table.

He was able to make out her pale hourglass form, floating ghostly above the frilly lace garters of her black thigh-length socks of jet-black lisle. Then she led the way to what looked more like a bed than that coffin Miss Camilla had favored, and the next thing they knew he was driving something kinder than a wooden stake into her, further down, and she wasn't acting like Miss Carmilla at all.

The spooky lady in that story had spit blood and carried on just awful as she was getting penetrated in her coffin. But La Bruja kissed mighty sweet and moved her hips just right as he got her to come a good dozen hammerings ahead of him.

Once they both came, she agreed it would be even nicer if they both stripped down completely and started over with a black silk pillow under her ghostly but mighty warm little rump. So he didn't get to ask her about those Anglo crooks until he'd made them both come some more.

She still refused to tell him as they shared a cheroot with her disheveled head on his shoulder and free hand on his semierection. As she gently stroked his manly organ-grinder she pleaded, "Please don't try to take advantage of my weak nature, El Brazo Largo. I am already so ashamed of giving in to my own curious nature."

He hugged her bare flesh closer with the smoke gripped in bared teeth as he said, "I'm still curious about them rascals out to kill me. What were you so curious about, senora?"

She giggled and confided, "You, senor. They say La Mariposa still brags insufferably about the many times she made El Brazo Largo come in her, down in Ciudad Mejico when they were hiding from los rurales in a railroad signal tower. Is that story true by the way?"

Longarm chuckled fondly and declared, "Truer than tales of a blood-sucking lesbian who can turn into a black panther on occasion, I reckon. It ain't polite to talk about screwing ladies who ain't here to defend themselves, and I never thought you were a lesbian to begin with."

She demurely asked if he was convinced she didn't like to suck, and when he allowed he was, she proved him wrong by sliding her head down his naked belly, long hair trailing, and proceeding to suck like all get out, although it wasn't his blood she was sucking.

So what with one pleasant surprise and another, Longarm wound up spending the rest of the day in the dark with La Bruja, and while he finally learned her real name and enough to lock her away for years, he never did get her to tell him who those other crooks were, or why they were after him, Lord love her.

CHAPTER 6

Longarm still would have done it his own way, weather permitting. But when he checked in at the steam line again that night, they told him none of their vessels would be coming or going till that heavy weather let up outside.

That sounded reasonable. The warm wet wind was blowing harder by the hour, and the heavy air smelled like spent brass cartridges, or a coming hurricane. So there was nobody laying in wait for him around the deserted wind-swept waterfront when he circled in silently from the lee side of some dark and shuttered warehouses with his gun out and his eyes slitted against the gathering storm.

When he got back to La Bruja's, she naturally wanted him to spend more time with her, and he was tempted. For he could likely come again if she really set her mind and lush lips to it. But he insisted on holding her to that other promise, and so it was along about quarter past midnight, with neither coastal steamers nor paid killers to be seen in the swirling darkness, when Longarm finally left by way of a clamshell-paved wagon trace to the south, driving a team of Spanish mules as he hunkered half sheltered by a flapping canvas wagon cover with old Norma's Saratoga trunk and some trail supplies in the wagon box behind his sprung seat.

He commenced having second thoughts about the grand notion a mile or less outside of town, when the light got even worse and he had to take the word of the mules and the gritty sounds of the steel-rimmed wheels that he was still following that shell path through what seemed like a mighty herd of wind-whipped palmettos flapping fronds on all sides as they strove to uproot their fool selves and take off like stampeding bats.

It got too dark to see even that much as the wind howled ever louder, and then the invisible mules out ahead balked at hauling him and old Norma's Saratoga another step, no matter how a man snapped the ribbons on their wet rumps and shouted curses into the gathering storm. So he set the brake, hitched the ribbons around its shaft, and got down to see what had gotten into the fool mules.

He said he was sorry for calling them foolish as soon as he could make out what they hadn't wanted to get into. The shell road ended in a wind-lashed sheet of muddy water, with no far side in sight. Nobody with a lick of sense would pave the way to the bottom of a river on purpose. So it was safe to assume the gale-force winds had run a high tide further ashore than usual. Winds did that some along the gulf coast. Wind surges along a low swampy shore made for more deaths than getting hit by flying shit in your average hurricane.

He led the mules back up the wagon trace afoot for a ways as he told them, "I'm wet too. So the question before the house is whether we head back to town and lose Lord knows how much time, or keep going in hopes there's another route and we stumble over it before all three of us drown?"

The mules offered no suggestions. Once he had them on as high a stretch of wagon trace as there seemed to be for miles, Longarm got back up under the flapping canvas to dig out that soggy map and some fortunately waterproof matches.

Longarm favored a brand of Mexican wax-stemmed matches because you just never knew when you'd need a light in damp weather, although weather as damp as this was a tad unusual. Mexicans made really fine candles too, and the first match he struck burned more like a tiny candle than your average match. But he still had to strike three in a row above the map spread atop Norma's Saratoga trunk before he was certain there was no other wagon trace around that normally fordable tidal creek.

He refolded the map and put it away, muttering, "Well, maybe La Bruja will serve us some hot chocolate. We sure as shit ain't going any farther south just yet!"

But as he swung his long legs over the sprung seat to brace one instep against the brake shafts while he unhitched the wet slippery ribbons, he saw a bright point of light through the flailing palmetto fronds to his west.

He called out. There was no way to tell if he'd been heard, or if anyone had answered amid all the flapping, moaning, and groaning all about. So he released the brake, but left the ribbons hitched as high and dry as he could manage as he got down some more to take the near mule by the cheek strap and declare, "That's a house or at least a camp about a quarter mile off, pard. Even if they can't set us on another trail, they might be able to shelter us from this storm and save us a few hours when and if it ever lets up."

He started leading the storm-lashed and balky team toward the distant light. It wasn't easy because even he could see they were off any sort of beaten path and sort of floundering through palmettos, chest-high sea grape, and through eight- or ten-foot ass-high sacaguista--as they called this particular breed of salt grass.

The mules perked up and began to act more sensible as they too detected human life and possible shelter up ahead. Longarm recalled what that purser had told him about the sort of humans squatting out here on the coastal plain. Moreover, it was still considered dumb, as well as impolite, to drop in on strangers after dark without any advance notice. So lest they take him for raiding Comanche or worse, Longarm drew his.44-40 and fired three times at the overhead winds. Three shots was the accepted way one shouted for help or attention out this way. One or two shots figured to be a distant hunter who'd as soon not have company as he went about his own beeswax. But three in a row meant a piss-poor shot if it was a hunter. So folks tended to assume whatever was going on might be their own beeswax as well.

Longarm knew he was right when he heard a distant gun reply to his above the wind. As he forged on, awkwardly reloading with his chilled wet hands full of mule as well, he mused out loud, "Outlaws on the run would be more likely to douse their light and lay low than answer back. But that don't mean we're the pals they left that lamp in the window to welcome. So we'd best just tether you and Norma's Saratoga out here amid the swaying palmettos a ways. I just hate to chase after mules spooked by gunplay."

He led them another furlong, then paused by a stout clump of beach plum to tether his borrowed team a rifle shot out from what he now recognized as a pressure lamp burning inside the wet canvas cover of another wagon, this one a third bigger than the Studebaker La Bruja had lent him. So what in thunder might a fellow traveler need a full-blown freight wagon for way off the beaten path like this?

As he waded closer through the tall wet grass a chili-flavored voice called out, "Quien es? Is that you, Mathews?"

To which Longarm could only reply, "Not hardly. I answer to Custis Long and I've run out of better places to go in this storm."

There was no answer. Longarm moved closer anyway, and finally heard a cautious "Habla usted espanol, extranjero mio?"

Longarm spoke Spanish better than he wanted to let on to any Mexican who called him a stranger so sarcastically. So he called back, "If you're talking to me, speak American, boy. For I'm sorry to say this here is America, not Mexico, no offense."

There was another thoughtful silence as Longarm moved closer, a tad thoughtful himself. Then another voice called out, "We have been expecting for to meet another Anglo here. A short red-bearded hombre driving an ox-drawn carreta?"

Longarm answered easily as well as honestly, "Ain't seen nobody but my own fool self out in this damned storm since I left Corpus Christi against the advice of more sensible folk. The wagon trace I thought I was following to Escondrijo wound up underwater. Might you boys know another route by way of higher ground?"

His unseen challenger called back, "No. We are on what your kind calls the Southern Cattle Trail. It runs from Corpus Christo to El Paso and beyond, by way of San Antonio and Del Rio. It does not lead south to Escondrijo. If the regular trail to the south is flooded, we suggest you turn back. But tell us, are you alone out here, Tejano?"

Longarm allowed he was. He had no call to inform them he wasn't exactly a Texan. He didn't speak Spanish well enough to tell folks of one part of Mexico from those of another either.

Knowing how some Mexicans felt about some Texicans, he was taken aback when he was suddenly invited on in for coffee and grub before he headed back to town. But it would have been impolite to move in on such an invite with his six-gun out. So he left it holstered, and contented himself with his double derringer concealed in one big fist as he strode on over.

As he got close enough to make out three Mexicans lined up between him and their big covered wagon, he decided the young kid to his right would have to be the first target. The two older ones were more likely to act sensible once they saw he had the drop on them. But you just never knew what a kid was likely to do, as the late Joe Grant should have known when he tried to bully Billy the Kid that time in Fort Sumner. Kids just had no respect for their elders, and considered a rep like Joe Grant's a challenge.

All three were grinning at him like shit-eating dogs, and he saw no evidence of a chuck fire on the soggy soil beside their lamp-lit wagon. Then one called out, "Come on, Tejano. We'll give you plenty of coffee before we send you on your way!"

Longarm was glad he'd elected to play dumb when the other older one asked conversationally in Spanish, "Don't you think he's close enough now?"

The friendly-acting leader replied as casually, "Why put more holes than we need to in such a nice shirt?"

Then the kid smirked and purred, "I have a better idea. Why not take him alive, make him take all his clothes off, and have some fun with him first?"

By now Longarm was within easy pistol range, so he took a steady stand in the rain with the wind at his back as he raised the over-and-under muzzles of his derringer into their lamplight and announced in no-nonsense Spanish, "I have a better idea. All three of you are going to politely unbuckle your gunbelts, let your guns fall where they may, and step clear of them right now."

It was the kid, of course, who pointed out, "He's right about there being three of us, and I only see two barrels for that whore pistol!"

The sly talker of the bunch sighed and muttered, "Feel free to be the first one he shoots, Juanito! I assure you I'll get him after he gets you and Robles."

Longarm growled, "I told you what I wanted you to do. I am not going to tell you again. So do it or die, right now!"

None of them wanted to die. So once he'd disarmed them with his derringer, Longarm switched to his six-gun and reached for the handcuffs riding the back of his gun rig with his left hand, telling them in the English he was more comfortable with, "First things first, we'd best make sure nobody's led into more temptation."

He tossed the unlocked cuffs to the kid, who caught them without thinking as Longarm commanded, "I want you to snap one of those steel rings around the right hand of Robles there. What are you waiting for, a boot in the ass?"

The kid did as he was told. Once he had one of his elders cuffed, Longarm herded all three of them to a rear wheel of the big freight wagon and explained what came next. The still-uncuffed leader, whose name was something like Lamas, protested, "This is most cruel! Why not inside the wagon, or at least on the other side, out of the wind?"

Longarm smiled mirthlessly and replied, "What are you crying about? Has anyone offered to corn-hole you, or even steal your shirt? Both you bigger boys hunker down by that wheel, face to face on opposite sides of the spokes. Once Juanito cuffs your right wrists together, with the links through the spokes, even dumb bastards like you ought to see the reason in my madness."

They did, bitching like hell, well before the kid had them cuffed together, squatting on either side of the wheel in the wet wind-whipped grass. Once Longarm saw he'd secured them, he turned to the kid and pistol-whipped the mean little shit to the ground a few paces off. He kicked the downed punk in the ribs, saying, "You can get back up now. I won't smack you no more unless you offer me a whisper of your smart-ass sass!"

As Juanito got back to his feet, both hands to his busted lips, Longarm asked if he had anything sassy to say.

When Juanito sobbed he'd do anything Longarm wanted, including a few offers Longarm hadn't been considering, the tall deputy laughed and said, "I like gals better. Right now I want to go to Escondrijo, and seeing you boys know this swampy range so much better, here's what we're going to do."

Waving the dripping muzzle of his six-gun at the two wet rats hunkered in windswept misery at the rear of the heavy wagon, he explained. "You're going to guide me through this stormy night to where I want to go, Juanito. I'll kill you at the first suspicion we ain't headed the right way, and Lord only knows what'll ever happen to these pals of yours. Must get hot and thirsty as hell around here when the sun comes back in the Texas sky after a storm."

Hunkered by the wheel, Lamas bitched, "You can't do that to fellow cristianos, senor! Nobody but a Comanche would kill anyone as slow as that!"

Longarm said, "I ain't finished. So all three of you listen tight. When and if Juanito gets me safe and sound to Escondrijo, I mean to turn him loose with the key to them cuffs. If he knows the way down to Escondrijo he ought to know the way back. You'll wind up with a free set of handcuffs instead of my shirt and rosy red rectum. So I'd best take your guns and pocket money in exchange."

They protested it wasn't fair to rob them at gunpoint the way they'd been planning to rob him. He just laughed. When young Juanito asked if he might have his own pony to ride both ways, Longarm thought that was sort of funny too. He said, "It ain't too far for you to make on foot in one day, if you really put your mind to it."

When Juanito insisted it would take him at least eighteen hours, Longarm just shrugged and said, "We'd best be on our way then. For I suspicion these pals of yours will be hot and thirsty as all get out by the time you hoof it all the way back with the key to them cuffs."

CHAPTER 7

The storm let up before sunrise. It still took longer to make it to Escondrijo by way of Juanito's longer route through higher range to the west. By then they'd spent enough time together, with nothing better to do than talk, for Longarm to have gotten a handle on what Juanito and the others had been doing out in all that rain.

They were gun runners, waiting for a load of British Enfield rifles they meant to smuggle across the border up above Laredo. Longarm had a notion he knew the unguarded stretch they'd had in mind. He knew a Mexican rebel depending on the federate troops he fought for ammunition favored the same brand of rifles most federales still used. Mexico had gotten a swell buy on Enfields, considering what they cost folks who meant to pay for them sooner or later. Old Sam Colt had known enough to demand cash on the barrel head for the horse pistols los rurales got to fire at pigs and chickens on their way through many a sullen village.

Finally Longarm spied church spires and chimney smoke against the sunrise to their east. He turned to Juanito and said, "That Scotch poet was right about the best-laid plans of mice and men, you mean little shit. I was fixing to wire the Rangers and have 'em waiting for you by the time you hiked all the way back."

"That is not the deal we made!" protested the unhappy youth.

But Longarm replied, "Yes, it was, as soon as you study the small print. I'm a lawman and the three of you confessed right out, albeit in Spanish, you were fixing to waylay me and worse. But I ain't finished. I may be a lawman, but I suffer from this rough sense of justice, and there ain't no justice down Mexico way with that piss-faced Porfirio Diaz calling his fool self El Presidente, as if he'd been elected, the lying son of a bitch."

Juanito turned on the seat they were sharing. "You know this much about my poor country and her poor people, senor?"

Longarm shrugged and replied, "Not as well as I might if I'd been born that unfortunate, I'll allow, but well enough to suspicion most any government you rebels could come up with would have to be some improvement. So getting back to the deal we made, I reckon I'm going to have to keep it the way you thought I meant it, with no small print. You can save yourself better than an hour afoot if you get off right here and get going whilst it's still cool. Grab one of them canteens in the back, and what the hell, you ought to be able to pack along a few tortillas. A lady I know rolled some in wax paper for me back in Corpus Christi. So here's the damn key, grab what you need and just git! What are you waiting for, a good-bye kiss?"

The kid rummaged in the wagon box for the water and trail grub as he murmured, "I do not understand you at all, senor. I mean, now that I recall our earlier conversation, I see what you mean by small print. Is true you only said you would turn me loose with this key. You never said you would not tell the Rangers we were ladrenes, or where we might be found. Pero what has changed your mind about us?"

To which Longarm could only reply, "I haven't changed my mind about you. I still think you're three mierditas who'd be a disgrace to your families if anyone could say who your fathers might have been. But you ain't the only Mex rebels I've ever met, and some of the ones I like better may need them rifles before El Presidente steps down of his own free will. So adios, shithead, and shoot a federale for me, if you have the balls."

Juanito dropped off the far side with Longarm's generous issue of water and trail grub and the handcuff key in a pocket. Then he said, "I think I know who you must be now. My people speak of a muy gringo but simpatico Yanqui they call El Brazo Largo."

Longarm didn't answer. He just snapped the ribbons to drive on to town, leaving Juanito to stand there, making the sign of the cross as he marveled, "Jesus, Maria y Jose! I threatened to screw El Brazo Largo before I killed him and I am still alive! They are right about him. The man is a goddamn saint!"

Longarm didn't hear that, which was just as well. For he already felt sort of guilty about it being such a beautiful morning. All that wind from the sea had left the coastal plain smelling cool and clean as a whistle, with the salt grass dewy and lightly grazed this far out of town. He spied a few widely scattered sea lions, as longhorns grazing the swampy coast ranges were called by Texicans. Some of them stared back at him wall-eyed, but none of them shied off at the sight of a mule-drawn wagon. Longarm felt a moment of concern for the Mexican kid he'd just dropped off afoot this close to any kind of free-ranging beef critters. For your average longhorn was as likely to charge a man afoot as it was to flee anyone on a cow pony. But while a dude could get in a heap of trouble around cows, mounted as well as afoot, most Mexicans found dancing the fandango with beef on the run an interesting challenge. Most of them were good at it. It didn't take a college degree to tell when a beef critter was fixing to charge with murderous intent. They never really meant it unless their four hooves came together under their centers of balance as their tails went up and their heads went down so they could sort of fall towards YOU With Most of their weight before they commenced to play Express Train. So once you were sure they were coming at you, hell bent and head down, the idea was to get the hell off the tracks.

He spied more cows grazing on shorter salt grass as he rolled closer to the rooftops of the awakening town with the sun in his eyes. He knew that steamer he'd come north on had just picked up a load of freshly slaughtered beef in Escondrijo. So that was likely why they were spread so thin on heavily grazed range. The sea lions that had been spared looked a tad lean but healthy enough. So they'd likely been passed over for now to fatten up a mite before they wound up refrigerated.

"Enjoy life whilst you can, cows," he called out aloud, although not without any sympathy at all. It was hard not to feel just a tad sorry for any critter whose only purpose in life was to be slaughtered and butchered for human consumption. But as soon as you studied on it, you could see there'd have never been a tenth as many domestic brutes, from cows to chickens, if humankind had never learned how swell they tasted.

Some cows tasted more tender than Texas longhorns, although few other breeds enjoyed the taste of Texas grass. It took a tough cow to thrive on such tough range, although both the grass and beef grew just a tad more tender within the salty smell of the Texas shores. The long-horned sea lions all about might have had a better hold on the beef market if it hadn't been for the fevers that seemed to go with such green and muggy grazing.

The Fever Coast seemed to be the breeding grounds for more than one mean ague. One of the meanest was a spleen-rotting cow plague known as Spanish fever in Texas and Texas fever everywhere else.

Longhorns in general and the coastal sea lions in particular seemed immune to Texas fever, which made them about as welcome as a lit cigar in a hayloft in other parts, where folks were trying to raise shorthorn or dairy breeds that just curled up and died when they caught it.

Whether they cottoned to Kansas views on Texas fever or not, the ranchers raising Texas beef along this Fever Coast were maybe twice as firm about the hoof-and-mouth plague carried by healthy-looking cows out of Old Mexico. Nobody was sure about the causes of either. But as in the case of Texas fever, hoof-and-mouth seemed to hide out in immune stock between disastrous outbreaks that could slaughter whole herds and make them unfit to even skin for hides. Stock known to have either highly contagious disease had to be shot and buried deep. That was the law, state or federal. Nobody with a lick of sense wanted to risk the whole Western cattle industry with the price of beef rising ever higher back in the booming East.

By the time he was within three miles, or an easy hour's walk on foot, of those rooftops along the lagoon, he saw more corn, beans, and peppers growing all around than cows. Most such milpas or small truck fields in these parts were tilled by Mexican hoe farmers. That seemed the way most Mexican folks liked to farm, living in close-knit villages or their own barios of larger towns so they could walk out to their scattered milpas. He wasn't sure whether Mexicans stuck to such habits because they were backward or because it made a certain sort of sense. The Anglo Homestead Act had never been tried in Old Mexico, and a Mexican played hell trying to file a homestead claim with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management unless he brushed up on his English or, failing that, convinced some land office clerk he was a dumb Dutchman or Swede. So that was a likely reason you seldom saw isolated Mexican farmhouses off on some lonely quarter section. And there was something to be said for having one's cash crops scattered among, say, half a dozen smaller holdings. For even as he passed some corn milpas flattened by the recent storm, he spied others where, from some natural whim, the green young cornstalks still stood proud in the morning sun. Mexican hoe farmers were independent thinkers when it came to what they had growing in a particular plot too. So unlike many a homesteader with all his seed money tied up in one cash crop, his more casual Mexican competitor, growing all sorts of stuff in modest amounts, could neither make a killing on a rising market in, say, popcorn or get wiped out in, say, a corn-borer plague.

He passed a cactus-fenced field where a small ragged-ass kid was overseeing a half-dozen young hogs, likely from the same litter, as they rooted in a wind-flattened and rain-flooded bean field for such value as that storm had left. A few fence lines along he saw some goats, tethered on long lines, already starting to tidy up a ruined corn milpa by consuming the still-green stalks so they could wind up as goat cheese or gamy meat. Mexicans liked both more than your average Anglo did, but nobody could eat smashed and sun-dried cornstalks unless he or she was a goat.

Longarm didn't see any serious stock, Or serious stockmen, on the modest Mexican milpas this close to Escondrijo. But he didn't find that odd. You had to get out of Denver a ways, maybe a half a day by produce wagon, before you came to more spread-out cattle spreads.

He didn't know whether such outfits in these parts would turn out to be Mexican or not. He knew anyone owning a big enough beef operation to matter would have to be Anglo-Texican, for the same reasons it was risky to one's health to spread out across much range in Old Mexico unless one was an Old Mexican. But while one seldom saw Anglo buckaroos riding for Mexican outfits to the south, a lot of big Texas outfits hired Mexican vaqueros, who worked cheaper as well as better than many an Anglo top hand.

Thinking about that led Longarm into thinking about various Texas cow towns of a surly nature on your average Saturday night. But Billy Vail hadn't sent him all this way to see how the local Mexican and Anglo cowhands got along. He just had to see whether Deputy Gilbert and their prisoner, wanted in Colorado, were fit to get on back there.

He'd have to track down old Norma Richards and give her this old Saratoga, of course, and maybe by now the Rangers had some notion as to why some asshole up in Corpus Christi had such a hard-on for an out-of-state lawman only trying to do his job.

He hoped they had. He was cursed with a curious nature, and he knew Billy Vail would never abide him wasting enough time to matter if Rod Gilbert and Clay Baldwin were fit to travel.

The wagon trace rumbled him onto a simple plank bridge across a tidal creek half choked with tall spartina reeds. He could see some windows under the rooftops ahead now. He'd have doubtless felt a bit closer to town if it hadn't been for a swamping cactus hedge on the far side of the creek. Then a skinny young gal of the Mexican persuasion ran out onto the wagon trace, long black hair unkempt, white cotton frills aflutter, and bare feet really moving, until she spied Longarm and reversed direction toward him coming with that wagon an screaming for help, a lot of help, in a hurry.

Longarm let the mules haul him on to meet her as he called out to her, "Que pasa? En que puedo servirle, senorita?"

To which she replied in English no worse than his Spanish, "Is my father. He has been bitten by a beast and we cannot stop the bleeding!"

Longarm reined in long enough to extend a strong hand and haul the small but nubile young gal up beside him. She likely didn't notice, and so he never commented on the one tawny tit the two of them managed to expose getting her aboard. As she sat down beside him, Longarm already had the mules swinging through the opening in the cactus she'd just popped out of. But as he headed for the rambling row of brushwood jacales and corrals across eight or ten acres of beans and corn, his distraught guide pointed off to their west, telling him, "Me padre is over that way, closer to the water."

Longarm saw no water. But an older and fatter version of the gal beside him was huddled with two younger boys over something or somebody down in the knee-high peppers they had growing in that corner to his right. So he looked for a good way through their modest crops, and then, as the worried gal beside him said not to worry about the damned old beans, he drove right over.

One of the boys took the reins as Longarm followed the daughter of the house over the side. He was sort of sorry he had as soon as he caught sight of the stocky middle-aged Mexican sprawled there in the mud and crud with his white cotton pants and right leg torn all to hell. Longarm saw they'd improvised a rope tourniquet around the stocky farmer's muscular upper thigh. He could only wonder how much worse the poor cuss could bleed with nothing at all wrapped above the ghastly wounds around his busted or dislocated knee. He told the English-speaking girl, "We have to get him to a doctor in town muy pronto. We ain't got a litter. We ain't got time to make one. So tell him this is going to hurt and ask your brother there to lower the tailgate of that wagon box."

She did, in a rapid singsong he'd have never managed on his own in a lingo he had to sort of feel his way along in. The badly injured Mexican bit his lower lip and hissed like a steam kettle, but never let on how bad it really must have felt as Longarm picked him up, with some effort, and shoved him gently as possible into the wagon behind the trunk. Then the young gal raised the tailgate and ran around to the front, calling out, "Abordos y vamonos pa'l carajo!"

So the old gal and all three kids scrambled aboard as best they could as Longarm drove back across their already battered crops.

The young gal wound up seated beside him some more as her mother in the back hung on to her injured man, sobbing at Longarm to go "mas rapido!" but also crying "cuidado!" as he did his best, without any advice, to follow the wheel ruts as fast as he safely could.

The young gal explained that the poor mamacita was upset, but that she knew how kind and thoughtful he was trying to be to people he'd never been introduced to.

He assured her he followed her mamacita's drift, and added, "She has every right to be unsettled by that fearsome bite out of Papacito's poor leg. What in thunder did he tangle with back there, a tushy old sow with a litter she was guarding amid them peppers?"

The girl shook her head. "I do not know what the beast is called in your tongue. We call aligador!"

Longarm whistled softly. "That's close enough to alligator if we're talking about the same critter. I'd heard they could be found all around the Gulf of Mexico from Florida to Yucatan but... out in the middle of a pepper crop?"

She sighed. "Is a bahia pequeria, what you call a tidal creek, I think, just beyond our back seto... you say hedgerow, no?"

When he said that sounded close enough, she explained, "Las aligadoras come out on land for to sun themselves when the weather is as cool as this morning. Pero, like yourself, Papacito was surprised to find such a big one on our side of the cactus seto when he went out for to look at our poor peppers. It grabbed him before he knew it was there, and he thinks it was trying to take him home for to feed its own family. They were rolling all over when the rest of us rushed out for to see what Papacito was cursing about. My brother, Miguelito, beat la aligador many times with a hoe, a steel-bladed hoe, before it let go and slid back through the cactus into the bahia. Miguelito is only twelve, but muy macho, just like Papacito!"

Longarm smiled thinly and said, "They both must have been. I'd say that gator was unusually macho as well. They ain't supposed to act so bold as a rule. Has anyone you know been feeding 'em around here?"

"Feeding, senor? You have heard of people who would actually feed such dangerous beasts? One would have to be loco en la cabeza, no?"

He shrugged. "Greenhorns likely feel they're just out to be neighborly. But they got signs posted over Galveston way that warn folks not to do so, 'less you get them gators really dangerous."

He could see a street intersection down at the far end of their hedged-in wagon trace now as he continued. "They say gators get to coming in when they get used to hearing splashes at a particular bridge, boat dock, or whatever. Makes it more dangerous than usual should a dog, or kid, fall in. The critters aren't inclined to consider before they snap, left to their own unkindly natures. Do I have to explain further why it's not so wise to feed 'em until they lose their natural caution?"

She shuddered and reminded him she and her kin had just pulled a family member out of a sassy gator's jaws. He nodded. "That's my point. Their more usual diet would be fish, ducks, muskrats, and such. So the critter as just went for your dad must have picked up such bad habits around other humans. I don't know my way around Escondrijo. Which way do we swing when we get to that cross street ahead?"

She said the curado they usually went to dwelt down to the right.

He said, "No offense, senorita, but your old man don't need any herbs or even Prayers right now. He needs surgical stitching, considerable surgical stitching, by a surgical sawbones trained gringo in manner, if not a pure gringo by birth!"

She sobbed, "I never called you a gringo, senor. pero, you are the one Who brought it up, is no cirujano gringo in Escondrijo who would treat a greaser, as I think you call us."

He said, "I don't call colored folk niggers either. But I do follow your drift. So which way might that Coast Guard station be from here?"

She didn't follow his drift before he'd repeated Guardia Costa in her own lingo. Then she said, "I thought that what You meant. Is a la izquirda, Pero very far, and even if we get there in time I do not think they will wish for to take Papacito in!"

Longarm swung the team left Onto the cross street, which seemed the Only important north-south thoroughfare in the dinky collection of sun-silvered frame buildings as he assured the injured man's oldest child, "I don't care if they want to take him in or not. I aim to tell them they have to, I'm a U.S. deputy marshal, here on federal business, and I reckon I can say who may or may not be a federal witness under protection and hence eligible for emergency medical treatment at any infernal federal clinic I can find!"

She told him he was talking too fast for her to follow his English. He wasn't up to explaining all that in Spanish. So he just drove on, faster than folks usually drove through town and hence attracting a lot of stares and a good deal of cussing as they tore on up the dirt-paved street.

Then, as they were passing what seemed a big whitewash warehouse, Longarm spotted a familiar figure in white and reined in to call out to Norma Richards, "Hey, Doc? I got your Saratoga trunk and a man in dire need of medical attention here. Your move!"

The motherly but sort of handsome older gal stared thunderstruck for just a bit before she called back, "Custis, is that you, with my lab equipment at last, praise the Lord."

As she dropped lightly down from the loading platform of that odd warehouse and moved toward them in her already muddy high-buttons, she declared, "I'd just about given you and my microscope up for lost. We're in a lot of trouble here, Custis. As you see, I've been able to commandeer this empty icehouse for use as an emergency ward but without proper lab equipment-"

Then Longarm was down off the wagon to steer the educated lab technician around to the tailgate as he tersely explained, "Don't take no microscope to see what's ailing this customer I brought you. But for the record, those teeth marks all over his right knee were left by a gator, not one of Doc Finlay's mosquitos!"

When Longarm unfastened the tailgate, the well-rounded Norma got up under the canvas with surprising grace and proceeded to rip what was left of Papacito's pants off below that tourniquet. As she took in the full extent of the Mexican's injuries she whistled softly, then declared, "They do tend to overdo things here in Texas. We have to get that tourniquet off if we're to save that leg. But first we have to tie off some arteries and make a hundred and fifty stitches, minimum. So we'd better get him inside, on the table, the day before yesterday!"

She added something about going inside for a pair of stretcher bearers. But Longarm was already following her with the chunky but smaller man in his arms, like an injured child. So Norma told all of them to follow and they did, like a worried line of ducklings.

It was warmer inside than out, despite the gloom under the bare wooden trusses holding up the big cork-lined roof. Longarm saw lots of the heat had to be rising from the hundred-odd folks filling most of the folding cots spread across the sawdust floor. Nobody had more than a sheet covering them. But some were twisting like worms caught on a tile walk by a baleful rising sun. The smell was disgusting as well. Pine oil and fresh linens could only do so much when folks took to puking and shitting all over themselves and a sawdust floor.

As Norma led the newcomers through some hanging sheets and into a corner she'd improvised as a sort of lab and autopsy or operating room, Longarm glanced up through the gloom and said, "You say this here is supposed to be an icehouse, Doc?"

Norma pointed at two kitchen tables with a door across them. "Make him as comfortable as you can there while I scrub up again. They tell me they used to store ice from New England in here, before that meat packer down the other way installed ice-making machinery a year or so ago. I commandeered this layout as soon as they assured me it was the nearest we could get to a hospital ward here in town. That Coast Guard clinic is too small as well as too far away. This space is too small for all these repeat customers we keep getting, bless their fevered brows."

Longarm told the four Mexican folks they'd best wait outside. None of them argued. But as the older daughter ducked out Norma said, "Me and my direct approach. I didn't mean every one of them. Somebody who can speak both languages might save us a wrestling match here."

Longarm allowed he could likely translate any medical jargon a hoe farmer was likely to understand, so the motherly-looking Norma swung around from her washstand with a lethal-looking load of cutlery on an enameled tin tray, saying, "I'm low on morphine to begin with, and the dosage can be tricky when a patient's in shock after losing Lord knows how much blood. So I want you to tell him it would be better if I irrigated and sutured his wounds without any anesthetic. Tell him he won't feel much more pain than... well, a whole lot of pinpricks."

Longarm moved to the far side of the improvised operating table, nudged the semi-conscious Mexican, and told him they were going to have to hurt him. Since he was talking to a grown man, not a cry-baby, he felt no call to bullshit about pinpricks. The badly bitten farmer smiled gallantly up at the woman in white and croaked, "Que bella es. Quando comienza?"

Longarm said, "He thinks you're pretty and wants to know why you ain't started, Miss Norma."

So she picked up a wet sponge and wrung it out over the gory mess. The liquid rinsing blood and crud from the lacerations looked like water. Longarm suspected it was something stronger when the man on the table stared thunderstruck and shouted, "Ay, mierda! Eso es una mierda!"

So Longarm assured the old gent it was more likely alcohol than the shit he suspected. But he doubted the Mexican heard him. As he shot a questioning glance across the table, Norma Richards assured him, "Only comatose. Just as well. I want to suture these torn arteries before I unfasten that tourniquet, and that's the part that seems to inspire unpleasant remarks about a poor old woman who means well."

As he watched her clean, skilled fingers mend the ends of what a lay man could take for bloody macaroni, he said, "Aw, you ain't so old, considering how much training it would take to get so good with that curvy needle, Miss Norma. But no offense, whatever happened to the doctors, military and civilian, in these parts?"

She irrigated the unconscious man's knee some more as she made a wry face and said, "The pharmacist's mate in command of the Coast Guard clinic is just outside, running a fever we can't get down with quinine sulfate, if that's what's in those brown bottles he issued me before he was stricken himself. Now that you've brought my own medical supplies, however limited, I may be able to get a handle on what on earth they've all been coming down with!"

He said he'd be glad to get his own possibles back, and asked what had happened to the civilian docs a town this size would surely have.

She picked up a smaller needle and began to close the wounds of the ripped-open farmer as she said simply, "There were three, they say. I never met any of them. One died and the other two skipped out before I got off that coastal steamer a million years ago. They say the local doctor who caught it and died had been the only one trying to fight whatever it is we're fighting. The other two said there was no use risking the lives of themselves and their families on something they just didn't understand."

She rinsed away more blood and made another skillful stitch as she pensively added, "Maybe they had a point. The oath physicians take makes no mention of running off and leaving patients to die, but it happens. YOU should have seen the stampede we had over to the northeast in New Orleans in the last bad yellow fever outbreak."

Longarm nodded soberly. "I heard. This fever we got in Escondrijo ain't like yellow jack?"

She shook her head, either unaware of or not caring about the one soft brown strand of hair on her sweat-beaded brow, as she replied, "I'm sure it can't be that. Nobody's been vomiting black bile, even in the last stages. It's more like the classic plague, or malaria, save for the fact that quinine sulfate seems to have no effect at all. I'll know better as soon as I finish here and administer some quinine I know to be the real McCoy."

Longarm didn't ask any dumb questions. She'd said she'd gotten the Medicine she'd been giving them from government medical stores. But on the other hand, he'd arrested more than one son of a bitch for cheating the taxpayers with worthless drugs and inedible Indian rations.

Before he could ask any brighter questions, the sheeting parted and a blandly pretty gal, wearing too much face paint and red hair Mother Nature had never issued her, popped in, the butcher's apron over her blue calico summer frock smeared with all sorts of crud. She sobbed at old Norma, "I think the poor boy from the Coast Guard station must be dead, Doctor Richards!"

Norma went on stitching as she muttered something to her self, and then asked Longarm, "Would you know, and could you make sure for us, Custis? As you see, I only have four arms."

Longarm allowed he'd seen a few dead folks in his time, and followed the mock redhead outside. As they passed the cluster Of worried Mexican folks, he assured them in Spanish their Papacita was doing just fine. The older daughter still tagged along as he followed the fancy nursing sister across the cavernous icehouse between the rows of close-packed cots.

The Mexican gal made the sign of the cross as they approached a sad scene against the far wall. Two more nurses in fancy clothes were gathered over a nice-looking half-naked corpse. There was no mistaking unconscious from dead once a person's nose turned to wax like that. As he joined the gals over the dead Coast Guardsman, Longarm declared, "At least a couple of hours. You'd best cover his face, ladies. He wouldn't want us looking at him as he commences to stiffen."

One of the gals sobbed, "He was ever so nice, even when the ague was on him, and I feel so awful about not looking at him sooner. But we thought he was asleep!"

Longarm said soothingly, "I doubt there's much any of you ladies could have done for him had you noticed sooner, No offense, but are you ladies volunteers from town?"

The three Anglo gals exchanged blushing glances. Only one burst out laughing. To cover up, the mock redhead asked, "Is rigor mortis when they get that silly grin on their dead faces, Doctor?"

Longarm grinned sort of silly himself, and replied, "I ain't no sawbones. I'm a federal marshal and, like you all, just helping out as best I know how. That wild mirthless smile you just mentioned is only part of what's called rigor mortis. It commences three to six hours after death, and you'll doubtless be glad to know they go limp and peaceful again in less than seventy-two. I have to know about such things in my line of work because sometimes it helps if we can make some educated guesses as to when somebody was killed."

He had no call to unsettle gals further with remarks about bloating, funny colors, or blowfly maggots. It made more sense to see if Norma Richards wanted the poor cuss buried before anything like that took place around here.

He said he'd tell her for them, and headed back across the icehouse. That Mexican gal in white cotton frills was still with him, which seemed reasonable seeing her kin were all gathered along that far side. He found her less reasonable when she asked him, in Spanish, if he had any notion what those painted and fancy-dressed Anglo gals really were.

He answered severely, "At the moment they seem to be acting as the only medical staff under the one Professional in this improvised fever ward. The respected physicians and no doubt a lot of the other respectable citizens of this town have all run away like rabbits. So why don't we just call those braver women nurses for now, and save ourselves the worry of what they might or might not do for a living on other occasions?"

She blushed but didn't answer, or back down as far as he could tell, as they passed a sweat-soaked form in a bed croaking, "Agua, Por favor. Estoy mareado. Pero no puedo dormir."

Longarm nodded and told the Mexican gal, "There you go. Those ladies you've been low-rating might not know this gent's asking for a drink of water, and could likely need more help than that right now. I'll go tell Doc Richards he's feeling dizzy and restless. Why don't you go back and tell them other gals he needs some water poco tiempo?"

She said she would. Longarm continued on past her kin with a nod, ducked back inside, and said, "That redhead was right about the Coast Guardsman. There's a Mex out yonder croaking for water and complaining he's too dizzy to get up and too restless to lie down. What do you want me to do for him, Doc?"

She went on bandaging the groggy Mexican farmer's knee as she replied, "I could use some help with that heavy Saratoga, Custis. But once it's in here I can manage, if I'm right about the quinine sulfate."

As he turned to go he heard her murmur, "If I'm wrong, I don't know what I'll do."

Longarm ducked out into the bright morning sunlight, half blinded but surprised at how cool it felt next to that steamy stink inside. South Texas did tend to stay pleasant for a few days after a nasty storm. The air smelled more of sea foam than mosquito swamp right now. He wondered if that was going to rid Escondrijo of this fever outbreak. Sometimes a change in the weather helped. Sometimes it didn't. He wasn't packing a badge to worry about such matters all that much.

He untethered the mules and led them, along with the wagon, around to the slot of shade between the icehouse and a smaller warehouse to its north, explaining, "We were in a hurry with that gator victim, amigos. I know you're both anxious to get out of those traces and put yourselves around some fodder and water. I'll be dropping you off at the address La Bruja gave me in just a few more minutes. So just bear with me till I tote old Norma's trunk inside and find out where she's stored my own shit, hear?"

Neither brute was in any position to argue as he tethered them again, reset the wagon brake, and slid the heavy trunk out the back of the wagon box.

As he carried it back inside on his back, the older of the Mexican kids came to join him, offering to help. So Longarm let him. Aside from not wanting to show off, he didn't want to insult a macho ten-year-old by implying he needed no help from such a squirt.

So, between them, they had the Saratoga trunk over by old Norma about the time she'd slid some of the sheeting out of the way to let everyone else at Papacito. The mangled Mexican was sitting up, though a mite green around the gills, as everyone said how brave he'd just been, unconscious Or not.

The matronly Anglo doctor fell upon her trunk with ill-disguised glee, saying, "I know for a fact I packed fresh full-strength quinine sulfate among my other Supplies. Lord knows how I'll get more, on such short notice, should that prove to be the answer."

Longarm suggested, "I could wire the Rangers in Corpus Christi for more medical supplies, seeing I got to wire in a progress report this morning in any case, Miss Norma."

She shook her head. "No, you can't. Did you think that I was on my own like this because I enjoy sweating? The wires were swept away in that storm last night. I did get off one overly optimistic report when I first arrived. I had half as many fever victims to worry about and plenty of quinine to fight it with, so I thought!"

Longarm grimaced. "Didn't have all that many answers to wire Billy Vail yet anyways. I'd best carry that borrowed rig and team over where I promised I would. You can tell me about my own saddle and such when I come back from that and mayhaps a few other morning errands."

La Bruja had written down the name and address of a small chandler's shop down the quay from the regular steamer landing. With no steamers in port the quay was nearly deserted as Longarm drove along it, the mules cropping and wheels rolling crisply on the oak-block paving. There were a dozen-odd Mexican fishing luggers tied up at the south end, with some smaller cat boats hauled up on the mud just beyond. He found a row of modest Mexican-owned shops just south of the fair-sized brick-walled edifice that proclaimed itself a meat packer in big block letters. He'd expected a larger operation. The chandler shop a few doors down was modest as well. But as soon as one studied on it, neither an outfit shipping occasional cargos of cold-storage beef nor a chandler selling ship's stores to a mess of Mexican fishermen had to look as if they belonged in Chicago.

He got down and tethered the team to a hitching rail out front. He went on in to find the chandlery poorly lit, pungent with the odors of hemp, tar, and peppers, and presided over by a big fat Mexican with a pleasant smile and deliberately stupid attitude.

When Longarm introduced himself and allowed he had a rig and mule team belonging to La Bruja outside, the chandler looked confused and said, "You stole that wagon from some witch, you say, senor? Forgive me, I mean no disrespect, but you seem to have me confused with someone else. On the head of my children I know nothing of witches or stolen goods!"

Longarm said patiently, "They told me the wires were down and I don't want us endangering any kid's head. So what say I just leave that team and rig tied up out front, the way I promised La Bruja I might, and we'll just say no more aboutit."

The chandler shrugged. "Is a free country, no? Who am I to say where an Anglo lawman parks his wagon along a public quay?"

Longarm allowed that sounded reasonable and, as long as he was there, offered to buy a box of those Mexican waterproof matches. But the fat chandler told him to just help himself to a box and go with God. So he did, certain he'd left El Bruja's property with someone smart enough to see she got it all back.

He strode over to the main street, a block inland, and asked some kids playing marbles in the still-damp street the way to their town lockup. They directed him to a brick building across from the white-washed Methodist steeple one could see for miles around.

As he strode the plank walk along the shady side of the street, he heard the kids behind him debating his station in life. They seemed divided as to whether he was a Ranger or simply some other pistol-packer with business at the town lockup.

Longarm had been a kid one time. So when one of then announced he'd just ask and jumped up to chase after him, Longarm stopped and turned with an indulgent smile.

But then his smile froze as a distant shot rang out and the kid caught a bullet aimed at Longarm's spine with the back of his poor little head!

Longarm's own gun was out and he was already running as the kid who'd taken a bullet for him beat a heavy mist of blood and brain tissue to the boardwalk with his small dead face. Longarm yelled at the other kids to get down and stay down as he tore past. The dirty white cloud of gunsmoke he'd spotted still hung shoulder-high near the corner he'd just turned. It was easy to see some son of a bitch had trailed him from the more open waterfront and pegged a back-shot down this other street from cover. Before Longarm could run that far he heard the receeding hoofbeats of a rapid mount. But he still caught a glimpse of a roan rump and a rider wearing an ankle-length duster of tan linen under his gray Texas hat as he tore around yet another corner with Longarm bawling after him, "Stand and fight like a human being, you yellow-bellied baby-butchering back-shooting bastard!"

Then, sick at heart at that butchered kid, Longarm had to turn around and see if there was anything he could do to help.

There wasn't much. A crowd had already gathered and the dead kid's young mother, a care-worn dishwater-blonde, had already dashed from her quarters nearby to cradle her child's shattered skull in her lap, oblivious of the mess it was making of her thin calico dress as she rocked mindlessly on her knees, assuring him it wasn't his fault and nobody was going to give him a licking this time.

Just beyond her, a copper badge and drawn.45 were staring at Longarm thoughtfully. So Longarm lowered his own.44-40 to his side and quickly called out, "I'm the law too. Federal. We're after a killer in a tan duster and gray Texas hat, mounted on a roan. Last seen headed south along that dirt path past those fishing boats along the lagoon."

The town law, an older as well as shorter Texican with a walrus mustache, with his badge riding the buttoned black vest over a crisp white shirt and shoestring tie, called back, "Lucky for you others further down the street at the time tell the same story. So who are you and why was that warmly dressed rascal out to back-shoot you?"

To which Longarm could only reply, "I'd be U.S. Deputy Marshal Custis Long. I don't know the answers to your other questions yet. But I sure aim to find out."

CHAPTER 8

A long time passed slowly by as Longarm and the local law did their best to restore some damned law and order in the middle of Escondrijo. They got the dead boy to the undertaker's, and got statements backing Longarm's from the kids he'd been playing marbles with that morning. Constable W.R. Purvis decided, and Longarm was inclined to agree, it might be best in this climate to have the dead kid tidied up and embalmed ahead of any formal findings by the county coroner, who was busy enough with that fever going round.

Purvis had to reason harder before Longarm reluctantly agreed that a posse's chances of tracking a dimly described rider on a public trail would be too slim to justify the excitement. Longarm had already considered the possibility of that bastard discarding the duster and flashy hat before simply holing up on a nearby spread, or even back in town afoot after sending his pony on alone.

It was a trick as old as riding the owlhoot trail for fun and profit with pistol or, hell, rapier. Horses were something like homing pigeons when it came to heading back to a familiar stall, where a critter could laze secure from surprises while being well watered and fed. Horses hated surprises, which was why they could spook over something innocent as a tumbleweed, or run back into a burning stable bewildered by all the excitement and seeking familiar shelter from such a confusing world. And so, as the older town lawman pointed out, that back-shooter and his mount could be most anywhere by now, whether still together or far apart. When Longarm asked how many roan ponies there might be around Escondrijo, old W.R. shrugged and asked, "Would you like a list of riders alphabetic or numerical, assuming me and all the folks I'd have to check with ain't missed none? This is cattle country, pard. Save for townies and Mex hoe farmers close to town, most everyone for miles around rides some damned sort of horse, and roan ain't an unusual color for a cow pony. Was it a strawberry roan or a blue roan, by the way?"

Longarm grunted, "Strawberry."

W.R. was too polite to tell an obvious horseman that that particular mixture of longer white guard hairs over a basic hide of auburn was ten times more likely to occur than the white over black they called a blue roan.

By the time they got down to the reasons Longarm had been headed to see Constable Purvis in the first place, they were entering the town lockup, where Purvis allowed he had a jar of corn squeezings filed under R, for Refreshments.

As Longarm's eyes adjusted to the sudden gloom, he saw they had no current customers in the three holding cells along the back wall.

As the lawman who ran the place got the jar and a couple of shot glasses from his filing cabinet, motioning Longarm to one of the bentwood chairs between the desk and a gun rack, he explained how both Deputy Gilbert and that federal want, Clay Baldwin, were out at that Coast Guard station to the north of town now.

Handing Longarm a perilously generous drink, Purvis continued. "they've both been taking turns, like everyone else, with that off-and-on-again fever. Seems every time your prisoner was well enough your deputy took sick, and vice versa. Young Gilbert told us someone like you would be coming, and meanwhile he felt he'd be able to hold Baldwin more secure in the Coast Guard brig whilst he lay sick or not so sick in their dispensary out yonder."

As they clinked, drank up, and gaped in mutual agony, the older lawman recovered his voice first. "If you ask me, your man is full of shit. We was holding Baldwin secure enough here. Why do you reckon he felt them Coast Guardsmen would be better at it?"

Longarm's tongue still felt numb, that corn liquor running close to two hundred proof, but he still managed to reply, "I don't know. I mean to ask him. I'd have thought both of 'em would be under the care of that lady doctor, Norma Richards, here in town. I just saw the cadaver of the pharmacist's mate they say was in charge out at that Coast Guard station."

Constable Purvis took a more cautious sip and replied, "We heard he'd come down with it too. I reckon it's the patent cell they got out yonder that's admired so much by young Gilbert. It wasn't that dead Coast Guardsman who was treating your deputy and your prisoner. That bossy sawbones you just mentioned has commandeered quarters out to the Coast Guard station, her being some sort of federal personage too fancy for the one hotel in town, and the Coast Guard station only standing a mile outside of town."

"You mean she rides back and forth between that federal post and her fever ward here in town?" Longarm asked before he'd had time to consider the obvious reasons.

Since he had, he was already back on his feet and saying something about having many another chore ahead before everyone who could holed up for la siesta. So Constable Purvis never got to fully explain how tough it might be to squeeze a whole town's worth of fever victims into the officers' quarters out at that Coast Guard station.

First things coming first, Longarm retraced his steps to that Mexican-owned chandlery on the waterfront. He wasn't surprised to see the team and rig he'd borrowed from La Bruja no longer stood out front.

When he went inside, he wasn't surprised to hear the fat chandler deny any knowledge of the property El Senor had left outside his door of his own free gringo will.

Longarm said, "I ain't worried about La Bruja getting her property back one way or another if you know what's good for you. I've come back to talk about some gunplay just up your side street. I reckon you never noticed that neither?"

The chandler shrugged his fat shoulders and replied he'd heard the shots, and that someone had told him an Anglo muchacho had been murdered by some person or persons unknown. When he added he paid little attention to such matters, since los gringos always seemed to be fighting among themselves, Longarm muttered, "Touche. Now why don't we try her another way. How are you called, amigo?"

The fat man smiled coldly and replied, "Gomez. For some reason a lot of my customers call me Gordo Gomez. I reserve the right to say whether I am anyone's amigo or not."

Since Gordo translated almost literally as "Fatso," Longarm felt free to call him that whether they were to be pals or not. He smiled thinly at the fat Mexican and said, "Bueno, Gordo mio. The pendejo who shot that kid in the head not far from here was aiming at my back. He fired from cover after trailing me as far as the main street from guess where?"

Gordo returned his stare innocently and replied, "Not from here, if that is what you mean."

Longarm said, "That's exactly what I mean. I hadn't told a soul in town I was coming your way with La Bruja's rig and mule team. So how do you reckon that back-shooter knew just where to wait for me?"

Gordo shrugged and sounded sincerely innocent as he simply asked, "Quien sabe? El Senor was openly driving through town in a vehicle even he describes as the property of some witch, no?"

Longarm started to object, saw he had no sensible objection to the fat man's simple logic, and said, "Mierditas, you could have one apt to Plot murder with a lady might know her mules and covered box-wagon on sight!"

Gordo stared up at a strip of fly paper as if debating with himself whether to change it for a fresh one as he told Longarm in the same politely firm tone he had no idea what they were talking about.

So Longarm nodded, suggested Gordo cut down on sweets at least, and headed back up the quay toward old Norma's improvised fever ward, his spine feeling itchy even though he kept looking behind him all the way.

Nobody seemed out for a second crack at him, and so he made it to the icehouse without further incident.

Inside, he found the Mexican farmer he'd brought in holding court on a corner cot, surrounded by other admiring farm folks as well as the kin who'd come in with him. It seemed that while alligators weren't unheard of along the Fever Coast, man-eating alligators were rare indeed.

He found the farmer's slim young daughter on the far side of the icehouse, translating for Norma Richards as the two of them tried to dose a flushed and sweaty Mexican kid with quinine sulfate. Longarm knew how bitter the shit-brown pills tasted. But it was the motherly Norma who decided, "Oh, fiddle, just give him ice water, Consuela. Lord knows this stuff doesn't seem to be helping any of the others, and the poor boy's sick enough without a broken jaw!"

She spotted Longarm and straightened up, saying wearily, "We heard about the shooting, Custis. You certainly do lead a very interesting life!"

Longarm sighed and said, "So do you, Miss Norma. You say quinine don't seem to work, even when you're sure it's real?"

She shook her head, brushed that same loose strand from her brow with the back of her hand, and explained. "We have to give the poor dears something. My sweet young volunteer here thinks we ought to call in some witch doctors she knows, and you've no idea how tempting that seems as this day wears on. Lord knows, I may as well be dancing naked in paint and shaking a rattle for all the good I've been able to do anyone!"

Longarm had to chuckle at the picture. Old Norma was sort of what you might call Junoesque, if not pleasantly plump. But he assured the worried-looking gal, "Just getting 'em in bed out of the noonday sun must be helping 'em some, Miss Norma, and as for the curados Miss Consuela here might have mentioned, you can't exactly call a curado a witch doctor. They got the same sort of witches we worry about. They call 'em brujas. A curado or curer is more like a herbalist mixed with a Pentacostal preacher. Picture a Holy Roller speaking in tongues and casting out demons whilst dosing sick folks with sassafras bark, licorice root, and such. I know you'll find this hard to believe, Doc. But that very quinine you've been dosing these folks with was discovered by Indian medicine men. I once read about a highborn Spanish lady being saved on her deathbed by some Jesuit missionary back from the woods with some bitter bark the Indians had given him."

She nodded and said, "The Countess Chinchon, who introduced it to Europe as Peruvian bark around 1640. You're so right about a weak brew of ground-up tree bark saving her life and restoring her to almost perfect health. So why don't these patients respond to pure quinine sulfate, more than ten times as strong?"

Longarm suggested, "They have another fever entirely, ma'am. I'd forgot the name of that countess. But I read somewhere that the stuff only works on one particular family of fevers. I know for a fact you can't cure yellow jack with quinine."

She nodded but insisted, "This fever here is nothing at all like yellow jack, and please give me credit for reading a little myself!"

She swept a bare arm rather grandly around at the sweltering icehouse. "They've all been suffering the same symptoms. They're hit without warning by a sudden violent rise in temperature, along with headaches, muscular cramps, and drenching sweats."

Longarm shrugged and said lots of fevers did that to folks.

She snapped, "I hadn't finished! The patient is helped by liquids but can barely tolerate broths. The poor appetite is complicated by an almost suicidal depression. Then, as suddenly as it began, or after a bout of chills and shivering, the patient suddenly snaps out of it, save for feeling weak, dehydrated, and ravenously hungry."

Longarm allowed, "That sure sounds like plain old ague. Chills, fever, and you say it comes back?"

She nodded, repressed a shiver of her own, and told him, "It's usually the second or third attack that takes them. I don't know if it's because the fever gets stronger or hits them the same way once they're weaker. We know so little, Custis, for all our Latin terms and impressive diplomas!"

Longarm suddenly found himself holding the sort of solid old gal against his chest, smoothing her brown hair with a gentle free hand as he said, "Don't go blubbering up on us now. These sick folks are depending on you, whether you know what you're doing here or not. Ain't it possible the bugs that cause the ague can get used to quinine the way those Austrian miners I've read about get used to arsenic?"

She leaned against him, sort of like a babe lost in the woods might have. But her voice was cheerful enough as she marveled, "My, you do seem to read a lot, don't you?"

To which he could only modestly reply, "They got a fine public library up in Denver, and along about the end of the month I ain't got the money to spend my free evenings at the opera. Could we discuss these invisible bugs instead of my modest wages, ma'am?"

She sighed and said, "I work for the same cheap government. I've already considered a strain of a still-unknown microbe building up a resistance to the usual specific drug. That could be the answer, or just as cheerfully, you could be right about it being some entirely different malady and... Oh, Custis, I'm so tired, even if I knew what I was doing!"

He said, "At least you've been trying, and that has to count for something. I understand you've been treating others out at that Coast Guard station you're staying at?"

She sounded half asleep as she replied, "A Deputy Gilbert, that prisoner called Baldwin, and one of the officers, an Ensign Domer. For some reason the garrison out there's been lightly hit by whatever this may be. Everyone out there who's suffered any fever at all came down with it here in town, or shortly after returning to the garrison from town."

She didn't seem to be getting any lighter on her feet as he kept on holding her there near the grinning Mexican kid. So Longarm reached up to remove his Stetson and wave it some for attention as he asked the big gal in his other arm whether his McClellan and Winchester might be out at that Coast Guard station as well.

She murmured, "In my quarters near the dispensary. You had all my toiletries with you in that trunk, so I had to use some soap from one of your saddlebags and I hope you don't.."

Then she was fast asleep against his shirtfront, and he had to put his hat back on and grab her with both arms as her knees went to sleep down yonder as well.

The gal with the mock red hair came over to join them, looking scared as she asked Longarm, "What's wrong? Don't tell me she's down with it too!"

Longarm didn't. He said, "I suspect she's just run herself into the ground. If you'd help me find a place to lay her down and stretch her out, it's going on siesta time in any case and I got to get on out to that Coast Guard station."

The gal nodded and said, "There's a lie-down we've been taking turns with over by the autopsy theater. That's what Doctor Norma calls the corner she uses to cut 'em open, dead or alive, the autopsy theater."

Longarm nodded, scooped the semi-conscious Norma up in both arms as if he were toting someone's mighty big baby off to bed, and let the other gal lead the way.

Their progress didn't go unnoticed by all the other volunteers. So there were others around them as Longarm lay the exhausted Norma on the semi-secluded cot in a shadowy nook between those hanging sheets and the brick wall of the improvised fever ward.

As he straightened up, Longarm observed, "She'd do better out of that starched-linen outfit with just a thin sheet over her. But I'd best let you ladies worry about that after I leave, right?"

One of the other gals, a small bleached blonde, suddenly covered her face and bawled, "I can't stand this! I can't tell whether these government folk are trying to be polite or mocking!"

The red-haired gal told the bemused Longarm, "Tess ain't used to being called a lady. None of us are. But you're trying to be a good sport, right?"

Longarm shook his head. "Nope. Calling 'em as I see 'em. Lots of folks who call themselves ladies and gents have run off and left those sick folks you've been caring for to die."

The mock redhead shrugged and said, "Business was slow with a damned plague keeping all the cowhands out of town in any case. I know you think we're stupid as well as low-down, Deputy Long, but hell, no girl with a lick of sense would be in our usual line of work to begin with."

Longarm said, "My friends call me Custis. Maybe it takes a lady with a foolish but generous nature to act the way all of you have been acting. I could tell you a tale of another swell gal they named a mountain after up Colorado way. But I got to be on my way now. So some other time."

The gal tagged after him. "My friends call me Ruby. How did you say you meant to get out to that Coast Guard station... CustiS?"

He said, "On foot, I reckon. They say it's only a mile and these low-heeled boots I wear were bought with such dismal events in mind."

Ruby said, "I have my own shay and a high-stepping trotter over to the livery, if you're not ashamed to be seen in broad day with a lady of the evening."

Longarm started to ask about old Norma. But the other gals seemed to have that under control. So he grinned at Ruby and declared, "You're on. But there are gossips up in Denver who might say it was you who was risking her reputation in the company of such a wicked rascal, ma'am."

CHAPTER 9

By then it was almost as hot outside, although sweeter-smelling, and the streets were nearly deserted as la siesta set in, with a heap of local Anglos participating. You had to go north to somewhat cooler parts of Texas to hear folks talking about lazy greasers in the noonday sun. The folks who'd been in the Great Southwest longer were as willing to work, when they had to, as most. But south of, say, San Antone, you knocked off a few hours from about noon to four in the afternoon, unless you felt like frying eggs on your skull with the help of that subtropical sun. Mexicans tended to sneer at lazy gringo shopkeepers who knocked off for the day before midnight, when anyone could see it was easier to go shopping after sundown. They themselves liked to finish their day's work around nine, dine late, and party till it got cool enough to make serious love after midnight. Going home for a snack, a quick screw, and a long nap during the daylight siesta made for a nice break.

So Longarm wasn't at all surprised when they found the livery across the way had closed for la siesta. He led Ruby in her sunbonnet around to the shady side, got out his pocketknife, and told her he'd whistle for her once he'd picked the front lock.

It didn't take long. They'd locked up more with kids in mind than serious horse thieves. So he whistled the friendly fancy gal inside, and took her word on which two-wheel shay was her own in the back. Once she'd introduced him to her frisky chestnut gelding with white stockings, he asked her if she wanted to find and fetch her own harness from the nearby tack room as he played Chinaman with the shay.

She said she would. So they parted friendly, and it only took him a few moments to get between the carriage shafts like some rickshaw coolie and haul the shay as far as that gelding's stall.

Ruby met him there empty-handed, whispering, "I think there's a dead man in the tack room!"

He told her it was likely just one of the stable hands, but drew his six-gun as he led the way through the low overhang between the stalls and tack room.

He had to chuckle as he saw at a glance he'd been right. There was no way to tell what the Mexican propped up on his rump in a corner looked like. He'd wrapped up in his striped wool serape and pulled his big straw sombrero down over his sleepy face. But when you took a longer look you could see he was breathing, while the little brown jug of pulque on its side beside him suggested it might be a waste of time to try and wake him.

So Longarm asked Ruby which horse collar and harness went with her shay, and wasn't surprised when she picked a well-blackened and silver-mounted outfit. Her shay had hard rubber wheel rims too.

As he harnessed the bay in its stall before backing it out, Ruby made a snooty comment on the way greasers dozed off at the dangedest times and places. He didn't waste time defending honest working folk to even a good-natured whore till Ruby asked, as if she really cared, "How come they like to sleep sitting up that way? You see them all over town propped up against a wall in a blanket with their hats down over their faces."

As he harnessed the bay between her carriage shafts and paid its four ribbons back through her silver-plated fittings, he told her, "It ain't as if anyone likes to sleep sitting up. But it beats trying to get comfortable lying down on hard dirt or the softest planking. I've found I wake up less stiff, after a long night on a cross-country train, if I shoot for my forty winks sitting up. They sleep flat as the rest of us when they've got a softer bed to lay flat on, Miss Ruby."

She smiled at him sassily and allowed she felt sure he knew all about sleeping with all sorts of folks in all sorts of odd positions. But he didn't brag about any Mexican gals he'd been to bed with as he led the frisky pony and its sassy owner out of the livery.

He put up the shay's folding top against the overhead sun before he helped her up to the cozy seat. He handed her the ribbons, and got out his knife to politely lock the livery door again. When he climbed up beside the mock redhead, he discovered the seat to be cozier than he'd expected. Ruby's rump was either wider than he'd judged it to be under her flouncy calico skirts, or she'd slid it to her right as he got in on that side.

There was no discussion as to who was to drive. No man was about to sit back and let a woman drive him about as if she were his coach servant. So she handed him the ribbons without him having to ask, but told him which way to go as he clucked his tongue at the bay and lightly flipped its big brown rump with some slack in the ribbons. As they lit out and he let the pent-up pony stretch its legs in a handsome trot, he assured its owner he knew north from south. "I suspect I was on the regular coast road last night. It was flooded in some stretches by that gale and I had to swing way inland but... Lord have mercy, was it only last night I was driving down the other way? It feels like at least three days. I can generally stay up a good seventy-two hours before I feel this tired. Reckon it's all the excitement since I got into Escondrijo this morning. But once I settle a few things out to that Coast Guard post I might be able to catch my own siesta."

She said, "It's not too late to turn back, if you'd really like a nice long nap in the nice soft bed in my private quarters."

He chuckled and declined her kind offer with a gallant observation about just how much sleep a man might get amid such exciting surroundings.

She didn't answer for a time as they trotted on out the north end of the tiny town. When she did, she sighed and said, "I see you drive with a firm but gentle hand, Custis. You're allowing Chocolate to set his own pace, but we all know exactly who's in command of this expedition, right?"

He shrugged and replied, "I've never held with being harder than I need to be with a critter taking me the way I wanted to go in the first place, ma'am."

Ruby nodded. "So I've noticed. Even some of the purer folks we've been trying to help back there in that icehouse haven't been able to resist comical comments about Doc Richards' nursing staff. But you called us ladies and acted as if we were, until I as much as told you right out that I liked you!"

He said, "I like you too, Miss Ruby, and I mean that sincerely. I never said I didn't want to go to bed with you. I only said I had a mess of chores to tend to."

She said, "I'll bet. I just said I admired the polite way you got exactly where you wanted to go, with no straying from your very own determined course. Did you think I was inviting you up to one of the cribs in the... hotel I usually work in?"

He shook his head and said, "I know all sorts of ladies like to keep their own private notions in their very own quarters, ma'am. I ain't all that pure. I've made all sorts of friends along the way, and one of 'em was that very Colorado gal of easy virtue I was speaking of back yonder. They called her Silver Heels up in hardrock country. Some say she was a miner's young widow, whilst others say she wound up doing what she had to do because some worthless rascal ran off and left her stranded in a mountain mining camp."

Ruby leaned closer, as if someone might overhear her above the clopping hoofbeats in the middle of a deserted street, as she told Longarm, "She was either out to punish herself, or punish some man who'd betrayed her former true nature, or she just plain liked it. Nobody can turn a gal wicked against her will, no matter how she might lie to you men afterwards."

Longarm noticed some thoughtful souls, likely old-time Mexicans, had planted cottonwood, or alamo as they called it, along either side of the wagon trace outside of town. Cottonwood grew fast, but he figured it had been planted a while back, judging by how the fluttering leaves of the overhead branches shaded clean across the road in places while providing at least dappled sunlight most everywhere else. He really liked thoughtful souls. So thinking back to how a soiled dove called Silver Heels had turned out, he told Ruby the bittersweet story of a sister in sin as they drove on through the uncertain light.

Silver Heels, so called for the silver heels of her dancing shoes because she refused to give her real name, had been making money hand over fist as the prettiest and some said friskiest whore in a mining camp that varied some with the teller of the tale. But everyone who told it, one way or another, agreed it was smallpox, breaking out in mid-winter when the trails were closed, that made things get grim as all hell. Some said there was no doc in town at all. Others said there might have been, but not unlike Norma Richards, he'd been overwhelmed by the plague, and so Silver Heels had pitched in alone to help. In either case, it had been that one lone whore, working round the clock serving soup and cleaning the fevered, pussy bodies of half the folks in camp, who'd saved the fifty or sixty percent who'd come through alive. So later on, the grateful miners had picked out a particularly pretty peak and named it Mount Silver Heels. Longarm assured this other good-natured whore, "There's no doubt about where Mount Silver Heels is today. You can find it on any large-scale map of Colorado."

"Where might the real Silver Heels be found today?" asked Ruby in a pensive tone.

Longarm shrugged. "Nobody knows. She just left the hardrock country with the smallpox and the next spring thaw. You hear some say she had to quit whoring because her pretty little face had been scarred up hideously by the pox she caught helping so many others fight off. Others say she married a miner who'd struck it so rich he could afford to keep her and her frisky favors all to himself. I've even heard tell that today the former Silver Heels is a respectable and highly respected young matron of Denver high society."

"What's the truth, Custis?" Ruby asked, as if she felt sure he'd know.

He did, and it was a sin to lie when you didn't have to. So he told her, "Let's just say her story had an ending a lady asked me not to tell anyone else. My point was that a nice gal is a nice gal, no matter what others may think of her."

Ruby told him he was awfully nice too, and snuggled closer as Longarm drove on through the dotted line of sunlight and shadows. When he suddenly reined in, Ruby sat up with a start to gaze all about and ask why. They'd passed the last corn milpas north of town, and the tree-shaded wagon trace was surrounded by spartina reeds to seaward and thickets of gumbo-limbo saplings on the higher ground to their left. When Ruby asked why they'd stopped, pointing out the Coast Guard station was almost in sight ahead, Longarm told her, "I know where we are. You could doubtless see the station from here if it wasn't for all those cottonwoods and the way this wagon trace curves just enough to follow the natural lay of the land. I'm a lot more concerned about the way we've just come. I thought I heard some other hoofbeats behind us. But when I reined in just now, somebody else might have too!"