Longarm 183 Longarm on the Fever Coast

She leaned out her side to peer back around the oilcloth cover, saying, "I don't see anybody, Custis. Even if I did, this is hardly a private road, is it?"

To which he replied more soberly, "Innocent travelers on a public thoroughfare don't stop at least two furlongs back when someone out ahead reins in. So let's see if we can skin this cat some other way."

She assumed they were going on to the nearby Coast Guard station when Longarm clucked the bay forward some more but kept a tighter hold on the ribbons to just walk them along the wagon trace a ways. Then, leaning out his own side first, he swung them off through the rank Bermuda grass between the cottonwood holes, apparently heading right at a solid wall of close-packed saplings.

She said, "Chocolate can't pull us through that tangle of second growth, Custis!"

He said, "I know. It ain't second growth. Gumbo-limbo never grows much bigger. It can't make up its mind whether it's a big bush or a small tree. Meanwhile, that ain't exactly where I'm heading."

Ruby grabbed hold of the top braces on her side as he suddenly swung them broadside to the wagon trace, headed back the way they'd just come. He was as surprised as she was by the unexpected gap in the gumbo-limbo they almost passed. But he still reined in and backed them into it before handing her the reins and saying, "Hold on whilst I shut the door."

So she did as Longarm slid between the carriage poles and the slick thin trunks of gumbo-limbo to ease back out in the open and, spotting nobody else in sight, quickly cut and gather a big light but awkward bundle of sea grape.

Sea grape wasn't related to real grapes. Folks called the seaside bush growing all along the gulf coast that because its big thick leaves looked remotely like grape leaves. Left to itself, the stuff seldom grew shoulder high. But Longarm was able to pile his severed sea grape canes in the opening he'd found in the gumbo-limbo to where somebody passing on the nearby wagon-trace might dismiss the small hideout as something that just wasn't worth reining in to study.

He took the ribbons back from Ruby, gave the bay enough slack to lower its muzzle to the lush blue-stem growing in the shady slot, then lowered the shay's oilcloth top as he explained, "I left us just enough room to watch, yon wagon trace over the tops of that piled brush. I want anybody coming along now to have to guess where even the tops of our heads might be."

She didn't complain. It was just as shady under the gumbolimbo branches arching overhead. She took off her sunbonnet and shook out her long dyed hair, saying, "I hope nobody ever comes along. It's so cool and, well... romantic in this little nook you found for us, you devil."

He removed his own hat to break up the pattern someone tailing them might be watching for. It was no accident that the Indians made the hand sign for a white man by holding a stiff palm across their brow. Currier and Ives would have it that the Indians with their hands like that were shading their eyes as they peered off in the distance for white folks. Folks who knew Indians better knew any Indian holding his hand like so had already spotted white folks. The way a white rider's hat brim divided his head between light and shadow was more obvious at a distance.

They sat hatless for a long time, and nothing seemed to be taking place on the wagon trace. Longarm was dying for some sleep or a smoke, in that order. Since neither seemed safe just then he said, "They must have figured where I was headed and fell back when I spooked 'em by reining in, as if I'd spotted 'em."

She sniffed and asked if he might not be taking a lot for granted, adding she was used to being followed some herself.

Longarm chuckled at the picture and assured her, "I'm sure I see why, Miss Ruby. But no offense, I figure the odds on a crook trailing me are greater than those for an admirer trailing a lady with an armed escort. To begin with, there's been a lot of such sinister trailing going on of late."

Since she seemed to care, he brought her up to date on his recent brushes with sinister strangers, having no call to hold back all that much. For as he'd told La Bruja around this time the day before, they hadn't sent him on any secret mission.

Once he'd told Ruby what he had been sent down this way to tend to, she said, "You're right. It's mysterious as hell. If someone was out to rescue that outlaw you were sent to fetch, wouldn't they do better going after the lawmen holding him before you ever got here?"

He repressed a yawn and said, "That's about the size of it. Marshal Vail never sent me down here to pester anybody else, and the Rangers in Corpus Christi agreed the two gunslicks I can account for by name ain't wanted state or federal. Not by those names, at any rate. So I'd say the mysterious mastermind offering money to have me back-shot has a mighty uneasy conscience and suspects I'm really on to him."

This time he couldn't help from yawning as he added, "I sure wish I knew what I'm supposed to have on him. So far two innocent bystanders, another nice gal and an innocent kid, have stopped bullets meant for me, and I'm commencing to feel mighty vexed!"

Ruby said, "I can see how anyone would. Tell me more about that Mex whore, La Bruja. You say she admitted she'd been offered money to do you dirty, Custis?"

He nodded but said, "Bruja stands for witch, not whore, and you might say she's more a doxy or outlaw gal than either. I suspect she operates something like an Anglo gal called Belle Starr, up north in the Cherokee Strip near Fort Smith. Gents on the dodge need places to stay, store their ill-gotten gains, and mayhaps swap mounts betwixt owlhoot adventures. Had La Bruja and her own gang wanted to do me dirty for that bounty on my fool head, she'd have had no call to tell me all about it and help me slip out of town on the sneak after dark, right?"

Ruby shrugged and replied, "I suppose not. What sort of a lay did you say this Mexican spitfire was, handsome?"

Longarm yawned some more and replied, "I never said. I never do. A man who'd talk dirty about a lady who's been nice to him would no doubt write dirty words on walls as well."

She insisted, "A lot of men do. I've been in the gents' room after visiting hours at my, ah... place of business. Is that why you'd rather fool with outlaw greaser gals than a white gal like me, Custis? I ain't been with a man since my last period, if that's what's stopping you!"

He laughed incredulously and declared, "For Pete's sake, we've pulled off the trail in broad daylight to find out who's been trailing us with possibly sinister intent!"

To which she demurely replied, "Pooh, nobody's coming on that old wagon trace, and I'd just love to come with you in this sweet old love nest you've brought me to, you big tease."

He fought back another yawn, knowing how cruel it might look to yawn at such a time, as he insisted, "There really was another pony trotting along under those infernal trees, Miss Ruby."

She began to unbutton her formatting calico bodice as she said, "I'm not calling you a fibber. As I told you before, some of us are wicked because we want to punish ourselves, whilst others are wicked because they want it, a lot. I lost track of how many lovers I had on the side before I decided it made more sense to just leave my old husband and get paid for what I enjoyed most. The poor dear I married young was rich as well as horny enough, at first. But I fear I'm just too warm-natured to ever settle down with one man. Do you think that makes me some sort of a freak, Custis?"

He answered honestly, "If you're a freak you've got plenty of company, Miss Ruby, albeit few are quite as honest about feelings a lot of us seem to feel. I like to tell myself I can't stay true to one particular gal because of the tumbleweed of occasions when I nearly got caught. I told myself, as well as the gal, that a man who packs a badge with my rep has no right to ask any lady to risk an early as well as likely widowhood, and I reckon I've really meant that more than once. But if the truth be told, I've always recovered from the wistful feeling of moving on."

She said she knew exactly what he meant, and added, "Let's get my lap robe out of the back and spread it on the grass in this sweet shade for some real sweet screwing!"

But he sighed and replied, "in tall, shaded grass, along the gulf coast after a rain, Miss Ruby? I can see you ain't been down this way long. They call 'em red bugs over near New Orleans and chiggers west of Galveston. By either name they bite like hell and itch way worse than mosquitos. There's one breed of red bug that burrows in under your nails and more delicate places to raise a rash that just won't quit. So take my advice and don't ever even spread a picnic blanket on the grass in a gumbo-limbo thicket, hear?"

Her form was popping out considerably now as she asked where, in that case, he wanted to screw her.

He gulped and started to point out he'd never asked to screw her anywhere. But he didn't want to sound like a sissy or, worse yet, a man who'd scorn a right nice-looking gal with one hell of a pair of naked tits. So he reeled her bare chest in against his thin shirt and kissed her on one ear as he muttered, "I've never found a better place than right betwixt a pretty lady's legs. But I hope it's understood I'd be aiding and abetting on duty if I was to offer money for any such favors."

She told him not to talk dirty, and added, "Does this one-horse shay look like a whorehouse, you stuck-up thing?"

So seeing she'd put it that way, he just peeled out of his own duds as she finished shucking her own, and laying her crossways on the leather seat with his own boots braced against a wheel and carriage shaft, stuck it to her as she thrust up to meet him, sobbing, "Oh, Lordy, just the way I like it! Just the way I needed it after washing off so many sick men's privates back there and not getting any for so many days and nights!"

He was glad he'd put his boots back on with just such purchase in mind. For there was much to be said for buggy riding when a man once got the hang of it, and as she gave it back to him with all the skill of a whore feeling really friendly, he surmised she'd done it in this very shay before.

But he never asked. It was her idea to note he acted as if he hadn't been in that Mexican gal after all. She was biting down hard with her innards as she husked, "You screw like a cowhand who's been out on the trail for months with nobody but his hand to put it in. Do you mind if I jerk my clit off whilst you prong me, honey? You do that so much better than your average horny cowhand, and I want to come a couple of times while I have your undivided attention!"

He grunted, "They asked the Prophet Mohammed about jerking off one time. He allowed he didn't see how it could be all that sinful, since nine out of ten folks did it and that tenth one was a liar."

So she laughed like a mean little kid, and slid her hand down between their bare bellies to strum her old banjo while Longarm shoved his own more sensitive parts as far up inside her as he could. So a great time was had by all, and when he asked Ruby how come she'd started crying at the end, she said it was because he'd kissed her on the mouth as she was coming. He started to say he never screwed anyone he found too disgusting to kiss. But upon reflection he felt that might sound sort of rude. So he just kissed her some more and confided he'd been coming too.

That inspired her to get on top, facing the other way so she could brace her high-buttoned heels on the floorboard and really bounce for him with her hands braced on her own knees while Longarm steadied her with a friendly grip on each bare hip. She allowed there was no need for her to strum herself anymore, now that he'd made her feel so womanly inside. He knew she was working harder to pleasure a pal when she peered back over her bare shoulder and confided, "As a rule I charge double to take it up my back door. But I'm not asking you for anything but... well, the nice way you treat a girl, if you want to shoot in my ass this time."

He'd been admiring the view of his love-slicked shaft going in and out of her regular entrance, which had light blond instead of mock red hair by the way. So he thrust up to meet a downstroke as he told her, "I'm doing fine, unless you really like it in your corn hole, honey."

She shook her mock red head and replied, "It doesn't feel good or bad back there, once you get it all the way in. I just knew some men like to do that to a gal and, well, I like you, Custis!"

He said he liked her too just the way she was. So she giggled and commenced to really slide on up and down his old organ-grinder as he lay back and enjoyed her efforts. Poor old Lenore Colbert on that steamer coming north the other night had had ash-blond hair as well as a pussy she'd never really gotten to use like this. He found himself picturing that half-sated erection sliding in and out of that Boston virgin, and it felt pretty convincing with another gal's back to him as he rose to the occasion in her pussy with the light blond hair. But then Ruby shattered the illusion by declaring, "Oh, yes, I can tell you really like me and it makes me feel so grand to please you this way!"

Then she popped off, turned around, and swayed the shay under them alarmingly, before she dropped to her knees on the floorboards and kissed the turgid head of his aroused erection, cooing, "I want you to come where you weren't too proud to stick your tongue, darling!"

So he forgave her for not looking at all like the late Lenore as she proceeded to bob her mock red head up and down, taking him to the roots in a French sword swallow till he gasped "Jeeezusss!" and shot a wad he hadn't known he'd been saving somewhere on the far side of her tonsils.

He had to beg for mercy as she kept on swallowing, the rings of her deep throat rippling wetly up and down his shaft as she sucked every drop out of him.

So he was mighty tempted when she finally raised her head from his lap with a roguish grin, purring, "That was lovely. Would you like to take a nap with your head in Mamma's lap before we drive on? It's hot as hell out there right now, and you did say you hadn't had any sleep lately, didn't you?"

He reached for his boots, to take them off so he could put his jeans back on, saying, "Lord love you, Miss Ruby, I was already tired, and now I feel as if I could sleep for a month without getting up once to piss. But we'd best drive on anyways."

She sat straighter, stark naked above her garters, proud breasts heaving with emotion as she demanded, "Why? Don't you trust me not to betray you to the Philistines in your sleep?"

The thought had in fact occurred to him. He'd run into latter-day Delilahs before, and barely come out better than that other lawman, Samson, in the Good Book. But he just said he had to make sure his fellow deputy and their prisoner were all right before he lay his own head down for forty winks.

"You men are all alike!" she suddenly blazed. "I just took it in my mouth for you and you still think I'm a dirty bitch out to lift your wallet!"

When he said he thought no such thing, she demanded he prove it by laying his head right down in her lap or getting his ass right out of her private shay. So in the end, Longarm wound up walking the last couple of furlongs to that Coast Guard station to the north.

CHAPTER 10

He ran out of shade as the tree-lined wagon trace passed by the shell-paved cutoff leading across salt marsh and dune to the Coast Guard station they'd built on a finger of somewhat higher ground that pointed accusingly out to sea. As he approached the cluster of whitewashed frame buildings wrapped around a small parade ground, with a listless Revenue Service flag hanging high on its whitewashed staff, Longarm saw the place was smaller than he'd been expecting. It was about the size of a one-troop army outpost in Apacheria. There was nothing tied up to the one pier running out to deeper water in the coastal lagoon. So he wasn't surprised to see how quiet things were as he strode on to the gate in the four-strand bobwire perimeter. Aside from it being siesta time, a lot of the more important officers and men had to be out to sea aboard their steam cutter in the wake of that storm.

The U.S. Coast Guard was a branch of the Treasury Department instead of the Navy. But the sentry who challenged him at the gate wore a regular sailor suit of summer white with those leggings all sailors wore, for some reason, when they were ashore with rifles and cartridge belts. As Longarm showed the kid his badge and identification, he asked if those blamed leggings didn't itch in all this heat. The Coast Guardsman only sighed, and said he'd been told to expect someone from the Justice Department, adding Longarm would find the officer of the day at the headquarters building near the pier. Longarm didn't ask why they expected him to go there first.

It was considered polite as well as sensible to check in with the local law before you made any arrests in a strange town.

It felt like a day's forced march under that ferocious afternoon sun before he made it at last to the shady veranda running the full length of the freshly painted headquarters building. A junior grade lieutenant, equal to a first lieutenant in the army, came out of a doorway down the veranda in dress whites to tell Longarm they'd been starting to worry about him. As they shook hands, he introduced himself as a Lieutenant Junior Grade Devereaux, and said his boss, Lieutenant Flynn, was out chasing boys--or so it seemed to Longarm until he realized the young officer meant buoys, those floating markers they put out across the lagoon to show steamer pilots where to go.

As Devereaux led him inside Longarm remarked, "I can see how your C.O. would be anxious about channels and such after that storm along this coast, But that reminds me of something I was meaning to ask you all. Studying the map along my way up here from Brownsville, I noticed that big old Padre Island off to the east blocks this part of your big lagoon from the open gulf So vessels putting in from the high seas can only enter the long lagoon well north of here."

The officer of the day motioned Longarm to a wicker chair by the big oak desk he was holding down for his superior and dinged a bell on it as he agreed. "Corpus Christi Pass. What's your question?"

Longarm replied, "What you're doing down here instead of up yonder, where you might be able to guard this big lagoon better, no offense."

Devereaux said, "None taken. You're not the first landsman who's asked me about that. We're not the Navy. We're the Coast Guard. Our mission here is to maintain channel buoys through a stretch of shifting grounds and watch for shifty smaller vessels than the Navy might be worried about. You've no idea how many places there are for smugglers or even pirates to put in along an almost deserted coast facing a monstrous sheltered lagoon!"

Longarm didn't have to answer for the moment as an orderly the lieutenant had obviously sent for refreshments when Longarm had been crossing the parade ground came in with a tray. As he put it on the desk and popped to attention, Longarm saw he'd brought a fifth of Bombay gin, a soda-water syphon, and a couple of tall glasses packed to their brims with chopped ice. Longarm didn't notice the small pill box before Devereaux dismissed the orderly and picked it up, saying "The British Navy's found it pays to stick to gin and tonic in the tropics. But quinine seems an acquired taste, so..."

"I only take medicine when I'm feeling poorly," Longarm said. "I ain't so sure about that ice either, this close to Old Mexico and the bellyaches that go with unboiled water down this way."

Devereaux smiled as he poured tall drinks, with and without the tonic, saying, "We get our ice at cost from Pryce & Doyle in town. They've assured us they boil all the water they put in their ice machine. As a matter of fact they furnish shops and even homes in Escondrijo with the clean modern ice they manufacture as a sideline to their meat packing."

Longarm reached for his own glass as he said, "I've seen their imposing packing plant. I'll take your word they know what they're up to down this way. What I really came out here to talk about was U.S. Deputy Marshall Gilbert and our federal prisoner, Clay Baldwin. I understand you've got 'em both out here?"

Devereaux nodded. "Young Gilbert's in our sick bay, on orders of that federal germ chaser, Miss Richards. He seems to be feeling better, but Miss Richards says he's to stay in bed until she feels sure he won't run another fever, and she ought to know."

Longarm nodded, sipped the drink cautiously, tired as he already felt, and said, "I heard you've had some of that fever out this way as well. Where are you holding Baldwin, in your brig?"

Devereaux sounded reasonable as ever as he replied, "We've gotten off much lighter than they have in town. The skipper thinks it might be because of our more healthful location. Baldwin's being held in solitary confinement on bread and water, pending your arrival."

That didn't sound so reasonable to Longarm. The tall deputy put his barely tasted drink down and rose to his considerable height as he grimly asked, "After a bout of a killing fever? Who ordered a diet of piss and punk for my sick prisoner?"

Devereaux sighed. "Don't look at me. Lieutenant Flynn ordered him placed in solitary confinement after Baldwin called him a seagoing sissy who sat down to piss."

Longarm smiled thinly at the picture. "I'll have him in leg irons if he talks that way to me on the way back to Colorado. In the meanwhile, the man's been dangerously sick and I want him at least on a cot with some solid grub in him. I'm going to have to borrow a government mount off you, which I'll naturally sign for, and it's my understanding I'll find my own Winchester, saddle, and possibles out here, where Doc Richards had 'em brought from town."

Devereaux looked unhappy. "I'm afraid we can't let you into the quarters set aside for Miss Richards before she comes back from that fever ward she's set up in town. She usually has supper out here in the officers' mess just after retreat."

Longarm nodded. "I want her to look at both Gilbert and our prisoner before I carry either into town in any case. So let's get back to getting Baldwin out of that solitary cell and wrapping him around some solid rations!"

Devereaux almost pleaded, "I can't! Lieutenant Flynn left me here to see his standing orders were carried out, not to countermand them in his absence! He'd have me before the mast for mutiny! You have to understand that Lieutenant Flynn runs a taut ship here!"

The collections of whitewashed buildings in a glorified sandbox wasn't Longarm's notion of any ship, but he saw the position the kid was in. So he asked when the ferocious Lieutenant Flynn was expected back, and when Devereaux said likely by sundown, Longarm said, "Reckon Baldwin and my old McClellan can last that long without me. I'd like to see Deputy Gilbert now."

The lieutenant rang that bell on the desk some more, and that orderly came in looking taut as ever. Devereaux told the enlisted man to show their guest to the sick bay. So it only took a few minutes, and then Longarm was alone with the pale but cheerful enough Rod Gilbert from his own outfit.

Gilbert was barely out of his teens, but according to Billy Vail, a high school graduate as well as a good shot. The department had sure gotten fancy since President Hayes had started cleaning up the federal establishment old Free and Easy Grant had left all covered with cigar ash, informal hiring practices, and graft.

Longarm sat on the steel sprung cot next to Gilbert's, noting the two of them seemed to have the eight-cot sick bay all to themselves. So as soon as he asked Gilbert how he felt he said, "They told me at least a few old boys out here came down with the same mysterious fever, Rod. So what are you doing out here alone?"

Gilbert said, "That lady sawbones, Miss Norma, wanted to carry me in to her fever ward with the rest of 'em. I said I had to stay out here and guard our prisoner. So she allowed it might be all right, seeing she's been eating and sleeping out this way."

Longarm found himself fighting back a yawn as he growled, "You ain't been guarding Baldwin worth shit if you've let 'em put a sick man on piss and punk just for sassing a fool officer! Did you know about that by the way?"

Gilbert nodded soberly. "I told 'em they had no right to punish a civilian outlaw for busting their Coast Guard rules. But they said I'd placed Baldwin under Coast Guard discipline when I asked 'em to hold him in their brig for me, and damn it, I don't know where they've hid my boots and side arm!"

Longarm yawned wider and said, "I want Doc Richards to look at you before the three of us shoot our way out of here. Lord, I don't know why I feel so sleepy this afternoon. When you say they, are you jawing about they in general, or that Lieutenant Flynn they all seem so scared of for some reason?"

Gilbert said, "They got plenty of reason to be scared of Flynn. He don't yell like Billy Vail. One strike and you're out with that old boy. He's been polite enough to me, I got to say, but they do say he goes by the book and you'd best pay heed to every comma if you want to keep wearing your rating around here. They say he sends 'em to the brig if they forget to cross a T or dot an I."

Longarm let that go for the moment. In his own army days he'd had less trouble with officers who went by the book, as long as they always went by the book, than those assholes who cracked jokes with you one minute and expected you to fetch and carry for 'em the next. He repeated his question about the need for a Coast Guard brig to begin with, and Gilbert said, "Baldwin's crazy-mean and to tell the truth, I didn't think much of either the town lockup or the town law when I first arrived. They said Baldwin was sick. He looked more like a mad dog to me, and I got the feeling they were scared of him. I know I was scared of the half-ass cell they had him in. Brick wall betwixt him and the alley out back, for Christ's sake!"

Longarm said, "I noticed. Old Constable Purvis didn't seem too scared of anybody, albeit now that you mention it, it's sort of unusual for an arresting officer to be so disinterested in a prisoner. I know we had more exciting things to talk about, but looking back, it should have struck me odd that he never bragged at all about him or his boys catching an owlhoot rider on the run!"

Gilbert said, "I can answer that one. They never caught him. They bragged they had in that wire to Billy Vail. But if the truth be known, Clay Baldwin was in town over a month, drinking and whoring in plain view under his own given name. Nobody in town seemed to give a shit till I reckon old Clay run low on money and took to acting even worse."

As Longarm got out a couple of cheroots and his new Mexican matches, Gilbert explained. "It wasn't in that wire to us, but what they say really happened was that old Clay tried to sell some stolen stock to that meat-packing outfit in town. Reckon he figured a side of beef was a side of beef to anyone out to make a profit on it. But he figured wrong. Pryce & Doyle naturally have to be on good terms with the few big cattle spreads in these parts. So they naturally frowned upon Baldwin's business methods when they recognized those local brands on stock he said he'd just trailed down from San Antone!"

Longarm laughed as he lit both their smokes, saying, "I get the picture. I hear Pryce & Doyle use clean water in their ice machine as well. So they turned Baldwin in and... hold on, he trailed even a small herd of stolen cows any distance at all alone?"

Gilbert shook his head. "He won't tell us nothing. He's a total hardcase professional who don't give an inch. But I agree it's tough to cut and herd cows all alone. Why did you think I was so worried about that thin-walled lockup in town?"

Gilbert enjoyed a drag of smoke, let it out, and went on. "They say an indefinite number of riders stayed off to the south in a lot with the herd after dark, whilst Baldwin went into the meat packer's office to settle on a price. His gang just lit out when Baldwin never came back. He never came back because an elderly gent Baldwin took for a sissy bookkeeper threw down on him with a Walker Colt and sent an office boy to fetch Constable Purvis. The braver civilian, who was really Mister Doyle in the flesh, asked Purvis to posse up and ride after the others. But Purvis never did."

Longarm blew a thoughtful smoke ring and said, "He didn't seem so anxious to posse up after a kid got shot in the head in town this morning, come to study on it. I took it at the time as common sense. Maybe it was. But I follow your drift about Baldwin being a tad more secure out here."

He yawned again, snubbed out his barely smoked cheroot, and said, "I ain't sure solitary confinement makes him tougher for his pals to bust out, if that's who's been shooting at me lately. I know bread and water ain't what Doc Richards would prescribe for a recovering fever victim, if he's recovered worth shit. Meanwhile, as the song says, farther along we'll know more about it. If I gave you my gun do you reckon you could guard me from assassination whilst I caught at least an hour's sleep?"

Gilbert nodded, but as Longarm stood to remove his hat and gun rig told him, "You can catch three or four, if you like. They don't serve supper around here before they blow horns and lower the flag around sundown. Miss Norma ain't never got back any earlier."

He might have said more. But Longarm closed his eyes before he'd finished flopping atop the covers of the empty cot, and the next thing he knew it seemed old Ruby had forgiven him after all. So he hauled her down atop him and kissed her good before he noticed she had a far bigger left tit and had pulled back mighty quickly while somewhere in the gloom young Gilbert seemed to be laughing like hell.

Then Longarm got his bearings, smiled sheepishly up at the red-faced Norma Richards, and said, "Sorry, ma'am. I thought you were somebody else."

Norma was flustered. "That seems obvious! I was only bending over to feel your brow. Your Deputy Gilbert here seems well enough to laugh like a hyena, if not fit to lead a charge uphill. I just came from the brig. But they wouldn't let me in to check on Mister Baldwin. They say he's to stay locked up alone until he learns better manners. Can they do that to even a rude civilian, Custis?"

Longarm swung his boots to the floor and held out his hand to Gilbert for his gun rig as he growled, "No. But it may take some convincing. They wouldn't let me at the Winchester you stored away for me out here either. Do you reckon I could have it now?"

Gilbert chortled, "Hot damn! Are we going to bust him out at gunpoint, pard?"

Longarm said, "Nope. I want you to stay here. Miss Norma and me are only going to feed him and take his temperature if the Coast Guard knows what's good for it."

He strapped on his gun, put on his hat, and told Norma he was ready whenever she was.

The Junoesque bacteriologist led the way, but told him she hoped he wasn't serious about armed conflict with the U.S. Coast Guard, as they strode along the veranda of the long building. He said it wasn't for him to say. It was up to them whether they wanted to let him at his own confounded federal prisoner or not.

They got to the last door down, and Norma unlocked it with a key from an apron pocket. It was dark inside with the sun way down in the western sky. But there was enough tiger-stripe light coming in through the jalousie shutters for him to make out his McClellan at the foot of the bedstead where she'd draped it over the rail. The walnut stock of his Winchester '73 saddle gun stood somewhat higher. So he hauled it from its boot and told her, "You'd best wait here a few minutes. If you don't hear shooting within ten, come on over to the brig. You'll know they let me in without a war."

She got between him and the door, pleading, "Please don't fight them, Custis. That horrid outlaw just isn't worth it. I'd tell you what he said to me the last time I tried to examine him, but you do seem mad enough already!"

He told her politely but firmly, "I ain't looking for no fight. I already knew Clay Baldwin was a worthless skunk. They sent me to bring him and young Gilbert back. They never said they wanted either of 'em dead. So stand aside and give me ten, like I said, if you don't want me grabbing you by that swell tit again."

It worked. She crawfished out of his way, blushing like a rose as she told him he was horrid. So he just strode on out, levering a round in the chamber of his Winchester as he crossed the parade with the weapon held at port.

They must have expected something like that at the guard post to the north. A chief petty officer and eight guardsmen wearing leggings, S.P. armbands, and Spencer repeaters seemed to be lined up between him and his intended goal.

Longarm stopped at easy pistol range to proclaim, "I'd be U.S. Deputy Marshal Custis Long, and I understand you're holding my own sweet federal prisoner in that brig behind YOU."

The C.P.O., who stood almost as tall and twice as wide as Longarm, replied in a politely firm tone, "We are, and that's where he's to remain until Lieutenant Flynn says different."

Longarm replied, just as firmly if not as politely, "I don't aim to take him off with me without your C.O.'s official release in writing. I only want to make sure he leaves here alive, and I understand you as much as told his attending physician to go jump in the lagoon."

The burly Coast Guard noncom chuckled wistfully and replied, "I'd be proud to go swimming with a gal built so swell. But that ain't what we suggested. We only told her the lieutenant told us the prisoner's to have one jar of water and two slices of white bread per diem, and no visitors until further notice."

Longarm said, "Damn it. Nobody wants to visit with the son of a bitch. I want to question him and Doc Richards wants to take his damn temperature!"

The C.P.O. nodded. "She already told us. We ain't trying to be mean to nobody, Deputy. It's just that we got orders and, well, orders are orders, see?"

Longarm said, "I got my orders too. So would you kindly order your men out of my way and unlock the damned door before somebody gets hurt?"

The C.P.O. laughed incredulously. "We heard they were sending a famous gunfighter of the civilian persuasion, Longarm. Do you really think you can get by my pistol and eight rifles with one saddle gun?"

Longarm shrugged modestly and said, "I got this six-gun at my side as well, and this Winchester fires fifteen times before I have to reload it. So make your point."

It got sort of quiet as the sun sank lower and a color guard came marching out across the parade behind Longarm's back. Then a distant female voice called out, "Custis! Stop that! That steam cutter just tied up out at the end of the pier and Lieutenant Flynn will be ashore any minute!"

Longarm and the burly N.C.O. stared silently at one another for a time. Then the Coast Guardsman said, "We ain't backing down. But this does seem a dumb time to settle it the noisy way."

Longarm replied, "Great minds seem to run in the same channels. So I reckon we'll never know who'd have won, unless your lieutenant is a really dedicated asshole."

To which the C.P.O. replied with a surprisingly boyish laugh, "Oh, I know who'd have won, and be it recorded it was your idea, not mine, to call Lieutenant Flynn an asshole."

Some of the others were grinning in the sunset's red rays as behind him they started to lower the flag. So Longarm turned about on one heel to remove his hat and stand at attention with the cocked Winchester down to one side, sincerely hoping he might not have to gun any of those nice kids.

CHAPTER 11

Longarm had been braced for a seagoing version of a pompous army officer he'd knocked down one time. But Lieutenant Flynn, who'd have been a captain in the army, turned out to be a sandy-haired and politely poker-faced cuss with eyes the same shade of gray as two oysters on the half shell going stale.

When Norma Richards brought him over, Flynn said it was jake with him if they wanted to listen to Clay Baldwin cuss. As that C.P.O. opened up, the lieutenant said he'd have the mess attendants save his civilian guests some supper, and turned away to go eat his own.

Longarm forgave the Coast Guard a lot when he finally got in to Baldwin's solitary cell with Norma and a lamp. Clay Baldwin didn't look like an owlhoot rider wanted for murder and grand larceny. He looked like some actor made up for the part of the village idiot in his ill-fitting duds and half-sprouted beard. As they entered, Baldwin leered at Norma and asked her, "Been getting any pronging of late, Chubby? If you ain't, I got eight inches I'd just love to have you skin for me with your tight little twat!"

Longarm snapped, "Knock it off, Baldwin. I ain't gonna say that twice."

Baldwin grinned lewdly. "Aw, have I insulted your own play-pretty, Uncle Sam? Don't worry. I ain't greedy. You can have my sloppy seconds after I show her what a real man has to offer."

And then he was flat on his ass in a far corner with a split lip as Longarm rubbed his knuckles thoughtfully and muttered, "Next time you get kicked. Guess where."

So Baldwin mentioned his balls in front of a lady, and howled like a kicked pup when Longarm kicked him there as promised.

Norma gasped, "For heaven's sake, can't you see he's crazy? Don't mistreat him further on my account. You should hear what some men call me when they're delirious with fever back in town!"

Longarm said, "This one ain't feverish. He's what we call a jail house lawyer. what's misled him about what we can or can't do to a federal prisoner. Are you listening to me, you poor misled or just plain stupid rascal?"

Holding himself by the balls with both legs drawn up as he lay on one side on the concrete, Baldwin whimpered, "Damn it, Longarm, you ain't allowed to torture me. It says so in the Constitution!"

Longarm smiled down at him and replied, not unkindly, "Try sassing Judge Dickerson of the Denver District Court, once I get you back to him, if you'd like to see some cruel and unusual punishment. Are you ready to act like a grown man now, or would you like me to hold you down while the doc here gives you an enema for your own good?"

Norma blushed like hell, but laughed and declared, "I think that's a grand idea, Custis. Anyone can see this wayward youth is full of shit!"

So Clay Baldwin allowed he'd as soon behave more properly, and never said anything dirty as Norma took his pulse and temperature, hunkered down beside him in a way that surely made her white skirt tight across her ample but shapely behind.

Longarm waited until Norma took the thermometer out and said he didn't seem to be running a fever now, before he told the mean-eyed cuss, "I'll see you get a decent supper tonight. You'll eat the same as Gilbert and me on the way back to Denver. Whether you ride all the way in leg irons and cuffs or just cuffs is up to you. For as I hope you understand by now, I treat a prisoner no better or no worse than he asks me to."

Baldwin said sullenly he'd only been funning and didn't want to stand trial back in Colorado all busted up. So Longarm nodded and said, "Bueno. Neither you nor Deputy Gilbert will be called upon to do much more than sit as we work our way home by boat and train. So let's hope Gilbert's as frisky as you come morning, and we might be on our way."

When Baldwin didn't argue, Longarm added, "One more thing, though. I've been having repeated problems with some pals of yours, Clay. Hamp Godwynn and Squint Reynolds are both dead."

Baldwin stared thoughtfully up at Longarm, shrugged, and asked, "Am I supposed to cry? Never heard of either of 'em. You say you gunned 'em?"

"Only Reynolds," Longarm modestly replied. "A Ranger got Godwynn up to Corpus Christi. I don't care how you feel about anyone out there in the dark. My point is that should anyone make any try at taking you away from Gilbert and me on the way out of here, you have my word you'll be among the first to die. Doc Richards here can assure you a really determined cuss can get off more than one good shot with a bullet in his heart. Ain't that right, Doc?"

Norma swallowed and declared, "Some people can remain conscious for as long as four minutes after heart failure. Don't hold me to how rational anyone might feel full of bullets!"

Longarm smiled grimly and said, "There you go, Clay. A bright boy like you ought to see the odds are better in court than in the company of a mighty unrational but highly annoyed cuss holding a gun on you!"

Baldwin wiped his bloody lip with the back of one sleeve as he insisted, "I don't know what you're jawing about. I told the boys I might have herded some stock out for parts unknown if I didn't come back with some money poco tiempo. You know I got double-crossed and turned over to the law. I don't know which way the others rode. We planned to split up with just such a conversation as this one in mind. I couldn't find a one of 'em now if I rode out after 'em myself. But I will say I'd be surprised to find any of 'em anywheres near Escondrijo now!"

Longarm said, "I might take your word on that if you could explain what you meant by a double cross. Are you saying you had reason to feel Pryce & Doyle might be in the market for stolen beef?"

Baldwin snorted, "Why, no, I always sell stolen property where I suspect they might call the law on me! Of course I was told that meat-packing outfit sent cold-storage meat to market with neither hides nor brands in evidence! But when I sashayed in to talk money with that prissy Mister Doyle... Hell, Longarm, you know the rest of my sad story."

Longarm said, "No, I don't. You never said who told you Pryce & Doyle bought stolen beef on the hoof. Would you care to illuminate me on that?"

Baldwin hesitated and then said, "Well, lots of greasers are called... Chino. So I reckon it won't hurt to admit it was one of the boys I met here in Texas, the lying son of a never mind."

Longarm cocked a brow and demanded, "Chino, or might it have been Gordo? I've a good reason to ask."

But Baldwin insisted he'd heard Pryce & Doyle peddled stolen beef from another drifter called Chino, and he was right about that being a common enough Mex nickname. So Longarm turned to Norma and suggested they go see about some supper. But she insisted on hauling out some gauze and hunkering down by the prisoner again, observing that his lip should have stopped bleeding by this time if it meant to without any help. So Baldwin allowed, and Longarm agreed, she wasn't such a bad old gal after all.

She was curious as well, asking question after question as they supped together alone in the wardroom after she'd paid another call on young Gilbert and declared him weak but likely on his way to recovery.

As they supped on officer's fare, in this case steak and mashed potatoes with cabbage, Longarm answered her questions until he got tired of talking in circles. "Sure he did," Miss Norma. The man's dishonest by definition. Hardly anyone else knew I was on my way down here, even before that storm blew the telegraph lines down. The gunslicks I've nailed down as dead facts seem cut from the same outlaw cloth as Baldwin. There must have been more than two in his gang if they cut out enough stolen beef to matter. So that'd account for some leftover and even more cowardly sniping."

She poured some canned cream in her coffee, asking if he'd like some before she mentioned that Mexican angle again.

He said, "No, thanks. I like mine black, and I mean to question a Mex called Gordo before our boat leaves, when and if we can book our passage out. It works more than one way. A man running a shop next door to a meat packer might know better than most whether they were crooks or not. But why would anyone tell saddle tramps they could sell beef on the hoof there if he knew they couldn't?"

She suggested, "What if he wanted to see them arrested?"

Longarm replied, "I just said that. Only Gordo would know for certain, if he had anything at all to do with it. There's nothing I can do about that tonight. How are we coming with your mysterious plague in town, Miss Norma?"

She sighed and said, "I feel like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, running fast as I can to stay in one place. You were awfully sweet to put me to bed like that this morning, by the way. I felt ever so much better after just a few hours of rest and it's just as well. That naughty Ruby seems to have quit on us for reasons of her own, while that Mexican girl, Consuela, seems to be turning into a great little nurse. She's been a godsend with our Spanish-speaking victims, and we seem to be getting more of them now."

The mess attendant they'd sent to the brig with Baldwin's pork and beans came back to ask if they were ready for dessert. As soon as he went into the kitchen, Longarm said, "I've been studying on that fever going round. It reminds me of an ague they were having down Mexico way when I was tracking another owlhoot rider sort of unofficially. It was up on the central mesa in late fall. They were holding that festival they call the Day of the Dead as I recall. Nobody I was interested in at the time came down with anything. It was just something you heard folks talking about as they ran all over town acting spooky in skull masks, eating candy skulls and such. They seemed to feel it was unusual to have chills and fever going around at such a time and place."

She sipped her weaker coffee thoughtfully, then mused, "Late autumn in such high, dry country doesn't go too well with the usual outbreaks of ague or malaria. You're certain the victims suffered alternate bouts of high fever and night sweats, followed by aches, pains, shivering, and feelings of utter misery?"

He nodded. "That's about the size of it. Hold it, I think they called it something like malted fever. Like I said, I had other things on my mind at the time."

Norma frowned down at her empty plate. "Malta or Mediterranean fever won't work, I'm afraid. It's true the symptoms are much the same. But you were so right about it being confined to Old Mexico."

He asked, "Is there any law saying a sick Mex suffering this Malta ague couldn't jump the border some dark and windy night to spread it up our way like the pox?"

She sighed. "There is. We've yet to isolate the exact microbe causing Malta fever, but we know it's not transmitted from one human being to another. It's a livestock plague, like hoof-and-mouth. It's endemic to Latin America, like hoof-and-mouth, and so it can stay there the same way. You know no Mexican stock is allowed north of the border unless it's been inspected a lot. The repeated inspections make it hardly worth the effort of trying to compete with beef raised on this side of the border, Custis."

He tried some black coffee. It was good. He said, "I could tell you a tale of cows crossing borders along an outlaw route called the Laredo Loop. But let's stick to real puzzles. How could a human come down with a cow ague if humans can't pass it on to one another?"

She smiled across the table at him. "From cows, of course. We're not sure how cows, goats, hogs, and other cloven-hoofed creatures pass Malta fever back and forth. But they do, at least in Mexico and the Mediterranean basin it originated in. Infected stock doesn't seem to suffer quite as much from it, which doubtless keeps it spreading throughout Latin America from some unknown port of entry. Humans somehow catch it from infected stock, and either die or slowly recover from an intermittent fever a lot like the one we've been having up this way. But it can't be Malta fever, Custis!"

He asked, "Why can't it? Because you mean to stamp your pretty foot and say so three times?"

She smiled wearily. "I see you read Alice in Wonderland too. I'll have to read up on Malta fever. At least it's possible, if you can show me someone running infected stock all the way up from Old Mexico. Cows infected with Malta fever don't run so well, and we're at least a hundred miles from the nearest crossing, right?"

Longarm nodded. "About a week's drive, not counting at least some driving to the border from further south. How do you go about catching the fever from some infected cow, Miss Norma?"

She said nobody knew, then gasped, "My God. Clay Baldwin did come down with some fever, after he drove some purloined stock into Escondrijo, just before the town's fever broke out!"

Longarm said, "I noticed. But everybody keeps telling us Baldwin and his boys stole the stock from somewhere closer. How are you at cross-country riding, and can you tell when a critter instead of a human being is coming down with any sort of ague?"

She replied, "I guess I ride all right. I'm not sure how you can ask a cow how it feels. I might be able to diagnose a really sick one, though. What's the plan?"

He finished his coffee. "I got to arrange steamer passage out with the telegraph wires still dead. So I'd best ride back to town early, leaving Gilbert and Baldwin out here for the time being. So seeing I got to ride anyways, I figured I'd get an early start and get there a tad later, after swinging wide across the higher cow country just to the west. I want to ask about the brands that meat packer spotted on Baldwin's stolen herd. If you'd care to tag along, you might want to ask how many cows have been feeling poorly in the last few weeks or months."

She grinned like a kid who'd been invited along to swipe apples. "I have the pony and sidesaddle I hired in the stable beyond the brig. When do we start?"

He said, "Crack of dawn. Texas rancheros either shoot at you or insist on feeding you something when you come visiting after sunrise. Show up at this hour and they're more likely to just shoot."

She rose from the table, saying, "If we aim to ride out before breakfast, we'd better turn in early. The lift I got from that nap in town is already wearing off."

He got to his own feet and they went outside. He naturally had to escort a lady across the parade ground in the gathering dusk. So Norma just took his arm without comment, and he had no call to discuss his other plans for the evening with her.

He had to ask the O.D. or somebody where they wanted him to turn in. If push came to shove, he figured he could flop in that empty cot next to Gilbert's again. He wanted to talk some more to Gilbert as well as the officers still up in the wardroom. For while a fairly clear picture was starting to form, there were still some fuzzy details some damned body might have some answers to.

They got back to Norma's door at the end of the officers' quarters' veranda. He didn't expect her to invite him in, and he hadn't taken her to a paid-for supper and vaudeville show. So he figured he'd better not try to kiss her good night, no matter how tempting she was smelling in the balmy night air. So he was more than surprised when it was Norma who hauled him on inside and husked, "Don't strike a match. We don't need any lamplight, and I'd as soon not have anyone gossiping about us, Custis."

Before he could ask what there might be to gossip about she was on tiptoe against him, kissing him in a far from motherly way. So there was plenty to gossip about as soon as he'd swept her up in his arms and carried her over to the bed.

But as he lowered her Junoesque form to the bedspread Longarm felt it only fair to murmur, "You did hear me say I'm fixing to pay three passages south on the next coastal steamer, didn't you?"

She murmured back, "I did, and I'll be headed the other way as soon as they repair the telegraph and I can wire for a real medical team to fight that plague. Did you think I'd be this bold with any man if I thought we had time for the usual flowers, books, and candy?"

So seeing she seemed to share some of his own ideas on grabbing life's few brass rings while the merry-go-round was still going, he just helped her out of her white linens, shucked his own duds, and took her up on her fine offer.

She hissed in mingled anxiety and pleasure as he spread her big thighs and entered her tighter-than-usual but unusually hairy ring-dang-do. The nice thing about gals with big firm butts was that you didn't need to shove a pillow under them to ride just right in their love saddle. She seemed to think they fit together just right too. She commenced to move under him with a skill that belied her girlish remarks about never having met a man so big before. He felt no call to swear she was his first and only. So he just got an elbow under each of her plump knees and proceeded to pound her good as she moaned, "Oh, Jesus! Yes! But I'm not going to fall in love again! I'm not! I'm not! I'm just going to fuck like a rabbit till I can't fuck you anymore, you lovely fucking machine!"

But that wasn't what they were doing a half hour later, according to the orderly who reported in to Lieutenant Flynn, hit a brace, and barely managed not to grin as he said, "Begging the lieutenant's pardon, that civilian lawman you sent me to escort to his guest quarters doesn't seem to need any... of his own."

Flynn stared up from his desk thoughtfully and coldly replied, "Don't beat around the bush with me, Yeoman. Whose quarters did you find him in, if not the ones I just assigned him? There's only one woman on this post and... are you sure?"

The orderly said, "Ay, ay, sir. They couldn't see me as listened through her jalousie slats to make sure. I didn't know she had company, of course, before I heard them in passing as I was searching for that deputy as the lieutenant ordered."

Flynn smiled slightly, a rare sight in the yeoman's experience, and asked, "You're certain she hadn't just invited him in for, say, a nightcap, Yeoman?"

His informant said simply, "Begging the lieutenant's pardon, it sounded like she was sucking him off. Would the lieutenant like me to call out the guard now?"

Flynn shook his sandy head without hesitation and purred, "Belay that. They're both civilians, albeit both federal employees. So why don't we give them all the rope they want, and report them to their own superiors as soon as those damned wires are back up."

CHAPTER 12

So a good time was had by all, and Norma said it was a good thing she was riding sidesaddle as they rode out at the crack of dawn after hardly any sleep. She'd changed into a more practical riding habit of tan whipcord from her Saratoga trunk, although she said she hoped to have a fresh white uniform from the laundry in town on tap as soon as they got her back to her fever ward.

Longarm was right about the country rising drier on the far side of that inland trail he'd followed down from Corpus Christi. He was right about them being forced to have coffee and cake, at least, at the half-dozen spreads they managed to visit along the way. But all the stock they passed seemed fit enough in the bright morning light.

Then, just as Longarm was about convinced the lying Baldwin must have trailed sick stock up out of Old Mexico, they met two rancheros in a row who said they'd had their own branded stock returned to them by Constable Purvis after that surprisingly honest Mister Doyle had thrown down on that cow thief.

Longarm let it go the first time, but asked the second stockman with the same story why he'd been so surprised to hear Pryce & Doyle were honest meat packers.

He was told, "Oh, nobody never said they was outright crooks. But few of us like to do business with such hard bargainers. We ain't no ignorant greasers raising cows for hides and tallow. We read the market quotations in the newspapers the same as everyone else, and it's no secret the price of beef is up, way up, this year."

Longarm nodded and said, "Pryce & Doyle don't want to pay the going rates?"

To which the Texican replied with a scowl, "They ain't willing to pay last year's rates. They seem to feel they got a monopoly here as the only meat packers within miles. But I've been driving my own beef up to Corpus Christi on the hoof. It may be a bother, and I may have had to hire some extra hands, but fair is fair and I'd as soon break even selling beef in Corpus Christi than get slickered by damn Yankees rich enough to make their own damned ice!"

They thanked the irate stockman for the information and rode on. They crossed that same tidal creek, and Longarm showed her where Consuela's dad had been attacked by that gator. Norma said she doubted reptiles caught Malta fever, and that even if they did, it hadn't ought to make them go mad like dogs with hydrophobia.

As they got into town they parted friendly, or at least as friendly as Victorian folks felt proper in public. She made him promise to drop by her fever ward before he left town again, whether he found out anything more about the plague or not.

Longarm was more worried about lying cow thieves who might or might not have back-shooting pals still out there. So while he still hoped to tie the gang into any infected stock from Old Mexico, he headed back to that chandlery on the waterfront to mostly ask old Gordo if anyone ever called him Chino.

This time the reception was friendlier. The fat chandler hauled Longarm into the back, and sat him at a kitchen table to pour him some pulque and yell at his womenfolk for some grub for their guest.

When Longarm said he'd been eating all morning, Gordo insisted he have something anyway, explaining, "A messenger from Corpus Christi got through to us a few minutes after you had left, El Brazo Largo. I hope you won't tell La Bruja we were rude to you on purpose!"

Longarm smiled and replied, "If you don't make me eat no more. Should anyone ever ask, my only honest answer would have to be that it takes a smart man to play convincingly dumb."

He sipped some pulque--another acquired taste some compared to alcoholic snot, although it was mostly fermented agave--and just said right out he was looking for a Mex cow thief called Chino who'd been riding with the Anglo outlaw caught next door a short spell back.

Gordo answered simply, "We heard about it. They had the stolen stock in the vacant lot down on the other side of us. I did not wish for to get any of us into it. So we stayed inside during most of the excitement. But I don't think anybody riding with the one they caught was of La Raza. Chino can mean Chinaman as well as a Mexican with a moon face and muy indio eyes, no?"

Longarm finished off as much of his pulque as he meant to, and got back to his feet. "A regular Chinaman riding the owlhoot trail sounds even wilder than a Mex, no offense. Maybe I can get some answers next door, at that meat-packing plant Baldwin got his fool self arrested in. Is it all right with you if I leave my mount out front for now?"

Gordo grinned and said, "No. When you wish for to ride again you will find El Brazo Largo's caballo out back, watered and fed fresh corn I save for such honored guests!"

So they shook on it and Longarm went back outside. The sun was almost directly overhead now, and some drunk was already holding up the corner of the meat-packing plant with his back, wrapped in a red serape with his big straw sombrero down over his face to keep the sun out of his eyes.

Longarm had to explore some before he found a sheet-metal-covered door that wasn't locked on the inside. The one he found had a sign that said, "Office." So he knocked, and when nobody answered, went on inside. He found himself at the foot of a long wooden stairway. As he mounted it he saw a few chinks in the vertical planking to his left, the wall to his right being solid brick. When he paused to peer through a knothole, he saw a cavernous space that reminded him of that cold-storage hold aboard the northbound steamer. The same brine pipes, frosted with ice, ran along the far brick wall. At least a hundred sides of beef hung down there on hooks you could roll along the overhead network of single rails. Longarm was more interested in such industrial details than some, but he wasn't there to study meat packing, so he went on up to the second floor and knocked on a frosted glass door. A male voice invited him in, calling out, "It's open."

The older but still spry-looking gent in his late forties regarding him from behind a desk like Billy Vail's was sitting in his shirt and vest with his expensive frock coat and pearl-gray hat hung up near the window on the far side of him. When Longarm introduced himself, the man identified himself as Mister Doyle of Pryce & Doyle, poured them both some real bourbon, and asked how he might be of service to the federal government.

Doyle's bourbon was good and his manners were polite, but Longarm got the feeling he was wasting time. Doyle told the same tale to Longarm as he had to everyone else. He'd only seen Clay Baldwin when the rough-hewn cuss had surprised the hell out of him with an offer of stolen beef-cows, as close as Doyle could recall the tally. He said the local law had read the brands and cut up the herd the outlaws had left behind in a salt marsh on their way to parts unknown. He suggested Longarm check the exact tally with Constable Purvis. But he was sure none of the cows recovered had worn those fancier brands Mexican stockmen went in for, and allowed he'd never heard of anyone, Anglo or Mexican, called Chino.

Longarm agreed Clay Baldwin had been known to fib about a lot, and then said, "Let's talk about sick cows, whether stolen or bought fair and square. You'd have noticed if any of the cows you slaughtered and butchered here were sweating like hell, shivering even harder, and so forth, right?"

Doyle pursed his lips. "It should have been reported to me, of course. Naturally I don't do any butchering myself these days."

But when Longarm asked if he might talk to the hands who did, the meat packer told him, "You'll have to come back tomorrow, when my senior partner and head butcher get back. They're on a buying trip further west, hoping to make up our next shipment at the right price."

Longarm smiled thinly and said, "I was told you gents drove a hard bargain, no offense. Stockmen around here seem to feel they'd as soon drive their beef on up the coast. Where do you reckon Clay Baldwin or his mysterious pard Chino got the notion you'd be in the market for even cheaper beef?"

Doyle looked less friendly as he primly replied, "I'm not sure I like your tone, Deputy Long! Isn't it mighty obvious that we'd have simply bought that beef from Baldwin if that was our game? I'll have you know I threw down on him and turned him over to the law after he offered that stock at five dollars a head C.O.D. after dark!"

Longarm nodded soberly. "That's a bargain in beef on the hoof or off, and once you'd run 'em inside downstairs, you'd have skinned 'em out of their branded hides before anyone was any the wiser. I ain't the only one who's allowed you acted honest as well as brave when those crooks approached you, Mister Doyle. It's going to take us some time to carry Baldwin back to Colorado, give him as fair a trial as he deserves, and stretch his neck as far as it can go. So he'll likely fill in some details for us between now and then. I've seen condemned crooks turn in kin for an extra slice of pie with their last meal."

He put down his shot glass and turned toward the door, saying he'd be back, maybe the next day, to talk with Doyle's senior partner and head butcher.

Doyle rose to follow him out on the landing, demanding, "Why? I just told you all that any of us know about the matter."

Longarm nodded. "I'm sure you have, no offense. But this ain't the first meat-packing plant I've ever visited, and I'm sort of puzzled about just a few points somebody who gets his hands dirtier might be able to clear up."

He went down the long stairway as Doyle went back in his office. Then he headed back to the chandlery, noting that same sleepy cuss was still propped against the bricks. But what bothered him about the stranger taking an early siesta didn't sink in all the way before he heard a distant window open and somebody he couldn't see tossed a bottle, or glass, out to bust and tinkle on the cobbles.

Then Longarm had his gun out, covering the serape-wrapped figure at his feet as he snapped, "Tenga cuidado, hombre! Soy tengo el filo, aqui." And when that didn't work he tried, "I said I have the drop on you, asshole! I didn't think a real Mex drunk would be sporting those expensive Justin boots under a dirty blanket and straw sombrero!"

The fake Mexican tried shooting up at Longarm through the grimy red wool. He got off two rounds and one came close, but not as close as Longarm's pissed-off burst of fire aimed at point-blank range. So the treacherous rascal wearing a dapper Anglo riding outfit and.45-28 Starr wound up stretched out on the dust with that dumb hat blown away but half the red serape covering his face.

Longarm kicked it away as he reloaded, staring down bemused at the softly smiling face of a total stranger as he reloaded. The dumb bastard looked to be around fifty. Longarm had just hunkered down to go through some pockets when Gordo, from next door, came timidly over to make the sign of the cross and shyly ask, "For why did you shoot Senor Pryce just now, El Brazo Largo?"

Longarm was back on his feet and moving off as he called back, "I had to. He was fixing to back-shoot me again. Tell Purvis who did it when he gets here. I'll tell him why as soon as I get back with his sneaky partner, Doyle!" He tore around the back of Gordo's chandlery, hauled that Coast Guard pony out of his brushwood stable, and forked himself up into his army saddle to ride after that son of a bitch.

The best way to chase another cuss was to figure which way he'd likely head, not give him a greater lead while you asked others for directions. So Longarm loped across the main street and headed west along that same lane leading to the inland wagon trace. For a man on the run with the law hot on his heels would likely choose some solitude as he lathered his own brute, and the coast road ran through much more of town as well as past that Coast Guard station to the north. All bets were off if the bastard was riding south, but from what La Bruja had told Longarm the shady meat packers had at least one mighty shady confederate up in Corpus Christi, if one of the partners themselves hadn't been trying to recruit Mexicans to dry-gulch a dangerous Anglo.

He had a better handle now on why they'd considered him dangerous. Thanks to old Reporter Crawford of the Denver Post, a lot of folks knew the notorious Longarm had spent some time punching cows before going to work under Marshal Billy Vail. Yet he'd missed what they were up to, and might have never studied on a dinky meat packing operation in a dinky seaport if they'd been smart enough to leave him the hell alone. There were heaps of stockmen coming and going all around the establishment of Pryce & Doyle, yet how many had ever seen fit to wonder how you ran a slaughterhouse without any stockyards out back, or why the tallow-rendering plants, fertilizer mills, and tanneries you usually saw next to a slaughterhouse hadn't been anywhere in the whole blamed town.

He was sure he had more answers than he really did as he tore out to the west with his saddle gun cocked across his knees, eyes peeled for ambush from the cactus hedges around the small milpas he tore by.

Then he spotted a small familiar figure afoot ahead, and reined in as that young Mexican gal Consuela turned around in the dusty road with a puzzled look on her pretty little face.

Longarm called out, "I'm chasing that sneaky meat packer, Doyle. Might you have seen him out this way, on most any sort of transportation? I suspect he signaled his partner the jig was up and lit out when I got that partner instead."

Consuela stared up owl-eyed to reply, "Pero no, senor. I am on my way home for to search for wicked cabras my little brother just told me about. I told La Senorita Norma I had to go find them for Papacito before la aligador gets them. I do not know for why they run off into the spartina reeds like that when they are feeling bad, but they do, and I know where to search for them."

He said he felt sure she did, and started to wheel his mount around to try another direction when what she'd said sank all the way in and he said, "Hold on. You say your goats have been coming down sick, Consuela?"

She said, "Si, more than half of them. Pero not all at once. One gets to shaking and dragging its poor hooves and then, just as it seems to feel better, another we thought was well again starts to cry and butt its head against things."

"Like those folks in town!" Longarm gasped. "Sick goats wandering into the swamps to get eaten by gators could account for a hungry gator boldly backtracking to your milpa in hopes of more goat meat and settling for... Do you folks sell a lot of goat meat in town, Consuela?"

She burst that bubble by shaking her head and declaring, "Pero no! Where would we get the milk for to make cheese or put in coffee if we slaughtered our milk goats for meat, senor?"

Longarm didn't answer. He was already headed back to town, as fast as he'd just ridden out. As he hit the main street again he saw a considerable crowd to his right, near the meat-packing plant. He swung the other way, slid his mount to a stop in front of the old icehouse, and tore inside, calling out to Norma, "Hey, Doc, I think I got it!"

The Junoesque Norma came across the cot-cluttered floor to meet him, looking innocent, in her fresh white outfit. But she smiled awfully sweet as she asked him in a puzzled tone what on earth he was talking about.

Longarm said, "You were right about it being a fever carried by livestock. But it was the nondescript Mex goats that nobody pays much attention to. No cows have caught it yet. Goats don't graze on open range with Texas beef cows, in peril of their lives."

She nodded but said, "That only makes sense till you consider all the Anglos coming down with your mysterious goat fever, Custis. How many of these Anglo townsfolk, cowhands, and even Coast Guardsmen do you suspect of eating or even petting sick Mexican goats?"

Longarm insisted, "It's the milk. None of those spreads we passed this morning kept one dairy cow on hand. Like everyone else down this way they buy the little fresh milk and cream they fancy off the local smallholders, who keep goats, not cows, for milking!"

Norma Richards was smart as well as passionate. So she thought, snapped her fingers, and said, "Of course! You don't take cream in your coffee. I've been using canned condensed milk, here as well as out at that Coast Guard station, thanks to a generous mess officer who asked me not to mention it to Lieutenant Flynn."

Longarm said, "Flynn seems to strike lots of folk as a martinet. Either way, condensed milk explains why so few Coast Guardsmen came down with this fever, and how come the ones in your care seem to be getting over it naturally."

But Norma was already waving all her volunteer gals in, along with some recovering patients she'd been putting to work there. Longarm didn't hang about to hear her explain why they all had to dash through town, shouting like Paul Revere about getting rid of all the fresh milk and goat cheese on hand. He was already on his way to get back to his own chores.

As he strode for the mount he'd tethered out front, old Constable Purvis cut him off, side arm drawn, demanding, "Stand and deliver on how come you just shot a pillar of our community, Deputy Long!"

Longarm said tersely, "Had to. It was him or me. I suspect that once we pass around some photographs, we'll agree those others I took for saddle bums were business associates of the late Mister Pryce as well. They must have had a time getting their regular help to go up against me and my rep, if they got desperate enough for the senior partner to try for me personally! I got to catch the junior partner now, and see if I can get him to fill me in on some of the missing pieces of the puzzle. I'm sure I got most of it about right now."

He untethered his mount and started to mount up as the older law man pleaded, "Tell me what's been going on here, damn it! I can't make heads or tails of a thing that's happened. How could Pryce & Doyle have been running a crooked operation if they turned in the only crook who ever stole one cow in these parts? Nobody for miles is missing any stock, old son!"

Longarm saw there was no way an elder on foot could ride along with him as they jawed, so he patiently explained. "Nobody for miles was doing business with Pryce & Doyle. They were afraid I'd notice other missing details as well. They had nothing resembling a full-fledged meat-packing operation. No stockyards, no side rendering plants, and shit, not even a slaughtering floor inside that glorified icebox. Just as they feared, albeit I had other things on my mind at the time, all I saw on their premises was a cold-storage cargo hold of neatly butchered beef. The same as I saw aboard a coastal steamer the other night. Don't you get it yet?"

Constable Purvis ran a thumbnail through the stubble on his jaw and declared, "Makes no sense. Pryce & Doyle have been shipping their cold-storage beef out of here regular. So where's it been bred, reared, and butchered if it ain't been around here?"

Longarm swung up in the saddle, saying, "Old Mexico, most likely. That's the only place near enough to matter where they could have got prime sides of neatly trimmed beef so cheap. When I catch Doyle I mean to ask him whether he refused Baldwin's offer because he thought it might be a trap or whether you can still buy beef on the hoof at five bucks a head down Mexico way."

"But how in thunder would you get all them Mex cows this far north past the hoof-and-mouth quarantine this spring?" the older lawman wailed as Longarm headed on, having wasted enough time guessing when all he had to do was catch the son of a bitch who knew!

CHAPTER 13

An old Mexican leading a burro loaded with firewood told Longarm he was on the right trail now, although the gringo on the lathered roan had one hell of a lead on him. There was no way anyone out at that Coast Guard station could have heard about recent events in town. And there was nobody to wire this side of Corpus Christi. No pony could run that far in one burst, though. So it all hinged on how hard either rider could push what he was riding. The cold-blood bay saddle breed Longarm had borrowed wasn't considered all that fast but might have a tad more endurance, or a few less brains, than the cow pony Doyle seemed to be riding. So Longarm could only keep heeling his bay at a steady lope and hope for the best.

The treacherous Doyle had a more jaded pony or more treacherous nature than Longarm should have expected by now. Virtue might have been its own reward, but had he never pulled off into that tangle of gumbo-limbo with old Ruby, he might not have been glancing over that way now as he tore past their recent love nest.

And he might not have seen the big white cotton ball of gunsmoke and rolled off the far side, Winchester in hand, by the time the rifle report that went with a whizzing.45-70 made it as far as he'd just been.

He hit the grassy seaward berm of the wagon trace any old way, and rolled a couple of times as that unseen but hardly unknown bushwhacker whacked at him some more with that repeating rifle. Longarm lost his hat, and his saddle and possibles lit out down the trace aboard that gun-shy government mount. It served a rider right for not borrowing one off the cavalry. But Longarm knew the bay would bolt for its own stall at the nearby Coast Guard station, and right now he had more important things to worry about than spare socks!

Since they'd laid out that wagon trace along a contour line, Lord love 'em, the soft soggy soil on his seaward side lay almost a yard lower than the roadway, and better yet, the salt grass he'd been rolling through rose well above his prone form. The son of a bitch firing from the gumbolimbo across the way was aiming at the swaying grass tops, not at a target he couldn't really draw a tight bead on at that range.

Longarm slithered around on his belly, ignoring the repeated potshots above as well as across his ass, till he was facing the way he'd been coming instead of the way he'd been going when he hit the ground. But what made it work was rolling close to the wagon trace till he lay between the slight rise and the long grass stems about half a yard out, on untouched and hence damper ground. He still moved slow, like a rat snake sneaking into a root cellar, dragging his '73 by its long barrel for what felt like a hundred miles but was likely a hundred yards. Then he made some nearby salt grass move with the muzzle of his Winchester, and when nothing happened he figured Doyle had to be back in that blind alley Longarm had backed into with Ruby, or another like it. So he took a deep breath, gathered his long legs under his center of balance, and sprang up to dash across the wagon trace, between two cottonwoods and through the open space on the far side, till he'd made the gumbo-limbo himself and got his breath back. Then he called out laconically, "That reminded me of Cold Harbor, Doyle. I sure hope we don't have to repeat that infernal campaign, for we could both wind up getting hurt in a blindman's bluff with shooting irons. Why don't you quit whilst you're ahead? You'll likely get away with blaming your dead pals for all the hanging offenses. That's if the prosecution agrees to let you turn state's evidence and tie up some loose ends for us."

Doyle fired blind through the springy saplings between them. As his ricochet wailed harmlessly off in the distance, Longarm chuckled and called back falsely, "Close. But no cigar. I don't want to have to kill you, asshole. I've about figured out what you and your pals were up to. But my boss frowns on what he calls my suppositions. You call it a supposition when you can't prove it. But you know I know a hell of a lot already. You wouldn't have tried to stop me from ever getting anywhere near your flimflam packing plant if you hadn't been worried about me taking one look and asking what in blue blazes you thought you were running there."

Doyle fired again. Longarm swore. "I got you boxed, you poor simp. I was back in those saplings just the other day and I know how tight they grow. I'm willing to ignore your repeated attempts to murder a federal agent recently, if you'd like to settle for just a few years in Leavenworth on smuggling and criminal conspiracy in exchange for a few more names, dates, and places."

Doyle didn't answer. Longarm spotted movement further up that wagon trace in a place exposed to fire from the thicket, and called out, "Get off that trail, boys! I got me an armed and stupid outlaw trapped up this way with a repeating rifle!"

As the Coast Guardsmen crabbed westward to form a more cautious file, hugging the gumbo-limbo to the north of where Doyle seemed to be, Longarm recognized Lieutenant Devereaux, leading the patrol with a Spencer of his own held at port arms. As the junior grade got within easy shouting range he called out, "That mount we loaned you just tore through the gate lathered under your empty saddle. So we doubted the distant shots we kept hearing could be a duck hunter. Who have we got pinned down here, Deputy?"

Longarm called back, "Old Doyle of Pryce & Doyle in town. Pryce tried to back-shoot me earlier. So we don't have to worry about him right now. As near as I can put it together, they were running Mexican beef to the U.S. market through that hoof-and-mouth quarantine along the border this season. They were offering local stockmen insulting prices for Texas beef, partly reflecting what they were paying Mex meat packers for already butchered and trimmed sides, but mostly because they had no facilities of their own for dealing with beef on the hoof." He turned his head to shout through the gumbo-limbo saplings. "I hope you're paying attention to this, Doyle. I got you pinned with the help of the U.S. Coast Guard, organized by Secretary Alexander Hamilton of the U.S. Treasury in the first damned place to keep smugglers like you in line!"

Doyle fired his rifle back at Longarm like a mean little kid. As some of the Coast Guardsmen raised their own weapons Longarm barked, "Hold your fire! He ain't so dangerous as desperate, and I aim to take at least one of them alive!"

Devereaux repeated Longarm's command, since it sounded more official coming from him, and called out to the trapped smuggler to surrender in the name of the U.S. Revenue Service.

Doyle didn't answer. Then they all heard hoofbeats, and down the road came Lieutenant Flynn himself, waving his dress saber aboard a bay thoroughbred. As Devereaux warned him off by pumping his own rifle over his own head, the sandy-haired C.O. slid his handsome mount to a stop and dismounted gracefully, if somewhat dramatically, waving that nickel-plated blade like a seagoing version of J.E.B. Stuart, or George Armstrong Custer. You had to give even a pain in the ass credit for being a good rider.

Devereaux filled his C.O. in, out of easy earshot, on the north side of the trapped Doyle. Longarm knew what they'd been jawing about when Flynn called out, "All right, Mister Doyle, you have ten seconds and counting to throw out your weapon and come out with your hands up! I now make it seven and still counting!"

Longarm bawled, "Hold on! We got him boxed, Lieutenant!" Meanwhile, deeper in the gumbo-limbo, Doyle wailed something that sounded like, "A mo abra! Fan ort! Is cruinti? mi!"

Then Flynn shouted, "Volley, fire!" and nobody paid Longarm a lick of attention as he shouted himself hoarse above the rattle of rifle fire, with each infernal Spencer firing seven times before anyone had to stop!

In the ringing silence that followed, Longarm croaked, "Asshole! How am I supposed to take 'em alive with help like that?"

Flynn said coldly, "You heard me warn him. That sounded like some ancient Irish war cry he threw back at us. Does anyone here have the Gaelic?"

Longarm snorted in disgust and said, "I wanted him to testify in English before a federal grand jury. I'm going in now. If any of you fill me full of lead, I'll never speak to you again!"

Devereaux warned, "Be careful, we were firing blind!"

Longarm eased up to that wilted sea grape he'd piled across the very same gap the day before. Now he muttered, "I noticed. There might be enough of him left to make a dying statement."

But there wasn't. Longarm had only moved in about as far as where he'd backed Ruby's shay before he spotted Doyle, further back among the supple saplings than he'd have thought possible. But Doyle had been sort of wiry as well as desperate. So there he stood, still on his feet, staring blankly as the blood still oozed from a good two dozen gunshot wounds.

Longarm propped his Winchester against two closely grown trunks and reached into the tangle, with some effort, till he had a grip on one of the dead man's sleeves. It was still a chore to wriggle Doyle out, even dead as the snows of yesteryear and limp as an old man's dick after a whole night in a whorehouse.

Devereaux joined him in the sun-dappled grotto, holding Longarm's Stetson in his free hand as he said, "One of my men just found your hat across the way. Is he dead?"

Longarm picked up his Winchester and took back his Stetson as he replied, "Yep. Didn't get much out of him as he breathed his last in a mishmash of English and that odd lingo... Gaelic, you say?"

Devereaux said, "Don't look at me. We were part of the Protestant gentry in the old country, to hear my grandmother go on. It could have been Gaelic. Or it could have been Greek, for all I know."

Longarm said, "I've known some Irish gals who burst into Gaelic when they were feeling sore at me, or vice versa. It may as well have been Greek to me, but I think Doyle's a Scotch or Irish name."

Devereaux asked, "What about Pryce, his late partner's handle?"

Longarm said, "Welsh, I think. His other pals, Godwynn and Reynolds, sound like they had plain English names to me. In the meanwhile, we ain't going to get much more than bug-bit hanging about in this baby jungle!"

Devereaux agreed, and said he'd deal with the cadaver. So Longarm stepped back out in the sunlight, where Flynn asked much the same questions and got about the same answers. While everyone but the big cheese on the bay got to walk the short distance to the nearby Coast Guard station, Longarm asked how Deputy Gilbert and their prisoner, Baldwin, might be making out.

Flynn said, "They both seem on the road to recovery. I'm not sure I see how the outlaw they sent you and Gilbert after might fit into this wild whatever that Pryce & Doyle were up to."

Longarm said, "Baldwin don't fit at all, Lieutenant. He was wanted on other charges entirely, and got his fool self arrested when he tried to sell stock he'd stolen close by to other crooks who'd picked this nice quiet stretch of coast to ship cold-storage meat from. Escondrijo's close enough to Old Mexico for a crooked outfit to pick up quarantined beef, at a considerable bargain, but far enough from the border to avoid suspicion as to where in this world they ever came by it."

Devereaux, walking on the other side of Longarm, asked how they'd ever managed to move cold-storage beef by the ton across more than a hundred miles of Texas cattle country.

Longarm said, "They couldn't have. So they never did. I figure they smuggled the forbidden Mex beef in from some Mex port such as Matamoros. No Mex officials would have call to worry about an outward-bound cargo and even if they did, you can buy most anyone working for El Presidente Diaz cheap."

Devereaux frowned thoughtfully and said, "That sounds needlessly complicated to me! Once a vessel put safely out from Matamoros with a load of refrigerated beef, what was there to prevent it from going on up to, say, Galveston or New Orleans to unload?"

Longarm said, "You boys. The U.S. Coast Guard can't watch every tub leaving Old Mexico or even plying these coastal waters, as long as it acts natural. But how would you go about putting in to some major seaport with a valuable load and no proper bill of lading?"

From the far side, Lieutenant Flynn almost snapped, "It's all so obvious now that the scheme's been exposed, Mister Devereaux. Pryce & Doyle simply acted as a way station for their seagoing confederates. Probably putting in from the open sea through Corpus Christo Pass in one of those innocent-looking fishing luggers we only occasionally check now and again. With their own more elaborate ice plant they could afford to amass a respectable cargo, which they'd then load aboard one of those coastal steamers that had already passed through U.S. Customs down by the mouth of the Rio Grande. Delivered with proper papers up the coast as Texas beef, nobody would have been the wiser had only they had the sense to leave Deputy Long here free to carry out his own less complicated mission. What was the name of that Mexican crone who's said to smuggle contraband in from the high seas, Mister Devereaux?"

The J.G. said, "La Bruja, sir. That means The Witch in Spanish, and I must say she and her gang have been a bitch to intercept on land or sea. The Rangers say she runs small but valuable cargoes past us in a splinter fleet of shallow-draft luggers with black sails, at low tide in the dark of the moon."

Longarm didn't see how he could object that La Bruja ran guns, not sides of beef in unrefrigerated holds, unless he wanted to answer more questions about a lady than he really needed to. So he let them gab on and on about all the ways one might smuggle beef on ice in a hot, humid clime. And then they'd made it back to the Coast Guard station, where a lawman juggling a whole drawer full of knives might be able to set at least a few of them aside, for the moment.

CHAPTER 14

Both Doyle's roan and the bay packing Longarm's personal saddle had passed through the gate before them, to be rounded up and put away with the water they'd likely had in mind when they bolted. Longarm found young Deputy Gilbert dressed as well as back on his feet, although still a mite green around the gills. Clay Baldwin seemed in fair shape to travel as well, having had a heap of fight knocked out of him by that long siege of off-and-on chills and fever. But Longarm decided a few more hours' rest wouldn't matter either after he carried Doyle's scrawny cadaver back to town to be photographed, buried, or stuffed, for all the federal government really cared. Flynn seemed to feel both crooked meat packers ought to go in the files as solved smuggling cases. But Longarm pointed out, "Texas will want to file 'em for murder for certain, and thanks to your love of noise, I ain't sure how I'd ever prove either guilty of anything else in a court of law, Lieutenant."

Flynn said stubbornly, "I did what I thought best. You said yourself he was trying to eel his way back through those springy saplings when only a small part of our volley stopped him. Didn't he say anything the federal government could use against him, Deputy Long?"

Longarm shrugged and said, "I'm still working on that. It's tough to say just what a shot-up cuss is trying to tell you when he gets to blowing bloody bubbles and a mishmash of English and Gaelic at you. Might you have anyone in your outfit who follows the drift of Ancient Irish, Lieutenant?"

Flynn thought. "Chief Tobin's people were from Galway, still considered Apache country by Queen Victoria. I could send for him, if you like."

Longarm considered, shrugged, and decided, "Maybe later. If he wasn't with us out yonder, I ain't sure I could reproduce the funny noises for him. Like I told this circus lady who swallowed swords and cussed in Gaelic, it sounds like a mishmash of Church Latin and Dutch, neither of which finds me at all fluent. Can you recall one word he yelled back when you ordered him to surrender?"

Flynn shook his head. "My people came over from Cork three generations ago. I understand my great-grandparents had been speaking English some time before they got on the boat."

The dapper Coast Guard officer seemed even smugger than usual as he added with a lofty sniff, "We Flynns arrived with shoes on. Nobody in my family was still there when the potato crop failed in '46."

Longarm allowed he'd heard a General Sullivan had led Continental troops up the Mohawk Valley during the even earlier American Revolution, and suggested they worry about old Doyle's family tree farther along, like the old hymn said.

He told Flynn and the other officers assembled in the wardroom he had other chores in town, but hoped to bring Norma Richards back that evening so she could give his deputy and their surviving prisoner a final examination. When Devereaux asked what might keep him that busy the rest of the day in town, Longarm explained, "Aside from signing a statement on two dead residents for the local law, I got to see that packing plant is sealed, with all that uncertain beef refrigerated as well as impounded. We're pretty certain now that that outbreak of Malta fever was occasioned by the milk of sick local goats. But Lord knows what all they might have smuggled in with the carcasses of Mex stock butchered and cooled inhoof-and-mouth country!"

They agreed nobody ought to sample any such beef before somebody who knew more about such matters took a good close look at it. Flynn told Devereaux to make sure Longarm got plenty of help in wrapping the late Mr. Doyle in a tarp and loading him aboard a buckboard for his return to town.

The J.G. naturally ordered Chief Tobin to see to it. The burly C.P.O. hadn't been out there with the others when Flynn had ordered his fatal fusillade. But as they were wrapping the shot-up Irishman in waterproof canvas, Tobin observed he'd heard the poor bastard had tried to give up at the last.

When Longarm asked how the chief knew this, Tobin looked around as if to make sure no officers were listening as he confided, "Yeoman Cohen would be a Sligo man, as odd as some Yankees might be finding that. He tells us Doyle shouted something like, 'Oh, me eyebrow, hold your fire for it's finished I am!' Cohen tried to tell the others, but they were already firing. So he fired too."

Longarm said he'd noticed that. Then, rank having its privileges, the chief dragooned some guardsmen firsts to load the cadaver on the buckboard and hitch Doyle's rested roan to the wagon.

Longarm allowed he'd ride the same steady bay, seeing it was as ready to go. When Tobin asked whether he was expecting any more cross-country riding, Longarm said you just never knew.

Mounting up and taking the roan's ribbons to lead instead of drive, Longarm told his enlisted pals he'd try to get back by suppertime so they could put his borrowed pony away.

As he headed across the parade for the gate, he was headed off by young Devereaux, afoot, who called out, "The lieutenant's compliments, and if you can't manage steamer passage in town for you and your party, he said to tell you we'll be running our own night patrol aboard our own cutter, if the three of you would like a free ride to a more important port!"

Longarm told Devereaux he and his own boys might take the Coast Guard up on such a kind offer, adding, "Depends on what else I find out in town. When are you all putting out to sea this evening?"

Devereaux said, "With the evening ebb tide. About three hours after sundown tonight."

Longarm saw that gave him plenty of time to study on it. So he said he would, and headed on back to Escondrijo, having no trouble with either pony in the soggy heat of a lazy day in South Texas.

From the way folks carried on in town, you'd think they'd never had two dead men propped up on a cellar door to admire before. More than one local historian had a box camera to record the slack-jawed features of Pryce & Doyle for posterity although Constable Purvis didn't think much of Longarm's suggestion that they have the two sons of bitches stuffed. Purvis said he meant to store them in their own cold-storage plant once a few pissed-off citizens got through spitting on 'em. So while some of that went on, Longarm and the older lawman had some cold beer across the way and Longarm brought Purvis up to date on the case, such as it was.

Purvis opined the boys had likely been in with that notorious Mexican gang led by the mysterious La Bruja up the coast a ways, until Longarm pointed out, "I've personal reasons for leaving those Mex smugglers out of it. To begin with, they warned me about these other crooks in time to save my ass. They'd have never done so if they'd been in tight with a bunch of Anglo smugglers."

He sipped more beer. "After that, Pryce or Doyle going to a Bruja for help against me tells us something else. Had they had a really big bunch working with 'em, they'd have never recruited half-ass killers who got killed themselves, or had to start gunning for me so personally. With four faces photographed fairly fresh, the Rangers ought to be able to tie the ones we got so far with any associates still at large."

Purvis looked dubious. "I dunno, old son. Nobody in town's been able to identify that one you sent ashore here after you shot him on board that steamer the other night."

Longarm nodded. "That only means he wasn't from Escondrijo. I just said the operation has to be spread mighty thin along a heap of thinly populated coastline. Someone is sure to recognize one or more photographs betwixt Matamoros and, say, Galveston. Right now, I'm more worried about how in blue blazes they got all that forbidden beef this far north of Matamoros."

Purvis suggested, "It's a mighty big lagoon, with many a cove and shallow-draft grass flat, Longarm. Anyone can see why they picked our particular port. We do ship honest beef out of here, albeit mostly alive, aboard cattle boats. So once the smugglers got past the revenue cutters guarding the mouth of the Rio Grande, or Corpus Christi Pass, which is even closer, they just had to unload by the dark of night when all us honest folks were in bed and then ship it right on, in broad-ass working hours, as honest Texas beef. Ain't that a bitch?"

Longarm finished his schooner. "A heap of trouble for a marginal profit too. Say the gang was small and they had plenty of cheap beef to move. They still must have had a less risky way to bring it in from Old Mexico than you just suggested. We're talking perishable produce, not diamonds or even gold bullion. They thought they had a good thing worth protecting here. I just can't see midnight runs with black-sailed luggers playing tag with steam cutters for the amount of financial reward that would go with such penny-ante bullshit. Crooks stealing shit worth less'n a dollar a pound on the retail market back East need to move it by the ton, with little or no fear of getting caught!"

Purvis pointed out, "They sure were afraid of getting caught by you, weren't they?"

Longarm grimaced. "They were, in a desperate penny-ante way. They acted more like mean pimps trying to protect a street corner. That means they didn't have local protection, which is why I feel so free to talk about 'em with you."

Purvis cocked a brow. "Why, thank you, I reckon. What if they just had that cold-storage meat brung up from Matamoros in the cold-storage holds of that coastal steamer line? They'd only need a few key henchmen with an otherwise honest outfit. Who else would be peeking inside a sealed-up section of the steamer like so?"

Longarm rose back to his feet, saying, "I did, the other night. I didn't pay much attention at the time. They'd have been better off leaving me the hell alone. But dumb as I might have been, your notion falls apart as soon as you put out from, say, Matamoros with a load of quarantined beef. Getting out is no big boo. But getting into the innocent stream of coastal traffic would be. Whenever the Coast Guard stops a vessel coming in from parts unknown, they send a search party aboard."

Purvis asked, "Is there any law saying Coast Guard officers can't be paid off?"

Longarm said, "No natural law. Federal statutes take a mighty dim view of it. So do I. So I've naturally considered that already. It keeps boiling down to the root of all evil, the love of your average cuss for money! How much do you reckon it would take to bribe a whole Coast Guard, or even one cutter crew out of one station?"

Purvis considered and decided, "You'd sure have to sell a hell of a lot of ground round back East at those prices!"

Longarm agreed that was about the size of it, and left to see how good old Norma and her plague might be making out.

Up by the converted icehouse, he found that for a soft flutterly gal who liked to be on the bottom best, the motherly but somewhat bossy Norma Richards had been making out just fine.

After kissing him smack on the mouth in front of everybody, the Junoesque doctor told him she'd wired a list of the observed symptoms all the way to the Surgeon General's office, and been assured they sure seemed to add up to Malta or what some now called undulant fever. They'd told her she'd been making sense with the moves she'd made so far, and suggested other, more drastic measures she might take to check the plague till a team from back East could get there to help her.

When she shyly asked whether he thought that meant she'd be in charge, Longarm kissed her some more and assured her, "If it don't, there ain't no justice. But when did they get the wires back up and how come nobody told me?"

She said, "I just found out myself Western Union hasn't been advertising for more business and the backlog is still awesome. I had to buck the line by threatening them with the power of the federal government. But I'm sure you'll be able to break in the same way, citing a federal emergency."

Longarm smiled thinly and replied, "I've never admired folks who got in line ahead of me, and there's nothing I have to say that can't wait till things simmer down a mite. I'd rather talk about Rod Gilbert and our sick prisoner, Baldwin. Lieutenant Flynn's offered us a free ride out aboard his steam cutter, and I was hoping you'd be able to tell me they were fit to travel."

Norma favored him with a maternal smile and sighed. "You've no idea how tempted I am to keep the three of you here for a month of Sundays, darling. But if you're asking me in my official capacity, the course of undulant fever is pretty predictable."

She took his arm as if to lead him off to show him something as she explained. "Thanks to your inspired guess about infected goat's milk and, as it turns out, local buttermilk-fed pork, we've stopped any human beings around here from being re-infected. We're not certain how vegetarian cows pass the plague along, but it's tougher for people to pick up. They have to rub body fluids from an infected animal into an open cut, or swallow them in greater quantity. You already know how sick they get within a few days. But it's called undulant because of the way it comes and goes, with each attack both milder and farther apart."

She was leading him out a side door for some reason as she went on. "It's usually the second or third attack that those who die succumb to. It's not as much the fever itself, as the pneumonia or secondary ailments that hit a victim in his or her drained state. Young Gilbert and that dreadful Clay Baldwin have been through the whole cycle half a dozen times. So I'm sure they're out of danger, albeit either may have mighty bad days for as long as a year in the future."

Longarm said he doubted Clay Baldwin had that much future ahead of him, and as she led him up the outside stairs of the building to the north added, "I reckon I can get them both back to Denver sitting down or stretched out aboard public transportation. Where might you be leading me, Miss Norma?"

She giggled sort of dirty and replied, "Down the Primrose Path, or at least up to the new quarters I've commandeered for myself here in town, now that I seem to be the Public Health Service. I had far less privacy as well as a longer trip back and forth at that Coast Guard station!"

She didn't say where she'd be taking her meals, now that she was quartered closer to her fever ward. Longarm didn't really care, once she'd shut the door upstairs behind them and turned with a Mona Lisa smile to confide, "Cross-ventilation too. But now that I have you in my wicked power, in broad daylight for heaven's sake, are you sure I can trust you not to laugh at your poor little piggy?"

Longarm proceeded to shuck his own duds too as he asked her when he'd ever declared her a pig. He managed not to laugh as she proceeded to pop a lot of bulging pink flesh in view, demurely suggesting, "This is the first time we've ever seen one another naked in daylight. I do try to watch my weight, dear, but it gets harder and harder as a girl gets older and... Oh, my God, did you really put all that in me the other night?"

He suggested soothingly that they see if they still fit fine together where it really counted. As he laid her back across her brass-railed bed atop the covers, she bit her baby-girl lower lip and hissed, "Be careful with that thing, Custis!"

But then, a few minutes later, being fickle as most gals about such matters, she was pounding his bare ass with the heels of her high-buttons, demanding he go deeper if he knew what was good for him.

So what with one position and another, with a quick supper shared well after sundown at the beanery across the way, Longarm barely made it back to the Coast Guard station in time to board that steam cutter as it cast off on a falling tide. Like most of its breed, the long white-hulled cutter was mostly flash boilers, powerful engines, and four-pound deck guns capable of catching up with anything its twin screws couldn't.

Chief Tobin told them Flynn and young Devereaux were too busy on the bridge to talk to anyone right now. But meanwhile, they could lock Baldwin in the ship's brig forward, and they'd try to make the two civilian lawmen comfortable in the wardroom, aft and a short length of ladder down from the bridge. Longarm had noticed before how sailors called any sort of steps "ladders," any sort of floors "decks," and so forth. Cowhands liked to confound green hands the same way.

A mess attendant brought the two deputies coffee, and said something about a smoking lamp being lit. Rod Gilbert still said he'd feel far better smoking out on deck instead of there in the greasy-smelling wardroom as the cutter began to pick up speed. For narrow-beam steamers tended to roll far more than sailboats, even across the calmer waters of a sheltered lagoon.

It was a good thing Gilbert felt that way. For they'd barely made it out to where Longarm could see the stars before he saw they weren't headed the way he'd expected.

Gilbert tagged wanly along as Longarm went on up to the bridge to demand why. What they called a bridge on a Coast Guard cutter was more like a glorified pilothouse borrowed from a riverboat. Lieutenant Flynn was posing for a statue behind the enlisted man at their big oak wheel and brass binnacle. It was Devereaux, acting as first officer, who cut them off and said they weren't allowed on the bridge while a patrol was in progress.

Longarm calmly but firmly replied, "That's what we're here to ask you about. How come we're headed south? Ain't you boys assigned to pay more heed to vessels putting in through Corpus Christi Pass to your north? There ain't no way to smuggle anything in off the open sea this side of the Rio Grande, one hell of a voyage to the south!"

Flynn turned grandly and stiffly replied, "As the one and only master of this vessel I don't have to answer to you or anyone else. But I've set a course for Matamoros because that's where you keep saying someone's been picking up quarantined beef. Didn't you also say you came all this way via the Rio Grande and up this very lagoon?"

Longarm sighed, "I did. I thought it would be obvious, even to you, I'd want to compare notes with the Rangers and others I know in Corpus Christi before we headed on back some other way!"

Flynn shrugged. "You should have asked which way we were headed before you boarded this evening. I understand the telegraph wires are back up. You ought to be able to contact all the others you want by Western Union once we put you ashore at Brownsville."

Longarm insisted, "I don't want to give any other crooks that much of a lead on me, Lieutenant. While I'm wasting a whole night aboard this cutter, patrolling miles of doubtless empty lagoon, confederates of Pryce & Doyle will be covering their crooked tracks with heaps of razzle-dazzle!"

It was Devereaux who quietly suggested, "Should the lieutenant so desire, we could put these civilians ashore at Escondrijo. I think I see the lamplight along their quay just ahead, off to starboard."

Flynn snapped, "You're not paid to think, Mister Devereaux. Until such time as they give you your own command, you'll be expected to do just as you're damned well told! Is that understood, mister?"

"Perfectly, sir," said the chastized J.G., and you could almost tell how red his face had flushed in the faint light of the binnacle lamp.

Longarm took a deep breath, let half of it out so his voice would stay steady, and said, "I want to be put ashore with my deputy and our prisoner here and now. Like the Indian chief said, I have spoken."

Lieutenant Flynn sounded almost cheerful as he smugly replied, "So have I. I'm in command here, and you'll damned well get off when and where I tell you, see?"

Longarm nodded soberly. "I reckon I do. I was aiming to give you more rope and wait till we all got to Corpus Christi and no doubt some superior Coast Guard officers who weren't in on it. But it was your grand notion to force my hand, so bueno, you're under arrest, and I reckon that puts Mister Devereaux here in command, don't it?"

Everyone there but Longarm sucked in his breath the same way. Flynn moved to the far wing of the bridge to fling open some glass and bawl out, "Mutiny! All hands on deck to stand by me and me alone!"

Longarm drew his.44-40 and snapped, "Cut that out before somebody gets hurt! Mister Devereaux, do you mean to take over as I told you to or stand there like a wide-eyed owl?"

Behind him, Deputy Gilbert had his own gun out, suggesting, "I don't like none of these sissy deck-moppers. What say we arrest the whole bunch of 'em, pard?"

Longarm said calmly, "The late Mr. Doyle only named Lieutenant Flynn here as one of his silent partners. I reckon he felt sort of betrayed after his pal laid him low with volley fire after Doyle agreed in Ancient Irish to surrender without a fight!"

"the bastard! You said he'd died without saying anything!" Flynn wailed, more like an old woman than a man.

Longarm shrugged and explained. "I just told you I wanted to let you have more rope. I was anxious to see you hang. For there's nothing lower than a crook who uses a position of trust to cheat. But damn it all, they'll probably let you save your neck by turning in all of the pals you ain't been able to murder yet!"

By this time Chief Tobin was in the hatchway, with a heavy club in one hand, a Navy Colt in the other, and two crewmen backing him up with their Spencers at port arms.

So Flynn snapped, "Arrest these civilians, Chief!"

And Tobin might have tried had not young Devereaux snapped, "Belay that. The lieutenant is under arrest. Escort him to the brig and slap him in irons. After which, helmsman, hard aport and set our course for Corpus Christi. I'll let Commander Wideman worry about this. For as the lieutenant has often reminded me, I'm not paid to do the thinking around here!"

CHAPTER 15

"But you were bluffing with a rotten hand!" Billy Vail said a week later as he finished reading Longarm's typed-up report in his Oak-paneled inner office at the Denver Federal Building.

Longarm just went on lighting his three-for-a-nickel cheroot on his own side of the marshal's cluttered desk. So Vail waved the thin sheets of foolscap like a matador taunting the bull as he insisted, "Don't you stare so innocent at me with your twinkling gray eyes, you goldbrick salesman disguised as a sober lawman! You've admitted right here in your own report that Doyle was dead as a turd in a milk bucket when you reached him after Flynn had laid down a volley of gunfire on his known position. So what would you have done if Flynn had called your bluff aboard that cutter he was commanding that night?"

"I'd have likely gotten off at Brownsville," Longarm replied, shaking out his match. "By then, of course, those steam line Officials Flynn had already warned by wire would have covered their own asses pretty good. That's how come I had to tell such fibs to get that damned tub turned around. It didn't take near as long to get on up to Corpus Christi, but by then Lieutenant Flynn had spent enough time in irons, contemplating a court-martial if not a keel-hauling, that he was singing like a tweety-bird when his superior Coast Guard officers commenced to question him."

Longarm blew a lazy smoke ring. "They let the Rangers sit in as well, as I put down there in my report. So it didn't take but seventy-two hours and almost that many telegrams up and down the coast before we had most everyone involved in the plot under arrest and squealing on one another like the rats they were. There weren't all that many in on the penny-ante operation, and nobody had ever made enough money to justify even one of the killings. But ain't you ever noticed how it's the cheap crooks who seem stupid enough to kill for next to nothing? Some Rangers who'd been keeping abreast of the beef market assured me the gang was making less'n ten dollars net profit a side on that quarantined beef by the time they'd gone to that much trouble!"

Vail shrugged and blew more pungent cigar smoke back as he pointed out, "They were moving many a side of beef, and with the profits slit less than a score of ways betwixt the crooked shippers and packers, with the help of just one key Coast Guardsman, we're still talking way more money than anyone was making at their more honest jobs. That's if you're certain how many all told were in on it."

Longarm said, "Damn it, I included a carbon of Flynn's signed confession, Boss. As I elaborated more in my official report, it only took a few dedicated bastards. Neither the crews of that steam line nor of that one Coast Guard cutter were in position to question the orders of those few key superiors. It's only up to the skipper and the supercargo where a vessel might or might not put in to load or off-load any damned cargo at any damned time day or night. I put down there how I had to arrest Lieutenant Flynn in front of his first officer to get anyone to question where in thunder Flynn was taking us on a pointless patrol."

Longarm glanced about for an ashtray, saw Vail had ignored his many helpful suggestions as to office furnishings, and calmly fed some tobacco ash to any rug mites by his own big leather chair. Then he continued. "I wasn't bluffing totally. I'd really narrowed down my list of suspects pretty good before Flynn gave his play away. Once I knew what Pryce & Doyle had been up to, I saw right off they'd have never been able to smuggle so brazenly, in bulk, without the help of at least some customs agents."

He took another drag on his smoke, sighed it out, and soberly admitted, "I just wasn't sure who it was at first. You see, Flynn seemed such an asshole I had to consider a junior officer or even a noncom flim-flamming him as well as the rest of us."

Vail nodded. "I follow your drift about the crooks being worried when they saw you headed their way. Thanks to all that shit about you in the Denver Post, it's an established fact You know your military organization as well as beef, from both sides of the border."

Longarm said modestly, "Anyone who's ever served as an enlisted man knows how often things are really run by the noncoms whilst the officers enjoy their privileges and one another's wives. But I knew fairly soon that Flynn was a petty tyrant who ran things his own way and couldn't abide suggestions. I suspected him seriously after he'd as much as executed Doyle before I could get him to talk. But I didn't know for certain till he had me, Gilbert, and our prisoner on board for an otherwise pointless ride to the Rio Grande." Longarm flicked more ash and said flatly, "He'd trained his men not to question his whimsical orders. But I had the advantage of being allowed to consider him an asshole, and mayhaps a better grasp of conflicting jurisdictions in my head. I knew the Coast Guard had the mouth of the Rio Grande covered, by others at least as high-ranking as Flynn. So I knew he had no real call to carry me and my own party down the coast that far, unless it was to get us as far as possible from his pals around Corpus Christi Pass."

Marshal Vail scanned something Henry had retyped for Longarm as he nodded his bullet head. "Right, a steamer swinging south from the passage from the open sea would naturally be left to Flynn's station for, what, occasional boarding?"

Longarm nodded and said, "That's about the size of it. Our thin-spread Revenue Service ain't got time to check every known vessel of a familiar line flying the Stars and Stripes. Nobody aboard either ship passing each other in the night would have call to question it when a familiar supercargo told a familiar Coast Guard skipper there was nothing being imported from anywhere in that refrigerated hold. When Flynn agreed there was no need to spill all that artificial cooling out into the balmy gulf air, who was likely to argue? It's all there in one paragraph or another, Boss. Like you said, I'd have never suspected anything myself if they hadn't started acting so suspicious!"

Vail chuckled. "Oh, I don't know about that. Seems I can hardly send you down to the corner for a bucket of beer without you uncovering a gang of bank robbers. But you done us proud this time, old son. Rod Gilbert's on his way to full recovery and Clay Baldwin's on his way to the gallows, whether he gets better or not."

Vail snubbed out his own cigar in the big copper ashtray he kept handy for himself, and set the report aside as he chuckled fondly. "It's still a good thing for you that Coast Guard officer never learned to play cards on an army blanket. He's naturally changed his story a dozen times since you arrested him, and he almost had some higher-ups convinced that you were making up mean things about him. So it's just as well he told that whopper about you before you arrested him instead of after."

Longarm shot his superior a sincerely puzzled frown and asked what they were talking about. So Vail chortled, "O he wired me as well as the Surgeon General's office some cock-and-bull story about you and some government nurse carrying on disgracefully in the officers' quarters down there. Even if a thing like that was true, it surely shows how Flynn had it in for you. He must have known you were closing in on him, right?"

To which Longarm could only reply, "I reckon the poor bastard must have been desperate, making up a whopper like that one!"

The End