Longarm - Longarm On The Fever Coast Part 2

The supercargo insisted, even as he was leading the way over with his bull's-eye beam on the oaken port and its stout bra.s.s fittings, "n.o.body could hide in there with the half-frozen fruit and crates of salad greens we've already cooled to just above zero centigrade."

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

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

Longarm nodded. "Some railroad men told me about freeze burn. For now I'm more interested in that f.u.c.king Hamp G.o.dwynn, if that was his name."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Longarm moved over to the doorway as he soberly replied, "I reckon if a catty-pillar could turn into a b.u.t.terfly, a wriggle worm ought to manage turning into a doughnut, ma'am. But to tell the truth, I doubt anyone aboard this vessel died of the ague this evening."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Longarm had. He'd liked that pretty blonde. So he fired as the son of a b.i.t.c.h zagged, hoping to bust his a.s.s and leave him in shape to explain why they'd wanted to gun a federal lawman.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Longarm said, "I know. I was there. I' m the one they call Longarm, and it was a government health worker I sent ash.o.r.e in my place back at our last port of call. As she'd have wired you, this tricky son of a b.i.t.c.h could have swum ash.o.r.e. But I figured he was hiding out somewhere on board. So I hid out just as good, and as you now see, he made a break for it here thinking I'd got off there."

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

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

By this time lots of folks who'd ducked for cover at the sounds of gunplay were edging back out into the morning light. So Longarm added, "Stay here and make sure n.o.body steals the corpse whilst I go back aboard for their two stock saddles and possibles. All we can do now is put out as total a description of them and their gear as possible and hope for some answers."

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

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

CHAPTER 5.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Longarm moved casually to place his broader back against a 'dobe wall, and noticed n.o.body seemed out to edge around behind him as he replied, "Quien sabe? Everybody looks like somebody. Exactly who did you have in mind?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His young guide led him not through one of the more imposing oak- or cypress-wood street entrances, but into a slot between what looked like two separate properties. At the far end of the gloomy pa.s.sageway a smaller but stout-looking door had been deep-set in thick masonry. The kid knocked and the door swung inward, as if they'd been expected. But there was n.o.body visible in the dimly lit vestibule or on the flight of stairs winding down and lit by one wall sconce. It wasn't too clear which of four possible fort-like properties one was under as the stairs gave way to a long candle-lit corridor that seemed to have been laid out by a drunk trying to build straight.

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

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

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

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

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

He shrugged. "n.o.body with a lick of sense admires the current Administration of Old Mexico, senorita."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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