Longarm - Longarm On The Fever Coast Part 1

LONGARM ON THE FEVER COAST.

By Tabor Evans.

Synopsis:

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

CHAPTER 1.

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

Longarm had appeared before His Honor a time or two to ask if they could use a dead outlaw's own pocket money to bury him decently, the outlaw being intestate, and old Elroy had been neighborly enough. But U.S. Deputy Marshal Custis Long, as he was known officially, was there at the funeral more as a representative of his federal court. n.o.body but his immediate superior, U.S. Marshal William Vail, would come right out and say what they thought of the poor old political hack. But Longarm felt sure he'd been stuck with the ch.o.r.e because he was well known to the locals gathered in the church as a federal man, thanks to those dumb features about him in the Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post. Things had gotten to where a lawman wound up on the infernal front pages every time he had to gun a foolish road agent. It felt dumb to be sitting up front, in a fresh-pressed tweed suit and cruelly starched white s.h.i.+rt, for Pete's sake, while some jasper a row back whispered, "That's the one they call Longarm, and I'll bet that's his famous.44-40 bulging under the left tail of his frock coat."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But the gal next to him wasn't playing the song about some dead slaveholder's funeral. As he pumped away Longarm tried and failed to come up with the right words, or even the t.i.tle of this one. But all that popped into his head was: "While the organ peeled potatoes, Lard was rendered by the choir. While the s.e.xtant wrang the dish cloth, Someone set the church on fire!"

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

So he tried not to. But the next thing he knew, as he was biting his own disrespectful tongue, he caught her mouthing the next verse under her breath. So it seemed only fair to sing along: "Holy smoke, the preacher shouted. In the rush he lost his hair. Now his head resembles Heaven, For there is no parting there."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Billy Vail bit down on the stubby cigar in his bulldog mouth and replied, "Bulls.h.i.+t! You never drove that gal out to no graveyard along no dirty roads! You run her straight home from the funeral after carrying on scandalously with her in front of the whole d.a.m.ned congregation!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To which Marshal Vail could only reply with a modest smile, "I reckon somebody has to do some thinking for you when it comes to women. Lord knows the pretty little things surely seem to confuse the s.h.i.+t out of you when left to study about 'em on your own!"

CHAPTER 2.

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

The Lone Star and erstwhile Confederate State was commencing to attract more settlers and railroad tracks now that President Hayes had called a halt to Reconstruction and let those who best knew the Southwest run it their own way, as long as they remembered who'd won. So most of the Southern railroads had standardized their tracks to the same broad gauge, and Henry had managed to get Longarm by rail to the head of navigation on the Rio Grande. You had to go by steamboat from Brownsville to Escondrijo and beyond in any case. Railroads ran where there was profit to be made, across sensible terrain, and even if there had been enough settlers to matter, it would have been a b.i.t.c.h to lay track across the line of swamps and estuaries between Brownsville and Galveston with the construction methods of the day. So it made more sense to everyone if such freight and pa.s.sengers as there were moved up and down the Fever Coast by boat, whether sail luggers out on the gulf, or steamers plying the inland waterway a good pilot could follow from lagoon to lagoon behind the sandy barrier islands that lay just offsh.o.r.e--as if to guard the low, swampy mainland from that mean Indian deity Hura Kan.

Longarm had known better than to head for south Texas in a three-piece tweed suit with summer coming in. The paddle-wheel pa.s.sage down the lower Rio Grande was hot and sticky enough to a gent wearing no more than a thin cotton work s.h.i.+rt and well-washed jeans between his tobacco-brown Stetson and low-heeled stovepipe boots. n.o.body along the border got excited by the sight of a sober gent packing a gun on one hip. He only sported his badge when he was up to answering pesky questions about his immediate intent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Escondrijo was on this side of Corpus Christi, and a day's ride away in a straight line from that more important stop. But moving along the Fever Coast by horse took longer, thanks to all the inlets and swamps there were to go around. By an ironic trick of geology, as the post office riders had known before coastal steamers got so common along the inland waterway, a rider could move much faster along the back dunes of Padre Island, an otherwise mighty lonely string bean of white sand and sea gull s.h.i.+t the winds and waves had piled a few miles out extending from Corpus Christi Pa.s.s all the way south to Matamoros in Old Mexico. They said it was healthier as well as a bit cooler out along the barrier sands. It was too bad n.o.body had yet come up with any way to make a living off no more than white sandy beaches and suns.h.i.+ne.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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