Then he saw those distant riders reining in but not getting down in front of old Consuela's casa. n.o.body seemed to be shooting at anyone yet. But Longarm sighed and said, "All right, just this once, but we really ought to watch this s.h.i.t."

It took a bit less time loping back than it had taken to trot off. But as he closed in on the tense scene he saw the argument had had time to build up some steam. Consuela and half a dozen of her ranch hands were on her front veranda afoot. None of the riders had dismounted, and one scrawny old cuss was waving a paper at the Indian gal as if he wanted her to take it.

Everyone stopped jawing to stare at Longarm as he reined in to join the discussion. As he neared the man who seemed to be the process server and held out his free hand, Consuela cried, "Don't take that! You have to accept an eviction order before they can make it stick!"

Longarm smiled down at her rea.s.suringly. "I fear you may know more about ranching than legal proceedings, Miss Consuela. That ain't the way things work, and even if it was, I don't own an acre of spit in these parts. So I'd best have a look-see."

He turned back to the mean-eyed old goat who'd been trying to serve the Indian gal with his fluttering single sheet, and mildly asked who he had the honor of confronting.

The older man said he was Cyrus Grayson of the Bar Three Slash, and asked who Longarm might be, aside from a Mex-lover.

Longarm ignored the snickers from the other riders backing the old goat's play as he mildly suggested, "By the time you found out exactly who I was, you might have decided you didn't want to know me all that well. What have you got there, Mister Grayson? Looks to me like a notarized letter."

Grayson handed it over, snapping, "d.a.m.ned right it's notarized. Had it witnessed and sealed by a licensed notary public yesterday afternoon!"

Longarm scanned the absolutely worthless doc.u.ment with a smile of disbelief. Then he turned back to the worried Consuela and said, "This jasper knows no more about the law than you do, Miss Consuela. He's made a sworn statement to the effect that you are neither an American citizen nor a member of the white race, which is moot. Then he goes on to say you're squatting unlawfully on range he needs to get to the river road, and so on."

Grayson nodded grimly and added, "Signed, sealed, and delivered according to law. There's no arguing with papers witnessed and stamped by a notary public, right?"

Longarm laughed. "Wrong. A notary public is a respected tobacconist, innkeeper, or whatever, licensed by the county to witness and seal doc.u.ments to prove he witnessed somebody swearing to him their words were true."

Grayson nodded. "That's what I just said."

Longarm replied, "No, it ain't. You tried to tell us this foolish scribble was a legal doc.u.ment. It's an expression of your personal opinion about a lady who was here first, on land you'd like to grab but ain't about to. I don't know what you paid to have this notarized, but you wasted your money. Didn't the notary tell you when he stamped it for you that all he was backing was your word that you and you alone were the blithering idiot who signed it?"

Then Longarm was suddenly holding a pistol in his hand as the sheet of paper fluttered down between his mount's legs. So the younger rider on the far side of old Grayson suddenly let go of his own pistol grips with a sick grin as Longarm quietly said, "I only give one demonstration.

The next one who reaches for his side arm had better mean it."

Old Grayson's face had gone frog-belly white, but his voice was fairly steady as he said, "Don't never do that again without my say-so, Rafe.

Now get down and pick up that paper you made the man drop."

Longarm kept his gun out as he said, "I have a grander notion. I want Miss Consuela's lawyer to keep and cherish that free sample of doc.u.mented stupidity."

He said a few words in Spanish. Consuela nodded, and one of her hands dashed forward as Longarm danced his mount off the paper.

Consuela asked something in Spanish. Longarm wanted both sides to get his message, so he replied in English. "It was a childish bluff I'd be ashamed to try in a lunatic asylum, Miss Consuela. I'd say your friendly neighbor's own lawyer told him there was no way they'd ever get a court order in New Mexico evicting anyone from an old Mexican land grant. So he wasted more time and money on a notarized doc.u.ment, as I said."

Grayson told the Mexican hand, "I'll take that," as the hand picked up the doc.u.ment in question. The Mexican hesitated. Longarm snapped at him in Spanish, and he ran clean past Consuela and into the house with it. Then Longarm told Grayson calmly, "You were trying to serve that paper on the lady, in front of witnesses. So now she's got it, and when her lawyers finish laughing at you, they'll likely want to hang on to it in case you ever try to waste their time in court again. Didn't your own lawyer explain any of this to you, old son?"

Grayson snapped, "I have my rights, d.a.m.n it! I'm a U.S. citizen who fought at Cold Harbor for the Union and came away with scars to prove it. Who are you to take the side of a full-blood Indian against a good white American?"

Longarm chuckled fondly and replied, "I'll allow you seem to be a white American. I doubt you're all that good, and I know you're as smart as the average scarecrow. I don't know where you got the grand notion you could run a taxpaying grant-holder off her land as you might some Digger Indian poking through your trash heap, but it just ain't possible. So why don't you just git and save wear and tear on all concerned."

Grayson sat taller in his saddle as he grimly replied, "I don't run off as easy as your average Digger neither, Mexlover."

Longarm said, "I don't think you understand this situation, land-grabber. It ain't going to work. Even if you shot everyone here and burned the whole spread to the ground, you would never in this world gain t.i.tle to a Spanish grant recognized by the U.S. Government, unless you could get Miss Consuela here to marry up with you."

Neither Grayson nor the widow Llamas seemed enthusiastic about that suggestion. Longarm laughed and said, "You got to admit nothing else would work half so well. But seeing you haven't come courting, old son, why don't you just be on your way? If your pony has its feet stuck, I might be able to inspire it to run with a few pistol shots."

Grayson glared down at the cornely widow on the veranda instead, snarling, "You win this hand, you stubborn squaw, but I can find me just as many hired guns as you, hear?"

Then he whirled his pony and rode off, his ragged-a.s.s bunch in his wake, before Consuela could give the show away by saying anything at all.

As they rode off, cussing and arguing among themselves, Longarm holstered his six-gun, hauled out his Winchester, and dismounted to say, "I'd best stick around a while. I'm hoping you've seen the last of them till he comes up with another bright notion. But you never can tell what a wolverine might do when it can't seem to get a cupboard open."

She laughed girlishly, and suggested they have some more to eat and drink inside. He figured she had to do a lot of riding between snacks to keep her figure on the pleasant side of pleasantly plump. Her hired help, of course, took care of his riding stock and, as long as they were about it, relayed Longarm's suggestion that everyone get the kids, pigs, and chickens forted up inside the 'dobe walls for now.

Back in that same parlor, Longarm explained the situation in greater depth as they nibbled tostadas and sipped sangria punch made with plenty of rum. She asked if he didn't think a stupid enemy was more dangerous than a smart one. He didn't want to worry her more than he had to. So he shrugged and said, "Might be a smart move to send a message to your own law firm. Where are they--in Vado Seguro?"

She nodded, and said she'd send a rider right away. But he told her to hold the thought as he got out his notebook and a pencil stub, saying, "I saw a Western Union sign out front of the hardware store in town. I also have some pals over to Santa Fe, a lot closer to Governor Wallace than your lawyers might be, no offense. So we'd best alert the federal territorial government to this total idiot you're having trouble with."

She clapped her hands in delight, and asked if he could possibly stay until the troops came to bombard Cyrus Grayson into submission.

He chuckled and said, "Anything is possible, ma'am, but it ain't practical for me to man this post indefinitely. If nothing happens on this side of noon, I'll have to figure it's over, for now."

Then a rifle round sponged through the window to shatter the big pitcher on the table in front of the sofa and spatter them both with busted gla.s.s and sangria punch.

Sangria was made of red wine, lemonade, rum, and other crud that looked like b.l.o.o.d.y gashes on wet clothes and skin. But Longarm was out the door with his Winchester before he'd taken time to see whether either of them had been fatally wounded.

The rifleman was already well on his way aboard a roan, having fired blind from way off in the mustard, judging by the drifting white smoke.

Longarm went back inside, muttering, "Looked like a kid. Might have been acting on his own. If there's one thing more dangerous than a blithering idiot, it has to be a young blithering idiot."

She'd risen to her feet, black lace sopping wet, and told him he was all spattered with sangria punch as he set down his Winchester again. He ruefully said he'd noticed as he regarded his own sleeves. His jeans hadn't caught too much of it, and he'd fortunately set his denim jacket aside, clear of the liquid explosion. But his. .h.i.therto light blue work shirt seemed covered with purple polka dots now.

As he picked up his notebook and pencil again, wiping the notebook's fake leather cover dry on his ruined shirt, he asked if she'd heard that table salt was good for fresh wine stains.

She said his only hope was a day-long soak in salt water, followed by thorough laundering and a day or so flapping in strong sunlight.

He grimaced and said, "I got another shirt in my saddlebags. I'd meant to launder some sweat out of it before I wore it some more. But it holds fond memories, and has to be an improvement over purple polka dots!"

As he sat down and proceeded to compose his wire to the federal men in Santa Fe, eighty-odd miles to the south-southeast, Consuela repeated what she'd said that morning about her late husband having been a big man. "I'm sure we can find you a pair of fresh shirts, and I would not feel as awkward handing down your freshly laundered work shirts to one of my larger riders, eh?"

He agreed that made sense. There was no need to go into why the personal duds of even a dead hidalgo might give some vaqueros lofty opinions of their position on the spread. He said he'd as soon wash up again before changing into that fresh shirt. When she said his wish was her command, he told her they'd best wait a spell. He'd already said that if the riders meant to come back, it would likely be before the day got hot enough for La Siesta.

But he felt sticky as h.e.l.l long before noon as the sweet rum punch he'd been soaked with dried to the consistency of that goo on the shiny side of flypaper.

He scouted out around the buildings on foot, both to make sure he'd really run that last rider off and in hopes of feeling a tad less itchy.

He couldn't find anyone to shoot. But he sure felt like shooting somebody as the morning dragged on.

Meanwhile, Consuela had bathed in her own quarters, and changed into a simple Mexican smock of white cotton, sashed at the waist with red silk.

It made her look more girlish in her Junoesque Zuni way. That jasmine scent she'd splashed on her brown hide made her smell a lot more high-toned than your average lady in rope-soled sandals.

When she inquired, and he had to admit how miserable he still felt, she suggested he might bathe in her mirador, or what Anglo Victorians called a cupola when they had one stuck atop their own houses.

He allowed he'd noticed the boxlike structure atop her roof, but had a.s.sumed it to be a dovecote. She explained it had been built in wilder Apache times as a lookout and siege tower, with more to it than it might seem from outside, since the clay tiles of the sloped roof rose waist-high to anyone up there. She offered to show it to him, and must have taken it for granted that he'd cotton to it. For she called out to a house servant in pa.s.sing that El Senor would be needing some hot bath water up there poco tiempo.

You had to go up a glorified ladder, or mighty steep staircase, by way of Consuela's own master bedchamber. It hadn't been meant to be easy for raiding Apache. Once they were up in the frame mirador, glazed with sash windows all around, Longarm saw it was fixed up as a sort of study or guest room, furnished with a writing table, a bra.s.s bedstead with blankets over the mattress, and the usual stools and such. She pointed out the big copper washtub under the table, and said she'd often bathed and slept naked during La Siesta in hot weather, when the cross ventilation that high off the ground was one's only hope.

He placed his Winchester on the writing table as he admired the view all around and said, "Raiders would have a time creeping in through the mustard with anyone watching from up here. For I'll be switched if I can't see lots of bare ground that would be behind the weeds to anyone sitting on the veranda downstairs!"