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

There wasn't much. A crowd had already gathered and the dead kid's young mother, a care-worn dishwater-blonde, had already dashed from her quarters nearby to cradle her child's shattered skull in her lap, oblivious of the mess it was making of her thin calico dress as she rocked mindlessly on her knees, a.s.suring him it wasn't his fault and n.o.body was going to give him a licking this time.

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

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

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

CHAPTER 8.

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

Purvis had to reason harder before Longarm reluctantly agreed that a posse's chances of tracking a dimly described rider on a public trail would be too slim to justify the excitement. Longarm had already considered the possibility of that b.a.s.t.a.r.d discarding the duster and flashy hat before simply holing up on a nearby spread, or even back in town afoot after sending his pony on alone.

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

Longarm grunted, "Strawberry."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

n.o.body seemed out for a second crack at him, and so he made it to the icehouse without further incident.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER 9.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ruby leaned closer, as if someone might overhear her above the clopping hoofbeats in the middle of a deserted street, as she told Longarm, "She was either out to punish herself, or punish some man who'd betrayed her former true nature, or she just plain liked it. n.o.body can turn a gal wicked against her will, no matter how she might lie to you men afterwards."