by Evans, Tabor
Longarm set his half-drained goblet aside and started to rise as he thanked the old cuss for what he’d already swallowed.
The priest said, “Sentarse, I had not finished. In my capacity as a priest of La Santa Fe I would have nothing for to say to this most desicreditado enemy of El Presidente Diaz. So perhaps it is just as well I have only heard rumors he might be in town and for how may I help you in your capacity as a lawman on this side of the border?”
Longarm chose his words before he cautiously replied, “To start with, was it the Widow Deveruex or her daughter who told you who I... might be, Padre?”
The priest said, “I do not think they know who you are. I can tell you that much. I am not at liberty to discuss what anyone may or may not have told me in the confessional. Now you wish for me to tell you whether poor David Deveruex or his comrades have sought Sanctuary with us, no?”
Longarm nodded and said, “Yep. Ain’t a question I can come up with more important than that one, Padre.”
The older man sighed and said, “You have my word as an ordained man of God that David and his friend, Hogan, are nowhere to be found on the property of this parish, including some grazing land you will hear of as you ask around.”
Longarm sipped more sangria and asked, “Is it safe to say you’d tell me if he was somewhere else you knew of, Padre?”
The priest looked pained and replied, “Let us not play guessing games, my son. I have tried for to explain the delicate position I am in with some of my parish on one side while others stand ready to fight to the death for the other. I have told you as much as I have because I do not wish for you to make more trouble for anyone. The ones you seek are not here. They are not hiding with anyone who attends services at this church. That is all I can tell you. Please do not ask me to betray a confidence or lie to a lawman of these Estados Unidos!”
So Longarm never. It would have been dumb to brag to the older man he’d used that “process of eliminating” to put the murderous little pissant out on the Deveruex-Lopez Grant, with his big sister instead of his little old momma covering up for him!
He finished the sangria and one of the galetta dulces to be polite and left the rectory friendly without pressing the priest about Hernando Nana popping out this same door like that the night before. The friendly old cuss had already told him more than he’d hoped for. So all he had to do now was search for an armed-and-dangerous needle in one hellishly big mesquite stack! That son of a bitching land grant covered many a square mile of rough range and it hardly seemed likely any D Bar L riders would be offering a helping hand to anybody but the bratty kid brother of their boss lady, Devil Dave’s own sister!
Springtime in West Texas was hot as High Summer in Denver. So Longarm paused in the shade of a blackjack arching over the churchyard walk to light a fresh cheroot as he tried to come up with some way to poke about the D Bar L without being challenged as a trespasser by riders who’d know their own range better.
As he shook out the match a ragged-ass Mexican kid came through the tombstones like a haunt fixing to ask for a hand-out. Longarm had made the mistake of giving money to one kid begging in Spanish. So he said, “No me jodas, Muchacho. No tengo dinero. No tengo tabaco. No tengo mierda por Usted. ¿Comprende?”
To which the kid sweetly replied. “Chingate! I do not wish for your money. I do not wish for tobacco and you can keep your shit! I was told you are the gringo called Dunk Crawford. The viada who sent me for to find you and bring you to her does not speak to me so rudo. But she must be loco en las cabeza to wish for your visita desagradable.”
Longarm broke out another cheroot and soothed, “Have a smoke, you sassy little cuss. A widow woman sent you to fetch me, you say? Might we be talking about a little gray-haired viada of calidad?”
The kid took the cheroot without even a nod of thanks and told Longarm to judge the lady for himself. So Longarm fell in step with the kid, who put the cheroot away for later as Longarm tried to figure out where they were going.
When he asked if the Deveruex-Lopez town house wasn’t more to the north of the churchyard the Mex kid snorted that everyone knew that.
So the old widow woman didn’t want to meet him at home, and like the old church song suggested, farther along he’d understand why.
As they left the churchyard Longarm asked the kid whether he went to church back yonder and the kid snorted, “Por que? Life is too short for to waste any part of it praying for to live forever. Do you believe any of that mierda, Senor Crawford?”
Longarm shrugged and said, “I ain’t as old and sure of myself as you, muchacho. The reason I asked was I was wondering whether there was a convent or a monastery attached to that old Spanish church.”
The kid shook his head and said, “Ningundo de los dos. Is a school for muchachas run by only a few, how you say, teaching nuns. But they take no direct orders from Padre Luis, so he is forced for to sleep with his housekeeper. For why do you ask?”
Longarm tried to sound less interested than he was when he replied he’d thought he’d seen a monk or nun walking home the widow he worked for.
The kid seemed to find this tough to buy and suggested Longarm was in the market for some specs. Longarm chose not to press the matter.
The raggedy kid led him to a part of town where the houses, albeit built of ’dobe, were set back a piece with their yards wrapped around them, Anglo style. The kid pointed ahead to a bay window bigger than any Mex would have in an outside wall, where a sign hung, advising one and all that Madame Irene made dresses to measure inside.
Longarm figured the widow woman who’d sent for him would tell him why she’d wanted to meet him in a dressmaker’s shop once he asked her, if that was exactly what she, or somebody else, really had in mind.
He stopped in the shade of a blackjack oak across the way to fish in his pocket for a nickel as he told the kid he’d take it from there.
The fresh-mouthed street urchin accepted the coin without thanking Longarm and lit out on his bare feet to wherever raggedy kids lit out to with a whole nickel.
Longarm didn’t waste time wondering how a kid so young could have gotten so old and bitter. He couldn’t spot anybody watching for him inside that big bay window. That didn’t mean nobody could be. It only meant he had a chance. So he strode off as if he was headed somewhere else entire and didn’t cross the dusty road until nary a chink in the ’dobe walls of that dressmaker’s was aimed his way.
Once he made it that far it was duck-soup-simple to work around to the back alley and, sure enough, there was a back door and no yard dog when he found his way to the cactus-hedged back garden of the odd address the Widow Deveruex had given for their get-together.
Hoping he was only about to embarrass his fool self, Longarm drew his .44—40 and dashed across the sunny garden to the back door, to find it locked in his fool face.
He shifted his sixgun to his left hand and got out a pocket knife with one blade filed in a manner to get anyone but a lawman arrested. But as he silently slipped his skeleton key in the lock, the door was flung wide and a marble goddess wearing an ecru silk kimono was asking him what had kept him so long and how come he’d come pussyfooting to her kitchen door.
On second glance the statuesque figure was that of a fair-sized gal with ivory-white skin, blue-black hair pinned up in a bun, and eyes as dark and smouldering as a pissed-off Apache.
Her kimono was almost as wide open as her kitchen door and he saw she was brunette all over as he ticked his hat brim to her and allowed he’d found her invite just a tad mysterious.
She said, “Come on in before the neighbors have us going at it out in the garden. I’m Irene Pantages. Didn’t that boy I sent for you tell you that?”
As he followed her inside a not unpleasant but odd-smelling kitchen Longarm replied, “He described you as a widow woman, Miss Irene. I had another lady entire in mind and that’s why I thought I’d best scout an address that took me by surprise. You say you’re last name would be Pantages, ma�
�am? The same as that of this wrangler I know?”
“By marriage,” the big brunette explained, leading Longarm on through her kitchen instead of sitting him down for coffee and cake as custom called for. As he followed, admiring the view, she explained, “My late husband was the cousin of the poor relation you call Greek Steve. We Hellenes do stick together, and poor Stavros and his problems with the law are why I sent for you.”
He’d expected to wind up in a front parlor if she didn’t mean to coffee and cake him in her kitchen. So he was mighty surprised when they wound up in what surely seemed a lady’s bed chamber, complete with a four-poster and an end table piled with smokes, tumblers, and a fifth of bourbon.
He gulped and said, “I didn’t know your kinsman was in trouble with the law, Miss Irene.”
She shrugged off her kimono to turn and face him bare as a babe, but ten times as tempting, as she demurely replied, “Bullshit. I know for a fact you were seen talking with a Texas Ranger before Stavros came to me for help. I know for a fact you were seen talking to that same Texas Ranger just after Stavros left town. What are you, a bounty hunter or some other sort of lawman in disguise?”
Longarm tried not to stare lower than her firm jawline as he told her she could have his word he wasn’t a Texas Ranger.
She lay back on her elbows to part her ivory thighs invitingly as she decided, “You’re not bad looking, whatever you are, and they tell me lawmen just hate to arrest girls they’ve made love to. So what are you waiting for? Don’t you want to compare notes with me on Stavros?”
Longarm soberly replied, “I ain’t sure. What have you got on Greek Steve, Miss Irene?”
She shook her head and insisted, “First we fuck and then we can talk.”
Chapter 14
It sure beat all how women passed such helpful hints about menfolk around. And some were as dumb as the notions pool-room kids told one one another about women. But the taxpayers had the right to expect a senior deputy to do his duty, no matter how painful. So he put his hat and gun aside and got out of his boots and duds as fast as he was able, with the curvaceous creamy brunette helping him off with his underpants at the last, and grabbing hold of his old organ grinder with a wicked grin as she shoved him flat beside her marvelled, “Good heavens! Is all this meant for little old me!”
He assured her it was and rolled the other way to plant his socks on the rug and hover above her, stiff elbowed, whilst she guided it in for their mutual enjoyment.
From the way she bit her lush lower lip and thrust her generously proportioned pelvis up to meet his, he suspected she might be combining business with pleasure.
He knew he was. So this hardly seemed the time to say that though his boss frowned on the practice and defense lawyers delighted in a lawman getting this familiar with a client before he arrested her, it wasn’t as impossible to arrest a lady you’d played slap-and-tickle with as a heap of shemale suspects had been told, Lord love whoever might have told this one! For she was a big strong gal with a heap of spring in her ass and a twat tight enough to service a schoolboy!
So a grand time was had by all and Longarm almost forgot the palmed derringer he’d brought to bed with them until he had to move it again when she begged him to put a second pillow under her frisky pale ass.
She felt it when he came in her, and wrapped her long ivory limbs around his waist to hold him inside her as they both went limp and he kissed her, sincere.
When they came up for air she murmured, “Oh, thank you, Dunk. I’d almost forgotten how good that could feel, with the right man.”
He ground his pubic bone against her own without answering as he digested her use of his made-up name. Any D Bar L rider who’d told her he’d been messing with the rangers could have told her he was a saddle tramp they called Dunk Crawford. If she was buying the name it likely meant nobody had told her he was El Brazo Largo. Nobody’d said either one of them were Mexican. She and Greek Steve both talked as natural as any other West Texas folk. Greek Steve had said he’d been born and raised nearby. He decided to let her tell him about herself in her own way in her own good time.
She did as they reluctantly untangled for a drink, a smoke, and their second wind. She made sure he was comfortable with those pillows piled behind his bare shoulders, a drink in his free hand, a good cigar in his mouth, and a big creamy tit in his other hand before she took a deep breath and said, “My late husband left me well provided for with this business in town and some Mexicans herding sheep for me over on the Stockton Plateau. So from time to time I’ve been able to help poor Stavros a little. He needs a little help because he drinks a lot.”
When a lady told a gent with a tumbler of whiskey in his hand that another gent drank a lot it was safe to say he had a problem. Longarm was suddenly reminded he had both hands occupied with his derringer under the pillow. So he gripped the Havana Claro in his teeth and put the glass aside to thoughtfully roll a nipple betwixt thumb and forefinger as he soberly asked Irene if she ever helped Cousin Stavros out this way.
She gasped, “Eutheo! He is family! By marriage at any rate. And one of the reasons his money never lasts until payday is that he spends the little he doesn’t spend on liquor at a bordello by the river called Rosalinda’s!”
Longarm was inclined to believe her. He’d been to Rosalinda’s with Greek Steve and nobody getting what Irene had to offer would spend a day’s pay on any whore! Old Irene was as good a lay with twice the class of pretty little Perfidia, and that was saying something indeed.
Longarm took a drag on the Claro, put it aside in a bed-table ashtray, and finished off that whiskey before he suggested mildly, “You said there was something you wanted to talk about, once we’d gotten to know one another this well.”
She snuggled closer and said, “I closed early and it’s almost the usual siesta time. You’ve no idea how well I mean to know you, in the biblical sense, and Stavros was what I wanted to talk to you about.”
He shrugged a bare shoulder under her soft cheek and said, “Once you say a man has a drinking problem you’ve said about all there could be to say about him, right?”
She toyed with the hairs on Longarm’s belly as she sighed, “Wrong. He came to me last night for a loan. That’s what Stavros calls it when he asks me for money, a loan. He said he needed at least twenty-five dollars. I told him that was a lot of money. He said he needed it to ride far and fast. He said the rangers had been asking you about him.”
“That’s what I told Chongo,” Longarm cautiously admitted. That was the plain truth when you studied on it. He thought it safe to add, “I never told Chongo the rangers had accused old Steve of anything. All I told Chongo was that they’d asked if I knew a rider who made that Sign of the Cross backwards, Greek Style.”
The Greek gal in bed with him sniffed and said she’d be the judge of who made the Sign of The Cross the wrong way. She added, “The rest of you have Easter on the wrong day, too, but getting back to Cousin Stavros. He confessed to me that the rangers might be after him because of young David Deveruex, the kid brother of the lady he rides for. The boy’s in some sort of trouble. Serious trouble. Stavros said both the rangers and some famous federal lawman are after him and some Irishman.”
Longarm asked, “Are you sure he said the Deveruex boy was riding with an Irishman? I think I heard them rangers say something about an outlaw called Hogan, and I’ll allow that sounds like an Irish name, but so does Deveruex and I understand they’re half-Mex.”
The Greek-American widow woman said, “Stavros said he hadn’t met this wanted man called Hogan. But he seemed to feel he was as dangerous as David Deveruex and we all know him as Devil Dave.”
“I’ve heard tell he grew up mean in these parts,” said Longarm.
The local gal suppressed a shudder and said, “Crazy-mean. Used to rope outhouses when ladies were using them and it wasn’t Halloween. Shot a black trooper in the back one Saturday evening because he declared Our Lord made darkies to fetch and carry, not to be
carried around by a superior animal.”
“I heard Devil Dave was like that,” Longarm murmured, adding, “How does Cousin Steve tie in with such a sweet kid?”
She confessed, “I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me. I was hoping you could tell me, once I’d heard the rangers had lit out after him a few minutes after one of them had another conversation with you this morning.”
Longarm felt on surer ground as he assured her, truthfully, “The one ranger I spoke to at breakfast time never said they were riding out after old Steve or any other white man. He said Victorio and as many as a hundred Bronco Apache have been raiding too close to Texas for comfort. He asked if I was a war vet who might like to ride along as they scout for the Ninth Cav. When did Steve light out last night? Was it early or late and did he say which way he meant to ride?”
She reached down to fondle his limp shaft as she calmly replied, “I think I’d better compromise you as an arresting officer some more before I say another word about my criminal associates.”
Longarm laughed and asked her who’d told her he was a lawman out to arrest her or anyone in her family. But she just kept stroking it with the skill only a gal who’d been happily married a spell seemed to attain, as many a schoolboy playing stinkfinger in a porch swing had been know to complain. So, seeing it was getting so hard, and not wanting to get her soft palm messy, he set everything but her aside to roll back in the saddle again. But then she said she wanted to get on top. So he let her, and she did that as only a gal who’d had a heap of practice could hope to manage.
Smiling down at him through the soft daylight of her bedroom as she slid up and down his merry-go-round pole Irene asked him why he had his eyes shut. “Don’t you like to watch my nipples bounce?” she demanded.
He opened his eyes with a dreamy smile to agree she bounced great, all over, and explained, “I was just now thinking about another widow gal and a conversation we once had about the advantages of doing this with one.”
