by Evans, Tabor
He put his gun back in its holster as he added, “We ought to be thinking about getting you and your money out of this rain and under lock and key whilst your own bank is still open, this evening, Miss Connie. I was recalling what your own priest said about vesper services that reminded me of a lone nun I’d seen with your momma, myself, and that reminded me of a pleasant sunset viewed from Capitol Hill, in good company, as a corporal’s squad of nuns crossed the statehouse grounds, in pairs. So when I suddenly spied one nun alone, coming at us in this drizzle after I’d yelled at her to stay back, I didn’t need a slide rule to tally the final equation. El Moro, yonder, had already told me him and his pals were planning something shady with a hard-talking cuss called lago Casas. Miss Connie, here, had made mention of trouble with one James Hogan. So I’d already put Casas and Hogan together as I ran over to get here just in time.”
One of the copper badges stared down at the sprawled vaqueros to demand, “They told you, the famous Longarm, they were planning to kill and rob the lady they rode for?”
Longarm modestly replied, “They didn’t know who I was.”
Slim laughed dryly and volunteered, “You had to have been there. He had us all convinced he was a not-too-honest veteran of that Lincoln County War.”
“He lies like a rug!” added Chongo, somehow not appearing too sore about that now.
Connie sobbed, “Get me and my money out of this rain and away from this two-faced cochino I never wish to see again!”
Her voice dripped acid as she added, “See Slim about any back pay you may feel you’ve earned for your ... services, Deputy Long!”
But life was not to be that simple. One of the copper badge escorted Connie and her retainers over to her bank as Longarm and the other rode herd on all the bodies until other lawmen and the meat wagon from the San Antone Morgue could arrive. Then it still wasn’t over.
The famous Longarm hadn’t gunned four crooks alone. Slim Gonzales had shot two and both Connie and Chongo were called as witnesses, along with Longarm and an old Mex selling hot tamales across the way to the coroner’s inquest that followed.
Connie Deveruex sat calmly but must have been sweating bullets when it was Longarm’s turn to testify. He told the panel he’d been working undercover to see if he could catch some federal wants riding with the D Bar L. When one of the panel members pointed out that the late Jim Hogan hadn’t been riding for the outfit, Longarm allowed that Hogan’s plotting with El Moro, Pablo, and Latigo seemed close enough. The San Antone coroner banged the table and said, “You’re out of order. You just heard everyone agree three whole riders for the D Bar L were in with a bad breed wanted for murder by the federal govenment! Get on with it, Deputy Long!”
So Longarm said, “That’s about the size of it, sir. It’s like that fairy tale about the three princes of Serendip by Mister Waldpole. It sometimes turns out that they send me after one crook and I catch me another.”
The coroner said, “That’s for certain. We’ve been told by other lawmen you were sent to Texas after the younger brother of Consuela Deveruex y Lopez, yonder in the front row.”
Longarm was facing the other way. So he couldn’t see Connie’s face as he lightly replied, “I was. Like the local law and your rangers had already decided, he don’t seem to have hid out worth mention at home. Jim Hogan was a bad Navaho breed we suspect of riding with Dave Deveruex and two bad Mission Apache. Apache and Navaho are close kin who talk the same Indian dialect. Albeit the three of them were passing for Mex. I can’t say for certain where Devil Dave might be just now. He ain’t around here, and I can’t see him being in on a plot to kill and rob his own big sister.”
The coroner nodded sagely and decided, “Then it’s your contention we have met to declare them four fools killed lawfully as they were fixing to murder and rob Miss Deveruex and leave the whereabouts of her brother, their pal, up in the air?”
Longarm shrugged and said, “I don’t see him at this inquest. Do you?”
The coroner declared the inquest ended with a finding of justifiable homicide if they all knew what was good for them. So Longarm was free to go and he went.
Connie Deveruex caught up with Longarm at her cow camp on the edge of town as he was saddling the buckskin that belonged to him. He nodded but said nothing as he raised a knee to the pony’s ribs and tightened the cinch. The dusky blonde glanced around as if to make sure nobody overheard as she softly demanded, “Why, Dunk? You never said a word about Jim Hogan blackmailing my mother back in Sheffield-Crossing.”
He said, “They never asked. Your momma ain’t a resident of Bexar County and she surely couldn’t have been in on any plot to murder you for money you were fixing to place in a bank account she shared with you. I reckon Hogan got tired of extorting said money in dribs and drabs. So he decided to grab a real fortune and retire to Old Mexico. You just heard me explaining that part in town.”
She softly said, “I did indeed. The rain’s let up, the moon shines high, but the chaparral will be soaking wet and all the creeks will have risen. So where do you think you’re going on that pony?”
He said, “It’s my pony. I bought him for cash, and I’m free to sell him for the same, along with this saddle and bridle, come morning. Then I mean to catch me a stage coach back to El Paso and the railroad, by way of that county seat where I stored my badge, I.D., and other things that might have given me away.”
She sighed and said, “You sure had us fooled. You’ll make it to El Paso long before my riders and me can hope to reach the Pecos. Where were you planning on spending the night?”
He said, “Another posada I know in town. I’m likely to feel a tad more welcome there, now.”
He mounted up, ticked his hat brim to her, and wheeled his pony to ride off. But he was just rounding the stockyards in the moonlight when she overtook him on her own cordovan mare, calling, “Wait! We’ve still so much to talk about! What about my brother, David?”
He reined in so’s they could ride side by side as he told her, “You just heard me swear under oath your kid brother wasn’t there at the hearing, Miss Connie.”
To which she replied, “I know. I was there. I was so sure you were going to drag our family name through the dirt and yet you didn’t! I just don’t understand you at all, Dunk!”
He said, “My friends call the real me Custis. I ain’t so hard to understand. I was sent to bring your brother in, and I did wind up in shootouts with most everybody else but him. Like I told the coroner, it happens that way sometimes.”
She said, “Then you’re still after David. Yet you’re headed for El Paso ... ? Oh, I see, you think you’ll find him there!”
Longarm shook his head and said, “Not hardly. But Greek Steve is hanging out in a pool hall in El Paso and I mean to have a few words with him just to satisfy my own curious nature. You were the one who asked Greek Steve to kill Jim Hogan, weren’t you? I can’t say either of you committed a federal offense, seeing Hogan was a federal want, but you sure scared the wits out of a poor bragging drunk, no offense. He told his cousin, Irene Pantages, you’d already had him do something awful for you. I suspect I know what it was. But don’t tell me. It may be best to just let me guess.”
She sighed and said, “You sure seem to be good at guessing ! But I had to offer Stavros Pantages a year’s pay to shoot Jim Hogan. I didn’t want to ask Slim or any of my smarter hands because I didn’t want them to know Hogan was blackmailing us. You’ve no idea what it feels like to have a kid brother hanging about with a bounty on his head! You don’t know who you can trust, including your kid brother! Do you think David could have put Jim Hogan up to shaking our mother down like so? David knew I wouldn’t give him any more money until he agreed to see this doctor we know who treats queer notions.”
Longarm said, “You told me your mother always gave in to her little lost lamb. I don’t think Jim Hogan or the late Hernando Nana knew where their old pal, Devil Dave, might be. He may have ridden down this way with ’em after that De
nver bust-out. I suspect a former altar boy at that church near your town house might have shown them hidey holes a wicked altar boy would know better than some. But your brother wouldn’t have gone along with blackmail and murder when he didn’t think he had to. I’m almost certain Hogan and Nana were acting on their own. So why don’t we leave it at that, Miss Connie?”
She said, “I don’t want to leave it at that! I know what you’re out to pull on me, again! You think I’d be willing to go back to bed with you, in spite of who you are, just to find out where you think my poor crazy brother might be hiding, right?”
He said, “Wrong. As a matter of fact I’d made other plans for the coming evening at that other posada, Lord willing, and she ain’t forgot my last visit to these parts. I ain’t out to have no wicked ways with a lady who called me a swine in Spanish, no offense. I can’t say I blame you for having some hard feelings about a few white lies, but I was lying in the line of duty whilst you and your momma were lying like rugs to cover up for federal wants. But, like I said, it’s over and we’ve both got better beeswax to get on with, so ...”
“So the hell you say!” she blazed, spurring her mount up beside his to face him sidesaddle from his right in the moonlight as she added in apparently sincere confusion, “I really don’t know where my brother has been hiding. But since you’ve stopped pressing me about him you must know where he is right now!”
Longarm soberly replied, “I have to talk to Greek Steve in El Paso on my way back to Denver before I can tell my old boss I’m certain. But I’m fixing to be surprised as all get-out if Pantages don’t tell me he was the one as switched the bodies so’s the real Jesus Robles could be buried in his own churchyard with all his own kin whilst your baby brother was laid to rest where your momma wanted him, out on your own family land grant.”
Connie gasped, “That was David we buried near the peach orchard he used to play in when we and the world were young and innocent? How on earth did you ever arrive at that conclusion?”
Longarm replied with a shrug, “You come to the conclusions you have left after you’ve eliminated all the other ones that won’t work. That’s how come we call it the process of eliminating, and are you trying to tell me you didn’t know who you were following to the grave that first time I admired you in Sheffield-Crossing?”
She shook her head wildly, swirling the fly tassles of her flat Spanish hat in the moonlight as she demanded to know who could have killed her mean baby brother.
Longarm considered before he decided, “I reckon the others wanted to spare your feelings. That accounts for some otherwise dumb moves on your part. Ain’t eliminating grand? I figure your momma’s Father Confessor had to know because he gave me his word I’d never find your brother in this end of Texas. He eliminates as the killer because I just can’t see a sweet old priest killing anybody on the sly. Had your momma turned to one of your other hands, Greek Steve wouldn’t have been the one who lit out with a guilty conscience after you scared his few wits out of him by asking him to kill for you. The fact that he was too scared to take you up on your offer of a year’s wages eliminates Greek Steve as a man who might have killed your baby brother. So who’s left? See how that there process works, Miss Connie?”
She gasped, “I do indeed! But I can’t believe it! Our mother thought the sun rose and set in her little lost lamb! She covered for him year after year through thick and thin! She’s the last person on this earth I’d ever expect to murder him!”
Longarm gently pointed out, “It was more like an execution than a murder, ma’am. Your brother was likely surprised as well, if he ever knew what hit him. The details as to how she managed when her rabid lost lamb came bleating home to her reeking of yet more blood and slaughter hardly mattered. A proud old lady done what she knew someone had to do, no matter how it hurt. Then she enlisted her priest and old Greek Steve to see both your brother and that dead vaquero they had on ice got buried decent, however informal.”
They were approaching a fork in the cinder path to town as Longarm continued, “I reckon I buy your tale of ignorance, no offense. Had you not noticed the bank withdrawings Hogan extorted from your poor momma you’d have never tried to enlist me or Greek Steve as paid assassins. But you did, and in the end no harm was done when Greek Steve ran off, and I could say I gunned both your brother’s sidekicks for another lady up Denver way who used to smile like Miss Mona Lisa. So, seeing I had no call to air your family linen at that inquest, I never did, and I reckon this is where I ought to bid you buenoches and be on my own way, Miss Connie.”
She demurely replied in an adoring tone, “I’ve a better idea. Why don’t we both ride on to that other dear little posada and let me show you I don’t have any hard feelings toward you after all?”
Longarm had to laugh before he confessed, “That’s mighty odd, once you study on it. For all of a sudden I seem to have hard feelings of my own to spare!”
Watch for
LONGARM AND THE VANISHING VIRGIN
245th novel in the exciting LONGARM
series from Jove
Coming in May!
