Longarm on the Fever Coast

by Tabor Evans

  He waited until they were in his stateroom with the lamp lit and door wide open before he casually asked, while pouring a tumbler to be shared, whether that wasn't a government nursing uniform she had on. She nodded, took a manly belt from the tumbler, and handed it to him. "It is. I put on my summer whites as soon as I saw how slow we were steaming. I put myself through medical school after the war. I knew I'd done almost nothing for those dying boys. Once I had my own M.D. degree I felt even less respect for some of the army surgeons I'd served under. I'm a good doctor. I don't usually drink this much and I'm interested in medicine. But since we both work for the same government, do I really have to go into why they'd only have me a lab technician with a nurse's rating?"

  Longarm sipped some rye and gently replied, "We don't have many female deputies riding out of the Denver District Court, now that you mention it, Miss Norma. About the best a lady can do with our Justice Department is stenographer or prison matron. But I'll bet you're a good lab technician. I saw how slick you tidied up that poor Miss Lenore."

  She shrugged and said, "Thank you, I think. I'm damned good. My specialty is bacteriology. It's a whole new science. We didn't know anything about disease germs during the war, and when I think of those poor boys shot full of holes in filthy uniforms and our primitive attempts to irrigate their wounds with pond water I... Could I have another drink? I don't know why that girl's death tonight got me so upset. I never knew her and I've seen so much worse in my time."

  Longarm poured her a stiffer one as he said soothingly, "You'd have liked her had you known her, and like you said, it's been a while and you've a better notion what's been busted up inside. I've read about germs. I take it you don't treat gunshot wounds any more?"

  She sipped some rye, shook her head, and explained. "Despite my womanly rank they have me supervising the setting up of new bacterial departments at army, navy, and Indian agency clinics down this way. I just finished teaching some hairy-chested male physicians down in Brownsville how to use a microscope properly. Ninety-nine percent of what you see wriggling in dirty ditch water seems to do nothing much at all. Some few one-celled microbes are now known to be helpful in baking bread and turning malted rye to gold, like we're drinking. A few others are really bad bugs. The ones causing the cholera look a bit like tadpoles. The ones that may cause the ague, or malaria, seem to look like either wriggle worms or doughnuts. They both show up in the blood of ague victims, and laugh if you like, I have my own theory they're two stages of the same organism. But when I sent in a paper to the Medical Journal they sent it back. They were too polite to call me a hysterical woman."

  Longarm moved over to the doorway as he soberly replied, "I reckon if a catty-pillar could turn into a butterfly, a wriggle worm ought to manage turning into a doughnut, ma'am. But to tell the truth, I doubt anyone aboard this vessel died of the ague this evening."

  There didn't seem to be anyone about outside, but you never knew for certain. So he shut the door before he moved back her way, saying, "I'm sure you're a swell doctor, Miss Norma, but right now I've other favors to ask of you, seeing we both work for the same government and all."

  She put the empty tumbler aside on a corner washstand, regarding him with some alarm. "I haven't had that much to drink and I told you I didn't want to get on top, cowboy!"

  Longarm chuckled. "Well, it's too blamed hot for me to consider doing all the work. But I wish you'd listen to my proposition before you cloud up and rain all over such a harmless cuss!"

  So she listened, and he told her how he thought the two of them, working together, might turn the tables on a killer who had Longarm in a double bind.

  As she hesitated, he insisted, "If he made it ashore my only hope is to wire up and down the coast for some posse riders as soon as I can. But if he's somehow managed to hole up aboard this big old tub with all its nooks and crannies..."

  "I'll do as you ask," she said with a sigh. "So pour me another drink before I change my mind. All in all, I'd rather get on top."

  They got into the sleepy port of Escondrijo by the gray if not really cold light of a gulf coast dawn. Few passengers were up at such an ungodly hour, and those who came out on deck to see what all the fuss was about were told not to go ashore unless, like Deputy Long, they intended to stay there until another coastal vessel put in. For this one was only staying long enough to take on some fresh beef from the one slaughterhouse in town, and save for the few crewmen putting a modest amount of cargo ashore, with Longarm's saddle perched atop a chest of drawers from Old Mexico, the whole crew seemed anxious to pitch in and wrestle the heavy sides of beef up the gangplank leading into the cold-storage hold. So it took less than an hour, and then they were on their way as the sun came up to shed more heat as well as light on things.

  The next few hours passed uneventfully for those still aboard with clear consciences, and then they put in at the much larger port of Corpus Christi before the day had gotten really hot. So all went ashore who might want to go ashore, the sea breezes blowing so much cooler than usual that morning and the skipper allowing they'd be there a good two hours.

  Corpus Christi was a county seat, with a Ranger station and a number of pottery kilns, grain silos, and such. Mostly it was an old Mexican settlement, not incorporated as an Anglo town until '52. So lots of the older buildings as well as the Spanish churches were interesting to Anglo eyes, while the seaside Mexican market smelled tempting to any sort of nose with the weather suddenly so nice. So most of the off-duty crewmen as well as all the passengers but those same two honeymooners came on down the gangplank long before the furtive Hamp Godwynn made a sudden move ashore, moving like a rat down a ship's hawser--in the opinion of a lawman who'd apparently gotten off at Escondrijo.

  Longarm hadn't. He'd had good old Norma Richards go ashore with his stuff to look after it and wire the Texas Rangers from that Coast Guard station at Escondrijo, while he'd gone on, holed up in her stateroom with the Saratoga trunk she'd entrusted to him. That big old trunk had been handy to hide his face under as he'd gone down the gangplank with it on his back.

  So now Norma's trunk, like Longarm, stood behind a pile of lumber in the shade of a dockside loading shed as he waited for the killer in the Carlsbad hat to sidewind within hailing range with his own narrowed eyes darting about as if he wasn't dead certain he'd guessed right.

  Longarm called out cheerfully, "You guessed wrong, Godwynn. So grab some sky if you'd like to be taken alive."

  Godwynn spun on one boot heel and ran back toward the gangplank, zigzagging back and forth in case Longarm had really meant that.

  Longarm had. He'd liked that pretty blonde. So he fired as the son of a bitch zagged, hoping to bust his ass and leave him in shape to explain why they'd wanted to gun a federal lawman.

  He hit his intended target about where he'd intended, smack in the right cheek of his frantic ass. The heavy.44-40 slug spun the running killer like a mighty clumsy ballerina who'd come down wrong from her twirling, but Godwynn managed to get his right-hand gun out as he landed flat on his back, rolled, and staggered back to his feet, only to yelp like a kicked pup as he tried to put some weight down under his gun hand.

  As he fired blind, chipping splinters off the far end of Longarm's lumber pile, the tall deputy called out, "Give it up, you poor simp! I don't want you dead. But I don't want you making it back to your rat hole aboard that steamer either. So drop that dumb gun and-"

  Godwynn fired more certainly at the sound of Longarm's voice. So Longarm fired again, aiming at the wounded man's other leg this time.

  He saw he'd hit the leg, if not the bone, when Godwynn let go of his Schofield to grab for his thigh with both hands and stagger for that gangplank some more bawling like a baby.

  As Longarm broke cover, all too aware Godwynn still had a gun in his left holster, a distant voice called out, "Halt and explain all this in the name of the Texas Rangers!"

  Longarm kept covering Godwynn as he strode out into the open after him, shouting back, "
I'm the law too, trying to arrest me a mighty unreasonable cuss on murder in the first!"

  So the white-shirted Ranger appearing down by the far end of that loading shed yelled, "Hot damn, we got us a wire on that one!" Then he fired his own Peacemaker, and being well trained as a marksman, if not as a careful investigator, hit Godwynn high in the chest with his longer but heavier shot. It likely would have left the wounded killer in piss-poor shape to talk had it been a lighter slug than 230 grains of lead backed by fifty-odd grains of powder, the Rangers tending to load their own shells and admiring noise at least as much as the Mexican rurales.

  "I wish you hadn't done that," Longarm grumbled as they both met up near the cadaver sprawled on the dock at their feet.

  The younger Ranger shrugged and said, "We both heard you warn him to give it up. Like I said, the famous federal marshal they call Longarm wired an all-points want on this one from just down the coast. Seems he murdered some passenger aboard that very steamer a-hint you!"

  Longarm said, "I know. I was there. I' m the one they call Longarm, and it was a government health worker I sent ashore in my place back at our last port of call. As she'd have wired you, this tricky son of a bitch could have swum ashore. But I figured he was hiding out somewhere on board. So I hid out just as good, and as you now see, he made a break for it here thinking I'd got off there."

  The young Ranger made a wry face. "He must not have never hunted mice. Me and our old cat, when I was little, used to do what you just did. I'd stomp away whilst the smart old cat crouched silent by the mouse hole. Who was this mouse and how come he shot a lady aboard yonder steamer?"

  Longarm hunkered down to go through the dead killer's pockets as he growled, "I suspicion he and his partner were out to get me and got her by mistake, God damn all three of us. I'm still working on it and... Damn it, his dead pard we put ashore at Escondrijo wasn't packing any infernal identification either!"

  By this time lots of folks who'd ducked for cover at the sounds of gunplay were edging back out into the morning light. So Longarm added, "Stay here and make sure nobody steals the corpse whilst I go back aboard for their two stock saddles and possibles. All we can do now is put out as total a description of them and their gear as possible and hope for some answers."

  The Ranger responded cheerfully, "Go ahead. Any number of my own pards ought to be here any minute, thanks to all that shooting. Ah, you'll tell the boys it was my bullet as finished the bastard, won't you?"

  Longarm snorted, "You tell 'em. I was trying to take him alive. So he's all your own to keep and cherish. I got another boat to catch!"

  CHAPTER 5

  It wasn't that easy. He spent a good three hours making depositions for the local authorities, and then, once he was free to go to the Corpus Christi office of that same steam line, a prune-faced cuss in a wilted suit said he'd have to wire their main office in Galveston about his unusual request. When Longarm observed he hadn't needed special permission to just get aboard one of their coastal steamers down in Brownsville, the Corpus Christi booking agent explained, with a frosty smile, how the southbound steamer they expected around midnight was already overloaded with every stateroom spoken for.

  Longarm said, "That's no problem, pard. I only got me and one old Saratoga trunk to get a hop, skip, and a jump down the coast. I don't mind standing up at the bar or, hell, the rail, till we get to Escondrijo. It was only a few hours coming up from there, and I was dying for a cool beer in that stuffy stateroom I'd holed up in."

  The booking agent pursed his purple lips. "I'll have to clear it with the company. We're expecting heavy weather tonight and you wouldn't want to be by any rail in a full gale aboard a flat-bottomed coaster. They say those Chesapeake side-paddle steamers roll even worse in heavy weather, but I'll be damned if I can see how. So why don't you come back in a couple of hours and we ought to know by then if they'll have room for you."

  Longarm frowned, "Well, I got some wires of my own I was saving till I got to Escondrijo and mayhaps some answers about a dead man they're holding on ice down yonder as well. But I'm missing something about coastal traffic. The boat I come north aboard was almost empty. Yet you say this night boat you're expecting will be filled to overloading?"

  The older man nodded patiently. "That northbound was just starting out. The southbound will have gone most of the way to its last stop at Brownsville."

  Longarm shook his head. "Texas produces food and fiber in bulk, and consumes manufactured goods from the east in far more modest amounts in far more compact form. So how many piano rolls or even pianos would it take to fill the shelter deck and cold-storage hold of a southbound coaster that should have delivered most of its passengers and cargo by the time it neared the end of its run?"

  The prune-faced cuss shrugged. "I only go by what they wire me from Galveston. Maybe a lot of people are headed for the mouth of the Rio Grande with a lot of stuff. I hear things are picking up down that way, what with the end of Reconstruction and the price of beef going through the roof. They've been putting in orange groves along our side of the river as well. Seems oranges grow swell in a hot sunny clime as long as they get plenty of irrigation water for their thirsty roots."

  Longarm didn't want to talk about growing oranges, or even cows, along the lower Rio Grande. So he muttered he'd be back before sundown, and headed for the Western Union across the plaza.

  He wired Billy Vail a fuller report than Norma Richards would have sent from Escondrijo. Then he wired Norma, care of the Western Union office down her way, that he'd be back with her trunk in time for her to catch the next northbound, Lord willing and they were wrong about that coming storm.

  He got over to the noisy but shaded and colorful Mexican market in time for a noonday snack, and ate on the fly as he strolled from one good smell to the other, buying dribs and drabs of this and that, which he polished off, sitting down at a small blue table in front of a cantina, with a tall cool schooner of cerveza. Mexican beer was the only thing that soft a man dared drink down there, unless it came to the table piping hot. The tamales, tapas, and such he'd picked up along the way had naturally been well cooked as well as fumigated with a ferocious amount of chili pepper.

  As he sat there, enjoying the novelty of doing nothing about a damned thing for a spell, he became aware of two slightly ominous things at once. More than one passing Mexican called out casual warnings to secure the overhead awnings before el huricano arrived. And some Mexican kids kept peering around a taco stand at him as if he had two heads. He could only hope they found an Anglo sipping cerveza before a Mexican cantina an interesting novelty.

  It was dumb for an Anglo with no fish to fry to hang around a Mexican neighborhood where he was getting stared at. So he finished his schooner sooner than he'd meant to, and got up to get going before anyone got up the nerve to act silly.

  He thought someone already had when a ragged-ass boy in his teens with empty hands and an uncertain smile popped into view in front of him.

  Longarm smiled back more coldly and growled, "No me jadas, muchacho. I don't want to marry your sister and these fucking boots are mine!"

  The kid gulped and said, "I mean you no disrespect, senor. Pero you fit the description of an Anglo we were told to watch for here in Corpus Christi. We were wondering if by any chance you could be he."

  Longarm moved casually to place his broader back against a 'dobe wall, and noticed nobody seemed out to edge around behind him as he replied, "Quien sabe? Everybody looks like somebody. Exactly who did you have in mind?"

  The young Mexican said softly, "An Anglo lawman, a Deputy Long, known to our people as El Brazo Largo. He is said to despise El Presidente Diaz down in our old country as much as we do, despite his riding for Tio Sam. So La Bruja wishes him to know he is in danger he may know nothing about, and if you wish for to speak with her-"

  "I'd rather you tell me here and now," Longarm cut in not too gently. "El Presidente Diaz is neither the first nor the last of your breed who ever tried to knife me in
an alley, no offense. So I'll just pass on following you into any barrio for a powwow with a lady even you describe as what my folks call a witch."

  The kid insisted, "La Bruja never comes out in the daytime. She seldom leaves her own residencia after dark. I do not know what it is La Bruja wishes for to warn you about. As you see, I am only her mozo de mandados. Pero she seemed most anxious for to have a word with you, and if you will not come with me I can only tell her I tried."

  Longarm hesitated, then decided. "I ought to have my head examined for insufferable curiosity. But seeing it's broad daylight and you seem smart enough to know I'll take you with me no matter what your pals might hit me with... How far is this old witch of yours?"

  The kid said the mysterious La Bruja lived on the far side of an old Catholic church across the plaza. So Longarm told the mozo to make sure his young pals didn't tag along too close, and repeated his warning with a thoughtful pat of his no-nonsense.44-40 as he let the kid lead the way.

  As they crossed that plaza he got dust in his eye. The wind was really picking up now. It was the wrong time of the year for a hurricane down this way, if there was a right time to have a hurricane anywhere. But they did have summer storms along this coast that could qualify as mighty serious. So he hoped he wasn't fixing to get stranded here in Corpus Christi with good old Norma's trunk.

  They circled the church, cut across a graveyard with some of the family tombs big enough to raise chickens in, and wound up in a maze of narrow walled-in alleys just crooked enough to make you wonder. Both the older and newer parts of Corpus Christi lay on flat enough coastal plain. But the old Spanish-speaking builders had been free thinkers, tossing up one casa wrapped around a pateo here and another there, then filling in the lopsided spaces between with smaller and cheaper tenement courts. It was tougher to tell, in such barrios, how high on the hog folks might live. For rich or poor, none of the property owners to either side sprang for proper sidewalks, and one flat stucco wall topped with broken glass set in the mortar looked much the same as any other, no matter what lay on the other side.