by Evans, Tabor
Longarm had spent enough time around Papists on both sides of the border to know how it was done. But he had no call to lie about religion to a dead man he’d never met, so far as he knew, and simply removed his hat to show some respect as, just before the passing hearse blocked his view across the street, he spotted something that didn’t seem quite right.
He wasn’t sure what he’d seen. It was one of those odd shifts in the regular scenery of life that you sometimes catch out the corner of one eye. By the time the rear of the hearse passed on to expose them all again, they’d finished ... what had they been doing all at the same time?
They’d been making the sign of the cross. All the same way. Or had one of them done it backwards? As if he’d been faking it, without too much Catholic Sunday School under his belt.
By the time the whole procession had passed and Longarm saw they were heading toward the crossing the town was named for, as if they meant to bury the poor cuss on the far side, he’d decided it hardly mattered whether one of those cow hands had just tried to show the same respect as his real Papist pals or whether he’d been brought up in another faith that did things different. Nobody back home in West-By-God, Virginia, had crossed themselves any which way. But he’d heard or read there were furriners who called themselves Catholics but couldn’t seem to agree what day Easter might fall on. Praying too much could get a body in as much trouble as never praying at all.
Longarm glanced heavenward and muttered, “I’m fixing to have a nice cool pitcher of suds now, Lord. Feel free to send me a sign if you don’t want me to.”
He strode through the crowd out front to beat them all inside. He dropped his saddlebags and Winchester on a corner table and moved to the bar to pay for a pitcher of draft beer and two tumblers. Then he set up in that corner with his possibles on the floor and the rifle across his lap to see if anybody aimed to join him. For getting a town drunk talking in a small town was as easy a way to horn in as going to their barber when you didn’t really need a haircut.
His eyes were just getting used to the dimmer light of the saloon when he spied someone drifting over, outlined by the sunlight through the swinging doors beyond.
Then an all too familiar figure sat down, wearing the circled five-pointed star of the Texas Rangers on his trail-dusted white shirt as he said, “Afternoon, Longarm. What brings you to Sheffield-Crossing, that bust-out up Denver way?”
Longarm rolled his eyes up at the pressed-tin ceiling as he sighed and muttered, “Oh, Lord, you might have sent me this sign before I paid for all this beer!”
Chapter 6
Hoping against hope it wasn’t too late, Longarm murmured, “The name is Crawford, Duncan Crawford, off the Diamond K in New Mexico Territory if you follow my meaning, Ranger Travis.”
The ranger replied no louder, “I follow your drift, even though I thought the Diamond K was in Colorado and that reporter for the Denver Post signed his newspaper stories Crawford. I remember them from when I was up that way to deliver a federal warrant. They were about this good old boy who took me over to that Parthenon Saloon. Speaking of which, is this my glass?”
Longarm poured the tumbler closest to the ranger as he tried as hard as he could not to look up and see if anyone else was close enough to worry about. Glancing around, like a kid fixing to shoplift a stick of candy, was a certain way to look worried.
But none of the booted feet he could take in without looking up seemed to be standing within easy earshot. So Longarm risked quietly observing, “I’ve heard there was another Diamond K outside of Denver. I doubt anybody in these parts would have much to say to that reporter or the lawman he writes all those tall stories about.”
Ranger Travis sipped some suds and allowed he knew the feeling as Longarm filled his own tumbler. As Longarm drank, the ranger quietly told him, “I was just fixing to pack it in after riding high, low, and sideways in these parts after an escaped federal prisoner. For some reason nobody he grew up with remembers him at all. He ain’t down the valley at his home spread on the Deveruex-Lopez Grant. He ain’t at any of many a line shack they have spread out across all that property, and he ain’t at the townhouse the Widow Deveruex has here in Sheffield-Crossing. Ain’t that a bitch?”
Longarm cautiously replied, “I’d be sort of suprised to find a known killer at his officious home address when the law came calling. As for his local kith and kin, nobody ever gets along with everybody in his family, and they don’t call him Devil Dave because he’s unusually easy to get along with. You mark my words and see if somebody they trust won’t betray Frank and Jesse, now that there’s bounty money posted on ’em.”
Ranger Travis asked, “Why are we talking about the James Boys? I thought we were after Devil Dave Deveruex, ah, Mr. Crawford.”
Longarm explained, “Same deal. A wayward youth with more bullets than brains hiding out betwixt temper tantrums in a fair-sized neck of the chaparral, inhabited by a whole heap of locals the law can neither arrest nor get the right time of day from. You don’t have to be a college professor to hold up a bank and run home to Momma. I know Devil Dave’s old and ailing Mex mother spends most of her time in town these days. Tell me what you can about the daughter of the house who’s said to be managing the family grant and business matters these days.”
Ranger Travis sipped more suds and topped his tumbler by pouring without asking as he murmured, “You just saw her outside if that was you I was staring at from out front. I thought at first you were a lawman I knew from up Colorado way. Reckon it must have been that pork-pie hat.”
Longarm said, “Nevermind my hat. The wind blows serious where I first learned the ropes of the beef industry. From what we had on file I was given to understand the Deveruex-Lopez herd tallies over a thousand head and you say I just saw this shemale wonder?”
The ranger nodded to say, “Miss Connie Deveruex. She leaves off the maternal Lopez and hates it when the greasers call her Doña Consuela. But she shares the proud Spanish notion that as soon as you can count your cows you own too few of ’em. She was walking behind that hearse just now. She sets a pony even prouder, sidesaddle.”
“Are we talking about a dusky blonde gal in black who stares at a man as if he was a bug on a pin?” asked Longarm hopefully.
The ranger sighed and said, “I wish she’d stared through me half that friendly when I called on her to ask about her baby brother. She invited me to supper and offered to put me up for the night. But that was only because she was Landed Irish on her daddy’s side and Hidalgo Class on her momma’s. Her eyes get innocent but her smile drips venom when you mention her kid brother. She swears she hasn’t seen hide nor hair of him since he stopped the Butterfield Stage a good three years ago. She’s lying, of course. Every time any of us cut the bastard’s trail it leads us towards this valley before we lose it in the quicksands of ‘¿Quien Sabe?’ That’s what greasers say when they’re too polite to tell you to go to hell. It means, Who Knows?”
Longarm muttered, “I’ve noticed. I can manage a lick of Border Mex if I put my mind to it. I’d hesitate to tell any lawman where a kinsman or neighbor might be if I was still a farm boy back in West-By-God, Virginia. Such conversations can get you burned out if it don’t get you or any of your kin murdered total. So there ain’t no mystery about his kith and kin covering up for Devil Dave. What I don’t understand entire is why they have to.”
He fished for a cheroot to nurse along with his beer as he went on. “Most outright outlaws are in it because they really need the money. Clay Allison was a crazy-mean killer. King Fisher has to be touched in the head to run around in tiger-hide chaps picking fights, and Ben Thompson has killed men with guns, knives, or anything handy since he and his mean kid brother, Tom, arrived from Old England. But none of them mad dogs have ever robbed a bank because they simply had no call to!”
The ranger nodded and showboated a tad by observing, “I follow your drift. The late Clay Allison supported his bad habits well enough with a spread and herd smaller th
an Connie Deveruex manages. King Fisher prefers ranching to robbing as a source of income, and, despite their disgusting ways, the Thompson brothers have usually gotten by as trail bosses or hired guns. What if Miss Connie just wouldn’t give her kid brother an allowance? Many a minister’s son has gone bad because his old man was tightwad, you know.”
Longarm shook his head and pointed out, “The two of us just saw her alive and well out front. Would you expect a cold-blooded killer who’s downed many an innocent by-stander to hesitate sixty seconds if anybody at all was that mean to him?”
The ranger blurted, “Hell, she’s his own sister!” before he thought through to, “You’re right. He could have arranged any number of tragic accidents and wound up the sole heir in the catbird seat if money and bossing honest riders around was enough to satisfy his twisted soul.”
Longarm nodded soberly and said, “You missed the drawn-out trial he just put us through in Denver. He was guilty beyond the shadow of a flea in the dark. But he had this team of high-priced Texas lawyers raising objections to everything including the weather outside on the day his other pals shot up the courtroom and lit out with him. I can’t see him having to rob because he’s from a poor family. He robs because he just plain enjoys the scenery along the owlhoot trail!”
“When he ain’t holed up on his home ground,” the ranger grumbled.
Longarm shrugged and said, “I never said any of ’em were college professors or even cowboys with common sense and natural habits. Who was Miss Connie showing respect to by following his hearse on foot? Some other local cattle baron?”
The ranger smiled thinly and replied, “Not hardly. Just a greaser named Jesus. Jesus Robles. One of Miss Connie’s vaqueros. He rode his pony into bob wire in the dark and busted his neck. They had to shoot the pony and some say old ’Soos was riding fast and drunk.”
Longarm lit the cheroot he’d stuck between his teeth before he shook out the waterproof waxed Mexican match to observe, “There you go. A lady who’d treat a drunken cowboy to such a handsome funeral after he’d killed one of her mounts would hardly hold out on her own flesh and blood.”
Travis asked, “What if he asked for more than she and her momma could afford? Speaking from sad family experience I can tell you a heap of big outfits live on credit and credit alone between market drives, with the beef prices set by fine-haired sons of bitches from back East!”
Longarm mentally studied the notes he’d taken in Denver and left there for safe keeping before he said, “It works either way. Old Devil Dave’s never pulled off a job that would have netted him more than a few hundred dollars after he’d split the swag with his sidekicks, and your point about cattlemen living on credit most of the time was well taken. I hear Uncle John Chisum lost a swamping amount from his bank account on that Lincoln County War. But the last time I had coffee and cake at his South Spring Ranch the coffee was Arbuckle Brand and the cake wasn’t stale. Uncle John has this pretty little gal, Miss Sally, keeping house for him these days. He introduces her as his niece. She may well be his niece. My point is that Uncle John keeps her gussied up pretty and I suspect she charges all the coffee and cake she wants to on the credit anyone with a lot of land and beef on the hoof can command. I know Miss Connie Deveruex can’t control as much land and beef on the hoof as Uncle John Chisum or Colonel Richard King, down where the Rio Grande flows into the Gulf. But her kid brother should have been able to charge or borrow enough to get stewed, screwed, and tattooed enough to kill him.”
The ranger finished his tumbler and a half of suds and put his hand over the empty as he growled, “I wish it had, and I got to get on down the owlhoot trail. Ah, Crawford, I’ll tell my captain about this conversation. He’ll likely go along with you riding solo to your doom. Lord knows we’ve had no luck and you have a rep for being lucky. But have you forgot what happened to them two Pinkerton men who rode into Clay County alone after Frank and Jesse that time?”
Longarm blew a thoughtful smoke ring and said, “Nope. I’ve often wondered how they gave themselves away as undercover riders. The one who gunned the two of ’em has never seen fit to say.”
The ranger rose and held out a hand to part friendly. Longarm was too smart to glance around the crowded saloon as he quietly murmured he’d rather not shake.
Travis proved he could think on his own feet by raising his voice as he turned away, saying, “Up your ass then you tight-lipped son of a clam!”
Longarm made a rude gesture at the ranger’s back as Travis strode out in a huff.
Longarm poured himself some more suds but just sat there smoking until, sure enough, a rider who could have been Tex or Mex as he stood tall and tan in a gray charro outfit trimmed in black braid came over and sat down uninvited to place a Colt ’73 Frontier on the table in front of him and say, “I’d be Chongo Masters and I ride for the D Bar L. I feel somehow certain you’re ready to answer some questions about now.”
Longarm drew his .44-40 with a left-handed twist-draw. He lifted the Winchester from his lap to slam them both on the table in front of himself as he calmly replied, “I answer to Duncan Crawford these days. I don’t ride for nobody and it depends on how polite your questions might be.”
It got mighty quiet in there for a serious breathless spell. Then Chongo Masters smiled thinly and said, “I don’t think you savvy the situation here, Mister Crawford. I forgot to say most of these other boys ride for the D Bar L, too. They rode into town behind me, see?”
“You must be tired after dragging so many ponies after you,” said Longarm, without taking his eyes off that one man and that one gun at the table with him as he added in a politer tone, “I never told you I wouldn’t talk to you. I’m still waiting to hear your question, not a schoolyard-bully brag.”
“Ay, quedescarado!” marveled a Mex in the crowd.
An English-speaking rider growled, “Clean the sassy stranger’s plow for him, Chongo.”
Neither of them were staring into the sassy stranger’s gun-muzzle gray eyes. Chongo managed to keep his own voice from cracking as he pasted a sickly smile across his swarthy face and confided, “You see how it is when there’s no opera house in town and the ones making the most helpful suggestions ain’t in the line of fire. Afore you cloud up and rain all over me, I only wanted to know what you and that ranger were talking about, just now.”
Longarm asked, “How come? Might you be wanted by the Texas Rangers, Masters?”
The somewhat deflated local bully said, “Not hardly. I just told you I had a steady job, in charge of all the riding stock down on the Deveruex-Lopez spread. Me and the boys were only wondering whether that ranger was asking about anybody from around here that we might know.”
Longarm had been thinking a lot harder than a poker player holding a straight flush and wondering who might be holding a royal. So his poker face gave nothing away as he shrugged and replied, “Like I told that nosy ranger, I got nothing to hide about anybody in these parts because I just drifted in from other parts. I’d have never made her as far as the Pecos if everywhere I stopped along the way they had coffee and cake for me but no job. I told that fool ranger I just rode in for the first time less than a full hour ago. So how in thunder was I supposed to tell him about some durned old Greek?”
Chongo blinked in confusion and studied some before he said, “Hold on. Are you sure it was Greek Steve he was asking you about, not a Tex-Mex by the name of Dave?”
Longarm started to shake his head, brightened and replied, “Oh, sure, him too. Another cuss I never heard of, called Dave something or other. I told him I didn’t know anybody called Greek Steve or Greek anything. Now I got a question. What’s this shit about and how come they’re pestering me about it?”
Chongo twisted in his seat to call out, “Hey, Pantages? Get over here and tell us what the rangers want you for!”
A burly rider with jet-black hair and a blue jaw but whiter skin than most of the bunch came over with a beer scuttle in hand, grabbing a chair from another tab
le along the way.
As he swung it around to sit in like a pony, backwards, Chongo told him, “This is Duncan Crawford, Steve. He says that ranger he was just jawing with in here was asking questions about you.”
Greek Steve stared hard at Longarm and flatly stated, “That is a fucking lie. I say this to your face, you lying bastard. So what are you going to do about it, eh?”
Chapter 7
Chongo had been staring into Longarm’s eyes longer. So he was the the one who put a hand on the newcomer’s sleeve to warn, “You’re out of line, Greek Steve. It was that ranger who mentioned your name in vain, not Crawford, here.”
Greek Steve said, “Bullshit! I ain’t wanted by the fucking rangers for toad squat! I’ve been an upright and honest Pecos Valley boy since nine months after my momma came from Salmos as a bride to join my dear old dad in Texas! Anybody who says the Texas Rangers are after me is a lying bastard, like I said!”
Longarm flicked some ash from his cheroot and soberly observed it was just as well he hadn’t lied, adding, “I’d have to kill you if it was me you were calling a bastard. Since I never said anybody was after you, it ain’t too late to reason calm about what I might or might not have said about you to that ranger.”
Chongo soothed, “There you go. Hear the man out, Greek Steve.”
The belligerent Hellene didn’t answer one way or the other. Longarm decided silence was at least gold-washed and said, “You’re right that I had no call to say any lawman was after you, Mister Pantages. We can all agree that we never laid eyes on one another until mighty recent. I just now got here.”
“From New Mexico, crowded out by the trouble they’ve been having up Lincoln County way,” Chongo chimed in, adding, “he couldn’t have been the one to bring your name up. He couldn’t have known you were alive. Ain’t that right, Crawford?”