by Evans, Tabor
Longarm allowed he’s heard as much and didn’t press her to explain further. He knew exactly how crazy-mean Devil Dave was. The reasons he preferred the owlhoot trail to running the family business were moot, as far as that murder warrant signed by Judge Dickerson read.
He tried to change the subject before she could ask him something he might not be set for. He said, “To tell the pure truth I was way more interested in something else they told me about you, Miss Connie. They said you were fixing to drive some beef to market and I couldn’t help noticing you’d lost one of your regular riders.”
She nodded absently and said, “Jesus Robles. He was a good man but a poor rider. I shall be driving a few hundred head to the railhead at San Antonio in a few days. If you’re asking for a job, I fear I have all the help I need at the moment. Do you know how much it costs to hire a professional gunfighter, such as Billy The Kid?”
As a lawman, Longarm did. Five-hundred dollars a month was the going price for a gun hand willing to kill most anybody for you, while you could hire a bodyguard way cheaper. Bodyguards hardly ever got hung for gunning paid assassins. He said, “I’ve no idea what Billy The Kid was paid by John Tunstall the one payday he got anything. Lawyer McSween swore Dick Brewer, Billy, and others in as private range detectives and they called themselves Regulators for all of three or four weeks before the county told them they couldn’t. I suspect that you could hire The Kid right cheap, right now, Miss Connie. But I don’t know where he is, and anybody else who did might just as willingly turn him in for the price on his head. I think it was over a hundred dollars, the last time I’d heard.”
She said, “I don’t want to hire any young killers. I only wish I knew what made them like that. My brother, David, has gotten in with bad company. We’ve tried to calm him more than once. A lawyer we’d sent to help him just wound up dead in another silly shootout! It wasn’t David who shot his own lawyer. It was one of those crazy-mean breeds he’s been riding with since our father died!”
Longarm knew he’d better flutter away from the candle flame before he burned his wings by showing too much interest. He could see how upset she was in spite of her calm outside. Worries were running around in those big brown eyes like trapped rats dying to bust out. He sipped the last of his wine, set the glass down next to some cheese he hadn’t eaten, and quietly asked, “Do you mind if I make a personal observation, ma’am?”
She dimpled at him to ask what he had in mind.
He said, “You’re looking poorly, no offense. I can’t tell what you might be coming down with. But if you ain’t coming down with something you have too much on your mind to cope with the likes of me tonight. Your momma was upset about something, too. So why don’t we call off that supper invite and set you both free to deal with whatever might be ailing the two of you?”
She stared owl-eyed to demand, hopefully, “Do you mean that? Are you sure you won’t feel insulted?”
He got to his feet, hat in hand, to reply with a sporting smile. “There’s nothing to get sore about, ma’am. You ladies invited me over for supper before something else came up and unsettled you. If I eat somewhere’s else this evening I’m no worse off than I would have been to begin with.”
She rose, too, saying, “But I feel so awkward, sending for you, only to send you away with nothing!”
He said, “I enjoyed that wine tremendous, and the cheese wasn’t half bad, ma’am. So I got more out of you than you got out of me. I’m sorry I ain’t the gun hand you may have took me for, Miss Connie. That’s just the way things go sometimes.”
She gasped, “Good heavens! Did you think I wanted to hire you as a gunfighter, ah, Duncan?”
He said, “We’ve established you ain’t hiring at all, Miss Connie. It’s been nice talking to you. But I reckon I’d best get it on down the road, and I sure hope you and your momma get to feeling better real soon, hear?”
She didn’t argue further. She led him part way and then that butler showed him out the front gate to the calle. It was still early, and the paseo tended to get more interesting near the end, as couples paired off after all that strolling and smirking. He still felt no great awakening in his loins, thanks to good old Perfidia, but the more a stranger showed his face around a small town the less strange it got.
So Longarm circled the big church to get back to the plaza, cutting through the graveyard, shaded night and day by ancient blackjack oaks. As he did so a Mex in a charro outfit, big sombrero, and a brace of Remington sixguns stepped out of a side door of the church rectory. Longarm dismissed him as likely a pal of that D Bar L rider they’d buried earlier that same day. The Mex was headed his way, away from the plaza and El Paseo as if heading home for his own late supper. So Longarm nodded as they met in a puddle of lamplight and then, just as Longarm murmured, “Buenoches,” the strange Mex grabbed for both his sixguns, gasping, “Ay, caramba! No es posible!”
He might have caught Longarm more off guard if he’d slapped leather without yelling like that. But he had yelled, and so Longarm got his own gun out and threw down as the both of them fired.
Hot lead whipped by Longarm’s shoulders on either side as his own two hundred grains of the same split the other man’s breast bone and chewed up the heart inside.
Then Longarm was off the path and waist deep in tombstones whilst the stranger he’d shot flopped like a hauled-in trout in a spreading pool of blood, with his hat and guns far-flung on the brick pavement.
As Longarm reloaded a distant voice called out, “¿A ’onde, que pasa?”
He yelled back, “¡Aqui! ¡Quiero ver al policia!”
So there he was when an older Anglo lawman wearing a pewter star came tearing along the path with his own gun drawn, saw Longarm, and called out in English, “What’s up? Do you know who fired all them shots just now, stranger?”
Longarm soberly replied. I fired one of ’em. I’m still working on why this dead cuss over here fired the others. I’d be Duncan Crawford out of New Mexico Territory. I’ve no idea who he might have been.”
The town law moved closer, nudged the limp body with his boot tip, and said, “Whoever he was, you surely cleaned his plow. So I’m asking you, polite, to hand over that sixgun and come along with me.”
Chapter 10
Longarm saw no better course than to comply. He still had his ace-in-the-hole double derringer, and if push came to shove he could still tell them who he really was. The graveyard was crowding some as he got back on the path and surrendered his sixgun. He’d just told the old coot he’d fired the blamed weapon. But the town law sniffed at the muzzle anyhow. They’d likely stolen him away from Scotland Yard.
He had enough sense to wave some Mex kids back as an even older man of the cloth came out that same rectory door. He turned out to be their priest. When he saw what Longarm had wrought he knelt by the body to see if Extreme Unction might help. Longarm got the town law to wait until the priest had finished his Pater Noster before he respectfully said, “He was out to kill me. He came out of your rectory just now, Padre.”
The elderly Mex priest looked up at them, confused, to reply, “I do not know this pobrecito. He looks like an Indio puro. You say he was inside our rectorio earlier?”
Longarm said, “He must have been. That’s where he was coming from when we met in this path, I howdied him, and he went for his guns. Is it possible he was wandering about, inside, without you folk knowing?”
The priest bent lower for a better look at the dead man in the dim light before he decided. “I have never seen him before. He must have hidden in the church beyond until after vespers. A door from behind the altar is not locked. If he hid in one of the pews until after we held our evening services... But for why? We are a poor parish. There is nothing worth stealing anywhere on the premisas!”
Longarm felt better about the old gun sniffer when he told the priest, “He was likely hiding from this ranger who’s come to town, looking for the Deveruex boy and some Mexican pals. He might have mistook this othe
r stranger for that ranger, just now. They don’t look alike. But they’re both Anglo strangers, and you know what they say about a guilty conscience.”
The lawman called two kids out of the crowd to say, “Pan-cho, I want you to go fetch Doc Waterford and tell him the county has a dead body for him to gather, here. Manuel, I want you to run over to my office and tell ’em I need some help, here.”
As they were sorting that out Longarm quietly asked the priest if he knew Devil Dave Deveruex.
The older man sighed and said, “He was one of our altar boys before he went astray. But, alas, he has not been to Mass or Confession since he seems to have gone loco en la cabeza!”
The older lawman opined, “He likely doesn’t care to confess what he’s been up to.” Let’s get going, Mister Crawford.”
Longarm asked, “Don’t you reckon we ought to wait until them other gents you sent for get here?”
The old timer asked, “Are you trying to tell me how to do this job? Are you some sort of lawman your ownself?”
Longarm shrugged and said, “I reckon you know the folk in your own town better than I do. Makes no nevermind to me if they steal this dead bird’s boots and guns.”
He turned as if to head back to the center of town. The old timer with the pewter badge said, “Hold on. We’d best wait ’til some of our junior deputies get here to watch that big hat, too.”
Then, as if to recover lost ground, he added, “It’s still up to our deputy coroner, Doc Waterford, to go through the rascal’s pockets and figure out who he might have been, hear?”
So they waited a spell and the town law accepted one of Longarm’s cheroots as folk from all over town gathered a respectful distance to crane for a view through the trunks and inky shadows of the blackjacks.
Travis of the Texas Rangers arrived with a couple of other Anglo lawmen from the town marshal’s office. He had the sense to address a man he knew to be a federal deputy as Mister Crawford.
The older town law holding Longarm and his gun asked, “You know this gent, Ranger Travis?”
The younger Texican said, “Talked to him earlier. Checked out his story by wire. New Mexico Territory has him down as a poor but honest rider who’s not wanted for nothing, as far as they can recall. What’s he done here in Sheffield-Crossing?”
The town law grudgingly told the ranger, “Just shot him a more mysterious Mex. It’s commencing to look as if he was telling the truth about that, too.”
Travis moved closer, spied the sprawled body, and hunkered down for a closer look, striking a match to make sure before he said, “I could swear this was Hernando Nana, Mission Apache and known associate of Devil Dave Deveruex. He just escaped from the law up Colorado way with pals believed to be Nana and a breed of some kind called Hogan. Another pal called Ramon Kayitah got killed by that famous Longarm during the bustout.”
Longarm saw Chongo and some other D Bar L riders in the crowd as the older town law told Travis, “I’ve heard tell of that federal rider they call Longarm. Have you ever met up with him, Ranger Travis?”
The ranger looked as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth whilst he rose right next to Longarm to shake out his match and soberly say, “I have. Worked with him one time along the border. Sometimes he acts like his shit don’t stink. But he ain’t a bad tracker.”
The town’s deputy coroner arrived with some of his own help to crowd around the town law above the remains. So Travis was able to edge Longarm into the shadows a mite and mutter, “What the fuck is going on, old pard?”
Longarm said, “I wish I knew. I never got a look at the pals shooting up Devil Dave’s trial. If you’re right about that being one of them I overestimated their brains a heap. They must have beelined for here whilst I was pussyfooting in, so smart. Nana, there, must have looked us all over some before they started shooting up that courtroom. It’s the only way he could have recognized me at a glance, in this light, in a different outfit. That’s one of the prices of being famous, I reckon.”
Travis asked how he wanted to play the next hand.
Longarm murmured, “Close to the vest. If the man I want made it here ahead of me it’s still up for grabs where he’s holed up and who might be aiding and abetting him. I just came from the Deveruex-Lopez town house. If his mother and sister have him hidden in their pantry, they’re better actresses than most. I suspect the sister was feeling me out as a gun hand. What can you tell me about her errand boy, Chongo?”
The ranger said, “Anglo-Mex boss wrangler out at her spread. Has to know horses and gets along better with ’em than any of the other crew bosses. She seems to regard him as a sort of pet ape because he cared for her and her ponies when she was little. Courting her would be above old Chongo’s station, but don’t ever insult her if Chongo’s within ear-shot. Why are we talking about such a tedious asshole?”
Longarm said, “I ain’t sure, yet. I ain’t figured out whether he’s a pal of Devil Dave or worried Devil Dave will come pestering his boss-lady some more. I can’t complain about the way he’s been feeling me out, so far. Might you rangers have any Greek outlaws on your wanted fliers?”
Travis blinked and asked, “Should we?”
Longarm said, “I told Chongo you’d asked me about some Greek on the run, earlier in that saloon. I didn’t want to tell him what we were really talking about.”
So the ranger chuckled and decided, “As I recall our conversation, I asked you who you were and whether you’d ever met up with a Greek outlaw called ... How about Plato? Wasn’t Plato some sort of famous Greek outlaw?”
Longarm said, “Close enough. He made some shocking suggestions as to who might do what to whom with his old organ grinder. Might be safer to tell anyone who asks that what you ask other gents is none of their business as long as you don’t make an outright liar out of me.”
The ranger said he’d try not to, but added, “You know it’s only a question of time before somebody else recognizes you. So how lucky can you always hope to be?”
Longarm shrugged and said, “Neither one of us would ever wear any badge if we lost all hope our luck might hold out. I learned as a schoolboy that kids who weren’t ready to play for keeps had no call to play marbles after school in the first place.”
Travis sighed and said, “I know. The kids who wouldn’t play us for keeps grew up to be our bankers and they still want us to help them keep their marbles. Why do you reckon we try ... ah, Mister Crawford?”
Longarm smiled wolfishly and said, “The way we get to play is more fun. When the roll is called up yonder, do you want to say you played the few marbles you had, to win, or would you rather admit you never won nor lost because you were afraid to play for keeps?”
Travis laughed, said they’d likely both die with their boots on, and they rejoined the huddle over the still form of Hernando Nana.
The local authorities had been talking as well. The town law who’d been holding Longarm’s sixgun handed it back, saying, “No sense in my arresting a man for gunning a wanted outlaw in self-defense. But you don’t want to leave town for a spell. You may be in for some bounty money and Doc, here, says the county may want you to bear witness at a formal inquest once he wires all this bullshit in to Fort Stockton. That’s our county seat these days.”
Longarm made himself sound more reluctant than he felt as he told them he’d stick around, seeing he had no choice. It would have been dumb to tell them they’d played right into his hands by giving a man with no visible means and excuse to hang around a small town where he couldn’t seem to find any job.
He had to hang about making small talk until a stretcher crew came to tote the dead man and his belongings to the meat wagon, drawn up at the edge of the graveyard. As the gathering began to break up, Longarm headed back toward the plaza, to be cut from the herd by Chongo and a couple of his crew.
It was getting easier to see why they called him Chongo. A chongo bull had it’s horns on upside down, and no Spanish bullfighter wanted to mess with a chongo bec
ause you just never knew which way it meant to hook with it’s contrary head. The man called Chongo said, “We just heard you’d gunned a pal of Devil Dave Deveruex. Would you like a deal on a fast fresh pony?”
Longarm headed back to El Paseo with the three of them in tow as he sighed and said, “I would if I could. They just told me not to leave town until further notice. I don’t know who that was I just had to shoot. They say he was some Mission Apache living Mex. I had to shoot him because he drew on me and said mean things about my dear old mother. I don’t know why. I’d never seen him before and he surely never met my mother!”
Chongo said, “If he was the ’Pache I suspect he was he wouldn’t have needed much reason. Young Dave Deveruex got Miss Connie to hire old Hernando on for a trail drive three or four summers back. She had to fire him directly for fighting with the trail cook. Don’t ever fight with the cook if you want to ride for the D Bar L.”
“Or any other outfit,” Longarm agreed, adding, “He must have had me mixed up with somebody else he’d had trouble with in the past. I never got past Buenoches before he slapped leather on me.”
Chongo trudged in thoughtful silence for a few paces before saying, “You must draw pretty fast. Old Hernando had his faults, but a slow draw wasn’t one of ‘em and you did say you rode with Dick Brewer and them Regulators back in ’78, didn’t you?”
Longarm shook his head and said, “I did not. Miss Connie just now asked me the same questions, and, like I told her, a mere handful of soreheads feuded for all of six months and it was over before most of ’em knew it was starting to get serious. With neither Uncle John Chisum, Major Murphy, nor stockman Jim Dolan wanting anything more to do with any hired guns, the surviving gun hands all went back to working cows or riding the owlhoot trail. The newspapers barely mentioned any Billy The Kid until he escaped from that showdown and burn-out at Lawyer McSween’s place in Lincoln and gunned an Indian agent called Bernstein in the process of robbing the Mescaleros. Like I keep telling everybody, nobody knows where The Kid and his few remaining pals might be this spring. Some say he’s taken to robbing the Chisum herd to make up for back wages. Others have him washing dishes in a saloon near the border on the far side of El Paso. You have my word I never rode for anybody as a hired gun!”