Longarm on the Fever Coast (4 page)

He had to laugh. Before she could spring up and flounce out he quickly explained. "I only meant I was willing to swap with you for just this one night! I ain't that subtle when I ask a supper Companion right out to let me call her sweetheart."

It was her turn to smile, sort of dirty, as she said, "I'm sorry, Custis. I know you've behaved in a perfectly proper way since I first sat down here. Could it have really been less than two hours? How could I feel I've known you such a long while?"

He said, "Time drags out here on the water with nothing but one another to bother knowing. Meeting at sundown helped some. We've shared sunshine and shadow as well as plenty of grub and rum-laced coffee."

She smiled archly. "I'd better not have any more rum if you're to remember me as a lady who keeps her clothes on after dark."

Then she caught herself, blushed again, and softly said, "oh, I must have had more rum than I thought. I didn't mean to tease like that, Custis. I'm really not the sort of girl who takes anything off in mixed company. But I suppose you knew all the time I was just a flirty old maid, didn't you?"

He assured her, "I've been teased worse, and you ain't old enough to be ashamed of being a maid, if we both mean maid as a gal who's still innocent. Being innocent is what lots of gals brag about, at least to the age of twenty-nine or SO."

She looked away and murmured, "I'll be twenty-six this August, and I'm not sure I'm still bragging. But I can't help the way I was brought up, Custis. So unless the man I've been saving myself for comes along, I suppose I'll just wind up like that poor old Olivia Lee in the Congregational burial ground back home."

He had to allow he'd never heard tell of Miss Olivia Lee.

Lenore sighed. "I never knew her either. She died a long time ago. Her headstone reads, 'Here lies Olivia Lee, who died a virgin at ninety-three, God rest her poor soul!'"

Longarm didn't laugh. He didn't think such a fate was funny. But he didn't want the responsibilities that would surely go with busting any twenty-five-year-old cherry so far from home either. So he asked whether she wanted to swap staterooms or not, and once she said she could sure do with an even slightly cooler upper berth, he suggested they get busy with their baggage.

They did. Passengers signed for food and drink and settled with the purser before getting off. But Longarm still left some coins on the table to make up for their longer than usual stay there.

He escorted her to her stateroom first. She was traveling light for a gal who slept with duds on. So he needed no help with her two bags, and never sent for any. He led the way along a corridor running abeam from starboard to port, and put her bags on the floor inside his own cabin. Then he lifted his saddle from the bottom berth, saying, "I'll just tote this load over to your stateroom and we'll both be set. Would you like me to straighten out the purser about the switch, or would you rather thrash it out with him seeing as you'll be staying aboard long after I've gotten off and nobody will be likely to say anything dumb?"

She suggested whichever of them saw the purser first ought to work it out with the steamer line. He agreed that made sense, and backed out the narrow doorway to shift the weight of his heavily laden army saddle higher on his free hip. She came out after him, as if to keep him from getting lost on the way back to her old quarters. It would have sounded dumb, as well as rude, to tell her no girls were allowed. So he never did, and in no time at all his possibles were safely locked away, thanks to their swapping keys. Then the two of them were alone on the starboard promenade deck, staring seaward at the rising moon as they leaned against the rail together. He wanted to kiss her so bad he could taste it. But he didn't, He knew that once they got to swapping spit there'd be no reining in till he found out whether he might or might not go farther. Either way, somebody was likely to get hurt more than finding out would be worth. For Longarm knew all too well how good it could get with a pretty lady suffering from a case of pent-up passion, and even a pretty gal that just lay there had pissing beat by at least a furlong. But one night of love with the Queen of Sheba, played by the lovely Miss Ellen Terry, fresh from a perfumed bath, couldn't make up for that hurt look a man saw in the eyes of a gal he was really letting down.

So he softly suggested, "Land breeze ought to be fixing to start over on the port side, ma'am. Why don't I carry you back to my old stateroom before I go see whether those two you spotted at supper are packing two guns apiece for any sensible reason."

She tilted her face up to his in the moonlight, softly asking, "Isn't there anything else you'd rather do than fight, Custis?"

To which he could only reply, "There's plenty, starting with just minding my own beeswax, Miss Lenore. But they don't pay me to avoid fights, and like you said yourself, that one jasper in the big hat surely seems to be spoiling for one!"

CHAPTER 3

The combined smoking salon and taproom lay aft of the sleeping quarters for sensible reasons. There was no sign stating women were not allowed. But it was generally understood by the traveling public that such dimly lit and smoke-filled areas were not intended for the giggles of females or the patter of little feet. There was a ladies' salon up forward for that.

Longarm was glad. He'd pinned on his federal badge and unsnapped his pocket derringer from the more dangerous end of his watch chain, and had the sneaky two-shot.44 palmed in his big right fist as he came through the starboard entrance. His bigger.44-40 double-action was there for the world to see on his left hip, plain but hand-fitted grip forward, so he could draw as well sitting down, standing up, or astride.

The two he was looking for were across the salon against the bar. They both stood with their backs to the bar, as if they might have been expecting someone. Now that he could see the face of the one in the Carlsbad hat, he could see it was no improvement on the ugly mutt wearing the darker Texas hat, although that was still the one with the meanest expression. They were both heeled with double rigs, worn too low for trouble on horseback but just right for a stand-up showdown.

Longarm strode right over to them as, off to his left, an older gent dealing cards at a corner table muttered, "Oh, shit, I reckon we'll play this hand later, boys. This child is going out on deck for some fresh air and he strongly advises you all to follow!"

Longarm didn't worry about the action that followed to either side as he simply stopped two paces from the bar and casually but firmly stated, "I'd be Custis Long and I'm the law, federal. One of the nicer things about my job is that I don't have to shilly-shally with suspicious characters. So I'd like you gents to state your own names and tell me why you've been acting so suspicious."

As he'd hoped, they'd been braced for the usual bullshit involving narrow-eyed stares and veiled remarks leading up to what they had in mind. So they both froze as each waited for the other to say the first words or make the first move.

In the meantime both kept their hands politely clear of their four guns. So Longarm demanded, "Cat's got your tongues?"

The mean-eyed one in the bigger hat stared back even meaner as he came unstuck and croaked, "We know who you are, Longarm. Neither one of us is wanted by any federal court in the land."

Longarm said, "I already figured as much. Had either of you fit any wanted fliers I've read recently, I'd have come in with my side arm drawn. I don't shit around like those lawmen in Ned Buntline's wild and woolly magazines. I'm asking you once more to state your names and business. It's all the same to me whether you'd care to do as I say or fill your fists."

Somebody else tore out a side door as the more sensible-looking one in the paler hat gulped and protested, "Hold on, Longarm. You can't just throw down on law-abiding citizens for no good reason!"

Longarm insisted, "You're giving me good reason. The law gives me the right to ask anyone this side of President Hayes to state his name and business, and the right to arrest and hold him on suspicion for seventy-two hours maximum should he give me probable cause. As for whether you want to come quiet or shoot it out right here and now, I'm assuming anyone who tells a federal lawman to just go fuck himself isn't planning on coming quiet."

The one in the Carlsbad hat said quickly, "I'd be Hamp Godwynn and this would be Saul Reynolds, better known as Squint Reynolds for reasons you can see for your own self. We are poor but honest cowhands in search of honest employment."

"Aboard a coastal steamer, acting suspicious and packing two guns apiece in border bully rigs?"

The one called Squint replied, in a surprisingly boyish tenor, "It was border bullies we got armed against. We were just down this way to see if we could get hired on at that monstrous ranch some steamboat skipper started at the mouth of the Rio Grande. We found they mostly hired Mex buckaroos, the cheap bastards."

Longarm smiled thinly. "I reckon you mean vaqueros, and I know the big spread you just mentioned. Since I've no good reason to call any grown man here a liar, I'll only say you could've saved us all some needless sweat on a hot night by simply answering me sensibly in the first place. Now that we all know who's talking to whom, let's talk about all them dirty looks you boys were aiming my way earlier this evening at supper up forward."

Hamp Godwynn said, "Squint wasn't aiming dirty looks at you in particular, Longarm. He looks that mean-eyed at everybody, and I don't mind telling you we've had this conversation with other gents who took Squint's natural expression wrong."

Longarm considered, shrugged, and said, "We've all been out with a gal whose naturally flirty eyes drew unexpected as well as unwelcome attentions from others. But like I told one version of that flirty gal on one occasion, there's no need to back up a naturally troublesome expression with a chip on one's cold shoulder."

Squint Reynolds snapped, "We told you who we was and said we was sorry about scaring you. What more do you want, an egg in your beer?"

Longarm answered, firmly but not unkindly, "For your information, I ain't scared of you and your kin combined. But since you've given me information I can check out later, we'll just say no more about it for now. I'd offer to buy a round if I liked either one of you and it wasn't so blamed stuffy in here. But since I don't and it ain't, I'll just say buenoches and don't go glaring like that no more if we should meet at breakfast, hear?"

Then he left. He didn't have to crawfish backwards. There was a big glass window offering him a good view of everyone in the salon as he strode out to the starboard promenade deck.

Once he had, it didn't feel much cooler. But the promenade deck got its name because it went all the way round the upper passenger section of the combined freight and passenger steamer from stem to stern.

He was closer to the stern at the moment. So he got out a cheroot and lit it in the still-muggy air on that side. Then he ambled aft and rounded the last stern corner to discover that, just as he'd told pretty Lenore, a fairly strong land breeze was blowing from the west. It smelled of mesquite and was far from frigid. But at least it was dry and brisk enough to cool his face and sweat-soaked shirt as he strolled forward along the deserted portside deck. The staterooms he passed were built back to back, save for the few facing a companionway or warped into odder shapes by funnels, air-shafts, and ladderways. So most of them opened out to the promenade deck with ventilation jalousies built into lower door panels as well as their port shutters. That was what they called windows on a boat, whether they looked like portholes or not. So you could hear things going on inside as you passed many a stateroom, most by this time dark. Victorian folks didn't go to sleep with the chickens because of religious notions. Oil lamps gave off a lot of heat as they shed piss-poor light for reading. Hence, as in the case of the chickens, most Anglo-Americans of the era were early to bed and early to rise simply so they could see what they were doing. The Mexican folks on both sides of the border were the night owls. Not as many were interested in reading, and after that it was just too hot down this way during Yanqui business hours. So the "lazy Mex" broke his day up into short hard stints from the wee small hours to the heat of late morning, dozed off in the shade most of the afternoon, and often put in another eight or ten hours of work or play in the cool shades of evening.

Lenore Colbert had already told him she was a Yanqui gal. So he wasn't surprised to see she'd trimmed her lamp and likely turned in by the time he passed his old stateroom. He was tempted to pause for a few puffs on his smoke and see if he could hear her snoring, jerking off in bed, or whatever. But he never did. It made a man wistful enough to picture a pretty gal alone in bed, either decorous under the sheets, or spread-eagled atop them buck naked.

He could guess how the couple two staterooms up were most likely dressed for bed as he passed their dark shutters and heard a female voice cry out, "Ooh, that feels wicked and I know I'll surely burn in Hades when I die, but right now I want your tongue even deeper!"

Longarm chuckled silently and moved on, muttering, "Aw, with any luck all those French saints will put in a good word for you, ma'am. Those French are a caution for eating pussy and turning into saints, and there's nothing about that in the Ten Commandments to begin with. The sinners in Sodom wanted to screw boy angels in the ass. I never read what the folk in Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim were up to. The Good Book just don't say. But it must have been worse than they do in Dodge when the herds are in town because Dodge and even Frisco are still there, praise the Lord."