Longarm on the Fever Coast

Synopsis:

Death at every turn... Escondrijo, Texas, is a sleepy seaport where not much usually happens. But now there's a federal prisoner being held in the town jail, and it's deputy marshal Long's duty to bring him back to Denver. But even before he starts, a pair of vicious back-shooters try to make sure he never finishes the job. At the same time, a mysterious epidemic is ravaging the entire Texas coast. Now Longarm has to dodge the blazing lead headed his way, get to the source of the strange fever afflicting the region--and get his man back to Colorado to see that justice is done. 183rd novel in the "Longarm" series, 1994.

CHAPTER 1

The funeral seemed at least as dignified and twice as sober as anyone was likely to remember the late Justice Elroy Bryce of the Denver Probate Court. His Honor had been one of those sneaky old drunks who'd never taken a false step, slurred one word, nor made a whole lot of sense as he'd presided over mostly routine cases.

Longarm had appeared before His Honor a time or two to ask if they could use a dead outlaw's own pocket money to bury him decently, the outlaw being intestate, and old Elroy had been neighborly enough. But U.S. Deputy Marshal Custis Long, as he was known officially, was there at the funeral more as a representative of his federal court. Nobody but his immediate superior, U.S. Marshal William Vail, would come right out and say what they thought of the poor old political hack. But Longarm felt sure he'd been stuck with the chore because he was well known to the locals gathered in the church as a federal man, thanks to those dumb features about him in the Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post. Things had gotten to where a lawman wound up on the infernal front pages every time he had to gun a foolish road agent. It felt dumb to be sitting up front, in a fresh-pressed tweed suit and cruelly starched white shirt, for Pete's sake, while some jasper a row back whispered, "That's the one they call Longarm, and I'll bet that's his famous.44-40 bulging under the left tail of his frock coat."

Longarm wondered what else they expected a lawman on duty to be wearing cross-draw in such an uncertain world, especially after putting many an owlhoot rider in jail, or in the ground, while packing a badge for six or eight years. Judges made enemies along the way as well. In addition, a pesky reporter had gotten a look at the guest invitations, and printed in his paper how the notorious Custis Long would show up.

Longarm had managed to crawfish out of being a pallbearer, with hardly a chance in the world if some sore loser threw down on him while he was helping to carry the coffin. But he still itched far more between his shoulder blades than that pesky starch called for. It was taking the preacher a million years to take his place at that damned pulpit and get cracking. Meanwhile, all sorts of suspicious characters filed by, supposedly to pay their last respects to that old dead drunk in that open mahogany casket.

The church organ wasn't doing a thing to speed things up. Longarm couldn't tell whether the short and pleasantly plump brunette over in the alcove was playing hunt-and-peck on the organ keys because she couldn't make out the score propped up so high, or because she couldn't reach the pumping pedals slung so low with her little legs. She was seated at such a sideways angle that he couldn't quite make out just what she was really up to. Nevertheless, she or anybody else seated at her organ had a clear shot at most anyone filing past that old dead drunk. So Longarm rose to his own imposing height and eased on over to give the little lady a hand, or in this case a foot.

"They got a separate hand pump manned by two choir-boys over at Fourteen Holy Martyrs," he confided casually as he calmly sat down beside her to feel for the foot pedals with his longer legs. "You just worry about the fingering of them fine chords and I'll keep the bellows full of air for 'em, ma'am. I answer to the handle of Custis Long and I ride for Marshal Billy Vail as a paid-up lawman, if you're worried about my innocent intentions."

The plump little brunette of about twenty or so favored him with a shy little smile, allowed she was Prunelia Farnam, and agreed she'd been having a time reaching the low pedals and high keyboard at once. She proceeded to play far better, and a tad faster, when he started rubbing his right leg against her left one. But there was no way for him to move to his left without hanging half his ass in midair, while she had plenty of room on the rest of the bench if she cared to shift her own.

She didn't seem to want to. Longarm mostly kept his desperately casual gray eyes on the crowd to their left as he stroked away at her and the organ to his right. She seemed to be breathing sort of fast, even though he'd taken over the harder chore, as she played a familiar church tune he didn't know the words to.

Leastways, he didn't know the words they'd doubtless put down on paper to be sung on such solemn occasions. Like many a country boy before him, Longarm had grown up memorizing more scandalous words to otherwise tedious songs sung by tedious elders. He and a freckle-faced kid who'd been killed a few summers later at Malvern Hill had sure enjoyed singing "Massa's in de cold, cold ground" as "Mah ass is in de cold, cold ground" right in front of the gals with the teacher leading. He'd never rightly figured whether the gals had been fooled or not. Gals often giggled while singing whether there was a joke worth laughing at or not.

But the gal next to him wasn't playing the song about some dead slaveholder's funeral. As he pumped away Longarm tried and failed to come up with the right words, or even the title of this one. But all that popped into his head was:

"While the organ peeled potatoes, Lard was rendered by the choir. While the sextant wrang the dish cloth, Someone set the church on fire!"

The plump brunette bumped his longer, leaner leg with a plump thigh deliberately, as she giggled. "Stop that! This is supposed to be a very solemn occasion and you mustn't make me laugh!"

So he tried not to. But the next thing he knew, as he was biting his own disrespectful tongue, he caught her mouthing the next verse under her breath. So it seemed only fair to sing along:

"Holy smoke, the preacher shouted. In the rush he lost his hair. Now his head resembles Heaven, For there is no parting there."

She botched a note, poked him with an elbow, and warned him with mock severity that she'd stand him in a corner if he didn't cut that out. Then she switched to another dirge, and Longarm had to stifle a laugh. For the only words he knew to that one were from a really filthy parody.

He resisted the impulse, even though he suspected she knew full well how the sillier version went. Young gals had been just as silly as anyone else growing up back home in West-by-God-Virginia.

So he just went on pumping her organ as she inspired his with a calico-covered thigh and the solemn notes of what he only recalled as "Cock of Ages."

Then they had to quit horsing around in the organ alcove for a spell as the preacher and some other professional liars said nice things about the old dead drunk in the fancy box. As he sat there, off to one side with Prunella, Longarm murmured a suggestion as to what they ought to play him out of the church with. She said she'd do it if he promised not to sing the dirty words to "Farther Along."

He assured her, "It's one of my favorite hymns sung straight. Most of 'em promise all sorts of things I ain't so sure they can ever deliver. But that more sensible one only suggests we'll all understand this confusion farther along in the mysterious hereafter."

He shot a somber glance at the raised lid of the old drunk's casket as he thoughtfully added, "Right now, the guest of honor in yonder box knows more about what lies yonder than the rest of us."

"If anybody does," she demurred in a wistful tone. "The poor old man wasn't able to make a lick of sense with his brain full of whiskey. How clear might it function full of embalming fluid?"

Longarm made a wry face and observed that that seemed to be a sort of scientific attitude for a church organist. To which she replied, "I'm here for the same reasons most everyone else was invited. The poor old thing was too important to send off with only the very few who cared about him. They asked me to play this organ because I said I knew a few hymns they didn't have the music for. After I see him out the front door with 'Farther Along' I'm calling it a day here. It looks like rain and the Methodist Burial Grounds on the south side of town are over a mile away."

Longarm sighed. "You're right about the coming rain. It's been a mighty wet green-up so far this year. But my boss, Marshal Vail, lent me his family surrey for the occasion, and it's a good thing we put up the side curtains this morning suspecting that early overcast of soggy intentions."

She shrugged, somehow moving her thigh against his in the process, as she softly replied, "It's too bad you feel obliged to drive out to the burial grounds then. With my luck the hansom I hail out front will have open sides and my skirts will surely get spotted by the time I'm home."

When he hesitated, weighing the odds of his being seriously missed in a crowd of rain-soaked strangers, she threw in, "Fortunately, I don't live far. So no matter how wet I get, I'll doubtless be snug and dry in my Turkish bathrobe, sipping hot chocolate by the fire, by the time the rest of you wade free of that fresh-laid sod out on the south side of town."

Longarm grimaced and quietly asked, "Might you have any toasting spits and marshmallows to go with that rainy-day fire, ma'am?"

She murmured, "My friends call me Pru, and I suppose we could stop along the way for fresh marshmallows if that would be your pleasure."

But it wasn't. So of course they didn't, as he drove her the other way through a serious April shower while everyone else headed out to the south in the wake of that rubber-tired hearse drawn by six black high-steppers. Billy Vail's less imposing surrey only rated a team of ill-matched bays. But Pru said they were sweet, and Longarm thought she might be as well when she suggested the horses would be better off rubbed down, fed, and watered in her own carriage house seeing that he might be staying long enough to toast some marshmallows.

He wasn't dumb enough to scout for a grocery shop open on a rainy Sabbath, or remark on her earlier admission that they'd not find any marshmallows once they got to her place on Logan Street. For he'd learned early on that there was nothing a mortal man could do to speed the pace of a woman with her mind made up. On the other hand, a total fool could change a woman's mind and cool her off by clumsy moves or the wrong words. So he hardly said anything as he and Billy Vail's team followed her directions. Sure enough, the next thing he knew the two of them were warming up before the coal fire in her bedchamber with nary a marshmallow or even that Turkish bathrobe to distract them. She did most of the work, on top, with the ruby glow from the coal fire inspiring a man to new heights as it rippled over her voluptuous torso and naked bouncing bubbles.

They naturally finished up in her four-poster across the room, with him on top, and then they shared one of his three-for-a-nickel cheroots with her tousled brown hair spread across his bare chest. He could have found out a lot more about her had he wanted. But he changed the subject to their more recent delights as she began to tell him the story of her life. He'd already figured she lived alone as a grown woman of some property on the fashionable side of Lincoln Street. So after that, anything else she had to tell a new lover figured to be depressing. Most men knew better than to brag about catching the clap off Arapaho squaws who beat them when they came home drunk. So he'd never figured out why gals felt they had to tell every young boy they met about getting screwed in the ass by an elder brother while their mothers beat them with horsewhips. So he assured old Pru he didn't care who'd been in the right or wrong during her recent divorce and property settlement. He put out their smoke, and put what she said she liked better back where she said she liked it best.

He wouldn't know what a mess he was in before he'd spent a good eighteen hours with her, laying, lying, or whatever. As another silly song suggested, if she'd had wings, he'd have screwed her flying!

It would have been rude to take leave of such a swell hostess right after she'd served him ham and eggs in bed even though it was a workday. So Longarm got to the Federal Building along about ten, still walking a mite funny. He didn't need the smirking typewriter-player in the front office to tell him what a chewing he was in for. He just sighed and said, "Don't try to understand it, Henry. Maybe someday, once you figure out why boys and girls are built different, you'll get out of the habit of showing up so early every damned old Monday morn!"