Longarm on the Fever Coast (20 page)

Longarm said, "You were right about it being a fever carried by livestock. But it was the nondescript Mex goats that nobody pays much attention to. No cows have caught it yet. Goats don't graze on open range with Texas beef cows, in peril of their lives."

She nodded but said, "That only makes sense till you consider all the Anglos coming down with your mysterious goat fever, Custis. How many of these Anglo townsfolk, cowhands, and even Coast Guardsmen do you suspect of eating or even petting sick Mexican goats?"

Longarm insisted, "It's the milk. None of those spreads we passed this morning kept one dairy cow on hand. Like everyone else down this way they buy the little fresh milk and cream they fancy off the local smallholders, who keep goats, not cows, for milking!"

Norma Richards was smart as well as passionate. So she thought, snapped her fingers, and said, "Of course! You don't take cream in your coffee. I've been using canned condensed milk, here as well as out at that Coast Guard station, thanks to a generous mess officer who asked me not to mention it to Lieutenant Flynn."

Longarm said, "Flynn seems to strike lots of folk as a martinet. Either way, condensed milk explains why so few Coast Guardsmen came down with this fever, and how come the ones in your care seem to be getting over it naturally."

But Norma was already waving all her volunteer gals in, along with some recovering patients she'd been putting to work there. Longarm didn't hang about to hear her explain why they all had to dash through town, shouting like Paul Revere about getting rid of all the fresh milk and goat cheese on hand. He was already on his way to get back to his own chores.

As he strode for the mount he'd tethered out front, old Constable Purvis cut him off, side arm drawn, demanding, "Stand and deliver on how come you just shot a pillar of our community, Deputy Long!"

Longarm said tersely, "Had to. It was him or me. I suspect that once we pass around some photographs, we'll agree those others I took for saddle bums were business associates of the late Mister Pryce as well. They must have had a time getting their regular help to go up against me and my rep, if they got desperate enough for the senior partner to try for me personally! I got to catch the junior partner now, and see if I can get him to fill me in on some of the missing pieces of the puzzle. I'm sure I got most of it about right now."

He untethered his mount and started to mount up as the older law man pleaded, "Tell me what's been going on here, damn it! I can't make heads or tails of a thing that's happened. How could Pryce & Doyle have been running a crooked operation if they turned in the only crook who ever stole one cow in these parts? Nobody for miles is missing any stock, old son!"

Longarm saw there was no way an elder on foot could ride along with him as they jawed, so he patiently explained. "Nobody for miles was doing business with Pryce & Doyle. They were afraid I'd notice other missing details as well. They had nothing resembling a full-fledged meat-packing operation. No stockyards, no side rendering plants, and shit, not even a slaughtering floor inside that glorified icebox. Just as they feared, albeit I had other things on my mind at the time, all I saw on their premises was a cold-storage cargo hold of neatly butchered beef. The same as I saw aboard a coastal steamer the other night. Don't you get it yet?"

Constable Purvis ran a thumbnail through the stubble on his jaw and declared, "Makes no sense. Pryce & Doyle have been shipping their cold-storage beef out of here regular. So where's it been bred, reared, and butchered if it ain't been around here?"

Longarm swung up in the saddle, saying, "Old Mexico, most likely. That's the only place near enough to matter where they could have got prime sides of neatly trimmed beef so cheap. When I catch Doyle I mean to ask him whether he refused Baldwin's offer because he thought it might be a trap or whether you can still buy beef on the hoof at five bucks a head down Mexico way."

"But how in thunder would you get all them Mex cows this far north past the hoof-and-mouth quarantine this spring?" the older lawman wailed as Longarm headed on, having wasted enough time guessing when all he had to do was catch the son of a bitch who knew!

CHAPTER 13

An old Mexican leading a burro loaded with firewood told Longarm he was on the right trail now, although the gringo on the lathered roan had one hell of a lead on him. There was no way anyone out at that Coast Guard station could have heard about recent events in town. And there was nobody to wire this side of Corpus Christi. No pony could run that far in one burst, though. So it all hinged on how hard either rider could push what he was riding. The cold-blood bay saddle breed Longarm had borrowed wasn't considered all that fast but might have a tad more endurance, or a few less brains, than the cow pony Doyle seemed to be riding. So Longarm could only keep heeling his bay at a steady lope and hope for the best.

The treacherous Doyle had a more jaded pony or more treacherous nature than Longarm should have expected by now. Virtue might have been its own reward, but had he never pulled off into that tangle of gumbo-limbo with old Ruby, he might not have been glancing over that way now as he tore past their recent love nest.

And he might not have seen the big white cotton ball of gunsmoke and rolled off the far side, Winchester in hand, by the time the rifle report that went with a whizzing.45-70 made it as far as he'd just been.

He hit the grassy seaward berm of the wagon trace any old way, and rolled a couple of times as that unseen but hardly unknown bushwhacker whacked at him some more with that repeating rifle. Longarm lost his hat, and his saddle and possibles lit out down the trace aboard that gun-shy government mount. It served a rider right for not borrowing one off the cavalry. But Longarm knew the bay would bolt for its own stall at the nearby Coast Guard station, and right now he had more important things to worry about than spare socks!

Since they'd laid out that wagon trace along a contour line, Lord love 'em, the soft soggy soil on his seaward side lay almost a yard lower than the roadway, and better yet, the salt grass he'd been rolling through rose well above his prone form. The son of a bitch firing from the gumbolimbo across the way was aiming at the swaying grass tops, not at a target he couldn't really draw a tight bead on at that range.

Longarm slithered around on his belly, ignoring the repeated potshots above as well as across his ass, till he was facing the way he'd been coming instead of the way he'd been going when he hit the ground. But what made it work was rolling close to the wagon trace till he lay between the slight rise and the long grass stems about half a yard out, on untouched and hence damper ground. He still moved slow, like a rat snake sneaking into a root cellar, dragging his '73 by its long barrel for what felt like a hundred miles but was likely a hundred yards. Then he made some nearby salt grass move with the muzzle of his Winchester, and when nothing happened he figured Doyle had to be back in that blind alley Longarm had backed into with Ruby, or another like it. So he took a deep breath, gathered his long legs under his center of balance, and sprang up to dash across the wagon trace, between two cottonwoods and through the open space on the far side, till he'd made the gumbo-limbo himself and got his breath back. Then he called out laconically, "That reminded me of Cold Harbor, Doyle. I sure hope we don't have to repeat that infernal campaign, for we could both wind up getting hurt in a blindman's bluff with shooting irons. Why don't you quit whilst you're ahead? You'll likely get away with blaming your dead pals for all the hanging offenses. That's if the prosecution agrees to let you turn state's evidence and tie up some loose ends for us."

Doyle fired blind through the springy saplings between them. As his ricochet wailed harmlessly off in the distance, Longarm chuckled and called back falsely, "Close. But no cigar. I don't want to have to kill you, asshole. I've about figured out what you and your pals were up to. But my boss frowns on what he calls my suppositions. You call it a supposition when you can't prove it. But you know I know a hell of a lot already. You wouldn't have tried to stop me from ever getting anywhere near your flimflam packing plant if you hadn't been worried about me taking one look and asking what in blue blazes you thought you were running there."

Doyle fired again. Longarm swore. "I got you boxed, you poor simp. I was back in those saplings just the other day and I know how tight they grow. I'm willing to ignore your repeated attempts to murder a federal agent recently, if you'd like to settle for just a few years in Leavenworth on smuggling and criminal conspiracy in exchange for a few more names, dates, and places."

Doyle didn't answer. Longarm spotted movement further up that wagon trace in a place exposed to fire from the thicket, and called out, "Get off that trail, boys! I got me an armed and stupid outlaw trapped up this way with a repeating rifle!"

As the Coast Guardsmen crabbed westward to form a more cautious file, hugging the gumbo-limbo to the north of where Doyle seemed to be, Longarm recognized Lieutenant Devereaux, leading the patrol with a Spencer of his own held at port arms. As the junior grade got within easy shouting range he called out, "That mount we loaned you just tore through the gate lathered under your empty saddle. So we doubted the distant shots we kept hearing could be a duck hunter. Who have we got pinned down here, Deputy?"

Longarm called back, "Old Doyle of Pryce & Doyle in town. Pryce tried to back-shoot me earlier. So we don't have to worry about him right now. As near as I can put it together, they were running Mexican beef to the U.S. market through that hoof-and-mouth quarantine along the border this season. They were offering local stockmen insulting prices for Texas beef, partly reflecting what they were paying Mex meat packers for already butchered and trimmed sides, but mostly because they had no facilities of their own for dealing with beef on the hoof." He turned his head to shout through the gumbo-limbo saplings. "I hope you're paying attention to this, Doyle. I got you pinned with the help of the U.S. Coast Guard, organized by Secretary Alexander Hamilton of the U.S. Treasury in the first damned place to keep smugglers like you in line!"

Doyle fired his rifle back at Longarm like a mean little kid. As some of the Coast Guardsmen raised their own weapons Longarm barked, "Hold your fire! He ain't so dangerous as desperate, and I aim to take at least one of them alive!"

Devereaux repeated Longarm's command, since it sounded more official coming from him, and called out to the trapped smuggler to surrender in the name of the U.S. Revenue Service.

Doyle didn't answer. Then they all heard hoofbeats, and down the road came Lieutenant Flynn himself, waving his dress saber aboard a bay thoroughbred. As Devereaux warned him off by pumping his own rifle over his own head, the sandy-haired C.O. slid his handsome mount to a stop and dismounted gracefully, if somewhat dramatically, waving that nickel-plated blade like a seagoing version of J.E.B. Stuart, or George Armstrong Custer. You had to give even a pain in the ass credit for being a good rider.

Devereaux filled his C.O. in, out of easy earshot, on the north side of the trapped Doyle. Longarm knew what they'd been jawing about when Flynn called out, "All right, Mister Doyle, you have ten seconds and counting to throw out your weapon and come out with your hands up! I now make it seven and still counting!"

Longarm bawled, "Hold on! We got him boxed, Lieutenant!" Meanwhile, deeper in the gumbo-limbo, Doyle wailed something that sounded like, "A mo abra! Fan ort! Is cruinti? mi!"

Then Flynn shouted, "Volley, fire!" and nobody paid Longarm a lick of attention as he shouted himself hoarse above the rattle of rifle fire, with each infernal Spencer firing seven times before anyone had to stop!

In the ringing silence that followed, Longarm croaked, "Asshole! How am I supposed to take 'em alive with help like that?"

Flynn said coldly, "You heard me warn him. That sounded like some ancient Irish war cry he threw back at us. Does anyone here have the Gaelic?"

Longarm snorted in disgust and said, "I wanted him to testify in English before a federal grand jury. I'm going in now. If any of you fill me full of lead, I'll never speak to you again!"

Devereaux warned, "Be careful, we were firing blind!"

Longarm eased up to that wilted sea grape he'd piled across the very same gap the day before. Now he muttered, "I noticed. There might be enough of him left to make a dying statement."

But there wasn't. Longarm had only moved in about as far as where he'd backed Ruby's shay before he spotted Doyle, further back among the supple saplings than he'd have thought possible. But Doyle had been sort of wiry as well as desperate. So there he stood, still on his feet, staring blankly as the blood still oozed from a good two dozen gunshot wounds.

Longarm propped his Winchester against two closely grown trunks and reached into the tangle, with some effort, till he had a grip on one of the dead man's sleeves. It was still a chore to wriggle Doyle out, even dead as the snows of yesteryear and limp as an old man's dick after a whole night in a whorehouse.

Devereaux joined him in the sun-dappled grotto, holding Longarm's Stetson in his free hand as he said, "One of my men just found your hat across the way. Is he dead?"

Longarm picked up his Winchester and took back his Stetson as he replied, "Yep. Didn't get much out of him as he breathed his last in a mishmash of English and that odd lingo... Gaelic, you say?"