Longarm on the Fever Coast (22 page)

Longarm rose back to his feet, saying, "I did, the other night. I didn't pay much attention at the time. They'd have been better off leaving me the hell alone. But dumb as I might have been, your notion falls apart as soon as you put out from, say, Matamoros with a load of quarantined beef. Getting out is no big boo. But getting into the innocent stream of coastal traffic would be. Whenever the Coast Guard stops a vessel coming in from parts unknown, they send a search party aboard."

Purvis asked, "Is there any law saying Coast Guard officers can't be paid off?"

Longarm said, "No natural law. Federal statutes take a mighty dim view of it. So do I. So I've naturally considered that already. It keeps boiling down to the root of all evil, the love of your average cuss for money! How much do you reckon it would take to bribe a whole Coast Guard, or even one cutter crew out of one station?"

Purvis considered and decided, "You'd sure have to sell a hell of a lot of ground round back East at those prices!"

Longarm agreed that was about the size of it, and left to see how good old Norma and her plague might be making out.

Up by the converted icehouse, he found that for a soft flutterly gal who liked to be on the bottom best, the motherly but somewhat bossy Norma Richards had been making out just fine.

After kissing him smack on the mouth in front of everybody, the Junoesque doctor told him she'd wired a list of the observed symptoms all the way to the Surgeon General's office, and been assured they sure seemed to add up to Malta or what some now called undulant fever. They'd told her she'd been making sense with the moves she'd made so far, and suggested other, more drastic measures she might take to check the plague till a team from back East could get there to help her.

When she shyly asked whether he thought that meant she'd be in charge, Longarm kissed her some more and assured her, "If it don't, there ain't no justice. But when did they get the wires back up and how come nobody told me?"

She said, "I just found out myself Western Union hasn't been advertising for more business and the backlog is still awesome. I had to buck the line by threatening them with the power of the federal government. But I'm sure you'll be able to break in the same way, citing a federal emergency."

Longarm smiled thinly and replied, "I've never admired folks who got in line ahead of me, and there's nothing I have to say that can't wait till things simmer down a mite. I'd rather talk about Rod Gilbert and our sick prisoner, Baldwin. Lieutenant Flynn's offered us a free ride out aboard his steam cutter, and I was hoping you'd be able to tell me they were fit to travel."

Norma favored him with a maternal smile and sighed. "You've no idea how tempted I am to keep the three of you here for a month of Sundays, darling. But if you're asking me in my official capacity, the course of undulant fever is pretty predictable."

She took his arm as if to lead him off to show him something as she explained. "Thanks to your inspired guess about infected goat's milk and, as it turns out, local buttermilk-fed pork, we've stopped any human beings around here from being re-infected. We're not certain how vegetarian cows pass the plague along, but it's tougher for people to pick up. They have to rub body fluids from an infected animal into an open cut, or swallow them in greater quantity. You already know how sick they get within a few days. But it's called undulant because of the way it comes and goes, with each attack both milder and farther apart."

She was leading him out a side door for some reason as she went on. "It's usually the second or third attack that those who die succumb to. It's not as much the fever itself, as the pneumonia or secondary ailments that hit a victim in his or her drained state. Young Gilbert and that dreadful Clay Baldwin have been through the whole cycle half a dozen times. So I'm sure they're out of danger, albeit either may have mighty bad days for as long as a year in the future."

Longarm said he doubted Clay Baldwin had that much future ahead of him, and as she led him up the outside stairs of the building to the north added, "I reckon I can get them both back to Denver sitting down or stretched out aboard public transportation. Where might you be leading me, Miss Norma?"

She giggled sort of dirty and replied, "Down the Primrose Path, or at least up to the new quarters I've commandeered for myself here in town, now that I seem to be the Public Health Service. I had far less privacy as well as a longer trip back and forth at that Coast Guard station!"

She didn't say where she'd be taking her meals, now that she was quartered closer to her fever ward. Longarm didn't really care, once she'd shut the door upstairs behind them and turned with a Mona Lisa smile to confide, "Cross-ventilation too. But now that I have you in my wicked power, in broad daylight for heaven's sake, are you sure I can trust you not to laugh at your poor little piggy?"

Longarm proceeded to shuck his own duds too as he asked her when he'd ever declared her a pig. He managed not to laugh as she proceeded to pop a lot of bulging pink flesh in view, demurely suggesting, "This is the first time we've ever seen one another naked in daylight. I do try to watch my weight, dear, but it gets harder and harder as a girl gets older and... Oh, my God, did you really put all that in me the other night?"

He suggested soothingly that they see if they still fit fine together where it really counted. As he laid her back across her brass-railed bed atop the covers, she bit her baby-girl lower lip and hissed, "Be careful with that thing, Custis!"

But then, a few minutes later, being fickle as most gals about such matters, she was pounding his bare ass with the heels of her high-buttons, demanding he go deeper if he knew what was good for him.

So what with one position and another, with a quick supper shared well after sundown at the beanery across the way, Longarm barely made it back to the Coast Guard station in time to board that steam cutter as it cast off on a falling tide. Like most of its breed, the long white-hulled cutter was mostly flash boilers, powerful engines, and four-pound deck guns capable of catching up with anything its twin screws couldn't.

Chief Tobin told them Flynn and young Devereaux were too busy on the bridge to talk to anyone right now. But meanwhile, they could lock Baldwin in the ship's brig forward, and they'd try to make the two civilian lawmen comfortable in the wardroom, aft and a short length of ladder down from the bridge. Longarm had noticed before how sailors called any sort of steps "ladders," any sort of floors "decks," and so forth. Cowhands liked to confound green hands the same way.

A mess attendant brought the two deputies coffee, and said something about a smoking lamp being lit. Rod Gilbert still said he'd feel far better smoking out on deck instead of there in the greasy-smelling wardroom as the cutter began to pick up speed. For narrow-beam steamers tended to roll far more than sailboats, even across the calmer waters of a sheltered lagoon.

It was a good thing Gilbert felt that way. For they'd barely made it out to where Longarm could see the stars before he saw they weren't headed the way he'd expected.

Gilbert tagged wanly along as Longarm went on up to the bridge to demand why. What they called a bridge on a Coast Guard cutter was more like a glorified pilothouse borrowed from a riverboat. Lieutenant Flynn was posing for a statue behind the enlisted man at their big oak wheel and brass binnacle. It was Devereaux, acting as first officer, who cut them off and said they weren't allowed on the bridge while a patrol was in progress.

Longarm calmly but firmly replied, "That's what we're here to ask you about. How come we're headed south? Ain't you boys assigned to pay more heed to vessels putting in through Corpus Christi Pass to your north? There ain't no way to smuggle anything in off the open sea this side of the Rio Grande, one hell of a voyage to the south!"

Flynn turned grandly and stiffly replied, "As the one and only master of this vessel I don't have to answer to you or anyone else. But I've set a course for Matamoros because that's where you keep saying someone's been picking up quarantined beef. Didn't you also say you came all this way via the Rio Grande and up this very lagoon?"

Longarm sighed, "I did. I thought it would be obvious, even to you, I'd want to compare notes with the Rangers and others I know in Corpus Christi before we headed on back some other way!"

Flynn shrugged. "You should have asked which way we were headed before you boarded this evening. I understand the telegraph wires are back up. You ought to be able to contact all the others you want by Western Union once we put you ashore at Brownsville."

Longarm insisted, "I don't want to give any other crooks that much of a lead on me, Lieutenant. While I'm wasting a whole night aboard this cutter, patrolling miles of doubtless empty lagoon, confederates of Pryce & Doyle will be covering their crooked tracks with heaps of razzle-dazzle!"

It was Devereaux who quietly suggested, "Should the lieutenant so desire, we could put these civilians ashore at Escondrijo. I think I see the lamplight along their quay just ahead, off to starboard."

Flynn snapped, "You're not paid to think, Mister Devereaux. Until such time as they give you your own command, you'll be expected to do just as you're damned well told! Is that understood, mister?"

"Perfectly, sir," said the chastized J.G., and you could almost tell how red his face had flushed in the faint light of the binnacle lamp.

Longarm took a deep breath, let half of it out so his voice would stay steady, and said, "I want to be put ashore with my deputy and our prisoner here and now. Like the Indian chief said, I have spoken."

Lieutenant Flynn sounded almost cheerful as he smugly replied, "So have I. I'm in command here, and you'll damned well get off when and where I tell you, see?"

Longarm nodded soberly. "I reckon I do. I was aiming to give you more rope and wait till we all got to Corpus Christi and no doubt some superior Coast Guard officers who weren't in on it. But it was your grand notion to force my hand, so bueno, you're under arrest, and I reckon that puts Mister Devereaux here in command, don't it?"

Everyone there but Longarm sucked in his breath the same way. Flynn moved to the far wing of the bridge to fling open some glass and bawl out, "Mutiny! All hands on deck to stand by me and me alone!"

Longarm drew his.44-40 and snapped, "Cut that out before somebody gets hurt! Mister Devereaux, do you mean to take over as I told you to or stand there like a wide-eyed owl?"

Behind him, Deputy Gilbert had his own gun out, suggesting, "I don't like none of these sissy deck-moppers. What say we arrest the whole bunch of 'em, pard?"

Longarm said calmly, "The late Mr. Doyle only named Lieutenant Flynn here as one of his silent partners. I reckon he felt sort of betrayed after his pal laid him low with volley fire after Doyle agreed in Ancient Irish to surrender without a fight!"

"the bastard! You said he'd died without saying anything!" Flynn wailed, more like an old woman than a man.

Longarm shrugged and explained. "I just told you I wanted to let you have more rope. I was anxious to see you hang. For there's nothing lower than a crook who uses a position of trust to cheat. But damn it all, they'll probably let you save your neck by turning in all of the pals you ain't been able to murder yet!"

By this time Chief Tobin was in the hatchway, with a heavy club in one hand, a Navy Colt in the other, and two crewmen backing him up with their Spencers at port arms.

So Flynn snapped, "Arrest these civilians, Chief!"

And Tobin might have tried had not young Devereaux snapped, "Belay that. The lieutenant is under arrest. Escort him to the brig and slap him in irons. After which, helmsman, hard aport and set our course for Corpus Christi. I'll let Commander Wideman worry about this. For as the lieutenant has often reminded me, I'm not paid to do the thinking around here!"

CHAPTER 15

"But you were bluffing with a rotten hand!" Billy Vail said a week later as he finished reading Longarm's typed-up report in his Oak-paneled inner office at the Denver Federal Building.

Longarm just went on lighting his three-for-a-nickel cheroot on his own side of the marshal's cluttered desk. So Vail waved the thin sheets of foolscap like a matador taunting the bull as he insisted, "Don't you stare so innocent at me with your twinkling gray eyes, you goldbrick salesman disguised as a sober lawman! You've admitted right here in your own report that Doyle was dead as a turd in a milk bucket when you reached him after Flynn had laid down a volley of gunfire on his known position. So what would you have done if Flynn had called your bluff aboard that cutter he was commanding that night?"

"I'd have likely gotten off at Brownsville," Longarm replied, shaking out his match. "By then, of course, those steam line Officials Flynn had already warned by wire would have covered their own asses pretty good. That's how come I had to tell such fibs to get that damned tub turned around. It didn't take near as long to get on up to Corpus Christi, but by then Lieutenant Flynn had spent enough time in irons, contemplating a court-martial if not a keel-hauling, that he was singing like a tweety-bird when his superior Coast Guard officers commenced to question him."

Longarm blew a lazy smoke ring. "They let the Rangers sit in as well, as I put down there in my report. So it didn't take but seventy-two hours and almost that many telegrams up and down the coast before we had most everyone involved in the plot under arrest and squealing on one another like the rats they were. There weren't all that many in on the penny-ante operation, and nobody had ever made enough money to justify even one of the killings. But ain't you ever noticed how it's the cheap crooks who seem stupid enough to kill for next to nothing? Some Rangers who'd been keeping abreast of the beef market assured me the gang was making less'n ten dollars net profit a side on that quarantined beef by the time they'd gone to that much trouble!"