Longarm on the Fever Coast (6 page)

Longarm nodded. "Some railroad men told me about freeze burn. For now I'm more interested in that fucking Hamp Godwynn, if that was his name."

The supercargo opened the port and let Longarm go ahead with the bull's-eye beam and six-gun as he observed, "We found no certain identification for either when we searched the stateroom they were sharing. They'd told the purser they were cattlemen. Their baggage neither proved it nor made liars out of them. They'd brought along stock saddles with their personal baggage lashed to them."

Longarm swept the beam ahead through the clearing fog stirred up by their entrance along with a blast of warm air. The mostly empty space was about the size of a dance hall, although with a far lower ceiling, but he'd never been to a dance where they had ice-frosted pipes running the length of the two longer walls. He didn't ask a dumb question about the ice on the refrigeration pipes. He knew the air next to ice could be somewhat warmer than freezing. The air in a plain old icebox felt about this cold. It was already raising a gooseflesh under Longarm's shirt as he asked the supercargo what sort of stock saddles they were talking about.

The seagoing Texican replied, "One was a Panhandle double rig, and the other was one of them Mex ropers with the exposed wooden swells and dally horn. You're talking to a man who loads a heap of beef along his weary way."

Longarm swept the beam up at the long rows of empty meat hooks as he thoughtfully mused, "They told me they were from other parts and just looking for work down by the border. They both packed their guns in border buscadero rigs as well. I sure wish folks wouldn't lie to the law so much."

He aimed his gun at some produce crates further back as he moved in on them, the supercargo trailing with his own gun out. But they only found citrus fruit and a fancy breed of salad greens for the New Orleans French-style of cooking back there. When Longarm asked, the supercargo explained that the little they had aboard up to now came from the Mexican farms around the mouth of the Rio Grande. He said the state and federal health authorities made such a fuss over meat out of Mexico, or anywhere near it, that the shipping company didn't want the bother.

Longarm said he'd heard about the current outbreak of hoof-and-mouth down Mexico way. "You were right about Hamp Godwynn not being refrigerated too. Let's get out of here before we almost freeze our own asses to zero centigrade!"

They ducked back outside. It was the first time since he'd been south of the Texas line that he welcomed the muggy heat of the gulf.

On the way back topside the supercargo admitted they hadn't been able to search any other staterooms because the rest of the passengers had retired for the night.

Longarm said they'd see about that, and proceeded to knock politely but firmly on doors. They found, as he'd hoped, that most law-abiding folks with nothing to hide but their privates were willing to let the law have a look around as long as they got to cover their privates first. The only couple who flatly refused to let Longarm in without a search warrant were the Hades-bound honeymooners he'd heard earlier. Longarm decided not to bend the U.S. Constitution all out of shape just to see what the woman looked like. It was almost bound to be a disappointment, and it was tough to picture them letting Godwynn in to watch.

The son of a bitch wasn't anywhere else on board that Longarm could come up with. So he drifted back to his own stateroom to see how they were doing with poor Lenore.

They'd done better than he'd expected. Somebody had stripped the ruined bloody bedding off the top berth, and the dead blonde was now reposing on the bar springs. That only seemed cruel till you noticed how someone had washed her off, smoothed her hair, and struggled her into a modest ivory flannel nightgown from her own baggage. Longarm felt sure the motherly nurse or whatever had done most of the work, although the boozy ship's surgeon was the one going on about how his company would wire home for her at the next port of call, and then carry her on to the end of the line on ice so someone of her own could meet or have the body met with there.

The motherly gal, a bit older and fatter than Longarm, said she'd drained such blood as those bullets had left in the dead gal and emptied her basin over the rail just outside. That was the first Longarm had noticed, in the soft lantern light, how someone had used face powder and rouge to keep Lenore's face from going that pallid beeswax shade dead faces got before they turned really funny colors. When Longarm asked where she'd learned so much about undertaking, she explained she'd been a Union army nurse in the war. She looked away as she added, "Making them look presentable before their dear ones saw them was the least we could do. Lord knows there was neither the medicine nor the medical skills to save a third of them."

He didn't say he'd been there. He wasn't being modest. He didn't want to remind her how long ago it had been. He was now in his thirties, and he'd had to lie about his age to be allowed to act so foolish. She'd have had to have been in her twenties and able to prove her good character and nursing skills to Sister Clara Barton, the boss of all the Union nurses, before they'd have let her put rouge on dead soldiers-blue. So he figured her for her early forties, give or take hard work and a healthy appetite.

They didn't talk more about the past till after some crewmen had come with an improvised pine coffin to carry poor Lenore down to the cold-storage hold. He told the purser not to bother making up the berth that night. He explained he was getting off in the morning to begin with and already had his own possibles in that other stateroom on the starboard side.

When he told the older army nurse he had a fifth of Maryland rye among those possibles, she dimpled at him and replied, "Lord love you, I could use a stiff drink, and we used to get Maryland rye fresh from the still when I was serving in that charnel house outside of Washington. But lest you feel you've wasted good whiskey, young sir, it's only fair to warn you I don't want anyone making all my bones ache."

Longarm smiled sheepishly and insisted, "I thought we'd agreed I was only trying to comfort a shot-up lady, ma'am. For the record and a lady's reputation, I never even kissed Miss Lenore. All that mush you may have misread sprang from an earlier conversation about a far older lady who died purer than she might have wanted."

The nurse said in that case she'd trust him for just one nightcap in his stateroom. They'd both figured out who he was by now. But along the way to the starboard side she surprised him a tad by introducing herself as Norma Richards, M.D.

He waited until they were in his stateroom with the lamp lit and door wide open before he casually asked, while pouring a tumbler to be shared, whether that wasn't a government nursing uniform she had on. She nodded, took a manly belt from the tumbler, and handed it to him. "It is. I put on my summer whites as soon as I saw how slow we were steaming. I put myself through medical school after the war. I knew I'd done almost nothing for those dying boys. Once I had my own M.D. degree I felt even less respect for some of the army surgeons I'd served under. I'm a good doctor. I don't usually drink this much and I'm interested in medicine. But since we both work for the same government, do I really have to go into why they'd only have me a lab technician with a nurse's rating?"

Longarm sipped some rye and gently replied, "We don't have many female deputies riding out of the Denver District Court, now that you mention it, Miss Norma. About the best a lady can do with our Justice Department is stenographer or prison matron. But I'll bet you're a good lab technician. I saw how slick you tidied up that poor Miss Lenore."

She shrugged and said, "Thank you, I think. I'm damned good. My specialty is bacteriology. It's a whole new science. We didn't know anything about disease germs during the war, and when I think of those poor boys shot full of holes in filthy uniforms and our primitive attempts to irrigate their wounds with pond water I... Could I have another drink? I don't know why that girl's death tonight got me so upset. I never knew her and I've seen so much worse in my time."

Longarm poured her a stiffer one as he said soothingly, "You'd have liked her had you known her, and like you said, it's been a while and you've a better notion what's been busted up inside. I've read about germs. I take it you don't treat gunshot wounds any more?"

She sipped some rye, shook her head, and explained. "Despite my womanly rank they have me supervising the setting up of new bacterial departments at army, navy, and Indian agency clinics down this way. I just finished teaching some hairy-chested male physicians down in Brownsville how to use a microscope properly. Ninety-nine percent of what you see wriggling in dirty ditch water seems to do nothing much at all. Some few one-celled microbes are now known to be helpful in baking bread and turning malted rye to gold, like we're drinking. A few others are really bad bugs. The ones causing the cholera look a bit like tadpoles. The ones that may cause the ague, or malaria, seem to look like either wriggle worms or doughnuts. They both show up in the blood of ague victims, and laugh if you like, I have my own theory they're two stages of the same organism. But when I sent in a paper to the Medical Journal they sent it back. They were too polite to call me a hysterical woman."

Longarm moved over to the doorway as he soberly replied, "I reckon if a catty-pillar could turn into a butterfly, a wriggle worm ought to manage turning into a doughnut, ma'am. But to tell the truth, I doubt anyone aboard this vessel died of the ague this evening."

There didn't seem to be anyone about outside, but you never knew for certain. So he shut the door before he moved back her way, saying, "I'm sure you're a swell doctor, Miss Norma, but right now I've other favors to ask of you, seeing we both work for the same government and all."

She put the empty tumbler aside on a corner washstand, regarding him with some alarm. "I haven't had that much to drink and I told you I didn't want to get on top, cowboy!"

Longarm chuckled. "Well, it's too blamed hot for me to consider doing all the work. But I wish you'd listen to my proposition before you cloud up and rain all over such a harmless cuss!"

So she listened, and he told her how he thought the two of them, working together, might turn the tables on a killer who had Longarm in a double bind.

As she hesitated, he insisted, "If he made it ashore my only hope is to wire up and down the coast for some posse riders as soon as I can. But if he's somehow managed to hole up aboard this big old tub with all its nooks and crannies..."

"I'll do as you ask," she said with a sigh. "So pour me another drink before I change my mind. All in all, I'd rather get on top."

They got into the sleepy port of Escondrijo by the gray if not really cold light of a gulf coast dawn. Few passengers were up at such an ungodly hour, and those who came out on deck to see what all the fuss was about were told not to go ashore unless, like Deputy Long, they intended to stay there until another coastal vessel put in. For this one was only staying long enough to take on some fresh beef from the one slaughterhouse in town, and save for the few crewmen putting a modest amount of cargo ashore, with Longarm's saddle perched atop a chest of drawers from Old Mexico, the whole crew seemed anxious to pitch in and wrestle the heavy sides of beef up the gangplank leading into the cold-storage hold. So it took less than an hour, and then they were on their way as the sun came up to shed more heat as well as light on things.

The next few hours passed uneventfully for those still aboard with clear consciences, and then they put in at the much larger port of Corpus Christi before the day had gotten really hot. So all went ashore who might want to go ashore, the sea breezes blowing so much cooler than usual that morning and the skipper allowing they'd be there a good two hours.

Corpus Christi was a county seat, with a Ranger station and a number of pottery kilns, grain silos, and such. Mostly it was an old Mexican settlement, not incorporated as an Anglo town until '52. So lots of the older buildings as well as the Spanish churches were interesting to Anglo eyes, while the seaside Mexican market smelled tempting to any sort of nose with the weather suddenly so nice. So most of the off-duty crewmen as well as all the passengers but those same two honeymooners came on down the gangplank long before the furtive Hamp Godwynn made a sudden move ashore, moving like a rat down a ship's hawser--in the opinion of a lawman who'd apparently gotten off at Escondrijo.

Longarm hadn't. He'd had good old Norma Richards go ashore with his stuff to look after it and wire the Texas Rangers from that Coast Guard station at Escondrijo, while he'd gone on, holed up in her stateroom with the Saratoga trunk she'd entrusted to him. That big old trunk had been handy to hide his face under as he'd gone down the gangplank with it on his back.

So now Norma's trunk, like Longarm, stood behind a pile of lumber in the shade of a dockside loading shed as he waited for the killer in the Carlsbad hat to sidewind within hailing range with his own narrowed eyes darting about as if he wasn't dead certain he'd guessed right.

Longarm called out cheerfully, "You guessed wrong, Godwynn. So grab some sky if you'd like to be taken alive."

Godwynn spun on one boot heel and ran back toward the gangplank, zigzagging back and forth in case Longarm had really meant that.

Longarm had. He'd liked that pretty blonde. So he fired as the son of a bitch zagged, hoping to bust his ass and leave him in shape to explain why they'd wanted to gun a federal lawman.