He and Consuela had time to jaw just a bit about her troubles and his plans. He tried to stay on the topic of her pestiferous Anglo neighbors. Not because he really expected to do anything about them, but because he didn’t want to say just where he’d be headed next. It was bad enough she knew who he was. He’d told her he was on a secret job and sworn her to silence, but the less she knew the better.
When two of her riders led the stock he’d picked back again, all set up to go, he got an idea how well she meant to keep his secret. For when he brought up the delicate subject of money again, she protested that he was a guest, and added something about the value of being known for having supplied two caballos to El Brazo Largo.
It wouldn’t have been polite to cuss her, or useful to warn her again not to gossip about him. So he just mounted the cream, took the lead of the palomino with a nod of thanks, and rode out.
With the sun up and nobody likely to be laying for him in the high weeds, Longarm headed for the coach road cattycorner through the stirrup-deep wild mustard. The air was still crisp and the tang of tiny yellow blossoms seemed to make both ponies frisky. You saw so much mustard around Spanish-speaking stock because they liked to nibble mustard about as much as humans did, concentrating instead on consuming grass down to the root crowns.
Longarm intersected the main road near the river about three furlongs south of the ranch complex, and couldn’t have said just why he reined in and turned in the saddle for a last look-see. But when he did he saw at least a dozen riders loping up that same entry lane under a cloud of dust. Their hats and darker outfits said they were Anglo from better than half a mile away. It was none of his own beeswax who they were or what they might want with old Consuela. A lady raising stock on a spread as big as this one—for he was still on her land—would be expected to have all sorts of visitors, and it wasn’t as if she didn’t have any grown men back yonder to protect her.
“Goddamn it, Creamy,” he said to his mount. “I wasted a whole day getting Kinipai squared away, and Billy Vail never sent me all this way to fight with windmills like that asshole Don Quixote! I’m supposed to be down by that mysterious mesa right now. There’s no mystery about Mexican land grants. Heaps of Anglo stockmen resent ‘em, and it’s a matter for the local law to deal with!”
Then he saw those distant riders reining in but not getting down in front of old Consuela’s casa. Nobody seemed to be shooting at anyone yet. But Longarm sighed and said, “All right, just this once, but we really ought to watch this shit.”
It took a bit less time loping back than it had taken to trot off. But as he closed in on the tense scene he saw the argument had had time to build up some steam. Consuela and half a dozen of her ranch hands were on her front veranda afoot. None of the riders had dismounted, and one scrawny old cuss was waving a paper at the Indian gal as if he wanted her to take it.
Everyone stopped jawing to stare at Longarm as he reined in to join the discussion. As he neared the man who seemed to be the process server and held out his free hand, Consuela cried, “Don’t take that! You have to accept an eviction order before they can make it stick!”
Longarm smiled down at her reassuringly. “I fear you may know more about ranching than legal proceedings, Miss Consuela. That ain’t the way things work, and even if it was, I don’t own an acre of spit in these parts. So I’d best have a look-see.”
He turned back to the mean-eyed old goat who’d been trying to serve the Indian gal with his fluttering single sheet, and mildly asked who he had the honor of confronting.
The older man said he was Cyrus Grayson of the Bar Three Slash, and asked who Longarm might be, aside from a Mexlover.
Longarm ignored the snickers from the other riders backing the old goat’s play as he mildly suggested, “By the time you found out exactly who I was, you might have decided you didn’t want to know me all that well. What have you got there, Mister Grayson? Looks to me like a notarized letter.”
Grayson handed it over, snapping, “Damned right it’s notarized. Had it witnessed and sealed by a licensed notary public yesterday afternoon!”
Longarm scanned the absolutely worthless document with a smile of disbelief. Then he turned back to the worried Consuela and said, “This jasper knows no more about the law than you do, Miss Consuela. He’s made a sworn statement to the effect that you are neither an American citizen nor a member of the white race, which is moot. Then he goes on to say you’re squatting unlawfully on range he needs to get to the river road, and so on.”
Grayson nodded grimly and added, “Signed, sealed, and delivered according to law. There’s no arguing with papers witnessed and stamped by a notary public, right?”
Longarm laughed. “Wrong. A notary public is a respected tobacconist, innkeeper, or whatever, licensed by the county to witness and seal documents to prove he witnessed somebody swearing to him their words were true.”
Grayson nodded. “That’s what I just said.”
Longarm replied, “No, it ain’t. You tried to tell us this foolish scribble was a legal document. It’s an expression of your personal opinion about a lady who was here first, on land you’d like to grab but ain’t about to. I don’t know what you paid to have this notarized, but you wasted your money. Didn’t the notary tell you when he stamped it for you that all he was backing was your word that you and you alone were the blithering idiot who signed it?”
Then Longarm was suddenly holding a pistol in his hand as the sheet of paper fluttered down between his mount’s legs. So the younger rider on the far side of old Grayson suddenly let go of his own pistol grips with a sick grin as Longarm quietly said, “I only give one demonstration. The next one who reaches for his side arm had better mean it.”
Old Grayson’s face had gone frog-belly white, but his voice was fairly steady as he said, “Don’t never do that again without my say-so, Rafe. Now get down and pick up that paper you made the man drop.”
Longarm kept his gun out as he said, “I have a grander notion. I want Miss Consuela’s lawyer to keep and cherish that free sample of documented stupidity.”
He said a few words in Spanish. Consuela nodded, and one of her hands dashed forward as Longarm danced his mount off the paper.
Consuela asked something in Spanish. Longarm wanted both sides to get his message, so he replied in English. “It was a childish bluff I’d be ashamed to try in a lunatic asylum, Miss Consuela. I’d say your friendly neighbor’s own lawyer told him there was no way they’d ever get a court order in New Mexico evicting anyone from an old Mexican land grant. So he wasted more time and money on a notarized document, as I said.”
Grayson told the Mexican hand, “I’ll take that,” as the hand picked up the document in question. The Mexican hesitated. Longarm snapped at him in Spanish, and he ran clean past Consuela and into the house with it. Then Longarm told Grayson calmly, “You were trying to serve that paper on the lady, in front of witnesses. So now she’s got it, and when her lawyers finish laughing at you, they’ll likely want to hang on to it in case you ever try to waste their time in court again. Didn’t your own lawyer explain any of this to you, old son?”
Grayson snapped, “I have my rights, damn it! I’m a U.S. citizen who fought at Cold Harbor for the Union and came away with scars to prove it. Who are you to take the side of a fullblood Indian against a good white American?”
Longarm chuckled fondly and replied, “I’ll allow you seem to be a white American. I doubt you’re all that good, and I know you’re as smart as the average scarecrow. I don’t know where you got the grand notion you could run a taxpaying grant-holder off her land as you might some Digger Indian poking through your trash heap, but it just ain’t possible. So why don’t you just git and save wear and tear on all concerned.”