Grayson sat taller in his saddle as he grimly replied, “I don’t run off as easy as your average Digger neither, Mexlover.”
Longarm said, “I don’t think you understand this situation, land-grabber. It ain’t going to work. Even if you shot everyone here and burned the whole spread to the ground, you would never in this world gain title to a Spanish grant recognized by the U.S. Government, unless you could get Miss Consuela here to marry up with you.”
Neither Grayson nor the widow Llamas seemed enthusiastic about that suggestion. Longarm laughed and said, “You got to admit nothing else would work half so well. But seeing you haven’t come courting, old son, why don’t you just be on your way? If your pony has its feet stuck, I might be able to inspire it to run with a few pistol shots.”
Grayson glared down at the cornely widow on the veranda instead, snarling, “You win this hand, you stubborn squaw, but I can find me just as many hired guns as you, hear?”
Then he whirled his pony and rode off, his ragged-ass bunch in his wake, before Consuela could give the show away by saying anything at all.
As they rode off, cussing and arguing among themselves, Longarm holstered his six-gun, hauled out his Winchester, and dismounted to say, “I’d best stick around a while. I’m hoping you’ve seen the last of them till he comes up with another bright notion. But you never can tell what a wolverine might do when it can’t seem to get a cupboard open.”
She laughed girlishly, and suggested they have some more to eat and drink inside. He figured she had to do a lot of riding between snacks to keep her figure on the pleasant side of pleasantly plump. Her hired help, of course, took care of his riding stock and, as long as they were about it, relayed Longarm’s suggestion that everyone get the kids, pigs, and chickens forted up inside the ‘dobe walls for now.
Back in that same parlor, Longarm explained the situation in greater depth as they nibbled tostadas and sipped sangria punch made with plenty of rum. She asked if he didn’t think a stupid enemy was more dangerous than a smart one. He didn’t want to worry her more than he had to. So he shrugged and said, “Might be a smart move to send a message to your own law firm. Where are they—in Vado Seguro?”
She nodded, and said she’d send a rider right away. But he told her to hold the thought as he got out his notebook and a pencil stub, saying, “I saw a Western Union sign out front of the hardware store in town. I also have some pals over to Santa Fe, a lot closer to Governor Wallace than your lawyers might be, no offense. So we’d best alert the federal territorial government to this total idiot you’re having trouble with.”
She clapped her hands in delight, and asked if he could possibly stay until the troops came to bombard Cyrus Grayson into submission.
He chuckled and said, “Anything is possible, ma’am, but it ain’t practical for me to man this post indefinitely. If nothing happens on this side of noon, I’ll have to figure it’s over, for now.”
Then a rifle round sponged through the window to shatter the big pitcher on the table in front of the sofa and spatter them both with busted glass and sangria punch.
Sangria was made of red wine, lemonade, rum, and other crud that looked like bloody gashes on wet clothes and skin. But Longarm was out the door with his Winchester before he’d taken time to see whether either of them had been fatally wounded.
The rifleman was already well on his way aboard a roan, having fired blind from way off in the mustard, judging by the drifting white smoke. Longarm went back inside, muttering, “Looked like a kid. Might have been acting on his own. If there’s one thing more dangerous than a blithering idiot, it has to be a young blithering idiot.”
She’d risen to her feet, black lace sopping wet, and told him he was all spattered with sangria punch as he set down his Winchester again. He ruefully said he’d noticed as he regarded his own sleeves. His jeans hadn’t caught too much of it, and he’d fortunately set his denim jacket aside, clear of the liquid explosion. But his hitherto light blue work shirt seemed covered with purple polka dots now.
As he picked up his notebook and pencil again, wiping the notebook’s fake leather cover dry on his ruined shirt, he asked if she’d heard that table salt was good for fresh wine stains.
She said his only hope was a day-long soak in salt water, followed by thorough laundering and a day or so flapping in strong sunlight.
He grimaced and said, “I got another shirt in my saddlebags. I’d meant to launder some sweat out of it before I wore it some more. But it holds fond memories, and has to be an improvement over purple polka dots!”
As he sat down and proceeded to compose his wire to the federal men in Santa Fe, eighty-odd miles to the south-southeast, Consuela repeated what she’d said that morning about her late husband having been a big man. “I’m sure we can find you a pair of fresh shirts, and I would not feel as awkward handing down your freshly laundered work shirts to one of my larger riders, eh?”
He agreed that made sense. There was no need to go into why the personal duds of even a dead hidalgo might give some vaqueros lofty opinions of their position on the spread. He said he’d as soon wash up again before changing into that fresh shirt. When she said his wish was her command, he told her they’d best wait a spell. He’d already said that if the riders meant to come back, it would likely be before the day got hot enough for La Siesta.
But he felt sticky as hell long before noon as the sweet rum punch he’d been soaked with dried to the consistency of that goo on the shiny side of flypaper.
He scouted out around the buildings on foot, both to make sure he’d really run that last rider off and in hopes of feeling a tad less itchy. He couldn’t find anyone to shoot. But he sure felt like shooting somebody as the morning dragged on.
Meanwhile, Consuela had bathed in her own quarters, and changed into a simple Mexican smock of white cotton, sashed at the waist with red silk. It made her look more girlish in her Junoesque Zuni way. That jasmine scent she’d splashed on her brown hide made her smell a lot more high-toned than your average lady in rope-soled sandals.
When she inquired, and he had to admit how miserable he still felt, she suggested he might bathe in her mirador, or what Anglo Victorians called a cupola when they had one stuck atop their own houses.
He allowed he’d noticed the boxlike structure atop her roof, but had assumed it to be a dovecote. She explained it had been built in wilder Apache times as a lookout and siege tower, with more to it than it might seem from outside, since the clay tiles of the sloped roof rose waist-high to anyone up there. She offered to show it to him, and must have taken it for granted that he’d cotton to it. For she called out to a house servant in passing that El Senor would be needing some hot bath water up there poco tiempo.
You had to go up a glorified ladder, or mighty steep staircase, by way of Consuela’s own master bedchamber. It hadn’t been meant to be easy for raiding Apache. Once they were up in the frame mirador, glazed with sash windows all around, Longarm saw it was fixed up as a sort of study or guest room, furnished with a writing table, a brass bedstead with blankets over the mattress, and the usual stools and such. She pointed out the big copper washtub under the table, and said she’d often bathed and slept naked during La Siesta in hot weather, when the cross ventilation that high off the ground was one’s only hope.