He unloaded them and set packs and saddle well clear, with the Mexican saddle upside down and its blanket shaken out flat on the dry caliche. Then he inspected all eight hooves for splits or pebbles, unpacked his tarp and one thin flannel blanket, stripped to the buff, wiped himself head to toe with a damp rag, and treated himself to all the flat, warm, rubber-scented water he felt like drinking before he positioned the Big Fifty and Schofield on his spread-to-dry duds and flopped flat atop the flannel, the shade cool on his naked hide, as he numbly wondered how he’d managed to get so sleepy-headed all of a sudden.
Then he was in the Denver Public Library, looking for an Atlas so he could look up Puerto Periasco and see how far those rascals had to ride for that blamed steamboat to Far Cathay, only he’d just noticed he was naked as a jay.
Nobody else seemed to notice as he sat down at a reading table to hide his uncalled-for erection. But then the librarian came over to tell him he wasn’t allowed to smoke. So he snubbed out a cheroot he hadn’t noticed he was smoking and explained, “I figure they have at least one experienced border-jumper with them, ma’am. So they’ll want to avoid that border town of Sonoyta and the rurales stationed there. I’m still trying to decide whether they’d be better off making their crossing after dark, when los rurales can’t see as far but expect folks to cross, or-“
“Never mind all that Deputy Long,” the librarian said. “How do you like the way my husband and I have been doing so far, and are you out to avoid another international incident for us or not?”
Longarm hadn’t noticed till then that he was talking to Miss Lemonade Lucy Hayes, the President’s handsome but sort of stuffy wife. She’d had her clothes on the time she’d served him orange punch instead of her notorious lemonade at the White House in Washington Town. Now he tried not to notice her middle-aged but not unattractive naked torso as he soberly replied, “Your man and me have about cleaned up the Indian Ring left over from the Grant Administration, and I’ve always been in favor of sound money and the end of Reconstruction, ma’am. I ain’t working on that lost, strayed, or stolen gift from Queen Victoria right now. I’m chasing plain old outlaws across the Mexican border. I know they don’t want me to do that any more. But I had orders to deliver the rascal to the Denver District Court too, so …”
“Why don’t we go back amongst the stacks and make mad Gypsy love?” the First Lady suggested, coyly adding, “I don’t hold with drinking hard liquor, but I’ve always liked other things hard.”
Longarm gulped and politely replied, “I ain’t sure we ought to, uh, ma’am. If screwing the President’s wife ain’t high treason, it has to qualify as disrespect to a superior.”
“Who says so? Who? Who? Who?” demanded Lemonade Lucy in a desperate tone. Then Longarm opened his sleep-gummed eyes and, still hearing the same repeated question, propped himself up on one elbow to see that a flock of gnat-catchers were mobbing an elf owl, perched on a nearby cholla branch. He didn’t see why. Owls holed up during the hours the fluttery gnat-catchers were using the sky. But he thanked them all in any case, saying, “I might have had a mighty disrespectful wet dream, or worse yet, overslept.”
The elf owl flew away with its smaller tormentors tagging after it all atwitter. It was odd how the human voice could spook some critters more than a thrown boot. He’d noticed in the past you could get pack rats to quit stirring about at night by just asking them, in a polite tone, to quit.
One of those bastards riding with Harmony Drake had Longarm’s watch. But the way the sunbeams slanted through the cholla pads above him said it was after three in the afternoon by now.
Longarm dragged his naked form erect in the decidedly warm shade, and moved over to the tethered riding stock, muttering, “Howdy. Are you two as thirsty as I am right now?”
They were, he saw, when he removed their empty nose bags to see they’d been licking at the bare bottoms of the bucket-like canvas containers. He filled them partway with tepid water from the handy rubberized bags, and put them back in place before he helped himself to some of the mighty uninteresting liquid.
The canyon springwater had tasted tangy when he’d filled the bags back at Pogamogan’s camp. This afternoon it tasted as if it had been boiled in an old rubber boot, which it had in a way. But looking on the bright side, it was easier to husband the water your body just had to replace in this dry heat. It would have been a total bitch to pack all the cold beer a man would be tempted to put away on days like this.
His riding stock made short work of their first helping. He poured more for them, saying, “Take it easy and don’t drown yourselves on your feet. I saw a greenhorn do that to an army mule one time. He filled the nose bag higher than the poor brute’s nostrils, and took all that kicking and snorting for high spirits.”
Receiving no answer, Longarm went back to his bedding and hauled on his duds and boots, with some reluctance. It had felt hot enough naked in the shade.
He ate a can of pork and beans from the trading post and rinsed it down with tomato preserves. Then he lit a smoke and watched three zebra-tail lizards play tag around a nearby cholla trunk. It was ten times hotter than it should have been, but at least twenty degrees cooler than it had been around high noon. Lizards and other cold-blooded desert critters got in most of their fun in the few hours between too hot and too cold in these parts.
He hated to even think about it, but since he didn’t know whether those other border jumpers planned an early or late crossing, he had to go with as early a crossing as practical.
That meant soon, damn it. Los rurales would just be breaking their own siestas about now. They’d tank up on coffee and saddle up for an evening patrol as the shadows lengthened. Anyone slipping across the line about now would likely make it without meeting up with los rurales. Anyone waiting for the cool shade of evening and the cloak of darkness would be risking a moonlit tryst with old desert hands who knew how to sit a pony silent and listen to the night noises all about.
Longarm sighed, gripped the cheroot between bared teeth, and rolled up the bedding. The mule and pony bared their teeth a bit too as they grasped his full intent to load them back up and lead them back out into that glaring sunlight.
He did it anyway, and all three had been right about it feeling as if they’d stepped through an oven door. The sun was far lower in the west, but it felt as if you were breathing alkali dust through cobwebs.
Longarm led the way afoot as far as the trail. Then, seeing those same hoofprints that had preceded him south at some damned time in the past, he mounted the mule to lead the sorrel mare and their depleted water supply at a trot.
He had at least one member of the gang pictured as an hombre who knew these parts. Longarm didn’t need a map to tell him this trail had to lead to the village of Sonoyta. Trails generally led somewhere, and Sonoyta was the only border town for miles to the east or west.
The question was why he or the outlaws he was trailing would want to go there. Strangers riding into small desert towns always drew a good deal of attention. Anglo riders in a Mexican border town were apt to draw more than their fair share from the local rurales.
There was the unpleasant possibility that an owlhoot rider in the habit of crossing the border in these parts might have come to some sort of understanding with the local rurale captain. A lot of Longarm’s own problems with Mexico’s answer to the Texas Rangers sprang from their almost cheerful demands for bribes, whether you’d done anything or not.
Then, just as he was starting to really worry about some son of a bitch with his badge and gun and a rurale company as well, Longarm saw the hoofprints he’d been following veer off to the east through a patch of stirrup-deep creosote.