That was what they called a government that treated most of its citizens like riding stock: a stable government. Taxes got collected, the mail got delivered, and you could usually count on making rail and steamboat connections, wherever that fool stagecoach was this evening. El Presidente and his Wall Street pals liked to say Mexico was now a smoothly running land of contented citizens. Los rurales shot citizens who wouldn’t say they were contented. They’d have hardly hired a sworn enemy of the state for this mail coach line either.
But the fat was in the fire. So when that plump serving wench came in through another door to ask if he’d like something to eat, he pasted a smile across his face and replied, “I’m not sure I’ll have the time, Senorita. I have to beat that steamboat to Puerto Periasco whether the coach is running or not tonight.”
She insisted, “I shall serve you some huevos fritos con jamon in no time at all. You will be able to meet that barco costanero with the time to spare if you have for to walk. Is only one a week either way. Your Yanqui friends from Yuma will not reach Puerto Periasco for at least four days, comprende?”
He digested that and asked, “How soon might the next northbound arrive with, say, my Mexican friends?”
She shrugged her bare shoulders and replied, “The day after manana, I think. Is the same slow but steady vapor, puffing north and south, south and north, in a most tedious manner on a calm but sultry sea. You say you have friends in the south of my country, Senor?” He said he’d sure like those ham and eggs now. So she went out back to fry them, or get somebody else to do so. The place seemed to be crawling with unseen kids, or maybe brownies, judging from the muffled elfin giggles.
The old fondero came back in, still smoking what was left of that cheroot. He said he’d put away the sorrel and mule. He also said he’d left Longarm’s saddle and baggage in the tack room next to the stable. Then he said he’d told his help to put the coach team they’d harnessed back in their damned stalls as well, seeing that coach was so late now, it would have to finish its run by broad day—in August, Jesus, Maria y Jose!
Longarm said he was waiting for a late snack, and asked about a coach ticket to go with it.
The grumpy old cuss said to settle with the cochero about his passage and the accommodations that went with it, when and if the triple-thumbed pendejo ever showed up with that chingado coach.
Longarm followed his drift. Out-of-the-way layouts such as this one were less attractive to road agents if they let the coach crew deal with most of the cash on hand.
The older man accepted another cheroot. But when the cantina gal returned with Longarm’s ham and eggs, the fondero allowed it was past his own bedtime and rose to leave.
Longarm said, “Hold on. If I can’t catch a coach out of here, how do you feel about swapping me two fresh mules for the mule and swell pony I rode in on?”
The fondero shook his head and replied, “is not for me to decide such matters for la compafiia, as fine as the sorrel seems. I mean no disrespect, but did you not say they began to give out on you no more than four leguas from Sonoyta?”
Longarm didn’t point out just how much the older man had given away about his authority over the remote station. It was his own fault for not fibbing more carefully earlier.
The gal brought Longarm more pulque, and sat across from him with a mug of her own as he polished off the ham and eggs, surprised at how hungry he seemed to be after all.
He didn’t have to pay all that much attention to the plump and lonesome mestiza to sense she was what her own kind defined as nada nids sube el culo. But he wasn’t in the market for an easy lay. He had to get to Puerto Periasco, better than fifty miles away, before those crooks he couldn’t identify on sight put Harmony Drake and that bitch Goldmine Gloria aboard that coastal steamer bound for Yuma.
He knew they were backtracking to Yuma now. Aside from the steamboat connection they seemed to be aiming for, the whole bunch would be able to fade into the woodwork faster north of the border. That was doubtless why they’d gone to so much trouble to convince everyone they were bound for the paradise of El Presidente Diaz, with its gringo-baiting, brutal, itchy-trigger-fingered lawmen. The plump and discontented gal drinking pulque with him broke into his thoughts by asking if he meant to hire a room out back for the night, or whether he might be interested in an arrangement that would cost him no more than a few gestures of kindness to a poor mujer who’d been driven almost to mandjarad.
Longarm had to laugh as he considered the time he’d gotten himself into an even sillier conversation in Laredo by confusing the verb manejar, meaning to manage or drive, with mandjar, meaning to jack off.
The gal took his lighthearted expression more romantically than intended. But it would have been needlessly cruel to a gal who seemed to mean well had he flatly refused when she suggested he finish his snack and let her show him around out back.
Longarm knew Marshal Billy Vail had never sent him all this way to fool around with Mexican gals, or even Mexico, so he explained he had to get on down the road because moonlight made for cooler riding than sunlight in a Sonora August.
She favored him with a Mona Lisa smile and demurely asked if he really thought he could last the night with a woman of passion who’d been feeling neglected since she’d broken up with a certain blacksmith. Longarm laughed again despite himself, and she quickly added that they had to wait for Tio Hector, her boss, to settle down for the night in any case.
She said, “is still early. If you wait until after ten you can go with God, my eternal gratitude, and those fresh mounts you asked him for in vain, eh?”
Longarm raised an eyebrow and quietly asked, “You could get away with that … ah … ?”
“My friends call me Ampollita,” she confided, rising from their table to reach for his hand as she added, “We shall have to, how you say, take care of the establero in charge of the remuda, since he and he alone keeps exact figures on the mules that come and go. You see, we exchange one team of six spent mules for a team of fresh ones every time a coach arrives from either direction. Then there are the extra ones we must keep on hand for to be sure, in case we get a lamed one for to water, feed, and rest. So …”
“I know how you run a stage line,” Longarm told her. “How much will I have to slip your head wrangler for those fresh mules?”
She shrugged her bare shoulders and demurely replied, “Quien sabe? He may feel that sorrel can be disposed of in town for enough to repay the favor. Let me argue the point with him later. He speaks no English.”
Longarm allowed he could manage enough Spanish for some horse trading. But Ampollita pulled him to his feet, with a surprising strength, and told him, “A third party can always strike the better bargain for you. Is easier for to lie when nobody can ask trick questions, such as where did one buy such a mount in the first place.”
That cinched it. The jolly little thing seemed to know more than she was letting on, and Billy Vail would want him to question her in more depth, as long as he wasn’t exactly torturing her.
He repeated what he’d said about not having all night, and she again assured him nobody was expecting that much out of him. Then she asked him to shut up as she led him out an archway and along a dark corridor lined with mysterious doorways.
She allowed it was safe to talk again once they’d entered a ‘dobe cell at the far end and she’d bolted the heavy oaken door behind them.
He said, “Nice place you got here,” as he stared around at the four walls crowding the only furnishings, a pine washstand and a fair-sized bedstead for these parts. A row of carved wooden Santos stared severely down at them from a plank shelf facing the foot of the bed.
She saw what he was staring at and giggled, saying, “It is about time they answered my prayers, no?”