It took a few moments for Longarm to follow the devoted reader’s drift. Then the lamp on the desk flickered again. Their guard put down his book and picked up the lamp to shake it. Once he’d determined there was plenty of oil left, he fiddled with the wick while the glass chimney blackened with sooty smoke until suddenly, the whole place was plunged into total darkness.
Almost total, at any rate. Longarm couldn’t see his hand before his face as somewhere somebody opened something, judging by the draft of air on Longarm’s hands as they gripped the bars of his cell.
Their guard must have felt it as well. He called out, “Que pasa?” and might have demanded, “Quien es?” had not further remarks from him been cut off in the dark by what sounded like someone slicing through a cabbage, followed by a large dull thud.
A familiar male voice called out, “El Brazo Largo?”
To which Longarm could only reply, “Aqui. I thought that sounded like someone’s throat getting cut, El Gato. Get me out of here. I got a boat to catch!”
There came the jingle of a key ring, but no sound of approaching steps. They didn’t call the rather sinister young man a cat because he stomped about in the dark in his boots and spurs.
As his invisible rescuer smoothly slid the right key in the lock, Longarm didn’t ask how El Gato could see what he was doing. El Gato couldn’t understand why everyone else seemed to go blind after the sun went down. But he’d long since learned to take advantage of his freakish night vision.
As he unlocked Longarm’s cell, El Gato asked what their plans for Sam Ferris might be. The story of their cantina fight was all over town by this time.
Longarm stepped out, saying, “Let me get back my badge, my guns, and such whilst I ponder the prick’s fate.” El Gato said, “Mierda, is no time for to ponder anything. I have your gun belt here. Put it on as we leave the premises muy pronto! I can unlock this other cell or leave it the way it is. Which shall it be, El Brazo Largo?”
Longarm laughed and said, “They have him pegged as El Brazo Largo to begin with, and they ain’t going to give toad squat who he is when they find that guard with his throat slashed.”
Then he called in to Ferris, “Are you ready to aid and abet the U.S. Justice Department instead of Harmony Drake, El Brazo Largo?”
Ferris naturally answered, “You can’t leave me here with that dead greaser. I’ll be lucky if all they want to do is shoot me! But who’s this Harmony Drake you keep asking me about?”
Longarm told El Gato, “Vammos. I haven’t time for games. I told you I got a boat to catch and I know who’s likely to be aboard it!”
So they and some other unseen presences left by way of a side exit to move along a dark alley. There was just enough light from the overcast sky above them to make out moving shapes. The nearest one with the big sombrero had to be El Gato. The other four figures could have been male, female, or big black bears for all one could really tell. As they moved swiftly but silently through the maze of back alleyways, Longarm buckled on his familiar .44-40. Then El Gato handed him his wallet and badge, saying, “One of my own may find that Schofield better for to carry than a pepperbox. What of that monstrous buffalo rifle they took away from you? Can we have it?” Longarm said, “Not just yet. My Winchester’s all the way over in New Mexico Territory by this time, Lord willing and they ain’t lost all my baggage on me. I hope your muchachos hung on to that ammunition as well.”
El Gato sighed and replied, “Our disgusting government seems to buy only modern guns and ammunition. Hey, how did you like that trick with the guard’s night light, eh?”
Longarm chuckled fondly and said, “Couldn’t have done it better my ownself. That kid working around the jail was one of your own, right?” El Gato said, “Si, is easy to place your own people in positions a grand government cabrone would not even choose for a brother-in-law. You know what was in that lamp instead of whale oil?”
Longarm nodded and said, “Sure. Water, with just a film of lamp oil floating on top to feed the wick for the first few hours of the night.”
El Gato grumbled, “Cofio, you peeked.” Longarm said, “Never mind how you got me out. Let’s just say I owe you for that and show me the way to the docks. For I’m turned around total and I have to get aboard that northbound steamboat poco tiempo, lest it leave for Yuma without me!”
El Gato suddenly pulled Longarm through a doorway into a much more brightly lit corridor. Longarm could see all of them were dressed in black charro outfits now. One of them was wearing that bandolier and packing the Big Fifty.
El Gato himself was an almost girlishly good-looking gent who moved in a disturbingly slinky way. The scion of a pure Castilian clan he preferred not to name, the young rebel leader would have had no trouble passing as a dapper Anglo in a different outfit. But he preferred to dress like a vaquero in mourning, with his black wool and leather trimmed in shiny ebony and black lace. The friendly eyes he saw so well with in the dark could have been brown, dark blue, or even purple as they shifted constantly in the tricky hall light.
When Longarm repeated his urgent need to catch that boat, El Gato said, “Is too late. The night boat for Yuma left some time ago. Let us hope Inspector Gomez thinks you caught it. In either case they are certain for to turn this poor town upside down in search of you!” Longarm swore softly and asked where El Gato was taking him.
The rebel leader pointed at the stairway down at the far end as he explained. “Next door to the room in which our good Inspector Gomez is in the habit of taking his siestas with a woman of La Causa, is the last place Inspector Gomez would expect to find you, no?”
Longarm laughed incredulously and demanded, “Jesus H. Christ, you expect me to hide out in a whorehouse?”
El Gato shrugged and replied, “Were you planning for to hide behind a cactus? Is no better cover for two days’ ride in any direction!”
Chapter 12
They led the thoroughly battered Sam Ferris from his cell at dawn, then out of town a mile, where they made him dig his own grave by the side of the road. When Inspector Gomez finished his morning coffee, he rode out to join them.
Gomez smiled in a fatherly way and declared, “Everything you told our midnight shift would seem to hold together, gringo. Was three other men and one woman staying at that waterfront hotel you named. They left, as you said, on the night boat for Yuma. Perhaps they will get there. Perhaps not. I have wired los rurales at San Louis Rio Colorado, where their vessel must pass through customs before proceeding on up the delta into your own country. The descriptions you gave of your leader and two henchmen were not too helpful. But how many blondes pass through San Luis Rio Colorado in a given period, eh?”
Ferris failed to puff the lit cigarette a guard placed between his bruised lips. He pleaded, “I told you that was the real Longarm you had in the very next cell. So how come I’m standing here in this old hole?”
Gomez pleasantly replied, “Because you would stink terribly in this heat if we did not bury you. Tell me for why you and your band came all this way down from Arizona Territory if Arizona Territory was where you wished for to live.”
Ferris sobbed, “I’ve told you over and over! We were holed up fine near Yuma when old Harmony went into town and got picked up by the law. Harmony was wanted on federal charges. So when we heard they was sending Longarm to transport him back to Denver, we had time to set up a bluff. We knew Longarm was too good to die the way we left him. We wanted him to bust loose, flag down a train, and tell everyone we’d run off to Mexico, see?”
Gomez wrinkled his nose and asked, “You really ran for where you wished him for to say you were running?”