Longarm grimaced and said, “It sure beats all how they ban books suggesting it feels good to get laid, whilst you’ll find a copy of Robin Hood in most every school library. That one book has got more folks killed than all the French postcards ever printed. It ain’t wise to tell little kids it’s all right to commit highway robbery if you don’t like the sheriff.”
El Gato shrugged and said, “I spit in the milk of your Robin Hood’s mother. I fight for Mexico in the tradition of El Cid, the grandfather of all Spanish-speaking rebels. When his king shit on him, El Cid went loco and killed people until they apologized sincerely. But be off to Yuma in search of the goose if you must. I shall send word to our most sneaky smuggler, Dandolo. Nobody knows this rocky coast and the swampy Colorado Delta more better than Dandolo, But if she agrees for to take you up to Yuma, you must let her do it her own way and set her own pace, comprende?”
Longarm stopped pacing and frowned. “She? This Dandolo is a gal?”
El Gato nodded. “Did I not just say she was sneaky? I understand she is not even a true Mexicana. Her family came here from Venice years ago as coastal traders. Perhaps that is for why Dandolo speaks so many languages. Her crew more than makes up for any lack of brawn Dandolo has for to go with her brains. Her vessel, a Yanqui schooner she inherited from her father, is fast and, even better, shallow-draft. The delta of the Rio Colorado has always been tricky for to navigate, and they tell me that lately, since your Anglo settlers have been drawing irrigation water from its tributaries, it has gotten worse.”
Before Longarm had to say he was sorry about that, there came a soft tapping on the bolted oaken door. El Gato opened it to admit a pleasingly plump puta in a loosely fastened robe.
As El Gato closed and barred the door behind her, the gal told them, “The pig is asleep, filled with wine, empty of desire, and most pleased with himself. Telegrafo messages move faster than the winds. So Gomez knows a, how you say, squall line is moving up the coast. He says we are to get hit with much wind, rain, thunder, and lightning just after the sun goes down.”
Longarm cocked a brow. “You say this pleases Gomez?”
The whore who’d doubtless also pleased the inspector nodded and explained. “He says that if you were not aboard that night boat bound for Yuma, you must be hiding here in Puerto Periasco and must be most anxious for to leave before they can turn over the wet rock you must be hiding under. I mean no disrespect, El Brazo Largo. Was him who said this, not me.”
Longarm nodded and told her to go on. So she continued. “Gomez expects you to make a break for it by sea during the coming storm. He has ordered the crew of that steam cutter at the far end of the embarcadero to stoke their boilers no later than three this afternoon, so they will have the full head of steam before sundown. When I yawned in his face and played with his pipi, he naturally thought I did not find his plans so interesting. So he naturally insisted on telling me how that cutter would find itself out on a calm sea in the moonlight if it cast off in the teeth of that squall as it swept north.”
Longarm and El Gato exchanged thoughtful glances. El Gato sighed and said, “I must learn not to underestimate the sly fregado. They have a Gatling gun mounted on that cutter, and is no way Dandolo can outdistance it by sail alone under a full moon!”
Longarm said, “I know. Is it right to picture this government cutter something like a big single-masted sloop, rigged fore and aft, with the mainsail set back a tad to make room for a steam funnel and that deck gun?”
El Gato nodded soberly. “Under sail or steam she is muy pronto. Is no paddle wheels. She has a modern screw propeller and one of those keels you can haul up for to tear across shallow water. They must have heard how certain people avoid the official entry port at San Luis Rio Colorado. In any event, is no way for you to leave by sea for at least a few nights.”
Longarm took a thoughtful drag on the claro before he asked,“What if I left earlier? I told you I was in a hurry to get it on up to Yuma whilst the trail of those outlaws is still warm. And seeing they mean to get up a full head of steam before that gale hits at sundown, I have no call to let it go to waste, do I?”
The whore had no idea what he was talking about. El Gato laughed like a mean little kid, and told her she’d best get back to her fat customer.
As the rebel leader locked the door after her, he told Longarm, “Dandolo may be willing. She is almost as loco en la cabeza as yourself. I have yet to grasp why it should be so that people who are not true Mexicanos seem to enjoy our revolutions more than we do!”
Irena Dandolo soon arrived with some of her piratical-looking “fishermen.” She looked like a pirate too.
The sun-and wind-tanned woman of perhaps thirty or so, give or take a rough life on the bounding main, Was tall and wiry for a female but not bad looking, once you got used to the scar on her forehead and her short-cropped dark-brown hair. She was dressed in rope-soled zapatas, white bell-bottoms, and a striped Basque shirt that didn’t really appear as manly as she might have wished. She had quite a pair of chupas for such a lean athletic figure.
She shook hands with a firm grip, and her palm felt as if she knew her ropes. Longarm admired the way she grinned when he told her his plan. He still felt obliged to say, “It’s not really your fight and the odds favor the other side, Miss Irena.”
The female skipper looked hurt and demanded, “Do you take me for a mere woman just because I am a woman? Listen, Yanqui, I am a direct descendant of Enrico Dandolo of Venice! You have heard of him, no?”
Longarm smiled sheepishly and asked, “Should I have?”
She snapped, “Of course. You English-speakers make so much of that boy-buggering mariposa Richard of England when it was the men and the ships of Venice who made all those crusades possible. My ancestor, Enrico Dandolo, led the ladder assault over the walls of Constantinople in 1204. This would not have been so remarkable in itself. He was from Venice, after all. But at the time he was in his nineties, and blind! You think it would have slowed him down if he had been born with a slit between his legs?”
Longarm gulped and declared, “Not enough to matter, ma’am. But how come this blind old hero was attacking Constantinople during one of those crusades. Wasn’t that a Christian town at the time?”
The ferocious old man’s proud descendant sweetly explained that her ancestor had been blinded in a much earlier war with the Greeks of Constantinople, and added, “There were always Moors for to kill. When he saw the chance to kill some old enemies, it was too good for to pass up. He died just a year after he led the assault over the walls of Constantinople. He must have died content, after a life well spent. I would die with a smile upon my lips tonight if I knew I had done something to annoy a most annoying government!”
So later that afternoon, as the streets came back to life after la siesta, under an oddly greenish sky with the taste of brass in the muggy air, the engineer in the hold of El Tiberon Blanco valved a little pressure off as he eyed the gauges of their small but very up-to-date Scottish auxiliary plant. The iron-framed and teak-sheathed cutter was built for short, furious bursts of speed, while intended to cruise under sail as often as possible. She burned oil instead of coal, to keep her light and fast. But oil cost money and it was not to be wasted.
Up in the cockpit, aft the mainmast, under furled sails, the skipper and deck crew were keeping an eye on that discolored sky. It was intolerably hot and damp in port that afternoon, and they were all anxious to put out to sea, where the motion of their vessel alone might offer some cooling breeze. But orders were orders and they had to wait until that storm hit, or until they spied another vessel of any kind putting out to sea ahead of it.