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He fired again, and proceeded to jam another Gatling slug into the space meant for a bigger one as he decided, “I must have the elevation wrong then. Figuring the direction is no big deal. So I’m going over or under.”

He braced the Big Fifty on his thigh and decided to try just a tad less than a full forty-five-degree elevation, since there was nothing in this world he could do if he was already dropping them short.

He pulled the trigger, going through motions he felt to be futile as he tried to come up with something better. He had no way, from a good three miles away, to even guess where his small desperate shots might be hitting. But aboard the gunboat the lookout and conning crew on the bridge could see an occasional splash or even hear a metallic clang as a born marksman’s Kentucky windage paid off.

Not knowing this, Longarm suggested Irena’s crew set some flaming oil-soaked rags adrift in a pot from the galley, explaining, “Whether they think they hit us somewhere else or not, the smoke drifting amid all the reed islands we’re passing might make us tougher to aim at.”

So they got cracking as he kept loading and shooting off almost a round a minute. Nobody could have planned it, but just as somebody has to win every lottery, a lucky shot glanced off the steel mast to pink the lookout and whine eerily on to smack their funnel with a mighty bang of flattened lead on steel. So it took a spell for the lookout to gingerly peer over the rim of his crow’s nest, blood running down one cheek, to see a low pall of oily smoke drifting across the not-at-all-certain channel the outlaws had headed into.

He called down, “I think we’ve hit them. Fire at the same azimuth and elevation!”

The gun crew obliged as the lookout searched the bottom of his cockpit in vain for the binoculars he’d dropped somewhere. So their one-pounders landed wide, with change, as El Tiberon Blanco moved deeper into the tule reeds, her centerboard up, but still stirring up thick gobs of bottom silt from time to time.

The skipper of the gunboat didn’t care to risk a grounding as he stood out to sea and kept lobbing shells into that big black cloud of smoke. By the time it had cleared, a deckhand had brought the lookout his dropped binoculars. One lens still worked well enough for him to shout down with some confidence, “We’ve sunk her! Is nothing where she was but chopped up tule and an oil slick!”

So they told him to come down and get his scalp patched up as they turned to head back to San Luis Rio Colorado and the telegraph there. El Presidente was going to be so pleased with them for sinking El Brazo Largo and a whole pirate crew, even if it had been a government cutter and they’d had orders to watch out for that schooner Dandolo was said to be planning another smuggling run aboard.

So the sun had gone down by the time El Tiberon’blanco limped back to the main channel, north of the border, to make for the winking lights of Yuma on the last of its fuel oil.

Smoking the last of El Gato’s cigars on the foredeck, Longarm was more surprised than alarmed when the bows swung sharply for the higher left bank of the river. As Irena ran them aground in the soft mud of the shallows, Longarm grunted, “Right. No sense or profit in explaining a Mexican cutter to the Arizona authorities when you don’t have to.”

He moved forward to regard the jump to the muddy bank without a whole lot of anticipation. He didn’t think he could make it, and he jumped farther than most. Irena had long legs for a gal, but not that long. So what if he took off his boots and carried her?

Then Irena had joined him in the grounded bows just as someone on shore softly called out, “Conozco una guapa que es no puta,” which was sort of inane. Then, having been told the cuss on the dark bank knew a fine-looking gal who wasn’t a whore, Irena assured the cuss her parrot was sick, which had to be code.

Longarm knew he’d guessed right when the jolly rogues on shore got a long plank out to them in no time. It was mighty springy, and Longarm was glad Irena had gone first when she helped him and the Big Fifty ashore by taking the rifle from him as he was commencing to lose his balance in the tricky light.

Once she had all her crew ashore, Irena ran back aboard as if she’d forgotten something. When Longarm started to follow, she told him not to. So he never did.

A few minutes later, as she rejoined him and the others massed on the bank, he followed her drift. El Tiberon Blanco backed off the mud flats with the last of its steam turning its screw in reverse. She didn’t have to tell him the sluggish current would carry the abandoned vessel downstream to most anywhere. It was obvious she and her crew only cared to hide exactly where they might have gotten off.

He saw why a few minutes later as he followed Irena and her mixed bag of about two dozen crew members along the bank to where another vessel was tied up in a willowy bend. It was tough to make out in the dark, as they’d doubtless figured when they’d put in there, but he could see she was far smaller than the cutter they’d stolen, and he could make out her two masts against the night sky above Yuma.

He chuckled fondly and told Irena, “Don’t ever invite a United States lawman aboard or offer to show him your bill of lading after you pull a stunt like this, you sneaky little thing.”

She answered in an innocent schoolmarm voice, “Why Custis, what are you accusing me and mine of being up to?”

He laughed and said, “Like the love that dare not speak its name, there are business transactions along this border it’s best to say no more about. I’m going on to that place in town we were talking about. You go on about your unstated business, if you’ve a mind to. I don’t want to know a thing about it. It hurts just as much to lie to my boss as it does to peach on my pals, so …”

“I’m going with you,” she said, turning to a follower or kinsman Longarm hadn’t met before to rattle off some orders in North Italian. Then she scampered after Longarm to grab his one free elbow and demurely ask if he thought they’d let her in the hotel with him if the two of them were wearing pants.

He laughed and said they’d let him in with a sheep, as long as he was willing to pay for a double. So they ambled on along the bank until they were out of earshot of her crew and she could tell him how dirty she meant to treat him the moment she had him in bed behind another locked door.

He said he wasn’t scared, and added they’d have all night before he had to mosey over to the Yuma hall of records and grope through all those musty papers.

Irena sighed and said, “I wish your business here was simple as my own. We only have to unload a modest cargo for some Yanqui fruit growers.”

He warned, “Don’t tell me about your infernal smuggling, querida! I already know you combined business with pleasure by luring that gunboat away from the main channel so’s your own schooner could sneak on by. I’d just have to turn you in if I knew for certain what you just smuggled into these United States!” She asked, “For why? Was Mexico’s unjust export duties we avoided, while we did a favor for El Gato. Is no Yanqui duties on semillas, is there?”

To which he could only reply, “I don’t know. What sort of seeds are we talking about?”

She shrugged and said, “For to grow avocodos, dates, olives, and a dry-climate orange tree. Some Yanqui settlers are most interested in new crops for these irrigated bottomlands. So they pay well for new crops to experiment with, if only El Presidente would let us keep most of the money and … For why are you hugging me, Custis? Can’t you wait?” He said, “I can and I will and I mean to screw you silly, because I suspect you just saved me a whole heap of paperwork, you sweet-smuggling little thing!”

Chapter 15

It took two days, and Irena said she was glad. Longarm never did find anything out about Trader Wolfram and Rosalinda’s other sister. But once he’d settled on the desert claim of a late Doctor Dundee, he got out there just as the hot dry siesta time was commencing, lest he miss one member of the gang he’d run to ground at last.