One look at the free-lunch counter that stood at the end of the saloon's bar only confirmed what his quick glance earlier had hinted. The slices of darkening curled-up bologna, discolored rat cheese, brine scummed pickles, and hard-boiled eggs with chipped shells were enough to stop a man's appetite dead in its tracks. Baskin's free lunch offering not only didn't compare with those of the Windsor Hotel bar or the Black Cat Saloon, but were less appetizing than most of those he'd seen when cases had taken him into the cheap, shoddy bars in Denver's Lowers.
Recalling the food stalls that had been setting up for business at the time he'd first entered the Los Perros plaza, he stepped through the batwings onto the narrow veranda that ran the width of the saloon's front and looked around the almost deserted open area to see if any of the native vendors were still in operation at their stalls.
Old son, he told himself, maybe you're in luck. Looks like you don't have to depend on that slop inside to fill your belly. That grub out there might not be much better, but it'll at least be hot.
Though the plaza wasn't nearly as crowded as it had been when Los Perros's residents were gathering in anticipation of the whipping, there were still a few people around. Taco and tamale vendors stood beside the small charcoal fires that kept their iron pots hot. In addition, a half-dozen stalls — bare planks supported on trestles to make rough counters — dotted the margin of the plaza. People stood at most of them, eating. Longarm stepped to the ground and strolled idly around, going from counter to counter, trying to find the one at which the food looked most appetizing. As he walked, the tang of stewing hot red peppers mingled with the fainter smells of beef and garlic to set his juices running.
All the stalls seemed to be family affairs, operated by women. All of them offered about the same menu: chili con carne, tamales, frijoles, enchiladas, and steaming tortillas, served in thick iron-stone plates that held the heat in the food. While the patrons stood at the counters, the women cooked and served them. The distribution of labor, he noted, was very consistent. The younger girls filled the plates from pots that rested on improvised stoves bent from metal sheets; the older girls served the food; the mothers cooked the tortillas; the grandmothers made them, starting with small balls of moistened cornmeal, slapping the balled meal into thin round sheets, rotating the meal cakes between wrinkled palms until they were paper-thin and ready to be cooked, greaseless, on the top of the metal stove. The very youngest children worked at one side of the serving area, grinding raw dried corn kernels on stone metates into a meal almost as fine as flour.
Approaching darkness was bringing out lanterns on the counters of the stalls before Longarm finished his leisurely inspection tour. He hadn't found anything different at any of the stalls; all he'd succeeded in doing was making himself hungrier by watching others eat. He stopped at a counter where a girl was trying to get a lantern lighted. Darkness had brought a breeze, and every match she struck fizzled out before she could touch it to the wick. Longarm took one of his waterproofed matches from his pocket and thumbnailed it into flame. Cupping the match expertly in his hands, he touched the wick with it. The kerosene-soaked fabric ignited, and he guided the girl's hand in lowering the glass chimney quickly, before the wind whipped the flame out.
"Ay!" the girl breathed. "Muy bueno! Gracias, senor, por su ayudo. "
Longarm scraped up enough of his scanty Spanish to reply, "De nada, senorita. "
"Pues, habla Espanol? " the girl asked, bringing her eyes up to meet his. "Ve que esta extranjero. "
"No hablo mucho, " Longarm replied. "Conoce Ingles? "
"A little bit, I speak," she said. "You are stranger, no?"
"I'm a stranger, yes, and hungry."
"Porque no come? Mira~" she indicated the pots on the stove behind the counter, shook her head, and said, "Excuse, senor, I forget. Look, we got good chili Colorado, chili verde, we got tamales and frijoles, and mi abuela, her tortillas they very fine. So, what you wan' to eat?"
"Everything you just said sounded pretty good. Maybe you can fix me up a plate with a little bit of everything on it?"
"Un poco de todas? Si. I fix you."
She moved back to the stove, almost dancing, Longarm thought, her steps were so light and graceful. Moving with unconscious poise, she ladled food from the pots crowded together, peeled the cornmeal husks from four tamales, and put them on top of the beans and chili con carne swimming on the plate. Finally, she grabbed a stack of smoking tortillas from the cloth-covered platter where they were being laid by the woman cooking them — obviously, Longarm thought, her mother. She laid the tortillas on the other food and danced back to where he waited.
"You eat now," she commanded with a smile that showed flashing white teeth between firm crimson lips. "Is no good when it get cold."
Longarm looked for utensils. There was no fork, no spoon, no knife. He asked, "How'm I going to eat without tools?"
"Tools?" She frowned, then her eyes widened. "Ah, si, cuchara, tenedor. Pues, senor, no tenemos. " Seeing that he didn't understand her, she added, "Here, I show you."
Picking up a tortilla, the girl pulled a strip off one side and folded it between her fingers and thumb to form a scoop. She pushed the edge of the tortilla into the food, lifting meat and beans in it, and held it to his mouth. Longarm was too surprised to do anything but make a single bite of the tortilla strip and the chili and beans it contained.
"You see?" the girl giggled. "Is easy, no?" She handed him the remainder of the tortilla. "You do, now."
Longarm's fingers were as dexterous as any man's, but he had trouble forming the strip he tore off into a scoop of the proper shape. He made a try or two, but the tortilla always opened out and let the food drop back on the plate before he could lift it.
"No, no," she said. "Do like so. Here."
She took his hand in both of hers and bent his fingers into the proper curves to support the thin tortilla while he scooped up a portion of chili and beans and got them in his mouth. Her hands on his were warm and light, and reminded him somehow of a butterfly he'd caught many years ago, when he was a boy in West Virginia. All at once he was aware that the girl was less a girl than a pretty young woman. He became purposely clumsy, so that she had to keep helping him.
"What's your name?" he asked. After being helped to several bites, he'd picked up a tamale and was eating it.
"Lita."
"Let's see, that'd be short for — Adelita, maybe?"
She smiled. "No, senor. Guess some more."
"Carmelita?"
"No, no! Ay, nunca advenirse. Mi nombre completa es Estrellita. "
"Now, that's a right pretty name, I'd say."
"Y usted? Que se llama? "
Longarm remembered how the sheriff had shortened his name in time to reply, "Custis."
"Cos-tees?" she tried, frowning.
"No. Custis." He stressed the "u," which she'd turned into an "o".
"Ah, si! Coos-tees. Is nice."
Lita's mother had been keeping an eye on the pair. From her place at the stove, she called, "Lita! Paradese hablando con el gringo!"
"Collate, mama!" the girl replied. "No daname hablar un poco con un extranjero!"