Longarm hadn't. He'd had good old Norma Richards go ashore with his stuff to look after it and wire the Texas Rangers from that Coast Guard station at Escondrijo, while he'd gone on, holed up in her stateroom with the Saratoga trunk she'd entrusted to him. That big old trunk had been handy to hide his face under as he'd gone down the gangplank with it on his back.
So now Norma's trunk, like Longarm, stood behind a pile of lumber in the shade of a dockside loading shed as he waited for the killer in the Carlsbad hat to sidewind within hailing range with his own narrowed eyes darting about as if he wasn't dead certain he'd guessed right.
Longarm called out cheerfully, "You guessed wrong, Godwynn. So grab some sky if you'd like to be taken alive."
Godwynn spun on one boot heel and ran back toward the gangplank, zigzagging back and forth in case Longarm had really meant that.
Longarm had. He'd liked that pretty blonde. So he fired as the son of a bitch zagged, hoping to bust his ass and leave him in shape to explain why they'd wanted to gun a federal lawman.
He hit his intended target about where he'd intended, smack in the right cheek of his frantic ass. The heavy.44-40 slug spun the running killer like a mighty clumsy ballerina who'd come down wrong from her twirling, but Godwynn managed to get his right-hand gun out as he landed flat on his back, rolled, and staggered back to his feet, only to yelp like a kicked pup as he tried to put some weight down under his gun hand.
As he fired blind, chipping splinters off the far end of Longarm's lumber pile, the tall deputy called out, "Give it up, you poor simp! I don't want you dead. But I don't want you making it back to your rat hole aboard that steamer either. So drop that dumb gun and-"
Godwynn fired more certainly at the sound of Longarm's voice. So Longarm fired again, aiming at the wounded man's other leg this time.
He saw he'd hit the leg, if not the bone, when Godwynn let go of his Schofield to grab for his thigh with both hands and stagger for that gangplank some more bawling like a baby.
As Longarm broke cover, all too aware Godwynn still had a gun in his left holster, a distant voice called out, "Halt and explain all this in the name of the Texas Rangers!"
Longarm kept covering Godwynn as he strode out into the open after him, shouting back, "I'm the law too, trying to arrest me a mighty unreasonable cuss on murder in the first!"
So the white-shirted Ranger appearing down by the far end of that loading shed yelled, "Hot damn, we got us a wire on that one!" Then he fired his own Peacemaker, and being well trained as a marksman, if not as a careful investigator, hit Godwynn high in the chest with his longer but heavier shot. It likely would have left the wounded killer in piss-poor shape to talk had it been a lighter slug than 230 grains of lead backed by fifty-odd grains of powder, the Rangers tending to load their own shells and admiring noise at least as much as the Mexican rurales.
"I wish you hadn't done that," Longarm grumbled as they both met up near the cadaver sprawled on the dock at their feet.
The younger Ranger shrugged and said, "We both heard you warn him to give it up. Like I said, the famous federal marshal they call Longarm wired an all-points want on this one from just down the coast. Seems he murdered some passenger aboard that very steamer a-hint you!"
Longarm said, "I know. I was there. I' m the one they call Longarm, and it was a government health worker I sent ashore in my place back at our last port of call. As she'd have wired you, this tricky son of a bitch could have swum ashore. But I figured he was hiding out somewhere on board. So I hid out just as good, and as you now see, he made a break for it here thinking I'd got off there."
The young Ranger made a wry face. "He must not have never hunted mice. Me and our old cat, when I was little, used to do what you just did. I'd stomp away whilst the smart old cat crouched silent by the mouse hole. Who was this mouse and how come he shot a lady aboard yonder steamer?"
Longarm hunkered down to go through the dead killer's pockets as he growled, "I suspicion he and his partner were out to get me and got her by mistake, God damn all three of us. I'm still working on it and... Damn it, his dead pard we put ashore at Escondrijo wasn't packing any infernal identification either!"
By this time lots of folks who'd ducked for cover at the sounds of gunplay were edging back out into the morning light. So Longarm added, "Stay here and make sure nobody steals the corpse whilst I go back aboard for their two stock saddles and possibles. All we can do now is put out as total a description of them and their gear as possible and hope for some answers."
The Ranger responded cheerfully, "Go ahead. Any number of my own pards ought to be here any minute, thanks to all that shooting. Ah, you'll tell the boys it was my bullet as finished the bastard, won't you?"
Longarm snorted, "You tell 'em. I was trying to take him alive. So he's all your own to keep and cherish. I got another boat to catch!"
CHAPTER 5
It wasn't that easy. He spent a good three hours making depositions for the local authorities, and then, once he was free to go to the Corpus Christi office of that same steam line, a prune-faced cuss in a wilted suit said he'd have to wire their main office in Galveston about his unusual request. When Longarm observed he hadn't needed special permission to just get aboard one of their coastal steamers down in Brownsville, the Corpus Christi booking agent explained, with a frosty smile, how the southbound steamer they expected around midnight was already overloaded with every stateroom spoken for.
Longarm said, "That's no problem, pard. I only got me and one old Saratoga trunk to get a hop, skip, and a jump down the coast. I don't mind standing up at the bar or, hell, the rail, till we get to Escondrijo. It was only a few hours coming up from there, and I was dying for a cool beer in that stuffy stateroom I'd holed up in."
The booking agent pursed his purple lips. "I'll have to clear it with the company. We're expecting heavy weather tonight and you wouldn't want to be by any rail in a full gale aboard a flat-bottomed coaster. They say those Chesapeake side-paddle steamers roll even worse in heavy weather, but I'll be damned if I can see how. So why don't you come back in a couple of hours and we ought to know by then if they'll have room for you."
Longarm frowned, "Well, I got some wires of my own I was saving till I got to Escondrijo and mayhaps some answers about a dead man they're holding on ice down yonder as well. But I'm missing something about coastal traffic. The boat I come north aboard was almost empty. Yet you say this night boat you're expecting will be filled to overloading?"
The older man nodded patiently. "That northbound was just starting out. The southbound will have gone most of the way to its last stop at Brownsville."
Longarm shook his head. "Texas produces food and fiber in bulk, and consumes manufactured goods from the east in far more modest amounts in far more compact form. So how many piano rolls or even pianos would it take to fill the shelter deck and cold-storage hold of a southbound coaster that should have delivered most of its passengers and cargo by the time it neared the end of its run?"
The prune-faced cuss shrugged. "I only go by what they wire me from Galveston. Maybe a lot of people are headed for the mouth of the Rio Grande with a lot of stuff. I hear things are picking up down that way, what with the end of Reconstruction and the price of beef going through the roof. They've been putting in orange groves along our side of the river as well. Seems oranges grow swell in a hot sunny clime as long as they get plenty of irrigation water for their thirsty roots."