So he just sat there, a politely questioning smile on his face, until La Bruja said, "Perhaps I should get right to the point in your own Yanqui manner, El Brazo Largo. I understand we are both on simpatico terms with such leaders of La Revolucien as La Mariposa and El Gato?"
He shrugged. "Nobody with a lick of sense admires the current Administration of Old Mexico, senorita."
She sighed and said, "Senora, porfavor. I am proud of the things my late husband did for the cause of Libre Mexico before los rurales shot him down like a dog against a wall. He and his brave comrades all refused the blindfold and faced their executioners with all of the scorn they deserved!"
Longarm nodded soberly. "I'm sure your average rurale firing squad deserves all the scorn they can get, senora. But didn't you say something before about getting to the point of this visit?"
She didn't answer as a much darker maid with more Indian features came in with a real silver salver piled with almond cakes and a fine old silver service. There was some sort of family crest on the coffee urn. Longarm didn't try too hard to make it out. He didn't know too much about such notions to begin with, and family plate had a way of turning up far from its original family down Mexico way.
La Bruja dismissed her chica with a not unpleasant nod, and swung her satin slippers to the rug to sit properly as she poured a cup for Longarm. When he asked where her cup might be, she softly replied she didn't really care for coffee.
He could see she didn't mean to share the almond cakes with him either. So Longarm left both his coffee and cake untasted as well, murmuring something about just coming from the market and repeating his polite request they get to the point.
La Bruja said flatly, "An Anglo business associate of mine wants you dead. He offered me five hundred Yanqui dollars to have my own muchachos kill you. When I politely declined he raised the offer to a thousand."
Longarm whistled softly. "He must really want me dead. I've arrested many a gunslick who'd kill a man for less'n a hundred!"
La Bruja lay back on her chaise as if weary of the whole thing as she replied, "Not El Brazo Largo. I understand you got one of them on that steamer last night and killed the other one here in Corpus Christi this morning."
Longarm shook his head. "A frisky pup of a Ranger put the last fatal round in him. I was out to take him alive. I had an educated hunch they had to be working for somebody higher up, and I'd be much obliged if you'd tell me who that might be, seeing you surely know, senora."
La Bruja smiled reproachfully and sighed. "It was very cruel of God to leave us so far from Him and so close to el gringo. As I was just saying to that other one, your people and mine do not speak the same language even when they are speaking the same language. He was under the impression I was a mere criminal because I am required to bend just a few of your Yanqui laws in my efforts to fund political struggles in my own country. When I told him he would have to employ some other means, we parted on mutually agreeable terms. It would be foolish for wolves to fight in a world of sheep, and he knew none of us would betray his identity to anyone. I don't think he expected me to warn you like this, of course. But please do not ask me to tell you any more about him."
Longarm nodded soberly. "I'm commencing to follow your drift. You don't aim to have either the local Anglo underworld or my old pal El Gato sore at you. So I'll just thank you for the warning and see what I can work out on my own."
But as he leaned his weight forward to rise, La Bruja sat up some more and insisted, "You can't be seen on the streets of Corpus Christi in broad daylight! It's true, as your enemies say, you may be on the alert for typical Anglo riders. But an enemy clever enough to think a chico mejicano might have better luck ought to be able to hire other types you might not take for assassins until too late!"
"The gang's mostly dressed sort of cow, eh?" Longarm mused as he perched undecided on the edge of that low hassock.
To which La Bruja replied with a knowing laugh, "Do not try to get it out of me with a, how you say, process of elimination. I have been questioned by serious policemen and have the scars to prove it. Nobody gets anything out of me that I do wish them to know."
Longarm nodded soberly. "I was sort of wondering about the dim lighting in here, senora. I said I understood the bind you were in. I ain't going to try and beat the identity of that murderous pendejo out of a lady who's offered me food, shelter, and such pleasant company. But I got my own fish to fry, and whether we savvy the same old lingo or not, another lady they shot the other night in my place was pretty as well as innocent. She'd never done them a lick of harm and it's my duty to see they're punished."
La Bruja insisted, "But the men who killed her in your stateroom have been punished! You shot them both yourself! The people they might have been working for never ordered them to kill anyone but you. Can't you see that?"
Longarm smiled thinly. "I see this mastermind told you more than I might have about our earlier transactions. If he wanted me dead before I gunned a couple of his boys, he must have thought I was already after him. So why can't we say who he might be?"
La Bruja laughed lightly, a sort of surprising sound, and archly replied, "You are as clever as they say you are. But it won't work. I will tell you frankly, it does not matter to me and mine whether you are on one Anglo's trail or another's. I only wish to see you leave Corpus Christi alive and well, should anyone south of the border ever ask. As I said, it is still broad daylight outside. You will stay here until dark. After sundown we can send you on your way to anywhere but the waterfront. They will be waiting for you along the docks, expecting you to try and board that midnight steamer."
He grimaced. "I got to board it. It's the only way I can get back down the coast to Escondrijo with a big Saratoga trunk!"
She smiled. "We can lend you a wagon and give you a map you would not be able to buy in any shop. People who deal in stolen goods along these shores do not wish to go through tedious customs declarations. So certain land routes that may appear more devious are somewhat safer. To begin with, nobody who does not know which route a traveler is taking would be in any position to ambush him, no?"
Longarm shrugged. "Your offer would be more tempting if it was only my own hide I was worried about, senora. But I'm the law and I'm paid to worry more about lawbreakers. Since I choose to doubt you and your own gang have busted any laws more serious than those of Texas and Old Mexico, we'll say no more about it. But murder on the high seas, or even a federal waterway, can't be constitutional to begin with, and they were trying to interfere with a federal agent on a government mission in any case."
He frowned thoughtfully and added, "Now, that's sort of odd as soon as you study on it. Why in thunder would they be so anxious to interfere in such a mundane mission? They surely must have thought I was up to something else. That's happened before. There ain't nothing like a guilty conscience to make some crooks act guilty when it might have been smarter to just let a dumb lawman go on about his own dumb chores!"
La Bruja asked just what his mission might have been, if it hadn't been catching her so-called business associate.
He started to tell her, feeling no call to lie about a simple pickup of a prisoner. But as soon as he'd studied on it, he had to laugh. "Now who's pumping whom for secrets with innocent questions, no offense? It's been grand talking you in the dark, senora. But now I'd best go see if I can shed some daylight on all this skullduggery along the Fever Coast."
She rose with him, pleading, "Please don't go! There are too many of them out there for you or even your Ranger friends to handle! None of you know what you are up against and, look, if this is all some sort of mistake, as you suspect, you ought to be able to carry out your real mission in Escondrijo and be safely on your way home before they know where you've gone!"