Longarm allowed that sounded reasonable and, as long as he was there, offered to buy a box of those Mexican waterproof matches. But the fat chandler told him to just help himself to a box and go with God. So he did, certain he'd left El Bruja's property with someone smart enough to see she got it all back.
He strode over to the main street, a block inland, and asked some kids playing marbles in the still-damp street the way to their town lockup. They directed him to a brick building across from the white-washed Methodist steeple one could see for miles around.
As he strode the plank walk along the shady side of the street, he heard the kids behind him debating his station in life. They seemed divided as to whether he was a Ranger or simply some other pistol-packer with business at the town lockup.
Longarm had been a kid one time. So when one of then announced he'd just ask and jumped up to chase after him, Longarm stopped and turned with an indulgent smile.
But then his smile froze as a distant shot rang out and the kid caught a bullet aimed at Longarm's spine with the back of his poor little head!
Longarm's own gun was out and he was already running as the kid who'd taken a bullet for him beat a heavy mist of blood and brain tissue to the boardwalk with his small dead face. Longarm yelled at the other kids to get down and stay down as he tore past. The dirty white cloud of gunsmoke he'd spotted still hung shoulder-high near the corner he'd just turned. It was easy to see some son of a bitch had trailed him from the more open waterfront and pegged a back-shot down this other street from cover. Before Longarm could run that far he heard the receeding hoofbeats of a rapid mount. But he still caught a glimpse of a roan rump and a rider wearing an ankle-length duster of tan linen under his gray Texas hat as he tore around yet another corner with Longarm bawling after him, "Stand and fight like a human being, you yellow-bellied baby-butchering back-shooting bastard!"
Then, sick at heart at that butchered kid, Longarm had to turn around and see if there was anything he could do to help.
There wasn't much. A crowd had already gathered and the dead kid's young mother, a care-worn dishwater-blonde, had already dashed from her quarters nearby to cradle her child's shattered skull in her lap, oblivious of the mess it was making of her thin calico dress as she rocked mindlessly on her knees, assuring him it wasn't his fault and nobody was going to give him a licking this time.
Just beyond her, a copper badge and drawn.45 were staring at Longarm thoughtfully. So Longarm lowered his own.44-40 to his side and quickly called out, "I'm the law too. Federal. We're after a killer in a tan duster and gray Texas hat, mounted on a roan. Last seen headed south along that dirt path past those fishing boats along the lagoon."
The town law, an older as well as shorter Texican with a walrus mustache, with his badge riding the buttoned black vest over a crisp white shirt and shoestring tie, called back, "Lucky for you others further down the street at the time tell the same story. So who are you and why was that warmly dressed rascal out to back-shoot you?"
To which Longarm could only reply, "I'd be U.S. Deputy Marshal Custis Long. I don't know the answers to your other questions yet. But I sure aim to find out."
CHAPTER 8
A long time passed slowly by as Longarm and the local law did their best to restore some damned law and order in the middle of Escondrijo. They got the dead boy to the undertaker's, and got statements backing Longarm's from the kids he'd been playing marbles with that morning. Constable W.R. Purvis decided, and Longarm was inclined to agree, it might be best in this climate to have the dead kid tidied up and embalmed ahead of any formal findings by the county coroner, who was busy enough with that fever going round.
Purvis had to reason harder before Longarm reluctantly agreed that a posse's chances of tracking a dimly described rider on a public trail would be too slim to justify the excitement. Longarm had already considered the possibility of that bastard discarding the duster and flashy hat before simply holing up on a nearby spread, or even back in town afoot after sending his pony on alone.
It was a trick as old as riding the owlhoot trail for fun and profit with pistol or, hell, rapier. Horses were something like homing pigeons when it came to heading back to a familiar stall, where a critter could laze secure from surprises while being well watered and fed. Horses hated surprises, which was why they could spook over something innocent as a tumbleweed, or run back into a burning stable bewildered by all the excitement and seeking familiar shelter from such a confusing world. And so, as the older town lawman pointed out, that back-shooter and his mount could be most anywhere by now, whether still together or far apart. When Longarm asked how many roan ponies there might be around Escondrijo, old W.R. shrugged and asked, "Would you like a list of riders alphabetic or numerical, assuming me and all the folks I'd have to check with ain't missed none? This is cattle country, pard. Save for townies and Mex hoe farmers close to town, most everyone for miles around rides some damned sort of horse, and roan ain't an unusual color for a cow pony. Was it a strawberry roan or a blue roan, by the way?"
Longarm grunted, "Strawberry."
W.R. was too polite to tell an obvious horseman that that particular mixture of longer white guard hairs over a basic hide of auburn was ten times more likely to occur than the white over black they called a blue roan.
By the time they got down to the reasons Longarm had been headed to see Constable Purvis in the first place, they were entering the town lockup, where Purvis allowed he had a jar of corn squeezings filed under R, for Refreshments.
As Longarm's eyes adjusted to the sudden gloom, he saw they had no current customers in the three holding cells along the back wall.
As the lawman who ran the place got the jar and a couple of shot glasses from his filing cabinet, motioning Longarm to one of the bentwood chairs between the desk and a gun rack, he explained how both Deputy Gilbert and that federal want, Clay Baldwin, were out at that Coast Guard station to the north of town now.
Handing Longarm a perilously generous drink, Purvis continued. "they've both been taking turns, like everyone else, with that off-and-on-again fever. Seems every time your prisoner was well enough your deputy took sick, and vice versa. Young Gilbert told us someone like you would be coming, and meanwhile he felt he'd be able to hold Baldwin more secure in the Coast Guard brig whilst he lay sick or not so sick in their dispensary out yonder."
As they clinked, drank up, and gaped in mutual agony, the older lawman recovered his voice first. "If you ask me, your man is full of shit. We was holding Baldwin secure enough here. Why do you reckon he felt them Coast Guardsmen would be better at it?"
Longarm's tongue still felt numb, that corn liquor running close to two hundred proof, but he still managed to reply, "I don't know. I mean to ask him. I'd have thought both of 'em would be under the care of that lady doctor, Norma Richards, here in town. I just saw the cadaver of the pharmacist's mate they say was in charge out at that Coast Guard station."
Constable Purvis took a more cautious sip and replied, "We heard he'd come down with it too. I reckon it's the patent cell they got out yonder that's admired so much by young Gilbert. It wasn't that dead Coast Guardsman who was treating your deputy and your prisoner. That bossy sawbones you just mentioned has commandeered quarters out to the Coast Guard station, her being some sort of federal personage too fancy for the one hotel in town, and the Coast Guard station only standing a mile outside of town."
"You mean she rides back and forth between that federal post and her fever ward here in town?" Longarm asked before he'd had time to consider the obvious reasons.
Since he had, he was already back on his feet and saying something about having many another chore ahead before everyone who could holed up for la siesta. So Constable Purvis never got to fully explain how tough it might be to squeeze a whole town's worth of fever victims into the officers' quarters out at that Coast Guard station.