First things coming first, Longarm retraced his steps to that Mexican-owned chandlery on the waterfront. He wasn't surprised to see the team and rig he'd borrowed from La Bruja no longer stood out front.
When he went inside, he wasn't surprised to hear the fat chandler deny any knowledge of the property El Senor had left outside his door of his own free gringo will.
Longarm said, "I ain't worried about La Bruja getting her property back one way or another if you know what's good for you. I've come back to talk about some gunplay just up your side street. I reckon you never noticed that neither?"
The chandler shrugged his fat shoulders and replied he'd heard the shots, and that someone had told him an Anglo muchacho had been murdered by some person or persons unknown. When he added he paid little attention to such matters, since los gringos always seemed to be fighting among themselves, Longarm muttered, "Touche. Now why don't we try her another way. How are you called, amigo?"
The fat man smiled coldly and replied, "Gomez. For some reason a lot of my customers call me Gordo Gomez. I reserve the right to say whether I am anyone's amigo or not."
Since Gordo translated almost literally as "Fatso," Longarm felt free to call him that whether they were to be pals or not. He smiled thinly at the fat Mexican and said, "Bueno, Gordo mio. The pendejo who shot that kid in the head not far from here was aiming at my back. He fired from cover after trailing me as far as the main street from guess where?"
Gordo returned his stare innocently and replied, "Not from here, if that is what you mean."
Longarm said, "That's exactly what I mean. I hadn't told a soul in town I was coming your way with La Bruja's rig and mule team. So how do you reckon that back-shooter knew just where to wait for me?"
Gordo shrugged and sounded sincerely innocent as he simply asked, "Quien sabe? El Senor was openly driving through town in a vehicle even he describes as the property of some witch, no?"
Longarm started to object, saw he had no sensible objection to the fat man's simple logic, and said, "Mierditas, you could have one apt to Plot murder with a lady might know her mules and covered box-wagon on sight!"
Gordo stared up at a strip of fly paper as if debating with himself whether to change it for a fresh one as he told Longarm in the same politely firm tone he had no idea what they were talking about.
So Longarm nodded, suggested Gordo cut down on sweets at least, and headed back up the quay toward old Norma's improvised fever ward, his spine feeling itchy even though he kept looking behind him all the way.
Nobody seemed out for a second crack at him, and so he made it to the icehouse without further incident.
Inside, he found the Mexican farmer he'd brought in holding court on a corner cot, surrounded by other admiring farm folks as well as the kin who'd come in with him. It seemed that while alligators weren't unheard of along the Fever Coast, man-eating alligators were rare indeed.
He found the farmer's slim young daughter on the far side of the icehouse, translating for Norma Richards as the two of them tried to dose a flushed and sweaty Mexican kid with quinine sulfate. Longarm knew how bitter the shit-brown pills tasted. But it was the motherly Norma who decided, "Oh, fiddle, just give him ice water, Consuela. Lord knows this stuff doesn't seem to be helping any of the others, and the poor boy's sick enough without a broken jaw!"
She spotted Longarm and straightened up, saying wearily, "We heard about the shooting, Custis. You certainly do lead a very interesting life!"
Longarm sighed and said, "So do you, Miss Norma. You say quinine don't seem to work, even when you're sure it's real?"
She shook her head, brushed that same loose strand from her brow with the back of her hand, and explained. "We have to give the poor dears something. My sweet young volunteer here thinks we ought to call in some witch doctors she knows, and you've no idea how tempting that seems as this day wears on. Lord knows, I may as well be dancing naked in paint and shaking a rattle for all the good I've been able to do anyone!"
Longarm had to chuckle at the picture. Old Norma was sort of what you might call Junoesque, if not pleasantly plump. But he assured the worried-looking gal, "Just getting 'em in bed out of the noonday sun must be helping 'em some, Miss Norma, and as for the curados Miss Consuela here might have mentioned, you can't exactly call a curado a witch doctor. They got the same sort of witches we worry about. They call 'em brujas. A curado or curer is more like a herbalist mixed with a Pentacostal preacher. Picture a Holy Roller speaking in tongues and casting out demons whilst dosing sick folks with sassafras bark, licorice root, and such. I know you'll find this hard to believe, Doc. But that very quinine you've been dosing these folks with was discovered by Indian medicine men. I once read about a highborn Spanish lady being saved on her deathbed by some Jesuit missionary back from the woods with some bitter bark the Indians had given him."
She nodded and said, "The Countess Chinchon, who introduced it to Europe as Peruvian bark around 1640. You're so right about a weak brew of ground-up tree bark saving her life and restoring her to almost perfect health. So why don't these patients respond to pure quinine sulfate, more than ten times as strong?"
Longarm suggested, "They have another fever entirely, ma'am. I'd forgot the name of that countess. But I read somewhere that the stuff only works on one particular family of fevers. I know for a fact you can't cure yellow jack with quinine."
She nodded but insisted, "This fever here is nothing at all like yellow jack, and please give me credit for reading a little myself!"
She swept a bare arm rather grandly around at the sweltering icehouse. "They've all been suffering the same symptoms. They're hit without warning by a sudden violent rise in temperature, along with headaches, muscular cramps, and drenching sweats."
Longarm shrugged and said lots of fevers did that to folks.
She snapped, "I hadn't finished! The patient is helped by liquids but can barely tolerate broths. The poor appetite is complicated by an almost suicidal depression. Then, as suddenly as it began, or after a bout of chills and shivering, the patient suddenly snaps out of it, save for feeling weak, dehydrated, and ravenously hungry."
Longarm allowed, "That sure sounds like plain old ague. Chills, fever, and you say it comes back?"
She nodded, repressed a shiver of her own, and told him, "It's usually the second or third attack that takes them. I don't know if it's because the fever gets stronger or hits them the same way once they're weaker. We know so little, Custis, for all our Latin terms and impressive diplomas!"
Longarm suddenly found himself holding the sort of solid old gal against his chest, smoothing her brown hair with a gentle free hand as he said, "Don't go blubbering up on us now. These sick folks are depending on you, whether you know what you're doing here or not. Ain't it possible the bugs that cause the ague can get used to quinine the way those Austrian miners I've read about get used to arsenic?"
She leaned against him, sort of like a babe lost in the woods might have. But her voice was cheerful enough as she marveled, "My, you do seem to read a lot, don't you?"
To which he could only modestly reply, "They got a fine public library up in Denver, and along about the end of the month I ain't got the money to spend my free evenings at the opera. Could we discuss these invisible bugs instead of my modest wages, ma'am?"
She sighed and said, "I work for the same cheap government. I've already considered a strain of a still-unknown microbe building up a resistance to the usual specific drug. That could be the answer, or just as cheerfully, you could be right about it being some entirely different malady and... Oh, Custis, I'm so tired, even if I knew what I was doing!"