Somebody else tore out a side door as the more sensible-looking one in the paler hat gulped and protested, "Hold on, Longarm. You can't just throw down on law-abiding citizens for no good reason!"
Longarm insisted, "You're giving me good reason. The law gives me the right to ask anyone this side of President Hayes to state his name and business, and the right to arrest and hold him on suspicion for seventy-two hours maximum should he give me probable cause. As for whether you want to come quiet or shoot it out right here and now, I'm assuming anyone who tells a federal lawman to just go fuck himself isn't planning on coming quiet."
The one in the Carlsbad hat said quickly, "I'd be Hamp Godwynn and this would be Saul Reynolds, better known as Squint Reynolds for reasons you can see for your own self. We are poor but honest cowhands in search of honest employment."
"Aboard a coastal steamer, acting suspicious and packing two guns apiece in border bully rigs?"
The one called Squint replied, in a surprisingly boyish tenor, "It was border bullies we got armed against. We were just down this way to see if we could get hired on at that monstrous ranch some steamboat skipper started at the mouth of the Rio Grande. We found they mostly hired Mex buckaroos, the cheap bastards."
Longarm smiled thinly. "I reckon you mean vaqueros, and I know the big spread you just mentioned. Since I've no good reason to call any grown man here a liar, I'll only say you could've saved us all some needless sweat on a hot night by simply answering me sensibly in the first place. Now that we all know who's talking to whom, let's talk about all them dirty looks you boys were aiming my way earlier this evening at supper up forward."
Hamp Godwynn said, "Squint wasn't aiming dirty looks at you in particular, Longarm. He looks that mean-eyed at everybody, and I don't mind telling you we've had this conversation with other gents who took Squint's natural expression wrong."
Longarm considered, shrugged, and said, "We've all been out with a gal whose naturally flirty eyes drew unexpected as well as unwelcome attentions from others. But like I told one version of that flirty gal on one occasion, there's no need to back up a naturally troublesome expression with a chip on one's cold shoulder."
Squint Reynolds snapped, "We told you who we was and said we was sorry about scaring you. What more do you want, an egg in your beer?"
Longarm answered, firmly but not unkindly, "For your information, I ain't scared of you and your kin combined. But since you've given me information I can check out later, we'll just say no more about it for now. I'd offer to buy a round if I liked either one of you and it wasn't so blamed stuffy in here. But since I don't and it ain't, I'll just say buenoches and don't go glaring like that no more if we should meet at breakfast, hear?"
Then he left. He didn't have to crawfish backwards. There was a big glass window offering him a good view of everyone in the salon as he strode out to the starboard promenade deck.
Once he had, it didn't feel much cooler. But the promenade deck got its name because it went all the way round the upper passenger section of the combined freight and passenger steamer from stem to stern.
He was closer to the stern at the moment. So he got out a cheroot and lit it in the still-muggy air on that side. Then he ambled aft and rounded the last stern corner to discover that, just as he'd told pretty Lenore, a fairly strong land breeze was blowing from the west. It smelled of mesquite and was far from frigid. But at least it was dry and brisk enough to cool his face and sweat-soaked shirt as he strolled forward along the deserted portside deck. The staterooms he passed were built back to back, save for the few facing a companionway or warped into odder shapes by funnels, air-shafts, and ladderways. So most of them opened out to the promenade deck with ventilation jalousies built into lower door panels as well as their port shutters. That was what they called windows on a boat, whether they looked like portholes or not. So you could hear things going on inside as you passed many a stateroom, most by this time dark. Victorian folks didn't go to sleep with the chickens because of religious notions. Oil lamps gave off a lot of heat as they shed piss-poor light for reading. Hence, as in the case of the chickens, most Anglo-Americans of the era were early to bed and early to rise simply so they could see what they were doing. The Mexican folks on both sides of the border were the night owls. Not as many were interested in reading, and after that it was just too hot down this way during Yanqui business hours. So the "lazy Mex" broke his day up into short hard stints from the wee small hours to the heat of late morning, dozed off in the shade most of the afternoon, and often put in another eight or ten hours of work or play in the cool shades of evening.
Lenore Colbert had already told him she was a Yanqui gal. So he wasn't surprised to see she'd trimmed her lamp and likely turned in by the time he passed his old stateroom. He was tempted to pause for a few puffs on his smoke and see if he could hear her snoring, jerking off in bed, or whatever. But he never did. It made a man wistful enough to picture a pretty gal alone in bed, either decorous under the sheets, or spread-eagled atop them buck naked.
He could guess how the couple two staterooms up were most likely dressed for bed as he passed their dark shutters and heard a female voice cry out, "Ooh, that feels wicked and I know I'll surely burn in Hades when I die, but right now I want your tongue even deeper!"
Longarm chuckled silently and moved on, muttering, "Aw, with any luck all those French saints will put in a good word for you, ma'am. Those French are a caution for eating pussy and turning into saints, and there's nothing about that in the Ten Commandments to begin with. The sinners in Sodom wanted to screw boy angels in the ass. I never read what the folk in Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim were up to. The Good Book just don't say. But it must have been worse than they do in Dodge when the herds are in town because Dodge and even Frisco are still there, praise the Lord."
Others along the way seemed to be just screwing, snoring, or in one case arguing in bed about whether they could afford a new carpet in the front parlor. Then he passed the dining salon, shut for the night, and finally he was standing alone in the bows, where the combined air movements made him feel so good he wondered why nobody else was standing there with him. Then, reflecting on the night watch above him on the Texas deck, the black gang down below in the engine room, and most of the folks in the staterooms being the type to call ports on a steamer windows, he realized it only stood to reason a more experienced traveler would get to hog such comfort as there was aboard this tub on such a muggy night.
He finished his smoke, tossed the lit stub over the side to admire its firefly dive to the inky gulf waters, and resisted the temptation to light another. He'd been trying to cut down on tobacco. For some reason he found it tougher than refusing another drink after his legs warned him he'd had enough, or leaving a gal's skirts alone after she'd warned him she was married or, even more dangerous, a maiden pure. Yet anyone could see a man got more pleasure out of strong liquor or weak-willed women than tobacco had ever offered. So why in tarnation did a man on such a modest salary have to spend a whole nickel to smoke only three damned cheroots that neither made him feel like singing or coming?
On the other hand, he was already uncomfortable enough as he leaned on the rail in sweaty duds with half a hard-on. So he lit up some more, muttering, "Just this last one before we turn in for at least a few hours' sleep. Don't want folks thinking a drunk might be coming down the gangplank at 'em come morning."
As anyone who's ever tried to cut down on smoking knows, a smoke seems to burn down faster as soon as you tell it you don't mean to have another in the near future. So maybe a quarter hour later he watched that one diving to the sea as he reached absently for a third, another part of him pointing out, What the hell, may as well spend the whole nickel before we turn in."