But he shook his head firmly and told himself, "A man's word is a man's word. Who in Creation is a man supposed to trust if he breaks his damned word to his damned self?"
He toughed it out another ten minutes or so, then found himself on the move again, aimed for Lenore's starboard stateroom but drifting back along the port side, to windward, if only to postpone the stagnant heat to seaward by taking the long route round the stern.
The moon was shining on the far side. So Longarm moved aft along the darker deck as no more than an inky blur, thanks to passing on that third smoke. Hence they didn't spot him either as they kicked in a stateroom door further down And charged in shooting.
Longarm drew his own side arm and advanced on the confusion, getting there just as two dark blurs were backing out of his original stateroom through their own cloud of gunsmoke. So he demanded they freeze and fired almost in the same moment when neither did. He hit the nearest one and suspected he knew who it was as his target dropped faster than its big hat. He put another round in the son of a bitch before pegging his fifth and last shot at the sound of the other one's thudding boot heels. Then he crouched just inside the open doorway, reloading six in the wheel as he bawled loudly, "Everybody stay put inside in the name of the law!"
Then he asked more softly, "Are you all right, Miss Lenore?"
He got no reply as he sprang back up to chase after the one called Godwynn. Halfway back to the stern he heard a mighty splash, and nobody seemed on deck ahead of him as he rounded the last corner. So he swung back to peer back along the barely visible wake in the moonlight, muttering, "I hope there's plenty of sharks trailing this vessel if that was you I just heard, you bastard!"
By the time he got back to his shot-up stateroom the smoke had cleared and there were others out on deck despite his command to stay inside their rooms. He recognized the white uniform of the purser in the dim light and called out, "Deputy Long here. I reckon you noticed that gunplay just now. I'd be obliged if you'd have a look at the one on the deck betwixt us whilst I see about somebody nicer I was trying to do a favor for!"
He struck a match as he stepped inside. The small space still reeked of the brimstone breath of six-guns. He lit a wall fixture, and felt sorry he'd done so as he saw what lay atop the sheets of the upper berth. Lenore Colbert had taken his advice about flopping buck naked in such ventilation as might get through those jalousies near the head of the berth. So you could see every bullet hole in her willowy naked body, and they'd sure put enough in her. But she was bleeding too much to be sincerely dead. So he holstered his gun to move over to her, snatching up some bedding to rip into white bandages as he wondered, heartsick, where to start.
She was bleeding hardest from a wound under one shapely breast. He shoved a twist of cotton sheeting into it before he commenced an attempt to wrap a longer strip around her chest. A gal that skinny lifted easy and he tried to move her gently. But she moaned and said, "You're hurting me. What happened? Is that you, Custis?"
He said, "It is. You've been shot. I got one of 'em and it looks as if the other one dove overboard. Hold still and let me knot this dressing secure till we can find you a sawbones."
She protested, "Oh, Lord, I don't have any clothes on. Please trim that lamp. I can't have you seeing me naked!"
He said, "Already have, and I'm sure glad to see you've neither tattoos nor a tail, ma'am. I reckon that'll hold your left lung in you for now. Let's see about this other round you took under your floating rib."
"Don't look at my privates!" she pleaded as he removed his hat and gently covered her blond pubic hair with it while refraining from telling her he already had. It might have upset her as much to be told no man with a lick of sense had horny thoughts about even a great naked body shot so full of lead.
The purser came in, gasped in dismay at the sight of the bloody nude on the upper berth, and recovered to soberly state, "Our Mister Reynolds outside is beyond any need for medical attention. But I sent for the ship's surgeon in any case. Is the lady still alive and may one ask what she was doing in your stateroom if you weren't in here with her, Deputy Long?"
Longarm said, "For now let's say we swapped berths because she was suffering more than me from your great weather down this way. I got a better question. How did those two killers learn which stateroom I was supposed to be holed up in tonight?"
The purser sighed. "I told them. They were asking about you in the smoking salon a few minutes ago. I allowed that since I'd not seen you on deck and there was nothing else open you were likely in bed. The other one, Mister Godwynn, said he wanted to slip a note under your door and he seemed so friendly..."
"I follow your drift," Longarm snapped. "Now I'd like you to round up some armed and dangerous crewmen and make sure that was Godwynn I just heard going over the taff-rail. I chased him as far as the stern and lost him one way or the other."
The purser stated flatly, "If he went over the side he's done for. We're miles off either shore in a shark-infested lagoon. Even in the unlikely event he might make it ashore, there's nothing there if you get there!"
Longarm said, "I know Padre Island is a desert island with nothing to eat or a drop to drink for farther than any man could hope to walk in this climate. Tell me more about the mainland over to our west."
The purser thought and shrugged. "Not a whole lot for a man on foot and probably unarmed by now, even if he was serious about swimming that far. The marshy shores rise to soggy cattle country. A lot more salt grass than cows can eat, away from the rarer fresh water. His only hope, should he make it that way, would be if he could at least find some shade before high noon. Wherever the soil rises high enough above sea level you 're likely to find squatters of the Mex or Indian persuasion, if your luck holds out. Anglo squatters along the coast this far from anywhere are more likely to be outlaws who'd kill a man for his boots!"
Longarm finished knotting the bandage around Lenore's trim bare waist and growled, "That Godwynn rascal is an outlaw in his own right. So why are you still standing there? Didn't you just hear me tell you to find out which way he went?"
The purser left. Longarm was trying to figure out what needed bandaging next, and how, when Lenore opened her eyes again and said in a conversational tone, "I'm dying, Custis."
He tried to keep his own voice as calm as he told her, "No, you ain't. You're too pretty and we won't let you."
She sighed and said, "I know I'm pretty, and here I lie, naked as a jay with a handsome man, and I'm still fixing to die a goddamn virgin like poor old Olivia Lee back home!"
He removed his hat from her privates to replace it with a numb but friendly palm, not really feeling anything as he told her, "I just now told you there'd be no dying around here, virgin or not. There'll surely be a Coast Guard dispensary when we get to Escondrijo in just a few hours, and then they'll fix you up so's I can make sure you'll never in this world die a virgin, hear?"
She smiled wanly and softly asked, "Are you threatening to seduce me while I'm helpless, you great-looking brute?"
He chuckled fondly. "Nope. Only when you're well enough to get on top. For once you can, I mean to come in your sweet flesh till all our bones ache."
He was suddenly aware they had company as the dying girl smiled radiantly up at him, or maybe through him, to say, "Why, Custis, that was the nicest thing any man's ever said to me!"
Then she was dead. The white-clad figure that moved around him to feel Lenore's throat looked more like a nurse than any ship's surgeon. Longarm gulped and said, "I know what you just heard must have sounded disgusting, ma'am, but..."