Longarm on the Fever Coast (2 page)

The skinny pale-faced clerk assured Longarm he liked women just fine, in moderation, and added, "You'd better get on back there and take your medicine like a man, Custis. Our boss is really pissed at you this time."

Longarm shrugged and strode on back to the oak-paneled private office of Marshal William Vail. He resisted the impulse to cast a guilty glance at the banjo clock on one wall. He sat uninvited in Billy Vail's field of fire and told the shorter, older, and stouter cuss on the far side of that cluttered desk, "Had to make certain your team was warm and dry after I washed down your surrey up in the carriage house at your place, Billy. Got a hell of a lot of 'dobe on the chassis, thanks to all that rain yesterday."

Billy Vail bit down on the stubby cigar in his bulldog mouth and replied, "Bullshit! You never drove that gal out to no graveyard along no dirty roads! You run her straight home from the funeral after carrying on scandalously with her in front of the whole damned congregation!"

Longarm tried, "I was only helping the lady pump the organ, for Pete's sake!"

Vail repressed a chuckle and managed to turn it into a snap as he replied, "Her husband's name is Paul, not Pete. But you sure as thunder did a heap for his sake. He's been trying to catch somebody pumping his wife's organs, and what'll you bet he had the two of you followed, and timed, by the detective firm he's had watching her a good six months or more!"

Longarm gulped. "Hold on. Old Pru assured me she was a grass widow, divorced from a jealous brute whose name seemed unimportant to me at the time."

Vail snapped, "You'll get to know him a heap, and vice versa, if we let him serve you with the papers he's likely having drawn up at this very moment. The gal didn't exactly lie to you. She just left out some truth. Prunella and Paul Farnam are sort of divorced, as of last month. But it won't be final till the end of ninety days."

Longarm smiled sheepishly. "She did seem anxious to get on with her, ah, new life. I ain't sure I follow your drift about this ninety-day shit, though. She told me the feelings had been mutual and her ex-husband had been a sport about the house and some mining property up to the Front Range."

Vail grimaced. "She meant Paul Farnam has a far slicker lawyer than she hired. Only I see she doesn't know it yet. Farnam figured he might lose a contested divorce, since his wife was far from the only resident of Colorado who considers him to be a total bastard. There's mining camps old Paul can't go to without a four-man bodyguard. So he gets good rates from that detective agency. As I get it from the courthouse gang, he slickered that passionate but dumb brunette by agreeing to an uncontested divorce and handsome property settlement with just one little provision in the small print."

Longarm sighed and said, "You mean they have her word in small print that she won't entertain overnight guests of the male persuasion under their mutual roof until such time as the court decrees she's free?"

Vail nodded. "Something like that. Knowing her nature even better than the rest of us, I'd say he and his lawyer figured she'd never hold out for ninety days. So tell me something about you, Have you ever suffered any serious fevers?"

Longarm blinked, hesitated but a moment, and replied, "Sure I have. Growing up hard-scrabble in West-by-God-Virginia, we sort of felt left out if we weren't served a dose of any ague going round, and there sure was a heap of 'em. Close to half the kids I started in the first grade with died of one damned fever or another, while the rest of us grew up immune to most. Sink or swim was all the medical science most of our folks could afford."

He glanced out the nearest window at the busy world outside as he caught himself muttering, "Old Warts Wilson died at Cold Harbor after living through the pox, and Hank Bronson licked the scarlet fever only to stop a round of.75 with his head at Shiloh. But that's all water under the bridge, and what have childhood agues to do with me getting hauled into divorce court like the fool that I am about frisky women?"

Vail said, "If you're not in town, you can't be served. If Paul Farnam doesn't serve some fool in less than ninety days and prove him a carnal correspondent in court within that time, your Prunella is off the hook, and more important, so's my senior deputy. I only wanted to make sure you had a sporting chance against the fevers of the Fever Coast. I got a half-failed mission down yonder, and seeing you're only fixing to get in a bigger mess here in Denver..."

"Hold on and back up," Longarm said with a puzzled frown. "I know they call that stretch of the Texican shore from, say, Brownsville to Galveston the Fever Coast because it's sort of lethal to man or beast from other parts. I've been down that way a time or two and I'm still breathing. But how can a mission be half-failed, Billy? Seems to me a man ought to carry out his mission all the way or consider it a total failure, fight?"

"Wrong," Billy Vail replied. "I sent Deputy Gilbert down to a seaport called Escondrijo, betwixt Brownsville and Corpus Christi. I sent him to pick up and transport a federal prisoner for Judge Dickerson down the hall. Gilbert got there to find his prisoner too sick to move from his cot in the town lockup. They told him it was a spring fever that seemed to be going round. Up to then a good half of them down with it had bounced back. So Gilbert hired a room across from the jail to wait his prisoner's fever out. Last I heard, the outlaw Judge Dickerson wants to hang has recovered his own health, whilst poor old Rod Gilbert's flat on his back with that same fool fever."

Leaning back in his swivel chair, Billy Vail relit his soggy old cigar. "To tell the truth, I'd planned on letting Gilbert get better and bring his man in before you got your own fool self in this worse fix. But seeing you have, what say we send you down to Escondrijo to see about getting both old boys back up this way in as much comfort as they both deserve?"

Longarm sighed. "I reckon it beats being hauled into a damned old divorce court any time of the year, and it might not be too hot in south Texas this early in the year. I'll just tell Henry out front, and tend me a few errands whilst he types up my travel orders and vouchers, right?"

"Wrong," Billy Vail replied again. "I've already told Henry what I want typed up for you, Gilbert, and your prisoner. I'll get word to Prunella Farnam later and save you the trouble and considerable risk of running back up yonder to warn her they'll be riding hard on her with spiteful intent. It ain't our worry if she can't hold out till you can help her with her organ some more when her dad-blamed divorce is final!"

Longarm smiled sheepishly and said, "Well, as long as somebody warns her ... It sure feels spooky working for a boss who reads my mind so good, Billy Vail."

To which Marshal Vail could only reply with a modest smile, "I reckon somebody has to do some thinking for you when it comes to women. Lord knows the pretty little things surely seem to confuse the shit out of you when left to study about 'em on your own!"

CHAPTER 2

Longarm spoke enough Border Mex to translate Escondrijo freely as "Hideout." So he wasn't too surprised to discover Escondrijo, Texas, was one of those places You just couldn't get to from most anywhere else without a whole lot of trouble.

The Lone Star and erstwhile Confederate State was commencing to attract more settlers and railroad tracks now that President Hayes had called a halt to Reconstruction and let those who best knew the Southwest run it their own way, as long as they remembered who'd won. So most of the Southern railroads had standardized their tracks to the same broad gauge, and Henry had managed to get Longarm by rail to the head of navigation on the Rio Grande. You had to go by steamboat from Brownsville to Escondrijo and beyond in any case. Railroads ran where there was profit to be made, across sensible terrain, and even if there had been enough settlers to matter, it would have been a bitch to lay track across the line of swamps and estuaries between Brownsville and Galveston with the construction methods of the day. So it made more sense to everyone if such freight and passengers as there were moved up and down the Fever Coast by boat, whether sail luggers out on the gulf, or steamers plying the inland waterway a good pilot could follow from lagoon to lagoon behind the sandy barrier islands that lay just offshore--as if to guard the low, swampy mainland from that mean Indian deity Hura Kan.

Longarm had known better than to head for south Texas in a three-piece tweed suit with summer coming in. The paddle-wheel passage down the lower Rio Grande was hot and sticky enough to a gent wearing no more than a thin cotton work shirt and well-washed jeans between his tobacco-brown Stetson and low-heeled stovepipe boots. Nobody along the border got excited by the sight of a sober gent packing a gun on one hip. He only sported his badge when he was up to answering pesky questions about his immediate intent.

He'd been fooled before about whether a lawman on such a routine mission might or might not need to do some riding. So this time, seeing he needed someplace to pack his possibles in any case, he'd brought along his personal McClellan saddle and army bridle with his roll, saddlebags, and Winchester '73 attached. Henry'd told him there was a Coast Guard station near Escondrijo, and so he'd doubtless be able to borrow a government mount there in the unlikely event he had to ride out after any escaped fever victims.

The paddle-wheel trip down to Brownsville was uneventful. He boarded a larger coastal steamer there without incident, just in time to be on his way north on the next tide just before suppertime, his cabin steward told him. So he tipped the helpful colored gent a generous two bits in hopes his cabin would stay locked, locked his baggage up for the moment, and ambled back out on deck to enjoy some salt air as well as a smoke. He naturally stationed himself to seaward on the shady side of the long promenade deck. His tobacco smoke still felt far cooler than the steamy breeze stirred up by the steamer's steaming at around six knots. There wasn't any shoreward sea breeze at the moment, and six knots of apparent breeze didn't do a lot for a man who'd just come down from the higher and drier climes of Colorado.

Traveling Denver folks often remarked on how thick and soggy the air felt, even on a dry day in, say, Frisco or Saint Lou. Most found San Antone a steam bath as early as April. Folks from that far north in Texas tried to avoid the gulf coast once the robin began to drift north to cooler summer climes.

"Doesn't it ever cool off down here?" a plaintive female voice was bleating from behind him. So Longarm turned with a smile, noting with regret that the willowy ash-blonde in the middy blouse and straw boater hadn't been talking to him at all--Her complaint seemed to be aimed at a pink-faced jasper in a rumpled white merchant marine cap and uniform. Longarm recognized him as the purser he'd had to check in with coming aboard. The poor bastard was sweating like a hog in that choke-collared linen suit as he somehow managed to assure the blond passenger, "Things will cool off a heap once the sun goes down, ma'am. The nights are way cooler along this coast, and as soon as we hit the more open waters of Laguna Madre the skipper will be ordering more speed."

Longarm doubted that. They'd swung north into the Laguna Madre if he was any judge of maps and if the distant shoreline to either side meant spit. But it would have been pointless as well as rude to call a ship's officer a bare-faced liar, or point out how hot and steamy most cabins figured to remain no matter how much steam they fed the twin screws back yonder. These coastal steamers got more cargo space by using the more modern screw drive, but the smaller boilers they could get by with had no more speed to offer. Steamers poking up and down the gulf coast made their money on stopping as often as possible, not by getting anywhere in such an all-fired hurry.

The sun was low, he could tell--not by looking to the west on the sunny side, but by admiring the first evening star in a purple sky to the east. It would still be some time before any evening breeze picked up its lazy heels. But he still drifted forward towards the dining salon as he finished his smoke. For whether traveling by rail or water, a man with a tumbleweed job soon learned to never be first or last to be seated for dinner.

The dining salon was already crowded as Longarm entered from a shady doorway and drifted to an empty table, on the sunny side but near an open window. His brow felt somewhat cooler as he hung up his hat and sat down by the window. The setting sun was still spiteful, but the faint breeze from the bow almost made up for it as a colored waiter, cheerful enough considering his white choke-collar jacket, came over to hand him a menu and fill a tumbler with ice water for him. How a gent used to this climate managed to keep his jacket no more rumpled than the linen tablecloths all around was a total mystery to a man feeling wilted as hell in a thin blue shirt with an open collar. Longarm was scanning the menu for something that looked safe as well as cooling when that same ash-blonde came over to ask if the seat across from him was taken. She seemed less distressed by his rough costume when he rose to his feet to assure her she was welcome to join him as long as she refrained from sipping the ice water.

As they both sat down, she frowned thoughtfully at his glass and asked what was wrong with sipping ice water on such a hot afternoon. He glanced about to make certain he wasn't insulting any of the help as he softly explained, "There's this French chemist called Pasture, I think, who's been studying on bitty invisible bugs that may spread plagues, and they call these waters the Fever Coast with reason, ma'am. I've been down this way before, and I've found it way safer to stick to hard liquor, or hot softer drinks such as tea or coffee. If you order either, make sure you're served stuff too hot to drink right off. Don't order iced desserts or salads down this way either, hear?"