Longarm 244: Longarm and the Devil's Sister (3 page)

“I wish you wouldn't.” Longarm cut in.

The two older men stared at Longarm as if they suspected him of farting in church. Billy Vail said, “I thought you just told me you had a personal hard-on for Devil Dave Deveruex, old son.”

Longarm said, “I do. That's why I want to catch him instead of making him look bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to his Tex-Mex admiration society. Lawmen private and public have tried in vain to cut the trails of Frank and Jesse within a day's ride of their known home address. In '75 the Pinkertons lobbed a fire bomb through their momma's window and only managed to cripple her and kill their nine-year-old half-brother, Archie Samuels.”

He let that sink in before he added, “Their unwanted kin were sitting there like trusting lambs because neither Frank nor Jesse were home at the time. They've never been home when the law comes calling because no lawman can ride a furlong into Clay County without some kissing cousin letting Frank and Jesse know the law's riding in. The Texas Rangers have to know Devil Dave hails from that land grant in the Lower Pecos Valley, don't they?”

Vail nodded and said, “Well sure they do. How did you think we knew that much about him? The mean little cuss commenced his wild career by shooting a colored cavalry trooper during the Reconstruction. The kid allowed the Good Lord had never created horses to be rode by Ethiopians. Nobody in West Texas was talking to the state police imposed on them by the Reconstruction. So Devil Dave's next victim was a white carpetbagger the Good Lord had endowed with a money belt, a diamond stick pin, and a gold watch. But that was then and this is now.”

Judge Dickerson made a wry face as he nodded reluctantly and said, “President Hayes in his infinite wisdom ended the last vestiges of the Reconstruction back in '77, and, as soon as those Texas rebs were back in the saddle, they disbanded those state troopers and brought back those dad-blamed rowdy rangers!”

Then he remembered who he was talking to and quicky assured Billy Vail he was only referring to those Texas Rangers who'd ridden for the Confederacy, after the times young Ranger Vail had ridden under Captain Big Foot Wallace.

Vail was explaining how other Scotchmen had called Big Foot Wallace “Sandy” when Longarm cut in to steer them back on more recent trails by saying, “My point is that nobody's ever been able to throw down on Devil Dave Deveruex or find a soul who's ever heard of him on or about his own home range. If we know this, he knows this. If he makes it out of Colorado, no matter where else he may circle, he's likely to wind up along the Lower Pecos, sooner or later.”

Vail and the judge exchanged glances. Vail turned back to his senior deputy to patiently but firmly demand, “Make up your mind. I just now said I could wire the rangers down yonder and you asked me not to because you want Deveruex and them two other killers caught? What am I missing here?”

Longarm said, “The best way to catch him. Neither you nor me nor a company of rangers backed by a squadron of cavalry would ever cut that local hero's trail in his own neck of the chaparral. But it's going on market-herding time in Texas. It's a logical time for an out-of-work cowhand to drift in, looking for work, and I can still rope and throw if I have to.”

Judge Dickerson grinned wolfishly and said, “By jimmies I'll write you a federal warrant that ought to stand up in Old Mexico. It can't be lawful anywhere to shoot up a courtroom while a trial's in progress!”

Vail knew West Texas better. He frowned dubiously and said, “I'll go along with it if you'll take Smiley and Dutch along with you. Lord knows they both look more like saddle tramps than our current civil service dress code allows, and Smiley might pass for a Mex at drygulch distance, being part Pawneee and all.”

Longarm shook his head and said, “That would be dumb, no offense. Anybody can see that no lawman would ride in alone if he had one lick of sense. As soon as I look like I have somebody covering my back I commence to look suspicious. After that I'd as soon work alone and not have to worry about covering anyone else's back.”

“It's too big a boo. You ain't riding into that nest of vipers all alone!” said Billy Vail, as if he meant it.

Then young Henry, the squirt who played the typewriter in their office down the hall, came in with the blue-uniformed Sergeant Nolan of Denver P.D.

Henry said, “Deputy Gilfoyle just reported in from a quick canvas of the neighborhood. The rain had swept the streets clear until we had all that gunplay. A swamper at the Parthenon Saloon stepped out into their back alley, got wet without seeing anything, and stepped back in the doorway just as three men came arunning. Swamper makes it two Mex riders in
charro
outfits and a dapper young gent in a suit but no hat.”

“That was them.” Billy Vail decided, adding, “Which way did they go?”

Henry said, “The swamper can't say. He ducked inside entire as soon as one of the
vaqueros
slapped leather and cussed at him.”

Sergeant Nolan consulted the notebook he was holding in one hamlike fist as he volunteered, “One of your lads made it over to our precinct house with the news of the breakout a tad too late. We'd been keeping an eye on three unusually prosperous Mexican strangers in town. Our watch commander's sent a detail to the rooming house they were staying in near the Union Station. We're going to be as surprised as the rest of you if they haven't checked out without leaving any forwarding address. I knew them three were up to no good, what with their fancy Mex outfits and no visible means of support. But every time we arrest some stranger on suspicion of vagrancy we catch hell from the Magistrate's Court if they can show the judge two dollars or more in cash.”

Another copper badge in blue came in to report to Sergeant Nolan on their suspicious strangers. Longarm and the others listened as Denver P.D. exclaimed, “They were long gone when we got to that boarding house, but we may have cut their trail. According to the landlady, one of the Mexicans she recalls as Ramon told her they had a train to catch, so he wanted her to give him back some room rent he'd advanced her. She told him hell would freeze over first and then their leader, a gent she recalls as a Mister Hogan in spite of his Mex features, cussed at Ramon in Spanish, told her to keep the money, and the three of them lit out. She thought they were running for that train in the rain. We sent Ryan over to the depot in the unlikely event it was three other Mexicans shooting things up over here at the federal building.”

As if to prove his point two more copper badges trudged in, soaked to the skin in soggy boots. The one who had to be Ryan gasped, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, it's a grand day for the ducks and we just missed the murtherous
trinear
by a
falt
go
leth!
They told us at the
stesean
that two greasers and a white boy boarded the Burlington express north to Cheyenne and the cross-country Union Pacific and all and all!”

Nolan said he'd wire Cheyenne P.D. Ryan said he already had. Longarm said, “We proved up on the roof that the one called Ramon was sort of dumb. Neither Devil Dave nor the smoother
vaquero
called Hogan are as apt to run into a likely trap. They'll get off somewhere betwixt here and Cheyenne and go to ground in some hideout they've had plenty of time to set up. So don't that give me time to make it to West Texas a spell before they get there themselves? I mean, if I managed to be taken as a harmless drifter who was already there instead of riding in after them ...”

Billy Vail cut in to say, “I know what you mean. It's worth a try. But you're sure as shit bucking the odds, you stubborn young cuss!”

The late Ramon Kayitah had proven on the roof that rushing ahead thoughtless could take as much as fifty years off a man's life. Hence, even though old Billy Vail could be a mother hen to his deputies, his orders to do some homework on Devil Dave Deveruex before he tried to beat him to his own back door made a heap of sense.

Longarm hadn't been taking notes as he'd sat closer to the late Elsbeth Flagg, watching
her
take notes. So it made him feel sort of odd as he sat in the judge's chambers after closing time, going over a dead gal's transcribed and typed-up court records by lamplight as the wind and rain kept trying to open the windows to the dark outside.

The bare facts of Devil Dave's most recent outburst down by Pike's Peak only told him that the young Tex-Mex was a mad dog with an itchy trigger finger. It didn't prove he was good or bad in a gunfight. Most any sort of gun-hand could blow away bank tellers or innocent bystanders who weren't fighting back.

The longer yellow sheets, or criminal record, of the mean squirt took up a heap more paper than the transcripts of his unfinished trial. It was impossible to tell whether that poor gal they'd killed out yonder in the courtroom had typed the earlier transcripts. All court records were worded in that same sedate way, without a lick of emotion as they described such earlier misdeeds as gunning a town drunk, just to see how long it would take anyone to notice he lay dead instead of drunk in a gutter. Longarm knew the dead gal had read that, whether she'd typed it or not. He wondered how she'd felt about the prisoner as she'd sat there recording his trial, looking cool as a cucumber, and now she lay down at the morgue on a cold zinc table, and if they didn't pump some formalin in her veins and stick a cannula up her ass to drain her guts, she was fixing to look just awful before they could get her home for her kin to bury.

He leafed through the yellow sheets to where they began with the one son of an otherwise respected family gunning that colored trooper and then bragging about it. Other offenses followed, one right after another, with none of them making financial sense. From the bare-bones background offered in old warrants and arrest records Longarm had the Deveruex y Lopez clan of Val Verde, Terrell, and Crocket County, Texas, owning many a cow, grazing many an acre under a modest army of hired help ruled by the widow of the late Sean Deveruex and managed by the older daughter of the house, a Señorita Consuela Deveruex y Lopez, as she signed the checks. There was nothing saying why Devil Dave's big sister had been left in charge. But that wasn't too tough to figure. What was tougher to figure was why Devil Dave had taken to holding up banks instead of just acting crazy mean. Maybe there'd be something explaining that in those land office files he'd asked old Henry to rustle up before he went home.

Longarm glanced up hopefully when the door swung open. Then he saw it wasn't old Henry standing there with two arms full of dusty ledgers.

It was that aptly nicknamed Miss Bubbles from the stenographers pool. They called her Miss Bubbles because everything about her seemed to be as globular as anything could get while it managed to stay pretty. So a big round bun of blonde hair perched atop her pretty oval face, from which big round eyes stared innocent as hell, considering how innocent Miss Bubbles was when another body got to know her. Longarm stared up uncertainly at the globular breasts staring back at him from atop the books she was toting as he quietly said, “Evening, Miss Bubbles. I was expecting old Henry, and how come you don't have anything on but them shoes and socks at the moment?”

The blonde shut the door behind her with a playful bump from her globular bare behind as she calmly replied, “Henry had a supper date with another chum. So I told him I'd take good care of you and you know full well I'm a woman of my word, Custis!”

Longarm gulped and said, “I sure do, and I told you how much I enjoyed it, Miss Bubbles. But I thought we agreed it wasn't too wise to mix our private lives with our jobs, here in the same building.”

She dropped the pile of books he'd asked for on the desk in front of him to stand there bold as brass and naked as a jay in the flattering lamplight, hands on globular bare hips, as she pouted, “You were planning the ruination of poor Elsbeth, weren't you? What did she have to offer that I haven't already given you, you brute?”

It wasn't easy, but Longarm kept a straight face as he assured her and the other ladies from the stenographers pool that he'd never even spoken to the poor gal murdered that very day.

Miss Bubbles shrugged her rounded bare shoulders and replied, “You were getting ready to. She told us so, herself.”

Longarm felt no call to fight the sheepish smile that crossed his face as he confessed, “That's the trouble with messing with the gals where you work. Like I told you, it always gets around the whole blamed building and you never know who's likely to take it the wrong way.”

Miss Bubbles moved closer to perch her bare rump on a corner of the desk as she assured him, “I wasn't jealous of poor Elsbeth. I knew she was cherry. She told us so herself, poor thing. So I knew that once you'd tried in vain you'd come limping back to this more willing blonde with your poor throbbing organ grinder.”

She ground her bare crotch around on the corner of the desk to ask in a huskier tone just how hard he might be at the moment.

Longarm laughed and insisted, “I never stayed after hours to worry about such matters, no offense. I didn't even know you were still in the building and I really have to go through those federal ratifications of old Spanish land grants!”

To which she demurely replied, “I did stay in the building when Henry told me you'd be in here working late. So we're all alone up here and you've got all night to paw through those fool books after you've pawed me some and screwed me a lot to make up for even considering another woman when you had all this waiting for you, ready and willing!”

Longarm started to argue. But life was too short to spend more than a man had to, arguing with women. So, thinking back to what a friendly whorehouse madam had told her working girls about just getting down and dirty to get it over with, he rose to toss his hat aside and haul Miss Bubbles in for a stand-up kiss.