Longarm on the Fever Coast (19 page)

Longarm nodded and said, "Pryce & Doyle don't want to pay the going rates?"

To which the Texican replied with a scowl, "They ain't willing to pay last year's rates. They seem to feel they got a monopoly here as the only meat packers within miles. But I've been driving my own beef up to Corpus Christi on the hoof. It may be a bother, and I may have had to hire some extra hands, but fair is fair and I'd as soon break even selling beef in Corpus Christi than get slickered by damn Yankees rich enough to make their own damned ice!"

They thanked the irate stockman for the information and rode on. They crossed that same tidal creek, and Longarm showed her where Consuela's dad had been attacked by that gator. Norma said she doubted reptiles caught Malta fever, and that even if they did, it hadn't ought to make them go mad like dogs with hydrophobia.

As they got into town they parted friendly, or at least as friendly as Victorian folks felt proper in public. She made him promise to drop by her fever ward before he left town again, whether he found out anything more about the plague or not.

Longarm was more worried about lying cow thieves who might or might not have back-shooting pals still out there. So while he still hoped to tie the gang into any infected stock from Old Mexico, he headed back to that chandlery on the waterfront to mostly ask old Gordo if anyone ever called him Chino.

This time the reception was friendlier. The fat chandler hauled Longarm into the back, and sat him at a kitchen table to pour him some pulque and yell at his womenfolk for some grub for their guest.

When Longarm said he'd been eating all morning, Gordo insisted he have something anyway, explaining, "A messenger from Corpus Christi got through to us a few minutes after you had left, El Brazo Largo. I hope you won't tell La Bruja we were rude to you on purpose!"

Longarm smiled and replied, "If you don't make me eat no more. Should anyone ever ask, my only honest answer would have to be that it takes a smart man to play convincingly dumb."

He sipped some pulque--another acquired taste some compared to alcoholic snot, although it was mostly fermented agave--and just said right out he was looking for a Mex cow thief called Chino who'd been riding with the Anglo outlaw caught next door a short spell back.

Gordo answered simply, "We heard about it. They had the stolen stock in the vacant lot down on the other side of us. I did not wish for to get any of us into it. So we stayed inside during most of the excitement. But I don't think anybody riding with the one they caught was of La Raza. Chino can mean Chinaman as well as a Mexican with a moon face and muy indio eyes, no?"

Longarm finished off as much of his pulque as he meant to, and got back to his feet. "A regular Chinaman riding the owlhoot trail sounds even wilder than a Mex, no offense. Maybe I can get some answers next door, at that meat-packing plant Baldwin got his fool self arrested in. Is it all right with you if I leave my mount out front for now?"

Gordo grinned and said, "No. When you wish for to ride again you will find El Brazo Largo's caballo out back, watered and fed fresh corn I save for such honored guests!"

So they shook on it and Longarm went back outside. The sun was almost directly overhead now, and some drunk was already holding up the corner of the meat-packing plant with his back, wrapped in a red serape with his big straw sombrero down over his face to keep the sun out of his eyes.

Longarm had to explore some before he found a sheet-metal-covered door that wasn't locked on the inside. The one he found had a sign that said, "Office." So he knocked, and when nobody answered, went on inside. He found himself at the foot of a long wooden stairway. As he mounted it he saw a few chinks in the vertical planking to his left, the wall to his right being solid brick. When he paused to peer through a knothole, he saw a cavernous space that reminded him of that cold-storage hold aboard the northbound steamer. The same brine pipes, frosted with ice, ran along the far brick wall. At least a hundred sides of beef hung down there on hooks you could roll along the overhead network of single rails. Longarm was more interested in such industrial details than some, but he wasn't there to study meat packing, so he went on up to the second floor and knocked on a frosted glass door. A male voice invited him in, calling out, "It's open."

The older but still spry-looking gent in his late forties regarding him from behind a desk like Billy Vail's was sitting in his shirt and vest with his expensive frock coat and pearl-gray hat hung up near the window on the far side of him. When Longarm introduced himself, the man identified himself as Mister Doyle of Pryce & Doyle, poured them both some real bourbon, and asked how he might be of service to the federal government.

Doyle's bourbon was good and his manners were polite, but Longarm got the feeling he was wasting time. Doyle told the same tale to Longarm as he had to everyone else. He'd only seen Clay Baldwin when the rough-hewn cuss had surprised the hell out of him with an offer of stolen beef-cows, as close as Doyle could recall the tally. He said the local law had read the brands and cut up the herd the outlaws had left behind in a salt marsh on their way to parts unknown. He suggested Longarm check the exact tally with Constable Purvis. But he was sure none of the cows recovered had worn those fancier brands Mexican stockmen went in for, and allowed he'd never heard of anyone, Anglo or Mexican, called Chino.

Longarm agreed Clay Baldwin had been known to fib about a lot, and then said, "Let's talk about sick cows, whether stolen or bought fair and square. You'd have noticed if any of the cows you slaughtered and butchered here were sweating like hell, shivering even harder, and so forth, right?"

Doyle pursed his lips. "It should have been reported to me, of course. Naturally I don't do any butchering myself these days."

But when Longarm asked if he might talk to the hands who did, the meat packer told him, "You'll have to come back tomorrow, when my senior partner and head butcher get back. They're on a buying trip further west, hoping to make up our next shipment at the right price."

Longarm smiled thinly and said, "I was told you gents drove a hard bargain, no offense. Stockmen around here seem to feel they'd as soon drive their beef on up the coast. Where do you reckon Clay Baldwin or his mysterious pard Chino got the notion you'd be in the market for even cheaper beef?"

Doyle looked less friendly as he primly replied, "I'm not sure I like your tone, Deputy Long! Isn't it mighty obvious that we'd have simply bought that beef from Baldwin if that was our game? I'll have you know I threw down on him and turned him over to the law after he offered that stock at five dollars a head C.O.D. after dark!"

Longarm nodded soberly. "That's a bargain in beef on the hoof or off, and once you'd run 'em inside downstairs, you'd have skinned 'em out of their branded hides before anyone was any the wiser. I ain't the only one who's allowed you acted honest as well as brave when those crooks approached you, Mister Doyle. It's going to take us some time to carry Baldwin back to Colorado, give him as fair a trial as he deserves, and stretch his neck as far as it can go. So he'll likely fill in some details for us between now and then. I've seen condemned crooks turn in kin for an extra slice of pie with their last meal."

He put down his shot glass and turned toward the door, saying he'd be back, maybe the next day, to talk with Doyle's senior partner and head butcher.

Doyle rose to follow him out on the landing, demanding, "Why? I just told you all that any of us know about the matter."

Longarm nodded. "I'm sure you have, no offense. But this ain't the first meat-packing plant I've ever visited, and I'm sort of puzzled about just a few points somebody who gets his hands dirtier might be able to clear up."

He went down the long stairway as Doyle went back in his office. Then he headed back to the chandlery, noting that same sleepy cuss was still propped against the bricks. But what bothered him about the stranger taking an early siesta didn't sink in all the way before he heard a distant window open and somebody he couldn't see tossed a bottle, or glass, out to bust and tinkle on the cobbles.

Then Longarm had his gun out, covering the serape-wrapped figure at his feet as he snapped, "Tenga cuidado, hombre! Soy tengo el filo, aqui." And when that didn't work he tried, "I said I have the drop on you, asshole! I didn't think a real Mex drunk would be sporting those expensive Justin boots under a dirty blanket and straw sombrero!"

The fake Mexican tried shooting up at Longarm through the grimy red wool. He got off two rounds and one came close, but not as close as Longarm's pissed-off burst of fire aimed at point-blank range. So the treacherous rascal wearing a dapper Anglo riding outfit and.45-28 Starr wound up stretched out on the dust with that dumb hat blown away but half the red serape covering his face.

Longarm kicked it away as he reloaded, staring down bemused at the softly smiling face of a total stranger as he reloaded. The dumb bastard looked to be around fifty. Longarm had just hunkered down to go through some pockets when Gordo, from next door, came timidly over to make the sign of the cross and shyly ask, "For why did you shoot Senor Pryce just now, El Brazo Largo?"

Longarm was back on his feet and moving off as he called back, "I had to. He was fixing to back-shoot me again. Tell Purvis who did it when he gets here. I'll tell him why as soon as I get back with his sneaky partner, Doyle!" He tore around the back of Gordo's chandlery, hauled that Coast Guard pony out of his brushwood stable, and forked himself up into his army saddle to ride after that son of a bitch.

The best way to chase another cuss was to figure which way he'd likely head, not give him a greater lead while you asked others for directions. So Longarm loped across the main street and headed west along that same lane leading to the inland wagon trace. For a man on the run with the law hot on his heels would likely choose some solitude as he lathered his own brute, and the coast road ran through much more of town as well as past that Coast Guard station to the north. All bets were off if the bastard was riding south, but from what La Bruja had told Longarm the shady meat packers had at least one mighty shady confederate up in Corpus Christi, if one of the partners themselves hadn't been trying to recruit Mexicans to dry-gulch a dangerous Anglo.

He had a better handle now on why they'd considered him dangerous. Thanks to old Reporter Crawford of the Denver Post, a lot of folks knew the notorious Longarm had spent some time punching cows before going to work under Marshal Billy Vail. Yet he'd missed what they were up to, and might have never studied on a dinky meat packing operation in a dinky seaport if they'd been smart enough to leave him the hell alone. There were heaps of stockmen coming and going all around the establishment of Pryce & Doyle, yet how many had ever seen fit to wonder how you ran a slaughterhouse without any stockyards out back, or why the tallow-rendering plants, fertilizer mills, and tanneries you usually saw next to a slaughterhouse hadn't been anywhere in the whole blamed town.

He was sure he had more answers than he really did as he tore out to the west with his saddle gun cocked across his knees, eyes peeled for ambush from the cactus hedges around the small milpas he tore by.

Then he spotted a small familiar figure afoot ahead, and reined in as that young Mexican gal Consuela turned around in the dusty road with a puzzled look on her pretty little face.

Longarm called out, "I'm chasing that sneaky meat packer, Doyle. Might you have seen him out this way, on most any sort of transportation? I suspect he signaled his partner the jig was up and lit out when I got that partner instead."

Consuela stared up owl-eyed to reply, "Pero no, senor. I am on my way home for to search for wicked cabras my little brother just told me about. I told La Senorita Norma I had to go find them for Papacito before la aligador gets them. I do not know for why they run off into the spartina reeds like that when they are feeling bad, but they do, and I know where to search for them."

He said he felt sure she did, and started to wheel his mount around to try another direction when what she'd said sank all the way in and he said, "Hold on. You say your goats have been coming down sick, Consuela?"

She said, "Si, more than half of them. Pero not all at once. One gets to shaking and dragging its poor hooves and then, just as it seems to feel better, another we thought was well again starts to cry and butt its head against things."

"Like those folks in town!" Longarm gasped. "Sick goats wandering into the swamps to get eaten by gators could account for a hungry gator boldly backtracking to your milpa in hopes of more goat meat and settling for... Do you folks sell a lot of goat meat in town, Consuela?"

She burst that bubble by shaking her head and declaring, "Pero no! Where would we get the milk for to make cheese or put in coffee if we slaughtered our milk goats for meat, senor?"

Longarm didn't answer. He was already headed back to town, as fast as he'd just ridden out. As he hit the main street again he saw a considerable crowd to his right, near the meat-packing plant. He swung the other way, slid his mount to a stop in front of the old icehouse, and tore inside, calling out to Norma, "Hey, Doc, I think I got it!"

The Junoesque Norma came across the cot-cluttered floor to meet him, looking innocent, in her fresh white outfit. But she smiled awfully sweet as she asked him in a puzzled tone what on earth he was talking about.