Longarm 244: Longarm and the Devil's Sister Page 7

  They wound up with her on top, sobbing about how he’d ruined her for any other customers that evening whilst he sucked a nipple and shot yet another wad up into her. Then she said she’d go fetch them that sangria at last, and he was too spent and too thirsty to do anything but lie there sweaty and too out of breath to want another smoke or, hell, anything at all, for the foreseeable future.

  Some kindly old philospher had written, doubtless in French, that the only times a man was completely sane was after a good lay. Longarm proved his point as soon as Perfidia was back in her chemise and out in the hall, by rolling out of bed to get the double derringer from his denim jacket and flop back in bed with the wicked little weapon in hand under the sheet he’d draped modestly over his privates.

  Down in the kitchen, the fully dressed Chongo loomed out of the shadows to demand, “Que tal? Hay algo para mi?”

  Perfidia replied in a desperately casual tone, “No se preocupe. He knows for how to treat a woman, but he is nobody important. They would not send a diputado federale here alone who did not speak more Spanish than that one, eh?”

  Chongo growled, “He could be pretending to know less than he lets on about everything.”

  The pretty whore fluttered her lashes and smiled knowingly as she assured Chongo, “He does not speak much Spanish. There are ways for a working girl to test a man when he is at his most maravilloso in her. I tested him with other surprise questions. I am sure he knows little or nothing about anyone around here or any problems they might be having. I told him I’d come down here for to get some sangria. It is starting to get muy caliente and the wine may get him for to tell me more. But I am certain he is no more than a wandering vaquero Yanqui looking for work.”

  So Chongo told her she was doing swell, patted her on her rump, and let her pass to fetch the sangria.

  Sangria translated literally as “bloodshed,” but Mexicans as often meant a cooling summer drink made from citrus and other fruit juices with red wine, ice, and tequila if there was either handy. It looked more like cherry punch than blood and tasted ... well, like sangria. Few folk who got to drink any sangria on a hot West Texas day ever complained about the taste and the kick could make your world seem a better place, made with enough tequila.

  Perfidia carried a pitcher made with enough tequila back up to her room as she considered the lack of trust shown by El Brazo Largo. As a woman who made a good living understanding men, Perfidia had figured out why he wouldn’t trust a strange woman he’d just met, no matter how many times he might come in her. As a patriotic Mexican despite her social position, or perhaps because of it, Perfidia still wanted to help. So she’d decided on the best way by the time she was back in bed with him, serving him sangria and anything else he might desire as she pretended he had her fooled.

  She’d lied to Chongo about a truer friend of her people because he rode for the grandeza Consuela Deveruex y Lopez and anyone could see a famous diputado federale had to be after that worthless mierdito of a brother she was trying for to save again. Like many another in the lower Pecos Valley, Perfidia was more afraid of the powerful Deveruex-Lopez clan than anxious to save a homicidal lunatic indulged by his family as if he’d been no worse than a spoiled brat. But neither the really friendly whore nor any of her real friends knew where David El Diablo might be hiding, or whether he was even back on his home range after that daring escape up north. So perhaps it didn’t really matter that El Brazo Largo only wanted to sip sangria and have sex with her. She could still help him in other ways, in spite of himself.

  Chongo had ordered her to find out more about this Duncan Crawford El Brazo Largo claimed to be. If she asked him what she was supposed to tell Chongo, El Brazo Largo would just try to change the subject again, and it was getting too hot for to chingar.

  So she snuggled closer, running her iced glass over his hairy belly to comfort him as she coyly pumped her bedmate as if she believed in the tooth fairy and a saddle tramp called Duncan Crawford, Sweet Santa Maria, Madre de Dios!

  She found her siesta sharer more willing to gossip about the range he’d been riding up New Mexico way. Longarm has passed through a lot of it on more than one field mission. That was one of the main reasons he’d decided on being an out-of-work New Mexico rider. He was on safe ground saying the late Major Murphy’s big store in Lincoln had been converted to the county court house, or that Dad Peppin had resigned as Sheriff, with the easy-going George Kimbrell filling in Dad Peppin’s unexpired term until the coming November elections.

  Being a woman, Perfidia wanted to hear more about the scandalous carryings on betwixt Uncle John Chisum and his so-called niece, over Roswell way at South Spring, and, again, Longarm was on safe ground for bullshitting because he’d been there, more than once, if not as Duncan Crawford.

  He truthfully told the Texas whore, “Miss Sally behaved as a warm and hospitable lady when they coffeed and caked me at South Spring. I know some say she’s the daughter of Uncle John’s dead brother, James, whilst others say she’s just a young play-pretty a man going on sixty would feel silly marrying up with. I don’t know whether it’s true he sleeps on the floor in a bedroll at night, neither. The main house was furnished luxurious and Miss Sally had manners fit for Queen Victoria’s court the few times I dropped by. Chisum’s made a heap of friends and enemies grazing all them Jingle Bob and Long Rail cows up yonder. All them newspaper reporters filling in the blanks of that Lincoln County War has added to the mythology. I can tell you for a fact that nobody on either side gunned a bunch of Chisum riders and inspired Uncle John to switch sides. He pulled in his horns when the gunplay got serious, the same as everyone else with a lick of sense. Before you ask, this child never rode for either side. I’m a cow hand, not a gun hand.”

  She assured him she believed him and so, what with some more smoking and sipping, with her indulging in a little sucking, they passed away the smouldering heat of a West Texas day, and when the siesta hours had ended and he asked how much he owed her, she blubbered up and ran out of the room crying, holding the hem of her chemise to her eyes with a hell of a view exposed. So Longarm got dressed and left to find some place he could bed down more serious for the coming night.

  Nobody with a lick of sense rode clean across the country by coach, now that you could ride by rail from New York to San Francisco. But the rebel state of Texas had been left behind at railroad building because of the war and the longer Reconstruction that had followed. So they still had a stage line running betwixt San Antone and El Paso, with a spur line up and down the Pecos to feed mail and passengers to the same.

  That gave Sheffield-Crossing its own station, where a body could stay overnight if he wanted to. So Longarm hired a cell smaller than Perfidia’s, with a cot a monk or nun might find a tad narrow, and left his saddlebags there with his Winchester so’s he could make it to the Paseo in the church plaza they’d be starting just after sundown.

  Paseo hailed from a Spanish verb that covered gaping, loitering, or strolling aimless. As El Paseo, it covered a more thought-out way to stretch one’s legs betwixt the afternoon siesta and the late-night suppers most Spanish-speaking folk went in for, once it got cool enough to slurp hot soup, and, for all the mean things some Texicans had to say about Mexicans, they’d taken to El Paseo in West Texas the same as they’d taken to Mex boots, saddles, sombreros, and other such greaser notions that only made common sense in hot dry cow country.

  Every town that had at least one Papist church had a plaza, and it was up to the ladies of the town whether they wanted to circle it clockwise or the other way as they worked up an appetite for supper or whatever in their evening outfits, which were generally fandango skirts and off-the-shoulder blouses, in border country.

  The gents of the town strolled around the plaza counter to the she-male flow as the sun went down and lanterns were lit to make everybody look more interesting. You could hardly tell if a couple of gigglesome gals coming your way needed a bath or not as you passed each other, not looking, the
first time or so. After you passed the same gal more times, it was considered only natural to ogle anyone so fine. It was up to whether she ogled or even smiled back. Once you got to at one another in passing it was considered all right her how she felt about joining you later for supper or ver. Her menfolk were not required to kill you for the honor if she’d met you at El Paseo, where any unes shemale was on her own. Big brothers who really cared forbade their sister to go to the plaza. And so hardly but Anglos ever got hurt. Hard-up Mexicans didn’t miliated by gals who might not fancy them because ever spoke to the gal until she’d sent the proper smoke with her eyes. It was the overly anxious Anglo boys tended to fresh-mouth a gal who’d just looked clean ugh them.

  When Longarm got to the plaza, things were just getting rted as a couple of really dreadful-looking young gals olled alone, counterclockwise, in the soft light of gloaming.

  Longarm took up a position under a street lantern and lit smoke as he waited to see what might happen next. The thing he wanted at the moment was a start-from-scratch ith another Mexican gal. But a stranger sizing up the local tion looked less suspicious than a stranger starting conver tions in saloons and barber shops.

  So what happened next was Chongo. The branding crew oss sidled up to Longarm, smoking his own brand, to say, Buenoches. Didn’t you get enough pussy this afternoon, old on?”

  Longarm shrugged and said, “Thanks to you. I owe you a swell piece of ass, but I’m sorry to say I don’t bend over for other boys. What might you be doing here, if you don’t want ither of them ugly young gals out yonder?”

  Chongo said, “Miss Connie Deveruex sent me to fetch you. She and her momma, Dona Felicidad, are expecting you for supper. Take my well-meant advice and accept her kind invitation.”

  Chapter 9

  Their town house was just to the other side of the church, Chongo told Longarm along the way, because old Dona Felicidad spent so much of her time with her rosary in the family pew these days. Her daughter had bought her the town house after she’d been widowed and taken to pining alone out to their homespread down the valley.

  Longarm knew before they got there that the supper invite was just a white lie. It wasn’t right eight o’clock yet, and high-toned Hispanics were inclined to dine at nine or ten and stay up way past Anglo bedtime, to put in the usual amount of sleep humans needed, in two four-hour shifts. One in the wee small hours and the other during the siesta hours just past. You could get four hours of sleep when you didn’t spend a siesta with someone like Perfidia.

  A gatekeeper in livery and a Schofield .45 let them into a fancier patio than Rosalinda’s, and Rosalinda’s patio was fancier than most. The moorish-tiled fountain sported running water, meaning someone had to pump well water to a roof tank now and again. Most big Hispanic houses had more help hanging about than they really needed. Travel writers who low-rated the pitiful salaries paid to Mex household help missed the point that, like some Indians who kept extra wives, Mexican patrones were expected to take on kith and kin who had no place else to be.

  So there was a butler in livery to let them into the grand entrance across the patio and an Indian gal dressed like a French maid to lead them into the main sala, where that dusky blonde Longarm had already seen sat by a cold baronial fire-place with an older, once pretty lady with a darker complexion but likely some white blood. They’d both dressed for supper in black gowns and mantillas with Spanish lace to crown their gold and silver heads, respective. It wasn’t clear to Longarm whether they were in mourning for that dead vaquero, the late head of their house, or just dressed high-toned. Hispanic blue-bloods tended to dress sort of gloomy as well as expensive, in velvet or lace to match a coal bin at midnight.

  Consuela Deveruex y Lopez looked more imperious up close than she had trudging down the street behind that hearse, and she hadn’t trudged all that humble to begin with. When Chongo introduced Longarm to her as Duncan Crawford she held out the back of her hand to say, “Ay, si, un nombre escocea. Esta Usted en su casa.” Then she caught Longarm’s deliberately dumb expression and added, “¿No habla Usted Español?”

  Longarm shook with her instead of kissing her hand as he sheepishly replied, “I got that last part, ma’am. I can talk enough Mex to get in trouble. But most of the words I know in the lingo ain’t fit for the ears of such fine ladies.”

  So she told him in plain English to set a spell because supper wasn’t ready yet. He noticed Chongo leaving as he sat down across from them in one of those straight-back Spanish chairs designed for sitting up prim and proper. The dusky blonde and her confused-looking mother had the more comfortable-looking sofa to themselves.

  Devil Dave’s older sister was about the same height as the mean little shit, making her taller than average for a gal. Her English was as natural and a tad more refined than his own. Longarm wondered idly whether her kind felt more Tex or Mex most of the time. There were a lot of her kind in West Texas and even more up New Mexico way these days.

  Still another maid came in to serve them all red wine with cheese and tortillas. The daughter of the house said he had their permit to smoke if he liked. When Longarm allowed he was trying to cut down on tobacco, she suddenly blurted, “Chongo tells us you said you’d ridden for a Diamond K in New Mexico?”

  Longarm had already had time to reconsider that whopper. So he met her eye and smiled easily as he explained, “That ain’t exactly what I said, ma’am. Leastways, it wasn’t exactly what I meant. Diamond K was the trail brand on some ponies I rode herd on betwixt Fort Union and Roswell. I can’t tell you where that remuda started out from.”

  She said, “I can. The Diamond K is a horse-breeding spread south of Denver, Colorado. You say you only signed on at Fort Union?”

  Longarm washed down some tortilla-wrapped cheese with the mighty fine dry wine and replied, “A couple of hands had quit along the way. I’d just run some army beef up to Fort Union and—”

  “Do you know El Cabrito?” she suddenly cut in, to his considerable relief. But he made himself sound slightly pissed as he soberly replied, “If you mean that wild youth some of your folk translate El Cabrito or Chivito from The Kid, I sure wish you’d tell me why everybody asks me that the minute I say I hail from New Mexico territory. I hate to brag, but I do ride Top Hand, which is more than any Henry McCarty, William Bonney, Kid Antrim, or Billy The Kid can say. He may be handy with a shovel or gun. Such fame as he deserves comes from his having outlived most of the gun hands of the Chisum, Tunstall, McSween side. He was riding under the late Dick Brewer and taking his orders from Lawyer McSween during most of that religious argument, Miss Connie.”

  The dusky blonde blinked and allowed she’d never heard the Lincoln County War described as a religious argument before.

  Longarm shrugged and replied, “There wasn’t much else for grown men to get so wild about, Miss Connie. The whole sorry mess lasted a mere six months and left the leaders on both sides dead or a lot less prosperous than they’d started out.”

  He sipped some wine and continued, “On the one side was Major L.G. Murphy, Jim Dolan, and Sheriff Bill Brady, Irish Catholics who’d got there first. The side favored by a mostly Protestant national press were either out to break a business-ranching monopoly or horn in on a mostly Catholic Tex-Mex community, depending on who you ask. They were funded by their rich Uncle John Chisum. Stockman Hank Tunstall and a side-switching Lawyer McSween set up their own general store, hotel, and bank across the street from the Murphy-Dolan premises in Lincoln. Chisum, Tunstall, and McSween were a mixed bag of Protestants. So the Irish Catholic Sheriff Brady sided with Murphy and Dolan and the fun and games began.”

  She frowned thoughtfully and said, “I was told The Kid followed our own Santa Fe and gets on well with Mexicans.”

  Longarm shrugged and said, “You’re speaking of a teenager who doesn’t spend much time in any church. A heap that’s been written about his earlier boyhood seems to be total twaddle. He started out riding for Jim Dolan. He changed jobs and sides when Hank Tun
stall’s foreman, Dick Brewer, made him a better offer. Despite what’s been said about him avenging the death of a man who’d been a father to him, The Kid had been on Tunstall’s payroll three weeks when Sheriff Brady’s deputies shot old Hank in February of ’78. Brady got shot in the back in April. A few days later Buckshot Roberts and Dick Brewer killed each other in the same shoot-out. By July the Murphy-Dolan faction had their new sheriff, Dad Peppin, surround the McSween-Tunstall property across the street from them and burn it out, killing McSween and four or five others to end the so-called war, six months after in began, with both sides ruined and hardly anybody hiring since. That’s why I ain’t still up yonder, riding for anybody.”

  The old lady suddenly jumped up to run from the room as if she had the trots. She was gone before her daughter and Longarm could rise politely. Connie said, “You must excuse my mother. She doesn’t speak English and she hasn’t been well lately.”

  Longarm allowed most folk found the Lincoln County War tedious in any lingo. She said she had a morbid interest in young gunfighters and asked what he’d heard about her family problem.

  He said he’d heard her dad had died and left her in charge of things.

  “Nothing about my younger brother, David?” she insisted.

  He made himself go through the motions of trying to remember before he brightened and tried, “Oh, was that your brother that Texas Ranger was asking me about, earlier? He did ask me whether I knew some local boy called Devilish Dave and I told him true I had no idea where such an oddly described cuss might be found. You say Devilish Dave is your kid brother, Miss Connie? How come they call him Devilish Dave?”

  She sighed and said, “They don’t. They call him Devil Dave Deveruex and I fear he has some... mental condition. He had a bad bout of scarlet fever when we were little. They say that can leave a body... touched.”