“Suit yourself,” the clerk said, “but you’ll find vaudeville shows hot and stuffy if we don’t get a break in this infernal weather. If you want to see a real show, out where the wind can get at you, what about the Fiesta de Juarez? They’re throwing it this evening, starting just after sundown.”
Longarm sighed and said, “I ain’t supposed to cross over to Juarez.”
The clerk laughed and said, “Not there, here, in the El Paso Mex Quarter. I don’t think El Presidente Diaz would let ‘em hold such a demonstration in Juarez. When they ain’t dancing and strumming, our own Spanish- speaking residents like to make speeches in favor of the Juarez revolution they feel Diaz betrayed.”
Longarm said he’d study on it, then left. Billy Vail hadn’t sent him all this way to listen to Mexican political speeches, or even to dance with Mexican gals, although that sounded more like it. He started up the walk, and it was a good thing it was covered most of the way by awnings or ‘dobe overhangs. For he hadn’t gone far before a streak of lightning ripped the belly out of the swollen gray sky and it commenced to rain fire and salt.
Longarm paused in a dry doorway to light a cheroot. He studied the best way to move on without wading knee-deep in swirling brown water, now that the street had decided it wanted to be a river in flood. The walk was already inches awash and he could only move up on the stone doorstep and hope for the best. His damned matches were supposed to be waterproof, but it took three tries before one was willing to flare. He lit his smoke and watched a dead cat and some driftwood bob by. He smoked the cheroot down, tossed it out to see where it might want to go next, and had just about made up his mind that it wouldn’t bore him as much to get wet when, as suddenly as it had begun, the rain stopped and the sun came out to beam down at the flooded streets of El Paso.
He could see by the swift muddy current that all that water had to be running somewhere. He lit another smoke and saw that little islands of horse shit and mud were already forming out there. He waited until the street was running more like old Cherry Creek up in Denver, then was able to cross it dry-shod by leaping from sandbar to sandbar. This at least put him on the same side as his hotel. But he’d no sooner made it than it began to rain again, even harder. He watched the street fill up again and muttered, “I wish you’d make up your mind, Thunderbird.” Then he headed back to his hotel. There was no sense drowning unless a man had someplace serious to go. He knew such summer storms never lasted long in these parts, so he decided to wait for fairer weather before he wandered anywhere.
This time he entered the Hotel International by way of the front door. The desk clerk called him over. Longarm expected to be told he’d gotten a wire or even better a police report. But the clerk said, “A lady was in here asking for you, Deputy Long. You just missed her.”
Longarm said, “She must have been a mermaid. Did she ask you to ring my room?”
The clerk shook his head and replied, “No. She just asked if you were registered here. I told her you were, since you are, and she said she’d try again, later.”
“I don’t suppose she left a name before she went swimming some more?” asked Longarm.
He wasn’t surprised when the clerk said, “No. She only said something about trying later.”
“I wish they’d quit trying altogether. What did she look like?”
“Nice. She was wearing a sort of shapeless slicker and a rain hat, but what there was of her to see was mighty pretty. I couldn’t see her hair, but I think her eyes were hazel. Does that sound like anyone you know?”
“Not here in El Paso. If she shows up again, send her right on up. Then ring me on the house phone. It’s safe to do that now, I hope.”
He went on to climb to the top floor, squashing on the plush a mite this time. When he got to his door he saw the match stem he left jammed just below the bottom hinge was still in place. But just the same, once he was inside, he took the back of the bedside telephone off to make sure it hadn’t been fooled with in his absence. It hadn’t. The one wired to ring louder had been put in the closet for now.
He got rid of his hat and gun rig, sat on the bed, and hauled off his old stovepipe army boots. Then he changed his socks. It was raining now, if anything, harder than ever. So much for the fiesta they’d planned on for that evening. That left him nothing more entertaining to consider than his mysterious female visitor. So he considered her, stretched out atop the bed covers in his shirt sleeves and socks.
It wasn’t true he didn’t know any white women at all in El Paso. He’d been through before and recalled a couple with some fondness. But the only Texas gal in recent memory who hadn’t said she’d never speak to him was old Jessie Starbuck, better known as Lone Star, and El Paso was west of her usual stomping grounds.
If it had been Jessie, and she really came back, the results were likely to be distracting as well as delightful. For while they always seemed to wind up in bed together, sooner or later, the somewhat ferocious Lone Star hardly ever looked him up unless she wanted him to help her hunt somebody down. He didn’t mind feeling a mite used and abused, when he had nothing better to do. But he had his own hunting to tend to in El Paso.
He glanced at the raindrops running down his window panes and yawned. Whoever the gal had been, she’d said she might be back. Meanwhile the door was locked, his .44 hung handy on the bedpost, and he had his derringer in his vest pocket if things got really tricky.
Mulling over the little the clerk had told him, Longarm decided the gal in the slicker didn’t work so good as a member of the Great Costello’s murderous clan. She hadn’t asked the clerk to ring the telephone beside his bead, so that couldn’t have been her reason—they had no way of knowing whether their comrades had been shot before or after switching the duplicate telephones unless she didn’t want him dead. No gal in cahoots with the Great Costello would have missed that OpPOrtunity. She’d have considered it worth a try, at least.
The clerk said she’d asked if he was staying here, as if she didn’t know. The Great Costello had known he was, and even the room number, so he’d have had no reason to risk a confederate just to find out what he already knew.
Longarm yawned again and told himself, “There you go again. You know the tricky little bastard depends on misdirection, or getting a man to think along natural lines while he pulls something plain logic would never lead one to expect. We got to keep an open mind, old son. Stage magicians hate to perform in front of children because kids, not having been taught to think logical yet, let their innocent little eyes wander instead of looking where they’re told to. We’d best just keep staring, innocent and childlike, until we see him stuffing that rabbit in the hat as bold as brass.”
He yawned again and closed his eyes, lulled by the patter of the raindrops and the effort of not thinking too grown-up. Old Pearl of Wisdom had told him an amusing story about a famous stage magician who thundergasted the audience with a trick so simple it seemed impossible to get away with. The cuss had these two big flashy German-silver jars on separate stands, say ten feet apart. He’d hold one up to show everyone how empty
