Longarm shook his head. 'Texas produces food and fiber in bulk, and consumes manufactured goods from the east in far more modest amounts in far more compact form. So how many piano rolls or even pianos would it take to fill the shelter deck and cold-storage hold of a southbound coaster that should have delivered most of its passengers and cargo by the time it neared the end of its run?'
The prune-faced cuss shrugged. 'I only go by what they wire me from Galveston. Maybe a lot of people are headed for the mouth of the Rio Grande with a lot of stuff. I hear things are picking up down that way, what with the end of Reconstruction and the price of beef going through the roof. They've been putting in orange groves along our side of the river as well. Seems oranges grow swell in a hot sunny clime as long as they get plenty of irrigation water for their thirsty roots.'
Longarm didn't want to talk about growing oranges, or even cows, along the lower Rio Grande. So he muttered he'd be back before sundown, and headed for the Western Union across the plaza.
He wired Billy Vail a fuller report than Norma Richards would have sent from Escondrijo. Then he wired Norma, care of the Western Union office down her way, that he'd be back with her trunk in time for her to catch the next northbound, Lord willing and they were wrong about that coming storm.
He got over to the noisy but shaded and colorful Mexican market in time for a noonday snack, and ate on the fly as he strolled from one good smell to the other, buying dribs and drabs of this and that, which he polished off, sitting down at a small blue table in front of a cantina, with a tall cool schooner of cerveza. Mexican beer was the only thing that soft a man dared drink down there, unless it came to the table piping hot. The tamales, tapas, and such he'd picked up along the way had naturally been well cooked as well as fumigated with a ferocious amount of chili pepper.
As he sat there, enjoying the novelty of doing nothing about a damned thing for a spell, he became aware of two slightly ominous things at once. More than one passing Mexican called out casual warnings to secure the overhead awnings before el huricano arrived. And some Mexican kids kept peering around a taco stand at him as if he had two heads. He could only hope they found an Anglo sipping cerveza before a Mexican cantina an interesting novelty.
It was dumb for an Anglo with no fish to fry to hang around a Mexican neighborhood where he was getting stared at. So he finished his schooner sooner than he'd meant to, and got up to get going before anyone got up the nerve to act silly.
He thought someone already had when a ragged-ass boy in his teens with empty hands and an uncertain smile popped into view in front of him.
Longarm smiled back more coldly and growled, 'No me jadas, muchacho. I don't want to marry your sister and these fucking boots are mine!'
The kid gulped and said, 'I mean you no disrespect, senor. Pero you fit the description of an Anglo we were told to watch for here in Corpus Christi. We were wondering if by any chance you could be he.'
Longarm moved casually to place his broader back against a 'dobe wall, and noticed nobody seemed out to edge around behind him as he replied, 'Quien sabe? Everybody looks like somebody. Exactly who did you have in mind?'
The young Mexican said softly, 'An Anglo lawman, a Deputy Long, known to our people as El Brazo Largo. He is said to despise El Presidente Diaz down in our old country as much as we do, despite his riding for Tio Sam. So La Bruja wishes him to know he is in danger he may know nothing about, and if you wish for to speak with her-'
'I'd rather you tell me here and now,' Longarm cut in not too gently. 'El Presidente Diaz is neither the first nor the last of your breed who ever tried to knife me in an alley, no offense. So I'll just pass on following you into any barrio for a powwow with a lady even you describe as what my folks call a witch.'
The kid insisted, 'La Bruja never comes out in the daytime. She seldom leaves her own residencia after dark. I do not know what it is La Bruja wishes for to warn you about. As you see, I am only her mozo de mandados. Pero she seemed most anxious for to have a word with you, and if you will not come with me I can only tell her I tried.'
Longarm hesitated, then decided. 'I ought to have my head examined for insufferable curiosity. But seeing it's broad daylight and you seem smart enough to know I'll take you with me no matter what your pals might hit me with... How far is this old witch of yours?'
The kid said the mysterious La Bruja lived on the far side of an old Catholic church across the plaza. So Longarm told the mozo to make sure his young pals didn't tag along too close, and repeated his warning with a thoughtful pat of his no-nonsense.44-40 as he let the kid lead the way.
As they crossed that plaza he got dust in his eye. The wind was really picking up now. It was the wrong time of the year for a hurricane down this way, if there was a right time to have a hurricane anywhere. But they did have summer storms along this coast that could qualify as mighty serious. So he hoped he wasn't fixing to get stranded here in Corpus Christi with good old Norma's trunk.
They circled the church, cut across a graveyard with some of the family tombs big enough to raise chickens in, and wound up in a maze of narrow walled-in alleys just crooked enough to make you wonder. Both the older and newer parts of Corpus Christi lay on flat enough coastal plain. But the old Spanish-speaking builders had been free thinkers, tossing up one casa wrapped around a pateo here and another there, then filling in the lopsided spaces between with smaller and cheaper tenement courts. It was tougher to tell, in such barrios, how high on the hog folks might live. For rich or poor, none of the property owners to either side sprang for proper sidewalks, and one flat stucco wall topped with broken glass set in the mortar looked much the same as any other, no matter what lay on the other side.
His young guide led him not through one of the more imposing oak- or cypress-wood street entrances, but into a slot between what looked like two separate properties. At the far end of the gloomy passageway a smaller but stout-looking door had been deep-set in thick masonry. The kid knocked and the door swung inward, as if they'd been expected. But there was nobody visible in the dimly lit vestibule or on the flight of stairs winding down and lit by one wall sconce. It wasn't too clear which of four possible fort-like properties one was under as the stairs gave way to a long candle-lit corridor that seemed to have been laid out by a drunk trying to build straight.
As they neared a darker archway someone lit a candle on the far side of the beaded curtain across it, as if they'd been waiting up until then in the dark. Longarm smiled thinly at the theatrics of La Bruja. He wondered what the priests at that church near the plaza thought of the spooky way their neighborhood witch carried on. He knew they'd given up, down Mexico way, on trying to wean their simple folk of reliance on an odd mishmash of Roman and Aztec cures for what ailed them. He had more personal respect for the Mexican medicine men who described themselves as curados, who dosed sick folks with weeds and prayed to Christian saints and more pleasant Indian spirits. The ones claiming brujeria or powers of black magic did more harm than good with their love potions and such. But since this old witch said she wanted to help a friend of La Revolucien, the least a man could do would be to listen politely. So he pasted a respectful smile across his face as he followed the kid through the beaded
