his semierection. As she gently stroked his manly organ-grinder she pleaded, 'Please don't try to take advantage of my weak nature, El Brazo Largo. I am already so ashamed of giving in to my own curious nature.'
He hugged her bare flesh closer with the smoke gripped in bared teeth as he said, 'I'm still curious about them rascals out to kill me. What were you so curious about, senora?'
She giggled and confided, 'You, senor. They say La Mariposa still brags insufferably about the many times she made El Brazo Largo come in her, down in Ciudad Mejico when they were hiding from los rurales in a railroad signal tower. Is that story true by the way?'
Longarm chuckled fondly and declared, 'Truer than tales of a blood-sucking lesbian who can turn into a black panther on occasion, I reckon. It ain't polite to talk about screwing ladies who ain't here to defend themselves, and I never thought you were a lesbian to begin with.'
She demurely asked if he was convinced she didn't like to suck, and when he allowed he was, she proved him wrong by sliding her head down his naked belly, long hair trailing, and proceeding to suck like all get out, although it wasn't his blood she was sucking.
So what with one pleasant surprise and another, Longarm wound up spending the rest of the day in the dark with La Bruja, and while he finally learned her real name and enough to lock her away for years, he never did get her to tell him who those other crooks were, or why they were after him, Lord love her.
CHAPTER 6
Longarm still would have done it his own way, weather permitting. But when he checked in at the steam line again that night, they told him none of their vessels would be coming or going till that heavy weather let up outside.
That sounded reasonable. The warm wet wind was blowing harder by the hour, and the heavy air smelled like spent brass cartridges, or a coming hurricane. So there was nobody laying in wait for him around the deserted wind-swept waterfront when he circled in silently from the lee side of some dark and shuttered warehouses with his gun out and his eyes slitted against the gathering storm.
When he got back to La Bruja's, she naturally wanted him to spend more time with her, and he was tempted. For he could likely come again if she really set her mind and lush lips to it. But he insisted on holding her to that other promise, and so it was along about quarter past midnight, with neither coastal steamers nor paid killers to be seen in the swirling darkness, when Longarm finally left by way of a clamshell-paved wagon trace to the south, driving a team of Spanish mules as he hunkered half sheltered by a flapping canvas wagon cover with old Norma's Saratoga trunk and some trail supplies in the wagon box behind his sprung seat.
He commenced having second thoughts about the grand notion a mile or less outside of town, when the light got even worse and he had to take the word of the mules and the gritty sounds of the steel-rimmed wheels that he was still following that shell path through what seemed like a mighty herd of wind-whipped palmettos flapping fronds on all sides as they strove to uproot their fool selves and take off like stampeding bats.
It got too dark to see even that much as the wind howled ever louder, and then the invisible mules out ahead balked at hauling him and old Norma's Saratoga another step, no matter how a man snapped the ribbons on their wet rumps and shouted curses into the gathering storm. So he set the brake, hitched the ribbons around its shaft, and got down to see what had gotten into the fool mules.
He said he was sorry for calling them foolish as soon as he could make out what they hadn't wanted to get into. The shell road ended in a wind-lashed sheet of muddy water, with no far side in sight. Nobody with a lick of sense would pave the way to the bottom of a river on purpose. So it was safe to assume the gale-force winds had run a high tide further ashore than usual. Winds did that some along the gulf coast. Wind surges along a low swampy shore made for more deaths than getting hit by flying shit in your average hurricane.
He led the mules back up the wagon trace afoot for a ways as he told them, 'I'm wet too. So the question before the house is whether we head back to town and lose Lord knows how much time, or keep going in hopes there's another route and we stumble over it before all three of us drown?'
The mules offered no suggestions. Once he had them on as high a stretch of wagon trace as there seemed to be for miles, Longarm got back up under the flapping canvas to dig out that soggy map and some fortunately waterproof matches.
Longarm favored a brand of Mexican wax-stemmed matches because you just never knew when you'd need a light in damp weather, although weather as damp as this was a tad unusual. Mexicans made really fine candles too, and the first match he struck burned more like a tiny candle than your average match. But he still had to strike three in a row above the map spread atop Norma's Saratoga trunk before he was certain there was no other wagon trace around that normally fordable tidal creek.
He refolded the map and put it away, muttering, 'Well, maybe La Bruja will serve us some hot chocolate. We sure as shit ain't going any farther south just yet!'
But as he swung his long legs over the sprung seat to brace one instep against the brake shafts while he unhitched the wet slippery ribbons, he saw a bright point of light through the flailing palmetto fronds to his west.
He called out. There was no way to tell if he'd been heard, or if anyone had answered amid all the flapping, moaning, and groaning all about. So he released the brake, but left the ribbons hitched as high and dry as he could manage as he got down some more to take the near mule by the cheek strap and declare, 'That's a house or at least a camp about a quarter mile off, pard. Even if they can't set us on another trail, they might be able to shelter us from this storm and save us a few hours when and if it ever lets up.'
He started leading the storm-lashed and balky team toward the distant light. It wasn't easy because even he could see they were off any sort of beaten path and sort of floundering through palmettos, chest-high sea grape, and through eight- or ten-foot ass-high sacaguista--as they called this particular breed of salt grass.
The mules perked up and began to act more sensible as they too detected human life and possible shelter up ahead. Longarm recalled what that purser had told him about the sort of humans squatting out here on the coastal plain. Moreover, it was still considered dumb, as well as impolite, to drop in on strangers after dark without any advance notice. So lest they take him for raiding Comanche or worse, Longarm drew his.44-40 and fired three times at the overhead winds. Three shots was the accepted way one shouted for help or attention out this way. One or two shots figured to be a distant hunter who'd as soon not have company as he went about his own beeswax. But three in a row meant a piss-poor shot if it was a hunter. So folks tended to assume whatever was going on might be their own beeswax as well.
Longarm knew he was right when he heard a distant gun reply to his above the wind. As he forged on, awkwardly reloading with his chilled wet hands full of mule as well, he mused out loud, 'Outlaws on the run would be more likely to douse their light and lay low than answer back. But that don't mean we're the pals they left that
