stocky farmer's muscular upper thigh. He could only wonder how much worse the poor cuss could bleed with nothing at all wrapped above the ghastly wounds around his busted or dislocated knee. He told the English-speaking girl, 'We have to get him to a doctor in town muy pronto. We ain't got a litter. We ain't got time to make one. So tell him this is going to hurt and ask your brother there to lower the tailgate of that wagon box.'
She did, in a rapid singsong he'd have never managed on his own in a lingo he had to sort of feel his way along in. The badly injured Mexican bit his lower lip and hissed like a steam kettle, but never let on how bad it really must have felt as Longarm picked him up, with some effort, and shoved him gently as possible into the wagon behind the trunk. Then the young gal raised the tailgate and ran around to the front, calling out, 'Abordos y vamonos pa'l carajo!'
So the old gal and all three kids scrambled aboard as best they could as Longarm drove back across their already battered crops.
The young gal wound up seated beside him some more as her mother in the back hung on to her injured man, sobbing at Longarm to go 'mas rapido!' but also crying 'cuidado!' as he did his best, without any advice, to follow the wheel ruts as fast as he safely could.
The young gal explained that the poor mamacita was upset, but that she knew how kind and thoughtful he was trying to be to people he'd never been introduced to.
He assured her he followed her mamacita's drift, and added, 'She has every right to be unsettled by that fearsome bite out of Papacito's poor leg. What in thunder did he tangle with back there, a tushy old sow with a litter she was guarding amid them peppers?'
The girl shook her head. 'I do not know what the beast is called in your tongue. We call aligador!'
Longarm whistled softly. 'That's close enough to alligator if we're talking about the same critter. I'd heard they could be found all around the Gulf of Mexico from Florida to Yucatan but... out in the middle of a pepper crop?'
She sighed. 'Is a bahia pequeria, what you call a tidal creek, I think, just beyond our back seto... you say hedgerow, no?'
When he said that sounded close enough, she explained, 'Las aligadoras come out on land for to sun themselves when the weather is as cool as this morning. Pero, like yourself, Papacito was surprised to find such a big one on our side of the cactus seto when he went out for to look at our poor peppers. It grabbed him before he knew it was there, and he thinks it was trying to take him home for to feed its own family. They were rolling all over when the rest of us rushed out for to see what Papacito was cursing about. My brother, Miguelito, beat la aligador many times with a hoe, a steel-bladed hoe, before it let go and slid back through the cactus into the bahia. Miguelito is only twelve, but muy macho, just like Papacito!'
Longarm smiled thinly and said, 'They both must have been. I'd say that gator was unusually macho as well. They ain't supposed to act so bold as a rule. Has anyone you know been feeding 'em around here?'
'Feeding, senor? You have heard of people who would actually feed such dangerous beasts? One would have to be loco en la cabeza, no?'
He shrugged. 'Greenhorns likely feel they're just out to be neighborly. But they got signs posted over Galveston way that warn folks not to do so, 'less you get them gators really dangerous.'
He could see a street intersection down at the far end of their hedged-in wagon trace now as he continued. 'They say gators get to coming in when they get used to hearing splashes at a particular bridge, boat dock, or whatever. Makes it more dangerous than usual should a dog, or kid, fall in. The critters aren't inclined to consider before they snap, left to their own unkindly natures. Do I have to explain further why it's not so wise to feed 'em until they lose their natural caution?'
She shuddered and reminded him she and her kin had just pulled a family member out of a sassy gator's jaws. He nodded. 'That's my point. Their more usual diet would be fish, ducks, muskrats, and such. So the critter as just went for your dad must have picked up such bad habits around other humans. I don't know my way around Escondrijo. Which way do we swing when we get to that cross street ahead?'
She said the curado they usually went to dwelt down to the right.
He said, 'No offense, senorita, but your old man don't need any herbs or even Prayers right now. He needs surgical stitching, considerable surgical stitching, by a surgical sawbones trained gringo in manner, if not a pure gringo by birth!'
She sobbed, 'I never called you a gringo, senor. pero, you are the one Who brought it up, is no cirujano gringo in Escondrijo who would treat a greaser, as I think you call us.'
He said, 'I don't call colored folk niggers either. But I do follow your drift. So which way might that Coast Guard station be from here?'
She didn't follow his drift before he'd repeated Guardia Costa in her own lingo. Then she said, 'I thought that what You meant. Is a la izquirda, Pero very far, and even if we get there in time I do not think they will wish for to take Papacito in!'
Longarm swung the team left Onto the cross street, which seemed the Only important north-south thoroughfare in the dinky collection of sun-silvered frame buildings as he assured the injured man's oldest child, 'I don't care if they want to take him in or not. I aim to tell them they have to, I'm a U.S. deputy marshal, here on federal business, and I reckon I can say who may or may not be a federal witness under protection and hence eligible for emergency medical treatment at any infernal federal clinic I can find!'
She told him he was talking too fast for her to follow his English. He wasn't up to explaining all that in Spanish. So he just drove on, faster than folks usually drove through town and hence attracting a lot of stares and a good deal of cussing as they tore on up the dirt-paved street.
Then, as they were passing what seemed a big whitewash warehouse, Longarm spotted a familiar figure in white and reined in to call out to Norma Richards, 'Hey, Doc? I got your Saratoga trunk and a man in dire need of medical attention here. Your move!'
The motherly but sort of handsome older gal stared thunderstruck for just a bit before she called back, 'Custis, is that you, with my lab equipment at last, praise the Lord.'
As she dropped lightly down from the loading platform of that odd warehouse and moved toward them in her already muddy high-buttons, she declared, 'I'd just about given you and my microscope up for lost. We're in a lot of trouble here, Custis. As you see, I've been able to commandeer this empty icehouse for use as an emergency ward but without proper lab equipment-'
