The J.G. said, 'La Bruja, sir. That means The Witch in Spanish, and I must say she and her gang have been a bitch to intercept on land or sea. The Rangers say she runs small but valuable cargoes past us in a splinter fleet of shallow-draft luggers with black sails, at low tide in the dark of the moon.'
Longarm didn't see how he could object that La Bruja ran guns, not sides of beef in unrefrigerated holds, unless he wanted to answer more questions about a lady than he really needed to. So he let them gab on and on about all the ways one might smuggle beef on ice in a hot, humid clime. And then they'd made it back to the Coast Guard station, where a lawman juggling a whole drawer full of knives might be able to set at least a few of them aside, for the moment.
CHAPTER 14
Both Doyle's roan and the bay packing Longarm's personal saddle had passed through the gate before them, to be rounded up and put away with the water they'd likely had in mind when they bolted. Longarm found young Deputy Gilbert dressed as well as back on his feet, although still a mite green around the gills. Clay Baldwin seemed in fair shape to travel as well, having had a heap of fight knocked out of him by that long siege of off-and-on chills and fever. But Longarm decided a few more hours' rest wouldn't matter either after he carried Doyle's scrawny cadaver back to town to be photographed, buried, or stuffed, for all the federal government really cared. Flynn seemed to feel both crooked meat packers ought to go in the files as solved smuggling cases. But Longarm pointed out, 'Texas will want to file 'em for murder for certain, and thanks to your love of noise, I ain't sure how I'd ever prove either guilty of anything else in a court of law, Lieutenant.'
Flynn said stubbornly, 'I did what I thought best. You said yourself he was trying to eel his way back through those springy saplings when only a small part of our volley stopped him. Didn't he say anything the federal government could use against him, Deputy Long?'
Longarm shrugged and said, 'I'm still working on that. It's tough to say just what a shot-up cuss is trying to tell you when he gets to blowing bloody bubbles and a mishmash of English and Gaelic at you. Might you have anyone in your outfit who follows the drift of Ancient Irish, Lieutenant?'
Flynn thought. 'Chief Tobin's people were from Galway, still considered Apache country by Queen Victoria. I could send for him, if you like.'
Longarm considered, shrugged, and decided, 'Maybe later. If he wasn't with us out yonder, I ain't sure I could reproduce the funny noises for him. Like I told this circus lady who swallowed swords and cussed in Gaelic, it sounds like a mishmash of Church Latin and Dutch, neither of which finds me at all fluent. Can you recall one word he yelled back when you ordered him to surrender?'
Flynn shook his head. 'My people came over from Cork three generations ago. I understand my great- grandparents had been speaking English some time before they got on the boat.'
The dapper Coast Guard officer seemed even smugger than usual as he added with a lofty sniff, 'We Flynns arrived with shoes on. Nobody in my family was still there when the potato crop failed in '46.'
Longarm allowed he'd heard a General Sullivan had led Continental troops up the Mohawk Valley during the even earlier American Revolution, and suggested they worry about old Doyle's family tree farther along, like the old hymn said.
He told Flynn and the other officers assembled in the wardroom he had other chores in town, but hoped to bring Norma Richards back that evening so she could give his deputy and their surviving prisoner a final examination. When Devereaux asked what might keep him that busy the rest of the day in town, Longarm explained, 'Aside from signing a statement on two dead residents for the local law, I got to see that packing plant is sealed, with all that uncertain beef refrigerated as well as impounded. We're pretty certain now that that outbreak of Malta fever was occasioned by the milk of sick local goats. But Lord knows what all they might have smuggled in with the carcasses of Mex stock butchered and cooled inhoof-and-mouth country!'
They agreed nobody ought to sample any such beef before somebody who knew more about such matters took a good close look at it. Flynn told Devereaux to make sure Longarm got plenty of help in wrapping the late Mr. Doyle in a tarp and loading him aboard a buckboard for his return to town.
The J.G. naturally ordered Chief Tobin to see to it. The burly C.P.O. hadn't been out there with the others when Flynn had ordered his fatal fusillade. But as they were wrapping the shot-up Irishman in waterproof canvas, Tobin observed he'd heard the poor bastard had tried to give up at the last.
When Longarm asked how the chief knew this, Tobin looked around as if to make sure no officers were listening as he confided, 'Yeoman Cohen would be a Sligo man, as odd as some Yankees might be finding that. He tells us Doyle shouted something like, 'Oh, me eyebrow, hold your fire for it's finished I am!' Cohen tried to tell the others, but they were already firing. So he fired too.'
Longarm said he'd noticed that. Then, rank having its privileges, the chief dragooned some guardsmen firsts to load the cadaver on the buckboard and hitch Doyle's rested roan to the wagon.
Longarm allowed he'd ride the same steady bay, seeing it was as ready to go. When Tobin asked whether he was expecting any more cross-country riding, Longarm said you just never knew.
Mounting up and taking the roan's ribbons to lead instead of drive, Longarm told his enlisted pals he'd try to get back by suppertime so they could put his borrowed pony away.
As he headed across the parade for the gate, he was headed off by young Devereaux, afoot, who called out, 'The lieutenant's compliments, and if you can't manage steamer passage in town for you and your party, he said to tell you we'll be running our own night patrol aboard our own cutter, if the three of you would like a free ride to a more important port!'
Longarm told Devereaux he and his own boys might take the Coast Guard up on such a kind offer, adding, 'Depends on what else I find out in town. When are you all putting out to sea this evening?'
Devereaux said, 'With the evening ebb tide. About three hours after sundown tonight.'
Longarm saw that gave him plenty of time to study on it. So he said he would, and headed on back to Escondrijo, having no trouble with either pony in the soggy heat of a lazy day in South Texas.
From the way folks carried on in town, you'd think they'd never had two dead men propped up on a cellar door to admire before. More than one local historian had a box camera to record the slack-jawed features of Pryce & Doyle for posterity although Constable Purvis didn't think much of Longarm's suggestion that they have the two sons of bitches stuffed. Purvis said he meant to store them in their own cold-storage plant once a few pissed- off citizens got through spitting on 'em. So while some of that went on, Longarm and the older lawman had some cold beer across the way and Longarm brought Purvis up to date on the case, such as it was.
