Longarm said he doubted Clay Baldwin had that much future ahead of him, and as she led him up the outside stairs of the building to the north added, 'I reckon I can get them both back to Denver sitting down or stretched out aboard public transportation. Where might you be leading me, Miss Norma?'
She giggled sort of dirty and replied, 'Down the Primrose Path, or at least up to the new quarters I've commandeered for myself here in town, now that I seem to be the Public Health Service. I had far less privacy as well as a longer trip back and forth at that Coast Guard station!'
She didn't say where she'd be taking her meals, now that she was quartered closer to her fever ward. Longarm didn't really care, once she'd shut the door upstairs behind them and turned with a Mona Lisa smile to confide, 'Cross-ventilation too. But now that I have you in my wicked power, in broad daylight for heaven's sake, are you sure I can trust you not to laugh at your poor little piggy?'
Longarm proceeded to shuck his own duds too as he asked her when he'd ever declared her a pig. He managed not to laugh as she proceeded to pop a lot of bulging pink flesh in view, demurely suggesting, 'This is the first time we've ever seen one another naked in daylight. I do try to watch my weight, dear, but it gets harder and harder as a girl gets older and... Oh, my God, did you really put all that in me the other night?'
He suggested soothingly that they see if they still fit fine together where it really counted. As he laid her back across her brass-railed bed atop the covers, she bit her baby-girl lower lip and hissed, 'Be careful with that thing, Custis!'
But then, a few minutes later, being fickle as most gals about such matters, she was pounding his bare ass with the heels of her high-buttons, demanding he go deeper if he knew what was good for him.
So what with one position and another, with a quick supper shared well after sundown at the beanery across the way, Longarm barely made it back to the Coast Guard station in time to board that steam cutter as it cast off on a falling tide. Like most of its breed, the long white-hulled cutter was mostly flash boilers, powerful engines, and four-pound deck guns capable of catching up with anything its twin screws couldn't.
Chief Tobin told them Flynn and young Devereaux were too busy on the bridge to talk to anyone right now. But meanwhile, they could lock Baldwin in the ship's brig forward, and they'd try to make the two civilian lawmen comfortable in the wardroom, aft and a short length of ladder down from the bridge. Longarm had noticed before how sailors called any sort of steps 'ladders,' any sort of floors 'decks,' and so forth. Cowhands liked to confound green hands the same way.
A mess attendant brought the two deputies coffee, and said something about a smoking lamp being lit. Rod Gilbert still said he'd feel far better smoking out on deck instead of there in the greasy-smelling wardroom as the cutter began to pick up speed. For narrow-beam steamers tended to roll far more than sailboats, even across the calmer waters of a sheltered lagoon.
It was a good thing Gilbert felt that way. For they'd barely made it out to where Longarm could see the stars before he saw they weren't headed the way he'd expected.
Gilbert tagged wanly along as Longarm went on up to the bridge to demand why. What they called a bridge on a Coast Guard cutter was more like a glorified pilothouse borrowed from a riverboat. Lieutenant Flynn was posing for a statue behind the enlisted man at their big oak wheel and brass binnacle. It was Devereaux, acting as first officer, who cut them off and said they weren't allowed on the bridge while a patrol was in progress.
Longarm calmly but firmly replied, 'That's what we're here to ask you about. How come we're headed south? Ain't you boys assigned to pay more heed to vessels putting in through Corpus Christi Pass to your north? There ain't no way to smuggle anything in off the open sea this side of the Rio Grande, one hell of a voyage to the south!'
Flynn turned grandly and stiffly replied, 'As the one and only master of this vessel I don't have to answer to you or anyone else. But I've set a course for Matamoros because that's where you keep saying someone's been picking up quarantined beef. Didn't you also say you came all this way via the Rio Grande and up this very lagoon?'
Longarm sighed, 'I did. I thought it would be obvious, even to you, I'd want to compare notes with the Rangers and others I know in Corpus Christi before we headed on back some other way!'
Flynn shrugged. 'You should have asked which way we were headed before you boarded this evening. I understand the telegraph wires are back up. You ought to be able to contact all the others you want by Western Union once we put you ashore at Brownsville.'
Longarm insisted, 'I don't want to give any other crooks that much of a lead on me, Lieutenant. While I'm wasting a whole night aboard this cutter, patrolling miles of doubtless empty lagoon, confederates of Pryce & Doyle will be covering their crooked tracks with heaps of razzle-dazzle!'
It was Devereaux who quietly suggested, 'Should the lieutenant so desire, we could put these civilians ashore at Escondrijo. I think I see the lamplight along their quay just ahead, off to starboard.'
Flynn snapped, 'You're not paid to think, Mister Devereaux. Until such time as they give you your own command, you'll be expected to do just as you're damned well told! Is that understood, mister?'
'Perfectly, sir,' said the chastized J.G., and you could almost tell how red his face had flushed in the faint light of the binnacle lamp.
Longarm took a deep breath, let half of it out so his voice would stay steady, and said, 'I want to be put ashore with my deputy and our prisoner here and now. Like the Indian chief said, I have spoken.'
Lieutenant Flynn sounded almost cheerful as he smugly replied, 'So have I. I'm in command here, and you'll damned well get off when and where I tell you, see?'
Longarm nodded soberly. 'I reckon I do. I was aiming to give you more rope and wait till we all got to Corpus Christi and no doubt some superior Coast Guard officers who weren't in on it. But it was your grand notion to force my hand, so bueno, you're under arrest, and I reckon that puts Mister Devereaux here in command, don't it?'
Everyone there but Longarm sucked in his breath the same way. Flynn moved to the far wing of the bridge to fling open some glass and bawl out, 'Mutiny! All hands on deck to stand by me and me alone!'
Longarm drew his.44-40 and snapped, 'Cut that out before somebody gets hurt! Mister Devereaux, do you mean to take over as I told you to or stand there like a wide-eyed owl?'
Behind him, Deputy Gilbert had his own gun out, suggesting, 'I don't like none of these sissy deck-moppers. What say we arrest the whole bunch of 'em, pard?'
Longarm said calmly, 'The late Mr. Doyle only named Lieutenant Flynn here as one of his silent partners. I reckon he felt sort of betrayed after his pal laid him low with volley fire after Doyle agreed in Ancient Irish to
