clue as to his whereabouts and his situation. He had nothing to lose by writing the letter except to make known his embarrassment, but that was going to come anyway. It was, he thought, a situation he was going to be a long time in living down.
After a while, he gave up thinking and decided that the best thing to do would be to sleep on the matter. He undressed down to his bare skin, which meant taking off his jeans, his shirt, and his socks—he didn’t bother with underwear. After that, he pulled the covers down on the bed, poured himself half a glass of whiskey, climbed up and sat with his back against the headboard. There was a nice breeze coming through the two casement windows but it wasn’t doing him a hell of a lot of good except to make the room comfortable.
After a moment or two, he lit a cigarillo, smoked that, drank the whiskey, turned down the lamp and slid down into the bed, pulled the covers over him and put his head on the pillow. He thought he’d have a hard time going to sleep but it seemed as if he had no more than shut his eyes when he went out like a light. He was a good deal more tired than he realized. He came awake the next morning to the sound of something at the door. He sat up alertly. It was already dawn and sunshine was streaming into the room. He recognized the sound at the door as someone working a key in it from the other side. Finally, the lock clicked back and then the door was pushed open.
To his surprise, Longarm saw a woman standing there holding a tray with steaming coffee and a dish of some kind of food. Without a look at him, she came shuffling forward and set the tray on the table where the remains of his supper still lay. At the door, one of the Mexicans who had accompanied them on the ride from Nuevo Laredo was leaning against the doorjamb, a revolver held in his hand. He looked sleepy and yawned as Longarm glanced his way.
Longarm switched his eyes back to the woman. She was wearing some kind of shapeless robe. He could tell very little about her, neither her age, nor much about what she looked like. Her hair was tangled and her face was without makeup. She could have been thirty or forty. He watched as she stacked the dirty dishes from the night before onto her tray and then set his breakfast on the table. He could see it was ham and eggs and biscuits along with a pot of coffee and a little pitcher of cream. He said to the woman, “Thank you, that looks good.”
She barely gave him a glance as she turned and hurried back toward the door. Longarm watched her all the way. She didn’t walk like someone who was old, she walked like someone who was ashamed. It seemed an odd way to put it even to himself, but that was the way she walked. In another second, she had scuttled through the door. The Mexican yawned again, pulled the door to, and then Longarm heard the familiar sound of the lock turning and then the bar falling into place.
Longarm sat up and swung his legs around and yawned. So he hadn’t been dreaming, he thought. He was in this damned hole. His dreams had been about Molly Coy. He wondered if he would ever see her again or feel her skin or kiss her lips. He stopped himself quickly. It wouldn’t do to let his mind run in that direction.
As he ate his breakfast, which was very good, his thoughts returned to the woman who had come hurriedly into his room. He couldn’t quite figure her out. She wasn’t Mexican.
She was a white woman with very fair skin. He supposed her hair was a light brown, almost a tawny blond, but it was so tousled and jumbled that it was hard to tell. She had been wearing a blanket-like blue robe that was so bulky it hid her shape. But as she bent over to Put his breakfast dishes on the table, he could tell from the look he got Of her rear she was not fat or chunky. He had half an idea that the robe was concealing more than might be expected, but then he told himself it might also be that he had been too long without a woman and too long in this damn whitewashed room.
It was about an hour and a half later that the woman returned. Longarm was standing on a chair looking out one of the little casement windows. He turned and watched the door open as the woman scuttled in with a tray in her hands. She hurried to the table and began stacking his breakfast dishes on It. LOngarm glanced at the door. The Mexican pistolero was there but he was lounging back against the wall outside the door and his gun was holstered. Longarm was wearing only his jeans. He was barefoot and shirtless. The woman worked quickly. She refilled his pitcher of water, took his bucket of slops, then Picked up the tray full of dirty dishes and went out of the room as silently and as quickly as she had entered. He took note that he was not commanded to lie down on the floor.
He got down from the chair, his mind turning over and over. This mystery woman. She did not fit the part of a maid, especially in Mexico. He had no doubt that there were half a dozen native women around the ranch who could have been doing her function. It was a very strange state of affairs and one he intended to get to the bottom of, somehow. He sensed that he might be able to use the woman. But there was still the matter of the letter and whether he should write it.
He didn’t know how the woman could help, and he didn’t have the slightest idea when or in what manner, but she seemed to be the only tool that had presented itself. What he couldn’t figure was the hangdog, ashamed, stooped look she had about herself. Someone had whipped that woman plumb to the ground, either in spirit or physically.
He walked over to the bare table and looked at the still-blank sheets of paper. He hadn’t made up his mind about the letter and he knew he had better make it up pretty quick. As if someone was reading his mind, the peephole suddenly opened and he heard Brown’s voice. He said, “Marshal Long, have you got the letter ready?”
Without moving from where he was standing, Longarm said, “No, not yet.”
“I’m leaving in an hour. You’ve got that long.”
“I’ll study the matter.”
“It’s entirely up to you.”
“I appreciate that information.”
The peephole was suddenly shut.
He sat down at the table and looked at the paper. It was a good heavy bond. Quality. He guessed Mr. Brown did all right for himself in more ways than one. He picked up the pencil, still undecided. He had spent a good deal of his waking time the night before trying to decide if he would write the letter, and if he did, what he would say. Now it seemed the time had come to make up his mind. He wet the end of the pencil and then leaned over the paper and began writing laboriously in a cramped style.
To Whom it may Concern:
This letter is written by the hand of Custis Long, United States Deputy Marshall, stationed out of Colorado—Billy Vail, Chief Marshal.
This is to notify YOU that I have been captured and am being held prisoner by a son of a bitch who calls himself Mr. Brown. His intention is to get you to swap me for that embezzler Earl Combs. Mr. Brown is ignorant enough to believe such an idea is going to work. I have told him it’s a foolish play but he won’t listen. He says if you don’t make this trade, he is going to start sending you small pieces of me. I take it by that he means chopping off a finger or a toe or something like that. I guess his intentions are to let you know that he is serious. If you make the trade,
