let out a serious yell.
A low, calm voice had a quieting effect as well. So Longarm softly told them, “Sounds like six or eight riders, stirrup to stirrup and serious as hell about getting there. The next stage stop to the south figures to offer them remounts, whether they want to or not, if those are rurales out for blood!”
But it wasn’t. Longarm had to laugh at his own sense of drama as he saw the bulky dark mass of a stagecoach swaying southward, with no running lights lit, behind its six-mule team.
He watched with a wistful smile as it rattled and rumbled past at a pace he could only envy. He told his own mules, “They’ll have made it to the next fonda and a change of teams before midnight, with time out for everyone to coffee and shit whilst the three of us plod on at a trail pace. They’ll likely make it all the way in to Puerto Periasco by the time we’re scouting for some shade a night’s ride short!”
He began to swap loads as he heard the coach rattle and rumble out of earshot. He muttered, “Just as well I never waited for that late-running coach, Lord knows why it’s running so late, and I’d already been spotted as a wanted man by others working for the same outfit.”
He untethered, mounted up, and led off at an angle through the moonlight, drifting back towards the road, as he assured himself he knew what he was doing.
He lit a smoke, cupping the match flame in his Palm. Then he held the lit cheroot in a cupped hand, army Style, instead of between his teeth. Smoking at times and in places you weren’t supposed to didn’t really make Your forbidden treat taste better. But it gave you something to do and kept you wide awake.
Back on the road again, where he’d be harder to trail, Longarm mentally paced off the ride ahead, and saw that while there was no hope of making it in what was left of this night, he’d be riding in before midnight tomorrow night. That would still be early for a Mexican seaport.
He told his mule, “I’ll find a good home for you kids. Then I’ll use the ill-gotten gains of those bandits to buy me most everything I lost, save for my badge.”
He snorted angry smoke out both nostrils and grumbled, “I’ll get my badge and the bunch of them! They won’t want to board that boat to Yuma until it’s fixing to shove off. So if I get aboard it earlier I can … Great day in the morning, I don’t have to do shit! Not if all of us are aboard, but they don’t know it, before we steam through the delta and U.S. Customs comes aboard at Yuma!”
He laughed mockingly and nodded in passing to a solemn old saguaro. “Howdy, U.S. Customs. I’d be U.S. Deputy Marshal Custis Long of the Denver District Court, and I’d surely be obliged if you all would help me make some federal arrests aboard this vessel!”
The saguaro didn’t laugh. Longarm warned himself to stop jawing out loud like a prisoner jerking off in a solitary cell. The night noises all about sounded louder, and spookier, once he had.
He’d read somewhere that mankind, having eyes that worked better by daylight, had invented bad dreams and ghost stories to keep everyone huddled safer after dark instead of wandering about, half blind, to step off a cliff or into something bigger, hungrier, and with better night vision. It still beat all how uneasy an elf owl could make one feel, even when one knew that was only a bitty owl-bird calling from a woodpecker’s hollow in a saguaro.
The crickets chirping all about could spook a night rider worse. Desert crickets didn’t chirp any spookier than the ones you might hear by the hearth of some old run-down house. They spooked you by suddenly stopping for long pregnant pauses, every time someone or something else as big as a fool kit fox, or something meaner, passed within yards of the bugs. You seldom heard real rattlesnakes late at night in the desert. But there were all sorts of other critters who seemed to delight in buzzing like an eight-foot diamondback to scare you shitless and spook your mount. One breed of grasshopper had that sudden sinister buzz down pat. It could spook your mount just as much.
But the mules Ampollita had sent him on his way aboard were used to this very road at night, and happy to be driven down it at a far more gentle pace than they were used to. He’d find out how they felt about taking him more than ten or twelve miles without getting the rest of the night off when they got to the next fonda down the road. He didn’t aim to stop there, or even let the folks inside get a good look at him. For sooner or later that message from the first fonda’s boss had to reach los rurales, and it was always best to let such a swell bunch just guess which way you’d gone for certain.
He’d trot them a furlong, walk them two, and rein in for a breather now and again, changing mounts when he stopped for a real trail break every ninety minutes or so. Hence he figured he was setting a pace of at least a third of the cross-country speed of that night coach, and so it didn’t seem astounding when he suddenly realized the next stage stop was just down the road a piece,‘dobe walls and high mirador or lookout tower barely visible in the moonlight, and nary a speck of candle glow to greet them.
“Must be after four in the morning, so they’re all asleep,” he told his mules as he reined to a walk, considering the sounds of all eight hooves in the moonlit dust.
No dogs were barking. No window shutters were being thrown open, and sneaking through cactus and stickerbrush, far enough out to matter, seemed the slower way to Puerto Periasco. So he decided to just ease on by.
He almost managed. Then, just as he drew abreast of a roadside window, a female voice on the edge of total hysteria called out in high-toned Spanish, “Quien es? Que desea? No tengo dinero, pero tengofusiles.”
Longarm reined in again to calmly assure the frightened lady he was only a poor wayfaring stranger, he didn’t want anything, and he had his own money and guns if it was all the same with her.
She must have noticed his accent. She called out, “Es usted Americano?
Oh, that is true. They told me one of El Gato’s followers is a gringo! There is nothing left here for to steal, and I warn you I will shoot if you come any closer!”
Longarm calmly replied, “In that case I’d best be on my way then, seeing I make you feel so tense. But just to satisfy my own curious nature, Senorita, are you saying you all have been pestered by El Gato and some other gringo? I’m missing something here. I thought El Gato led a rebel band, and hadn’t heard he’d been recruiting all that many of my kind. I hate to have to admit it, but not many gringo riders of the Owlhoot Trail share El Gato’s idealistic notions. Neither Frank nor Jesse act as much like old Robin Hood as they would have us all believe.”
The unseen woman, who might or might not have had a gun trained on Longarm, said uncertainly, “I do not understand the point you seem to make. I do not know much more about what has been going on at this fonda. I came in aboard the mail coach to Puerto Periasco a few hours ago. We were running late because there was talk of El Gato’s band out our way and everybody knows he likes to strike in the dark, like the mouser he is named for.”
