lighting as he crossed the calle to stride on into the cantina with an innocent expression.
There were only two obvious Anglo riders in the nearly deserted establishment. The older and shorter one sat in one corner behind a limed oak table with his back to the angled ‘dobe. The one at the bar, as if to order, was tall and lean, packing a mighty familiar .44-40 in a cross-draw rig Longarm recalled having bought and paid for.
The one in the corner was staring out from under his Texas hat in such a disinterested way he just had to be interested as Longarm bore down on the one at the bar. That one didn’t seem to notice Longarm approaching with the Schofield in his right fist and a cocked buffalo gun in the other. The mestizo barkeep cocked a brow and said something about opening another bottle as he headed on back to somewhere less tense.
The one packing Longarm’s side arm, and doubtless a lot of other of his belongings, swung to face the man he’d robbed as he sensed an ominous movement to his right.
There was no more delicate way to start. So Longarm strode closer to that one, a gun in either hand, and quietly said, “Howdy. Before you get your bowels in an uproar, I was only sent to bring in Harmony Drake. Would you rather fight another man’s fight or make a deal?”
The kid wearing Longarm’s gun blustered, “How would you like to try for a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut, Longarm? You ain’t got any jurisdiction down this way and, come to study on it, I could give a little whistle and have you gunned down like a dog by them rurales.”
Longarm quietly raised the Schofield, murmuring, “Do us both a favor and leave them sweet lips unpuckered. I don’t think you follow my drift, old son. I’m offering you a break you never offered me the other night in Growler Wash. You’d be well advised to take it!”
The one in the far corner, who must have thought Longarm didn’t know they were together, suddenly tipped his thick oak table forward and dropped behind it to make mysterious movements of his own. Longarm doubted he was jerking off. So before the Anglo could get his own gun muzzle over the top edge of his improvised barricade, Longarm swung the muzzle of the Big Fifty up to fire a shot heard all across Puerto Periasco.
The cuss who’d made such an unwise decision squealed like a stuck hog for a short spell as he writhed in the corner on one side, with a belly full of oak slivers and distorted lead. As his agonized pissing and moaning subsided, Longarm quietly informed the other one, “I said I was willing to deal. I never said I was willing to put up with any more of this bullshit.”
The younger and taller outlaw had gone fish-belly White and one got the impression, from the way both his hands were trembling at shoulder height, he was beginning to review his options seriously.
Then a voice from the doorway was saying in passable English, “I am not pointing my own guns your way for to ask your opinions of them, caballeros. You will both stand most still while my deputies put your weapons and everything else on the bar for my inspection. I am called Inspector Gomez, by the way. The words are the same in Spanish as English.”
Longarm didn’t turn as another Mexican in a gray summer uniform moved in to take both guns while a third searched him and put all his pocket jingle and his steamline ticket beside them on the bar.
The gun waddie he’d been fixing to relieve of far more suddenly blurted out, “He just killed my pard! You’ll find the dead body over in yonder corner. He come in here, raving like a maniac, and just blew poor old Jake away.”
Inspector Gomez, a stocky Mexican of about forty, moved over to the corner, took one look, and softly said, “I thought that was a buffalo round I heard from over in the marketplace. Your innocent friend seems to have a Remington .45 on the bloody floor by his right hand, senor. Could I have some names now?”
The snot who’d just surrendered Longarm’s gun and such to the Mexican lawmen smiled at Longarm as he said, “I’d be Sam Ferris, as innocent a child as ever rode out of Texas. Me and my poor pal, Jake Larkin, come down here looking to buy some of your fine dally-ponies. This murderous bounty hunter who just kilt Jake must have taken us for somebody else. He’d be that famous Longarm I understand your boys have had their own troubles with!”
Gomez turned to Longarm with renewed interest. “You are El Brazo Largo?
For why were you registered at your posada as Senor Crawford?”
Longarm didn’t like to lie when he didn’t have to. So he simply smiled at Ferris and replied, “Ask him. I ain’t the one packing the cross-draw .44-40 everyone says El Brazo Largo shoots rurales with.”
Gomez swung about to stare thoughtfully at the gun rig his deputy had taken from Ferris to place atop the bar next to the Schofield .45 the real Longarm had been carrying. The burly Mexican lawman shoved Ferris back a pace to pick up the wallet they’d just taken from him. Ferris smiled weakly and said, “That ain’t mine. We took it from him, see?”
Gomez opened the wallet to stare down at Longarm’s federal badge and identification with a wolfish smile as he softly marveled, “You made Senor Crawford hand this over as he was covering you with a loaded revolver? I mean no disrespect, El Brazo Largo, but you seem to be trying to feed me a big bowl of mierditas! They say El Brazo Largo is a tall gringo who wears his .44-40 cross-draw. You are a tall gringo. You were wearing that .44-40 cross-draw, and you would seem to have had El Brazo Largo’s badge and identification in your pocket. Would you care to explain how this might indicate this other noisy gringo, and not yourself, could be El Brazo Largo?” Ferris nodded desperately and said, “Sure I can. I may as well confess me and poor old Jake were wanted over in San Antone, but not here in Mexico. We all know Longarm here is a lawman north of the border who’s the wanted outlaw down this way. He chased us all this way illegal because he’s after a pal of ours and-“
Gomez cut in. “You say you were wanted by the state of Texas and so a federal deputy marshal tracked you all this way for to kill your friend with these antique weapons? Is that for why he registered at a second-rate posada with a woman and took his time for to encounter you by chance in this cantina?”
Ferris insisted, “It’s true! He’s Longarm, or El Brazo Largo as you all call him! We got the jump on him the other night, up the other side of the border. I took his gun rig because I fancied it. I’ve been packing his badge and identification because I meant to turn it in for the reward as soon as someone else I know finished his business here in Puerto Periasco, see?”
Gomez turned back to the real Longarm, who shrugged and said, “Don’t ask me why they’d get the drop on a famous lawman and forget to kill him before they rode off with his badge and gun.”
Gomez softly said, “Guns. Plural. Did you not notice the derringer attached to that watch chain on the bar, Senor Crawford?” Longarm shrugged again and said, “I stand corrected. Why don’t we get him to tell us where this mysterious pal of his might be at the moment? Seems to me I’d want anyone who knew me to identify me if I was being confounded with somebody wanted by the local law. I’m pretty sure there’s a lady back at my posada who can tell you I answer to the name of Crawford.”
