El Gato turned from the window, adding, “The streets below are now clear of friend and foe. Is too hot outside for anyone. After the woman of La Causa has learned more from our gallant Gomez, we shall perhaps be able to plan your mad dash up the coast with more certainty, eh?” Longarm smiled thinly and asked, “Does Gomez always blab all his plans to the ladies?”
El Gato nodded soberly and explained, “That is for why I asked them to give him a good price. When a man thinks he is getting it almost for nothing, he is inclined to think she must like him. Married men in the habit of patronizing putas are seldom simply oversexed. Women who make a business of pleasing men are inclined to let men talk, no matter how boring they may seem at home. I understand our gallant Gomez is saddled with a delicate faded rose who does not like for to hear about clever questioning or ingenious disposals, eh?” Longarm said he followed El Gato’s drift, then added, “No matter where he thinks I ran to, I have to get going if I mean to catch up with Harmony Drake and his pals. If I wait until dark, they’ll have put in at Yuma long before I can hope to get there!”
El Gato shrugged and suggested, “Forget about them and help us steal money instead. Is no way you could overtake that night boat before it puts in at Yuma. Not if you left this very minute. I told you the only vessels our side controls are fishing boats or, all right, smugglers, powered by sails in the fickle winds of this stagnant Sea of Cortez. Your prisoner and his blond puta will be back on shore, free for to run in any direction, long before we could hope to land you in Yuma. To begin with, is a guarded border crossing you would never get through if you followed the main channel of the Rio Colorado. The broad swampy delta provides many better, or at least less famous channels. But progress through that windless sea of tule reeds can be slow.”
“I don’t aim to catch ‘em aboard that infernal steamboat,” Longarm declared, snorting smoke out both nostrils as he explained. “The best I can hope for in Yuma is somebody who saw which way they were headed. Such witnesses get tougher to come by as time winds on. They know this. They figure they led me on a long ride around Robin Hood’s Barn, and I’m figuring they heard I’d been arrested before they ever boarded that side-wheeler. Even if they take some pains, it’s tough to cover your tracks when you get off a steamboat with a good-looking blonde. I only need someone who can say for certain they caught a train either way. I’m betting they never planned to.”
El Gato cocked a thoughtful eyebrow. “Par que? For why would anyone stay close to Yuma when he knew that was where the law expected them to hide out?”
“To hide out, of course,” said Longarm, taking pity on his pal’s bewildered smile. “Harmony Drake was the only member of the bunch anyone ever spotted in Yuma. Or should we say, the downtown parts of Yuma. I’m saying they must have been holed up somewhere good. Somewhere they felt safer than anywhere here in Mexico where nobody in possession of a U.S. federal warrant had just cause to look for them.”
El Gato nodded soberly and said, “Is agreed those two you tangled with in that cantina should not have been out drinking when they had reason for to be expecting someone like you to come along. But should the gang leave that boat for to go straight to some Yuma hideout, do you have any idea where such a secret lair might be?”
To which Longarm could only reply, “Upstairs or down, close to the center or way out on the outskirts of town. A hideout is by definition somewhere nobody else knows about. With any luck, I’ll be able to trace them as far as the depot, and we can wire an all-points on the sneaky sons of bitches. But with my luck, they’ll go to ground somewhere close to Yuma, where Billy Vail sent me to get old Harmony in the first damned place. How long does it take a sailboat to carry a lawman that far, old son?” El Gato said, “Twenty-four hours with a following wind. It gets to be more of a problem when the winds are calm or contrary. I think you have more fun helping us rob El Presidente Diaz. They gonna kill you if they catch you anyway. So you may as well have the game as long as you have the name, no?”
Longarm grimaced and said, “It sure beats all how they ban books suggesting it feels good to get laid, whilst you’ll find a copy of Robin Hood in most every school library. That one book has got more folks killed than all the French postcards ever printed. It ain’t wise to tell little kids it’s all right to commit highway robbery if you don’t like the sheriff.”
El Gato shrugged and said, “I spit in the milk of your Robin Hood’s mother. I fight for Mexico in the tradition of El Cid, the grandfather of all Spanish-speaking rebels. When his king shit on him, El Cid went loco and killed people until they apologized sincerely. But be off to Yuma in search of the goose if you must. I shall send word to our most sneaky smuggler, Dandolo. Nobody knows this rocky coast and the swampy Colorado Delta more better than Dandolo, But if she agrees for to take you up to Yuma, you must let her do it her own way and set her own pace, comprende?”
Longarm stopped pacing and frowned. “She? This Dandolo is a gal?”
El Gato nodded. “Did I not just say she was sneaky? I understand she is not even a true Mexicana. Her family came here from Venice years ago as coastal traders. Perhaps that is for why Dandolo speaks so many languages. Her crew more than makes up for any lack of brawn Dandolo has for to go with her brains. Her vessel, a Yanqui schooner she inherited from her father, is fast and, even better, shallow-draft. The delta of the Rio Colorado has always been tricky for to navigate, and they tell me that lately, since your Anglo settlers have been drawing irrigation water from its tributaries, it has gotten worse.”
Before Longarm had to say he was sorry about that, there came a soft tapping on the bolted oaken door. El Gato opened it to admit a pleasingly plump puta in a loosely fastened robe.
As El Gato closed and barred the door behind her, the gal told them, “The pig is asleep, filled with wine, empty of desire, and most pleased with himself. Telegrafo messages move faster than the winds. So Gomez knows a, how you say, squall line is moving up the coast. He says we are to get hit with much wind, rain, thunder, and lightning just after the sun goes down.”
Longarm cocked a brow. “You say this pleases Gomez?”
The whore who’d doubtless also pleased the inspector nodded and explained. “He says that if you were not aboard that night boat bound for Yuma, you must be hiding here in Puerto Periasco and must be most anxious for to leave before they can turn over the wet rock you must be hiding under. I mean no disrespect, El Brazo Largo. Was him who said this, not me.”
Longarm nodded and told her to go on. So she continued. “Gomez expects you to make a break for it by sea during the coming storm. He has ordered the crew of that steam cutter at the far end of the embarcadero to stoke their boilers no later than three this afternoon, so they will have the full head of steam before sundown. When I yawned in his face and played with his pipi, he naturally thought I did not find his plans so interesting. So he naturally insisted on telling me how that cutter would find itself out on a calm sea in the moonlight if it cast off in the teeth of that squall as it swept north.”
Longarm and El Gato exchanged thoughtful glances. El Gato sighed and said, “I must learn not to underestimate the sly fregado. They have a Gatling gun mounted on that cutter, and is no way Dandolo can outdistance it by sail alone under a full moon!”
Longarm said, “I know. Is it right to picture this government cutter something like a big single-masted sloop, rigged fore and aft, with the mainsail set back a tad to make room for a steam funnel and that deck gun?”
