notice, Longarm took another drag on the claro and murmured dryly, “That was strike three, Bajo.”
Chapter 14
Longarm found a cubbyhole with a door he could bolt, and caught a few safe hours of sleep before a change in the motion of the vessel and bright sunlight through the one porthole woke him up. He went out on deck to see they were heeled over at full sail in such breeze as a desert shore next to a stagnant inland sea had to offer. The sky above was that shade of blue Mexicans liked to paint tables and window frames. They were coasting close inshore to take full advantage of the onshore airs. The ominous black cliffs over yonder were likely lava, cooled and sharpened by seawater.
He went aft to the cockpit to find Irena talking to the helmsman she had at the wheel that morning. That didn’t surprise Longarm. What did surprise Longarm was that Bajo seemed alive and well behind the wheel.
Irena smiled up at Longarm and said, “Come below with me and I’ll have my galley crew serve you some breakfast. Have you seen Monakai anywhere this morning? Nobody seems to know where he’s been sleeping, and he is supposed to be standing watch!”
Longarm was too thunderstruck to mutter more than, “Well, we sure do live and learn!”
He hadn’t expected that to mean anything to her. As he followed her through the hatchway forward of the cockpit, she confided in a softer tone, “I am afraid for the Islander’s safety. Is not true he was allowed to treat me as you did last night, toro mio. But some of my muchachos may have thought I favored him a little. He learned for to sail aboard a Yanqui whaling ship, and perhaps some confused the way I relied on his sailing skills with a desire for his big brown pipi. Not that I have ever seen it, of course. Is difficult for to keep such secrets aboard ship, eh?” He said he wasn’t interested in Monakai’s big tool, but suggested, “You could be right about somebody on board having had a jealous hard-on last night. We’d best behave ourselves until we can sneak off to a more private love nest in Yuma. How soon were you figuring on getting us to Yuma, by the way?”
She sat them both down in the small main salon, and called forward for some coffee for the both of them and a plate of Moors and Christians or beans with rice for Longarm’s breakfast.
As they waited, she explained they’d be moving up through the swampy and uncharted Colorado Delta before sundown if these breezes held. She said, “Is better to approach the delta under full steam with the sails furled for not to attract attention, eh?” He asked if it might not be even slicker to sneak in the last few miles by moonlight, adding, “The seaward reaches of that whole delta are south of the border, ain’t they?”
Irena nodded and said, “With a marina federate base guarding the main channel. We must have some daylight for to navigate the channels we must choose instead. This big cutter draws more water than my own little schooner, and even she has trouble finding her way through the tule flats when the muddy waters of the Gila and Colorado meet the sea in ever-changing patterns.”
He said he followed her drift, and then a Mexican kid brought a tray back to them. The coffee was strong, and the government-issue rice was a nice change from most working-class Mexican cooking. Spanish-speaking folks liked rice almost as much as Chinese did. But it didn’t grow in most of Mexico. So only El Presidente and his own got to eat any rice worth mentioning, and Longarm’s pirate pals were out to consume all the government grub on board. Longarm didn’t ask Irena what she and her crew planned to do with this cutter farther along. He was afraid she’d tell him, and he’d already exceeded his instructions just a bit.
Irena left before he’d finished. Once he had, he took the empty cups and his plate forward to the galley. They didn’t seem to have any chores for him, so he went on deck and seemed to mostly get in the way, until he found a place on the foredeck to display some landlubber skills.
That Gatling gun had ridden out the storm under a tarp, but it was still overdue for some stripping and cleaning. Made like the first Winchesters from both steel and brass, the multibarreled death-grinder tended to corrode fast wherever sweat or salt water could set up odd little electrical currents where the two metals met.
Longarm carefully cleaned and oiled the Gatling, rubbed flecks of green corrosion off the top layer of its .45-55 brass, and as long as he was at it, cleaned and oiled his Big Fifty too. He did as careful a job as he knew how. It was still way the hell short of noon when he’d finished. So he smoked and stared off across the sunlit waves until Irena Dandolo joined him with more coffee and grub to allow they were making good time and ask him to tell her more about that private session he had planned for Yuma.
So they sat cross-legged to dine on sea rations by the Gatling, and he explained he figured on some paper- chasing once she got them all to Yuma. He said, “I have to paw through a whole mess of local files for homestead claims, property deeds, transfers of property, and so forth. It’s high summer, and I fear the government offices in Yuma will have picked up bad habits from you Mexican folks, no offense. I ain’t saying it’s bad to shut down for la siesta when it’s a hundred and change in the shade. I’m saying it’s a pain in the neck when an office shuts from noon to three and then don’t stay open after the usual six o’clock quitting time.” She asked what that had to do with el rapto supreme. So he fought back the temptation to feel her up on deck in broad daylight as he explained, “I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to find what I got to look through all those files for. I do know it’s likely to be a few hours on and a heap of hours off. So there’s this little hotel near the plaza, with cross ventilation north and east if you pick a top-story room with any common sense. Don’t tell me what you and your pals are planning to do around Yuma. Just tell me if you’d like me to include you in my siesta plans.” She laughed and said they’d talk about it once they got there. He didn’t argue. He’d read somewhere about shipboard romances being the bee’s knees until it came time to get off and you both remembered where you were headed and who you were. But it was sure a swell way to pass away the hours of an otherwise tedious journey, which likely accounted for the way spinster schoolmarms and married-up whiskey drummers wound up swearing eternal love on ships and trains so often.
But it wouldn’t have been prudent to while away the afternoon in a bunk with Irena, and it was too damned hot to lock himself in below in any case. So at least a million years went by as he lazed on deck in the shade of the mainsail. Then he felt the throbbing of the engine under his rump, and some son of a bitch slapped him across the face with the late afternoon sun when they suddenly lowered all sails.
Longarm rose and ambled aft just as Irena yelled from the cockpit, and he had to grab a stay as the vessel heeled into a turn at full speed.
Back by the wheel he saw Irena staring hard to the east through a long brass spyglass. Following her gaze, he spied a smoke plume on the horizon. Irena lowered her telescope and ordered a youth in floppy white cotton to go aloft. As he pulled himself hand over hand up the ratlines, Irena nodded to Longarm and sighed, “Monakai was the best lookout we had. I told you he had learned the ropes aboard a whaling ship. But I fear he must have fallen over the side last night.”
Longarm didn’t want to talk about that, so he asked what else was new.
Irena pointed at the distant smoke plume and replied, “Is burning oil and not coal in a careless fashion. That is for why is so black. When we turn, they turn. It has to be a federate gunboat out of San Luis Rio Colorado. Faster than us under steam. That is for why that smoke plume keeps getting closer! Do you think we could move that Gatling gun aft, for to give them a running gunfight if they catch us out here on open water?”
