Davis gave Longarm a puzzled look. Longarm laughed, and explained, “The lady is telling you she’ll do the choosing. If and when she does.”
“Yes,” Dulcima said. “That ees the way I always do. And when I am finish, I am finish.” She looked at Longarm. “I doan theenk he is muy macho like you.”
Longarm could not keep from smiling as Davis said, “Ma’m, I’d like a chance to prove that.”
She shrugged. “How long we be gone?”
Longarm gave Austin Davis a quick look. He said, “Two or three days.”
Dulcima turned toward the clothes chest in the corner. “I must pack a valise.”
Longarm started toward the door. “Let’s get out of here, Austin. Give the lady some privacy.”
Once on the landing, he said, “You know, you and Raoul wear the same kind of hat and the same color.”
“It’s common along the border,” Davis told him. “That’s why they call it a border hat.”
“Yeah, but you’re also about the same size, except you’re maybe ten, fifteen pounds heavier, mostly in the shoulders and chest. Why don’t you wear his vest?”
“What are you getting at?”
“I’m thinking maybe you ought to cross at the International Bridge.”
Davis screwed up his face in concern. “Are you crazy? I don’t look like that Mex.”
“Not up close, no. I don’t mean for you to stop and visit. Is his horse outside?”
“There was two horses tied out there. I guess one of them is his. Yeah, I reckon it is. Big black saddle. Got enough silver on it to feed a family for a year.”
“All right, that’s my point. Folks will see the saddle and they’ll see Dulcima, because that is what will take their eyes. You keep the brim of your hat down low and kind of scrunch up on that buckboard seat and just brisk right on over that bridge, and more than one person will think it’s San Diego.”
Davis looked thoughtful for a moment. “Well,” he said, “I can see where it will help your case when you tell Caster that the last you saw of Raoul was him taking off with Dulcima and your twenty-five hundred dollars. But what if somebody hails us?”
“Don’t look up and don’t stop. In that half mile or so where you’re liable to run into someone just keep your head down and the horses in a good trot or lope. Tell Dulcima to do the waving if any waving has got to be done.”
“What if I see his brother, Raymond? The Tejano Cafe ain’t that far from the bridge.”
Longarm shrugged. “I don’t know. Hope like hell you don’t, I guess. I’ll be following you, so I’ll know how it goes. Hell, Austin, it will strengthen my story.”
“Hell, why not,” Davis said. “How long you want me gone?”
“Well…” Longarm looked down the stairs, thinking. “I don’t know. I don’t know when Caster will release the cattle. He said a week. You reckon you can keep her over there for a week? We can’t arrest Caster until he turns the cattle loose. He ain’t done nothing illegal until then.”
“I don’t know if I can keep her there or not, short of, like I said, hogtieing her. But, Longarm, I’ll be back for the arrests. Don’t forget now that I can’t go to Brownsville and look Mull over.”
Longarm grimaced. “I hate to not know about Mull. Like I said, this is the most snarled up, complicated damn job I was ever on in my life. I had an easier time of it when I was courting five women at the same time in Denver one year. And killing San Diego has just snarled it up more. Hell! I had counted on us knowing Mull when we seen him.”
“I still don’t think you can depend on Jasper White.”
“I ain’t got no intention of depending on Jasper White. We’ll just have to think of something else.” He scratched his head, realizing he still hadn’t put his hat on. “Though I don’t know what, right now. You really think I ought to tell Caster that I gave San Diego the money?”
“I give you my reasons for that, but you do like you want on the matter.”
“We better get back in there with Miss Dulcima. I didn’t know there was an outside door before.”
“You scared she’ll run off?”
“Listen, Austin—The lady is now your problem.”
“I don’t know how I’m going to keep her over there a week. I’m serious, Longarm. She acts like a woman who bores easy.”
“You can’t let her back here.”
“You want me to shoot her in the leg?”
Longarm shook his head. “I don’t know what to tell you. Like you say, this is your barn dance. She gets back over here, it could burn the barn down.”
“Oh, now it’s my party. I see how you think, Longarm, and I don’t much like it.”
“If you see you’re going to be settled in one place for a few days, wire me where I can wire you. I’ll try and let you know what’s happening. But you better get a move on.”
Longarm pulled up a quarter of a mile short and watched as Austin Davis, with Dulcima seated beside him and the body of Raoul San Diego in the back, drove to the main southbound road, took a left, and then drove the remaining three or four hundred yards to the bridge.
Austin had the matched team going at a good high trot and, with his horse and San Diego’s tied to the back of
