“How’d you know which window?”
Davis sat up, swung his legs around, and sat on the side of the bed. He yawned. “I knew your room number, so all I had to do was count down from the lobby. Wasn’t hard.”
“Huh,” Longarm said. He walked to the bedside table, poured himself half a glass of the Maryland whiskey, noting the bottle had taken a pretty good beating since he’d last seen it, then pulled up a chair, turned it front to back, and sat down astraddle. He took a drink of whiskey. “What,” he said, “are you doing back here? I’m glad as hell you are, but what happened?”
Austin Davis’s face fell. He grimaced. “She ran out on me, Longarm. Got away. Last night. I don’t know what time ‘cause I didn’t wake up. But when I did, she was gone. I nearly killed two horses getting back here. I ain’t been here long.”
“Hmmmm,” Longarm said, and took another sip of his drink. “I take it you rushed back because you figure she don’t mean us no good. Is that it?”
Davis shook his head. “I don’t know. But I figured you ought to know. I mean, she did slip off. Took Raoul’s horse, the best I can figure. I know she bribed a couple of the peons working on my friends’ hacienda to help her saddle up and get away. We determined that much.”
“How was she to you?”
The young deputy wrinkled his brow in thought. “Kind of calculating I’d say. She asked me a bunch of questions about you, but I just stuck to my part as a cattle contractor. Told her you was a cattle broker, and that was all I knowed. That you was dealing with Caster and your business with him had brought you out to see Raoul. Said it was damn unfortunate about him, but them things happened.”
“What’d she say to that?”
Davis shook his head. “Not much of anything. If she was feeling any loss about Raoul, she kept it damn well hidden from me. It took us two days to get to these folks’ place. They knew I was a deputy marshal, but I tipped them not to let on and I’m sure they didn’t. I got rid of the body along the way, though Dulcima never knew about it. We spent the first night in a little hotel, and I slipped out when it was good and dark and found a canyon in some wild country and buried Raoul at the bottom of it.”
Longarm rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t know a hell of a lot about the woman,” he said, “except she is strong-willed as hell and wants her way. Did you do any good with her?”
Davis shook his head again. “No. And it was a damn big disappointment. But you remember she’d said she’d do the touching if it come to it. So I waited and it never happened. We slept in separate rooms, though they was side by side and had a connecting door. I slept mighty light and kept a check on her through the night. That’s how I come to find out she was gone as soon as I did. I reckon it was around two in the morning. Hell, it was this morning. So I’ve come forty miles just about as fast as you can without being on a train. You reckon she means to make trouble for us here?”
Longarm took a drink and looked thoughtful. “I’m not sure,” he said. “Women are a strange breed and she’s one of the strangest I ever run across. Maybe it took her a few days, but it might have occurred to her I killed her lover right there in her house and that was a slap to her. If she takes it that way, then yes, I got to figure she means trouble. And then her slipping off like that. Got to be something in it.”
“Then how come she never put up no struggle about it? Why didn’t she fight me more?”
“Maybe figuring to lull you to sleep. Maybe she figured if she put up a fight, we’d of throwed her in a sack and taken her anyway. But that ain’t the important part. The important part is how fast can she get back here?”
“Ain’t any way she could have come by horseback and beat or even come close to my time. I’m saying I rode hard. Other way is to head about fifteen miles west to a little town where the rail line to Nuevo Laredo stops. If she done that, the train would get her into town sometime early tomorrow morning. But how could she know?”
Longarm shrugged. “That’s a mighty resourceful lady. She bribed the peons to help her, she might have got the information out of them. And she could have found a guide that would have helped her. I would imagine she had plenty of cash on her.” He stood up and walked over to the table to pour himself more whiskey. Austin Davis held out his glass and Longarm filled that. Then he turned and went back to his chair. “But I better tell you where we are,” he said. “We got some plans to make.”
Item by item, Longarm related everything that had transpired. “So it looks like tomorrow morning is the time. Either we catch our rabbit—or rabbits—then, or they’re going to get away. As a matter of fact, much as I hated to do it, I was going over to ask Raymond San Diego to get me up a crew of vaqueros to handle the cattle when they’re released. But now, with Dulcima a wild card in the game, I don’t reckon I care for that idea over much.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Davis told his partner. “I’ll go down to a saloon later on and hire us a crew in nothing flat. There’s a couple of places where the vaqueros hang out. In fact, I think most of the bunch I hired to go into Mexico are still in town. I’ll offer them three dollars a day for a short drive and get more takers than I can use. But it does sound like Caster is getting jittery. Now, I’m supposed to have loaned you that extra twenty-five hundred?”
“Yeah. You just got some money in to pick up another herd in Mexico.”
Davis ran a hand through his dark hair. “Boy, I’ll tell you the truth—this is one job I’ll be glad to get shut of. It’s like handling day-old fish—they’re slippery and they smell to high heaven.”
Longarm looked at him sharply. “You? Damnit, Austin, you ever involve me in anything like this again and I’ll move to Canada.”
“Oh, by the way,” Davis added, “I found out what Raymond San Diego and Jasper White been smuggling. Raoul, too. And Caster.”
“What?”
Davis grinned slyly. “Cattle.”
“Cattle? Into the U.S.? Hell, we already knew that.”
Austin Davis shook his head. “No, into Mexico.”
“Mexico?”
