Longarm 244: Longarm and the Devil's Sister (23 page)

Once fully dressed with his hat and gun back on, Longarm moseyed out undecided and drifted down the stairs and as far as the exit to the street as he muttered, “None of Pete Maxwell's Mex
vaqueros
played a serious part in that short nasty war up Lincoln County way. To begin with, Fort Sumner and the rest of the Maxwell Grant lie a good eighty miles from Lincoln, which is why owlhoot riders, such as The Kid, spent any time there at all. That lago squirt is likely some Mex who only heard about the famous fight betwixt our own kind, if he ain't one of them Navaho left over from the time the army had a bunch of Navaho planting peach trees around Fort Sumner.

As he stood there in the doorway, staring out to see the rain was starting to let up, he decided to wait until it quit entire. He lit another smoke and muttered, “Dumb name for a big bad bandito from the headwaters of the Pecos. Iago Casas, meaning James Houses, or perhaps you could translate
Casas
as Homes if you didn't look too Mex and had some Anglo blood you wanted to brag about.”

Then, as if lightning had flashed inside his skull, Longarm stared goggle-eyed at the damp adobe across the way to exclaim, “That's it! I ought to be sat in a corner with a dunce cap on, but they say it's better later than never, and it may be later than we think!”

He started running, splashing through puddles and paying no mind when his cheroot got put out. He was blocks from Military Plaza and feeling dumber by the minute as he ran, with the damp cheroot gripped in his bared teeth until, at last, he burst out of a side street just in time to see Connie Deveruex coming out of that bank near the big cathedral with Chongo and Slim. Slim Gonzales was the one packing the big canvas money bags.

The three of them froze in place in the last of the rain as Longarm called out, “Get back inside! Do it now!”

But they just stood there as Longarm charged across the plaza. Then El Moro and his two pals were running to join Connie and her older riders from a closer doorway, and El Moro was grinning like a shit-eating dog as he called out,
“¿Que pasa, me patrona?”

Connie called out,
“No
se!” and Longarm wanted to kick her when she added,
“Pero ayúdame”.
So the three of them ran over to cover her as Longarm slid to an awkward halt in front of them all, his sixgun drawn, to warn El Moro, “It ain't going to work. I got it figured. So where's your
compadre,
Iago? Or should I call him your mastermind?”

Slim handed a money bag to Chongo and dropped a thoughtful hand to his gun grips as he demanded,
“Que cono te pasa?
What are you up to, Crawford?”

Longarm had El Moro and his pals covered with their gun hands frozen as he snapped, “I'm working on it! A holdup works better than anything else they might have had in mind!”

El Moro protested,
“Pues ... tu eres un vero cabron, gringo.
We buy you a drink and call you
amigo
and you pay us back by saying such rude things about us?”

Turning to his nominal boss, El Moro added, “Do you see us trying for to rob anybody,
me Patrona?
First this gringo yells at you. Then I yell for to ask what is wrong, and you order us to come and help you! How do you know it is not
he
who is out for to rob you? He is the one with the gun in his hand! He is the one who makes no sense as he yells at us about masterminds!”

Grinning at Longarm, El Moro added, “What is a mastermind? Who are we talking about? Have you been drinking since you had that tequila with us earlier?”

Longarm told Connie and the others, “He told me he had something good lined up. He said it all depended on whether a knock-around
hombre
who'd set it up wanted to let me in on it. He said this man of action was called Iago Casas. Add it up!”

“Add it up to what?” asked Slim as Longarm saw to his dismay that in spite of the drizzle others were drifting over with puzzled smiles.

Worse yet, a nun had come out of the cathedral now to come their way with her cowled head held shyly down and her hands up her sleeves like a Chinese mandarin. That was all they needed with things fixing to break out in a rash of bullets any second!

He called out, “Circle wide of this, sister! You gents with the money bags take Miss Connie back in the bank and I'll explain it all later!”

But Connie, Slim, and Chongo never moved anywhere as that blamed nun kept coming their way, as if she aimed to invite them all to the vesper mass in her cathedral. That had been what that priest back in Sheffield-Crossing had called the last services of the evening, hadn't he?

Then, as El Moro and his two sidekicks stood their ground, looking like butter wouldn't have melted in their mouths, Longarm swung the muzzle of his .44-40 to cover the innocent-looking nun, who in turn seemed to be whipping an old Merwin & Hulbert .41 out of one sleeve just as Longarm fired, point blank, to blow the nun's whimple and a gob of blood and brains away, to start the fun and games!

It was just as well the slower and not-too-bright Chongo had that money bag in his gun hand. The quicker-thinking Slim spied the Justin boots and denim jeans under the swirling black skirts of that “nun” as the head-shot imposter landed spread eagle on the damp paving blocks with that other sixgun. So he slapped leather as El Moro and his two pals went for broke and Longarm felt free to shoot El Moro next instead of the lean- and hungry-looking
segundo!

Connie was screaming at everybody to stop as Slim nailed the one called Pablo. Latigo yelled,
“iYo
rendicio!” and grabbed for the rain clouds. But it was tougher to surrender after you'd chosen to be known as “Lash” in Mex, and Slim dropped Latigo to the pavement along with his pals before Longarm could ask him not to.

A police whistle was tweeting, and, as the survivors stood there in the drizzle and drifting gunsmoke, nobody but a couple of copper badges in blue uniforms seemed to be coming any closer. But the Texas lawmen were coming fast, with drawn guns, so Longarm called out, “It's all right! I'm the law and these are the law-abiding folk! I left my own badge in Stockton, but I'm still U.S. Deputy Marshal Custis Long of the Denver District Court!”

Connie Deveruex blanched and gasped,
“Ay, Querido
!
How could you?”

Longarm shrugged and said, “It wasn't all that tough, ma'am. We only done what we both thought best at the time and you wanted me to gun Jim Hogan for you. So there the rascal lies in that nun's habit he surely stole somewheres. El Moro, yonder, knew him as Iago Casas. But James Hogan means roughly the same thing if you're a Navaho breed. Hogan can be an Irish surname or the Navaho word for a
casa,
or house. I just now said old Jim thought he was a mastermind. Now look where all his slick sarcastic notions got him!”

It was just as well one of the San Antone lawmen knew Longarm of old on sight. As they joined him and the others, Longarm began to reload and explain, “This lady would be Miss Connie Deveruex, owner and operator of the D Bar L on the Pecos. This here's her
segundo,
Slim, and her boss wrangler, Chongo. They were fixing to carry them two money bags across the plaza to another bank. Them three cadavers to the south rode for Miss Connie as well. They'd just helped her herd a heap of beef here to San Antone, and they wanted all the money she sold them for.”

“Damn it, Dunk, I trusted you!” wailed the dusky blonde who fucked with her spurs on.

Longarm told the copper badges, “Them three two-faces figured she'd trust them, too. So the plan, as I see it, was for them to break cover and join Miss Connie and these honest riders as they crossed over to the far side. Neither Slim nor Chongo are sissies, and as you can see they are both wearing their own hardware. So Jim Hogan in yonder nun's habit was to circle in smiling saintly with that Merwin & Hulbert .41 to start the music, so's El Moro and them others could back-shoot Miss Connie and the guns she'd invited to the party in their backs!”

The folk he'd just saved were staring owl-eyed as he continued with, “They couldn't have planned on leaving three witnesses who knew them on sight alive. Dead men tell no tales and so we're going to have to guess some details. But I somehow doubt our vanquished quartet meant to spend all that money here in Texas. It ain't that far to Chihuahua, and you can see they could all pass for Mex.”

The cops didn't see fit to argue. It was Slim who waved his own gun muzzle at the oddly costumed corpse of Jim Hogan to demand, “How did you know? Before that sweet old nun drew from her sleeve, I mean? She'd have had the drop on me for certain!”

Chongo said, “Amen to that! Are you a naturally suspicious anti-Catholic, Dunk? I mean Deputy?”

Longarm shook his head and said, “Not hardly. But I had the natural advantage of being more curious about the trimmings of your faith than somebody raised to accept ‘em without thinking much about 'em. There's this big old cathedral in Denver atop Capitol Hill, and they naturally have droves of nuns going in and out at all hours. But always in pairs. I mind one time I asked this Irish maid who works on Capitol Hill how come you never see a nun in public alone. She told me it was against rules set in Rome a long time ago.”

It was Connie who gasped, “I knew that! I'd forgotten that! I'd seen my mother talking to a lone nun near our church in Sheffield-Crossing and ... You mean it was ... Jim Hogan, there?”

Longarm nodded and said, “He was wanted serious by the law in his Justins and jeans. Your priest back home said something about an altar boy and that other outlaw of Mission Indian extraction, Hernando Nana, had made himself might familiar with that same church and its grounds. The bunch of them must have been slipping in and out, dressed natural or nunnish, when the priest and his crew weren't paying attention. Rangers hardly ever search church lofts, whether they're Papists or not.”

He put his gun back in its holster as he added, “We ought to be thinking about getting you and your money out of this rain and under lock and key whilst your own bank is still open, this evening, Miss Connie. I was recalling what your own priest said about vesper services that reminded me of a lone nun I'd seen with your momma, myself, and that reminded me of a pleasant sunset viewed from Capitol Hill, in good company, as a corporal's squad of nuns crossed the statehouse grounds, in pairs. So when I suddenly spied one nun alone, coming at us in this drizzle after I'd yelled at her to stay back, I didn't need a slide rule to tally the final equation. El Moro, yonder, had already told me him and his pals were planning something shady with a hard-talking cuss called lago Casas. Miss Connie, here, had made mention of trouble with one James Hogan. So I'd already put Casas and Hogan together as I ran over to get here just in time.”

One of the copper badges stared down at the sprawled
vaqueros
to demand, “They told you, the famous Longarm, they were planning to kill and rob the lady they rode for?”

Longarm modestly replied, “They didn't know who I was.”

Slim laughed dryly and volunteered, “You had to have been there. He had us all convinced he was a not-too-honest veteran of that Lincoln County War.”

“He lies like a rug!” added Chongo, somehow not appearing too sore about that now.

Connie sobbed, “Get me and my money out of this rain and away from this two-faced cochino I never wish to see again!”

Her voice dripped acid as she added, “See Slim about any back pay you may feel you've earned for your ... services, Deputy Long!”

But life was not to be that simple. One of the copper badge escorted Connie and her retainers over to her bank as Longarm and the other rode herd on all the bodies until other lawmen and the meat wagon from the San Antone Morgue could arrive. Then it still wasn't over.

The famous Longarm hadn't gunned four crooks alone. Slim Gonzales had shot two and both Connie and Chongo were called as witnesses, along with Longarm and an old Mex selling hot tamales across the way to the coroner's inquest that followed.

 

Connie Deveruex sat calmly but must have been sweating bullets when it was Longarm's turn to testify. He told the panel he'd been working undercover to see if he could catch some federal wants riding with the D Bar L. When one of the panel members pointed out that the late Jim Hogan hadn't been riding for the outfit, Longarm allowed that Hogan's plotting with El Moro, Pablo, and Latigo seemed close enough. The San Antone coroner banged the table and said, “You're out of order. You just heard everyone agree three whole riders for the D Bar L were in with a bad breed wanted for murder by the federal govenment! Get on with it, Deputy Long!”

So Longarm said, “That's about the size of it, sir. It's like that fairy tale about the three princes of Serendip by Mister Waldpole. It sometimes turns out that they send me after one crook and I catch me another.”

The coroner said, “That's for certain. We've been told by other lawmen you were sent to Texas after the younger brother of Consuela Deveruex y Lopez, yonder in the front row.”

Longarm was facing the other way. So he couldn't see Connie's face as he lightly replied, “I was. Like the local law and your rangers had already decided, he don't seem to have hid out worth mention at home. Jim Hogan was a bad Navaho breed we suspect of riding with Dave Deveruex and two bad Mission Apache. Apache and Navaho are close kin who talk the same Indian dialect. Albeit the three of them were passing for Mex. I can't say for certain where Devil Dave might be just now. He ain't around here, and I can't see him being in on a plot to kill and rob his own big sister.”

The coroner nodded sagely and decided, “Then it's your contention we have met to declare them four fools killed lawfully as they were fixing to murder and rob Miss Deveruex and leave the whereabouts of her brother, their pal, up in the air?”