Tabor Evans - Longarm on the Border

Hill rode up to Longarm. "You feel all right?"

"Fine. Be indecent if I felt any better."

"We'll be keeping an eye on Ramos's men." Longarm nodded, his eyes on the rurales, who were beginning to string across the ford. A bit diffidently, the cavalryman said, "Well, good luck, Marshal."

"Thanks." Longarm nudged Tordo through the line of troopers and stopped just beyond them. A hand touched his knee. He looked down and saw Nate Webster.

"That sergeant from the rurales, Molina, was over here a while ago," Webster said. "Maybe I butted in, but I took it on myself to work out some rules with him."

"Like what?"

"Everybody'll stay back outa your way. I'll walk up with you, and Molina'll come out with Ramos. Molina swore they wasn't fixing up any monkeyshines, but I still don't trust 'em."

"All right, so far. What then?"

"Me and Molina will draw a middle line. Then we'll step off fifteen paces in both directions from it, and draw deadlines. You and Ramos start out back to back from the middle. You can walk or run or belly-crawl, however you want to do it, long as you don't draw before you get to the deadline. Then you turn around and face it out."

"Sounds fair enough to me," Longarm told the Ranger. "Captain Hill says his froopers'll be watching the rurales to see they don't cut no didoes."

"I'd say everything's covered." Webster studied the sky. The pink was fading in the east, a harbinger of sunrise. Above them, the air was bright and the sky clear. "Guess me and Molina better get on with it. I'll wave you out, when it's time."

Longarm lounged in the saddle and watched the Ranger and the rurale pace off the deadlines and mark them with furrows scraped by boot heels. Behind him, the babble of the crowd grew louder as the onlookers observed the preliminaries. Webster and Molina walked back to the center line after marking the deadlines. Webster waved to Longarm, who dismounted and walked leisurely to the furrow from which the duellers would start. From the cluster of rurales at the river end of the spit, Ramos was walking toward them.

An argument developed between Webster and Molina. It was brief, and not especially heated. When they left the line and went over to the crowd together, Ramos and Longarm both stopped to watch what they did. The Ranger and the sergeant were searching the faces that stared from behind the line of cavalrymen. Finally, both nodded and simultaneously signaled one of the spectators forward. There was a brief three-sided discussion and the trio returned to the center line. Longarm and Ramos resumed their approach.

"This hombre's going to start you off." Webster put his hand on the shoulder of the man he and Molina had picked from the spectators. "He'll count, then he'll run like hell to get outa the line of fire. You can see he's Mexican. He lives in Los Perros and he swears he don't hold sides for either one of you. That all right?"

"How many numbers will he count?" Ramos asked.

"Three," Webster replied.

"Uno, dos, tres, " Molina supplemented.

Ramos nodded. So did Longarm.

"Might as well go ahead then," Webster said.

Longarm and Ramos did not shake hands as they walked to opposite sides of the center line and turned to stand back to back. Webster and Molina moved away. The tension that had slowly been building now began to make itself felt; the air was charged with unseen currents. The only sound was the bubbling of the Rio Grande's opaque water.

His voice high-pitched and strained, the man chosen from the crowd began to count, "Uno — dos — tres!" His heels scuffed softly in the sand as he ran from the line.

Behind him, as he started walking, Longarm heard the muffled crunching of Ramos's footsteps. He tuned his ears to the rhythm of the sound and tried to match his own pace to that of the rurale. Ahead of him, the deadline grew more sharply defined with each step.

Longarm divided his mind. Half of it counted the paces he must take to reach the furrow, the other half concentrated on translating the almost inaudible scratching of sand on boot soles into the length and speed of Ramos's steps.

A jarring note in the rhythm of Ramos's paces warned Longarm. The rurale had begun to run. Longarm leaped forward over the furrow of the deadline. In midair, he curled his body. He landed prone and rolled, drawing as he landed. He saw Ramos over his sights and fired. Ramos dropped before he could trigger the revolver he was raising.

While the echo of Longarm's shot was dying, two more reports that sounded almost as one broke the disturbed morning air. Longarm, still lying on the ground, saw the spurt of sand raised by a pistol slug rise like a tiny geyser, a foot from his shoulder. He looked around. Molina was crumpling. Webster was standing with his revolver still extended.

"Bastard drew when he seen Ramos drop," the Ranger called to Longarm.

There was a murmur of agreement from those in the crowd who'd seen Molina's move, of surprise and doubt from others. The rurales started forward as if on order. The cavalrymen advanced, closing into platoon front, their carbines resting on their thighs. The rurales stopped, clustered around the bodies of Ramos and Molina. When the Mexican force stopped, the troopers halted as well. In sullen silence the rurales picked up the dead men and draped them across horses. They turned and rode off the sandspit into the water, splashed across the ford, and disappeared into the chamizal.

Only after the conical tops of the rurales' sombreros could no longer be seen above the brush did the crowd let go its breath in a great collective sigh. The onlookers began to trickle back toward town. The cavalrymen held their position, watching for movement on the Mexican side of the river.

Longarm walked over to Webster. Both men were still holding their pistols, so brief had the interval been after the first shot.

"Thanks, Nate," Longarm said. He fished a cartridge out of his pocket and looked it over carefully before putting it into the Colt's cylinder. Then he told Webster, "I got to go back to the sheriff's office now and finish up the job I came here to do. I'd be proud to have your company, if you want to come along."

Webster nodded. Both men mounted and rode side by side back toward the shanties of Los Perros.

Chapter 20

As he and Webster rode into the plaza, Longarm said, "We'll need to stop by the saloon before we go to the sheriff's office. Both of us could stand a drink about now."

"Looking for Baskin?" Webster asked casually.

"Yep. You heard what Lefty said there in the jail before they killed him."

"It's not something I'd be likely to forget. But it's been your play, mostly. I'll let you call it."

Longarm lilted his glass of rye quickly and left Webster at the bar while he went upstairs and tapped at the door of Flo's room.

"Who is it?" she called. Her voice wasn't cheerful.

"Who'd you think it'd be?"

He heard her footsteps running to the door. It swung open. Flo said, "I didn't stay after the gunfight. I didn't know whether you'd feel like talking."

Longarm kissed her. "Don't fret over what's past. I just got a minute, but I'll be back when I'm done."

"You mean you're almost ready to leave here?"

"Pretty quick now. If you got any getting ready to do~"

"I'm ready any time." She sighed with relief. "I wasn't sure you were going to ask me to go with you."

"I'm asking, but only if that's what you feel like doing."

"You know I do. Where?"

"We'll talk about that later, after I get back."

He rejoined Webster at the bar. The Ranger asked, "Want to tell me what you've got in mind?"

Longarm poured another glass of rye and sipped it before he answered. "Well, we got what my boss would call overlapping jurisdiction. Only I figure you got a better claim than I have, not that I want any at all, Nate."