Longarm didn't. He said, "I suspect she's just run herself into the ground. If you'd help me find a place to lay her down and stretch her out, it's going on siesta time in any case and I got to get on out to that Coast Guard station."
The gal nodded and said, "There's a lie-down we've been taking turns with over by the autopsy theater. That's what Doctor Norma calls the corner she uses to cut 'em open, dead or alive, the autopsy theater."
Longarm nodded, scooped the semi-conscious Norma up in both arms as if he were toting someone's mighty big baby off to bed, and let the other gal lead the way.
Their progress didn't go unnoticed by all the other volunteers. So there were others around them as Longarm lay the exhausted Norma on the semi-secluded cot in a shadowy nook between those hanging sheets and the brick wall of the improvised fever ward.
As he straightened up, Longarm observed, "She'd do better out of that starched-linen outfit with just a thin sheet over her. But I'd best let you ladies worry about that after I leave, right?"
One of the other gals, a small bleached blonde, suddenly covered her face and bawled, "I can't stand this! I can't tell whether these government folk are trying to be polite or mocking!"
The red-haired gal told the bemused Longarm, "Tess ain't used to being called a lady. None of us are. But you're trying to be a good sport, right?"
Longarm shook his head. "Nope. Calling 'em as I see 'em. Lots of folks who call themselves ladies and gents have run off and left those sick folks you've been caring for to die."
The mock redhead shrugged and said, "Business was slow with a damned plague keeping all the cowhands out of town in any case. I know you think we're stupid as well as low-down, Deputy Long, but hell, no girl with a lick of sense would be in our usual line of work to begin with."
Longarm said, "My friends call me Custis. Maybe it takes a lady with a foolish but generous nature to act the way all of you have been acting. I could tell you a tale of another swell gal they named a mountain after up Colorado way. But I got to be on my way now. So some other time."
The gal tagged after him. "My friends call me Ruby. How did you say you meant to get out to that Coast Guard station... CustiS?"
He said, "On foot, I reckon. They say it's only a mile and these low-heeled boots I wear were bought with such dismal events in mind."
Ruby said, "I have my own shay and a high-stepping trotter over to the livery, if you're not ashamed to be seen in broad day with a lady of the evening."
Longarm started to ask about old Norma. But the other gals seemed to have that under control. So he grinned at Ruby and declared, "You're on. But there are gossips up in Denver who might say it was you who was risking her reputation in the company of such a wicked rascal, ma'am."
CHAPTER 9
By then it was almost as hot outside, although sweeter-smelling, and the streets were nearly deserted as la siesta set in, with a heap of local Anglos participating. You had to go north to somewhat cooler parts of Texas to hear folks talking about lazy greasers in the noonday sun. The folks who'd been in the Great Southwest longer were as willing to work, when they had to, as most. But south of, say, San Antone, you knocked off a few hours from about noon to four in the afternoon, unless you felt like frying eggs on your skull with the help of that subtropical sun. Mexicans tended to sneer at lazy gringo shopkeepers who knocked off for the day before midnight, when anyone could see it was easier to go shopping after sundown. They themselves liked to finish their day's work around nine, dine late, and party till it got cool enough to make serious love after midnight. Going home for a snack, a quick screw, and a long nap during the daylight siesta made for a nice break.
So Longarm wasn't at all surprised when they found the livery across the way had closed for la siesta. He led Ruby in her sunbonnet around to the shady side, got out his pocketknife, and told her he'd whistle for her once he'd picked the front lock.
It didn't take long. They'd locked up more with kids in mind than serious horse thieves. So he whistled the friendly fancy gal inside, and took her word on which two-wheel shay was her own in the back. Once she'd introduced him to her frisky chestnut gelding with white stockings, he asked her if she wanted to find and fetch her own harness from the nearby tack room as he played Chinaman with the shay.
She said she would. So they parted friendly, and it only took him a few moments to get between the carriage shafts like some rickshaw coolie and haul the shay as far as that gelding's stall.
Ruby met him there empty-handed, whispering, "I think there's a dead man in the tack room!"
He told her it was likely just one of the stable hands, but drew his six-gun as he led the way through the low overhang between the stalls and tack room.
He had to chuckle as he saw at a glance he'd been right. There was no way to tell what the Mexican propped up on his rump in a corner looked like. He'd wrapped up in his striped wool serape and pulled his big straw sombrero down over his sleepy face. But when you took a longer look you could see he was breathing, while the little brown jug of pulque on its side beside him suggested it might be a waste of time to try and wake him.
So Longarm asked Ruby which horse collar and harness went with her shay, and wasn't surprised when she picked a well-blackened and silver-mounted outfit. Her shay had hard rubber wheel rims too.
As he harnessed the bay in its stall before backing it out, Ruby made a snooty comment on the way greasers dozed off at the dangedest times and places. He didn't waste time defending honest working folk to even a good-natured whore till Ruby asked, as if she really cared, "How come they like to sleep sitting up that way? You see them all over town propped up against a wall in a blanket with their hats down over their faces."
As he harnessed the bay between her carriage shafts and paid its four ribbons back through her silver-plated fittings, he told her, "It ain't as if anyone likes to sleep sitting up. But it beats trying to get comfortable lying down on hard dirt or the softest planking. I've found I wake up less stiff, after a long night on a cross-country train, if I shoot for my forty winks sitting up. They sleep flat as the rest of us when they've got a softer bed to lay flat on, Miss Ruby."
She smiled at him sassily and allowed she felt sure he knew all about sleeping with all sorts of folks in all sorts of odd positions. But he didn't brag about any Mexican gals he'd been to bed with as he led the frisky pony and its sassy owner out of the livery.
He put up the shay's folding top against the overhead sun before he helped her up to the cozy seat. He handed her the ribbons, and got out his knife to politely lock the livery door again. When he climbed up beside the mock redhead, he discovered the seat to be cozier than he'd expected. Ruby's rump was either wider than he'd judged it to be under her flouncy calico skirts, or she'd slid it to her right as he got in on that side.
There was no discussion as to who was to drive. No man was about to sit back and let a woman drive him about as if she were his coach servant. So she handed him the ribbons without him having to ask, but told him which way to go as he clucked his tongue at the bay and lightly flipped its big brown rump with some slack in the ribbons. As they lit out and he let the pent-up pony stretch its legs in a handsome trot, he assured its owner he knew north from south. "I suspect I was on the regular coast road last night. It was flooded in some stretches by that gale and I had to swing way inland but... Lord have mercy, was it only last night I was driving down the other way? It feels like at least three days. I can generally stay up a good seventy-two hours before I feel this tired. Reckon it's all the excitement since I got into Escondrijo this morning. But once I settle a few things out to that Coast Guard post I might be able to catch my own siesta."
She said, "It's not too late to turn back, if you'd really like a nice long nap in the nice soft bed in my private quarters."
He chuckled and declined her kind offer with a gallant observation about just how much sleep a man might get amid such exciting surroundings.
She didn't answer for a time as they trotted on out the north end of the tiny town. When she did, she sighed and said, "I see you drive with a firm but gentle hand, Custis. You're allowing Chocolate to set his own pace, but we all know exactly who's in command of this expedition, right?"
He shrugged and replied, "I've never held with being harder than I need to be with a critter taking me the way I wanted to go in the first place, ma'am."
Ruby nodded. "So I've noticed. Even some of the purer folks we've been trying to help back there in that icehouse haven't been able to resist comical comments about Doc Richards' nursing staff. But you called us ladies and acted as if we were, until I as much as told you right out that I liked you!"
He said, "I like you too, Miss Ruby, and I mean that sincerely. I never said I didn't want to go to bed with you. I only said I had a mess of chores to tend to."
She said, "I'll bet. I just said I admired the polite way you got exactly where you wanted to go, with no straying from your very own determined course. Did you think I was inviting you up to one of the cribs in the... hotel I usually work in?"
He shook his head and said, "I know all sorts of ladies like to keep their own private notions in their very own quarters, ma'am. I ain't all that pure. I've made all sorts of friends along the way, and one of 'em was that very Colorado gal of easy virtue I was speaking of back yonder. They called her Silver Heels up in hardrock country. Some say she was a miner's young widow, whilst others say she wound up doing what she had to do because some worthless rascal ran off and left her stranded in a mountain mining camp."
Ruby leaned closer, as if someone might overhear her above the clopping hoofbeats in the middle of a deserted street, as she told Longarm, "She was either out to punish herself, or punish some man who'd betrayed her former true nature, or she just plain liked it. Nobody can turn a gal wicked against her will, no matter how she might lie to you men afterwards."
Longarm noticed some thoughtful souls, likely old-time Mexicans, had planted cottonwood, or alamo as they called it, along either side of the wagon trace outside of town. Cottonwood grew fast, but he figured it had been planted a while back, judging by how the fluttering leaves of the overhead branches shaded clean across the road in places while providing at least dappled sunlight most everywhere else. He really liked thoughtful souls. So thinking back to how a soiled dove called Silver Heels had turned out, he told Ruby the bittersweet story of a sister in sin as they drove on through the uncertain light.
Silver Heels, so called for the silver heels of her dancing shoes because she refused to give her real name, had been making money hand over fist as the prettiest and some said friskiest whore in a mining camp that varied some with the teller of the tale. But everyone who told it, one way or another, agreed it was smallpox, breaking out in mid-winter when the trails were closed, that made things get grim as all hell. Some said there was no doc in town at all. Others said there might have been, but not unlike Norma Richards, he'd been overwhelmed by the plague, and so Silver Heels had pitched in alone to help. In either case, it had been that one lone whore, working round the clock serving soup and cleaning the fevered, pussy bodies of half the folks in camp, who'd saved the fifty or sixty percent who'd come through alive. So later on, the grateful miners had picked out a particularly pretty peak and named it Mount Silver Heels. Longarm assured this other good-natured whore, "There's no doubt about where Mount Silver Heels is today. You can find it on any large-scale map of Colorado."
"Where might the real Silver Heels be found today?" asked Ruby in a pensive tone.
Longarm shrugged. "Nobody knows. She just left the hardrock country with the smallpox and the next spring thaw. You hear some say she had to quit whoring because her pretty little face had been scarred up hideously by the pox she caught helping so many others fight off. Others say she married a miner who'd struck it so rich he could afford to keep her and her frisky favors all to himself. I've even heard tell that today the former Silver Heels is a respectable and highly respected young matron of Denver high society."
"What's the truth, Custis?" Ruby asked, as if she felt sure he'd know.
He did, and it was a sin to lie when you didn't have to. So he told her, "Let's just say her story had an ending a lady asked me not to tell anyone else. My point was that a nice gal is a nice gal, no matter what others may think of her."
Ruby told him he was awfully nice too, and snuggled closer as Longarm drove on through the dotted line of sunlight and shadows. When he suddenly reined in, Ruby sat up with a start to gaze all about and ask why. They'd passed the last corn milpas north of town, and the tree-shaded wagon trace was surrounded by spartina reeds to seaward and thickets of gumbo-limbo saplings on the higher ground to their left. When Ruby asked why they'd stopped, pointing out the Coast Guard station was almost in sight ahead, Longarm told her, "I know where we are. You could doubtless see the station from here if it wasn't for all those cottonwoods and the way this wagon trace curves just enough to follow the natural lay of the land. I'm a lot more concerned about the way we've just come. I thought I heard some other hoofbeats behind us. But when I reined in just now, somebody else might have too!"