As she moaned like a coming cougar he warned her to keep it down to at least alley cat, explaining, “I’m hot, too. But let’s not forget our manners to the other guests downstairs.”
She gripped him tighter around the waist with her legs and said, “Forgive me. I seldom feel free to let myself go with a man, and I have not even done this with a customer since my last indisposition of the moon. Do you do this so good with all the other poor women you overpower, handsome yanqui?”
He said, “Only the pretty ones, and I’m not sure who might have overpowered whom, just now.”
“Are you cross with me for falling for you?” she asked.
He allowed he wasn’t and braced himself on stiff elbows to enjoy the view of what she’d gotten him into. There was only a little light through one dusty window to see by. It was enough to see she was built nice enough to pose for one of those marble statues the Old Greeks had gone in for, although he’d never yet seen a statue posed so sassy in any museum open to the public. Since great minds ran along the same channels at such times, she gazed up at him adoringly and said, “Oh, you are so handsome and so strong and, ay caramba, there is so much of you!”
He stopped what he’d been doing to ask if he was hurting her. She shook her head wildly, begged him not to stop, and told him it was most considerate to show such concern.
They’d just discovered he could when the door opened enough for El Gato to say, “Oh, excuse me. I thought you might want to know your prisoner, the Great Costello, does not seem to be with us anymore.”
Longarm swore and assured Rosalinda he didn’t mean her. “How great a lead are we talking about,” he asked El Gato, “and how come he has any at all, damn it?”
El Gato said, “The girl I sent to bed with him was watching. That is, she was until he knocked her out at a very rude as well as unexpected time. She just came to. She has no idea how long she may have been unconscious. But of course none of us have been here a full hour, you fast worker.”
Longarm began to haul on his duds as he growled, “He has to be headed for the horses, risky as that may be. I thought you told me a couple of patriotic pimps were keeping an eye on things down below.”
“They have been. Your prisoner did not leave by any of the usual exits. You’ll never guess how he got out of a room very similar to this one.”
Longarm said, “Sure I will. It occurred to me right off that if we got trapped up here my best bet would be straight up through them tiles and across the other rooftops.”
He strapped on his gun without bothering to button his vest. Rosalinda was welcome to his long johns if she had any use for them. He reached for his hat, found the gal’s bare rump in the way, and patted it fondly as he said, “I’ll never forget you and please hand me my hat, querida. I’m sorry, too, but I got to get going.”
As the girl passed his Mexican sombrero to him with a sad sigh, El Gato told him, “Wait, you are not thinking. That stable is right across from the bullring.”
“Yeah,” Longarm said, “but the boys we detailed to draw the whole town over that way are long gone by now and Costello knows it.”
“Not all the people attracted by the false alarm, and certainly not all the local lawmen. Even if he makes it to the horses, how far can he get? He’s a gringo, without a dozen words of Spanish. They’ll have roadblocks set up all around the city.”
Longarm said, “Yeah, but not looking for him, The Great Costello ain’t wanted on any charges in Mexico, right?”
“Wrong. They know Don Julio has many yanqui friends. By now they have to know he never got away from them without any help. If they grab a strange gringo on the trail, and he does not know how to answer them, well … los rurales are hardly famous for their saintly patience, even with people who can talk to them.”
“He rode down with us. He’s heard all you just now said. You may have noticed he knows how to move sneaky, a Cut above your average border jumper.”
As Longarm rose from the mat, stooping some, El Gato said, “In that case I shall go with you.”
“Don’t you dare,” Longarm protested. “I never hung by one hand off the side of a six-story building just to see Don Julio caught again. You got to get him out of here to another hideout. Fast. Don’t tell me where. I don’t want to know. They might catch me as well as Costello. He could be spilling the beans this very minute. So this is it and you’re on your own, pard. I done all I can for you and now it’s time I got back to my own chores.”
El Gato and Rosalinda wished him via con Dios as he ducked out the door, knowing he’d need some help from the Lord. He sure wasn’t getting much cooperation from anyone else.
He made it down the back stairs without incident, meaning the sneaky little son of a bitch hadn’t been picked up yet. As Longarm made his way out to the front street, he knew Costello would have done the same. Whether their big hats and charro jackets worked or not in dim light, neither would have been able to thread all the way to the posada via the inky back alleyways of a strange town without getting hopelessly lost.
The streets of downtown Juarez weren’t as crowded now, cuss all sleepy heads, but they weren’t yet deserted enough for even a taller-than-usual-looking vaquero to draw much interest. As he got closer to the bullring a shabby young gal popped out of a doorway to ask if he was lonely. When he said he wasn’t, in as good a Mexican accent as he could manage, she cursed him and said her baby brother was available, but didn’t follow him.
He didn’t think it would be a good notion to stroll into the posada by way of the front door. He was close enough, now, to work his way around to the back without getting lost. As he stood there in the darkness, trying to figure a way into the stable, a back door opened and a familiar plump figure splashed his boots with the contents of a wash basin before she spotted him and sucked in her breath. Before she could let it out with a scream he moved closer and assured her, “It’s me, Felicidad. Has anyone else been by, asking about us?”
She made the sign of the cross with her free hand and told him, “Not you by name, querido. But a short time ago la policia and some rurales lined us all up out front and Made us tell them the stories of our lives. They took a man away who had no papers.”
Longarm groaned and asked, “The short clubfooted hombre who was here, earlier, with El Gato and me?”
“No. He was just here, for to get his horse. Didn’t you know that?”
He muttered, “I do now. El Gato was right, he’s acting dumb as hell. Can you sneak me into the stable from back here, Felicidad?”
She could and did. They encountered no one as she led him through the kitchen and showed him a side door into the stable.
There was nobody there but the horses. He struck a match and commenced to cuss a blue streak. When the plump mestiza cowered away and asked him why he was so angry, he told her, “It ain’t you. It’s him. The dirty little polecat took the fine army mount I was riding and left me ten dollars worth of crow-bait. He’s even ridden off with my possibles, Winchester, private saddle, and my favorite hat and coat!”
She suggested, “Can you not catch up with him riding El Gato’s big black caballo?”
“Don’t tempt me. El Gato may need to do some serious riding before long, and a man who’d stick a pal with a poor mount would lick up spit. That’s what I mean to make the Great Costello do when I catch up with him. I might not let him lick up anything as nice as my spit, neither.”
He led the livery nag from its stall and began to saddle it with the borrowed saddle that was no doubt worth more. Felicidad said, “If you ride out, now, you are sure to run into a roadblock. I heard los rurales talking about that. Why don’t you spend the rest of the night with me? I have finished all of my work and this time I will not have to ask you to stop, eh?”