After a while, he began to take stock of what he had on hand that he could use in some way to free himself. They had taken his gun but had left him his gunbelt. He slowly unbuckled it, looking ruefully at the big silver concave belt buckle. Normally concealed in the concavity of the buckle would have been a .38-caliber derringer held in place by a steel spring. But on the train trip back from Mexico City, Earl Combs had given him so much trouble wrestling around and cutting up that he had been afraid the small gun would become dislodged and fall out. As a result, he had packed it in his valise. It was still in his valise, but that was back at his hotel in Laredo. Normally, he didn’t carry cartridges in the loops on his belt. They were too heavy and made the whole affair too heavy. But he had eight for some reason in the loops in the belt. He looked at the big .44-caliber cartridges and wondered what good they were. Without a gun to fire them, they were useless. He laid the gunbelt on the bed and then began feeling through his pockets. He had the cash—he got it out and counted it. He had fifty-one dollars. He also had some loose change. Then he had a small pocketknife. Wasn’t much use as a weapon, about all he could do with it was sharpen a pencil or maybe cut a thread off his shirt, but it wouldn’t do in a fight.
He surveyed his assets with a feeling of hopelessness. It didn’t appear he possessed a single weapon that he could use to free himself. He got up and walked around the room, looking for anything he might contrive to use to gain his freedom. The room was bare except for the bed, the two tables, the two chairs, the lamp and a few pictures and a small mirror on the wall. He supposed he could spill the coal oil out and set fire to it, but it damn sure wasn’t going to set the thick plaster walls on fire and the big wooden beams were too heavy to burn even if they did catch on fire. All he would manage to do was to burn himself up. Quite frankly, he viewed the situation as hopeless. He could not remember ever feeling so helpless before in his life.
He sat back down, finished his whiskey, and poured more into his glass. Just as he was taking a drink, he heard a scratching at the door. He glanced over and saw some white pieces of paper along with a pencil being shoved underneath. He got up, padded soundlessly over in his stocking feet—he still hadn’t put his boots back on. There were two sheets of bond paper and the pencil. He leaned down, picked them up, walked back and laid them on the table where he had eaten his supper. He didn’t know if he would write the letter or not, but as Brown had pointed out, it might speed things up, and there was also the chance that he could give whoever might read the letter some clue as to his whereabouts and his situation. He had nothing to lose by writing the letter except to make known his embarrassment, but that was going to come anyway. It was, he thought, a situation he was going to be a long time in living down.
After a while, he gave up thinking and decided that the best thing to do would be to sleep on the matter. He undressed down to his bare skin, which meant taking off his jeans, his shirt, and his socks—he didn’t bother with underwear. After that, he pulled the covers down on the bed, poured himself half a glass of whiskey, climbed up and sat with his back against the headboard. There was a nice breeze coming through the two casement windows but it wasn’t doing him a hell of a lot of good except to make the room comfortable.
After a moment or two, he lit a cigarillo, smoked that, drank the whiskey, turned down the lamp and slid down into the bed, pulled the covers over him and put his head on the pillow. He thought he’d have a hard time going to sleep but it seemed as if he had no more than shut his eyes when he went out like a light. He was a good deal more tired than he realized. He came awake the next morning to the sound of something at the door. He sat up alertly. It was already dawn and sunshine was streaming into the room. He recognized the sound at the door as someone working a key in it from the other side. Finally, the lock clicked back and then the door was pushed open.
To his surprise, Longarm saw a woman standing there holding a tray with steaming coffee and a dish of some kind of food. Without a look at him, she came shuffling forward and set the tray on the table where the remains of his supper still lay. At the door, one of the Mexicans who had accompanied them on the ride from Nuevo Laredo was leaning against the doorjamb, a revolver held in his hand. He looked sleepy and yawned as Longarm glanced his way.
Longarm switched his eyes back to the woman. She was wearing some kind of shapeless robe. He could tell very little about her, neither her age, nor much about what she looked like. Her hair was tangled and her face was without makeup. She could have been thirty or forty. He watched as she stacked the dirty dishes from the night before onto her tray and then set his breakfast on the table. He could see it was ham and eggs and biscuits along with a pot of coffee and a little pitcher of cream. He said to the woman, “Thank you, that looks good.”
She barely gave him a glance as she turned and hurried back toward the door. Longarm watched her all the way. She didn’t walk like someone who was old, she walked like someone who was ashamed. It seemed an odd way to put it even to himself, but that was the way she walked. In another second, she had scuttled through the door. The Mexican yawned again, pulled the door to, and then Longarm heard the familiar sound of the lock turning and then the bar falling into place.
Longarm sat up and swung his legs around and yawned. So he hadn’t been dreaming, he thought. He was in this damned hole. His dreams had been about Molly Coy. He wondered if he would ever see her again or feel her skin or kiss her lips. He stopped himself quickly. It wouldn’t do to let his mind run in that direction.
As he ate his breakfast, which was very good, his thoughts returned to the woman who had come hurriedly into his room. He couldn’t quite figure her out. She wasn’t Mexican.
She was a white woman with very fair skin. He supposed her hair was a light brown, almost a tawny blond, but it was so tousled and jumbled that it was hard to tell. She had been wearing a blanket-like blue robe that was so bulky it hid her shape. But as she bent over to Put his breakfast dishes on the table, he could tell from the look he got Of her rear she was not fat or chunky. He had half an idea that the robe was concealing more than might be expected, but then he told himself it might also be that he had been too long without a woman and too long in this damn whitewashed room.
It was about an hour and a half later that the woman returned. Longarm was standing on a chair looking out one of the little casement windows. He turned and watched the door open as the woman scuttled in with a tray in her hands. She hurried to the table and began stacking his breakfast dishes on It. LOngarm glanced at the door. The Mexican pistolero was there but he was lounging back against the wall outside the door and his gun was holstered. Longarm was wearing only his jeans. He was barefoot and shirtless. The woman worked quickly. She refilled his pitcher of water, took his bucket of slops, then Picked up the tray full of dirty dishes and went out of the room as silently and as quickly as she had entered. He took note that he was not commanded to lie down on the floor.
He got down from the chair, his mind turning over and over. This mystery woman. She did not fit the part of a maid, especially in Mexico. He had no doubt that there were half a dozen native women around the ranch who could have been doing her function. It was a very strange state of affairs and one he intended to get to the bottom of, somehow. He sensed that he might be able to use the woman. But there was still the matter of the letter and whether he should write it.