Longarm on the Fever Coast by Tabor Evans Read Free Book Online

Custis."
    He tried to keep his own voice as calm as he told her, "No, you ain't. You're too pretty and we won't let you."
    She sighed and said, "I know I'm pretty, and here I lie, naked as a jay with a handsome man, and I'm still fixing to die a goddamn virgin like poor old Olivia Lee back home!"
    He removed his hat from her privates to replace it with a numb but friendly palm, not really feeling anything as he told her, "I just now told you there'd be no dying around here, virgin or not. There'll surely be a Coast Guard dispensary when we get to Escondrijo in just a few hours, and then they'll fix you up so's I can make sure you'll never in this world die a virgin, hear?"
    She smiled wanly and softly asked, "Are you threatening to seduce me while I'm helpless, you great-looking brute?"
    He chuckled fondly. "Nope. Only when you're well enough to get on top. For once you can, I mean to come in your sweet flesh till all our bones ache."
    He was suddenly aware they had company as the dying girl smiled radiantly up at him, or maybe through him, to say, "Why, Custis, that was the nicest thing any man's ever said to me!"
    Then she was dead. The white-clad figure that moved around him to feel Lenore's throat looked more like a nurse than any ship's surgeon. Longarm gulped and said, "I know what you just heard must have sounded disgusting, ma'am, but..."
    "I know what you were trying to do," the plump and motherly gal said. "Few men would know how to be that comforting to a dying woman. It was very gallant of you, Deputy Long."

CHAPTER 4
    Longarm had lived through a war or more. So unlike some peace officers, he was inclined to let less-than-lethal confusion simply pile up while he tried to grasp the overall pattern and watch for snipers. So as soon as the ship's surgeon, red-eyed and three sheets to the wind, joined them in his stateroom, Longarm left the dead Lenore to a drunk who couldn't hurt her and that nursing sister or whatever as he joined the search for her surviving killer--if the son of a bitch was still on board.
    The purser led Longarm down to the cargo deck, where an officer had his deckhands poking about with bull's-eye lanterns. The officer was called a supercargo because he supervised the cargo, the way the purser supervised the passengers.
    The partly open-sided cargo deck, like those of most coastal steamers and all riverboats, lay just above the waterline over the hollow-egg-crate construction of the shallow-draft hull. The supercargo said they'd already swept the mostly empty barn-like space. Longarm wanted to make certain, having found a life preserver missing. Longarm's first impression of the bulkhead further aft was that the steamer's boilers and machinery lay just beyond. But as the supercargo's gang went through the motions forward, Longarm paced from port to starboard and saw he was right about that companionway near his stateroom being longer. So he rejoined the gruff and somewhat older supercargo and said, "As big as this open cargo deck may seem, this vessel gets wider back behind that bulkhead, meaning you got more than half this level all filled up with coal bins and machinery?"
    The supercargo shook his head, billed cap and all. "We've already checked the coal bins, and there's no way he could have gotten into the boiler room or engine compartment without the black gang noticing. There's not as much space for him to work with aft as you seem to imagine. Less than a third of this level holds anything besides cargo. More than a quarter of our length, beyond that bulkhead, is cold storage. We have what amounts to a swamping ice house, refrigerated with those newfangled ammonia and brine pipes. Didn't you know we picked up lots of fresh meat and produce along the way that would never make it to New Orleans or even Galveston in this heat without spoiling?"
    Longarm said, "I do now. How do you get inside with, say, a lantern as well as a six-gun?"
    The supercargo looked surprised, but pointed at a sort of