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

icebox door off to one side. "That's the only inspection port at this end. Cargo's loaded into the refrigerated hold from the side, from the docks. So there's no way he could have-"
    "You just said that smaller entrance allowed an inspector to get through," Longarm noted. "I'd surely be obliged if someone would lend me a lantern and show me how to open that latch. I got my own gun."
    The supercargo insisted, even as he was leading the way over with his bull's-eye beam on the oaken port and its stout brass fittings, "Nobody could hide in there with the half-frozen fruit and crates of salad greens we've already cooled to just above zero centigrade."
    Longarm shrugged and said, "I've been in colder places, in just my shirtsleeves, and it never killed me. Zero centigrade is a lot hotter than zero Fahrenheit. How come you keep your cold-storage cargo just above freezing?"
    The supercargo handed Longarm his lantern. "Hold the beam on the latch while I unlock her, will you? If you freeze meat or produce all the way, the ice needles forming inside turn it all mushy and sooty-looking as it thaws. But ice don't form and stuff don't rot too much just above the freezing point of water."
    Longarm nodded. "Some railroad men told me about freeze burn. For now I'm more interested in that fucking Hamp Godwynn, if that was his name."
    The supercargo opened the port and let Longarm go ahead with the bull's-eye beam and six-gun as he observed, "We found no certain identification for either when we searched the stateroom they were sharing. They'd told the purser they were cattlemen. Their baggage neither proved it nor made liars out of them. They'd brought along stock saddles with their personal baggage lashed to them."
    Longarm swept the beam ahead through the clearing fog stirred up by their entrance along with a blast of warm air. The mostly empty space was about the size of a dance hall, although with a far lower ceiling, but he'd never been to a dance where they had ice-frosted pipes running the length of the two longer walls. He didn't ask a dumb question about the ice on the refrigeration pipes. He knew the air next to ice could be somewhat warmer than freezing. The air in a plain old icebox felt about this cold. It was already raising a gooseflesh under Longarm's shirt as he asked the supercargo what sort of stock saddles they were talking about.
    The seagoing Texican replied, "One was a Panhandle double rig, and the other was one of them Mex ropers with the exposed wooden swells and dally horn. You're talking to a man who loads a heap of beef along his weary way."
    Longarm swept the beam up at the long rows of empty meat hooks as he thoughtfully mused, "They told me they were from other parts and just looking for work down by the border. They both packed their guns in border buscadero rigs as well. I sure wish folks wouldn't lie to the law so much."
    He aimed his gun at some produce crates further back as he moved in on them, the supercargo trailing with his own gun out. But they only found citrus fruit and a fancy breed of salad greens for the New Orleans French-style of cooking back there. When Longarm asked, the supercargo explained that the little they had aboard up to now came from the Mexican farms around the mouth of the Rio Grande. He said the state and federal health authorities made such a fuss over meat out of Mexico, or anywhere near it, that the shipping company didn't want the bother.
    Longarm said he'd heard about the current outbreak of hoof-and-mouth down Mexico way. "You were right about Hamp Godwynn not being refrigerated too. Let's get out of here before we almost freeze our own asses to zero centigrade!"
    They ducked back outside. It was the first time since he'd been south of the Texas line that he welcomed the muggy heat of the gulf.
    On the way back topside the supercargo admitted they hadn't been able to search any other staterooms because the rest of the passengers had retired for the night.
    Longarm said they'd