Longarm 244: Longarm and the Devil's Sister by Tabor Evans Page A

to Momma. I know Devil Dave’s old and ailing Mex mother spends most of her time in town these days. Tell me what you can about the daughter of the house who’s said to be managing the family grant and business matters these days.”
    Ranger Travis sipped more suds and topped his tumbler by pouring without asking as he murmured, “You just saw her outside if that was you I was staring at from out front. I thought at first you were a lawman I knew from up Colorado way. Reckon it must have been that pork-pie hat.”
    Longarm said, “Nevermind my hat. The wind blows serious where I first learned the ropes of the beef industry. From what we had on file I was given to understand the Deveruex-Lopez herd tallies over a thousand head and you say I just saw this shemale wonder?”
    The ranger nodded to say, “Miss Connie Deveruex. She leaves off the maternal Lopez and hates it when the greasers call her Doña Consuela. But she shares the proud Spanish notion that as soon as you can count your cows you own too few of ’em. She was walking behind that hearse just now. She sets a pony even prouder, sidesaddle.”
    â€œAre we talking about a dusky blonde gal in black who stares at a man as if he was a bug on a pin?” asked Longarm hopefully.
    The ranger sighed and said, “I wish she’d stared through me half that friendly when I called on her to ask about her baby brother. She invited me to supper and offered to put me up for the night. But that was only because she was Landed Irish on her daddy’s side and Hidalgo Class on her momma’s. Her eyes get innocent but her smile drips venom when you mention her kid brother. She swears she hasn’t seen hide nor hair of him since he stopped the Butterfield Stage a good three years ago. She’s lying, of course. Every time any of us cut the bastard’s trail it leads us towards this valley before we lose it in the quicksands of ‘ ¿ Quien Sabe?’ That’s what greasers say when they’re too polite to tell you to go to hell. It means, Who Knows?”
    Longarm muttered, “I’ve noticed. I can manage a lick of Border Mex if I put my mind to it. I’d hesitate to tell any lawman where a kinsman or neighbor might be if I was still a farm boy back in West-By-God, Virginia. Such conversations can get you burned out if it don’t get you or any of your kin murdered total. So there ain’t no mystery about his kith and kin covering up for Devil Dave. What I don’t understand entire is why they have to.”
    He fished for a cheroot to nurse along with his beer as he went on. “Most outright outlaws are in it because they really need the money. Clay Allison was a crazy-mean killer. King Fisher has to be touched in the head to run around in tiger-hide chaps picking fights, and Ben Thompson has killed men with guns, knives, or anything handy since he and his mean kid brother, Tom, arrived from Old England. But none of them mad dogs have ever robbed a bank because they simply had no call to!”
    The ranger nodded and showboated a tad by observing, “I follow your drift. The late Clay Allison supported his bad habits well enough with a spread and herd smaller than Connie Deveruex manages. King Fisher prefers ranching to robbing as a source of income, and, despite their disgusting ways, the Thompson brothers have usually gotten by as trail bosses or hired guns. What if Miss Connie just wouldn’t give her kid brother an allowance? Many a minister’s son has gone bad because his old man was tightwad, you know.”
    Longarm shook his head and pointed out, “The two of us just saw her alive and well out front. Would you expect a cold-blooded killer who’s downed many an innocent by-stander to hesitate sixty seconds if anybody at all was that mean to him?”
    The ranger blurted, “Hell, she’s his own sister!” before he thought through to, “You’re right.