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

comes out of.”
    Â 
    So the three of them headed down the way to a thick-waited ’dobe wrapped around a shady patio with no windows facing the sun-baked streets of Sheffield-Crossing. Longarm knew before he could see the house of ill repute that Chongo was aiming to fix him up with a local gal paid extra to pump a strange rider’s mind as she took care of his carnal needs.
    He didn’t care. He could lie just as swell to anyone and, after all that time by rail and trail since he’d parted with Miss Bubbles, his needs were commencing to hurt.
    Thick ‘dobe walls were popular with everybody in West Texas who knew what was good for them. By warming and cooling way slower than wood frame or even baked bricks, adobe tended to even things out, indoors, betwixt the scorching sunny days and the cold starry nights of the usually cloudless Southwest. The patio’s lily pond, shaded by fig trees and a big old weeping willow, had it close to ten degrees cooler off the streets of Sheffield-Crossing. It seemed even cooler in the dark cavernous tap-room beyond, where earlier arrivals lounged with the mostly Mex gals who worked there. The few that didn’t look Mex seemed more colored or pure Indian. One was either Chinee or that odd blend of blood lines the Mexicans themselves called “Chino.” All of ’em were a tad younger and prettier than the average soiled dove in an Anglo whorehouse of the day. Latin gals in general took up whoring with less pissing, moaning, and strong drink. So they tended to offer a greater selection to choose from and some of them even seemed to enjoy their work.
    Chongo and Greek Steve led Longarm over to the corner bar and introduced him as their old pal, Duncan Crawford. Then Chongo allowed he’d be back as soon as he had a word with Madam Rosalinda, her fat self. So Longarm and the cooled-off Greek Steve had their tequila in the border manner, with a lick of salt and a lemon-half chaser. It was fair tequila. The gal tending bar in her chemise insisted they gaze on the clear glass bottle she’d poured from, anyhow. She seemed proud to work in such a high-toned place. Longarm agreed that pickled worm bobbing around in the genuine tequila proved her point, even if it would have been easy enough to drop a maguey worm in a bottle full of grain spirits, as was often the case down Mexico way, where only a hundred proof, distilled from maguey or century plant, was supposed to be sold as tequila. Longarm had often wondered how there’d be enough worms to go around, boring through the average maguey heart.
    Chongo soon rejoined them, along with that pretty whore with Chino features, wearing no more than a thin silk chemise that barely covered half her shapely sallow thighs. Her raven’s-wing hair was cut sort of short and worn in bangs, Chinee or perhaps Apache Style.
    She never looked higher than Longarm’s fly as Chongo introduced her as Miss Perfidia and added, “She says she don’t take it Greek Style. So, I reckon she’s with you, Crawford.”
    Greek Steve muttered, “Fuck you!” into his tequila.
    The oddly oriental looking Mex gal smiled shyly without meeting his eyes and asked, “ ¿Babla ’spañol, Querido?”
    To which Longarm felt it best to reply, “Muy poco, ma’am. We’re in Texas, now. We’ll get along better if you can manage Texas talk.”
    She shrugged her bare shoulders and said, “Yo comrendo. You wish for to fuck me instead of for to chinge me, correcto ?”
    Longarm laughed, allowed that was about the size of it and drained his stemmed glass of tequila to follow her upstairs where it was even cooler. He would have been more hesitant if he hadn’t been able to tell his nagging conscience that bedding a whore in the line of duty, free, wasn’t the same as patronizing a whorehouse like a simp. The way she swung that shapely behind under one layer of thin silk as she