Longarm and the San Angelo Showdown

LONGARM AND THE SAN ANGELO SHOWDOWN

By Tabor Evans

Synopsis:

San Angelo is a town as dry as a whore’s kiss—and equally sincere when a man’s time is up. Even the indians don’t bother making trouble down that way. So Longarm doesn’t understand why soldiers from Fort Concho are being picked off under cover of the night. But he’s going to get a firsthand look at the situation, posing as a high-rolling gambler and horse trader. Seems the soldiers have worn out their welcome around town. Especially in the eyes of the Castles, a clan of cattle barons whose word is law in San Angelo. Now Longarm must find out if it’s greed or madness that’s leading to murder—and the search will send him up against a whole town. 193rd novel in the “Longarm” series, 1995.

Jove Books New York Copyright (C) 1995 by Jove Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

ISBN: 0-515-11528-2

Jove Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

JOVE and the “J” design are trademarks belonging to Jove Publications, Inc.

A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

Printing history Jove edition / January 1995

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

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Chapter 1

Billy Vail, United States Marshal, First District Court of Colorado, said, “The army is asking us for some assistance. They’ve got a little trouble at one of their forts and they want us to come in and give them a hand. Considering how cooperative they’ve always been with the Federal Marshal Service, I don’t see how we can refuse.”

Longarm lounged in a chair across the desk from his boss. He had it tilted back against the wall and was idly smoking a cheroot and dropping the ashes on the floor. He said, “Well, Billy, that sounds like a pretty fair proposition to me. God knows that I’ve used enough of their horses and enough of their supplies. Is it something here locally?”

They were in Billy Vail’s office in Denver, which was the headquarters for the district.

“No,” Vail said, “it’s not that local, Longarm. I think you’ll be taking a little trip.”

Longarm brought his chair to the floor with a thump. “How long of a trip? I just got back from one. I’m due a little relaxing and laying around time. I don’t mind law work, but does it always have to be at such long range?”

Vail laughed. “Don’t you want to live up to your nickname of Longarm? The long arm of the law? Why, Custis, you’re the most famous deputy marshal in the country.”

Longarm said, “Billy, turn me over. You’ve buttered me well enough on this side.”

Billy Vail chuckled. He was a man with thinning gray hair. He and Longarm had a running battle about each other’s ages. Vail would never admit to more than forty-five, even though Longarm had accused him of being well past retirement age. “I’m sorry you said that, Custis. It was absolutely unnecessary considering the favor I’m going to do you, knowing how you like to travel in this particular area.”

Longarm looked wary. “Just tell me gently.”

Billy turned in his swivel chair and put both of his arms on his desk, locking his hands together. “Our friends at Fort Concho are having a little trouble. They need a first-class lawman to come down there and straighten things out.”

At the mention of Fort Concho, Longarm’s face fell. “Oh, my God, Billy. No … don’t tell me that. First of all, I don’t ever want to go back to Texas. Secondly, Fort Concho is in San Angelo, and that is the worst place in the world. My God, I could live the rest of my life and never go near San Angelo. That place is as dry as a whore’s kiss and about as sincere. Those people that live there have been trying to scratch a living out of that hardscrabble ground so long, they have all turned as tight and as mean as a wildcat eating green persimmons. Don’t say Fort Concho to me and damn sure don’t say San Angelo to me. Hell, Billy. No!”

Billy put up a placating hand and said, “Just hold on, just hold on. This one is important. You are the perfect man for it.”

“I cannot think of anything happening in San Angelo, Texas, that would be important enough to rate even a glimmer of my attention.”

Billy Vail went on earnestly. “Custis, they’ve got about a hundred and ten, hundred and twenty men and officers in garrison there. To refresh your memory, Fort Concho was established in 1850, back during the Indian troubles, and has been there ever since, part of a chain of forts along the southern edge of Texas and on into New Mexico and Arizona. Well, things have been pretty quiet until lately. They’ve had five soldiers killed there in the past two months.”

Longarm said, “I don’t want to appear unsympathetic, Billy, but what the hell does that have to do with me? If you’re a soldier, you got a chance at getting killed, and if you’re a soldier at an Indian fort, you got an even better chance.”

Billy slapped the flat of his hand on the top of his desk. “Aw, hell, Custis, Don’t talk nonsense. There hasn’t been any Indian trouble in that country in ten years, and besides that, these soldiers were not killed in the line of duty. Custis, somebody has been murdering soldiers at that fort.”

Custis got out another cheroot and lit it. It was a small, cheap cigar. It wasn’t his preference. But sometimes he felt like being noble and denying himself the luxury of the long panatellas he liked.

“Murdering, Billy? They’ve been murdering soldiers? More than likely, they committed suicide just because they couldn’t get out of the damn place. If anybody killed them, it was because the soldiers discovered the one sprig of grass growing around there, or maybe the one drop of water still left in the damn place, and the civilians wanted it for themselves. Why would civilians want to murder soldiers anyway?”

Billy Vail shook his head. “I don’t know. That’s the strangest part of it. You would think that a town like San Angelo, being no bigger than it is—what is it, around five thousand?”

Longarm nodded. “Maybe a little bigger.”

“Well, you would think that a town like that would want soldiers hanging around there spending their pay, but the town has been on a tear to get that post moved. They’ve written congressmen, they’ve complained. It doesn’t make a damn bit of sense, but there it is. And now, here come these murders.”

“Well, why in hell didn’t the army just shut down the fort and move them if the town didn’t want them there. Like you said, there hasn’t been any Indian trouble around that country since Lord knows when. The Comanches have been staying on the reservations and the Apaches are all in New Mexico—western New Mexico at that. Why doesn’t the army just move them?”

Billy Vail said, “Where? When you’ve got a bunch of soldiers on the payroll, you’ve got to keep them somewhere. You can’t keep them all in Washington, D.C. You’ve got a fort, you’ve got to put soldiers in it. Hell, Custis, don’t you know anything?”

“I know that I don’t want to go to San Angelo and find out who’s murdering soldiers.”

“Well, you’re going and that’s that.”

Longarm got a grieved look on his face. “Why me? Tommy Wharton hasn’t left Colorado in six months that I know of. He’s been lapping it up in every saloon from Denver to Colorado Springs. How about Wesley Coker? Now, there’s a man who oughta go to San Angelo. Hell, yes, Wesley Coker. If anybody deserves to go to San Angelo, it’s Coker, and they deserve him too.”

Billy Vail shook his head warily. He had expected this reaction. Truthfully, Longarm had been catching the hard assignments of late, and Vail had hoped to give the man some time off, but the request from the War Department was not to be ignored.

“Custis, I am sending you because you’re the best man for the job. There is no other reason and nothing you say is going to change my mind.”

Longarm looked decidedly agitated by the statement. He couldn’t really tell Billy Vail why he very much did not want to go at this particular time. As far as that went, he would not have wanted to go at any time, but it was inconvenient in the here and now, and especially detrimental to a situation he had invested a good two weeks in. There was a young widow who had recently come to town. A comely young lady named Shirley Dunn whom he had been carefully cultivating since he had returned to Denver from a hard trip into the Oklahoma Territory.

This Mrs. Dunn had been coming along nicely, and he had great hopes that their friendship was about to burst into passion, but he didn’t think that the iron was quite hot enough to strike yet. It wasn’t anything that he was going to tell Billy Vail, however. So all he could do was carry on about the injustice of sending him out so soon on what sounded like a long and dreary and probably fruitless assignment in a part of the country that Longarm found distasteful.

He said, “Billy, you can’t even get a decent drink of whiskey in west Texas. You’re a drinking man. You know how that can affect a lawman’s performance, his all-round general frame of mind.”

Billy gave him a dry look. “Take a good supply of the Maryland whiskey that you value so much.”

Longarm looked disgusted. “Why can’t the army handle this for themselves? Hell, they’re in the killing business. If they’ve lost five of them, their own soldiers, that’s damn careless.”

Billy Vail said, “They’ve asked for our help, Longarm. Now I want you to get yourself ready to go.”

“Well, it just looks to me that the government ought to have some branch or body that could tend to that sort of thing.”

Billy said dryly, “They do. Us. Now you can wiggle all you want to, Custis, but you’re not going to get loose from this job. I’ll give you a few days to get ready, but I want you gone before the end of the week. I want you in San Angelo next Monday.”

Longarm sighed, his mind on the Widow Dunn, wondering if the affair could be pushed into a gallop from a sedate trot. He said, “Well, how have these so-called murders been occurring? Have we got any details?”

Billy Vail pushed a piece of paper across the desk at him. “Read that. It’s the official report requesting our assistance.”

Longarm took the paper, headed by the insignia of the War Department, Department of the Army, and when he was through he said, “Well, it’s kind of a mixed bag. Four were shot and one was knifed. All of them occurred off post, and it appears that all of them were either on their way into town for some fun and frolic or else coming back.”

Billy Vail said, “The one that was knifed in the back alley behind the whorehouse might not be connected to the others. There’s no way to tell. But as to the four men that were shot, each one of them was alone, each one of them was between the fort and the town, and each one of them was killed at night. There’s no doubt that they were bushwhacked.”

Longarm said, “I can see that. Billy, this doesn’t make a damn bit of sense. I mean, what are all these soldiers doing that the town folks would be so interested in them getting on out of there? Are they a rowdy bunch? Are they going around raping the pastor’s daughter? Are they singing too loud in church?”

Vail said, “That’s the puzzle. That’s why I want you to go down there. I don’t know any more than what’s in that report. I cannot imagine the soldiers being a nuisance or a threat to the town, since that’s never been a part of the town’s complaint. The only complaint that has been made officially from the town’s officials, and that’s the mayor and the city council, is that the soldiers are no longer necessary and are taking up space that could be used for grazing and ranching. Of course, that doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense either because the army reservation is not that big.”

Longarm sighed. It was a bitter pill to see the long rest that he had anticipated in the company of the lovely Shirley Dunn coming to such an abrupt and unwelcome end.

He asked, “Well, just what am I supposed to do? Go in there as a deputy U.S. marshal and start nosing around?”

Billy Vail gave him a disgusted look and said, “Yes, why don’t you do that, Custis. And while you are at it, why don’t you run a notice in the newspaper asking the party or parties who are murdering those soldiers to please turn themselves in to you.”

Longarm said mildly, “Billy, you ought not to upset yourself like that. A man of your age …”

“You never mind my age. I halfway thought of maybe sending you in there as a soldier.”

“As a soldier? Billy, I forgot all I knew about being a soldier.”

Billy said, “I was thinking about sending you in as a buck recruit, brand-new to the army.”

Longarm gave him a look. “That would probably make me the oldest recruit in the history of the cavalry.”

Vail said, “One of these days we are going to track down your real age. I’ve looked through your records and you may not be old enough for this job, some of the things that you put down. No … I want you to go in there without your badge.”

“Just go in as a private citizen? What’s my story?”

“I don’t care.” Vail shrugged. “Go in as a horse trader, go in as a gambler, go in as somebody just passing through. Go in as somebody prospecting for gold. Hell, think of something, Longarm. Do I have to do all of your thinking for you?”

Longarm said, “One thing’s for damn sure—I am taking my own horse. Maybe I’ll take two horses with me. I’m sure as hell not gonna ride any of those rawboned hides that the army furnishes.”

“Then you’ll buy their tickets on the train. The marshal service is not paying for any more of your horse-trading deals. Every time you leave with one bunch, you come back with a larger bunch. If you don’t want to use what the army will furnish you there, then you can damn well pay to transport your own animal or animals, however many you care to take.”

Longarm shrugged. “That is uncommonly unfair of you, Billy. Now you are going to make me work to figure out some way to make up the difference on some other part of my expense report.”

Billy Vail looked disgusted. “Get out of here, you big thief. Sometimes I don’t know which side of that damn badge you are on.”

Longarm said, “I knew that you were fond of me, Billy, but I didn’t know just how fond.”

“You can have yourself a little fling with that dressmaker, but you check in with me before you leave.”

Longarm looked startled. “How do you know about Mrs. Shirley Dunn?”

Billy Vail said, “I am in the law-enforcement business, remember? I am supposed to know what is going on. You ain’t the hardest lothario in the county to keep up with. I would have bet long odds that you’d be the first one in line the minute that woman stepped off the train. Now why don’t you get on out of here and tend to your fun and frolicking and get it all out of your system in time to go to work.”

Longarm put on his hat, a gray, wide-brimmed felt model that he had paid $24.95 for and was his pride and joy. He said, “Billy, you treat me too harshly.”

Billy Vail said, his voice dead serious, “I wouldn’t treat this one real lightly. Whoever is killing these soldiers is not exactly running on a straight set of tracks. Somebody down there is either nuts or they have a real mean streak in them. I’d be as alert and as awake as you can get.”

Longarm gave him a little salute and went out the door.

Chapter 2

He hadn’t bothered to ask Billy Vail how long he could expect to be in San Angelo because he had known in advance what the answer would be. The answer would be for as long as it took, and that could be a day, a week, six months, or a year. The very thought depressed him so much that he went immediately to a saloon near the Federal Building and treated himself to several drinks of the fine Maryland whiskey that they stocked especially for him.

When Longarm was through with the saloon and somewhat reconciled to the situation, he walked down to the train depot to check the schedule that would get him to San Angelo. It took the ticket agent a few moments to figure out his route, but when he was through, it appeared that Longarm had no choice. If he were to be in San Angelo by Monday morning he had to leave Saturday. He swore softly under his breath.

The ticket agent looked up at him. “Is something wrong, Deputy Long?”

Longarm sighed. “No, Frank. Everything is just fine. A man in the law business ain’t supposed to get nothing, have nothing, or want nothing. Dammit.”

The ticket agent said, “You got troubles?”

Longarm turned away from the counter. “No, I don’t have any troubles. I don’t have anything. Listen, I’m going to need a half stock car to haul two horses.”

“Is that gonna be on the government voucher?”

Longarm said, a trace of bitterness in his voice, “No, I’ll be paying for that, but the government will pay for my ticket.”

“Yes, sir.”

Longarm left the depot and walked back toward the center of town. Off on a side street was the small dressmaking establishment of Mrs. Shirley Dunn. They had an engagement planned for Saturday night that he was now going to have to break. There was to be an evening of entertainment at the opera house and he had invited Mrs. Dunn to go. She had graciously accepted. He had anticipated that an evening of fun, aided perhaps by a champagne supper at the Brown Hotel, might lead to far more pleasant recreation. Now he stood in front of her little shop feeling miserable. It would have been their fourth formal outing. Twice they had gone dancing and twice they had had dinner at the elite Brown Hotel, Denver’s finest. On two other occasions, they had met on her front porch on a Sunday afternoon, drinking lemonade and making light talk. His progress had been slow and carefully planned because Mrs. Dunn was a demure lady of breeding and delicate sensibilities. He had progressed no farther than putting his arm around her waist on a few occasions and one light good-night kiss.

Longarm was an old experienced hand at tracking the feminine species. He knew the kind that could be hurried and he knew the kind that required proper courtship. Mrs. Dunn, he was absolutely certain, was of the latter. To attempt to rush her would be to throw the game away. He suspected she could be as flighty as any deer he had stalked. And now this very unwelcome interruption had come into his social life. All he could do was go into her shop and break the news, and hope that some other buck hadn’t invaded his territory by the time he got back. It was a sad errand, and he silently cursed Billy Vail as he turned the door handle and entered the little shop.

Shirley Dunn was behind the little glass counter where she sold ready-made items. The main work of her business, that of custom dressmaking, was done in the back room where she employed three seamstresses.

As he entered the store, she had her back to the door putting some boxes of lace handkerchiefs in place. She turned as he came in and said, “Oh!” putting her hand to her throat in a dainty little gesture.

She was so petite, so delicate, so proper that she always made him feel like a big shambling idiot. He took off his hat as he walked toward her, uncomfortably aware of how loud his boots and spurs sounded on the floor of the shop.

He said, “Mrs. Dunn, my, you are as pretty as a ceramic pussy cat … no, make that a crystal cat.”

She colored prettily. “That may be the most unusual compliment that I have ever heard. At least I will take it as a compliment.”

He said, “Believe me, ma’am, there is nothing else that I could pay you except a compliment. If I had it, I would pay you a million dollars just to stand here and look at you, but I reckon that you will have to wait for your money.”

She laughed. “Oh, Custis, how you do go on. I am surprised to see you in a ladies’ shop in the middle of the afternoon. Have you come to see me or are you shopping?”

His face fell. He worked his hat in his hands in agitation. “the sad truth of it, ma’am, is that I will not be able to escort you to the entertainment Saturday night. My work calls me away.”

“Oh,” she said. She put her hand to her throat again. She was wearing a light gray tailored suit with a ruffled blouse that was open at the throat.

He could see the disappointment in her face, but it quickly cleared.

She said, “I am so sorry to hear that, but I can understand that someone in your line of endeavor has little control over these things.”

He said, “you may rest assured of that. I am badly disappointed, ma’am. I was so much looking forward to Saturday night, but I have to be on a train Saturday morning, and by Saturday night I will be somewhere on my way to Texas.”

“Texas! Oh, that is a long way.”

He made a face. “Too long for me. Any place in Texas is too long for me.”

“You don’t care for the state?”

He said, “Ma’am, you generally don’t care for places where you get shot at and knifed at and made to feel extremely unwelcome, but that is pari of my business and I don’t want to burden you with it. I just stopped by to tell you what I had to say.” He took a step closer to the counter. “You can’t believe how disappointed I am.”

She put her hand out toward his. He reached to take it. She said, “So am I, Custis. Very much so. I’ll miss your company, not just the entertainment.”

He nodded. “I don’t know how long I will be gone.”

She said, “We can do it when you get back.”

He tried for a smile. “I don’t want any of these other fellows around here beating my time.”

She smiled. “Why, whatever do you mean, Marshal?”

“You know good and well what I mean, Mrs. Dunn. A lady of your style and beauty will not lack for suitors. I fear to leave my range unattended—I fear cattle thieves, I fear rustlers.”

She blushed. “My, my. What a comparison, Marshal Long.”

He took her hand a little tighter and held it for a moment. Then he released it and put his hat on. “Well, I reckon I better be on about my business. You have a shop to run.”

He took a step backwards, and was about to turn for the door when she said, “Custis, why not Friday night? Do you have plans Friday night?”

He turned back quickly toward her. “No, nothing that is important.”

She said, “Then, perhaps you would allow me to cook you supper at my house Friday night. I’d hate to think of you going off to some dreadful place that you don’t want to go to without an enjoyable evening the night before.”

His heart leapt. As he looked at the swell of her breasts and the flare of her hips, thinking in his mind’s eye how delicious they would look free of the constricting material of her clothes, he said, “Mrs. Dunn, that is a fine idea. I cannot think of anything that I could possibly enjoy more.”

“Then it is settled. You will come to my house and we shall eat supper. I am a good cook, you will be surprised to know.”

He shook his head. “No, ma’am, there is nothing about you that would surprise me. What time shall I arrive?”

She said hesitantly, “Would seven o’clock be too late? The shop here

…”

“No, no, no. Seven would be fine. And please, don’t go to any trouble.”

“it won’t be any trouble.”

He told her good-bye, and turned and went out the door. His spirits were lifted high despite the dismal trip to Texas before him.

He lived in a set of rooms not far from her shop and he walked there with a happy heart. He even felt so exuberant as to run up the stairs to his second-floor quarters. It was the fourth or fifth set of rooms that he had lived in in Denver since he had been assigned there years previously. It wasn’t important to Longarm where he lived since he was gone so much. He could have gotten by with just one room with a bed and a place to keep what few clothes he owned. But since on occasion he did entertain visitors, mostly ladies, he had a parlor and a bedroom and a bathroom that did well enough for his needs. He suspected that sometimes his landlady, when she knew that he could be off for considerable lengths of time, would let his rooms out on a short-term basis to visiting drummers and such itinerant peddlers as came through town looking for cheap accommodations. More than once, he had found evidence of someone else’s occupancy of his quarters, but he didn’t really care.

By the time he got to his rooms, he was cursing himself for having called Shirley Dunn a pussy cat. He said to himself half aloud, “That was really dumb, Long, really dumb. You could have likened her to a crystal figurine or something. Why a pussy catt?”

He poured himself a drink of whiskey, sat down in a chair by the window where he could see the street below, and lit a cheroot. For a moment, he let his mind roll over the delectable Mrs. Dunn. She had light brownish hair which she wore swept up, making him hunger to see it down and displayed in all of its glory. She had smooth, regular features except for her eyes, which were large and brown. She had a cupid’s bow of a mouth, which she rouged, that he was dying to give a good kissing to.

But more than the look on her face, he ached to see what was beneath the severely cut suits and frilly blouses and no-nonsense dresses that she wore. From the look of her, he knew that it would be something to see.

Longarm was very much an appreciator of women. Except for the widow of a long-dead comrade, he had never, however, kept a permanent relationship with any. It was clear to him that he would be a poor husband, not only because of his dangerous job, but also because of the extended absences and the far-flung missions that were part of his job. From marriage, it would be a simple step to children, and he didn’t think that children should grow up without some benefit from their father. Billy had once joked about some imagined wife of Longarm’s trying to describe her husband to the children. Billy had said he figured that the poor woman would make a botch of the job, on account of it being so long since she had seen Longarm that her memory had grown dim. Billy had said, “What you’ll have to do, Custis, is get a whole bunch of tintypes taken of yourself regularly and have them posted around the house so that your family can remember you.”

But in his own mind, he knew that it was more than that. There were, he reckoned, some men who just weren’t cut out for marriage and he speculated that he was one. He was a man who liked to be true to whatever he promised, and if he set out to be married to one woman, then he would expect himself to be faithful, and he wasn’t sure that he could put such a hardship on himself. Many a time he had been taken with this woman or that one, to the point that he’d had a quiet talk with himself about marriage. In the end, he had seen more minuses than pluses. He might intend to be faithful, but during an extended trip away from home, a trim pair of ankles or a rounded bosom might undermine all of his good intentions in the flash of a second. He knew that he was a man easily tempted by women, and he didn’t see any point in putting himself to any test.

But most of all, it was his considered opinion that a man in his line of work shouldn’t be married. Of the five or six friends that he had had in the law business who had been married, all had been killed. He calculated that being a man with a wife and family gave you something to think about at a time that you shouldn’t be thinking about anything else—just reacting.

He figured that a man with a family was carrying extra weight that might slow him down at just the instant that he needed to be at his very fastest.

He guessed that as long as he was married to the marshal service, he would just have to be content with whatever women came his way.

Even in that, he lived by a strict code. If a woman was too naive or too inexperienced, he would not touch her. To the best of his knowledge, he had never taken a virgin in his life. The same applied to married women, he would not invade another man’s home any more than he would steal another man’s horse. A woman had to be available, experienced, and interested. He also drew the line at prostitutes. He had never laid out a dime to sleep with one and had no intention of ever doing so. His view was that what he had was just as good as what a woman was carrying between her legs and that one wasn’t any good without the other. He had once told a woman who had turned out toward the end of the evening to be a Prostitute that he could make her a deal—he wouldn’t charge her if she wouldn’t charge him.

He finally concluded that sitting there thinking about women was not the best procedure for his peace of mind. In a little over forty-eight hours, he would be having supper with the luscious Mrs. Shirley Dunn. He had no idea what the evening might bring. In fact, he didn’t even want to speculate on it, so with a discipline rare for him on that particular subject, he closed his mind of the fairer sex and settled down to the business of wondering why the citizens of San Angelo didn’t want money-spending soldiers near their town, and especially why they didn’t want them enough to set into killing them. It was the damnedest proposition that he had ever heard of and he was becoming, in spite of himself, more interested the more he thought about it.

He had no idea how he would go about his investigation. He reckoned that he would show up and have a conference with the fort commander, making him aware of his presence, and then just hang around and listen as best as he could. As far as his cover story was concerned, that offered no trouble. He could always pretend to be a horse buyer; in fact, he very often bought horses on some of his trips. That had been a bone of contention between Billy Vail and himself for many years—the fact that Longarm would leave with one or two horses shipped at government expense and come back with four, all shipped at government expense as well. He sometimes thought that Billy Vail just didn’t see the overall picture.

He didn’t expect that Shirley Dunn would be a drinking lady, so he treated himself to some whiskey before he headed out for her house. He was shaved and bathed and had on his best clothes, such as they were. He had even had his boots shined by the boy down at the barbershop, and his hat had been brushed. It was July, so it was still fair light by the time he swung open the gate to her picket fence and walked up the path to her porch and knocked on the door.

She opened it and for a second, Longarm didn’t recognize her. She was the same size and the face looked the same, but she was altogether a different woman. Her hair was down in long silken waves and she was wearing some sort of a green silk outfit that you might have taken for a robe except that it fit so much closer. He didn’t really get much of a chance to examine her because she held the door open wide, beckoning him to come on in. He stepped across the threshold, his hat in his hand, still amazed at the transformation in this delicate woman. She led him into the parlor. As she walked, he could see that the robe-like dress was slit up one side. It came almost to her ankles but not quite, and beneath the hem of the garment, he could see that she was wearing dainty, jeweled slippers.

He said, “Well, Mrs. Dunn, this is certainly mighty obliging of you, having me over for supper.” He could feel himself stammering and searching for something to say that didn’t make him sound like he was a complete idiot, but he was having difficulty because he couldn’t take his eyes off her and the way that the dress clung. Never before had he seen her dressed that way.

She sensed him staring at her and she smiled. “It’s Chinese,” she said, “I bought it a few years back in San Francisco when I lived there with my husband. I haven’t had a chance to wear it since then, so I thought it would be nice to wear it now. It has a name, but I’m not sure what you would call it—I knew at one time but I’ve forgotten.”

He said, “Well, it’s mighty fetching, ma’am.”

She said, “Custis, you look all confused. Sit down and let me get you something to drink.”

She disappeared. He was expecting her to reappear with a pitcher of lemonade. Instead, he was shocked to see her coming back with a tray on which rested a little pitcher of water, two glasses, and a bottle of very respectable bourbon whiskey. He would have bet that not only had whiskey never passed her lips, but it had never passed her threshold either.

She set the tray down on a little table in front of the divan he was sitting on. Then she came around the table and sat next to him.

“Shall I pour for you, Custis?”

“Well, yes, ma’am. I would be much obliged if you would.” He was still trying desperately to recover from the shock that she had given him, first by the way she had fixed her hair, then by the dress she wore, and now by the way she fixed his whiskey.

She poured him a good solid tumbler. She said, “I’ve got a feeling that you are the kind of man who takes his drink neat.”

“Well, you’d be right about that, Mrs. Dunn.”

She said, “Do you really feel obliged to call me Mrs. Dunn? Can’t you just call me Shirley?”

He stammered a little bit and said, “Of course, Shirley. There, that came out all right, didn’t it?”

She laughed. When she did, she looked much younger than the mid-thirties he had originally figured her for. She said, “I have to take a little bit of water in mine. Too much spirits make me ardent, or is that why they call them ardent spirits?”

He almost blushed. “Well, I … I reckon that I never put the two of them together. Ardent spirits? That’s a pretty good joke, Mrs.-I mean, Shirley.”

She mixed her drink half and half, pouring water out of the pitcher, and then held her glass up for a toast. He raised his and they clinked.

He said, “To luck.”

She said, “To love.”

It was one more shock in the continuing series of surprises she was throwing at him. He downed his drink in one quick swallow, shuddering a little at the hard bite of the bourbon. As soon as he set it back down on the tray, she quickly poured it full for him again.

She said, arching a brow at him, “Are you always so quick, Custis?”

He took up his glass and drank half of it. He said, “Shirley, have you got a twin sister?”

She laughed. “No, not that I know of. Why do you ask?”

He looked around. “It’s just that I have the feeling that either I am in the wrong house or that you are.”

She laughed again. “You think that I have to be the same person all the time? Can’t a girl have a little fun once in a while?”

He took a quick gulp from his glass. He said, his throat getting thick, “Oh, I am all for that, Shirley. I am really all for that. Yes, ma’am, indeed I am.”

She was sitting very close to him and he was very aware of her body. He could smell the scent of her perfume, the power of the musk—a feminine musk that emanated from her. He let his right arm, which had been along the back of the divan, casually fall around her shoulders. Effortlessly, she came to him, her breasts pressing against his chest, her face uptilted. He set his glass down with his left hand while he looked into her eyes. Then he bent his head and kissed her, gently at first, and then with growing passion. He felt her hand slide around to the back of his neck. She was twisting herself so that the whole front of her body was up against him. For a second, he pulled back. His breathing was coming hard and labored. He looked down at her face—her eyes were closed, her lips slightly parted. He began to kiss her again. As he did, he let his left hand go to her back and then come around the silken cloth until he touched the side of her breasts. He could tell that she was wearing nothing underneath the Chinese dress. He could feel her breasts growing and swelling under his hand. He could feel the nipples hardening.

She was probing his mouth, and his heart was pounding, his jeans getting very tight. He was searching for a way to get his hand inside her dress, but there didn’t seem to be any opening. He dropped his hand down along her thigh, trying to find the hem. The dress had ridden up on her until it was just below her knees. He put his hand inside, touching her cool, smooth flesh. At the very instant that he started to move his hand up the inside of her thigh, she broke the kiss off and moved backward immediately. She said, “Why, Marshal Long. Whatever do you think you are doing?”

He said, stammering a little, “I thought you knew what we were doing. Wasn’t just me, Shirley.”

She said, “Custis, I think that you are being a little presumptive. You told me that you were leaving on a long trip.”

He said, “Well, I don’t know how long it’s gonna be … it could be a week, could be two weeks, maybe a little longer.”

“But you are going on law work, aren’t you?”

He said, “Well, uh … yes. Yes.”

“That’s dangerous.” She said it matter-of-factly, as if it were a statement that needed to be out in the open.

He was so taken aback that he was still fumbling for words. He said, “I suppose that one could consider it that, yes, I suppose so. Shirley, what is going on here?”

Very primly she sat on the couch and inched away from him, smoothing down the skirt of her silken dress. “Well, Marshal. A girl has got to look after herself. No one else is going to protect the future of a widowed young woman. Here you would come around and take advantage of me, and you going off on some sort of dangerous job. My husband was a man in a dangerous career—he was a gambler at cards, at horse racing, and now I end up a dressmaker. No, thank you.”

He sat there stunned. He didn’t know what to say. Finally, a few words tumbled out. “Shirley, you can’t just lead a man on like this. I mean … it’s not healthy. Good heavens, you’ve got me all worked up here. I’m as lathered up as a horse … a horse that has been run three miles.”

She said primly, “Well, that’s not my doing, is it?”

He looked around. “Well, I’ll be damned if I see any other woman in the room.”

“And I suppose you didn’t have something in mind yourself? I suppose I planted the idea in your mind?”

He said, motioning, “Well, the way you’ve got yourself up and the way you received me, if I hadn’t had something on my mind before, I damn sure would have five minutes after I got here.”

She said, “Why don’t you have another drink while I go and see to supper? It’s chicken. I hope you like chicken.”

He watched her get up and cross the room, his mouth hanging open. He said, “Well, yes. Of course, I like chicken. Of course, there’s something I like much better.”

She turned at the kitchen door and smiled at him. “But you’re not going to have that.”

“Would you just as soon I left?”

“Oh, no. No, you can’t leave. Not after I’ve gone to all this trouble.”

“But, what is going to happen? We’re going to eat supper, but then what?”

She gave him a very impish smile with her full-lipped mouth. “I’m going to show you what will be waiting for you when you come back safely from your dangerous mission. Perhaps then you will view me in a different light and think of me more seriously.” With those words she pushed open the swinging kitchen door and disappeared.

He sat there very thoughtfully. He poured himself out another drink of the bourbon and sipped at it. He knew where the misunderstanding was between himself and Shirley Dunn. She wanted him to understand that she was the marrying kind and not just some toy to be played with at his leisure. He couldn’t blame her for that, not in the slightest. And he couldn’t blame her for not wanting to become involved with a man who was indeed in a dangerous profession. if one husband had died violently, she wouldn’t want to be involved with another who ran the same risk. He had no answer to those questions. One thing he could have told her, but hadn’t, was that he was not interested in getting married. It didn’t make him feel guilty given the circumstances, but he decided it was going to be very definitely an unusual night.

Just how unusual he didn’t realize until she called from the kitchen, “Go and wash your hands. I’ll be putting supper on the table in just a very few moments. There is a little washroom just on the back porch straight down the hall in front of you.”

He did as she directed, pumping water into a basin, washing his face and hands with soap, and drying them on a big fluffy towel. After that, he walked back into the dining room area and looked at the table. It was set for two. He noticed she had particularly fine china and crystal. Her husband must have been a pretty good gambler, he thought to himself.

He was just about to take a seat, when the kitchen door came open and she backed through carrying a small tray in each hand. As she turned around and came around the door, his mouth fell open. She was wearing nothing but a small half apron, a chintzy little affair that was rounded and only went halfway down her thighs and was tied just below her navel. His first amazement was at the size of her breasts. She was one of those little women who have much bigger breasts than you expect. They were easily the size of half cantaloupes. They looked firm and uplifted. The nipples were big and the rosettes were pink and round as silver dollars. He stood there staring. She smiled at him as she set the platters on the table. She said, “Why Marshal, haven’t you ever seen fried chicken before?”

He swallowed, the words that had been about to come out sticking in his throat. “Yes, ma’am. I’ve seen fried chicken before. I just never seen it dressed quite so nicely.”

She smiled again. “Well, let me get one more thing and then we’ll be ready to eat. You go ahead and sit down.”

But he didn’t. He just stared as she turned. From the back she was completely naked. And he stood there enjoying the sight until she had disappeared through the swinging door of the kitchen. Then he finally did sit down. To the best of his knowledge he had never had supper, or any other meal for that matter, with a naked or nearly naked woman. Maybe he’d sat in bed with one and gnawed on a steak bone or had a piece of cake on a saucer, but he’d never sat down at the table with a lady dressed, or undressed, as she was. He was not at all certain he would be able to eat.

And then she came back through the kitchen door carrying a pitcher of iced tea. She sat down and gave him a bright smile while he stared at her. She said, “Now Marshal, don’t be bashful. Just help yourself.”

In a husky voice he said, “Ma’am, I sure wish you meant that the way I want it to be meant.”

She smiled and started piling his plate with fried chicken. “Well, you just come back from your mission knowing what you have waiting for you, and then we’ll have a talk and maybe you can have anything you want for supper.”

He said, his voice still hoarse, “Shirley, you got any idea what you’re doing to me?”

She was putting coleslaw on his plate. She said, “Of course I have an idea of what I am doing to you. I was a married woman, remember?”

“Then more the shame for you,” he said.

“Bah … I know what your plans are, mister. They just didn’t work out the way you wanted them to. I have my own plans. You’re a very appealing man, Marshal Long. You have a good future. You have a good job. You’re just the kind of man that I could set my cap for if there wasn’t so much danger in your job. But I think that you’ve got enough time in the marshal service that you could have some of that danger taken out of your life.”

He didn’t like that. “Shirley, I don’t come with conditions. There ain’t no lead ropes on me. You don’t see any halter around my head.”

She leaned over until her breasts were almost touching her own empty plate. She said, “I’m open to compromise. Like I say, when you come back we’ll talk about it. Now eat your supper.”

it was undoubtedly the strangest meal that Longarm had ever tried to eat. The food was wonderful but he couldn’t taste it. It seemed that all of his senses were concentrated in his eyes, which were glued to Shirley Dunn’s beautiful breasts. He ate mechanically, never taking his eyes off her. He never knew if he had a mouthful of coleslaw, or mashed potatoes, or fried chicken. She served peach cobbler for dessert and asked him if he wanted cream on top. He didn’t know his answer, and he didn’t know if he had cream on top or not. When the meal was mercifully over they sat back down on the couch, which was even worse. For now he had a full view of her slender shapely legs. And every now and then a brief glimpse of the silken patch that was hidden by the crinkly apron. She had kept on her green slippers, and they even added to the seductiveness of the figure she cast. He had two more drinks, barely conscious of what he was doing. They talked. She asked him questions about the marshal service and his job. He answered. Sometimes he knew what he was saying, but most times he didn’t. When the clock struck ten he got up and put on his hat. She walked him only partway to the door, then put her mouth up to be kissed. He kissed her long and lingeringly, but he kept his hands strictly on the smooth creamy skin of her back.

As he started to the door she said, “Just remember, I’ll be waiting when you get back.”

He said, “I’m gonna be remembering that you said that I could have anything for supper I wanted.”

She smiled sweetly. “Under certain conditions.”

He nodded. He had an idea what those conditions were and already his mind was scheming, thinking of a way around them, around whatever barriers she might put up, that would allow him to get to that luscious body.

He went out the door backwards, making sure that he had a good full vision of her to carry him all the way to San Angelo, Texas, and back.

Once out into the night air, he shook his head and said to himself, “I feel like I’ve been whipped with a wagon tongue and then dragged about ten miles.” In truth, part of his body was convinced that another part had ceased functioning. He walked straight to his nearest favorite saloon and contented himself with a game of poker and more whiskey. But try as he would he couldn’t keep his mind on the game, and ended up losing forty dollars—an almost unheard-of occurrence for him in such a low-stakes game.

But walking back to his boardinghouse that night, he got to thinking his situation over, and after a time he began to laugh. The woman had neatly turned the tables on him. He had gone there with one thing and one thing only on his mind. She had known it and what she had done was call his hand and raise the ante, letting him have just enough of a peek at his hole card to make him want to continue the game even more.

Thinking on the whole evening, he decided that it was about as clever a performance he had ever run up against. The woman wasn’t just as pretty as a speckled pup, she was pretty damned smart on top of that. He reckoned when he got back, they might have some pretty good times sparring around. He had no more intention of getting married or getting serious than he’d ever had. He knew that was her intention and that she had no plans to end up his plaything. It would be curious to see if they could find some middle ground where they could meet. He got to his boardinghouse and went upstairs with a smile on his face. He was even more anxious than ever to get to San Angelo, get his business done, and get back here to the Widow Dunn.

Chapter 3

After a long, hot, tiring journey, the train finally pulled into San Angelo, Texas. For the last eight hours, since six that morning, he had had a good view of the baking plains of west Texas. He got off the train wondering just how many people in the place had actually ever seen a tree, or a stream of clear running water. But that was none of his affair. They wanted to live in such a place—he was glad that someone was willing. For his part, he’d have rented the whole shooting match out to Mexico for a price of one dollar a year, and if they drove a hard bargain, he’d come down from that.

He walked back along the platform toward the freight Part of the train. He’d brought two horses—a gentle mare that he figured to use around town and a big rawboned chestnut that could go all day just in case he had to do some hard riding over the rough countryside. He had his saddlebags over his shoulders. They were mainly loaded with his extra .44-caliber Colt revolver, several boxes of ammunition, and five bottles of Maryland whiskey that he had brought with him from Denver, knowing full well that he’d find nothing but rotgut in San Angelo. He carried in his hand a small valise with a few changes of clothes and some fresh socks. Longarm didn’t see the point of underwear in the summer. It was his opinion that, under the right circumstances, it would just slow a man down.

He arrived at the cattle car just as they were unloading the bay and chestnut. He had left the saddle on the gentle bay fifty. Now he took the bridle where it was flung over the saddle, fitted it into her mouth, and cinched up the saddle. He put his saddlebags on the back, tied his valise to the saddlehorn, and climbed aboard. He had the chestnut on lead, and he started in to San Angelo. They had one decent hotel, the Cutler House. He had stayed there before and though it wasn’t much, it was better than any of the boardinghouses or staying out at Fort Concho. He figured to get a suite of rooms and spread himself as much as he could. He had drawn two hundred dollars worth of expense money over Billy Vail’s strong objection, and had brought along another two or three hundred dollars for gambling or horse-trading money. As far as that went, either horse he had was for sale or trade when he no longer had use for them.

San Angelo was a town that, if you took in the shacks that stretched out from the center a couple of miles, had somewhere around seventy-five hundred people in it. How many, he could never figure. There was one long, dusty, main street where most of the commerce was, and then some branching streets that had a few stores and a few shops and places where you could get this or that fixed. On beyond that were more residences and livery stables, and then you got into the shacks, and then you got into the prairie. Why anyone in the world would want to protect the place, especially the United States government, was beyond his knowledge, but then he was just a deputy U.S. marshal and he didn’t have to know the why of things in order to do his job.

San Angelo was famous for one thing—it had one of the biggest whorehouses in west Texas. It was first class in operation and was run by a lady named Mabelle Russell. He’d met her on a couple of occasions, though he doubted that she would remember him. She was a handsome, elegant woman who just happened to be in the whore business. He didn’t know, but he didn’t think that she had come up through the ranks. He figured she was a non-participating owner, and the curious thing about it was that her whorehouse occupied the top floor of the three-story Cutler House. She took up every room on the third floor. Of course, that was with the help and the blessing of the local law, as it was considered illegal in most Texas communities for open prostitution to go on within the city limits. But like most frontier towns, the rules there were whatever the local people cared to make them.

As he went jogging down the main street leading the chestnut, he noticed that the men hadn’t gotten any friendlier-looking and the women hadn’t gotten any prettier. That drew his mind back to the luscious Shirley Dunn—a vision that he was doing his best to keep out of his mind until it was time to go home.

His badge was in his pocket, and it would stay there until such time as he had to take it out. He wasn’t, though it normally was his habit, even going to advise the local sheriff of his presence. As far as anybody knew, or would know, he was just an itinerant gambler who would trade a horse with you or run a horse race with you or take a drink with you. A man of the world and a man on the move—no ties and no intention of being tied. He pulled his horses up in front of the Cutler House, stepped down, dropped the reins of the little bay mare, and went into the hotel.

At the desk, a young man with more mustache than his face would support said, “Yes, sir, can I help you?”

Longarm asked for a suite of rooms, preferably on the first floor. He did not know why, but on this particular occasion, he had the feeling that the time might come when he would want to make an impression. It was a hunch, and he very often followed his hunches without questioning them.

The clerk allowed as to how he did have such a suite. In fact, it was right at the end of the hall, right next to the main bathroom on the floor. He also added that it would be four dollars a day.

For answer, Longarm took out a roll of bills, peeled off a twenty, and flipped it on the desk. “There. That’s for five days,” he said. “Now, I have two horses out in the front. Have somebody take care of them.” He put down another five. “That ought to take care of you and whoever is taking care of the horses. Now, give me my key and point me in the right direction.”

The desk clerk came alive. “Yes, sir,” he said with alacrity. “Yes, sir.” He turned his head and yelled, “Todd! Todd, get out here and take of this gentleman’s horses! Hurry up!” Then he turned to the cubbyholes behind him and took out the key that said 106 and handed it over to Longarm. Then he said, “I want you to enjoy your stay with us, sir. Breakfast is served at six in the morning, dinner at noon, and supper they commence serving at five.”

“Thank you,” Longarm said dryly. “I can’t wait for some of that good dining-room food here at the Cutler House.” He started to turn away and then looked back. “Mabelle Russell still running things up on the third floor?”

The clerk’s face lit up. “Oh, are you acquainted with Miss Russell?”

Longarm said, “I reckon you could say that we know each other. Thank you.”

He turned and walked away, having deliberately left the clerk with the impression that he was someone to be reckoned with. He wanted that word to get around. His intentions were to cause as much stir as he could so that he could draw more people in. That was part of the reason for the flashy roll of money, the suite of rooms, and the question about the madam. To cut a swath, he’d decided, was the way to do it. Attract some attention. Get some people talking. He didn’t want to appear to be a man who would be the slightest bit interested in killing soldiers, and therefore, for that reason, he would most likely hear all about it.

He let himself into his suite. The first room had a dilapidated-looking velveteen settee and a couple of ordinary armchairs around a table. It wasn’t much of a room. The only good feature about it was that it had a big chandelier over the table that had several lanterns. If a man wanted to have a poker game in private, he would have plenty of light to see his cards by.

He walked on into the bedroom. It was large enough, with a bureau and a washbasin and towels on a long table. The bed was of a fair size. He went over and felt it. It was a little lumpy but it wasn’t too soft, so he figured that it would do. There was a chiffonnier to hang some clothes in, and in the corner was an ample zinc bathtub. It appeared that he could shave and have a bath in his room without bothering with the communal bathroom in the hall. He put his saddlebags down on the bed and set his valise on the floor. Then he took out a bottle of whiskey from the saddlebags and took a pull straight from the bottle, even though there was a glass handy on the nightstand just at the head of the bed.

He took out a cheroot and lit it and sat there thinking. He supposed that the first order of business was to go out to the fort, see the commander, and get a line on the killings. But just as he was about to take another pull of whiskey, there was a knock at the door and he yelled, “Come in!”

The outer door opened and a boy of about sixteen came through, carrying his .44-caliber Model 73 Winchester carbine that had been in his saddle boot.

The young man said, “Didn’t figure you wanted this left out in the stable, mister.”

Longarm nodded. “I expected you to bring that in, sonny. I saw you outside and I figured that you were as smart as paint. I wanted to see if I could depend on you. Here’s another fifty cents for your trouble. You’re supposed to get a dollar from the desk clerk. Did you?”

The young man looked doubtful, as if he was unsure of what he should answer. Longarm said, “Cheated you, did he? What did he give you, a quarter?”

The young man grinned sheepishly and looked down. “Well, I don’t like to say.”

Longarm added another half-dollar to what he was handing the young man. He said, “I’m going to need someone I can trust around here to run errands and help me on different matters. Would you be available for that job?”

The young man’s face brightened up. “Yes, sir. I’m your man. My name is Todd.”

“Now, a man that works for me has got to know how to keep things under his hat. Are you good at that?”

The young man nodded. “Yes, sir. Yes, sir.”

“All right, Todd. The first thing that I want you to do is to get me a line on all the sports in town. I’m a man who is willing to get into a card game if the stakes are right, might even run a horse race, might even trade a horse. Might even buy some cattle if the price is right. Do you follow me about buying those cattle, Todd?”

“Yes, sir. I figure I do.”

“Fact, I might even buy a load of horses if the price is right. Do you understand me about that, Todd?”

“Well, yes, sir, but I gotta tell you, sir, that there ain’t many of them kind of horses comes through here.”

“What kind of horses did you think I meant, Todd?”

“Well, sir, I kind of thought that you might have meant horses that have gotten lost and cattle also.”

Longarm said, “You’re a smart paint, Todd. Now you run along and keep your eyes and ears open. You might put the word around to the right places that I am also a man who likes to have a good time. Do you understand me, Todd?”

“Yes, sir!” Todd said. Then he turned and was gone.

Longarm watched him close the door and then smiled to himself. He thought he could begin to enjoy this act, that is, as long as the money held out. If it didn’t, he’d have to deal with the tight-fisted Billy Vail. Billy’s idea of acting like a sport meant throwing around a dollar and a half. It was Longarm’s considered opinion that Billy Vail ought to be the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States of America, as tight as he was. Longarm picked up his carbine and levered it slowly to see that a shell was still in its chamber. He liked to make sure that all of his weapons were loaded, just as he liked to make sure that he never carried a dull knife.

A man had once told him early in life that it didn’t cost any more to carry a sharp knife and a loaded gun. He’d added, however, that sometimes it did cost more to have a pretty woman than to have an ugly one. On that thought, Longarm had another drink and went over to look out the window at the main street of San Angelo. It didn’t take him long to see that there wasn’t much to see.

He moved back to the bed and unbuckled his gunbelt. He was tired from his journey and he wanted to take a rest before looking the town over. He unbuckled the big concave silver buckle of his gunbelt carefully because inside the buckle, held by a spring, was his hideout gun, a .38-caliber two-shot derringer. He didn’t need it very often, but when he did, he needed it mighty bad.

He took his boots off, loosened his belt, lay down on the bed, and shut his eyes. He couldn’t sleep, but he could rest for a half an hour and then go out to the fort, where he hoped to see the commander. He figured that the sooner he got to the nub of the business, the sooner he would get it over with.

The commander of the fort was a Captain John Montrose. He was a man of approximately Longarm’s age, though he was tall and thin where Longarm was muscular. His face was weathered, as were his clothes. It was obvious that this wasn’t his first tour of duty at a frontier fort.

Longarm managed to get into see the captain by claiming to have a bill for forage against the army that he wanted forwarded through proper channels. Once he had managed to see Captain Montrose alone, he immediately dropped the ruse, showed the captain his badge and papers, and told him the purpose of his visit.

Captain Montrose leaned back in his chair in his sparsely furnished office and said, “Well, Marshal, I have to admit that I am very glad to see you. Frankly, the entire matter is a puzzle to me. This is my fourth tour of duty at these so-called Indian forts, and nothing like this has ever happened before.”

Longarm said, “Captain, I just got in town this afternoon. I’ve just barely had a drink and a rest. You will at least give me until supper to solve this thing, won’t you?”

The captain gave him a rueful smile. “I guess when you have been living with something like this as long as we have, you are anxious for it to be over with.”

“I’ve been told that this business started about two months ago. Is that when the first killing occurred?”

Captain Montrose nodded. “That’s approximately right.”

“When did the local townspeople begin to make it evident that they didn’t want you around?”

The captain scratched his thinning hair. “Well, that part is a puzzle to me too. I don’t really know of any concerted effort or wish to have us leave. It just seems to crop up here and there. I’ve been told that letters have been written to the congressman and the governor, but I’ve never seen any of them. I’ve been told that the mayor has protested our being here, but I have asked him point-blank and he says he has never made any such protest. Frankly, I am puzzled by the entire affair. I am told that the entire town wants this fort closed, and yet I can’t find a single soul that will tell me that they want us gone. Asked directly, they invariably say, ‘Why would we want you to leave?’ And since we provide a flow of money in the form of our payroll and the amount of supplies that we buy, I couldn’t imagine why the town would want us gone. I admit myself that I can’t see the necessity of this fort. The only Indians that I know of around here work on cattle ranches and are very unlikely to go on a warpath anytime soon.”

He smiled briefly. “We are primarily a training base. Most of my men are new recruits. We work them here and then move them on up the line to Fort Bliss in El Paso, and from there they go on into New Mexico and Arizona, where there are still some Indian fights going on. We’re a threat to no one, so I am as puzzled as anyone about this.”

Longarm shook his head. “Well, this gets thicker and thicker.”

Captain Montrose said, “What do you propose to do?”

“There ain’t a hell of a lot I can do, Captain. I’m gonna hang around and act like I am a big spender just in from the gold country. Try to stir some folks up and keep my ears open. Five soldiers killed?” Longarm shook his head. “That’s a pretty strong protest. Are you sure that it wasn’t personal?”

The captain shook his head. “I don’t see how. The men had absolutely nothing in common other than they were all U.S. soldiers. One of them was a corporal and the other four were privates. They were from different parts of the country. Two were immigrants, as many of our men are, you know. They were young, they were middle-aged. None were vicious. No common thread that I can think of.”

“What about the idea that the land that you are occupying could be used by citizens for grazing and other purposes?”

The captain said, “Hell, we don’t take up more than two hundred acres. You can’t graze much on two hundred acres around here. We do most of our training way out in the country. There’s no land around here that would be considered of any value. Unless you consider that the fort, being set as close to the town as it is, is a valuable piece of property. But surely there is ample room for town expansion without leveling the fort.”

Longarm got up and put his hat on. “Well, I’ll get on about my business. You and I, of course, don’t know each other, Captain. I will be giving you some information from time to time when I have something to report.”

“You can give me no idea how long this will take?”

Longarm shook his head. “Not the slightest, Captain.”

“Do you think any more of my men will be murdered?”

Longarm just gave him a look.

Captain Montrose laughed and said, “Yes, I guess that was a silly question.”

Longarm rode away from the garrison back toward the town, knowing no more than when he’d ridden out. He took his horse to the hotel stable to turn him over to the stable boy. Todd was just coming out, leading a sleek-looking quarter horse. Longarm said, “What’s that you got there, Todd?”

Todd’s face lit up. “Oh, this be Mr. Castle’s horse, sir.”

“Well, who is Mr. Castle?”

“He’s a member of one of the most prominent families around here, sir. There is a bunch of them. This one here belongs to Mr. James Castle. He is an uncle of the main branch of the family.” Longarm said, “Well, just remember our deal.” He turned his horse in to the stable and then walked back toward the hotel. He went back into the hotel dining room and had supper. They gave him what they considered roast beef, which he thought was better suited to making shoes out of, along with some stuff they called gravy—he figured that you could glue the shoes together with it—along with some canned tomatoes and some mashed potatoes. He figured that he was either going to have to find a better place to eat or get some grub out of the general mercantile and start eating in his room.

That evening, he walked a few doors down from the hotel to the Elite Saloon, which was considered the biggest and the best in town. Todd had reported to him that it was at the Elite that the biggest gamblers gathered. He stood at the bar watching the play at several tables until a seat came open at a game where the stakes were high enough to interest him. There were five other players. With the exception of one man, they seemed to be ordinary-looking local cattle ranchers or townspeople in some kind of trade or another. The exception was a huge bull-necked man with a heavy thick face and small eyes that seemed to flick back and forth out of their slits.

Longarm could see the man wasn’t fat, he was just big and solidly built. He judged the man to weigh pretty close to two hundred and fifty pounds. He wasn’t as tall as Longarm, but he was still a stretch over six feet.

No names were given and no introductions were made. The only introduction that you needed was your fifty-cent ante and the knowledge of how to deal when it came your turn. On the first hand that he played, which was five-card draw, Longarm won a thirty-five-dollar pot with three tens. On the second hand, he bought the pot with a twenty-dollar bill and a pair of jacks showing in a game of five card stud. He had made the bet on the last card up, and it had been only himself and the bull-necked man. The bull-necked man had looked at the twenty-dollar bill, and then looked at his hole card and folded. Longarm had pulled the pot in. He was playing contrary to his usual game.

He was being flamboyant, he was talking, and he was making jokes. Normally when he played, he showed no emotion and talked very little, if at all. But then, this was different. He was trying to draw attention to himself. He could see that the bull-necked man didn’t like him. On the third hand, which was also five card stud, he won it straight up with a pair of kings showing, a pair of tens showing, and a ten in the hole. He had won three straight. He calculated that he was up almost a hundred dollars.

On the fourth hand, which was draw and which he was dealing, he dealt himself a pair of queens and a pair of nines. Three players stayed after the first bet, which was made by the opener to his left. Longarm drew one card, as did the bull-necked man, and immediately bet twenty dollars. He bet it casually without looking to see what he had drawn, almost as if he were taunting them. Of course, the one card draw could mean that he was drawing to fill a flush, a full house, or a straight. Or he could have been holding three of a kind with a kicker and just being cute by drawing one card. The bull-necked man kept his eyes steadily fixed on Longarm, as he had ever since the second pot. Longarm could feel an enmity radiating from him. To help it along, he directed most of his bantering remarks to the heavyset man. As he did, he noticed that the other players glanced at him uneasily as if they thought he was making a foolish play.

With a twenty-dollar bet on the table, the man who had opened hesitated and then called it. The man next to him folded, and the heavyset man took a long time debating before he finally pitched his hand in. When the cards were spread, the opener had two pairs, jacks over fours, and Longarm had made a full house—three queens over his pair of nines.

As he raked in the money, he said, “Hell, if I had known that it was this easy around here, I would have gotten here yesterday, maybe even the week before. As it is, I figure that in a year I can buy this damn town, but what in God’s name I would want with it, I don’t know. Unless I was a soldier and was forced to live here, I can’t see no good reason for staying.”

A quiet came over the table. The big man said in a rumbling voice, looking dead at Longarm, “If I were you, mister, I’d make it awhile before I win another pot. That’s four pots in a row that you’ve won. You keep fooling around, I’m gonna mess you up good. Do you understand me? I’m gonna mess you up good. I’m gonna mess your face up.”

Chapter 4

Longarm stopped stacking his chips, leaning back easily in his chair. He looked at the man. “Is that a fact? Well, how do you know that I won’t appreciate it if you mess my face up? What makes you think that I like my face the way it is? It might turn out that I would be obliged to you for changing my face, ‘cause a lot of folks’ faces need changing. Like yours, for instance. You are nearly the ugliest thing that I ever saw. Why don’t you go run into a barn door or hit yourself in the face with the flat of a shovel. That would be an improvement.”

He heard a few gasps from around the table. He could hear the sound of chairs scraping back. For a second nothing happened, and then the big man slowly rose. He started to his right. The men sitting on that side of the table jumped out of their chairs and hurried back out of the way. The heavyset man didn’t come with a rush. He came ponderously, heavily, with his arms out from his barrel chest. Longarm could see from the size of his arms that if the man could ever succeed in getting him in his grasp, he, Longarm, would most likely be done for. He stood up slowly, giving the man time to round the table. He had a fairly good idea what the man was going to do. He stepped to his left and just hooked his chair with the toe of his boot so that he could fling it.

As the man came around the curve of the table, he suddenly started forward. In that same instant, Longarm jerked the chair into the man’s path. it caused the big man to stumble. As he started to fall forward, Longarm pulled out his gun and clubbed him over the back of the head and neck. He hit him as hard as he could. The sound of the barrel striking the hard flesh made a thunk in the quiet of the saloon. The big man just kept falling, crushing the chair beneath him. He hit the floor on his chest and bounced and then lay still for a second.

Longarm stepped back and was about to holster his revolver, thinking it was all over. But then the big man shook his head several times and started slowly to rise.

Around him, Longarm could hear the buzz of voices. It seemed he kept hearing Billy Bob this and Big Billy that. He said to the rising man, “Stay down, mister. I am warning you … stay down.”

The big man seemed not to have heard him. He kept shaking his head as if to clear it and slowly rose, pushing himself up with his massive arms until he was on his hands and knees. As he was about to straighten up, Longarm stepped forward and kicked him under his chin as hard as he could. The blow knocked the man over backwards. He went down and then rolled over on his right side.

Longarm stood there, watching, wondering what would come next. Once again the man lay still for a few seconds, and then once again he started to laboriously heave himself to his feet.

Longarm watched him, fascinated, as the man pushed himself up with one arm, then up on one knee, and then began to slowly straighten up. As he did, Longarm drove the heel of his right boot into the man’s side. He could almost feel the crunch of a rib. The man sighed and sagged back down. Longarm booted him again. This time, the blow drove him to the floor.

The process started again, only this time, Longarm knelt beside the man and put his revolver between his eyes, cocked the hammer, and said, “Listen, you chubby little sonofabitch, stay down there on that floor or I’ll put one right between your eyes. I ain’t letting you squeeze the life out of me.”

A voice from behind him said, “Let him alone, mister.” He turned around slowly. He was looking into the twin barrels of a shotgun. Behind them was a young man who bore a resemblance to the heavyset man on the floor, only this one was taller and more normally built. But he was still heavy and he still had a bullying look about his face and little mean, cruel eyes. There was no mistaking his intent with the shotgun. Longarm looked at him. He still had the gun pointed at the man on the floor. Longarm said, “Who might you be?”

The man said, “Never mind who I be. You let him alone.”

Longarm said, “You drop that scattergun. I don’t care much for having those things pointed at me.”

“You take that pistol out of my brother’s face.”

“Your brother started this fight. Your brother don’t want pistols pointed at his face? He ought to not offer violence to other men. Now you put that scattergun down and I’ll take this pistol out of your brother’s face and I’ll back out of here and we’ll all just be friends for the rest of our lives. Now, what do you think of that?”

While the questions hung in the air, there was a commotion and a man came shouldering his way through. “What the hell is going on here?” he said.

Longarm was glad to see that he was wearing a badge. He hoped that it was the sheriff and not one of his deputies. He figured from the age of the man that it had to be the sheriff, and judging by his authoritative ways, he was fairly certain it was.

Someone said, “This man’s been beating the hell out of Billy Bob.”

Longarm looked up at the sheriff. “I wasn’t beating the hell out of Billy Bob, if that’s his name. I was only protecting myself. This sonofabitch that’s about the size of a barn was going for me. I wasn’t going to stand there and get squashed to the floor.”

The sheriff looked around at the other players in the game. He singled one out and said, “What about it, Mr. Swinney?”

Mr. Swinney, who was one of the men who looked like a tradesman, sort of shrugged and said, “The new fellow won four hands in a row. Billy Bob didn’t like it. He kind of mentioned to the new fellow that he didn’t like it and that he was going to give him a working over.”

The sheriff said, “All right, I don’t give a damn about any of that. Glenn, you put that shotgun down.” Then he pointed his finger at Longarm and said, “And you, mister, put that gun back in its holster, get your money off the table, and get the hell out of this saloon.”

Longarm stood up slowly, uncocking his revolver before slipping it into his holster. He said, “I didn’t start this fight.”

The sheriff said, “I don’t care who started this fight. I’m here to finish it. Now pick your money up off that poker table and get the hell out of here.”

“Whether I’m ready to go or not?”

“Whether you’re ready to go or not. Makes me no damn difference. I’m the sheriff here—you’ll do what I tell you. NOW get out of here.”

At Longarm’s feet, the big man groaned and moved around. Longarm glanced down. A trickle of blood was running down the thick neck from where the gun barrel had cut him at the base of his skull. Longarm looked over at the younger man who had the same features and the same blond hair—hair so blond that it was almost white. The younger man had dropped the barrel of the shotgun but his eyes were still aimed at Longarm. Longarm glanced around the room. Everyone was staring at him.

He said to the sheriff, “Just who the hell are these two gents that they would rate the law taking a position over another private citizen? I ain’t done a damn thing except play a better poker game than that idiot on the floor.”

The sheriff’s face flushed. “Never you mind who they are or who anybody else is for that matter. Just get your damn money and get the hell out of here. My job is to keep trouble from starting and to stop it once it gets started and I don’t want any more. Do I got to tell you again?”

With casual movements, Longarm stepped to the table and scooped his money up, stuffing it into his pocket. Then he glanced down at the big man named Billy Bob or Big Billy and gave him one last look. He started toward the man with the shotgun. As he shouldered his way between him and the sheriff, he said to the younger man, “Listen, sonny. I ain’t real sure that you are old enough to be carting one of those things around. Ain’t there some law, Sheriff, about twelve-year-old boys carrying a shotgun?”

The sheriff said, “Hold it right there, Glenn. I’ll tend to this. Glenn, just put that shotgun down and step back. This man is leaving.”

He took Longarm by the shoulders and gave him a nudge toward the front of the saloon. “On your way, mister.”

Longarm shrugged the sheriff’s hands off. He walked a few steps and then turned around and looked the room over slowly. Finally he smiled slightly, turned, and walked toward the door, making a sardonic wave over his shoulder. As he stepped through the bat-winged doors, he could hear the noise begin to pick up again in the place. Outside on the street, he laughed. It had been a good beginning. If nothing else, he told himself, he had won nearly two hundred dollars. More money to flash around and act like a sport.

He wandered the streets for a quarter of an hour, then turned a corner and went into a saloon called the Square Deal, which he thought to himself was anything but. It was no way on a par with the Elite. It was more of a workingman’s drinking place. He was about to turn around and go back out when out of the corner of his eye, at the end of the bar, he saw the blue tunics of a couple of cavalry soldiers. He walked on in. There was one poker game going and he could tell at a glance that it was small change—nothing that he wanted a part of.

He took a place at the bar and ordered a drink, making a grimace as he tasted the raw whiskey. He slammed his glass down and said to the bartender, “Hell, you slopping pigs or giving drinking men whiskey? What is this stuff? Give me something decent.”

The barkeep looked startled. “Well, that’s good enough for most folks around here.”

Longarm slung a silver dollar on the bar and said, “Give me your best.”

The bartender shrugged and found another bottle. He took a fresh glass and poured Longarm another drink. Longarm took it down in one gulp, grimacing. He said, “Hell, that ain’t a hell of a lot better.”

He looked down to where the two cavalry men stood. Both were slick-sleeved privates. He said, “And not only ain’t the whiskey worth a damn in this joint, but you don’t seem to care who you let in here. You serve soldier boys in here—Yankee soldier boys? Next you’ll be letting Injuns in here to drink with the white men.” He flipped another silver dollar on the bar and turned on his heels and walked out.

Out on the street, he smiled again. He was well pleased with himself. He had managed to make a stir in two places. It was growing late—a little after ten—so he walked slowly back to his hotel. As he was crossing the lobby, he saw the young man, Todd, hurrying after him. Longarm continued on down the hall. Just as he reached his room, Todd came up.

Todd said excitedly, “Mr. Long, sir. I got to tell you something.”

“What is it, Todd?”

“Well, Mr. Long. I heard that you got into a … got into an upset with Billy Bob Castle and his brother Glenn.”

“Is that their name? Castle?”

“Yes, sir. Just like the one that had the horse that you were admiring this afternoon.”

“So what?”

“Well, sir. I just thought I better warn you. They ain’t the best folks to be getting crosswise with around here.”

Longarm put his key in the door.

The boy continued. “They’re kind of pretty important around here. They’re kind of the head stud horse. The whole bunch of them.”

Longarm gave the young man a look. He said, “Well, Todd. You pass the word that if they will stay clear of me, I’ll let them go on being stud horses around here, but they fool with me and I’ll geld them right quick.”

Todd stood there staring at him as Longarm went past the door, shutting it behind him. He walked through the parlor into his bedroom and sat down on his bed to have a good laugh. He uncorked a bottle of Maryland whiskey and swished it around his mouth to get rid of the taste of that last drink. He leaned back against the pillow and said, “Ahhh,” before taking out a cigarillo and lighting it.

He figured that he had done a pretty good day’s work in the little town in not quite half a day. He didn’t know who the Castles were—Billy Bob or Glenn—but they apparently were of such a size and vigor and prestige as to have made Todd impressed with his conflict with such a robust family.

All of it had left him no closer to finding who was killing the troopers. The remark he had made in the Square Deal Saloon about the place serving soldiers was possibly the most aggressive effort he had made that day, but it would take a great deal more than that to get him viewed as an arrival who shared the town’s opinion toward the garrison at the fort.

As he ate his breakfast the next morning in the hotel dining room, he reflected that if he ever meant to make his official presence known to the sheriff, the sheriff’s behavior the night before had canceled out that thought. Clearly the sheriff took the side of the locals against any outsiders.

Longarm wondered if that included the soldiers at the fort. Were they outsiders since most of them were Yankees? Even worse than that, most of them were immigrants newly arrived in the country. The only work they could find was that of serving in the army, and especially in the frontier forts. Many of those forts were now being manned by Negroes who were called buffalo soldiers. As a general rule, being sent to such far-flung outposts was reserved for outcasts, the second-rate and troublemakers. Of course, that did not apply to the officers to the same extent as the enlisted men. But no matter what their social status was, they didn’t deserve to be killed.

He wondered about the Castle family, and intended on making some discreet inquiries in time. He thought, however, that their paths would be crossing in the very near future. The burly man they called Big Bill or Billy Bob, or even the one they called Glenn, the one with the shotgun, didn’t look like the type to take a licking and think very kindly about it. He thought for certain that they would be paying him a visit in the very near future.

But for the time being, his plan was just to hang around town and listen to what he could hear, put forth such opinions as might find favor with those who were against the soldiers being there, and let the situation take its course. He knew of no other way to proceed.

However, later that morning he received a communication from Captain Montrose. They had worked out a method of communicating by which Longarm could not be identified with the garrison. There were several civilian employees at the fort, and a blacksmith who saw to the garrison’s horses was to drop off a message at his hotel. It wouldn’t be a closed envelope but rather an innocent-looking piece of paper mentioning lost horses and Longarm’s search for them. That would notify him that he was supposed to come to the fort as quickly as possible.

He met Captain Montrose in the horse corrals at the fort at one o’clock. The captain said that he had forgotten to mention that he was taking most of the troop on a training march the next day, and he wanted to make sure that such an action would not interfere with Longarm’s investigation. Longarm told him in no uncertain terms it would very definitely interfere with his investigation.

He said, “Captain Montrose, how the hell am I supposed to find out who’s shooting your soldiers if you march them out of here?”

The captain said, “But I’ll be leaving a small complement of clerks and other personnel.”

“Don’t make no difference. You’ll just slow me down during the time it takes you to carry out this exercise. How long were you planning on being gone?”

“Ten days to two weeks.”

The very thought of having his mission delayed by that amount of time made Longarm cringe. In the strongest terms possible he gave it as his opinion that if the captain did such a thing, it might well cancel the progress Longarm had already made. He didn’t bother to tell the captain that his progress thus far had been to get into a poker game and into trouble with the local sheriff.

Captain Montrose didn’t want to comply with Longarm’s wishes, but in the end he had no choice, even though he complained that it would cause his troops to lose significant training time.

Longarm said, “Better that they lose their training time than lose their lives.”

With that Longarm left and headed back to town.

His first stop was the Elite Saloon. There, over several drinks at the bar, he let it be known that he was almost certain that several of his horses, horses that had been stolen, were being held out at the garrison, and that that damned Yankee captain would not release them. And he, by God, was going to have justice on the matter or there would be hell to pay. All of this he told to the bartender, who was not at all interested, but he told it to him in such a way that practically everyone in the place could hear him.

After that, Longarm ambled down the street looking for the sheriff’s office. He found it right across from the Cutler House. At the same time, he discovered that the sheriff’s name was T.J. Smith. His office had a plate-glass window and his name was printed across it in large letters, showing the man was either proud of being sheriff or proud of his name, or had an overly ambitious sign painter on his payroll.

Longarm opened the front door and stepped into the fair-sized office. The sheriff was behind the biggest of three desks. He was set up right in front of the door that obviously led back to the cells. There were two other smaller desks that were set against the wall to Longarm’s left. At one of them, a young deputy was sitting with his feet up, drinking a cup of coffee. The sheriff had his hat off and was working on some papers. Longarm could see that he was going bald, and noticed the gray in the man’s drooping mustache. He figured the sheriff to be pushing fifty, but he was still a solid-built man with a lined face and hard eyes. He seemed capable of enforcing his authority without too much trouble.

He looked up as Longarm walked up to his desk. For a second his eyes blinked, and then he recognized Longarm. He said, “What the hell do you want?”

Longarm glanced over at the deputy, who was watching him. He said to the sheriff, “I’d like to know where the hell you got off rousting me around last night after them two ruffians jumped on me. One was gonna squash me like a bug and the other was gonna take a shotgun to me.”

The sheriff skittered his chair back away from his desk so he could look up and have a better slant at Longarm. “I don’t know who the hell you are, mister, or who the hell you think you are, but those two are part of the best family in this county, so they count for a hell of a lot more than somebody that is just in here for some unknown reason. By the way, what is your business in my town?”

“The last time I looked, this was a free country. Unless a man done something wrong, he Didn’t have to explain anything to the law. But just for your information, I deal in stock and the government owes me for some horses I sold them. I have reason to believe that some of them, the ones that I didn’t get paid for, are out here at this so-called fort you got. Now, you let one man cheat you and another will try it. I don’t want it on my record that I let some damned quartermaster pocket my money, doctor his records, and make it look like I never sold the government some horses. I know my brands, and I’ll either wind up getting my money or my horses back. That good enough for you?”

Before the sheriff could answer, the deputy dropped his boots to the floor with a thump and said, “Sheriff, don’t tell me that this is that fella that took on Billy Bob last night?” He laughed and looked at Longarm. “Mister, was I you, I wouldn’t be studying about no damned horses if I had Billy Bob Castle on my ass. I’d be figuring out the fastest way that I could get out of here and put the most territory I could between me and him. He’ll be in town tonight and guess what? He’ll be looking for you.”

Longarm looked back at the sheriff and said, “Then it will be your job, Sheriff Smith, to keep him off my ass. I am a taxpaying citizen. I mind my own business.”

The sheriff looked at him sardonically and said, “Well, if minding your own business includes pistol-whipping Big Billy Castle, then you’d better take up another business.”

Longarm said, “Just who the hell are the Castles?”

The deputy answered first. “You ain’t ever heard of the Castles? Boy, you must be from a long ways off.”

Longarm’s head whipped around toward him. “Son, when you get to be half my age, then you can start calling me boy, but until then, it ain’t a real good idea.”

The deputy laughed. “Feisty old sonofabitch, ain’t ya?”

Longarm said evenly, “Feisty, yes. Sonofabitch, sometimes. Old, not yet. Watch your mouth, sonny.”

The sheriff said, “You’re causing nothing but commotion around here. You’re not really welcome in this town.”

Longarm said, “Well, welcome or not, I have business in this town and I intend on staying here until I get it tended to. Now I am a logical and a reasonable man. Do you mind telling me why I am supposed to treat these Castle folks so politely? How come they deserve the buttered side of the bread?”

The deputy said, “Because they keep this area going. They have two of the biggest cattle outfits around here. They are by far the wealthiest people around. They hire more men, they spend more money. They keep this outfit going. Ya need any better answer than that? Ain’t money at the bottom of most everything?”

Longarm said, “Well just who are they? Is it just one family?”

This time the sheriff answered. “The real head is old Vernon Castle. He was the first one out here. He’s got three boys. You’ve met two of them, Billy Bob and Glenn. Then there is a younger one, Virgil. He’s not much into the business end of things. Then there is Vernon’s younger brother, James. He’s got a pretty good-size spread. He’s got two young sons and two daughters. And, yes, they own just about everything that you see, including that hotel that you are staying in. So unless you want to get thrown out of there, you’d better mind your p’s and q’s.”

“So they run the town, do they? Do they run the law also?”

The sheriff’s head snapped up. “You know, I’m getting a little tired of your smart mouth, mister. How’d you like to spend a little time back there in one of those cells?”

Longarm said, “When I have done something that deserves it. You try to put me in there before that, you’ll see more lawyers than you’ve ever seen in your life coming at you. I’m not a man without means myself. I cut a little mustard back in my own country.”

“And where would that be, if it’s any of my business?”

“Well, it don’t happen to be any of your business, but it’s Tennessee and parts of Louisiana and parts of Arkansas. Us Longs, we tend to get around. There’s quite a few of us and we tend to get some people voted into office ourselves, so I understand how that works. You just make sure that the three-hundred-pound baby bull stays the hell away from me, or next time I won’t use the barrel on him. I’ll use it in him.”

Before the sheriff could answer, Longarm pushed away from his desk, gave the deputy a curt nod, and walked out of the office, well pleased with himself.

Later in the afternoon, Longarm saddled up the chestnut gelding with the intention of making a reconnaissance in order to get a lay of the land. He’d gotten some rough directions from one of the stable hands as to where the two Castle ranches were located. But the country was so big that all he’d really be able to do would be to place their headquarters. They owned parcels of land in a great circle all around the town.

He also had a map that the garrison commander had drawn him showing where the five soldiers had been killed. He eliminated the one that was stabbed in the alley, considering him as not part of the pattern since the others had obviously been bushwhacked by rifle fire.

He rode out of the town toward the south, taking a road that led toward Eden, some forty miles away. He thought to name any place Eden in such country showed a remarkable sense of humor on the part of the residents. He had, of course, no intention of going some forty miles away. His main interest was the location of Castle property in relation to where the four troopers had died.

It was a warm day and enough wind was blowing to raise the light, powdery, leachy dust that was so irritating to a man’s nose. He took a big bandanna out of his saddlebags and tied it around his face like a bandit, just over the bridge of his nose. His horse wouldn’t suffer because nature had put enough hair in a horse’s nose so that it would filter out such trouble.

He put the chestnut into a ground-eating lope and rode in a wide eastward swath until he located the headquarters of the James Castle ranch. They appeared to be running cattle that were a mixed breed of shorthorns and white-face Herefords with a base stock of longhorn mixed in with them. Only in the last ten years had the ranchers realized the necessity of breeding beef stock to the all-bone, longhorned cattle. The small gentle Midwestern beef stock couldn’t handle the harsh Texas climates by themselves, but if they were crossed with the hardy stock of the longhorn, then you got a good bit of the longhorn’s hardiness, and you put a little meat on his bones with the shorter-horned or Hereford cross.

He set his horse on the dirt road and looked out across the half mile between himself and the headquarters of the James Castle branch of the family. It was a big, two-story adobe or stucco structure with red Mexican tile on the roof. Even from that distance, he could see that it was a well-kept place, and around the barns and other outbuildings he could see men working.

He had no reason to suspect that the Castles had anything to do with the murders. It was just that they had come to his attention first, and if anyone would be interested in the welfare and management of the country around San Angelo, it would be the largest landowners, and that most definitely would be the Castle family.

He rode on, curving toward the north toward the little town of Wall, about seven miles east of San Angelo. He passed Wall and continued further north, disliking the country as much as he had from previous visits. They had done an excellent job of growing rocks, cactus, sand, mesquite trees, and a few scrub oaks, but there was damned little grass for cattle to eat and damned few cultivated crops. Here and there he saw some scraggly fields of corn, oats, and wheat, but he was damned if the country would handle more than one cow per one hundred acres. If a man was going to make a living ranching, he needed a hell of a lot of land.

The headquarters for the Vernon Castle ranch was about five miles northeast of San Angelo. The fort, he noted, lay in almost a direct line between San Angelo and the Vernon Castle ranch. It wasn’t significant because as Captain Montrose had said, the government land didn’t cover enough area to be worth anybody’s life, much less four troopers. Still, it was interesting to note that the Castles did have parcels of land that were much closer to the fort, some that were almost bordering the government land that the fort occupied.

The Vernon Castle ranch house was very much like that of the other brother, big and white with a red-tiled roof and plenty of outbuildings and corrals and barns. It too showed the effects of money and attention.

Having seen all that he wanted to see, he turned his horse and headed back toward town. His route took him very close to Fort Concho. He thought about stopping by to see Captain Montrose, but decided that the less he was identified with the garrison, the better off it was for all concerned.

But as he rode by, the thought came to him of just how folks in the East pictured a frontier fort. Most of them thought it had a wall around it, supposedly to keep the Indians out. That wasn’t the case now, nor had it ever normally been the case. First of all, there usually weren’t enough building materials to build a wall around a garrison fort. Secondly, there weren’t any Indians stupid enough to come and attack over a hundred soldiers on their own home grounds. The fort was a series of barracks, barns, and other buildings built around a large parade ground, or quadrangle as the army called it. He figured that the neat row of houses where the married officers lived would be a disappointment to the folks back East, who visualized the fort as being on constant alert against an Indian attack. Behind one officer’s house, he could see a Mexican lady hanging clothes on a line to dry. He reckoned the woman was completely unaware that at any second some wild Indian could put an arrow through her breast. It made him laugh.

He rode on back into town over the featureless land, broken only here and there by buttes that had stood the test against nature and reared up two or three hundred feet off the flat prairie. Other than buttes and arroyos and crevices and draws that slashed the ground here and there, it was hard to tell what part of the country you were in just by looking around.

He put his horse up at the hotel stable and went back to his room. First he had a drink and then a smoke. He sat there trying to think of something smart to do, but nothing would come. What he needed was information about the people of the area, about the history of the area, and about the attitude that was prevalent toward the soldiers. There didn’t seem to be any way to get that information without giving himself away as a U.S. marshal. That was the hell of it.

He couldn’t use his badge for any good purpose. In this case, it was a hindrance more than a help. He didn’t have the slightest idea of how he was going to go about tracking down the murderer or murderers of the soldiers. Hell, he thought, it could be anyone. Anybody could lay off the road between the fort and the town, and on moonlit nights he’d have no trouble knocking a bluecoat out of the saddle.

Of course, it was interesting, especially in view of the fact that one of the Castle ranches was to the south and another to the northeast, that while three soldiers had been killed on the road between the fort and the town, one had been shot out of the saddle south of town on the road that could be said to lead to the James Castle ranch. He didn’t know if he was being influenced by the fact that he didn’t like the Castle kind of people, the kind that wanted to control towns, the kind that wanted to control other people’s lives. That could be entering into it, he had to admit to himself.

He decided that that night might be the time to meet with someone he figured knew everything and everybody and every detail of what was going on in town, the madam of the whorehouse up on the third floor, Mabelle Russell. The only problem with that was he could not recollect if he had ever let on to her that he was a federal officer. It had been three or four years since he had been in San Angelo and he dimly remembered being incognito back then. It hadn’t been the same kind of a job, but as a general rule, unless there was a need for it, Longarm kept his badge in his pocket. He never paraded the fact that he was a marshal. If somebody was going to do something wrong, they seldom did it if they knew they were standing right next to a law officer. Besides, on a purely social basis people tended to shy away from you when they saw that big gold and blue enameled badge. It scared them, made them think that you were the bogeyman or maybe going to put them in jail.

He decided that he would have his supper if he could find a decent place to eat, and then have a few drinks at the Elite, perhaps with the opportunity to run into more of the Castle clan, and then go pay Miss Mabelle a visit.

On a tip from Todd, Longarm walked several streets back from the main drag to a Mrs. Browning’s boardinghouse. He got there about six-thirty, and it appeared to him that he was in time for either the second or third setting, judging by the number of men who were coming out. He entered through a long hall into two big rooms, each of which was centered by a long dining table around which a dozen men were busy in the sole pursuit of eating their fill. Here and there, harried-looking women and girls in aprons were carrying pitchers of iced tea or platters of food and rushing back and forth, trying to keep up with the demand.

Longarm spotted an empty seat and plunged for it, managing to beat out another entrant. He paid his dollar and a half to a lady who set a fresh plate in front of him, and within twenty minutes he was convinced that it was the best dollar and a half that he had ever spent on food. He ate his fill of crisp, tender, chicken-fried veal cutlets, along with fresh okra and corn and mashed potatoes and sliced tomatoes, and some of the best coffee that he had had. Finally, he had to grudgingly choose between chocolate cake and apple or coconut pie. He chose the coconut pie and was glad he did, although he figured he’d have all three before he finally left town. In gratitude for the difference between Mrs. Browning’s and the hotel’s fare, he left a dollar tip for whichever one of the women who’d served him cared to take it. His only regret was that Mrs. Browning’s didn’t serve breakfast except to those who roomed with her. Outsiders were restricted to lunch, which was served from eleven to one, and supper, which was from five until seven. He guessed that he could survive the arrangement since he had never been much of a breakfast eater anyway.

After supper, he went back to his room and sat drinking, smoking, and thinking until about nine o’clock. He fortified himself with several slugs of the good Maryland whiskey so that his mouth wouldn’t be so terribly insulted by the vile stuff they peddled as whiskey in the saloons. He checked his .38 derringer to make sure that it was securely in place in his concave belt buckle, and then headed out the door to the Elite Saloon. As he left the hotel, he saw a steady stream of men heading up the stairs, and he figured that they were heading up to see Miss Mabelle Russell. He didn’t figure to go see her until later in the evening when the ribbon clerks and the forty-dollar-a-month men had spent all their allowances and were out of the way.

At the Elite, he had a couple of drinks at the bar and finally sat down at a small-stakes poker game. He hated to play at such games because you couldn’t use your money as a weapon. It was just a question of who drew the best cards, and that wasn’t poker. Poker wasn’t just a game of luck. It was a game of skill and science understood by damn few and appreciated by even fewer.

He noticed that he got quite a few looks from the other patrons of the bar. Nobody at the table that he was playing at said anything directly to him, but behind his back he heard whispered remarks like, “That’s him,” “That’s the one over there, that broad-shouldered fella sitting in that game.”

It pleased him. It meant that his plan of getting noticed was working, but whether that would lead to anything, he couldn’t yet say. All he wanted to do was appear to be a man willing to engage in just about any sort of high jinks for fun or for profit.

By eleven-thirty the Castle brothers had disappointed him by not showing up, and he quit the game and made his way out of the saloon. He reckoned to have won around twenty dollars—hardly fair wages for his time considering his skill at poker.

The streets were starting to get deserted as he turned in to the hotel lobby. Also, the stairs were cleared. Apparently, most of the young bucks who’d had the bite had already spent their money and gone home. He started up the stairs.

There was a door blocking the way on the landing at the third floor. He knocked, and was admitted by a colored woman who escorted him into what she called “de pawlaw.”

Inside the parlor, which was a big room created by knocking out a number of walls between bedrooms, several bored-looking young women in fairly skimpy clothes were sitting around. The decor of the place was what Shirley Dunn would have probably called garish, including the clothes of the young ladies, who glanced at him with studied indifference.

There was a bar at the end of the room, and he sauntered over and ordered a drink of the best whiskey they had. He was pleasantly surprised to find that it was good Tennessee corn mash. He said to the bartender, a Negro in a white jacket, “I’d like to see Miss Mabelle Russell.”

“Yes, sir. She be comin’ out jus’ any minute. You’s got to wait on her ‘fore you selects yore companion for the evening.”

Longarm didn’t bother to answer the man, but he hadn’t quite finished his drink before Miss Mabelle Russell came out from a side door. She was a striking-looking woman in her mid-thirties. She had luxurious black hair that curled to her shoulders and creamy white skin that offset it nicely. She was wearing an ornate red velvet gown trimmed with white lace. Longarm thought that she had on a touch too much makeup, but he figured if she wanted to get confused with her hired help that was her business.

She came toward him, her eyes narrowing for a second and then recognition flooding her face. She said, “It’s Mr. Long, isn’t it?”

He gave her a slight bow. “Yes, ma’am, Miss Mabelle. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve been here.”

She said, “As I recollect, you don’t need to frequent my type of establishment. The last time you were here, if I remember correctly, you were a participant in a high-stakes poker game. Are you still in the gambling business?”

“Mat’s correct, Miss Mabelle. I’m still just a drifting gambler.”

She looked him over with a critical eye. “I reckon that you’re still doing pretty good. As I recall, there were some rather sad gentlemen that left my business that night. Perhaps you even took money away that might have fallen into my hands.”

He said, “I’m right sorry about that, Miss Mabelle, but that’s the luck of the cards.”

She laughed slightly. “What can I do for you?”

He pulled a roll of bills out of his pocket and leafed off two twenties and a ten. He said, “I’d like to buy about fifty dollars of your time.”

Chapter 5

Mabelle Russell looked at the money and then at him. She said, “You must be a little confused, Mr. Long. I run this game, I don’t play in it.”

He laughed. “I understand that, Miss Mabelle. Of course, I must add as a gentleman that if I thought that this money would buy me more than just talk, I certainly would be glad to raise the ante as high as the pot could stand.”

She nodded and gave him a curtsy. “Why, thank you, sir, but I don’t think that you have quite that much money.”

Longarm said, “I’d like to buy about fifty dollars worth of talk.”

“Talk?”

“Yes, ma’am. You got someplace quiet that we can sit down? Shouldn’t take me more than fifteen minutes. I figured that if anybody knows everything that goes on around here, you’d be the one. Will fifty dollars buy me some good eyes and ears?”

She looked thoughtful for a moment and then shrugged. She reached out and took his money and said, “Come with me.”

She led him into a small room, tastefully furnished, just off the main parlor. She said, “This is my sitting room. I don’t let anyone else in here except, of course, special guests like you, Mr. Long. Would you like a drink?”

“Yes, ma’am. You’ve got some fine whiskey out there. Apparently, you’ve cornered the market in this town.”

She laughed. “I’ve heard that.”

She served him herself and then sat back down on a settee. Longarm was positioned across from her in a big, overstuffed wing-backed chair.

She said, “Now, what can I do for you, Mr. Long?”

Longarm said, “I’ll get right to the nub of the matter, Miss Mabelle. I’m going to surprise you. I’m thinking of getting out of the gambling business and getting into something maybe a little safer. There are three things that I know about—women, cards, and horses. There ain’t no money in women, except your way, and I think I would be out of place trying to handle your job. Cards have given me a fair living for a number of years, but it is getting to where there are more and more hotheads that sit down at your table and think that the six of a kind that they have in their revolver is always gonna be the best hand.”

She said, “I can’t envision you having trouble that you can’t handle, Mr. Long.”

He said, “I can handle it, but I am getting tired of it. I’m not going to see seventeen again, maybe not even twenty. I know that it surprises you, Miss Mabelle, but I think that I would like to grow old gracefully. So that kind of leaves horses. What I have in mind is a place where I could raise common stock horses, range horses, and either sell them up north where they haven’t got enough sense to know what a horse is worth, or else sell them to the army. I picked San Angelo because it’s a big enough place and the land is cheap around here and there is plenty of it. It’s a place where I could spread myself, but I’ve been bothered by something that I’ve heard in town.”

“You’ve heard that they’ve taken to shooting cavalry soldiers around here?”

“Yes, ma’am, I have. Now I’m just wondering what it’s all about. Is it just some insane person, or is there a feeling in this part of the country where they don’t want any outsiders? I mean, I don’t want to set up around here to sell horses to the cavalry and discover that they are going to go from shooting soldiers to shooting the man who is supplying them with horses.”

She looked at him. “Why have you come to me?”

“For the reason I have told you, Miss Mabelle. If anybody knows what’s going on in this town, it’s you. Would you dispute that?”

She smiled slightly. Even though they were several feet apart, Longarm could sense the sexual power of the woman. He remembered it from the last time he had been there. Now it was even more evident. He didn’t know what she did herself. Maybe she had a boyfriend on the side. Certainly he had never heard of her having a husband.

She said, “And you think that I would have some idea who is killing these soldiers?”

“I think that you might be able to tell me if there is a climate around here that would make it unsafe for me to go into the horse business, especially the horse business where I would be selling to the army.”

She got up suddenly and crossed the room to where several decanters sat on a side table. She poured an amber liquid into a wine glass. Holding it in her delicate hand, she came back to the settee. “Sherry,” she said, indicating the glass. “Sometimes I think I like it too much.”

Longarm gave a slight smile. “Miss Mabelle, I have a hard time envisioning you overindulging yourself in anything. You look like a mighty strong-willed woman to me.”

Her eyes crinkled with a small smile. “Do I strike you as a happy woman, Mr. Long?”

“Well, you’ve certainly made a place for yourself. I can’t imagine you’re losing money on this operation but with all due respect, Miss Mabelle, it is very difficult to tell much about a person such as yourself, reserved and aloof as you are.”

She took a sip of the wine. “So I seem aloof, do I? Unapproachable?”

He said, “That’s the impression that I kind of get, though I don’t claim any superior knowledge on the subject.”

“But you, just a moment ago, said that you knew about three things. Women were one of them. Don’t you consider me a woman?”

Longarm blushed in spite of himself. He said earnestly, “My Lord, yes, Miss Mabelle. I don’t think that anybody in their right mind would take you for anything but a woman, and a woman of the finest kind, in all ways.”

“How do you mean? Do you mean that like I think you do?”

Longarm nodded. “Indeed I do.”

“So then you don’t find me so unapproachable?”

Longarm said carefully, “Maybe it’s just that the occasion or the circumstances haven’t come up. Given the right time and the right place, I reckon that I can be induced to approach you.”

She laughed. The high tinkling laugh was pleasing to the ear. She said, “Are you unapproachable, Mr. Long?”

He locked his eyes with hers. “I’ll let you make a decision on that yourself, Miss Mabelle,” he said. “I don’t think that a woman like yourself would have much trouble approaching an old rounder like me. But we are kind of getting off the subject here. Maybe it is deliberate on your part.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “Maybe you don’t want to talk about this particular business.”

She shrugged. “It makes me no never mind. It’s just that I can’t tell you anything. I don’t think that there is anyone in this town who knows who is killing those soldiers except for the one who is doing it.”

Longarm said, “It’s not just that. It’s also this attempt to get them to move the fort. I’ve been hearing that too, even before I got here.”

She waved her free hand airily. “Oh, that. I don’t think you should put too much stock in that. It’s just the Castles. For some reason, they don’t like this army garrison here. Maybe it’s because they are bringing up stolen cattle from Mexico. I don’t know. They’ve got the sheriff in their pocket. Maybe they’re afraid the soldiers might take a hand.”

Longarm was surprised to hear her talk so easily about the Castles bringing in stolen Mexican cattle, but he let it pass. He said, “It’s not just that. I’ve heard the mayor and the city council have been writing to the War Department and the governor trying to get this garrison moved out of here. I find that hard to believe. Those soldier boys spend a lot of money in this town. I imagine that you see a lot of it in here.”

She said, “It’s not the mayor, Mr. Long, and it’s not the council. The mayor and the council do what the Castles tell them to do, just like the sheriff. I can believe that they have their reasons as I’ve stated for wanting that army post moved, but I can’t believe that they would be behind something so silly such as shooting the soldiers. That would just make the army dig in their heels harder and be more determined to stay. As big as the whole clan is, I don’t think that the Castles believe that bushwhacking soldiers is the way to get rid of the fort.”

Longarm nodded. “That would make sense, wouldn’t it? No, the army would take a damned dim view of being faced down by a bushwhacker and pulling out of a long-established garrison post just because a few of their soldiers have been killed. Hell, they can print those soldiers just about as fast as they print money. There ain’t never any shortage of people who can’t find no other work ready to join the cavalry and go waste their lives out in the big middle of nowhere. No, I have to agree with you on that. But you do say that the Castles are pushing for the garrison to leave. Do you have any idea why, besides this business of the stolen cattle?”

She shrugged her shoulders again. “No, and I don’t really know why they should be so concerned about the army. Hell, the army’s not interested in who’s bringing in stolen cattle. Supposedly, they are here to defend us from the Indians. The nearest one of which I think is about five hundred miles from here.”

Longarm finished his drink in a quick move. He said, “Well, it’s certainly got me puzzled. But I appreciate your time, Miss Mabelle.”

She held out her hand to him. The fifty dollars was in it. She said, “Here. Take this.”

He was about to get up but he settled back down. “Why would I want to take that back?”

“I didn’t do you any good. One of the rules of this house is that if you don’t satisfy the customer, he doesn’t have to pay. I didn’t give you any answers that could have possibly satisfied you.”

Longarm said, “Ma’am, I said that I would pay fifty dollars for a few minutes of your time. I didn’t say that I had to get satisfaction out of it. No, a deal is a deal. That’s your money.”

She thrust the bills at him. “Do me a favor and take it. I don’t want any money hanging between us.”

He slowly began to understand what she was talking about. He asked, “Am I hearing what I think I am hearing?”

She said, “Tomorrow night is Wednesday night. We close on Wednesdays. Would you come have dinner with me here?”

He said, “Well, I’d be right honored, Miss Mabelle.”

“Then take this money and cut out the Miss Mabelle la-ti-da. You and I are a lot alike, Custis. We may wear the clothes but underneath, we are a couple of rounders. Now take the money.”

He reluctantly accepted the fifty dollars from her and said, “What time shall I come for dinner?”

“About seven. Do you want another drink?”

He stood up slowly. “No, it’s late. I thank you very much, though. I am looking forward to tomorrow night. I’m gonna get up early in the morning and do some scouting around and look over some property. I guess I’d best get on back to my hotel … actually, I am in my hotel, so I guess I’ll get on back to the first floor and get some sleep.”

She came around the table and offered him her hand. He took it and gave it a light kiss. Before he could realize what was happening, she was in his arms and their lips were meeting. It was a brief kiss but it sent tingles all through Longarm. He backed toward the door.

He said, “I’ll be looking forward to tomorrow night.”

She said, “Yes, good night, Custis.”

He left Mabelle Russell and went down to his room a great deal more enlightened and a good deal more mystified than when he’d gone up. Now the finger seemed to point directly at the Castles. What had previously been thought to be a widespread interest in having the army garrison removed now came down to the interest of just one family. Though for the life of him, he couldn’t see how the army would be any threat to the Castles, even if they were bringing in Mexican cattle, stolen or otherwise. For many years it had been a dodge in that barren country to bring in Mexican cattle, especially if you were fairly close to the border, to supplement your herd.

What a big cattleman did was to bring in a buyer from one of the large cattle-buying outfits in St. Louis or Kansas City or Abilene and show them his regular stock. The buyer would pay sixty-five or seventy or maybe even eighty dollars a head for a thousand head or five hundred head, and then he would go on back to the city to await delivery. Then the cattleman would mix in a couple hundred of the Mexican steers, which were worth about twenty or twenty-five dollars apiece, and make an extra profit on the business without ever having done much more than obtaining the cattle and taking them on the short drive to his ranch. Of course, there was the matter of the branding. But since they didn’t brand cattle in Mexico, his brand would be the only one on the cow.

It was enlightening to know that it was the Castles who were putting the pressure on the garrison to move, but as Mabelle Russell had said, she didn’t see where the Castles would be dumb enough to think that murdering a few soldiers was going to get the army to move the fort. He didn’t think so either. In fact, it would have exactly the opposite effect.

What had him mystified was the sudden way she had taken to him. He hadn’t done much more than say hello before she’d started putting out ripples like a stone dropped in a still lake. He had felt her, he had smelled her, he had seen her, and she had given him back his money. Mabelle Russell didn’t seem the type to give back anyone’s money for any reason. And now he was invited to dinner.

He got undressed, put his revolver ready to hand on the nightstand, and got into bed full of questions, but as was his habit, he put them out of his mind. They couldn’t be answered that night and all they could do would be to interfere with his sleep. He had one last drink, then turned down the bedside lamp until it flickered and the room grew dark. His last thought as he went to sleep was the amazing contrast between the delicate, dainty, and exquisite Mrs. Shirley Dunn and the robust, hardy, sexual excitement of Mabelle Russell.

Chapter 6

He awoke the next morning to the news that there had been another murder. He heard it from his waitress in the hotel dining room while he was having breakfast. She said it offhandedly as if she expected that he already knew. He had been about to put a biscuit in his mouth when he dropped it to the table and stared at her. He said, “What?”

She said, “Aw, yeah. They killed another one of those soldier boys last night. Somebody found him this morning coming into town. I figured that you already knew. It’s the talk of the town.”

He said, “Where was he found?”

She shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. I think it was on that road out of town that leads to Fort Concho. It might have been someplace else. I really didn’t pay much attention to it.”

He hurried through his breakfast as fast as he could, and then went back to his room to deliberate. He needed information and he needed it badly while the murder was still fresh. He doubted the wisdom of going to the sheriff, who would most certainly know but would be most certainly interested in Longarm’s curiosity. He could pick up information from the men on the street or in the saloons, but that would be unreliable and perhaps distorted. In the end, he decided that it was worth a visit to the fort to get as many fresh details as he could, even if some people began to wonder why he found it so necessary to visit the garrison commander so often.

Just as he was finishing his deliberations, Todd came in to give him the news. When Longarm assured him that he had already heard, the boy said, “Kind of a shame, ain’t it, Mr. Long?”

Longarm said, “Oh, I don’t know. They ain’t doin’ much good around here. Who was it that got killed anyhow?”

“I heard that it was one of them officers, you know, one of them high-ranking kinds. Not like the ones that they’ve been killing before but one of them … you know, the ones that gives the orders?”

Longarm nodded. If that was the case, then indeed the case had turned serious. Killing some farm boy from Iowa who had enlisted to get off the farm was one thing, but killing an officer who most likely was from some influential family was another. Whoever was doing the killings had now upped the ante. He had also shown some knowledge of the military.

Longarm told Todd to saddle his bay mare and bring it around to the front of the hotel, saying that he would be along shortly. The young man nodded, hesitated a second, and then finally started toward the door. He stopped and turned and said, “Mr. Long, can I ask you something?”

Longarm nodded. “Well, if it don’t cost money or scare the horses. What?”

Todd fidgeted for a moment. “Well, this is a kind of delicate proposition, you understand, Mr. Long. What I was wondering, if a man was to find an army horse just running loose out on the prairie when that man was comin’ in to work early in the morning … well, if’n he found that horse, that horse wouldn’t be his, would it, Mr. Long?”

“He found the horse of the officer that was shot?”

Todd said hastily, “No, sir! I ain’t saying that. I’m just saying that I found a saddled and bridled army horse that was running loose. In case that you ain’t knowed about it, that’s the first one of the horses of the men that have been shot that’s ever been found and I’m the one that found it. You understand what I am saying, Mr. Long?”

Longarm nodded slowly. It was a fact that he had overlooked. He said, “Are you telling me that of the soldiers that were shot, none of their horses were never recovered?”

Todd nodded. “Yes, sir. That’s what I’m a-saying. Of course, I ain’t talking about that one that was stabbed in the back alley. He was just walking. He wasn’t a-horseback.”

“Where have you got this horse?”

Todd looked down at the floor. “Am I gonna get in trouble about this?”

“Not if you tell the truth.”

“I taken him to my cousin’s barn on the outside of town. I unsaddled him, unbridled him, and gave him a bait of oats and gave him some water. He was spooked, sure as hell.”

Longarm said, “The smell of blood spooks horses, Todd.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do now?”

“One thing that you’re supposed to do is not to tell anyone else, do you hear me?”

Longarm reached in his pocket and found a five-dollar gold piece. He flipped it across the space between them. He said, “Do you understand me when I say that you are not to tell anyone else?”

Todd looked surprised at the coin he had caught in the air. This was probably the first time he’d had five dollars all together at any one time in his life.

He said, “Yes, sir, Mr. Long. I am gonna do exactly what you tell me. Prexactly!”

“Then just leave that horse where he is. Scurry on around and bring me my horse, and then this afternoon I want you to show me that horse. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir! I’m tending to it right now. I’m already saddling your horse.”

Longarm waited until he was gone and then he had a double pull off the rapidly diminishing bottle of Maryland whiskey that he had opened the day before. After that, he got up, stretched, and checked his revolver. He put on his hat and started for the front of the hotel. He didn’t think it would take Todd very long to have his horse ready.

Todd was waiting for him as he stepped off the porch and into the street. Just before he swung into the saddle, Longarm looked around at the young boy and said, “Todd, is there anybody around here that goes way back and could give me a feel of this place? I mean, I’m a man who when he is thinking of going into business in a particular area wants to know everything he can about it. I’m a man who believes in being thorough. So, do you know of anybody who has been around here steady for a good number of years who would have a pretty good idea of the people and the history and where all the bodies are buried and that sort of thing?”

The open face of the sandy-haired young man screwed up for a moment while he thought about it. “Well, there’s ol’ Clell Martin.”

“Who is he?”

Todd said, “Well, he’s … I don’t know. He’s just an old gentleman been in and around here since anybody can remember. I think he was born here or something.”

Longarm said, “Where would I find him?”

Todd made a vague gesture toward the northeast. “Well, he’s got an old place, little-bitty old place, off up yonder about halfway to the fort. It’s back off that main road a good two miles to the north. I tell you, Mr. Long, I ain’t too sure that he’d be the right one to talk to, though.”

“Why not?”

“Well, he’s a little strange.”

“What do you mean, strange?”

Todd said, “Well, the story is at one time he used to be a Texas Ranger. Not for very long ‘cause they say he took a bullet in the head. It didn’t kill him, but they say he’s still carrying it. I guess it was in the Texas Rangers that he got that. I don’t know, they tell so many stories about old Clell Martin that it is hard to keep up with him, but he has some pretty strong opinions about stuff. But if there’s anybody that knows the country and knows the people around here and such, it would be him.”

“What about the Castles? Don’t they go back a pretty good ways?

Todd looked surprised. “Hell, the Castles? Mr. Long, the Castles ain’t been here as long as I’ve been alive. They’re from Kentucky or some such place up in there. They ain’t native to this part of the country.”

Longarm nodded. “Clell Martin, huh? Much obliged, Todd.” He swung aboard the bay mare and pointed her out of town toward the fort. Clell Martin sounded interesting, but not enough to be in a hurry about seeing him. As Longarm cleared the town, he put the mare into a lope to cover the few miles to the fort.

Captain Montrose was behind his desk looking grim-faced when Longarm was shown into his office. With a curt nod of his head, the commander indicated a chair for Longarm to sit in.

The first words out of his mouth were, “Well, now they have commenced killing officers.”

Longarm said, “So I’ve heard. Who was it?”

“A young second lieutenant named Singleton. He’d only been posted out here about a month. Twenty-five years old, graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, and a very promising young officer. I cannot believe this. I cannot believe that such despicable actions could take place within the confines of the United States of America.”

Longarm thought for a moment. “Does anybody have any idea what time the lieutenant might have been shot?”

Captain Montrose said, “The best that we can figure, it must have been close to midnight. He had struck up a friendship with a young lady in town and he was with her and her parents until a few minutes after eleven. Figure about ten or fifteen minutes for a good-bye to her, figure coming from the other side of town hitting the road to the fort and the time it took him to travel the four miles that he had traveled judging from where he was found this morning, and you come up with about midnight. He was less than a mile from the fort when some no-good, low-down sonofabitch struck him down.” Longarm said, “Have you got the body here?”

“Yes, sir. We’ve got him in the ice house. We are waiting for instructions from his family as to what to do with the body. I am sure they would want him shipped back home to be buried there.”

“Was he shot more than once?”

“Hell, Marshal. If you could see the size of the hole in him, you’d realize that one shot was all that was needed.”

With Captain Montrose leading, they left his office and went beyond the buildings that bordered the quadrangle to a stone and log building set off by itself at the back of the fort. It was small and compact with a flat roof.

The captain worked the door to open it and they stepped inside. It took a moment for the captain to light the kerosene lamp so that they could see. By its illumination, Longarm was able to see the body of the young officer still in uniform laid out on the table in the middle of the room. All around the walls were big cakes of ice and toward the back, hanging on hooks, were sides of beef, pork, and goats. Together they stepped over to the body and looked down at the young man. In death, he looked even younger than twenty-five years old. On the front of his jacket-blouse was a large angry red stain.

Longarm said, “I want to see where the bullet entered.”

With Captain Montrose’s help, he turned over the body, now rigid with rigor mortis. The young man had been shot just to the right of the left shoulder blade. It had made a neat, almost round hole as it had entered. Longarm calculated it would have exactly pierced the young man’s heart on the way through his body, killing him instantly.

As they laid the body down on its back, Longarm said, “Well, at least he never knew what hit him.”

“The sonofabitch,” the captain said, “or the sonofabitches—whoever pulled the damn trigger.”

Longarm said, “Let’s open his blouse, Captain. I want to see if we can figure out what he got shot with.”

Together they unbuttoned the young man’s tunic. It seemed to Longarm that Captain Montrose shuddered a little as he performed the unpleasant task. They pulled the blouse back and then the shirt. There was a gaping wound on the left side of the young man’s chest.

“My God,” the captain said. “You can put your fist in there.”

Longarm said thoughtfully, “Well, it’s a damn cinch that he wasn’t shot with no carbine. That’s a soft-nosed bullet, not copper-clad.”

Captain Montrose said, “Would a .44 make that size hole?”

Longarm shook his head. “No, that looks like a Sharps to me. A .50-caliber Sharps buffalo gun. I ain’t seen that big of an exit hole in a long time.” He looked a moment more and then started buttoning the young man’s clothes. He looked up at the face and said, “Young and innocent and stiff and dead. It’s a damn shame. Let’s go back to your office and talk about this.”

There really wasn’t much to talk about. Captain Montrose wanted to know what Longarm was going to do, and Longarm couldn’t tell him because Longarm didn’t know. He said, “Captain, this is a hell of a big country. There are thousands of places where a bushwhacker could lay in wait and at the time they are doing the killing, there is nobody around to see. Can’t you keep your men on post for the time being?”

Captain Montrose said helplessly, “I can’t expect these men after their rigorous duties in the field to sit here just five miles from entertainment. Marshal, you have no idea how dreary, how wearisome barracks life is for the common soldier.” The captain shook his head. “I never had any idea they would kill an officer.”

“I thought that was the ones they went for first.”

Captain Montrose glanced over at him. “That’s in battle. This is not a battle. This is murder. In battle, you try to take out the other side’s leaders. This was just a young boy returning from a social engagement before some cowardly sonofabitch shot him in the back.”

Longarm said, “It appeared to me that the angle of the bullet was downward. It looked to me that somebody was on higher ground than the lieutenant was. That ball went in by his shoulder blade and came out near his bottom rib, though it was hard to tell as messed up as it was.” He was thoughtful for a moment. “If it was a Sharps, it has a hell of a carrying range, four or five hundred yards, but at night, that would take a hell of a shot, especially at a man on a moving horse.”

Longarm got up and continued. “Captain, I may have to take some drastic action.” He told the captain what he had heard about the Castle family. “I don’t know what is causing them to covet your place so bad, but it may be that they want it bad enough to kill your troops. I can’t think of any other reason, can you?”

Captain Montrose shook his head. “No, I can’t. But if I thought that it was the Castles, I would take a company of men to each of their ranches, burn their damn places down, kill all of their stock, and then hang them. The face of that young officer is going to be with me for the rest of my life. And what do I write and tell his parents? That he was killed in action while returning from a visit to his girlfriend? Shot by a cowardly, west Texas bushwhacker?”

Longarm said, “I know you are bitter, Captain, and I know you are angry, but that ain’t gonna get us no nearer to the killer. I may have to put on this badge and start arresting some folks to get some answers.”

Captain Montrose looked at him and said, “Maybe if you had done that in the first place, this young man wouldn’t be dead.”

Longarm gave him a sharp look. “Captain, one badge can’t be but in one place at a time, and whoever is insane enough to kill five soldiers is not going to stop at killing the sixth just because there is a U.S. marshal around. There is plenty of law around here. There is a sheriff with two deputies. There is a town marshal. That hasn’t stopped them. What makes you think that my badge would?”

The captain looked down at his desk. He said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

Longarm nodded. “I understand.” He put on his hat. “I better get back to town. I’ve got some thinking to do.”

It was a fine morning as he let the mare ease her way back to town. About two miles from the fort, he noticed a path leading off to the right. In the distance, he could barely make out a shack of some kind made noticeable only by a thin trail of smoke coming from a cooking fire. The shack itself was so weathered that it blended in with the dead grays and browns of the countryside. He thought that it was most likely Clell Martin’s place. It was just about where Todd had told him it would be.

With not much of an idea of what he was going to find out or even what he was going to say, he turned the mare on the trail and spurred her into a lope. He went a good mile and a half or two miles back into the rough prairie land. As he covered the distance, he noticed that just to his right were a pair of twin buttes rising perhaps five hundred feet in the air. They were about a half a mile from the main road he had just left. As he passed them, the thought struck him that such a place might be an ideal station for a sharpshooting bushwhacker. Perhaps Mr. Martin had heard the sound of a gunshot. Perhaps he had seen men moving about at night. Sometimes old men didn’t sleep too soundly. He knew that in the latter years of his life his grandfather had slept only two or three hours a night.

A quarter of a mile from the weather-beaten shack, he pulled his horse down to a trot and then a walk. It didn’t do to come upon these old nesters too suddenly. They had a way of shooting strangers first and then discussing it with the sheriff later. Behind the house was a fair-sized barn and then two other outbuildings and several corrals. He could see a few mules and a few milk cows and some steers held up close to the place, obviously being grain-fed and perhaps supplied with hay. It surprised him. It was a much more prosperous operation than he would have expected. He had even heard a rooster crow and knew that the old man had chickens, which actually wasn’t all that surprising since nearly everyone out in the country kept chickens since they were cheap to buy and cheap to keep up. Fresh eggs were a treat. When he was within fifty yards of the ranch house, he began calling out loud, “Hello!” On the third hail, he saw the front door of the cabin open and a small, thin, stooped man came out to stand on the rickety front porch. Longarm rode on up, still without any idea what he was going to say.

He pulled his horse to a stop a few yards from the porch. The old man shuffled forward a step or two. Longarm said, “Hidee.” He made no move to dismount. You didn’t get down unless you were asked.

The old man was looking at him suspiciously. He said, “Yes, and what would you be a-wantin’.”

Longarm said, “Actually, I don’t want anything. I was just looking the countryside over and spied your place and thought I’d stop and talk a minute.”

The old man was still looking at him suspiciously. He said, “You ain’t come out with no papers of any kind from those damn Castles, have you?”

Longarm smiled. Without half thinking about it, he had an idea that the old man was squatting on the property and the Castles were trying to incorporate it into their domain. He said, “No, I can assure you that I ain’t no friend of the Castles. In fact, I had quite a run-in with that young bull, Billy Bob, in the saloon the other night.”

Some of the suspicion cleared from the old man’s face. He said, “You … you mean that you had it out with old Billy Bob? You don’t look dead.” He cackled.

Longarm said, “Well, I cracked him over the head with the barrel of my revolver before he could get close enough to get those arms around me. After about four or five of those licks, Mr. Martin, he didn’t want to wrestle no more.”

The old man cackled again and slapped his thigh. He said, “Good for you. Good for you.” Then a curtain seemed to drop over his face. “How do you know my name?”

“I was out at the fort and I had noticed this place going to it. I asked them who lived here and they told me. No mystery about it, Mr. Martin.”

The suspicion on the old man’s face was stronger than ever. He said, “You were out to the fort, hanging around them soldier boys?”

Longarm said, “Well, the fact of the matter is I had an invoice against the United States Cavalry for some horses I had sold them, and I either want my horses back or I want my money. Part of them horses are here at this fort. I came here trying to get justice. So far, I haven’t got it. That’s what I am doing in this country. I do like this country and I’ve been thinking about locating a little ranch here.”

The old man nodded slowly. He said, “So them bluecoats ain’t been doing you right?”

Longarm said, “Well, if you consider stealing a man’s property and his money doing him right, then they’ve been doing real right with me. I’ve been to Fort Mason, Fort Stockton, and now here. I’ve found my horses at every one of them. I’ve got this warrant from the Quartermaster Corps to be paid for seventy-five head of horses and I ain’t seen a penny, so I don’t really calculate that as being right.”

The old man spat into the dust off the edge of the porch. He said, “Why don’t you step on down off of your horse and come on in and drink a cup of coffee with me?”

Longarm said, “Well, that would be mighty hospitable of you. I’d like that.”

He swung his leg over, dismounted, and dropped the reins knowing that his bay mare would ground-rein and impress the old man. He said, “But more than the coffee, I would be mighty obliged to a man who I reckon would know this country about as well as anybody.”

Clell Martin said, “Well, man and boy, pushing fifty years. I’ve been around here just about as close as a man can stick. I went off to a war and went off to some foolishness with the Texas Rangers, but other than that, I’ve been pretty well right around here close at hand.”

Longarm stepped up onto the porch and followed the old man through the door and into the house. He noticed that Clell Martin sort of dragged a leg as he walked. He said, “I see you’ve got a bum leg there, Mr. Martin. Anything sudden, or does that go back a ways?” They were turning left out of the tiny sitting room into a cluttered kitchen.

Martin said, “Sit yourself down there at the kitchen table. I’ll hot this coffee up and we’ll have a cup.” While he busied himself with the coffeepot and some tin cups, the old man said, “I caught a ball in the hip about twenty years ago. It’s plagued me ever since. Some days are worse than others.”

Longarm said, “Depends on the weather, I take it?”

“Yeah, though sometimes lately it seems like it’s nearly all the time.”

Longarm was looking around the cluttered room. He could tell that it hadn’t had a woman’s touch in many a year. He said, “Heard tell that you were with the Texas Rangers, Mr. Martin.”

At the stove, the old man shrugged his shoulders. “Well, not so’s that you could notice. Was right after the Confederacy. Them Yankee carpetbaggers that came down here talking about Reconstruction made out that they were reforming the Texas Rangers, but it was just a bunch of hoorah. Turned out that they just wanted us to do their dirty deeds for them. I got a bullet between my scalp and my skull for my troubles. I wasn’t with them more than six months. I came on back here and tried to scratch what living I could out of dry dirt and scrawny cattle.”

“You running any cattle now?”

“Oh, I have about a hundred head. They’re scattered all over.”

Longarm said, “Well, it’s as good a time a year to have your cattle out. I guess what water there is, they’ll find.”

Martin said disgustedly, “Yeah, what water there is. Them damn Castles got most of the water, and naturally them damn soldier boys got what’s left.”

He poured up two steaming cups of coffee out of a tin pot and brought them on over to the table. He set one in front of Longarm and then eased himself into a chair, wincing slightly with his hip.

Longarm said, “You don’t care much for them Castles, do you?”

“Well, if you care for highfalutin, smart-aleck, stingy neighbors who try to take a man’s property, I guess you could say that I care about them. About the same way you care about them thieving army boys. How come they won’t give you your money for those horses?”

Longarm said, “I don’t know. Some kind of paperwork. Seems like it’s all confused. I go to one quartermaster and he says I have the wrong set of papers, that I have got to go to some other place to get the other set of papers. All I know is that I delivered seventy-five horses, I got a bill of sale for them, but I don’t have no damn money for them. I came down to get either my horses or my money. But I ain’t having much luck.”

The old man smiled knowingly. “That’s those damned bluecoats for ya. They ain’t worth a damn. Half of them are fer’ners, you know, they don’t even come from this country. Can you imagine anything worse than a Yankee fer’ner? Ha!”

Longarm looked at him for a second. He said, “What outfit were you with, Mr. Martin?”

Old Man Martin seemed to grow a foot in his chair as he said proudly, “I was with Hood’s brigade. The A-number-one outfit out of Texas. I was a sergeant, by golly, and damn proud of it. There is a few of them blue bellies pushing up daisies, tried to cross that Red River and didn’t quite make it. Yes, sir. I was very proud to be a member of Hood’s brigade.” A thought was growing in Longarm’s mind but it needed time to develop. He said, “The Castles are trying to push you off this land, aren’t they?”

The old man looked up in surprise. “How did you know that?”

“Well, Mr. Martin, part of the job of being a horse trader is being able to see things in folks. I have a feeling that you ain’t got clear title to this property, and it ain’t as if the Castles ain’t got enough, but they are trying to push you off what little bit you’ve got.”

Clell Martin slammed his hand down on the kitchen table hard enough to make the dishes rattle. He said, “There, by God, sir. You have the bite of it. That’s the truth and the facts. Them low-down, no-good sonofabitches. Yes, sir, trying to push an old man off his property. A man who fought for his country, a man who took a ball for his country, a man that was even in the service of the state.”

Longarm said, “You know, I’d like to play a dirty trick on the Castles. Would there be any chance that you’d help me?”

The old man’s face lit up. “You just say the word. I’m there.”

Longarm said casually, “You wouldn’t happen to have a long-range rifle, would you by any chance? High-caliber?”

Clell Martin said, “Ha! You wouldn’t believe it, but I still have my Springfield from the War of the Confederacy. You know, of course, we didn’t have no proper arms like the Yankees did, so I took me one of them modern Springfield breech-loaders off one of them blue bellies. Still got it. Fires a .58-caliber cartridge.”

Longarm said, “That might come in handy.” He sipped at his coffee, watching the old man over the rim. They talked for another half hour, and Longarm managed to make his way through two of the bitterest cups of coffee that he had ever tasted. Finally, when he felt that his visit was as fruitful as it was going to get, he made his adieus with a promise to come back and discuss their mutual problem at greater length. After he had mounted, he said, “Mr. Martin, I think you and I are going to do some business. I consider you, sir, a citizen and a patriot.”

The old man seemed to straighten up. He said, “I like to think of myself that way.”

“Well, we need more like you. I’m going into town now and do some thinking and some planning. I’ll be on out here. It just might be that we can help each other.”

Clell Martin said, “Well, that would just suit me jam up to jelly.”

Longarm rode away in a very thoughtful frame of mind. That the old man had an old Civil War Springfield did not surprise him. They had been manufactured toward the end of the war by the Union forces in the hundreds of thousands. There were probably a many a one hanging over fireplaces or stored in attics all over the country. Of course, in the years since, they had been replaced by the all-metallic cartridge rather than the cap-and-ball mechanism that had operated the Springfield. The old rifles were slow but they were extremely effective. However, they were not the only long-range rifle that fired a large-caliber slug. Any number of buffalo guns, most notably the Sharps, did the same.

But he found it most interesting that Clell Martin had such a hate for the Castles. At one part of the conversation, Longarm had wondered out loud what effect it would have on the peace and tranquility of the Castle family if they both got up on top of one of the buttes near one of the Castle ranch headquarters and lobbed a few shells through the ranch house roof. The old man had cackled with glee at the very thought.

But there was still a question that Longarm wanted answered. The best man for that was one of the town’s undertakers. He assumed that it would have had to have been an undertaker who’d readied the bodies of the soldiers to be shipped back home for their burial. However, only part of his mind was dwelling on the subject of the murdered soldiers. Other parts of it were playing around with the delightful prospect of dinner with the delicious Miss Mabelle Russell that evening. It was the one bright spot in an otherwise dreary time. As he rode toward town, he couldn’t keep from wondering where Billy Bob and his brother Glenn had been the night before. The deputy had warned him that they would come looking for him, but they hadn’t. What business could have been so important to keep them from seeking revenge? His problem was that he had no way of finding out. He simply couldn’t go around asking questions and he couldn’t go to the sheriff. He didn’t know any way to get any information without putting on his badge, and he wasn’t ready to do that. Yet.

When he got into town he inquired about undertakers, and was surprised to find that there was only one. With the state of civility in a place like San Angelo, he’d figured that they would need at least a half a dozen. He got directions and rode to the other side of town and pulled up in front of the building. As he dismounted from his mare, he noticed that there was a barbershop right next door, and it reminded him that it might be a good idea to get a haircut and a store-bought shave before his dinner that evening with Miss Russell.

Longarm learned very little from the undertaker, though the man was willing enough. He was an affable, plump man named Charlie something—Longarm never did get his last name. The undertaker had handled all of the bodies, including the one that had been stabbed. He had a vivid memory of each one. In fact, he went out of his way to make it clear to Longarm that he took pride in his work and in his handling of the bodies that were in his care. Of all the soldiers who had been shot, only one body had seemed to indicate that the bullet had been fired from an elevated position. Charlie was quick, and as soon as he caught on to what Longarm was after, he was able to draw on a piece of paper the locations of the entrance and exit wounds of all the soldiers who had been shot. One shot had been shot from a level position, which meant that the assassin must have been standing or kneeling or in concealment on a slight rise. The other two entrance wounds had been lower than the exit wounds. In all cases, however, it was clear that a high-powered, long-range rifle of a high caliber had been used since the exit wound had been so much larger than the entry.

The result was that Longarm had left the undertaker no wiser than when he had entered. He was not at all surprised that each of the murders had been committed with a long-range, high-caliber rifle. That only made sense. If you were going to ambush a man, it made sense to do it from as far a distance as possible, and that meant a long-range rifle. If you wanted to make sure that you killed him, that meant a heavy-caliber slug. But the information was virtually useless since he had no idea of how many old Springfields like Clell Martin owned or how many Sharps buffalo rifles or other high-powered long-range heavy-caliber rifles there were in the county. They probably numbered in the fifties or the hundreds. He doubted that he would find his killer through the weapon. His visit to the undertaker had been in the hope that all of the ambushing had been done from an elevated height, which would indicate that someone was using a position on one of the buttes, and that could point in the direction of Clell Martin. But he really couldn’t suspect Clell Martin because he didn’t have a solid reason. The Castles continued to be foremost in his mind only for the flimsy reason that he had no one better. And also because Billy Bob and Glenn had not come looking for him last night when the last trooper had been killed, and because the Castles were behind the effort to move the fort.

It was in a thoughtful mood that he went into the barbershop to get a haircut and a shave. It was a three-chair barbershop and there were quite a number of loungers hanging around. After the barber finished trimming Longarm’s hair, he leaned the chair back so that Longarm was lying almost horizontally and began lathering his face for the shave. As he lay there with the barber putting hot towels on to soften his bristly whiskers, he chanced to hear a couple of the loafers laughing about Virgil Castle. He just caught the end of the remark, which sounded like, “and you know that they found that fool running nekkid down the road with a rifle in his hand …” Another voice chimed in to say, “Yeah, I heard about that. You know that the boy gets stranger and stranger every year.”

Longarm suddenly got very curious. He asked the barber, “Who are they talking about?”

The barber was stropping his razor. He turned to Longarm and said, “Oh, one of Vernon Castle’s sons. He ain’t quite right, a little strange.”

Longarm said, “They called him a boy? Is he young?”

The barber answered, “Naw, he’s about twenty-five. He just ain’t ever growed up.”

“Is he dangerous?”

“Naw, he just … he just ain’t quite right. That’s about all you can say about him.”

Longarm said, “When was he found wandering down the road with a rifle?”

The barber was busy scraping away at Longarm’s face. He stopped and wiped the razor on the cloth under Longarm’s chin, then asked, “What would be your interest, mister? You a friend of the Castles? You must not be or you’d know who Virgil is.”

Longarm said, “Well, just general interest. I’m a … new in town. If there is someone running around naked carrying a rifle, I guess I’d just kind of like to know about that.”

He said, “The Castles are highly regarded around here. We don’t do much talking about them.”

Longarm asked, “Well, by any chance was it last night that he was found wandering down the road?”

The barber didn’t bother to stop shaving Longarm’s face. To Longarm, it seemed like he dug the razor in a little deeper. The barber said, “Like I said, mister, the Castles are pretty highly regarded hereabouts. We don’t do much talking about them. It ain’t good for business, if you know what I mean.”

“Suit yourself. Really ain’t none of my business anyways. I’ll be riding on in a couple of days.”

“That might not be a bad idea.”

When the barber was finished, Longarm got out of the chair and paid for the shave and the haircut. He put his hat on and carefully looked at the two loafers he had heard talking before walking outside. He stood on the boardwalk for a moment thinking, then as if on sudden impulse, mounted his horse and set off at a good pace for the railroad station and the telegraph office.

What he was going to do was a long shot and not particularly legal. Technically, the action that he was about to take was within his jurisdiction, but it was not the sort of thing that Billy Vail would smile about.

Once at the telegrapher’s office, he wrote out his message, took it over to the operator, and handed it to him silently. He watched the man’s face as he read it. When the man had finished the rather long message, he looked up, startled, at Longarm.

Longarm said evenly, “I’m going to give you some advice, my friend. That message is federal government business. If it goes out of this office … if any word of it comes out of your mouth, even to your grandmother, there is an outstanding chance that you’ll be spending a pretty good chunk of your life at Leavenworth Prison.”

The telegraph operator, who was a thin, chalky man with sunken cheeks, stared at him and gulped. Longarm slowly pulled his badge out and, holding it in the palm of his hand, shoved it in front of the telegrapher’s face.

He said, “Take a good look at it. Don’t make any mistakes.”

The telegrapher finally found his voice. He said, “Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I ain’t saying a word. Yes, sir. No, sir.”

Longarm said, “I just don’t want you to get confused as to who carries the most weight, the Castles or the United States government. In a fair fight, the United States government is going to win every time.”

“Yes, sir!” the telegrapher said.

“Send it.”

“Yes, sir.” The telegrapher wheeled on his stool, went to his desk, and began hitting the wireless key.

Longarm listened to the dots and dashes, knowing what the message said. He had wired a friend of his, a deputy marshal in Omaha, Nebraska. He had asked the deputy marshal to find a friendly federal judge and have that judge wire him a warrant for the arrest of the Castle family for the illegal importation of Mexican cattle and the illegal sale of those cattle inside the United States. He had closed the telegram by asking his friend not to question the reason, saying that he was on the track of something far more serious than the movement of Mexican cattle, and that he needed a handhold somewhere so he could move some of the obstacles that were blocking his path. He was fairly certain that his friend would understand and comply. He had chosen Omaha instead of Kansas City or St. Louis because he was fairly certain that the Castles would ship cattle to Omaha and the deputy marshal in Omaha happened to be a good friend of his. It was as simple as that.

When the message was sent, the telegrapher looked expectantly at Longarm as if awaiting further instructions. Longarm disappointed him by simply paying for the telegram and leaving without another word. He took the blank on which he had written out the message with him.

He rode back to his hotel, had a late lunch at a little cafe just down the street from the Cutler, and then went to his room, poured himself a drink, and sat down on the bed to think.

He was almighty curious about Virgil Castle. Could the killings indeed be the work of a weak-minded member of a powerful clan? Maybe they were too smart to believe that they could move the army by killing individual soldiers, but perhaps Virgil was a little too thick-headed to understand that and had just been trying to help matters along in his own muddled way. It made a plausible explanation. The man could have overheard his father or his brothers talking about the garrison, saying that it was standing in their way, and figured that the simplest way would be to shoot a soldier. He still didn’t know when Virgil had been spotted naked carrying a rifle, or even which road he had been seen on. Longarm immediately set his glass aside and went in search of Todd.

He found the young man in the lobby of the hotel. He drew him aside, told him what he had heard in the barbershop, and asked Todd if he had heard the same.

Todd looked around nervously. “Mr. Long, I don’t reckon that we ought to be talking about the Castles, especially Virgil. They don’t allow nobody to make fun of him.”

Longarm said, “I just want to know when he was seen walking naked down a road carrying a rifle.”

Todd looked around again to make sure that no one could overhear him. “It was last night … late last night.”

“You mean, like midnight or after?”

“Yes, sir,” Todd said. Then, with an appeal in his voice, he said, “Mr. Long, you ain’t gonna tell nobody that I told ya, are you?”

Longarm gave him an impatient look. “Todd, I thought you and I had a deal. We don’t talk about our business with anybody else. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes, sir.”

Longarm asked, “Do you know which road?”

For a moment Todd appeared to think the question over, then slowly shook his head. “No, sir. You see, it’s mostly just gossip that gets to me. There ain’t all that many particulars to it. I just kind of heard it when I was out around the stables. Things like that get started at one end of this town, and they get all changed around by the time they get to the other. Do you know what I mean?”

Longarm said, “Yes, I do.” He gave Todd a silver dollar and then went back to his room, his mind turning the matter over and over. The more he thought about it, the more he liked it. Now all he needed was a little leverage to get hold of the Castles by the short hairs. A handle, a come-along.

He would have it if his friend was able to get him the bench warrant from the federal judge. That would give him the authority to arrest the Castles, to search them, to search their premises, to scare the living hell out of them.

But all that could wait. For the moment, he could allow his mind the luxury of thinking about the evening ahead with Mabelle Russell. The widow Shirley Dunn had built a fire in him with her very unusual supper. The fire was still banked and only waiting for the slightest opportunity to ignite into full blaze.

He went to his rooms and immediately set about taking a bath and slicking himself up for the engagement that grew nearer by the moment. For the time being, the law business would wait.

Chapter 7

Longarm almost dropped his fork when Mabelle Russell said almost casually halfway through supper, “When are you going to put on your badge, Marshal?”

He stared at her, trying to think of something to say. After a moment, he tried to put a lying face on. He said, “What are you talking about? Marshal? Badge? I am a gambler and a horse trader. What’s this marshal stuff?”

She laughed gaily. “Oh, for God’s sake, cut it out. I know who you are. When you were here three years ago you were spotted. Someone told me that you were passing yourself off then as a gambler, but you were actually the famous Marshal Custis Long, known far and wide as Longarm. I don’t see where you have the gall to travel around incognito as well known as you are.” He could do no more than stare at her. Finally he said, “Mabelle, does anybody else know about this?”

She shrugged. “I doubt it.”

“Then how come you know?”

She gave him a slight smile. “Don’t you think that I make it my business to know every man’s business who comes into my place? Do you think that I would last long in this business if I didn’t have a very inquiring nature? I don’t just let anybody come in here. They’ve got to have some sort of a recommendation. You take a small town and there will be two people that know everybody and what’s going on. One of them will be the madam of the local whorehouse.”

Longarm looked at her. “Who will the other one be?”

Mabelle laughed again. “Well, naturally it will be the one that the madam is paying to get her information.”

Longarm laughed ruefully. “I reckon that it makes a little sense. I’m going to ask you a favor. Do you think that you can keep this under your hat for a few days? Do you reckon that you can help me out a little bit there?”

She shrugged. “I don’t see why not. It makes no never mind to me, one way or the other, who’s killing those soldiers. In fact, I wish you would catch the sonofabitch. My trade has dropped off considerably. About half of that garrison is scared to come into town late at night. Sure, I’ll keep your secret. Keep that badge in your pocket as long as you want to.”

He thought about telling her of his plans for the Castles, but then kept quiet. It wasn’t necessary that she know everything just yet, but he did have some questions that he wanted to ask her about the family. He figured that she could give him more detailed information than anyone else, but right then he was concentrating on the best steak he had had in a long time and the several choices of desserts that would follow the meal.

There was no teasing, no coyness, no pretending reluctance that he might have encountered from a younger, less worldly woman. When the meal was finished and they had coffee and brandy, she simply took him by the hand and led him through a door into what obviously was her bedroom. It was very large, with one of the biggest beds that Longarm had ever seen, covered with a silk counterpane. The lighting was dim but adequate. She sat Longarm down on the bed and then standing right in front of him, slowly took her clothes off. She was wearing a frilly, lacy lavender gown that went well with her coloring. It was followed by several slips, until she was finally down to her camisole and the silk stockings that encased her legs.

It was done so unsexually that Longarm thought it was the most exciting, most sexual thing that he had ever seen. Her every movement was natural. She undressed as unconsciously and matter-of-factly as if she were in the room alone. He felt like she was giving him the chance to peek through her window late at night. Before she was half through, he found himself short of breath and his jeans uncomfortably tight. His neck was swelling and a coppery taste was coming into his mouth. As she finally slid the camisole over her breasts and then down over her long, sleek body, he thought that he was going to explode at the sight of her. Her skin was creamy and her breasts were large and plump, but yet she had a very slim belly with wide hips that tapered to straight rounded legs. The vee of her brush was starkly black against the soft mound that it grew on. She took a step toward him, and he leaned forward to kiss the smooth, soft, velvet skin of her belly. His lips moved up, seeking the nipples of her breasts. She bent slightly to accommodate him. His breathing was coming harder and harder. He slowly put his arms up and pulled her on the bed beside him. For a few moments they sat, he fully clothed, she naked. Their arms were around each other and they were kissing deeply and searchingly.

Almost as if they understood it to the second, he arose as she slowly began to push herself back up onto the bed. His undressing was not like hers. His was done in haste, as he ripped at the buttons of his shirt, yanked off his gunbelt, threw off his boots, and shrugged out of his jeans. In an instant, he was lying beside her on the soft silk of the counterpane that was almost as smooth and sleek as her skin. He started kissing her on the neck, letting his tongue run over her velvet skin. Slowly he worked his way down until his face was buried in the soft hair that grew on the soft little mound. He could smell and then taste the soft musk of her. She was beginning to groan. Her legs spread, growing wider and wider. Suddenly she reached up, took his head between her hands, and guided it as if it were an instrument to be used for her pleasure. In a moment, her hips were rising and falling rhythmically. Then she let out a low muffled shriek that suddenly rose louder and louder and louder, until it culminated in a sigh that descended and fell and descended some more.

For only a second was she relaxed. In an instant she had come up to him where he was kneeling on the side of the bed and taken him inside her mouth. With a pulsating motion of her head, she drew and extracted and drew and extracted from him until he felt as if he was being sucked into the vortex of a whirlpool.

Somehow, without knowing how exactly, they were intertwined and he was inside her and her legs were up around his shoulders wrapped around his neck. He brought her up, thrusting into her. Thrusting and thrusting harder and harder. She pulled him closer and closer to her. He felt her come up and come up until just at the pinnacle, he slowed. She dug her fingernails fiercely into his back. He brought her back up again, only this time he let her keep going until she exploded—writhing and contorting her body and trembling so that he could barely hold her. Her scream was loud and primordial. It went on and on and on. He didn’t know if he was screaming with her but suddenly, all that he could remember was that he was feeling totally spent.

He toppled off of her and lay exhausted beside her on the bed. For a long ten minutes, neither of them spoke or made a sound other than their breathing. Finally, Longarm shuddered and tried to sit up. She reached out a gentle hand and pushed him back down.

“Not yet,” she said softly.

A quarter of an hour passed and he was suddenly aware that she had slipped out of bed. A few moments later, she was back wearing some sort of loose wrap and carrying two glasses of brandy. She had a cigarette and a match for him. He sat up gratefully as she slid in the bed beside him. To his left was a nightstand table that held an ashtray. He lit the cigarette and took a deep inhale, blew out the smoke, and then set the cigarette carefully in the ashtray. After that, they lay side by side against the headboard of the bed and sipped brandy.

He said, “Wow!”

She reached up and kissed him gently. “I don’t want it very often, Longarm, but when I do, I want the best and I knew you were going to be the best.”

He half smiled. “You may not want it very often, but when you want it, you want a whole bunch of it.”

“Are you complaining?”

“Noooo … ma’am.” He reached out and got his cigarette and took a drag. “Right now, I’m not complaining about anything except that I wish that I was ten years younger so I could get this thing back up again.”

She laughed. “You know the best way to ruin a good thing?”

“Yeah, have too much of it at one time.”

“Exactly right.”

After a time, they slowly got up out of bed. Mabelle dressed in a simple silk lounging robe while Longarm was obliged to put on his clothes. He didn’t bother to strap on his gunbelt, just slung it over his shoulder when they walked back into the dining room parlor area. They sat apart from each other across the small table. Mabelle poured them another glass of brandy and they sat back in some contentment.

After they had grown mellow, Longarm lit another cigarette. He said, “Mabelle, I’m gonna save you the trouble of having to wait any longer than you have to to find out what I am going to do. I’m gonna tell you about it because I want your opinion. You’re a sagacious woman, you know this town, you know these people, you know where all the skeletons are, you know who is sleeping with who, and you know who is having to pay for it here because he ain’t getting it at home.”

Mabelle said, “I won’t deny that I’m in the ideal position to know what goes on.”

Longarm nodded slowly. “All that I can hope is that you’re the only one who recognized me.”

She shrugged so that the robe fell off one of her shoulders and bared half of her left breast. “I wouldn’t give that any thought,” she said. “Actually, I only had my suspicions when I first saw you in here the other night. I sent off a couple of telegrams to confirm what I thought to be the truth. No, I don’t think that you need have any doubts about that.”

“Well, after tomorrow—I’m hoping tomorrow—I don’t think that it will make any difference.”

“What do you mean, after tomorrow?”

He said, “I’m putting on the badge and I’m going after the Castles. What do you think of that?”

Mabelle Russell said slowly and with consideration, “I think that you are on shaky ground. I think that you better have all your facts. I think you better have the right bait on your hook. You don’t want to fool with the Castles, Longarm, unless you are real certain. They are rich and they have powerful friends. That’s a bad combination to go up against.”

“I know that, Mabelle, but I’ve got no better suspects for the murder of these soldiers than the Castles.”

She said impatiently, “I thought that we discussed that. Vernon Castle or even James Castle isn’t stupid enough to think that killing a few soldiers is going to get that garrison moved. I don’t know why they want the army out of here, but they do. But that still doesn’t mean they’re willing to kill soldiers one by one to do it. It just doesn’t make any sense.”

He looked up at her steadily. “I know it doesn’t make any sense. It’s an insane thing to do. Right?”

She said, “Yes. You’d have to be simpleminded.”

“Do you know any of the Castles that are simpleminded?”

A frown suddenly creased the smooth skin between her eyes. She said, “Virgil?”

“Who else?”

She looked off in to space for a moment. “That’s funny, I never thought of Virgil. Now, come to think of it, I’ve got every reason to think of Virgil. That silly sonofabitch damned near killed one of my girls about two years ago.”

He said, “What? Almost killed one of your girls?”

“Yeah. His brothers brought him up here, my God. He’s almost twenty-six or twenty-seven years old and had never had a woman before, so a couple of years back, they got him all washed and cleaned up. I won’t let anybody in with any of my girls that hasn’t had a bath that very day or shaved. They’ve got to be decent. I mean, my girls have feelings too. But you don’t want to hear about that. Anyway, they brought him up here. I wasn’t none too happy about it. He’s not the most appealing person in the world because you never know what he is going to do. He ain’t all that bad-looking, tall and skinny, but there is a certain look in his eyes like nobody’s there, if you know what I mean.”

Longarm said, “Yeah.”

“So anyway, I turned him over to one of my more experienced girls, a little girl from Kansas City named Kathy. They went on back to the room and it wasn’t fifteen minutes when we started hearing screaming. Now, you’ll hear screaming around this place—some of it’s real and some of it’s not—I don’t have to tell you how it is around a place like this.”

Longarm smiled. “Yeah, I know.”

She said, “Only this screaming was different. This screaming would have curdled your blood. Well, me and a couple of men that I keep around here to handle some situations went dashing back there and knocked the door down. That crazy sonofabitch had Kathy backed up in a corner, both of them naked as hell. He had a pair of wire cutters in his hand. Turns out the simple sonofabitch wanted to cut her nipples off. He claimed that he was an Indian of some kind. He said that was some kind of a rite, something that an Indian man did to his wife if she had been unfaithful to him, and he said that Kathy had been unfaithful.”

Longarm looked puzzled. “He said all that? Why … how did he possibly think that Kathy had been … didn’t he know where he was?”

Mabelle said, “Listen, don’t ever try to figure out whatever goes on in that man’s mind, if there is a mind in there. But he was going to punish her because he had seen another man come out of there before he had gone in and that’s what Indians do. He really and truly thinks that he is an Indian. I don’t know where he got onto this nonsense, but he had a pair of wire cutters.”

“Where did he get the wire cutters?”

“Damned if I know. I guess he brought them with him. All I know is that he was planning on nipping off Kathy’s nipples. Some sort of ancient rite, he said.”

Longarm shook his head wonderingly. “Do you know of any other incidents with Virgil?”

Mabelle thought for a moment. “There’s been a lot of little things. Of course, the old man always buys his way out. I charged the old man two thousand dollars for that little stunt. Gave it to Kathy, of course. It liked to scared the hell out of that little girl. Oh! And then there was the time when he stole a man’s horse and led him out of town, cut the horse’s throat, and was skinning the horse out. He was about to eat it raw when some riders came along and stopped him.”

Longarm shook his head slowly. “That’s Comanche. That’s what the Comanches did. When they were in a hurry, when they were on the run, they would stop and cut steaks off a live horse and eat them. He must have heard about it from somewhere. I guess his daddy bought his way out of that one?”

“Of course. The sheriff even went along with it, though it was horse-thieving. I mean, you steal a horse to ride or you steal a horse to eat, it’s still horse-thieving, ain’t it?”

Longarm laughed. “That’s the first time I’ve ever come across someone stealing a horse to eat him.”

She said, “I don’t know of any other big incidents. They keep him pretty close to home but he gets out and wanders around. I’m sure that you know about last night when he was found wandering alone with his rifle naked. He wasn’t exactly naked, he was wearing one of those things that the Indians wear. Do you know what I mean?”

“It’s a breech cloth.”

“Yes, one of those.”

Longarm thought for a minute. “Well, he’s the best I’ve got, Mabelle. What do you think?”

She said, “I wouldn’t put it past him. He wouldn’t even need a reason. Maybe he thinks he is a Comanche Indian killing soldiers.”

“I hadn’t thought about that before, but then I didn’t know that he thought he was a Comanche Indian.”

She laughed. “No one knows where he got the idea. Of course, in his younger days there was still plenty of Comanche Indians around here. Maybe somebody scared him about the Comanches gonna get him when he was young or something. No, that couldn’t be right. The Castles haven’t been around this area that long. They came from somewhere in the Midwest. Hell, Longarm. He’s just simpleminded. God only knows how his mind works.”

Longarm left her not too long after that. Before he did, he kissed Mabelle tenderly and thanked her for one of the best evenings he could remember. He said, “You’re a hell of a woman, Mabelle. Too bad you don’t want a man full time.”

She said, “Oh, men are like whiskey. A little goes a long way. Don’t think that I don’t like my fair share of it, though. The problem with a husband is that he begins to tell you what he wants you to do and how to act and think and talk. I’m not much of one to have someone tell me anything. I like being the boss, Longarm, or haven’t you noticed?”

He laughed. “Oh, yes. I noticed.”

Before he got out the door she said, putting her hand on his arm, “Listen, honey. You be careful with those Castles. They are dangerous, everyone of them, and they have a lot of hired hands out there. Don’t expect any help from the sheriff.”

He said dryly, “I hadn’t counted on it. In fact, I figured that he would be on the other side. Before I go out and see the Castles, I’m gonna make him aware of the facts and make it clear to him what will happen if he interferes.”

Then he shrugged. “Of course, all of this is just talk if I don’t get a bench warrant from a federal judge in Nebraska that gives me the right to go out and arrest the Castles and search their premises.”

“Why would you want to search their premises?”

“You never know what you might find, Mabelle. I’m just trying to put a little heat on the old man to make him give Virgil up. I think they are all aware that he is the one that is killing these soldiers. I think they are protecting him. I’ve got to make the price so high that Vernon Castle is willing to surrender his own son to save the rest of them.”

Mabelle shook her head. “Well, all I can do is wish you luck.”

Longarm’s face was grim. “Just hope that I get that telegram. I just want the chance.”

He spent the morning and the early part of the afternoon hanging around his hotel and fretting, hoping, waiting impatiently for an answer to the telegram he had sent to Omaha. At about three o’clock, a messenger from the telegraph office finally brought him the envelope that he had been waiting for. He gave the boy a half a dollar, and went to his room and opened it anxiously.

It was exactly what he had hoped for. It was an official bench warrant from a federal judge in Omaha empowering him to arrest the Castle brothers, their progeny, and any or all of their employees who might in any way be linked to the importation and sale of cattle brought into the United States by means other than those proscribed by the laws governing the introduction of livestock to the United States from foreign soil. He was further empowered to seize all assets or items that might in any way be construed to have been a part of this illegal operation. It further instructed any and all law enforcement authorities, be they local, county, state, or federal, to assist Deputy United States Marshal Custis Long in the furtherance of his duty. Failure to do so would subject those law officers to such charges as the federal judiciary might care to bring. It was signed by Judge J.P. Bridgewater.

There was a second telegram in the envelope. It was from Longarm’s friend, the deputy in Omaha. It said simply:

THIS OUGHT TO SATISFY YOU STOP NOW, HOW ABOUT GIVING ME BACK MY HORSE AND WIFE STOP

Longarm chortled with glee at his friend’s joke, but mainly at the bench warrant from the judge. Even though it was sent in the form of a telegram, it was as official as if it had been written by the judge’s own hand.

He folded the telegram and put it into his shirt pocket. He strapped on his gunbelt and made ready to go have a quick visit with Sheriff Smith before going out to the Castle ranch. His intention was to apprehend the Vernon Castle family and then go after James Castle. He didn’t think that he would bother with James Castle’s young sons and daughters.

First he went around to the stable and gave instructions to have his chestnut saddled and left in front of the sheriff’s office.

He walked across the street to Sheriff Smith’s office. On the boardwalk, he stopped for a moment to take his badge out of his shirt pocket and pin it to the fabric. Then he opened the door and stepped inside. The sheriff was alone at his desk. He looked up in annoyance as Longarm walked toward him.

Sheriff Smith said, “I thought I told you to get the hell out of here. I don’t want to see you or hear you or smell you.”

For an answer, Longarm tapped his chest, directing the sheriff’s attention toward the badge.

The sheriff peered and then fumbled around on his desk until he found his glasses. He put them on, curling them behind his ears, and stared at Longarm’s chest. He said, “What the hell? You’re a deputy U.S. marshal. What the hell do you mean coming into my town and not telling me you’re here!”

Longarm said evenly, “Listen, Sheriff Smith, this is not a real good time to get on my cross side. So you listen to me carefully. I am going out to arrest Vernon Castle and any of his sons that are in their right mind. I am going to arrest them for bringing illegal Mexican cattle into this state and selling them into the northern markets.”

Sheriff Smith said, blustering, “You’ll do no damn such thing. This is my county and nobody comes in here and arrests its citizens without my say-so. You got that, Marshal?”

Longarm tapped his badge. “Smith, my badge is bigger than yours. Don’t give me no trouble. I’m going out to arrest the Castles and I’m going to bring them in and house them in your jail, do you understand me?”

Smith stood up. “The hell you will.”

Longarm leaned forward. “Sheriff, you defy me and you had better be prepared to spend some time in a federal penitentiary.”

Smith said, “You go to hell, mister.”

Longarm reached into his pocket for the telegram. He said, “That is Marshal to you, Sheriff. Marshal Custis Long.”

The sheriff looked puzzled. “Longarm?”

“You got it right. Now, take a look at this.” He unfolded the telegram and spread it on the desk in front of the sheriff.

In order to read it, the sheriff was forced to sit back down. It took him several minutes. He read it and then reread it and then finally reread it one last time. He took his glasses off and looked up at Longarm. He said, “You sneaky sonofabitch.”

Longarm said, “You better watch your mouth, Sheriff Smith. I already don’t much care for your attitude. It wouldn’t take much more to get me down on you. Now, I’m going to go out to the Castles and when I bring them in here, you better be ready.” He put out a finger and tapped the telegram. “You better be ready to comply with what that federal bench warrant says or I’ll put you in one of your own cells. Do you understand that?”

The sheriff looked at him steadily. “There is just you. I’ve got two deputies and myself and I can get a few more deputies if I need them.”

“Yes, and there is a fort full of soldiers out there and I can requisition them as fast as I can requisition a horse or a blanket from them. Now if you fool with me, you’ll have federal marshals coming out of your ears. Do you understand that, Smith?”

The sheriff tried to stare back at Longarm for a second. His jaw muscles worked, but finally he dropped his eyes. “I hope that you know what the hell you are doing,” he said. “You don’t fool around with a family like the Castles that easily. You’re going to cost me my job, dammit.”

“Surprisingly enough, Sheriff, I don’t give a damn about your job. You’ve had it too soft for too long. You’ve been serving the wrong master. You’re supposed to be serving the voters of this county, not Vernon Castle or his brother James.”

He reached out and took the telegram, folded it, and put it back in his pocket. “I will expect you to be here in this jail ready to receive prisoners in about two or three hours.”

The sheriff said maliciously, “That is if you get off that ranch alive, which ain’t all that sure.”

Longarm turned for the door. “Well, I reckon that you had better let me worry about that.”

Chapter 8

Longarm approached the Vernon Castle ranch headquarters warily. There was a big gate and a fence that led to the ranch house. He stopped in the opening and studied the lay of the land. He could see a few cattle and a few cowhands working off in the distance. His objective was to catch all four of the immediate family together at the same time. It was just after five o’clock. His hope was that they would be in from the day’s work and would be having a drink before dinner.

He started up the road that led to the whitewashed house with the red tile roof. As he neared, he could see that it had a big wide front porch. He saw no one hanging about the place.

When he reached the front of the house, he dropped his reins and dismounted slowly. He thought of taking his rifle into the house, but decided against it. He wanted to get in and look around before he let them know that his intentions were hostile.