Longarm and the Lusty Lady

LONGARM AND THE LUSTY LADY

By Tabor Evans

Synopsis:

Mexican cattle are being smuggled across the border into Texas without spending their full ninety days in quarantine. Some of these cattle are sick and are spreading diseases among the south-Texas herds. U.S. Deputy Marshal Custis Long is in Laredo at the request of a fellow deputy marshall to help put a stop to the problem. But the U.S. Customs agent who is releasing the cattle early in exchange for a cash bribe is smart and crafty and catching him isn’t as easy as it first appears. 16th novel in the “Longarm Giant” series, 1996.

Jove Books New York Copyright (C) 1996 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: 0-515-11923-7

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A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

Printing history Jove edition / August 1996

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.”

DON’T MISS THESE ALL-ACTION WESTERN SERIES FROM THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

THE GUNSMITH by J. R. Roberts Clint Adams was a legend among lawmen, outlaws, and ladies. They called him … the Gunsmith.

LONGARM by Tabor Evans The popular long-running series about U.S. Deputy Marshal Long—his life, his loves, his fight for justice.

SLOCUM by Jake Logan Today’s longest-running action Western. John Slocum rides a deadly trail of hot blood and cold steel.

Chapter 1

“Like hell I will!” Longarm said with feeling.

His boss, Billy Vail, Chief Marshal of the Southwestern District, stared out washed-out blue eyes for a second as if he were trying to see through a foggy window. Then he put his hand up and smoothed down his sparse gray hair, put the hand behind his ear and leaned forward across his desk. “Say what? Guess I’m getting’ hard of hearing. I thought you said something that sounded like you wasn’t going to do what I told you.”

U.S. Deputy Marshal Custis Long looked back at his boss in disgust. “Now don’t start playing that silly old game again, Billy,” he said. “You’re about as hard of hearing as a she-wolf with cubs and got about the same disposition. But no, I ain’t got the slightest intention of having anything to do with any such plan. And you knew that before you brought it up.”

“Let me see something here,” Billy said, getting out of his swivel chair and coming around the desk to stand behind Longarm. Billy Vail was deceptively small and innocent-looking. Time spent living behind a desk had finally sanded away at the rough, weathered face and left him looking a little sleek and a little soft. But even though he now gave orders to other men to carry out jobs he’d have liked to handle himself, he was still the Billy Vail of whom an outlaw had once said, “Shoot, I ain’t scairt of Billy Vail. I very nearly come close to makin’ him tell me twice to drop my gun.”

And Longarm knew it. He also knew what Billy was up to as he stood behind his deputy and put his head down on Longarm’s left shoulder. “Just want to get round here,” he said, “and get your perspective on the matter.”

Longarm gave him a disgusted look even if he couldn’t see it. “Damnit, Billy, this ain’t necessary.”

“Aw, yeah it is,” the chief marshal insisted. “I figured, judging by what you said, that we had different views on the matter. So I come around here to see what you see. Wait!” Billy pointed to something with his finger. “What is that on that desk? That little board-like thing. See it there?”

Longarm grimaced. “I see it, Billy. Will you just go to hell once and for all?”

“Look what that sign says. What does it say?”

“You know damn good and well what it says. Damnit, Billy, you may be the orneriest old sonofabitch ever walked the face of the earth, and I think you’re getting worse.”

“Wait!” Billy Vail said again. He squinted. “These old eyes of mine ain’t so good no more, but it appears I can make out what that little piece of wood says. Says ‘Chief Marshal’ on it. What do you think about that? Chief Marshal! That’s the boss, ain’t it?”

Longarm said tiredly, “You will do this, won’t you, Billy? Ain’t no way you’re going to stop, is there?”

Billy Vail straightened up. “There’s just the one more thing,” he said. “As I recollect, you are a deputy U.S. marshal. That’s not as high up as a chief marshal, is it?”

Longarm set his mouth, folded his arms, and stared straight ahead. Billy Vail went back behind his desk and sat in his wooden swivel chair with the big leather pad on the seat. “Now,” he said, “as near as I can figure from all this, I am the one who gives the orders and you are the one who takes them. Is that about the way it falls out?”

“Go to hell, Billy,” Longarm replied. “I ain’t working with him and that is my last word.”

Billy Vail’s pale blue eyes suddenly sharpened. “Oh? You handing in your resignation, are you?”

Longarm raised both arms over his head in frustration. “Damnit,” he said, “you don’t know Austin Davis. He’s a damn smart aleck is what he is and he irritates the hell out of me. He’s got such an opinion of himself I’d like to buy him for what he’s worth and sell him for what he thinks he’s worth. I’d get rich. Billy, just let me go down to Texas and handle that job by myself. I don’t want to work with Austin Davis! Hell, he ain’t been a deputy marshal much over six months.”

Billy Vail sat and studied his deputy. Where Billy was small and rounded, Longarm was tall and heavy in the shoulders and arms and hands. His face said he could have been pushing past 40, but the easy, powerful grace of his body suggested a younger age. All of him said hard and determined and resourceful. He had gotten the nickname Longarm some years past, partly because his last name was Long, but mainly because it was known among those on the other side of the law that you couldn’t run far enough to escape Custis Long. An outlaw once said, “I was buried so deep in the badlands of New Mexico that I swear my Maker couldn’t have found me and, first thing I knowed, here come Custis Long sticking that long arm of the law of his in there and plucking me out of the back of a cave.”

Longarm worked with other men, sometimes willingly, but more often with no enthusiasm. He was a loner who did not like to consult with others about his plans and his decisions. But now, worse than just working with anybody, Billy Vail wanted him to work with that tall talker from Texas, Austin Davis. He said again, “Let me do the job on my own, Billy. Or give me somebody else.”

Billy Vail turned and looked out the window of his office in downtown Denver. “Hell, Custis,” he said, “you worked with the man before. You deputized him your ownself. And it was you recommended he apply to the U.S. Marshal Service.” He wheeled back around in his chair. “Ain’t that a fact?”

Longarm looked away. “Yes, but-“

“Ain’t no buts about it. In the first place, it’s Davis who brought this matter to my attention. He’s done some good work getting depositions from Texas cattlemen who have been affected by them Mexican herds. He’s done most of the spadework already. And, besides, he knows the Tex-Mex border better than anybody else I got.” Longarm said very softly, “So he claims.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Listen, Billy, why don’t you send somebody else? Hell, I got a few days off coming and I wouldn’t mind cooling my heels a bit.”

“All you been doing is cooling your heels here lately. You’ve got more time in town than I have. You surely have had time to make it through your list of lady friends more than once. Now, are you telling me that this Austin Davis ain’t a dependable man in a tight place?”

Longarm grimaced. “No, I ain’t saying any such thing,” he said grudgingly.

“You telling me he can’t handle himself?”

“No.”

“You remarking on his character?”

Longarm looked unhappy. “No, I ain’t badmouthing his character. Damnit, Billy he is such an arrogant sonofabitch. He irritates the hell out of me. Why that bastard thinks he could walk into a Mexican whorehouse without a penny in his pocket and come out with a satisfied look on his face.”

Billy Vail cocked his head. “Now there’s a curious thing. Davis said you told him he couldn’t get laid in a two-bit cathouse with a thousand dollars in his pocket.”

Longarm looked off toward the corner, a disappointed expression on his face. Shaking his head, he said, “Now that’s it right there. Just the kind of remark he would pass.”

“You didn’t tell him that?”

Longarm looked uneasy. “Well, yeah,” he admitted reluctantly, “but only because of remarks he passed about my poker playing. He said the only way I’d make a small fortune playing poker was to start with a big one.”

Billy Vail smiled and looked away, then remarked, trying to sound serious, “He said you told him the only chance he had of breaking even in a poker game was not to play. Any truth to that?”

Longarm was squirming. “See?” he said. “See? See why I don’t want to work with that lying, miserable sonofabitch! Telling tales behind my back. And not only that, but the sonofabitch drank the last of my good Maryland whiskey when he don’t know the difference and there was enough of the rotgut variety around to swim in.”

“Marshal Davis said he done it for your own good,” Billy Vail replied. “Said he didn’t think a man of your age ought to be putting so much of that juice away. Said it made you creaky in the mornings.”

“Well, that does it!” Longarm exclaimed. He got up, picked up his hat, and put it on his head. He gave Billy Vail a grim look. “Give me the particulars. I can guarantee that Marshal Davis will be damn sorry to see me come and damn glad to see me go. I reckon he won’t ask for me on a job again. All right, I’ll go wet-nurse the smart-aleck little bastard. Where and when?”

“Oh, he didn’t ask for you,” Billy Vail said. “In fact, he put up a bigger squawk than you about working with you. Damn near said the same things you did.” The chief marshall let a small smile work on his face. “Seeing as how the regard is mutual on both sides, y’all ought to get along just fine.”

Longarm felt the heat rising. “That sonofabitch,” he said. “He come at you in exactly that way to trap me. All right. So be it. He’s a sneaky sonofabitch, but I reckon I can put up with him for the good of the service. I just hope the little bastard don’t forget who the senior deputy is. I hope you made it clear to him.”

Billy Vail leaned back in his chair and twined his fingers across his ample little belly. “No,” he said, “I figured you’d get him straightened out on that. Now, sit down and let me lay the matter before you.” He smiled a little. “You wouldn’t want to go down there and have Davis know it all and you be in the dark.”

Longarm sat down and said, “I just hope the sonofabitch has got a wad of money in his pocket and feels fearless enough to play me a little head-up poker. If that happens, then this damn trip will have been worth it.”

“Funny thing, but Austin Davis said-“

Longarm waved his hand. “No, no. Don’t tell me he said the same thing, because I ain’t going to believe YOU.”

The chief marshal looked at his deputy intently. “Custis, do you really not want to work with the man? Is he that bad?”

Longarm worked his head around on his shoulders for a few seconds and picked a piece of lint off his pressed, starched jeans. Then, looking away, he acknowledged grudgingly, “Aw, he ain’t that bad. Fact is, he’s all right. I wouldn’t be one to go around damaging a fellow marshal’s reputation. But he’s got his ways, I’ll tell you that. Just so long as he don’t come on with he’s the expert down along the border. I ain’t going to abide that. Last time I looked, there was seven or eight agents working out of this place could draw assignments on the border, but I always seem to get that card. So I want the smart aleck to understand this ain’t my first stampede when it comes to matters down along the Rio Grande.”

Billy Vail was fighting to suppress a smile. Putting concern in his voice, he said, “Well, Custis, I hate like hell to send you off unhappy. Like you said, there are other deputies I could send.”

Longarm sighed. “No, no. Ain’t no point in that. I’d never ask another man to do work I wouldn’t do myself.” He looked off across the room again. “I swore an oath to do my best at whatever duties come my way and I ain’t backing down on that. No, I’ll go. I’ll make the best of it. Maybe Marshal Davis might learn a thing or two. Though you’ll never get him to admit it.”

“is he really a better poker player than you, Custis?”

Longarm’s eyes flared as he replied, a little louder than necessary, “Hell no! Double hell no!”

“Then how come he claims to have taken your money? Is he lying? I need to know if I got an agent here who lies.”

Longarm still looked outraged. “He might have got away with a little of mine, but he is the most uncommon lucky man you ever saw in your life. But, like I told him, he sits in that chair long enough, that luck will even out and then it will come to skill. Then we’ll see who takes the money home.”

The chief marshal was still fighting a smile. “And is he better with the ladies than you, Custis?”

For a second, Longarm straightened as if he was going to come out of his chair. Finally he subsided and studied the same corner of the room he’d looked at before. He flicked at his trousers. “I ain’t even gonna answer that.”

“I asked,” Billy Vail said, “because, if he is, you better get your ashes hauled tonight. You’ve got to be on a train tomorrow, and I wouldn’t want to see you down there doing without for a long haul.”

Longarm slowly swung his eyes around to his boss. He studied him for a second, realization slowly dawning. “Billy Vail,” he said, “you are a mean old man. You’ve been sitting there, spurring the hell out of me and having yourself a quiet laugh. Well, I reckon you got some chickens going to come home to roost one of these days. I’ll just file this little incident away for future reference.”

Billy Vail smiled big. “Either way, you still got to be on a southbound train in the morning,” he said.

Mrs. Spinner, Longarm thought, was about the most aptly named woman he’d ever met, even if she was still carrying the name of a former husband. She could set your mind spinning, your body spinning, your senses spinning, and even cause the hands of a clock to spin slower or faster depending on her whim. When she put her mind to it, she could get the both of them spinning and that included the bed and the walls and ceiling of the room. She was a lady of short acquaintance, relatively speaking, but one he intended to maintain good relations with as long as she was willing. She had moved into his boarding house a month previous and Longarm had immediately set out on a deliberate plan of seduction. Which was when he discovered that Mrs. Spinner—Lila was her given name—was also one of the most forthright people he’d ever encountered. As he’d begun his early foundation work, she’d suddenly rounded on him and said, “Marshal, are you trying to get me in bed? If that be the case, then let us dispense with these walks in the moonlight and talks in the porch swing and meals in expensive restaurants and get right to the business at hand.”

The “business at hand” had left him breathless and drained, and longing for more strength and stamina, anything to keep up with Lila. She was a woman of thirty but she had the body of a girl. In her tight-fitting bodice and corsets she looked slim, almost boyish. But when she took off the restraints, her hips bloomed and her breasts blossomed in a way that left Longarm short of breath before the actual “business at hand” ever got started. But even with her ample breasts and the wonderful flare and curve of her buttocks and hips, she was still as smooth and firm as a satin doll. She worked as a chorus dancer at one of the theaters in Denver that furnished popular entertainment, but, before that, she had been an acrobat in a flying trapeze act in the circus. The main performer in that act, the “catcher,” had been her husband. She had left both him and the act when the drink he’d taken to had taken him over. She’d said to Longarm, “Marshal, I can tell you that a drunken acrobat is not a laughing matter. No, sir. Not fifty feet in the air. I never cared for the stuff myself and I can see where it might not cause much harm to, say, a banker or a cowboy or a storekeeper, but I do not believe it has any place in a trapeze act and I told my ex-husband that very thing. It was a wonder that none of us were killed.”

Part of Longarm’s irritation at being sent off on assignment, with or without Austin Davis, was that his affair with Mrs. Spinner had only been in progress for about a week and he was far from satisfied. To suddenly be told that he had to leave at once had left him with an almost physical ache. He reckoned that Austin Davis was going to feel a little of that dissatisfaction.

But Mrs. Spinner had given him a very memorable sendoff the night before. He had never, he was sure, been involved with a woman who was more inventive, or willing to be inventive and certainly none more supple. They had begun last night by facing each other, both naked. He had taken her around the waist, lifted her straight up, and then lowered her on his erect member. She had wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist and they had walked all over his room at the boarding house while she writhed and gyrated and pumped against him. Because she knew how to distribute her weight, she had felt light as a feather and he’d had no trouble carrying her even with her wild movements. She had climaxed very quickly, as she often did, clawing his neck and kissing him with deep, sucking kisses. He had held off until he’d felt her rising again, and then they both went off almost simultaneously. He had been near the bed and he fell on it with her as his own explosion began. It had given him the strange sensation of floating for a long time in midair while thunder and lightning and fireworks exploded all around him. He had not been aware of hitting the bed until some moments later when she moved in his arms, freeing herself so she could move down his body and bring him back to arousal.

The amazing thing about Lila Spinner, he thought, was how she could look so hard and smooth and then, when he took her in his arms, she just seemed to melt into him and around him. She could go from a marble statue with beautifully formed breasts with upturned tips, flat belly above a wheat-colored thatch of hair that protected the warm, pink, soft flesh within, softly rounded hips, straight legs, and small feet, into a flashing body of flesh, which was like warm dough in the way it could envelop him and suck him into her.

He sat on the train seat in the back of the car, thinking about last night and about Lila Spinner. She was so formal, so serious out of bed. So dignified. But once the shades were drawn there were no holds barred. The memory made him shake his head. He did not believe he had ever been in more intimate positions, not just with any other woman, but maybe with the sum of half of the women he had been with. And all that in just a week.

And she was insatiable. She could reach climax in a matter of a very few moments and then continue to reach the top of the mountain for as long as he could last. It shamed Longarm how early he often had to quit. He resolved that he was going to cut back on his drinking and smoking and get in better shape so as to be more worthy of a woman like Lila Spinner. He also resolved that this border matter was going to get settled a hell of a lot quicker than anyone reckoned, and that included Austin Davis. He was not going to be separated from this incredible woman any longer than need be. He knew she loved and missed the circus and the job of being an acrobat. His greatest fear was that a circus might come through Denver and she’d join up with a troupe before he could talk her out of it.

As the train rumbled down the grade from Colorado and crossed into Oklahoma, Longarm let his mind wander over the infinite variety of Mrs. Spinner’s pleasures. On their third or fourth assignation she had invited him to come up to her room after dinner to take “tea.” He had been quite surprised, since he’d expected something else, to discover her fully dressed in a severe frock that buttoned to the neck, and an actual tea service laid out on a small table. For the first fifteen minutes he’d been off balance and not quite certain what to do. Finally he had moved his chair around next to her and made a small advance. It had been immediately repulsed. She had even said, “Why, Marshal, what kind of girl do you think I am?”

Since he’d had ample proof on their previous engagements of just what sort of girl she was, he’d been confused and unsure what to do. But she had turned coy and flirty and, encouraged, he made another sally in the direction of her breasts. Once again he was rebuffed, only this time with much batting of her eyelashes and coy looks and little slaps on the back of his hand. It had finally dawned on him what the game was. He assaulted her then with vigor and determination. She’d resisted sometimes to the point where he thought he might be following the wrong trail, but he had kept on. The frock, though intended to cover all, buttoned all the way down from neck to hem. Button by button he had slowly won his ground, fighting for every inch of it over her breathless protests and feeble cries and faint attempts to push his hands away. After the dress it had been a succession of petticoats and then a chemise and finally an underbodice and bloomers. When he finally got her stripped down naked and felt and tasted her, he knew she was as ready as any woman he’d ever had. She’d lolled back in her chair, arms outflung, and said, “Then take me if you must, you cad.”

He had picked her up, carried her to the bed, and laid her down gently. She lay on her back, legs spread wide, gently massaging herself through the silken wheat-colored hair with one long, slender finger. She was making soft little outcries as he frantically tried to tear off his clothes so he could join her before it was too late. She was starting to heave her hips up when he finally covered her and entered the soft, warm vagina. She had climaxed the instant he’d taken himself fully into her, and his excitement had been such that he had followed only a few seconds later.

Longarm suddenly became aware of a fine sheen of sweat on his forehead. It was June, and warm in the passenger car, but not warm enough to sweat. The heat was being generated from within and he reckoned it would be a good thing for his health, as well as his general appearance, if he put Lila Spinner’s infinite variety of pleasures out of his mind for the time being. His assignment could last a week; it could last a month. He certainly didn’t want to be tormenting himself with a slice of pie he couldn’t have because it was out of reach. Better to think of the job ahead and think of Mrs. Spinner at such time as he might be able to take her in hand.

It was early afternoon. On the floor next to Longarm’s feet was a sack of biscuits stuffed with ham that his landlady had made up for him. There was also a bottle of his good Maryland whiskey sitting in the seat between him and the side of the coach. Having had nothing to eat since breakfast, and that had come at Six A.M., he dug into the sack of biscuits and began to eat the ham sandwiches one after another as he stared out the window at the countryside rolling by at forty miles an hour.

They had slipped only briefly through a corner section of Oklahoma and were now running due south through the northern part of Texas. The train had just stopped at Lubbock to drop off some passengers and take on some new ones. Still, the car wasn’t very crowded and Longarm had had a seat to himself all the way. Usually it was his luck, if he rode the passenger coaches rather than accompanying his mount in the stock cars, to draw some stout old lady who crowded him and objected to his cigar smoke. He knew that lady was waiting at some station between here and San Antonio, but, so far, his luck had held. Outside, the landscape was bleak and arid-looking. Longarm didn’t reckon a man could raise ten cows to a thousand acres. Now and again they passed the cabin of a sodbuster. Usually the wife and children would be standing out in front of the weatherbeaten cabin staring at the train with big eyes while the farmer was out behind a plow hoping like hell to make a crop of wheat or corn or cotton before weevils or wind and rain or hail, or just plain bad luck, took it. Longarm always thought the women, especially, had such a hopeless look about them. He wondered how they felt, alone on a great prairie, no neighbors, no pretty things, nothing but hard work and bearing children and waiting for the next crop to fail so they could load the wagon and move on to another piece of soil in an equally unwelcoming place so another crop could go down and then wither under the killing sun and lack of rain. He guessed that was why they had so many kids. There wasn’t much else to do. And, as the train passed, he could pretty well figure how long a couple had been married by the number of kids they had. The children always stood in a rank, the youngest next to the mother, who generally had a baby in her arms, and then they stair-stepped upwards to the oldest. You could tell that there was usually just about a year between them.

He yawned and took a moment to unplug his bottle of whiskey and take a short drink. He still had a long way to go. Even though they were well inside Texas, it would be about eight hours more before they reached San Antonio. Texas, Longarm reflected, was just too damn big. You could travel and travel and still be in the same damn state. A man liked a little variety. Texas was like making love to a fat woman. More was not necessarily better.

Austin Davis was supposed to meet him when the train got in, but Longarm had his doubts on that score. Most likely, Davis would get captured by a bottle or a poker game or a woman or all three and completely forget about meeting the senior deputy marshal. It made him mad just to think about it.

He had met Austin Davis some fourteen or fifteen months back, in Mason County, Texas. Longarm had been called in to run down a gang that the local authorities couldn’t seem to handle. Davis had shown up with some wanted paper on several of the supposed bandits and claimed he was there doing a little bounty hunting. Given the quality of the local law, Longarm had sworn him in as a provisional deputy. No one had been more surprised than Longarm himself when Davis had panned out pretty well. In a rash moment Longarm had recommended him for the Marshal Service, and then damned if he hadn’t been accepted.

Longarm calculated Austin Davis to be in his mid-to late-thirties. He was as tall as Longarm—a little over six feet—but wasn’t built quite as heavy in the shoulders and arms. He figured Davis was probably a pretty good man in a hand-to-hand fight. He knew he was good in a gun fight, but he reckoned he could also use his fists. The man was deceptively strong. When they were setting up an ambush in front of the mercantile in Mason, Longarm had seen him lift an eighty-pound bag of feed like it didn’t weigh anything. Besides, Davis’s face was virtually unmarked, and for a man with his turn of tongue that was a sure sign he could handle himself. Austin Davis was a smart aleck. No, Longarm thought, reluctantly trying to be fair, that wasn’t quite true. Davis was smart. Plain and simple smart. But he knew it, and he didn’t mind letting folks around him know it. That was where the “aleck” part came in, and that was what irritated the hell out of Longarm. He didn’t mind Davis being right once in a while, but he hated to hear him announce it.

And, on top of everything else, Davis was just close enough to being handsome to be certain that all the ladies were standing in line waiting to get a piece of him. Longarm looked out the train window, brooding on his new partner’s defects. Some things were going to have to change and he, Longarm, was just the man to adjust matters. For a moment Longarm let himself speculate on what Mrs. Spinner would think of Austin Davis, but he quickly banished that line of thinking. Mrs. Spinner, he finally decided, was well above the station of some ride-and-shoot pistolero like Austin Davis, and he would never allow a lady of her accomplishments to come anywhere near a rounder like the junior deputy marshal. He was confident, though, that if she did happen to meet the man, she wouldn’t be fooled by his flashin-the-pan looks or his sassy mouth.

He stretched in the seat, sticking out his long legs and extending his arms over his head. It was a most uncommon long ride. And then, once in San Antonio, there was still the business of getting down to Laredo, which was another two hundred miles. Longarm had not brought a horse with him, but there was a military installation at San Antonio, several in fact, and he could requisition whatever mounts he needed from the cavalry.

The train kept rumbling along. The afternoon had worn down and dusk wasn’t far off. Longarm got out one of his two-for-a-nickle cigars, bit the end off, and lit it up with a big kitchen match that he struck with his thick thumbnail. When it was drawing good, he took a swig of whiskey to sweeten his mouth and then leaned back and blew out clouds of smoke, most of it whipping out the open window by his side. He’d be glad to get off the train and he didn’t care who knew it. He wanted a steak and a bath and a good bed. People said he was crazy, but he would rather sit a horse for twelve hours than ride a train for the same amount. Riding a horse was a whole hell of a lot less tiring as far as Longarm was concerned, but he couldn’t get anybody to agree with him. Some folks claimed they liked to ride on trains. He considered that just plain silly.

It got dark and he ate a few more of the biscuit sandwiches and had another drink or two of whiskey. A candy butcher came through the coaches selling various things to eat and smokes and soda pop. Longarm bought a bottle of strawberry fizz and found it went very well with his corn whiskey, though not at the same time.

He didn’t know a great deal about the job that lay ahead, but that was all right. It seemed there was a customs inspector in Laredo, an official with the United States Customs Service, who had been allowing cattle from Mexico to cross the border without staying in quarantine for the prescribed number of days. The result had been considerable trouble for the South Texas ranchers through whose ranges these herds of illegal Mexican cattle passed. The problem was that Mexican cattlemen did not dip their stock to rid them of the ticks and fleas and lice that could cause half a dozen plagues in clean, American stock. For that reason they were supposed to be held on the border for ninety days to make sure they weren’t suffering from some disease, primarily Mexican tick fever, before they were allowed to cross onto United States soil. But holding cattle in corrals, large herds of cattle, was an expensive business. There was no grass for them to graze off, so they had to be fed hay and grain and feed, and for a herd of any size that could run into a considerable amount of money. Also, standing around like that, the cattle tended to become sore-footed and get on the prod with each other, which meant fights, which meant dead cattle. But the worst thing about the quarantine, for the man who was buying cheap Mexican steers with an eye toward bringing it into the U.S. and turning a profit, was that, just as the quarantine was intended to discover, the cattle might get sick and all of them up and die. When that happened, the U.S. speculator lost all the money he’d spent on the cattle, all he’d spent gathering them and driving them to the border, and all the money he’d spent feeding them before they got sick. The best way around all that trouble was to bribe a customs official to fake your quarantine and give you papers that would let you through in a hurry and legally. The problem was that most inspectors wouldn’t take a bribe because it was too easy to get caught. Smuggling a thousand head of steers across the border was a lot harder than dealing in any other kind of contraband, like gold or weapons.

Of course many herds were taken across “wet,” meaning they were driven across the Rio Grande at a secluded spot along the border. The problem here was that the owner had no papers to prove he’d crossed the cattle legally through quarantine, and he was subject to being stopped by any range inspector and having his herd taken away from him. Also, it was very difficult to sell “wet” cattle, since the buyer knew he was not only buying cattle but trouble.

But according to Billy Vail, Austin Davis had gotten the goods on an official at the customs station in Laredo who had apparently found a way to take bribes without getting caught. The cattlemen who had been having their herds infected had appealed to the Customs Service first and hadn’t gotten any satisfaction. Customs had claimed that their investigations showed all their people to be in the clear. After that, the ranchers had turned to the Marshal Service, and Austin Davis was sent to look into the matter. He’d apparently found enough going on to warrant a full scale investigation. And that, as Billy Vail had said to Longarm, “is what is going to put you in Laredo.”

Billy had been about to give his deputy some of the details, but Longarm had waved him away, saying, “Naw. Save that for Davis. Them few little facts is about all he’s going to get to tell me, and I’d hate to deprive him of the chance of swelling around and feeling important.”

Billy Vail had looked a little worried. “Now, Longarm,” he’d said, “we ain’t ever had no killing between our marshals. You ain’t fixing to break that string, are you?”

Longarm leaned back fretfully in the coach seat and yawned. He stared at the blackness out the window, relieved only here and there by a pinpoint of light. Would the damn train, he wondered, ever get to San Antonio? Hell, as bored as he was, he was even beginning to look forward to seeing Austin Davis.

Chapter 2

To Longarm’s great surprise Austin Davis was there to meet him when the train finally pulled in to San Antonio a little before eleven at night. He was waiting on the passenger platform and he came forward as soon as he spied Longarm. He said, putting out his hand, “Hell, Grammaw was slow but she was old. Where the hell you been, Marshal.”

Longarm had to put his saddle down to shake Davis’s hand. He had his saddlebags in the other hand with a small valise hung off his thumb. It was awkward, but if Davis wanted to shake hands instead of getting part of the load, Longarm wasn’t going to complain. He hadn’t made the trip expecting any fun. “How are you, Austin,” he said, “Still wearing that border hat, I see.”

Davis was wearing a black, flat-crowned, stiff-brimmed hat favored by the kind of men who hung around the border for their health. He was also wearing a soft black leather vest with silver conchos for buttons. Davis shook hands and then touched the brim of his hat. “Hell,” he explained, “I got to stay in the role. I’m supposed to be a border desperado dealing in illegal cattle. Supposed to be a bad man.”

Longarm picked up his saddle and slung it over his shoulder. His thumb was about to break off holding the small valise the way he had it. “it suits you,” he told the junior deputy.

“What, the hat?”

“Naw, acting like a desperado. I ain’t so sure but what you ain’t. But if you don’t get this valise off my thumb, you’re going to be a bad man in pain.”

Austin Davis jumped around and took the valise, relieving the pressure on Longarm’s thumb. “Well, hell, why didn’t you say you needed some help? Last time I helped you without you asking, you like to have taken my head off.”

Longarm just gave him a glance. “I want a steak and a bath and a bed,” he said.

Davis chuckled softly. He had a pleasant voice when he chose to use it. “I got you all set. I know you’re a man who likes his comfort. We got rooms over at the Gunther Hotel. Ain’t two blocks from here. And the cook will still be there. I warned him there was a bad ol’ bear coming to town and if he didn’t get a steak or two, he might eat the hotel and everybody in it.”

“Well, that’s a fair start, Davis,” Longarm said. “Could be we’ll get out of this with you still alive. That is if somebody else don’t kill you.”

Davis laughed. “Yeah, and I’m glad to see you, too. Hell, I was scairt you might have changed and turned human. I bet ol’ Billy Vail had to twist your arm plumb off to get you to come down here.”

Longarm looked at him. “Hell, I heard it the other way around. The way Billy told it, you wanted anybody but me. Somebody, I reckon, who didn’t know all your sly ways.”

“Billy’s sly ways,” Davis corrected. “This is kind of a tricky setup we’re going into and I told him I didn’t reckon was anybody else but you could pull it off.”

They had left the train depot and were walking down the street toward the hotel. Longarm stopped dead. “Now listen, smooth-mouth,” he said, “that kind of silver tongue bullshit might sell in some markets, but it won’t fit me. I ain’t rising to that kind of bait.”

Davis shrugged. “You can believe me or not. Don’t make a damn bit of difference to me. Things have changed since you swore me in in Mason County. Now I wear the same badge as you do and they ain’t no place on the back of it where they stamp in the years you got in the saddle. Me and you is equal, partner, and you can like that or lump it. I ain’t smooth-mouthing you about nothing. I don’t have to. I asked for you and that is a fact. And by the time we are halfway through this little deal I expect, unless you get taken by a serious case of the dumbs, that you will see why. But, like I say, it’s all the same to me. We ain’t got to be friendly.” With that, he turned and continued walking toward the hotel, his back very straight and rigid.

Longarm, startled, stared after him for a moment. Finally, when he could find his voice, he yelled, “Hey, wait a damn minute! Davis! Hold up there, you sonofabitch!”

Austin Davis slowed and stopped some ten yards down the street. He turned halfway around. He was still holding Longarm’s valise in his hand. “What?” he said.

Longarm walked toward him. When he’d arrived so that they were facing each other he unslung the saddle from his shoulder and dropped it at Davis’s feet. Staring the other man flat in the face, he said, “I have carried that saddle better than halfway from the station. If we’re going to be partners, it seems only right that you carry it the rest of the way.”

Austin Davis stared back for a half a moment. Finally he shrugged and said, “All right. That sounds square.” But before he bent to pick up the saddle, he held out the valise. “But then you ought to take this.”

“Fine,” Longarm said stiffly.

Austin Davis picked up the saddle and slung it over his shoulder. “The hotel is just another block yonder,” he said.

“I know where the damn Gunther Hotel is as well as you do.”

“You still ain’t shucks as a poker player.”

“Listen,” Longarm said with some heat, “before this job is over I am going to have every cent you got and a lien on your next year’s salary.”

Davis replied amiably, “You just keep on dreaming, partner. And I wouldn’t count on no comfort from the ladies, not while I’m around.”

As they resumed walking toward the hotel, Longarm said, “If you’re a real good boy I might let you have some of my leavings so far as the females are concerned. But I can guarantee you they will be gnawed down to the bone by the time I’m through with them.”

“My, my. That is brave talk for a man of your years. You sure you got the strength for it?”

“If we don’t get to that hotel and get me a steak, you will shortly find out about my strength. And I just hope you haven’t already got the situation screwed up where I can’t save it. I’m down here to do a job and I can only hope you don’t get in the way with your big feet.”

The Gunther was an old institution in San Antonio, known for miles around as the best cattleman’s hotel in the West. It had a big, spacious lobby with a first-class bar that served liquors and whiskeys not found in the ordinary saloon. Their rooms were of good size and their restaurant was famous for the quality of its menu. A man could walk across the Gunther’s marble floor, go up to the desk, drop his saddle, and say what he wanted and expect to have it happen faster than he could put his name in the hotel registry. When Longarm told the clerk what he wanted, the man just nodded and snapped his fingers. In an instant porters were there to relieve him of his gear and luggage and the clerk recommended they have his supper, following which, Longarm’s bath would be waiting for him in his room. And if he didn’t feel like shaving himself or wanted his hair cut, the clerk would have a barber sent up.

And that at eleven o’clock at night.

As they went into the dining room Longarm said, “These folks know how to run a hotel. I come in here one morning at about three A.M. with a bullet in my side and a terrible thirst for some goat’s milk. I guess I was half out of my head with the wound, but it seemed like somebody had told me goat’s milk would keep your strength up. Well I don’t know how they did it, but they had a glass of goat’s milk in my hand before the doctor arrived to take the slug out of me.” He made a face. “My word, I can still taste that damn goat’s milk. But I drank it. Man gets an idea in his head, he can’t shake it. I asked the doctor about it later and he said he’d thought it was a little strange to find a gunshot victim drinking goat’s milk, but he figured it was probably some kind of superstition. Said it wouldn’t hurt me, but he doubted it would have done me as much good as getting the bullet out.”

Austin Davis gave him a glance. “Is they a point to that story?”

Longarm shrugged. They had come to the big double doors of the dining room. A uniformed waiter was hurrying toward them. “Naw, not really,” Longarm said. “Just makes me wonder how many other hotels there are around could come up with a doctor and a glass of goat’s milk at three in the morning.”

“Not many, I’d guess,” Davis remarked dryly.

The waiter came up and said, “Mister Davis, I seen y’all when you come in the lobby. I done told the cook and he’s already got y’all’s steaks on. Big T-bones. Got some potatoes and some corn, and some apple dumpling for desert with sweet cream. Let me get y’all set down an’ I’ll bring you what you need from the bar.”

As they followed the waiter, Longarm said to Austin Davis, “See what I mean? They not only can produce a glass of goat’s milk, they can remember you.”

Austin Davis looked amused. “Wasn’t my face that they remembered. Was that of Abraham Lincoln.”

“What are you talking about?”

Davis sat down in the chair the waiter had pulled out for him. “That’s the face on the five-dollar bill I gave him to remember.”

“Don’t be so careless with my money,” Longarm said. “I got plans for it.”

“Your money? How you figure that?”

Longarm smiled thinly. “When this job is over, sonny boy, I’m going to send you home with nothing but lint in your pockets and a vow in your heart to never play poker with the big boys again.”

Austin Davis yawned. “In your dreams, Marshal.”

“So how does it fall out?” Longarm asked.

He was in a galvanized tub, soaking the train tiredness out of his bones in the hot water. Austin Davis was sitting on the bed, drinking whiskey out of a glass and smoking a cigarillo.

“Well, Jay Caster is the man we want. He’s the chief customs inspector for all the cattle that cross the border at Laredo. There are other custom folks there dealing in other matters, but he is the honcho on the cattle and the horses and any other kind of livestock that has to be quarantined. He’s got about four other men working for him, but only one of them is a customs officer. The rest are just Mexican hired hands that work the livestock.”

Longarm reached an arm outside the tub, and found the bottle of whiskey sitting there. He poured a measure in his glass, took a sip, and worked it around in his mouth. A tooth had been bothering him lately and he hoped to hell it wasn’t going to get serious. There were damn few things he was out-and-out scared of, but a dentist was one of them. “You reckon the rest of them are in it with him?” he asked Davis.

Davis took a puff on his cigarillo. “They’d have to be.” He blew a smoke ring. “Hell, moving a herd of cattle around ain’t like palming the ace of spades.”

“Well, how does he do it? I mean, does he just get paid off and then clear the cattle right on through without even the show of a quarantine?”

“Naw. Nothing so raw as that. He puts up a front. It ain’t a good one, but it seems to satisfy his superiors. That, by the way, is the crux of the matter. How far uphill does the water run? Caster is crooked. We ain’t going to have no trouble proving that. But he’s got a boss. In Brownsville. And that boss has got a boss. In Galveston. So just how high up the tree are the branches rotten? Boss on top of a boss, right on up to Washington, D.C., I reckon.”

Longarm took another mouthful of whiskey and soaked his tooth in it. After a moment he swallowed and said, “Why don’t we just catch one crook at a time? The whole thing kind of irritates me, anyway. Why doesn’t the damn Customs Service clean up their own messes? Hell, we got other hooligans to gather up.”

“The way I get it,” Davis said, “the cattlemen complained about them diseased herds coming through and infecting their cattle and the customs folks never gave them no relief. Claimed the herds must have been wet, illegal, though any damn fool knows you can’t get twenty miles in this country driving a herd up from the south without proper papers. But the more they complained, the more the customs folks said it couldn’t be none of their bunch doing anything wrong since they was all good boys and put a dime in the collection plate every Sunday.”

Longarm glanced over at Davis. “Reckon they’ve been laying behind the log?”

Davis nodded. “I would reckon. I would reckon they’ve been looking out for each other. Been a little back-scratching going on to my way of thinking.”

“And we got called in how?”

“Cattlemen went to their legislators and asked did they want to keep their soft jobs or get voted out next election. The senators and congressmen got right on to our outfit and that’s how come you’re taking a bath in San Antonio and I’m sitting on this here bed.”

Longarm gave a little bark of laughter. “You do have a way of cutting right to the nub of the situation, Austin. But you ain’t told me yet how this Caster fellow passes the illegal herds through without being so damn obvious about it. Does he just hand out paper giving them a clean bill of health and let them wade on across?”

Davis shook his head. “Even he couldn’t get away with that. The herds have got to come through the port of entry, as they call it, at Laredo. They got to actually cross the International Bridge there. They get a trail brand, or mark, to see them through the border country and on up toward the north where most of them are bound. To the railheads, to Oklahoma, Kansas, wherever.”

“So how does it work? I’ve seen the big corrals around the bridge. Here and down at Brownsville. I guess there’s one up at Eagle Pass also.”

Davis took another drink of whiskey. “Yeah, they get put in the holding corrals. They got a system the way they handle the situation. As you can well imagine they is one hell of a lot of cattle comes in to the quarantine stations. I mean in the thousands. What they do, when a fresh herd comes in, is slap a daub of paint on the side of each head of beef. It’s red paint for them coming in new and getting ready to be penned up for ninety days. After that, they stage the herds. The ones moving up, getting ready to go out in another thirty days, gets a daub of white paint. Then, when those cattle are free and done their time, they get slapped with a swipe of green paint. Maybe you’ve seen that on herds down here in South Texas. It wears off pretty quick, but some of it can still be seen after a time.”

Longarm scratched his chin. He’d shaved while in the bath and the razor had nicked the point of his jaw. “Yeah, I’ve seen that,” he said. “What’s that got to do with us? Looks like a good way of keeping up with the inventory.”

Davis shrugged. “There’s a lot of folks around, watching those herds. Caster can’t just run a herd in, slap it with green paint, and then run it across the bridge. Too many interested parties.”

Longarm stepped out of the bath, picked up a towel, and began drying himself. “So he’s got some sly way of going about it, is that what you’re saying?”

Davis nodded and exhaled a cloud of blue smoke. “Oh, yes. And he does it right under folks’ noses, too. You’re getting the floor wet.”

Longarm gave him a look. “How the hell am I supposed to get out of a bathtub without dripping on the floor? Hell, they expect such things. What is this cute way Caster’s got?”

Davis pondered for a moment, studying the tip of his cigarillo. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

Longarm threw his towel down, took a clean pair of jeans off a chair, sat down, and began pulling them on. “You what?”

“I said I don’t know.” Davis gestured with the glass in his hand. “Don’t you wear no underclothes?”

“Naw.”

“How come?”

Longarm glared at him. “How come? What the hell business is that of yours? I never wore underwear because I never seen the need. Besides, it gets crosswise and rides up on you. But what the hell has that got to do with a bribe-taking custom inspector? I thought you had this play all figured out. How come you don’t know how he does it?”

Davis stood up and walked to the bedside table where there was another bottle of whiskey. He poured a little more liquor in his glass, then said, “Because I just don’t. He’s slick, damn slick. And there are an awful lot of cattle in an awful lot of pens and they get moved around. One day a bunch is in one pen with white paint on ‘em, and the next day they’ve moved clear on around to a pen at the bridge and are wearing green paint and getting their papers. I’ve watched for two weeks, and I still can’t see how he’s been doing it.”

“You sure somebody hasn’t made you for the law?”

Davis shook his head. “No. I ain’t showed a badge around here in two months. Anybody I’ve run into that knowed me before don’t know I’m a federal officer. Caster puts this show on for everybody. I think he naturally expects the law to be watching him and he goes along under that assumption. I know he’s moving cattle out of here illegally, because I’ve seen it done. I’ve picked me out a few steers from a fresh herd that I was pretty sure would be bribed through. Knew it from what I’d heard. And I’ve watched those steers as close as I could, allowing for a few hours of sleep and eating, you understand. Somehow they got from the red paint to the green in a week and were on their way. But I still don’t know how it happened. Thousand head.” He put his head back and took a long drink.

“Huh!” Longarm said. “This is sounding more like it. But you said there wouldn’t be no problem proving this Caster is crooked. You said your big worry was how far up the tree we could reach. Now it sounds like you ain’t even got anything on Caster.”

Austin Davis laughed. “Oh, hell, he’ll be easy. I got a herd being put together about fifty miles south of Laredo. When I bring them up I’ll simply bribe the sonofabitch and arrest him at the same time. But that’s just Caster. I’d like to get his boss in Brownsville.”

Longarm was pulling on his boots. “I can’t believe that man can get a thousand head of cattle past me without me seeing how he’s doing it. Like you said, it ain’t like palming an ace.”

Davis said patiently, “We don’t have to know how he’s doing it. All I got to do is catch him in an illegal act, like taking a bribe. Or we could follow one steer and see how he manages to move up to the green corral so quick. I’ll tell you one thing it ain’t hard to tell the cattle that ain’t being bribed through. They stand around and stand around and stand around. Get damn little feed and less water. You can watch them losing flesh in the course of one afternoon. I think Caster does it to drum up business. It’s the same as saying, Hand over the cash or sit and watch your cattle wilt away.”

Longarm stood up and stomped his boots on the floor, settling them to his feet. “This still an all night town?” he asked.

“Oh, yes,” Davis replied, “You can get anything at midnight that you can get at noon. Why?”

Longarm picked up a clean shirt and started putting it on. “I reckoned we’d go out and play a few hands of poker. Kind of put our ear to the ground. I don’t know about you, Austin, but damned if I’m content to just arrest that man. If he’s stacking the deck, I want to find out how. And I intend to do so before we put his ass in jail. Ain’t a sonofabitch alive can slip a herd by me.”

“You do know it’s after midnight?” Austin Davis yawned. “A good bit past midnight.”

“You ain’t got to go. Where you bunking?”

Austin jerked his thumb. “Next room. How we going to play this? Do we know each other?”

Longarm thought a moment. “Hell yes, I don’t see why not. You’re the man bringing in the herd. I’m the fellow what is buying them. Gives me a reason to be in on all the transactions. You coming?”

“Not without it’s an order. I been up since four this morning. I don’t hanker for no night life right now.”

“Then I reckon I’ll see you for breakfast. We can talk it over a bit more then. What time?”

Davis shrugged. “You’re going to be out late. Say eight o’clock?”

“I’ll be too hungry by then. Say seven.”

Davis yawned again and stood up. “Well,” he said, “you try not to get into no trouble before I’m up good and had my coffee. We still got a few things to talk about.”

“Seems to me the main thing is how we’re going to reach up the tree and get one more branch.”

“That would be it.” Davis stretched his hands over his head. “Hell, I’m plumb give out. I’d of thought you’d be the same.”

“I been cooped up on a damn train all day. I got to get out and see a little of the world up close before I can unwind. Besides, I ain’t been in South Texas in a time. I need to get used to the place again, even if this is just San Antonio.”

Austin Davis was at the door. He turned the knob and shook his head. “That,” he said, “ain’t going to happen. I been in this country on and off for twenty-five years and I ain’t got used to it yet. You don’t understand this place, you just try and survive it. Wear your eyes and ears out there. They is folks walking around will kill you for the boots on your feet, let alone your revolver and what change they think might be in your pockets. And we’re still a hundred and eighty miles from the bad part.”

Longarm said dryly, “I’ll be real careful, Marshal Davis. Wouldn’t want to bring no discredit on you. You lose a senior deputy the first day on the job, wouldn’t look good on your record. What time is our train for Laredo tomorrow?”

“Supposed to leave at eleven. Most times it does. I ain’t kidding about this town. San Antonio ain’t the border, but it’s still Mexico on both sides.”

“What about horses? I could requisition some mounts at one of these calvary stations right here. We could hire a stock car.”

“I got the horse situation all tended to,” Davis said. He pulled the door open. “See you at breakfast.”

“I hope you understand I am mighty particular about my riding stock,” Longarm said.

Austin Davis gave him a slow smile. “Tell me, Marshal, just what ain’t you mighty particular about?”

When Davis was gone, Longarm buckled on his gun belt. He carried a Colt .44 caliber with a six-inch barrel. He had another of the same model in his saddlebags, only with a nine-inch barrel. He seldom had use for it, but when he did, it was a mighty handy instrument for a distance that was a little too long for regular pistol work but too close for a rifle.

His gun belt featured a big, concave silver buckle. From the outside it appeared to be an ordinary if somewhat outsized buckle. But inside the curve of the buckle there was just enough room to conceal a .38 caliber derringer, kept in place by a strong steel spring. It had saved his life more than once. His lever-action carbine was the same caliber as his Colt revolver, which eliminated the necessity of buying different ammunition.

Lastly he put on his hat, a high-crowned pearl-gray beauty with a four-and-a-half-inch brim that curved up gracefully. It was a new hat and had cost him $45. Billy Vail had predicted it would be a wreck before he got back to town, but Longarm had vowed that this was one hat that was not going to see hard usage as most of his hats did. Billy Vail had just laughed.

He left his room and walked through the lobby, his boot heels echoing loudly in the deserted expanse. All around were big, overstuffed chairs and divans. In the morning they would be occupied by cattlemen talking business, but now those buyers and sellers were in bed, sleeping the sleep of men who knew they could trade cattle or horses with the best of them.

Longarm stepped out into the cool night. He stood a moment orienting himself. Some three blocks away was the big Military Plaza. When Texas had been a province of Mexico, the plaza had been a parade ground where the Mexican calvary had wheeled and maneuvered. Now it was a bricked-over park with trees and fountains and benches. But it was still bordered by the governor’s mansion and other government buildings that had been taken over by the Republic of Texas and later by the state when Texas entered the Union.

Longarm turned left out of the hotel and began walking in the general direction of the center of town. Even though it was late, he could see several saloons going full blast. There were not many people on the streets, but now and again he met a man walking or a woman sidling along, practicing her profession. Occasionally a horseman went by.

Peering in the window of the first saloon he passed, Longarm decided it looked like poor pickings and continued up the street. He really didn’t intend to stay out late. He’d simply been cooped up too long on the train and felt the urgent need to get out and stretch his legs. As he walked along, he mulled over the problem of the cattle inspector in Laredo. On the surface it seemed pretty easy, but Longarm was damned if he could figure how Jay Caster moved whole herds around without being obvious about it. As much as Longarm hated to admit it, Austin Davis was no slouch and if he hadn’t caught on to how it was done, it was a gut cinch that they had a job of work cut out for them.

He stepped into the second saloon he came to and stood at the bar for a drink of inferior whiskey while he looked over a couple of tables where poker was being played. After a few hands had been dealt, he could tell both were limit games and not worth his trouble. He preferred a dollar ante, pot limit game. It was the only way a man could use his money as a weapon. If you couldn’t bet enough to make a man check his character, you might as well turn all the cards face up and just play to see who had the best luck. Luck wasn’t something a real poker player counted on. Poker was a game of skill and science, requiring a thorough knowledge of human nature. Longarm had had some of his biggest nights when he never made a hand better than two pair.

He paid for his whiskey, leaving it half undrunk and then stepped out of the saloon and started for the next block. It was a dark area and, just as he was passing an alley, he heard a voice, close by, say, “Psst! Hey! You there!”

Longarm stopped. The mouth of the alley was dark to almost black, but he was able to make out a form there, for the man who’d hailed him was standing no more than ten feet away. Longarm also caught the glint of something in the man’s hand. “You talking to me?” he asked.

“See anybody else?”

“What do you want?”

The man chuckled hoarsely. “Now what you reckon I want? I want what’s in yore pockets. And I reckon I wouldn’t move was I you. I’m holding steady on yore middle, an’ I’ll blow a hole through you a horse could climb through if you so much as bat an eye.”

“You robbing me? Is that it?”

“Enough of this palaver. Turn out yore pockets an’ be damn quick ‘bout it. And while you be at it, move over this way a mite. An’ I wouldn’t let my hand git near my iron was I you. I ain’t gonna miss at this range.”

Longarm said calmly, trying to see the robber more clearly, “You better pick an easier target, mister.”

“You just never mind tellin’ me my bid’ness. You just turn and face me so’s I can see whatever is in yore mind and put a stop to it before you git up to mischief.”

Slowly, Longarm turned to his left. He knew that the man was going to order him to drop his gun, and he knew that once you let a situation start getting bad it never got better by itself. As he came fully around to face the man, he suddenly let his left leg collapse, falling full length toward the boardwalk on his side. As he fell, he heard the sharp explosion of the robber’s pistol, saw the orange-red flame of the shot erupt in the night, and heard the whiz of the bullet through the space where he had been standing.

But he was drawing as he fell. Before his left shoulder hit the boardwalk, his revolver was in his hand, the hammer back, the barrel aimed at the spot he’d seen the muzzle-flash. He fired, the hammer of the gun slamming back in his palm. Over the echo of his own shot he heard a muffled “Hmmmmph!” as the man grunted. From the sound, Longarm knew that his bullet had found solid flesh and, more than likely, bone.

He lay a second, letting his eyes come back into focus from the blinding flash of his shot. As he stared into the alley his eyes gradually adjusted to the dark. At first he couldn’t see anything. But then, looking closer, he saw what appeared to be a heap of old clothes lying on the ground in the mouth of the alley. For half a moment Longarm lay still, his revolver covering the heap, watching for any sign of movement. None came and he slowly got to his feet and advanced on the fallen man. He lay on his side, his revolver nearby in the dust. With his boot toe Longarm turned him over. He could see, from the dark stain on the fellow’s shirt, where his bullet had struck home, midway up the chest and just to the left of the breastbone. The impact would have knocked the man down and probably killed him before he could hit the ground.

Longarm reached down, picked up the man’s pistol, and stuck it in his belt. He looked at the man’s face. It wasn’t anyone he’d ever seen before; just one more robber in a town full of robbers.

He sighed and said softly, “Damn, damn, damn!” For a moment he was tempted to just walk away and leave the body. But he couldn’t do that. Someone else, some innocent party, might be charged in the shooting. No, as much as he hated it, there wasn’t but one course of action open to him. He’d have to go to the local law. The least of that was that it would take time and put him to bed later. The worst was that it would call attention to himself and his presence in South Texas. But there was no help for it; it had to be done. He sighed again and started toward the downtown section, where he reckoned the sheriff or police office would be. So much for a relaxing walk and a quiet drink and a few hands of poker. Why hadn’t the stupid sonofabitch waited for an easier mark? Why did he have to pick on a U.S. deputy marshal? Well, Longarm decided, it was just bad luck for both of them.

Chapter 3

Longarm waited until they’d finished breakfast and were on their first smoke and second cup of coffee before he related what had happened the night before. When he was through, Austin Davis raised his eyebrows slightly and whistled. “Well, I’d have to say you done the town up a little better than what I was expecting.”

“Hold the comments to yourself,” Longarm said. “What do you reckon? Am I exposed? I know how tight this country is around here. What do you think? You figure we can proceed as planned?”

Davis thought a moment, then said, “Hell, Longarm, I don’t rightly know. I got to say there is a well-worn path between San Antonio and Laredo. They might be a hundred and eighty miles apart, but I swear you can see a man in Laredo one day and then run into him the next right here in San Antonio. They’ve been hooked together for two hundred years, back when this was part of Mexico. But I hate to abandon the plan we got, because I don’t know of another one. How many you reckon saw you or heard about you?”

Longarm shook his head, remembering. “Like I told you, I went over to the jailhouse. Sheriff wasn’t there, but a couple of deputies were on duty. I told them what had happened, hoping I could get out of the business without declaring myself. But I was a stranger to them and they weren’t about to take me at my word. They insisted on sending for the sheriff, and away we went with all boilers blasting. Sheriff come down, and then me and about half a dozen deputies went around to look at the body. Collected quite a little crowd.”

“But they still didn’t know at that point who you were?”

“Naw,” Longarm said. “I just give my name as Long and hadn’t said anything else. The feller I killed was known to them as a small-time crook around town. But what caused the trouble was they insisted he’d never tried armed robbery before, and kind of took the attitude I might have just shot him for the hell of it. Wasn’t nothing but my word that he’d been holding a gun on me. Naturally I’d turned it in when I got to the jailhouse, but they took the position that that didn’t mean he’d ever been holding the gun and threatening me with it. In fact, they come about as close to calling me a liar as you can get.”

Davis smiled slightly. “I reckon they couldn’t understand how you could kill a man who already has the drop on you and your weapon is in your holster. I can see how they’d wonder about that.”

“Naturally that point got made. The way they were going on I could see it wouldn’t be long before they decided I’d been robbing the dead man and had killed him to keep matters clean.” Longarm shook his head. “Just was bad luck.”

Davis blew a smoke ring into the air. “I reckon the dead man might have been thinking along the same lines if he could have been thinking.”

“Well, I finally had to own up,” Longarm said. “I got the sheriff aside, hoping to limit the publicity, and kind of told him on the quiet and showed him my badge.” He made a disgusted sound. “For all the good that done. We was back in the office by then and it didn’t take ten seconds for word to get around that I was a federal marshal.”

“Did they know you? Recognize the name?”

Longarm looked up at the ceiling and sighed. “Sometimes I don’t think matters shake out fair. I’ve been a very good marshal. That ought to have been enough.”

“I take it they knew you.”

“It’s that damn nickname of mine. I wish I’d never heard the word Longarm. I’d like to find the man that first pinned that on me and do him a great harm.”

“How many you reckon heard about you?”

Longarm grimaced. “No telling,” he said. “I reckon they was a dozen collected together there in the sheriff’s office.”

“All law?”

“Oh, hell no! Bunch of them wasn’t nothing but loungers and busybodies and I don’t know what all. So if a dozen heard it, how many you reckon knows this morning that a U.S. deputy marshal is in this part of the country?”

Davis laughed ruefully. “Enough so if they was voters you could get elected mayor. This is a talking town. This whole part of the country is talking towns.” He shook his head and put his cigarillo out in his saucer.

Longarm looked across the crowded hotel dining room. “Damn!” he swore.

“The famous Marshal Longarm,” Davis said waggishly. “I reckon I’d heard about you for ten years before I finally clapped eyes on you in Mason. I figured you to be nine feet tall.”

“Cut it out,” Longarm said.

“Hell, some of them stories I heard about you would have stretched the mind of the world’s biggest sucker. But they was told for the truth.”

Longarm gave him a cool look. “I didn’t make the stories up, sonny boy.”

“I’d hope not. Hell, if you’d run down and caught every crook I heard about, there wouldn’t be a horse left alive in the Southwest. You’d have ridden them all to death.”

Longarm smiled slightly. “All right, all right. Let’s get off that. You’re the man on the scene. What do you think this does to our plan?”

Davis leaned back in his chair and took the time to light another cigarillo. After a moment he said, “Well, they know there’s a federal marshal in San Antonio, and folks in Laredo will hear about it and they’ll figure that the marshal will naturally come on down to see them. But there ain’t no reason for anybody in Laredo to suspect that the marshal is you. Not unless you kill another alley robber. I mean, your name is a hell of a lot better known than your face. I can’t see any reason anyone would recognize you. You say there was a dozen men at the jail last night? What’s the odds on them, anyone of them, showing up in Laredo and being there at exactly the wrong time? Pretty slim, I’d say. Naw, I don’t see no reason to alter our plans.”

Longarm said, with feeling, “If there’s a chance it could cause matters to go wrong, I won’t take it amiss if we bring in another man. We can wire Billy Vail and have somebody else on the next train.”

Austin Davis glanced across the table at Longarm, then said evenly, “You really don’t want to work with me, do you?”

Longarm pulled his head back to look at Davis from a greater distance. “I didn’t say that. Where’d you get that idea? You reckon I went out and got in that shooting scrape to get out of working with you?”

“You been passing remarks ever since I picked you up at the train. Ain’t no skin off my nose either way.”

Longarm looked at Davis coolly. “Speaking of skin,” he said, “thin skin don’t go with this job. It don’t turn no bullets. You understand me?”

“I understand you appeared to be looking for a way out of the job. You was quick enough to talk about wiring Billy Vail.”

Longarm sat still for a moment, not speaking, not doing anything. Finally he said, “Davis, I’m the one wrote the recommendation that got you into the U.S. Marshal Service. I don’t do that for men I don’t trust with my life and who I don’t want to work with. Now, you either get this idea out of your mind about me or we will have to figure out something else right here and now.”

The junior deputy stayed his hand as he was about to take a puff on his cigarillo. He was sitting slightly sideways to Longarm. Glancing at him, he said, “You actually wrote me a letter of recommendation?”

“You just heard me say it, didn’t you?”

“Hmmmm …” Davis said. “That kind of puts a whole new light on the matter. Maybe you ain’t all that bad of a feller after all. I reckon I’ll have to take back some of them things I been spreading around about you.”

Longarm cocked his head. “Do you ever plan to get serious? We got us a job to do.”

Davis blew out a cloud of blue smoke. “I’m trying to say I’m sorry and to thank you, you dumb sonofabitch. Yes, I can get serious. Now, if you ain’t going to run out on me and head back to Denver, where you ain’t got no competition for the poontang, I reckon we better settle our bill here, get packed and get out of this hotel and catch a train. You do realize we’re going to Laredo, don’t you?”

Longarm got up. The hot coffee had started his tooth to acting up again and he wanted to get to his room and give it a dose of whiskey. “If I’ve got to go anywhere with you,” he said, “I reckon I’d just as soon it be Laredo. Even you can’t make a trip to that hellhole any worse.”

“Listen,” Davis replied, “don’t put the knock on Laredo. I’ve been hanging around there for two months. With a little help I might be able to make myself go back.”

As they stepped into the lobby, Longarm said, “I’ll meet you back here in half an hour.”

Davis was starting toward the desk. “It’s still two hours till train time,” he said. “You reckon you can go that long without killing anybody?”

Longarm didn’t pause. “So long as you stay out of my sight I can.” But he couldn’t enjoy the banter for the pain in his tooth. It was getting worse and he cursed his luck as he strode down the hall toward his room. The only thing he could think of that was worse than being in Laredo was being in Laredo with a toothache. For a moment he wondered if he had time to go to a dentist while they were still in San Antonio, but he immediately put the thought aside. Better to suffer a little longer than go straight to the sure hell of a dentist’s chair.

As he gathered up his few belongings, Longarm couldn’t stop worrying about the previous night’s experience. He knew it was just an unlucky break but he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was some kind of bad omen. He wasn’t, by nature, a superstitious man, but he wished reverently that the incident had happened some other time. He and Austin Davis were going into a delicate and potentially explosive situation. Anytime you tried to catch officials in a fellow service and not only shut them down but put them in jail, you were taking on an extra load of law work that usually didn’t go with the job. If you made one misstep or didn’t play it exactly by the book, making damn certain you had your evidence cold and in black and white, you could come up against a storm. The Marshal Service was part of government, as was the Customs Service, and anytime you got to messing around with government that meant politics and politicians and beaurocracy and all the back room dealing you could imagine in your worst nightmare. If they didn’t catch Caster and his henchmen clean and sure and square, Longarm hated to think of the trouble they’d be in. It would make being in the middle of a tornado seem like a ride in a front porch swing. so the last thing he wanted was to have inadvertently called attention to himself beforehand. But maybe it was nothing, he told himself. Maybe he was just being over anxious. By the time he’d soaked his tooth in several mouthfuls of whiskey and then swallowed the whiskey, the situation no longer seemed so worrisome. Whiskey, he noted, had a way of giving you that feeling. He also had serious doubts that young Mister Austin Davis really knew what kind of bad country they were heading into. Davis hadn’t been a marshal long enough to have had the pleasure of arresting a well-placed government officer. He probably thought a crook was a crook and handcuffs fitted a circuit court judge just as easily as they did a horse thief. Mister Davis had an education coming.

The train pulled out of the station no more than fifteen minutes late. They had a five-hour ride ahead of them. The coach had not been crowded and they’d managed to get one of the double sets of chairs that faced each other. Longarm took the side facing the engine because he didn’t like to ride backwards. Austin Davis sat down across from him and piled his duffle and some paper parcels in the empty seat at his side. Longarm nodded at the parcels. “What’s all that?” he asked.

Davis yawned. “Oh, I took the opportunity to buy a few clothes. You can’t get nothing in Laredo.”

Longarm’s eyebrows went up. “More clothes? Lord, as near as I can tell you already got more clothes than any four men I know.” Davis was wearing his soft black leather vest with the silver conchos down the front. Longarm nodded at it. “What’d you pay for that vest? I bet a family of four could live six months off the price of it.”

“Was a gift,” Davis said. He smiled. “Lady give it to me. Sort of a thank you present.”

“What for? Getting out of town?”

The train rolled along. For the first fifty miles, running due south, the country was hilly and rolling and covered with oak and sycamore and elm. It was more brushy than pastoral, but now and again a green valley could be seen, decorated with cattle and horses. Then, abruptly, they came out of the hill country and entered the southern plains. The land turned increasingly and with every passing mile. The oak and elm disappeared to be replaced with mesquite groves and greasewood thickets. Longarm had the window up and it seemed to him that the temperature had risen ten degrees as soon as they’d plunged into the rough rangeland.

“Pretty, ain’t it?” Davis said.

Longarm looked out at the drab scene. “How the hell does anyone raise cattle in this scrub?”

Davis said, “They don’t. Not in this part anyway. This is called the big brassada, the big brush country. There’s old mossy-horned longhorns back in them thickets might have got off the ark with Noah. They can make a living here, but ain’t no other cow or critter can seem to. No, but you go fifty miles east and you’re in the coastal plains and that is rich country. Muy rico. That’s where the big cattle ranches are in this part of the country, and that’s where the hombres live who are kicking up a storm about those diseased Mexican cattle that are being driven through their range.”

Longarm glanced out the window again. “Why don’t them as is driving illegal cattle take them through here?”

“No water. No grass. You ever tried to drive a thousand cattle a hundred miles without water or grass? It’s a little better to the west, and sometimes somebody will try and sneak a wet herd through there, heading for the railhead or maybe trying to get them to Fort Worth or someplace they can sell them without being pressed too close about the origin of the cattle or what paper the sellers got.”

Longarm reached beside him in the seat and uncorked the bottle of whiskey he had handy. He took a mouthful and let it deaden his tooth for a moment. Then he swallowed and said, “What makes it worthwhile for a man to go to all this much trouble? The prices that different?”

Austin Davis nodded. “I would reckon. You can buy steers in Mexico for between six and seven dollars. They’ll bring twenty dollars in Fort Worth and thirty if you can get them to Abilene, Kansas. Most settle for railhead delivery at the first point they can make north of San Antonio—Waco, or Austin or some such. Ain’t no use trying to sell cattle in San Antonio. That place is already full to overflowing with wet beef.”

Longarm took another swig of whiskey, held it in his mouth for a moment or two, and swallowed it. “Well, now I can see where it’s worth the while of cattle crooks to bribe the customs folks. You got any idea what they’re getting? What the going rate is for not quarantining cattle?”

Austin Davis was studying Longarm intently. “You got a toothache?”

Longarm said quickly, “You just never mind about my teeth. I asked you about the customs people. What do they get for their work?”

Ignoring the question, Davis said, “Ain’t nothing more bothersome than a toothache. Man can’t concentrate on his work. We gonna have to get you to a dentist first thing we get to Laredo. That whiskey trick won’t work long enough for the water to get hot. I know, I’ve tried it.”

“Listen,” Longarm said with heat, “I ain’t going to say this but once more. You forget all about my teeth. And I ain’t going to no dentist! Now, tell me about the customs inspector.”

“Just trying to help,” Davis said, looking put off. He thought a moment. “Caster ain’t really got a set price. It depends on how many cattle you got and how fast you want them through. I’ve heard if you’ve got a thousand head and you want them straight on through—that takes about a week—the going price is about three dollars a head. If you can afford to feed them for a couple or three weeks, he’ll come down to two dollars. Less chance of him getting caught that way. If you only want to halve the ninety days, he’ll accommodate you for as little as a dollar and a half a head. That is if you got enough cattle.”

Longarm cocked his head and whistled. “That ain’t bad pickings.”

“Especially if you reckon on how many cattle pass through there a month. Caster ain’t getting it all, but I roughed it out at about a minimum of five thousand dollars a month. That kind of money would make a judge turn crooked.”

Longarm looked out the window. “I arrested a judge once,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“But he was just a county judge, so that didn’t amount to anything.” He paused and then shook his head slowly. “But once I arrested a federal bank examiner.” He let out a sigh and shook his head again.

Austin Davis waited a moment, and when Longarm didn’t go on, he said impatiently, “Yeah, so you arrested a federal bank examiner. What about it?”

Longarm lounged back in his seat. “I’d rather have gone up against a barrel of wildcats wearing barbed-wire britches than got involved in that mess.” He let out a breath. “Hell, before it was over I wasn’t sure who was going to jail, me or him.”

Davis wrinkled his brow. “Didn’t you catch him clean? Wasn’t he guilty?”

“Hell yes, he was guilty, guilty as sin. The man had left a trail of thievery a mile long by the time I put the cuffs on him. Every time he went into a bank to examine it there was always less money in the vault than when he came. After a while that kind of thing starts to get noticed. Of course you couldn’t tell it from the books—he had them well doctored. I followed him around for two months after we got called into the matter, and couldn’t get within a day’s ride of him. Finally I just arrested him as he was departing a bank one day and confiscated his little leather satchel where he kept all his papers and whatnot. Found five thousand dollars all done up neat in the bank’s wrappers. Them little bands that banks mark packets of money with. As it turned out, after the bank counted up that was exactly the amount they were short.”

“Well, hell,” Davis said, “you had him dead to rights.”

Longarm nodded. “Yeah,” he said with a trace of bitterness. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But I got some news for you, young Mister Davis, dealing with folks like that ain’t like catching bank robbers or road agents.”

“How so?”

Longarm looked weary, thinking back over the incident. “First of all, they got their ways that we don’t know nothing about. He was a bank examiner. What the hell do I know about that? Maybe he was taking that money out of the bank just to test their safeguards. That’s what he claimed. Second, they work for a bureau of the government, and if there’s anything that protects their own it’s bureaucracy. They pack up worse than wolves. I think they operate on the theory that if one gets caught they might all get caught.”

“But you caught him with the damn money!”

Longarm shook his head. “Don’t mean a damn thing. I had to be able to get at least two more federal bank examiners to swear that what the crook done wasn’t proper and part of procedure, and that took some little doing. Billy Vail said that at best I could be out of a job and at worst might go to prison for drawing a gun on a high government official. I tell you, it was nip and tuck there for a while.”

“How’d you finally get him?” Austin Davis was looking puzzled and worried.

Longarm shrugged. “Well, it took a little bit of luck. A bunch of bankers who’d lost money every time the examiner paid them a visit come forward and helped out. But the biggest help was the man’s wife. She got spiteful because she was pretty sure he was running around on her, and she come forward and told us where we could find an account he had hidden that had better than a hundred thousand dollars in it.” Longarm gave Davis a look. “Bank examiners don’t make that kind of money.”

Davis said, “Yeah, but wait a minute. Hell, we are a branch of the government. Why the hell should a bank examiner carry more clout than a deputy marshal?”

Longarm explained. “Because we’re on the rough side of the bench. We carry guns. Some folks ain’t sure we’re the law or outlaws. We are supposed to be willing to risk our lives for poor pay and no credit and be damn grateful and damn quiet about it.”

Davis was riled. “Why, that is a hell of a note.”

“Ain’t it? Listen, to have any whack in the government you need a desk and a couple of clerks to write outraged letters for you. I tell you, before that deal was over with the bank examiner had the Federal Reserve system down on us and the Treasury department and I don’t know who all. All Billy Vail done for about a month was answer letters and telegrams that would burn your hand you picked one up. Didn’t make me any too popular with him.”

“But he knowed you done right, didn’t he?”

Longarm sighed and shook his head. “Austin, that part don’t make a damn. I put my boss to considerable trouble. Right or wrong, he didn’t care for it. He told me—and I ain’t too sure he was kidding—that next time he’d appreciate it if I’d just shoot the sonofabitch and not bring him in.”

Davis suddenly cocked his head and stared at Longarm. “Would you be telling me this story for a reason?” he asked.

“I might.”

“Would this have anything to do with the customs people?”

Longarm shrugged. “I don’t know. I would reckon, at a guess, that they are a close-knit bunch. I reckon they wouldn’t want it getting around that any of them are crooked, if you take my meaning.”

Davis looked angry. “Are you telling me that if we catch that sonofabitch Caster, and any other fish we can get in the net, we are going to have political pressure put on us? Are you telling me that because they belong to a big outfit like Customs, we are going to get some grief?”

Longarm held his hands out, palm upwards. “They is a bunch of them. They got a strong union. They collect a lot of tariffs. Bring in a lot of money. What do you want me to say?”

Davis was outraged. “I think it’s a damn sin, is what I think!” He leaned forward, jabbing his forefinger. “Listen, Longarm, I got two months in, working on this job. I put in some piss-poor days scouting the back country of Mexico and, believe me, that ain’t no church social. I put in enough time hanging around cattlemen’s saloons to be a drunk. I’ve took more than my fair share of chances. That sonofabitch is guilty. And so is his boss in Brownsville! And I can prove it. And now you come along and tell me we might not can make it stick? Hell!”

Longarm lifted his hands. “Wasn’t it you that said we jerk on the rope down here when we arrest Caster, they’ll feel the tug in Washington? I ain’t got no friends in Washington, D.C. Do you?”

“Hell!” Davis said again. He sat back in his seat and folded his arms. “This makes me mad as hell.” Then he glanced at Longarm, a glint of suspicion in his eye. “You ain’t playing me for the greenhorn, are you? This ain’t another one of your tall tales just to tie a can to my tail?”

Longarm, looking at Davis out of hooded eyes, said evenly, “Some things I don’t joke about, sonny boy. Before this is over, you may wish you’d shot Mister Customs Inspector Caster and told Billy Vail he died of a bad cold.”

Davis stared back. “You ain’t kidding,” he said slowly. “I got Jay Caster dead to rights and I mean to have him. I got his boss in damn near as tight a bag on information I’ve picked up about his doings in Brownsville. I intend to have him also.”

“What’s his name?”

“James Mull. He’s the head honcho for the whole southwest border district in Texas. Jay Caster couldn’t move one illegal cow without his say-so.”

Longarm stretched out his legs and looked out at the unchanging landscape. “The further up the tree you reach, the further you got to fall. All I’m telling you is what might happen.”

“You’re not saying we should back off, are you?”

Longarm swung his eyes to Davis’s face. “Now who’s doing the kidding? I just wanted you to know the situation might be a little stickier than you’d figured.”

Davis tipped his hat forward so the brim hid his eyes, then said, in a disgusted voice, “Well, if this wouldn’t kill knee-high cotton. Damn! I thought I had me a bird’s nest on the ground and then you come along and tell me the damn game is rigged. What the hell we going to do?” He pushed his hat brim back up and gazed at Longarm.

“I reckon we are going to do what we come to do, arrest as many crooked customs officials as we can. And hope they get sent to prison.”

Davis slumped back in his chair, got a cigarillo out of his pocket, and lit it. With the first mouthful of smoke, he blew a smoke ring that came out small and then grew and grew until it finally came apart. “So,” he said, “you’re saying all this politics don’t mean nothing.”

Longarm nodded. “That’s right.”

“Well, what in hell did you tell me for? Hell, I was much happier when I was ignorant.”

Longarm gave a short bark of laughter. “Oh, that ain’t changed. You’re still about as smart as a sack of sand.”

“You know what I mean, you bastard.”

Longarm shrugged. “I wanted you to be prepared, wanted you to know we had to mind our P’s and Q’s on this one. Do it up special with no mistakes. Wanted you to understand it was going to be somewhat different.”

“So do we change the plan?”

Longarm laughed. “Well, if you recollect, I don’t know what the damn plan is. It’s your plan. You ain’t told me about it yet. I ain’t worked a cattle case in a long time and I don’t reckon I ever worked one involving the customs folks. How you got it laid out, other than you don’t know how Caster moves the cattle?”

“Well,” Davis said, “I’m gathering up a herd of about one thousand a little ways into the interior. Bought with money supplied by the Ranchers Association of South Texas. I’m gonna bring them up to the outskirts of Nuevo Laredo on the Mexican side and then either me or you are supposed to approach Caster about letting us cut down on the quarantine time. Get him to take a bribe. I was hoping we could get his boss, Mull, down for the doings, but I haven’t figured out how to do that yet.” Davis bent forward and flicked ashes on the floor. “I ain’t got much more than that worked out.” He smiled. “I was kind of hoping for some help from the senior member of the company as to how we should proceed on the finer points.”

Longarm thought for a moment. “You’re going to leave me in Laredo while you go into back country in Mexico?”

Davis nodded.

“How long?”

Davis shrugged. “I don’t know. Long as it takes to drive them cattle the short distance to the border. Three days. Maybe four.”

“Listen, one thing I ain’t never understood. Where the hell are the cattle kept in quarantine? On the Mexico side or the Texas side? You said something before about the cattle going over the International Bridge. I ain’t up on all these matters you understand.”

Davis said, “The pens are on the Texas side, Longarm. I reckon they’d have to be unless we had some sort of arrangement with the Mexican government to lease ground on their side of the river. But Customs takes charge of the cattle the minute they leave Mexican soil and hit that bridge. From there they go straight to the pens and get the paint smeared on them. I didn’t figure all that had anything to do with it. I had it figured that I’d just show up with this herd I’d put together and offer to grease my way through and he’d take the money and it would be wham, bam, thank you ma’am.”

Longarm shook his head. “Naw, it ain’t going to work quite that simple.”

“Then what do you reckon? You ain’t actually talking about holding these cattle for any time, are you? Hell, they didn’t give me that much money. You got any idea what it costs to feed one thousand steers a day? Plus hay and water? Listen, the second he takes the money, ain’t he guilty right then? Ain’t he caught?”

Longarm held up his hand. “Don’t rush me, boy. I need to get on the ground and kind of nose around. This is a little bigger operation than I’d thought at first.”

Davis gave him a flickering smile. “You mean there’s a chance I ain’t got the great man out on some penny-in-the-posy kind of business?”

“Will you put that smart mouth of yours away for a while? Give me a rest.”

“Sorry,” Davis said. “I can’t help it. But you reckon it’s all right for us to be seen together in Laredo, even on the Mexican side?”

“I don’t see why not. After all, I’m the big money who is buying the cattle. I reckon I’ll need to hire some drovers to take them up the trail once we get them clear of Customs.”

“Wait a minute. Like I said, they didn’t give me all that much money.”

Longarm gave him a sour look. “I ain’t gonna actually hire any drovers, just kind of act like I’m seeing what’s available. I mean, you don’t actually reckon to drive your herd to Texas, do you?”

Austin Davis laughed. “I can see I’m gonna have trouble keeping you up with when I’m playacting and when I ain’t. I got to remember we are not actually smuggling cattle, but arresting customs inspectors.”

“What are you supposed to do with that herd once its served its purpose?”

“Beats the hell out of me. I reckon that cattleman’s organization will take over from there. It’s their money, their cattle, their problem.”

Longarm was silent for a moment, thinking. Then he took out his watch and checked the time. “I reckon we’re about an hour out of Laredo. Where you got the horses?”

At the livery of the Hamilton Hotel. Do you know it?”

“Oh, yeah. Best in town.” The Hamilton, like the Gunther in San Antonio, was an old, solid, traditional hotel that catered to the traveler with both the means and appreciation for comfort and quality. It was a big, square, brick building that sat on one side of the big plaza very near the end of the International Bridge.

Davis said, “I got us rooms there.”

Longarm thought for a moment. Something was starting to kindle in his mind but it wasn’t ready to be spoken about yet. “No,” he said, “I got a room there. You’re going to be leaving in the morning to see about your herd anyway, ain’t you?”

“Well, yeah. Why? What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking maybe it would be a good idea if we wasn’t seen together right off. You’ll be out of Laredo for three or four days and that will give me some time to scout around and get the lay of the land. I’m still thinking on how we can pull Caster’s boss, Mull, into this thing.”

“Where the hell am I supposed to stay?” Davis asked.

Longarm looked at him. “Hell, Austin, I don’t give a damn where you stay. Right now I just come to the conclusion that it might be helpful for me to move around on my own for a time. So I don’t want us to be seen together at the Hamilton. In fact I don’t even want us to get off the train together.”

“But you still ain’t give me no good reason.”

Longarm uncorked the whiskey bottle. “I ain’t got to give you no good reason. You go along like you were really planning to bring a herd up to sell me. I ain’t seen you before and you ain’t seen me, When you get off the train you go over and get your horse or horses out of the livery stable and tell the stable keeper that you’ve left one for a cattle buyer. That would be me. That’s all you got to do. Just go ahead and get your herd together and then meet me back in Laredo in three or four days. We’ll act like we’re strangers to each other. Fact of the business, I’ll lailygag and you go by the Hamilton and leave a message for me, Mister Long, that you’ve been called out of town suddenly but you’ll be back and I’m to wait.”

Austin Davis shrugged. “I hope to hell you know what you’re doing.”

Longarm smiled slightly. “If I did, it would be the first time.”

Chapter 4

Once off the train, Longarm killed some time in a nearby saloon and then, when he was sure that Austin Davis was cleared out of town, he took himself to the Hamilton Hotel. The bogus message from Davis was waiting for him, and he got a room and settled himself in with a long drink of whiskey and a slow cigar. By then it was going on for four in the afternoon, the town just waking up from the siesta hours, and he took himself on a tour of the place, between the river and the central part of the town which was mostly built around the big square. Walking toward the river, he was able to see the holding pens for the quarantined cattle and he was a little surprised at their size. He’d expected a big operation, but it was nearly twice what he’d imagined. His view, however, was not the best since he’d held himself back about a quarter of a mile, not being ready as yet to be seen taking an interest in cattle.

He walked around the town with no particular route in mind, but he did have an objective. He was looking for a man. He didn’t know the man’s name or what he looked like or what line of work he was in, but he knew he’d find him. It had been Longarm’s observation that in every Western town he’d ever been in there was always one fellow who was in the know on nearly all matters. He might not necessarily be an important man or hold an important job, but he always seemed to hear the latest, see the newest and be able to tell you where to go if you wanted to find something or somebody.

The hard part was finding that fellow and getting a fix on him bypassing imitators or replicas who claimed to be the real article. Longarm had found that bartenders were the best guide to what he thought of as “telegraph operators.” He’d go from saloon to saloon and, as casually as he could, ask after different matters around town, none of them necessarily having anything to do with the information he was seeking. But that part didn’t matter. The “telegrapher” usually knew a little or a lot about everything, and if one name kept coming up from several sources it was a good bet that Longarm would find his man. It had always amused him that the “telegraph operators” were a mixed lot, seldom having any one common trait from town to town. In one place the “telegrapher” might manage the hotel or run a saloon or even a livery stable. In another town he might be some old man who spent his time in front of the general store whittling and spitting tobacco juice. Of course they were never officials such as judges or mayors or sheriffs. “Telegraphers” couldn’t be in a business where their gathering of information might be viewed as self-serving or done for gain. No, as a general rule they were just townspeople who had big ears and good memories and liked to stay current on events. They weren’t gossips in the sense that they went around telling everything they knew and passing on information just so they could appear important. In fact, the opposite was true. The better the source was at getting the lowdown, the harder it was to pry any of it out of him. Sometimes they would sell what they knew if they figured nobody was going to get hurt, but they were not busybodies or malicious or men who collected information for any other purpose than to simply possess it and watch to see how it all, in the end, came together.

So, for that reason, Longarm spent the last hours of daylight going from saloon to saloon, hunching up to the bar for a beer and striking up a conversation with the barkeep or some of the hangers-on who happened to be there. He started off by wondering aloud who would be a good man to talk to about hiring a half-a-dozen drovers, and worked his way from there to what old head had been around when they first started bringing cattle across the bridge. In a few places he asked for the name of the leading authority on gathering a herd in Mexico, and in others he came closer to the point by wondering if anybody knew any citizen who was in tight with the customs officials.

One name finally began to surface enough that Longarm felt fairly certain he was on to his man. The last bartender had shrugged and said, “If anybody knows about switching sides of the border it would be Jasper White. Don’t know if he’ll have much to say to you, though. You being a stranger and whatnot.”

It was a warning Longarm had heard more than once about other “telegraph operators.” But he had found that cash money would loosen the rustiest tongue. From all accounts the Tejano Cafe and Saloon was Jasper White’s main hangout. It was a small place on the south side of town, near the International Bridge and almost in the center of the border traffic. The bartender said Jasper sometimes sat out front on a bench and sometimes could be found inside drinking coffee, “But that be during the day. Nighttimes he roams around most of the saloons. Don’t drink much and don’t talk much. Listens mostly.”

It was going on for half past six and twilight was fast approaching. In an hour it would be dark. If he was to get to the cafe and have a look at White before the man started his nightly rounds, Longarm would have to move quickly. Since, by now, he’d managed to amble at least half a mile into the town from the river, he had a good walk ahead of him in his high-heeled boots. He wished mightily that he’d taken time to get the horse Austin Davis had arranged for at the stable. Now there was no other way to get down to the bridge except by shank’s mare. Once, Longarm had been caught in a desperate situation and was forced to walk ten miles across the New Mexico desert. He’d promised himself then that he would never, under any circumstances, walk farther than he could shout back to have someone bring him a horse.

Then, in spite of breaking that promise, he still arrived at the Tejano too late to meet up with Jasper White. The proprietor, a light-skinned Mexican with a scar on his upper lip, said that White had left not more than ten minutes past. “He go a leetle early today. But maybe I can help you with your business. What do you require?”

Though the cafe and saloon was small, Longarm could see that it was clean and well run. He hadn’t had his supper and this looked like as good a place as any. He sat down at a table. “Well, right now I’d like a steak and some eggs and some potatoes and whatever kind of vegetable you might have.”

The proprietor was dressed in a suit, obviously to indicate that he wasn’t a waiter. “I meant your business with Senor White,” he said stiffly. “I will send a girl over to bring you food. But you should know that Mister White keeps close counsel with me.”

Longarm gave the slightly built man a look. “Do I look that green?” he asked. “Hell, I ain’t going to put my business around just anywhere. Now, how about that chow?”

The owner went off without expression and, after a wait, a pretty Mexican girl came over to take Longarm’s order. The food did not disappoint his expectations, though he was still slightly mystified at the owner inquiring into his business. That sort of inquisitiveness was not the usual practice along the border. But then maybe Jasper White was more than just a mountain of information; maybe he was in some sort of smuggling racket and the little Mexican was in it with him.

But it didn’t matter to Longarm, since it had nothing to do with his job. He finished his meal and then went sauntering back toward the Hamilton Hotel and its bar. He had heard there was a fairly decent poker game there most every night. And, if his luck was bad, it wouldn’t be far to bed.

On his way to the hotel he wondered how Austin Davis was doing. He expected that the younger deputy had reached the herd by now and, if he’d gathered enough cattle, would be starting for the border in the morning.

He played until midnight on average luck and with only part of his mind on the game. He quit forty dollars ahead and didn’t receive so much as a nod or a look when he left the game. Longarm had played poker in many a border town and it had always amazed him how quiet the games were. Over the years he’d given some thought to the condition, and had come to the conclusion that border-town poker players weren’t more serious than their counterparts inland. They didn’t talk any more than was necessary because of the dangerous climate of the border and the greater chance of giving offense by some offhand remark. Most men who played poker along the border were hard cases, and it didn’t take much to get a fight started. As a consequence it was Just safer, all around, to keep Your mouth shut and your eyes open. But it did make for a fairly dull game, especially if your luck was only lukewarm.

He went to bed that night thinking about Mrs. Spinner and her amazing ability to get into such a variety of positions. She was truly a woman born to please a man. He could only hope that no circuses came to town while he was gone and that she would be there, waiting for him, when he got back to Denver.

He woke up the next morning with his tooth aching even worse, and sat on the side of the bed, soaking it in whiskey while he sourly contemplated the idea of going to a dentist in Laredo. It would probably be less painful to get it knocked out in a bar fight. Of course there was always laudanum. You could buy laudanum at the apothecary and it was guaranteed to stop pain for a while even if it did make you slightly lighthearted.

Finally his tooth let up and he was able to get up and shave and put on clean clothes. He took breakfast in the hotel dining room, doing well on the ham and eggs, but passing, reluctantly, on the hot coffee. Instead he had a lukewarm mixture of half coffee and half milk, which was almost no coffee at all but at least didn’t set his tooth to singing.

After breakfast he killed time until ten o’clock by sitting outside on the porch with the rest of the railbirds, watching the traffic heading to and from the bridge. When he figured that Jasper White would just about be in place, he went around to the hotel livery and collected the horse Austin Davis had left for him. Longarm hated to admit it, but his fellow marshal appeared to have a pretty good eye for horseflesh. The animal, a big roan gelding that was mostly quarterhorse, had a nice way about him and looked, judging by his deep chest and long legs, to have some staying power. The horse was frisky from standing in the stable for a few days, so Longarm mounted him outside and let him jump around and kick up his heels a little until he’d got the shivers out of his spine. After that he settled down and acted as if he’d been raised right with a good set of manners. Nevertheless, Longarm rode him out to the edge of town and fired off his revolver several times just to see how the horse would react. He tensed up some, but the sound of the gunshots didn’t seem to scare him over much. The gun test had been an institution with Longarm since a dozen years past, when he’d fired a rifle off the back of an animal who tried to turn himself inside out at the explosive sound. Longarm had been in the midst of a running gun battle with some cattle thieves, and the horse’s actions had come at a very bad time. It had cost him the thieves, the horse, and a broken finger when he’d bucked off into a pile of rocks. There were still a few men around who would have liked to make reference to the incident, but didn’t out of respect for the look that came into Longarm’s eyes when the conversation wandered anywhere near the subject.

Finally satisfied with the horse, Longarm rode directly over to the Tejano Cafe, dismounted, and looked around for Jasper White. The bench out front was unoccupied, and Longarm went on into the cafe. It had a small bar and he slouched up against it while he looked the place over. It contained no more than ten tables and only a few of them were occupied. The pretty Mexican girl who’d served him the night before brought him the beer he asked for. As he looked back at the tables, he asked the girl which of the men would be Jasper White. She nodded at a man seated at a small table by the window. He was drinking coffee and smoking a cheroot, and looking out the window toward the bridge. “That is the Senor White,” she said. “But he ees not welcoming to the stranger who just come up. You unnerstan’?”

Longarm reached in his pocket, took out a silver dollar, and spun it on the bar in front of her. “Why don’t you take that and put it in your pocket and go over and ask Mister White if he’s got time to talk to a cattleman from out of state. Tell him I’m buying the coffee or whatever he’d care to have.”

The girl shrugged and went around the bar. Longarm slouched against the counter while he watched her approach the table. White was younger than Longarm had expected. Usually, town “telegraphers” were older men, but Jasper White looked to be somewhere in his mid-thirties. A tall man who could have used a little filling out, there was nothing unusual about him except for a high, balding forehead. Longarm watched while the girl bent over to speak with him. After a few seconds White glanced around, his gaze directed at the bar. Longarm looked away. He wondered what White had to be so careful about. You’d of thought he was sitting on a key to Fort Knox, the way he protected himself from strangers.

Finally the girl came back and said that Senor White would spare him a few moments of his time. Longarm spun another silver dollar on the bar for the girl, took his beer, and sauntered over to the small table where White was sitting. There was an extra chair, but White did not invite Longarm to take it. “Mister White,” the deputy marshal began, “my name is Long. I’m a cattleman from Oklahoma. From what I hear around town you’re the man to talk to about getting articles from one side of the border to the other. Being a stranger and not knowing the ways of the country, I thought I’d come to you for advice.” Longarm stood there waiting, his mug of beer in his hand. White didn’t pay him the slightest bit of attention.

At last the man looked up. Longarm noticed how pale his eyes were. “So you be a Stranger to these parts,” White said. “Don’t know yore way about.”

“That’s right,” Longarm said.

“You be from Oklahoma.”

“Yep.”

“You be in the cattle business.”

“Yes,” Longarm said with a little irritation. He’d said all this before.

“And you want to know how to get some cattle across the border. Do that be it? But you don’t know how to go about it.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

Jasper White nodded slowly, then played his eyes over Longarm. “Say you are new to these parts? Say yore name is Long?”

“Yes,” Longarm said, wondering if he’d come to the right man.

White was drinking black coffee. He nodded at Longarm’s beer. “I don’t hold with strong drink.”

Longarm, now more than a little irritated, said, “I don’t hold it any longer than I have to myself. Quicker I can drink it down, the more good it does.” To illustrate, he turned his beer mug up, drained it, and then signaled for the girl to bring him another.

White ignored the gesture. “I take it you want to get these cattle across the border without getting’ ‘em wet.”

“That would be the general idea. But I want to do it as legal as I can.”

“You mean you want papers to say you done it legal. You don’t actually want to do it legal, else you wouldn’t be huntin’ me up.”

Longarm just looked at him silently. The girl brought his beer and he took a sip, waiting for the man to go on.

White said, “Tell me, Mister Long, you are in the business of selling cattle for a profit. That about the size of it? I mean, cattle is yore stock in trade.”

“That would be about right.”

“So you don’t give cattle away. That right?”

Longarm, seeing where the man was headed, said, “Mister White, I had intended to pay you for any information you might supply me. I ain’t here looking for a handout, just the name of the right man to go to.”

“And you figger to pay a fair price fer that?”

“I do.”

White nodded toward the extra chair. “Sit yourself down and let’s see what we can work out.”

Longarm took the back of the light wooden chair, spun it, and sat down astraddle. He said, “I take it you would know.”

White nodded again. “I reckon we better understand one another, Mister Long. You do be talking about keepin’ them cattle dry and moving them right along without no bothersome delays here at the border. That be right?”

“It would.”

White seemed to think a moment. Finally he heaved a sigh and said, sounding almost sorrowful, “Well, that information is worth exactly forty dollars. You got forty dollars, Mister Long?”

Longarm reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out his roll, flashing enough of it to inform White that he was pretty well heeled, but not enough to seem extravagant. He peeled off two twenty-dollar bills and laid them on the table between himself and White. “You said that would get me a name.” He stuck the roll back in his jeans.

White looked at the money and then looked up at Longarm. He said, chuckling a little, “Well, Mister Long, you seem like such a nice feller, I’m gonna go you one better. For the price of one I’m going to give you two names. One man is Jay Caster. Works for the customs people. The other is Rudy Thomas. He does the same.” As he reached for the money, White started to giggle.

His fingers never quite picked up the bills. With a swift motion Longarm whipped his revolver out of its holster and brought the barrel down forcibly onto the back of White’s hands. The blow wasn’t hard enough to break the skin, but hard enough that the man jumped and cried out. Longarm kept White’s hands pressed to the tabletop with the barrel of the revolver. White looked at him, his eyes wide and suddenly scared. Stuttering a little, he said, “Da-Da-Damn, mister! That hurts. Cain’t you take a little joke?”

Longarm kept the pressure on the man’s hands. “Yeah, if it was a joke. I got an idea one of them names is the right man. The other would be the wrong man. I don’t like paying forty dollars for the chance to guess right. But I suppose you were just teaching the greenhorn stranger a little lesson in border odds. That right?”

White suddenly jerked his hands out from under the barrel of Longarm’s gun. It scraped off a little skin, and a thin line of blood formed on the back of his hand. He looked at it sullenly. “Something like that,” he said. “Damn, you done gone and cut me.”

“You cut yourself. Now, you just figure I taught you a little lesson in how to make a stranger feel welcome. I’m still willing to do business with you, but we’re going to go outside, where I can be seen talking to you. Anything happens to me, folks are going to notice that me and you had a conversation. You savvy? In fact, me and you are going to walk down to the bridge and take a look at where they hold the cattle in quarantine. Maybe you can point out Mister Jay Caster and Mister Rudy Thomas to me and tell me if there is any difference to the pair.”

White was still looking belligerent. “You ain’t got no call for that kind of acting up. You’re on the border. I was givin’ you a little lesson about who you could trust down here.” As he said it, he cut his eyes over Longarm’s shoulder.

Longarm smiled. “And I was just giving you a little lesson in who to try and steal from. What you looking at so hard there? That little Mexican runs this place coming up behind me? He better not be. This here revolver is pointing right at your belly. You better go to nodding and smiling and quit worrying about your damn hand or I’m going to ease the hammer back on this big pistol of mine. You savvy?”

White looked at Longarm and then at the muzzle of the revolver that had crept up to aim at his midsection. He said, calling toward the bar, “It’s all right, Raymond. Everything is fine.”

“That was sensible. Now pick that forty dollars up and put it in your pocket. You are going to earn it before we get done talking.”

White swallowed, his Adam’s apple jerking up and down. His eyes were all for the gun in Longarm’s big hand. “I-I don’t want it.”

“Put it in your pocket.” Longarm said the words quietly, but there was menace in his tone. “And then get up and start for the front door. I’ll be right behind you.”

“I ain’t going nowhere with you.”

Longarm started the hammer back with his thumb. It made the first clitch sound, and White was instantly on his feet, exclaiming, “I’m going!”

He came around the table as Longarm rose. When he was on his feet Longarm turned toward the bar, the revolver still in his hand. He half expected to find the little Mexican standing there with a shotgun leveled at him. The owner was behind the bar, but he was simply standing next to the girl, staring at Longarm through narrowed eyes. Longarm took two steps in his direction, holstering his pistol at the same time. “What would your name be, senor? You seem to take a big interest in my affairs.”

The man’s eyes got even narrower. “This is my place of business, senor. I take an interest in all that happens here.” He spoke excellent English with only a trace of Spanish accent.

Longarm said, “You still didn’t tell me your name. You ashamed of it?”

There was a hard expression on the owner’s face. “My name is San Diego,” he said, “Raymond San Diego. Be careful how you use it should you have occasion to speak it.”

Longarm smiled and nodded. “My name is Long. You can use it any way you want to. I ain’t all that proud. Just stay out of my business. I may not be proud, but I’m touchy about money. You savvy?”

“I think we meet again.”

“Don’t see why not. You serve good grub at good prices. I reckon I’ll make this my eating headquarters while I’m in town.”

Longarm could feel the man’s eyes on his back as he followed Jasper White through the door and down the steps of the cafe. The proprietor wasn’t very big, but then you didn’t have to be very big to handle a big revolver. Longarm was confused as to what the connection between his “telegrapher” and the owner of the cafe was, but he had no doubt that Raymond San Diego would make a dangerous enemy.

Once outside, Jasper White stopped and turned around. He was holding the two twenty-dollar bills in his hand. On his feet he was an even less impressive physical specimen than he was sitting down. Holding the money out toward Longarm, he said, “Look here, mister, I don’t want yore money. I played a little joke and it blew up in my damn face. Now I’d jest like to forget the whole matter.”

Longarm was slightly confused. His original intention in seeking out Jasper White had been to establish a contact with Jay Caster independent of Austin Davis. He’d thought that it would make any connection between himself and Davis even more remote, nothing more than a buyer and seller of cattle. Rather than having Davis introduce him to Caster, he’d hoped to be able to go to the customs man and say he’d been recommended to him by another party, Jasper White. But now he was running into this strange alliance of a Mexican cafe owner and the town information bank. It was an unlikely combination.

He pushed the money back to Jasper White. “Put it in your pocket, I said. I’m nearly sorry I pulled a gun on you. And I’m nearly sorry you caused me to do it. But that’s all over and done with. I still got business with you, and that is what we are doing standing out here on the street.”

Pushing the money forward again, White said doggedly, “I don’t want no part of you, mister. You look like trouble to me.”

Longarm looked at him intently. “Did that Mex tip you a wink on the way out? He give you some kind of sign not to fool with me or not to do no business with me?” He paused, waiting for some reply, but Jasper White just looked steadily away, staring out toward the river. Longarm tried again. “There’s something between You and that Mex. You two are in cahoots about something. Yesterday I was in the cafe and asked after you and he the same as said your business was his. What are y’all up to—a little smuggling? Or are you part of passing cattle over the river?”

White swiveled his eyes around to Longarm. “Mister,” he said, “you better get on back to Oklahoma. You ain’t going to last long on this border.”

“What’s that fancy gent’s name? San Diego? Raymond San Diego? That’s a hell of a lot of name for a man runs a Mexican greasy spoon. And dresses like he owns the county. Where does a man like that get money for them kind of clothes?”

Jasper White made an attempt at a fierce look. It did not come off as much more than a sneer. “I’ll tell you this much, an’ I’ll tell it to you for nuthin’. Was I you, I’d leave Raymond San Diego the hell alone. He ain’t a man to be foxed around with. And he’s got a brother that is triple trouble. You do any business with Jay Caster and you’ll have his brother looking over your shoulder. His name is Raoul San Diego, and the last thing in this world you want is trouble with him!”

Longarm smiled slowly. “So the customs man I want is Jay Caster.” He gave a little laugh. “You earned your money after all, Mister White.”

Jasper White looked sullen. “Don’t think you be so smart. You could have gone in any saloon and found that out in five minutes. He don’t make no secret out of it.”

“Pushing cattle through quarantine? He better start making a secret out of it. The way I understand the matter, it’s against the law.”

White shrugged. “Is it? You’ll have to find out how he does it before the law can step in.”

Longarm said, “I ain’t interested in the law stepping in. I’m just interested in getting some cattle across the border fast.”

“Well, now you know, don’t you?”

“Yes, and I’m much obliged. Mind telling me how I go about it?”

“You be so damn smart, you figure it out.”

“How about you approaching him for me? I got a feeling you already know how.”

White glared at Longarm with his close-set eyes. “Mister,” he said, “I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ except I don’t want to do no bid’ness with you. Not no more, not the way you do bid’ness.” He lifted his injured hand and looked at it as if in silent accusation.

“Now, c’mon,” Longarm said. “You brought that on yourself, and if you’re fair about it, you’ll admit as much.”

But Jasper White shook his head. “I don’t know nothin’ about you, feller. You could be the law for all I know.”

Longarm gave a short laugh. “That’s a hot one. I’m standing here talking to you about rushing some cattle, and you think I might be the law. Look, there’s nothing to know about me. I got a herd due up from the interior of Mexico in the next couple of days. I want to get them on the road to market as quick as I can. I ain’t going to make any money with them standing around in cattle pens waiting to see if they got tick fever.”

White pursed his mouth and seemed to be contemplating. “I don’t know,” he finally said.

Longarm gestured at the forty dollars he was holding, “I got the balance of that would make a hundred-dollar bill in your pocket was you to introduce me to Jay Caster.”

White looked interested. “Sixty dollars more?”

Longarm put his hand in his pocket. “Cash money. On the spot. All you got to do is walk up with me to the man and give him my name. Give me a howdy and a handshake to him. Nothing more.”

“You don’t want me to tell him what you be looking for?”

Longarm shook his head. “Nosir. Not at all. Wouldn’t ask you to do a thing that might seem like trouble. Ain’t no law against introducing one man to another, now, is there?”

White glanced toward the cafe, looking thoughtful for a moment. “I reckon not,” he said at last. “But I want the money in advance.”

“When you want to do it?”

White spit on the ground and scratched his head. “Well, I don’t exactly know. I don’t know if Mister Caster is in his office right now or not.”

Longarm pulled a look. “You mean you don’t know if you ought to go in the cafe and check with your partner first. Ain’t that about it?”

White raised his head. “I don’t got to ask Raymond nothing about this kind of bid’ness. He ain’t my boss.”

“No, but you two are in some kind of business together, ain’t you.”

“That wouldn’t be none of yore affair.”

“Well, while we’re at it, seeing as you’re a man knows his way around the town, can you tell me where I can scare up some drovers? I’d be willing to pay you for your help on that score.”

Longarm could see the greed starting to build in White’s eyes. He had counted on it.

“How many men you looking for?” White asked.

“Enough to handle a thousand steers. Say eight drovers and a cook. You find me good men and I’ll pay you ten dollars a head.”

White hesitated only a beat. He said, “I reckon I could handle that. Let’s see, that would bring it up to a hunnert and fifty dollars what you’d owe me. That right?”

Longarm said, “Only if I can make a deal with Caster. I’ll pay you the sixty for that as soon as you can get me met up with him. But I can’t pay for no drovers until I get a herd through. Now, what about it? Reckon you can make time to get me within handshaking distance of the customs man?”

The lure of money was proving irresistible to Jasper White. He glanced at the cafe and then over his shoulder toward the river. “Well,” he said, “I don’t see nothing wrong with us walking down to the pens and seeing if Mister Caster ain’t handy.”

“Let’s go,” Longarm said. “Ain’t me holding us UP.”

Still Jasper hesitated. He looked down at the money in his hand, slowly folded it, and slipped it into his pocket. “When was you thinkin’ ‘bout payin’ me that other sixty?”

Longarm gave him an impatient look and jerked out his roll. He peeled off four tens and a twenty. “Hell,” he said. “How about right now? One of us has got to start trusting the other. I guess it might as well be me.”

“What if Mister Caster ain’t there?”

Longarm took White by the shoulder and turned him toward the river and the holding pens. “Then you’ll make me acquainted with the gent at some other time. Hell, Jasper, quit acting like you ain’t already done this a hundred times before.”

Jasper White looked at him. “You been talkin’ to folks about me.”

Longarm shook his head. “No, I’ve been talking to you about you. That’s been enough.”

Chapter 5

They stood in front of the whitewashed lumber-and-adobe building. A sign hung from the porch announcing the place as the offices of the United States Customs and Tariff Service. The building, about the size of a small house, wasn’t near as grand as its title. Off to their left stretched the holding pens, crowded with cattle. Longarm could see half a dozen hired hands working in among the steers, feeding, watering, haying, moving the steers, slapping paint on some. Not too far from where he and White stood was a slim man in a brown uniform. “Which one is that?” Longarm asked.

“That be Rudy Thomas.”

“He not in on it?”

Jasper shook his head. “I couldn’t say about that. But if he is, I ain’t heard.”

“How the hell does Caster operate without him catching on?”

Jasper gave Longarm a worried look. “You shore ask a lot of questions, mister. Was I you, I’d worry about my cattle getting across and not how Mister Caster runs his business.”

Longarm shrugged. “You got a good point. Where you reckon Caster is?”

Jasper bent over and peered through one of the big windows that was covered by a screen. “He be in there. I can see him sitting at his desk. C’mon and I’ll take you in.”

Longarm put out a hand and stayed him for a moment. “Now, you’re going to tell him I’m an all right fellow, ain’t you?”

Jasper gave him a long look. “I never heard that was part of the bargain.”

Longarm looked disgusted. “Well, hell, I’ll just be another yahoo if you just walk me in there and say my name. I need the man to have some trust in me so we can do business. Them cattle I’ve bought are due in here any day.”

Jasper blinked and frowned. “Well I don’t know that you’re all right. Hell, I don’t want to get crosswise with Mister Caster. What if you don’t pay him?”

“Thought you said he had this mean Mexican worked for him. Thought he was supposed to keep the business straightened out.”

“Raoul?” Jasper’s face brightened. “Yeah. I forgot about Raoul. Don’t nobody cheat Mister Caster. Not as walks away.”

“Hell, I’ll pay the man in advance. C’mon, Jasper, you got to fix me up with this hombre. I already figured you get a cut.”

Jasper glared at Longarm. “You better not believe everything you hear,” he said.

Longarm slapped him on the back. “You’re already a hundred up on the day. Now usher me in there and set me up with Jay Caster and I’ll take it from there. You can’t lose.”

Jasper looked doubtful, but he stepped up on the porch and pulled back the screen door. Longarm followed right behind him. Inside he saw a thickset man in a brown khaki suit sitting at a back desk. The fellow glanced up as they entered. “Jasper,” he said, “what the hell you doing up and around this early? You liable to get heatstroke, boy.”

“Howdy, Mister Caster. How you be?”

“Pretty good,” Caster said, but he had switched his attention to Longarm. “Who you got with you, Jasper?”

“Cattleman, Mister Caster. Feller name of Long. From Oklahoma. Looking to have a little visit with you.”

Caster frowned. He had a heavy mustache that covered his top lip. “I’m pretty busy right now, Jasper. Another time might be better.”

“Well,” Jasper said, “he’s an obliging feller, Mister Caster. I wouldn’t reckon he’d take up much of your time.”

Listening, Longarm felt sure that Caster was doing more than saying he was busy. He was asking Jasper if he, Longarm, was worth the trouble.

Jay Caster leaned back in his swivel chair. “So, you be saying he wouldn’t be wasting my time.”

Now Longarm was sure they were talking in a kind of code. “Pretty shore, Mister Caster. He done right by me.” Jay Caster looked back at Longarm, giving him a slow going over. Finally he nodded and said, “You run along, Jasper, and I’ll spare the man what time I can.”

“Yessir,” White said, and was out the door in three strides. Longarm turned to watch him go. When he turned back around, Jay Caster was staring at him.

“What’d you say your name was?”

“Long. Out of Broken Bow, Oklahoma. Oklahoma Territory.”

Jay Caster hooked his fingers behind his head. “Pretty wild country, that, ain’t it?”

“oh, it’s calmed down a little.” Longarm was still five or six feet from Caster’s desk and wondering if he was going to be invited to sit down.

“What can I be doing for you today, Mister Long?”

Unbidden, Longarm took two steps forward and said, “I’m in the cattle business, Mister Caster. I’m expecting a herd of about a thousand cattle in here in the next day or two.”

“Mexican cattle, I assume.”

“Yessir, from the interior. The deep interior.” He added delicately, “Where they ain’t got no tick fever. Cattle are clean as a whistle.”

Caster smiled as if he’d heard that story one more time than he cared to. “Yeah,” he said, “but they got to pass through tick country to get here to the border. We don’t think of them as clean cattle, Mister Long. That’s why we got all them pens out there. Now, if you could get them cattle to fly up here to the border, might be a different story.”

Still unbidden, Longarm sat down in a straight-backed wooden chair directly across from Caster. He took his hat off, crossed his legs, and put his hat on his knee. “Uh, they say money can do a powerful lot of things, Mister Caster. Maybe it can make them cattle fly up here so they can get rushed right through and be on their way to Oklahoma. I got a government beef contract to feed Indians. Ain’t the most generous contract you ever saw. I shore know it ain’t going to stretch far enough to feed them cattle for ninety days while they stay in quarantine.”

Mister Caster was chewing tobacco. He leaned sideways and spit in a bucket, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and then said mildly, “I’ve heard of drovers who went clean on around this little customs station of mine here and swum their cattle across.”

Longarm laughed without humor. “Yeah, I tried that one time. Luckily it was a fairly small herd, so I didn’t lose everything. Four hundred head. I reckon I fed cavalry soldiers with that one instead of Indians. Let’s see, I reckon I wasn’t no more than fifty miles inland when a range inspector come up and wanted to see my papers. Naturally I didn’t have none, so he said he reckoned they weren’t my cattle, and damned if he didn’t fetch them off with him.”

Caster nodded and spit again. “Yeah, I hear that will happen. Man needs papers on cattle he imports into the United States of America from Mexico. I understand that is the law.”

Longarm scratched his head. “I wasn’t planning on driving through any settled country on the southeast side of the range,” he said. “Not through any ranches where I might cause trouble. Naw, I was going to head northwest out of here. Wouldn’t cause nobody no trouble. And I shore wouldn’t be passing on no tick fever.”

Caster shook his head sympathetically. “Law don’t make no allowance for that, Mister Long. Law don’t care which direction you’re headed. Law says you got to keep your cattle penned under government supervision—that would be me—for ninety days. If they don’t show no signs of fever, why, you’re free to go on your way. Of course if they come down sick, we got to turn you back. But, then, I reckon this ain’t no news to you.”

Longarm fiddled with the crown of his hat. It was important to not be too bold with Caster. A sure enough smuggler wouldn’t be. “Yeah, I know all that part,” he said casually. “I just keep thinking about how nice it would be if them cattle could just fly right on over the border and be on their way to Indian territory. Looks like the right amount of money could make that happen. What do you think, Mister Caster? What do you reckon it would take to get them cattle rushed on through the rigamarole and on their way to feed some hungry Indians?”

Caster leaned over slowly to spit again, and then, even more slowly, straightened back up. “Now, Mister Long,” he said, “you wouldn’t be talking to me about bribe money, would you? That’s illegal. Maybe you didn’t know it, but a customs official has got police powers. That means I could arrest you right here on the spot. What do you think of that?”

Longarm cocked his head. “Well,” he replied, “I don’t know what you’d be arresting me for. All I asked was your opinion on how much money you reckoned it would take to make cows fly. Ain’t no law against that, is there? I didn’t hear anybody in this room offer nobody a bribe. Did you?”

Caster grinned, showing his tobacco-stained teeth. “You kind of got a cute little way about you, Mister Long. Tell me,” he said, “did you hear around town that I might be the man to see if you wanted to get some cattle sailed on through in a hurry?”

Longarm shook his head slowly. “No, can’t say I did, Officer Caster. Is that what you call a customs official—officer?”

“Not generally.”

“Well, you was talking about police powers. I didn’t want to be taking too big a chance. No, I just got in town late yesterday evening. Ain’t really had time to talk all that much to anyone except bartenders.”

“You seem to have found Jasper White quick enough.”

“Oh, that.” Longarm pulled a face and brushed at the brim of his hat. “There’s a Jasper White in every town. They ain’t hard to find.”

“So you and him ain’t old buddies?”

Longarm looked up and locked eyes with Caster. “Met the man this morning. Over at a little cafe.”

“The Tejano.”

Longarm nodded. “That’s the one. I was having breakfast. Being so close to the bridge, I figured the owner might know something about how this place operated. I never brought cattle through here before.”

“So you spoke to Raymond.”

“Yeah. Raymond. Got a long last name.”

“San Diego. His brother works for me.”

“Does he now? He a customs official?”

Caster showed his brown teeth again. “Not exactly. He kind of works for me privately. Sort of makes sure things run smooth, if you take my meaning.”

“How would that be?”

“Oh, he just does.” Caster hunched forward and leaned his elbows on the desk. “You said you never brought cattle through here before. Of course I know that—I’d have remembered you otherwise. But this is kind of far to the southeast for a man driving cattle to Oklahoma. What caused you to pick Laredo?”

Longarm gave a whisper of a smile. “Oh, just seemed like a good place,” he said easily. “Get to see a different part of the country.”

“Have a little trouble up north of here, did you? At Del Rio and Eagle Pass?”

Longarm let himself look the slightest bit uncomfortable. “Oh, they could have made matters easier,” he said. “Anyway, this was where the man I’m buying the cattle from wanted to deliver them.”

“Jasper didn’t tell you I could make cows fly, did he?”

“Now, why would he do a thing like that? I told you, Mister Caster, I just met the man this morning. We talked a bit about my business and I wondered if he knew the chief customs inspector. He said he did.” Longarm spread his hands. “That’s the sum of the matter.”

Caster drew his head back a little. “Well, I reckon you can appreciate my position, Mister Long. I’m a government official. Got my duties and my reputation to think of. Wouldn’t want talk getting around town that I can make cows fly.” Caster gave a little imitation of a laugh. “But you say Jasper was the only one you had a talk with?”

“Well, the only one where the talking come to anything. Like him bringing me up here and giving me a howdy-do to you.”

Caster tried for another smile, but his stained teeth wouldn’t allow it. He leaned further forward. “How much money you give him?”

“What makes you think I give him any money?”

“Because,” Caster said dryly, “I know Jasper White. He wouldn’t help an old woman up from a mud puddle ‘less there was something in it for him. How much?”

Longarm frowned slightly. “That kind of sounds like we are talking about my business here. What’s it got to do with you?”

Caster leaned back in his chair, rocking it back and forth slightly. “Oh, I was just curious as to what Jasper’s going rate was these days. I’m gonna guess fifty dollars. Would that be about right.”

Longarm shrugged. “If it suits you to believe that.”

“Did you tell him how many cattle you had? Did you let on or look the least bit desperate? Did you tell him your cattle was due here in a couple of days?”

Longarm shrugged again. “I might have. Though I don’t see what that’s got to do with our business.”

Caster swiveled his chair around so that he was presenting his side to Longarm. “It’s got a lot to do with our bid’ness,” he said. “I don’t know you, Mister Long. Don’t know a damn thing about you. And here you come to the chief customs inspector and the same as ask me to make it easier on your cattle then them as belongs to other folks.” He waved his arm toward the pens outside. “Hell, I bet I’m holding near five thousand head right now. Why should you get any different treatment? How the hell do I know you are who you say you are. And just who are you? Tell me about yourself.”

“Ain’t much to tell, Mister Caster. I been in the cattle business man and boy for thirty years, ever since I could get up on a stump and get a foot in the stirrup. Always operated in Oklahoma. I don’t owe nobody and I never went back on a deal. But don’t take my word for it. You can wire the bank in Broken Bow and ask after me.” Longarm said the last with a careless bravado. But he wasn’t too worried. He didn’t think Caster would check up on him, and anyway, he planned to wire Billy Vail as soon as he could and have him inform the bank in Broken Bow that if any questions were asked about Custis Long they were to say that he was a good and valued customer and a cattleman of the first water.

Caster looked around at him. “I might just do that, Mister Long. I just might. But tell me something else. You got a contract to provide reservation beef. What the hell you doin’ coming all the way down here? Hell, ain’t they no cattle up where you ranch?”

Longarm stared at him for a long moment before he replied. “Mister Caster, you got any idea what the Bureau of Indian Affairs pays for a beef? If you knew, you wouldn’t have to ask why I was buying Mexican cattle.”

Caster chuckled softly. “What are you paying for those cattle you’re having brought up?”

“Well now, there we go again, straying over into my business. Why would that be of any concern to you?”

“Weeelll …” Caster said slowly, “I was just trying to figure out if you had the price to get them cattle to fly over the border. You’re telling me the Indian Bureau ain’t leaving you much leeway. That means you better be buying the cattle on the cheap side. I know what range cattle are selling for in South Texas. It’s clear you can’t afford that price. I’m just wondering if you know what a set of cow wings costs.”

Longarm kept silent for a moment. To cover the lapse he fumbled in his pocket, got out a cigarillo, and lit it. This was the first indication Caster had given him that he’d do business. When he had the little cigar drawing good, he leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. “All right,” he said. “What does cow wings go for these days?”

Caster swiveled back around so that he was facing Longarm. “One thing you better understand is that there ain’t no such thing as flying cows.” He gave a little chuckle. “Them cattle are going to have to stop off with me for at least a week. You can’t take them straight through. I ain’t writing no papers on wet cattle. So they at least got to stop off here for a week.”

Longarm blew out smoke. “Yeah, so I heard. That part don’t come as no surprise.”

Caster straightened up. “I thought you said you hadn’t been talking to nobody.”

Longarm quit looking at the ceiling and lowered his gaze. “I told you I hadn’t been talking around town. That’s a fact. But I know an awful lot of other men in the cattle business. Men who have bought Mexican cattle. After I lost that herd of four hundred I went to asking around.” He looked at Caster. “Know what I mean?”

Caster grinned. “And they told you I was the man to see.”

Longarm studied his cigarillo. “I’ll talk about my business, Mister Caster, but I won’t talk about other folks’. If you take my meaning. Whether they said anything about you or anybody else just plumb escapes me.”

“But they told you that a week is the shortest time?”

“That’s right.”

“You understand that’s the express service.” Damn near the price of a set of wings. Price goes down the longer I hold them.”

“Yeah, but the feed bill goes up.”

Caster leaned back again. “What’s it worth to you to get a thousand head through in a week?”

Longarm looked over toward a corner. “Oh,” he said, “I figure two dollars a head would be a fair price. Taken all around.”

Caster laughed without humor. “You can double that for starters.”

Longarm leaned forward and rounded on him. “Four dollars a head? Hell, Caster, there is no way I can make any money on this deal at that price.”

“Now, that wouldn’t be my worry, would it?” Caster said evenly.

Longarm pulled a frown and shook his head. “And I heard you was a man would do business. Hell, four dollars a head I might as well not bother to take delivery of the cattle.”

“You seem to have heard a good deal about me. That all you cattlemen got time to do is gossip like a bunch of old maids?”

“Gossiping and talking business ain’t the same thing, mister Caster. You seem considerably touchy about folks talking about you. You doing something you’re ashamed of? That damn quarantine law is something to be ashamed of. That’s keeping a lot of honest folks from making a living.”

Caster leaned over to spit in the bucket, then straightened back up and said, “Long, I don’t care what you and yore friends say about me, or what tales you tell. I run this customs station and I’ll run it any damn way I please. I ain’t a damn bit ashamed of anything I do. But I’d be damn careful, was I you, of making remarks like that. And such remarks ain’t going to get you a better price, that is for damn sure.”

Longarm got up abruptly and walked over to the window. He could just see one corner of the long row of cattle pens. Without looking around, he said, “Well, Caster, I’ll tell you straight out I can’t pay the four dollars. I’m going to get sixteen dollars and six bits a head from the Indian Bureau. I’ll be paying between six and seven dollars a head for them Mexican cattle. Say six seventy-five to keep it in round numbers. That leaves ten dollars a head. I give you four and that leaves me with only six dollars a head to work off of. And I got the expense of feeding them here for a week and then the cost of hiring drovers for a month to get them to Oklahoma. Not to mention what I’ll have to spend on the road, paying tolls through fenced ranches and farms. Times have changed, and you just can’t march cattle in a straight line no more. And then I know at least half of them cattle will be poor and wore out by the time that they get here to Laredo. I stand to lose a good number of them on the trail to Indian country. I get there with eight hundred I’ll be damn lucky. And of course I got to pay the contractor that is gathering them for me.”

Behind him Caster yawned and he said, “Sounds to me, Long, like you’re in the wrong business. You should have knowed what we charge before you got here.”

Longarm wheeled around. “I heard two dollars. And from more than one man.”

Caster shook his head. “Not for just a week.”

Longarm nodded. “Yeah, a week. Two dollars a head.” He paused and regarded Caster for a second. “I will say, however, that I might have been mistaken about who they said. It might have been Brownsville, and it might have been your boss—Mull, ain’t that his name?”

Caster leaned back slowly in his chair. After a pause he said, “You are uncommonly full of surprises, Mister Long. You are talking about the Regional Director of the Customs Service, James Mull. You telling me you’ve talked to people who have done business with him?”

Longarm shrugged. “I done talked too much. What y’all do is your business. I’m just interested in getting some cattle across the border, and I can’t pay but two dollars a head.”

Caster’s voice rose slightly. “Well, somebody is lying. Either it’s you or whoever told you they got cattle through at Brownsville for two dollars. And I know that for a fact.”

Longarm walked slowly back to his chair. His mind was racing. The man was the same as admitting that both him and his boss in Brownsville were involved in smuggling for a bribe. It was all going much faster and easier than he’d expected. His inclination was to push Caster even harder for more revelations, but a small voice of caution warned him to go slow. He said, sitting down, “You seem mighty sure of what you’re saying Mister Caster. But it’s my money we’re talking about here.”

Caster shot his arm out. “Then go somewhere else. Hell, go back up to Del Rio. Go to Eagle Pass. See how yore luck runs. Hell, drive yore damn cattle down to Brownsville if you think you can get a better deal. I’ll write a letter you can carry with you to Mister Mull. Take off. See where you can do better.”

Longarm looked thoughtful, as if he were considering what Caster had said. Instead his mind was busy, thinking over how they, he and Austin Davis, might catch two fish on one hook. Finally he gave a little rueful laugh. “I take it you are a poker player, Mister Caster.”

“I’ve looked at a few cards. What the hell does that have to do with it?”

Longarm crossed his legs, took his hat back off, and put it on his knee. “I’m trying to figure out if you’re bluffing or trying to buy the pot. Four dollars a head is four thousand dollars. That’s a lot of money for doing nothing.”

Caster snorted. “Doing nothing? That what you reckon? I done plenty to get into this job. Worked my ass off. Say a doctor takes a bullet out of you and it only takes him ten minutes and he charges you twenty dollars. You ain’t going to say to him that’s two dollars a minute. No, you’re going to figure he spent a lot of years learning how to take that bullet out, so you ain’t going to say nothing. Well, you can figure the same about me.”

With a little hesitation Longarm agreed, “Well, yes, there’s that. And I reckon there is some risk involved for you.”

Caster stared at him. “Risk? What risk?”

“Hell, I’m just trying to look at it from your side. I don’t reckon the law would look kindly on matters of this kind. But then, the law is always mixing in where they ain’t got no call to, and interfering with business.”

Caster laughed out loud. “Risk?” he said, “You think I’m taking some kind of risk letting you get a few cattle through a little early?”

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call a thousand head a few, and I wouldn’t call a week against ninety days a little early.”

Caster leaned back and smiled. “Tell you what, Mister Long, You follow me around the whole week yore cattle is in my pens, and you find me doing one thing even looks illegal, I’ll let you take yore cattle through for nothing.”

Longarm frowned. “Hell, Mister Caster, I ain’t interested in your business or how you do it. I done told you my concern is my cattle. But I can’t go no four dollars. I got to make some profit or they ain’t no reason for me to make the deal. I might could go two and a half, but that is my top.”

Caster shrugged. “Then you need to be somewhere else, because you’re wasting my time.”

“Well, I don’t understand that. I know my information is reliable. You’ve done it for two dollars. I know you have.”

Caster got an impatient look on his face. “Look, Long, let’s get something straight. This is my operation and I’ll run it as I please. Maybe I did let a few herds through for two dollars, but them days is over with. That old dog won’t hunt no more. If it wasn’t you sitting in that chair, it would be somebody else. I got cattlemen lined up from here to the Brazos waiting for what I got to sell. You got some idea in your head that I’m taking a risk with the law, and that gives you some kind of hold over me. Well, you’ve been invited to watch me all week and see what you can see.”

“I don’t see why you’re singling me out, Caster, to go high priced. Is it because I mentioned a risk? Well, hell, I’d like to have you explain to me how there wouldn’t be no risk when I hand you several thousand dollars. Wonder how that would set with the sheriff.”

Caster waved his hand as if driving off a pesky fly. “In the first place, Long, you ain’t gonna hand me no cash. You heard me speak of that fellow who works for me, Raoul San Diego. That’s who you pay. And, believe me, he is the last man in the world you want to shortchange. And I ain’t singling you out. I raised my prices for the same reason the farmer raises his. He can get it. If corn is in short supply corn costs more. Well, they is a hell of a demand for Mexican beef right now. I don’t know the why of it and I don’t care. But the price is four dollars a head. Take it or leave it. Like I said, there’ll be somebody else sitting in that chair, either later today or tomorrow or the next day, singing the same song. I can only run just so many cattle through a month and I intend on taking advantage of the situation while it exists. You savvy?”

Longarm took his hat off his knee and put it on his head. He sat back, rummaged around in his shirt pocket until he found another cigarillo, then stuck it in his mouth and lit it. As he was shaking out the match, he said, “Well, Caster, you’ve picked a hell of a time to tell me about your new policy. I’ve hired a man to gather a thousand head of cattle and I’d reckon he’s about near finished. What am I supposed to do with the cattle? I can’t go back on my word to the contractor. But it will cost me money to give you four thousand dollars right off the top. Hell, I ain’t right sure I have got four thousand dollars. Not after I pay the contractor.”

“Who’d you hire to gather your cattle? Deep down in the interior, I believe you said.”

“What difference does that make?”

Caster pulled at the ends of his ample mustache as if to stretch it out a little further. “I’ll tell you why. Was a man come around to me about two weeks ago. Said he was getting up a herd and had a buyer and wanted to know what my rock-bottom price was for sticking a herd through. He was bold as brass. And since you seem to have been talking to every other sonofabitch in Texas about me, I wondered if you wasn’t connected to this hombre. Reason I ask is, he is trying to cheat you.”

Longarm gave him a look. “I doubt that. I’ve known the man a good many years.”

“Man in his mid-thirties? Kind of dandified looking? Wears a soft black leather vest with silver conchos and a black, border hat?”

Longarm looked uncomfortable. “Might be. How was he trying to cheat me?”

“Like I said, he was bold as brass. I’d never seen the feller before but he claimed he’d pushed more than one herd across the border at different spots. Just like you, he was under the impression the price was two dollars a head. He said if I’d give him a half a dollar a head he’d tell you that the price was solid at three and nothing to be done about it. I’d make an extra half a dollar and he’d make the same. Sound like yore man?”

“Well, I’m a sonofabitch,” Longarm said softly, “Me and that gent is gonna have a little talk.” He looked angry, but secretly he was pleased. To Caster, it made both of them look like crooks, and Caster, being a crook, would feel comfortable with his own kind. “He give you a name?”

“Davis, I think. Yeah. Davis. Don’t remember much else, but he said he was gathering a thousand head for some greenhorn from Oklahoma.”

Longarm looked up. “Called me a greenhorn, did he?”

Caster laughed. “Yeah. Beginning to look like you are one, too. He’s gathering cattle you can’t get to market. But after the way he come at me with his proposition, I wouldn’t feel all that bad about just leaving the cattle with him and seeing how he liked it.”

Longarm looked grim. “Well, I ain’t been proved a greenhorn just yet. I got an idea or two. Might be I can handle that four dollars a head after all. A thought has come to mind.”

“Yeah?” Caster raised his eyebrows. “One minute it will break you and the next you can see yore way clear. Ain’t even going to offer me three and see if I’ll take that?”

“I would if I thought you was so disposed, but I don’t.”

Caster smiled wryly. “Sounds like you’re beginning to catch on.”

Longarm let a pause build up and then he said, “In fact I’ll give five.”

Caster stared at him, unblinking. Finally he said, “What?”

“I said I’d give five dollars a head. But I got a condition.”

“Well, if that condition is you run them across the bridge and keep on going, you can damn well forget it because that ain’t going to be. You and me and your cattle are going to spend a week in my pens.”

“That ain’t the condition.”

“Then, pray tell, what is?”

“I want Your boss, Mister Mull, to sign my road papers along with you. I want them signed by the both of YOU.”

Jay Caster stared at Longarm. “Have you gone loco? My boss is in Brownsville. This is Laredo, or have you lost yore way as well as your head?”

Longarm leaned back in his chair and stuck his boots out. “So what?” he said. “Hell, it ain’t but a three-hour train trip. Round trip six hours. You’re going to split it with him—hell, I know that. You couldn’t be running this business without his okay on the matter. And I can’t see anything but a fifty-fifty split. That’s twenty-five hundred dollars each. Hell, I’d spend six hours on the train for that kind of money.”

Chapter 6

Caster was quiet for a long moment. Finally he shook his head and said, “Well, I’ll give you this much, Long. You take the prize for out and out gall. Whatever in the world would make you think I’d try and get Mister Mull down here? What makes you think he’d even consider coming?”

“Same answer to both questions. Money. You and him both know this can’t last much longer. One of you will get transferred or something will happen. You both figure you’d better get it while you can. You the same as told me that when you raised your price.”

Caster stared at him. “Long, you are starting to give me an itch. Might be I’m going to remember any minute that I got police powers.”

“Oh, come on, Mister Caster. We both know you ain’t going to do that.”

Caster cocked his head. “I’m curious about something. You seem to have in mind what you want to do. Maybe you did when you walked through that door, and me and you have just been waltzing around without any music playing. But how come you need Mull’s name on yore quarantine papers, too? How come just mine won’t do?”

Longarm smiled just enough so that his lips weren’t dead straight. “I done a little looking into this before I come to Laredo, Mister Caster. I talked to a couple of stock contractors who had cleared your quarantine and had their road papers, signed by you. You alone. Theirs was a one week deal also. Only they paid two-fifty a head. Well, they commenced to try and drive those cattle straight southeast across the coastal plains, figuring to take them to Galveston and ship them out to Cuba or New Orleans or some other place. They knew they could get twenty dollars a head. Only problem was them ranchers along the coastal plains. That’s mighty rich range land. Them ranchers along in there raise some fine beef and they are mighty protective about it, especially when it comes to Mexican cattle might have tick fever.” Longarm paused. “They got turned back, Mister Caster. Turned back by the law and some armed citizens. Ended up driving to the northwest, and didn’t make enough to buy lunch.” Longarm paused again. “Seems like you got a bigger reputation than you’ve been letting on, Mister Caster.”

Caster studied Longarm for a moment. “Yes,” he finally said. “And it appears like you been playing dumb all along.”

Longarm gave him an innocent look. “Oh, sometimes I don’t have to play. Sometimes it just comes natural. But not this time. This time I have a pretty good idea what I’m going to need to get them cattle to the Galveston port. And it’s a little more than your signature on some papers. They know about you along the coast, Mister Caster. Those rich ranch owners. And they got the law in their pocket. And you and I both know that no cattle slip through quarantine in Brownsville. Mister Mull keeps his reputation slick as a whistle. Here in Laredo is where y’all do your business. We both know that. Don’t take a schoolteacher to figure it out. Of course you can tell me to take my cattle to Brownsville and cross them. You can tell me that, knowing I damn well will be obliged to hold them for ninety days.” Longarm nodded his head. “It’s slick the way y’all run it. I got to give you that. But I want Mull’s name on that paper and I want my port of entry to say Brownsville.”

“Long, YOU are either crazy or you think I am. I got half a mind to have my Mister San Diego pay you a visit.”

“You ain’t going to do that.” Longarm shook his head. “No, that is not something you would do.”

“Why not?”

“Because it is bad business. You can’t do business with a man who is halfway back to Oklahoma Territory.”

“You’d run?”

“I ain’t no gunfighter, Caster. I’m a businessman, just like you. And when you give this some thought you’ll see it’s a good deal. Like I said, this end of your operation is playing out. To drive cattle out of here a man has got to go to the northwest, and that’s too far. The ranchers along the coast have cut off any herds coming from here. You’ll have to do it my way or get out of the game. I figure you can get herds through with Mister Mull’s signature for at least another year. That’s a good chunk of money you can make between now and then.”

Jay Caster opened a drawer of his desk and rummaged around until he found a toothpick. He stuck it in his mouth and rolled it around, regarding Longarm all the while. Watching this made Longarm conscious of the dull ache in his own tooth. He needed to get some laudanum. Caster said, “Where you staying?”

Longarm told him. “If I ain’t there, I’ll be in a poker game at a saloon close by.”

Caster nodded. “Well, why don’t you get up and get the hell on out of here for the time being. I’ll give what you said a good thinking over.”

Longarm put on his hat and stood up. “Just remember,” he said,“my cattle are due in here any day now. We got to have a deal before I put them in quarantine.”

Caster smiled. “You don’t trust me, Mister Long?”

“Trust ain’t got nothing to do with it, Mister Caster. This is business. Trust is something you have when you loan somebody money. I ain’t proposing to loan no money I’m proposing to pay money for a service. You’re mighty sure about what you’re doing without no risk. I want to have the same feeling.”

“I don’t know if you’ll get to feeling that secure,” Caster said, “but we’ll see what we will see.”

Longarm turned toward the door, but before he’d gone but a few steps, he said, over his shoulder, “I’m obliged to you for telling me about my cattle gatherer trying to cheat me. Obliged, but not surprised.”

“Oh? How come?”

Longarm shrugged. “The last two tried the same thing. I done a little lying today but I reckon you can understand about that.”

“Oh, yes,” Caster said. “I can understand lying.”

Longarm didn’t hear from Jay Caster for nearly twenty-four hours. He spent the intervening time moving around the town, acquainting himself with the layout and the country, getting to know the horse Austin Davis had furnished him, playing a little poker, and drinking a little whiskey. He avoided the Tejano Cafe, since he felt that Jasper White would be carrying tales back to Caster, besides which he didn’t want to risk a run-in with Raymond San Diego, mainly because he was the brother of Caster’s gunman and go-between. Once on the downtown street, he saw a Mexican woman who was nearly as beautiful and voluptuous as any woman he’d ever seen in his life. She was walking near the plaza, wearing a gaily colored gown and carrying a parasol over her shoulder. She had long, shining black hair and very light skin that set off her dark eyes and her full red lips. Longarm’s eyes fastened on her square-cut bodice, where he could clearly see how her breasts mounded up and strained against the thin material. Even at a distance the sight of her made his mouth go dry. A man standing nearby had looked around at him and smiled crookedly. “I reckon it’s all right to look,” he said, “but I wouldn’t get too close. That’s Dulcima.”

“Who the hell is Dulcima?”

“That’s Raoul San Diego’s woman, and if you don’t know who he is, then more the pity you.”

“Bad, huh?”

The man had spit on the ground and ground it in the dust with his boot heel. “Bad enough for me to stay clear of him.”

Now Longarm was in his room having just finished breakfast in the hotel dining room. He’d been soaking his tooth in whiskey and vowing to go straight to an apothecary and get some laudanum. He’d bit down wrong on a piece of bacon and the pain had nearly killed him. Now however, after five minutes of soaking it was starting to dull down just a little. There was a knock at the door. Longarm swallowed the whiskey, then took another quick drink from the bottle. He was sitting on the side of the bed and he swiveled to his left so as to be facing the door and to clear his draw in case he had to go for his weapon. He called, “Come in,” hoping it would be Austin Davis, though it was a couple of days early.

The door opened, pushed from the outside, but no one entered. A man stood in the doorway. He was tall and slim and was wearing a flat-crowned border hat just like Austin Davis’s. To Longarm’s thinking, he was not Mexican, though he looked Mexican. He might, Longarm reflected, be a half-breed. His face had regular features, and was not unpleasant to look at. But his eyes were flat and hard and looked like agatee. He was clearly a man used to settling disputes with the big revolver he wore at his side, and since he was still alive, it appeared he must have won all of them. Longarm had no doubt that this was Raoul San Diego.

The man made no move to come in. “You Long?” he asked. He had very little accent.

Longarm nodded. “That would be me. As a guess I’d say you’d be Senor San Diego. Raoul San Diego.”

San Diego ignored the remark. He said, “Senor Caster say you are to come see him this morning. You ready?”

Longarm shook his head. “No, not just at this moment. I got a little business I need to tend to. Tell him I’ll be there in an hour.”

San Diego stared at him, not blinking for half a moment. He was wearing a white shirt that appeared to be silk. Longarm figured that being the gunman for a crooked customs official must pay pretty good. San Diego shrugged. “Mister Caster send me to bring you. Maybe he don’t want to see you in no hour.”

Longarm stood up. He often used his size to make a point. “You tell Mister Caster I got a tooth is causing me a lot of pain. I got to go find something for it. Tell him I’ll get there quick as I can. Maybe in less than half an hour.”

San Diego looked at him for a second or two with his flat eyes, and then he shrugged again. Without a word he turned and disappeared down the hall. But he was wearing big roweled Mexican spurs and Longarm could follow his progress by their ching-changing.

He went over and closed the door, thinking the sonofabitch didn’t have manners enough to do that. Manners or not, Raoul San Diego was someone he didn’t intend to give much of an advantage to. If it came near to shooting time, Longarm determined he would kill the man first and worry about if he’d done right later. Any other course of action might result in a man not having any time to think about anything later.

But there was still the problem of his damn tooth. Laudanum made a man a little slow and groggy, and if he was to be coming up against Caster in serious discussion, Longarm didn’t want to be either. Then again, he couldn’t be sure what Caster wanted. Maybe he just wanted to say they didn’t have a deal and Senor San Diego was going to shoot him for all the trouble he’d caused.

But somehow Longarm doubted that. He spent another ten minutes doctoring his tooth with whiskey until it was down to a bearable ache. After that he put a couple of fresh cigarillos in his pocket along with some matches, checked his revolver, put on his hat, and left the hotel.

It was a pleasant morning. Longarm walked around to the stable, got the roan out, mounted him, and set off for Caster’s office. It wasn’t but half a mile or less, but he had no intention of doing any more walking.

The place looked empty when he rode up and dismounted. The sign that hung from the roof of the porch swung gently in the breeze, creaking a little. There was no sign of any horses or wagons. Off to his left the cattle pens hummed with activity, as before. Longarm climbed up on the porch and let himself in through the front door. Caster was sitting where he had been before, at his desk in the back of the office. Coming in from the sunlight, Longarm paused an instant to let his eyes adjust to the gloom. But Caster waved him forward impatiently. “Come in, damnit. I ain’t got all day.”

Longarm walked forward. Once again Caster did not invite him to take a chair, but Longarm did so anyway. “Sorry I couldn’t come right away,” he said. “I expect your Mister San Diego explained.”

“I ain’t interested in yore damn teeth, Long. We’re doing business here.”

“Are we?”

Caster leaned back in his chair and frowned. There was a letter-sized piece of paper on his desk. He nodded slowly. “I sent a letter to Mister Mull outlining your proposition. There’s his answer.”

Longarm looked surprised. “You sent a letter? How the hell did you get an answer so fast?”

Caster gave him a look. “I sent a man down on the train. How the hell did you think? He brought the answer back last night on the return train. What did you think I was going to do, put that kind of business on the telegraph?”

Longarm shrugged. “I guess I never thought about it.”

Caster showed him his tobacco-stained teeth. “That’s how come you’re settin’ where you are and I’m behind this here desk. It’s also the reason yore money’s going to be in my pocket and you’ll be following a bunch of cows for yore share while I’m spending mine.”

Longarm kept his face impassive. He knew he had to play the role of a not-so-bright beef contractor, but he was getting just a little tired of this crooked customs inspector and his lordly ways. But, he reminded himself grimly, it wouldn’t be too much longer before their roles were reversed. Contenting himself with the thought of arresting Jay Caster, he said submissively, “Yeah, I reckon you’re right. But somebody has got to do the work, such as it is, or you wouldn’t be able to sit behind that desk.”

Caster laughed. “Never thought about it that way, but, yeah, that’s so. I’m just glad it’s you and not me.”

Longarm spoke with studied innocence. “You said my money was going to be in your pocket. Does that mean we got ourselves a deal? Did Mister Mull go along with it?”

Caster suddenly frowned. For a moment he didn’t say anything. Finally he tipped his swivel chair back and said, “Yeah, in a manner of speaking. There will be some conditions, however.”

Longarm was instantly alert. “Conditions? I don’t see no room for conditions. Can’t be a rise in the price, because I’m stretched thin as a guitar string as it is. And I ain’t taking the herd to Galveston without his John Henry and stamp on them papers. So what conditions you talking about?”

Caster looked away for a second. When he turned back to Longarm he said, “Well, one of the conditions is he ain’t going to meet with you. You ain’t never going to set eyes on him.”

“Well,” Longarm said slowly, “I don’t see how that’s going to work. Ain’t no way I’ll be able to make shore I got his okay unless he handles the papers himself. Hell, anybody could write his name, sign his name.”

Caster’s eyes got hard. “You accusing me in advance of planning something like that?”

“Well, no. But you got to agree it would occur to a man.”

Caster tipped his chair forward and picked up the piece of paper on his desk. “If I was to let you read this, you would know that he’s going to go along with it. He’ll be in Laredo the day you leave with your cattle and he’ll endorse your papers and put his seal on them.”

Longarm reached out his hand. “Can I read it?”

Caster pulled the paper back. “Hell, no! Who the hell do you think you are? I deal with you cattle bums all the time. You’ve all breathed so much trail dust it’s affected your minds. No, you can’t read this letter.”

Longarm shrugged, letting the insult pass but determined to remember it. He wondered what kind of dust Jay Caster had been breathing—the kind you absorb from being crooked? “Then what’s the good of showing it to me if I can’t read it?” he said. “How come you don’t want me to read it?” He had half an idea, but he wasn’t going to voice it. From the sour way Caster was acting, he suspected that Mull hadn’t gone for a fifty-fifty split. He’d almost have bet money that somewhere in the letter it said that if Mull was going to have to make the trip to Laredo and back, he’d take three dollars out of the five a head and Caster could have two. Of course Longarm didn’t know that for certain, but it seemed likely. He said again, “How come you don’t want me to read it?”

“How come? Hell, Long, it’s official government business.”

That was too much. Longarm had to laugh. “Official government business? That he’s coming down here to slick my cattle through quarantine. Hell, Mister Caster, I doubt you want that letter falling into ‘official government’ hands. You want to borrow a match from me and put a flame to it? What happened, he decide to split the money different than the way you had it figured?”

Caster’s face went red. He half rose from his chair. “Listen, you sonofabitch, you better watch yore mouth or you’ll be swimming those cattle. That, or have them confiscated. Where the hell you get off with that kind of talk? Who the hell you think you’re talking to, some saddle tramp drover?”

Longarm wondered why the corrupted hated those who corrupted them. The offer didn’t have to be accepted. It could be refused and honor retained. He reckoned that Jay Caster had to despise the “saddle tramp drovers”—the alternative was to despise himself, and Longarm didn’t think Caster was man enough to do that. But he had to get him sweetened back up. “Mister Caster,” he said earnestly, “I am plumb sorry I said that. It was meant as a joke and I see it didn’t come off. It ain’t none of my business how you and Mister Mull conduct y’all’s affairs, and if I give offense I am mighty sorry for it.”

Caster sank back in his chair, looking somewhat mollified. “Well, just watch it, long. You cattlemen got a bad habit of coming in here and acting like you own the place just because you pay a little money to get yore cattle to market sooner. What you’re buying is time and the cost of not having to feed a herd. Don’t worry about me flaring up, but they has been a couple of occasions where I’ve had to send Mister San Diego to straighten out a few hombres. Trust me, you don’t want that to happen.”

“Was it him took the letter to Mister Mull in Brownsville?”

Caster laughed. “Yeah, and he didn’t want to.”

“He scared of Mister Mull?”

Caster was in the process of scratching his forearm. He stopped and gave Longarm a look. “Scared of Mister Mull? You talking about Raoul San Diego? Hell, boy, he ain’t scairt of nobody and that includes me. I pay him, so he wants me to stay alive. Scared of Mull? Sheeet!”

“Then how come he hated to go so bad.”

Caster laughed. “‘Cause he didn’t want to leave that woman of his and be gone all night, that’s why.”

“His woman?”

“Dulcima? You ain’t heered about her?”

Longarm shook his head. “No, I reckon not. Am I supposed to have?”

“Well, you’re staying at the Hamilton and she takes a stroll around the plaza right in front of the Hamilton twice a day. All the men line up on the sidewalk with their tongues hanging out about a foot, panting like hound dogs after a hard run. And don’t she know it.”

“Know what?”

Caster frowned. “Say, are you a little slow? She knows all them ol’ boys are standing around watching her, dreaming about what it would be like to get in her britches.” He looked away thoughtfully. “I’ve wondered myself. But I want to stay alive. So I just look, like the rest of them.”

“And she enjoys that, does she?”

“Why, hell yes, she enjoys it. Gets a hell of a kick out of it. I’ve heard her tell Raoul about it.”

“What does he think?”

Caster shrugged. “I never asked him. Where that woman is concerned it’s best to stay off the subject.”

Longarm got out a cigarillo and lit it. “Say, is he Mexican? He don’t quite look it.”

“Half-breed. His daddy was Mexican. His mother was a schoolteacher from Louisiana or Tennessee or some such place. Fell in love with a Mexican bandit if you can figure that.” He stopped and frowned. “Long, we ain’t getting our business talked about. We still got a couple of conditions to cover. Besides, the less you know about Raoul San Diego the better off you’ll be.”

Longarm drew on his cigarillo. “Now about that first condition. I ain’t all that pleased about that. I done told you why, and I ain’t gonna run the risk of putting another burr under your saddle blanket, but that condition kind of brings me up short. What else is on the bill of fare?”

“You said you were going to drive for Galveston. Well, you ain’t going to make a beeline for there from here. I ain’t going to have it looking like you come out of Laredo. You may not want to, but you’re going to turn those cattle east for fifty miles and trail in that direction alongside the Rio Grande before you turn them back north toward Galveston or Houston or wherever you plan to take them. I ain’t having those coastal ranchers thinking you come from here.”

“Hell, you won’t get no argument from me about that. Ain’t I already told you I want my papers to say I come out of Brownsville? I don’t know that it’s necessary to go fifty miles. Hell, that’s a three-day drive.”

“Fifty miles. No argument.”

“You going to send Mister San Diego to make sure I do?”

“I will if I have to. But I’ll know if you don’t go as far as I tell you.”

Longarm stared at Caster for a moment. “All right. What else?”

Caster scratched his forearm and did not look at Longarm. “You’re going to pay half the money up front. Soon as we take your cattle into quarantine. Twenty-five hundred. Cash on the barrelhead.”

“The hell!” Longarm was startled in spite of himself. He’d gotten so into the playacting that he was genuinely outraged. “You want me to give you twenty-five hundred dollars and you got my cattle penned up? Boy, you must think I’m the biggest sucker ever come down the pike. I’ll pay the way it’s always paid. I’ll pay when you give me my cattle and my signed and stamped trail papers.”

Caster shook his head. “No. I want the money as soon as your herd gets here.”

“And what’s to keep you from taking my money and just leaving my cattle in quarantine? Listen, Caster, I never heard of such a proposition and nobody I know ever heard of one like it, either. You got something against me personally? You have, why just spit it out. I’d like to know, because you seem to be causing me a world of grief here.”

Caster spit in his bucket. “Long,” he said in a bored voice, “you ain’t nothing to me but money. I don’t know you and don’t want to know you, so there ain’t nothin’ personal. I didn’t like you wantin’ to drag Mull into this, but maybe it be a good thing. I don’t know. And you made a few other remarks weren’t none of your business, but let it pass. Now, you want this deal or not? The conditions ain’t up for argument.”

Longarm furrowed his brow as if he were making a decision, thinking. Actually, he was thinking. He didn’t know how much money the ranchers had given Austin Davis, but he was almost certain it didn’t include any five thousand dollars in bribe money, especially twenty-five hundred up front. He sat there for a moment trying to figure out how he was going to lay his hands on that kind of money. He didn’t know if Laredo had a federal bank or not, but it didn’t make any difference. He wasn’t going to tell anyone in Laredo he was a U.S. deputy marshal, even a federal banker. He knew Laredo, he knew the border. You might not be corrupt when you came to Laredo, but if you stayed long enough it would corrupt you sure as hell. The border lived by the mordida, the bite, the bribe. That was the way business was done, and it was so natural no one thought anything of it. But that wasn’t going to help him get twenty-five hundred dollars. “Look here, Mister Caster,” he said at last, “I’ll take your deal because I ain’t got no choice. I’ll just have to take it on trust that Mister Mull is going to sign and put his seal on my road papers. But I got to tell you that I ain’t got twenty five hundred dollars I can lay my hands on as quick as you want it. You say you have to have it in hand when my cattle arrive. Hell, that could be tomorrow.”

Caster frowned. “What the hell is all this? You telling me you didn’t bring any money with you? Wasn’t you prepared to pay at least two dollars a head? You were also going to have to pay the man who gathered the cattle.”

“Of course. But that give me a week. I was going to wire my bank for the money. I figured my cattle would be held a week and I’d have time to get the money down here by wire. But if I got to take and hand over half that five thousand when my cattle come in—well, hell, there ain’t going to be enough time.”

Caster’s look turned sour. “Hell, you are some hombre to do business with. I reckon you had better get yore cornbread ass over to the bank and get them busy on the transaction. As long as it’s in the works I’ll go ahead and receive your cattle.”

“Mister Caster, you know what day of the week it is?”

“Of course, it’s Saturday. So what? The banks are open till noon. Go find one.”

“They may be open till noon here, but they ain’t in Broken Bow. Monday morning is the soonest I can get this wagon rolling.”

Caster slapped his fat hand on the desk. It made a loud thud. “Well, sheet, Long! You are trying my patience. How much money do you have with you?”

Longarm tried to look worried. He said, “Not much. Few hundred dollars. Man with any sense don’t carry a lot of cash in this country. You ought to know that. I done business this way for years and never had no trouble. Hell, Mister Caster, what is the rush? You’ll have my cattle in your pens when they get here, and I won’t be able to move them without your say-so. Ain’t that security enough?”

Caster leaned forward and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. “That’s the only kind of security I believe in, Long. Tell you what … How long will it take you to get hold of your money?”

“Two days, three at the outside.”

Caster stood up. “All right,” he said. “I’ll give you three days starting Monday morning. By Wednesday you better have twenty-five hundred dollars to put in Raoul’s hand. You savvy?”

Longarm stood up, too, put on his hat, and worked it around to get it set comfortably. “Put like that, I don’t reckon there’s much way I can’t savvy. All I can do is find me a bank Monday morning and get them hopping. You give me to the close of banking hours Wednesday?”

“That’s three o’clock. Yeah, you can have until then. But if you’re wise, you’ll get it to Raoul as quick as you can. You’re just about to get where you ain’t worth all the trouble.”

Longarm stared at the customs man for a long moment, wondering what all the rush was about. It sounded like Caster was up to something on his own. He was setting up to cheat someone, but Longarm couldn’t figure out if it was him or maybe even James Mull. But he let it pass just as he let pass the casual insulting remarks that Caster liked to make. All he said was, “You drive a hard bargain, Mister Caster. And I don’t see no call for it.”

“Don’t you? Well then, I reckon you wouldn’t. But then you ain’t spent ten years dealing with the likes of yourself. Now go on. I’ve got work to do.”

Longarm walked out of Caster’s office very deep in thought. Letting the screen door bang behind him, he stepped off the porch, climbed into the saddle of the roan, and looked around, half expecting to see San Diego watching him, but the gunman was nowhere in sight. He rode slowly back to the hotel, and turned the animal in at the stable, figuring he wouldn’t need him for a while. Still deep in thought, Longarm went into the old hotel and walked across the empty lobby. It was almost noon, but he wasn’t hungry. He went in the bar, got a large whiskey and a mug of beer, sought out an empty table in a back corner of the almost deserted bar, and sat down to think. The first problem he had to deal with was where in hell he and Austin were going to get the kind of money they needed. He could wire Billy Vail and the money would be sent without any question, but he sure as hell couldn’t telegraph from Laredo to the headquarters of the U.S. Marshal Service in Denver, Colorado. And there wasn’t another telegraph office within seventy-five miles. And the hell of it was he didn’t know where Austin Davis was or when to expect him. Caster seemed determined to have the money and have it within the time specified. Longarm could not figure out why the customs man was being so adamant about it, but the reason didn’t really matter. If they were to catch Caster, and Mull, he had to have some cash money in his hand to pass across. That dodge about handing it to San Diego wasn’t going to protect Caster, no matter what he might think. He’d already made it clear that San Diego was his employee, and handing the half-breed the money was the same as giving it to Caster.

But there was still the puzzle about Mull. Longarm wasn’t sure if Caster was trying to pull a fast one on Mull or not. He was halfway persuaded that Mull had been contacted and was willing to go along with the scheme; he just wasn’t willing to be directly linked to it in person.

The money, though—that was a real poser. He guessed, once Austin Davis got in with the cattle, he could take what money the junior deputy had and put it with what they both could scrape up and maybe they’d have the twenty-five hundred that Caster was demanding. Then again, how much money Austin would have depended upon how much the Texas coastal cattlemen had given him and how much he’d had to pay for the Mexican cattle. Longarm pressed his hand against his forehead trying to remember what Davis had said having to do with bribing Caster. Had he been going to actually bribe him, hand over the money? Or was he just planning on making the offer and arresting Caster when he accepted? Longarm could not recall. They’d talked about so much, and he hadn’t been on the scene, and he really hadn’t paid that much attention. Not that he hadn’t been interested—it just hadn’t seemed necessary at the time, and he’d figured there’d be plenty of other opportunities to get matters straight. Besides, he hadn’t much planned on using anything that Austin had mapped out, anyway.

He sighed and took a drink of whiskey, chasing it with a long swallow of the cool beer. Longarm didn’t much care for beer unless he was thirsty, but it went down well enough when a man was doing hot work, like heavy thinking about where to lay his hands on a lot of money.

He was chewing the matter over in his mind when Jasper White suddenly appeared in the door of the saloon and, after pausing to look around, came marching straight over to Longarm’s table. Longarm glanced up as the lanky man with the pale eyes came to a stop. “I reckon you owe me money,” Jasper White said. “And I reckon you know why you do.”

Longarm stared at him for a moment. Finally he said, “Well, Jasper, I think I counted that hundred out right, but if I made a mistake, you set down here and tell me about it. You want a drink?”

“Don’t drink,” Jasper White said. But he sat down stiffly in a chair across from Longarm. “Never did drink. Don’t hold with it.”

Longarm half laughed. “Well, all right. That’s your business. Just leaves more for the rest of us. Now, what is this about I owe you money.”

“You jest paid me fer Mister Jay Caster. Was a hunnert dollars for him. Wasn’t nothin’ said about Mister James Mull.”

Longarm frowned. “What are you talking about, Jasper?”

“I’m talking about Mister James Mull of Brownsville, the high mucky-muck for the Customs down in this part of the country. You gone and got him ringed in on yore deal. Well, that figures to cost you another hunnert dollars.”

Longarm shook his head slowly, but his mind was working fast. It wasn’t hard to figure how Jasper knew about Mull. Raoul had told his brother Raymond and Raymond had told Jasper. It was good news in a way. It meant that Mull was actually coming to Laredo, that he was actually part of the scheme and not just some bluff that Caster was going to try to run. But it wouldn’t do to let Jasper know how fair things had progressed. “Jasper,” he said, “where you getting your information? For all I know, you’re trying to do me out of more money. What makes you so sure that Mister Mull is involved?”

Jasper began nodding his head. “That’s all right, how I know. The thing is, I know. People tell me things because they want me to know. Sometimes so I’ll talk and get word around, and sometimes when they don’t want me to talk. Fact of the business is I know the difference. They don’t want it knowed about Mull. He’s coming in on the Q.T. Telegram is gonna get sent to him saying a certain thing and he be getting’ on the train and come straight here. Now, about my money-“

“Wait a minute. You said whoever knowed about Mull didn’t want it talked around. Yet here you are talking to me, telling me. That ain’t a very good reference.”