Billy Vail went on earnestly. “Custis, they’ve got about a hundred and ten, hundred and twenty men and officers in garrison there. To refresh your memory, Fort Concho was established in 1850, back during the Indian troubles, and has been there ever since, part of a chain of forts along the southern edge of Texas and on into New Mexico and Arizona. Well, things have been pretty quiet until lately. They’ve had five soldiers killed there in the past two months.”
Longarm said, “I don’t want to appear unsympathetic, Billy, but what the hell does that have to do with me? If you’re a soldier, you got a chance at getting killed, and if you’re a soldier at an Indian fort, you got an even better chance.”
Billy slapped the flat of his hand on the top of his desk. “Aw, hell, Custis, Don’t talk nonsense. There hasn’t been any Indian trouble in that country in ten years, and besides that, these soldiers were not killed in the line of duty. Custis, somebody has been murdering soldiers at that fort.”
Custis got out another cheroot and lit it. It was a small, cheap cigar. It wasn’t his preference. But sometimes he felt like being noble and denying himself the luxury of the long panatellas he liked.
“Murdering, Billy? They’ve been murdering soldiers? More than likely, they committed suicide just because they couldn’t get out of the damn place. If anybody killed them, it was because the soldiers discovered the one sprig of grass growing around there, or maybe the one drop of water still left in the damn place, and the civilians wanted it for themselves. Why would civilians want to murder soldiers anyway?”
Billy Vail shook his head. “I don’t know. That’s the strangest part of it. You would think that a town like San Angelo, being no bigger than it is—what is it, around five thousand?”
Longarm nodded. “Maybe a little bigger.”
“Well, you would think that a town like that would want soldiers hanging around there spending their pay, but the town has been on a tear to get that post moved. They’ve written congressmen, they’ve complained. It doesn’t make a damn bit of sense, but there it is. And now, here come these murders.”
“Well, why in hell didn’t the army just shut down the fort and move them if the town didn’t want them there. Like you said, there hasn’t been any Indian trouble around that country since Lord knows when. The Comanches have been staying on the reservations and the Apaches are all in New Mexico—western New Mexico at that. Why doesn’t the army just move them?”
Billy Vail said, “Where? When you’ve got a bunch of soldiers on the payroll, you’ve got to keep them somewhere. You can’t keep them all in Washington, D.C. You’ve got a fort, you’ve got to put soldiers in it. Hell, Custis, don’t you know anything?”
“I know that I don’t want to go to San Angelo and find out who’s murdering soldiers.”
“Well, you’re going and that’s that.”
Longarm got a grieved look on his face. “Why me? Tommy Wharton hasn’t left Colorado in six months that I know of. He’s been lapping it up in every saloon from Denver to Colorado Springs. How about Wesley Coker? Now, there’s a man who oughta go to San Angelo. Hell, yes, Wesley Coker. If anybody deserves to go to San Angelo, it’s Coker, and they deserve him too.”
Billy Vail shook his head warily. He had expected this reaction. Truthfully, Longarm had been catching the hard assignments of late, and Vail had hoped to give the man some time off, but the request from the War Department was not to be ignored.
“Custis, I am sending you because you’re the best man for the job. There is no other reason and nothing you say is going to change my mind.”
Longarm looked decidedly agitated by the statement. He couldn’t really tell Billy Vail why he very much did not want to go at this particular time. As far as that went, he would not have wanted to go at any time, but it was inconvenient in the here and now, and especially detrimental to a situation he had invested a good two weeks in. There was a young widow who had recently come to town. A comely young lady named Shirley Dunn whom he had been carefully cultivating since he had returned to Denver from a hard trip into the Oklahoma Territory.
This Mrs. Dunn had been coming along nicely, and he had great hopes that their friendship was about to burst into passion, but he didn’t think that the iron was quite hot enough to strike yet. It wasn’t anything that he was going to tell Billy Vail, however. So all he could do was carry on about the injustice of sending him out so soon on what sounded like a long and dreary and probably fruitless assignment in a part of the country that Longarm found distasteful.
He said, “Billy, you can’t even get a decent drink of whiskey in west Texas. You’re a drinking man. You know how that can affect a lawman’s performance, his all-round general frame of mind.”
Billy gave him a dry look. “Take a good supply of the Maryland whiskey that you value so much.”
Longarm looked disgusted. “Why can’t the army handle this for themselves? Hell, they’re in the killing business. If they’ve lost five of them, their own soldiers, that’s damn careless.”
Billy Vail said, “They’ve asked for our help, Longarm. Now I want you to get yourself ready to go.”
“Well, it just looks to me that the government ought to have some branch or body that could tend to that sort of thing.”
Billy said dryly, “They do. Us. Now you can wiggle all you want to, Custis, but you’re not going to get loose from this job. I’ll give you a few days to get ready, but I want you gone before the end of the week. I want you in San Angelo next Monday.”
Longarm sighed, his mind on the Widow Dunn, wondering if the affair could be pushed into a gallop from a sedate trot. He said, “Well, how have these so-called murders been occurring? Have we got any details?”
Billy Vail pushed a piece of paper across the desk at him. “Read that. It’s the official report requesting our assistance.”
Longarm took the paper, headed by the insignia of the War Department, Department of the Army, and when he was through he said, “Well, it’s kind of a mixed bag. Four were shot and one was knifed. All of them occurred off post, and it appears that all of them were either on their way into town for some fun and frolic or else coming back.”
Billy Vail said, “The one that was knifed in the back alley behind the whorehouse might not be connected to the others. There’s no way to tell. But as to the four men that were shot, each one of them was alone, each one of them was between the fort and the town, and each one of them was killed at night. There’s no doubt that they
