While he waited for the soldiers to arrive to pick up the bodies, and to make his report to Captain Montrose, he sat and tried to think good thoughts about Mabelle Russell. Maybe he could even stick around long enough to pay her one more visit. Maybe they could even have another nice dinner together. Hell, it was something pleasant to think about—something other than the slaughter on top of a butte. He was not proud of what he’d done, but it had been what he’d had to do. He’d never been given any choice.
He sat there, studying the night, noting the lack of stars, waiting for the soldiers from the fort to arrive. Then he got up and walked partway down the butte, if for no other reason than to get away from the bodies of Clell Martin and Virgil Castle. Normally bodies didn’t bother him, but this time they did. He felt as if he had killed men who deserved help rather than killing. And he wished there had been something he could have done other than what he had been forced to.
He got out a cheroot and lit it, the flame of the match bursting bright in the dark night. The only good that he could see coming of the matter was that now he could go home. There was little doubt in his mind that the two, in some sort of strange partnership, had been the murderers of the six soldiers.
In reality, he couldn’t actually take credit for flushing them out. They had flushed themselves out. He supposed that they had begun firing at the fort out of frustration because the soldiers, out of fear, had quit frequenting the road to town at night. That meant, in the end, it had been the soldiers’ fear itself that had solved the mystery. The only thing he could be grateful for was that no one else had been killed in this last attack. The worst thing that could have happened would have been if Clell and Virgil had been able to restrain themselves for a time until the fear had worn off and the soldiers had fallen back into their pattern of nightly trips into town. Then the pair would have had targets aplenty.
But he supposed that you couldn’t expect patience from a man who thought he was an Indian and another who thought that Reconstruction was still going on. It was a sad state of affairs all around. He knew that the captain would thank him. He knew that Vernon Castle would curse him. He knew that the sheriff would probably file a written complaint against him. He knew that Vernon Castle, through his lawyer, would no doubt file a civil action against him. But in the end, it just came down to doing the job that the badge said you had to do. Nowhere in his rules of conduct was it specified that it was supposed to be fun or even pleasant. Nowhere was he guaranteed anything more than long hours, poor pay, and lonely work. Well, he decided, if in the end there were more people happy with your work than unhappy, then you’d done a good job. He reckoned, judging it that way, that his time in San Angelo had not been misspent.
It was five days later and Longarm was sitting across the desk from Billy Vail in Billy’s office in Denver. Billy had just finished reading Longarm’s report and was glancing at it again.
Finally he threw it on the desk and said, “Hell, Custis. That may be the shortest damn report ever filed in the history of this office. There is a world of story behind a few of those statements you made in there.”
Longarm said, “Such as what?”
Billy picked the paper up again. “Well, just for openers, right here you start this thing out by saying that due to the greed of one individual, Vernon Castle, six troopers of the United States Cavalry stationed at Fort Concho, San Angelo, Texas, were mistakenly killed by a misguided ex-Confederate soldier and a simpleminded young man who had been convinced that he was an Indian. What greed? What greed, Custis, are you talking about?”
Longarm shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He said, “I didn’t really want to put it in an official report, Billy, because it sounds so damn silly. I mean, you take the consequences that came about because of what Vernon Castle had in his mind and what he was trying to do, well, it’s a damn shame. I hated to put it down.”
“Well, you can just damn well tell me and let me be the judge of whether you put it down or not.”
Longarm said “Well, Vernon Castle thought that there was a spring that was very near the surface right under Fort Concho. He’d got hold of a dowser—you know, a water witch.”
Billy Vail said, “You mean one of them kind that goes around with a willow stick and when the water pulls at it, it pulls toward the ground?”
Longarm nodded. “Exactly.”
Billy Vail said, “Well, you know, I’ve heard of that working.”
Longarm said, “And I’ve heard of it not working also. But the point of it is that this dowser, the water witch that Vernon Castle had brought in to try to find some water near the surface in that dry-as-a-bone part of the country, had got onto what he claimed was an underground stream. He followed it straight through Fort Concho. He said it came to no more than five or six feet below the surface there, and said that it could be dug up in one afternoon except that the soldiers had a camp there. They had a fort there. It was government land, and that was what caused Vernon Castle to set into doing what he did.”
“You mean, trying to get that garrison moved?”
“That’s right. So you see how silly that would have looked in an official report. A rancher tries to get an army garrison moved because he believes there is water under the fort. I’m not going to write that. Somebody is liable to find it ten years from now and wonder if maybe there wasn’t another crazy person involved in the case.”
Billy rubbed his face. “Why didn’t they just go to the commander of that fort, Captain—uh, what’s his name, Captain Montrose—and ask him if they could dig for water?”
Longarm sat back in his chair. “Hell, greed, Billy. Pure and simple greed. They didn’t want to share that water with anybody. If it had been found on government land, U.S. public land, then it would have belonged to everybody. The Castles wanted it for their cattle, their livestock.”
Billy Vail studied the report a moment more before pitching it back on his desk. “You don’t reckon the rest of the Castles were involved with the murder of those soldiers at the fort?”
Longarm shook his head. “No, I think that it was the damnedest unlucky coincidence that could have happened. I think that simpleminded Virgil, who halfway thought he was an Indian, had heard his daddy talking about the soldiers—and, of course, I’ll never know the truth in this—and he either worked it out in his own head or had some help from Clell Martin, and decided that the soldiers were the enemy and that the way to eliminate them was to kill them. He had access to all those rifles, and I’ve got it out of the rest of the family that he was indeed a very good shot.”
