“You feel all right about letting Old Man Castle and those two boys go? I mean, you did have those charges filed against them for illegal cattle importation.”
Longarm smiled slightly. “Well, I was kind of on thin ice about that.”
Billy Vail gave a whoop. “Thin ice? Boy, that’s an understatement. Thin ice? Hell, it was ninety-five degrees. There wasn’t no ice at all. What do you mean firing off a telegram to a fellow officer, getting him to get a bench warrant from a federal judge sent down to San Angelo? Hell, you could have gotten all our asses in a crack. What were you thinking about?”
Longarm said, “I was thinking about five dead soldiers, six after a while. That’s what I was thinking about. I was thinking about how to unravel a knot when I couldn’t find a way. The only thing that I could think of to do was to put some pressure on the Castles and see what came out of the jar. That’s all I could figure out, Billy. I know, I probably exceeded my authority-“
“Exceeded your authority? Boy, you sure have a quaint way of putting things, Mr. Custis Long.”
Longarm sighed ruefully. It had taken a couple of days to clean the mess up. In the end, he had let Vernon Castle and his two sons go. They had gone willingly and they had certainly not been grateful. Even though Virgil had been simpleminded, he had been well loved by his family. Longarm could tell that Vernon Castle felt the loss keenly. The sheriff had been no friend of his at the end either. In fact, he had let Longarm know in no uncertain terms that he deeply resented the federal lawman and wished for any excuse to jail or to shoot him.
Only Captain Montrose and the soldiers had seemed grateful.
Billy Vail asked, “Was there a spring under the fort?”
Longarm shook his head. “I’ll be damned if I know, Billy. They hadn’t started digging by the time I left and I really don’t care. All I know is that I wanted the hell out of San Angelo, Texas.”
Billy Vail leaned back in his chair and cocked his head to one side. “Am I to understand that you found no diversion down there whatsoever? No female companionship to make the long hours and days pass faster?”
Longarm said nonchalantly, “Wherever would you have gotten an idea like that, Marshal Vail? I was on the job twenty-four hours a day. You sent me down there to do a job and that’s all I did.”
“Bullshit.”
Longarm stood up. “I can’t add a thing to it. The best I can figure, Clell Martin thought that it was still Reconstruction, and one day he took it into his head, either him or that simpleminded kid. They teamed up and decided to start killing soldiers. Clell convinced Virgil that he was an Indian and that his name was Running Wolf, or it might have been vice versa, it’s hard to tell about crazy people. They both truly believed in what they were doing.”
“How’s your arm?”
Longarm shrugged. “It will work fine for whatever light duty I am going to get around here for a while.”
Billy Vail gave him a big grin. He said, “Well … we’ll just have to see what comes up.”
Longarm pointed a finger at him. “Billy, you better not be sending me off any time soon. I’ve got business to do around here. I just put in two of the hardest weeks of my life, and I’ve got some easy time coming and I’ve got plans to make good use of it.”
Billy Vail cackled. “By the way, the widow Shirley Dunn has come around a few times asking about you.”
Longarm brightened. “She has?”
“Yeah, she has. But I’m gonna give you a piece of advice, Mr. Fast and Loose. That lady ain’t gonna give you no milk unless you buy the cow. If I ever saw a marrying woman, that is one.”
Longarm walked over to the door, took his hat off, and carefully brushed the brim before he set it back on his head.
He said in an offhanded voice, “Billy, have you ever spent a few nights in a whorehouse having drinks and dinner and, well … let’s just call it dessert, and it didn’t cost you a dime?”
“No, and you haven’t either.”
Longarm nodded and put his hand on the doorknob. He said, “Billy, there are some things in Heaven and Hell that you don’t know about yet.”
“I know one thing. Sometimes the truth ain’t in you. Now go on and get out of here. Ten minutes with you is long enough for anybody.”
Longarm opened the door and started out, and then he paused. He looked back at his boss and said, “Billy, I didn’t like this one. I didn’t like it at all. I had an old man who thought he was still fighting the Civil War. I had a simpleminded kid who thought he was a Comanche Indian fighting the long knives. And I had to kill them both. The wrong people got killed, Billy.”
His boss said, “Are you telling me that you think that Old Man Castle and his sons knew?”
Longarm nodded. “I finally got it out of Glenn that they had found some spent cartridges from one of the Sharps rifles and that they had found some dust and dirt on one of them in the rack where they would normally be kept cleaned. They knew, all right.”
Billy Vail said, “Then why didn’t you hold them as accessories?”
Longarm shook his head. “Billy, it wouldn’t have done any good. It would have been local jurisdiction and they would have never convicted a Castle. Not in that county. Not in San Angelo. Besides, I figure that the townspeople and the Castles all deserve each other anyway.”
Billy Vail said, “Probably you’re right. Go on and get a drink and forget about it. You might have to forget about the widow Shirley Dunn too.” He cackled.
Longarm said, “We’ll see about that.” He shut the door behind him and walked off through the outer office toward the hall, his mind finally turning to other things.
