“What in hell happened to get you here on time, for once?”
Longarm didn’t bother answering. He was used to Vail’s bitching. He felt his chief was entitled, bound as he was now to a desk and swivel chair, going bald and getting lardy. Desk work, after an active career in the field, seemed to bring out the granny in a man, and Longarm felt that he might bitch about life, too, under the same circumstances.
Vail shoved a pile of telegraph forms across the desk. “I guess you know you raised a real shit-stink down in New Mexico. You’d better have a good story to back up your play down there. I’ve got wires here from everybody except President Hayes.”
“Chances are the word ain’t got to him, yet,” Longarm replied mildly. “Don’t be feeling disappointed. You might get one from him too, before the day’s out. You want me to tell you how it was?”
“No. In fact, I’m not sure I want a long report in the file telling exactly what happened. Think you can write one like the one you handed in after that Short Creek fracas a few years back?”
Vail was referring to a report Longarm had turned in about his handling of another political hot potato that had consumed a month of time, resulted in eight deaths, and upset a hundred square miles of Idaho Territory. The report had simply read, “Assigned to case on May 23. Completed assignment and closed case July 2.”
“Don’t see why not.” Longarm considered for a moment before he went on. “I figured things might be hottening up down around Santa Fe, at the capitol. Some gunslick tried to bushwhack me when I got off the narrow-gauge last night.”
“The hell you say.” Vail’s tone showed no surprise. “You get him?”
“Too dark. He ran before I could sight on him.”
“Well, keep your report short. I won’t have to explain things I don’t know about. Besides, I want you out of this office before that pot down there boils over clear to Washington.”
“Suits me, chief, right to a tee. There’s snow on the ground and a smell of more in the air, and you know how I feel about that damned white stuff.”
“If it’ll cheer you up any, the place you’ll be going to is just a little cooler than the hinges of hell, this time of the year.” Vail pawed through the untidy stacks of documents on his desk until he uncovered the papers he was after. “Texas is Yelling for us to give them a hand. So is the army.”
“Seems to me like they both got enough hands so they wouldn’t need to come running to us. What is wrong with the Rangers? They gone to pot these days?”
Vail bristled. As a one-time Texas Ranger, he automatically resented any hints that his old outfit wasn’t up to snuff. Huffily, he said, “The Rangers have got more sense than to bust into something that might stir up trouble in Mexico. Here’s what Bert Matthews wrote me from Austin.” He read from one of the papers he’d uncovered. “He says, ‘You see what a bind we’re in on this, Billy. If one of my boys sets foot across the border and gets crossways of Diaz’s Rurales, we’d risk starting another War with them. Whoever goes looking for Nate Webster’s got to have Federal authority back of him and can’t be tied to Texas. That’s why I’m looking to YOU to give us a hand.’”
Longarm rubbed his freshly shaved chin and nodded slowly. “I hadn’t looked at it that way. Makes sense, I suppose. What’d this Nate Webster do?”
“As far as Bert knows, he didn’t do anything except droP out of sight somewhere on the other side of the Rio Grande. So did two black troopers who deserted from the 10th Cavalry, and a captain from the same outfit who went off on his own to bring them back.”
“Wait a minute, now. That Rio Grande’s a damn long river,” Longarm Observed. “It’s going to take a while, prowling it all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico. I got to have a place to start looking.”
“You have, so settle down. I wouldn’t be so apt to send you if it wasn’t that all four of them disappeared from the same place. Little town called Los Perros. Dogtown I guess that’d translate into. You ever hear of it? I sure as hell never did, but it’s been a spell since I left Texas.”
Longarm shook his head. “Name don’t ring a bell with me, either. Where’s this Los Perros place at, in general?”
“It’s to be close to where the Pecos River goes into the Rio Grande.”
“Rough country in that part,” Longarm said. “if it’s there, I reckon I can find it, though. I aim to circle around New Mexico instead of going there the straightest way. If I show my face in old Senator Abeyet’s country before the old man wears his mad off, I’d have to fight my way from Santa Fe clear to El Paso.”
“You steer clear of New Mexico Territory, and that’s an order,” Vail agreed. “You’ve stirred up enough hell there to last a while.”
“Now, don’t get your bowels riled up, Chief. I’ll figure me out a route. Just let me think a minute.” He leaned back in the red morocco-leather chair, the most comfortable piece of furniture in the marshal’s office, and began aloud. “Let’s see, now. I take the KP outa here tonight and switch to the MT at Pueblo. That gets me to Wichita, and I’ll make a connection there with the I-GN or the SP to San Antone. Pick me up a horse and some army field rations at the quartermaster depot there and ride to Fort Stockton. That’ll beat jarring my ass on the Butterfield stage, and it’ll get me to spittin’ distance of the border a lot faster.”
“Tell my clerk,” Vail said impatiently. “He’ll write Your travel vouchers and requisition your expense money. Here. Take these letters and read them on the train. They’ll give you the whole story as good as I can. Now, get the hell outta this office before I get a wire from the attorney-general or the president telling me to suspend you or fire you outright.”
“Which you can’t do if I ain’t here.” Longarm grinned. “All right, chief. Time I close this case and get back, things ought to’ve cooled down enough to get me off the political shitlist.”
During the three train changes and four days and nights it took Longarm to reach his jumping-off Place deep in Texas, he spent his time catching up with lost sleep and studying the letters Marshal Vail had gotten from the Texas Ranger captain and the post adjutant at Fort Stockton. He was looking for some sort of connection that might tie the four disappearances together, but couldn’t see any.
Ranger Nate Webster had been working on a fresh outbreak of the style of rustling along the Texas border that had come to be called the “Laredo Loop.” Cattle stolen from ranches in central Texas were hustled across the Rio Grande’s northern stretches, their brands altered, and with false bills of sale forged to show that the steers had
