inches over six feet in stocking feet. He had a horseman’s lean build, with narrow hips and broad shoulders. His hands were powerful, with long fingers that were comfortable when wrapped around the butt of the double-action .44 Colt revolver he carried in a cross-draw holster just to the left of his belt buckle. He wore a tweed coat, calfskin vest, and checked flannel shirt with a string tie loosely knotted at his throat. His trousers were brown corduroy. His gunbelt and stovepipe cavalry boots were black. A snuff-brown Stetson hat with a low, flat crown lay on the floor beside the chair he’d been occupying.
He cleared his throat and leaned close to the mirror. By damn he’d been right. A single, spiky hair had escaped from the seal-sleek flow of mustache and been left to curl back and up toward his nostril. Why, another fraction of an inch or so of growth and that hair would be tickling the bejabbers out of him. That damn barber should have noticed the hair and snipped it. Now Longarm was going to have to yank it out. The offending follicle was sticking upright at a funny angle, and was growing in an awkward spot to begin with, immediately underneath his nose. He’d have to kind of twist and wiggle some to trap the little SOB between his thumbnail and the nail on his middle finger. He figured he was going to have to get a pretty good grip on the thing to pluck it out, and did his best to get a handle on the situation, scowling and twisting his jaw and probing under his nose with one big hand.
Billy Vail chose that moment to walk in from his lunch. And he wasn’t alone.
“Sam, this is, um, the deputy I was telling you about. Deputy Marshal Custis Long, this is Assistant U.S. Attorney Sam Beckwith.”
The government lawyer hesitated about half a heartbeat before he nodded and shoved a hand out for a shake.
Shit, Longarm couldn’t blame the guy. It sure had to have looked like he was standing there picking his nose—and admiring himself in the damn mirror while he did it—instead of trying to cull an errant mustache hair.
No point in trying to explain, he realized. He wouldn’t be believed anyhow and words would just make it worse. So he settled for making this Beckwith fella feel at least a mite better. Longarm hauled a bandanna out of his back pocket and carefully wiped his hands before he accepted the bravely offered shake. “Pleasure to meetcha, Sam.”
“Yes, um, likewise I’m sure.”
“Sit down, Longarm, Sam,” Billy put in. “Let’s get down to business, shall we?”
Longarm was plenty willing to do that. He dropped the butt end of his cheroot into Billy’s cuspidor and sat like a good little fella, determined to be on his best behavior for the rest of the interview, whatever it proved to be about.
Chapter 2
“Tell me, Longarm, do you happen to know what a Last Man Club is?”
Longarm shrugged. “Sure do, Billy. The way I understand it you can use a bottle, like some real fine whiskey, or a sum of money, most anything you like. You get a bunch of fellas together, comrades from an outfit that fought together or whatever, an’ they agree to be pals for life. Maybe they get together now an’ then or maybe they don’t. Point is, they keep this thing, whatever it is, but they don’t none of ‘em touch it. It’s like … a symbol or a talisman. It belongs to the bunch of them, an’ no single one of ‘em can use it until the rest have died off and there’s just one of them left. Then he takes the thing, this bottle of whiskey or chunk of money or whatever, and he uses it in remembrance of his comrades that went before him. And that, the way I’ve heard it, is pretty much what a Last Man Club is about. Am I right, Billy?”
“Right on the money, Longarm,” Vail agreed.
“Nothing against the law in a Last Man Club, is there?” Longarm asked.
“Not a thing,” Vail said.
“Normally,” Sam Beckwith put in.
Longarm lifted an eyebrow and waited for the lawyer to explain.
“We have something of a—how shall I put this?—a situation. It, ahem, involves a Last Man Club. Or at least we believe that it does.”
“Yes?”
“The thing is …” Beckwith stood and began to pace the room, his nervous energy making Billy Vail’s office seem considerably smaller than it really was. “The thing is, Long, there is a Last Man Club of officers, and former officers, of the United States Army. Oh, I am sure there are a great many such groups involving military officers, and perhaps even some among enlisted men as well.”
Longarm didn’t have any trouble figuring out that Samuel Beckwith must once have been an officer himself. Because why else would he qualify the statement that enlisted men had feelings that would lead them to want to have Last Man Clubs as well? Longarm kept quiet, though, and let the lawyer talk.
“This particular group consists of officers who served together in the forts along the old Bozeman Trail back in the late ‘60s. Are you familiar with the period in question?”
“Some,” Longarm drawled. “That’s the bunch that got whipped by Red Cloud an’ his Sioux.”
Beckwith’s face colored, starting out pink and progressing through various shades of salmon, red, ocher, and scarlet until it approached plum purple. Longarm kind of found the transformation interesting.
“By God, sir, you will withdraw that scurrilous remark at once or I shall … shall … Marshal Vail, please remind your employee to be quiet on subjects he knows nothing about.” Without waiting for Billy’s response, Beckwith bulled forward. “There was no defeat of those fine young men,” he snapped. “Far from it. If they had been allowed to do what they were fully capable of doing …”
Beckwith paused for a moment and Longarm, in a tone of feigned innocence, observed, “But wasn’t that fella—what was his name again? Oh, yeah, Fetterman, that’s it. Didn’t that Captain Fetterman get exactly the chance he asked for?”
Longarm hoped Sam Beckwith had a safety pop-off valve built into his gizzard, for otherwise he just might puff up past his limits and explode.
“Bill Fetterman was a hero. A hero, I tell you. He died in valor, a martyr to the treachery of the red man.”
