but it would take a great deal more than that to get him viewed as an arrival who shared the town’s opinion toward the garrison at the fort.
As he ate his breakfast the next morning in the hotel dining room, he reflected that if he ever meant to make his official presence known to the sheriff, the sheriff’s behavior the night before had canceled out that thought. Clearly the sheriff took the side of the locals against any outsiders.
Longarm wondered if that included the soldiers at the fort. Were they outsiders since most of them were Yankees? Even worse than that, most of them were immigrants newly arrived in the country. The only work they could find was that of serving in the army, and especially in the frontier forts. Many of those forts were now being manned by Negroes who were called buffalo soldiers. As a general rule, being sent to such far-flung outposts was reserved for outcasts, the second-rate and troublemakers. Of course, that did not apply to the officers to the same extent as the enlisted men. But no matter what their social status was, they didn’t deserve to be killed.
He wondered about the Castle family, and intended on making some discreet inquiries in time. He thought, however, that their paths would be crossing in the very near future. The burly man they called Big Bill or Billy Bob, or even the one they called Glenn, the one with the shotgun, didn’t look like the type to take a licking and think very kindly about it. He thought for certain that they would be paying him a visit in the very near future.
But for the time being, his plan was just to hang around town and listen to what he could hear, put forth such opinions as might find favor with those who were against the soldiers being there, and let the situation take its course. He knew of no other way to proceed.
However, later that morning he received a communication from Captain Montrose. They had worked out a method of communicating by which Longarm could not be identified with the garrison. There were several civilian employees at the fort, and a blacksmith who saw to the garrison’s horses was to drop off a message at his hotel. It wouldn’t be a closed envelope but rather an innocent-looking piece of paper mentioning lost horses and Longarm’s search for them. That would notify him that he was supposed to come to the fort as quickly as possible.
He met Captain Montrose in the horse corrals at the fort at one o’clock. The captain said that he had forgotten to mention that he was taking most of the troop on a training march the next day, and he wanted to make sure that such an action would not interfere with Longarm’s investigation. Longarm told him in no uncertain terms it would very definitely interfere with his investigation.
He said, “Captain Montrose, how the hell am I supposed to find out who’s shooting your soldiers if you march them out of here?”
The captain said, “But I’ll be leaving a small complement of clerks and other personnel.”
“Don’t make no difference. You’ll just slow me down during the time it takes you to carry out this exercise. How long were you planning on being gone?”
“Ten days to two weeks.”
The very thought of having his mission delayed by that amount of time made Longarm cringe. In the strongest terms possible he gave it as his opinion that if the captain did such a thing, it might well cancel the progress Longarm had already made. He didn’t bother to tell the captain that his progress thus far had been to get into a poker game and into trouble with the local sheriff.
Captain Montrose didn’t want to comply with Longarm’s wishes, but in the end he had no choice, even though he complained that it would cause his troops to lose significant training time.
Longarm said, “Better that they lose their training time than lose their lives.”
With that Longarm left and headed back to town.
His first stop was the Elite Saloon. There, over several drinks at the bar, he let it be known that he was almost certain that several of his horses, horses that had been stolen, were being held out at the garrison, and that that damned Yankee captain would not release them. And he, by God, was going to have justice on the matter or there would be hell to pay. All of this he told to the bartender, who was not at all interested, but he told it to him in such a way that practically everyone in the place could hear him.
After that, Longarm ambled down the street looking for the sheriff’s office. He found it right across from the Cutler House. At the same time, he discovered that the sheriff’s name was T.J. Smith. His office had a plate- glass window and his name was printed across it in large letters, showing the man was either proud of being sheriff or proud of his name, or had an overly ambitious sign painter on his payroll.
Longarm opened the front door and stepped into the fair-sized office. The sheriff was behind the biggest of three desks. He was set up right in front of the door that obviously led back to the cells. There were two other smaller desks that were set against the wall to Longarm’s left. At one of them, a young deputy was sitting with his feet up, drinking a cup of coffee. The sheriff had his hat off and was working on some papers. Longarm could see that he was going bald, and noticed the gray in the man’s drooping mustache. He figured the sheriff to be pushing fifty, but he was still a solid-built man with a lined face and hard eyes. He seemed capable of enforcing his authority without too much trouble.
He looked up as Longarm walked up to his desk. For a second his eyes blinked, and then he recognized Longarm. He said, “What the hell do you want?”
Longarm glanced over at the deputy, who was watching him. He said to the sheriff, “I’d like to know where the hell you got off rousting me around last night after them two ruffians jumped on me. One was gonna squash me like a bug and the other was gonna take a shotgun to me.”
The sheriff skittered his chair back away from his desk so he could look up and have a better slant at Longarm. “I don’t know who the hell you are, mister, or who the hell you think you are, but those two are part of the best family in this county, so they count for a hell of a lot more than somebody that is just in here for some unknown reason. By the way, what is your business in my town?”
“The last time I looked, this was a free country. Unless a man done something wrong, he Didn’t have to explain anything to the law. But just for your information, I deal in stock and the government owes me for some horses I sold them. I have reason to believe that some of them, the ones that I didn’t get paid for, are out here at this so-called fort you got. Now, you let one man cheat you and another will try it. I don’t want it on my record that I let some damned quartermaster pocket my money, doctor his records, and make it look like I never sold the government some horses. I know my brands, and I’ll either wind up getting my money or my horses back. That good enough for you?”
Before the sheriff could answer, the deputy dropped his boots to the floor with a thump and said, “Sheriff, don’t tell me that this is that fella that took on Billy Bob last night?” He laughed and looked at Longarm. “Mister, was I you, I wouldn’t be studying about no damned horses if I had Billy Bob Castle on my ass. I’d be figuring out the fastest way that I could get out of here and put the most territory I could between me and him. He’ll be in town
