yonder about halfway to the fort. It’s back off that main road a good two miles to the north. I tell you, Mr. Long, I ain’t too sure that he’d be the right one to talk to, though.”
“Why not?”
“Well, he’s a little strange.”
“What do you mean, strange?”
Todd said, “Well, the story is at one time he used to be a Texas Ranger. Not for very long ‘cause they say he took a bullet in the head. It didn’t kill him, but they say he’s still carrying it. I guess it was in the Texas Rangers that he got that. I don’t know, they tell so many stories about old Clell Martin that it is hard to keep up with him, but he has some pretty strong opinions about stuff. But if there’s anybody that knows the country and knows the people around here and such, it would be him.”
“What about the Castles? Don’t they go back a pretty good ways?
Todd looked surprised. “Hell, the Castles? Mr. Long, the Castles ain’t been here as long as I’ve been alive. They’re from Kentucky or some such place up in there. They ain’t native to this part of the country.”
Longarm nodded. “Clell Martin, huh? Much obliged, Todd.” He swung aboard the bay mare and pointed her out of town toward the fort. Clell Martin sounded interesting, but not enough to be in a hurry about seeing him. As Longarm cleared the town, he put the mare into a lope to cover the few miles to the fort.
Captain Montrose was behind his desk looking grim-faced when Longarm was shown into his office. With a curt nod of his head, the commander indicated a chair for Longarm to sit in.
The first words out of his mouth were, “Well, now they have commenced killing officers.”
Longarm said, “So I’ve heard. Who was it?”
“A young second lieutenant named Singleton. He’d only been posted out here about a month. Twenty-five years old, graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, and a very promising young officer. I cannot believe this. I cannot believe that such despicable actions could take place within the confines of the United States of America.”
Longarm thought for a moment. “Does anybody have any idea what time the lieutenant might have been shot?”
Captain Montrose said, “The best that we can figure, it must have been close to midnight. He had struck up a friendship with a young lady in town and he was with her and her parents until a few minutes after eleven. Figure about ten or fifteen minutes for a good-bye to her, figure coming from the other side of town hitting the road to the fort and the time it took him to travel the four miles that he had traveled judging from where he was found this morning, and you come up with about midnight. He was less than a mile from the fort when some no-good, low-down sonofabitch struck him down.” Longarm said, “Have you got the body here?”
“Yes, sir. We’ve got him in the ice house. We are waiting for instructions from his family as to what to do with the body. I am sure they would want him shipped back home to be buried there.”
“Was he shot more than once?”
“Hell, Marshal. If you could see the size of the hole in him, you’d realize that one shot was all that was needed.”
With Captain Montrose leading, they left his office and went beyond the buildings that bordered the quadrangle to a stone and log building set off by itself at the back of the fort. It was small and compact with a flat roof.
The captain worked the door to open it and they stepped inside. It took a moment for the captain to light the kerosene lamp so that they could see. By its illumination, Longarm was able to see the body of the young officer still in uniform laid out on the table in the middle of the room. All around the walls were big cakes of ice and toward the back, hanging on hooks, were sides of beef, pork, and goats. Together they stepped over to the body and looked down at the young man. In death, he looked even younger than twenty-five years old. On the front of his jacket- blouse was a large angry red stain.
Longarm said, “I want to see where the bullet entered.”
With Captain Montrose’s help, he turned over the body, now rigid with rigor mortis. The young man had been shot just to the right of the left shoulder blade. It had made a neat, almost round hole as it had entered. Longarm calculated it would have exactly pierced the young man’s heart on the way through his body, killing him instantly.
As they laid the body down on its back, Longarm said, “Well, at least he never knew what hit him.”
“The sonofabitch,” the captain said, “or the sonofabitches—whoever pulled the damn trigger.”
Longarm said, “Let’s open his blouse, Captain. I want to see if we can figure out what he got shot with.”
Together they unbuttoned the young man’s tunic. It seemed to Longarm that Captain Montrose shuddered a little as he performed the unpleasant task. They pulled the blouse back and then the shirt. There was a gaping wound on the left side of the young man’s chest.
“My God,” the captain said. “You can put your fist in there.”
Longarm said thoughtfully, “Well, it’s a damn cinch that he wasn’t shot with no carbine. That’s a soft- nosed bullet, not copper-clad.”
Captain Montrose said, “Would a .44 make that size hole?”
Longarm shook his head. “No, that looks like a Sharps to me. A .50-caliber Sharps buffalo gun. I ain’t seen that big of an exit hole in a long time.” He looked a moment more and then started buttoning the young man’s clothes. He looked up at the face and said, “Young and innocent and stiff and dead. It’s a damn shame. Let’s go back to your office and talk about this.”
There really wasn’t much to talk about. Captain Montrose wanted to know what Longarm was going to do, and Longarm couldn’t tell him because Longarm didn’t know. He said, “Captain, this is a hell of a big country. There are thousands of places where a bushwhacker could lay in wait and at the time they are doing the killing, there is nobody around to see. Can’t you keep your men on post for the time being?”
