Captain Montrose said helplessly, “I can’t expect these men after their rigorous duties in the field to sit here just five miles from entertainment. Marshal, you have no idea how dreary, how wearisome barracks life is for the common soldier.” The captain shook his head. “I never had any idea they would kill an officer.”
“I thought that was the ones they went for first.”
Captain Montrose glanced over at him. “That’s in battle. This is not a battle. This is murder. In battle, you try to take out the other side’s leaders. This was just a young boy returning from a social engagement before some cowardly sonofabitch shot him in the back.”
Longarm said, “It appeared to me that the angle of the bullet was downward. It looked to me that somebody was on higher ground than the lieutenant was. That ball went in by his shoulder blade and came out near his bottom rib, though it was hard to tell as messed up as it was.” He was thoughtful for a moment. “If it was a Sharps, it has a hell of a carrying range, four or five hundred yards, but at night, that would take a hell of a shot, especially at a man on a moving horse.”
Longarm got up and continued. “Captain, I may have to take some drastic action.” He told the captain what he had heard about the Castle family. “I don’t know what is causing them to covet your place so bad, but it may be that they want it bad enough to kill your troops. I can’t think of any other reason, can you?”
Captain Montrose shook his head. “No, I can’t. But if I thought that it was the Castles, I would take a company of men to each of their ranches, burn their damn places down, kill all of their stock, and then hang them. The face of that young officer is going to be with me for the rest of my life. And what do I write and tell his parents? That he was killed in action while returning from a visit to his girlfriend? Shot by a cowardly, west Texas bushwhacker?”
Longarm said, “I know you are bitter, Captain, and I know you are angry, but that ain’t gonna get us no nearer to the killer. I may have to put on this badge and start arresting some folks to get some answers.”
Captain Montrose looked at him and said, “Maybe if you had done that in the first place, this young man wouldn’t be dead.”
Longarm gave him a sharp look. “Captain, one badge can’t be but in one place at a time, and whoever is insane enough to kill five soldiers is not going to stop at killing the sixth just because there is a U.S. marshal around. There is plenty of law around here. There is a sheriff with two deputies. There is a town marshal. That hasn’t stopped them. What makes you think that my badge would?”
The captain looked down at his desk. He said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”
Longarm nodded. “I understand.” He put on his hat. “I better get back to town. I’ve got some thinking to do.”
It was a fine morning as he let the mare ease her way back to town. About two miles from the fort, he noticed a path leading off to the right. In the distance, he could barely make out a shack of some kind made noticeable only by a thin trail of smoke coming from a cooking fire. The shack itself was so weathered that it blended in with the dead grays and browns of the countryside. He thought that it was most likely Clell Martin’s place. It was just about where Todd had told him it would be.
With not much of an idea of what he was going to find out or even what he was going to say, he turned the mare on the trail and spurred her into a lope. He went a good mile and a half or two miles back into the rough prairie land. As he covered the distance, he noticed that just to his right were a pair of twin buttes rising perhaps five hundred feet in the air. They were about a half a mile from the main road he had just left. As he passed them, the thought struck him that such a place might be an ideal station for a sharpshooting bushwhacker. Perhaps Mr. Martin had heard the sound of a gunshot. Perhaps he had seen men moving about at night. Sometimes old men didn’t sleep too soundly. He knew that in the latter years of his life his grandfather had slept only two or three hours a night.
A quarter of a mile from the weather-beaten shack, he pulled his horse down to a trot and then a walk. It didn’t do to come upon these old nesters too suddenly. They had a way of shooting strangers first and then discussing it with the sheriff later. Behind the house was a fair-sized barn and then two other outbuildings and several corrals. He could see a few mules and a few milk cows and some steers held up close to the place, obviously being grain-fed and perhaps supplied with hay. It surprised him. It was a much more prosperous operation than he would have expected. He had even heard a rooster crow and knew that the old man had chickens, which actually wasn’t all that surprising since nearly everyone out in the country kept chickens since they were cheap to buy and cheap to keep up. Fresh eggs were a treat. When he was within fifty yards of the ranch house, he began calling out loud, “Hello!” On the third hail, he saw the front door of the cabin open and a small, thin, stooped man came out to stand on the rickety front porch. Longarm rode on up, still without any idea what he was going to say.
He pulled his horse to a stop a few yards from the porch. The old man shuffled forward a step or two. Longarm said, “Hidee.” He made no move to dismount. You didn’t get down unless you were asked.
The old man was looking at him suspiciously. He said, “Yes, and what would you be a-wantin’.”
Longarm said, “Actually, I don’t want anything. I was just looking the countryside over and spied your place and thought I’d stop and talk a minute.”
The old man was still looking at him suspiciously. He said, “You ain’t come out with no papers of any kind from those damn Castles, have you?”
Longarm smiled. Without half thinking about it, he had an idea that the old man was squatting on the property and the Castles were trying to incorporate it into their domain. He said, “No, I can assure you that I ain’t no friend of the Castles. In fact, I had quite a run-in with that young bull, Billy Bob, in the saloon the other night.”
Some of the suspicion cleared from the old man’s face. He said, “You … you mean that you had it out with old Billy Bob? You don’t look dead.” He cackled.
Longarm said, “Well, I cracked him over the head with the barrel of my revolver before he could get close enough to get those arms around me. After about four or five of those licks, Mr. Martin, he didn’t want to wrestle no more.”
The old man cackled again and slapped his thigh. He said, “Good for you. Good for you.” Then a curtain seemed to drop over his face. “How do you know my name?”
“I was out at the fort and I had noticed this place going to it. I asked them who lived here and they told me. No mystery about it, Mr. Martin.”
