yours. I am going to do my job. I wish you good luck, but I wouldn’t be looking for this matter to be settled anytime soon.” He started for the door. Halfway there, he stopped and looked back. “You mentioned that there was a great deal of money involved. That seems to be your greatest interest here. Your son is out there doing God knows what. There are soldiers being murdered out there—I think your son is the one doing it—and you’re talking to me about money. You’re some kind of a father, Mr. Castle, and an upstanding citizen on top of it. Good day to you, sir.”
As he left through the lockup door he could hear shouted curses being hurled at him by all three of the Castles. He slammed the door behind him. The sheriff looked up as he passed. Longarm said without looking at him, “And the same to you too, Sheriff.” He passed on out the front door and mounted his horse.
He rode south out of town making the big circle that he had ridden so many times the past few days. As he rode, he realized that the job was getting tougher and tougher. His sleep was being seriously interfered with by the nighttime vigils he was keeping. He had to snatch meals, his drinking time had seriously been cut into, and there had been no time for continued congeniality with Miss Mabelle Russell. All in all, he thought it was one of the worst jobs that he had ever had. He hoped Billy Vail was happy.
But the job had produced a streak of stubbornness in him. It appeared to him to come down to a privileged family that thought they were going to take matters into their own hands. His job was to see that that sort of thing didn’t happen, and he took it as sort of a personal affront to deal with people like Vernon Castle and be called a sonofabitch with such regularity.
He rode on past the James Castle ranch thinking that next day he just might go out and arrest him. He continued on around on the east side of the big loop fronting around San Angelo. As he came up toward the north, he could see a small figure by the side of the road. He put the chestnut into a lope, and the figure grew larger as he kicked up dust along the road.
Two hundred yards off, he could tell that it was Virgil Castle. One hundred yards away, he could see that he was squatting by the side of the road and was wearing nothing but a pair of Levi’s. Longarm slowed his horse, put him into a walk, and then came up beside Virgil and stopped.
He said, “What are you doing this afternoon, Virgil?”
The blank-eyed young man looked up at him. He said, “Waitin’ for my daddy. My bubbas.”
Longarm said, “Your daddy and your bubbas ain’t gonna be coming home anytime soon.”
Virgil had a skinning knife in his right hand. He drew figures in the dust with the point of it. He said as if he had studied on it, “Who taken my daddy, my bubbas? Who got ‘em?”
Longarm said, “The long knives, Virgil. The long knives.” He watched the boy carefully.
Virgil looked up at him. “The yellow legs? Them blue bellies?”
Longarm said slowly, “Yeah. The soldiers. The long knives. They’ve got your daddy and your brothers.”
Virgil stood up. Only then could Longarm see that on the other side of him was a skinned rabbit. He thought, well, so much for Mr. Castle’s theory that Virgil liked bunny rabbits. He turned his horse out to the main part of the road.
He asked, “Virgil, can you shoot a rifle?”
Virgil stared at him blankly.
He asked again, “Virgil, can you shoot a big rifle?”
Virgil said, “Long knives got my daddy. Got my brothers.”
Longarm just nodded and kicked his chestnut into a lope. He thought he better have a real quick talk with Mr. Castle.
But as he circled around the fort and came even with Clell Martin’s little shack, he could see the old man out in front of his porch. On a whim, he slowed the chestnut and turned in and rode toward the old man.
Clell Martin was feeding chickens, scattering shelled corn out for them beside his house near a chicken run. Longarm pulled up his chestnut and waited until Martin finished.
Martin put down his feed bucket and came through the screen gate, shutting it behind him. He dusted off his hands.
He said, “Hi there, young man. Step down and have yourself a cup of coffee with me.”
Longarm dismounted but he said, “Well, much obliged for the offer of coffee, Mr. Martin, but I am heading on back into town. Wouldn’t mind sitting out here on the porch and visiting a few minutes, though. You care for a smoke?”
Clell Martin waved away the offer. “Never took to tobacco that away. Always chewed it.”
“Well, some smoke it and some chew it.”
Martin said, “I tell you, back during the War of the Confederacy, there was many a night when that chaw of tobacco was my best friend out there on guard duty out near them Yankee lines.”
They sat down on the porch. Longarm got his cheroot lit and then shoved his hat back. He said, “Mr. Martin, you don’t like the Castles just some little bit, do ya?”
Clell Martin immediately got agitated. “Well, if they were to all drown or be burned in Hell’s fire, wouldn’t make no difference to me. And I guarantee you that if they drown, they will be dried out in Hell.”
Longarm said, “What about Virgil? What do you think about Virgil?” His thinking was that maybe Mr. Martin had seen Virgil lurking about the road near the fort late at night. Of course, an old man like Mr. Martin more than likely went to sleep early.
Mr. Martin’s response surprised him. He said, “Virgil? Why, Virgil ain’t no damn Castle. Where did you get that idea? Virgil is an Injun. He was taken up by them damn Castles when he was just a kid. He ain’t no damn one of them.”
Longarm said, “A blue-eyed Indian?”
