Vail shook his head. He said, “Now, you’re playing me wrong, Custis. Lord have mercy, if there was another soul I could send, I’d cut off my right arm before I’d send you.”
“If I had a dollar for every time you said that, I could break the biggest poker game in the state or have the money to buy out the biggest whorehouse in New Orleans. What is it this time? And it better not involve no lions and tigers.”
“Well, we’ve got a situation down in Texas that is going to take some mighty delicate handling, and you’re the only man I can think of that could do the job.”
Longarm sighed. He said, “Billy, do you realize how long I was out this last time? I was out damned near two months, and I bet you there wasn’t three nights out of that two months that I slept in a bed or had three meals on two consecutive days. I got rode hard and put up wet, wore out six horses, damned near burned the rifling out of every pistol I own, and now you want me to off and settle some squabble down in Texas? What is it this time? Somebody discovered an honest politician and it’s got them worried sick?”
Billy Vail came back around to his chair and sat down. He put both hands flat on top of his desk. He said, “There’s a little town down in the hill country of Texas, about a hundred miles out of Austin. It wasn’t worth a damn ten years ago, but now that all the Indian trouble is out of there, all of a sudden they’re discovering what wonderful grass there is around there and what wonderful water they have. Everybody is wanting to crowd in there, but unfortunately, there’s a couple of old nester families that ain’t looking for company and they’re making it kind of hard on everybody, including each other. So, I need to send somebody in there that knows how to separate lions and tigers. I don’t expect you to use a whip and a chair, but it ain’t a job for one of the younger men, Custis. I’ve got to tell you that.”
Longarm sat there looking disgusted. He didn’t know about the younger men. All he knew was that he felt about a hundred years old at the time. His face, from the weathering it had taken through hard usage, said forty. But the big shoulders and the muscled arms and the rest of his body said younger. He was a little over six feet tall and weighed one hundred and ninety-five pounds, mostly made up of leather and bones and sinew and muscle. He said, “Billy, aren’t you ever ashamed of yourself for the way you treat me?”
For a change, Billy Vail looked almost sympathetic. He said, “Custis, I do hate to do this to you. If the truth be told, I really hate it. In fact, I came near to hesitating about picking you for this job, but I’ve got no choice. There’s big trouble down there, big enough that a local congressman got involved and he went to pestering a United States congressman and the United States congressman came to the marshal service in Washington and now they’ve contacted me and put the heavy load on my shoulders.”
Longarm looked at him disgustedly. He said, “And naturally, you knew right where to transfer that heavy load, didn’t you? Billy, if it weren’t for friends like you, I couldn’t afford enemies.” Billy said, “Now, Custis, that’s no way to talk. This ought to be a pretty easy job for you. You just go down there, talk that slick talk of yours, get those folks to understand that there won’t be a profit to objecting to what you have in mind, and everything will come out fine.”
Longarm sighed and looked away. He’d had a very satisfying week or two of vacation planned, most of it built around the several ladies of his close acquaintance. He said, “How soon do you need me to go whipping off on this important mission?”
Billy Vail looked down at his desk. “Well, I reckon you ought not try to leave tonight. I’d imagine that it might be tough to get train connections heading in that direction.”
Longarm threw his hands up in the air. He said, “Well, you old son of a bitch, I don’t believe this. And what’s more, I can’t see where it’s any of our damned business. Sounds like to me that it’s local law’s business. Why doesn’t the sheriff tend to it?”
“Well, this little town is set way out the hell away from nowhere and it’s sitting right astride the line between two counties. One sheriff can’t handle the whole mess and the other can’t handle the whole mess and they can’t seem to get together and cooperate.”
“What about the town marshal? Don’t they have one?”
“Nope. Anybody that’s smart enough for the job is smart enough not to take it.”
Longarm took his hat off and scratched his head. He said, “Hell, Billy, what’s going on down there?”
“There’s killing going on, Custis. There’s some serious trouble down there. The big problem is the new settlers that have come in there have run afoul of these two old nester families who have some big holdings around there.”
“What are their names?”
“One family is named Barrett and the other …” He paused while he shuffled around some papers on his desk “… and the other bunch is named Myers.”
“Which one of them is in the right?”
Billy Vail shook his head. “Neither one of them. The problems with the newcomers is that the Barretts say that if you ain’t on our side, then you’re on the Myerses’ side and that makes you our enemy and the Myerses say the same thing. I tell you, Custis, I think they’re running out of room to bury folks. I think they’re starting to have to bury them in stacks.”
Longarm shook his head slowly. “Billy, you wouldn’t exaggerate every now and then, would you?”
“Well, I ain’t exaggerating about the pressure I got from Washington, and if I’ve got to have some strong words directed at me from them, then I reckon I’m going to redirect them at you. So get down there and clean that mess up. The name of the town is Grit. It’s about fifty miles west of the town of Junction and about forty miles east of the town of Brady. It’s beautiful country, from what I understand, unless you’re six foot under it.”
But Longarm was not quite ready to give up. He said, “Billy, let’s don’t get so damned hasty about sending me off to Texas. In the first place, why don’t the famous Texas Rangers do something about this matter?”
Billy Vail shook his head. He said, “They claim to be stretched too thin with trouble along the Mexican border. But that ain’t the main concern here that makes it federal business. There’s squabbling about free federal government grazing land. That makes it federal business, and that makes it our business.”
Longarm said, “Hell, there’s government grazing land all over this country. We don’t have to go down there and divvy it up. Everybody can graze on United States free land.”
Billy Vail ran a hand through his thinning white hair. He looked every bit of his sixty years of age. He said, “Well, that’s just it. The Barretts and the Myerses are the ones doing the deciding who’s going to graze cattle on that free
