some place in Africa gold mining. They’re supposed to have made a ton of money. They came back and they picked out a place that looked like where they made their fortune, and southeast New Mexico was it. The word I have is that they’ve built themselves a palace about fifteen miles south of here.”
“You ain’t seen it?”
Lee shook his head again and said, “Nope. Your instructions were to stay close and ask questions. I never had time for a thirty-mile ride. Besides, if you’ve seen one palace, you’ve seen them all. I understand that it’s one hell of a place, that it’s bigger than the hotel, if you can believe that. Anyway, they’re supposed to live out there and they don’t do much of anything except occasionally get some friends in—that’s what this top floor is for, and they even have a special train that they run them in here with—and they’ll play poker for about a week. They may even bring in a trainload of women, and then they go back out to the ranch. Nobody knows what it is that they do out there. They don’t raise cattle, they don’t raise horses. They don’t raise anything except a little bit of hell.”
“That’s it?”
Lee shrugged and said, “Hell, I knew you were going to say that, but without going over there and bracing the mayor or the banker or the sheriff or the marshal, I didn’t have any way to find out. The only thing I can tell you is that the people who ought to know say they’ve never seen this Henderson kid.”
“What about the telegrapher?” said Longarm.
“He says he doesn’t remember sending any such telegram.”
“They must have more than one telegrapher. They must have one that works days and one that works nights.”
“Well, the one that I talked to said there wasn’t a receipt logged in for it. He said there wasn’t a single telegram sent to Denver in at least a week.
“But they know this Henderson kid is a deputy marshal. Apparently, he made it clear right from the moment he hit town that he was a deputy marshal, a deputy United States marshal.”
Longarm said, “Oh, by the way, so are you. I’ve just sworn you in. You’re a special deputy United States marshal.”
Lee Gray pulled a face. “Is this some more of Billy Vail’s generosity?
That’s six dollars a day and all I can eat for fifty cents a day?”
“I’ll see that you make out a little better than that, Lee.”
Gray waved his hand as if to indicate that it didn’t matter. He said, “You got a plan?”
Longarm shook his head. “Not yet. All I can think to do right now is to get some of this trail dust off of me and get a few hours of sleep and then get busy.”
“How are you and me going to play it?”
“For right now, I think it’s best if we don’t know each other. What’s your room number?”
“I’m just down the hall in 201.”
“I think what you better do is watch my back. I don’t know to what extremes I’ve got to go. I think I’ve got to start looking for Ross Henderson right here in town, and I think I’m going to start with the sheriff.”
“Are you going to be just a friendly neighbor riding through or are you going to be Longarm, the marshal who has the price on his head?”
Longarm shook his head again. “I don’t know, Lee. Right now, I’m about as confused as I’ve ever been. I feel like a man in a five-dollar whorehouse with four dollars in his pocket. I don’t know if it would take me all the way. As soon as I come out of cover and declare who I am, then I become fair game for everybody in this town.”
Lee Gray smiled a slow, sleepy smile. “Oh, I wouldn’t exactly say fair game, Longarm. I think you can take care of yourself. I think it might be that anybody in town would be stupid to take you on. No, you’re not going to get me to shed any crocodile tears worrying about you.”
“And, of course, I will have you at my back.”
Gray smiled. “Yeah, that’s what you’ve got to worry about.”
Longarm laughed, drained his glass, and then stood up. “Well, get on out of here and let me get a bath and some sleep. I’m going to be in the dining room about seven o’clock eating breakfast. Why don’t you plan on being there close to the same time. You can generally walk in the same direction I walk. Don’t shoot anybody unless it’s clear they are fixing to shoot me.”
“You want me to let him actually pull the trigger before I shoot him?”
Longarm gave the man a wry smile. “Lee, you were always a comfort to a body. Always.”
Lee Gray left, and Longarm locked the door and then started running the tub full of hot water. He was tired and creaky and cramped from his long trip on the train. He sat down and began undressing, trying to figure out the perplexing question of how he went about finding a deputy marshal without acting like one himself. It was all very confusing.
Lee Gray was not in the dining room the next morning when Longarm entered the place and sat at a corner table. He went ahead with his breakfast, ordering ham, a half-dozen eggs, and biscuits with gravy and a pot of coffee. He ate slowly, looking the room over. It was sparsely filled, but then it probably wasn’t supposed to be a going concern, a business that made money. The hotel was obviously a hobby for the Nelson brothers, a place where they could have parties in town without forcing their guests to ride fifteen miles across the New Mexico prairie. Longarm was about halfway through his breakfast when he saw Lee come in, go to a far table, and sit where he could keep an eye on Longarm. Longarm made no sign other than to wave the waiter over and ask for more biscuits.
As he ate, Longarm thought for perhaps the thousandth time about the United States Marshal Service. It had come into being back when there were more territories than states, mostly because local law could not cope with the banditry and lawlessness that flourished all along the frontiers and among the rough and ready elements of the interior. Too many of the lawmen were corrupt, and those who weren’t corrupt were weak, and those who weren’t corrupt or weak were dead. The worst problem was that local lawmen’s areas of jurisdiction were small. A town
