Ingersoll of railroad quality. At the other end, however, the “fob” was in fact a brass-framed .44-caliber derringer, a device that Longarm on occasion had found more useful than a normal decorative fob.
Longarm made sure everything was more or less in order, smoothed the ends of his mustache, and reached inside his coat for a slim, dark cheroot, which he trimmed and lighted before going inside and making his way—he could have done it by now while blindfolded, he was certain—to the U.S. Marshal’s office.
“He’s waiting for you,” Marshal Vail’s prim and bookish clerk said without preamble.
“I’m not late,” Longarm protested.
“I didn’t say you were. Just that he’s waiting for you. You can go in now.”
“An’ a fine good morning to you too, Henry. Forget to shave under that ear this morning, did you?” Longarm hung his Stetson on the rack behind Henry, and managed to keep a straight face as Henry surreptitiously felt of his face first on one side and then the other, to make sure there was no unsightly stubble there. Which there was not. Longarm enjoyed teasing Henry at times, but he also liked and indeed respected the mild-seeming little man. Henry’s appearance was not forbidding, but there was a core of spring steel inside him and he had never been known to back down from anything duty required of him. And Longarm was convinced beyond doubt that Henry would throw himself in front of an oncoming freight train if Billy Vail needed him to.
“What’s this about, Henry? How come I have to be here before everybody else.”
“Because they’re all going to hate your guts when they find out, that’s why. Because the boss has a plum assignment especially for you. Because now all the other fellows have to deliver your batch of subpoenas along with their own. And because you seem to live a charmed life that keeps you from being overwhelmed with the boredom that is the bane and the curse of all the rest of us. That’s why.” Henry sniffed and pushed his spectacles higher onto his nose.
Longarm laughed. “Try again, Henry. You aren’t gonna get to me that easy. No false hopes for me today, thank you.”
“At the risk of repeating myself, Deputy … he’s waiting for you. Go right on in whenever it’s convenient.”
“Thanks.” Longarm tapped lightly on Billy Vail’s office door and let himself in without waiting for a response.
Chapter 2
“I don’t like this,” Billy Vail declared. “Not even a little bit.”
“Doesn’t anybody in this office remember how to say good morning?” Longarm complained.
“I remember how,” the balding, round-faced marshal said. “I just don’t damned well feel like it at the moment.”
“What has you so pissed off this early in the morning?” Longarm asked, hooking a boot toe behind the leg of a straight chair in front of the boss’s desk and dragging the chair around so he could straddle it backward and drape his forearms over what was supposed to be the back of the chair.
“Meddling,” Vail said. “Bunch of damned political upstarts interfering with my plans. My personnel. The assignments in this office.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Longarm told him.
“If I thought for one second that you did, Long, I’d kick your butt so hard you could wear your asshole for earmuffs.”
“I don’t suppose you’d care t’ tell me-“
“I already told you. Meddling, that’s what.”
“But …”
“You know how much work we have to do over the next several weeks,” Vail complained.
“That I do,” Longarm agreed. “It’s gonna be a real bitch.”
“It would have been a bitch if I had everyone on the job to do it. Now it will be even worse.”
“So why won’t you have everyone available?” Longarm asked.
“Are you sure you don’t already know? Are you sure you didn’t have anything to do with this?” Vail picked up the “this” in question, a brown-rimmed yellow message form, and waved it accusingly in Longarm’s direction.
“Dammit, Boss, I don’t even know what that is. An’ I won’t know until or unless you quit your bitching an’ get around to tellin’ me what that thing is.”
“This,” the marshal grumbled, “is a request … an order actually, of course, but we aren’t supposed to call it that when certain political appointees may be involved. A request that one of my men, a particular one of my men at that, be detached from service with the Department of Justice and placed at the, um … let me get this right.” Vail peered intently at the paper for a moment, his lips moving slightly and his normally genial features contorted into a scowl. “Placed under direction, that is the word they used, ‘direction,’ of the War Department. Specifically, that this Department of Justice employee be placed under the direction of a Colonel L. Thompson Wingate at a certain, um, Camp Beloit, which military encampment is adjacent to the … let me see here … the Upper Belle Fourche later-tribal Agency. Wherever and whatever that is.” Billy Vail grunted and growled a little more and threw the message form down onto a small pile of other papers lying on his desk.
“What you’re saying,” Longarm drawled, trying to sort out the boss’s distress, “is that one o’ your deputies has got himself conscripted into the army? Sort of?”
“You could put it that way.”
“The poor sonuvabitch,” Longarm said with considerable feeling.
“You would rather be chasing all over the Rockies with papers to serve?” Vail asked.
“Rather than have to play hey-boy to some smart-ass army colonel? Hell, yes, I’d rather hang paper than that, Billy. You know how I feel about having to wipe butt whenever some other fella decides to fart. I’d a whole lot
