“What’s all that?” he asked.
Davis yawned. “Oh, I took the opportunity to buy a few clothes. You can’t get nothing in Laredo.”
Longarm’s eyebrows went up. “More clothes? Lord, as near as I can tell you already got more clothes than any four men I know.” Davis was wearing his soft black leather vest with the silver conchos down the front. Longarm nodded at it. “What’d you pay for that vest? I bet a family of four could live six months off the price of it.”
“Was a gift,” Davis said. He smiled. “Lady give it to me. Sort of a thank you present.”
“What for? Getting out of town?”
The train rolled along. For the first fifty miles, running due south, the country was hilly and rolling and covered with oak and sycamore and elm. It was more brushy than pastoral, but now and again a green valley could be seen, decorated with cattle and horses. Then, abruptly, they came out of the hill country and entered the southern plains. The land turned increasingly and with every passing mile. The oak and elm disappeared to be replaced with mesquite groves and greasewood thickets. Longarm had the window up and it seemed to him that the temperature had risen ten degrees as soon as they’d plunged into the rough rangeland.
“Pretty, ain’t it?” Davis said.
Longarm looked out at the drab scene. “How the hell does anyone raise cattle in this scrub?”
Davis said, “They don’t. Not in this part anyway. This is called the big brassada, the big brush country. There’s old mossy-horned longhorns back in them thickets might have got off the ark with Noah. They can make a living here, but ain’t no other cow or critter can seem to. No, but you go fifty miles east and you’re in the coastal plains and that is rich country. Muy rico. That’s where the big cattle ranches are in this part of the country, and that’s where the hombres live who are kicking up a storm about those diseased Mexican cattle that are being driven through their range.”
Longarm glanced out the window again. “Why don’t them as is driving illegal cattle take them through here?”
“No water. No grass. You ever tried to drive a thousand cattle a hundred miles without water or grass? It’s a little better to the west, and sometimes somebody will try and sneak a wet herd through there, heading for the railhead or maybe trying to get them to Fort Worth or someplace they can sell them without being pressed too close about the origin of the cattle or what paper the sellers got.”
Longarm reached beside him in the seat and uncorked the bottle of whiskey he had handy. He took a mouthful and let it deaden his tooth for a moment. Then he swallowed and said, “What makes it worthwhile for a man to go to all this much trouble? The prices that different?”
Austin Davis nodded. “I would reckon. You can buy steers in Mexico for between six and seven dollars. They’ll bring twenty dollars in Fort Worth and thirty if you can get them to Abilene, Kansas. Most settle for railhead delivery at the first point they can make north of San Antonio—Waco, or Austin or some such. Ain’t no use trying to sell cattle in San Antonio. That place is already full to overflowing with wet beef.”
Longarm took another swig of whiskey, held it in his mouth for a moment or two, and swallowed it. “Well, now I can see where it’s worth the while of cattle crooks to bribe the customs folks. You got any idea what they’re getting? What the going rate is for not quarantining cattle?”
Austin Davis was studying Longarm intently. “You got a toothache?”
Longarm said quickly, “You just never mind about my teeth. I asked you about the customs people. What do they get for their work?”
Ignoring the question, Davis said, “Ain’t nothing more bothersome than a toothache. Man can’t concentrate on his work. We gonna have to get you to a dentist first thing we get to Laredo. That whiskey trick won’t work long enough for the water to get hot. I know, I’ve tried it.”
“Listen,” Longarm said with heat, “I ain’t going to say this but once more. You forget all about my teeth. And I ain’t going to no dentist! Now, tell me about the customs inspector.”
“Just trying to help,” Davis said, looking put off. He thought a moment. “Caster ain’t really got a set price. It depends on how many cattle you got and how fast you want them through. I’ve heard if you’ve got a thousand head and you want them straight on through—that takes about a week—the going price is about three dollars a head. If you can afford to feed them for a couple or three weeks, he’ll come down to two dollars. Less chance of him getting caught that way. If you only want to halve the ninety days, he’ll accommodate you for as little as a dollar and a half a head. That is if you got enough cattle.”
Longarm cocked his head and whistled. “That ain’t bad pickings.”
“Especially if you reckon on how many cattle pass through there a month. Caster ain’t getting it all, but I roughed it out at about a minimum of five thousand dollars a month. That kind of money would make a judge turn crooked.”
Longarm looked out the window. “I arrested a judge once,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“But he was just a county judge, so that didn’t amount to anything.” He paused and then shook his head slowly. “But once I arrested a federal bank examiner.” He let out a sigh and shook his head again.
Austin Davis waited a moment, and when Longarm didn’t go on, he said impatiently, “Yeah, so you arrested a federal bank examiner. What about it?”
Longarm lounged back in his seat. “I’d rather have gone up against a barrel of wildcats wearing barbed-wire britches than got involved in that mess.” He let out a breath. “Hell, before it was over I wasn’t sure who was going to jail, me or him.”
Davis wrinkled his brow. “Didn’t you catch him clean? Wasn’t he guilty?”
“Hell yes, he was guilty, guilty as sin. The man had left a trail of thievery a mile long by the time I put the cuffs on him. Every time he went into a bank to examine it there was always less money in the vault than when he came. After a while that kind of thing starts to get noticed. Of course you couldn’t tell it from the books—he had them well doctored. I followed him around for two months after we got called into the matter, and couldn’t get within a day’s ride of him. Finally I just arrested him as he was departing a bank one day and confiscated his little leather satchel where he kept all his papers and whatnot. Found five thousand dollars all done up neat in the bank’s wrappers. Them little bands that banks mark packets of money with. As it turned out, after the bank counted up that was
