“You just heard me say it, didn’t you?”
“Hmmmm …” Davis said. “That kind of puts a whole new light on the matter. Maybe you ain’t all that bad of a feller after all. I reckon I’ll have to take back some of them things I been spreading around about you.”
Longarm cocked his head. “Do you ever plan to get serious? We got us a job to do.”
Davis blew out a cloud of blue smoke. “I’m trying to say I’m sorry and to thank you, you dumb sonofabitch. Yes, I can get serious. Now, if you ain’t going to run out on me and head back to Denver, where you ain’t got no competition for the poontang, I reckon we better settle our bill here, get packed and get out of this hotel and catch a train. You do realize we’re going to Laredo, don’t you?”
Longarm got up. The hot coffee had started his tooth to acting up again and he wanted to get to his room and give it a dose of whiskey. “If I’ve got to go anywhere with you,” he said, “I reckon I’d just as soon it be Laredo. Even you can’t make a trip to that hellhole any worse.”
“Listen,” Davis replied, “don’t put the knock on Laredo. I’ve been hanging around there for two months. With a little help I might be able to make myself go back.”
As they stepped into the lobby, Longarm said, “I’ll meet you back here in half an hour.”
Davis was starting toward the desk. “It’s still two hours till train time,” he said. “You reckon you can go that long without killing anybody?”
Longarm didn’t pause. “So long as you stay out of my sight I can.” But he couldn’t enjoy the banter for the pain in his tooth. It was getting worse and he cursed his luck as he strode down the hall toward his room. The only thing he could think of that was worse than being in Laredo was being in Laredo with a toothache. For a moment he wondered if he had time to go to a dentist while they were still in San Antonio, but he immediately put the thought aside. Better to suffer a little longer than go straight to the sure hell of a dentist’s chair.
As he gathered up his few belongings, Longarm couldn’t stop worrying about the previous night’s experience. He knew it was just an unlucky break but he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was some kind of bad omen. He wasn’t, by nature, a superstitious man, but he wished reverently that the incident had happened some other time. He and Austin Davis were going into a delicate and potentially explosive situation. Anytime you tried to catch officials in a fellow service and not only shut them down but put them in jail, you were taking on an extra load of law work that usually didn’t go with the job. If you made one misstep or didn’t play it exactly by the book, making damn certain you had your evidence cold and in black and white, you could come up against a storm. The Marshal Service was part of government, as was the Customs Service, and anytime you got to messing around with government that meant politics and politicians and beaurocracy and all the back room dealing you could imagine in your worst nightmare. If they didn’t catch Caster and his henchmen clean and sure and square, Longarm hated to think of the trouble they’d be in. It would make being in the middle of a tornado seem like a ride in a front porch swing. so the last thing he wanted was to have inadvertently called attention to himself beforehand. But maybe it was nothing, he told himself. Maybe he was just being over anxious. By the time he’d soaked his tooth in several mouthfuls of whiskey and then swallowed the whiskey, the situation no longer seemed so worrisome. Whiskey, he noted, had a way of giving you that feeling. He also had serious doubts that young Mister Austin Davis really knew what kind of bad country they were heading into. Davis hadn’t been a marshal long enough to have had the pleasure of arresting a well-placed government officer. He probably thought a crook was a crook and handcuffs fitted a circuit court judge just as easily as they did a horse thief. Mister Davis had an education coming.
The train pulled out of the station no more than fifteen minutes late. They had a five-hour ride ahead of them. The coach had not been crowded and they’d managed to get one of the double sets of chairs that faced each other. Longarm took the side facing the engine because he didn’t like to ride backwards. Austin Davis sat down across from him and piled his duffle and some paper parcels in the empty seat at his side. Longarm nodded at the parcels. “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?”