“That be Rudy Thomas.”
“He not in on it?”
Jasper shook his head. “I couldn’t say about that. But if he is, I ain’t heard.”
“How the hell does Caster operate without him catching on?”
Jasper gave Longarm a worried look. “You shore ask a lot of questions, mister. Was I you, I’d worry about my cattle getting across and not how Mister Caster runs his business.”
Longarm shrugged. “You got a good point. Where you reckon Caster is?”
Jasper bent over and peered through one of the big windows that was covered by a screen. “He be in there. I can see him sitting at his desk. C’mon and I’ll take you in.”
Longarm put out a hand and stayed him for a moment. “Now, you’re going to tell him I’m an all right fellow, ain’t you?”
Jasper gave him a long look. “I never heard that was part of the bargain.”
Longarm looked disgusted. “Well, hell, I’ll just be another yahoo if you just walk me in there and say my name. I need the man to have some trust in me so we can do business. Them cattle I’ve bought are due in here any day.”
Jasper blinked and frowned. “Well I don’t know that you’re all right. Hell, I don’t want to get crosswise with Mister Caster. What if you don’t pay him?”
“Thought you said he had this mean Mexican worked for him. Thought he was supposed to keep the business straightened out.”
“Raoul?” Jasper’s face brightened. “Yeah. I forgot about Raoul. Don’t nobody cheat Mister Caster. Not as walks away.”
“Hell, I’ll pay the man in advance. C’mon, Jasper, you got to fix me up with this hombre. I already figured you get a cut.”
Jasper glared at Longarm. “You better not believe everything you hear,” he said.
Longarm slapped him on the back. “You’re already a hundred up on the day. Now usher me in there and set me up with Jay Caster and I’ll take it from there. You can’t lose.”
Jasper looked doubtful, but he stepped up on the porch and pulled back the screen door. Longarm followed right behind him. Inside he saw a thickset man in a brown khaki suit sitting at a back desk. The fellow glanced up as they entered. “Jasper,” he said, “what the hell you doing up and around this early? You liable to get heatstroke, boy.”
“Howdy, Mister Caster. How you be?”
“Pretty good,” Caster said, but he had switched his attention to Longarm. “Who you got with you, Jasper?”
“Cattleman, Mister Caster. Feller name of Long. From Oklahoma. Looking to have a little visit with you.”
Caster frowned. He had a heavy mustache that covered his top lip. “I’m pretty busy right now, Jasper. Another time might be better.”
“Well,” Jasper said, “he’s an obliging feller, Mister Caster. I wouldn’t reckon he’d take up much of your time.”
Listening, Longarm felt sure that Caster was doing more than saying he was busy. He was asking Jasper if he, Longarm, was worth the trouble.
Jay Caster leaned back in his swivel chair. “So, you be saying he wouldn’t be wasting my time.”
Now Longarm was sure they were talking in a kind of code. “Pretty shore, Mister Caster. He done right by me.” Jay Caster looked back at Longarm, giving him a slow going over. Finally he nodded and said, “You run along, Jasper, and I’ll spare the man what time I can.”
“Yessir,” White said, and was out the door in three strides. Longarm turned to watch him go. When he turned back around, Jay Caster was staring at him.
“What’d you say your name was?”
“Long. Out of Broken Bow, Oklahoma. Oklahoma Territory.”
Jay Caster hooked his fingers behind his head. “Pretty wild country, that, ain’t it?”
“oh, it’s calmed down a little.” Longarm was still five or six feet from Caster’s desk and wondering if he was going to be invited to sit down.
“What can I be doing for you today, Mister Long?”
Unbidden, Longarm took two steps forward and said, “I’m in the cattle business, Mister Caster. I’m expecting a herd of about a thousand cattle in here in the next day or two.”
“Mexican cattle, I assume.”
“Yessir, from the interior. The deep interior.” He added delicately, “Where they ain’t got no tick fever. Cattle are clean as a whistle.”
Caster smiled as if he’d heard that story one more time than he cared to. “Yeah,” he said, “but they got to pass through tick country to get here to the border. We don’t think of them as clean cattle, Mister Long. That’s why we got all them pens out there. Now, if you could get them cattle to fly up here to the border, might be a different story.”
Still unbidden, Longarm sat down in a straight-backed wooden chair directly across from Caster. He took his hat off, crossed his legs, and put his hat on his knee. “Uh, they say money can do a powerful lot of things, Mister Caster. Maybe it can make them cattle fly up here so they can get rushed right through and be on their way to Oklahoma. I got a government beef contract to feed Indians. Ain’t the most generous contract you ever saw. I shore know it ain’t going to stretch far enough to feed them cattle for ninety days while they stay in quarantine.”
Mister Caster was chewing tobacco. He leaned sideways and spit in a bucket, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and then said mildly, “I’ve heard of drovers who went clean on around this little customs station of mine here and swum their cattle across.”
Longarm laughed without humor. “Yeah, I tried that one time. Luckily it was a fairly small herd, so I didn’t lose everything. Four hundred head. I reckon I fed cavalry soldiers with that one instead of Indians. Let’s see, I reckon I wasn’t no more than fifty miles inland when a range inspector come up and wanted to see my papers. Naturally I didn’t have none, so he said he reckoned they weren’t my cattle, and damned if he didn’t fetch them off with him.”
Caster nodded and spit again. “Yeah, I hear that will happen. Man needs papers on cattle he imports into the United States of America from Mexico. I understand that is the law.”
Longarm scratched his head. “I wasn’t planning on driving through any settled country on the southeast side of the range,” he said. “Not through any ranches where I might cause trouble. Naw, I was going to head northwest out of here. Wouldn’t cause nobody no trouble. And I shore wouldn’t be passing on no tick fever.”
Caster shook his head sympathetically. “Law don’t make no allowance for that, Mister Long. Law don’t care which direction you’re headed. Law says you got to keep your cattle penned under government supervision—that would be me—for ninety days. If they don’t show no signs of fever, why, you’re free to go on your way. Of course if they come down sick, we got to turn you back. But, then, I reckon this ain’t no news to you.”
Longarm fiddled with the crown of his hat. It was important to not be too bold with Caster. A sure enough smuggler wouldn’t be. “Yeah, I know all that part,” he said casually. “I just keep thinking about how nice it would be if them cattle could just fly right on over the border and be on their way to Indian territory. Looks like the right amount of money could make that happen. What do you think, Mister Caster? What do you reckon it would take to get them cattle rushed on through the rigamarole and on their way to feed some hungry Indians?”
Caster leaned over slowly to spit again, and then, even more slowly, straightened back up. “Now, Mister Long,” he said, “you wouldn’t be talking to me about bribe money, would you? That’s illegal. Maybe you didn’t know it, but a customs official has got police powers. That means I could arrest you right here on the spot. What do you think of that?”
Longarm cocked his head. “Well,” he replied, “I don’t know what you’d be arresting me for. All I asked was your opinion on how much money you reckoned it would take to make cows fly. Ain’t no law against that, is there? I didn’t hear anybody in this room offer nobody a bribe. Did you?”