Caster grinned. “And they told you I was the man to see.”
Longarm studied his cigarillo. “I’ll talk about my business, Mister Caster, but I won’t talk about other folks’. If you take my meaning. Whether they said anything about you or anybody else just plumb escapes me.”
“But they told you that a week is the shortest time?”
“That’s right.”
“You understand that’s the express service.” Damn near the price of a set of wings. Price goes down the longer I hold them.”
“Yeah, but the feed bill goes up.”
Caster leaned back again. “What’s it worth to you to get a thousand head through in a week?”
Longarm looked over toward a corner. “Oh,” he said, “I figure two dollars a head would be a fair price. Taken all around.”
Caster laughed without humor. “You can double that for starters.”
Longarm leaned forward and rounded on him. “Four dollars a head? Hell, Caster, there is no way I can make any money on this deal at that price.”
“Now, that wouldn’t be my worry, would it?” Caster said evenly.
Longarm pulled a frown and shook his head. “And I heard you was a man would do business. Hell, four dollars a head I might as well not bother to take delivery of the cattle.”
“You seem to have heard a good deal about me. That all you cattlemen got time to do is gossip like a bunch of old maids?”
“Gossiping and talking business ain’t the same thing, mister Caster. You seem considerably touchy about folks talking about you. You doing something you’re ashamed of? That damn quarantine law is something to be ashamed of. That’s keeping a lot of honest folks from making a living.”
Caster leaned over to spit in the bucket, then straightened back up and said, “Long, I don’t care what you and yore friends say about me, or what tales you tell. I run this customs station and I’ll run it any damn way I please. I ain’t a damn bit ashamed of anything I do. But I’d be damn careful, was I you, of making remarks like that. And such remarks ain’t going to get you a better price, that is for damn sure.”
Longarm got up abruptly and walked over to the window. He could just see one corner of the long row of cattle pens. Without looking around, he said, “Well, Caster, I’ll tell you straight out I can’t pay the four dollars. I’m going to get sixteen dollars and six bits a head from the Indian Bureau. I’ll be paying between six and seven dollars a head for them Mexican cattle. Say six seventy-five to keep it in round numbers. That leaves ten dollars a head. I give you four and that leaves me with only six dollars a head to work off of. And I got the expense of feeding them here for a week and then the cost of hiring drovers for a month to get them to Oklahoma. Not to mention what I’ll have to spend on the road, paying tolls through fenced ranches and farms. Times have changed, and you just can’t march cattle in a straight line no more. And then I know at least half of them cattle will be poor and wore out by the time that they get here to Laredo. I stand to lose a good number of them on the trail to Indian country. I get there with eight hundred I’ll be damn lucky. And of course I got to pay the contractor that is gathering them for me.”
Behind him Caster yawned and he said, “Sounds to me, Long, like you’re in the wrong business. You should have knowed what we charge before you got here.”
Longarm wheeled around. “I heard two dollars. And from more than one man.”
Caster shook his head. “Not for just a week.”
Longarm nodded. “Yeah, a week. Two dollars a head.” He paused and regarded Caster for a second. “I will say, however, that I might have been mistaken about who they said. It might have been Brownsville, and it might have been your boss—Mull, ain’t that his name?”
Caster leaned back slowly in his chair. After a pause he said, “You are uncommonly full of surprises, Mister Long. You are talking about the Regional Director of the Customs Service, James Mull. You telling me you’ve talked to people who have done business with him?”
Longarm shrugged. “I done talked too much. What y’all do is your business. I’m just interested in getting some cattle across the border, and I can’t pay but two dollars a head.”
Caster’s voice rose slightly. “Well, somebody is lying. Either it’s you or whoever told you they got cattle through at Brownsville for two dollars. And I know that for a fact.”
Longarm walked slowly back to his chair. His mind was racing. The man was the same as admitting that both him and his boss in Brownsville were involved in smuggling for a bribe. It was all going much faster and easier than he’d expected. His inclination was to push Caster even harder for more revelations, but a small voice of caution warned him to go slow. He said, sitting down, “You seem mighty sure of what you’re saying Mister Caster. But it’s my money we’re talking about here.”
Caster shot his arm out. “Then go somewhere else. Hell, go back up to Del Rio. Go to Eagle Pass. See how yore luck runs. Hell, drive yore damn cattle down to Brownsville if you think you can get a better deal. I’ll write a letter you can carry with you to Mister Mull. Take off. See where you can do better.”
Longarm looked thoughtful, as if he were considering what Caster had said. Instead his mind was busy, thinking over how they, he and Austin Davis, might catch two fish on one hook. Finally he gave a little rueful laugh. “I take it you are a poker player, Mister Caster.”
“I’ve looked at a few cards. What the hell does that have to do with it?”
Longarm crossed his legs, took his hat back off, and put it on his knee. “I’m trying to figure out if you’re bluffing or trying to buy the pot. Four dollars a head is four thousand dollars. That’s a lot of money for doing nothing.”
Caster snorted. “Doing nothing? That what you reckon? I done plenty to get into this job. Worked my ass off. Say a doctor takes a bullet out of you and it only takes him ten minutes and he charges you twenty dollars. You ain’t going to say to him that’s two dollars a minute. No, you’re going to figure he spent a lot of years learning how to take that bullet out, so you ain’t going to say nothing. Well, you can figure the same about me.”
With a little hesitation Longarm agreed, “Well, yes, there’s that. And I reckon there is some risk involved for you.”
Caster stared at him. “Risk? What risk?”
“Hell, I’m just trying to look at it from your side. I don’t reckon the law would look kindly on matters of this kind. But then, the law is always mixing in where they ain’t got no call to, and interfering with business.”
Caster laughed out loud. “Risk?” he said, “You think I’m taking some kind of risk letting you get a few cattle through a little early?”
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call a thousand head a few, and I wouldn’t call a week against ninety days a little early.”
Caster leaned back and smiled. “Tell you what, Mister Long, You follow me around the whole week yore cattle is in my pens, and you find me doing one thing even looks illegal, I’ll let you take yore cattle through for nothing.”
Longarm frowned. “Hell, Mister Caster, I ain’t interested in your business or how you do it. I done told you my concern is my cattle. But I can’t go no four dollars. I got to make some profit or they ain’t no reason for me to make the deal. I might could go two and a half, but that is my top.”
Caster shrugged. “Then you need to be somewhere else, because you’re wasting my time.”
“Well, I don’t understand that. I know my information is reliable. You’ve done it for two dollars. I know you have.”
Caster got an impatient look on his face. “Look, Long, let’s get something straight. This is my operation and I’ll run it as I please. Maybe I did let a few herds through for two dollars, but them days is over with. That old dog won’t hunt no more. If it wasn’t you sitting in that chair, it would be somebody else. I got cattlemen lined up from here to the Brazos waiting for what I got to sell. You got some idea in your head that I’m taking a risk with the law, and that gives you some kind of hold over me. Well, you’ve been invited to watch me all week and see what you can see.”