“Then how come he hated to go so bad.”
Caster laughed. “‘Cause he didn’t want to leave that woman of his and be gone all night, that’s why.”
“His woman?”
“Dulcima? You ain’t heered about her?”
Longarm shook his head. “No, I reckon not. Am I supposed to have?”
“Well, you’re staying at the Hamilton and she takes a stroll around the plaza right in front of the Hamilton twice a day. All the men line up on the sidewalk with their tongues hanging out about a foot, panting like hound dogs after a hard run. And don’t she know it.”
“Know what?”
Caster frowned. “Say, are you a little slow? She knows all them ol’ boys are standing around watching her, dreaming about what it would be like to get in her britches.” He looked away thoughtfully. “I’ve wondered myself. But I want to stay alive. So I just look, like the rest of them.”
“And she enjoys that, does she?”
“Why, hell yes, she enjoys it. Gets a hell of a kick out of it. I’ve heard her tell Raoul about it.”
“What does he think?”
Caster shrugged. “I never asked him. Where that woman is concerned it’s best to stay off the subject.”
Longarm got out a cigarillo and lit it. “Say, is he Mexican? He don’t quite look it.”
“Half-breed. His daddy was Mexican. His mother was a schoolteacher from Louisiana or Tennessee or some such place. Fell in love with a Mexican bandit if you can figure that.” He stopped and frowned. “Long, we ain’t getting our business talked about. We still got a couple of conditions to cover. Besides, the less you know about Raoul San Diego the better off you’ll be.”
Longarm drew on his cigarillo. “Now about that first condition. I ain’t all that pleased about that. I done told you why, and I ain’t gonna run the risk of putting another burr under your saddle blanket, but that condition kind of brings me up short. What else is on the bill of fare?”
“You said you were going to drive for Galveston. Well, you ain’t going to make a beeline for there from here. I ain’t going to have it looking like you come out of Laredo. You may not want to, but you’re going to turn those cattle east for fifty miles and trail in that direction alongside the Rio Grande before you turn them back north toward Galveston or Houston or wherever you plan to take them. I ain’t having those coastal ranchers thinking you come from here.”
“Hell, you won’t get no argument from me about that. Ain’t I already told you I want my papers to say I come out of Brownsville? I don’t know that it’s necessary to go fifty miles. Hell, that’s a three-day drive.”
“Fifty miles. No argument.”
“You going to send Mister San Diego to make sure I do?”
“I will if I have to. But I’ll know if you don’t go as far as I tell you.”
Longarm stared at Caster for a moment. “All right. What else?”
Caster scratched his forearm and did not look at Longarm. “You’re going to pay half the money up front. Soon as we take your cattle into quarantine. Twenty-five hundred. Cash on the barrelhead.”
“The hell!” Longarm was startled in spite of himself. He’d gotten so into the playacting that he was genuinely outraged. “You want me to give you twenty-five hundred dollars and you got my cattle penned up? Boy, you must think I’m the biggest sucker ever come down the pike. I’ll pay the way it’s always paid. I’ll pay when you give me my cattle and my signed and stamped trail papers.”
Caster shook his head. “No. I want the money as soon as your herd gets here.”
“And what’s to keep you from taking my money and just leaving my cattle in quarantine? Listen, Caster, I never heard of such a proposition and nobody I know ever heard of one like it, either. You got something against me personally? You have, why just spit it out. I’d like to know, because you seem to be causing me a world of grief here.”
Caster spit in his bucket. “Long,” he said in a bored voice, “you ain’t nothing to me but money. I don’t know you and don’t want to know you, so there ain’t nothin’ personal. I didn’t like you wantin’ to drag Mull into this, but maybe it be a good thing. I don’t know. And you made a few other remarks weren’t none of your business, but let it pass. Now, you want this deal or not? The conditions ain’t up for argument.”
Longarm furrowed his brow as if he were making a decision, thinking. Actually, he was thinking. He didn’t know how much money the ranchers had given Austin Davis, but he was almost certain it didn’t include any five thousand dollars in bribe money, especially twenty-five hundred up front. He sat there for a moment trying to figure out how he was going to lay his hands on that kind of money. He didn’t know if Laredo had a federal bank or not, but it didn’t make any difference. He wasn’t going to tell anyone in Laredo he was a U.S. deputy marshal, even a federal banker. He knew Laredo, he knew the border. You might not be corrupt when you came to Laredo, but if you stayed long enough it would corrupt you sure as hell. The border lived by the mordida, the bite, the bribe. That was the way business was done, and it was so natural no one thought anything of it. But that wasn’t going to help him get twenty-five hundred dollars. “Look here, Mister Caster,” he said at last, “I’ll take your deal because I ain’t got no choice. I’ll just have to take it on trust that Mister Mull is going to sign and put his seal on my road papers. But I got to tell you that I ain’t got twenty five hundred dollars I can lay my hands on as quick as you want it. You say you have to have it in hand when my cattle arrive. Hell, that could be tomorrow.”
Caster frowned. “What the hell is all this? You telling me you didn’t bring any money with you? Wasn’t you prepared to pay at least two dollars a head? You were also going to have to pay the man who gathered the cattle.”
“Of course. But that give me a week. I was going to wire my bank for the money. I figured my cattle would be held a week and I’d have time to get the money down here by wire. But if I got to take and hand over half that five thousand when my cattle come in—well, hell, there ain’t going to be enough time.”
Caster’s look turned sour. “Hell, you are some hombre to do business with. I reckon you had better get yore cornbread ass over to the bank and get them busy on the transaction. As long as it’s in the works I’ll go ahead and receive your cattle.”
“Mister Caster, you know what day of the week it is?”
“Of course, it’s Saturday. So what? The banks are open till noon. Go find one.”
“They may be open till noon here, but they ain’t in Broken Bow. Monday morning is the soonest I can get this wagon rolling.”
Caster slapped his fat hand on the desk. It made a loud thud. “Well, sheet, Long! You are trying my patience. How much money do you have with you?”
Longarm tried to look worried. He said, “Not much. Few hundred dollars. Man with any sense don’t carry a lot of cash in this country. You ought to know that. I done business this way for years and never had no trouble. Hell, Mister Caster, what is the rush? You’ll have my cattle in your pens when they get here, and I won’t be able to move them without your say-so. Ain’t that security enough?”
Caster leaned forward and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. “That’s the only kind of security I believe in, Long. Tell you what … How long will it take you to get hold of your money?”
“Two days, three at the outside.”
Caster stood up. “All right,” he said. “I’ll give you three days starting Monday morning. By Wednesday you better have twenty-five hundred dollars to put in Raoul’s hand. You savvy?”
Longarm stood up, too, put on his hat, and worked it around to get it set comfortably. “Put like that, I don’t reckon there’s much way I can’t savvy. All I can do is find me a bank Monday morning and get them hopping. You give me to the close of banking hours Wednesday?”