Davis replied amiably, “You just keep on dreaming, partner. And I wouldn’t count on no comfort from the ladies, not while I’m around.”
As they resumed walking toward the hotel, Longarm said, “If you’re a real good boy I might let you have some of my leavings so far as the females are concerned. But I can guarantee you they will be gnawed down to the bone by the time I’m through with them.”
“My, my. That is brave talk for a man of your years. You sure you got the strength for it?”
“If we don’t get to that hotel and get me a steak, you will shortly find out about my strength. And I just hope you haven’t already got the situation screwed up where I can’t save it. I’m down here to do a job and I can only hope you don’t get in the way with your big feet.”
The Gunther was an old institution in San Antonio, known for miles around as the best cattleman’s hotel in the West. It had a big, spacious lobby with a first-class bar that served liquors and whiskeys not found in the ordinary saloon. Their rooms were of good size and their restaurant was famous for the quality of its menu. A man could walk across the Gunther’s marble floor, go up to the desk, drop his saddle, and say what he wanted and expect to have it happen faster than he could put his name in the hotel registry. When Longarm told the clerk what he wanted, the man just nodded and snapped his fingers. In an instant porters were there to relieve him of his gear and luggage and the clerk recommended they have his supper, following which, Longarm’s bath would be waiting for him in his room. And if he didn’t feel like shaving himself or wanted his hair cut, the clerk would have a barber sent up.
And that at eleven o’clock at night.
As they went into the dining room Longarm said, “These folks know how to run a hotel. I come in here one morning at about three A.M. with a bullet in my side and a terrible thirst for some goat’s milk. I guess I was half out of my head with the wound, but it seemed like somebody had told me goat’s milk would keep your strength up. Well I don’t know how they did it, but they had a glass of goat’s milk in my hand before the doctor arrived to take the slug out of me.” He made a face. “My word, I can still taste that damn goat’s milk. But I drank it. Man gets an idea in his head, he can’t shake it. I asked the doctor about it later and he said he’d thought it was a little strange to find a gunshot victim drinking goat’s milk, but he figured it was probably some kind of superstition. Said it wouldn’t hurt me, but he doubted it would have done me as much good as getting the bullet out.”
Austin Davis gave him a glance. “Is they a point to that story?”
Longarm shrugged. They had come to the big double doors of the dining room. A uniformed waiter was hurrying toward them. “Naw, not really,” Longarm said. “Just makes me wonder how many other hotels there are around could come up with a doctor and a glass of goat’s milk at three in the morning.”
“Not many, I’d guess,” Davis remarked dryly.
The waiter came up and said, “Mister Davis, I seen y’all when you come in the lobby. I done told the cook and he’s already got y’all’s steaks on. Big T-bones. Got some potatoes and some corn, and some apple dumpling for desert with sweet cream. Let me get y’all set down an’ I’ll bring you what you need from the bar.”
As they followed the waiter, Longarm said to Austin Davis, “See what I mean? They not only can produce a glass of goat’s milk, they can remember you.”
Austin Davis looked amused. “Wasn’t my face that they remembered. Was that of Abraham Lincoln.”
“What are you talking about?”
Davis sat down in the chair the waiter had pulled out for him. “That’s the face on the five-dollar bill I gave him to remember.”
“Don’t be so careless with my money,” Longarm said. “I got plans for it.”
“Your money? How you figure that?”
Longarm smiled thinly. “When this job is over, sonny boy, I’m going to send you home with nothing but lint in your pockets and a vow in your heart to never play poker with the big boys again.”
Austin Davis yawned. “In your dreams, Marshal.”
“So how does it fall out?” Longarm asked.
He was in a galvanized tub, soaking the train tiredness out of his bones in the hot water. Austin Davis was sitting on the bed, drinking whiskey out of a glass and smoking a cigarillo.
“Well, Jay Caster is the man we want. He’s the chief customs inspector for all the cattle that cross the border at Laredo. There are other custom folks there dealing in other matters, but he is the honcho on the cattle and the horses and any other kind of livestock that has to be quarantined. He’s got about four other men working for him, but only one of them is a customs officer. The rest are just Mexican hired hands that work the livestock.”
Longarm reached an arm outside the tub, and found the bottle of whiskey sitting there. He poured a measure in his glass, took a sip, and worked it around in his mouth. A tooth had been bothering him lately and he hoped to hell it wasn’t going to get serious. There were damn few things he was out-and-out scared of, but a dentist was one of them. “You reckon the rest of them are in it with him?” he asked Davis.
Davis took a puff on his cigarillo. “They’d have to be.” He blew a smoke ring. “Hell, moving a herd of cattle around ain’t like palming the ace of spades.”
“Well, how does he do it? I mean, does he just get paid off and then clear the cattle right on through without even the show of a quarantine?”
“Naw. Nothing so raw as that. He puts up a front. It ain’t a good one, but it seems to satisfy his superiors. That, by the way, is the crux of the matter. How far uphill does the water run? Caster is crooked. We ain’t going to have no trouble proving that. But he’s got a boss. In Brownsville. And that boss has got a boss. In Galveston. So just how high up the tree are the branches rotten? Boss on top of a boss, right on up to Washington, D.C., I reckon.”
Longarm took another mouthful of whiskey and soaked his tooth in it. After a moment he swallowed and said, “Why don’t we just catch one crook at a time? The whole thing kind of irritates me, anyway. Why doesn’t the damn Customs Service clean up their own messes? Hell, we got other hooligans to gather up.”
“The way I get it,” Davis said, “the cattlemen complained about them diseased herds coming through and infecting their cattle and the customs folks never gave them no relief. Claimed the herds must have been wet, illegal, though any damn fool knows you can’t get twenty miles in this country driving a herd up from the south without proper papers. But the more they complained, the more the customs folks said it couldn’t be none of their bunch doing anything wrong since they was all good boys and put a dime in the collection plate every Sunday.”
Longarm glanced over at Davis. “Reckon they’ve been laying behind the log?”
Davis nodded. “I would reckon. I would reckon they’ve been looking out for each other. Been a little back-scratching going on to my way of thinking.”
“And we got called in how?”
“Cattlemen went to their legislators and asked did they want to keep their soft jobs or get voted out next election. The senators and congressmen got right on to our outfit and that’s how come you’re taking a bath in San Antonio and I’m sitting on this here bed.”
Longarm gave a little bark of laughter. “You do have a way of cutting right to the nub of the situation, Austin. But you ain’t told me yet how this Caster fellow passes the illegal herds through without being so damn obvious about it. Does he just hand out paper giving them a clean bill of health and let them wade on across?”
Davis shook his head. “Even he couldn’t get away with that. The herds have got to come through the port of entry, as they call it, at Laredo. They got to actually cross the International Bridge there. They get a trail brand, or mark, to see them through the border country and on up toward the north where most of them are bound. To the railheads, to Oklahoma, Kansas, wherever.”