He wandered the streets for a quarter of an hour, then turned a corner and went into a saloon called the Square Deal, which he thought to himself was anything but. It was no way on a par with the Elite. It was more of a workingman’s drinking place. He was about to turn around and go back out when out of the corner of his eye, at the end of the bar, he saw the blue tunics of a couple of cavalry soldiers. He walked on in. There was one poker game going and he could tell at a glance that it was small change—nothing that he wanted a part of.
He took a place at the bar and ordered a drink, making a grimace as he tasted the raw whiskey. He slammed his glass down and said to the bartender, “Hell, you slopping pigs or giving drinking men whiskey? What is this stuff? Give me something decent.”
The barkeep looked startled. “Well, that’s good enough for most folks around here.”
Longarm slung a silver dollar on the bar and said, “Give me your best.”
The bartender shrugged and found another bottle. He took a fresh glass and poured Longarm another drink. Longarm took it down in one gulp, grimacing. He said, “Hell, that ain’t a hell of a lot better.”
He looked down to where the two cavalry men stood. Both were slick-sleeved privates. He said, “And not only ain’t the whiskey worth a damn in this joint, but you don’t seem to care who you let in here. You serve soldier boys in here—Yankee soldier boys? Next you’ll be letting Injuns in here to drink with the white men.” He flipped another silver dollar on the bar and turned on his heels and walked out.
Out on the street, he smiled again. He was well pleased with himself. He had managed to make a stir in two places. It was growing late—a little after ten—so he walked slowly back to his hotel. As he was crossing the lobby, he saw the young man, Todd, hurrying after him. Longarm continued on down the hall. Just as he reached his room, Todd came up.
Todd said excitedly, “Mr. Long, sir. I got to tell you something.”
“What is it, Todd?”
“Well, Mr. Long. I heard that you got into a … got into an upset with Billy Bob Castle and his brother Glenn.”
“Is that their name? Castle?”
“Yes, sir. Just like the one that had the horse that you were admiring this afternoon.”
“So what?”
“Well, sir. I just thought I better warn you. They ain’t the best folks to be getting crosswise with around here.”
Longarm put his key in the door.
The boy continued. “They’re kind of pretty important around here. They’re kind of the head stud horse. The whole bunch of them.”
Longarm gave the young man a look. He said, “Well, Todd. You pass the word that if they will stay clear of me, I’ll let them go on being stud horses around here, but they fool with me and I’ll geld them right quick.”
Todd stood there staring at him as Longarm went past the door, shutting it behind him. He walked through the parlor into his bedroom and sat down on his bed to have a good laugh. He uncorked a bottle of Maryland whiskey and swished it around his mouth to get rid of the taste of that last drink. He leaned back against the pillow and said, “Ahhh,” before taking out a cigarillo and lighting it.
He figured that he had done a pretty good day’s work in the little town in not quite half a day. He didn’t know who the Castles were—Billy Bob or Glenn—but they apparently were of such a size and vigor and prestige as to have made Todd impressed with his conflict with such a robust family.
All of it had left him no closer to finding who was killing the troopers. The remark he had made in the Square Deal Saloon about the place serving soldiers was possibly the most aggressive effort he had made that day, but it would take a great deal more than that to get him viewed as an arrival who shared the town’s opinion toward the garrison at the fort.
As he ate his breakfast the next morning in the hotel dining room, he reflected that if he ever meant to make his official presence known to the sheriff, the sheriff’s behavior the night before had canceled out that thought. Clearly the sheriff took the side of the locals against any outsiders.
Longarm wondered if that included the soldiers at the fort. Were they outsiders since most of them were Yankees? Even worse than that, most of them were immigrants newly arrived in the country. The only work they could find was that of serving in the army, and especially in the frontier forts. Many of those forts were now being manned by Negroes who were called buffalo soldiers. As a general rule, being sent to such far-flung outposts was reserved for outcasts, the second-rate and troublemakers. Of course, that did not apply to the officers to the same extent as the enlisted men. But no matter what their social status was, they didn’t deserve to be killed.
He wondered about the Castle family, and intended on making some discreet inquiries in time. He thought, however, that their paths would be crossing in the very near future. The burly man they called Big Bill or Billy Bob, or even the one they called Glenn, the one with the shotgun, didn’t look like the type to take a licking and think very kindly about it. He thought for certain that they would be paying him a visit in the very near future.
But for the time being, his plan was just to hang around town and listen to what he could hear, put forth such opinions as might find favor with those who were against the soldiers being there, and let the situation take its course. He knew of no other way to proceed.
However, later that morning he received a communication from Captain Montrose. They had worked out a method of communicating by which Longarm could not be identified with the garrison. There were several civilian employees at the fort, and a blacksmith who saw to the garrison’s horses was to drop off a message at his hotel. It wouldn’t be a closed envelope but rather an innocent-looking piece of paper mentioning lost horses and Longarm’s search for them. That would notify him that he was supposed to come to the fort as quickly as possible.
He met Captain Montrose in the horse corrals at the fort at one o’clock. The captain said that he had forgotten to mention that he was taking most of the troop on a training march the next day, and he wanted to make sure that such an action would not interfere with Longarm’s investigation. Longarm told him in no uncertain terms it would very definitely interfere with his investigation.
He said, “Captain Montrose, how the hell am I supposed to find out who’s shooting your soldiers if you march them out of here?”
The captain said, “But I’ll be leaving a small complement of clerks and other personnel.”
“Don’t make no difference. You’ll just slow me down during the time it takes you to carry out this exercise. How long were you planning on being gone?”
“Ten days to two weeks.”
The very thought of having his mission delayed by that amount of time made Longarm cringe. In the strongest terms possible he gave it as his opinion that if the captain did such a thing, it might well cancel the progress Longarm had already made. He didn’t bother to tell the captain that his progress thus far had been to get into a poker game and into trouble with the local sheriff.
Captain Montrose didn’t want to comply with Longarm’s wishes, but in the end he had no choice, even though he complained that it would cause his troops to lose significant training time.
Longarm said, “Better that they lose their training time than lose their lives.”
With that Longarm left and headed back to town.
His first stop was the Elite Saloon. There, over several drinks at the bar, he let it be known that he was almost certain that several of his horses, horses that had been stolen, were being held out at the garrison, and that that damned Yankee captain would not release them. And he, by God, was going to have justice on the matter or there would be hell to pay. All of this he told to the bartender, who was not at all interested, but he told it to him in such a way that practically everyone in the place could hear him.