As the older couple moved out on the empty dance floor, Ryan said something to Godiva Weaver, and the next thing Longarm knew he was seated at the table alone. But he didn't care. Like most men, the tall deputy mostly danced as an excuse to grab on to a gal for the first time. He found it perfectly logical that few men really liked to dance with ladies they'd already slept with or never meant to. As the dance floor filled with swirling couples, he figured any gal left over along the walls would be somebody's wife, somebody's daughter, or mighty ugly. So, having finished the sickly punch and wanting a smoke, he got up and headed out to the downwind veranda.
Nobody else seemed to care, and it was cooler and more peaceful out there in the semi-darkness as he smoked a cheroot and that louder dance music played in one ear while, off in the distance, someone was playing "Cotton-Eyed Joe" on a mouth organ. It sounded like that Running X rider who'd been serenading them along the trail north out of Texas. Harry Carver and his boys were likely sipping non-alcohol beer or soft cider down at the sutler's. Although as in the case of the rum punch inside, hard liquor could always find its way onto a post no matter what Lemonade Lucy Hayes got her husband, the President, to say.
Longarm blew a thoughtful smoke ring as he pondered that notion. He knew how the Reed-Starr bunch over by Fort Smith ran stolen stock and moonshine in and out of the Cherokee Nation. But that shabby clan of trash whites and Cherokee breeds didn't act like Quill Indians, and went out of their way to be nice to the Indian Police.
On the other hand, if Quanah Parker's Comanche Police were less willing to be bought off, and someone was worried about an experienced white lawman teaching them more than they already knew... That worked, up to a point. The point where things got tough to picture was where, in any direction, a Black Legging rider sporting feathers and paint loaded up on rotgut. Anyone running substantial amounts of liquor would be running it in for the troops. There were close to a thousand soldiers out here, all drawing at least thirteen dollars a month, and while Indians like to drink at least as much, they wouldn't have as much money to spend on such forbidden pleasures.
Longarm blew another smoke ring and muttered, "Then what edge would anyone acting sullen in buckskin have over a friendly Indian, mayhaps with a job on the post, when it came to peddling moonshine to the thirsty peacetime army?"
He became aware the dance music had stopped inside when some others came out on the veranda, not to join him but to cool off. He saw Godiva and old Ryan, speaking of buckskins, but they were down a ways and he had no call to pester them. Old Ryan was acting mighty attentive, and he'd likely told the newspaper gal already that he'd have his own quarters close at hand, doubtless more luxurious than a spartan room at that guest hostel.
Godiva must have told the B.I.A. man she wanted some of that swell rum punch. For she was suddenly alone as Ryan ducked inside again.
Longarm stayed where he was, and sure enough, the newspaper gal moved down along the railing to join him, saying, "Fred Ryan has just offered to wrangle me a seat on the B.I.A. mail ambulance bound for Fort Smith tomorrow morning."
Longarm nodded and replied, "You told me down in Spanish Flats you were out to interview Quanah Parker. I reckon it's possible for you to catch up with him in Fort Smith. He's got to be out there in some direction. Meanwhile he's expected back here some time or the other."
She sighed and said, "Fred told me You'd probably say something like that. I naturally didn't tell him about... our getting sort of silly on the trail. But he seemed to take it for granted that I was sort of... under your influence."
"You no doubt straightened him out on that," said Longarm with a thin smile. It had been a statement rather than a question, but the honey blonde sighed and said, "It's not as if we'd made a lot of promises, Custis. We all say silly things when we're... excited. But we never agreed our... friendly feelings meant anything permanent, did we?"
Longarm saw Fred Ryan down the veranda, looking confused with a glass of punch in each hand. He told Godiva, "Your ride to Fort Smith is looking for you. Do us both a favor and move it on down to meet him, honey. I follow your drift, and you have to be an elderly English fop to carry off those sophisticated scenes you womenfolk seem to get more out of."
She started to say something else. Then she laughed, like a mean little kid, and turned away without another word. As he watched her flounce down the veranda to get her rum punch, and Lord only knows what else before the night was over, Longarm had to laugh at himself. For while one part of him was just as glad it had ended so carefree, another part of him couldn't help feeling a mite used and abused, the way a lot of gals had felt, no doubt, when the shoe had been on the other foot. As Longarm turned the other way, he spied the plump Elvira Howard just down the veranda rail, fanning herself fit to bust. As their eyes met he just nodded in passing. It would have been rude to ask a lady how much of that conversation she'd grasped. There wasn't a speck of doubt she'd been listening. Making his way around to the main entrance, Longarm went back in just long enough to get his hat. For as the dancers swirled inside the poorly ventilated club, the mingled smells of sweaty army blue wool and cloying perfume would have been a bitch if he'd anybody of his own to dance with. He knew any gal he started up with in the shantytown just off the post was as likely to get him in trouble as some officer's wife or daughter at the fool dance he'd just left. So he decided it might not kill him, just this once, to get on back to his hired room and turn in early alone, the way they kept telling him he ought to.
CHAPTER 10
Neither non-alcoholic beer nor soft cider was any more tempting than rum punch. But that familiar mouth organ slowed Longarm down as he might have passed the sutler's.
Glancing through the swinging doors, he saw Harry Carver and some other Running X riders, mixed in with about as many troopers, quietly admiring the kid who was playing "La Palmona" now by the cold stove in the center of the combined shop and canteen.
He went inside to join them, partly because it was still a bit short of his usual bedtime, but mostly because Billy Vail paid him to be nosey and everyone passing by an army post usually spent more than a few words of gossip at the sutler's.
Nodding to Harry and the others he knew, Longarm strode on to the rear counter and asked the old geezer behind it for a fistful of his usual smokes and some waterproof matches, if they had them.
The sutler was able to fill both orders and still give him change for his silver cartwheel. It would have been rude to ask right out if they sold anything harder than the soft drinks approved by Miss Lemonade Lucy. He figured he'd just order a beer, bitch about the way it tasted, and see what happened.
He suspected it might not work when, pouring a tin cup of the suds that was not yet fermented and hence still sweet, the sutler asked him if he was by any chance that famous federal lawman everyone had been talking about earlier.
Shooting a morose glance at the riders who'd likely been gossiping about him, Longarm allowed he was Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long.
The beer tasted sort of tangy, as if there might have been a hint of alcohol somewhere among the suds, as the sutler nodded and said, "Just as well young Quirt McQueen and some soldiers blue went on out to Shanty Town for some real liquor, I reckon. I know the kid's all talk, but sometimes he don't know when to stop and-"
"The little shit said he was after you, Longarm!" Harry Carver shouted as he rose to join them. "I told him you might be by to say adios. That's doubtless what inspired him to tear-ass off across the parade to scare folks in Shanty Town."
Longarm frowned uncertainly as he sipped sweet suds and ran the handle through his brains in vain. When he said he had no memory of any feud with anyone called Quirt McQueen, the sutler explained, "He rides shotgun messenger aboard the mail ambulance as it runs from the Anadarko Agency to Fort Smith by way of here. He would have it known he killed a man in Dodge, whether anyone remembers him in Dodge or not."