Tabor Evans - Longarm on the Border

As he went out of the room, Longarm kicked ahead of him the soiled clothing that still lay on the floor. Hoh Quah, his Chinese laundryman, would pick it up and bring it back clean that evening. He closed the door and between door and jamb inserted a broken matchstick at about the level of his belt. His landlady wasn't due to clean up his room until Thursday, and Longarm wanted to know the instant he came home if an uninvited stranger might be waiting inside — somebody, for instance, like the unknown shadow who'd failed to pick him off last night. Anybody who knew his name was Custis Long could find out where Longarm lived.

Not only the rooming house, but the entire section of the unfashionable side of Cherry Creek where it stood was still asleep, Longarm decided when he stood on the narrow veranda looking over the street. The night's unexpected snowfall, though only an inch or less, made it easy for him to see whether anyone had been prowling around. He took a cheroot from his breast pocket and chomped it between his teeth, but didn't light it, while studying the white surface.

There was only one set of tracks visible. They came from the house across the street, and the toes were pointed in the safe direction — for Longarm — away from the house, toward the Cherry Creek Bridge. Just the same, Longarm didn't step off the porch until he'd flicked his gunmetal-blue eyes into the long, slanting shadows between the houses. He didn't really expect to see anyone. The kind of gunhand who'd picked the safety of darkness once for his attack would be likely to wait for the gloomy cover of hoot-owl time before making a second try.

His booted feet cut through the thin soft snow and crunched on the cinder pathway as Longarm walked unhurriedly to the Colfax Avenue Bridge. He turned east on the avenue. Ahead, the golden dome of the Colorado Capitol Building was just picking up the first rays of the rising sun.

George Masters's barbershop wasn't open yet, and Longarm needed food more than he did a shave. He didn't fancy the cold, free lunch he knew he'd find at any of the saloons close by, so he went on past the barbershop another block and stopped at a little hole-in-the-wall cafe for hotcakes, fried eggs, ham, and coffee. The cheroot went into his pocket while he ate. The longer he held off lighting it, the easier it'd be to keep from lighting the next one.

Leaving the restaurant twenty-five cents poorer but with a satisfactorily full stomach, Longarm squinted at the sun. Plenty of time for a shave before reporting in at the office. He walked at ease along the avenue, which was just coming to life. The day might not be so bad in spite of the weather, he decided, feeling the warmth from his breakfast spreading through his lean, sinewy body. He grinned at the bright sun, glowing golden in a crystal sky. Deliberately, he took a match from the bundle in his pocket, flicked it into flame with a thumbnail, and lighted the cheroot.

* * *

Smelling of bay rum, his overnight stubble removed and his brown mustache now combed to the angle and spread of the horns on a Texas steer, Longarm walked into Marshal Billy Vail's office before eight o'clock. It gave him a virtuous feeling to be the first one to show up; even Vail's pink- cheeked, citified clerk-stenographer wasn't at the outside desk to challenge him. The chief marshal was already on the job, of course, fighting the ever-losing battle he waged with the paperwork that came from Washington in an ever-mounting flood.

Vail looked pointedly at the banjo clock on the wall. "This'll be the day the world ends," he growled. "What in hell happened to get you here on time for once?"

Longarm didn't bother answering. He was used to Vail's bitching. He felt his chief was entitled, bound as he was now to a desk and swivel chair, going bald and getting lardy. Deskwork, after an active career in the field, seemed to bring out the granny in a man, and Longarm decided he might bitch about life, too, under the same circumstances.

Vail shoved a pile of telegraph flimsies across the desk. "I guess you know you raised a real shit-stink down in New Mexico. You better have a good story to back up the play you made there. I've got wires here from everybody except President Hayes."

"Don't go feeling lonesome," Longarm replied mildly. "Chances are the word ain't got to him yet. Maybe you'll get one from him, too, before the day's out. You want me to tell you how it was?"

"No. In fact, I'm not sure I want a long report in the file telling exactly what happened. Think you can write one like you handed in after that Short Creek fracas a few years back?"

Vail was referring to a report Longarm had turned in about his handling of another political hot potato that had consumed a month of time, resulted in eight deaths, and upset a hundred square miles of Idaho Territory. The report had read simply, "Assigned to case May 23. Completed assignment and closed case July 1."

"Don't see why not," Longarm considered for a moment before he went on. "I figured things might be hottening up down around Santa Fe, at the capital. Some gunslick tried to bushwhack me when I got off the narrow-gauge last night."

"Hell you say." Vail's tone held no surprise. "You get him?"

"Too dark. He ran before I could sight on him."

"Well. Keep your report short, so I won't have to explain things I don't know about. Besides, I want you out of this office before that pot down there boils over clear to Washington."

"Suits me, Chief, right to a tee. There's snow on the ground and more in the air, and you know how I feel about that damned white stuff."

"If it'll cheer you up any, the place you'll be going to is just a little cooler than the hinges of hell, this time of year." Vail pawed through the untidy stacks of documents on his desk until he uncovered the papers he was after. "Texas is yelling for us to give them a hand. So is the army."

"Seems to me like they both got enough hands so they wouldn't need to come running to us. What's wrong with the Rangers? They gone to pot these days?"

Vail bristled. As a one-time Texas Ranger, he automatically resented any hint that his old outfit wasn't up to snuff. Huffily, he said, "The Rangers got more sense than to bust into something that might stir up trouble with Mexico. Here's what Bert Matthews wrote me from Austin." He read from one of the papers he'd uncovered. "He says, 'You see what a bind we're in on this one, Billy. If one of my boys sets foot across the border and gets crossways of Diaz's rurales, we'd risk starting another war with them. Whoever goes looking for Nate Webster's got to have federal authority back of him and can't be tied to Texas. That's why I'm looking to you to give us a hand.' "

Longarm rubbed his freshly shaved chin and nodded slowly, "I hadn't looked at it thataway. Makes sense, I s'pose. Who's this Nate Webster fellow and what'd he do?"

"He's a Ranger, and as far as Bert knows he didn't do anything except drop out of sight somewhere on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande. Bert don't think it was by accident, because just a little while afterward two black troopers who deserted from the 1 Oth Cavalry and the captain of their outfit, who went looking for 'em, all three disappeared across the river, too."

"Wait a minute now. That Rio Grande's a damn long river," Longarm observed. "It's goin' t'take a while to prowl it all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico. I got to have some place to start looking from."

"You have, so simmer down. I wouldn't be apt to send you if it wasn't that all four of them men disappeared from the same place. Little town called Los Perros. Dogtown, I guess that'd translate into. You ever hear of it? I sure as hell never did, but it's been a spell since I left Texas."

Longarm shook his head. "Name don't ring a bell with me, but you know about the only time I was in Texas, how long I spent there, and all. Where's this Los Perros place at, in general?"