Tabor Evans - Longarm on the Border

Purdom stroked his sideburns. "Los Perros? Can't say I recall it, but that don't signify much. There's plenty of squatter towns along the river that don't have names anybody's ever heard of, ten miles away from 'em."

"Figures," Longarm nodded. "Figures, too, if the place had a bad reputation, you'd likely have heard it mentioned."

"I imagine so," Purdom agreed. Then he added, "I'll tell you something, though, Marshal Long. We got enough mischief to handle right here in our own county, so we don't reach out for trouble."

"Sensible. That mischief — would it include a fresh rash of rustling?"

"There's always a certain amount of cattle thieving, you know that. I will say that here lately there's been bigger herds than usual drove off. Why? You onto something I oughta know about?"

"No. I was just wondering if you might've got an idea the old Laredo Loop's at work again."

His question surprised the sheriff. "Where'd you hear about the Laredo Loop? You never said you was from Texas, and I know all the old boys in the marshal's force around here."

"Now, I don't lay claim to knowing anything. Far as being from Texas, the only time I was here was on a gold smuggling case a few years back, but that was way south of here. I was just curious. I heard about the Laredo Loop then, and I got to wondering about it."

"I see." Purdom shook his head. "I just don't know. We don't work the Mexican side anymore. Back in old Juarez's day, us and the rurales got along pretty good. With that bastard Diaz running things there now, it's all changed."

"So I've heard." Longarm stood up. "Well, I still got riding to do between here and dark. Anything special to watch out for between here and the border?"

"Nothing that comes to mind." Purdom surveyed his visitor's well-worn boots and skintight britches, his eyes stopping for a moment at the slight bulge made by the holstered pistol in the left side of his frock coat. "You look like you can handle yourself. If I was you, I'd shed that coat, though. You say you're strange to these parts, so just keep in mind you're going into right dry country, when you head west. Don't pass by any good water without letting your horse drink, and topping off your canteen. Do that, and you'll make it."

As he rode out of Uvalde, Longarm discovered the sheriff had neglected to tell him that besides being dry, the country was also about ten degrees hotter than hell's hinges. Even though he'd taken time before leaving the town to fold his coat and tie it neatly inside his slicker, he'd been on the road only a short-time before sweat began welling out. The sun was like a bright gold coin that had been heated in a furnace until it was almost at the melting point. The character of the land changed suddenly. Grass and bright green foliage gave way to bare, stony earth, olive-hued mesquite, and gray green cactus. The sparse plants looked as though the beating sun had bleached out all their color. The month might well have been July instead of September.

He looked at the baked countryside, at the low humps of the Edwards Mountains to his right, and wondered why they were named on his ordnance map as mountains. Nobody who'd ever seen the Rockies could call those little chunks mountains, he was sure of that. He rode on after fishing his bandanna from his pocket and folding it into a triangle, which he tied loosely around his neck to catch the drops of sweat that trickled off his chin. The heat leached out his energy, and when he reached the Nueces River just as the sun was turning to bright orange above the horizon's jagged rim, Longarm decided to stop for the night. The map told him this would be his last sure water before he reached Fort Lancaster, still eighty miles ahead.

"Tordo," he told the dapple as he tethered the horse by the rock-strewn riverbank, "you better drink good tonight and before we hit the frail in the morning. We got two damn dry days ahead."

Dry they were, indeed. The autumn rains hadn't started yet, and the only watercourse shown on Longarm's map was Sycamore Creek, which had neither sycamores along its bank nor water in its bed. Longarm had expected that, because the map also bore the notation, dry in summer. He poured water from the canteen into his cupped palm and sloshed it into Tordo's mouth, let the horse rest a short while, then kept pushing on at a carefully measured, energy-saving gait that brought him in sight of Fort Lancaster late in the afternoon of the third day out of Uvalde.

"You men are sure as hell out in the middle of nowhere, here," Longarm remarked to the fresh-faced young lieutenant who'd found himself in command of the fort when Captain Hill had disappeared.

"It's desolate, all right," Lieutenant Bryant agreed. His eyes followed those of his visitor in scanning the bare, beaten earth of the parade ground outside the orderly room window. Distorted by heat shimmer from the earth, the U.S. flag hung limp on the flag-pole, its thirty-eight stars hidden in its folds. On both sides of the hoof-pocked center area, on worn adobe walls of the narrow barracks buildings, the sun picked out seams and water-cut runnels that had turned the hardened clay into a jigsaw puzzle of lines, like those on the faces of very old men. A few troopers, with the sleeves of their gray flannel field shirts rolled high, lounged in the scant shadows at the ends of the structures.

"If a man was stuck here long at a time, I'd bet he'd get right randy," Longarm suggested. "Want to go find himself a woman."

"It happens. Makes problems for us when it does."

"Like them two that skipped?"

"I'll tell you something odd, Marshal. Those are the only two outright desertions we've had during the two years I've been here. Oh, there've been some who wandered off without authorization — overnight, a day or two. Most of them are men who go looking for a woman in one of the shanty towns along the river, or maybe at the Apache resettlement camp south of here."

"Only them two didn't come back, and when your captain went looking for 'em, he disappeared, too."

"You're certainly not suggesting that Captain Hill deserted?" Lieutenant Bryant sounded horrified.

"Don't get miffed, son. I didn't mean it that way." Longarm judged that this was the time to ask the question that had been puzzling him since he'd been assigned to search for the missing cavalrymen. "You got any ideas why them two troopers took off like they did? And wasn't it sort of funny your captain felt like those two men were important enough for him to go chasing himself? "

Lieutenant Bryant thought for a long time before he replied, "I'm sure you need to know this, Marshal, but I hope you'll keep it confidential. Captain Hill didn't want to cause any scandal, or do anything that'd harm the way the ranchers feel about our troopers."

"Go ahead and spill it, Lieutenant. If you knew me at all, you'd know I don't flapjaw. It's my business to find things out. If you don't tell me what you're trying to set on, I'll just go dig it up anyways."

"Yes, I suppose you will. Well, Captain Hill felt he had to bring those men back to face court martial. The troopers deserted because they'd raped a rancher's wife."

"White woman, of course?" When Bryant nodded, Longarm went on, "And I bet down here in Texas, your black buffalo soldiers ain't exactly what you'd call popular."

Bryant retorted sharply, "They're damned good soldiers, Long. I don't care what civilians might say or think about them."

"Nobody said they wasn't. And rape ain't exactly something that comes with the color of a man's skin. But I can see you got a real problem. Don't worry. I don't aim to make it worse."

"Thanks. Now, how can I help you, Marshal?"

"About the biggest help you can give me is to trot out that Cimarron scout that went down to the border with the captain."