"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."
Longarm cocked a brow and softly remarked, "Dodge ain't all that far from Anadarko now that you mention it."
The sutler snorted, "That's what I meant. Quirt's staying here overnight, to ride on with the B.I.A. dispatches along with the mail in the morning. Somebody told them about that Indian trouble you-all had down to the south. Quirt said you'd likely thrown down on innocent Kiowa because he knew for a fact you were a four-flushing show-off."
Harry Carver nodded and said, "He told us you'd bullied him and made him lick spit over in Dodge one time because he'd been a lot younger and everyone had told him you did wonders and ate cucumbers."
Longarm put the rest of the insipid non-alcohol beer aside as he insisted, "I don't know anyone called Quirt McQueen or, hell, Quirt anything that makes a lick of sense."
He lit one of his new cheroots to get rid of the sweet taste, and then he stated firmly, "It's not my habit to make anyone lick spit for no good reason. You say this sworn enemy I can't seem to recall is spending the night here at Fort Sill?"
The sutler nodded, and made Longarm feel better by explaining the two-man ambulance crew would be bedding down across the way at the B.I.A. installation, assuming young Quirt didn't get lucky in Shanty Town. He made a wry face and added, "All but a few of the higher-priced whores on the far side of Flipper's Ditch were servicing the Tenth Cav until just a few weeks ago. But Quirt's a breed and he likely thinks any white gal is a step up from his sisters."
Longarm dryly observed, "I take it you are neither an admirer nor afraid of this Quirt McQueen, Mister..."
"Vernon, Ed Vernon, and you take it right." The sutler replied as he reached under the counter, adding, "I can't abide big-mouth gun waddies who never shoot off anything but their mouths! If I've told that kid once I've told him a dozen times not to make war talk around here if he's only looking for innocent merriment!"
He brought up a bottle of thick brown glass and quietly began to fill three shot glasses as he grumbled on. "I've seen dumb bragging matches shift from bluff to bloodshed in the wink of an eye, and a couple of times stray rounds came perilously close to these tired old eyes. The last time Quirt got into one of his swaggering snits, I thought we were going to have us a dead breed and a couple of hung darkies on this post. It was all I could do to talk a couple of Tenth Cav into overlooking the babbling of a bratty kid. Fortunately, they liked grown-up liquor too."
Longarm gingerly tasted the amber liquor he'd been offered and had no doubt in his mind as he gravely pronounced, "Maryland rye. The real stuff. No moonshiner born of mortal woman ever sold you anything as fine as this, Ed."
The sutler smiled innocently and replied, "I never said any such cuss ever did. Do I look like the sort of fool who'd serve moonshine on a military reservation to a federal lawman? You'll note I've only served you gents, from my own private stock. I'd have to call any man who said I'd sold him hard liquor a liar."
Harry Carver looked puzzled and allowed he failed to see all that much difference, since Miss Lemonade Lucy had declared Fort Sill a dry post.
It was Longarm who explained. "She did and it is. The administrative order signed by her husband forbids the trafficking in or possession of strong drink by the surrounding Indians or the troops posted here to make 'em behave. Neither commissioned officers nor us way less disciplined civilians are required by federal law to follow the stern Articles of War nor tedious Army Rules and Regulations to the letter."
One of the closer cavalry troopers, possessed of a keen nose, got up to drift over, grinning, as he quietly asked, "Do I smell the aroma of rye whiskey coming from this corner, Mr. vernon?"
The bottle had already vanished. But Ed Vernon made no attempt to hide or polish off his own glass as he gravely replied, "If you did it was your misfortune and none of our own, Trooper Baily. We can serve you our beer or we can serve you soft cider. It was your own grand notion to sign up for a hitch, not mine.
The cavalryman told Vernon to do something that didn't even sound like fun, and went back to hear some more mouth-organ music. Ed Vernon chuckled and said, "It's the few native-born Americans we have the most trouble with. Most of the new recruits are German or Irish greenhorns who never read the U.S. Constitution or heard that a trail hand starting out can make twice as much as any soldier blue and drink like a grown man whilst he's at it."
Longarm didn't care. He told the sutler in a friendly but firm way, "I'm paid to ask questions, and so I'm asking you politely where you get this rye whiskey and how much you keep on hand here."
Vernon smiled easily and replied, "I have no secrets from my dear old Uncle Sam. I just told you I ain't been selling, and I only keep enough for my ownself and my pals. As to where it comes from, I send back East for it and have my hired help pick it up with other wares at the railroad freight dock at Atoka, about a hundred and sixty miles to the east and about as close as the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas Line ever gets to this dusty swamp."
Longarm half closed his eyes to draw maps in his mind as he sipped the fine whiskey. He had no call to ask why Vernon sent away for such private stock. He nodded thoughtfully and said, "That railroad stop at Atoka would be in Chocktaw country on the far side of the Chickasaw reserve. What happens when your whiskey comes to a reservation line?"
Vernon looked blank, then replied, "It crosses it. Ain't no exact lines drawn across the buffalo grass betwixt here and Atoka. You just ride or drive 'till you're on or off any fool reserve. How come you ask? Ain't no way to get lost on an established wagon trace."
Longarm waved his empty shot glass at the trail boss beside him as he explained. "Harry and his cows got stopped by your Indian Police at the reservation line to the south the other day. They said they'd been told to collect a toll on such wealth on the hoof. Yet you say a man can drive in from the east with a wagon-load of valuables and those blue shirt riders don't say boo?"
Vernon shrugged and replied in an easy tone, "You have to meet up with riders before you can say what they might have to say. I can't recall me or my boys meeting up with any of them Indian Police on the trail save to say howdy. They ain't allowed to pester white folks."
Longarm knew that, strictly speaking, this was not true. But he didn't want to get into the complicated federal regulations giving the Indian Police limited authority on their own range. So as he stood there thinking hard, Ed Vernon got out that bottle some more to pour three more drinks as he said a mite uncertainly, "Quanah Parker has never tried to impose no import duty on the goods I sell to his own as well as these troops--at a fair price and modest profit. If ever a fool Indian did try to shake me down extra for the fees I already pay the government for my sutler's license, this child and all his goodies for sale would be long gone!"
Longarm said, "I'm sure the Army and the Indians already know that, Ed."
Vernon said, "I can tell you there's no Comanche police patrols along the western reservation line. That's Kiowa country, and not even Quanah can make Kiowa toe the line. They say it all goes back to when some Kiowa followed a younger and wilder Quanah up to Adobe Walls, along with some Arapaho and South Cheyenne. They say the experience made a Christian out of Quanah and disillusioned the Kiowa considerable. As the leader of the largest contingent, Quanah got to lay out the plan of attack, with the help of his private medicine man. But to make up for that he let the Kiowa under White Bear and Lone Wolf lead the charge, anxious to count COUP."
Longarm cut in. "We all know what happens when seven hundred riders charge across wide-open short grass dotted with prairie-dog holes at professional riflemen with telescope sights. If we could move it on up to the here and now, you're saying those police patrols are a sometime thing, with at least the one we rode into way closer to an open shakedown than I'd allow if I was running things."
Harry Carver shrugged and pointed out, "You told me when we first met that they'd sent you to straighten out an Indian police force. I don't see what's so mysterious about 'em needing guidance, old son."
Longarm grimaced and put a hand over his empty shot glass to decline a third shot as he said, "I'd best ask them about that in the morning then. Maybe they know something about those wild and woolly Kiowa we brushed with as well. Mean while, I reckon I'd best just sleep on it. So I'm callin' it a night if it's all the same with you gents."
Vernon simply bade him good night. But Harry Carver followed him out on the plank walk to say, "Me and my boys will be riding back to Texas tomorrow. So it's been nice meeting up with you if we don't meet for breakfast. What are you aiming to do about that kid who says he has it in for you, pard?"
Longarm said, "Nothing, the same as he figures to do about me for all his war talk. I must have missed a recent dime novel by Ned Buntline. For I met up with another such asshole in Amarillo not too many nights ago."