by Tabor Evans
Longarm nodded and said, "Told Lieutenant Standish why too. Never told him those mystery riders were headed north for certain. I reckon they were in too great a hurry to wait for me this morning. I had to carry two ladies home to Comanche Town. I could use another dozen of these same cheroots."
Vernon reached under the counter for them as he said, "Maybe just as well. Quirt McQueen just said he was riding after the column to have some words with you. I don't know if we talked him out of it or not."
As Longarm reached in his jeans to pay for the smokes he muttered, "That makes no sense, if we're talking about that silly kid who rides shotgun for the mail ambulance. There's no way in hell they could have driven all the way to Fort Smith and back by this morning."
Vernon handed over the fistful of cheroots and accepted Longarm's quarter as he casually explained, "Quirt says they fired him at the Mud Creek relay stop. Seems to think you had something to do with it. I told him if he wasn't working for the government no more I couldn't let him wait here on a military post to clean your plow. Last anyone I know seen of Quirt, he was getting liquored up over in Shanty Town, allowing he meant to kill you on sight and asking if anyone would lend him a pony."
The sutler handed Longarm his nickel in change as he added in a cheerful tone, considering, "By now someone's sure to have put him on a pony, if only to get rid of him. Quirt can be obnoxious as all get-out when he's drunk."
Longarm put his tobacco and change away as he thoughtfully said, "He ain't all that pleasant sober. But there's no way I could have wired mean things about him to Mud Creek. I didn't know he was there, and even if I had, I'd have been out on the range with more serious things on my mind at the time."
He lit one of the smokes he'd just bought as he considered all his options. Then he said, "Reckon I'll have to track the kid down, if he's still over yonder, and just ask him what this is all about."
The sutler blinked and replied in a worried tone, "You don't want to meet up with him before he's had time to cool down and sober up a mite, Longarm. Quirt is one mean drunk, and he's sworn he means to slap leather at the sight of you!"
Longarm shrugged and said, "You told me that. Now I'm going to go find the little shit and ask him what makes him so mean."
CHAPTER 18
Having just sort of growed, like Topsy, the haphazard collection of canvas and frame structures on the far side of Flipper's Impossible Ditch would have been an unsolvable maze if it had been much bigger. But Longarm asked directions, and heard the tinkling piano playing in Spike's Parisian Pavilion. Once he found it, it looked a lot more like an old threadbare army mess tent. It likely was. He shut one eyelid to let his right pupil unwind from the noonday sunlight as he strode for the opening facing the muddy lane out front. So when he stepped inside and slid sideways along a canvas wall, he only had to open his shooting eye to see well enough in the sudden shade.
A third of the big tent, toward the far end, was walled off with painted canvas. The piano stood against that, played by a skinny young squirt in his shirtsleeves and derby. A long bar had been improvised by laying planks across piled shipping crates. The floor was a squishy expanse of trampled muddy sod. Longarm wasn't sure whether the open sale of hard liquor or the painted gals in scandalous satin outfits lounging around the piano and bar would have upset Lemonade Lucy Hayes, the President's lady, the most.
A Philadelphia lawyer could likely make a case for the joint sort of squatting on an Indian or military reservation. You weren't supposed to sell hard liquor on either under current regulations out of Washington. But they were a long way from Washington, and that was between old Spike, whoever he was, and the nearest provost marshal, whatever he got to look the other way. Longarm didn't ride for the War Department, and was only on loan to the Indian Police, who had no jurisdiction over white business permits.
Longarm was far more interested in the familiar sullen figure at one end of the bar, drinking alone as he tried to attract attention to himself by sort of singing along with the piano. Saloon gals had no call to flirt with saddle tramps who drank alone, and the few male customers at this hour seemed more uneasy than amused.
Nobody seemed to feel any easier when Longarm strode to within spitting range of Quirt McQueen and announced in a tone that could be heard clean through the music, "I understand you've been looking for this child, McQueen."
The piano stopped halfway through a bar, and the professor slid off his stool to join the painted gals in a sort of crawfish stampede around the far end of that canvas partition. Those few customers who didn't simply duck outside moved back as far as they could from the bar as the gent who'd been serving drinks behind it ducked down out of sight.
Quirt McQueen looked as if he was fixing to throw up. He gulped hard and said, "Howdy, Longarm. I heard you was on your way up to Anadarko with that cavalry column!"
Longarm curtly replied, "You said you were aiming to chase after me too. But I don't see you doing it, Squirt."
The kid protested, "They call me Quirt, not Squirt, if you don't mind. Could I buy you a drink, pard?"
Longarm shook his head and snapped, "I don't drink with mean little kids, Squirt. How did you get back from Mud Creek if you don't have a pony to ride, and what's all this shit about me getting you fired?"
Quirt swallowed some more and said, "I never said it was you in the flesh. Your B.I.A. pal and that newspaper lady said something to the jehu, and he must have said something to the station manager at Mud Creek. How was I to know they were your pals? They both sort of laughed at you when we all passed by you on the prairie that time. I told them how you'd refused to fight me over to the fort and-"
"Bullshit! Fill your fist!" Longarm declared.
Then he had to smile as the kid started pissing down one leg of his pants, whimpering, "Jesus H. Christ, can't anybody take a joke out this way? You know I never meant it, pard!"
Longarm said, "I knew it. Let's talk about why your war talk got Fred Ryan and Godiva Weaver so het up. Are you saying they rode on from Mud Creek with nobody at all riding shotgun messenger?"
McQueen shook his head and said, "There was this hardcase Indian Ryan knew, working as a stable hand at Mud Creek. Ryan said he'd feel safer with a more experienced gun waddy seated up front. But I ask you, was that fair?"
Longarm nodded and said, "Sounds fair to me. Fred Ryan has his own odd notions. But he is an experienced Indian agent and, no offense, you don't make a very convincing bad man."
Longarm pointed at the doorway with his thumb as he added, "I can see why Ryan didn't want you guarding him and Miss Weaver all the way to Fort Smith with nothing but your mouth. Squirts like you make me a mite nervous too. So now I want you to go find the pony you rode back on and justride it, anywhere's you like, as long as I don't see you around me no more."
McQueen protested, "What are you talking about? You can't run me out of town! What if I just refuse to go?"
Longarm answered pleasantly enough, "That's your right, under the U.S. Constitution. I know I can't make you go. But I can surely make you sorry as hell you stayed."
He saw the kid was too drunk, or too ignorant, to grasp his full meaning. So he quietly but firmly explained, "Asshole. You've told as many witnesses as I'd ever need that you meant to gun me on sight. So here I stand in full sight, and would any court in this land expect me to hold my fire until you'd killed me?"
McQueen tried, "Aw, shit, I told you I was only joshing."
Longarm shook his head and said, "That ain't what you told Ed Vernon and some others who don't like you any better. You'd best leave now, or make good on your brag, you yellow-livered little shit, because I am fixing to take you up on it within a number of seconds I'd as soon count off silently."
Longarm wasn't really counting under his breath. He'd seen more than one man die counting aloud toward ten and getting shot around seven or eight. But the four-flushing McQueen must have thought he was counting. For he was suddenly running for the doorway as if the Hounds of Hell we
re in hot pursuit.
Longarm leaned over the bar and quietly said, "War's over and I'd like rye with a beer chaser, barkeep."
The ashen-faced barkeep was filling his order when one of the saloon gals came over to tell Longarm that his drink was on the house and that Spike would like a word with him in the back. So he drained the shot glass, picked up his beer schooner, and followed the drab back behind that canvas wall.
On the far side it smelled even mustier, and he saw they'd divided that part of the big tent into a maze of tiny partitions. He had a fair grasp on what went on in some of them. The drab led him into a sort of canvas-walled office, where an older but prettier gal with funeral-black hair was seated behind a couple of planks laid across two flour barrels. She declared her friends called her Spike, Then she waved him to a stool on his side of the improvised desk. The younger gal with far more face paint ducked out without being ordered to leave. Longarm sipped some beer and waited for the lady to have the first say.
Spike said, "You had us worried. Quirt McQueen had a rep until a minute ago. He was a pest and bad for business as well. So to whom might we owe the honor?"
Longarm introduced himself. She didn't ask to see his badge. She laughed and said, "I'd have left town too. My help told me the kid was talking big about a lawman with a rep. I frankly never expected anyone famous as you to show up!"
Longarm modestly replied, "I doubt Quirt McQueen was either. I come across punks like him all the time. It's safer to threaten grown lawmen than some total stranger with a less certain reaction to your brag."
The lady known as Spike chuckled and recalled, "I saw the amusing outcome of such an encounter in Coffeyville, just before they cleaned it up and ran me out. There was this quiet little gent drinking alone at the bar. Looked like a windmill salesman, had anybody paid enough attention to speculate."
She reached in a box in front of her and took out two Havana Claros as she continued. "Anyhow, this big rough mule skinner packing a.45 on one hip comes through the door, already in his cups and doubtless feeling even bigger, to declare it's a Saturday night, that his Indian blood is up, and that he can lick any son of a bitch on the premises."
She handed Longarm one of the cigars and added, "Naturally the little lone drinker just drew and drilled him directly through the heart without a word. He declared as he was leaving that he had never let anyone talk about his dear momma like that."
Longarm broke out some matches to light them both up as he said, "The mule skinner would have been safer daring the town law to fight him. I'm surprised he didn't. Most mean drunks learn how much safer that is by the time they've been beaten up a few times. I've had some professional boxers tell me they have the same trouble. It's a lot safer to challenge someone like John L. Sullivan to a bare-knuckles brawl than some blacksmith or even a bootblack who'd be more likely to take you up on it."
She placed cool manicured fingers against his hand to steady it as he lit her cigar. He wondered whether they were flirting or not. She hadn't said what she really wanted of him yet.
He said, "There's no mystery about Quirt McQueen. He Somehow got the notion he could bluff me beyond reason. But now he knows better."
She leaned back, blew a sort of octopus cloud of blue smoke at him, and quietly asked, "Why did they send such a famous lawman here to the Indian Territory, Custis?"
So now he knew what was worrying her. He smiled through the smoke at her and said, "Nobody in Denver or Washington, most likely, has ever heard of Spike's Parisian Pavilion. I'd be lying if I said the War or Interior Departments approved of your doubtless well-meant services to lonely troops a long ways from home. On the other hand, a heap of old army men and even Indian agents are more worldly than Queen Victoria or Lemonade Lucy Hayes. They know, or say they know, a soldier blue with some place to let off steam close to his post is less likely to go over the hill or, worse yet, molest some handier Indian gal. I had to chase a cuss clean to Mexico after he'd been charged with the murderous mistreatment of an Indian laundress one time."
Spike blew more smoke at him and quietly asked, "Then why did they send you?"
He finished the last of his beer, rested one elbow on her desk as he leaned closer, and just told her.
It naturally took a spell, even when he left out the dirty parts. So Spike rang a bell on her desk when he was halfway back from that Kiowa camp, and another drab came in with a pitcher of beer and two tumblers on a tray.
She set it on the desk and backed out. As Spike poured she said some troopers had told her why they had to ride up to Anadarko. She said it was going to be lousy for business. But she was glad nobody had double-crossed her.
Longarm waved his cigar warningly and said, "Stop right there, ma'am. Any deals you've made with white folks are betwixt you and white folks. Like I told you, I was sent here to give Chief Quanah a hand with his new Indian Police and as things turned out, Quanah ain't here. My orders are to give him another twenty-four hours to get back and explain his fool self. Unless he has something to say that ain't on record, I'm as good as gone. From all the files I've had a look at and all the folks I've questioned, there's nothing all that wrong with the way the Indian Police have been set up in these parts."
She asked, "What about those fake Indian Police, working with a band of fake wild Indians?"
He shrugged and said, "Quanah set up his own police force to deal with such crooks on his own reserve. Him and the B.I.A. have the army to back their play. They don't need one more white lawman all that much, and like I told you, I suspect I've somehow managed to scare the gang back to wherever they came from. I sure wish I knew how."
Spike laughed and said, "That's no mystery. I was watching through the canvas when the piano professor told me Quirt McQueen had met up with that jasper he was fixing to fight. You're scary when you're on the prod, Custis. I could see by your gun-muzzle eyes, clear across the saloon, it was time for that boy to slap leather or start running!"
Longarm shrugged modestly and said, "I don't usually start out as annoyed. I never locked eyeballs with that Sergeant Black Sheep. He just took it upon himself to go to war with me. If I knew what the fuss was about I might know how I won!"
She agreed it was a puzzle, and then, since they'd finished the two drinks she'd poured and she wasn't pouring more, Longarm said he had to figure out where he was going to spend the coming night.
He could see why they called her Spike. She had no suggestions to offer. She didn't even walk him out front when he rose to leave. He wondered who she was paying off at the nearby fort, with what. But it wasn't any of his beeswax. An army provost marshal seldom heeded and never appreciated helpful hints from the Justice Department.
As he ambled back to the fort afoot, he laughed at himself for concerning himself with the business dealings and dubious charms of a gal too old for him. He decided it was likely because a nice-looking gal of any age was such an improvement on the offer that Hino-Usdi Rogers had made him. He decided to keep the hard-eyed but decidedly female Miss Spike in mind when he turned in alone at the hostel that night. A man would feel silly as hell having wet dreams about Cherokee breeds who only thought they were gals.
Crossing the parade, he noticed the mud was sun-baking back to 'dobe again. 'Dobe was what you called clay soil with lots of lime in it out here whether anyone molded it into bricks or not. Kids in Denver molded it into bitty balls to have 'dobe fights after it set solid as plaster. Those mystery riders wouldn't be leaving hoofprints much longer as they rode across thick sod rooted in drying 'dobe.
Colonel Howard and his column were headed the wrong direction in any case. If the gang was smart enough to split up and drift into the rail stop at Atoka in scattered twos and threes, they might even get by the Choctaw Police, dad blast their sneaky ways!
Longarm went back to the stable to get his saddlebags and Yellowboy from the army tack room. Then he toted them to that hostel to ask for the same room if they had it.
They did. So he put his personal bagg
age away after shaving and such down the hall, and this time he wedged a match stem under the bottom hinge as he shut and locked his hired door. He was just about sure he'd seen the last of Quirt McQueen, but it could pay to take the routine precautions.
He was standing on the veranda, lighting another smoke while he pondered whether he had enough questions left to pester the signal corps, when a familiar figure on a paint pony reined in a few yards away to hail him.
It was Sergeant Tikano of the Indian Police. The moonfaced Comanche said, "They told me you might be here. Quanah just rode in. He was bringing another beef herd up from Texas when he heard about all the trouble you've been having and rode on ahead. Do you want me to bring him here or will you ride with me?"
Longarm said he was in a hurry to compare notes too. So as the Indian trotted his mount beside the walk, Longarm hurried back to the stable and saddled the bay he'd hired in Spanish Flats, and they loped out together for that Comanche sub-agency just over the horizon.
Along the way, Longarm brought the Indian police sergeant up to date on his early chores with a telegraph key. Tikano agreed the rail stop at Atoka, on the Choctaw reserve, made heaps of sense for the mystery riders, if they were really running for it. He said they'd have ridden smack into Quanah and two dozen real Indians if they'd taken the Cache Creek Trail for the depot at Spanish Flats. Longarm asked how Quanah had found out enough to worry him at all, and Tikano explained, "He's been buying more beef down in Texas all this time. He likes to act more like his Saltu relations when dealing with the Saltu. That is why nobody else knew where he was all this time. He met your friends from the Running X as they were riding home to Texas. The trail boss called Carver told him about those police who were not police and others who might or might not have been Black Leggings. So now Quanah and Agent Conway are drinking much black coffee, trying to figure out what to say when they ask Agent Ryan's clerk to wire the main agency at Anadarko."
