“Yes, um, likewise I’m sure.”
“Sit down, Longarm, Sam,” Billy put in. “Let’s get down to business, shall we?”
Longarm was plenty willing to do that. He dropped the butt end of his cheroot into Billy’s cuspidor and sat like a good little fella, determined to be on his best behavior for the rest of the interview, whatever it proved to be about.
Chapter 2
“Tell me, Longarm, do you happen to know what a Last Man Club is?”
Longarm shrugged. “Sure do, Billy. The way I understand it you can use a bottle, like some real fine whiskey, or a sum of money, most anything you like. You get a bunch of fellas together, comrades from an outfit that fought together or whatever, an’ they agree to be pals for life. Maybe they get together now an’ then or maybe they don’t. Point is, they keep this thing, whatever it is, but they don’t none of ‘em touch it. It’s like … a symbol or a talisman. It belongs to the bunch of them, an’ no single one of ‘em can use it until the rest have died off and there’s just one of them left. Then he takes the thing, this bottle of whiskey or chunk of money or whatever, and he uses it in remembrance of his comrades that went before him. And that, the way I’ve heard it, is pretty much what a Last Man Club is about. Am I right, Billy?”
“Right on the money, Longarm,” Vail agreed.
“Nothing against the law in a Last Man Club, is there?” Longarm asked.
“Not a thing,” Vail said.
“Normally,” Sam Beckwith put in.
Longarm lifted an eyebrow and waited for the lawyer to explain.
“We have something of a—how shall I put this?—a situation. It, ahem, involves a Last Man Club. Or at least we believe that it does.”
“Yes?”
“The thing is …” Beckwith stood and began to pace the room, his nervous energy making Billy Vail’s office seem considerably smaller than it really was. “The thing is, Long, there is a Last Man Club of officers, and former officers, of the United States Army. Oh, I am sure there are a great many such groups involving military officers, and perhaps even some among enlisted men as well.”
Longarm didn’t have any trouble figuring out that Samuel Beckwith must once have been an officer himself. Because why else would he qualify the statement that enlisted men had feelings that would lead them to want to have Last Man Clubs as well? Longarm kept quiet, though, and let the lawyer talk.
“This particular group consists of officers who served together in the forts along the old Bozeman Trail back in the late ‘60s. Are you familiar with the period in question?”
“Some,” Longarm drawled. “That’s the bunch that got whipped by Red Cloud an’ his Sioux.”
Beckwith’s face colored, starting out pink and progressing through various shades of salmon, red, ocher, and scarlet until it approached plum purple. Longarm kind of found the transformation interesting.
“By God, sir, you will withdraw that scurrilous remark at once or I shall … shall … Marshal Vail, please remind your employee to be quiet on subjects he knows nothing about.” Without waiting for Billy’s response, Beckwith bulled forward. “There was no defeat of those fine young men,” he snapped. “Far from it. If they had been allowed to do what they were fully capable of doing …”
Beckwith paused for a moment and Longarm, in a tone of feigned innocence, observed, “But wasn’t that fella—what was his name again? Oh, yeah, Fetterman, that’s it. Didn’t that Captain Fetterman get exactly the chance he asked for?”
Longarm hoped Sam Beckwith had a safety pop-off valve built into his gizzard, for otherwise he just might puff up past his limits and explode.
“Bill Fetterman was a hero. A hero, I tell you. He died in valor, a martyr to the treachery of the red man.”
Longarm gave Billy Vail a sideways glance and decided to let that one go by without comment.
The truth, of course, was that this Captain Fetterman—William, a name which Longarm had forgotten over the years but which Sam Beckwith certainly remembered well enough—had been a blowhard and, at least the way Longarm understood it, something of an asshole. And worse, an unlucky blowhard and asshole.
Fetterman had been serving at one of the Bozeman Trail forts—Fort Phil Keamy, if Longarm remembered correctly—during what was now known as the Red Cloud War. Brash and boastful, Captain Fetterman was fond of claiming that with eighty men he could cut a path clean through the entire Sioux Nation and give those Indians the thrashing they so soundly deserved.
Then sometime in the winter of—Longarm tried to remember—‘66? ‘67? He thought it was somewhere around Christmas-time in one of those years when a woodcutting detail came under attack by the Sioux. A relief expedition was mounted to chase off the Indians and escort the wood wagons back to the post. Captain Fetterman demanded the right to lead the relief column even though another officer had been initially ordered to command that body. Fetterman’s demand was met, and he set out with firm orders that he was to run the Indians off but under no circumstances was he to pursue them, just in case the lightly manned attack on the woodcutters was a ruse.
The relief column started out at once, seventy-eight enlisted men and Captain William Fetterman serving as the officer in command. By a curious quirk of fate two civilians had asked to ride with the column, thus giving Fetterman the exact number, eighty, with which he’d so often sworn he could lick the whole Sioux Nation.
The way Longarm heard it afterward, Fetterman found it easy to run the attacking Sioux off. The Sioux ran, and he gave chase. They ran over a distant ridge, taunting the soldiers and making rude gestures at them.
Fetterman’s orders had been clear. Relieve the wood train and return without a running chase. Except that this was the blowhard’s opportunity to prove how inferior those ignorant savages were. And, the reverse of that coin, what a dandy officer William Fetterman was. So ignoring the orders issued by his commanding officer, Fetterman and his eighty men rode over the top of that ridge and out of sight from the fort.
They rode into a beehive conceived and constructed by perhaps the greatest war chief the Sioux Nation ever had, Red Cloud. Not one of the men was ever seen alive again. Except, that is, by the Sioux who were waiting in ambush beyond—the name of the place was coming back to Longarm now—Lodge Trail Ridge.
Captain Fetterman and his entire command were massacred that day in an event that was, until the debacle at the Little Big Horn some ten years later, the second worst massacre ever experienced by United States military troops.
And personal loyalties aside, Longarm still didn’t see how anyone could claim that William Fetterman was anything but a blowhard and an asshole, judging by the performance he’d left written in the pages of his nation’s history.
Longarm realized all that, but for Billy Vail’s sake managed to hold his tongue. “You were sayin’ something about a Last Man Club, sir?” was all he said aloud.
“Yes, uh, so I was.” Beckwith continued to frown, but after a few moments his color returned to normal. “So I was, yes.” He paused in his pacing and pointed toward the cabinet where Billy kept a few bottles for the comfort of visitors. Obviously Sam Beckwith was not a stranger to this office.
“Gentlemen,” Vail injected, taking the hint. “What will it be? Bourbon for you, Sam? Longarm, why don’t you pour for us all, please. You know what I like.”
Longarm did as he was told, giving Beckwith a tumbler of bourbon whiskey, pouring a small Madeira for Billy—the boss was trying to cut back—and taking a tot of Billy’s first-rate Maryland distilled rye for himself. The air, not just the palate, seemed a little clearer for the break.