"Urn. How'd the captain find all this out?"
"From asking around Los Perros, Tinker said."
"It's for sure all three of 'em dropped out of sight after they left Los Perros, then?" Longarm rubbed his face. The sweat was making his stubble itchy. He reminded himself that he'd have to find out if there was a barber at the fort, and, he remembered, if the sutler there had his kind of cheroots; he was down to three. He said, "I guess that's my next stop, then. What d'you know about the place, Lieutenant?"
"Los Perros?" Bryant shook his head. "Not much. I've stopped there a few times, when a patrol took me close to it. Captain Hill didn't like the men to go there, so I tried to set an example."
"Suppose you tell me as much as you can. Whatever you seen's pretty certain to be a help to me. I like to know what's in a hole before I jump in."
"There's not much to tell, Marshal Long. The place isn't really a town, just a bunch of shanties. Jacales, they call them around here. Shacks made out of scrap wood and tree limbs and tin, whatever the people can pick up, I suppose. Two or three houses built of good solid lumber. A saloon, of course, with gambling tables."
"Whorehouse upstairs?" Longarm broke in to ask.
"Strangely enough, no. I think there was at one time, but when Captain Hill started discouraging the troopers from going to the town, the girls scattered out."
"I've traveled around some," Longarm observed, "and I've found out it's got to be a real piss-poor town that can't support a whorehouse."
"That's Los Perros," Bryant smiled thinly. "As far as I can see, it doesn't support anything except the saloon. No stores, nothing."
"How big a place is it, then?"
"Not big at all. Only perhaps twenty or twenty-five Americans and a couple of hundred Mexicans and border breeds."
Longarm nodded. He'd seen a few border settlements such as the one the lieutenant had described when he was breaking the gold-smuggling case. He said, "That really ain't what I'm after. What kind of people are they? They go by the law, or what? And this fellow I heard runs things, what's he like?"
Bryant thought for a moment. "Marshal, I can't tell you a lot about the people. Some of them have little truck gardens, not big enough to be farms. They sell produce to the ranches and to the fort, here. Some have little goat herds or they keep chickens. They scrape out a living, somehow. And I don't know what the Americans do, if they don't work at the saloon or for the sheriff."
"That's one I'm interested in. He's the big boss, ain't he?"
"Yes. Tucker's his name, Ed Tucker. And I don't think he was ever elected sheriff, he just took over the job."
"Got any idea where he's from?"
"I'd guess from the South, judging by the way he talks."
"Is he old enough to've fought in the war?"
"Oh, yes. I'd guess he's pushing fifty, maybe past that."
"Mean, or easygoing?"
Again the young officer hesitated before answering. "Maybe not mean, but he's sure not easygoing. I mentioned that Captain Hill unofficially discourages our men from going there. Since the captain began doing that, anybody in an army uniform gets a cool reception."
"How many men has he got backing him?"
Bryant shook his head. "That's something I can't tell you, Marshal. I've only seen Tucker two or three times. I'd say he's got a lot of curiosity, or maybe it's suspiciousness."
"How's that?"
"Well, I went to Los Perros once looking for the Mexican who supplies the fort with eggs. Tucker stopped me, asked what I was doing, and when I told him, he tagged along with me until I left. The next time, I was in the saloon. It was a hot day, and getting late, and I was going to bivouac my patrol a little way out of town. I thought if I let them stop for a beer or two, they wouldn't be so tempted to sneak back at night for a drink." Bryant looked earnestly at Longarm. "It wasn't exactly according to the captain's ideas, but there weren't any official standing orders~"
"I understand about the army, Lieutenant," Longarm broke in. "Go ahead."
"Tucker came into the saloon while we were there. He came up to me and said I'd better keep my men on a tight rein, that their uniforms wouldn't keep them out of his jail if they made trouble. That was about all."
"Damn it, you must've noticed something more, or heard talk. It'd be a big help to me if I knew whether the sheriff had two or three men to back him, or two or three dozen. I'll remind you about something. When I go in to a place, I'm by myself. I don't have a squad of troopers with carbines and sabers to back up my play."
"I wish I could help you more, Marshal Long. The plain fact is, I just don't know any more to tell you."
Longarm sensed the young officer's disappointment. "Guess if you don't know, you don't. It ain't your fault. Wasn't your job to go prying into what goes on in Los Perros. Leastwise, it wasn't the times you was there."
"What're you planning to do, Marshal? About Captain Hill and the deserters?"
"Whatever I got to do to find 'em. And to find me a Texas Ranger that dropped out of sight about the same way they did. Last place he was heard from was Los Perros, too."
"You think there's some kind of connection?"
"Don't know yet, son. Might be, might not be. All I can say right now is about what you told me a minute ago. I just plain don't know. But I sure as hell intend to find out, soon as I can get to Los Perros and start digging."
"If there's anything I can do~"
"Just happens there is." Longarm smiled. "I been eating outa my saddlebags the past few days. I washed as best I could when I made a stop where there was water, but I ain't fond of shaving with cold lather. If you was to offer me some cooked supper and a hot bath in a tub, and maybe dig up one of your troopers who knows how to shave a man without cutting his guzzle in two~"
"Of course. I — I suppose it'd be all right if you stayed in the captain's quarters. His orderly can look after you. And you're more than welcome to join us at our mess, such as it is."
"I'd appreciate that, Lieutenant. Man's going out looking for trouble, he always feels better if he goes clean-shaved and with a full belly. And I can smell trouble waiting for me in Los Perros."
Chapter 4
Longarm reined in at the edge of the sandy draw and looked across the white expanse at Los Perros. Remembering the lieutenant's description, he had to agree that the young officer had been right when he said it wasn't much of a town. The Rio Grande dictated the settlement's shape: long and narrow. Los Perros stood on a sandspit, and Longarm could see that when rains upstream swelled the river, the sandspit would become an island. Now, the sandy wash on the Texas side of the river was dry. Beyond the town, the green current ran in a narrow channel, and Longarm judged it was both deep and swift.
Los Perros stretched out, a long, thin, straggling shamble of houses. Most of them were patchwork jobs, put together from spliced short boards. Some of the planks bore the faded imprint of words: "Silver's Cuban Tobacco Twist," "Aunt Miranda's Dark Molasses," "Winchester Arms Co.," showing that they'd come from salvaged packing cases. Some of the shanties were pole shacks, made by driving tree limbs into the ground in a square and nailing to them sheets of metal made from straightened-out kerosene containers, or the red-painted metal cannisters in which army gunpowder was once shipped. The roofs of most of the houses were rusted sheets of metal that came from only God knew where, to wind up on a sandspit on the Texas border.
A few structures were solidly constructed from planed boards, and even these were in need of paint. Longarm spotted the saloon at once; it was Los Perros's biggest building, two low stories tall, with a false front that made it look higher than it really was. A short distance from the saloon, another solid house rose above the low roofs of the jacales. This one had been painted, though there were patches of bare wood showing now where the paint was peeling off. Another decent house stood on the opposite side of the saloon, and a third could be seen behind the bar's false front. On the near side of the sandspit a new house had been started, though no one was working on it now.