The Long Count by JM Gulvin Page A

the low-lying building where he found Pious playing cards with the Uruguayan foreman. At twenty-three years old Nolo Suarez was the single most accomplished horseman Quarrie had ever seen. His father had been a gaucho all his life, working a spread south of Montevideo, and his mother was part Comanche and part Tejano. The bearer of an American passport, Nolo had come north when he hit eighteen and ended up in the panhandle. Pick Feeley was still alive back then and he gave the kid a job. Now Pick was gone Mrs Feeley couldn’t do without Nolo, not unless she decided to turn all the land she owned over to oil and get rid of the stock completely.
    Mama Sox had a half dozen bottles of Falstaff sweating in the fridge. Pious’s mother, she ran the bunkhouse along with Eunice, and Quarrie had known them since he was a fourteen-year-old kid. When Pious was locked up in Leavenworth, Quarrie found his mother and sister work at the ranch and they had been there eversince. Grabbing a long neck he snapped off the top and sat down at the table.
    ‘You look beat, John Q,’ Nolo said.
    ‘Do I? Fact is I been on the road so long I could sleep on a chicken’s lip.’
    Nolo laughed. He indicated the cards. ‘You want to play? We could deal you in?’
    ‘No, sir.’ Quarrie shook his head. ‘I’m a worse poker player than Pious even and that’s saying something.’ With a grin he glanced at his old friend. ‘James told me he talked to you about that train wreck up on the Red.’
    ‘Yes, he did.’ Pious was concentrating on his hand.
    ‘You never said to him what we found there?’
    Pious shook his head. ‘Nope. You told me how you’d tell him when you were ready and I figured you meant what you said. Did you talk to the sheriff yet?’
    In his mind’s eye Quarrie could see those bones in the river again. ‘Not so far,’ he said. I was going to but then this business kicked off in Marion County. James told me he’s going to write something up for school though, and I figured I wouldn’t tell him about the skull until I saw what it was he had. Meantime I’ll get a-hold of Sam Dayton and have one of his boys come up here so you can show them where we were fishing at.’
    ‘You know what?’ Pious said. ‘We could bring those bones up and give them a proper burial, but the way I see it they’re pretty much buried as it is. I guess I told you that wreck happened forty years ago but I was wrong about that. On the way down to Houston Mrs Feeley said to me how that bridge actually came down in nineteen hundred and three. That’s sixty-four years, John Q, and those bones been there ever since. If this was up to me I’d leave them where they’re at rather than go disturbing them over again.’
    ‘I’d kindly like to oblige you, Pious, but the fact is I’m a cop.’ Taking another swig of beer Quarrie got to his feet. ‘I can’t beleaving human bones lying around for someone else to come up on. You ain’t the only catfish grabbler knows about that wreck. Sooner or later somebody else will make the same discovery we did. We need to gather those bones up and I should’ve done it right off. I’ll get hold of the sheriff first thing in the morning. And you never know, if James does this project thing properly, maybe he’ll come up with a name for the kid.’ He took another pull at the bottle. ‘He told me you said you might help show him how to look stuff up, and seeing as how I’m on the road right now, I’d be obliged if you did.’
    After he dropped James off at the bus stop the following morning, Quarrie drove to Wichita Falls and Sheriff Dayton’s office where he was able to commandeer a desk. He had the sawn-off section of twelve-gauge barrel as well as the slivers of metal he had recovered in two separate evidence envelopes and he sent them to the forensic lab in Austin. He was about to wire the newly formed National Crime Information Center to see if they had anything on the fingerprints, when a call came