When Purliss brought Bodenheimer out into the office, Longarm was not surprised to see the man looking duller than ever. But now his clothes were rumpled and he needed a shave. He said immediately, “You come to turn us loose?”
“No. There’s a dead man over at the undertaker’s. I’m going to take you over there to look at him. If you can tell me anything about him it will help your case with me.”
Bodenheimer stared back. “I ain’t got to go nowhere with you.”
“That’s right,” Longarm Said evenly. “And I don’t have to feed you or give you water. How will you have it?”
Bodenheimer said matter-of-factly, “I’ll get you one of these days.”
But he agreed to come along. They went out on the street. Longarm had not bothered to manacle the man or hold a pistol on him. As they walked across the street people stopped and pointed and whispered to each other. Longarm had no doubt that the word had spread throughout the area that the sheriff had been arrested.
Inside the undertaker’s parlor they looked down at the man Longarm knew as Gus Home. He was laid out on a wooden bench. Bodenheimer barely gave him a glance. “Don’t know him.”
“You’ve never seen this man?”
“Not until now.”
“He married Dalton Diver’s daughter less than six weeks ago. Hannah.”
“Wasn’t at the wedding.”
“This your last word on the subject, Bodenheimer?”
“Yep.”
“Then that is one more mark against you. I think you are lying. No, I know you are lying.”
“You better let me out of that jail or you are going to be in a hell of a lot of trouble.”
“Turn around and get out that door. You’re going back. This fresh air just causes you to lie better.”
He was very conscious of the time and very conscious that he had promised Hannah to be back in a hurry. It was, he calculated, pushing two o’clock. But he was hungry. It had been a long time since breakfast, and he went to the hotel dining room to see if they wouldn’t fix him something quick. The dining room was closed, but Longarm talked the desk clerk into getting the cook to fry him up some potatoes and a steak. He got a beer out of the bar and then dined in solitude, very aware that Hannah was probably starting to fume. But what the hell, he thought, she’d waited this long, one more hour wasn’t going to hurt.
He paid his score, leaving an extra dollar for the cook, and then sauntered out of the hotel. He was about to mount up when he saw a horseman coming at a lope down a street from the west. Longarm paused and watched. Soon it became clear that the man was Austin Davis.
Longarm stood there, the reins in his hand, waiting. In another moment Davis was reining in at the front of the hotel. He dismounted and said, “Longarm, we need to have a talk.”
“It will have to wait. I got a hot young virgin ready to come out of the oven. She’s probably already mad as hell.”
Davis looked agitated. “No, that will have to wait. Let’s go in your room and take a drink. Hell, I need a drink. Something happened.”
Longarm led the way through the lobby and down the hall to his room. He unlocked the door, and they took seats at the table as they had the night before. Longarm said, “Now what’s this all about?”
Davis took his hat off and ran his hand through his hair. He said, “You was more than right what you said about me making an enemy. Amos Goustwhite had it in his mind, not a half an hour ago, to blow my head off.”
“What happened?”
“I was cutting cross-country, coming back from that Rebeccah’s, when Goustwhite stepped out of a wild plum thicket with about a ten-bore double-barreled shotgun pointing right at me. Wasn’t ten yards away. Only thing that saved me was he seemed like he wanted to say something before he fired—something to make me sorry for what I done to him, I reckon.”
“And you weren’t in the mood for conversation.”
“See how much you feel like talking when some idiot is setting up to cut you in half. I wheeled my horse sideways, drawing my revolver, and leaned under my horse’s neck and put two in his chest.”
“He ever fire the scattergun?”
“Yeah, but by that time he was going over backwards. All he could have done was shot down any ducks might have been flying over.”
“He dead?”
Davis reached out, poured himself a drink, and downed it before he answered. “If he hadn’t of been, you wouldn’t be seeing me.”
“Where’s the body?”
“Laying right where I left it. Or where he left it. Or where my slugs left it. His horse was tied inside the thicket of plum trees. Was pretty dense in there.”
“How you figure he knew where to lay for you?”
Davis gave a brief laugh. “That’s easy. My big mouth. After breakfast I went into the saloon and went to asking directions of this Rebeccah’s place. Said I was a friend of her husband’s and had word for her. I got the directions, all right, but I also got more than I bargained for. I figure some friend of Goustwhite’s got word to him. Longarm, I tell you the truth. It does not do my nerves one bit of good to have some sonofabitch point a double-barreled shotgun at me at such a range. Them damn things will blow you to pieces. If the bastard had stayed under cover and just fired as I rode by, you would be mourning at my gravesite.”
Longarm said dryly, “I doubt there’d have been that much of you to bury. I thought you broke the bastard’s arm.”
“His forearm. He had a splint on it and bandages, but it didn’t hinder him none with that big shotgun. You ain’t got to be accurate with one of them damn things, just close. And he was as close as I ever want anybody to get. Unless she is a naked girl. Now I wish I’d broke both his arms.”
“What about his horse?”
“I left him tied. The place ain’t a mile out of town. I wanted to see you and figure out what you wanted to do before I went off on my own.”
“I wasn’t supposed to be in town.”
Davis nodded. “I know it. You were headed out for that Hannah girl’s place. But I didn’t know where it was, so I come to get directions. And then I seen you in front of the hotel.”
Longarm thought of the interruption he’d had the day before. He said, “So you was planning on riding up to her cabin and banging on the door just to tell me you’d shot Goustwhite? No matter what you reckoned I’d be doing inside?”
Davis gave him a slight smile. “Hell, Longarm, anybody knows law work is hard work. Your duty comes first.”
“So the horse and the body are still there.”
“Yeah,” Davis said, “but I went through his pockets and his saddlebags first.” He went to digging in the pockets of his riding pants. “Made quite a little haul. Man was doing uncommonly well for a saloon tough. He had two hundred dollars in paper cash and gold in his saddlebags and eighty dollars in his pocket.” He put it on the table in a crumpled ball. “Seems like quite a wad for a poker player of his caliber to be carrying. He also had this.” Davis reached in his pocket and came out with a piece of folded paper. He opened it. “Where you reckon he got that?”
It was a check, made out to the County Line Auction Barn and signed by some cattleman Longarm didn’t know. The amount was $190. Longarm said, “Well, this tells us where he got the cash. I’d have to reckon he was one of the robbers.”
Davis shook his head. “That is the damnedest thing I ever heard of. Is the whole damn county crooked? What in hell is going on here?”
Longarm looked thoughtfully across the room for a moment. Then he sighed and said, “I don’t know. But I think it is going to be hard as hell to prove up. I once chased a gang run by a family name of the Gallaghers. They roved back and forth across New Mexico, but mainly headquartered in Oklahoma Territory and Arkansas. If you got close to them they’d just kind of disappear and turn up as ranch hands and farm hands and even storekeepers. But that was over one hell of a big territory, and when they got the gang together they’d stay together for months at a time. This bunch looks like they gather up, pull a job, and head for the house before supper.”