“Sounds like a real trustworthy man,” Smoke said in a sardonic tone of voice.
“Yeah, he is.”
“What about Sheriff Wallace?”
Bobby Lee ran his hand through his long, unruly, dark hair. “I should never have trusted the son of a bitch,” he said. “I don’t know why he didn’t show up, or why he lied about our arrangement. Unless …”
“Unless he was in cahoots with Dodd,” Smoke said, completing the sentence for him.
“Yeah,” Bobby Lee said. “At my trial, they suggested that I was supplying Dodd with the information as to what train would be carrying money shipments. And of course, that has always been the big question. How did Dodd know? The suggestion was that I was providing him with information that I got from my association with the Western Capital Security Agency.”
“Does the WCSA have that kind of information?”
“Yes, we are generally informed. Sometimes, we even provide additional guards, though most of the time the shippers just rely on one messenger.”
“Would that information be available to anyone else?” Smoke asked.
Bobby Lee shook his head. “Not really,” he said. “They are pretty close with it, only the people who need to know, like the WCSA and—” Bobby Lee paused in mid-sentence.
“And the sheriff?”
“Yeah,” Bobby Lee said. “And the sheriff. I’ll be damned. That’s why he wasn’t in the express car with them. He was in cahoots with them.”
“When I was coming down here, Dodd tried to hold up the train I was on,” Smoke said.
“Really? Where?”
Smoke told him about the attempted holdup, including in his narrative the fact that Phillips and Garrison had been identified, while a third robber who had also been killed had not been identified.
“Hmm, Phillips and Garrison must have been new,” he said. “I don’t believe I ever met them. What did the other man look like?”
“He wasn’t a very big man, had a pockmarked face, thin, sort of light brown hair.”
“Had to be Wayland Morris,” Bobby Lee said. “If you killed him, it was good riddance. He once killed a farmer, then raped his wife and daughter before killing both of them.”
“Too bad I killed him,” Smoke said.
“What?” Bobby Lee asked, surprised by the reply. “Why would you say that?”
“Shooting is too good for someone like that. That’s the kind of person that the public needs to see hang.”
Bobby Lee ran his finger around the collar of his shirt. “After seeing my gallows built, hanging isn’t something I care to think about right now,” he said.
Smoke laughed. “I don’t blame you, but look at it this way. We did manage to spoil your hanging party, didn’t we?”
“Yeah,” Bobby Lee said. “Thanks to you, we did.”
* * *
Eddie Murtaugh had been with the Western Capital Security Agency for three years. During that time he had often been partnered with Bobby Lee Cabot, in fact had learned everything he knew about the business from Bobby Lee. He considered Bobby Lee his best friend.
“He didn’t do it,” Murtaugh told Captain Bivens.
“I know how you feel, Eddie,” Captain Bivens said. “I feel the same way. I’ve known Bobby Lee longer than you have. But the evidence is just too convincing. Frank Dodd has been terrorizing trains and stagecoaches all through Nevada. He always knows when they are carrying money. Last month, Frank Dodd held up a Nevada Central train and got five thousand dollars. Everyone had been wondering how Dodd was getting his information on which trains were carrying the money, and now it seems pretty obvious that he was getting it from Bobby Lee. And don’t forget, Bobby Lee was with Dodd when he hit that train.”
“Yes, but I believe Bobby Lee had worked his way into the gang in order to catch them,” Murtaugh insisted.
Captain Bivens shook his head. “Eddie, you’ve been with us long enough to know that we don’t operate that way. ”
“Maybe he didn’t see any other way of stopping them,” Murtaugh suggested.
“Why didn’t he let us know ahead of time what he was doing?” Captain Bivens asked.
“You wouldn’t have approved,” Murtaugh said.
“No, I wouldn’t have,” Bivens agreed. “Our rules are very specific, Eddie, you know that. There is never any reason for joining with the criminal element. When you do so, you risk not only your own life, but you could wind up risking the lives of others as well, to say nothing of bending the very laws we are trying to protect. It could also jeopardize an ongoing investigation.”
“There you go then. That’s the reason Bobby Lee didn’t tell you about it.”
“There’s one more reason we don’t want our agents associating with the criminal elements,” Bivens said. “Sometimes the pressures, and the temptations, can be overwhelming—so much so that a man might forget what side he is on.”
“That did not happen to Bobby Lee. I know you have known him longer, Captain, but he and I have put our lives
