as long as that agreement stands!”
For the first time, Longarm felt a flicker of sympathy for Gower. He said thoughtfully, “I see the kind of bind you’re in, but I sure hope you’re not looking to me to work it out for you.”
“If I can’t work it out as chief marshal, I don’t see how you could as a deputy on temporary assignment here,” Gower replied impatiently. “That’s not why I asked Billy to send me his top man, Long. I’ve talked to you enough now so I feel safe in telling you the real reason you’re here.”
“Thanks. I’d sort of like to hear it.”
Gower went to the door of his office, opened it, and looked both ways along the corridor. He came back and sat down. Leaning over his desk, he dropped his voice and said, “That bunch at Younger’s Bend is in so many things and gets away with so much that I’ve got a suspicion a bunch of local marshals and sheriffs are in cahoots with them.”
“You mean they’re being paid off?”
“That’s exactly what I mean. Belle’s like any other fence, Long. She’s got to have room to work in. The only way a fence can buy that kind of room is by paying off somebody to look the other way when she’s making her deals. And once a man on our side of the law begins taking payoffs, it’s not long before he’s taking money to be out of town when a gang rides in to rob a bank. It starts with the fence, but it’s not long in spreading.”
“I ain’t aiming to embarrass you, Marshal Gower,” Longarm said carefully. “But I’d be interested in knowing how far it’s spread.”
Gower stared at Longarm, his face set grimly. He dropped his voice as he answered. “Yes, you’re right, Long. You do need to know how far it’s gone. Well, I’ve got a suspicion, without a damned shred of evidence to back it up, that some of my own deputies have sold out to Belle Starr and her gang.”
Longarm studied Gower’s face for a moment, trying to find some expression in the chief marshal’s pale eyes. There was none, but Gower’s face had undergone a subtle change. His long chin was no longer out-thrust pugnaciously, and his bushy brows were not pulled together in a scowl now.
Before Longarm could say anything, Gower went on, “That’s what I want you to find out, Long. If my suspicions are right, I’ve got to clean up my own office here before I can do anything about that running sore over in the Nation. And I had to find out whether you could keep yourself in hand when the going gets rough before I was sure you were the man to help me do the job.”
“But you’ve made up your mind now?” Longarm asked.
“Yes. I’m sorry for the bad time I gave you when we first began talking. But you’ll understand, I had to know what kind of man you are before I could open up and tell you the whole story.”
For several minutes Longarm said nothing. He was digesting the fact that the rough reception he’d gotten had been Gower’s way of testing him out, making sure he’d be able to put a curb on his tongue and a rein on his temper when he was taking a rawhiding.
Finally he said, “No offense taken, Marshal Gower. I guess it was about the only way you had to check me out.”
“It was the only way I could see. Now the air’s cleared between us. How do you feel about it?”
“Better than I did for a while there. I’m just trying to figure out where my starting place is. You don’t know if all your men are straight, or who the sell-outs might be, if there are any. So what I’ve got on my plate is to find out who the rotten apples are.”
“I wish I didn’t have to agree with you, Long, but I do. I’ve watched my men for the past four or five months, since things first started going sour. Prisoners escaping, evidence not brought in, witnesses dropping out of sight. It smells, but I can’t get down to the source of the stink. You know how easy it is for an honest mistake of a deputy to cause a case to go sour.”
Longarm answered. “I guess I ought to. I’ve made some mistakes like that, now and again.”
“Well, that’s not what Billy tells me, but we won’t go into that. The point is that I can’t accuse one of my own deputies of being paid off by Belle unless I’ve got absolute, ironclad proof. I’m in pretty much the same spot when it comes to accusing a town marshal or a sheriff or sheriff’s deputy. If I’m not sure, I can’t do anything but keep quiet, no matter what I might suspect.”
“Sure. I can see that. It’s about the only fair way a man in your position could act. From what Billy’s told me, you’ve got some pretty good men on your force here.”
“Of course I have. And it looks like I’ve got a few bad ones, too,” Gower said. He hesitated before adding, “Look here, Long, I know this is a hell of a job for me to ask you to take on. You’ll see why I can’t turn any of my boys loose on it, though. I’ve been tempted to, but there’s always the chance that I might pick out the wrong one and blow the whole deal to hell.”
“That’s as good a reason as I can see for holding off,” Longarm concurred.
“Billy Vail’s the only one I’ve talked to about it. I used that rumor about Jesse James trying to buy Cole Younger’s way out of the pen to give me a reason for meeting Billy in Stillwater, where we could talk without worrying about somebody overhearing,” Gower said. “I was surprised, though. Billy took my Jesse James story seriously.”
“I can tell you why that was,” Longarm said. “Billy found out that Jesse and Frank James and three of their men hid out right under his nose, not fifty miles from Denver, over around Leadville, a while back. He never has got over missing that chance to take them.”
“Funny,” Gower frowned. “I never heard about that.”
“Billy damn sure wouldn’t mention it,” Longarm said. “There wasn’t any way he could’ve known the Jameses were in his territory, of course. They didn’t pull any jobs, and nobody’d ever have known who they were if some old friend of theirs from Missouri hadn’t spotted them. But he kept quiet until they’d been gone three or four months.”
“I’ll sure have to josh Billy about that, the next time I see him,” Gower said. He smiled for the first time. “I can see how it’d rankle on him, of course, knowing he had Jesse in reach and missing him.”
“Hell, it rankles on me a little bit, too,” Longarm told Gower. “But I guess anybody on the right side of the
