Longarm said lightly, “First off, Jack, you ain’t never been and never was gonna be a lawman like me. Like yourself, they is some comparisons I don’t care for. If you’d been a lawman like me you still would be one. Savy?”
Shaw glanced back, his lip curling a little. “Yeah, if that’s the way you’ll have it. Ain’t no matter to me. Though I reckon I ain’t the first has swapped sides of the badge.”
“Lord, no!” Longarm said. “When I first come out here as a deputy U.S. marshal, it was about as catch-as- catch-can an outfit as you ever saw. We all worked for a federal judge. I was under one out of Fort Smith, Arkansas, and worked the Oklahoma Territory. Hell, you never knew from one day to the next whether you was gonna be drinkin’ whiskey with your fellow marshals or looking to hang them. I tell you them was some uncertain times. And I wasn’t much more than a young sprat hardly dry behind the ears. Was plenty of chances to take a wrong turning in the road.”
“And you was never tempted?”
Longarm let out a hoot of laughter. “Naw, Jack. Hell, no. I loved that low pay and hard work and times. You even had to buy your own cartridges back then. Made a man a better shot, I’ll tell you that. Though I don’t reckon that was the intention. Tempted? Well, you show me a happily married man that don’t take a peek at a pretty woman from time to time and have little thoughts pass through his mind, and I’ll show you a man has never been tempted. I ain’t got no wings, Jack. They ain’t standard issue.”
Shaw said, “Well, it seemed like you never passed no judgment on me. Even that time down in Mexico when we shared some whiskey and women. You never said nothing. Never asked me nothing.”
Longarm shrugged. “Man does what he wants if he can get by with it. I don’t judge ‘em, I just catch them as wants to do what’s against the law. I’ve executed a few, but that was their choice. They had the selection of giving themselves up.”
Shaw looked back at him curiously. “Well, that’s being their judge. Ain’t it?”
Longarm shook his head. “Naw. They judged themselves. Any man that charges straight into certain death has done called the turn on himself and goes out to get what he deserves. I was just the executioner in the business. They was the ones put themselves on the gallows.”
“You really believe that? You really believe a man will sentence himself to death?”
Longarm nodded. “I do.”
“Why? Why should they?”
“Either out of remorse or conscience or embarrassment or not wanting to stand trial. Some that I had caught had had a taste of prison and knew they couldn’t take no more. Though I hadn’t ought to be talking about that last to you, considering where you are headed.”
Shaw said, “I ain’t worried about prison.”
“You figure you can handle it? What happens if you run across some of them you put the catch on?”
Shaw shrugged. “I’ll worry about it when I get to it. I’m still trying to figure out what you said about somebody running into a bullet because he done something wrong. Remorse? Was that the word you used?”
“Yeah. I wouldn’t worry my head, Jack. I don’t reckon there’s any chance of something like that coming all over you and causing you to lose your head.”
“You don’t think I know right from wrong, do you?”
“I know you know right from wrong. I just think you don’t care.”
“Would you be interested in knowing what caused me to hit the owlhoot trail? To turn the badge around?”
Longarm wasn’t particularly interested in knowing, but anything that would take his mind off the heat would be welcome. He said, “If you’re a mind to speak about it.”
Shaw pulled up his horse and unhooked a canvas water bag from his saddlehorn. Longarm rode up to him, but kept his distance. The trailing horses were content to hang back, their heads drooping, their tails switching idly in the heat. Shaw unscrewed the cap of the water bag, got the opening up to his mouth, and then lifted the bag until the water gushed into his mouth and then overflowed as he poured faster than he could drink. He lowered the bag and said, “Ah! Damn, there’s plenty of times water is better than whiskey.”
“You better be a sight more careful with that,” Longarm said. “I ain’t all that sure we’ll find water tonight.”
Shaw hung the bag back on his saddlehorn. He made no move to kick his horse on forward. He said, wiping one sleeve across his face, “I wanted to see what it felt like to be bad.”
Longarm stared at him a moment trying to see if he had heard right or if Shaw was serious. “What?”
Shaw spat over the side of his horse. The heart-shaped birthmark was not as distinct in the tangle of his unshaven whiskers. They were black and gnarly, as was his hair. He said, “Ever since I could remember, my ol’ daddy had beat goodness in me. I done the least little thing, it was out with a switch or his razor strop or whatever. When I got older, it was a pretty fair-sized paddle. My ol’ daddy set a pretty good amount of store by being good. So did my ol’ mama, though she generally left the lickin’ to my ol’ pa. I grew up believin’ that if you done bad or wrong you got a lickin’. A hard lickin’. A real hard lickin’. I didn’t know much about being good. I wasn’t taught to be good, I was taught not to be bad. I never knowed there was a difference. Anyway, that day I was in the bank in Del Rio, I didn’t go in there to rob it.”
“You didn’t?”
Shaw shook his head. “Naw. I never made no plan, didn’t have no more plan than a fly in a jelly jar. I was standing there, in that bank, and they was starting to bring all the money out of the safe and put it in the tellers’ cages. All of a sudden I wondered what would happen if I just up and took that money. I knew if you took cookies or pies or whatnot out of the kitchen you’d get a lickin’. But I didn’t know about taking money out of a bank. So I just up and drawed my gun, me the town marshal, and took the money.”
“Just like that?”
Shaw nodded, his face serious. “Just like that. Just robbed and ran. Never planned it more than a second before
