I drawed my gun. I about halfway expected my ol’ pa to come round the corner with a good-sized stick and go to flailing away at me. But he didn’t.” Shaw spat again.
“So that’s how I come to rob my first bank, because I wanted to see how it felt to be bad. Know what?”
“What?”
Shaw grinned. “I liked it.”
“You liked it?”
“Yeah. I liked it a lot. Made me feel good. I kept waiting for that lick from the paddle to land and it never did. Fact of the business is, I was handing out the licks, so to speak.”
“And you didn’t plan it, that first robbery when you got away with so damn much money? Just a kind of spur- of-the-moment affair, you say?”
Shaw laughed. “Spur-of-the-moment, hell. Spur-of-the-instant more like it. One instant there is all that money coming out because the bank is opening, and the next instant I got my pistol out and am taking that money.”
“Didn’t have no getaway planned?”
“Getaway? Hell, I’d hard-tied my horse so that I nearly couldn’t get the knot out of the reins. It was on that account I had to shoot the first teller coming out of the door.” He grinned. “He took the lickin’. Not me.”
Longarm started his horse forward. Shaw did likewise. One of the trailing horses came up abreast of Shaw’s horse on the left side, working in between him and Longarm’s animal.
“And that is how you come to turn in your badge? All them years of robbing and shooting come from a curiosity you had.”
Shaw nodded. “Yep. I’d have to say that was true.”
Longarm shook his head slowly. “Well, I guess that explains it a little better.”
“What? Explains what?”
“Oh, the way you are. The way you ain’t got no hesitation about plugging anybody, whether they be your partners or not. I always wondered about you. I always kind of thought you was about as cold-blooded as any hard case I ever run across. I reckon that any man that can turn from town marshal into bank robber just to see what it feels like don’t give anything much thought.” Shaw said, “I don’t know I much like the sound of that. You give some thought to how long I been operating and how few times I been caught. That ought to make it clear that I give plenty of thought and planning to every caper I pull off. I knew that first time was blind luck. It still scares me sometimes when I think about it. That’s why I’m so careful now. You asked me about why I stayed in them mountains so long, jumping from one little range over into another. Well, it’s that kind of thinkin’ has made me successful.”
Longarm looked at him carefully. “I didn’t mean that kind of thought, Jack. I meant thought about what you were doing and the rightness or wrongness of the matter, the consequences.”
Shaw laughed. “Oh, I get it. Like what you was talking about them folks had run judgment on themselves and stepped into a situation where you had to kill ‘em. Well, no, I don’t speculate on them kind of matters for one second. I’ll never let you be my executioner because I feel guilty, Custis.”
Longarm smiled. “You done proved that. Now we better get along. It’s getting late and we ain’t spotted that cabin yet.” Shaw said, “Damn, I am nearly dying for a woman. How about you, Custis?
Could you stand a little?”
Longarm’s thoughts immediately flew to the image of Molly Dowd. He said quickly, “Dammit, don’t start talking like that with us out in the middle of the desert. Just save that talk for another time.”
“You going to let me get to a woman before you turn me in, Custis?”
“Dammit, shut up, I said. I been out in this country as long as you have. So save that talk until it will do some good.”
Shaw laughed. “Aw, hell, Longarm, I’m serious. Who is the best woman you ever knowed?”
“My mother,” Longarm said shortly. “Now shut the hell up.”
“Now Custis, they has got to be one woman that has stood out for you over the years. I know I’ve had two I ain’t ever going to forget.”
“Well, do us both a favor and forget ‘em for the time being.”
“Just tell me if you generally favor darker women—you know, Mexican and such—or do you like ‘em light skinned and blond?”
Longarm rode his horse a little out to the left. “Mostly I like them handy if there is any of this kind of talking to be done. Do you take my point?”
“Well, what was the best you ever had? Can you remember that? I mean, I’ve had a piece off a woman was the best I thought it could get. Then I’ve gone back to that same woman and it wasn’t shucks. How do you explain that?”
Longarm was silent, refusing to be drawn into the debate.
Shaw sighed. “Seems like at times like this the best you ever had was the last one. That’s what I feel right now. I wish to hell I was in bed with them two Mexican women of mine right now.”
Longarm was forced to speak. He could not help himself. “You take ‘em on two at a time?”
“Well, sometimes. You want to hear about it?”
“No,” Longarm said firmly. “It ain’t good manners to talk about women. Now shut your trap. We got to make some miles.”
Chapter 7
