“Well, we think different, Marshal. You’ve got quite a reputation. You’re a well-known man and we expect this information to get into the newspapers and create quite an uproar. We think the government will see their way clear to trading Earl Combs for you.”
Longarm said, “If you didn’t sound so damn serious, I’d bust out laughing.”
Brown said, “Oh, you can depend on it, Marshal. We’re serious. Dead serious.”
Longarm grimaced. “When you say ‘dead,’ I reckon that you’re talking about me.”
Mr. Brown said, “We hope it doesn’t come to that, Marshal. We’d much rather have Mr. Combs back because Mr. Combs knows where he hid the two hundred thousand dollars. We’d much rather have the money than you, as you can well understand.”
Longarm shook his head sadly. He said, “You haven’t got a chance. There is no way in hell the United States government is going to make a trade like that. Hell, the village idiot on his first horse trade would know better than that. No, sir. You’ve got the stick by the wrong end. Those folks are going to die laughing at you.”
“Well, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”
Longarm asked, “What are you going to do when they tell you to go to hell?”
Mr. Brown paused for a second and then said coolly, “I guess we’ll start sending them pieces of you.”
Now Longarm paused. “What exactly do you mean by that? Pieces of me?”
“Oh, I guess we’d start with a finger, maybe an ear. Work our way through your easily severed parts.”
The thought struck a tiny cord of fear inside Longarm, causing an involuntary shiver to run up his back. He could face bullets with much more equanimity than the idea of being held down and having a finger sheared or cut off. He said, “Brown, you don’t sound to me to be that kind of man. I can’t see you carving up a fellow and then sending him through the mail.”
Brown said, “Well, we’ll just have to wait and see about that, Marshal, or at least you will. I already know what I am capable of doing.”
“Why the hell did you pick me? Why didn’t you pick a United States senator or something?”
Brown laughed. “You were handy, Marshal. We’ve been with you all the way from Mexico City looking for our chance but you never gave us one. We had to wait until you had turned Earl Combs over to that other marshal who was too well reinforced to attack.”
Longarm said, “So, this is the plan you came up with?”
“That’s about it. Now look, we’re going to take the manacles off you and then we’re going to lock the door. You will quickly discover there is no way out of this room. You can try to escape all you want but I don’t believe that you will be successful. After a while, someone will bring you some supper and a bottle of whiskey and some smokes if you haven’t got them. You’ll be given your instructions on how to act when your food and other articles are brought to you. Be sure you obey what you’re told to do. I’d hate to have to hamstring you or cut your ankle tendon. Do you understand?”
“I understand you’re crazy.”
Brown laughed. Longarm could hear footsteps receding, the sound of spurs faintly jingling against the hard tile floor. As the sound of Brown’s withdrawal slowly faded, Longarm could feel someone at work on the manacles. He stood still, waiting. Finally, he felt his wrist come free of the steel, but for a moment his hands remained where they were. His arms and shoulders were so numb and stiff that he had to make a conscious effort to swing his hands forward to his sides. For another half moment, he didn’t move at all. Then he heard the sound of the heavy door shut behind him, heard the sound faintly of a key being turned in the lock and the sound of footsteps going back down the hall, growing fainter with each second. Then there was nothing but silence. He reached up carefully and took the bandanna blindfold from his eyes. He thought he was as tired as he had ever been in his life. He had expected that the sudden light would hurt his eyes, but the room was dim enough so that his eyes adjusted fairly quickly from their enforced disuse.
He looked slowly around his prison. It was a handsome enough room: white walls, whitewashed, with a few pictures hung on the walls. There was a big double bed set in the middle of the room against the far wall. Beside that, there was a table with a kerosene lamp and on another table he could see a pitcher and a basin full of water. To his right, there were two windows in the side walls but they were really casement windows. They were high up and small and each one was barred with heavy wooden rods. Even if there had been no bars, he would not have been able to get through the windows anyway. They were too small, but they did serve to show him that the adobe limestone walls were at least two feet thick. The room had a ceiling formed by beams and plaster. He doubted a man would be able to dig his way either through the ceiling or through the walls.
But for the time being, all he wanted to do was to sit down and rest his aching body. He walked slowly toward the bed and sank down on it, grateful for its softness. He was sore but he knew he was going to be a lot sorer the next day. He took his hat off, then his boots, and then he sat there trying to figure out what kind of mess he had gotten himself into. To him, the greatest danger was this Mr. Brown’s optimistic view that the United States government would be willing to swap an embezzler for a deputy marshal. Longarm knew as well as he knew his own name that the government did not operate in such a fashion. Deputy marshals, even ones that might be famous, were a dime a dozen. It wasn’t every day that you caught somebody who had managed to embezzle two hundred thousand dollars from the Treasury Department and then managed to get out of the country. He smiled wryly to himself as he thought of the reception Mr. Brown’s proposal was going to draw from the federal banking system.
He lay back on the bed staring at the beamed ceiling, the wood dark against the white plaster. He didn’t reckon there was any way out of this particular dungeon except through the door he’d entered. He didn’t reckon it was going to be an easy trick to get through it. The door was probably guarded, and if it wasn’t guarded, it was barred on the other side, even if he could somehow get past the lock. The windows were out, the ceiling was out, the walls were out, and he imagined that the floor was about as solid as the rest of the outfit.
He got up off the bed and limped slowly over to the table where the pitcher and basin rested. A couple of glasses sat beside the basin and he could see water in the pitcher. He poured himself a glassful and drank it down. When that was gone, he had another. It didn’t do much for the hole that was located where his stomach should have been, but the water made a better meal than worry at any rate. He filled the glass again and then took it with him as he went back to the bed. There were a couple of chairs in the room, but they didn’t look as comfortable as the bed. This time he sat up at the head, propping a couple of pillows behind his back.
He sat there slowly sipping at the glass of water, trying to think. He knew it was a useless process. For the
