“Are you saying Rainey and Lloyd killed Matt Hardcastle instead of the Brazos Devil?” asked Burley.
Longarm shrugged. “I’m not saying anything. But even if … something else … killed Hardcastle, Mrs. Thorp could’ve been running away from whatever it was when she bumped into those two outlaws.”
If that was the case, it was possible, even likely, that a couple of hardcases like Rainey and Lloyd would have raped her. And if she’d put up a fight, one of them could have hit her too hard …”
It was a plausible explanation. Just because Rainey and Lloyd hadn’t killed anybody that Longarm knew of didn’t mean he could put rape and murder past them. They had certainly been quick enough to try to kill him, and in a particularly cruel and gruesome fashion at that.
“Rainey’s knocked out right now,” Longarm said. “When he wakes up, we’ll question him.”
“If he’s coherent again,” Doc Carson put in.
“He’ll be coherent enough to answer our questions,” Thorp said coldly. “If he wants to live to see another sunrise, he’ll answer us.”
Longarm refrained from pointing out that Rainey was a federal prisoner. He wasn’t about to let Thorp or anybody else kill a prisoner in his charge.
But Longarm wanted to get to the bottom of this mess too, and the best place to start would be by questioning Rainey when he regained his senses.
In the meantime, he was long overdue for that bath and a hot meal. He looked at Burley and said, “I’m leaving Rainey in your custody, Marshal. I expect nothing’ll happen to him while I go clean up and get myself a meal.”
Burley nodded curtly. “Nobody will bother the prisoner, Deputy Long. You’ve got my word on that.” He looked meaningfully at Thorp.
The rancher seemed to have recovered his own senses a little. He said, “Don’t worry, Long. Right now, the man in that cell block is worth even more to me than he is to you.” Thorp looked at the heavy wooden door and drew a deep breath. “He’s going to tell me what happened to my wife.”
Rainey slept through the night as the sedative Carson had given him did its work, and he was surprisingly lucid the next morning. Longarm was on hand when Burley and Thorp questioned the outlaw. He was feeling considerably more human himself after a night’s sleep and a hearty breakfast. He would have felt even better, Longarm reflected, if his slumber hadn’t been haunted by images of giant hairy creatures that ran like men.
Rainey shook his head stubbornly to every question Burley and Thorp threw at him. “I didn’t see nothin’ out there,” he insisted. “And I sure as hell didn’t see your wife, mister. Jimmy and me, we never laid a hand on her, ‘cause we didn’t run into her.”
“What about this jewelry?” asked Thorp as he held up the necklace and bracelet.
Rainey’s eyes lit up with avarice at the sight of the jewelry, but the reaction was fleeting. He became sullen again and said, “Like I told Long, we found that stuff on the trail.”
“Found it,” repeated Burley.
“That’s right, damn it! And we picked it up too. Would you ride away and leave something like that laying on the ground?”
Thorp growled, “And we’re supposed to take the word of a holdup man that that’s what happened.” He snorted in contempt.
Thorp was more in control of himself this morning, Longarm noted. The man was still upset, of course, and hollow-eyed from lack of sleep. But the rage that had gripped him the day before seemed to have subsided. That made the questioning easier, if not more fruitful.
“Listen, Rainey,” Longarm put in from his position leaning against the bars of the opposite cell, his arms crossed over his chest, “you’ll make it easier on yourself if you tell us the truth.”
“I am telling the truth, damn it! Can’t any of you get that through your head? I’m already behind bars! What in blazes do I have to gain by lying?”
“Right now you’re facing federal charges of stealing Uncle Sam’s mail and assault and attempted murder of a deputy marshal, namely me,” Longarm told him. “That’ll land you in Leavenworth for a fair number of years, but if you behave yourself I reckon you got a good chance of coming out alive.” Longarm’s voice grew quieter and more menacing. “But if you and your late pard had anything to do with Mrs. Thorp’s disappearance, old son, I don’t reckon you’ll live to see Denver, let alone Leavenworth. I might just ride off and let these good folks here in Cottonwood Springs have you. So if you know anything at all about Mrs. Thorp, you’d be smart to tell us.”
Truth to tell, Longarm didn’t know what he would do if Rainey confessed to murdering Emmaline Thorp. He had already lost Lloyd; he didn’t want to lose the remaining bandit too. But he couldn’t in all good conscience deny Texas law the opportunity to deal with a killer. Not to mention the fact that if he tried to take Rainey away under those circumstances, he might wind up on the wrong end of a lynch rope too.
It didn’t come to that. Rainey looked from Longarm to Burley to Thorp, and he said miserably, “I swear, gents, I never saw any woman over there on the other side of the Brazos. Jimmy and me found that jewelry, just like I said, and I’ll swear to that on as big a stack of bibles as you want to pile UP.”
Thorp glared at him for a moment, then grabbed the bars of the cell so tightly that his knuckles turned white. “You’re lying!” he hissed between his teeth. “Burley, let me in there with him for five minutes! By God, I’ll have the truth out of him!”
Rainey was sitting on the bunk. He cringed back against the wall and pointed a finger at Thorp. “You can’t do that, Marshal!” he yelled at Burley. “You keep that crazy man away from me! It ain’t fittin’ that he’s even in here.”
Burley put a hand on Thorp’s arm. “Come on, Mr. Thorp. We’re just wasting our time here. Let’s go out in the office and talk about it.”
“We’ve been talking for three weeks, goddamn it! None of it has brought my wife back! I’m tired of talking!”
Longarm got on Thorp’s other side, and he and Burley were able to steer the upset rancher out of the cell
