“Not more’n fifty feet,” Oakley said. “We’re almost going to ride over the top of it.”
Longarm did not see what could be lost by making this deal, as long as they were riding that way anyhow.
“All right,” he said, “we’ll play it out. Understand that I don’t trust you any farther than I can throw you and that, if this is all a ruse, you’re just wasting our time.”
“I’m in no hurry to catch that train,” Oakley said, shaking his head. “The gospel truth is, Marshal, that I’m beginning to think that I’m not going to get to kill you after all. I thought some of the boys would be trying to overtake us … but I guess that they’ve just forgotten old Ford.”
“You’re breaking my heart.”
“And so,” Oakley said, ignoring Longarm’s caustic remark, “I might as well trade that four thousand dollars for whatever small comforts I can get before I swing.”
“Glad to see that you’re finally thinking smart,” Longarm told his prisoner, not believing a single word of it.
“Well,” Ford said with a deep sigh, “I have to admit that I do deserve to hang for killing and raping and stealing. I’ve been a real ornery sonofabitch since I was about twelve years old and I cut the guts out of my old man.”
“You knifed your father?”
“Yep. It was from him that I got my mean streak. He always got drunk and beat my mother and me. Finally, one night I’d had enough as he was beatin’ hell out of poor old Mama, sittin’astraddle of her and really working her over with his fists. I grabbed a butcher knife and, quicker than you can say ‘nope,’ I opened him up like a ripe melon.”
“What happened then?”
“I lit out and never looked back at Oklahoma. I was used hard by everyone I met while growing up and trying to find honest labor. I never got a break or a kind word and so, by the time I was twenty, I’d shot or stabbed more’n a few of ‘em to death and took what they’d lorded over me. Raped their cryin’ damned widows too if they’d struck my fancy. I knew that I was doin’wrong, but I didn’t much care.”
“How much farther to this place where you hid the bank money?” Longarm asked, glancing up at the sun, which was just starting to dive into a low rise of barren hills to the west. Already, the skyline was turning crimson and gold.
“Not far. About … oh, five miles, I’d guess.”
“That means we won’t get there until after dark.”
“Be time to camp and cook some grub anyway,” Oakley remarked. “Been a long, hard ride, wouldn’t you say, Marshal?”
“I’ve been on some a lot longer and harder.”
“But I’ll bet you never brought a man in tougher or meaner than me, right?”
Longarm just refused to give the killer any satisfaction. “Sure I have,” he said. “You’ve been damned easy compared to a few others I’ve had to escort to the gallows.”
“The Hell you say!” Oakley was visibly offended. “I could have killed any one of them! I’m the toughest, smartest, and most dangerous man you ever had to bring in and you don’t even know it yet!”
Longarm glanced at the outlaw leader. “Yet?” he repeated. “That sounds like you’re still of a mind to get your head cracked open again.”
The outlaw’s jaw muscles corded and he stayed silent until the sun dove into the mountains and the stars begin to appear. They finally came to the Humboldt River and allowed the horses a good long drink.
“How much farther to the money?” Longarm asked.
“About two miles, maybe less,” Oakley said, looking intently into the deepening night. “Now that we’re down in this low part of the riverbed and it’s dark, I have to get my bearings.”
“I’ll bet that you’ve only ridden along here about a thousand times in the last few years.”
Oakley said nothing, but instead made a big show of looking all around, squinting and gawking. “There!” he finally said. “That’s where I hid it!”
“Where?”
“Over there in those river caves and tunnels!”
Longarm followed the man’s gaze to a sandstone cliff formed by the river’s cutting. The cliff wasn’t high, only about twenty feet, but it was at least another hundred feet long. The cliff was pocked with hundreds of caves, most of which were only shallow indentations. A good number, however, would probably go back into the sandstone a dozen or more feet.
“I think that you’re lying.”
“No, I ain’t!” Ford pointed into the shadows. “You’ll find an old campsite and corral right over there in them cottonwood trees. That’s where me and the boys always camped. And when they was asleep, I climbed up that cliff and found me one of them deep caves. I crawled inside and stuffed the bank money in and then I crawled back out again.”
“How did you mark the cave?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that there are so many that you must have marked it somehow.”
“Hell, I … I marked it with a little cut in the rock!”
Longarm didn’t think that there was one chance in a thousand the man was telling the truth. But he was bone- tired and, if there was a corral and a camp all ready for them to spend the night in, he was game to test his theory
