County boy. Beats the hell out of me why. I can’t find nobody that knowed his folks or him or anything about him.” He shook his head. “Beats the liver out of me.”
Longarm asked a few more questions of the couple, and then told them that he would do everything he could to see that the money was recovered but that he wasn’t too hopeful. Ownsby said, “Marshal, I don’t know what to do about this mess. It’s got me wringing my hands. It wasn’t our money as was taken, but we was keeping it for the folks what had it coming. If we have to make good on such a sum, I reckon it will come close to breaking us.” He shook his head. “It was a mean piece of luck, Marshal. If I’d been in here maybe I could’ve sung out or something, alerted the crowd. They’d have made short work of that half a dozen crooks and no mistake. But Mother here, like any women, was scared to death. She wanted them to get on away from her and quit waving those guns.”
Longarm recommended that Ownsby not pay out any money for at least forty-eight hours. He said, “I don’t see where the law says you owe the money so far as that goes.”
Ownsby said, “Oh, that don’t make no difference. I run a honest business here, Marshal. I’ll go broke before I’ll lose the trust of my neighbors and customers.”
“Just hold up on breaking yourself. Let me see what I can do.”
An hour and a half later Longarm was riding into Mason with Bodenheimer, his three deputies, and Elton Miles. The men that Bodenheimer had deputized to go to the river with him had disappeared.
Longarm paid no attention to the men riding with him. He headed his horse straight to the sheriff’s office, dismounted, and went in without a look back. Once inside, he sat down at Bodenheimer’s desk and then turned in the swivel chair to face the door. The men came in one at a time, with Elton Miles the last to enter. Bodenheimer stared uncertainly at Longarm sitting behind his desk. “Uh, Marshall,” he said, “I reckon you are in my seat.”
Longarm ignored the remark. “Sheriff, you and your two blood-kin relatives are under arrest. Purliss, for the time being you are not. Bodenheimer, I want you and those other two idiots with you to very carefully unbuckle your gunbelts and lay them on this desk. And it is my advice that you be real careful how you do it. Don’t make me nervous, or else I might draw my weapon and start making a hell of a lot of noise in here.”
Bodenheimer stared at him. He said, “Huh?”
Chapter 3
Longarm said, “Huh, hell. Pay attention. You and those two deputies of yours are under arrest. Now get them damn gunbelts on this desk. Quick and careful.”
Bodenheimer took a step backward. He was at the front of the line of men who had come in the door. His cousin and his nephew turned and looked at him, uncertainty on their faces. Bodenheimer said, “You can’t arrest me. I’m the sheriff. This is my county.”
Longarm sat up straight. “Don’t make me get up from this chair, Bodenheimer. If I go to the trouble of getting up, I’m going to feel obliged to do something. Am I making myself clear to you, Sheriff?”
Bodenheimer said, a little whine in his voice, “You ain’t got the right to do this, Marshal. You lock me up in my own county and you’ve ruined me.”
Longarm said grimly, “Better I lock you up than the people of this county string you up.”
“Whatever in the world are you talkin’ about?”
“Listen, Otis … You been getting away with murder for several years because that bunch of cutthroats you’ve been harboring within the confines of Mason County have done all their robbing in other places.
But now they have put you in a pretty fix by robbing the auction barn. They didn’t rob Mister Ownsby and his wife. They robbed the folks that have been dumb enough to vote for you. Maybe you are so damned ignorant you couldn’t see how riled up that crowd was. They blame you, Bodenheimer. And as soon as they find out you were on the other side of the county on a wild-goose chase and that you lured me out there, they are going to be fit to be tied. Except that ain’t what I think they’ll do with the rope.” Longarm stood up, though he did not draw his revolver. All five of the men standing there took an instinctive step backward. Longarm went on.
“You’re a crook, Bodenheimer. There’s two things that smell awful when they go bad and dead fish is one of them. The other one is crooked law. I can’t stand the smell of either one. So I am going to put you in a jail cell until I get this mess straightened out. Now put your damn gunbelts on the top of this desk. Now!”
They all jumped back, but then, with Bodenheimer in the lead, one by one they deposited their weapons on the desk. Melvin Purliss, who hadn’t understood, had to be stopped by Longarm from doing the same thing. “No, Melvin,” Longarm said. “I said just Bodenheimer and his kinfolks. And not you either, Elton Miles. I don’t think you did anything wrong. I think the sheriff put it into your head to report what you hadn’t seen. You can get out of here now.”
When Elton Miles had left, Longarm said to Deputy Purliss, “Melvin, I am promoting you to jailer.”
The little deputy frowned. “What?”
“You are going to be the jailer over these three prisoners here.”
Longarm gestured at Bodenheimer and his kinfolks. “I don’t want you out on the street doing anything. Your job is to stay in this jail and keep these men behind bars. See that they get fed and watered, but don’t let them out for any reason. And you better not let them escape, Melvin.”
Deputy Purliss was still looking uncertain, his gaze shifting back and forth from Longarm to the frowning face of Sheriff Bodenheimer. He said, “I don’t know about this, Marshal.”
“Well, I do,” Longarm said. “And I want to acquaint you with a little bit of federal law. If you let federal prisoners escape, which these are, then you have to serve their time in their place. Now I figure these boys are going to get about twenty-five years apiece for what I’m going to charge them with. You let them escape and I won’t go to hunting them down, I’ll come after you. And three times twenty-five is seventy-five years. Keep that in mind, Melvin, when you think about getting careless. Now put them in their cells.”
Before they could move, Bodenheimer said, his voice trembling, “Marshal, we ain’t done no wrong. And you can’t prove we did.”
Longarm stared at him for a long moment. Finally he said, “Otis, now you have taken to insulting my intelligence. To begin with, you’ve had a bandit operating around here for a couple of years who rode a damn paint horse. Otis, nobody rides a paint that has very far to go or has to go very fast. If you can’t catch a bandit riding a paint horse, then you ought not to be in office. And then you had the gall to call me out on that wild-goose chase to
