Davis gave him a slight smile. “Hell, Longarm, anybody knows law work is hard work. Your duty comes first.”
“So the horse and the body are still there.”
“Yeah,” Davis said, “but I went through his pockets and his saddlebags first.” He went to digging in the pockets of his riding pants. “Made quite a little haul. Man was doing uncommonly well for a saloon tough. He had two hundred dollars in paper cash and gold in his saddlebags and eighty dollars in his pocket.” He put it on the table in a crumpled ball. “Seems like quite a wad for a poker player of his caliber to be carrying. He also had this.” Davis reached in his pocket and came out with a piece of folded paper. He opened it. “Where you reckon he got that?”
It was a check, made out to the County Line Auction Barn and signed by some cattleman Longarm didn’t know. The amount was $190. Longarm said, “Well, this tells us where he got the cash. I’d have to reckon he was one of the robbers.”
Davis shook his head. “That is the damnedest thing I ever heard of. Is the whole damn county crooked? What in hell is going on here?”
Longarm looked thoughtfully across the room for a moment. Then he sighed and said, “I don’t know. But I think it is going to be hard as hell to prove up. I once chased a gang run by a family name of the Gallaghers. They roved back and forth across New Mexico, but mainly headquartered in Oklahoma Territory and Arkansas. If you got close to them they’d just kind of disappear and turn up as ranch hands and farm hands and even storekeepers. But that was over one hell of a big territory, and when they got the gang together they’d stay together for months at a time. This bunch looks like they gather up, pull a job, and head for the house before supper.”
“Can you think of a loose end you might could get hold of and we could pull and unravel the whole thing?”
Longarm shook his head. “Right now I ain’t got an idea. But you wasn’t the only one had a little excitement this morning.” He shoved his hand in his pocket and came out with the money and the checks he’d taken off Gus Home. He piled it all on top of the table with what Davis had brought.
Davis’s mouth dropped open. “Where in hell did you get that?”
“Just about the same place you did.” In a few words he described what had happened on his way to Hannah’s. He finished and said, “I guess we know who two members of that gang were. Too bad they are dead and can’t tell us who else was with them.”
Davis whistled slowly. “I’d say we come off on the lucky end. If your man don’t tie his horse so close that your horse shies, then odds are he don’t hit your saddlehorn, but a big piece of you. And if ol’ Amos hadn’t felt the need to tell me why he was fixing to blow me to smithereens, I would have been blown to smithereens. Hell, Longarm, I think we are in the kingdom of the bushwhackers.”
Longarm said, “I believe that was my advice to you before you set out to court Rebeccah.” He picked at the money and checks. “Must be nearly a thousand dollars here.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“Take it out to the auction barn and give it to Ownsby. It’s his money.
By the way, how did you get on with Rebeccah?”
Austin Davis slumped back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling.
“That was something I meant to mention. Marshal, we was going great guns there at first. She was giving me every signal a woman can give a man. And say, she ain’t bad-looking at all. I damn shore wouldn’t throw rocks at her.”
“You get a hand on her?”
“Near about. We was both sitting on the same divan and she had a leg up so I could see some thigh. But then…” Austin Davis slapped his thigh.
“Then I taken it into my head, heavens knows why, to bring up Vince Diver. I said I’d known him down along the border and in other places and the name was unusual, and I wondered if they might be kin.”
“What happened?”
Davis slapped the top of the table with the flat of his hand. “Nothing happened, that’s what. I might as well have shoved a chunk of ice up her glory hole. The minute I mentioned that name the fun was over. She done everything but ask me to leave.”
Longarm mulled it over a moment. “You must have struck a nerve. But you are still going to have to go back out there and work your way back in.”
“How?”
Longarm got up. “I don’t know right now. But time is a-wasting and I want you to get a look at this Gus Home I shot. See if you’ve ever come across him in your travels.”
As they walked from the hotel to the undertaker’s, Longarm said, “Austin, you can’t tell anybody that you killed Amos Goustwhite.”
Davis looked at him. “Why not?”
“Because he is part of the town. He’s got kin here. Like you said, this may be the kingdom of the bushwhackers. These people are pretty close-knit. No, that’s one you can’t claim.”
“But what if there is paper out on him?”
Longarm gave him a disgusted look. “Hell, he’s a town rowdy. Ain’t no paper out on him. He’s a homegrown outlaw. You figure Bodenheimer has put out wanted notices on him? Hell, besides, you’re making three dollars a day. What do you want?”
“Then who is supposed to have killed him?”
“I reckon me.”
