and then. It ain’t like he was one of the ones with a gun in his hand, shooting up towns. And it ain’t like he made a big profit. Twenty-five-dollar-a-month raise? That ain’t exactly high cotton.”
Longarm looked at Bodenheimer. The sheriff was standing there, anxiety on his face, wringing his hands together in spite of the manacles.
Longarm said, “Hell, he’d give us away in a minute. Look, I’m trying to put people in jail, not let them out. Hell!”
Davis said, “Look at it this way, Custis. You may have already spooked that mayor and the banker. But you let ol’ Otis here come on back in his job—and in your company, why, that ought to sooth some ruffled feathers right there. Remember, we still got quite a few quail to flush yet.”
“Yeah,” Longarm said thoughtfully. “But I don’t know if I want old Otis here flushing them for me. He is likely to flush them way before I’m ready.”
“I got a feeling old Otis here will do just about what he’s told. That and nothing more. Ain’t that right, Otis?”
Bodenheimer’s mouth was hanging open and his eyes were wide with hope. He took a step forward. “Oh, yessir! Yessir! Marshal, I’d give anything fer another chance. I know I done wrong, but I didn’t see no way out. You could give me one.”
Longarm sat, thinking. On the one hand he hated to see Bodenheimer get off with nothing more than a few days in jail. But he still did have quite a few chickens yet to get in the henhouse, and the sight of Bodenheimer returned to good standing might ease some of the fidgets he imagined were running through certain quarters. And in the end, his real interest was in stopping dead the gunhands who had actually done the robbing and killing. Of course he meant to get Dalton Diver and the banker and the mayor in the same net. Maybe Davis was right, much as he hated to admit it. Longarm said, “What if I set him back up and he betrays us?”
“Then gut-shoot him. Give him a couple of days to die slow and painfully. That will teach him not to suck eggs.”
Longarm looked back at Austin Davis. “Thank you, Marshal Smith. By the way, since we are new on this assignment together, I never did get your first name.”
Davis gave him an innocent look. “It’s John.”
“Honest John, no doubt.”
Davis looked modest. “They mostly call me that.”
Longarm said, “Well, Honest John, I hope for your sake that you are right about this matter, because it is going to be your nut in the wringer if something goes wrong and it leads back to old Otis here.”
Bodenheimer said, “I swear it, Marshal. I swear you can set store by me. I won’t let you down.” He was so agonized that drops of sweat were standing out on his big forehead even with a cool breeze blowing.
Longarm looked at him sourly. “One thing I ain’t heard about as much as I want to, and that is your deputies. How deep are they in this?”
Bodenheimer took another step forward. “Marshal, I can nearly swear that the two what is blood kin to me ain’t in none of it. They ain’t smart enough. And I made sure they never come close to being exposed to it at all.”
“They ain’t smart enough?” Longarm leaned out of the saddle toward the sheriff and put his hand to his ear. “Come again? You are talking about how smart someone is? Otis, that has got to make me ask you how you would know.”
The sheriff looked down. “I know how it looks. But it’s hard makin’ a living around here, and I just put them boys to work kind of for no reason. They ain’t really deputies. They don’t know nothing about the law.”
“But they carry guns.”
“Yeah, but they ain’t mean or nothin’ like that. It’s just a job for them. It was part of the deal for me keeping my eyes and ears closed. Of course I can’t say about Melvin Purliss. I don’t know all that much about him. He was kind of part of the deal. Now he is a capable hand. He’s been in law work before.”
Longarm glanced at Austin Davis. “Little Melvin Purliss? He’s been a lawman? Hell, I thought he was another one of your charity cases.”
The sheriff shook his head. “Nosir. The mayor and the council thought I ought to have one deputy capable of keeping the peace and they give me Melvin, oh, a year, year and a half back.”
Longarm nodded at Austin Davis. “Well, at least we got a little help. But I never thought it would be Purliss.”
Davis said, “Well, what are you going to do? It’s getting on toward noon. We need to get moving.”
Longarm dug in his pocket and found the key to the manacles. He pitched it in the dust in front of Bodenheimer. But before the sheriff could lean over to pick it up Longarm said, “Get one thing straight, Otis. And remember it. If you forget everything else in your life, you had best remember this.”
Bodenheimer straightened up. “Yessir.”
Longarm’s words were even and low. “You break my trust, you betray me in any way, you upset the apple-cart in the slightest, and I will make you sorry you were ever born. Do you understand that?”
“Yessir.” Bodenheimer was trembling.
“Do you believe it?”
“Oh, yes, sir. Yessir, I shore do.”
Longarm turned to Austin Davis. “Give him his horse, Marshal Smith. And then let us me and you ride on back into town. Bodenheimer, you follow at about a mile.”
As they rode the several miles back to town Austin Davis said, “Cap’n, they is a few things you ain’t exactly explained to my satisfaction. For one thing, we have got an awful lot of beaver to trap at the same time. There’s the mayor and the banker and especially Dalton Diver. But that ain’t mentioning the ones we really want, the
