Dalton Diver shrugged. “I told you I wouldn’t tell it good. Well, you got to go back a little ways and understand that the county was in trouble. Ernest Crouch said that with no more money than was coming in, the bank just wasn’t going to make it. You’ve seen our courthouse, us being the county seat of Mason County. Well, we thought that would bring in quite a bit of business, but it didn’t. Mason is nearly the only town of any size in the county, and we ain’t got more than two thousand souls even counting Mexicans. Other than that, there ain’t another town with more than fifty people in the whole damn place. Besides that, there wasn’t no land deals being made or deeds recorded or nothing. No courthouse business. I was talking to Vince about it one day, and he said if the county could guarantee him a safe place to hole up after a robbery, that he’d be willing to split. Take the money right to the bank and give them their share. Well, Ernest Crouch jumped on it like a mockingbird on a June bug. Thought it was a capital idea.”
“And the mayor was already in by this time?”
“Aw, yeah. Fact of the business is, he got in on the marrying the second time he married Sarah. I wish to hell I could think of the name of her second husband. Yeah, the mayor was all for it. Everybody was. Hell, wasn’t a soul on the street didn’t know what was going on.”
Longarm glanced at Austin Davis and nodded as if to say, “I told you so.”
“So we roped in the sheriff and sweetened him up a little. Didn’t take much. And that is pretty well the way she got started.”
Longarm frowned. “I still don’t understand how you could be sure and get the man on the paint horse, or pinto as you call him, killed.”
Diver was about to speak when Austin Davis said, “Excuse me, Mister Diver. I got a feeling this might go on a little. You made the offer of some vittles a while back. Does that still stand?”
Longarm shot him an irritated glance, but Diver heaved himself up out of his chair. “Oh, hell, yes. Two things we ain’t ever been short of, vittles and children. We might as well be sociable about this matter.” He took a step or two toward a door and hollered, “Robert! Robert! Get in here!” Then to Longarm and Austin Davis he said, “I’ll get Robert to lay out some supper and we’ll eat in the kitchen. Be shore and bring your whiskey.”
Robert laid out slices of ham with green beans and mashed potatoes and gravy. They did not talk while they ate. Even Diver allowed as how he hadn’t quite gotten his fill the first time around and he’d give it another go. But finally they finished. Robert brought cups and the coffeepot, set them on the table, and then left the kitchen.
Longarm said, “Dalton, I still don’t understand how you managed to be sure the man you wanted killed would get killed. Did Vince shoot them in the back?”
Diver waved his hand. “Oh, no. Vince would never do nothing like that. Naw, what he done was he sent Dan Hicks in ahead of time to the job. Then when the party rode up Dan done his work. It was good for the place they was robbing. It would make the local law look good. They’d always take credit for the kill. Made the folks that was robbed feel like they’d got something in return.”
“I see,” Longarm said dryly. “But what about the local boys? How come you started using them?”
Dalton Diver shrugged. “Well, hell, they was wanting to marry my daughters too. Only they didn’t have no money. So I said to Vince he ought to give the home folks a chance, and he did.” He suddenly frowned. “That reminds me about Amos Goustwhite. He owed me some money. He was set on marrying Rebeccah and had been paying a little as he went. They robbed the auction barn and he was on his way over here to give me three hundred dollars when some sonofabitch shot him.”
Longarm looked at Austin Davis and smiled grimly. “Yeah, I reckon it was a sonofabitch that shot him. Mister Goustwhite had the bad luck to get in an altercation with Marshal Smith here. Next day he tried to bushwhack him. Didn’t work.”
Dalton Diver glanced at Austin Davis and frowned slightly. “Well, I guess if it was in the line of duty … Guess I ain’t got no complaint.”
Longarm said, “But that don’t explain Gus Home, or Gus White. I killed him, and he had some of that score from the auction barn robbery on him. How come he didn’t get killed right after he married Hannah?”
Dalton Diver paused to pour some whiskey in his cup. “Well, that was a kind of strange circumstance. They was heading for the town of Miles to do a robbery when Gus got throwed by his horse and broke a leg. A nearby family took him in and he was laid up quite a spell. I told Vince I needed more money from Gus on account of the delay. Hell, I could have had Hannah married twice more in the time he was laying up. So Vince let him in on that auction robbery. You say he was going to Hannah when you killed him?”
“He was right in the middle of the river.”
Diver shook his head. “Well that just wasn’t right. He should have come by here and paid what he owed before he went near her. And he knew it too.”
Austin Davis said, “I don’t understand Vince robbing the auction barn. That involved a lot of folks from Mason. I would expect that stirred up a hornet’s nest.”
Diver made a face and shook his head. “That was all Vince’s doing. I done my best to talk him out of it, but he wouldn’t have it. He had it in for Ownsby, and the man is dead lucky he wasn’t in that office when Vince walked in to rob it. And I mean dead lucky.”
“What did Vince have against Ownsby?”
“Well, I’ll tell you. Some few months back Vince carried a bunch of horses to the barn and wanted to sell them. Ownsby said they was stolen and he wouldn’t touch the deal. Well, of course they was stolen. Every damn one of them had a different brand. Man acted like he didn’t know what was going on. The upshot of it was he took the horses and notified their rightful owners. Made Vince good and mad, I can tell you that.”
Austin Davis said, “Nobody was killed there. In fact, the lady claimed it was Vince riding the paint.”
Diver nodded. “Yeah, he done that. He didn’t want everybody getting on to the fact that that was a hearse horse. So sometimes, when it was a short haul and nobody to be left behind, either him or Dan Hicks would ride the horse.”
“Which brings up something I don’t understand, Mister Diver.” Longarm took a moment to figure out what he wanted to ask. “You only had four daughters getting married. But there were a lot more men got killed on the jobs than just them.”
