He pulled his horse up as the party started walking their horses toward him, the sheriff in the lead. Bodenheimer gave him a stiff little nod and said, “Well, you’ve taken yore time gettin’ here, Marshal, but I reckon it be just as well. They ain’t done no stirrin’ round.”
Longarm looked at the fat man’s fat face with distaste. “To begin with, Otis…” He managed to say the sheriff s name so that it sounded like a bad odor. “To begin with, I don’t know what in hell you are sending for me for. Ain’t you the damn sheriffs Or is that just an ugly rumor floating around that I hope isn’t true.”
But there was no insulting the man. He sat his horse, giving Longarm a placid look. “I tol’ Melvin there to ‘splain to you that parts of this river is in dispute between us and Kimble County and I don’t want to have no disputes with Sheriff Estes over crowdin’ in on his territory.”
Longarm said patiently, “Dammit, Otis, I have told you a half a dozen times you can cross county lines when you are in hot pursuit.”
Bodenheimer had a cud of tobacco in his jaw. He sat chewing it like a cow, his moon face innocent of any sign of understanding. “Ain’t no way to say for shore ‘bout a thing like that. Sherif Estes is kinda edgy ‘bout matters here lately. Don’t want to go rilin’ him. Thought it would be as easy to have you out.”
Longarm gave him a disgusted look. “Yeah, I imagine Sheriff Estes is a little edgy at you, but it ain’t got a damn thing to do with hot pursuit or crossing into his county. I would imagine he’s getting damn tired of you making a home for a gang of robbers who are stealing in his towns and then running back here to hide. And as for it being just as easy to send for me …” Longarm rose in his stirrups a little and reached out and jabbed Bodenheimer hard on the breastbone with a thick forefinger. “Next time I recommend you give it some more thought before you just up and send for me. I might otherwise be occupied.”
Bodenheimer pulled back from the pile-driving forefinger, but otherwise gave no sign he understood that he was being reprimanded. He said, “Tryin’ to do the smart thang, Marshal.”
Longarm made a disgusted sound. The first day he’d arrived in Mason County he’d decided that Otis Bodenheimer was dangerous to the citizens of Mason County. His opinion had only gone downhill from there. He said, “Smart? Bodenheimer, you’d have to improve to just be dangerously dumb. All right, what have you got here?”
Bodenheimer straightened in his saddle, and pointed across the river toward the face of the bluff. “You see the mouth of that cave over yonder? Well, we got pretty good reason to reckon that bunch is holed up in there.”
Longarm turned slightly in his saddle to look across the river. About halfway up the bluff face he could see a hole about five feet in diameter. It could be a cave or nothing more than a dimple in the cliff face. Longarm judged it to be no more than eighty or ninety yards away from where they were standing. He could see a little ledge that ran below the opening and then made a ragged trip to the top of the cliff.
He studied it a moment and then said wonderingly, “What makes you think they are in there, Bodenheimer? Or do you just hope they are there?”
The sheriff spat tobacco juice and then turned in his saddle to locate a face among the silent men around him. He said, pointing, “Elton Miles thar’, he seen ‘em. Ain’t that right, Elton?”
Elton Miles was an ordinary-looking little man with a growth of whiskers and a mustache stained with tobacco juice. He nodded vigorously. “Yessir, yessir, that be right, Shur’ff. I seen ‘em. ‘Bout ‘leven o’clock it was this mornin’. Seen the bunch of ‘em riding through them thickets over yonder. Musta been five, six, seven of ‘em. I wasn’t too anxious to be callin’ no attention to myself, so I hung pleny far back. But it was the bunch. I’d swear it.”
Longarm studied the man for a moment and said, “You mean you saw five or six men. Is that right?”
Elton Miles bobbed his head. “Yessir, yessir. Shore did. Make no mistake.”
“You see them go in the cave?”
Elton Miles opened his mouth to say something, and then thought better of it and closed it. He opened it again and said, “Well, not prezactly.”
“What do you mean, not prezactly?”
Elton Miles looked uncomfortable. “Like I wuz tellin’ them, Marshal, I kinda hung back in that wild plum thicket. I didn’t want them boys gettin’ after me. But I seen ‘em headin’ fer the river, an’ then it seem like I heered their horses in the water. Little while after that I kind of snuck around where I could see the river. Got off my horse an’ went to sneakin’ round and they was gone. Wasn’t no sign of ‘em, hide or hair.”
Longarm looked across the river at the cliff face. There were several ravines cutting through it where one could leave the riverbed and make the ground on the other side. To get to the cave a horseman would have to climb the ravine to the high ground and then turn his horse loose, and after that, make his way down the precarious little ledge to the mouth of the cave. And Elton Miles hadn’t seen anything. Apparently he hadn’t seen where they had crossed or where they had gone once they had cleared the river. But to be sure, Longarm asked the little man again.
Elton Miles blinked. “Seen ‘em go in the cave? Why, nosir, nosir. I went and tol’ the shur’ff what I seen and he got him a bunch together and we figured out they was a-hidin’ in that cave.”
It was a Saturday afternoon, a crisp, cool fall day at its best. And, Longarm thought, he was standing here with seven of the dumbest sonofabitches he’d ever met when, by rights, he should be in a bed in a cabin with a young lady by the name of Hannah.
He let his eyes rove over the bunch with Bodenheimer. “Otis,” he said, “I know that three of these men are your deputies. Who are the other damn fools?”
Bodenheimer didn’t blink. He said stoutly, “They be good citizens that I deputized. I didn’t know what to expect. Could have been in a gunfight.”
Longarm looked at the men and shook his head. “Bodenheimer, you are likely to bankrupt the saloons, you keep taking such good citizens out of town. Now, what have you done to see if, by whatever wild chance, the outlaw gang might be over there?”
Bodenheimer chewed his cud of tobacco. “Been waitin’ on you, Marshal.”
“Where are their horses? Didn’t you send anybody across the river to get on top to see if their horses might be tied there? You didn’t really think they could lead their horses down that ledge and into that cave, did you?” He said it, hoping that Bodenheimer would have some idea of what he was talking about.
