Longarm removed his hat and ran his fingers through his hair. “Pride cometh before a fall, Ivan. There’s none of us in this profession that hasn’t made some major mistakes. Not one. And sometimes, we need a little help in getting ourselves out of fixes. I’m here to offer that help. It’s up to you to be big enough and smart enough to accept that help.”
“Shit!” Kane swore. “I been taking care of my own affairs way too damn long to have someone waltz in here and want me to change things around. And I don’t know who the hell has been talking ‘bout me behind my back, but I mean to find out and see that they never do it again.”
“That would be a big mistake,” Longarm said. “People have a right to complain when they think that their officials are doing something wrong.”
“What exactly is the complaint?” Kane hissed.
Longarm knew that he could not tell this man that there were allegations that he had gone bad. That he was perhaps extorting money from the town merchants and that he had thrown out the law books and become the law of Bodie. That there were men who weren’t misfits and outlaws who wanted him either dead, or simply removed from Bodie. That the town was afraid of their marshal and had lost trust in Ivan Kane.
No, Longarm wasn’t about to tell his old friend, the legendary Ivan Kane, that people thought that he was corrupt and ruthless.
“The complaint, Ivan, is that you’re running a little roughshod over the people and that you’re shooting first and asking questions later.”
“Jeezus!” Ivan shouted, again banging his fist down on his desk. “Do you know what this town was like when I arrived? Do you have any idea what a hellhole Bodie was before the city fathers begged me to clean it up?”
“I know it was wild and woolly.”
“It was a slaughterhouse!” Kane bellowed. “Every day men were being gunned down right here on the streets. The city fathers, those chicken-shit sons of bitches, they were so scared of the bad elements that they were paying them off! That’s right, bribing them not to hurt them or their families. And so what happened? The ones with money were safe and everyone else was game for shooting.”
Kane took a deep breath. “And do you have any idea how many men tried to tame Bodie before I arrived?”
“No.”
“I’ll tell you! Better yet, I’ll take you up to Boot Hill and I’ll show you their graves.” Kane smiled wickedly. “You see, they laid them out side by side. “Nine marshals shot between 1870 and 1880—almost one a year. In fact there’d have been a lot more than that, but most of the time they didn’t even have a marshal because no one would take the job at any price!”
“Why?”
Kane blinked. “What do you mean, why?”
“Why was Bodie so much worse than any other boom town with all its wild elements?”
Kane took a deep breath. “Bodie, from the beginning, was founded by corrupt men. They got here first and they set up things exactly as they wanted. They made the law and then they eliminated anyone who tried to change their rules.”
“So who hired the lawmen who were gunned down?”
Kane opened a desk drawer and drew out a silver flask. He waved it in Longarm’s direction, but the offer was declined so Kane continued speaking. “After a few years, some honest merchants came into Bodie. There was a newspaper editor, a fella named Joe Bames. He wrote editorials inciting the good citizens to band together and form vigilante committees, if necessary, to reclaim Bodie.”
“And did they?”
“They tried a few times, but their leaders, including Joe Bames, were always shot down. Sometimes from ambush and sometimes right out in front of everyone in the street, sort of as a lesson.”
“And this just went on and on?”
“That’s right.” Kane’s eyes squinted. “The year before I came, two federal officers like you came through Bodie nosin’ around, and they both vanished.”
“Vanished?” Longarm hadn’t heard of this.
“That’s right,” Kane said, “vanished. Their bodies were later discovered at the bottom of a couple of mine shafts. No bullet wounds. They were sent over from the district office in San Francisco.”
“I see,” Longarm said, knowing that this was a plausible explanation and that it was commonplace for one district office not to have any idea what another was or was not doing.
“Anyway,” Kane said, “I walked into this hornet’s nest knowing its bloody history. I brought along two deputies from the last town where I’d been working. Both were ambushed and are buried in Boot Hill. Neither one lasted more than three months. So I started getting just as tough as the men that were trying to plant me up there with the others.”
“What did you do?”
“I got a judge to come through every month and I … I convinced him that he needed to be the hanging judge of Nevada. He started meting out justice rope-style.”
“You mean he began to rubber-stamp executions.”
“No, dammit! He started to get some backbone and was doing real well.”
“Until?”
“He was gunned down too.” Kane took another drink. “So what was I to do then? I couldn’t get another judge to even consider coming through Bodie. It was akin to setting their own death sentence.”
