Hunter walked outside with him and shook Longarm’s hand. He said, “I appreciate you coming out, Marshal. I’d appreciate hearing about anything that’s coming up. If I can be of any help, I’d sure be more than willing.”
Longarm nodded and mounted. As he wheeled his horse, he said, “You’ll be hearing from me. Keep your rifle loaded, Mr. Hunter, and sleep light.” He put his spurs to the horse and loped away from the lonely cabin out onto the rolling prairie.
Chapter 6
Longarm was waiting in the parlor of Mrs. Thompson’s boardinghouse when Mr. Hawkins finally came in. It was late in the afternoon, almost half past four. He had been sitting in a big easy chair with a glass and a bottle of his good Maryland whiskey, sipping slowly and smoking cigarillos and thinking. He had a kind of hazy plan. It wasn’t very good, and he didn’t know if it would work or if he could get anybody to help him, but it was the only plan he had. He thought he might as well give it a try.
He heard Hawkins come in the front door and hollered at him to step into the parlor. The tall, gaunt man came in through the double doors and stopped. He said, “Well, Marshal, you seem to be taking your ease. You have a good talk with Tom Hunter?”
“Yeah, I just got through talking to a man who needs help from the law, and I’m not sure the law has any way to help him. It’s a damned frustrating feeling, Mr. Hawkins. By the way, you never have told me what your first name is. Mine’s Custis.”
Hawkins took off his hat and laid it on the table and sat down in a straight-backed chair. “Well, I’m not too prompt about flinging my first name around, but if it’s got to be told, it’s George. The second one’s worse, so I don’t use that one at all. Generally, I just go by G. W. Hawkins.”
Longarm smiled. “So, it’s George Washington Hawkins, is it? I take it that either your daddy or your mother was a historian or a patriot?”
Hawkins blushed slightly beneath his weathered skin. He said, “Hell, Marshal, you weren’t supposed to figure that one out.”
Longarm said, “Well, I’d offer you a drink, but you don’t drink.”
Hawkins said, “Oh, I still drink. I just don’t ever do it right now.”
“I take it by that you mean any right now.”
Hawkins smiled. He said, “That’s about the size of it, sir.”
Longarm was silent for a moment, sipping at his drink and staring at the man. He liked him, liked his sense of humor, and liked his straightforwardness. He hated to play the trick on the man that he was going to play, but he didn’t see any way around it. He said, “Tell me, Mr. Hawkins, who are you the closest to—the head of the Barrett family or the head of the Myers?”
Hawkins pulled a face. He said, “I don’t reckon you’d say that I was invited to Christmas dinner at either place, but I reckon if it came down to that or drowning, I reckon I’d say I know Archie Barrett better. We’re more the same age. Hell, Jake Myers is upwards of sixty and mean as a rattlesnake with a sore on his tail. Barrett is not the best company in the world, but I’ve been doing business with his outfit for ten, twelve years. I guess I could say that I know him better.”
“Well, tell me this. Would he accompany you somewhere?”
Hawkins gave Longarm a puzzled look. “Accompany me somewhere? Why would he want to accompany me anywhere?”
Longarm said, “Well, let’s just say that you had a particular piece of goods that you wanted him to see, but you couldn’t bring it to him. Would he come with you to look at it?”
“Like what?”
“Well, let’s say like a silver-mounted saddle, for instance. A really first-class piece of goods.”
Hawkins frowned. “Archie Barrett has already got a silver-mounted saddle.”
“All right, a gold-mounted saddle, then, with diamonds or something. I don’t care, just something in your line of work that a man couldn’t pass up if he had plenty of money.”
Hawkins shrugged. He said, “I suppose so, though I can’t figure out why I couldn’t take it out and show it to him.”
Longarm said, “Let’s say it was just one of a kind and it was passing through town and wasn’t going to be here but one day and you’d like to show it to him. It’s just one of a kind that your company made and you couldn’t take it off the stage. You say you’re leaving on the stage tomorrow? Let’s pretend it’s coming on the stage in the morning. Do you think you could get him to come into town and look at it?”
Hawkins shook his head slowly. “That would have to be some hellacious saddle. I don’t even know if I could invent one in my mind that would persuade Archie Barrett to ride in here to look at a saddle. Besides that, you’re supposed to have this town hemmed off from him. You’ve got a fence out there that says No Barretts and No Myerses.”
Longarm leaned back in his chair. “That ought to be a good selling point for you. He’d have to admit in front of you and everybody else that he was scared to come into town because of me, wouldn’t he?”
Hawkins looked off for a moment. He said, “I suppose so, though I don’t know what you’re getting at here, Marshal. I ain’t riding out to see Archie Barrett. Do you want me to write a note or something like that?”
Longarm cleared his throat and took a sip of whiskey. “No, I had something else in mind. Something that would be more handy, more efficient, more law-like.”
George Hawkins gave him a suspicious look. He said, “And what would that be, Marshal Long?”
Longarm cleared his throat again. He said, “George Washington Hawkins, by the power vested in me by the Marshal’s Service of The United States Government of America, I hereby deputize you as a temporary deputy in the service of law and order in and for these United States of America. Say, ‘I do.’”
Hawkins’s mouth fell open. He said, “What?”
