“And you was never tempted?”
Longarm let out a hoot of laughter. “Naw, Jack. Hell, no. I loved that low pay and hard work and times. You even had to buy your own cartridges back then. Made a man a better shot, I’ll tell you that. Though I don’t reckon that was the intention. Tempted? Well, you show me a happily married man that don’t take a peek at a pretty woman from time to time and have little thoughts pass through his mind, and I’ll show you a man has never been tempted. I ain’t got no wings, Jack. They ain’t standard issue.”
Shaw said, “Well, it seemed like you never passed no judgment on me. Even that time down in Mexico when we shared some whiskey and women. You never said nothing. Never asked me nothing.”
Longarm shrugged. “Man does what he wants if he can get by with it. I don’t judge ‘em, I just catch them as wants to do what’s against the law. I’ve executed a few, but that was their choice. They had the selection of giving themselves up.”
Shaw looked back at him curiously. “Well, that’s being their judge. Ain’t it?”
Longarm shook his head. “Naw. They judged themselves. Any man that charges straight into certain death has done called the turn on himself and goes out to get what he deserves. I was just the executioner in the business. They was the ones put themselves on the gallows.”
“You really believe that? You really believe a man will sentence himself to death?”
Longarm nodded. “I do.”
“Why? Why should they?”
“Either out of remorse or conscience or embarrassment or not wanting to stand trial. Some that I had caught had had a taste of prison and knew they couldn’t take no more. Though I hadn’t ought to be talking about that last to you, considering where you are headed.”
Shaw said, “I ain’t worried about prison.”
“You figure you can handle it? What happens if you run across some of them you put the catch on?”
Shaw shrugged. “I’ll worry about it when I get to it. I’m still trying to figure out what you said about somebody running into a bullet because he done something wrong. Remorse? Was that the word you used?”
“Yeah. I wouldn’t worry my head, Jack. I don’t reckon there’s any chance of something like that coming all over you and causing you to lose your head.”
“You don’t think I know right from wrong, do you?”
“I know you know right from wrong. I just think you don’t care.”
“Would you be interested in knowing what caused me to hit the owlhoot trail? To turn the badge around?”
Longarm wasn’t particularly interested in knowing, but anything that would take his mind off the heat would be welcome. He said, “If you’re a mind to speak about it.”
Shaw pulled up his horse and unhooked a canvas water bag from his saddlehorn. Longarm rode up to him, but kept his distance. The trailing horses were content to hang back, their heads drooping, their tails switching idly in the heat. Shaw unscrewed the cap of the water bag, got the opening up to his mouth, and then lifted the bag until the water gushed into his mouth and then overflowed as he poured faster than he could drink. He lowered the bag and said, “Ah! Damn, there’s plenty of times water is better than whiskey.”
“You better be a sight more careful with that,” Longarm said. “I ain’t all that sure we’ll find water tonight.”
Shaw hung the bag back on his saddlehorn. He made no move to kick his horse on forward. He said, wiping one sleeve across his face, “I wanted to see what it felt like to be bad.”
Longarm stared at him a moment trying to see if he had heard right or if Shaw was serious. “What?”
Shaw spat over the side of his horse. The heart-shaped birthmark was not as distinct in the tangle of his unshaven whiskers. They were black and gnarly, as was his hair. He said, “Ever since I could remember, my ol’ daddy had beat goodness in me. I done the least little thing, it was out with a switch or his razor strop or whatever. When I got older, it was a pretty fair-sized paddle. My ol’ daddy set a pretty good amount of store by being good. So did my ol’ mama, though she generally left the lickin’ to my ol’ pa. I grew up believin’ that if you done bad or wrong you got a lickin’. A hard lickin’. A real hard lickin’. I didn’t know much about being good. I wasn’t taught to be good, I was taught not to be bad. I never knowed there was a difference. Anyway, that day I was in the bank in Del Rio, I didn’t go in there to rob it.”
“You didn’t?”
Shaw shook his head. “Naw. I never made no plan, didn’t have no more plan than a fly in a jelly jar. I was standing there, in that bank, and they was starting to bring all the money out of the safe and put it in the tellers’ cages. All of a sudden I wondered what would happen if I just up and took that money. I knew if you took cookies or pies or whatnot out of the kitchen you’d get a lickin’. But I didn’t know about taking money out of a bank. So I just up and drawed my gun, me the town marshal, and took the money.”
“Just like that?”
Shaw nodded, his face serious. “Just like that. Just robbed and ran. Never planned it more than a second before I drawed my gun. I about halfway expected my ol’ pa to come round the corner with a good-sized stick and go to flailing away at me. But he didn’t.” Shaw spat again.
“So that’s how I come to rob my first bank, because I wanted to see how it felt to be bad. Know what?”
“What?”
Shaw grinned. “I liked it.”
“You liked it?”
“Yeah. I liked it a lot. Made me feel good. I kept waiting for that lick from the paddle to land and it never did. Fact of the business is, I was handing out the licks, so to speak.”
“And you didn’t plan it, that first robbery when you got away with so damn much money? Just a kind of spur-of-the-moment affair, you say?”
Shaw laughed. “Spur-of-the-moment, hell. Spur-of-the-instant more like it. One instant there is all that money coming out because the bank is opening, and the next instant I got my pistol out and am taking that money.”
“Didn’t have no getaway planned?”
“Getaway? Hell, I’d hard-tied my horse so that I nearly couldn’t get the knot out of the reins. It was on that account I had to shoot the first teller coming out of the door.” He grinned. “He took the lickin’. Not me.”
Longarm started his horse forward. Shaw did likewise. One of the trailing horses came up abreast of Shaw’s horse on the left side, working in between him and Longarm’s animal.
“And that is how you come to turn in your badge? All them years of robbing and shooting come from a curiosity you had.”
Shaw nodded. “Yep. I’d have to say that was true.”
Longarm shook his head slowly. “Well, I guess that explains it a little better.”
“What? Explains what?”
“Oh, the way you are. The way you ain’t got no hesitation about plugging anybody, whether they be your partners or not. I always wondered about you. I always kind of thought you was about as cold-blooded as any hard case I ever run across. I reckon that any man that can turn from town marshal into bank robber just to see what it feels like don’t give anything much thought.” Shaw said, “I don’t know I much like the sound of that. You give some thought to how long I been operating and how few times I been caught. That ought to make it clear that I give plenty of thought and planning to every caper I pull off. I knew that first time was blind luck. It still scares me sometimes when I think about it. That’s why I’m so careful now. You asked me about why I stayed in them mountains so long, jumping from one little range over into another. Well, it’s that kind of thinkin’ has made me successful.”
Longarm looked at him carefully. “I didn’t mean that kind of thought, Jack. I meant thought about what you were doing and the rightness or wrongness of the matter, the consequences.”