Longarm nodded.
“Olliver must have sustained some brain damage during the beating because he started accusing everyone of trying to kill him. Even me!”
“Me too,” Hec grunted.
“And so he became sort of the town lunatic,” Kane said. “He’d preach hellfire and brimstone on the street corners. He’d go into the whorehouses over on Bonanza Street and preach to them ladies of the night too. He became a big nuisance, and I’d have to lock him up for his own protection sometimes.”
“Seems to me,” Longarm said, “that a nuisance is just that—a nuisance. Not someone that you expect to see gunned down.”
“Olliver was starting to rouse the town against the saloons and the whorehouses,” Kane said. “He’d found some crazy followers and they were becoming pretty vocal. He was causing things to start festering. I tried to protect him, but it was impossible.”
“So that’s who you think shot him down last night? A saloon owner or madam?”
“Not a madam, but one of the toughs they hire to police their whorehouses. Hec and I make daily visits to those places and try to keep the peace, but there’s always trouble.”
“And you do this for a fee? These visits, I mean,” Longarm said quietly.
“Well,” Kane said, winking. “We sometimes take our fees out in trade. Don’t we, Hec?”
The big, brutish deputy guffawed, and Longarm walked over to the window and stared out at the street, trying to put his feelings into words. It wasn’t easy.
“What’s the matter, Custis? You seem upset about something?”
“I am,” he said, turning around to face the two lawmen. “What seems to be wrong here is that you’ve both forgotten that the law is a public issue and concern. It shouldn’t just be for those that can afford your fees! Everyone should be protected. Rich and poor. Ivan, this town needs a public lawman. Not a fee collector.”
Kane’s face drained of color, and Hec Ward’s big shoulders humped and black eyes flashed with disgust as he said, “I guess you didn’t hear Marshal Kane. Either that, or you weren’t listening. We are the law in Bodie because no one else can stay alive doing it.”
“You’re wrong,” Longarm said. “There are men who can and will do it. This town had one once.”
Longarm looked right at Kane, and the older man’s lips pulled back from his teeth when he spat, “You’ve had your say and we’ve had our say. I guess this meeting is over.”
“I guess it is,” Longarm said.
“And you’ll be leaving Bodie today,” Kane said.
“No, I will not.”
Both Kane and Ward came to their feet, and it was the deputy who said, “You look smarter than that. I’d be leaving town, Long.”
Longarm looked at one and then the other before he said, “I’m sorry that it’s going to have to be this way. I will, of course, have to let Billy Vail know exactly what is going on here in Bodie.”
“You let him know anything that you want,” Kane said, “but you just let him know from somewhere else. Is that perfectly clear?”
“Yeah,” Longarm said, heading for the door and adding on his way out, “I just don’t see how it could have been made much clearer.”
Chapter 10
When Megan returned to the Kirkwood Livery Stable, she was pleased to see that Mr. Kirkwood had made good on his promise to take excellent care of her two sorrel horses.
“Good morning, Mr. Kirkwood!”
He was cleaning a stall and when he heard Megan’s voice, he looked up and a smile creased his face. “Mornin’, miss. You have a good night’s sleep?”
Megan had a wicked impulse to be honest and tell the man that she had hardly slept at all because she and Custis Long had made love off and on through the entire night.
“Just fine. How are my horses?”
“Just fine too,” the man said. “I grained and brushed them this morning when my stable boy didn’t show up again. Lazy little fart. It’s hard to get good help. Hell, I pay the kid a nickel a morning!”
“Hmm,” Megan mused aloud while going over to scratch her mare’s forehead and then slipping her a cube of sugar that she had gotten at the cafe. Then she did the same for the gelding that Longarm had ridden into Bodie. “Maybe you ought to fire the kid and find another.”
“Ain’t a lot of kids in Bodie,” the man explained.
“There aren’t more than a few dozen families and their kids are all spoiled, generally the sons and daughters of mine owners or superintendents. Everything costs too much here for a working man to bring his family.”
“I suppose that’s true.”
“Lots on Main Street go for about a thousand dollars. I paid only three hundred for the land that this stable sits on, but I could sell it for about two thousand easy.”
“And retire in comfort,” Megan said, thinking that Kirkwood looked awfully weary and stooped for his age. “Maybe it’s something that you ought to consider. You know, these mining towns come and go pretty fast. Could be, if the ore ever gives out here, your land and even this nice stable won’t be worth much more than the price of kindling wood.”
“You got a good point there,” Kirkwood admitted, putting down his pitchfork and mopping his brow because the morning was already warm and the air inside the barn was still. “But the thing of it is that real estate in this town has been rising for the past six years and the mines seem strong. Besides, I don’t know where else I’d go that I’d like any better.”
“Then stay and enjoy it,” Megan said, strolling about in the stable and taking a good look at the horses being boarded.
There were about fifty in corrals outside, but they would be the rough stock, the lesser-quality animals whose owners didn’t care if they fought and were kicked in the legs causing shin splints and awful bone problems. The horses with some breeding and quality would always be found in separate stalls, and that’s where Megan was looking now.
“What are you looking at?” Kirkwood asked.
“Just seeing what kinds of horses people keep in Bodie.”
“There some damned good ones,” Kirkwood assured her. “And I own a few of ‘em.”
“Really?”
“That’s right.” Kirkwood forgot about finishing cleaning the stall. “Come over here and look at this palomino.”
Megan followed the man, and watched as he opened the stall and stepped inside. A moment later, he was leading a very handsome horse out for her inspection.
“Ain’t he something, though?”
“He’s a dandy, all right,” Megan agreed. “Where’d you get him?”
“He belonged to a gambler who was shot and killed after he got caught dealing from the bottom of the deck. The man owed everyone in town, but he owed me the most. So I paid off the others and took the horse.”
“I’m sure that you got a wonderful deal,” Megan said. “You probably got him cheap.”
“Not so cheap as you might think,” Kirkwood said. “I guess I’m out about two hundred dollars for him.”
“My, my! He isn’t that nice.”
Kirkwood’s eyes dilated. “What do you mean! He can run like the wind and never get tired. He’s intelligent—if you knew much about horses you could see that in his eyes.”
Megan smiled sweetly. “Why, I can see that is a fine animal, but a horse like that would only bring about a hundred dollars in Reno. And that, Mr. Kirkwood, would be the absolute tops.”
Kirkwood visibly deflated. “Really?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Well,” the man blustered, “he’s worth at least twice that in Bodie. I mean to enter him in a race one of these days and win a bundle of money.”
Megan nodded as if she believed this, but then said, “I just hope that the race you enter him in is short.”
“Why?” Kirkwood asked suspiciously.
“Why? Because it’s obvious that he’s been wind-broke. I doubt he’d be able to run more than a few hundred yards before he’d be gasping and wheezing.”
“That’s crazy! Why, this horse is as sound as a dollar.”