“It’d be a damned miracle. That’s what I think. Hell, a saddle like that …” He whistled. “A saddle like that would be worth plenty. Hell, I’ve heard that it’s gold-mounted, made out of the finest leather. Yeah, something like that would definitely influence a man like Archie Barrett. But how come I don’t take it to him?”
“Because your company has sent it down here special. There’s two fellows that are guarding it, and it can’t get out of their sight. They’ve got it in a wagon here in town and they’re going on and the team’s too tired to make it out to the Barrett ranch. You’ve got this one opportunity to show it to him. You tell him that you wired your headquarters and got them to come out of their way into Grit with that saddle. You ain’t got much time, but it’s his only chance to look at it.”
Hawkins was getting a gleam in his eye as if he actually had such a saddle for sale. “You know, a saddle like that would fetch right around two thousand five hundred dollars, maybe three thousand dollars.” He whistled again. My commission on that would run right around five, six hundred dollars. That’s not a bad deal. You know, I can see where Archie Barrett would be interested in a saddle like that and he could afford it, priced at three thousand dollars. A man like that, the more he pays for something, the more he thinks it’s worth. Yeah, yeah, that just might work. Maybe even three thousand five hundred dollars. What do you think about that?”
Longarm was watching in amazement as the leather goods drummer worked himself up. He said, “Why stop there? Why not make it a four thousand dollar saddle?”
Hawkins nodded vigorously. He said, “That’s even better. Yeah, that’s even better.” He stopped and looked at Longarm. He said, “By the way, how did my company manage to come into possession of that saddle?”
Longarm said, “Why, that’s easy. It was stolen out of the palace by some of them revolutionaries and one of them wound up in Del Rio and he sold it to one of your drummers that was working down there. Now y’all have got it to sell. It was brought up to the border and it fell into your hands. Now it can fall into Mr. Archie Barrett’s hands. He’ll be the envy of the territory. Jake Myers won’t have anything like that.
Hawkins said dryly, “Why don’t you just leave the selling to me, Marshal? I believe I can come up with a talk that will work.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Hawkins. I didn’t mean to get into your territory. I was just trying to help out.”
Hawkins sat there thinking. “I’m looking for holes in this proposition. Now, you do know that Mr. Archie Barrett is not going to ride into Grit by himself. He’s going to have two or three men with him, and they won’t be no second-rate gunslingers, either. He’s got some first-class hands.”
Longarm said dryly, “Why don’t you leave that to me, Mr. Hawkins. You do the selling, and I’ll do the other part. That’s my job.”
Hawkins gave him a stern look. He said, “You right sure you can handle it, Marshal? I’m going to be in the midst of that bunch coming in, and I’d just as soon not get killed until I have one last drunk. If I’m going to get killed, I might as well finish that bottle for you.”
Longarm shook his head slowly and clicked his tongue. He said, “Tsk, tsk, tsk, Mr. Hawkins. You don’t want to break your resolve over a little thing like this. You’d feel silly if you got yourself all drunked up and then didn’t get killed.”
Hawkins gave him a look. “I suppose you have a point, Marshal. But, say, are you certain that I am under obligation, that I’ve got to do this under the Constitution?”
Longarm gave him an eye. He said, “Mr. Hawkins, there are a few things I don’t tease about. Pussy is one of them, good whiskey is another, and the law and my job are the other two. So I am dead serious when I tell you that you are a fully constituted member of the United States Marshal Service and subject to my orders. If you don’t follow them, you can go to prison.”
Hawkins looked up at him. He said, “That’s a fine how do you do. A law-abiding citizen like me ends up like this.” He began gathering up the cards. “Well, the least you can do is play me some head-up poker. Maybe I can make a profit off that deal. Hell, two dollars a day! Why, that wouldn’t even pay for my whiskey in other days and times.”
Longarm said as he reached into his pocket for his roll of money, “I wouldn’t count on it paying anything. Playing me poker doesn’t generally improve a man’s pocket. In fact, you might lose your two dollars a day for a long time to come.”
Hawkins began to shuffle the cards. He said, “We’ll just see about that, Marshal. Or do I call you boss?”
Longarm smiled. He said, “Either one of them will do, Mr. Hawkins. Just shuffle them cards and give me a cut. And ante up a dollar while you got it.”
Chapter 7
The two men had finished playing poker and the cards had been put away. Now they were sitting, Longarm with a drink of whiskey and a cigarillo, and Mr. Hawkins with a pipe. Very little money had changed hands in the poker game, and the man had proven to be a rawhide-tough player, though Longarm claimed you couldn’t tell anything about a man’s skill by playing two-handed poker. He claimed it was about like trading horses blindfolded. He said, “Hell, it’s all luck. You might as well turn them all face-up. Very few hands are going to come along where they are even enough to get some decent betting going.”
It was growing late and Longarm was about to go back to his room. They had made their plans for the next day. Hawkins had groused a bit about delaying his departure for his next stop, but Longarm believed that he was secretly delighted to be a part of a law adventure.
Hawkins had wanted more details than Longarm had been able to supply about how they would operate the next day. Longarm simply said, “We leave here and along the road, I’m going to look for a likely spot. You’re just going to go up to Archie Barrett’s place. I’m going to wait for you. That’s all it comes down to.”
That had left Hawkins looking uneasy, but Longarm had reassured him by saying that he was a crack shot. He said, “Look at it this way, Mr. Hawkins. If it’s you and Mr. Barrett and four riders, that’s six people and I’ve got a one out of six chance of hitting you.”
For a second, Hawkins stared at Longarm before he realized that his leg had been pulled. He said, “Aw shucks, Marshal. That kind of talk ain’t funny, especially from a man wearing a badge on his chest.”
Just before they were to leave, Longarm wanted the story about what happened to Mrs. Thompson’s husband, Milton.
It brought a somber look to Hawkins’s face. He said, “Maybe what happened to Milton Thompson is one of the main reasons I’m willing to go along with you on this foolishness. Milton was a good man. He came here and built this big house we’re sitting in right now—fortunately for his wife or she wouldn’t have a way to make her living—and he set about to make a community out of this place. He had some experience in banking and there were all these settlers coming in, most of them with little or no resources. They were a long way from the bank in Junction or the bank in Brady and certainly from the bank in Austin.
The man paused and looked at Longarm. “He proposed to set up a type of community bank. It wouldn’t have been a regular bank, not in the same terms that you would think of one. It would be one that everybody put in a little money—twenty-five dollars if you had it, fifty dollars if you had it, or one hundred dollars if you could. And then, they’d make loans to whoever was the most needy. It was a good idea, Marshal, the kind of idea that would have worked and the kind of idea that would have saved many of these settlers that were close to going under. Well, naturally, the Barretts and the Myerses didn’t like it at all. Not only that, he was going to put up a feed and grocery cooperative, staples, work clothes and such so that these settlers could kind of own that and be able to buy whatever they needed at the cheapest possible price instead of being held up by some of these townspeople here who are scared to death of the Barretts and the Myerses.”