Hunter said, “Howdy Marshal.” He glanced over at Barrett. “I see you brought our visitor.”
Longarm looked at Barrett and saw that the man looked alarmed. Barrett said, “What the hell does he mean, his visitor? You’re not keeping me here. I am not staying in this man’s house. Marshal, you cannot do this.”
Longarm swung his leg over his saddle and dismounted. He said, “Get down, Barrett. You can rest your legs for a while, and you can also rest that mouth of yours.”
“I’m not getting off this horse.”
Longarm walked around the flank of his own horse and approached Barrett with his rifle reversed and the butt end facing the chunky man. He said, “Get down or get knocked off that horse. Take your choice. I’ll give you about one second to decide.”
Barrett began to cuss, but he also swung his leg over and dismounted with a grunt. He was heftier than Longarm had thought at first. It was clear that he hadn’t done much hard work in some time. Tom Hunter said, “I’ve got a room all ready for him.”
“Did Mr. Goodman and his boy get here?” Longarm said.
“Yeah, they’re getting their stock settled.”
Barrett swung around to face both of them. He said, “What the hell is going on? What are you playing at? If you are trying something that you will be sorry for, I promise you I will make you sorry for it. You are not going to detain me here.”
Longarm said, “Walk on into the house, Mr. Barrett, or else we’ll carry you in. It makes no difference to me, one way or the other.”
With Tom Hunter and Hawkins following, Longarm shoved Archie Barrett into the front room of the cabin. It was dim and cool. Longarm said over his shoulder to Hunter, “Which way?”
“Straight ahead. There’s a small room that my wife used to use for sewing and whatnot. It’s bare now. She took what furniture and other little items she could with her. Got a good stout door on it and the windows are mighty small. I think it would take a hell of a big window to get his fat butt out.”
Longarm shoved Barrett ahead of him and to the right and through a door that opened into a room that was about ten feet by ten feet. There was a window in each of the two outside walls, but they were up high and as Tom had said, they were small. There was a chair and a table in the room and a wash basin and a pitcher of water. There was nothing else.
Longarm looked around and said, “Fine. This ought to do it.” He backed out and pulled the heavy wooden door shut behind him and then turned the key in the lock. On the other side, he heard a sudden yell and a stream of curses.
He turned around and smiled at Tom Hunter and at Hawkins. He said, “Now, I think we’ll let him cool out for a while and let him meditate on his sins.”
Tom Hunter said, “How long do you reckon?”
“Oh, all night for certain, and that with no supper.”
“Do you reckon we ought to put a bucket in there for him?”
“There’s a pitcher, ain’t there? And a wash bowl?”
“Yeah, but that’s for him to drink and wash his face.”
Longarm shrugged. “Hell, he can take his choice.”
The men sat talking for a few minutes. Tom Hunter started frying up some bacon and beans. In a little while, the two Goodmans came in. If Longarm hadn’t been told different, he would have thought they were brothers rather than father and son. They were both on the smallish side. Longarm guessed they each weighed somewhere between one hundred and forty and one hundred and fifty pounds. They were square built with square shoulders and square hands and thick necks and they both looked very solid and very capable. The father, Robert, was not quite as blond as his son, but his eyes were equally blue. The son, Rufus, had a little thinner face, but Longarm reckoned it would square up to match his father’s when a few years had passed.
While the bacon was frying, they sat around the big table and discussed the matter at hand. As best as he could, Longarm explained his plan. Tom Hunter was the most enthusiastic. The Goodmans seemed to have a number of doubts. Robert Goodman said, “I don’t see how you’re going to be able to force him to keep his word. That’s what I don’t see.”
Longarm said, “You leave that part to me. That’s law work. And by the way, speaking of law work, Mr. Hawkins here is already sworn in as an auxiliary deputy marshal. Y’all three are now sworn in as auxiliary deputy marshals.”
Rufus, the son, said, “Ain’t we supposed to hold up our hands or something?”
Longarm gave him a dry look. He said, “Son, it ain’t the ceremony that counts. But do understand this: you are now duly constituted law officers, and you’ve got to act within the law, whatever you do. I’m responsible for you, so I’m going to make damned sure that you don’t misuse it. But, being within the law, whatever you do will be legal.”
Rufus said, jerking his head toward the room where Archie Barrett was still yelling at the top of his voice, “Is what you’re doing with that fellow in there inside the law?”
Longarm said, “Son, whatever I do is within the law. That don’t apply to all of y’all, but it applies to me.”
Mr. Hawkins said, “You’re pretty easy with that law. You kind of make it up as you go along?”
“Why, Mr. Hawkins, how can you make such a statement?”
Hawkins shook his head. “Because you have shanghaied me. I’m not even supposed to be here, and now you’re laying out plans that are going to keep me here four or five more days. What am I supposed to tell my company? That I’ve quit them and gone into law work?”
Longarm said, “I’ll give you a note for your boss. It’ll make it all right.”
But it was Robert Goodman who said what Longarm thought needed to be said: “Well, Marshal, I don’t have any idea if this plan of yours will work, either, but I do know there ain’t many ways that these folks can be got at, and your way sounds as good as any I can think of if you give me ten years to think of it. What’s important to me and to Rufus and to Tom is that somebody from the outside is trying to help us. The way it was before is that we’ve been sitting down here being picked off one by one. They’ve took the weak ones and now they are down to just us. We haven’t succumbed so easy, but it would be just a matter of time before they wiped us out. The only reason they haven’t just massacred the bunch of us is that I figure that it would have caused so much of a ruckus that maybe even somebody in the state capital would have cared. I’m with you, me and Rufus, all the way, and I appreciate what you’re doing.”
Longarm said, “Thank you, Mr. Goodman. We’ll just roll the dice and see what happens.”
Tom Hunter said, “One thing’s for certain: it can’t be no worse than what it was. I was about a week from up and leaving.”
Robert Goodman added, “I doubt if we would have lasted the week. We’re down to eight cows. We couldn’t have gone on much longer.”
Tom Hunter got up to turn the bacon over and to stir the beans. Hawkins said, cocking an ear toward the room they had Archie Barrett in, “He is kicking up a ruckus, ain’t he?”
Rufus said, “Marshal Long, you just plan to starve him down? Just hold him down until he comes to his senses?”
Longarm said, “That’s the only way I can do it, son. I don’t know of any other way.”
The boy said with a grim look, “How about you just turn me loose in there and lock the door behind me? I reckon I can get him to agree to just about anything, and it’ll take a hell of a lot less time.”
Longarm laughed. He said, “Yeah, we could take some skin off him, but not right off the bat. Let’s do it this way for a while and see how it looks. I have a feeling he won’t be too hard a nut to crack. He looks a might on the soft side to me.”
Hawkins nodded his head on his scrawny neck. “Archie Barrett might have been a pretty hard man at one time in his life, but that’s long since past. He couldn’t drink black coffee now if there was a prize for it. He’s got to have cream for his coffee and butter for his bread. Hell, I bet he can’t even eat corn bread. He eats nothing but light bread now. No, he’s soft, Marshal. He’s soft, but how willing he is to give in to the kind of demands you’re going to put on him, I don’t know.”