Longarm shot him an irritated glance, but Diver heaved himself up out of his chair. “Oh, hell, yes. Two things we ain’t ever been short of, vittles and children. We might as well be sociable about this matter.” He took a step or two toward a door and hollered, “Robert! Robert! Get in here!” Then to Longarm and Austin Davis he said, “I’ll get Robert to lay out some supper and we’ll eat in the kitchen. Be shore and bring your whiskey.”
Robert laid out slices of ham with green beans and mashed potatoes and gravy. They did not talk while they ate. Even Diver allowed as how he hadn’t quite gotten his fill the first time around and he’d give it another go. But finally they finished. Robert brought cups and the coffeepot, set them on the table, and then left the kitchen.
Longarm said, “Dalton, I still don’t understand how you managed to be sure the man you wanted killed would get killed. Did Vince shoot them in the back?”
Diver waved his hand. “Oh, no. Vince would never do nothing like that. Naw, what he done was he sent Dan Hicks in ahead of time to the job. Then when the party rode up Dan done his work. It was good for the place they was robbing. It would make the local law look good. They’d always take credit for the kill. Made the folks that was robbed feel like they’d got something in return.”
“I see,” Longarm said dryly. “But what about the local boys? How come you started using them?”
Dalton Diver shrugged. “Well, hell, they was wanting to marry my daughters too. Only they didn’t have no money. So I said to Vince he ought to give the home folks a chance, and he did.” He suddenly frowned. “That reminds me about Amos Goustwhite. He owed me some money. He was set on marrying Rebeccah and had been paying a little as he went. They robbed the auction barn and he was on his way over here to give me three hundred dollars when some sonofabitch shot him.”
Longarm looked at Austin Davis and smiled grimly. “Yeah, I reckon it was a sonofabitch that shot him. Mister Goustwhite had the bad luck to get in an altercation with Marshal Smith here. Next day he tried to bushwhack him. Didn’t work.”
Dalton Diver glanced at Austin Davis and frowned slightly. “Well, I guess if it was in the line of duty … Guess I ain’t got no complaint.”
Longarm said, “But that don’t explain Gus Home, or Gus White. I killed him, and he had some of that score from the auction barn robbery on him. How come he didn’t get killed right after he married Hannah?”
Dalton Diver paused to pour some whiskey in his cup. “Well, that was a kind of strange circumstance. They was heading for the town of Miles to do a robbery when Gus got throwed by his horse and broke a leg. A nearby family took him in and he was laid up quite a spell. I told Vince I needed more money from Gus on account of the delay. Hell, I could have had Hannah married twice more in the time he was laying up. So Vince let him in on that auction robbery. You say he was going to Hannah when you killed him?”
“He was right in the middle of the river.”
Diver shook his head. “Well that just wasn’t right. He should have come by here and paid what he owed before he went near her. And he knew it too.”
Austin Davis said, “I don’t understand Vince robbing the auction barn. That involved a lot of folks from Mason. I would expect that stirred up a hornet’s nest.”
Diver made a face and shook his head. “That was all Vince’s doing. I done my best to talk him out of it, but he wouldn’t have it. He had it in for Ownsby, and the man is dead lucky he wasn’t in that office when Vince walked in to rob it. And I mean dead lucky.”
“What did Vince have against Ownsby?”
“Well, I’ll tell you. Some few months back Vince carried a bunch of horses to the barn and wanted to sell them. Ownsby said they was stolen and he wouldn’t touch the deal. Well, of course they was stolen. Every damn one of them had a different brand. Man acted like he didn’t know what was going on. The upshot of it was he took the horses and notified their rightful owners. Made Vince good and mad, I can tell you that.”
Austin Davis said, “Nobody was killed there. In fact, the lady claimed it was Vince riding the paint.”
Diver nodded. “Yeah, he done that. He didn’t want everybody getting on to the fact that that was a hearse horse. So sometimes, when it was a short haul and nobody to be left behind, either him or Dan Hicks would ride the horse.”
“Which brings up something I don’t understand, Mister Diver.” Longarm took a moment to figure out what he wanted to ask. “You only had four daughters getting married. But there were a lot more men got killed on the jobs than just them.”
Diver nodded vigorously. “Yessir, and that is a fact and one I’m more than just a little proud of. See, word was getting around about what a good thing Vince and Dan had going. So some of them border ruffians got to insisting they be brought in on the jobs. Well, Vince seen he couldn’t refuse them without raising hard feelings. So he took ‘em in—one at a time. Naturally, they got to ride the pinto. Wasn’t long before them trashy felons wasn’t so all-fired interested in joining up. I figure we done the whole country a good service by ridding it of some mighty undesirable folks. Wouldn’t you say that was a fact?”
Longarm glanced away and shook his head. He said, “Mister Diver, some of your reasoning just gets right on by me.”
“Yeah,” Austin Davis said. “What about this Jim Squires? He married one of your daughters, and I’d bet you horseshoes to half-dollars he ain’t dead.”
Diver’s face suddenly went beet red. He pointed an outraged finger at Austin Davis and said, “Now there, if there ever was a case called for law work, he is one! I let that young villain marry my daughter Salome without payin’ the full bride price. Put half down. The understanding was he was to go off on a job and bring me the balance of the money, but that hellion never even meant to stick to his bargain. Right after the marriage ceremony the gang took off for Fredricksburg, and that scalawag peeled off from the bunch and hurried right back to Salome and went to dipping his biscuit in the gravy! Now, tell me that ain’t crooked! An’ I ain’t got my money yet. That damn fool daughter of mine up and fell in love with the fool, and I might as well consider her just a dead loss. I’ve complained about it to Vince, but he just laughs. Now, if you are here to bring justice to this affair, I’d like to commend your eyesight to that bit of thievery!”
Longarm and Austin Davis tried to keep straight faces, but it was hard going. Longarm cleared his throat and said, “Mister Diver, let’s get back to this other business. I take it that some of this money was being brought back to the county. Other than what was given you for your daughters, how did the county get any good out of the robbery proceeds?”
“Why, through the bank. I thought you was on to that.”
“How did that work?”
“Well, Vince give Ernest Crouch part of every job, and Crouch put it in the bank and then distributed it around the county by making loans.” He shifted his eyes around as if to keep from being overheard and said furtively, “Though I got to tell you there has been more than a little dissatisfaction on that score. Lot of folks think Crouch has been charging some mighty high interest rates, up to eight percent. It’s left some ranchers and farmers where all they can do is pay off the interest, let alone touch the principal on their loans. But I reckon costly money is better than no money at all, which is what we had before this scheme got started.”
“How much has Vince turned over to the bank so far?”
Diver frowned. “Well, I ain’t exactly sure, but Vince says it is somewhere about fifty thousand dollars.”
“is that half of what the bunch has robbed and stole?”