“Does he ever send deputies around?” Longarm asked, curious. “Or come around himself?”
Ownsby looked disgusted. “Hell, no. The sonofabitch said they wasn’t nobody going to go to a place where they was half a hundred able-bodied men and hold it up.” Ownsby leaned forward. “Well, they never come in no place where they was half a hundred able-bodied men.” He gestured around the small office. “They come in here, where the money was, and where they wasn’t nothin’ but a nice little lady to scare the hell out of!”
Mrs. Ownsby put her hand to her breast and looked toward the ceiling while she took a deep breath. She said, “Marshal, John and I got caught in a flood in a wagon that drowned the team in its traces, and I wasn’t nowhere near as scared as I was when them two men come in here waving guns around and demanding the money. Heavens, they didn’t have to demand it.” She gestured at the top of her desk. “It was all right here. All they had to do was lean down and pick it up.”
“How much was taken?” Longarm asked.
Before anyone could answer, the door opened from the outside and Otis Bodenheimer started in. Longarm wheeled in his chair. “Stay outside, Bodenheimer.”
The sheriff protested. “Hell, Marshal, this is my business. This done taken place in my county.”
“Couldn’t have happened nowhere else. So we agree about that. But I don’t want you in here. You get outside and tend to the electorate, especially men who have got money or stock coming. See if you can explain what happened to them.”
But Bodenheimer stood his ground. “I’m the sheriff here,” he said stoutly. “And this is my affair to handle. This is my business.”
Longarm stood up. “Bodenheimer, if you don’t get out of here I’m going to have to give Mister Ownsby an announcement to make to the crowd.”
Bodenheimer frowned. “What’s that?”
“I said I’d have to whisper a few words into Mister Ownsby’s ear that he could announce to the crowd.”
Bodenheimer was still frowning. “What, uh, kind of announcement?”
“That’s just the thing,” Longarm said. “You won’t know until it’s too late.”
Bodenheimer looked uncertain. “I ain’t right sure I’m following you.”
“What I’m saying, Bodenheimer, is once Ownsby tells the crowd what I got in mind, you’ll be running for your life.”
The sheriff took a step backward. “Now, hold on,” he said. “You better not go to spreadin’ no tales about me.”
“It won’t be a tale,” Longarm said. “Now, are you going to get out of here or do I send out Mister Ownsby?”
The sheriff looked back and forth from Longarm to Ownsby. “Why, why, YOU are threatening me with what I don’t know. That ain’t fair. I ain’t got no way of knowing what you might have Mister Ownsby say to that bunch. They be pretty upset, Marshal. Ain’t no time for rash doings.”
“Then I reckon you better get the hell out of here and talk to them yourself. That way you can control the situation.”
Bodenheimer blinked and felt behind him for the door handle. “Well, all right, Marshal, but you and I is got to have a little talk. We both on the same side.”
“Right now I want you on the other side of that door. That’s the only side I want you to be on. The other.”
“I’m goin’ then. Damned if I know what this is all about.”
Longarm watched, without a word, until Bodenheimer had let himself out and closed the door. Then he turned and sat back down in the chair.
“Now then,” he said, “how much did they get?”
But Ownsby was staring at Longarm. “What was that all about?”
Longarm shrugged. “Nothing.”
“First time I ever seen one lawman run off another one from the site of a theft. Strikes me as passing strange.”
“Maybe that’s because federal officers don’t do business the way you are used to your sheriff doing.”
Ownsby gave a snort. “That’s for damn shore. Any change in that direction would be a relief.”
Longarm said, “Now then, Mrs. Ownsby, can you tell me how much was taken?”
She fluttered her hands. “Well, I can’t say to the dollar, not until I get all of the sales receipts in from the man what runs the auction, the auctioneer.”
Ownsby said, “It was all the morning receipts. Them as had done their business and come in and paid Vera.” He nodded his head at his wife.
“Mrs. Ownsby. Whatever that figure come out to be. It will be a good piece of change.”
“More than, say, two thousand dollars?”
“Oh, good heavens, yes. Day like today, brisk as it was, it would be closer on to four thousand than two.”
Longarm shook his head slowly. “That’s a bunch of money to expect to find sitting out here in a grove of mesquite trees. Is it pretty common knowledge that ya’ll handle such funds out here?”
Ownsby pulled a face. “I wouldn’t say every Tom, Dick, or Harry knowed about it, but it wasn’t no secret. You come out here and stand around awhile and see a pen of horses go through and fetch a thousand dollars, and you see a man pay for them in cash, you’d kind of get the idea that we had some money behind the counter.”
“Yes, but doesn’t the man that sold the horses step up and take it right away?”
Ownsby shook his head. “Naw. Don’t work that way. First we got to remove our commission, and then we pay the seller by check. But it don’t happen one, two, three. Once the buyer has paid for his stock he goes around to inspect them. That all takes time. We don’t okay the sale until buyer and seller is satisfied. That’s what makes a auction barn different than trading out of a wagon on the town square. You never know what you’ll be getting there, but we guarantee the swap. And if the buyer pays by check, it’s us as stands to lose if his check ain’t no good. And that can hold up a trade. On some big checks with a buyer that ain’t from this part of the country or ain’t got no standing with us, why, we’ll hold up the trade until we can wire about the man’s check. And if a seller wants to be paid in cash, we will try and accommodate him.”
“They come around one o’clock. Wouldn’t they have gotten more money if they’d held up until, say, five?”
Ownsby shook his head. “Not necessarily. We shut down at about one, and don’t crank up again until three. By five o’clock, we might have paid off a lot of our sellers in cash and might have less money than at one o’clock.”
Longarm looked at Mrs. Ownsby. “Ma’am, I take it you were in here by yourself when the robbers called?”
She fluttered her hands in the air. “Oh, my stars, yes! My heart like to have stopped when they come through that door with them big guns in their hands.”
“How many were there?”
“They was only two come in here, but I could see they was about four more right outside the door.” She pointed at a little window beside the door. Longarm looked over his shoulder. He could see Bodenheimer and his deputies talking to a group of men. She said, “They was sitting their horses right by the door. One of them was holding the horses of the two who was in here a’robbin’ me.”
“How’d you know the men outside were robbers?”
“They was wearing bandannas ‘cross their faces just like the ones come in here, wasn’t they.”
“So the men that came in here had their faces covered?”