Before they could move, Bodenheimer said, his voice trembling, “Marshal, we ain’t done no wrong. And you can’t prove we did.”
Longarm stared at him for a long moment. Finally he said, “Otis, now you have taken to insulting my intelligence. To begin with, you’ve had a bandit operating around here for a couple of years who rode a damn paint horse. Otis, nobody rides a paint that has very far to go or has to go very fast. If you can’t catch a bandit riding a paint horse, then you ought not to be in office. And then you had the gall to call me out on that wild-goose chase to the other side of the county. You must think I am a damn fool. Otis, if you are not directly involved with that gang, then you are dumber than I think you are, and that is pretty damn dumb indeed. I hope they have made it worth your while, because you and your cousin and your nephew are going to spend a lot of time in Kansas, and not the prettiest part of the state either. Now get the hell back in those cells before I consider that you are all three trying to escape and have to shoot you in the attempt!”
He sat down at the sheriff’s desk and put his boots up while Purliss, reluctantly and timidly, escorted the three men back to cells behind the office. Longarm could hear doors clanging and keys jangling and a few curses. He was frankly amazed that no one had called out Bodenheimer before. Surely all the people in the county couldn’t be so dumb as not to see that they weren’t exactly getting their money’s worth from the sheriff.
Of course Longarm was of the opinion that the situation went a good deal deeper than just the sheriff. He didn’t know how he was going to go about digging into the heart of the matter, but it had to be done.
Though it could only be done if the good citizens of Mason County wanted it done, and he wasn’t so sure they did. He had a feeling that most everyone in the county knew what was going on and approved. Mason was a poor county, and had damn little industry or commerce. Goat raising was about the only moneymaker. That and fugitive harboring, he told himself. It might well be that making a hideout for a gang of bandits was such an important part of the economy that public opinion would be against jailing the members of the gang. He didn’t, for the moment, quite know how he was going to handle that part. But he had a pretty good idea that the robbery at the auction barn might have changed public opinion in a big way. Now the outlaws had gone to stealing local money. That was a horse of a different color—and in this case, a horse of many different colors. He sat there in the chair, listening to Purliss completing his task, and admitted to himself that he wouldn’t have bothered locking the sheriff up before. No jury would convict him, and he would be back outside damn near before you could roll and smoke a cigarette. But the robbery of the auction house had changed all that. He doubted that Bodenheimer would be very popular, even with his own kin.
Melvin Purliss came back into the office, shutting the iron-bound door that led back to the cells behind him. He hung the big ring of keys up carefully, and then stood uncertainly looking at Longarm.
Longarm glanced up at him. “What?”
Purliss shifted from one foot to the other. “Marshal, I ain’t right shore I feel right about this. I ain’t never heered of arresting the sheriff before.”
Longarm waved a hand at him. “Done all the time, Melvin. All the time. I’d hate to count all the sheriffs I’ve arrested in my time. Otis ain’t the first crooked one I come across. But this time it might be for his own good. When word gets around that a lot of citizens lost money out there at the auction barn, they are going to come looking for Bodenheimer. He might be well off inside a jail cell. Hard to hang a man in there. Ceiling ain’t high enough.”
Purliss took his hat off and scratched at his hair. “You reckon the shur’ff knowed about that robbery in advance?”
Longarm gave Purliss a slanted look. He brought his feet to the floor and stood up. “Yeah, I think Bodenheimer knew about the robbery.” He reached out a blunt forefinger and touched the deputy in the chest. “I ain’t all that sure, Melvin, that you didn’t know about it.”
Purliss opened his mouth, looking a little pale at Longarm’s sudden announcement. He said, stuttering slightly, “Tha-tha-that ain’t true, Marshal. I ain’t never knowed nothin’. I am completely ignorant!”
Longarm laughed. “If you say so, Melvin.” He started toward the door, then stopped and looked back. “I’ll probably know before you do whether you need me or not, but if you do, I’m going to stay in town tonight. I’ll either be at the hotel or the Elite Saloon playing poker.”
“What’ll I do while I go home fer supper?”
Longarm was about to open the front door of the jail. He looked back. “Oh, you can’t go home to supper, Melvin. In fact you can’t leave this jailhouse.”
Melvin’s mouth fell open. “Wha-what-what am I supposed to do. I mean my wife ain’t-“
“I’ll get them to send you supper over from the hotel dining room. That reminds me. I need to tell them they got three more prisoners to feed.”
“But-but, Marshal. My wife. I can’t stay up here all night!”
Longarm gave him a grave look. “Melvin, if they come in the middle of the night, some mob with a lynch rope, you got to be here to stop them until I can come over and help you. No, Deputy, you are in to stay.”
He walked out the door, shutting it behind him, leaving the deputy staring after him, his mouth open. As Longarm stepped across the dusty street to the hotel on the other side of the courthouse square, he thought, “Take that, you little sonofabitch. I bet you’ll give it some thought before you go to busting in on me at the wrong time again.”
The thought of Hannah made him pause in mid-stride and look in the direction of the river. It wasn’t but a couple of miles to her cabin, and he didn’t reckon it was much past eight o’clock. And he had told her he’d be back that evening and she’d cook supper. He’d deliberately left his horse in front of the sheriff’s office on the chance he might need the animal later. He’d planned to eat supper at the hotel and then move his horse over to the front of the Elite Saloon. If things were still quiet later on he would take the horse to the livery stable.
So all he had to do was retrace his steps to the front of the jail and mount up, and twenty minutes later he’d be at Hannah’s cabin. But it didn’t feel right. There could be trouble in town over Bodenheimer, either because he’d been arrested or because he hadn’t been hung. Longarm couldn’t very well leave Melvin Purliss to face such a situation. No, the best idea was to see what transpired during the night. He could go out to Hannah’s sometime the next morning. Anyway, the older he got, the more of a morning man he was becoming. He shrugged and continued on across the lawn of the courthouse with the big, stone, two-story building rising up to his left. It was a mighty imposing edifice, a little over-built for a county such as Mason that didn’t have that much courthouse business. But Longarm figured the contractor who’d built the courthouse was a member of one of the big families, and he’d been able to milk it for all it was worth. So he had just kept constructing and constructing and constructing.
Longarm went into the hotel and got his key. He had a front room on the ground floor with a bed that was less lumpy than most he’d slept in.
But what distinguished Mason’s sole hotel was its dining room. The food was surprisingly good, and Longarm went directly there, having washed his face and hands. He could have used a shave and he could have used a bath, but he didn’t have a needful feeling for either. He’d get slicked up before he went out to Hannah’s the next day. What he mainly wanted to do was to get some supper eaten and then get over to the Elite Saloon and see if a certain gent was sitting in at the poker game. For two nights in a row he had won Longarm’s money, and Longarm was getting just a little tired of it. Besides, the man, a visitor to the area, had a kind of smart-aleck smirk about him that Longarm didn’t care for one little bit. And then there was the question of what the man was doing in Mason County just when the outlaw gang was running wild. It was, Longarm thought, about time he and the stranger had a little talk.