How long they rode along the road, he had no idea, but then abruptly they began to slow and made a turn to the right. Now he could tell they were going into rough country. Occasionally he could hear the clink of an iron horseshoe on a rock, and then the country began to rise, then drop and rise again. Each motion caught him off guard and without the supporting hands he would have been thrown from the saddle.
Longarm asked, “Where the hell are we bound for? We are, for certain, out in the rough country.”
There was no answer. The horses had been brought down to a walk now, but it was a hard forced walk and he could tell that they were winding their way down through rough and broken country by the way they turned left for a distance and then right and then back to the left. He could feel the terrain rise and fall and rise and fall. It seemed to him that the general incline of the land was upward. There were hills south of Nuevo Laredo, he knew, and he expected that they had passed into them and were winding their way through the peaks and valleys. He didn’t know how much time had passed, but he knew the sun was falling low in the sky. The air was cooling. It wasn’t long before dusk. By now, he had grown numb through the shoulders and upper chest. It wasn’t exactly a relief but it was better than the sharp ache he had borne through most of the ride.
For the last hour or so no one had spoken, even when he’d asked a direct question. It was as if, by their silence, they were further obscuring the trail to the place where they were leading him. He had asked several times for a drink of whiskey but no one had answered. The only sounds he heard were the creak of saddles and the clink of horseshoes and the occasional snort of a horse. He wasn’t actually afraid, but he felt he had no control of his own destiny. They had taken him so suddenly and so unawares so that he had no insight into the minds of the men who were leading him to an uncertain fate somewhere. Where, he knew not. The combination made him slightly nervous but he kept reminding himself that he had been in tight places before and he had always managed, somehow, to get free and to come away mostly unharmed.
It seemed they had reached a level place, at least for the last fifteen minutes or so as the horses had been walking on flat ground. He asked, “Are we nearly there?”
No one answered.
“Ya’ll aren’t exactly the most talkative bunch I’ve been around.”
No one answered and no one laughed.
Longarm lapsed into silence after that. A slight breeze had sprung up and was blowing directly into his face, leading him to believe they were headed west now since a westwardly wind was the generally prevailing breeze in that part of the country at that time of the year. He calculated in his mind that they must have gone some ten to fifteen miles south and then curved around west another two or three. He had no idea how much farther they were going to travel. Behind the blackness of the blindfold, it was impossible to tell if it were night or day but he had the impression that full dark had not come.
As he was giving thought to what he could do, the party abruptly stopped. For a moment, they were marching along on horseback and then next they were dead-still. It felt curious to Longarm. His body felt as if he was still riding forward even though his brain told him they had come to a stop. A moment later he felt hands taking hold of him, pulling him out of the saddle. When they stood him on his feet, he was unsteady and almost lost his balance, but quick hands held him upright. The Mexican to his right said, “Now you walk, please.”
His legs felt numb from the hips down and they had to half carry him as he stumbled along in the direction they indicated. After ten yards or so, they brought him to a halt and one of them told him to step up with his right leg. He did so as best as he could, half stumbling up what he took to be a set of steps. He felt hard tile or rock beneath his feet and he guessed he was on a porch of some kind. He was walked forward three more paces and then he heard a door creak open. From the sound, it was a big heavy wooden door. He was pushed through and then he felt smooth hard tile under the soles of his boots. They started him forward again, and as the circulation gradually returned to his legs he was able to walk without the fear of turning an ankle. They walked ahead for what he took to be five or six paces, then turned him to the right, then the left for another few paces and then finally back to the right again. He could tell, even through the blindfold, that he was in a dark place. It seemed to him to be a big empty house of some kind. After a walk through what he took to be a long hallway, they stopped. He could hear the sound of a key being fitted into a lock and then he could hear the sound of another heavy door opening. He was pushed forward. The hands holding him let go and he stumbled and almost fell to his knees. In time, he recovered and then stood there, not certain what to do.
Behind him, Mr. Brown suddenly spoke for the first time in a long while. He said, “Marshal Long, I’m sure you’ve got a lot of questions, but I’m afraid you’re not going to get many answers. We’re going to hold you in this place for however long our plan takes. I want you to know that we are going to do our best to treat you as well as we can. You’ll be given good food, good whiskey. You’ll be allowed to keep your smokes and your matches. You’ll have a good bed. There’s a couple of windows through which you can get fresh air.” Mr. Brown laughed slightly. “The air will come in but you can’t go out. As I said, we are going to do our best to keep you as comfortable as we can. I don’t know how long this confinement will last, that’s not going to depend on me. We’ll even furnish you with a woman, if it gets down to that.”
Longarm asked, “Mr. Brown, you have me confused as hell. Just what are you holding me for? What do you hope to gain by keeping me in confinement, as you call it, here?”
Mr. Brown answered quietly, “We are going to try to arrange with the proper authorities in the United States to swap you for Earl Combs.”
Chapter 3
The words so caught Longarm off balance that he involuntarily took a step backward and almost fell over. A quick hand caught him in time and steadied him on his feet. With astonishment on his face, he asked, “Brown, have you lost your damn mind?”
Mr. Brown said, “I don’t think so.”
Longarm said, “I can tell you right now that the United States government, and especially the federal bank, is not going to swap one U.S. deputy marshal for a man that embezzled two hundred thousand dollars.”
“Well, we think different, Marshal. You’ve got quite a reputation. You’re a well-known man and we expect this information to get into the newspapers and create quite an uproar. We think the government will see their way clear to trading Earl Combs for you.”
Longarm said, “If you didn’t sound so damn serious, I’d bust out laughing.”
Brown said, “Oh, you can depend on it, Marshal. We’re serious. Dead serious.”
Longarm grimaced. “When you say ‘dead,’ I reckon that you’re talking about me.”
Mr. Brown said, “We hope it doesn’t come to that, Marshal. We’d much rather have Mr. Combs back because Mr. Combs knows where he hid the two hundred thousand dollars. We’d much rather have the money than you, as you can well understand.”
Longarm shook his head sadly. He said, “You haven’t got a chance. There is no way in hell the United States government is going to make a trade like that. Hell, the village idiot on his first horse trade would know better than that. No, sir. You’ve got the stick by the wrong end. Those folks are going to die laughing at you.”
“Well, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”
Longarm asked, “What are you going to do when they tell you to go to hell?”
Mr. Brown paused for a second and then said coolly, “I guess we’ll start sending them pieces of you.”
Now Longarm paused. “What exactly do you mean by that? Pieces of me?”