As an afterthought, when they started around the saloon, Longarm called to Spud. "You. That gray over at the hitch rail's my horse. Get him and lead him along with us. The rest of you hold up right here till he brings the critter up."
As in most of the towns he'd seen wherever his cases took him, Longarm found that the Los Perros jail also included an outer office for the sheriff and a lean-to or ell for his living quarters. As they entered, Sheriff Tucker let out a bellow.
"Wahonta! Git out here with some hot water and rags! There's a hurt man I want you to tend to!"
Judging by her name and appearance, Longarm placed the girl who responded to the summons as an Apache. She looked surprisingly young, though as was always the case with women of the Southwestern Indian tribes, her age was hard to judge. She had the Apache stockiness of build, short legs, wide hips and shoulders, and the square tribal face that would broaden and flesh out as she grew older. Yet she had about her the bloom of extreme youth as well as the quick, springy step of the very young. Longarm guessed what her relationship with the sheriff was, and made a mental note to confirm his hunch when he had time. Right now there were more important things to do.
He said to the men carrying the prisoner, who was beginning to twitch and moan, but still wasn't fully conscious, "One of you at a time, take off your gunbelts and hang 'em on those pegs on the wall." In sullen silence, the deputies obeyed. Spud wore no gunbelt. "Now all three of you take that fellow back in the jail and put him on a bunk." Tucker, after a moment of indecision, started to follow his men. Longarm said, "Not you, Sheriff. You stand right where you are." To Wahonta he said, "You go in, too. Fix up that man's back as good as you can." The Apache girl looked questioningly at the sheriff, who nodded. Then she followed the men into the first cell.
Longarm swung the Winchester's muzzle in Tucker's general direction. "Lock 'em up."
"Now, wait a minute~" Tucker began.
Longarm cut him short. "Lock 'em up, I said!"
Tucker glared, but took a key ring from the wall peg on which it hung and locked the cell door. It was crowded in the cell, even with Morton stretched out facedown on the cot that was the cubicle's sole piece of furniture. Longarm held out a hand for the key ring. The sheriff handed it over.
"Now, then," Longarm told the thin-lipped Tucker, "let's you and me go in there" — he indicated the door by which Wahonta had entered — "and have us a little private confab."
Chapter 5
Sheriff Tucker pushed his hat back on his head as he and Longarm went into the ell attached to the jail building, and Longarm got his first really close look at the man's face. It wasn't one to inspire confidence. Tucker's eyes were narrow slits set in puffs of fat. His lips were a wide, crooked slash that turned down at the corners above a once-firm chin that was now half-buried in a set of double chins bulging below it. He wore a Burnside beard — a heavy mustache that crept around his cheeks and clean-shaven jaw to merge with full, flowing muttonchop whiskers. His nose veered back and forth between brow and tip, evidence that the sheriff had at one time been a man prone to indulge in fistfighting. Longarm revised Lieutenant Bryant's estimate of Tucker's age. He'd bet the man would never see fifty again, and might well be past fifty-five.
Tucker asked again, "Who in hell are you, to come bustin' into town like you did and get in the way of the law bein' enforced?"
"I might just argue with you about that whipping being according to law," Longarm replied. "Fellow I was talking to before it got started said you're sheriff and judge both, here in Los Perros."
"Well? What if I am? Somebody's got to keep the damn town in line."
"Makes me wonder just whose laws you're talking about, though. Your own, or the state's, or the U.S.'s."
"We don't worry about little things like that around here. We do what we got to, to keep things quiet."
"What kinda things?"
"Damn it, man, you know what I'm talkin' about. Lawlessness in general."
Choosing his words carefully, Longarm said, "The way I look on it, laws made up to suit special cases is worse'n no law at all."
"An expert on the law, are you?" Tucker challenged.
"Nope. Never claimed to be that. Let's just say I got my own ideas. And when push comes to shove, I figure my ideas are as good as the next man's."
"You still ain't told me who you are."
"Name's Custis~"
Before Longarm could finish, the sheriff spoke quickly. "Custis? Now, that's a real fine old Virginia name. Fought on the side of right during the war, I suppose?"
"I suppose." Longarm didn't need to ask which side Tucker meant. The sheriff's Southern accent told him that.
"Who'd you fight under?"
"Depends on when. I rode with more'n one, while I was serving. "
"Did you now? You want to name me names?"
"I disremember things like names, sometimes. Especially when I figure somebody's getting too nosy."
"Look here, Custis, it ain't nothing to be ashamed about, being on the side that lost. Hell, I'm real proud to say I rode with Quantrill, back then."
Tucker's naming of the notorious guerrilla fighter, far more outlaw than soldier, told Longarm perhaps more than the sheriff had intended. It also changed his mind about revealing that he was a deputy U.S. marshal, at least for the time being. Letting Tucker think he was a bullying opportunist with more brass than brains might serve his purpose better. Instead of commenting on the sheriff's revelation of his past history, Longarm merely nodded.
"Now, you might wonder why I told you about myself," Tucker went on. "Fact is, I got a good thing goin' here, have had for a pretty fair spell, and I don't aim to let some owlhoot drifter mess things up for me. Which is what you come close to doin' when you busted up that whippin'."
"Maybe my stomach ain't as strong as it used to be," Longarm offered mildly.
"I don't know about your stomach, but I got to say I like your nerve. Ain't many men'd have enough sand in their craw to call a play the way you did."
"That wasn't much, Sheriff. I didn't look for sensible men to argue with a cocked and loaded Winchester, no matter how fast they might be with a Colt."
"You feel like tellin' me why you showed up in Los Perros?" When Longarm said nothing, but just continued to look at the sheriff with his steel-blue eyes, Tucker asked, "You're on the dodge, ain't you? Law's after you someplace up the line — San Antone, maybe, or El Paso. Fort Worth? Galveston?"
"Now, seeing as you're the law here, or say you are, you don't expect me to answer a fool question like that, do you?" Longarm was curious to find out how far he could prod the sheriff before he'd balk.
"Not unless you got less brains than I give you credit for." Tucker paused, studying Longarm closely. "If it'll make you feel any better, I ain't interested enough to find out. But it's got to be that, or you're lookin' for somebody that's got your dander up, on the prod to gun him down."
"Let's leave it stand that I'm just traveling."
"If that's how you want it." The sheriff frowned thoughtfully. "It could be something else, a-course. You might be carrying a badge. Or you might've been with a bunch that got busted up, and lookin' to make a new connection."
"Like I said, Sheriff, let's say I'm just traveling."
"You'll be plannin' to move on, then." Tucker wasn't asking a question. Longarm understood that, and got the warning message that the statement implied.