“Gather up all his belongings, put them in the bag, and bring it,” said the sheriff.
“You bet.” One of the uniformed men turned away to do his bidding.
The sheriff said to another, “Question everyone in the house. See if anybody knows anything about him.”
“Yes, sir.” That man edged past the footboard and left the room.
Another moved forward and bent over Thatcher. His nose was bleeding. It and his eyes were beginning to swell. He was holding a shotgun, no doubt the one Thatcher had smacked into his face.
The man grinned with malice. “Thought you’d just drift into our town and haul off with one of our women? Think again, hotshot.”
Then he flipped the shotgun and smacked the butt of it against Thatcher’s skull. The blow hurt like hell and made his vision go dark and sparkly for a moment, but it didn’t knock him out.
“Hey, go easy, Harold,” the sheriff said. “We need him able to talk.”
He extended Thatcher his hand and helped him up. The man who’d struck him—Harold—watched smugly as Thatcher struggled to regain his equilibrium. He made blurry eye contact with the man he recognized by his gold pocket watch. He also was leering with self-satisfaction.
“I’m Sheriff Bill Amos. What’s your name?”
“Thatcher Hutton.”
The sheriff repeated his name as though committing it to memory, then gathered up the clothes Thatcher had hung on a wall hook before going to bed and passed them to him. “Get dressed.”
After he did, he was handcuffed. Then without further ado, the sheriff said, “Let’s go.”
Thatcher dug his heels in. “I have a right to know what you’re arresting me for.”
None of them seemed to think so. With the barrel of the shotgun against the base of his spine, he was prodded out of his room and into the hallway.
It seemed that he was the only boarder in the house who’d been taken unawares by the arrival of the posse. Everyone else had emerged from their rooms, all in pajamas or underwear, watching as the procession trooped down the two sets of stairs.
Few of them met Thatcher’s gaze directly, but the smart aleck, Randy, who earlier had heckled the older man on the porch, winked at him. And when Thatcher passed the flashy dresser who’d introduced himself to Randy as Chester Landry, he gave Thatcher a sly, speculative look as though they shared a dirty secret.
The landlady stood at the front door, arms crossed over her bony chest, lips tightly pursed. “Don’t expect no refund on your rent.”
Once outside, the sheriff dispatched all the deputies except Harold to “rejoin the search.” Thatcher asked, “The search for what?” but, again, he was ignored.
When Harold manhandled him into the officially marked automobile, he was showy with the shotgun, but careless with his gun belt, which was within easy reach of Thatcher’s cuffed hands. However, to go for the deputy’s pistol would be foolhardy. They would soon determine that they had the wrong man and release him. Until then, he’d go through the process without making more trouble for himself.
“Mayor, I guess you’ll have to ride with us,” the sheriff said, and the man Thatcher had met outside Hancock’s store—the mayor?—climbed in along with them.
* * *
Harold drove them to a single-story limestone building that headquartered the sheriff’s department. No one said anything during the brief ride. When they piled out of the car, the sheriff gripped Thatcher’s arm just above his elbow. Together they entered the building.
It smelled of cigarettes and scorched coffee. The main room was crowded with the standard desks, chairs, and filing cabinets of any law enforcement office. Wall-mounted gun racks were impressively stocked. Two large maps, one of the county, the other of the state, were tacked to the far wall, along with numerous wanted posters and a notice of a missing cow.
Seated in side-by-side chairs were a man in a deputy’s uniform and a man with a pale complexion, a dark five o’clock shadow, and wavy hair. The instant he saw Thatcher, he came hurtling toward him like he’d been shot from a cannon. If the deputy hadn’t acted swiftly to restrain him, Thatcher thought for sure the man would have gone for his throat.
“Gabe!” the sheriff barked. “None of that business. Scotty, haul him back and keep him back.”
“Yes, sir.”
Though the man resisted, the deputy managed to wrestle him back into the chair.
The mayor went over to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Found him sleeping like a baby, Gabe. Can