Craig Johnson: Kindness Goes Unpunished

He snatched it up on the second ring; it was his signature. “It’s another beautiful day at the Red Pony Bar and continual soiree.”

“Can we leave early?”

“No.”

I hung up. There wasn’t any reason to argue; I’d lose. I stared at the old Seth Thomas clock on the wall, thought of my packed bags by the door of my cabin, and sighed.

I punched the first number on my automatic dialing system and listened to the phone ring one thousand nine hundred thirty-six and one quarter miles away, to the place where my heart was on sabbatical.

“Schomberg, Calder, Dallin, and Rhind. Cady Longmire’s office; can I help you?”

Patti with an “i.” “Hi, Patti, you guys are working late.”

“Yo, Sheriff. We’ve got a brief that has to be filed by tomorrow. How’s things out in the Wild West?”

I leaned back in my chair and set my hat on my desk. “Uninteresting.” I threw my feet up, something I rarely did, and almost flipped over backward. I grabbed the edge of the desk to steady myself. “Is ‘The Greatest Legal Mind of Our Time’ available?”

There was a clicking noise and the phone rang half a ring before she picked up. Near as I could figure, Schomberg, Calder, Dallin, and Rhind were getting their collective money’s worth. “Cady Longmire.”

I smiled in spite of myself; she sounded so grown up. “You’re a punk.”

There was silence on the line for a moment, then a slightly plaintive voice. “Have you left yet?”

“No, the Indian isn’t packed.”

Another short silence. “Is he still carrying the photographic find of the century around in hatboxes?”

“Probably. What’s this stuff about bringing my sidearm?”

A quick sigh of exasperation. “I told you about it. Devon and I go to this shooting club over on Spring Garden on Thursday nights.”

I was bored and decided to use up a little time arguing. “Why?”

Another, longer, silence. “It’s something to do, Daddy. Don’t start making judgments.”

“I’m not. I just don’t understand why you and a bunch of lawyers feel compelled to go out and shoot things on Thursday nights.”

“We don’t ‘feel compelled’ and we don’t ‘shoot things.’ We go to a registered firing range, where we take out our secured weapons from the locked trunks of our cars, apply for our assigned ammunition, and shoot paper targets under the careful eye of a licensed instructor. He’s an old fart, an Army guy like you.”

“Marines.”

“Whatever.” She sniffed and got soft again. “I just thought you could meet him. It would be nice.”

“Is this a Devon thing?”

Her voice turned sharp. “Bring your gun or don’t. You’re being impossible, and I have to go.”

I looked at the phone. “I’ll bring it.”

“Whatever.”

The phone went dead in my hand. I put my feet back down, placed the receiver on the cradle, and thought about how I was making friends and influencing people. I thought about closing my door and taking a nap but, when I looked up, a tall, slim young man with sandy hair was looking at me through the doorway. “Sheriff Longmire?”

“Yep.”

“I’m Chuck Frymyer.” I stared at him. “About the job in Powder Junction?”

I motioned for him to sit down and pulled his file from the pile on my desk. Only a month earlier, we couldn’t get two deputies to rub together, but now we’d had over a dozen applications for the job. Frymyer had the most experience, with two years in Sheridan County.

I looked at the young man’s application; he was way over-qualified. I glanced back up at him. “You do realize that this job is our equivalent of the French Foreign Legion?”

“Sir?”

I tossed the file back on my desk. “You’re going to be out in the middle of nowhere. Have you ever been to Powder Junction?”

“I’ve driven through it, on the highway.”

“Under the best of weather conditions, it takes me forty-five minutes to get down there, so I need deputies who can take care of themselves and the southern part of this county.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t call me sir.” I looked at him a while longer and figured that, like “Beau” Geste, he must have his own reasons for wanting to go off to the end of the world; it probably had to do with a woman, but maybe that was the romantic in me. With his two years of patrol duty, he’d be a nice addition to Double Tough, the other deputy I had down there. “You’re sure you want to do this?”

He smiled. “Yes.”

I stood up and stuck out a hand. “You may curse me for it later, but you’ve got the job. Get your stuff together and report here on Monday morning, eight o’clock, and we’ll get you sworn in. Sheridan’s uniforms aren’t that much different from ours, but you can wear blue jeans in Absaroka County. Get a badge and a patch set from Ruby at the front desk; we’ll order up the rest. No black hats-we’re the good guys.”

I leaned back in my chair as he smiled. Ruby appeared in the doorway and cleared her throat. “I have some bad news.”

I leaned forward and rested my chin on my fingers, which spread across the surface of my desk. “I’m on my way out.”

“It’s Omar and Myra. They’re shooting at each other again.” I raised my head and looked at her. “It’s a 10-16, technically.” She smiled. “I’m going to my ice-cream social. Have a good time in Philadelphia and give Cady a kiss for me”

And she, too, was gone.

I yelled after her. “Who called it in?”

I heard her stop in the hallway. She came back and picked up my hat, carefully dusting it off and placing it on my head. “Go out there, make sure they don’t kill each other, then go over to the Home for Assisted Living and play chess.” I looked up at her. “I’ll take Dog with me, and if you decide to take him with you, just stop by on your way out of town.”

I drafted Vic before she could get out of the office and told her it was a chance for us to say goodbye before I left; of course, we could also be shot by the matching set of. 308s with which Omar and Myra usually held their domestic disputes.

Omar Rhoades was the big dog of international outfitters; if you wanted to kill anything, anywhere, Omar was your man. He led big-game hunts on all seven continents, but the most dangerous game he had ever faced was his ex-wife, Myra. They had been divorced for about a year now, but Myra had left her belongings at the Rhoades ancestral manse, and it was like a ticking time bomb as to when Myra was going to be back. The home they had built together was on the northern border of our county, about halfway up the mountain; if they were serious about killing each other, then they were already dead.

I banked the next turn and gunned the Bullet into the long straightaway.

Vic unlocked the Remington 12-gauge from the center hump. “The gate’s open.”

It was about a hundred-yard shot to the circular turnaround at the main entrance, and I missed the fountain by less than a foot. We slid to a stop, and I jammed the truck into park and unbuckled my seatbelt. Vic was already up the front steps before I could get out. “Hold up! It’s one thing if Omar wants to shoot us, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to be shot by accident.”

I pulled my. 45 and looked across the heavy, cherry-paneled door that hung open. Vic jacked a shell into the Wingmaster and looked at me. You could hear music, and I’m pretty sure it was Edith Piaf.

I took a deep breath and, after a second, stepped over the threshold.

Vic’s voice lashed at me from behind. “Well?”

It was dark in the main hall, the gallery windows affording only a flat, yellow light from the dying afternoon. There was no one on the landing and no one in the entryway. “C’mon.” I aimed at the stairway to the left, following the wall with a foot along the baseboard and kicked a broken bottle of Absolut raspberry vodka. There was no liquor on the floor, so the bottle had been empty when it hit. Great.