C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-ONE
They was a sorry bunch, sitting there in the light of a lamp while Rusty put down the story. I sure didn’t know what to do with them. They might be witnesses if I could ever catch them renegades and get them before a judge. But they were also a long way from anywhere, and wanting to get out of Puma County.
“You want to get married?” I asked Ambrosia. I thought maybe if we got hitched, she’d be around as a witness if I needed one.
“You’re an idiot,” she said.
I thought maybe there’d be a way to cut these miserable folks loose.
“Tomorrow, you give sworn statements to our county attorney, Stokes is his name, and he’ll let you go,” I said. “Meanwhile, all we got here is some empty cells.”
Them gals and the two fellers stared at me like I was about to lock them up and throw away the key.
“Or I can try to get you into a boardinghouse. But that’ll cost.”
They decided on the cells.
“Don’t worry about them bedbugs,” I said. “They ain’t killed anyone yet.”
The bedbugs were an asset, I figured. Anyone I tossed in there got bit so bad they could hardly stand it, and got real cooperative real fast. When Judge Rampart sentenced someone to a night in the pokey, it was about as bad as ten nights in one with no bugs. But the Puma County jail had bedbugs big as dimes, or so people believed, and they sure liked a good feast. Of course these show people wouldn’t take that kindly, but the door would be open and they could sit on the front stoop if the bugs got to them. The worst of the bugs would get to biting along the inner thigh and drive a body clear into depravity. I sure could get confessions, repentance, promises, and bail money fast because of them bugs. A jail full of bedbugs was better than two or three deputies for keeping order. Criminals arriving in Doubtful soon learned about my pet bedbugs. Over at the Last Chance Saloon, Sammy Upward always told strangers about the bedbug jail around here, and it was a mighty fine way to keep the peace.
But now I had a crime wave, and hardly knew how to put it down.
I didn’t get much sleep, and found all them show folks sitting miserably outside the jail, waiting for me to free them up.
“Time for some java,” I said, and walked them over to the Beanery.
“These here are witnesses, and this is on the county,” I said to Roscoe, who was on shift.
“Cash up front, Pickens,” he said. “You can’t get by me so easy.”
We haggled awhile, and I finally had to promise to pay from my salary if the county wouldn’t.
Those bedraggled gals mostly just swallowed a little oatmeal gruel and sat there miserably.
Maxwell found me there. “Let’s get this show on the road,” he said.
I motioned to the lovelies and they followed the black delivery wagon to the burial ground outside of Doubtful. Maxwell must have figured that Jardine didn’t deserve a hearse, not if the county was paying, but at least he provided a pine box of green wood, still leaking sap, its top hammered down. Usually it was nothing but a canvas shroud if the county was paying.
Maxwell’s man had dug a three-foot-deep grave over in the far corner, next to some graves of vagrants and the resting places of three bawds. Three feet was as low as graves got dug in potter’s fields.
“Any of you strumpets want to talk? I’ll give you a minute or two,” Maxwell said.
“Go to hell,” Ambrosia said. She had found a dandelion along the way, and gently set it on Jardine’s pine box. The other ladies held hands, and rubbed their eyes. The two gents from the show stared bleakly. They had all pulled deep inside of themselves, as if the whole world was a cruel place they must endure.
“Time’s up,” Maxwell said.
He and his man slid the small pine box into the rectangle cut in the sod, where it landed with a thump. It remained tilted, and no one straightened it. Then the hired man began dumping the yellow clay on it, which thudded hollowly.
I took my hat off. “You sure were a feller who knew how to make the girls look like heaven,” I said. “Good luck to you in the next world. Maybe heaven is like the Grand Luxemburg Follies. I sure hope so, Mr. Jardine.”
Dirt kept hammering the box.
Pretty soon we all drifted back to Doubtful, and I told them they were free to go. Their own rented coach would take them to the railroad, and after that, who knew what? Maybe I should have told them that Lawyer Stokes would take sworn statements from them, but I didn’t much feel like that. They’d been robbed by bandits, and I just decided to cut them loose. By the time Lawyer Stokes would have finished with them, he’d have turned them all into the perpetrators.
Ambrosia eyed me, and then took my hand. “You’re cute,” she said.
I been called a mess of things, but that wasn’t one of them. I felt about the way a calf does when the branding-iron strikes. My ma, she would have started laughing. That was the worst thing I’ve been called in my entire life, except for the time I was called a jack-off.
Them show people, they were awful happy to clamber in, and get rolling out of Doubtful. This place had changed their lives forever. I was sorry about it all, but there wasn’t much I could do to make life easier for them. I watched that coach roll out of Doubtful, sort of sorry to see it go. They were good company, them theater people.
I discovered Ralston standing there, and was glad of it.
“You mind telling me how much money Jardine was carrying?” I asked. “You’d be the only one to know.”
“Nothing,” Ralston said. “With all those troubles, Jardine couldn’t make expenses. By the time he paid me and the boarding places, he didn’t even have enough to pay his company.”
“What do you think them robbers took from that hidden compartment?”
“Beats me,” Ralston said.
“Did Jardine ever hint at anything?”
“He said it’s a lousy business sometimes.”
“And now he’s dead in a robbery that didn’t net anyone anything.”
“There may have been something,” Ralston said. “Those companies try to keep some emergency reserves on hand.”
“A little cash in that boot?”
“Enough to tide them over to the next town.”
“Well, it got took.”
“Yes, and by bandits who had studied the company, knew where to look, and when to strike.”
“I guess I know who,” I said. “But catching them’s the trick.”
Ralston eyed me. “You’ve got a bank robbery, some holdups, two murders, and assorted thefts. And nothing’s being done about any of them.”
I got mad, but I tried not to let him see it. He abandoned me there, and headed back to his opera house, leaving me on the street feeling like an old dog turd. I thought I’d have to get up a posse and try to find some tracks and see if I could close in on them two. I’d have to leave Rusty in town, holding down the sheriff duties.
If I had Critter, I’d already be riding, but the thought of riding posse on that livery-barn plug made my belly curdle up and belch. I headed for all them merchants.
“Hey, saddle up your nag. We’re going out as a posse,” I said to Hubert Sanders.
“Ah, I’ll leave that to you fellows,” the banker said.
“Maybe Mrs. Sanders?” I asked. “I suppose she’s a straight shooter.”
“Delphinium has a headache,” he said.
I tried a mess of other businessmen, and got the same response. No posse duty; they had stores and offices to attend to. I could have required it, but I knew better than to take a bunch of carping and whining possemen out in the field. So I headed for the saloons, starting with Sammy Upward.
“You want to get me a few posse men? Leave in an hour?”
Sammy grinned. “I’ll try, Cotton.”
I headed for the Sampling Room and corralled Cronk, who dealt faro there.
“No, sorry, Pickens, I’m out of cigars, and that would keep me from going anywhere,” the gambler said. “I live on cigars. I’m epileptic, and without cigars I go into conniptions and they steal money off my table.”
I headed for every establishment on Main Street. Harlan Kreutz, the baker, said he was too busy making dough. Magnus Thor, the hardware man, said he needed to fit out a sheep wagon. Conrad Drudger, the harnessmaker, said he was expecting a shipment of cowhide. Marshall Beergarten, the ice and coal dealer, said he’d promised to deliver three tons of bituminous to the assayer, Mike Michaels.
Well, collecting a posse in Doubtful was a lot harder than I would have thought. All them people who were complaining about a crime wave, and death and mayhem, they wanted someone else to go out and get the county cleaned up.
I hunted for my old deputies, De Graff and Burtell, and they’d gone fishing. Maybe that was okay. I’d been wondering what side they were on. And if they were in favor of bass and carp and catfish, that might be better than siding with Delphinium.
So I headed for Turk’s Livery Barn, thinking maybe I could put a hobo or vagrant to work, but they were all gone, and Turk was unhappy. “You get that nag shot up, you pay,” he said.
“This plug is so rank it deserves to be shot up and eaten by magpies,” I replied.
He didn’t like that none. One thing about Turk. If you insulted any nag of his, or complained about any squeak-wheeled wagon of his, he would get huffy. And now I’d insulted his nag.
“You deserve your fate,” was all he said to me. “This here nag is a miracle horse. He’s ready with a miracle any time you ask.”
“What’s his name?” I asked.
“His name is Jesus Mary Joseph,” Turk said. “I didn’t name him. The feller that sold him to me named him.”
So I took Jesus Mary Joseph, a yellow sucker with missing teeth, and led him back to my office to load him up and tell Rusty he’d be acting sheriff for a while.
Rusty was in there at my desk, studying that stuff I took out of Jardine’s pockets. The flask of something thick and the enameled tin with some cottony stuff in it.
“Ace was in,” Rusty said. “He was looking at this stuff here, what we got off Jardine, and he turned white.”
“Ace Grundy, the mining supply man?”
“Himself.”
Ace had a yard outside of Doubtful where he kept mining equipment, and had a bunker full of explosives.
“He says this stuff in the bottle is nitroglycerin, or blasting oil. It’s a bit touchy. Dynamite is this stuff mixed with clay to stabilize it. And the stuff in the enameled tin is guncotton. He says if the bullet that killed Jardine had hit him in the chest, where this stuff was stored in his breast pockets, it would have blown the whole wagon train to kingdom come.”
Guncotton? I’d heard a little bit about that. If you sneezed the wrong direction, it would go off. And nitro wasn’t far behind. So there was the head of a variety show carrying enough explosive to level Doubtful. It sure was a puzzle.
“You got any idea why Jardine had turned himself into a walking bomb?”
“Ace said it’s actually safer to carry it like that than to let it ride in a wagon and get jolted.”
“But why? What would a little French showman want with stuff like that? And why would he endanger his entire company?”
“Ace said it’d be pretty handy cracking safes,” Rusty said. “What’s needed is a set of safecracking tools, drills, pry bars, wedges, whatever it takes to get some nitro between the door and the frame. But sometimes it’s easier with guncotton, carefully packed into whatever little space you’ve worked up to take the charge.”
“Alphonse de Jardine?” I said. “Him with the stovepipe hat?”
Rusty, he was grinning at me.
“Don’t set them items off,” I said. “Don’t even wave your hand near there. Don’t get up to go to the outhouse. Don’t move. Don’t talk. Don’t spit. Don’t blink an eye. Don’t think evil thoughts.”
I thought of that rotten horse tied out there and hoped he wouldn’t blow up.
The Doom of Doubtful sat on my desk. I thought maybe to give them items to Reggie Thimble or Ziggy Camp as a little token of my esteem, but I thought they might not appreciate it. Maybe I’d give the stuff to Judge Rampart to help him move his bowels.
C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-TWO
It looked like I was going to be a posse of one. Somewhere, them two renegades, an ex-lawman and a thug, was living high on other people’s money. I didn’t have much real evidence, but it was enough for me to go after them. They’d robbed that show company only a few miles out of Doubtful.
“Rusty, I’m not figuring you’ll survive for long, not with that stuff on the desk and you enjoying it. You’ll blow your ass to bits. But I’ve got to head out of town and bring in those two, and that means you’ll be doing the sheriffing around here until I get back. If you blow yourself to bits, it’s your own fault.”
“Who would you want me to blow up, Cotton?”
“You can start with them supervisors and throw a judge or two into the bonfire.”
Rusty yawned. That’s how he treated me, yawning away.
I collected the sawed-off scatter-gun and a few cartridges of buckshot. That was the weapon for real male lawmen, while six-guns were for the tooty-fruity. Ike Berg had a six-gun and was dangerous, but not half as dangerous as a sheriff with a shotgun. I headed across the square to the Beanery, and had them give me a half-dozen porterhouse steaks. I could eat good steaks for breakfast, lunch, and supper, two days running, and bill the county. Long as I was saving them posse salary, I figured I could cook some steaks on Puma County.
I added a blanket and I was ready to roll.
I eyed that yellow nag, who was standing lopeared, one leg cocked, and I thought he must be my blood brother. He stood real quiet while I tied down my blanket and stuffed the steaks and spare shotgun shells in my saddlebag.
But when I untied him, took hold of the reins and stepped into the saddle, he erupted, pitching me up and letting me crash two, three times. I was lucky I didn’t harm my private parts on the saddlehorn or I would have to quit dreaming about Ambrosia. That’s what happens to cowboys and why they never marry. They got no tools to marry with, after a while on horses.
Well, that livery stable nag of Turk’s, he just kept crow-hopping, bucking, whirling, and trying to bite my leg, and it was getting to the point where I’d either bail off of him or he’d kill me.
“Jesus Mary Joseph!” I yelled.
Now that was the dangdest thing. That miracle nag, he quit all his hightailing and settled right down, real quiet. I can’t explain it. All I done was shout his name. It was sort of prayerful, though. Maybe he answered my prayer. Whatever it was, Jesus Mary Joseph turned quiet and was ready to go.
I glared at Rusty, who was watching from the door of the jailhouse.
“Go get blown up,” I said, and rode off in a huff. It didn’t take long for me to figure out that Jesus Mary Joseph was the smoothest and most eager and most friendly nag I’d ever sat upon. He was even an improvement on Critter. The thought made me feel guilty, and also sent a pang through me. But maybe I’d catch Critter’s killer this time.
I got out there to the holdup place in a bit. This time I had daylight to help me, and not some lousy candle-lamp. Everything looked different, wide open. It wasn’t flat at all. The road curled around a slope, with a gulch on one side and hillside on the other. There wasn’t any hiding place. Them two renegades just had to wait until it got real dark, and then sit their horses until the show company rolled by. I found where they’d waited, back a hundred yards so the wagon oxen and coach teams wouldn’t pay them heed. They’d known to go for the rear coach, where Jardine kept the company cash. I found the place where they’d shot him. Brown blood caked the clay. They’d put a bullet into his face just like that, no reason for it. It was sheer luck that his guncotton didn’t blow when he hit the ground.
Down in the gulch off to one side there were satchels and trunks around, untouched. They belonged to them showgirls and guys. I’d have to send someone out to pick them up. It was odd; the robbers didn’t even touch them. The satchels got tossed into the gulch. Them holdup men went after whatever lay in the bottom of the boot. I got off the yellow nag and tied him up, not trusting him. He’d probably trot clear back to Turk’s if I let him loose. He eyed me like he was seeing what his molars could chew on, but I ignored that.
I sprung open the first of them satchels to see what was in there. Some lady’s undies mostly, plus a robe and some stuff to paint her face. But wrapped in oilcloth was a big lump of something that was pretty firm, so I got it out and unrolled it, and found myself staring at a heap of greenbacks, some of them real big, twenties and fifties. Holy cats. I put that aside and dug into the next item, a leather trunk. Some feller owned it. There was a straight-edge and a mug in there, a brush, some gray longjohns, and some moccasins. And another of them oilcloth packets, and that one was all loaded with greenbacks too, but mostly fives and singles. This was a heap of cash.
I looked around hard, not wanting anyone to show up just then, and decided maybe to move this stuff over to my nag. The best bet was to unroll my blanket and roll up the cash in it and tie it down. So I lifted all that cash with sweaty paws, and lined it all up in my gray blanket.
Two of the other satchels revealed the same oilcloth packets, and by the time I’d checked the rest, I figured I’d gotten all the bank’s paper money back, or most of it. That sure made the owners of them bags and trunks look real guilty, but I thought I’d better not rush into any notions until I got things anchored down. Maybe they didn’t know what was in the oilcloth.
I hunted around, checking that luggage, but there wasn’t any more. I thought maybe I had the greenbacks from the bank, but the gold was still missing. Maybe that’s what them two crooks got. The gold would be heavy, and make all them satchels too heavy, but it could be hidden down in that boot with a cover sewn over it, and a robber would hardly know the difference. But somehow Iceberg and the Butcher knew where to go.
I got all that cash rolled into my blanket and tied down real good, and just in the nick. Coming at me was a mess of cowboys, probably off the Anchor Ranch, heading for a good time in Doubtful. If they knew what I’d just hid in my bedroll, they could retire for life out in Arizona or some godforsaken place like that, with nothing but cactus and thirst for company.
Sure enough, it was some rannies I knew all too well, Big Nose George, Alvin Ream, Smiley Thistlethwaite, and Spitting Sam.
“Howdy-do,” I said.
They was peering around at them satchels down the hillside.
“Coach got robbed last night. Them poor souls got themselves held up. I come out for a look-see. Say, fellers, you could help me. I got to get these bags back to town. They belong to the people that got held up. You mind piling them into your laps and taking them in?”
Spitting Sam, he rode over to one satchel and peered in.
“Undies? You want us to carry undies?”
“Belonged to them showgirls from the Grand Luxemburg Follies.”
“That’s what they wore? This here is Follies stuff?”
“They didn’t wear much of anything. But if you fellers could help me, you’d be looked upon with special favor next time I have to lock you up on a drunk and disorderly.”
Spitting Sam eyed Big Nose George. “You want to carry ladies undies to Doubtful?”
“Maybe we should help the sheriff,” Ream said.
“I’ll take some undies,” Smiley said. “You peckerheads can take the ones with the razors and shaving mugs.”
“I’m not going to take them,” Big Nose said. “Give me corsets and nighties.”
They sure got to arguing about it, and I finally said I’d load them two trunks on my nag and walk him to town.
“That’s some horse, Sheriff.” Thistlethwaite said.
“None of your lip,” I said.
I collected the two leather trunks and managed to tie them so they hung to either side of my saddle, and started walking, while them rannies accompanied me. The horse behaved himself, mostly because I was leading him. I hated to think what might have happened if them cowboys watched me mount that miserable nag. The gossip would never quit. It was a regular parade back to Doubtful, with the Anchor Ranch rannies each carrying a satchel or two, and me walking that Turk nag. Little did they know what I was carrying.
We got back to the sheriff’s office, and the rannies loaded the stuff inside. Rusty was sitting in there, smoking cigars and knocking the ash onto the enameled tin box that held the guncotton, which made me turn green.
The cowboys grinned and retreated. They didn’t much care for local lockups, where they had spent more than a few hours.
“I thought you were out pretending to be a posse,” Rusty said.
“I went to the site and found them bags,” I said. “Had to bring ’em in.”
“Why? Those show people are gone.”
“Them bags are evidence,” I said. “I’m thinking maybe the entire Grand Luxemburg Follies is a gang of thieves. Maybe even Ambrosia. Maybe those are her undies.”
Rusty, he thought I was crackbrained.
“The stagecoach robbers missed some loot, because it was scattered through all those bags wrapped in oilcloth.”
Rusty knocked more ash on that enameled box.
“Dammit, Rusty, you carry that box and that flask to the last cell and put them on the bunk. And leave your cigar right here.”
Rusty yawned, carried them two bombs to the rear of the jailhouse, and resumed chomping on his stogie. He tapped ash onto my desk, and settled into my chair, looking smirky.
I went out to Jesus Mary Joseph and untied the bedroll behind the cantle and carried it in. I weighed an extra twenty or thirty pounds with all that paper wrapped in there.
I undid all the ties on my bedroll while he watched lazily, deliberately yawning to let me know what he thought of his boss.
I stretched the bedroll on the grimy floor and slowly unrolled it until there were five oilcloth-covered lumps of something or other, and then I undid these. Rusty, he quit puffing and started staring. The first of them oilcloth caches revealed a stack of fifties and twenties, crisp green and brand new. The second doubled that. The third revealed a mess of tens and fives. The fourth a bunch of singles and twos.
“Where are the three-dollar bills?” he asked.
“Smartass,” I said.
“We could retire,” he said.
“I sure hate to give them to Sanders,” I confessed. “But I guess I have to.”
“Delphinium will kiss you.”
“Rusty, you’re fired. You can’t say something like that to me and expect to keep your miserable job. Get a pad and a pencil. You’re going to count these.”
“You can count it yourself,” he said.
“I only got ten fingers.”
We set to work. By Rusty’s count there was seven thousand, four hundred and fifty-two dollars in there.
“You’ve rescued Doubtful,” Rusty said. “But couldn’t we spend a little over at Rosie’s palace of a thousand delights?”
“Maybe Delphinium and Hubert will give us a reward.”
“Am I fired yet?”
“Go fetch Sanders. I’m gonna sit here and guard these with my life.”
“You could get them out of sight, you know.”
That was a good idea. I emptied the undies out of a satchel and loaded up all them bills and took them back to the rear cell and set them down beside the black enameled case with the guncotton, and the flask of blasting oil, and then locked the cell door.
It must have took some doing to get Hubert Sanders to come in, but eventually he showed up with Rusty. He sure looked haggard, and had great hollows under his eyes.
“He was playing with his revolver and aiming it at his ear,” Rusty said.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Sanders said.
“The metropolis is rescued,” Rusty said.
I steered the angry banker to the rear cell and unlocked it and retrieved the satchel and carried it to the front office and handed it to him.
“What on earth is this? I’ve never seen this satchel in my life.”
I sure get tired of bankers now and then. I unbuckled the thing and shoved it at him. He dipped his fingers in there like he was expecting them to get burned, and pulled out some fifties.
He studied them, and studied the satchel, and poked around in there, and stared.
“Where’s the gold?” he asked.
That’s what I admire about bankers.
“We’re working on it,” I said.
“Why didn’t you get this to me sooner? What’s it doing here? Why didn’t you bring it to the bank? Is this all of it?”
I showed him Rusty’s accounting.
“Yes, that’s the currency, but where’s the gold? You didn’t do your job. Where did you get this?”
“It was in the undies.”
He jerked his hand from the bag.
“Go give Delphinium a kiss,” I said.
He stared at me like I was some kind of worm, which I am. Rusty relit his stogie and smiled.