C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-FIVE
Soon as I got back to Belle’s boardinghouse she was after me for back rent.
“I’ll pay you as fast as the county pays me,” I said. “I got them greenbacks to the bank, and they’ll soon go into pay envelopes.”
“Yeah, and what about the gold? You let that slide through your fingers.”
“I haven’t seen a double eagle yet, but when I fetch the gold, you’ll know about it.”
“Yeah? When you get that gold, I’ll eat my shirt.”
“If I don’t get it, I’ll eat my underdrawers.”
“Is that a promise?”
I thought I’d better back out. “They ain’t fit for eating,” I said. “They don’t get washed but once a month. But I’ll eat one square inch.”
She smiled and patted me on the cheek. That was Belle for you.
I hardly got rested before it was showtime at the opera house, so I dragged myself out of my bunk, spruced up, and headed toward Ralston’s place. Sure enough, the Watch and Ward Society was back, trying to shut down the new show. And there was Delphinium Sanders leading the charge, waving a big hand-lettered sign. And she had all her biddies and a few male biddies with her, too. But the ticket line was full. Them cowboys didn’t pay much heed to her, and they were stepping right up to the ticket window and buying. I guess Sanders had got the greenbacks out around town fast, because there was some cash showing now, after the town pretty near starved for a few days.
Delphinium Sanders spotted me near the box office and whacked me over the head with her sign.
“Take me! Arrest me!” she said.
“I think you should be in the harem scene,” I said.
She assaulted me again with her sheet of pasteboard, while the people in line were elbowing one another and enjoying the show.
“Take me away from this vice! This town is a cesspool,” she said.
“I’d like to see the bellydancers,” I said.
She whacked me again. She was getting real serious about getting hauled off.
“You wouldn’t want to sit in a cell with bedbugs and guncotton and nitro in it,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“You could blow yourself up, and half the town.”
“If that’s what it takes—Arrest me.”
“You’d like to see all them eunuchs in there,” I said.
“What are they?”
“Beats me. Maybe they’re lacking a few parts.”
“Well, so are you. Namely, brains.”
She was trying real hard to get hauled off, but I just ignored her. I headed in, and found the opera house mostly filled up and ready to go. Just because I was sheriff, I headed through a door at the side which would take me backstage and watched for a while, enjoying them harem wives and belly dancers, and some feller dressed up as Sheik Barbousse. What I wanted to see was the Masked Executioner, but he didn’t show up. I supposed he was down in his dressing room sharpening his scimitar. But I got a look at the fire-eater and the sword-swallower. They sure were peculiar. Oh, them harem girls were pretty, with big gauzy white pantaloons and little vests with a mess of gold braid and not much under them except pure girl. They wore real colorful stuff, too, oranges and reds and golds you hardly ever saw on the street. One feller had a green pillbox on his head. I wanted to see them eunuchs, but so far they were all hiding. Maybe they were the orchestra. I peered out of the curtain a little, and saw a few fellers in red fezzes tuning up a bunch of stringed instruments that I’d never seen before, along with a drummer and a rattle-shaker. I figured musicians could all be eunuchs easily enough, and I’d probably see them again in the big harem scenes.
They were all ignoring me. But then some feller in a robe of Araby, or whatever they wore, he lit all the footlamps, until the reflectors were tossing light onto the stage, and then the orchestra whined away. That’s the only word I could think of. Them players were whining out Arabian music. Whenever one came backstage, I planned to ask him what a eunuch is. Maybe they were men with horns. Who could say?
Just then I stared at a harem girl and she stared back.
“Ambrosia!” I said.
“I’m not Ambrosia any more. I’m Zelda Zanadu.”
“How come?”
“We ran into this company in Laramie. They wanted girls, so I hired on.”
“You’re in the harem scene?”
“Lissen, Sheriff, I need to talk to you. There’s trouble around here and I’m scared.”
“Well, fire away,” I said.
She peered around fearfully and motioned me to the stage door leading to the alley, and we stepped outside into the summer twilight.
“You know when we were robbed? When Jardine was killed? I got a good look at one even if it was only by lantern light. He had a way of walking. He was sort of square, and muscular, and heaved the bags off the coach, and was sort of taking orders from the thin one with the reedy voice.”
“The Butcher,” I said.
“He’s hired on, too. He’s the Masked Executioner.”
“Here? In the show?”
“Yes, and I’m the virgin tonight.”
“You couldn’t be.”
“The girl who refuses to marry the sheik and gets beheaded.”
“Beheaded?”
“It’s a stage trick. The head is papier-mâché with a wig on. He brings his sword down and then picks up the head. Only he has to be real careful, you know? I mean, he has to do it just right. And he knows I know who he is. The robber of Jardine’s coach. He’s been staring at me ever since we both joined. And . . .” She started shaking. “I’m afraid. It’ll look like a horrible accident.”
“Listen. I’m staying right here. When he comes out, I’ll collar him even before the scene. Maybe it’ll mess up the show, but I’m going to lay my hands on him and drag him out of here before you lose your head and he’s calling it an accident.”
There were tears in her eyes.
“I’ll do my best. But if there’s trouble, head into the audience, don’t stay backstage. Get out where it’s safe. Right there with the cowboys.”
“You’re not sure?”
“I’d like some help but there ain’t any. He’s a tough little thug.”
She thought about that, and then we slipped back into the theater. The curtain had gone up on a line of harem girls and the juggler, who was tossing three balls all over the place. It sure was different, watching from backstage. I could see them gals and the juggler, and the band was sawing away, and then there was a dance done by the harem girls and then a belly dancer came out. She sure had a lot of belly showing, I never seen so much belly, and them skirts riding her hips, and a lot of bare upwards from there too, and then she was rotating around and behaving like someone about to lose her dinner, but that changed into something never did see before, a woman sort of, well, I can’t find the words for it, but she shouldn’t be doing it on a stage in front of a mess of cowboys. It wasn’t a bit proper. She was doing stuff with her belly that made me think Delphinium Sanders was dead right.
Not that the cowboys could do anything about it. Cowboys all have ruint themselves on horses, which is why they never get married. A woman in with a mess of cowboys is safer than anywhere else on earth. Cowboys have no children. You ever heard of a son or a daughter of a cowboy? It’s not known.
Then came the sword-swallower, and I swear that little freak pumped about a foot of steel blade down his gullet, and looked like he’d spill blood all over the planks, but somehow he got it out safe, and no one clapped. Not one cowboy liked sword-swallowers. I didn’t much care for the act myself. But then came the fire-eater, and how that feller, dressed up in gold braid, could blow flame out of his mouth like that I’d never know. He just lowered that flame down in there and sent a plume of it at the audience. Danged if I could figure it out. I’d have burnt myself to ash, cooked my tongue, and cracked my molars doing what he did. How could anyone eat fire, anyway? He must have been hot-tempered. My ma told me to blow out the candles on my birthday cake, not swallow them.
I just stayed there backstage, watching everything, and no one seemed to mind. Once in a while I could see all them cowboys, but it was pretty dark. This show wasn’t as well lit as the Follies. Next was the big harem scene, and I crowded close as I could to get a good gander at all them ladies. They were sprawled out there on big pillows and divans, wearing gauzy pantaloons and little vests with a lot of themselves showing. They were mostly just lying around awaiting the sheik, but there were some fellers dressed in big diapers and turbans waving fans at the gals. That was a good idea because it was hot, and the fellers in diapers were stirring the air real good.
I finally figured out those gents were the eunuchs, though no one told me what one of them was or how he got that way. But they mostly waved their fans and pretended not to be interested in the ladies, and I thought maybe I was missing something, and I’d have to ask what one was. Maybe Lawyer Stokes would tell me if I asked him. Meanwhile, the musicians were sawing away on the string instruments, until at last Sheik Barbousse came trotting out. He was a fierce customer, all right, with a lot of black hair, and gold pantaloons and bare arms and a white vest sort of like the ones worn by the ladies. But now he circled around, eyeing them women, who were all seeking his attention. Man, he was a lucky feller, and I thought maybe I’d like to be a sheik. Some of them got up and began pawing him, and smiling, and showing a lot of teeth, and the music gets bigger and bigger until finally there’s a clear winner, a babe with long brown hair, real curvy, and the shiek smiles, grabs her by her topknot and hauls her away.
That got a mess of applause, but I wanted to know what the sheik and that lady were doing, but when I got over there they had parted. I thought maybe the way they’d gotten steamed up they would retire somewhere, but it was nothing but show, and that’s why show business is nothing but a big fraud.
Then there was a clash of tambourines and drums, and some feller with a turban was saying that this maiden had refused the sheik’s hand in marriage for a thousand days, and now she would be taken to the wooden block on stage and beheaded for resisting the sheik. Well, that was pretty entertaining, and the audience got real quiet, and then Ambrosia stepped out, looking real scared, dragged by two of them big eunuchs. I shouldn’t call her Ambrosia because she was Zelda Zanadu now, but anyway they pushed her down on the chopping block so her neck and head’s over the edge, and out comes the Masked Executioner, and he’s got a great big scimitar, one of them steel blades with funny lines to it, and he’s swinging that thing around real bad. And I took a close look, and it’s Luke the Butcher behind that mask, and maybe he’s gonna kill the witness who figured out who shot Jardine, so I went after him. I grabbed one of them ostrichfeather fans and headed toward him, and the whole audience rose up and cheered as I moved in on the Masked Executioner. He sure was slinging his big blade around. It whipped past me, back and forth, clipping ostrich feathers, and he was driving me back offstage, and I was circling around looking for my chance. That blade was mean, and it was real, and its sharpened edge glinted in the footlights. And the Butcher knew how to use it, too, as he drove me backward. Everyone out there recognized Sheriff Pickens, and they were howling. This was the best entertainment they’d ever seen. But I didn’t have time for any bows because the Butcher was trying to separate me from my head, and his blade slashed real close to my neck.
There was a lot of hubbub backstage too but no one came out to help me. That glinting blade swung back and forth and I edged back. He had me. Then two things happened. I tripped on something, and Zelda Zanadu grabbed the Butcher by the leg and twisted, putting him off balance. He staggered, his blade ran wide, and I rolled up and into him, and grabbed that arm waving the scimitar around, and now it was me fighting for my life. There’s nothing like a swinging broadsword to inspire a man, and I just boiled into a frenzy and pretty soon I got the blade out of his paw and was pounding on him real hard, and all them cowboys were cheering, and Zelda Zanadu was on her knees biting the leg of the Masked Executioner.
He didn’t give up easy and landed a kidney punch on me, but I pressed a forearm into his neck until he gagged, and finally it was over. I got him. Out there the audience was standing and clapping and cheering, and they thought I was the star of the show, and the best act at Ralston’s opera house.
I hauled that bastard to his feet. I’d got the killer of Critter, the killer of Jardine, the killer of the advance man Pinky Pearl, the feller that mugged me, and one of the fellers that robbed the stagecoach.
“Get on with the show,” I said to all them eunuchs. “The beheading’s over.”
C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-SIX
Backstage, I patted down that piece of wormy beef, and found two more toad-stabbers on him, and then hauled him to his feet.
There sure was a lot of hubbub around me but I paid it no heed. “Get on with the show,” I said.
The audience was tearing up the place, standing and hooting, but then Ralston went out on stage and them cowboys quieted a little.
“That was the best act we’ve ever seen,” he said, “and it starred our own sheriff. And now we’ll go to the next, the juggler.”
Ralston caught me as I dragged that lout through the stage door, and he simply patted me on the back. I nodded. There were a lot of unspoken things being said between us.
I hauled that chunk of rotten meat to the jailhouse, with a fistful of shirt holding him up, and he staggered along. Rusty wasn’t around, but I didn’t need him. I tossed Luke the Butcher into the chair in front of my desk.
“Talk,” I said.
He eyed me, getting a little cocky as he studied me.
“Where’s Iceberg? Where’s the gold? Who’d you kill? Who put you onto it?”
The Butcher yawned, smiled, and settled down for the fun.
“Why’d you kill that advance man, Pinky Pearl?”
The Butcher had started to sweat, and his slimy shirt was getting soaked. He just stared, not showing me his gap-toothed mouth.
“Why’d you kill my horse?”
The Butcher smiled.
“Why’d you rob me on the street?”
The Butcher started cleaning his fingernails.
“Why’d you kill Jardine? Who put you up to it?”
The Butcher’s face began to drip, and sweat was running down his cheeks.
“Where’s Iceberg? Where’s the gold?”
He began to smell real bad. He didn’t ever smell right, but now he started to stink like a rotten carcass.
“That gal was a witness. She knew you’d killed Jardine. So you was going to cut her head off right there on stage and vamoose.”
The Butcher, he laughed a little.
I could see this was going nowhere, and I was feeling a little impatient. So I grabbed him by the shirt again, wary of him now because he was halfway recovered, and I dragged him back to the second cell and tossed him in and locked the door.
“Now talk,” I said.
He sat down on the bunk and yawned.
“See that over in the next cell? That’s Jardine’s guncotton and blasting oil. I took it outta his suitcoat. If you’d shot him a little lower, we’d have picked up your pieces and planted them.”
That caught his attention. Sure enough, there in the next cell was a small flask of the nitro, and the tin of guncotton, sitting real quiet.
“Safest place in town to keep that stuff,” I said. “But I tell you what. I’m going to put a bullet into that guncotton, and it’ll blow that nitro, and you’ll be chipped beef.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
“But you’d kill yourself.”
“Try me.”
I lifted my six-gun and shot at the wall a few feet left of the nitro. If I blew myself to kingdom come, I didn’t much care. The shot racketed loud and chipped some rock off the wall. The Butcher covered his ears and closed his eyes, and when he discovered he was still alive, he started shaking.
“All right, start yapping or I’ll blow the place up.”
The wormy beef was oozing out his lard.
“Why’d you mug me?”
“Iceberg put me up to it. He wanted a crime wave.”
“He wanted to be sheriff here?”
“That banker’s wife, Delphinium, she wanted to get rid of you.”
“She put him up to it?”
“She told him to employ any means but don’t tell her about it.”
“Why’d you kill that advance man for the Follies?”
“To make a crime wave.”
“Make a crime wave? You’d kill a man for that?” The punk didn’t say nothing.
“You killed my horse.”
“Yeah, that was easy! Got your goat, didn’t it?”
I fired another round, this time missing his head. The racket scared the crap out of him.
“You killed Jardine.”
“He was really a safecracker. He blew the bank safe in the middle of his show.”
“Where’s the gold?”
“Iceberg double-crossed me. He’s gone.”
“Where’s the gold, dammit?”
I pointed my revolver straight at the flask of nitro in the next cell.
“Don’t!” he said. “I don’t have it. Iceberg don’t have it, either. The bank’s got it back. Delphinium’s got it.”
“You telling me that Sanders got that gold?”
“You messed everything up, and Iceberg’s on the lam.”
I wasn’t making a whole lot of sense of it, but it didn’t matter much. “Where’s Iceberg?”
“He and Delphinium are going to take off with the gold. She can’t stand Doubtful and she can’t stand her old man.”
“Say that again, dammit.”
“She and Iceberg, they’re in love. They’re going to ditch Doubtful and live somewhere nice like Cicero, Illinois.”
“Where’s he right now?”
“How should I know?” The Butcher was getting annoyed, now that I hadn’t blown him to smithereens.
“What does that woman see in that man?”
Luke the Butcher smiled this time. “They hate mating. They hate lust, and they want to spend their life together hating lust and attacking evil.”
“Does her husband have the gold?”
“Naw, she’s got it, and Iceberg’s got it. He took it out of the boot.”
“And missed the bills.”
“He didn’t care. He got what he wanted.”
“Delphinium.”
“Some people got bad taste,” the Butcher said.
That was all I needed from that buzzard. I left him in the cell, where he could contemplate his own death, and I headed into the night. They’d be building a gallows for that one soon enough. I locked the front door of the jailhouse tight, just in case Iceberg was floating around. I didn’t know where to find him, but I had a notion the bank gold was out in that carriage house on Sanders’s place on the north edge of town.
Delphinium was sure entertaining. She’d set in motion mayhem and murder, and for what? To put me out of office and clamp Doubtful in her own moralistic vise. If that twice-stolen gold was there, I’d be putting her in the other cell, which would probably terrify the Butcher even more than nitroglycerin. Delphinium was sure a strange lady.
The place was dark. I rattled the front door, waited, and rattled it again. No one showed up. I circled around the building in moonlight, and hollered a few times. The windows upstairs were open to the July breeze, but no one answered my call. I thought maybe something was very wrong, and decided it wasn’t smart to stand around in moonlight, so I headed for the carriage house and peered in. The buggy was gone. And so was the dray. I studied the shadows, not seeing anyone. I began checking everything, the loft, the servant quarters, the stalls, quietly poking around for gold. Harness in the harness room was gone. I lit a lamp and did a thorough search, and after an hour or so I gave up and returned to the house.
I tried again to raise someone, but no one answered, and I finally pushed inside, lit a lantern, and began a search. I didn’t have far to look. Hubert Sanders, in his bathrobe, lay on the parlor floor, a bullet hole through his mouth. I tried to pump life into him, but he was dead. The last person to die from a bullet in the mouth was Jardine. So Iceberg had been here, and Mrs. Sanders, the buggy, the dray, and harness were all gone.
I lit more lamps in that dreary house. It belonged to the most prominent couple in Doubtful, and look what it had come to. Gold was only part of it. Mrs. Sanders was determined to spread her misery from one end of the earth to the other, and she’d found a willing ally in Iceberg, another of those persons who resented anyone who was cheerful or happy. Hubert shared some of that too, but he wasn’t at the heart of this, and now he lay dead from a single shot through the mouth—like Jardine.
I turned Sanders over a little, and sure enough there was an exit wound. There’d be a bullet buried in a wall somewhere, and I’d find it, and maybe it would match the caliber of Ike Berg’s revolver. I didn’t see the bullet hole offhand, but lamplight isn’t much good for finding things like that. I felt sorry for the man, mostly because he’d been stuck all his good and faithful life to a terrible mate, who never knew what love was or what good companionship could be.
The Royal Arabian Nights was just letting out. I could hear the crowds faintly on the summer breeze. Maybe Maxwell was still up. I needed Rusty, but he’d no doubt gone to bed. There’s only so much two men can do when they have a whole sheriff’s office to run.
I peered around there, wondering if I’d missed something, and it turned out that I had. The revolver on the parlor carpet gleamed dully. I picked it up. It had one shot fired from it, and it was real clean, left there by someone who liked to keep a weapon in prime shape. Like the sheriff of Medicine Bow County. I tucked it into my belt and hiked down into town, and found a lamp still lit at Maxwell’s Funeral Parlor. I knocked real hard, and he opened the door, eyed me, and grouched, as I knew he would.
“Pick up Hubert Sanders. He’s dead in his parlor. Delphinium’s gone.”
“Heart attack?”
“Murder.”
That took the undertaker back. “No, not Hubert.”
“He’s dead, and a bullet did it. This is the weapon,” I said. “You ever see it before?”
He looked a little pale. “Could be anyone’s,” he said.
“A thirty-eight caliber Smith and Wesson,” I said. “With a short barrel.”
The funny thing is that I didn’t remember ever seeing Ike Berg wearing a sidearm.
“I’ll get the hearse,” he said. “He’s king of Doubtful. It’ll take a while.”
“Get him with a one-horse wagon. I don’t have time,” I said.
“And who’s paying?”
“Delphinium, when I catch her, and before she hangs.”
“I heard there was a commotion at the opera house.”
“You heard right.”
He was waiting for more, but I wasn’t of a mind to feed his lust for gossip.
“Well, this is a sad night,” he said. “Another immoral show at Ralston’s Opera House.”
“Yeah, it really’s a black eye on this moral town,” I said.
I left him there, chewing on the evil that had come upon Doubtful. I had things to do.
First was to fetch Rusty from his slumbers and second was to go after the criminals in that buggy. That wouldn’t be easy, but nothing ever was easy.
Rusty simply wouldn’t wake up. He’d been on duty for days, and now he just yawned and muttered. I didn’t know what to do; I couldn’t leave Doubtful without a lawman, especially with a fresh murder. But then I realized that night riding wouldn’t get me anywhere; I’d have to go after Iceberg and Delphinium by daylight.
I found Ralston in his dim-lit office. The theater had emptied. The troupe had gone to bed.
He reached for a small revolver as he entered, and then relaxed. “Glad you’re here,” he said. “You were the star of the show.”
I told him that I’d nailed the Butcher and got a confession out of him, too. And then I told him the rest. The banker dead in his parlor, Delphinium missing, the Sanders buggy and dray with her. Probably heading for the railroad.
“If I had a wire, I’d send a bulletin and every train in both directions would be searched. But I don’t,” I said. “Nearest telegraph’s fifty miles away. The problem is, I don’t know what direction they went. In the morning I might find iron tire-tracks heading north toward Montana.”
Ralston stared, processing all that. “Hubert dead? I’m sorry. He didn’t like my theater, but he was a good man, and his bank held this town together. Now Doubtful’s in trouble. No bank. Its gold is gone. Maybe the bank’s directors could keep it afloat, but not with half its assets heading out of town.” He eyed me levelly. “Doubtful’s doomed. My opera house is doomed. Without a solvent bank, not one business here is going to survive.”
“I was going to get some sleep, but you just changed my mind for me,” I said. “I’m heading out tonight.”