C
HAPTER
S
IX
Bully Bowler was actually the manager of an outlying ranch owned by Britons. His name was honestly earned. He was a massive man, fifty pounds heavier than me, and quick to make full use of his strength. He had massive fists, a thick neck, and a thicker skull. He ruled supreme out at his spread by simply pounding any cowboy who didn't toe the line.
Now he was in Doubtful, making noises I didn't want to hear. I donned my overcoat and hat, and plunged into the icy wind, headed for the Wyoming Hotel. Some said the hotel was the only good place between Laramie and Douglas, with two sheets on every bed and a tablecloth on every table. I wouldn't have known the difference, and didn't care. But I cared about Bully Bowler's threats, and that's what took me over there.
Bully never traveled alone, and I found him with four of his skinny cowboys, sitting at a table in the dining room, smoking cigars.
“You were looking for me?”
Bully tapped some ashes over the remains of a pancake, smiled, and nodded. He said nothing, making me wait.
But I didn't press the man and stood quietly.
One of Bully's boys sipped coffee, looking a little smirky.
“Well, I guess I was mistaken,” I said. “Someone told me you wanted to see me.” I turned to leave.
“Pickens, stay put,” Bully said, and still offered no explanation.
I yawned, waited a moment, and started to leave. The hell with it.
But a massive paw, lightning fast, caught my belt and yanked me back to the table.
“Now, Sheriff, you'll listen even if you're wetting your pants.”
That's how it went with Bully Bowler. I had heard enough stories to fill a book or two, and none of them flattering.
Bowler let go of my belt just before I was about to do something about it.
“The boys are coming into town New Year's Eve. They're going to have a fine time. Every ranch hand in the area, three hundred, four hundred, in for a whoop-de-doo.”
I nodded.
“You ain't gonna shut down the place.”
“I'm glad you think so,” I said.
“Because you won't want anything bad to happen to your supervisors.”
I just kept quiet.
“Because that's what's gonna happen.”
“Thanks for letting me know, Bowler.”
“I ain't done with you yet, you little fart.”
“I didn't think so,” I said.
“That dry law, it's going to be repealed. And if it ain't, you ain't going to enforce it. That law's dead as poisoned wolf.”
“You going to repeal it?”
“I already did.”
“I haven't seen it published yet. Supervisors do it?”
“Pickens, I always heard you're thick between the ears.”
“If it's not repealed, why do you say it is?”
“That law's gone away, sonny boy, gone. That's what I'm telling you. Now beat it.”
“Just your say-so, is it, Bowler?”
“I'm tired of you.”
“Guess I'd better protect you from them Temperance women. You better stop in at my jail and I'll lock you up safe and sound.”
That started the crew laughing, but Bully Bowler stuffed out an arm and grabbed my shirt and yanked me forward. I hadn't seen it coming. Then the manager's iron arm shoved me backward, over the table, spilling coffee cups, plates, dead food, and silver. I landed on the far side, sprang up, and bulled into Bowler. I heard other patrons screaming. The floor was littered with food and tableware.
I hammered at the man. It was like hitting the door of a safe. Bully Bowler simply grinned, let me discover what I faced, and then lowered the boom. A few pops with those ham hands, a knee to the groin, a couple of elbows, and I was sprawled on the dining room carpet, discovering hurts I never knew I could enjoy and hearing the screech of waitresses and hotel guests. But Bully didn't quit. A few kicks with his boots caught my ribs. And that was the signal for his four henchmen to join the act. Every time I tried to get up, or fight, all five of them got in their licks. And I got the arithmetic lesson, and quit.
“Some sheriff you are, Pickens,” Bully said, grinning.
I was more interested in all the ways I hurt than in my reputation.
“Gimme that rag,” Bully said, and one of the henchmen handed him a tablecloth. Swiftly, Bully wrapped me in it and yanked another cloth from another table, and wrapped that around me until I was wrapped in a winding sheet that was tied tight with anything handy, including scarves and belts. I was as helpless in my cloth prison as if I'd been lowered into a grave. My arms were pinned so tight I couldn't get any purchase on anything, and my legs were wrapped to close that I couldn't even bend them.
“Let's show the town what kind of sheriff it's got,” Bully said cheerfully.
One of the ranch hands pulled the pins out of a hinge and freed the wooden door into the kitchen. They loaded me on the door, and the pallbearers lifted the catafalque and marched into the bitter cold. One of those hands settled my hat on my chest as the cortege proceeded up Wyoming Street, through the heart of town, past the shops and eateries, straight up the one street where no one would miss the show, and toward the Courthouse Square, my sheriff office, and jail.
It might be December, but people flooded to windows and opened doors to view the horrible sight.
“Is he dead?” someone shouted.
“Might as well be,” someone else said.
I eyed Mayor Waller and then spotted Turk, the livery owner, and watched Hubert Sanders watching the spectacle from his bank window. I saw Leonard Silver, owner of the Emporium, peer from his door and spotted Doc Harrison studying the parade from the Beanery, and there was nothing I could do. If they wanted a sheriff who strode through town with a six-gun at his hip, a sheriff whose frown stopped little boys from tossing firecrackers at dogs, whose squint deterred burglars, whose beckoning finger corralled drunks, whose bold gaze intimidated cowboys bent on shooting up the town for sport, they could only be dismayed. The young man they'd employed to keep the lid on Doubtful, and keep all the he-cats and she-dogs at bay, namely me, was being hauled through town like dead meat.
The message was clear. Doubtful was at the mercy of the ranchers and cowboys, and they intended to celebrate their New Year's Eve exactly as they always had, and if there was any trouble, they'd show the citizens of Doubtful just who owned Puma County.
Women emerged from doors, saw the awful spectacle, and herded their children inside. A carriage horse whinnied and reared, the spectacle too much for its equine temperament. Bully led the parade, smiling cheerfully but otherwise not acknowledging the crowds, while his four ranch hands carried the door, one at each corner.
“Whatcha doing in the winding sheet, Pickens?” asked Alphonse Smythe, the postmaster.
I could think of no answer, so I kept quiet. My ma used to say that there was no way out of a winding sheet. But maybe they'd let me go.
“Send me a postcard,” Smythe said, enjoying himself.
I still hurt, and the cold was reaching me. I couldn't wiggle enough to keep warm.
And still Bully's parade marched onward, turned, heading now toward Saloon Row, the very blocks where I, Sheriff Pickens, always walked tall and subdued rough men in a rough neighborhood. This was going to be the most painful of all. I'd kept order there mostly because troublemakers knew I'd whip them one way or another. But now every lowlife in Doubtful was going to see me wrapped tight in tablecloths.
The wind sure was getting to me. I rolled around on my wooden door, and the pallbearers were none too gentle about hauling me along, never looking to my comfort. Bully Bowler proceeded nonchalantly ahead, ignoring the cold but making sure the whole town of Doubtful knew the score: this sheriff is a joke. This sheriff couldn't enforce a law against stray dogs. Doubtful had no public safety. Those cowboys out on the ranches were going to do whatever they damned pleased on New Year's Eve or any other time.
My little funeral paradeâthat's how I saw it nowâdrew no followers. It was just Bully and his hands and me lying on the hotel door. But by the time we reached Saloon Row every barfly and tavern keeper was on hand. Somehow word had buzzed ahead, and the show had arrived. I saw Sammy Upward frowning and the whole McGivers Saloon crowd gaping at the spectacle. Some of them were looking pretty smirky. I spotted a few lowlifes I'd thrown into my iron cages a time or two, some for public intoxication, some for threatening with weapons, some for brawling. And now they were enjoying the sight of their nemesis bound helplessly on a door. What sort of message was all this? I resisted a sudden impulse to resign and load up Critter with all my worldly goods and head for Argentina or some place.
Bully Bowler steered his pallbearers toward Lovers' Lane, as some called it, and there the ladies flocked to the windows to watch. Some waved; some blew kisses. Most of them giggled, and a few flashed a little flesh. There was nothing like seducing a man tied up tighter than a hog going to market.
But eventually, the cortege slid past the bawdyhouses. Bully Bowler headed for the sheriff office, either tired of the sport or content that he had delivered an indelible message to the county supervisors. In any case, Bully and his boys entered the sheriff office, dumped me on the cold floor, stole one set of jail keys, and departed with the hotel door. Not a word was spoken. Not a warning, not a lecture, not a joke.
I lay on the cold floor, nearly helpless, but I soon found I could wiggle my fingers and arms. The long tour had loosened the bindings. It sure was cold in there, hardly warmer than outside because no one had built up the fire. I gradually freed my arms and hands, untied the rest, and stood, getting some blood circulating in my body at last.
I had complex feelings about the whole business. Bully and his four thugs had jumped me, deliberately planning the event. But that trip to town was what bothered me. I might as well turn in my badge. That was exactly the message that Bowler and his hooligans were sending to everyone in Doubtful.
I stretched, built up the fire with some kindling on hot ash, and pretty soon got a little warmth going. No one came in, and I was grateful for that. I wanted to think things over. I wanted to make some decisions. But I wasn't offered that chance. County Supervisor Amos Grosbeak stepped in, glaring at me like a thundercloud.
The supervisor examined the tangle of tablecloths and bindings, and squinted at me.
“Mr. Sheriff, I do believe an explanation is in order.”
“Well, I pounded on myself until I was all beat up, and then tied myself tight in some tablecloths, and then hired some cowboys to haul me through town on a hotel door.”
“Mr. Witherspoon at the hotel has already brought us a bill for seventeen dollars and sixty-eight cents, tablecloths, broken pottery. I told him I'd deduct it from your salary.”
“That's mighty kind of you.”
“What were you trying to do, Pickens?”
“Let the whole world know that I'm the friend of all cowboys and ranchers, Mr. Grosbeak.”
“That's a poor way to do it. I imagine we'll be discussing this at the next meeting of the supervisors. What were you trying to prove?”
“That I'm the only sheriff in Wyoming that ever got a good ride on a hotel door.”
“Pickens, you're acting very strange, I must say. We're relaxed in Puma County and think that cowboys will be cowboys, and boys will be boys, but we do expect our public servants to show some discretion, especially at Christmastime. Are you sure you wish to continue with us? We'll be discussing this, frankly, and it would help if you'd just tell me whether you feel you're up to the task. A sheriff needs strength and dignity, and that stunt certainly didn't inspire confidence in your abilities.”
“Mr. Grosbeak, get the hell out of here.”
“I'll put that on the agenda, too, sir. Do you think your deputy might be interested in stepping up?”
C
HAPTER
S
EVEN
The next few days felt worse than a month of constipation. I hardly dared show my face on the streets. I was the same person as before, but now the perception of me had changed. Bully Bowler had robbed me of the thing most important in a peace officerârespect. That parade on a hotel door, wrapped in a winding sheet, had changed everything. Along Saloon Row, most of the people were smirky and insolent. Uptown, it was worse. People gave me long looks, looks that leaked dissatisfaction and worry.
It didn't matter that I was the same Cotton Pickens as always. What mattered was that the toughs in town were emboldened to test me, or ignore me, while the uptown people felt themselves naked and vulnerable. I sensed it. People who used to greet me cheerfully just sidled by. They were all waiting for the county supervisors to fire me, so there was no need to greet me cordially on the street. I was just another of the dozen or so peace officers Doubtful had hired and fired before I came along. And now I'd join the scrap heap.
Christmas was coming, but I didn't feel any cheer. In fact, I was lower than a snake's belly. All my friends had deserted me, too. The storekeepers who used to greet me now slid elsewhere. The clerks in the courthouse who used to share gossip with me were suddenly busy when I walked through. The ladies I tipped my hat to now replied with a frosty stare. Even my remaining deputy was giving me the fish eye now and then.
Well, the hell with it.
Christmas Eve arrived with no change. I told Rusty I'd take the shift; the deputy could have the evening off. And I'd probably pretty much shut the office Christmas Day. So I did the shift that eve, patrolled the town until the last caroler on the street vanished into the night, and then I shut down and locked up. People knew where to find me if they needed a lawman.
A good sleep at my digs in Belle's Boardinghouse looked good to me just then. Most of the lamps in town were turned off, and the whole town was dark and cold. I couldn't see Santa Claus anywhere, and would probably have to nip him for unlawful trespassing if I did, so I just hurried through the darkness, hearing the snow squeak beneath my boots and feeling arctic air frost my earlobes. There was a lamp burning in Belle's apartment on the first floor, but the rest of the place creaked in the winter cold. I scraped inside and was about to climb the noisy stairs to my room, when Belle opened her door and smiled. She was wearing a big red robe to cover her big pink person. The white of a flannel nightgown trailed below the robe.
“You come in here, Cotton. I've been waiting for you,” she said.
“For a minute, Belle. I'm pretty tired.”
“Of course you are. You're carrying more load on your back than anyone else in Doubtful.”
I stepped into a totally female parlor. She had attacked every cushion with crocheting needles, and no stuffed chair was without lace doilies. But the coal stove glowed cheerfully, and the room seemed to cascade light and life over me.
“Time you had some Christmas,” she said, maneuvering me gently until I stood under the chandelier. Too late I spotted the mistletoe and started to escape, but Belle was a lot of woman and surrounded me. She clasped me to her ample self, a self too large for me to encircle with my arms, and bussed me heartily. I quit resisting and enjoyed it. It was certainly a novelty. I could get my arms around every other woman I had embraced in my young life. But not Belle. She was in no hurry to quit, but then she sighed and let herself loose.
“There now. I've now turned a fantasy into reality,” she said. “Sit down and have a Christmas cookie and a snifter of mulled rum.”
She stuck a glass filled with something warm in my hand, and I sipped, finding the taste rather odd. I was game for anything, however, and besides, it was Christmas Eve and I owed my landlady rent, and she was good company.
“You want to stand under the mistletoe again?” she asked. “I get better and better at it as I go along.”
“Let's wait a while,” I said.
“Have a seat, and don't worry about being seen. I've pulled the drapes tight.”
“I wasn't worried, not a bit,” I said. “There ain't nothing worse can happen to me than already happened.”
“Poor dear, hog-tied with a tablecloth on a door. If you'll stand under the mistletoe I have a cure for you.”
“Let me see how this stuff goes down,” I said, taking a fine gulp of hot rum.
“I just want you to know that I'm right there beside you, as long as you don't enforce the new law.”
“I'm sworn to, Belle.”
“Oh, fiddle. Just let the town be. If you drive cowboys away, I'll go broke. I can't run a boardinghouse in a ghost town.”
“I was sort of hoping to do the job real gradual, but half the town wants me to shut down the town one minute after midnight, and the other half wants me to forget I ever heard of the dry law.”
“Between the devil and the deep blue sea,” she said.
“I never heard that one before.”
“I didn't learn it until about sixth grade,” she said.
“That lets me out. But I got another. I'm between a rock and a hard place.”
“Oh, that's about fourth grade,” she said.
“It's about right, anyway. I don't know what I'm gonna do one week from now. I got saloonkeepers, I got Temperance ladies, I got a few hundred cowboys coming into town, I got half a dozen madams, I got county supervisors, I got hotel keepers and drummers, and they all got different notions about what I've got to do. And there's no escape.”
“Then don't do anything, Cotton.”
“Well, I might as well turn in my badge, then. What good is a sheriff that gets took around town on a hotel door?”
“That's sure eating you, isn't it, Cotton? You come here and get the mistletoe cure.”
“I need to drown my sorrows first,” I said.
I sipped more of that hot spiced rum. It sure was a novelty. I didn't even like warm beer before this, but this stuff wasn't too bad for a Christmas Eve. Some good cold redeye would be better, though, especially with ice hanging from every eave.
“If you enforce that law, I'm a cooked goose,” she said.
“You don't look like a goose. More like a pig.”
“Cotton, I swear, you need more schooling. I don't know how you got to be sheriff. But you've got to just ignore this here law and pretty quick it'll disappear. It'll be what they call a dead letter. A law on the books that no one pays any attention to.”
“They carried me around, and I've got to get past that.”
“What are you talking about?”
“They were funning me, and now I've got to get their respect. If I don't get their respect, I can't do my job around here.”
“Cotton, what you need is another mistletoe session.”
“I need respect. No one pays me any respect.”
“That's what I'm saying. Come over to the mistletoe and I'll show you my respect.”
“You have more respect than I want to see, Belle.”
She tugged at me, and I reluctantly stood up and let myself be directed to the chandelier with its fateful green sprig. I thought that the hot booze did it. And I'd lost all respect. I didn't even respect myself. I was a failure. I didn't know one end of a horse from the other. I'd quit and saddle up Critter and ride to Nevada or some crazy place like that where I could start life over and hope no one asked any questions about my checkered past.
She maneuvered me until I was squarely under the kissing stuff, then undid her robe so it fell loose around her, and she was guarded only by a flimsy white Mother Hubbard that sort of bobbed and wobbled. Then she smiled, plucked my hot booze from my fevered hand, set it aside, and burrowed in.
There was too much Belle surrounding me. Her lips were finding mine, her arms were snaking around my back, but I couldn't embrace her because that was not possible. Pretty soon I was kissing away, and suffocating, and wanting more hot booze, but she kept right at it until I began sputtering and coming up for air.
“Okay, Belle, that's enough mistletoe stuff for now,” I said, finding purchase on her shoulders and easing her away. She looked sort of pouty, but I didn't care. I could breathe. I wasn't smothered. And I could return to the task that had preoccupied me for three days, getting my respect back.
“Do you think I could do it?” I asked.
“Just give it a rip. I've got plenty of nightgowns,” she said.
“No, I mean, how do I get to be sheriff again?”
“Let her rip, Cotton.”
I sure was feeling bad. This eve hadn't gone in any direction at all, and the longer I hung around in Belle's parlor, the bleaker it got.
“Belle, you're just the sweetest old gal on the planet, but I gotta go to bed now.”
She sighed. “You're leaving? I was hoping Santa Claus would come visit me.”
“I guess I'd better git now.”
I could never figure out women, and now I was baffled by the tears in her eyes. What was she doing that for?
She stood so desolately that I wondered if I might console her a little. “If that mistletoe's still up after New Year's, I'll come give her a try,” I said.
“Goddammit, Cotton, get your skinny ass out of here,” she snapped.
That sure puzzled me. One moment she was weepy, the next moment she was mad, and I still hadn't figured out how to get my respect back. “I'll bring you a bouquet tomorrow,” I said.
She pushed me toward the door and into the icy hall, and the door closed hard behind me.
I started up the creaking stairs and then thought that I didn't really want to go to bed. I didn't know what I wanted. I turned around and slipped into the icy night, where the bitter air hit me like an avalanche. The clouds had cleared off, and the stars dotted the heavens like chips of ice. It was late, and Doubtful was mostly asleep, except maybe along Saloon Row, which never slept. Enough snow remained to coat the yards and walks with dim white. I didn't much feel like patrolling Saloon Row. Tonight Saloon Row could take care of itself.
The air cleared my head in a hurry, and I felt only a great quietness as I meandered through the silent town I had protected for two or three years. It came to me that it didn't really matter what the town thought of me. What mattered was what I thought of myself. What mattered was the sort of job I was doing. I had done a good job, at least until now when I was faced with an utterly impossible task. The prohibition law was tearing Doubtful to pieces, and hardly anyone agreed with anyone else, and hardly anyone was taking it peaceably. There was blood in the wind. And this trouble was ten times worse than anything I had ever dealt with. I hoped I was up to the task. If I did my best, that was all I could ask of myself, so I vowed to do just that.
I felt all right, then. That was a good enough Christmas gift. A man could like himself or not, and if he did, it was Christmas every day of the year.