Support Your Local Deputy: A Cotton Pickens Western (12 page)

No sooner did I get back to my office then I tangled with the Puma County supervisors. Reggie Thimble, the chairman, required my presence in the courthouse, so I grumbled my way over there, knowing what was coming.

Sure enough, he was laying for me. He sat behind a monster oak desk on an elevated platform, giving him an extra foot or so to look down at supplicants. He had a pouty little mouth, and now it was pursed with disapproval.

“I’ve had a little visit from Heliotrope Pike, who is the chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the Pike Brothers Carnival,” he announced. “Is it true you are threatening to keep them in Doubtful until such a time as you choose to spring them?”

“No, they can leave whenever they fess up, hand over the masked men who abducted the Ukrainian Siamese twins, and whoever else perpetrated the crime.”

“I see,” said Thimble, peering at me from over his wire-rimmed spectacles, which were perched delicately on his pulpy nose, with its red besotted veins.

“Do you suppose you are doing something entirely illicit, immoral, scandalous, and barbaric?”

“All of them, Reggie.”

“Mr. Thimble, if you please. Now then, do you have the slightest evidence, I mean actual, hard, court-worthy evidence, that any such crime was committed? And by people in the carnival?”

“Nope. I’ve got witnesses who saw four masked men, three on horse and one in a chariot, order the blondes off the stagecoach, which they forcibly stopped at gunpoint. And I’ve got a lot of hot air from Pike, who first said he bought the ‘act,’ as he called it, in Laramie, but could supply no contract, and indeed, had more or less admitted there had been no vaudeville or carny act involving these ladies, and he had created one.”

Thimble rapped his fingers on the beeswaxed desk, which he polished daily. “So there’s nothing.”

“There’s four men in that company that snatched the women, or woman, off that stagecoach, in Puma County, where I am charged with keeping the law, and when Pike turns them over, and himself, if he was the one giving the command, then I’ll let the carny show loose. But not until then.”

“I don’t suppose you’d imagine you have no right to do so.”

“It’ll get the job done.”

“And what if these supposed abductors aren’t associated with the Pike Brothers Carnival? What then, Mr. Sheriff?”

“Then I keep this outfit around until they tell me who did the job. They got those twins somewhere, so they know who done it.”

Thimble stared his most withering stare, but I was used to it. Mostly when he stared like that I noticed his right eye, which was slightly crossed.

“You’ll not impede the carnival when it chooses to go. That is an order, subject to termination of your job if you should disobey.”

I’d heard that about fifty times. “I ain’t budging,” I said. “The law got broke, I got the perpetrators right here, and as soon as I can get them tried and sentenced, the show’s free to go to Los Angeles or any other hell.”

Thimble stared at a passing puffball cloud, through the grimy window. “Has it occurred to you that the merchants of Doubtful are suffering? Already this summer, they’ve had to weather a medicine show, a doomsday preacher, and now a carnival. Doubtful survives on the trade of the five hundred cowboys and ranchers surrounding us, but this year the cowboys have invested in quack medicine, donated their last cent to the Doomsday crook, and have opened their purses and pitched out dimes and dollars to play games of chance on the midway, gawk at a freak, watch Little Egypt’s belly roll in syncopation with Memphis blues, and pitch rings at little posts, to win some sort of furry stuffed monkey or two. And our shops suffer. Mayor Waller tells me his trade is down. Leonard Silver says his is cut in half; even the blacksmith, One-Eyed Jack, has lost trade. Cowboys would rather gawk at freaks than see their horses shod.”

“Sorry, but I got laws to uphold, and this show doesn’t leave here until it coughs up the bandits.”

“Come now, bandits? They didn’t steal a nickel.”

“They stole two lives, Reggie.”

“Mr. Thimble, please. The ladies seem quite content. You seem to be inventing a crime and a tragedy out of whole cloth.”

“I got laws to enforce, and if you fire me, the law of Wyoming and this county won’t get enforced.”

“That’s the idea, sheriff, exactly the idea. You will not impede the carny. We want them out as fast as they can harness up and go. I wish they had left yesterday, but no such luck.” He eyed me real severe. “You’ve been warned. This is the second offense on your ticket this week. The first being appointing a little boy a deputy, putting the whole county at risk. Have you taken the badge back?”

“Nope. He’s pleased as punch. There ain’t another kid in the county gets to be a deputy sheriff.”

Reggie sighed. He had a way of sighing that was plumb theatrical. He sighed slowly, sadly, shaking his head, lowering his chin in sorrow, his eyes mournful. He used it at every board meeting, and every political rally. There wasn’t nobody in Wyoming with a sigh like Reggie Thimble’s.

“That was a good one,” I said.

“I haven’t the faintest idea what you are talking about,” he said, sighing once again.

“That’s how you got elected,” I said, and walked out.

My ma always said I was stubborn, and I’d get myself in trouble because of it. And now I was being stubborn all over again, and pretty soon I’d be looking for another job. But as long as I was sheriff, I’d be the best one I knew how.

I found Rusty in the office, mopping up the jail. We’d had a couple of drunks in there, and they missed the piss pot, and puked in the bunk, so after Hanging Judge Earwig fined them two dollars each, we had to clean up. That’s how it is for sheriffs. Mostly, we get to be chambermaids.

“How are your lady friends?” I asked, when Rusty emerged from the iron cage with a bucket of slop.

“They’re getting into a catfight,” he said. “Natasha wants to marry me and quit the show, but Anna, she don’t want nothing to do with me, and they’re really steaming. It sure ain’t easy, being stuck so close to someone you’re fighting with all the time.”

“They talk to you about getting took off the stagecoach?”

“Oh, yeah, Natasha does. She wishes I’d come rescue her. These here masked bandits, they stopped the stagecoach, opened the door, and told the twins to get out. So the twins get into the cart, and bandits get their luggage, and away they go. They went direct to Heliotrope Pike. There wasn’t any buying or selling of theater acts. Pike got the gals and put ’em in the show, and that was that.”

“You think they’d testify?”

Rusty scratched his head. “Natasha, she would if you asked her questions real slow so she could understand. But everything she’d say, Anna would say different, and the testimony would nullify.”

“I guess I hadn’t thought of that. Who’s telling the truth?”

“You need to ask?” Rusty asked.

No, I didn’t. Natasha was. Anna was playing the spoiler. But maybe if they were both sworn in to tell the truth and nothing but, maybe she’d come around. But it sure made a mess of things.

“They know who abducted them?”

“Maybe one, but the gunmen wore masks, and they plain don’t know for sure. No one was talking.”

“You still want to marry them, the two fighting like that?”

Rusty, he grinned real crooked. “Both at once, that’d do it fine.”

I told him about my talk with Reggie Thimble, and how the merchants wanted the outfit to leave town.

Rusty grinned. “The cowboys, they’ve hardly walked into a saloon since the carny show came, and before that, they were buying tonic from the medicine man.”

“Let’s do a little walk down the midway. If that outfit’s going to slide out of Doubtful tonight, there should be a few clues.”

“How you gonna stop them? If they go, they go.”

“I got ways,” I said. I was afraid if I told Rusty, he’d tell Natasha, and my little plan wouldn’t work.

“You’re gonna round up the draft horses, that it?”

“Nope, they’ll be tight guarded tonight, and someone will get hurt. I got better ideas.”

“That’s what your ma always used to say, right?”

Rusty, he didn’t believe I had any wits about me, just the same as no one else did, either. I never quite got used to it. But sometimes it came in handy, and it would tonight if the show was gonna pull up stakes after the midway died down.

We meandered along, watching the afternoon trade. It was mostly women and children, trying their luck on the games. Scalawag Marvel, the little punk, was trying to win a doll by throwing a baseball at a row of bottles. He didn’t know them bottles were loaded with concrete.

I slid past the midway, into the camp, where the wagons were sitting willy-nilly. It didn’t look like an orderly place at all, but in some ways it was. There were cooking areas, and bunking areas. The harness for each wagon rested in front of it, ready to be hooked up. Harness comes in all shapes and descriptions, but most of these rigs had breast collars, big straps that fit over the draft horse’s chest. A draft horse really pushed into the chest collars, even though it looked like he was pulling the load. These were heavy-duty harnesses, intended to tie a draft horse to a big load. There were surcingles and bridles and reins and all the rest, but what I wanted most to look at was the collars. Without them collars, this outfit wasn’t going anywhere at all.

“You satisfied?” Rusty said.

“You know harness?” I asked.

“Some.”

“You pick out collars in the dark, maybe?”

He studied the piles of harness resting next to each wagon.

“I imagine. You think the dogs’ll stop us?”

“We’ve been hanging around long enough. What we’re going to do, Rusty, is fetch us those collars and lockup the whole bunch in the jail. We don’t even need to get them all. Get enough harness collars, and this outfit isn’t going anywhere at all, and we got Pike right where we want him.”

“I suppose your ma gave you this idea,” Rusty said.

“No, I thunk it up all by myself,” I said. “You just study on where the collars are put, and how they’ll look in the dark.”

Rusty was grinning. “I guess I get another day or two to woo my wives.”

Me and Rusty, we done the job. That old carny show was roaring away on the midway; everyone in the show was over there, gulling the last dimes out of cowboys and suckers. The camp area, it was plenty dark, and no one was around except once when one of the old gals in the outfit came back to smoke her corncob pipe a while.

Finding the breast collars and unbuckling them and carting them out was a big job. Those things were hard to separate from all the rest of the harness. The breast collars run across the chest of the horse or mule, below the neck and windpipe, and are wider than most of the rest of the stuff. But neither Rusty or me was as good as Turk when it came to harness, so it took some doing.

There were fourteen wagons, each drawn by a pair of draft horses or big mules, and that meant finding twenty-eight collars. It was no ten-minute job, in the dark. But bit by bit, both of us collected what we could, stocked it away from camp, and went back for the rest, always keeping an eye out. The company was pretty well packed up. All the loose stuff was stowed away, and the outfit was going to roll out of Doubtful, maybe around midnight, when the rest of us were deep asleep. They planned to be far down one of the roads; they didn’t let us know where they were going next. But they’d come up from Laramie, and I was guessing they would be heading for Douglas.

After we got all the collars we could find, unbuckled and in a heap, we carted them two at a time over to the jail, and stuffed them all in a cell. That was heavy going, too, all those trips hauling forty or fifty pounds of leather and buckles. But about the time the carny show was winding down, and people were quitting, we got them collars all locked up in a cell, and got the jail all locked up, so there wasn’t going to be any busting in or out.

Rusty, he just grinned. “I get to visit my Ukrainians for a while more, seems like,” he said.

I figured that was good for Rusty, but not for the Siamese twins, who were in a big spat over him and his designs. It sure must be hell to be locked into the same body as your twin, especially if one of you got favored, and not the other. But that was the way things were, and they’d have to figure out living, because no one could help them.

“We gonna sit here with scatterguns and guard the fort, or are we going to bed?” Rusty asked.

“Go to bed. You go look after Riley. Me, I’m going to Belle’s. If they come knocking, I’ll just let ’em hammer on doors.”

I watched him go to his cabin, which was not far away, and near Doubtful Creek, where all them draft horses were, and I drifted toward Belle’s Boarding House, where I’d roomed ever since I came to town. It was a quiet night, with a soft breeze, and not much of a moon so it was plenty dark, and I stumbled my way up the stairs and into my room. My guess was I wouldn’t get through the night before all hell busted loose.

Well, I was right, but it wasn’t an hour into the night before there was a racket in the hall, and then some thundering on my door.

I yawned, lit a lamp, and padded to the door. I sleep buck-ass naked in the summer, and thought maybe I’d better get into something, so I hiked up my britches, and then opened up. Sure enough, there was Heliotrope Pike, beet red, breathing fumes, and looking ready to kill. A man behind him held a kerosene lamp.

“Where is it?” he asked.

“You got some trouble?”

“The harness. You’ve got it.”

“The harness?”

“Cut the crap, Pickens. Where is it?”

“Locked up tight, and it stays there until I cut it loose.”

Pike was backed by a pair of bruisers, roustabouts for his show, maybe the very men I was looking for. They were big, and they all simply pushed into my room.

“You’ll unlock, or we’ll unlock,” Pike said. “Your choice.”

“You threatening a law officer?” I asked.

“You going to unlock or not?”

“You owe me the names of four abductors, and whoever cranked up that abduction. Did you do it?”

“The keys, Pickens.”

“You do it, Pike? You put these roustabouts on horses, and got a cart to carry the twins, and went and grabbed them for your show, knowing you could get away with it?”

“The keys. Or do we have to force the issue?”

I heard a commotion in the hall, and pretty soon Belle was floating up the stairs in her robe, a light in hand.

“You’re disturbing my boarders,” she said. “You git.”

They ignored her.

I thought I saw some opportunity in it. With a little luck, I’d put these three in the other cell, but it’d take some doing.

“It’s all right, Belle. This here’s Mr. Pike, and he says someone’s made off with his harness. So I’ll get dressed and we’ll see.”

“You in trouble, Cotton?” she asked. I knew she sometimes carried her little .32-caliber five-shot lady revolver in her robe pocket, and I didn’t want her messing with these bruisers.

“These here are nice carny folks, Belle. They’re fixing to leave town, and mislaid some harness somewheres. I’m going to get my shirt and boots, and we’ll go see what needs doing. Someone doesn’t want them pulling out.”

She eyed me skeptically. “Horse pucky,” she said, but didn’t pull her peashooter out.

Pike, he just glared. He sure was looking pouty. He was up a tree. He got caught trying to duck out at midnight, and probably didn’t suppose I could tell a breast collar from a surcingle. Or that I’d go after his harness at all. Most people, they want to immobilize an outfit, they go after the livestock.

I got busy yanking pants up and stabbing toes in boots, all the while finding out what I could.

“When did you fellers come up missing?” I asked.

Pike just stared. “Pickens, cut the baloney,” he said. “You got it and you’re going to deliver it.”

“Well, I’ll trade it for the names of them fellers broke the law around here.”

I collected my ancient Stetson and started to collect my scattergun, but Pike, he just shakes his head slowly. “I think not,” he said.

Both of them roustabouts had their hands hidden, and I didn’t want to mess with that.

So we rattled down the wooden stairs, waking up boarders, and Belle let us pass. Pretty quick we were in a quiet night, and walking toward the jail. I was surprised to find Rusty waiting at the door. He sure had a sense of trouble, and was quietly waiting for trouble to come, mainly in the form of Pike and two big roustabouts.

Rusty, he didn’t say a thing, and I knew what we were about to do, and so did he. He opened the office door, and we pushed in, and he headed for a kerosene lamp, scratched a lucifer, and lit the place.

“Now, Pike, what is it you’re looking for?” Rusty asked.

There was no harness visible in there. The dark, barred jail door loomed, and behind it two cells, and the farther one had the goods in it. There were a couple of shotguns and rifles in a wall rack, and a mess of papers, and some dodgers, and a few chairs, and my battered desk, all in shifting shadow as the flame wavered.

“You satisfied, Pike?” I asked.

It became a moment of calculation. Rusty was armed. The roustabouts no doubt had some weapons. Pike, he wore his midway clothing, a suit, collarless shirt, and bowler. His hands were not in his pockets. He eyed the room, all its shadowy corners, eyed the barred jail door, and eyed the blackness beyond, knowing where the collars were, but also knowing there would be big trouble if he pushed. Someone had to open the jail door, and open the cell door, and not get trapped in there. And Pike didn’t want to shoot a sheriff and deputy if he could help it. Or get shot by me and Rusty.

I watched the gas leak from him.

“We bought that act from a medicine show in Laramie,” he said. “I wish I had a receipt but I don’t. It’s all handshake in the business. That was the Zimmer outfit, that came through ahead of us. These gals, they were pleased to join a real carny, not a medicine show. Those are hard shows. They wear people out and go broke. So we got two grateful women for our freak show tent.”

I said nothing. He knew how to get his harness back.

“This company. We stick together,” he said. “It’s a hard life, being a carny, always on the road, no home to go to, and all we’ve got is each other. It’s us against the world, sometimes. These fellows behind me, they’d give their life for me if I asked them. I’d do the same for them. So whatever we do, we’re all together. You can’t just throw a few of us in the jail; we’re in on everything. You want that? Collect every one of us and put us in those cells, and maybe you’d have what you want. There’s no such thing as a few of us taking the rap.”

Me, I said nothing. I didn’t budge. I wanted the masked men who’d abducted them Ukrainian twins, and that’s how it was going to end.

He eyed me and knew that, without my saying a word. Silence sometimes says ten times more than a lot of talk. His carny show was coming to an end, right then and there. He had no choice. It was doomed if he admitted he had abducted them Siamese twins to put into his show and it was doomed if I refused to give him his harness. I wasn’t budging.

He stared glumly into the lamp that was throwing wavering light into the sheriff office.

“Wake up the judge,” he said. “I want my harness back. You’ve stolen my property.”

He was on to something. Earwig was the only man in Puma County who might get his harness returned to him—if he was lucky.

“His name is Hanging Judge Earwig,” I said, “and he usually cranks up his justice court at ten in the morning, after everyone’s sobered up proper.”

“I want him now.”

“He’s likely to dismiss your complaint if you pester him. He sure likes his shut-eye.”

“Now,” Pike said. He plainly thought he had found a lever to pull. “In spite of his name,” he added.

“His name ain’t got anything to do with his behavior. He got that because of his equipment. He’s got low-hanging fruit.”

“Now,” said Pike, and I nodded.