Support Your Local Deputy: A Cotton Pickens Western (16 page)

George Waller caught me early in the morning.

“That little punk stole three licorice sticks. You owe me three cents, you or Rusty. I shook the brat until his teeth rattled, but it won’t do any good. That orphan train, all it did was haul the punks out of the cities and spread them around here.”

“You’re talking about Riley?”

“Who else?”

“Has he done this before?”

“How’m I supposed to know? I got a store to tend, and customers to look after, and I can’t be studying every little rug rat that comes sneaking in to swipe something.”

“What did you say to him?”

“I told him he was no good, he’d never be good, and he’d spend his life behind prison walls. He starting crying, and I told him he wasn’t man enough to take his medicine.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Yesterday afternoon, and maybe a hundred times before that.”

“But you don’t know that.”

“I know a rotten little crook when I see one.”

“You ever swipe anything when you were a boy, George?”

“Not ever. I grew up straight and true, and well bred. Unlike that little turd.”

“I dipped my fingers into the cookie jars a few times,” I said. “Got caught, too. And got my knuckles rapped. I mean rapped, with a ruler. It didn’t do any good.”

“If you don’t have the breeding, nothing does any good.”

I dug into my britches. “Here’s a nickel for the licorice. I’ll talk to Riley, and also to Rusty and Belle. Maybe we can do something.”

“It won’t do a bit of good. Bad blood, it’s going to show in that boy. And you got him in your sheriff office. I don’t know how you ever got in, Pickens. You’ve got all the town’s half-wits in there.”

I’d heard all that before—bad blood, bad breeding, all of that. I sure didn’t have any good blood or good breeding, but I wasn’t sure what that stuff was. Mostly it was people who looked down their noses at everyone else.

I left word for Rusty that I was going to take the day off, and take Riley fishing. I supposed that would steam up everyone. But Rusty wouldn’t need me. He’d cover the Wild West grounds in the afternoon, and deal with any trouble there. Those rodeo cowboys and all sometimes got a little unruly, especially in the saloons after the show.

I collected the boy; he was at Belle’s getting some lessons. He’d had no schooling, running on the streets back East, so Belle was teaching him at home during the day, and maybe when Riley got caught up, he’d get put in the grade school in Doubtful.

I found Belle teaching him arithmetic. They were doing addition. I never could figure it out myself, but I got good enough to add things up. But I always had trouble with eight and seven. It seemed like thirteen to me, not fifteen. Belle eyed me standing there, but finished up her lesson.

“I thought I’d take Riley fishing, Belle,” I said.

“But . . . he needs school.”

“I’m taking some time off.”

She eyed me. “There’s something here I am being kept out of.”

“For a few hours maybe.”

She sighed. “It’s a man’s world. All right. Take him.” Riley peered up at me. “Fishing? There’s fish around here?”

“There’s a couple of holes in the creek, and maybe there’s something in them.”

“There’s not a fish closer than fifty miles from here,” Belle said.

“Maybe you’re right,” I said.

Belle just stared at me. She always knew when something was up.

I had some line and fishhooks. We’d have to hunt for worms or bugs or grubs for bait, and cut some sticks for fishing poles. Maybe we’d catch something. I didn’t much care one way or the other.

“What kind of fish?” asked Riley.

“Maybe some whoppers, boy. Big as liars can make them.”

Riley grinned. “We’re really going to fish? I never been fishing.”

“You sure are a pain in the butt, Pickens,” Belle said. That was as tough as she ever got with me. She made a sour face when I kidnapped the kid.

It was a fine August day, too dry, but that was August in Wyoming for you. We headed for the creek, and then walked its banks upstream. It was slow and lazy in August. It got cold and swift in the spring, carrying off snowmelt from the Medicine Bow Mountains. In Doubtful, there were a lot of outhouses along its banks, so if a feller wanted to fish, he’d be well advised to head upstream.

We got to the big swimming hole a way upstream. A lot of stuff happened there that I carefully didn’t look into very hard. Most of it happened at night. But now on a sleepy, sunny morning it was empty. The mountains in the distance looked somber and tired.

“Let’s try here,” I said. “Maybe there’s some monsters in there.”

“You mean real fish?”

I cut off some willow branches with my knife, and sliced off the little shoots until I had a couple of long sticks for fishing poles.

“Scrape around for bait, Riley. Bugs or worms.”

He had a talent for that, and by the time I’d gotten the lines and hooks all tied to the poles, he had a mess of caterpillars, a few beetles, and some bugs I had no notion of. I made a couple of little floats from sticks, and tied them in, so the baited hook wouldn’t just drop to the bottom. And then we were set.

“Let’s sit here in the shade, so the fish don’t see us,” I said, sounding like I knew something. Actually, I didn’t know nothing.

So we pitched the hooks in, each hook laden with some fish grub on it, and nothing much happened. The floats just drifted downstream until our lines checked them.

“Why don’t they bite?” Riley asked.

“Beats me, boy. Tell me how you like it around here.”

“Am I supposed to like it?”

“Well, there’s a man, Rusty, who’s spending some of his hard-earned salary as a deputy of mine, keeping you fed and clothed and all. And my landlady, Belle, who’s trying to give you a good start on life.”

“The fish ain’t biting.”

“You remember your ma?”

“I don’t want to remember her.”

“Miss her?”

He eyed me. “What is this? How come we’re doing this? You taking me fishing or is this something else?”

He was one street-smart kid, I thought. “We’re doing a lot of things here, Riley.”

“This is because Waller caught me. He pretty near twisted my ear off, until I bit him.”

“That’s one of the things, yes.”

“I knew it. My ass is in trouble. So give me the lecture.”

“Well, I could, if you want it, but lectures don’t do much good. If you want to dip into George Waller’s licorice jar, you’ll keep right on, no matter what I say, or Rusty says.”

“You got that right, copper. You’re gonna tell me I’m not a deputy anymore; deputies got to obey all the laws and all that, so you’re kicking me out, is that it?”

“Well, you got me there, boy. I was thinking along those lines.”

“Well, ship me off to somewhere else. I don’t measure up.”

Riley was staring straight ahead, and I knew he would land on anything I said.

“We’ll fish, boy. You’re still my deputy sheriff. You still get to wear the badge. You just keep that badge shiny for me, make it shine.”

“You mean don’t steal.”

“Oh, let me put it this way. Give more than you take.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Well, here’s an example. You could go to George Waller, who owns that store, and you could say, sir, I’ll sweep your floor for you. If you’ll show me where the sawdust and the push broom are, I’d do it for you.”

“You’re just trying to turn me into a slave. That’s what all the orphans end up as. They get us off the orphan train, and they got a slave.”

“No, Riley, not a slave. Just someone who gives back.”

“I don’t feel like giving back. For what?”

I was tempted to say for the food and shelter and clothes and attention he got, but I didn’t. Children had a right to those things, whether or not they gave anything back. A child needs those things, no matter who or what he is.

“For me, it’s being a man,” I said. “I get my pay in a brown envelope once a month. And I try to give the county and town some safety. If I took the money and didn’t give the people around here some safety, I wouldn’t feel very good.”

Riley was watching the stick float bob a little in the creek.

“Someone worked real hard to harvest the plants that give that candy its flavor. And other people worked hard to cut sugarcane or harvest beets for the sugar. And someone made the sticks in the jar, and someone transported the licorice sticks to here, and George Waller hoped to sell them for more than he paid, so he could make something, too, putting them in front of the public. So a lot of folks did work that paid them back, and the licorice sticks got to here, and everyone put some labor and skill into it, and took some pay out of it.”

“Yeah, and now they don’t get paid.”

“No, they got paid. All except George Waller.”

“I’m gonna resign as deputy. I’ll give you my badge when we get back. I’m tired of fishing.”

I was tired of it, too. I thought maybe we could talk it out, but I didn’t have whatever it took to do that.

Riley’s bobber dipped. Then it began making a circle.

“I think you got a fish, Riley.”

“Yeah? What do I do?”

“We haven’t got a net, so we’ll need to draw it in slow, and then beach it, over there where you can reach into the water.”

The boy suddenly came alive. He tugged and pulled, and worked the fish to shore, and we saw its silvery body thrash as he drew it close. But then it spit out the hook, or maybe Riley tugged too hard, and it was gone.

“Got away,” Riley said. “That’s me for you. I haven’t got anything.”

I got ahold of the boy and sat him down on the riverbank, and we just sat there for a while. There was some sort of big, hollow ache in him, an ache no one could ever banish.

“We know there’s a big lunker in there, and you’re going to catch it,” I said.

Riley just shook his head. Catching a fish was too much for him to hope for.

“I’ll get us a proper rod with a reel and a net, and you’ll catch him,” I said.

“How’m I gonna pay for that?”

“It’ll be something I’ll give you. But if you’d like to earn it, I think I can find a few people who’d pay you to sweep their stores.”

“More of your crap,” he said, and clammed up.

But he was thinking about it. And that was as much as I could hope for. We headed back to Doubtful, and somehow I thought the time had not been wasted.

Well, I was expecting trouble while that Wild West was in Doubtful, and I’d told the barkeeps to call me fast when it broke out. You can’t hardly expect a cowboy show without a string of fistfights or even shootouts. Cowboys are a little unruly, and that’s the way they want it. So the barkeeps, like Sammy Upward, kept a sawed-off shotgun under the bar, and that usually did the job.

But after the show, when Doubtful was settling down for the short summer’s night, I got a holler from Denver Sally. She sent her bouncer, Maginnis, over for me. She has a real good bouncer, and usually he can grab someone by the ear and throw him out if he starts abusing her girls, or he’s too drunk, or he’s getting into trouble. Once Maginnis even stopped an arsonist who was going to burn the place down and fry the girls.

“We got trouble, sheriff,” Maginnis said.

“What kind of trouble?”

“We got a girl in a room with two people, and they’s a mess of shots getting fired in there, and some screaming, and them walls are flimsy and don’t hold lead, and no one’s got nerve enough to bust in and stop it all.”

That sure didn’t sound good. I strapped on my gun belt, and hurried over there to Denver Sally’s, with Maginnis, whose short legs worked twice as hard as mine.

“Who’s in there?” I asked.

“Lily the French Bombshell, that’s Sally’s highest priced girl, and two from the show. A big lunker named Rinkydink, and that shooter, Amanda Quick.”

“The sharpshooter? In there?”

“That’s who. They came together, rented Lily, and now all hell’s broke loose.”

“What’s Miss Quick doing in there?”

“Don’t ask me, and I won’t tell you.”

“I gotta know.”

“Well, when I was checking through the peephole, the three of them were all having a fine old time.”

My idea of Amanda Quick was changing fast, but I’d wait and see about this. People sure had strange ideas of what they want from life.

“Who’s Rinkydink?” I asked.

“Mostly a roustabout, all muscle and no brain. He puts up tents, does grunt work, stuff like that. He’s been at Sally’s every night, after the show’s done, and stays the night.”

“Is he in the show?”

“They’re all in the show. That stagecoach scene, wild Injuns chasing the coach, he’s driving it, or sometimes he’s painted up and wearing a breechclout, or something, and firing blanks at the stagecoach.”

When we got to Denver Sally’s, I found all her gals huddled in the parlor, except for Lily, who was caught in the back. Sally rushed up to me in her robe. She’d been busy with the trade herself, until the trouble started.

Just then I heard another shot, and a scream, and the girls all clutched one another and a couple were crying. Then another shot, more screams, and some whimpering from the back somewhere. Sally’s had two floors, but all this was unfolding straight down the main hall.

“Sally, what’s the story?” I asked.

“They’re torturing Lily. They shoot, she screams.”

“You’re talking about the show people? Rinkydink and Miss Quick? What are they doing in there?”

Sally sighed. “It’s their idea of a threesome, only it’s all bullets and whips and pain. If they mark Lily, I’ll mark both of them in a way they won’t forget.”

I was feeling real dumb, so I fessed up. “You mean they’re doing stuff that hurts?”

“Cotton, you’re a child in some ways.”

“You let ’em do that?”

“Long as they pay, and don’t get rough. But this is rough. They’ll likely kill Lily. You gotta stop it.”

So I had to stop it, and not catch lead sailing through that flimsy door.

“All right,” I said. “You keep clear.”

I clumped real hard down that hallway. “This is the sheriff. Open up, with your hands up,” I yelled.

“Go to hell,” Amanda Quick yelled, and she punctuated it with a shot. The bullet busted through the door and smacked the hall wall.

“Miss Quick, you put that shooter down,” I yelled.

“Which one? His or mine?”

“You come out of there, or I’ll come in there, and it won’t be peaceful.”

“Just try it,” she said, and fired again.

Every shot sure jolted me some. She couldn’t finish a sentence without a bullet for a period.

Truth to tell, I didn’t know how to stop this. I could hear the girls whimpering and yelping back in the parlor. I could hear a crowd gathering in the dark outside.

“Miss Quick, you send the girl, Lily, out the door now,” I said.

“We paid for her, and we’re not done with her.”

“What do you do to her?”

“Sheriff, you’re such a card.”

“All right, send out the guy, Rinkydink.”

“He’s just getting heated up and ready to roar.”

“You send him out the door.”

She shot another hole in it. I could smell burnt powder in the hallway. Back in the parlor, Denver Sally was trying to quiet the sobbing women.

“All right, Miss Quick. If you won’t come out, then nothing’s going in. No food, no water, not a thing until you call it quits.”

“Call it quits! We’re just getting ready for a hoedown!”

A man’s voice followed. “Sheriff, you just bust your bum butt out.”

“Rinkydink, you come out of there now.”

He just laughed, hoarsely. I heard a crack and a scream.

“You hurt, Lily?” I asked.

“Help me! They’ll kill me!”

I heard another slap and a scream.

That did it. I got opposite the door, which was badly splintered now, reared up, and smacked it with my shoulder. It caved in, and I fell into the room, staggered, and got a glimpse of things before Rinkydink threw the kerosene lamp out the window.

The three didn’t have a stitch on between them. Miss Quick wore nothing but a gun belt, and she sure looked cute in it. Made me think of proposing, but she was also waving her revolver at me, and I decided not to propose.

There was just enough light so I could see Lily dive onto the bed, followed by Rinkydink. But Miss Quick just waved her revolver at me.

“So, join the party,” she said.

It wasn’t a bad idea, but my ma always used to say finish what you started, so I decided on that. “You two from the show, you get yourselves dressed and out, because if you don’t, I’ll haul your bare butts to my jail and you can sit in there and think about things.”

The sharpshooter eyed me. “You’re a turd, Pickens.”

But she grabbed her stuff, and began to get dressed. By then the dollies down the hall were all creeping toward Lily’s room. Rinkydink stuffed his shirt into his pants, yanked his boots on, and pushed through the crowd. Miss Quick was sure looking grumpy, like she had been deprived of a cookie. She got into her fringed buckskins and pushed her way out, and vanished into the night. I wondered how many times she had pulled her trigger that evening.

“Don’t come back,” Sally yelled.

Lily was a trouper. She was not only smiling, but enjoying all the fuss her pals were making.

“Man, did he have a gun,” she said.

I managed to hold back the crowd that was swarming in, but Sally saw her chance.

“We’ll open in five minutes, half price,” she said. There were about fifty males jammed into the parlor and the hallway. “Even Lily the French Bombshell. Half price for the next hour.”

You sort of had to admire Sally. There are people who know how to take advantage of events, and turn everything into cash, and she topped the list. All those gents, they were digging into their britches to see if they could come up with a dollar instead of two, and pretty quickly there were greenbacks floating into Denver Sally’s hand.

“We should stage one of these every night,” she said. “I could retire.”

It was the strangest thing. All I could think of was Amanda Quick, wearing nothing but a smile and a gun belt. I thought I’d like to put her in a little cottage with rambling roses, and we could shoot at tin cans on fence posts for our entertainment, when we weren’t heating up the bedroom. But that’s just me. Some men, they’d be better off leaving her alone. I like guns and I like women who like guns, and there aren’t very many of those.

I like to compare women to guns. Now, Amanda Quick, she was like a fine Navy Colt. Other women, they’re like a blunderbuss. A few are like derringers. I’ve hardly ever met a woman who reminds me of a shotgun, though. But I’d like to meet one. Belle reminds me of a Dragoon, big and hearty and makes a lot of noise. The ones to watch out for, though, remind me of a dueling pistol, a big caliber, smooth, and mean.

About then, Billy Bones showed up.

“Trouble?” he asked.

“Nothing to it,” I said.

“She does that, you know. She likes little parties of three.”

“I’m hoping you’ll leave town. We’ve had enough trouble around here.”

“Thanks, sheriff. You’re really welcoming.”

“It’s her,” I said. “She’s trouble. I don’t know a thing about women.”

“She’s our big draw. Without her, we’d not have enough gate to pay our freight.”

I didn’t know what all that meant, but it didn’t matter.

“You’re lucky she’s not sitting in the jail bare-ass naked, along with that stud of hers.”

“No luck at all. I wish she was there. We’d have a sell-out crowd tomorrow.”

I might be a slow learner, but I was beginning to understand road shows, and show business. Those people sure were strange.

I headed back to the jail. I was sleeping in Cell Number Two, because I’d given my boardinghouse room to the Siamese twins. Doubtful had finally quieted down, after the excitement in the sporting district. I unlocked, didn’t light a lamp, washed up, got out of my shirt and britches and boots, and headed for the cell cot in my underdrawers. It had been a long day, wrestling with Riley and his little thefts, and fishing with him, and not getting anywhere with him, and then trying to prevent a cathouse bloodbath.

No sooner did I lie down on that hard bunk, mostly just sheet iron with a pad on it, than someone was tapping at the door. It wasn’t real loud, just persistent. I grabbed my shooter, and decided not to light a lamp. I’d open the door a little, and see who was there without being seen.

I creaked the door open some, and saw herself, Quick, standing there alone. The moonlight caught her locks and caught the smile on her face.

“Mind if I come in, sheriff?”

“Well, I mind. Unless you got something to report. It’s late and I’m ready for a sleep.”

She ignored me, and drifted in, and I thought I’d let her talk a minute and then push her out. I lit a lamp. She studied the office, with its gun racks, my desk, the open door to the jail, and the darkness beyond the wavering yellow light of the lamp.

She was smiling. “I sure like guns,” she said. “You got guns on every wall, and they just make me happy. Put me in the middle of a lot of big long guns, and I’m a happy woman.”

“Well, I like guns, too, ma’am. I got a mess of them, and I’m always a sucker for the next one. But I like the older ones better than the new. I like ’em when the shine’s gone, the blueing is worn off, and I know what way off-center the shot’ll go.”

“Sounds like you’re talking about me, Cotton Pickens. I thought maybe you’d like to pull my trigger.”