Support Your Local Deputy: A Cotton Pickens Western (18 page)

That was Hanging Judge Earwig’s finest hour, and he knew it. He convened court at six in the morning, making sure that everyone was grouchy and no one had dosed himself with coffee yet. I marched the criminals into court, thirty-three in all, and they were a surly lot, stained brown from all that dried blood. They shed a lot of it, wrestling on the floor with all those broken bottles.

Billy Bones came along with a bag of money; he was reconciled to what was coming, and wanted to bail out of Doubtful as well as he could manage, which would mean forking over.

Earwig leered at the assembled miscreants, cowboys off the ranches, roustabouts, and show cowboys from the Wild West.

“What a beautiful morning, gentlemen,” he said. “At least I think you’re all gentlemen, aren’t you? What a lovely, sweet dawn welcoming a glorious day in Puma County. Do you wish to plead guilty to whatever charges we can think up? It will save time. If not, why, I will set the trial for two weeks hence, and you may post bail for a thousand dollars apiece, or enjoy the hospitality of Sheriff Pickens. I understand the piss pots are overflowing, and there’s a lack of bunks, but you’ll have no trouble accommodating yourselves to minor discomforts.”

All those miscreants stared up at Earwig, not yet fathoming his opening sally, since half of them were still drunk, and the rest were hurting, or leaking liquids from every pore and orifice. Still, they listened.

Earwig was enjoying himself. “There is the small matter of Mr. Upward’s saloon, which is now suffering from the recent and memorable joust in which you participated. He has yet to give me an estimate, but he lost every bottle of spirits in his possession, most of his glassware, most of his furniture, and sundry other items. Even the Montgomery Ward catalog in his outhouse, he tells me.”

He peered owlishly at the silent and surly crowd of miscreants. “There is the matter of disturbing the peace. The matter of assault to do great bodily harm, if not exterminate anyone in your way. There is public drunkenness. I believe there were threats and foul language. There was the matter of defying the sheriff, who ordered you to cease and desist. And I suppose I can think up a few more, and court testimony will enlarge and embellish the list of infractions against the good order and peacefulness of Doubtful, Wyoming Territory. How do you plead?”

No one said a thing. So Earwig pointed at each man and asked him to plead, guilty or innocent. But they were all clamming up.

“Very well, I will remand the prisoners to the sheriff, and direct them to appear at their combined trial in a fortnight,” he said.

“Ah, Your Honor,” Billy Bones said. “May I be heard?”

“Step forward, sir.”

“I am the employer of twelve of these gents, and I will enter a guilty plea for those in my company.”

“A guilty plea, is it?”

“If it can result in a fair settlement, Your Honor, guilty it will be.”

“And what would a fair settlement be?”

“Ah, let us say, no more than forty percent of the cost of rehabilitating Mr. Upward’s business establishment, if you determine that my group was at fault. However, since they didn’t initiate this difficulty, but sat peacefully until set upon by drovers, the true amount should be less, no more than ten percent, because they were merely defending themselves.”

Earwig leaned over, and jabbed a finger at Rinkydink. “You there, how did you defend yourself ?” he asked.

“We were sitting peacefully at our table, Your Honor, when we were set upon by local rowdies. We remained seated until it was plain that we needed to protect our persons, and guard our private parts against the unruly mob.”

“Good, good, sir. Now how did you protect yourself against the drovers from the ranches, may I ask?”

“Well, sir, we invited them to join us for a drink, and we expressed our friendship and best wishes, for we had just competed in certain rodeo events in our show, and we offered to buy them a round of drinks, but they chose to hit us.”

“Hit you?”

Rinkydink sighed. “We did our best to keep the peace, sir, but it came time to defend ourselves, and so we did, it being a principle of justice that we have the right to defend our persons against harm.”

“Ah!” said Earwig, his eyes aglow.

“Your Honor,” said another roustabout, “it was a matter of honor and decency. The star, the glory, of our show is our shooter, Miss Quick. She came to have a friendly drink with all parties, being of a generous nature, but the locals began to abuse her, threaten her, mock her honor and skills, and needless to say, we were ready and willing to defend her against these calumnies, canards, and gross perversions of the truth.”

That fellow sounded real practiced at this, I thought. Maybe he had some experience. I thought I’d ask Bones if this sort of departure was ordinary.

Earwig leaned forward. “And so you defended her honor against the local drovers? Who were demeaning her? Is that it?”

“Yessir.”

“What are calumnies? Tell me about canards.”

“Those are real evils, sir, right out of
Webster’s
.”

“And what truth was perverted by these drovers?”

“They said she couldn’t shoot worth a damn. If she didn’t load her rifle with sand, she couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn.”

“Ah! Now we are getting somewhere,” Earwig said. “And does she use sand?”

“Never, sir, she shoots nothing but lead. And anyone who says otherwise is a rotter, a cad, and a bounder.”

“Those are from
Webster’s
, too?”

“That’s what Billy Bones taught me to say.”

“Your boss is a fine, upstanding gent,” Earwig said. “A lady’s virtue is at stake.”

He turned to the rest of the miscreants, familiar faces from the assorted ranches around Doubtful. “Ah, it’s always a joy to spot old friends and acquaintances,” he said. “Now, then, my curiosity has got the best of me. I shall point, and you shall tell me how many times you have been before this court. If you wish to repeat your name, that is fine; if not, it won’t matter.”

He pointed a crooked index finger at Big Nose George. “Tell me truly, sir, how many times you have stood before me in this court of law.”

Big Nose scratched his nose, dipping into assorted memories. “I believe it was four, sir.”

“Ah! And you, fella?” he asked, pointing at a T-Bar cowboy.

“Five, sir.”

He pointed at Alvin Ream, from the Admiral Ranch. “And you?”

Ream puffed up some. “I don’t rightly remember, sir. So many times I can’t quite say, but it’s in the double digits.”

“Ah, more than the fingers on my hands,” Earwig said, spreading out all his fingers.

“Yep.”

Several cowboys whistled. A little brag was good.

“How about you, sir?” Earwig asked, pointing at a cowboy unfamiliar to me.

“Well, sir, five or six times, before you, and eight or ten before the previous judge, best as I can recollect.”

Earwig nodded. “A true reprobate, and proud of it.”

He aimed his finger at Smiley Thistlethwaite.

“Beyond counting, Your Honor. Simply taxes my mind to remember them all,” Smiley said.

“Good, good. And you, Spitting Sam?”

“I’ve never had the honor, sir, but only because I’ve dodged the law. But I’ve been before a dozen judges throughout the territory, and have survived twenty or thirty good fights.”

“Good, good, good,” the judge said.

The motley crowd looked plumb worn out after a night of uproar and blood, and then a few hours packed into cells intended to hold one or two. The culprits weren’t bleeding now, but they looked pale and drawn, as if they were on their last legs. All of which delighted Judge Earwig.

One by one, he had the locals fess up. And most of them put the best face possible on it, and confessed to far more infractions than they had to their credit. I thought most of them had been before the judge once or twice, at most, but this lot was confessing to five or seven or a dozen arrests for brawling. There was something really satisfying about it, and it did my heart good to see so much manhood confessing to so much public disturbance in Doubtful. There was not a town in the territory that could match or beat Doubtful when it came to public disturbance. And I must say, those roustabouts with the show were really impressed. They hadn’t the faintest idea, until last evening, what they were facing in Doubtful, Wyoming.

But now they knew. Judge Earwig finished his questioning, with a vast smile building under his rough beard. A gleam lit his eyes. I knew this would be a decision for the ages. I could see it coming, like a burst of sunshine in that courtroom.

“Well now,” he said. “We have a bunch of splendid confessions here. We’ve listened to more confession this fine morning than I’ve ever heard in one session of this court. We have confessions upon confessions, admissions upon admissions, crime upon crime, duly noted and officially accounted for. When it comes to confessions, this is a truly manly crowd, except for the show people over there, who were swift to blame anyone other than themselves. They’re a shameful crew, but the locals who have paraded before this court dozens of times, they’re as fine an example of Puma County manhood as ever came here.”

I was getting antsy, seeing as how Earwig was going on and on. I was plumb wore out, and wanted some shut-eye, but this was Earwig’s moment of glory, with the sun and moon and stars all shining on him, and he wouldn’t let go.

Some of those fellows needed some medical attention, I thought. Or at least their pals needed to put them on a horse and carry them back to their ranches. But Earwig ignored that, or if he saw it, he thought there was divine justice in it.

He rapped his gavel sharply, awakening the dead and dying, and alerting the crowd.

“The Wild West scoundrels are herewith fined twenty dollars or two weeks in our iron cages, their choice. If they choose to pay, they must leave town before sundown.”

They sighed. Billy Bones would pay, and extract the fines from their pay down the road. They settled morosely while Earwig grinned at them, enjoying every moment.

He rapped again. “Now, then, the locals, who have intently confessed to crimes beyond number, crimes exceeding the stars in heaven, must endure a harsher fate. I herewith sentence them all to hang by the neck until dead, one week from today.”

That sort of stopped the show. That was it. Sentence imposed. The cowboys looked at one another, amazed. I sure was going to have a mess of hangings on my hand, and the only way I could do it was with a scaffold wide enough to drop them all at the same time. I’d get the carpenters busy on that. I’d have to order a mess of rope just to put nooses over the heads of twenty or so culprits.

Big Nose George sat down on the floor and rubbed his eyes.

“Stand up, you. You’re in a court of law,” Earwig snapped.

Big Nose slowly unfolded and stood erect.

Earwig rapped again. “Now, then, it would impose a great hardship on our esteemed sheriff if he were to keep all twenty-some of the condemned in his two cells, feeding them, changing diapers, hosing them down, and all. Therefore, I am remanding you to your ranches for one week, provided you put a dollar each in the Charity Jar, and you will report here one week hence for your choking party.”

The mob stared, absorbing all that.

“I’ll be there, your lordship,” said Smiley, who dropped a greenback into the Charity Jar and walked out. A certain amount of greenback exchanging went on, but pretty soon, the jar was laden with bills, and the last of the culprits had staggered into the morning sun.

“Now, then,” Earwig said to the show people, “you may take your leave, providing the fine is paid.”

Billy Bones sighed, dug into a black leather purse, spread out some greenery before His Honor, and then marched his charges out the door into the glaring light of day.

Earwig turned to me. “Should be enough to put Sammy back in business,” he said.

The hanging judge and I watched the culprits stream into the day and vanish. He was looking self-satisfied, and I could well understand it. Sammy Upward’s famous saloon would be restored. The Wild West show would depart without taking a lot of Doubtful’s cash with it.

“Your Honor, the county has a gallows stored away, but it won’t drop twenty-one at a crack. You mind if I hang them in shifts?”

“That’s not really fair, you know. Some fellows have the honor of croaking a few minutes before the next lot.”

“I could have them draw straws to see who goes first,” I said. “I can hang six at a time.”

“Well, not all of them’ll show up, you know. Then I’ll have to issue warrants for their arrest. You’ll have a stack of warrants in your office, to use at will. They might be pretty handy for keeping the peace around Puma County,” he said.

I was beginning to see the genius in his sentencing.

“That’s pretty fine, Your Honor. Maybe we’ll only hang a few in a week.”

“Well, set up the gallows, and we’ll see.”

That sounded fine to me. “I’ll get a crew busy,” I said. “We’ll get some fresh hemp. I never could tie those blasted nooses, but I know a few who can. I’ll get Rusty to do it, if I can unloose him from his honeymoon.”

“Or honeymoons,” Earwig said, winking away.

Earwig was nobody’s fool, I thought.

I got a couple of fellows from the Puma County Tax Collection Office to put up the gallows on the village square. Collecting taxes was about the same as hanging people, so I figured they knew what they were up to. And they did. They got the frame in place with the trapdoors on it, and little stairway up there, and then the uprights, and the beam, and I had Rusty build six nooses and let them hang there in the August breezes. It made a nice addition to the town’s sights, and lots of visitors off the ranches paused to admire it. The tax boys did a good job of it, getting the upright posts going straight up, and bolting down the crossbeam, which I had used a few times before this.

The joke was that the county was going to hang anyone who didn’t pay his taxes, which was not a bad idea, because I sometimes wasn’t paid regularly. But Reggie Thimble let it be known that I’d be hanging a mess of unruly cowboys who were advised to show up for their demise or face a warrant.

I ran a few test runs, using sandbags, and the whole deal worked handsomely. When I pulled the lever, the hinged trap dropped, and the sandbags plunged downward and then dangled in the wind. I thought that maybe Spitting Sam and Big Nose George would die with a smile, but some of those other dudes would whine and struggle. But you never knew what a man was made of until he was about to croak.

Rusty was feeling mighty fine, full of joy. He had two wives and a boy, and how could you beat that? The Siamese twins had settled down and were no longer trying to throttle each other, so there was peace at last in Doubtful. As long as there was bad blood between the twins, I knew trouble was not far away. Rusty and his family would sometimes parade up and down Wyoming Street, just to show off a little. The town ladies quit gossiping, and greeted the twins like long-lost sisters. Everyone in Doubtful admired Hanging Judge Earwig’s fine solution to an impossible dilemma.

I thought summer was about over, and life would be peaceful again, except for hanging twenty-one cowboys, but then a slicker rode in with some fancy horses and challenged everyone to a match race, with a few side bets for spice. His name was Algernon Limp, but I think he invented it to give him some advantage. Anyone in Wyoming knows that Algernon is a sissy name, and Limp is worse. It’s as if his horses limped, and that was what he was trying to convey with a name like that. I studied him some, and went back to my office to paw through the wanted dodgers and posters, but I didn’t find anyone matching Algernon Limp’s description. Actually, he was a pint-sized dandy, with pinstripe black suit, a red paisley vest and bowler hat and waxed mustachios and patent-leather shoes so shiny that they pretty near reflected starlight.

But Limp was more than a dandy dresser. He brought with him three of the finest horses I’d ever seen, full of thoroughbred blood, I thought, almost dainty in their stepping. There was a black, a bay with white stockings, and a palomino.

He began by parking them at the hitch rails of the saloons, and it was plain he was letting people take a gander at them. A few cowboys had filtered back in, but the hanging was still a couple of days away, so Limp didn’t have the usual bunch of drovers around to talk to. He eyed the gallows, inquired when the big day would be, and offered to run races to celebrate the event, but mostly he was waiting for the hangings to go away so he could get down to the business of staging match races between his steeds and any local talent the cowboys came up with.

He stopped by the sheriff office to inquire about a good place to run the match races he had in mind.

“I have here, some of the finest horseflesh not only in the territory, but in all of the United States and all of the world,” he said. “Have with me a trainer, jockey, and an oddsmaker, Boston Bill, who will take wagers laid on one nag or the other, and fleece the cowboys out of their hard-earned monthly salaries.”

“I imagine your ponies lose a few,” I said.

“I like to give that impression,” he said. “In fact, I always understate the virtues of my running horses, so that people are willing to test their own nags against mine. That’s how I make a dandy living, and I expect to retire soon because I have husbanded my winnings and built them up.”

“How do you do it?”

“I have a quarter-miler, a half-miler, and a miler, all southern bred,” he said. “And Egbert Engstrom, the demon Swede jockey who squeezes juice out of my turnips. I lay out the game to the local talent, and they can decide whether or not to run a match race with my plugs. If there are no takers, I move on to the next town, and see who’ll swallow the bait.”

“What if you lose?”

“Oh, I pay my stakes cheerfully, and my bookie coughs up, and we accept our licking. I have excellent credit with the Greengrocers and Bail Bond Stock Bank of Manhattan, and I draw a certified check, and head for the next burg.”

“You have stakes?”

“Of course. We each put up a stake, and the winner walks away with it.”

“What if there’s a false start?”

“We always have independent judges, drawn from the community. One at the starting line, and one at the finish.”

He sure seemed to have all the answers. And he may have run a square game, but I’d reserve judgment on that. There had been so many road shows coming through Doubtful that I figured there weren’t two nickels left to rub together, but horse racers are a different breed, and half of them are mad, and they can get all heated up faster than a virgin in a cathouse.

“Well, the best day for a match race would be the day of the hangings,” I said. “We’ve got twenty-one cowboys lined up, and we’ll hang them in shifts, and maybe you could run a match race between each shift.”

“Oh, boy,” he said. “Doubtful will have a glorious day.”

“How do you promote the event? The hanging’s only two days away.”

“The saloons, my friend. They are regular gossip machines. Put out the word, and next thing, there’s a dozen calculating strangers eyeing my livestock.”

“Do you exercise them so they folks can watch?”

“Absolutely. We train first thing every morning. As soon as we measure up the track, we’ll do light runs for the edification of the locals. We’ve got the finest horseflesh west of Kalamazoo, and we’ll put it all on display.”

“We got some fine horseflesh around here. Over at the Admiral Ranch, Smiley Thistlethwaite’s been working some quarter-milers that can’t be beat, at least locally. Trouble is, he’s scheduled to be hanged. You might want to get him to race his tomorrow, before he expires.”

“Well, that’s a thought, but ideally, he should match my nag on the day of the hanging, so if he wins, he can go to the noose happily, and the crowd can cheer him.”

“Well, we can schedule a little time between each shift. My deputy’s got to cut down the bodies anyway, and build fresh nooses. I imagine a good match race would occupy people until we’re ready to hang the next lot.”

“Capital, just capital,” he said. “Well, I’m off to the saloons, to troll a little. Wish me happy days.”

After that, things sort of picked up steam on their own. Maxwell, the funeral parlor man, ordered in some ice so he could keep all them corpses cold and run the funerals by rotation with the criminals well preserved and looking prime.

The women of the Methodist persuasion planned to sell fried chicken and potato salad box lunches to the crowd. But the Episcopalians, not to be outdone, offered to set up a whole lunch counter, hams, steaks, green snapper beans, strawberry tarts, and frosty fizzes, all donations going to the widows, if any—cowboys were not known for getting into holy wedlock uninspired by a shotgun—and the Lutherans decided to hold a Sons of Norway lutefisk supper following the hangings, right next to Maxwell’s Funeral Parlor, so folks could eat and view the stiffs in one tour.

I toured Saloon Row that eve. It sure was entertaining. Sammy had got his saloon back in business. He bought booze from the Lizard Lounge and Mrs. Gladstone’s Sampling Room so he didn’t have to wait for a shipment from Denver. He didn’t have much variety, but that didn’t matter. Who cares about taste?

There were cowboys in town from all the ranches, but none of the condemned. They were smart enough to steer clear until the last. And sure enough, there was Algernon Limp, the center of attention, boasting up his nags. He chose Mrs. Gladstone’s Sampling Room, mostly because Cronk ran a faro game there, and betting was what the place was all about.

“Now, friend,” Limp was saying to a certain cowboy named Bark, “my quarter-mile runner is unbeatable. His name is Booth, after John Wilkes Booth, and he is the Terror of the West. He was born and bred in the South. If you’ll put up a hundred dollars as a stake, winner take all, I will match you, and we will race tomorrow.”

“A hunnert? Where am I gonna get a hunnert?” Bark asked.

“You form a pool with your pals from your ranch,” Limp said.

“Well, I got a quarter stallion, it can’t be beat, and it’s mean enough to take a piece of hide off yours,” Bark said. “Ain’t that the truth?”

Some of his friends allowed that it was.

“Well, then, you’ve got an easy hundred,” Limp said. “You got ten friends? Have them put in ten, and win ten. Or they can make side bets, too, with my bookie. He’ll post the odds, and you can bet or not as you choose. You want to lay two dollars on my nag, or his nag? See the bookie.”

Bark eyed his pals, who nodded, and agreed. “We’ll match you, and race tomorrow,” he said.

I had a hunch that Bark and his pals were about to lose their asses, but my ma told me never to bet on hunches.

And Algernon Limp was smiling like he owned Doubtful.