Support Your Local Deputy: A Cotton Pickens Western (21 page)

I’d never seen such a mob. Most of Puma County was there, and plenty from the surrounding counties, too. I guess word got out, and there were people came a hundred miles just for this race. They were setting up to stay a while at the track, putting down blankets to sit on, and carrying picnic baskets. The ladies had got up in their best finery, lots of big straw hats against the August sun. I sure enjoy seeing women who are dolled up and looking flirty.

The heat was building, and I knew we’d all get burnt and roasted this race day, and I hoped people had sense enough to stay under big hats. By noon, the crowd had swelled to a couple thousand, which was more than we had in the county, so they were sure pouring in.

Boston Bill had a chalkboard on a tripod, where he posted the latest odds. The sorrel was the longshot, and if he won, he would pay out five for one. A feller could make a sawbuck on a two-dollar bet. Most of the smart money was on the Confederate horse, as he was being called, and the winners wouldn’t collect much. But they were calling it a sure thing, so it didn’t matter. A man could bet two simoleons and two minutes later have two and a half. But there were a lot of Union men who wouldn’t put a plugged nickel on a Reb horse, and a lot more who itched for a local horse, like Jones, to cop the race.

Much to my surprise, Walt Zablonski, sheriff of Medicine Bow County, showed up. He didn’t say much, just eyed me, eyed the track, eyed the bookmaker, Boston Bill, and eyed the competitors, Algernon Limp and Elmer Skruggs. It sure made me curious. Maybe there was more to it, but Zablonski wasn’t talking.

Boston Bill sure was doing a business. Folks were lined up to lay some greenbacks on him, and he received each bettor courteously, making sure people got the exact change, and a printed yellow ticket with the words “Davis” or “Jones” carefully written into a blank on the ticket.

“Winners, redeem your tickets ten minutes after the race, and after the judges have declared the results final,” he kept saying. “I’ll post the results on the chalkboard.”

The judges were all on hand early, all dressed in black suits for the occasion, in spite of the hot sun. King Glad at least doffed his suit coat until race time. But Cronk, the faro dealer, seemed impervious to the heat and just sat in a folding chair, smoking cigarillos and watching the mob. Doc Harrison was busy treating heatstroke, so he didn’t have a chance to stand around and look important.

By one-thirty, the place was half crazy. People were still in line, buying chits from Boston Bill, but now Bill was saying that he’d quit selling ten minutes ahead of the race. Sure enough, at ten minutes to two, he shut down.

“Sorry, fella, it’s race time now,” he said. “Betting’s closed. Hear that? Closed now.”

The crowd got the word, and drifted away, and Boston Bill asked me where the nearest outhouse might be.

“Behind the Last Chance,” I said.

“Watch over my deal here,” he said.

I kept an eye on his seat and chalkboard and a small black bag, glad to be of assistance.

Well, race time rolled around. The crowds milled around the two nags, studying them. Skruggs had got a racing pad on his sorrel, and would ride the critter himself. No fancy silks for him. In fact, he left his stained cowboy hat at his campsite. But Limp’s Swede jockey, Egbert Engstrom, was all duded up in purple silks and looked ready to run for the money.

The owners shook hands, the jocks mounted, and began exercising their nags, walk, trot, easy lope for a bit, while the judges stationed themselves. The nags would go twice around the track, and the chalk line was both the starting and finish line. So that’s where the big crowd collected, as many in the infield as outside the loop.

At the stroke of two, King Glad bawled into a megaphone. “Jockeys, line up your mounts.”

The jockeys lined up the horses at the line, with the Swede having a little trouble holding in the bay. Limp, dressed to the nines, watched blandly, puffing on a fat Havana. He’d been through all this lots of times.

I sure got fascinated. Skruggs sat easily on his red horse, but Engstrom looked twitchy.

A sudden silence swept the crowd.

Glad fired his shot; the horses broke away, a fair start, and the race was on.

They ran neck and neck through the first loop, with the Confederate nag on the outside and taking broader sweeps around the corners, but as they raced into the second loop, Jefferson Davis pulled ahead, running easily, and pretty soon it was a length, then two, then three, and finally four lengths ahead at the finish. It was a clear victory, and beyond dispute. The crowd watched silently. There hadn’t been enough drama to stir up much feeling. I thought that Turk had it right; he’d picked that horse and touted it, and now he must be crowing.

The horses slowed, their flanks heaving, their stifles sweat-soaked in the heat, and the jocks turned them back to the finish line, where the crowd waited.

The horses stood at last before the crowd, their jockeys relaxed.

King Glad consulted briefly with the other judges.

“The winner of this match race is Jefferson Davis, by four lengths. The judges are unanimous,” he said. “This race is over. The stakes go to Algernon Limp, owner of the bay.”

King Glad handed the match race cash to Limp.

There was a little weak cheering, but the drama was already over at the three-quarter mark.

The crowd examined its race tickets, and the ones who’d put cash on Jones were pitching their tickets away, while the larger crowd that put money on Davis began lining up at the bookmaker’s stand, where the chalkboard still stood on its tripod with the final odds written on it.

But Boston Bill was nowhere in sight.

“He’ll be right back,” I said.

But he didn’t return. Off a bit, Skruggs was unsaddling his red horse, and Engstrom was walking his bay, while Limp watched languidly. Skruggs’s face was a mask. He and his cowboy buddies in the next county had hoped for a big upset, and that hadn’t happened.

Sheriff Zablonski of Medicine Bow edged up to me. “It’s like I figured,” he said. “You’d better find Boston Bill, and fast, and maybe put those other two behind bars.”

“What?”

“Just like I thought. The three are in cahoots, along with the jockey. They pulled this one in Rock Springs and cleaned up.”

“What are you saying?”

“Find Boston Bill fast. He probably skipped town. That kid there, Skruggs, he’s not from Medicine Bow County. No one’s ever heard of him. It’s a simple deal: These three travel together. They find a county seat like this. Boston Bill sets up shop, these two run the races, sometimes throwing the race one way or another if it suits.”

There were plenty of people listening, and the result was a human thunderstorm.

“Sheriff, keep order here. I’m going after him.”

“Not my county.”

“You’re deputized. Right now.”

He grinned.

I stared at the crowd, a giant thunderclap in the making, and then raced toward town. I hardly knew where to look. Boston Bill could have dodged any way, down any road. Maybe he was still there, waiting for the moment to go.

I wheeled into Sammy Upward’s saloon. Sammy wasn’t there, but a young barkeep was. “You see a beefy man in a dark suit and derby here?”

“Nope.”

“If you do, hold him.” I said.

I raced along Wyoming Street. Turk’s place would be next. That’s where a man could get a saddle horse. But Turk’s was deserted, like the rest of the town. If Boston Bill had stolen a horse and saddle, no one was around to stop it. I stared down side streets, studied distant roads. Then I remembered the Laramie and Overland Stage. A mud wagon was due to leave about race time. That office was two blocks up Wyoming, on the west side of town, as far from the racetrack as one could get.

It was deserted, except for a clerk in a sleeve garter.

“Laramie stage leave?”

“Yep. You’re too late.”

“Who was on it?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Couple of whiskey drummers, one patent medicine salesman.”

“Wearing what?”

“Something bothering you, sheriff?”

“Tell me fast. What were they wearing? Right now!”

The feller sighed. “I don’t pay much attention. Light colors, summer stuff. The whiskey drummers, tan suits, checkered waistcoats, likely. The other one, light blue jacket, straw hat.”

“Any carrying big bags?”

“They all carry a samples bag, that’s for taking orders. And a valise.”

“The patent medicine man, what was he carrying?”

“Beats me,” the clerk said. “Maybe a small case, like a sample case.”

“Was he in a hurry? Breathing hard?”

“Nope, bought a ticket to Laramie, paid cash, sat down, waited for the jehu to load up, and that was that.”

“How far out are they now?”

“Left fifty minutes ago. Must be four miles out.”

There was a wire that went to the courthouse. I headed that way, hoping I’d find Wiley Wills, the telegraph operator. I’d telegraph Laramie, get them to hold all passengers on that stage. I huffed my way to the courthouse, but there was no one in the place. No telegrapher. I rattled around in there, looking for anyone who could tap out my message, but in fact the whole lot of people there were at the track. There were only two people in Doubtful who could tap out a message, and they were not around.

I could saddle Critter and try to catch up, and hope one of the three passengers was Boston Bill, or I could keep on looking in town. I chose to stay; there was trouble brewing right here. The whole town was like a warehouse of giant powder, ready to blow. I didn’t know what would happen, but it was going to be as bad as anything I’d ever faced.

By the time I got to the racetrack, things were out of hand. A mob surrounded Zablonski, demanding that he produce Boston Bill. There were other mobs surrounding Limp and Skruggs, and about all I heard was shouting. Another crowd had corralled the judges, and were threatening to pulverize them. I looked for Rusty, but he wasn’t around, and it was going to be me against not one but several mobs, all ready for a fight.

King Glad still had a megaphone in hand, so I figured I’d get to him. If I could get the mob quieted down, maybe I could keep the place safe.

But when I tried to push through the angry crowd, they simply grabbed me.

“Sheriff! Where’s my money? What are you gonna do?”

“I’m going to keep the peace, and you’re going to let go of me,” I yelled.

But they didn’t let go. In fact, they started blaming me.

“Why didn’t you nab them?”

“Some sheriff! These crooks need hanging, and where were you?”

It wasn’t hard to see where all this was heading. A lynching was building up, and this mob might well lynch a dozen people before it quit. They had swarmed Skruggs and Limp, and were holding both. King Glad, with the megaphone, saw what was building, climbed up on the nearest wagon and began yelling.

“Cut it out,” he roared. “I’m a judge here, and I’m telling you to quiet down. Now listen to me!”

But the mob ignored him.

“Hang these bastards,” yelled a cowboy. “String ’em up.”

And I knew of no way to stop them, but I would try.

King Glad was trying to slow that mob, but the crowd turned on him and knocked him down, and started kicking him. I waded in, worked toward Glad, and found myself being yanked and hauled by more hands than I could count. Someone got my revolver, and hooted as he waved it.

“Cut that out,” I yelled. “Go home. It’s over.”

But the mob wasn’t listening. I saw a mess of cowboys catch the match race contestants, Skruggs and Limp, and wrestle them down. The two horses went berserk, kicking anyone in sight, but a dozen cowboys grabbed their bridles and hauled the horses out.

“Kill them,” yelled someone, and the word spread through the jostling crowd like a tightening noose. I could see them catching the judges, Doc Harrison, Cronk, the faro dealer, and Glad himself, who ran the Admiral Ranch. The cowboys were whipping off their bandannas and using them to tie up the contestants and judges, and then they started on me.

I bucked and dodged, but all I got for it was some boots in my shins, and some yanks that nearly tore my arms out of their sockets.

I saw Sheriff Zablonski up on a wagon, yelling, but they were ignoring him, too.

“You’ll hang,” Zablonski yelled, but that simply heated up the game, and the mob began jeering. The mob took on a life of its own, and people knew instinctively what to do, and who to fight. I knew where this would end, and I looked desperately for help from Rusty. Or maybe the town’s businessmen. Or anyone.

But there wasn’t a soul except the lynch mob. The women had fled, and the businesspeople soon after, and all that remained out there, next to the horse track, was a crazed mob, bent on revenge, lawfully or not.

I saw no sign of Judge Earwig, either. He’d gotten out while he could.

The fact of the matter was that within minutes, the mob had me hogtied, Sheriff Zablonski tied up, the judges bound head to toe, and the two contestants tied up, stomped on, breathing raggedly, and fearing what would come next.

I saw Alvin Ream, an Admiral Ranch cowboy, in the midst of them.

“Alvin, stop this,” I yelled. “Before something happens you’ll regret.”

He kicked me in the ribs. I felt my side explode with hurt.

The mob got a wagon, lifted me and the judges and the neighboring sheriff into it, and pulled the wagon into town. That was the last I saw of Limp and Skruggs. The law, what was left of it, was tied up tight. One cowboy had no trouble digging my jail key out of my pocket, and I had an idea what would happen.

Sure enough, they dragged the wagon to the jail, yanked us out—none of us could stand or walk—and dragged us into the jail, and into Cell Number Two, and locked the door.

“Where’s the rope?” one of them asked.

They found it easily enough, and headed out the door. It suddenly was real quiet in there. And real quiet in town. There hadn’t been a soul on the streets when they hauled us down Wyoming to Courthouse Square, and now Doubtful was dead silent.

I eyed the others, who were all wrestling with the bandannas that bound them.

Zablonski was the first to muscle his hands loose, and in short order he had freed the rest of us. Doc Harrison worked on Cronk, who was half conscious, but there wasn’t much Doc could do except pump air in and out of Cronk’s lungs until the man regained some sensibility. There was no water in the cell.

I hurt. The rest hurt. Some of us were bleeding, but the bandannas soon became bandages stopping the blood. My nose had taken a fist, and was swollen red and thick.

The moment came when we’d done all the doctoring we could manage in the dim light. We knew what was surely happening, not far away, in the square, where the gallows still stood. But in the cell there was only silence, and we were alone with our thoughts.

I was wondering what I might have done better, and Zablonski must have seen it in me.

“Wasn’t a Ned Buntline moment, was it?” he said.

I didn’t know what he was talking about, and he saw it.

“Ned Buntline writes dime novels, with outlandish heroes doing impossible things,” the sheriff of Medicine Bow County said.

“Like stopping a lynching?” I asked.

“Here’s how the dime novel story would go. The brave sheriff, armed with a shotgun, would stand in the path of the lynchers, daring them to walk past him, and they would see the shotgun, and see the sheriff ready to use it, and they would falter, and the lynchers would quit, and the sheriff would be celebrated as a hero.”

“I’m no dime novel sheriff,” I said.

We heard a faint roar from the crowd, a muffled cry in the afternoon.

I felt real bad.

“That’s the dime novel world, with dime novel heroes, not the real world,” Zablonski said. “You don’t have to beat on yourself.”

But none of the others were joining in, and I sensed they thought I’d let them down, let law and order down, let those two horse racers down. Zablonski was trying to cheer me up, but I was beyond cheer.

“A mob is an animal, and sometimes you can’t stop it, and bravery isn’t going to help a lawman,” he said. “That’s the real world, not the fictional one.”

“You did what you could, Cotton,” King Glad said.

But we all knew that just outside a way, there were two bodies, swinging in the breeze, live men one moment, gone the next. I had let them down, let justice down, and nothing would change my mind about that.

I can’t remember a darker moment in my life. It wasn’t only that I had failed; it was that the people in the town I lived in had turned savage, and had murdered two strangers as swiftly and easily as if they were shooting a deer. Something had taken hold of them, tossed all reason and restraint to the wind, fired them up, and turned them into a howling pack of killers. There were men I knew among them. Men capable of murder.

The same thoughts must have been threading the minds of the rest of us in there. They stared bleakly through the bars, waiting to be released, wondering when or whether we’d be released. Someone would turn us loose—maybe.

The clock ticked onward, and the silence outside only deepened through the afternoon, and I had a sense that people had fled Doubtful, ran as far as they could, as fast as they could from the horror.

At last we heard a door creaking, steps, and then we saw Judge Earwig, slowly lumbering toward us.

“They let me go,” he said. “They still have your deputy somewhere. They’re not letting him go until you promise you won’t bring charges. He has the key to here; I don’t.”

“I’m sworn to uphold the law,” I said.

He nodded. “You need food and water. I can’t unlock without a key.”

The others were staring at me, maybe hating me. They wanted to get out, no matter what the price.

“Find One-Eyed Jack,” I said. “He can cut us out with his blacksmith tools. And see if you can find Burtell, my part-time deputy.”

“Burtell’s dead. He tried to stop them, so they strung him up.”

“Burtell?”

“Who knows who else? I’ll be back with something.”

“Water now, please,” said Doc Harrison.

The judge nodded, and returned with a bucket of clear water that he set just outside the bars, and a dipper. He passed the filled dipper through the bars. Harrison immediately offered each prisoner a good sip.

“Who’s dead?” I asked.

“Limp, Skruggs, Burtell, and a stranger.”

“The bookmaker, Boston Bill?”

“No, he’s gone.”

“Who negotiated with you, sent you here?”

“I don’t know. They wore bandannas over their faces.” He eyed the trapped men. “I’ll be back shortly.”

That water was manna from heaven. We drank much of what was in the bucket, which we could reach through the bars.

He returned in a while with a pot of beans from Barney’s Beanery, and with the blacksmith.

“It’ll take a few hours to cut you loose,” Jack said. “Or I can bust the lock.”

“Bust it,” I said.

“It’ll be noisy.”

“What do I tell the mob?” Earwig asked. “I’ll hang the lot?”

“Stay here. Don’t tell them anything.”

Jack jammed an amazingly long pry bar into the door mechanism, slammed it with a sledgehammer, and twisted. Something in there snapped. My ears were ringing. But Jack had done the job. He drew the bolt, and the door swung open. We stepped into bleakness, free at last, but my tasks had only begun.

“Arm yourselves if you want,” I said to the judges.

I found a sawed-off twelve-gauge shotgun, and loaded it. The rest chose to let things lie.

We went to the door, and looked out upon a bleak scene. Four bodies hung from the gallows, swaying slightly in the August breezes. There wasn’t a soul in the square. There wasn’t a sound issuing from any window or building. There wasn’t a horse or wagon, or cart, or ox team on the square.

“Where were you to meet the ringleaders?” I asked the judge.

“At the gallows.”

“I’ll go talk,” I said.

I wanted Rusty real bad. He was in big trouble. I wasn’t even sure he was alive. And I had no idea where to find him.

I headed out the jailhouse door, onto the lonely square, walking steadily, my shotgun cradled in my arm. The gallows loomed above me, with their dismal burden. Each man dangling, hands tied, neck snapped, head sideways, tongues bulging out of Limp and Burtell. Each body swayed slightly. Nothing under their boots but air. Once there had been the trap, solid and treacherous. But the trap hung straight down on its hinges.

I stood at the gallows, waiting, wondering whose eyes were watching me from what dark window fronting the square. There must have been a hundred windows, each hiding its own dark secrets.

No one showed up.

I sat on the edge of the gallows for a while, seeing not one soul.

My guess was that they had fled, every last one, as the reality of their crime overwhelmed them. And if so, I’d have to find and free Rusty on my own. The likeliest place was the courthouse, so I walked there, a solitary man doing a solitary task. The place was empty. I routinely checked each office as I made my way toward Judge Earwig’s chamber, and when I got to the courtroom there was Rusty, gagged and tied, but alive.

He seemed plenty glad to see me. I pulled the gag off his face, and then wrestled with the bandannas that had wrapped his numb arms and legs.

Rusty, he didn’t say anything. He didn’t say, “Glad to see you,” or anything like that. He just stared at me, and I stared at him, and some understanding passed between us.

He could name names, for sure, but I didn’t ask him and he didn’t volunteer any.

His holster was empty.

The judge kept a pitcher of water and some glasses there, and I poured a glass for Rusty, and he drank it greedily. When your arms are wrapped behind you, and you can’t lift a glass to your lips, you get mighty thirsty, and it becomes a howling need soon enough.

“Burtell’s dead,” I said.

“He was trying to stop the mob,” Rusty said. “He deserves a medal.”

“Are we negotiating with anyone now?” I asked.

“They ran.”

“Who’s the stranger they hanged?”

“No one knows. They just picked on him.”

“You got any notion what needs doing?” I asked.

“Call Maxwell. And cut Burtell loose first, and lay him out proper. And then the rest.”

I agreed with all that.

There was something I wanted to do before we left the courthouse. I headed for the front windows, where the United States and Wyoming flags hung from staffs. I pulled both in, and folded them, and then closed the window. They shouldn’t be flying in Puma County, not now.

We headed across Courthouse Square. Rusty would head for the jail and tell those people it was safe to go. I headed for Maxwell’s Funeral Parlor, and told him to pay respect to the dead.