Support Your Local Deputy: A Cotton Pickens Western (7 page)

Well, my ma, she always said there’s no better way to win an argument than to poke a twelve-gauge shotgun at some offender’s mouth. It stops all conversation. And that went double this time, with one of them scatterguns aimed at me, and one at Rusty.

The main thing to do is keep your trap shut, so me, I just went real silent and wondered if this was the last sight I’d see.

But the professor didn’t see it that way. He seemed actually melancholic about it.

“This poses a sad dilemma, with no good way out,” he said.

“We’re going the way of the carrier pigeons,” I said. The last of those little buggers got shot away years before. They once sold by the wagon load for pig feed.

“No, not quite. If we were to feed you to the magpies and crows, my friends, the Zimmer Medicine Show would come to an immediate halt, and every person here would flee for his life. For there would be no doubt about who to pursue, and every lawman in several states would do so, with great zest. So, you see, I would face not only the departure of these friends, and my show, but also my way of life, which I cherish.”

This feller was sure talking like someone in some college somewhere.

“On the other hand, if we let you go, we face tribulations, and another set of sorrows that would doom the show, and maybe remove our liberty from us. We all cherish our liberty, sheriff. We wouldn’t belong to a traveling road show if we were content not to roam, and live within the bleak confines of some dreary city.”

This sure was getting long-winded. I wished he’d just wind it up.

“Well, friend sheriff, what are we going to do? I am awash in sadness.”

“Pass around some of your joy juice, the real McCoy.”

“Ah, sheriff, your humor excels, but your practicality is wanting.”

“You got any ideas?” I asked.

“Perhaps a trade-off?”

“What for what?”

“Well, suppose we return the goods that someone accidentally left in our wagon, and suppose we pay fifty dollars to the customers who bought our elixir after the tincture of opium ran out, and suppose we pay a twenty-dollar fine for disorderly conduct, and then you go on your way and we go on our way.”

“I got to uphold the law. Feller does something wrong, I got to haul him in so he will face the music.”

“Ah, but we are remedying the wrong, you see?”

Rusty, he was tired of staring into the bore of a twelve-gauge, and was getting itchy. “I’m tired of this. I’m getting on my nag and heading back to Doubtful, and if you’re gonna shoot me, then do it.”

“Hold up, deputy. Drop your gun belt, and you can go. Adam, take the rifle from the sheath.”

I wondered if Rusty had something in mind, but he was playing his cards close to his vest, so I didn’t even get a look at his face. He got onto the livery stable nag, and eased out of camp.

“And you, sheriff?”

“Me, I’m sworn to uphold the law, so I’m stuck here until I uphold her. Professor, this here Mexican roulette ain’t gonna change. Either you kill me or I take you in. Your choice.”

Zimmer, he sure did look sad. But finally he caved in. “Adam, saddle a horse. I’ll take my medicine.”

That sure was something. I collected Critter, and Zimmer cleaned out his cache of money, and climbed onto a horse that a teamster saddled for him. They gave me Rusty’s artillery to take to him, and two burlap sacks full of purloined items from the Mercantile. But the shotgun on me never wavered.

“I’ll be back whenever Fate decrees it,” Zimmer told them. “Enjoy the night.”

We rode under a starry sky, making swift time back to Doubtful, and pulled in around nine or ten. Rusty wasn’t far ahead of me, and was rounding up a posse when we got in. George Waller was pleased to get his stuff back. Or most of it. What came back didn’t quite match what got took. There were some ladies’ items that had gone missing, but I wasn’t inclined to ride out there and check what was on the southern parts of the grass skirt woman cooking dinner out there.

I pitched the medicine man into a cell, which he eyed dolefully, and sat down with a pencil to draw up some charges, while Rusty went to find Hanging Judge Earwig, and get him to open up court.

There wasn’t any attorney around to prosecute, but maybe it wouldn’t matter if Zimmer pleaded guilty and coughed up a fine.

Old Earwig, with his gray muttonchops and bald head, he even looked like a judge most of the time, when he was sober. He grumbled and whined, and didn’t like being dragooned from his evening toddy, but I got real serious about it and said if he didn’t show up fast, the county might have the expense of trying about seven members of the troupe, and feeding them, until it all was settled. So he finally hiked over to the courthouse in his bedroom slippers, lit up some lamps, and waited for me to bring in the current prize locked up in one of the two iron cells.

Zimmer, he looked even more doleful than Earwig. He was wearing his travel clothing, not his show outfit, and looked like a little dumpling rather than some fancy impresario. The courtroom filled up real quick; Doubtful can’t hold a secret five minutes, and word sure got around, and pretty quick half the cowboys in the bars filled the room, and most of ’em had tonic bottles they wanted to exchange for some greenbacks.

By midnight we got the show on the road. Earwig banged his gavel.

“Will the culprit rise?”

I prodded Zimmer, and he stood up.

“You fixing to make restitution and pay a little fine?”

“If Your Honor so declares,” Zimmer said, woefully.

“You gonna declare yourself guilty as hell?”

Zimmer sighed and groaned and passed a little gas, and nodded.

“You got to say it,” the judge said.

“Guilty as hell, your lordship.”

“All right, now we can divide the spoils,” Earwig said. “Now what are you guilty of?”

“Watering the tonic, your lordship.”

“How many bottles?”

“I got one,” yelled a cowboy.

In all, there were twenty-three cowboys in there wanting their money back.

“That’s forty-six simoleons,” Earwig said.

“But your lordship, they bought these for less than list price.”

“Don’t matter. It’s two dollars a bottle they’ll be getting. Now what else are you confessing to?”

“I confess to nothing, sir. But I am willing to make whole any injured party, within reason, of course, even if I am entirely innocent of all wrongdoing.”

Hanging Judge Earwig turned to me. “What are the rest of his sins, sheriff?”

“George Waller’s store lost some merchandise, most of which was recovered when I raided the medicine show this evening. But he’s still missing some, ah, ladies’ unmentionables, mostly because of the difficulty of making a proper search for the items.”

“What say you, Zimmer?”

“Well, your lordship, I am bereft of knowledge of all that, but believe she may have been making repairs to her grass skirts. When we are short of grass, on the road, my animals feed on her grass skirts, and modesty requires that she have something else on. So my surmise, sir, is that she was simply attempting to protect her womanly modesty.”

“She ain’t all that modest on the stage, Your Honor,” I said. “Fact is, these here unmentionables got took from the Mercantile, and still abide somewhere north of Doubtful, on the south side of the woman in question.”

Hanging Judge Earwig discovered the merchant in the crowd. “Waller, what are they worth?”

“A dollar and ninety-eight cents, sir.”

“All right, I’ll fine this feller two dollars for the undies, and he can pay you when we’re done, or spend thirty days contemplating the error of his ways, guest of Sheriff Pickens. That suit you, Cotton?”

“Your Honor, I’ve always disliked the name Cotton, but Pickens is all right. That was my ma’s joke, calling me Cotton Pickens, but it’s been an anvil around my neck all my days.”

Hanging Judge Earwig banged his gavel. “You’re out of order, sheriff. This court refuses to listen to tales of woe. We’re after justice and money here, not tales of misery.”

I must have really ticked him off. He hardly ever assails me, but once he banged his gavel on my head when I got cranked up in the witness chair.

“Sheriff, has the culprit agreed to be fined?”

“Yes, sir, and I propose twenty-five dollars for the whole lot. I could run up a list of offenses, but as long as Zimmer here is agreeable, it’d save Puma County a mess of work and bookkeeping if he just paid up.”

Hanging Judge Earwig leaned over the bench. “You good for twenty-five more?”

“Your lordship, that would be hard indeed on my loyal staff, who would not be paid if I am forced to squander such a sum as this. They have toiled and the toilers deserve their reward. But if you would lower the bar, so to speak, to seven dollars and a half, I could see my way clear to satisfy all the demands of justice in Puma County, Wyoming.”

“That suit you, sheriff?”

“Well, my ma used to say, don’t niggle the details.”

“Done. This culprit is nailed for seven and four bits, and will trade twenty-six bottles for two dollars each, and will pay George Waller two dollars for some vanishing undies. Does that do it?”

“Your lordship,” said Zimmer, “this has been a pleasant and momentous occasion, and upon the conclusion of these transactions, I wish to treat you to a libation at the Last Chance Saloon, and will stand a drink for the rest of the gents here, in this progressive and noble city, blossoming in Wyoming.”

“Zimmer, if you’ve got a bottle of the real McCoy on you, I’ll buy it as a parting gesture.”

“I just happen to have one, your lordship.”

Well, quick as greased lightning, the cowboys turned in bottles and got two bucks, and Waller got his two, and the county got its fine, and we headed to the east end of town, where the Last Chance Saloon stood, and Sammy Upward was soon pouring the staff of life, and pocketing all the loose change that was floating around.

Zimmer and Hanging Judge Earwig, they got themselves a fine corner table and set about toasting each other, and swearing eternal friendship, and talking about future business partnerships. Me and Rusty, we went back to Belle’s to pick up Riley, who was asleep on the couch, with Belle waiting and watching in her stuffed chair, an odd smile on her weary face.

Next morning, I ran into the Puma County supervisor, Reggie Thimble, and he started jacking my hand like it was a pump handle.

“Well, ya finally caught some crook,” he said. “I was beginning to think the county didn’t have a lick of crime in it.”

I sure didn’t know how to answer that one. So I told him the straight truth of it. “Reggie, it wasn’t me. Zimmer simply caught himself. He got himself into a real bind. If he’d shot me and Rusty, especially for a few miserable dollars, his show would be ruined and all them people in his outfit would scatter, so he decided to face the music and come in and get her done with.”

“That’s not what I heard, sheriff. I heard you singlehandedly captured the whole evil lot and brought the ringleader back here to face Hanging Judge Earwig.”

“I hope Rusty ain’t spreading that manure,” I said.

“What’s this about him adopting one of those orphans?”

“Riley, yes. He nabbed one, mostly because I pushed him into it.”

“Well, fire him. You can’t have a deputy running around with some orphan he latched on to.”

“We got it all fixed,” I said. “Belle, she’s gone catawampus over Riley, and Rusty’s gonna have a tough time prying the boy loose now and then and give him a little fathering.”

“Belle must have lost her marbles,” he said.

Reggie didn’t much care for it, but he didn’t have any real comeback, so he just growled a little about duty and loyalty, and don’t charge the county for anything not right, and stalked off.

But all that morning people came roaring up to me, shaking my worn-out paw, telling me how glad they were that I’d brought the archfiend Zimmer to justice. I spent the whole day, pretty near, explaining that Zimmer marched himself in, that all I did was stare into the muzzles of two twelve-gauge shotguns loaded with buckshot, and I didn’t much care for it, preferring that someone else stare into the muzzle of my shotgun. But that’s life for you. They made a hero out of me when all I did was try to stay alive.

At least, I wasn’t likely to be fired. Most days around Doubtful, some leading citizen or official was planning to evict me from my sheriff office, and hire someone more to his liking. But I managed to hang on, one way or another. My ma, she always said just live a day at a time and keep plenty of corncobs in the outhouse. I prefer cobs to Monkey Ward.

A couple of days later, a tent preacher came in, with his own show, and set up shop right where Zimmer’s Medicine Show was playing. He put up a big, worn canvas tent, and a sort of pulpit he could thump with his fish-belly-white fist. This feller, Mr. Elwood Grosbeak, was a sinner-collector. And a first-rate pulpit-thumper. He was looking for sinners under every bush, and inviting them over there to hear all about their evil ways. And he had other things to talk about, too. He said the world would come to an end in three weeks, before sundown, May 28, and woe to anyone who wasn’t real prepared. That sure scared the crap out of a lot of people. But there wasn’t any crime emanating from his shabby tent, so I just stayed away. Mostly, he was attracting townspeople; I hardly saw a cowboy off the ranches anywhere near. They were too busy looking after the crop of new calves to worry much about the world coming to a halt or all the elect sailing off into the wild blue heavens, never to be seen again, at least on earth.

But a teamster down from Douglas told me that Grosbeak had been pulpit-thumping up there, only he told those folks the world would end on May 1, and that had scared the dickens out of some. Come May 1, and Grosbeak was nowhere to be found there, and the sun came up and the sun set, and all that happened was that Grosbeak had cleaned Douglas out of about four hundred smackerinos, before rolling into Doubtful. Now that was an interesting scenario. I sort of wondered if it was proper to scare the hell out of people and run off with their cash.

I asked Lawyer Stokes, who doubled as county attorney when Puma County gave him some business, whether Grosbeak was doing stuff illegal, and he said let it alone. So Grosbeak was holding his camp meetings each night, and hammering his pulpit, and saying May 28 would be the last day on earth, and scaring the crap out of some folks around town. And they were filling the collection plate he passed around in the middle of all this.

I don’t take kindly to it when I see the people I try to protect being fleeced, and I didn’t have much of any notion how to slow it all down. I stopped in at the Last Chance Saloon, where my friend Sammy Upward tended bar, and asked him what he planned on Doomsday and he said he was handing out free drink tokens that could be redeemed the evening of May 28 after the sun set. I told him about the deal up in Douglas, and he enjoyed that, and said he’d maybe he’d invite Grosbeak to the Last Chance to deliver his tub-thumper right there in the barroom and entertain the cowboys at the finish line.

Well, the whole idea just bloomed, and pretty soon all the saloons in Doubtful were passing out tokens for a free drink on May 28, after the sun set. Barney’s Beanery got into the act, and offered a free breakfast to survivors who were still around the next morning. And then the madams got into it, and offered one free lay between midnight, May 28, and dawn the next morning. That sure got the cowboys interested.

Rusty, he had the best idea. “We’ll offer one free hanging at dawn, May 29, and we’ll announce a ballot to select who gets to enjoy the noose. Now if the world ends on the twenty-eighth, like the man says, no one gets hanged.”

“I got an idea, Rusty. We’ll invite Grosbeak to stand there with a noose. If he’s right, he’ll vanish into the heavens. If he’s wrong, he gets hanged.”

Rusty, he whistled. That was Rusty for you. When he really liked an idea he didn’t just say so, he whistled. And now he was chirping like a canary.

That sure was good scheme, all right, and I was wondering how I could pull it off. There were a few in Doubtful that deserved a good hanging, but getting them up on the gallows would take some doing. Getting Grosbeak up there might be a lot easier. If he believed in what he was talking about, he’d gladly step right into that noose.

I decided it was time for a little talk with Elwood Grosbeak. He was staying at the Wyoming Hotel. It wasn’t much of a hotel, but it was the best in town. His six staff people, I don’t know where they were staying. There were rooms for rent over most of the saloons and likely they were parked in those. Sometimes a visitor could arrange a room at a cathouse.

They had a little dining room there in the hotel, so I tried that first. Sure enough, he was sipping java in there. He was a formidable man, with hair slicked back with goose grease, and a fresh white shirt, and one of them huge cravats, red paisley, and a pretty nice suit coat and britches with a knife-edged crease in them. He didn’t wear that stuff in his revival tent, but just a plain gray outfit. The first thing you notice about him was his eyes, big and burning, and lips that seemed to mock even when he wasn’t saying a word.

He saw my star, and rose at once.

“Sheriff Pickens, I believe?”

“You got her,” I said.

“What brings you to my table, sir?”

“Well, there’s fellas around here who don’t think the world’s coming to an end, and they’re getting up some entertainments to celebrate when nothing happens and it’s time for a drink.”

“There’s always skeptics,” he said. “I deal with them regularly. They don’t grasp my message, which is not that the earth beneath our feet will vanish, but that the elect will be whisked away to their eternal reward. One hour you see us; the next hour, we’re gone. The lady down the street has vanished. The man you called a friend is departed. The child you watched grow up has gone away. That’s the story, sir, and that’s what I preach.”

“Yeah, well, are you going up the golden stairs?”

“If I am called, and I am sure I will be, I’ll be gone. Do not look for me on this earth on May the twenty-ninth, because I will have joined the angels, and the seraphim and cherubim.”

“What are those? You got me there.”

“It’s too long to explain, sir, but call them helpers. They are assistants in heaven.”

“Well, Rusty—he’s my deputy—he has a dandy idea. The sheriff office wants to join this here party, and what we propose is to put up our gallows, and have you volunteer for a hanging on May 29. Comes dawn and you’re still around, you get hanged. If you got taken up, there’s only an empty noose dangling in the sunlight of a new day.”

That sure took him aback. He stared with the smoldering eyes until I felt a little put upon.

“You mock me, you mock my beliefs, you laugh at the powers above.”

“Well, my ma used to say, put your money where your mouth is. She also used to say, actions speak louder than words. You want to prove your beliefs? You can come to the necktie party. Your very own party.”

“I am speechless, Pickens, absolutely speechless. You should be recalled or fired.”

“Seems like a good idea, this gallows party. Think what it gets you. A mess of believers everywhere.”

“You forget, sir, I am a man of the cloth, a prophet, and you must not insult anyone who’s been set apart to bring people the good word.”

“Well, they tell me up in Douglas, you collected about four hundred dollars before you vamoosed in the night, on May 1, and now you’re here, and the greenbacks are landing in your collection plate, and I just was sort of wondering if we’d see your outfit on May twenty-ninth. If you all are on your way to heaven, I guess you’d leave behind your tent and wagon, right?”

“Are you done insulting me, sir?”

“I ain’t very good at it, but I am getting better, the longer I’m in office. Maybe, before they fire me, as they’re fixing to do, I’ll get real good at insulting. You could prime me a little.”

Grosbeak, he just glared, and seemed to shut me out. It was like he was no longer sitting there eating his eggs Benedict, oatmeal, tea, toast, and strips of bacon.

“Where are you going next?” I asked.

“What business is it of yours, sheriff?”

That was as much a confession as I needed, I figured.

“I got a saloonkeeper friend, Sammy Upward. He says he’s having a big End of the World fiesta the afternoon of May 29, and you’re invited. He’s giving out tokens for free drinks, and says you’ll get one. He says you can come on in, and spread the word, and he’s got a whole bar full of cowboys waiting to listen to the whole mess. You gonna come on in?”

But Grosbeak, he was methodically eating and ignoring me, and I saw how it’d go.

“You got many of the town’s ladies going out there in the afternoons? They laying out a lot of quarters and dollars to get themselves in good shape to be hauled up to heaven?”

He ignored me.

“If I was you, Reverend, I’d think about giving all that cash back, or donating it to the Doubtful Chamber of Commerce. They could always use a little infusion.”

“You are a crass materialist, sheriff. You haven’t the faintest notion of spiritual matters.”

“Well, my ma used to say, being spiritual is what you do if there’s money left over after paying your bills. I’m thinking, Mr. Grosbeak, maybe you should pull up stakes and get on the road, just as fast as you can, before someone gets his neck broke.”