William W. Johnstone (4 page)
Read William W. Johnstone Online
Authors: Massacre Mountain
Tags: #Murder, #Western Stories, #Wyoming, #Westerns, #Fiction, #Sheriffs - Wyoming, #General, #Mountain Life
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By the next dawn I was as ornery as I get. I woke up mad and got madder. I got dressed mad, and ate oatmeal mad, and eyed Doubtful mad, and went to work mad. I snarled at Rusty and De Graff. They had the good sense to duck out and patrol the town and leave me alone with my misery.
My ma, she always said the madder you get, the dumber you get, and if she was right, I was as dumb as I’ve ever been. Critter was gone; no one found him. He wasn’t wandering around loose. He had been hijacked and was probably in a different county by now. I’d be robbed by a hooligan on the street and my horse got stole. Maybe it was just a coincidence, but I thought it was deliberate. Someone either wanted my job or wanted me out of office, and was making me look as bad as possible.
If one of them supervisors walked into my jail, I was going to yell at him. But no one did. They just let me stew in my office and think about quitting before they fired me. But I knew I wouldn’t do that. I’d keep on doing the best I knew how.
I thought a lot about Ike Berg, from over in Medicine Bow County, hanging around here like an executioner. Maybe he arranged these embarrassments so he could take over. I thought about my deputies. Maybe they wanted my job and knew how to kick me in the groin. There was Cyrus Ralston, who wanted me to go easy on his Opera House and the performers. There was the starchy banker, Hubert Sanders, who thought Doubtful had gone to hell when the opera house went up, and wanted me to arrest any performer who walked the streets. Sanders was the one who gave me the willies. Maybe he was behind this crime wave directed entirely at me. It sure wouldn’t take much of that to persuade the supervisors I was too small for the job and then Sanders and his rich friends could get me out of office and talk the commissioners into hiring someone else. Like Berg.
Well, there wasn’t a thing I could do for it. I’d just live each day of work as best I could. That’s how the day played out, me as ornery as a bear with a sore tooth. I spent most of the day hunting for Critter. I checked with the barkeeps about rumors they might have heard. I pushed my way into sheds and stables. I snapped at Turk, who had been enjoying himself at the Sampling Room instead of tending to business at his livery barn.
It all came to nothing. Critter was gone and I’d probably never see him again. I hoped he’d kick the teeth in of whoever stole him. He would enjoy that. If anyone in Doubtful suddenly got stove up, I’d arrest him as a horse thief.
This was opening night over at the opera house and I intended to be there even if I was still as mad as I get. I’d never seen a real live show before. I decided I was going to stand in the rear of that theater and keep an eye on things. If there was trouble in the streets, I could duck out.
“I’m going to be there,” I told Rusty. “You’re stuck with duty.”
“If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ’em all,” he said.
“You seen a show?”
“Once in Cheyenne. They’re a bore. I left at the intermission. I’d prefer to spend my nickels on a nickelodeon. Give me a good dance hall and some dollies to stomp with, and that’s better than being bored in a chair in a show hall.”
“Well, the town’s yours, then. And watch out for footpads.”
“You feeling any better?”
“It’s none of your damn business,” I said, and stalked out of there, slamming the door hard to make my point. He probably was the one angling for my job.
By seven the new opera house was jammed, and people were standing along the rear wall. It was too crowded for comfort, so I stood, too. That got me in for four bits. Sit-down tickets cost six bits. I saw half of Doubtful in there, and cowboys off the ranches. I even saw a few women, but they were still scarce in Doubtful, and most of them wouldn’t be caught dead in a theater. It got hot in there; I don’t think Ralston had given much thought to comfort. But it didn’t matter. This crowd was raring to see whatever walked onto that stage behind the velvet curtain.
After a bit, some feller came out and lit the kerosene footlamps along the front of the stage. That brightened up the place. The footlamps had mirrors on the audience side, so they could throw the light back on the performers. But that only made it hotter in there.
I saw the county supervisors sitting in a row, and Mayor Waller and his woman. I saw Boardinghouse Belle, my fat landlady, bulging out of her seat and putting the squeeze on skinny clerks next to her. And sure enough, there was Ike Berg, still wearing his badge, sitting with the woman who ran the show, Mrs. Gildersleeve. She was all gussied up in brown taffeta. Lawyer Stokes was just in front of her, dressed like he was heading for a funeral. I thought I got a whiff or two of whiskey in the air, and I think maybe half of this crowd had fortified itself in the saloons before coming to the opera house.
Then the musicians came out of a side door, and I saw at once that they were also the roustabouts that muscled this show into wagons. There was a skinny accordion player, a fat drummer with a snare drum, a greasy-haired trombonist, and a gray-haired fiddler. That sure was more musicians in one place than Doubtful had ever seen. I pulled out my Waltham pocket watch and noted that it was well past seven and the show hadn’t started. That sure was annoying. But at last, the orchestra wheezed to life, and the tooters tooted and the drummer drummed, and everyone got real quiet. Some feller in a tuxedo came out from the curtain. I’d never seen a tuxedo before except in Montgomery Ward catalogs in the outhouse, but there he was, with them flapping black tails.
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the first show ever to appear in Doubtful, Wyoming,” he began.
That got me looking around to see who he was talking about, but I didn’t spot any ladies and gentlemen in that place, which left me a little wary of this crook up there. He was going to give us a pack of lies.
“And now, we will begin with our National Anthem, sung by the Gildersleeve Variety Singers.”
He vamoosed behind the curtain, and moments later it rolled apart, and there were them six gals, all done up as virgin brides in white, but somehow a lot prettier than when I saw them at the Sampling Room the night before. So we all got up, and they ran through it real nice, and the variety show was off and running.
We all settled in for some fun, and we got it. There was stuff I never did see before, like tap dancers, that made the place snap and pop with the cleats on their shiny shoes. And there were singers, and a comic with baggy pants hung from suspenders. He kept pulling stuff out of his pants, like a big string of red sausages, which had all the fellers laughing even if the ladies turned real quiet. And there was some deal called the soft shoe, in which a pair of dancers got up like city slickers, wearing white spats, did a thing with canes and top hats. It sure was grand. I’d never seen the like. I kept wondering what my ma would say if she saw all this stuff.
Then this fellow in the tuxedo, he came out and said there’d be an intermission, and the show would crank up again in twenty minutes. A feller came out and turned down the footlights. So people drifted out and got in line for the two outhouses in the back. And some guy in muttonchops set up a bar in the lobby and was selling beer and booze, and he had a lot of thirsty customers. I watched Iceberg head into the cool eve and light up a stogie. He saw me watching him.
“I suppose this is your first show, Pickens,” he said.
“It sure is wonderful,” I said.
“You keeping an eye on the town, are you?”
“I got a deputy on duty.”
“But you’re not? And the town’s half empty and you’re not out there?”
“I got a good deputy,” I said.
“You got a lot to learn, Pickens,” he said.
He turned his back on me, and began a quiet conversation with Madame Gildersleeve, who was half-way pretty, in an antique way, at least in the dark.
Well, pretty soon they got the footlights turned on again, and some feller with a bell rang it and kept saying “Two minutes.” And after about five, they got the shebang up and running again, this time with a rousing chorus of them pretty girls, all gussied up in orange dresses with a lot of feathers. Except for one fat one, they were nicelooking, and all the males in Doubtful sat there lusting for them. I suppose they were used to that. They must have a real good life, with thousands of lusting men everywhere in sight.
Then they had a magician in there. I’d never seen one before, and he was real interesting. He wore a black silk stovepipe hat, and kept pulling stuff out of it, including a live rabbit. And then he wadded up a handkerchief in his fist and began pulling it out of his hand, and it got longer and longer until he’d pulled out a few yards of handkerchief and I’d never seen the like of it. And then he sawed a woman in two and I was fixing to arrest him for murder right there on the stage. He put her in a box with her head sticking out of one end and her dainty feet from the other and then he got a big crosscut saw and began sawing that box in half. I was waiting for blood to gush out of there, but it didn’t, and pretty quick he’d sawed the box in two, and them feet was still wiggling and the head was still wagging, and I think I got myself tricked. I thought maybe I’d pinch him for defrauding an officer of the law, but ma always said, look before you leap, and I thought maybe I’d better wait until after the show and the magician was burying the corpse somewhere.
I don’t think I like magicians. They think we’re all dumb and suckers.
After that, the gent in the tuxedo came out. The footlights were sending up smoke, so some feller adjusted the wicks again, and then they announced the next number. It was a cancan direct from Gay Paree—whatever that was. I’d never heard of a cancan. It sounded like a couple of tins of Arbuckles coffee. But the music started up real fast, the accordion wheezing, the fiddler fiddling a lively tune, and the drummer hammering, and next I knew, all the gals in the show, they came prancing out and started a lively jig all over the place. They were dressed in frothy skirts, I can’t even find a word for them, but they all wore these skirts that looked like beer foam, and swirled them skirts around like they were weightless. Then the trombonist got real sultry, making long sounds on his horn, and the gals got to swiveling their hips, sort of like they were in their own bedroom, and the next thing, they were kicking high, real high, kicking their legs right up in the air, and everyone in the opera house could see their legs. From there on it got real interesting, with the gals flipping their skirts this way and that, kicking high, the legs up to their heads, and all anyone could see was flashes of white leg as these ladies showed more and more of their undies. I pretty near fainted.
All them good citizens of Doubtful were whistling and cheering, and every time they kicked high, and there was a lot of female leg catching the footlights, why half the audience was clapping and cheering. But there was some sitting there with their hands in their laps, real silent. Like they weren’t approving of anything like this. But the cancan dancers just kept on going, just a rainbow of color and flounces and whatever. There wasn’t a man in the place but wasn’t trying to figure out what sort of undies them gals wore, if any, but the low light didn’t allow it.
When that cancan ended, half the audience stood up and cheered and clapped and whistled, while the rest just sat there like stumps. But then the show wound up with the whole company on stage, singing “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight,” and they were taking bows and smiling, and enjoying the clapping, and the velvet curtain came down.
I never saw the like. I thought maybe I’d been transported to some big place, like Denver or Laramie. People drifted outside into the fresh air, which everyone needed. George Waller came hustling up to me, and straight-off waved a fist in my face.
“Arrest the whole lot. Arrest Ralston. We can’t have this. Doubtful’s reputation is ruined.”
“For what?” I asked.
“For public indecency.”
“I don’t know any law like that, Mister Mayor.”
“Then invent one. I want them out of town by morning.”
“Pretty nice show,” I said.
“You heard me,” Waller said. “This is your last chance, Pickens.”
“You mind opening up the city ordinances and showing me chapter and verse?” I said.
“You heard me,” he said, and stalked into the soft summer night.
Well there I was, in deeper trouble than before. Seems like that’s how my life was going.
I hung around outside as the citizens of Doubtful drifted away, except for a few stage-door johnnies waiting for the girls to show up at the rear door of the opera house. Most of the crowd was heading for the saloons for a nightcap, except for the merchants and their wives, who were escaping the revels and heading straight to bed.
The town was turning quiet, so I decided to head for my room at Belle’s, which was half a block off Main Street and real quiet. It was a pretty nice show, actually, and I thought Ralston had done the town a good turn, sinking money into that opera house and opening for business. I thought Mayor Waller would sleep off his anger, and things would be fine tomorrow.
There wasn’t nobody awake at Belle’s and not a lamp lit either. She’d been the first to vamoose from the show, and was probably tucked between her blankets now. But I found my way up the wooden stairs to my room, first door on the left, and got in there, scratched a lucifer, and lit the oil lamp. That’s when I noticed it. My room had been ransacked. There was stuff all over. The bureau drawers had been pulled out and emptied. My spares were all over the floor. I carried the lamp around, looking at everything real close. It was hard to say what was missing, but one thing was gone for sure. My spare holster and revolver, which hung on a peg from the door. The burglar had cleaned that out, and some loose change I had lying on the bedstand.
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