William W. Johnstone (9 page)
Read William W. Johnstone Online
Authors: Massacre Mountain
Tags: #Murder, #Western Stories, #Wyoming, #Westerns, #Fiction, #Sheriffs - Wyoming, #General, #Mountain Life
C
HAPTER
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F
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The Grand Luxemburg Follies rolled into Doubtful in style. This was obviously a high-class outfit. Outside of town, they’d taken time to polish up. The lacquered coaches had been wiped down. Them actresses, all dressed in gauzy white and wearing big straw hats, were all bunched on a big wagon covered with red bunting. Man, were they a sight. I never saw such a bunch of pretty girls.
Even the harness on the draft horses was loaded with nickel-plate, so everything shone bright and fancy. Four wine-red coaches and six wagons came in that June afternoon, with the company musicians tooting away on one wagon, them trumpets and trombones all brassy in the sunlight. And then came the one with the ladies. They was so pretty it was all anyone could do not to rush up there and do some kissing. I’d trade my sheriff job for two or three of those ladies any day. My ma always said, it ain’t what’s under a dress but under a skull bone that counts, but I wasn’t of a mind to pay her any attention. It didn’t matter what they had in their heads. They were plumb delightful, tossing kisses at the gathering crowds, smiling, standing in that wagon in them gauzy dresses that looked like the wind could blow them away. I knew half the cowboys around Doubtful were going to spend their last dime seeing that show every night it played.
Ralston had got his promotion men busy pasting up red and black and yellow broadsheets on every fence and barn in the area, so the show was getting the attention it wanted. Those sheets were everywhere. Most of them said
GIRLS,
GIRLS, GIRLS
THE
GRAND LUXEMBURG
FOLLIES
Thirty-Six Beautiful Ladies.
Ballet Straight from Paris, France.
The Royal Flemish Opera singing
Arias from Milan.
Tableaux Vivants from the Louvre Museum, the
Galleries of Florence, the Prado of Spain.
And the
U
NFORGETTABLE
“Beaux-Arts Ball.”
U
NFORGETTABLE
“Beaux-Arts Ball.”
Well, if that didn’t start an itch in every male in Puma County, nothing would.
So there was the outfit, rolling down Main Street, and people rushing to see what was what. There sure weren’t thirty-six ladies on that wagon, but ten or fifteen would do just fine. And none of them had varicose veins neither, like the ones in that Gildersleeve outfit. Maybe these were all painted up, but they looked younger than the ones that rolled out of town.
“Hey, Rusty, do you feel like you died and gone to heaven?” I asked.
“Nah. If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ’em all,” Rusty said.
I don’t know why I ever deputized him if he thought like that.
Speaking of that, along came Iceberg, wearing the Puma County star on his black frock coat, a skinny lawman that looked like he’d just escaped from the bottom of hell. And he had him a new deputy with him, short and wide and built like a butcher’s block, with the muscles of a blacksmith pushing through his shirt. That sure interested me. I’d never seen that one before, and marked him as trouble. It was pure instinct. He was strong. He could stab with a finger, slap with the back of his hand, and send me sprawling. I decided just to call him the Butcher, since I had no name. Them two just plain ticked me off.
But for now the pair was just gawking. At least the Butcher was. I think Iceberg must have been immune to women, because he just studied on everything and said nothing and let people see who was in charge. One glance landed on me, but then he was looking off in other directions, like he was casing his new town. He seemed like a pool of darkness there on that sunny day when everyone in Doubtful was having a fine old time.
But he left me alone—for the moment. I kept expecting he’d find some excuse to make me his guest in his iron-barred parlor.
The new company rolled right past the opera house, where Ralston stood watching, and headed for the far side of town. Then it rolled back and pulled up in front of the theater. I crowded in. The girls stepped down from their wagon, and waved at all them merchants and cowboys gawking, and at a few frowning ladies who didn’t like all the competition getting off the wagon. Sure enough, there was Delphinium Sanders, a cylinder of lavender velvet, scowling at the actresses like they’d done something wrong just by being in Doubtful. I had a hunch she and her bunch would be out picketing tonight, and they’d have Iceberg on hand to block theater patrons from going in. Maybe things would get real rough.
One gal, cutest thing I’d ever seen, with a mess of curly red hair and ruby lips, gave me a big smile and I big-smiled back at her, and thought about proposing matrimony, but decided I’d wait a little bit. I wanted to see her perform. Pretty soon the opera house swallowed the new company, and its roustabouts were unloading sets and gear and hauling it in there. They didn’t have much time if they were going to run the first show this very night.
“Guess I’ll buy a ticket,” Rusty said.
“We don’t get in free anymore,” I said.
“I’d like to marry about six of them, all at once,” he said.
“I couldn’t handle more than one,” I said.
Rusty shook his head at me. “Poor devil,” he said.
The last person out of the coaches was a little feller with a potbelly, almost a dwarf, skinny except for the bowling-ball belly. He wore a black silk stovepipe hat that added a couple of feet to his person, and the rest of him was all encased in a black broadcloth suit, along with them shiny patent leather shoes that never saw a scuff.
He stared around, eyeing Iceberg and his new deputy, and the crowd, and the dour-looking women in it, and the views up and down Main Street. He smiled, lighting up one side of his misshapen, off-center face. His black-eyed gaze finally settled on the lavender and formidable Madame Sanders, so he approached, removed his big old silk hat, and bowed clear from the waist, with an elaborate sweep of his hand.
“Ah, madame, it is a pleasure to be in Doubtful at last. We’ve heard good things about this place, and appreciate your warm welcome.”
Delphinium glared back icily.
“I am Alphonse de Jardine, the author and proprietor of the Follies, late of Paris, Monte Carlo, Madrid, and Barcelona.”
“You purvey wickedness,” she replied. “You bring shame to Doubtful.”
“Culture, madame! You will see samples of the great arts of Europe. Opera! Ballet! Comedy! Symphonic music! I invite you. I will give you and your beloved a pair of free tickets, so that you may enjoy my little extravaganza. It will delight the eye, balm the spirit, lift the heart, bedazzle the mind.” He reached into his black suit coat and pulled out two purple tickets. “Here! Free passes to the greatest show on earth!”
Poor old Delphinium. The lure was too much for her. Instead of declining, she snatched the pasteboards from his tiny hand, even while her trout-lips were pursed in disdain. The little feller was delighted, and soon had handed out another ten or twelve purple ducats to assorted gawkers. That seemed to me a pretty good way to make a few friends. Two of them tickets went to Iceberg and his new deputy, who could’ve walked in free anyway. But there was the sheriff, eyeing them purple tickets like he never seen the like.
After that, the impresario vanished inside the opera house, and there wasn’t much to see. The town’s women kept their eyes on the door, half expecting someone naked to rush out of it, but all they saw was the stagehands and teamsters hauling stuff inside. Fancy sets full of glitter, and big trunks, stuff like that. And some of the other roustabouts had a wagon over at the hotel, and were hauling trunks in there. Looked like the actresses would all be squeezed in there, and would find their travel trunks in their rooms after the show.
This here was a real show, all right. There ain’t many kids in Doubtful, but now a gang of little rascals was collected around those big drays, most of them dappled gray Percherons, which were about as big as horses get. The squirts had never seen horses like that, or a nickel-dressed harness before. While everyone else was gazing at the beautiful showgirls, them kids were studying the horses. In a few years that would all change.
“I guess we buy our own tickets,” Rusty said, sounding a little blue. Neither him nor me could afford a seat in there, and there were no free passes to ex-sheriffs or fired deputies.
The crowd was thinning now, the excitement over. And pretty soon the streets of Doubtful were half empty again, except for all them fancy carriages and wagons.
“I want to find out who that new deputy is,” I said.
Rusty and me, we hiked over to the Last Chance Saloon and found Sammy Upward in his usual white apron, polishing his shiny bar. Sammy plucked two tumblers up and started to load them up, but I slowed him some.
“Sammy, we don’t have badges anymore.”
“I know that,” he said, and poured our favorite hooch in there, bourbon for me and red-eye rotgut for Rusty. I never could figure out why Rusty liked to scorch his tongue out of his skull.
“Okay, what happened?” Sammy asked.
“Supervisors didn’t like how I was keeping the peace and got rid of me, and the new man fired my deputies.”
“Iceberg,” Sammy said. “We’ve been hearing stuff. Is it true that Iceberg’s going to shut down the saloons and close the cathouses and boot the tinhorns out? That’s what I’m hearing. Also, no one does business on Sundays. Is that true?”
“If it is, some of our best citizens will lynch him,” Rusty said. “I may join the crowd.”
“I don’t know. I have no idea what’s happening. It all seemed to crank up when Ralston built his opera house. Now there’s a regular army of mean old ladies out picketing, and I get robbed, my horse is stolen and killed, and my room rifled and my stuff stolen—and the politicians call it a crime wave and blame me. And then fire me. And put into office a feller who’s not resigned down in Medicine Bow County, far as I know.”
“Someone wants you out,” Sammy said.
“Maybe it’s not me. Maybe it’s a way to shut down the opera house.”
Sammy polished a glass and smiled. “I don’t get it.”
“I don’t get it either. But I will.”
“That man that was killed outside of here. Who was he?”
“Pinky Pearl, Ralston told us. He was an advance man for this show.”
“Like making arrangements?”
“We buried him, and Ralston said a few words.”
“That was aimed at this show,” Sammy said.
“Or at Ralston and his opera house.”
“These shows siphon a lot of cash out of town?”
“Ralston says no; they actually bring cash in. Cowboys come in and spend.”
“Yeah, they spent in here and Rosie’s place,” Sammy said. “I did a good trade.”
“And over at the mercantile, they didn’t sell one union suit or one bandana.”
Upward smiled. “Now you’re getting somewhere. I got one question. What’s Medicine Bow County like, with Iceberg law?”
“They voted themselves dry,” Rusty said. “So Iceberg shut down the saloons. And threw out the madams. And shut down all businesses on Sundays. It sure is silent there. I visited there a couple of years ago, and it was like staying in the back room of a funeral parlor. The ranch people, they headed for Laramie if they wanted a good time. No one ever heard of prohibition in Laramie, and what’s her name, Carrie Nation, she never showed up in Laramie, busting bottles with her axe. You know what it is? That there Temperance Union. It’s all women. Next thing you know, they’ll be wanting to vote. Makes me pine for the old days, five years ago, when a man was a man and a woman knew how to be a woman.”
“There’s our future,” Upward said. He looked pretty bleak. “And that’s what the Puma county supervisors are heading toward. Next thing you know, we’ll have women in office here. And maybe that’s why you were axed.”
“My ma, she always said that women already are the supervisors,” I said. “She says women tell men how to vote and they do it if they want peace in their house or a little kiss at bedtime.”
Rusty shuddered.
It sure was pretty grim to think about. Doubtful would have to change its name to Desolate. And call itself the county coffin instead of the county seat. The sporting people were all waiting for the axe to fall. I sort of wondered where Reggie Thimble and Ziggy Camp and George Waller came up with a mess of bad ideas like that. Or maybe they didn’t. Maybe they was being pushed. Maybe some of them merchants were putting the squeeze on the supervisors. It sure wasn’t anything I could figure out. And there wasn’t much I could do about it, star or no star.
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