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Authors: William W. Johnstone

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“I think I could get as far as eighth grade,” I said. “I'd have to really give it a shot.”

“We're trying our best to prepare you for what's next in the county. The Elysian fields of happiness.”

“Well, ma'am, I'll give her a try.”

“Good! At the next meeting of county supervisors, our dear husbands, the supervisors, are going to ban houses of ill repute in Puma County, and make it an offense to sell, buy, solicit, or engage in, ah, relations outside of the marriage contract. We'll want you to enforce the new law rigorously.”

“Holy cats,” I bawled.

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

The county supervisor Amos Grosbeak himself showed up in the sheriff's office one afternoon, interrupting my game of checkers with Rusty.

“Ah, it's perfect,” said Grosbeak. “Playing checkers.”

“What's perfect?” I asked.

“There's no crime. Nothing for you to do. Puma County is as peaceful as a graveyard. Playing checkers all day is the very signature of our success.”

“It's a bore,” said Rusty, jumping my piece and taking the game.

“It's heaven. We're succeeding in creating a piece of paradise here,” Grosbeak said. “And now we're ready for the next step. At the February meeting, the supervisors will enact another ordinance, this one prohibiting all carnal relations in the county, apart from holy matrimony, of course. We will make it illicit to buy, sell, procure, or give away any fleshly vice. It will be illegal to operate, own, or rent a house of ill reputeâor opium den. We don't have any, but we plan to prevent it anyway. This will be effective March one, and after that, violators will be heavily fined and jailed. Up to a year in jail ought to persuade the sisterhood to go elsewhere, as fast as their dainty feet will carry them.”

“What for?” asked Rusty.

“So that we may advance matrimony, and keep predators and assorted vices and criminals out of Puma County. We shall have a serene county, filled with yeomen and their beloved wives, and the riffraff can all go elsewhere.”

“And what will single men do?” I asked.

“Plant vegetable gardens. A little hoeing, a little weeding, a little stoop labor, a little collecting of cabbages and digging up potatoes, and plucking peas, sir. Put a cowboy to work in a garden, and you've got a good citizen in the making.”

“Have you talked to the cowboys about this?”

“We don't need to. It is the most advanced thinking to be found, issuing from universities. A lot of scholarship has gone into it.”

“So I'm supposed to shut down the parlor houses?”

“It'll be easy, Pickens. You did a masterful job with the saloons. See how peaceful we are now, with no trouble at all. You can get started by visiting those, ah, ladies and telling them what is in fate for them beginning the first day of March.”

“So you want me to take the bad news to the madams?”

“Who else, Sheriff? You're the man of the hour, the hero of New Year's Eve. So we'll leave it up to you to inform them, and with any luck they'll all be shut down and the ladies will have caught the stage for Laramie even before March one arrives.”

“You gonna tell me what the fines are if they resist?”

“Multiple fines, Pickens. For operating a house of ill repute, a hundred dollars for each offense. For soliciting, twenty-five. For, ah, servicing, fifty. Each offense, of course. Beginning with second offenses, jail time stretching into many months. We'll post it all after we've passed the law.”

“You got all the supervisors with you?”

“Myself, and Twining. Reggie Thimble wavers a little, but he'll come aroundâor face the wrath of the Temperance women.”

“So the gals got three weeks to sell their buildings and move out?”

“That's more time than they deserve, Sheriff. They've bilked innocent males out of a fortune. We're cleaning up Puma County.”

“Seems that way.” I turned to Rusty. “Set up another game.”

“No, Sheriff, you'll be doing a lot of groundwork,” said Grosbeak. “Beginning immediately, you'll visit all the operators of those houses and inform them what is coming. Don't delay. The sooner you tell them, the easier the transition. We'll put the frontier behind us and make Puma County the proud, serene, agricultural capital of Wyoming.” He gazed placidly into my eyes. “Someday, the frontier and all its vices will be forgotten, and the past buried, and all the world will ever know of Doubtful is that it is the farmer's home, the supplier of all the neighboring wheat and livestock enterprises, filled with whitewashed churches, the paragon of everything mankind has dreamed of from the beginning of time.” He studied me a moment. “Here, in this very place, those jail cells will go unused. Your days will be filled with checkers and chess and pleasant strolls through town.”

“You know, you ought to give them ninety days. They've got property to sell.”

Grosbeak smiled. “The wages of sin, my boy. If they have to sell at a low price, don't you suppose they earned it?”

“Who's gonna buy?”

“That's valuable land, and those are solid structures. I know of half a dozen of Doubtful's upright men eager to bid.”

“For half price, I'd guess,” Rusty said.

“Ten percent,” Grosbeak said. “It'll benefit the town.”

“Guess a mess of them gals will be getting married fast,” I said.

Grosbeak frowned. “We won't encourage it. Puma County's going to be the most reputable place in the entire West, a model of virtue. No, we'd encourage all such women to depart swiftly.”

“Okay, what's gonna finance the city?” Rusty asked.

Grosbeak glared at him. It was a delicate and cantankerous subject. “Mayor Waller will have to propose other means,” he said. “If you are a stalwart at your job, Sheriff, you'll improve the city coffers.”

Doubtful's entire municipal budget derived from quarterly saloon licenses, bordello licenses, bordello inmate licenses, and fines levied in municipal court.

“I'm not going to pinch anyone doesn't deserve to be pinched,” I said.

“Well, I'm sure Mayor Waller will give you some new opportunities,” Grosbeak said. “He's resourceful. We've had some chats and have some dandy ideas. We'll soon have a clean municipal budget, and here's how it'll happen. The mayor and the city council are about to enact an anti-spitting ordinance. Spit anywhere in public, and you'll get fined five dollars. Now there's a sensible law. Keep Doubtful de-spitted, and keep the coffers full. You'll be able to nab most any cowboy riding into town on that one. They all spit like rabid dogs.”

“Me? You want me to arrest them?”

“Who else, Pickens? You're the finest lawman in Wyoming, the hero of New Year's Eve, the man with the shiniest badge in the West. Of course you will. We're going to give you a spitting quota. You'll arrest ten spitters a day, fifty dollars a day for the till, and that'll pay for most of the town budget.”

“Not me. I ain't gonna haul a man into court just for laying a gob on some grass.”

“You're sworn in as a peace officer, Pickens, and you'll enforce the law to the last jot and tittle.”

“I'm not sure I want the sheriff office to be the source of the whole city budget,” I said. “That ain't quite right.”

“Sheriff, you're such a ninny at times. There's money to be made. Waller's going to propose a restaurant licensing tax. Fifty a quarter to operate a restaurant.”

“Why? What have you got against restaurants?”

“They're public nuisances. They attract drummers and whiskey salesmen. People should eat at home, with their wives at the stove.”

“What about the poor devil who's not got a wife?”

“Like yourself? Get married, Pickens. That's going to solve all bachelor difficulties at once. Food, intimacy, baths, you name it.”

“Well, I just don't figure out how wrong makes right. How pinching some innocent feller to raise money for the city does anyone any good.”

“You'll understand better as time goes by, Pickens. You're still in your twenties and wet behind the ears.” He eyed Rusty and me. “Now I have another matter to discuss, strictly confidential. And you'll both be involved in this. There's a new bootleg saloon opened up on the county line, at the place where the Cheyenne Road crosses the North Platte. The ferry house. It's on Puma County land, so it affects us. And you're going to ride over there and put a stop to it before it gets going. I hear they're set up to move the whole saloon across the river whenever trouble arrives. If they see you coming, that entire booze parlor will be ferried over to Medicine Bow, safe and sound. You can imagine what that means. You've got to pounce. You've got to get in there and bust it up and haul the guilty back here for trial.”

“I can do that. But you tell Waller to go hire a town constable to enforce his spitting law.”

“No, I won't tell him. Mayor Waller's a progressive man who sees a need and fills it. He's considering another option, a smelly outhouse fine. Any property owner who fails to lime his privy and creates a public nuisance, stinking up Doubtful, that's worth seven dollars in municipal court for each offense.”

“I can sure go along with that,” Rusty said. “The jailhouse outhouse, you'd get a fortune out of Cotton here. He heads in there and stinks up Courthouse Square.”

“I don't have a budget for lime, Mr. Grosbeak.”

“Well, I guess the town's gonna fine you.”

“Or you. It's your outhouse, not mine.”

“Oh, tut. The main thing is, there's lots of ways to raise revenue for Puma County and the city of Doubtful, and that'll keep you plenty busy.”

“That's what I'm feared of.”

“That's all, gents. Cotton, my boy, you go spread the word among those fine ladies, and urge them to vamoose fast, and tomorrow, you boys ride out to the crossing of the Platte, and see if you can nip that devil's work in the bud.”

Grosbeak smiled broadly, clapped his derby on his well-clipped locks, and departed into a mild afternoon.

Rusty and me, we stared at each other, the checkerboard forgotten.

“I'm not sure I like this here job in a dead town. I'm a peace officer, not a cemetery officer,” I said.

“What are you gonna say to the madams?”

“You go say it, Rusty. I'm heading for Barney's Beanery.”

“No, it's your job, and he asked you. I ain't going. You're going. Those ladies are my friends. They get about ninety percent of my pay. I ain't going over there like some hangman with a noose in my hand.”

I was stuck. Rusty wasn't budging.

“Oh, all right. I can maybe do it before business hours.”

“It's always business hours over there, Cotton.”

“Maybe I'll just quit. It ain't any fun wearing this badge anymore. Maybe you and me, we could go over there together. You do the talking and I'll do the smiling.”

“Not me. You want a deputy? You're about to lose one.”

This was getting serious.

“Rusty, go get some beans at the beanery before they shut it down.”

I wandered over to the bordello district, wondering which of the houses to visit first. I finally chose Mrs. Goodrich's Gates of Heaven, mostly because she wasn't likely to skin me alive when I opened my mouth. The place slumbered quietly in the February light and looked oddly forlorn, not at all like the gates of heaven.

I walked in, setting off jangles, and Mrs. Goodrich appeared at once. “Oh, it's you, dearie. The girls aren't up yet, but I'm ready, any time, any place. You want to try it on the front porch?”

It wasn't a bad idea, but my ma always told me to take propositions under advisement, so I told her I'd consider the matter.

“Mrs. Goodrich, I, ah, got real bad news.”

“You got the clap?”

“No, nothing like that. I got sent here by the county supervisors, in fact the chairman, Amos Grosbeak.”

“They're gonna shut us down.”

“Well, yeah, but they'll give you a little time.”

“March one.”

“Well, yeah, three weeks.”

She began laughing, but it turned into a snarl. “Sweetheart, I've been there. Almost every town I've worked. Sooner or later this rolls through the door.”

“I guess the saloons showed what was coming.”

“The bitches of the north side. They got the vote and used it.”

I nodded.

“I'm tired of running. I'm gonna make it as hard for you as I can, Cotton Pickens. Go ahead, kick me out.”

“Well, I was thinking of making it as hard for you as I can, Mrs. Goodrich.”

She laughed, the gravel grinding in her throat. “We're a pair,” she said. “You could always come work for me.”

“I guess I'd better go tell the rest.”

“Don't bother. They knew this was coming. After Saloon Row, what else could it be?”

“I still think I'd better spread the word.”