“Were they hostages? Will they be returned for a reward?” Rusty asked the drummers.
“Nope, no sign of it,” said one in a black bowler.
“Who’d want female Siamese twins?” Rusty asked.
“They were real lookers,” another salesman ventured.
Rusty whipped out his tintype. “These the ones?”
They studied the black and white a while. “Not sure, but seems so,” one said.
“Did these women seem in distress?”
“Nope, they thought it was all pretty merry.”
The passengers had been detained long enough, so me and Rusty cut them loose, cut the jehu loose, and headed for Turk’s Livery Barn. We had some hard riding in front of us.
CHAPTER 2
Rusty, he wanted a posse. He was plumb irate. Them was his brides got stolen, and he was rooting around, looking for ways to hang the wife-rustlers at the nearest cottonwood tree.
“Hey, cool ’er off,” I said. “Go saddle up and take some fixings. I’ll get Critter, and we’ll get this deal shut down in no time.”
“Who’ll run the office?’
“I’ll send Burtell.” I was referring to a part-time deputy.
“I want a posse. That was Anna and Natasha who got took. I want plenty of armed men.”
“This’ll be the easiest kidnapping we ever solved. Where can they hide? We got some dudes in a red and gold chariot, kidnapping beautiful Siamese twins in one skirt, and they speak Ukraine, or whatever the tongue is. We got ’em cold, Rusty.”
He didn’t want to believe it, and I didn’t blame him. He got robbed out of two real pretty gals, and a lot of real fine nights once he got hitched to one or the other . . . or both.
But my ma, she used to say twins were double the trouble. She’d settle for twin cocker spaniels, but not any pair that would put her out some. In truth, if we got them joined-up twins back, I wasn’t sure Rusty could handle the deal.
He turned toward the office where he’d left his horse and I continued on to Turk’s Livery Barn, fixing to saddle up Critter the Second. The first got his throat slit, and I looked hard before I found the Second, who was meaner than the first, so it worked out all right. I don’t know what I’d do with a gentle horse. Horses are like women. If they don’t buck when you’re riding them, they’re no good.
Critter was out in the yard, which wasn’t good. He kicked down any stall he got put into, so Turk often put him outside. I got the bridle and went after him, and sure enough, he headed for a corner in the fence and waited for me, his rear hoofs itchy to land on me. I tried moving along one rail and he switched that way, so I tried the other rail, and he switched that way.
“Critter, dammit, we’re going to look for some women. Or one woman. I don’t have it straight. So shape up,” I yelled.
He turned and eyed me, and settled down. I bridled, and brushed, and saddled him without trouble. Critter was a philosopher.
“Dog food,” called Rusty as he led his horse toward the barn. “He needs to be turned into dog food.”
“I won’t argue with it,” I called back.
“Shouldn’t we have a buggy or a cart?” Rusty asked. He was thinking about how to transport the Ukrainian ladies. You can’t expect Siamese twins to climb up on a horse, but maybe a pair of horses would work if they crowded close.
I ignored his question and stared at him. He was armed to the teeth, with a saddle gun and a pair of mean-looking Peacemakers hanging from his skinny hips. He was gonna get his women back, even if he burned some powder. “You got any idea why them gals got took?”
“It sure is interesting,” I replied.
Turk spotted us. “You going after them stage robbers?”
Rusty nodded. “That’s my women they took.”
“Double the feed bags,” Turk pointed out. “You sure got odd tastes.”
That was my private opinion, but I wasn’t voicing it. Rusty was the best deputy I had, and I didn’t want to rile him up.
Word spread through town like melted butter, and they were all watching as we rode out. Mostly watching Rusty, not me. The women stood along Main Street with pursed lips, and I could read their every thought.
Soon we were trotting down the Laramie Road, heading for the ambush spot, so I could see what was to be seen, and we could see what the chariot wheels did to the turf. It should be easy enough to follow that cart, and with a little luck I’d have the bandits in manacles and heading for my lockup in a day or two.
Rusty, he sure was silent.
“What are you thinking, Rusty?”
“Maybe I won’t marry after all. They’ll be plumb ruined. I was marrying double virgins, and now look at it. It’s a mess.”
“You sure got big appetites, Rusty. Double everything—double marriage, double honeymoon, double household, double mouths to feed.”
“Yeah, that’s me,” he said, a little smirky. Somehow he was seeing that as proof he was double the rest of us. He looked over at me. “What if they both expect babies at the same time, eh?”
I didn’t push it. Life sure was going to be interesting.
Critter loved to get out, and he was pretty near popping along. Rusty’s nag had to trot now and then to catch up. We were riding through empty country, nothing but hills and sagebrush, and not worth anything except to a coyote. But that was Wyoming for you. Ninety percent worthless, ten percent pretty fine.
It took us about three hours to reach the ambush place, well chosen to hide the ambushers behind a curve in the road. The jehu had given me a pretty good idea of it. Signs were all around there, all right—some iron-tire tracks, some hoofprints, some handkerchiefs, and plenty of boot-heel dimples in the dun clay.
And sure enough, the iron-tire tracks led straight west, off the road and over open prairie. So we followed them.
“We’ll nail ’em, Rusty. How can we lose? Look at them tracks, smooth and hard.”
But the tracks gradually turned and finally came entirely around, heading for the Laramie Road, maybe a mile south of where the ambush happened. And there they disappeared. Those clean iron-tire tracks vanished. We messed around there a while, widening out, looking for the tracks, but it was as if that chariot had taken off from the earth and rolled on up into heaven.
Rusty was having the same sweats as me. That just couldn’t be. Big red and gold chariots didn’t just vanish—unless through the Pearly Gates. I wondered about that for a while. Were them Ukrainian ladies taken on up?
The road had plenty of traffic showing on it, and we scouted it one way and then the other, checking hoofprints, poking at ruts, and kicking horse turds, but the fact was, the kidnappers had ridden off into the sky, and were rolling across cumulus, or maybe thunderheads, to some place or other.
“You got any fancy theories, Cotton?” Rusty, he sure looked gloomy. Like he had been deprived of a night with two of the prettiest gals ever born.
“We could ride on down to Laramie and see what’s what,” I said.
“Who’d want ’em?” Rusty asked.
“Some horny old rancher, I imagine.”
“Well, there’s no man on earth hornier then me.” It was dawning on him that he’d lost his mail order bride—or brides, I never could get that straight—and he was sinking into a sort of darkness.
I thought it was best to leave him alone. “I’ll get ahold of the sheriff, Milt Boggs, and tell him what’s missing, and for him to let us know if we got a red chariot and two hipshot blondes floating around southern Wyoming.”
“We catch them, what are you going to charge them with?” Rusty wanted to know.
“Now that’s an interesting question,” I said. “My ma used to say people confess if you give them the chance.”
“Well, she inherited all the brains in your family,” Rusty said, just to be mean.
Truth to tell, my mind was on what might happen when we got back to Doubtful without two hip-tied blondes and a red chariot and a mess of crooks trudging along in front of
my shotgun. Townspeople’d be telling me to quit, or maybe trying to fire me again. Seems every time I didn’t catch the crook or stop the killer, they wanted to fire me. I’ve spent more time in front of the county supervisors trying to save my sheriff job than I’ve spent running my office.
About dusk, we got back in town, and all we raised were a few smirks. Like no one thought kidnapping Siamese twins from the Ukraine was worth getting lathered up about. Especially when it was all Rusty’s problem. He was the only one got shut out of some entertainment. So we rode in by our lonesome selves without a parade of bandits and bad men parading in front, and without those brides. People sort of smiled smartly, and planned to make some jokes, and maybe petition the supervisors to get rid of me, and that was that.
Me, I felt the same way. If Rusty hadn’t mail-ordered the most exotic womanhood this side of Morocco, it never would’ve happened.
Turk showed up out of the gloom soon as we rode into his livery barn. “Told you so.”
“Told us what?”
“That you’d botch another job again.”
I was feeling a little put out with him, and if there were any other livery barns in town, I would have moved Critter then and there. My horse chewed on any wood he could get his big buck teeth around, and sometimes Turk sent me a bill for repairs, but I could hardly blame Turk for that.
Rusty unsaddled, turned out his nag, and disappeared. He was feeling real blue, and I didn’t blame him.
“Hey,” Turk said, “while you gents were out the Laramie Road, chasing Ukrainian women, a medicine show came up the Cheyenne Road and setup outside of town.”
“Medicine show?”
“None other. Doctor Zoroaster Zimmer’s Three Way Tonic for digestion, thick hair, and virility. Three dollars the six-ounce bottle, thirty-five dollars a dozen. And you get to watch a juggler, belly dancer, an accordion player, and a dog and pony act, and then lay out cash for the medicine.”
“Zimmer? Seems to me he’s on a wanted dodger in my office. Whenever he hits town, jewelry and gold coins start vanishing, and dogs howl in the night. I think his tonic’s mostly opium, peppermint, and creek water, but I’ll find out.”
“Yeah, Sheriff, and guess what? I wandered over there to have a gander. He’s driving a big red-enameled outfit with gold trim. But there’s no chariots or Ukrainian blondes in sight.”
CHAPTER 3
Doubtful, it had growed some, and was fixed in the middle of some of the best Wyoming ranch country around. So there were plenty of people in the Puma County seat, and also plenty more out herding cows and growing hogs and collecting eggs from chickens. There were even some horse breeders around town, most of them raising remounts for the cavalry.
The town was half civilized. I knew the rough times were over when some gal named Matilda opened up a hattery. I don’t know the proper name of a hat shop, but it don’t matter. Hattery is what she operated, and she did nothing but sell bonnets and straw hats full of fake fruit to the town’s ladies. And gossip, too. All the local gals went in there to gossip about the rest of us. Sometimes I got a little itchy about sheriffing in a halfway civilized town and thought I should pack up and head for the tropics.
But my ma, she always said don’t shoot a gift horse between the eyes, and that’s how I looked at my job.
That eve, Rusty quit early on me and headed off to his cabin to nurse his disappointment. He had his heart set on marrying the Ukrainian beauties and never having to have a conversation with his women because he didn’t understand a word they said. I thought it was a fool’s dream, myself. What if they was saying mean things about him, in their own tongue, maybe even at night with the pair of them lying beside him?
The town was drawing everything from whiskey drummers to medicine shows these days, and I intended to get out to the east side to have a close look. Half the shows rolling through the country roads of the West were nothing but gyppo outfits, looking to con cash out of the local folks, while swiping everything that wasn’t nailed down tight. And if they could get a few girls in trouble while robbing citizens and peddling worthless stuff, they did that, too, and smiled all the way to the next berg.
I’d wander over there. But first I’d patrol Doubtful, as I did every evening—wearing my badge, walking from place to place, rattling doors to see if they were locked, and studying saloons closely to see if there was trouble. Sometimes there was, and the barkeeps would be glad I wandered in at a moment when some drunken cowboy, armed to the teeth, was picking a fight.
So I did my rounds, seeing that all was quiet at Maxwell’s Funeral Parlor, and no one was busting the doors at Hubert Sanders’ Merchant Bank. I peered into Barney’s Beanery, and saw that it was winding down for the eve, and peered into the dark confines of Leonard Silver’s Emporium. I checked the office of Lawyer Stokes, and saw no one rifling his file cabinets. McGiver’s Saloon was quiet, and so was the Last Chance, where I saw Sammy Upward yawning, his elbows on the bar, looking ready to close early.
I spotted a few posters promoting Dr. Zoroaster Zimmer’s show. The man had a string of initials behind his name, but I never could figure out what all they meant, but the PhD meant he was a doctor of philandery or something like that. The KGB puzzled me, but someone told me it was British and had to do with garters and bathtubs. You never know what gets into foreigners. At any rate, Professor Zimmer had them all, and they followed his name like a line of railroad cars. I thought I’d like to meet the gent.
Denver Sally’s place, back behind saloon row, looked quiet, the evening breezes rocking the red lantern beside her door. Most of her business came on weekends. The Gates of Heaven, next door, looked as mean as ever. Who knows all the ways a feller wants to get rid of his cash?
Doubtful was peaceful enough, that spring evening. So it was time to drift out beyond saloon row, east of town and take a gander at the medicine-man show. A mess of those shows were wandering through the whole country, setting up in dark corners of little towns, and running an act or two across a stage set up on a wagon. The medicine man would step out and peddle his stuff, and when he gauged he’d done all the selling he could, he’d pull up stakes and head for the next little town and do it all over again.
Sure enough, east of town on an alkali flat, a couple of torches were going.
I moseyed closer and saw two fancy red and gilt wagons—one with a lamplit stage—and a makeshift rope corral with some moth-eaten drays in it. Maybe twelve, fifteen suckers were watching a jet-haired woman in a grass skirt wiggle her butt and make her bosom heave. I’d never seen that, and it seemed entertaining, but I had sheriff business to do, namely, look for a red and gilt chariot, and two blond Ukrainian women joined at the hip.
It took a quick prowl around the rear of the place, and into the other wagon, to satisfy myself no one was hiding a chariot or Siamese twins, blond or any other color. Whoever kidnapped the ladies, it wasn’t that miserable outfit.
I spotted a gent smoking a cigar back there, and thought he might have some answers. He saw the glint of my badge even before we spoke. He sucked on his gummy cheroot, and knocked off the ash. “You looking for something, Sheriff?”
“Just keeping an eye on things. How many people you got in this outfit?”
“Six and the professor.”
“Any women?”
He stared at me as if I were an idiot. “That’s Elvira Smoothpepper out there. And we got Elsie Sanchez, the Argentine firecracker.”
“No Ukrainian blondes?”
“You got eyes, don’tcha?”
“Who else is in the show?”
“Sheriff, there ain’t anyone with a wanted poster on him. There’s me and another teamster. He’s the accordionist, and there’s a tap dancer named Fogarty, and the professor.”
“What does the professor sell? What’s his medicine?”
The gent smiled. “Try it sometime and come back and tell me.”
“Any chariots around here?”
“Any what?”
; “Oh, never mind.”
“You all right, Sheriff? Want to lie down? That second wagon, it’s got bunks. Had a little too much?”
“Who’s the professor?”
“He’s whatever he is at any moment. Right now, he’s a medicine man, and he’s working the rubes for a few bucks.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll go watch the show,” I said.
“It beats pissing on a fence post.”
Half of the crowd was cowboys, out from the saloons. I recognized a few, most of them that hung out at Mrs. Gladstone’s Sampling Room. They were tied up with the Admiral Ranch, other side of the county. But there were some locals too, including the mayor, George Waller, who looked embarrassed when he saw me.
“I just came to view the competition.” Waller was a merchant, and any outfit that sold anything was competition, as far as he was concerned. “Maybe you should arrest the whole lot.”
“What for?”
“They’re all crooks.”
“Well, that’s progress. You show me one act of crookery, and I’ll pinch the person straight off.”
Elvira Smoothpepper was making her belly roll and the grass skirt sway, and that was pretty entertaining. The accordionist got to wheezing away, and pretty soon the act creaked to a stop, and out came Professor Zoroaster Zimmer, in black silk top hat and tails, and a grimy white vest that looked a little worse for wear.
I’d never seen the like.
He spotted me at once, and welcomed me. “Ladies and gents, here’s the sheriff of, ah, Puma County, Wyoming. Come to see our little show, and maybe endorse my product, namely, the Zimmer Miracle Tonic, guaranteed to cure piles, insomnia, gout, St. Vitus Dance, and all bowel troubles. Welcome, Mr. Sheriff.
“Now, esteemed friends, I want to tell you about a product that should need no introducing, since it sells itself. You need only ask your neighbor, who has the remedy on his shelf, ready to use, and you’ll see how effective it is. Mr. Sheriff, please come up.”
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