Town Tamers

by David Robbins

  For Asa, it was a wide-brimmed black hat, a black Macintosh, and black pants.

  For Byron, it was a checkered shirt, bib overalls, and a straw hat. When Noona looked at him and raised her eyebrows, he said, “They’ll think I’m a farmer gone bad.”

  “You look as if you have plows on the brain,” she teased.

  “Why, thank you,” Byron said.

  For her part, Noona chose a man’s shirt and pants, both too big, which made them baggy like she wanted them. She also selected a high-crowned hat into which she could tuck her hair. “So they’ll mistake me for a man,” she said when Byron gave her the same look she’d given him.

  “The clothes aren’t all we need,” Asa reminded them, and led the way to the feed and grain.

  They found a bin of grain sacks, and each of them picked one up and fingered it.

  “I don’t know about this, Pa,” Noona said. “It’s too rough and thick. It’d scratch our skin and we’d half-suffocate.”

  “Not to mention we won’t be able to see a thing, even with eyeholes,” Byron said.

  “I’m afraid you’re right,” Asa agreed. “Let’s keep looking.”

  Two blocks down, a mercantile bustled with customers. Asa found some burlap sacks for sale, but they were as rough as the grain sacks. He considered pillowcases. It would be easy to cut the holes, but when they were sweaty the cotton would cling and he didn’t want that. He was still searching when Noona came up holding a roll of white material. “What have you got there, daughter?”

  “Muslin,” she said. “Feel it and hold it up to your face.”

  It had a loose weave so air would pass through. And when Asa placed it over his eyes, he could see through it.

  “This would work wonderful for the masks,” Noona was saying. “The holes will be easy to cut, and if they shift on our face somehow, as you just saw we can still see through it.”

  “I don’t like the white,” Asa said.

  “They sell bottles of dye. I figure we color the masks black.”

  “This will work fine,” Asa complimented her. He looked around. “Where did your brother get to?”

  “Where do you think?”

  The books were at the very back. Byron was paging through one and didn’t realize Asa was there until Asa nudged him.

  “More poetry?”

  “I wish. It’s not as popular as in Lord Byron’s day.”

  “I wonder why.”

  “Pa, please. I thought we agreed to a truce.”

  “I’m sorry, son. I’ve tried and I’ve tried and I just can’t get used to it.”

  “Well, once this is over, you won’t have to worry about it anymore.”

  “It’s not the verse, it’s you.”

  “Have I ever failed to do what needs doing? Have I ever not squeezed the trigger for you?”

  “For that I’m grateful.” Asa turned. “Come on. Your sister has found what we need.”

  Byron touched his sleeve. “Hold on. Something is starting to bother me.”

  “Uh-oh,” Asa said.

  “We didn’t talk this out when I brought it up before, and we should.”

  Asa looked around to be sure no one was listening. “All right. Air your lungs.”

  “This won’t be a typical taming. Some might say all we’re doing is taking the law into our own hands.”

  “Taming is always taking the law into our own hands.”

  “But that’s wrong, isn’t it?”

  “Here we go again.”

  “Please. I’m serious.”

  Asa looked around again. “If you’re going to back out, now is the time to do it.”

  “Who said anything about backing out? I told you I’d see it through and I will.”

  “Then quit bellyaching,” Asa said. “No, we’re not duly sworn law officers, or knights in shining armor or any of that poetical nonsense you like.”

  “Then what are we, exactly?”

  “Killers,” Asa said.

  59

  The Overland stage rumbled into Ordville nearly an hour late. The stationmaster wasn’t worried when it didn’t show on time. The stage was often late. Rockslides, fallen trees, and steep grades were common causes. But on this particular day the cause was something else.

  Cockeyed Jack was on the box, and he commenced bellowing at the outskirts. He cracked his whip and bawled over and over, “The stage was robbed! The stage was robbed!”

  By the time the stagecoach reached the Overland building, a considerable crowd was trailing along.

  The stationmaster, Harvey Spence, heard the ruckus from blocks away and was out under the overhang when the stage came to a stop. Harvey swiped at the cloud of dust it raised, and coughed. “What are you hollering about up there?” he asked even though he’d heard clearly.

  Cockeyed Jack sprang down, a remarkable feat given his years, and seized Harvey by the shirt. “We was held up! And it was the strangest damn holdup you ever did see.”

  Harvey noted the presence of women and children among the onlookers and exercised his authority with, “Watch your language. There are ladies and whatnot.”

  “What?” Jack said. He glanced around, his left eye looking one way and his right eye looking another. “What?” he said again.

  “The holdup,” Harvey Spence said. “Let me hear about the holdup.”

  “Hold on,” a voice commanded, and through the throng shouldered Marshal Abel Pollard. As nearly always, Deputy Agar was a second shadow.

  The stage door opened and a woman in her fifties poked her head out. “Marshal! You should have been there. A man pointed a gun at me and everything.”

  Another passenger, a pasty-faced man in a rumpled suit, vigorously bobbed his chin and declared, “I thought I was a goner.”

  “Oh, posh,” the woman said. “They were polite as could be.”

  Marshal Pollard held up a hand. “Quiet down, all of you. I’ll take your statements in a minute.” He turned to the driver. “Let me hear your account.”

  Cockeyed Jack licked his dry lips. One of his eyes appeared to be looking at Pollard while the other was fixed on Agar. “We were comin’ up the last of the bad grades. You know the one, Marshal, about a mile down.”

  Pollard nodded.

  “Well, it slowed us, of course, and the team was at a walk by the time we reached the top. And there they were!” Cockeyed Jack exclaimed.

  “Who?”

  “Why, the robbers. Or highwaymen, I reckon they’re called nowadays.”

  “How many? And what did they look like?”

  The woman had climbed down and was fluffing the hair that hung from under her hat. “There were three. They were on horseback, and they held guns on us.”

  “Are you tellin’ this, or am I?” Cockeyed Jack said.

  “No need to be huffy,” she said.

  “Keep telling,” Marshal Pollard instructed Jack.

  “Well, anyhow, they pointed long guns at us and one of them said, ‘Would you be so kind as to come to a stop?’”

  Marshal Polllard blinked. “He said what?”

  “‘Would you be so kind as to come to a stop?’” Cockeyed Jack repeated.

  “I told you before they were as polite as anything,” the woman said. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of bandits so polite.”

  “Consarn you, Maude Adams,” Cockeyed Jack said. “He wants me to tell it, not you.”

  “She’ll get her turn,” Marshal Pollard said. “What happened next?”

  Cockeyed Jack rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Well, with three long guns pointed at me, I wasn’t about to say no. I stopped and the farmer came up close and said—”

  “Wait,” Marshal Pollard said. “The farmer?”

  “That’s what I call him on account of how he was dressed,” Cockeyed J
ack said. “He had overalls and a straw hat and looked just like a farmer except for the mask.”

  “Hold on, hold on,” Marshal Pollard said. “Let’s back up a bit. What did the other two look like?”

  “One was wearin’ one of those raincoats. Macintoshes, I think they’re called. He was all in black.”

  “I took him for the mean one,” Maude Adams said. “Outlaws always have a mean one in the bunch.”

  “Damn it, Maude,” Jack said, and continued. “Him and the farmer were middling sized. The third man was shorter, and didn’t speak once. The farmer said, ‘Would all of you inside please step down’ —”

  “Gosh, he was mannered,” Maude said. “I bet if you invited him to supper, he’d say ‘please’ each time he wanted the salt.”

  “Mrs. Adams, please,” Marshal Pollard said.

  “Now she’s got you doin’ it,” Cockeyed Jack said.

  Pollard glared.

  “Anyway, as I was sayin’, the farmer asked for everyone to climb down and Mrs. Adams and the other four passengers obliged. And the farmer pointed his gun at them and asked if they had any biscuits.”

  “He what?”

  “You heard me,” Cockeyed Jack said. “The robber said, as nice as could be, ‘Would any of you fine people happen to have fresh biscuits? I am enormously hungry.’”

  “Enormously?”

  Cockeyed Jack nodded. “His exact word. You don’t think I’d sling a ten-pounder like that around myself, do you?”

  “And then what?”

  “Well, the passengers all said as how they didn’t have any biscuits and he said they could climb back in. And once they did, he said to me, ‘Thank you for stopping. You can go now. But I do ask a favor of you.’”

  “A favor? What kind of favor?”

  Cockeyed Jack looked at Maude Adams with his right eye and Jack and Maude looked at the other passengers, and all of them looked at Marshal Pollard.

  “I don’t know as I should tell you,” Jack said.

  “Why in hell not?”

  “It’s liable to make you mad.”

  “Goddamn it, Jack.”

  “All right, all right.” Cockeyed Jack took a deep breath. “The farmer said to give you his love.”

  A great hush fell. The onlookers who had been whispering stopped and stood stock-still and stared at the marshal. The passengers and Jack stared at the marshal, too.

  Pollard’s mouth had dropped open. For all of ten seconds he appeared stupefied. Then the scarlet tinge of anger crept up his neck and face, and he put a hand on his six-shooter. “Was that your notion of a joke?”

  Cockeyed Jack thrust out his hands. “He said it! As God is my witness, he did.”

  “We all heard him,” Maude Adams said. “That nice outlaw sent our town marshal his love.” And she tittered merrily.

  More than a few of the onlookers laughed.

  Deputy Agar was a study in confusion. “What in tarnation is going on, Abel?”

  Marshal Pollard stared down the mountain. “I wish to hell I knew.”

  60

  The marshal formed a posse, and they thundered down to the grade and searched for tracks. They promptly found some and almost as promptly lost them when the tracks led to a stream. They split and followed the stream in both directions but couldn’t find where the outlaws left it.

  In Ordville, word spread like a prairie fire.

  When Marshal Pollard and the posse returned, they were pointed at and grinned at.

  “Had any biscuits lately?” a man shouted from a saloon doorway.

  Not a block later another man called out, “Give our love to the farmer.”

  “I don’t much like being laughed at,” Deputy Agar grumbled.

  “It’s me they’re laughing at, you jackass,” Marshal Pollard said, “and I like it even less.”

  “Someone was playing a prank,” Agar said. “It has to be.”

  “They picked the wrong hombre to play it on,” Pollard said.

  Pollard visited every saloon in town. He let it be known that he would pay a hundred dollars out of his own pocket for information that led him to the identities of the three stage robbers.

  No one came forward. In a few days the townsfolk stopped joking about it. They had something new to gossip about.

  Cornice Baker’s daughter, Laura, had hung herself.

  The next Friday, Cockeyed Jack was on his usual Denver-to-Ordville run. He was climbing the last steep grade and came to the top and was astounded to see the same three highwaymen. He brought the stage to a stop without being told to and declared, “Not you three again!”

  The passengers peered out. None of the men resorted to a firearm, not with what they took to be three rifles trained on them.

  The farmer gigged his horse close to the stage and said to Cockeyed Jack as politely as anything, “How do you do?”

  “I am plumb surprised that you’re back,” Jack confessed. “We didn’t have any biscuits last time, and we don’t have any now.”

  “Do you happen to have any sugar?”

  “Sugar?”

  “We would be happy as anything if you did. I didn’t buy enough, and we have run out for our coffee.”

  “You put on those masks and hold us up for sugar?”

  “I would do it for beans if we were out of beans.”

  “Don’t this beat all.” Cockeyed Jack shook his head. “You are as loco as anything. The three of you. No, I ain’t got no sugar, and I doubt my passengers do, either.”

  The farmer bandit, as Jack liked to think of him, looked at the heads poking out of the stage. “Sugar, anyone?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Why in hell would anyone bring sugar on a stage?”

  “Maybe you ought to visit a general store. They have sugar galore.”

  “I’m terribly disappointed,” the farmer bandit said. “The vagaries of life are truly fickle.”

  “The what?” Jack said.

  “Would you do me another favor?” the farmer bandit asked.

  “Not again. What is it this time? Send your love to the marshal like before?”

  “No,” the farmer bandit said. And he told them what it was.

  One of the male passengers cackled, and a female passenger said, “I never!”

  “First it was love and now this,” Cockeyed Jack said. “What is the matter with you?”

  “I’d be ever so grateful.” The farmer bandit wagged his rifle. “Off you go. I trust all of you will have the nicest of days.”

  “Mister,” Cockeyed Jack said as he raised the reins, “when they passed out brains, you were off in the outhouse.”

  “Now, now,” the farmer bandit said. “If it’s stink we’re talking about, let’s stick to the marshal.”

  Cockeyed Jack muttered, flicked the reins, and the team broke into motion. The stage gained speed on the flat, and he held them to their top speed for the rest of the distance to town.

  Jack didn’t whoop and holler like he did the last time. He brought the stage to a halt in front of the stage office and said to Harvey Spence, who was waiting as usual, “You won’t believe it. Those three did it again.”

  “You were held up?”

  A couple of kids were rolling a hoop with a stick and overheard. Lickety-split, they ran up the street hollering, “The stage was robbed! The stage was robbed!”

  In no time a crowd collected and hurled questions at Cockeyed Jack, but he refused to say a word. He climbed down and was holding the door for the passengers when Marshal Pollard and Deputy Agar arrived.

  “Did I hear right?” the marshal asked.

  “You did,” Jack said.

  “What did they want this time?” Deputy Agar asked with a smirk. “More biscuits?”

  “Sugar,” Cockeyed Jack said, and looked
at the marshal. “And for me to ask you to do something.”

  “Do I want to hear it?” Marshal Pollard.

  “No.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “Do you give your word that you won’t hit me?”

  “You have my word. What the hell is it this time?”

  Cockeyed Jack raised his voice so everyone in the crowd would hear him. “The farmer bandit wants you to give Arthur Studevant a kiss.”

  Thanks to the guffaws and peals of mirth from the good citizens of Ordville, only Cockeyed Jack and Deputy Agar heard Marshal Pollard reply.

  “I will by-God kill them.”

  61

  The whites called it Shoshone Mountain. A family of sheep-eater Shoshones once lived on it. The sheep weren’t the kind whites raised. They were mountain sheep. It took considerable skill to stalk the high crags and bring a mountain sheep down with an arrow.

  Then the whites came along and hunters picked the sheep off from a distance with rifles, and the Shoshones found it increasingly harder to fill their hungry stomachs.

  So they left.

  In a meadow high on a south slope, nestled at the base of a bluff where they were out of the wind, the three town tamers had made camp.

  A fire crackled, and coffee was on to brew.

  Byron touched the top of the pot and jerked his finger back. “It will be ready soon,” he announced.

  Across the fire, seated cross-legged, Noona grinned and said, “I thought that business about the sugar was a nice touch.”

  “Thank you.”

  Asa finished picketing the horses and came over with his Winchester shotgun cradled in the crook of an elbow. “Tell me again how this is smart.”

  “It’s smart in so many ways, I’m amazed at my own brilliance,” Byron said.

  “The love and the kiss parts don’t sit well with me,” Asa said. “It’s not dignified.”

  “You wanted them to be laughingstocks,” Byron reminded him.

  “From what Cornice told me,” Noona said, “everyone is laughing at that no-good law dog and at Studevant behind their backs. And some laugh to their faces.”

  Byron chuckled. “You hear that, Pa?” he asked without the hillbilly twang. “You wanted to get everyone’s attention. Well, we have. You saw the newspaper that Mrs. Baker gave sis. We were the talk of the town the first time. This time we’re the talk of the territory.”