Savage Guns

by William W. Johnstone

  “Hold up there, Sheriff,” Ruble said.

  “I got no business with you,” I said.

  “We got word that the Cleggs got held up by Admiral Bragg’s men, and they made off with the gallows timbers.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “From Old Man Clegg. He was on his way out of Doubtful.”

  “I’m on it. And it’s not going to happen again. I’ve sent a deputy to tell Admiral Bragg that ain’t gonna stop a thing and he’s obstructing justice.”

  Ruble just laughed. “Fat lot of good that’ll do.”

  He riled me some, and Plug was itching for me to take a swing at his boss, but I just stood real quiet.

  “Here’s the deal, Sheriff. We’re going to escort Clegg and his boys and those timbers into town, and if Admiral Bragg’s men try anything, they’ll be leaking blood into the ground.”

  “No, you won’t,” I said. “You’re not going to do that. I’m a peace officer, and I’m not going to let a gang war start in Puma County. If you try that, I’ll throw your ass in jail.”

  Plug, he just wheezed happily, like he could hardly wait for me to try it.

  Truth was, the odds were pretty bad, but I was the law, and I wasn’t gonna let a bunch of gunslicks shoot it out.

  That evening, Barter Clegg slipped into Doubtful and told me his old man was ready to haul wood in the morning. He said they’d worked real hard out there, and got the timbers ready, and wanted to leave before dawn, figuring they could get the timbers into town before anyone was up for the day. I told him I’d be there, and the kid slid away. I hoped no one was looking, but in Doubtful these days I never knew who was spying on me.

  I found Rusty and DeGraff inside. “I’m going out to Clegg’s lumber mill, and I’m escorting the wagon in. They’ve cut some new wood. We’re driving back here before dawn.”

  I stared real hard at them both. “Now you’re going to take care of the prisoner, feed him, and do it proper, because if he ain’t fed and cared for, you’re going to be looking for some other job.”

  DeGraff got riled up. “Don’t blame me,” he said.

  “I’m not blaming anyone. I’m just warning you that anyone fails to treat that boy proper, he’ll answer to me.”

  “I don’t know why you bother when he’s gonna be cold meat in three days.”

  “He’s gonna be taken care of proper until he hangs,” I said.

  In fact, I think DeGraff was the one who wasn’t feeding the boy or cleaning his slop bucket when he was on duty, and I was thinking maybe I’d get a new deputy if he didn’t shape up real fast.

  I went to the gun cabinet and looked things over, and finally selected a double-barrel twelve-gauge shotgun and some shells loaded with buckshot. The one I took with me had an eighteen-inch barrel, just right for making a good cone, but not so short it sprayed lead all over. I never thought much of shotguns, but that’s what I wanted this time. With my revolver I could put a pill through the ace of hearts at ten paces. That took some practice, and I took some pride in it, but this time I’d be alone against three, four, five of Admiral Bragg’s best. I respected all of them, especially Big Nose George and Spitting Sam, and I’d carry whatever advantage I could.

  I got up in the middle of the night, when it was quiet and cold, and went to get Critter. He was dozing and had a fit, kicking his stall hard until I quieted him down.

  “We’re going for a night ride,” I said, “so cut it out.”

  He got the message, and didn’t even try to break my ribs by squeezing me into the wall, and pretty soon I got him saddled and bridled, and led him into the quiet night. He sniffed the air, snorted, and decided he was going to enjoy the trip.

  Lemuel Clegg’s mill was about two hours away, so I started out there around three and rode in about five. There was enough moon so I could make them out. They had a draft horse hooked to the wagon, and on the bed were two more uprights, a crosspiece, and support timbers. They was loaded and ready, and we set out. None of them was armed, and that was good. I didn’t want some amateurs getting themselves kilt just because they was hauling metal.

  It sure was a nice night. I didn’t try to talk none with the Cleggs, because I wanted to listen to all the night sounds. But we made two, three miles without trouble, until we come to a narrow place where the hills cramped the road some, and there was room enough for the road and the dry gulch running alongside.

  I felt Critter tighten, and could just make out his ears rotating off to the left some. I didn’t wait for anything to unfold. I put my spurs to him, and he bolted left so hard it pretty near pitched me off the saddle, and sure enough, there was three or four horsemen waiting up ahead. I pulled the shotgun and barreled right in, and by the time they got wind of me I was on them, and I aimed one barrel at a knot of them. The shot must’ve caught men and horses too, because some of them nags, probably good blooded stock belonging to Admiral Bragg, were bucking and screeching and pitching their riders. I sure was curious to see who might show up in town wearing a few bandages.

  It only took that one shot. One rider picked up a downed rider, and the mess of them hightailed away. I had my shotgun at the ready, but that bunch was gone. I pulled the empty shell and reloaded, and rode back.

  “We’ll likely have no more trouble,” I said. The old man whupped his draft horse to life, and we creaked and groaned our way into Doubtful.

  Them Cleggs unloaded the timbers on the courthouse square and took off for their mill. They needed to bring in another load of planks and two-by-fours for the platform, and I worried about them getting ambushed on the second trip. But I couldn’t be everywhere at once.

  A lot of people studied them big timbers, but no one touched anything. I thought the timbers would be safe enough there, out in front of the whole town. But the presence of those timbers changed everything. Doubtful would soon be a place where a big crowd would watch a criminal boy get hanged, and a sort of brooding settled over the town. Them timbers did it. The timbers made everything real.

  I found Judge Nippers and County Supervisor Reggie Thimble eating lunch at the beanery, and told them I thought the Cleggs would get the scaffold built proper, and tested proper, before the big event. Lem Clegg claimed to have built one before, and knew all about it, and knew how to test it out, with a weight on the trapdoor, so when I pulled the lever nothing would go wrong, and King Bragg would drop hard and fast. That would be exactly at eleven in the morning, in three days.

  “Well, that’s fine,” Thimble said. “Build it to last. I’m all for it. If we can hang five or ten a year, pretty soon we’ll have the cost down to a few dimes a drop.”

  I sure wasn’t enjoying the thought of hanging anyone, but I was the sheriff and I’d do what I had to do. But I kept wishing some piece of evidence would come along that would free the boy. I wasn’t sure he killed anyone, even if he once swaggered around Doubtful, making the most of being his father’s son. But boys are like that. He was a different boy now, back in the cell where he was going to spend the last hours of his life.

  I kept an eye out for anyone with a bandage wandering around town, but no one like that showed up, and I knew that anyone injured by my buckshot was staying out at the Anchor Ranch, and not coming into Doubtful to get himself arrested by me.

  The Cleggs made another round trip, this time with a heap of planks and studs and a cask of ten-penny nails. They unloaded the whole shebang in the courthouse square, and come over to the jailhouse to ask me just where to put up the gallows. I walked over there and had a look. It had to be in a place where everyone could see real clear that justice was done. I decided on a place fairly close to the Puma County Courthouse steps, so the crowd would gather down from the courthouse some. There sure were a mess of people around there, and I noticed the T-Bar men were sort of guarding that pile of lumber. Crayfish Ruble was making sure that nothing stopped the hanging of the killer of his three ranch hands.

  It was a real quiet night, and the next morning the Cleggs we
re hard at work. They bolted the foot timbers to the uprights, and then bolted in the angle pieces so that each upright stood on a base and wasn’t gonna tip none. Then, while them uprights was still lying on the grass, they bolted down a spruce crossbar good and solid. And then the Cleggs got some big ropes and tied them to the crossbar, and began to tug the whole thing up in the air, so that by the end of the first day at work, they got the framework up and braced into place. It looked mighty solemn, and a lot of people stopped to stare at it. The merchants liked it because all them folks stayed right around town and went shopping. A few of the ladies bought spring bonnets they could wear for the hanging.

  I told the Cleggs they could sleep in the jail if they wanted, and I saw Lemuel talk a little with Wage and Barter, and then they turned me down without sayin’ why. But I knew why. They didn’t want to bunk in any cell next to the condemned boy. So they drove out to their place that night, and planned to come back in the morning. If they stayed on schedule, they would frame the platform tomorrow, and put in the hardware, and spend the last day before the hanging testing it to make sure there was a good drop once I pulled the lever. I wanted a good drop for the boy too, so he didn’t just dangle there and choke to death real slow.

  I didn’t know nothing about making a noose, but DeGraff said he did, so I was going to leave that to my deputy. I went over to Waller’s hardware and bought twenty yards of one-inch hemp rope, tough rope that wouldn’t bust when it took some weight, and I told DeGraff to make a noose, and we’d get her up there as soon as the Cleggs were ready.

  Things were coming right along, all right.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Lem Clegg and his boys was putting up the gallows in fine style, taking real pride in their work. I kept an eye on them, but no one was bothering them none. They’d got the hanging part of it up, good and solid, and now they was working on the platform and the trap. They’d put in posts and stringers, and soon they’d be running plank across. They sure knew what they were doing, and I wondered if they’d built a few other gallows in their day. It felt real good to have some professionals doing the job.

  There was a mess of people watching them work, most all the time. A lot of Doubtful mothers, they’d bring their young ones over for a look, and tell them kids to behave themselves or they’d get themselves hanged just like King Bragg was going to in a couple of days. Some of these boys, they got real excited by it and wanted to get real close to see it when the moment came along.

  Mrs. Cadbury, the schoolmarm, she brought the fifth grade over to see the gallows going up, and told them all how it would work. Them little kids were impressed, and I thought they’d stick to the straight and narrow rather than get their necks broken. When she came back with the seventh graders, they all begged her to watch it when the time came, and she promised them she’d let them out of school so they could see justice done and take part in the hanging of a mass murderer. I thought that was pretty good myself, and it’d keep the peace around there real good. The more people saw King hang, the better, when it came to stopping crime in its tracks. She told me it was better than reading the Bible to them every morning, and since the gallows had started to go up, she’d had no trouble in class and not even much truancy. So that gallows was sending a message, all right.

  Doubtful didn’t have no high school, just grades one through eight, so there weren’t any older children seeing the gallows go up. That was too bad, because the older ones, they’d see that King Bragg was eighteen, about their own age, and that would make some sort of impression on them. The more that came to the hanging, the better off Puma County would be, and of course the merchants were expecting a big day in their shops too.

  It sure was a nice spring, and I thought if the weather held, King Bragg would get himself hanged on a fine, warm, sunny day, and that would be good. I’d hate to hang a feller on a cold, mean day.

  There was a mess of T-Bar men floating around, but the Anchor Ranch outfit was staying away. That suited me fine. Admiral Bragg, he’d tried everything from a fake hanging to scare me to smuggling stuff to his boy, and only a couple days earlier I’d stopped them from robbing the gallows timbers and trying to slow down the hanging. So I wasn’t very fond of that one, him with all them airs. And his daughter Queen was just as bad, except once in a while when her pa wasn’t around. I felt sorry for her, under his thumb like that. But maybe she deserved it, being so snotty like that.

  Crayfish Ruble was whiling away his days over at Rosie’s, and I hardly saw him. But I knew he was around, and I knew he was pulling strings. His gunslicks were all over town, almost patrolling it, like they were the lawmen and not me. But it was peaceful enough, and as long as they didn’t bust any laws or cause trouble, I had no reason to mind. Maybe it was even to the good, because it kept Admiral Bragg and his bunch out of Doubtful so the hanging could go ahead real peaceful.

  After watching the Cleggs saw planks and hammer them down, I headed out Wyoming Street, thinking to have a visit with Sammy Upward. He might still be mad at me, but I didn’t care. I was as itchy as ever about what was going on in my town.

  The moment I walked in there, Sammy starting rubbing the bar with his rag, and I knew I wasn’t very welcome. There was a bunch of T-Bar men in there, and it was like I’d walked into their private club and they didn’t like it none.

  Sammy just slapped a bottle of red-eye on the bar, and a tumbler, and told me it’d be a quarter. “I’m charging one bit now,” he said.

  It had been a dime. I didn’t object, and laid out two bits.

  “I’m looking for a few things,” I said.

  “You got something to tell me first?”

  Sammy was back in his trading mood. He’d tell me something if I told him something.

  “Sure,” I said. “Admiral Bragg tried to stop the scaffold going up. I put some buckshot into the ambush.”

  “That so?” Sammy seemed impressed. I hadn’t told anyone about that predawn fight when I rode with the Cleggs. “You know who took some shot?”

  “Nope. Anyone that got hit’s staying out at the Anchor Ranch. I’ll pinch anyone with a bandage on him just now.”

  Sammy polished away at the bar, and finally decided it was okay to cut loose with something I might need. “Well?” he said, sounding irritated.

  I peered around a little. All them T-Bar men had quit their talking and were listening to me. They wanted to know what the sheriff was askin’ about, so I decided to give them an earful.

  “This fellow Rocco, the one that King Bragg shot. I’m just curious about him. I got some flyers on the two brothers, so I know they were up to no good, but I don’t know a thing about Rocco. Crayfish hired him, and he didn’t seem like one of the regular bunch out there. You gonna help me with that?”

  “What do you want to know for?”

  “I was sort of wondering if maybe King Bragg did the world a favor.”

  Upward thought about that a little, polishing away on his bar, and then said, “He didn’t do the world any favor. Rocco, he was different all right. He wasn’t a regular cowboy living in the bunkhouse like the rest. He lived up at the house like Mr. Ruble. He was Mr. Ruble’s manservant, you know? The gent that kept the big house and got whatever Crayfish needed and took care of things. Mr. Ruble, he has no woman, you know. So he had this Eastern gent, Rocco, do all that stuff.”

  “What stuff?”

  Sammy eyed the silent crowd, and then leaned forward, almost whispering to me. “Crayfish Ruble sure liked his women, and once in a while he’d send Rocco to town, with the black buggy, to fetch him a woman. Rocco would go rent one from one of the parlor houses. He’d go to Rosie and rent one for a week, and bring her out to the ranch, so Crayfish could enjoy her for a few days.”

  “Then he’d take her back?”

  Upward shrugged. “I only know what I heard. That’s all I’m telling you.”

  “Rocco, did he spend time with the rest of the T-Bar men?”

  “Naw, he was a loner. He was real
well educated, and talked different. He never talked about cattle or guns or anything like that. When he came in here with Crayfish, they would talk about good wines, or how to cook venison, or what women in Paris were wearing.”

  “Rocco was from where?”

  “How should I know? But I once served a man from that hellhole called Brooklyn, and this Rocco, he sounded like that. I couldn’t place it if I tried. But he was smart.”

  “And Crayfish employed him as a manservant? Anything else?”

  Sammy sighed. “Maybe an informer. I think he was Crayfish’s eyes and ears. Now that’s all I’m gonna say. I’m done. I told you more than you told me.”

  He stalked off to serve one of the T-Bar cowboys, who was wanting another shot. I just waited real quiet. I wasn’t done with Sammy.

  Pretty soon I had another crack at it. “How come King Bragg shot him?” I asked.

  “I don’t know or care. King Bragg shot Mr. Ruble’s best friend and two of his best hands in cold blood. Crayfish Ruble told me a dozen times, Rocco was the most valuable help he had, and them Jonas boys, they was harder working than most everyone in the bunkhouse. I’ll tell you something, Cotton. When that boy killed three of his best men, Crayfish broke down and pretty near cried some. He’d hate me for saying it, because men don’t shed tears, but I saw Ruble kneel over those three murdered men and fight back a tear or two, not wanting anyone to see how bad he felt.”

  “Were they baiting King?”

  “Naw, it was cold-blooded murder, an execution if you ask me.”

  “The kid simply pulled his gun and shot the three of them?”

  “He did. They was all in a row next to him while he was sucking red-eye, and next I knew, there was all this gunfire, and I was in the storeroom. When I stuck my head out for a peek, there they were. Three dead men on my sawdust, leaking blood and coughing their last. Oh, man, Sheriff, that was a bad moment.”

  “Must have been,” I said.