“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,” I said.
“Well, there’s no man on earth hornier than me,” Rusty said.
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 to let us know if we got a red chariot and two hipshot blondes floating around southern Wyoming,” I said.
“We catch them, what are you going to charge them with?” Rusty asked.
“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. They’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.
Well, about dusk, we got back in, and all we raised were a few smirks. Like no one thought that kidnapping Siamese twins from the Ukraine was worth getting lathered up about. Especially when it was all Rusty’s problem. He’s the only one got shut out of some entertainment. So we rode in, by our lonesome selves, without a passel 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,” he said.
“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. Critter 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 set up 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 Three
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.
And 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 burg.
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’s 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. McGivers’ 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.
There were 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 Ph.D. 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, this Professor Zimmer had them all, and they followed his name like a string 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 this here medicine man show. There were a mess of these shows wandering through the whole country, setting up in dark corners of a little town, running an act or two across a stage set up on a wagon. Then the medicine man would step out and peddle his stuff, and when he gauged that 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, there were a couple of torches going, two fancy red-and-gilt wagons, a makeshift rope corral with some moth-eaten drays in it, and a lamp-lit stage on a wagon. There were maybe twelve, fifteen suckers watching some 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 blonde Ukrainian women joined at the hip. I took a quick prowl around the rear of the place, and into the other wagon, to satisfy myself that no one was hiding a chariot or Siamese twins, blonde or any other color. Whoever k
idnapped the ladies, it wasn’t this 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, dontcha?”
“Who else’s 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 the ones 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,” he said. 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,” he said.
“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 skirts 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, tux 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, what? 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.”
“Me?”
“Of course, you. Step right up, my friend.”
“I haven’t got anything ailing me, doc.”
“Oh, my friend, do you have restless nights? Toss and turn nights?”
“Naw, I sleep like a log.”
“Do you ache after a long day on your horse?”
“Now, you’re talking about Critter, the orneriest critter on four legs. Yes, I’ll allow that I ache some after a long ride on that beast.”
“Were you out on him today, sheriff?”
“Pretty near the whole blasted day, professor.”
“Then you must feel weary, right down to the bone.”
“Well, we were out looking for some blonde Ukrainian women that got attached at the hip and plain disappeared.”
That got mostly dead silence and a couple of snickers from some of them cowboys.
“I think you are very weary, sir, after a day of searching for blonde Ukrainian women. Are you a bit worn?”
“I am done in.”
“Well, perfect. I would truly like to have you sample Doctor Zimmer’s Tonic, and report the results to all these fine folks.”
“My ma, she used to say, one drink is enough.”
“Oh, this is not drink, sir. This is an elixir to balm the soul, elevate mood, celebrate life, and rejoice in your own splendid body. Now how old are you?”
“I forget; past thirty, anyway.”
“Ah, the shady side of thirty. Let me tell you, my friend, that is when Doctor Zoroaster Zimmer’s Tonic works wonders the fastest. It works wonders at any age, sir, but especially after thirty.”
The maestro of this here event reached for a bottle of the stuff, which was sitting on a little shelf, with a gold halo around it, so the bottle looked like a saint.
He sure was smiling. He grabbed that stuff, and pulled the cork, and poured a little into a tumbler, and handed it to me, while all them cowboys and Mayor George Waller watched.
I remembered what my ma used to say, no guts, no glory, and I downed the stuff in one gulp.
Well, it took a moment and worked through me, like a glow of a lot of fireflies, and then I plumb keeled over. The accordionist caught me going down.
Chapter Four
I think the professor was a little surprised, but he took advantage of it.
“There, you see. Sublime happiness! Look at the sheriff smile! Not an ache in his carcass! Step right up, folks, only two dollars the bottle, and if you buy five, you get one free.”
All them cowboys were staring at me, sitting there on the stage, looking like some drunk, but eventually I got myself up, teetered around, and gazed happily at the whole universe.
“There, you see? Sheriff, will you testify? Will you tell these fine folks what a marvel the Zimmer Tonic is, and what joy awaits them?”
I wasn’t at all sure I could manage that, seeing as how my tongue wasn’t operating right, but I sort of nodded, and lifted my old hat, and that did it. Them cowboys lined up and forked out payday cash for a bottle or two of the stuff, and wandered off, enjoying the young night, sipping as they went.
Me, I didn’t know whether to go back to Belle’s Boarding House, or arrest the man. So I just stood there, while the outfit shut down for the night.
“Whatcha got in them bottles, Zimmer?” I asked.
“It’s a proprietary secret, my friend, but I’ll confide in you, the lawman. There’s tincture of opium, wintergreen oil, creek water, and a secret substance I shall never divulge, even on my deathbed, because it holds the secret of eternal bliss. Now, I’m going to sell you a bottle for half price, one dollar cash, for you to take back to your bed. Dr. Zimmer’s Tonic is an improvement on love, women, alcohol, tobacco, and religion.”
“Oh, all right,” I said. “If it’s an improvement on religion, I’ll buy it. My ma used to say that religion’s all right except when you need it, and then it quits you.”
“A wise woman, your ma, and she raised a bright boy.”
“Well, she always said I was a little slow, but I’m quick with a gun, which adds up to exactly what’s needed in a sheriff.”
“Ah, I see, my good man. Now here’s the bottle of my elixir, and you just dig into your britches for a greenback, and we’ll call it even. I like doing favors for lawmen; we’re brothers under the skin, trying to make the world safer and happier.”
“We are?” I asked. Zimmer sure had some strange ideas.
The crowd had vanished into the mild night. There was only Zimmer’s crew, stowing away the show stuff.
“Say, professor, I got a few questions. Do you know anything about a couple of blonde Ukrainian twins, joined at the hip? They got took off a coach and loaded onto a red-and-gold chariot, same colors as you got here.”
The maestro lifted his silk hat and settled it, his gaze keen upon me. “Let me
check you for fever,” he said, running a hand along my forehead. “No, no fever. I think you’re the sort who responds to a good tonic with more enthusiasm than usual. My learned advice is, go to your bunk and sleep it off. You’ll feel better in the morning. And don’t indulge in my elixir while you’re on duty.”
“Just thought I’d ask,” I said, feeling grouchy. Chasing down Rusty’s missing brides wasn’t my notion of a picnic. “You keep things clean around here, and I won’t trouble you. Minute I hear of trouble, I’ll come down on this outfit like a swarm of red ants.”
“I knew you’d see it my way,” he said, a mysterious smile on his ruddy face. The crew was dousing the oil-fed torches, and suddenly it was plenty dark in there.
I floated along to town, scarcely knowing how I got to Belle’s Boarding House, where I had lived ever since arriving in Doubtful. I had that bottle in hand, and thought to pitch it down the two-holer I would use before heading for my room, but then I thought better of it. That stuff might come in handy someday.
I slept the sleep of the innocent, and awakened with only a mild headache. The elixir didn’t last until dawn.
When I finally dragged into the sheriff office, Rusty wasn’t there. But a note on my desk explained that. “I’m going out to look for my mail-order women,” he wrote. “And if you don’t like it, fire me.”
I didn’t like it, but I wasn’t the one marrying Ukrainian blondes connected at the hip, both big, bosomy dolls. I didn’t know how I’d explain all this to the county supervisors, especially Reggie Thimble, who was a natural-born skeptic. If Professor Zimmer didn’t buy it, no one would.
So I patrolled. I knew enough about road shows to know that anything not bolted down would vanish when a road show came through. While they were entertaining the suckers, their thieves were pocketing anything they could finger. So I started at the west end, and worked east, telling merchants to watch out, and take inventory, and tell me when anything didn’t add up.
I stopped in at the Mercantile, and found Leonard Silver unloading jars of pickles.
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