“Cotton, what in the world is going on? The other night, my father ordered me into mother’s room. I didn’t want to go, and then he hit me, and forbade me to ever see you again.” She turned her head and I could see a faint bruise on the side of her face. Pissed me off.
She said, “Now, all of a sudden, he says he made a terrible mistake and it’s all right for us to go ahead and plan our wedding.”
“Well, me and your pa had us a disagreement, Pepper. Man stuff.” Damn, I didn’t know what else to say. I just couldn’t bring myself to tell her about her parents’ past, as dark and checkered as it was.
“Uh-huh,” she said, and I knowed she didn’t believe a word I’d said.
I underestimated her intelligence; men have a bad habit of doin’ that with women. Seems like we’d learn after awhile.
As we rode, she said, “Father is not as nice a person as he has led people to believe, is he, Cotton? And please don’t try to lie to me. You can’t. You get all flustered up when you try.”
I thought on it some. “Ever’ man has a dark trail behind him, Pepper,” I finally said. “If he don’t, then that man ain’t lived very much. I been on the hoot-owl trail myself.” I had been, yeah, but like I said, it was just to see how it was like.
Piss-poor, was what it was like.
“And my father’s dark trail . . . ?”
“He . . . well, he got into some jams as a young man. A boy, really. Lots of boys do that.”
Her smile was sort of sad to look at, and it hurt me way down deep. “Did he get into trouble back in New York City, Cotton?”
That shook me clear to my boots. Just how much did she know about her pa? “I really don’t know where it happened, Pepper.”
She glanced at me. “Your ears are as red as fire, Cotton.”
“Are not!”
“Are too! Cotton, two years ago, a man came to the ranch to see my father. Said he was an old friend from New York City. My father was not very happy to see him.”
I just bet he wasn’t glad to see him. I waited for her to continue.
When she didn’t, I said, “Well, what happened?”
“The man went riding with father. He was not a very good rider. Jeff tagged along despite father’s requests that he not. The man had an accident; fell off his horse and his neck was broken. Not many months after that, the man who was sheriff of the county was mysteriously killed.”
The man who had pointed out the right trail for me to take by leavin’ them papers tucked ’way back in the safe.
“I became very interested in my family tree, Cotton. So unbeknownst to mother or father, I began some discreet inquiries. I had everything posted to Doctor Harrison’s address in town. Cotton, my mother is not from New Hampshire. Everything came back a dead end.”
I didn’t say nothin’ . Let her talk it all out in her own way.
“By that time, I had noticed that Jeff and my father were becoming very secretive. I still don’t know what about. When I asked mother, she pretended that she didn’t know what I was talking about, that I was making it all up.”
She went on. “None of the New England Bakers that I could contact ever heard of any Rolf Baker. Finally, a doctor friend of Doctor Harrison interceded and wrote him. He advised him to tell me not to pursue the matter any further. I elected to heed the rather ominous missive.”
I knew most of what she just said. But that interceded ominous missive bit went plumb over my head. Sounded like to me she was talkin’ about cannonfire.
I made up my mind right there and then to start readin’ more ever’ day.
“My father, and probably A.J. and Matt as well, are wanted by the law back east, aren’t they, Cotton? Probably back in the city.”
“Pepper . . . don’t make me say no more on it. I was you, I’d ask my daddy to tell you about it.”
But she wasn’t gonna be put off that easy. “What note were you and father talking about?”
So she’d heard it all. With a sigh, I reined up and handed her the note I’d taken off of Haufman’s body.
“I reckon you’d better read this yourself.”
She read it, then reread it, turnin’ white as a ghost. She folded the note and give it back to me. Then she swung down and walked towards a little stand of willows by a crick. I got the feelin’ she wanted to be let alone, so I loosened the cinches and let the horses blow some.
Pepper, she snorted and blubbered and finally wiped her eyes and blew her nose on a little hanky. Then she called out, “And you intend to do what about it, Cotton?”
Walkin’ to her, I squatted down, careful not to stick myself in the butt with my spurs. “I’m gonna let the dead lie, Pepper. If your pa will help me put an end to the valley war, ain’t gonna be no more said about what it was that happened when him and the others was young.”
She sat for a time, her back to a tree. A pretty, fair, blond-haired young lady that was suddenly forced to look at her ma and pa in a much different light. “My parents have lied to me for years. You told me to ask them about it; I did. All they did then was heap more lies on top of the lies they’d already told me.”
“Pepper, put yourself in their place—what would you have done?”
“I can’t answer that. No one can. Now I want the truth, Cotton Pickens. If I’m to be Mrs. Pepper Pickens, I want to know every last bit of what you’ve found about my father and my mother and their past. All of it, Cotton!”
When a woman gets that tone of voice, a man best bare his soul, if he knows what’s good for him. So, sittin’ there by that bubblin’ little crick, lookin’ straight at the only woman I’d ever loved—the way a man is supposed to love a woman—I told her what I knowed about the Old Brewery.
I told her what a nightmare it must have been for them forced to live within its confines. I told her about some incidents of people who tried to leave, and they was stoned to death or strangled by folks on the outside, fearful of them who lived in the big old place. I told her how the place was filled up by incest and rape and all sorts of other unmentionable stuff. And how them livin’ in there didn’t have no good or real chance to come out of it a good person. I told her that maybe, just maybe, her pa had come from a fine family; how many good boys who had fallen out with their daddies ended up in that awful place, and to try to understand what it must have been like for them livin’ there.
“I can’t believe that you are sitting there defending the man who ordered that Haufman person to kill you, Cotton.”
“I ain’t defendin’ him, honey. But what is past is done with. What good would it do anybody to make it public?” And I told her about my settin’ up her pa, and how he grabbed for the bait, him and Jeff.
“That isn’t surprising.” She turned her blues on me. “I shall leave the ranch with you, Cotton . . . this day. I’ll stay with Doctor Harrison and his wife in town.”
“As you wish, Pepper.”
“And we’ll be married whenever you say.”
“That would pleasure me mightily.”
After that, one thing led to another, and we sort of got carried away. Like I said, I was gonna have to speak to her about bein’ so brazen. Someday.
We was both a mite rumpled when we got to the main house. A grass stain here and there. I was plumb tuckered out. Pepper, she looked fresh as a daisy. Women can sure bounce back in a hurry. Amazin’!
And her ma took one look at us and knew what had been goin’ on. She should, she was an expert at it. On it. Whatever.
“I’m going to stay with Doctor Harrison and his family,” Pepper announced. “I shall be gathering up some things in my room. Please excuse me all.”
I wish she’d gather up something to give me some energy; felt like I’d been wrestlin’ steers all morning.
“I thought you would be gentleman enough not to tell her, Marshal,” Rolf said.
“I didn’t tell her. Couple of years back, she began tryin’ to trace her family tree. Had the letters come to her in town. Do I have to tell yo
u the rest?”
The man, he aged some more. “I have been considering your offer, Marshal. I have decided to decline. I don’t think you can prove a goddamned thing, to be blunt about it.”
“That’s the way I seen it, too. But it was a good try, weren’t it?” I grinned at him.
“Yes. I suppose I shall have to reassess my opinion of you. You just look rather stupid.”
If that was a compliment, I’d had better ones.
“Well just carry your prissy butt on out of here then!” Martha’s squallin’ reached us from the other room. “And damn you anyway!”
“Cindy’s about to let the hammer down, ain’t she?”
Rolf kind of pulled back in surprise. “You have been digging, haven’t you, Marshal?”
’Fore I could reply, Martha hollered, “Your father? Hell, Rolf isn’t your father. I don’t know who is. Some goddamn sailor, I suppose.”
Rolf smiled sadly. “I did buy a pig in a poke when I contracted for her, didn’t I?”
I reckon that was one way of puttin’ it. “I came out here to ask you to help me put an end to the valley war, Rolf. I suppose that’s just smoke blowin’ in the wind, now, isn’t it?”
“To be sure, Marshal. To be sure.”
“Think you and Matt and A.J. will win it, huh?”
“Yes, I believe we shall, Marshal. Were I you, I would stand back. For we are about to cut the hounds loose.”
“Oh, hell!” Martha/Cindy ripped. “I know what you and that saddle bum been doing. You damned little slut!”
There was the sound of a blow, the sound of flesh being smacked, and smacked good. And I wondered who had hit who.
Martha/Cindy, she flung open the front door and stepped out, one side of her mouth all poked out. Despite himself, Rolf smiled. “I warned you about her temper, Martha.”
She looked at him and said that word that women just don’t never use. She said it several times.
Then she looked at me and cut loose. That woman traced my family tree all the way back to the caves and beyond. Rolf? He just sat down on the steps and rolled him a smoke. He offered the sack and papers to me and I took them. I rolled me a tight little smoke while Martha/Cindy continued to turn the air blue.
I tried to give back the tobacco and papers but Rolf waved them away. “Keep it. A man should enjoy one truly fine sack of tobacco before he dies. That tobacco is imported.”
Pocketing the makin’s, I said, “You gonna be the one to do the deed, Rolf?”
Martha, she had finally wound down and wandered off. I was glad to see her go.
“Oh, no, Cotton. I couldn’t do that to Pepper. She isn’t my flesh and blood, but I love her as if she were. No, but I understand some of the gunslingers are drawing straws to see who gets to brace you.”
“Who won?”
“Two of them. Ford Childress and Black-Jack Keller. They’ll be calling you out into the street late this afternoon.”
He dropped his cigarette butt and ground it out under the heel of his boot. Looking up, he smiled at me. “Poor Pepper. Looks like all her dreams will be dying in the dirt in a few hours.”
Chapter Six
I had seen Pepper safely to Doc Harrison’s place and then had stabled Pronto. Back at the office, I checked and cleaned my guns while I told the boys about Rolf’s comments that day.
“Ford and Black-Jack is in town, all right,” Burtell said. “They’re over to the Wolf’s Den.”
“Drinkin’?”
“No. Stayin’ sober as a judge.”
“We’ll back you up, of course,” Rusty said. “That goes without sayin’.”
I shook my head. “No. This is my fight. Ain’t no concern of yours.”
They started to protest and I waved them silent. “I ain’t no brave man nor no fool, boys. If they call me out, plannin’ on double-teamin’ me, I sure ain’t gonna play it fair and square. Bet on that.”
“Well, what are you gonna do, Marshal?” De Graff asked.
With a grim smile, I took down a Greener and loaded up both barrels. “Even up the odds and play dirty.”
Burtell looked out the window. “Here they come, Marshal.”
“The boardwalks empty?” I asked.
“Clean as a whistle.”
I let them get close before I opened the door. Standin’ in the door, I presented only my left side to the gunhawks, holdin’ the double-barrel sawed-off in my right hand, barrel down, pressed close to my leg so’s they couldn’t see it.
Behind me, I heard De Graff chuckle. Never takin’ my eyes off Black-Jack and Ford, I heard him say, “Personal, I never could see the sense in walkin’ out into the street and gettin’ killed.”
Ford and Black-Jack had stopped in front of the office and turned to face me, still standin’ in the door.
“We come to call you out, Cotton,” Ford said.
“Say it plain, boys.”
“What you mean?” Black-Jack asked.
“Tell me your intentions this day.”
“Why, hell! To kill you!”
“That’s all I needed to know.” They thought I was gonna play it straight. Step off the boardwalk and face them in the street. That’s the way them penny-dreadful books always have it. Personal, I liked the odds on my side.
“See you boys in hell,” I said, turning in the door and liftin’ the shotgun. I had the hammers eared back so I just let ’er roar and buck, both barrels.
Shore did make a mess in the street. Plumb disgustin’. That shotgun was loaded with nails and ballbearins and little-bitty pieces of scrap iron, and it tore them boys up some awful. The charge I put into Black-Jack lifted him right off his boots and flung him backwards. The other charge hit Ford smack in the face and took it all off. Wasn’t no way anybody could tell who he was, or had been.
Tim Marks, that no-count, he come runnin’ up the street, his face all flushed and his lips curled back like a snarlin’ dog.
I handed the shotgun to Rusty and stepped out onto the boardwalk.
“Goddamn you!” Tim, he hollered. “You, yellow-bellied dog. You ain’t got the nerve to face nobody fair and square. Draw, damn your eyes!”
So I drew. I never wanted the handle of gunfighter. And never sought to play up the name even after it was hung on me. Like Smoke Jensen, I tried to shy away from it. But it stuck anyways.
Tim, he never even cleared his holster. My .44 slug caught him dead center in the chest and he staggered, somehow stayin’ on his feet.
He tried to lift his Colt, but he didn’t even have the strength to jack back the hammer. I seen his eyes begin to cloud over as life left him. He slowly sank to his knees, his .44 fallin’ out of leather as his hand slipped from it.
I punched out the empty brass and reloaded, this time even puttin’ one under the hammer, something I rarely did. Slippin’ the hammer-thong off my left hand gun, I walked up the boardwalk towards the Wolf’s Den.
I heard and seen Rusty, Burtell, and De Graff come out and spread out into the street, all of them carryin’ Greeners. They paced me all the way to the saloon. I guess they figured that if a fight was to come, let’s do it!
But the gunslingers that was still in town that day didn’t want no more of it . . . not for that day. They’d watched as three of their own went down, knees in blood, and that was enough.
I pushed open the batwings of the saloon and stepped in, the boys right behind me. The batwings squeaked softly as they swung to and fro.
“Anybody else want to try their hand?” I tossed the challenge out to the quiet gatherin’.
No one did. Like I said, they wasn’t afraid of me or the boys. But the luck was with me that day, and them ol’ hardcases knew it.
“They got dealt bad hands, Cotton,” Lydell Townsend spoke quiet-like. “But they’ll be another day.”
“Not in this town there won’t be,” Rusty said, his voice carryin’ steel in it. “From this moment on, you boys is banned from Doubtful.”
Some young gunslinger—or
who imagined hisself to be—pushed his chair back and stood up, his hands over the butt of his tied down low .44. He must have been one of them who’d rode in the night before, for I didn’t know him.
“To hell with you and your orders, Sheriff!” he called out.
The Greener’s roar was deafenin’ in the room. Rusty must have personal hand-loaded that charge with nitro. Not only did the charge damn near blow the kid in two, it flung him clear out a window and into the street. I mean, blowed him through the window, past the boardwalk, and into the dirt.
Them other hardcases didn’t move. I mean, they didn’t even breathe real deep.
Finally, Joe Coyle said, “We’ll be takin’ our leave now, Sheriff.”
“Fine,” Rusty said, and I knowed then that he was gonna make a fine sheriff. “Don’t come back. Don’t never show your faces in this town again. I’m placin’ that warnin’ clear. I’ll kill the first one of you I see.”
“That ain’t gonna set well with our bosses,” Lydell said.
“Tell your bosses I said to go right straight to hell!” Rusty told him.
“I’ll shore deliver the message personal.” Lydell stood up, but he was careful to keep his hands away from his guns.
“Ride!” Rusty barked.
They rode.
When I stepped out of the hotel the next mornin’, I knew all the talkin’-time was done with. It was just a feelin’ from deep inside my guts. The town of Doubtful was quiet . . . too quiet. I walked to the desk and looked that dandy-gent in the eyes.
“Hotel seems quiet this mornin’.”
“Yes, sir, Marshal. Almost all of our guests have checked out.”
“When?”
“Late last evening, sir.” His Adam’s apple was bobbin’ up and down and his face was gray with fear.
He knew something. “You know something that I need to know?”
He shook his head, his slicked-back hair fallin’ out of place.
I reached over the counter and grabbed me a handful of shirt and tie and shook him like a dog with a rabbit. “You better talk to me, sissy-pants.”
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