The supervisor examined the tangle of tablecloths and bindings, and squinted at me.
“Mr. Sheriff, I do believe an explanation is in order.”
“Well, I pounded on myself until I was all beat up, and then tied myself tight in some tablecloths, and then hired some cowboys to haul me through town on a hotel door.”
“Mr. Witherspoon at the hotel has already brought us a bill for seventeen dollars and sixty-eight cents, tablecloths, broken pottery. I told him I’d deduct it from your salary.”
“That’s mighty kind of you.”
“What were you trying to do, Pickens?”
“Let the whole world know that I’m the friend of all cowboys and ranchers, Mr. Grosbeak.”
“That’s a poor way to do it. I imagine we’ll be discussing this at the next meeting of the supervisors. What were you trying to prove?”
“That I’m the only sheriff in Wyoming that ever got a good ride on a hotel door.”
“Pickens, you’re acting very strange, I must say. We’re relaxed in Puma County and think that cowboys will be cowboys, and boys will be boys, but we do expect our public servants to show some discretion, especially at Christmastime. Are you sure you wish to continue with us? We’ll be discussing this, frankly, and it would help if you’d just tell me whether you feel you’re up to the task. A sheriff needs strength and dignity, and that stunt certainly didn’t inspire confidence in your abilities.”
“Mr. Grosbeak, get the hell out of here.”
“I’ll put that on the agenda, too, sir. Do you think your deputy might be interested in stepping up?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The next few days felt worse than a month of constipation. I hardly dared show my face on the streets. I was the same person as before, but now the perception of me had changed. Bully Bowler had robbed me of the thing most important in a peace officer—respect. That parade on a hotel door, wrapped in a winding sheet, had changed everything. Along Saloon Row, most of the people were smirky and insolent. Uptown, it was worse. People gave me long looks, looks that leaked dissatisfaction and worry.
It didn’t matter that I was the same Cotton Pickens as always. What mattered was that the toughs in town were emboldened to test me, or ignore me, while the uptown people felt themselves naked and vulnerable. I sensed it. People who used to greet me cheerfully just sidled by. They were all waiting for the county supervisors to fire me, so there was no need to greet me cordially on the street. I was just another of the dozen or so peace officers Doubtful had hired and fired before I came along. And now I’d join the scrap heap.
Christmas was coming, but I didn’t feel any cheer. In fact, I was lower than a snake’s belly. All my friends had deserted me, too. The storekeepers who used to greet me now slid elsewhere. The clerks in the courthouse who used to share gossip with me were suddenly busy when I walked through. The ladies I tipped my hat to now replied with a frosty stare. Even my remaining deputy was giving me the fish eye now and then.
Well, the hell with it.
Christmas Eve arrived with no change. I told Rusty I’d take the shift; the deputy could have the evening off. And I’d probably pretty much shut the office Christmas Day. So I did the shift that eve, patrolled the town until the last caroler on the street vanished into the night, and then I shut down and locked up. People knew where to find me if they needed a lawman.
A good sleep at my digs in Belle’s Boardinghouse looked good to me just then. Most of the lamps in town were turned off, and the whole town was dark and cold. I couldn’t see Santa Claus anywhere, and would probably have to nip him for unlawful trespassing if I did, so I just hurried through the darkness, hearing the snow squeak beneath my boots and feeling arctic air frost my earlobes. There was a lamp burning in Belle’s apartment on the first floor, but the rest of the place creaked in the winter cold. I scraped inside and was about to climb the noisy stairs to my room, when Belle opened her door and smiled. She was wearing a big red robe to cover her big pink person. The white of a flannel nightgown trailed below the robe.
“You come in here, Cotton. I’ve been waiting for you,” she said.
“For a minute, Belle. I’m pretty tired.”
“Of course you are. You’re carrying more load on your back than anyone else in Doubtful.”
I stepped into a totally female parlor. She had attacked every cushion with crocheting needles, and no stuffed chair was without lace doilies. But the coal stove glowed cheerfully, and the room seemed to cascade light and life over me.
“Time you had some Christmas,” she said, maneuvering me gently until I stood under the chandelier. Too late I spotted the mistletoe and started to escape, but Belle was a lot of woman and surrounded me. She clasped me to her ample self, a self too large for me to encircle with my arms, and bussed me heartily. I quit resisting and enjoyed it. It was certainly a novelty. I could get my arms around every other woman I had embraced in my young life. But not Belle. She was in no hurry to quit, but then she sighed and let herself loose.
“There now. I’ve now turned a fantasy into reality,” she said. “Sit down and have a Christmas cookie and a snifter of mulled rum.”
She stuck a glass filled with something warm in my hand, and I sipped, finding the taste rather odd. I was game for anything, however, and besides, it was Christmas Eve and I owed my landlady rent, and she was good company.
“You want to stand under the mistletoe again?” she asked. “I get better and better at it as I go along.”
“Let’s wait a while,” I said.
“Have a seat, and don’t worry about being seen. I’ve pulled the drapes tight.”
“I wasn’t worried, not a bit,” I said. “There ain’t nothing worse can happen to me than already happened.”
“Poor dear, hog-tied with a tablecloth on a door. If you’ll stand under the mistletoe I have a cure for you.”
“Let me see how this stuff goes down,” I said, taking a fine gulp of hot rum.
“I just want you to know that I’m right there beside you, as long as you don’t enforce the new law.”
“I’m sworn to, Belle.”
“Oh, fiddle. Just let the town be. If you drive cowboys away, I’ll go broke. I can’t run a boardinghouse in a ghost town.”
“I was sort of hoping to do the job real gradual, but half the town wants me to shut down the town one minute after midnight, and the other half wants me to forget I ever heard of the dry law.”
“Between the devil and the deep blue sea,” she said.
“I never heard that one before.”
“I didn’t learn it until about sixth grade,” she said.
“That lets me out. But I got another. I’m between a rock and a hard place.”
“Oh, that’s about fourth grade,” she said.
“It’s about right, anyway. I don’t know what I’m gonna do one week from now. I got saloonkeepers, I got Temperance ladies, I got a few hundred cowboys coming into town, I got half a dozen madams, I got county supervisors, I got hotel keepers and drummers, and they all got different notions about what I’ve got to do. And there’s no escape.”
“Then don’t do anything, Cotton.”
“Well, I might as well turn in my badge, then. What good is a sheriff that gets took around town on a hotel door?”
“That’s sure eating you, isn’t it, Cotton? You come here and get the mistletoe cure.”
“I need to drown my sorrows first,” I said.
I sipped more of that hot spiced rum. It sure was a novelty. I didn’t even like warm beer before this, but this stuff wasn’t too bad for a Christmas Eve. Some good cold redeye would be better, though, especially with ice hanging from every eave.
“If you enforce that law, I’m a cooked goose,” she said.
“You don’t look like a goose. More like a pig.”
“Cotton, I swear, you need more schooling. I don’t know how you got to be sheriff. But you’ve got to just ignore this here law and pretty quick it’ll disappear.
It’ll be what they call a dead letter. A law on the books that no one pays any attention to.”
“They carried me around, and I’ve got to get past that.”
“What are you talking about?”
“They were funning me, and now I’ve got to get their respect. If I don’t get their respect, I can’t do my job around here.”
“Cotton, what you need is another mistletoe session.”
“I need respect. No one pays me any respect.”
“That’s what I’m saying. Come over to the mistletoe and I’ll show you my respect.”
“You have more respect than I want to see, Belle.”
She tugged at me, and I reluctantly stood up and let myself be directed to the chandelier with its fateful green sprig. I thought that the hot booze did it. And I’d lost all respect. I didn’t even respect myself. I was a failure. I didn’t know one end of a horse from the other. I’d quit and saddle up Critter and ride to Nevada or some crazy place like that where I could start life over and hope no one asked any questions about my checkered past.
She maneuvered me until I was squarely under the kissing stuff, then undid her robe so it fell loose around her, and she was guarded only by a flimsy white Mother Hubbard that sort of bobbed and wobbled. Then she smiled, plucked my hot booze from my fevered hand, set it aside, and burrowed in.
There was too much Belle surrounding me. Her lips were finding mine, her arms were snaking around my back, but I couldn’t embrace her because that was not possible. Pretty soon I was kissing away, and suffocating, and wanting more hot booze, but she kept right at it until I began sputtering and coming up for air.
“Okay, Belle, that’s enough mistletoe stuff for now,” I said, finding purchase on her shoulders and easing her away. She looked sort of pouty, but I didn’t care. I could breathe. I wasn’t smothered. And I could return to the task that had preoccupied me for three days, getting my respect back.
“Do you think I could do it?” I asked.
“Just give it a rip. I’ve got plenty of nightgowns,” she said.
“No, I mean, how do I get to be sheriff again?”
“Let her rip, Cotton.”
I sure was feeling bad. This eve hadn’t gone in any direction at all, and the longer I hung around in Belle’s parlor, the bleaker it got.
“Belle, you’re just the sweetest old gal on the planet, but I gotta go to bed now.”
She sighed. “You’re leaving? I was hoping Santa Claus would come visit me.”
“I guess I’d better git now.”
I could never figure out women, and now I was baffled by the tears in her eyes. What was she doing that for?
She stood so desolately that I wondered if I might console her a little. “If that mistletoe’s still up after New Year’s, I’ll come give her a try,” I said.
“Goddammit, Cotton, get your skinny ass out of here,” she snapped.
That sure puzzled me. One moment she was weepy, the next moment she was mad, and I still hadn’t figured out how to get my respect back. “I’ll bring you a bouquet tomorrow,” I said.
She pushed me toward the door and into the icy hall, and the door closed hard behind me.
I started up the creaking stairs and then thought that I didn’t really want to go to bed. I didn’t know what I wanted. I turned around and slipped into the icy night, where the bitter air hit me like an avalanche. The clouds had cleared off, and the stars dotted the heavens like chips of ice. It was late, and Doubtful was mostly asleep, except maybe along Saloon Row, which never slept. Enough snow remained to coat the yards and walks with dim white. I didn’t much feel like patrolling Saloon Row. Tonight Saloon Row could take care of itself.
The air cleared my head in a hurry, and I felt only a great quietness as I meandered through the silent town I had protected for two or three years. It came to me that it didn’t really matter what the town thought of me. What mattered was what I thought of myself. What mattered was the sort of job I was doing. I had done a good job, at least until now when I was faced with an utterly impossible task. The prohibition law was tearing Doubtful to pieces, and hardly anyone agreed with anyone else, and hardly anyone was taking it peaceably. There was blood in the wind. And this trouble was ten times worse than anything I had ever dealt with. I hoped I was up to the task. If I did my best, that was all I could ask of myself, so I vowed to do just that.
I felt all right, then. That was a good enough Christmas gift. A man could like himself or not, and if he did, it was Christmas every day of the year.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The day after Christmas was sunny and warmer, but Doubtful seemed to slumber under a thundercloud. The new law was only days away, and the town was split down the middle by it. I had no business. There was no one in the jail cells. The town drunks were behaving. There hadn’t been a fistfight for a week. No one reported any robbery. Some prankster reported a stolen kiss, but it wasn’t prosecuted under a mistletoe amnesty. If it weren’t for the law that loomed just down the road, one might have thought Doubtful was at peace.
I spent my hours keeping the fire built up and germinating an idea, which I finally tried out on Rusty, who was sleeping in the jail cells for lack of anything better to do.
“I think I know how to do her,” I said.
“I hope you fail,” Rusty said. “A dry Doubtful, that’s like moving back to Ohio. I come out here to get me some adventure.”
“Well, it’ll be the law,” I said.
“Where have I heard that before?” Rusty asked.
“I think maybe timing is the way to do it. Not shut them down at the stroke of midnight. Let’s let ’em rip until dawn. They’ll be loaded and sleepy, and by dawn New Year’s Day, they’ll be pretty much snoring away and the saloons will be shut down.”
“I see where you’re aiming,” Rusty said. “You’re a rat. Striking when the whole town’s hungover.”
“I’ll hardly need help,” I said. “We’ll just get us a good freight wagon, bust into them saloons, load up all the illegal booze, and haul it off. The town’ll go dry when it’s got hangovers and migraines galore, and then the job’s done.”
“They’ll want their booze back.”
“As of New Year’s Day it’s illegal booze, so they won’t get it back, and if they try it’ll make a good bonfire.”
Rusty stared. “You’re the meanest bastard ever held office in Doubtful. I don’t know why I work for you.”
“Neither do I,” I said.
“You sure know how to stab a guy through the heart,” Rusty said.
“Just you and me, starting about seven or eight in the morning, January one. We may have to bust into some places.”
“You sure that’s legal?”
“I can maybe get some search warrants. Illegal booze.”
“What if one of them places has got drunken bodies lying on the pool table and everywheres?”
“They’ll be too sore-brained to know what we’re up to.”
“That’s a lot of booze. How are you going to carry it off?”
“All them Temperance ladies. They volunteered. I’ll give them the word, and they can get that glass off the backbars and into a wagon before anyone sobers up.”
“Somehow I think there’s a hole or two in this plan, Cotton.”
“Trust me.”
“Trust you! I trusted you as far as fifth grade, and then you quit school.”
That afternoon, when me and Rusty were catnapping in the empty cells, a visitor did arrive, and was about to depart when I emerged from the jail. I knew the man. It was Brigham Higgins, the manager of a big spread out at the far west end of Puma County. It was a big Mormon cattle operation, with thirty or forty hands.
The odd thing was that Higgins was dressed in a blue constable uniform, like it was from a ready-made clothing factory. I stared at him.
“You been made a cop?” I asked.
“No, but I’d like to have a little chat with you about the prohibition law. We, of cour
se, are for it. It would remove temptations from my Latter-Day Saints. We’ve managed to keep Utah mostly dry, to everyone’s benefit, and now we see the chance to dry up Wyoming, starting with Puma County.”
Rusty appeared, rubbed his eyes, and stared at the uniform.
“You going to be a policeman somewheres?” he asked.
“We thought we could help you enforce the new law,” Higgins said. “I’ve a corps of thirty able men ready to serve as your deputies when the time comes. We’ve been drilling, and we can march as a company and load shotguns and fire them as a company. We’re ready to help you rid Puma County of every last drop of spirits.”
“And every last ounce of coffee and tea,” Rusty growled.
“That, too,” said Higgins.
“Anything else you plan to get rid of?” I asked.
“We’re at your service, Sheriff. At seven, New Year’s morning, we’ll march into Doubtful, thirty men on horse, all in blue, each with a shotgun in hand. It’ll be the most impressive sight ever seen in Puma County. Call us the Mormon Battalion.”
“If anyone’s awake to see it,” I said. “Tell you what. You leave your shotguns out on the ranch and come along with a few wagons, and you fellers can load up the bottles from each saloon and haul them out to the edge of town where we’ll start a bonfire. I’m not gonna deputize you, so you won’t be a posse, but you can help out all right.”
“Under the circumstances, Sheriff, our men prefer to be armed.”
“I’m not going to have a shotgun war around here, so just leave ’em home. But thanks for your help.”
“And don’t bust into the mercantile and grab the coffee beans,” Rusty snarled.
“If coffee is legal in Doubtful, we’ll leave it alone,” said Higgins.
“I suppose you want pay for all this. I ain’t got a spare nickel in the sheriff budget.”
Higgins shook his head. “We don’t want pay. We’re glad to rid the county of vice. But if you want to do us a favor, in return, there’s something you can do for us. After we clean out the booze, throw a ball. Have all the fine folks in Puma County bring their unattached daughters, and make sure all single women are invited. Two or three for each of us would be a start.”
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