I wished I had me a cup of coffee. I’m a coffee-drinkin’ man, and I just hate to start the morning with no cup of coffee. ’Course, I didn’t feel like endin’ no morning with no cup, neither.
“You crazy son of a bitch!” a man yelled at me. I reckon he was hollerin’ at me, wasn’t nobody else around.
I kept my mouth shut and listened.
Wasn’t much else I could do, boxed in like I was.
“You, there! Man who called hisself Cotton. We know you’re down there in that holler. Ain’t nobody gonna hurt you. We got proposition for you, that’s all.”
I looked back at Critter, lookin’ at me. And from the look on his face, he didn’t believe the guy neither.
“Look here, now! Don’t start no shootin’, Mister Cotton.”
Mister Cotton! Mighty damn formal name-callin’ from a bunch of people who was fixin’ to hang me.
I decided to give it a whirl. Damn near anything beats hangin’. I peeked out and squinted my eyes and spotted that feller who had been gnawin’ on that egg in the saloon. “I hear you! What do you want?”
“That there was Jack Nolan you kilt back yonder in the saloon. The other one was his partner, the fat one. Name of Larson. Both of them was gunslingers.”
I’d heard of ’em. Figured they was some better than that.
“Is that right? Well,” I hollered. “They couldn’t drag iron no better than they played cards!”
“You plenty fast, Mister Cotton. Might be the man we want. You want a job?”
“I ain’t lookin’ for one.”
“We’ll pay you a hundred a month and give you a place to stay.”
A hundred a month! Hell, take the average cowboy damn near six months to earn that much, unless they was drawin’ fightin’ wages. “What’s the catch?”
“There ain’t no catch! Damn, you shore are suspicious. How about the job?”
“What kind of job you talkin’ about?”
I could see them talkin’ amongst themselves up there on the ridge. They was out in the open, and I could probably knock two or three out of the saddle. But they wasn’t actin’ hostile, and I didn’t see no one wavin’ no rope around.
“We’ll give you a hundred and twenty-five a month, Mister Cotton!”
“What kind of damn job are you jabberin’ about, anyways?”
When he told me, I just sort of hunkered there in that holler and was stunned-like. I been a lot of things in my time, but this one took the cake.
I was still sort of not believin’ it when they handed me the badge. Sheriff of Puma County, Wyoming Territory.
I looked down at the badge in my hand. “I thought there was supposed to be an election before someone got to be sheriff?”
George Waller, the man who’d been chewin’ on that egg, and who was the Mayor of Doubtful, and who’d just sworn me in, in a manner of mumbling, cleared that up right quick—sort of. “There was. We had it last night, right after you kilt them gunhands. Everybody that was in town voted for you. Congratulations, Sheriff Cotton. that is your rightful Christian name, ain’t it?”
When I had to be, I was as good at mumblin’ as he was. “One of ’em, yeah. How about the folks out in the county, the ranchers?”
“We rung the town bell,” the scar-faced, gimp-legged cafe man said. “If they didn’t hear it, that was their hard luck. We out-vote them anyways.”
“Uh-huh. Well, am I supposed to handle the whole county of myself?”
“Oh, no!” the mayor said. “You can have up to four deputies. Problem is, nobody wants the job.” He looked like he was unhappy he told me that.
“But that don’t mean there ain’t men to be had,” the woman who ran a boardin’ house pipe up.
I took one look at her—and once a day would be plenty—and figured she’d know if there was a man to be had anywhere in the Territory. That woman, Belle something-or-the-other, was so ugly she could stop an eagle in a dive—just by lookin’ at it.
I scratched my woolly head—woolly ’cause I ain’t had a bath in two weeks—and done some thinkin’.
Now . . . I ain’t never took myself to be no real intelligent fellow. My momma, God rest her soul, didn’t have to hide me under no bucket ’cause of my brilliance. I can read and write and figger some . . .
“Sheriff? . . .” George said.
“I’m thinkin’!”
. . . I can bust nearabouts any horse I ever tossed a saddle on, and I can ride and rope with the best of ’em. And, I got to admit, I’m more than passin’ fair with a six-gun, too.
“You ain’t thinkin’ about backin’ out, are you, Sheriff?” George asked.
“No, I ain’t. I’m . . . prayin’, that’s what I’m doin’.”
“Let’s all bow our heads, too,” Belle suggested.
“Fine. Lemmie get done with mine and then we’ll talk some more.”
They all took to mumblin’, and I went back to thinkin’.
And, I got to say, I’ve ridden the hoot-owl trail a time or two . . . but not because I broke any laws. I’m just sort of a curious type, that’s all. I wanted to see how the outlaws lived. According to them penny-dreadful books they was all glamorous. But I soon found out they lived mighty damned sorry, that’s how.
“Hallelujah!” Belle hollered.
I like to have jumped out my boots.
“Hush!” George said.
Before she took to runnin’ a boardin’ house, Belle must have had her a job callin’ hogs!
Top hand. That’s me. Cotton. I don’t use my last name much. I ain’t ashamed of it, I just figure Cotton will do. I’ve punched cows from Texas to Montana Territory. I been over the Bitterroot and seen the ocean. took my breath away. Damn near as much as that place folks got to callin’ the Grand Canyon. It’s grand, all right. I seen it just after Major Powell come along in ’69. But I got lost as a goose in there. Took me three days to find my way out. I don’t talk about that much.
But this job. There was something about this here sheriffin’ job that just wasn’t shapin’ up right in my mind.
I looked up. Everybody was lookin’ at me.
“What happened to the last sheriff?”
“Uh . . . why, he up and quit,” George said. I reckoned he knew I’d find out anyways.
“And the one before him?”
“He got roped and drug,” the cafe man said.
“And the one before him?”
“He got kilt,” Belle said.
Now he was getting’ down to the facts. “Who killed him and why?”
“Gunhands from the Circle L,” the cafe man said. “Right out there in front of my place.” He pointed. “They kilt him in a fair fight. And ’cause he was a coward and they knowed it.”
“Baited him like you would a bull, huh?”
“Yes, sir.”
I thought a mite longer. Now, if I could stick it out for a year, I could have me a right nice poke. By livin’ close, I could save a thousand. And that could get me started on a small spread.
I looked that cafe man kinda hard. “I get my meals free.”
“Now, see here! You et enough las’ night for three people.”
But George give him an eyeballin’ and closed his mouth. They probably figured I’d be dead in a month anyways. “Certainly, Sheriff,” the mayor said. “That’s fine.”
“And I ain’t buyin’ my own lead, neither.”
“That’s perfectly understandable. Get them at my store.”
Belle batted her eyelashes at me. Plumb sickenin’.
“Where do I bunk?”
George swelled up like a coon in the moonlight. “Right there.” He pointed toward the rear. “Got you two nice rooms back yonder and a two-hole privy out back. It’s even got a back-flap for better ventilation.”
Belle giggled. Sounded like a rattlesnake caught in a tin bucket.
“OK,” I said. “You folks got yourself a sheriff.”
They all shook my hand and Belle puckered up. But I shook her han
d too. She just grinned big and batted her eyes and then sashayed out to the boardwalk, her bustle a-jumpin’ from right to left. You ever followed a cow? You know what I mean. With that rear-end of hers, she didn’t need no extra girth. Two axe-handles wide as it was.
I stuck the badge in my pocket and began un-packin’ my kit and warbag. I was gonna have to buy me some new duds—mine was shabby-lookin’. Diggin’ down in my warbag, I fished out my second gun. I seldom wore it, ’cause don’t nobody but tin-horns and trouble-hunters and them lookin’ for a reputation pack around two short guns. Well . . . maybe another type: lawmen totin’ a big badge that makes ’em a dandy target.
Walkin’ over to Leonard Silverman’s Emporium, I got me a better look at the town of Doubtful. It was some bigger than I gleaned at night. Two full blocks of stores on either side. Several saloons, couple of general stores, a hotel, leather shop, smith, a dress shop—spelt with two P’s and two E’s; didn’t look right to me—and half a dozen other businesses I’d have to look at closer.
Now, I reckon I did look like a saddle bum, but that wasn’t no excuse for what happened next. I wasn’t dressed up like no dandy. Old wore out jeans and a shirt with the elbows ragged. My left boot had a piece of rawhide tied around it to keep the sole from flappin’. But I ain’t never believed in makin’ fun of other folks just ’cause they wasn’t dressed to the nines.
I heard the riders, and they was comin’ hard, kickin’ up dust like a bunch of idiots and shootin’ pistols into the air and whoopin’ and hollerin’. And me? I was caught right in the middle of that street.
Must have been a dozen hands, and one woman. And that woman was ridin’ astride. I’ve seen plenty of squaws ride that way, but never no white woman. It kinda come as a shock to me.
“Ride him down!” that woman screamed, for no good reason that I could think of. “Nobody stands in our way.”
Now that made me mad.
I never could abide no one that thought he or she was so almighty big they could just run over other people. I have whupped more than two or three in my time.
Them ol’ boys come a-foggin’ straight at me. I stepped back, judged the speed of that lead hoss, and when he come even with me, I just reached up and snatched that red-headed young rider off the horse and flung him not-too-gently to the dirt.
The brand on the horse’s hip that the horse’s ass had been ridin’ was Circle L.
The wind was knocked out of the cowboy on the ground, but them others had made the turn down at the far end of the street and was lookin’ at me. That she-person sittin’ astride had hate in her eyes that I could read from this distance.
Me? I just quick-stepped on across that street and was up on the boardwalk ’fore they could do anything more about it.
“Somebody get Rusty!” the woman yelled. “We’ll deal with that saddle tramp later.”
So now I was a saddle tram. Well, hell, I’d been called a lot worse than that.
Leanin’ against the support post of the awning over the boardwalk, I watched as the woman said something to a big gent on a midnight black horse. He rode down my way, wheeled in, and sat starin’ at me.
The gent was a big, handsome-lookin’ man, and his clothes was expensive-lookin’. I say handsome, but his face was cruel-lookin’.
Real slow and dramatic-like, he dug in a pocket of his leather vest and hauled out a timepiece, smilin’ at me as he clicked it open.
“Two hours,” he said, clickin’ the watch shut. “That’s how long we’re gonna be in town. And that’s how long you got ’til you get roped and dragged. No saddle bum puts a hand on any Circle L rider.”
“You the one who roped and drug one of the lawmen a time back?”
His eyes narrowed. I reckon he was tryin’ to figure out how I come to know that.
“You a nosey bastard, ain’t you, saddle bum?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Let’s just say I’m the curious type. And you didn’t answer my question, neither.”
“Why should I waste my time talking to a tramp?”
“Hell, you come to me, not the other way around, remember?”
His face flushed up red and his eyes turned real ugly.
“You won’t be near about as mouthy when I get through with you, punk!”
I laughed at him.
He wheeled around and left me in a cloud of dust.
He had him a big mouth, but he had the size to back it up, too. Looked to be about six feet, four, two hundred and thirty or forty pounds.
I spat in the street. I just wasn’t all that impressed.
Chapter Two
Steppin’ out onto the boardwalk, I checked my timepiece—the sun. In an hour’s time, I’d had me a shave and a good hot bath. Had to dump the water three times ’fore I got clean. Before I done all the spit and polishin’, I’d bought some new duds at the Emporium. If I was gonna be sheriff, I figured I’d best look the part.
I left my new suit and some shirts and britches at the Chinaman’s place, and now I was all decked out in spankin’ new duds, bandana tied proper around my neck. Them new boots felt good. ’Course my socks and long johns was new, too.
Socks fit fine, but that new underwear was just a mite itchy.
I went back to the office and hung that second gun on, left side, butt forward. I ain’t as fast with it as I was my right-side gun, but I ain’t been beat with it, neither.
It was a gambler’s gun, meanin’ the barrel was some shorter, than my right side .44.
Checkin’ myself in the mirror—noticin’ that I hadn’t got no prettier—I gave my cowlick a lick and put my hat on. It was old, but I’d had Wong brush it off while I was wallowin’ around in the tub out back.
From pure habit, I checked both guns, left the hammer thong off my gambler’s gun, pinned on the star, and stepped out onto the boardwalk.
Half a block down, I stepped into George Waller’s general store. I have always loved the smell of a general store. The leather, tobacco, spices and pickle barrel all mingled their smells together. I got me a cracker and a hunk of cheese and a pickle, munching on that while I waited for George to finish with a customer.
“Yes, sir, Sheriff?”
“Circle L man who rides a black horse. He’s about as big as the horse. And he’d got a big fat mouth.”
“Ah . . . Sheriff . . . that’s, ah, Big Mike Romain. He’s the foreman at Circle L.”
“Is that supposed to impress me? I can tell you he don’t.”
“Well, ah, no, Sheriff. Not at all. But Big Mike is a bad man to fool with. You’ve had trouble with Big Mike? Already ?”
“That wild woman with him ordered her boys to ride me down. Then this Big Mike tells me he’s gonna have me roped and drug. And the more I think on it, the madder I’m gittin’!”
“I don’t blame you. Now you see what the good citizens of this town have to put up with, Sheriff. And why lawmen ain’t lasted too long.”
“You just never had the right lawman. George, you depend on the Circle L for a livin’?”
He picked up on my drift right quick. He smiled and shook his head. “No, Sheriff. this part of the territory is filling up with ranchers and farmers. We hired you to keep the peace. No one is immune from the law. No one!”
Fancy words. But I wondered if, when it got down to the humpin’, would George and the others really back me up?
Belle had been listenin’ from the open door. “That Mike Romain is nothing more than a brute!” She stamped her foot. Good-sized foot, I noticed. that foot-stompin’ knocked a trace chain off a peg.
And I had me a hunch that Belle would like to hang a saddle on that ‘brute’ and try to ride him.
Nodding my head at George and smiling at Bell, I took my leave. As I was walkin’ up the boardwalk, I heard Belle say, “Oh, what a handsome man, Mister Waller. I think I’m going to swoon.”
I picked up my pace, not wantin’ to be around if she did come down with the vapor. It’d take a mule team and a pully to get her ba
ck on her feet.
Walking to the Wolf’s Den Saloon, I pushed open the batwings and stepped inside, pausing for a second to let my eyes adjust to the sudden dimness. I walked to a table and sat down, my back to the wall.
The place had hushed somewhat as I walked, my big spurs jingling. All had taken some notice of the badge on my shirt.
And Big Mike’s eyes had narrowed considerable.
“What’ll it be, Sheriff?” the barkeep called.
“Beer.”
The beer was cold and good and I knocked back half the mug. Setting the mug down on the table, I said, “’Bout two hours ago, there was this big-mouthed, over-bearin’, candy-assed son of a bitch who told me he was gonna rope and drag me. Well . . . here I am.”
Man, that place got so quiet you could hear a fly fart!
Folks started movin’ chairs back, out of the line of fire. Big Mike had stiffened when I called him that name, as any man with any pride would have done. Now he turned to face me, his face ugly with hate.
“You might not like me, Sheriff,” Mike said. “But my mother was a good woman. I’ll not have her name slurred in such a manner.”
I took my time thinkin’ about that. “All right. It ain’t your momma’s fault what you turned out to be.”
That really pissed him off.
“You! . . .” He strangled on his anger.
“But the big-mouthed, over-bearin’, candy-ass stands,” I said.
He was so mad he was tremblin’.
I looked around for the woman who’d ordered me rode down. She wasn’t in the saloon. Might be hopes for her yet . . . but I kinda doubted it, considerin’ the company she kept. There was a lady in the saloon, however. But I figured her for the owner, ’way she was all decked out in satin with her petticoats showin’. She was kinda familiar to me, but I couldn’t quite place the face.
“Git him, Rusty!” a cowboy said.
The cowboy I’d jerked out of the saddle and dumped in the street stepped forward. Another one of those two-gun types, hung low and tied down. Matter of fact, I’d noticed that nearly all the Circle L boys was wearin’ two guns, and they all had a salty look about them . . . like maybe they was drawin’ fightin’ wages.
But the cowboy called Rusty had kind of a different look about him—like maybe he didn’t really like what he was doin’. But the pay was good, so he’d try it.
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