by J. T. Edson
“There’s a better chance of that being right than of me voting Republican,” the sheriff supported. “Way I cut the sign, the jasper who lit a shuck came back after you’d left, Mr. Ramsbottom. Figured on collecting the pay they’d been offered for making wolf bait of you, even though they hadn’t. They’d been told to bring your hands to whoever hired ’em to prove the chore’d been done, but not why, so he reckoned his amigo’s would pass for your’n.”
“Only, he must’ve got one hell of a shock when he showed ’em to his boss,” Mark assessed. “’Cause I wouldn’t say the odds were any too short on his amigo having hands like yours, Al.”
“It’s not real likely he would,” Smith replied.
There was a good reason for the certainty both men expressed on the point.
In fact, even in situations when politeness generally required this should be done, Smith had an excellent excuse for refraining from removing his gloves.
Knowing it would cause far more trouble than was desirable under the circumstances if he should have a Texas Ranger—which Smith had been at the time— killed for investigating his affairs, Teodoro Fuentes had adopted less drastic means. Smith having been drugged and taken prisoner, both of his forefingers had been surgically amputated on Fuentes’s orders, although there was nothing wrong with them.
“Do you know either of those gents who’re just going out, Sheriff?” Smith inquired before anything more could be said on the subject of his mutilated hands.
“Wouldn’t go so far’s to say I know them,” Maskell replied, looking in the required direction. “But I allus try to get acquainted with folks’s come into my bailiwick, ’specially when they strike me as being interesting. First time we met, a couple of days back, the one dressed like a gambler told me his name’s Lance Sidcup. Allows he’s riding shotgun for the other one, Professor Amos Cruikshank.”
“Even with a name like that,” Smith drawled, watching the pair until they disappeared into the lobby. “What sort of professoring does he do that he needs somebody to ride shotgun on him?”
“That’s what I asked Sidcup,” the sheriff answered. “Seems he’s a professor of mathematics who’s come up with a system for winning at various gambling games. Only, it’s different from all the others you hear tell about—it works. He’s done considerable well at it back East, but allows he could need protection against sore losers west of the Big Muddy.”
“Hereford doesn’t seem a likely place for them to be visiting,” Mark put in, also having found the pair interesting. “It’s never come to be known as a gambling town, so far’s I’ve heard.”
“That’s what I told ’em,” Maskell declared. “‘What little gambling goes on hereabouts is only for small stakes,’ I said. Sidcup allowed they wasn’t figuring on playing here in town, but were waiting for word to reach them about where they can sit in on a private no-limit poker game. Do you reckon you know them from someplace, Mr. Ramsbottom?”
“Nope, I can’t say’s I do,” Smith admitted. “Would they be staying here at the hotel?”
“Sure,” the sheriff confirmed. “Why?”
“I can’t bring to mind seeing either of them down here after the shooting last night,” Smith replied. “And I got the feeling they was looking me over real good while we’ve been talking.”
“What’s happened since you came to town, you’re like’ to get talked about and looked at, even if they didn’t come down last night to see what was happening,” the sheriff asserted. “Was Sidcup looking this way?”
“Nope,” Smith replied. “He’d got his back to us all the time. It was the professor gent who was doing the staring.”
“Could be it wasn’t you he was staring at,” Maskell suggested. “He’s kind of hard of hearing and watches whoever he’s talking too real careful to help him know what’s being said.”
“Then he was likely doing just that with Sidcup,” Smith drawled. “And I could be getting more than just a mite jumpy when there’s no call for it.”
Chapter Twelve – Do Your Duty, Sheriff, Arrest Him
“There’s some who’d say you’ve got good cause to be more than that mite jumpy, way you’ve been treated since you come back to Texas,” Sheriff Maskell asserted. “Anyways, whoever took the hands from the jasper you killed must have come and gone along the trail. We couldn’t cut any sign that might help us pick out his hoss.”
“I’d know him again, should we meet up,” Waxahachie Smith claimed.
“I don’t reckon you’ll get the chance,” Maskell answered. “On the way back, we saw some smoke rising and rid over. Found the burned-out remains of a line cabin and there was a corpse charred beyond recognition inside, along with all that was left of two saddles, bridles, reins, and war bags. Way they were charred up, wasn’t nothing to tell who owned them. Wilf hunted ‘round outside and found a couple of unsaddled hosses with brands neither of us recognized. Signs were they’d been turned loose by a feller who lit out on another one. I reckon the body’s the jasper who cut the hands off the dead ’n’, figuring to sell them as your’n to whoever he met. Only, he got paid off in lead, not gold, for trying to cut a rusty with a cold deck. Trouble being, there’s no easy way of proving any of it. Whoever did it pulled out along the trail and didn’t leave so much as a hoofprint.”
“You’ve never struck me as being a man who wanted everything made easy for him, Tom,” Dawn Counter remarked with a smile aroused by the peace officer’s apparently disgruntled demeanor.
“Then I’ve surely struck you wrong,” Maskell said. “I’ll take everything the easiest I can. And, so far, there hasn’t been nothing easy about this whole game.”
“What else’s gone wrong?” Dawn inquired, sounding sympathetic.
“Just about everything,” the sheriff replied. “Like I said when I got here after the fuss, I can’t bring to mind seeing those four jaspers who got shot around town last night. Which means them and the one who got away couldn’t’ve been together in any place Wilf and me looked over while we were making the rounds. There’s no way we’d miss seeing that many hired guns in a bunch.”
“Could be they kept split up until they figured they’d be needed,” Mark suggested. “Was they behaving peaceable, you’d not be so likely to notice just one, or even two of them, in a place.”
“I’m not denying it,” Maskell agreed. “Town wasn’t over-busy last night, but there was enough cowhands in for us to miss them if they was split up and weren’t doing anything to make us notice them.”
“One thing I do know,” Smith asserted. “They didn’t ride in just ahead, or close after me. Wondering if those two wasn’t just owlhoots after my poke, I laid up clear of the river to make sure there wasn’t anybody on my trail. So I know I wasn’t being followed, nor had anybody riding point on me.”
“Talking of riding, that’s something else I don’t figure,” the sheriff stated. “The three who come in the front had their hosses with their gear ready for leaving town at the hitching rail, but there wasn’t any ‘round the side, unless the jasper who lit a shuck took them along.”
“Happen he did, I didn’t hear him,” Mark stated. “He was going lickety-split on foot like the Devil after a yearling when he lit out.”
“Which don’t help me a whole heap,” Maskell declared. “’Cause the night hostler down to Whitlock’s livery barn can account for every critter in his place, and it was the same at Benteen’s. Least, there wasn’t any saddled horses inside or ‘round back of the barn, and Wilf peeked in the window of the tack room and saw the burro was empty. So they must’ve been stashed somewhere else.”
“It all points that way,” Smith conceded, and the blond giant nodded agreement. “So who-all around town would let them do it?”
“Who could let them do it?” Mark supplemented. “Even two hosses with the riders’ twenty-year gatherings on the saddles around most places, ’cepting maybe saloons and such, would be like’ to draw notice.”
“Maybe each of them left his hor
se someplace away from the rest,” Dawn suggested. “That way, they wouldn’t attract so much notice and, once they’d done the shooting, they’d be harder to hunt-down in ones than as a bunch.”
“That would mean five hosses, saddled and loaded with all their boss’s gear—leastwise, the three out front were, and I reckon the other two’d be just as eager to get going when the shooting was over—each standing someplace until needed,” the sheriff commented. “Which they’d have to be somewhere you’d expect to find a horse waiting, or they’d draw as much notice as if they was all together.”
“How about on the hitching rail of a saloon?” Dawn offered. “Or outside the house of ill repute, if you’ve got one, Tom?”
“We’ve got one, or so I do hear tell,” Maskell admitted. “Only, all the saloons were closed and their hitching rails empty by half past eleven, and Mrs. Clinton’s place was the same. Leastwise, no matter who-all might be rooming there for the night, there wasn’t any hosses outside.”
“Something tells me you don’t cotton to that Benteen hombre who runs the town’s other livery barn, Tom,” Mark said.
“I don’t,” Maskell admitted. “He’s been trying to get his cousin elected as sheriff. I don’t hold that against him. It’s just that he’s a staunch Republican and’d like to have one wearing the badge, ’specially if that one was his cousin.”
“He’s a horse-trader, too,” Dawn remarked. “And not entirely above stooping to sharp practice. In fact, from what I’ve heard, he doesn’t always bother to stoop.”
“Well, I’ve never caught him doing nothing dishonest,” the sheriff declared. “And, knowing him, I don’t see him taking the risk of letting those fellers leave their hosses at his barn. He’d figure that’d be one of the first places I’d go looking for them.”
“Comes to liking and not liking,” Mark drawled, “I got the notion you don’t exactly look on the undertaker as a friend.”
“You’ve got the right notion,” Maskell confirmed. “Him and Benteen are tarred with the same brush.”
“Business partners?” Mark queried.
“Not on a share-and-share-alike basis, so far as I know,” the sheriff replied. “But their bunch got a civic ordinance put on the books that the property of any stranger who dies anywhere in the county gets sold to pay off whatever debts he might have run up and for the burying. As coroner, Jones the Burial handles the whole thing, and it’s always Benteen who winds up with whatever’s going at a price that’ll show him a profit.”
“Talking of strangers dying, Tom,” Smith remarked, “I reckon’s how, if those fellers we made wolf bait of’d’ve had anything to say who they was, or what they was doing hereabouts, on ’em or in their gear, you’d have said so.”
“They didn’t, or I would have,” Maskell replied.
Before anything more could be said on the subject, the undertaker arrived with five other men. Two were big, heavily built, clad in good-quality clothing, and had a strong family resemblance. The third was small, skinny, soberly attired, and rat-faced. Clad in cheap and dirty range-style garments, the pair bringing up the rear each had a Colt revolver tucked into the waistband of his trousers. Despite their attire, neither looked like a cowhand. Rather, they struck the Counters and Smith as being the kind of loafers to be found in any cattle-country town, and it was a surprise to see them in such company.
“Do you know who this man is, Sheriff?” Jones asked, louder than was necessary and gesturing at Smith as the group came to a halt in a loose half-circle.
“Mr. Counter told me he’s Mr. Aloysius W. Ramsbottom the Third when we met up last night,” the peace officer replied.
“Then Mr. Counter tol—must have heard wrong,” the undertaker stated, making the amendment when he realized his original words would be tantamount to calling the blond giant a liar, an accusation he knew would be most unwise. “That isn’t his name. He’s Waxahachie Smith, and there is an outstanding warrant for his arrest.”
“Are you sure?” Maskell asked.
“I’m willing to verify it,” Hugo Benteen asserted, his face showing what could have been righteous virtue. “So do your duty, Sheriff. Arrest him!”
“Would there be a reward for doing it?” Maskell queried.
“There would, for a thousand dollars,” Benteen confirmed with relish. “And it goes to whoever causes him to be arrested.”
“Which’s you,” Maskell drawled. “I never took you gents for bounty hunters.”
“And we’re not,” Jones asserted, noticing that the conversation was attracting the attention of everybody else in the room. While willing to help discredit the sheriff and take his share of the reward, he realized how the stigma of the suggestion could have an adverse effect upon his political aspirations. “We want to see the law is upheld regardless of whose friend might be involved.” He gestured to the man with the family resemblance to Benteen and continued, “If you won’t take him in, Mr. Ragland is willing to make a citizen’s arrest. This man is wanted---!”
“I just knowed this would happen!” Smith interrupted in tones that implied exasperation. “Are you satisfied I’m who Mr. Counter said, Sheriff?”
“I’m not!” Jones put in before the peace officer could reply.
“Or me,” Benteen supported.
“That’s all I need to know,” Smith announced. “You do what these two good law-abiding gents want, Sheriff, and I won’t hold you to blame for what comes next. Would there be a lawyer in town?”
“There’s Colonel Fothergill,” Maskell replied, wondering what was coming and refraining from mentioning that the fourth member of the group before them was qualified for the designation.
“Could you send for him to meet us down to the jail?” Smith requested “I’ll be needing him to act for me.”
“Then you admit that you’re Waxahachie Smith?” the undertaker asked in a triumphant voice.
“You pair said that, not me,” Smith corrected. “So it’s you and not the sheriffs’ll stand for the consequences.”
“‘Consequences’?” Benteen repeated with a frown.
“If that’s a threat, look you—!” Jones commenced, speaking much louder than was necessary, and the hands of the two loafers reached to the butts of their Colts.
“Call it a friendly warning,” Smith corrected, continuing to sit with his hands resting on the table. Although his main attention was directed toward the group of men standing before him, beyond them he could see that Sidcup and Cruikshank had halted on the stairway leading to the upper floors and were watching. “If I suffer the embarrassment of being arrested in front of all these folks and taken to the pokey through your doing, well, I reckon Colonel Forthergill’ll agree with me I’m within my lawful ’n’ Constitutional rights to sue you both under Article Eleven, Twenty-three, Sixty-one of the United States Legal Code, which same covers causing the false arrest of an innocent and law-abiding citizen.”
“Can you explain that for us, Mr. Ramsbottom,” Maskell requested when Lawyer Cyrus Comstay did not make any comment.
“Why, sure,” Smith obliged. “These gentlemen are accusing me of being a wanted owlhoot and demanding you take me to the pokey on that account. Which is same’s false arrest, and I’m allowed to sue whoever caused it to happen.”
“Would that be the legal law, Counselor Comstay?” Maskell inquired, his manner indicating the expectation of an answer in the affirmative.
“Well—well—!” the lawyer began, unwilling to admit that he had never heard of the United States Legal Code. However, it had been quoted with a most convincing air of authority by one who appeared to be fully conversant with its ramifications, and he knew that in some circumstances it was possible for a lawsuit for false arrest to be brought against those responsible. “I—I—!”
“Are you saying you’re not Waxahachie Smith?” Jones demanded, directing a bitter scowl at Comstay.
“It’s more that you pair are saying I am,” Smith countered.
“But your fi
ng—!” the undertaker began, and pointed at the tabletop. “Take those gloves off and show us your hands.”
“I can show you something a whole heap more convincing than that,” Smith claimed without changing his position. “If one of you gents will reach into my jacket’s inside pocket and take out my wallet—!”
Despite the eagerness they had originally displayed to make the sheriff perform his duty—or refuse and supply a reason to be used against him at the forthcoming election for the office—none of the group did as they were requested.
“Shall I do it, Mr. Ramsbottom?” Dawn inquired.
“If you’d be so kind, ma’am,” Smith authorized.
Producing the wallet, the woman carried on doing as she was instructed. Opening it, she extracted a photograph and an envelope from which she removed a single sheet of paper. Accepting the first item, Maskell studied it and then showed it to Jones, Benteen, and Ragland, but not the loafers. Startled exclamations burst from all of them at what they saw. There were three male figures in the photograph. In the center was a tall, well-built, and impressive-looking man. However, the group gave him barely a glance. Their attention was devoted to the other two men. To the right, dressed as he was at that moment except that he was not wearing his gloves, was the man they had demanded be arrested. On the left, wearing the attire of a working cowhand from Texas, with the badge of a peace officer on his vest and also displaying his hands, the third figure was slightly smaller. However, apart from having a heavy mustache, he looked very much like Smith. The resemblance extended to both having lost the forefinger from each hand.
“Maybe one of those gents would like to read the affidavit Mrs. Counter’s holding?” Smith suggested, giving no sign of how he regarded the consternation caused the group by the photograph.
“Go to it, Counselor Comstay,” Maskell prompted.
“‘To whom it may concern,’” the lawyer began, having accepted the paper reluctantly and found it was a typewritten document. Such machines were still far from common on the open-range country west of the Mississippi River, and therefore it was even more impressive and official-looking. “‘This is to clarify the situation for Aloysius W. Ramsbottom the Third, resident of our city, in case he needs to offer proof of his identity while visiting Texas. Bravely going to help a family cut off from town in a blizzard last year, he suffered frostbite that caused the loss of his forefingers. Knowing of his affliction and, in addition to both being Texans, realizing there is some physical resemblance between them that the injuries has increased, Waldo ‘Waxahachie’ Smith, our town marshal, is desirous of preventing a mistake being made where their respective identities are concerned. For this purpose, they were photographed together in my presence. We ask all peace officers and others to take note of our statement that the bearer is Aloysius W. Ramsbottom the Third, and not Waldo “Waxahachie” Smith.’”