I was getting the drift, so I just nodded.
“It all depends on you, Cotton Pickens. It’ll be up to you to rescue Doubtful from sin and poverty and madness. It’ll be up to you not only to enforce the law in all respects, but to enforce the moral law. If those hussies on that stage bare anything more than an ankle, arrest them for violating public decency. If they dance, pinch them. Good people don’t dance. It’s against everything that proper people stand for.”
“I just enforce the law, such as the legislature gives us,” I said. “I got a book of it that I study sometimes.”
“You’re going to do more than that, Pickens. I’ll insist on it. If you don’t do what’s required, I’ll see about finding a man who will. You are going to find the means to shut down Ralston. That fellow is the devil incarnate. I didn’t realize at first what he was up to, building that sin palace right on the main street of Doubtful. He didn’t borrow a cent from me, and I don’t know where his cash came from, but find out. It’s probably tainted money.”
He stared straight at me through those wire-rimmed spectacles. “Shut him down. You’ll find reasons enough. A dozen reasons a night. Shut down any company that comes in. Shut them down for any reason you can think of. Arrest them. Charge them. Tell them to get out of town or they’ll face worse.”
So that was where Sanders was heading.
Me, I was feeling some heat from all sides. Ralston as much as said he’d welcome an open town, so people could have some fun. The supervisors were convinced a crime wave was cranking up. And now Sanders wanted me to shut the place down before it even got feet under it and started running. And there were a few vultures out there, or at least one anyway, looking to snatch my badge from me.
It sure was getting interesting.
“As long as they’re lawful, I don’t have any way to shut ’em down,” I said.
“You’ll find a way. Or a new sheriff will.”
“Here’s what you do, sir,” I said. “You tell the supervisors what laws you want, and if they enact them, then I’ll enforce them. It’s that simple. You want some new laws, you go get the elected officials to put them on the books. Meanwhile, I’ll do my best to keep this town as peaceful as I know how.”
Sanders arose abruptly. “You are dismissed,” he said.
So I was dismissed. I headed out into the sunlight and took a good look at them green-clad mountains off to the west, poking up into a bright blue heaven.
PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
Copyright © 2011 J. A. Johnstone
All rights reserved.
