“I will accept that, Sally,” her father, John, said. “I have heard the horror stories about law and order in the West. But what amazes me is how you handle the business of law and order.”
“We handle it, Father, usually ourselves.”
“I don’t understand, Sally,” her sister Penny said. “Do you mean that where you live women are allowed to sit on juries?”
Sally laughed merrily. “No, you silly goose!” She kidded her sister. “Most of the time there isn’t even any trial.”
Her mother, Abigal, put her knitting aside and looked at her daughter. “Dear, now I’m confused. All civilized places have due process. Don’t you have due process where you live?”
“We damn sure do!” Sally shocked them all into silence with the cuss word.
Her mother began fanning herself vigorously. Her sisters momentarily swooned. Her brothers looked shocked, as did her brothers-in-law, Chris and Robert. Her father frowned.
“Whatever in the world do you mean, dear?” Abigal asked.
“Most of the time it’s from a Henry,” Sally attempted to explain, but only added to the confusion.
“Ah-hah!” John exclaimed. “Now we’re getting to it. This Henry person—he’s a judge, I gather.”
“No, a Henry is a rifle. Why, last year, when those TF riders roped and dragged Pearlie and then attacked the house, I knocked two of them out of the saddle from the front window of the house.”
“You struck two men?” Betsy asked, shocked. “While they were stealing your pearls?”
Sally sighed. “Pearlie is our foreman at the ranch. Some TF riders slung a loop on him and tried to drag him to death. And, hell, no, I didn’t strike them. When they attacked the house, I shot them!”
“Good Lord,” Chris blurted. “Where was your husband while this tragedy was unfolding?”
Sally thought about that. “Well, I think he was in Fontana, in the middle of a gunfight. I believe that’s where he was.”
They all looked at her as if she had suddenly grown horns and a tail.
Smiling, Sally reached into her bag and brought out a newspaper, a copy of Haywood’s paper, which detailed the incident at the Sugarloaf, where she and young Bob Colby had fought off the attackers.
“Incredible!” her father muttered. “My own daughter in a gunfight. And at the trial, dear, you were, of course, acquitted, were you not?”
Sally laughed and shook her head. They still did not understand. “Father, there was no trial.”
“An inquest, then?” John asked hopefully, leaning forward in his chair.
Sally shook her head. “No, we just hauled off the bodies and buried them on the range.”
John blinked. He was speechless. And for an attorney, as he and his sons were, that was tantamount to a phenomenon.
“Hauled off the…bodies,” Robert spoke slowly. “How utterly grotesque.”
“What would you have us do?” Sally asked him. “Leave them in the front yard? They would have attracted coyotes and wolves and buzzards. And smelled bad, too.” Might as well have a little fun with them, she concluded.
Robert turned an ill-looking shade of green.
And Sally was shocked to find herself thinking: what a lily-livered bunch of pansies.
Abigal covered her mouth with a handkerchief.
“Did the sheriff even come out to the house?” Walter inquired.
“No. If he had, we’d have shot him. At that time, he was in Tilden Franklin’s pocket.”
John sighed with a parent’s patience.
Penny was reading another copy of Haywood’s newspaper. “My God!” she suddenly shrieked in horror. “According to this account, there were ten people shot down in the streets of Fontana in one week.”
“Yes, Sister. Fontana was rather a rowdy place until Smoke and the gunfighters cleaned it up. You’ve heard of Louis Longmont, Father?”
He nodded numbly, not trusting his voice to speak. He wondered if, twenty-odd years ago, the doctor had handed him the wrong baby. Sally had always been a bit…well, free-spirited.
“Louis was there, his hands full of Colts.”
Sally’s nieces and nephews were standing in the arch-way, listening, their mouths open in fascination. This was stuff you only read about in the dime novels. But Aunt Sally—and this was the first time most of them could remember seeing her—had actually lived it! This was exciting stuff.
Sally grinned, knowing she had a captive audience. “There was Charlie Starr, Luke Nations, Dan Greentree, Leo Wood, Cary Webb, Pistol LeRoux, Bill Foley, Sunset Hatfield, Toot Tooner, Sutter Cordova, Red Shingletown, Bill Flagler, Ol’ Buttermilk, Jay Church, The Apache Kid, Silver Jim, Dad Weaver, Hardrock, Linch—they all stayed at our ranch, the Sugarloaf. They were really very nice gentlemen. Courtly in manner.”
“But those men you just named!” Jordan said, his voice filled with shock and indignation. “I’ve read about them all. They’re killers!”
“No, Jordan,” Sally tried to patiently explain, all the while knowing that he, and the rest of her family, would never truly understand. “They’re gunfighters. Like my Smoke. A gunfighter. They have killed, yes; but always because they were pushed into it, or they killed for right and reason and law and order.”
