and retreated, so I was all alone in there, dining like I could afford the ticket. I took a gander out the window, in time to see the judge walk back to the courthouse and the Braggs ride off, leading the spare and riderless horse.
It sure was funny. There was the Braggs, the judge, a spare horse, and down the street was every gun-toting hand the Anchor Ranch could come up with. But nothing happened. Or maybe something woulda happened if I hadn’t been barging around town, lookin’ after the peace. I thought I’d never know.
I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. But the whole business was probably intended to bust King out of my hospitality and send him off to California or some awful place like that. Maybe they was gonna snatch the judge and then try to exchange him for King. Maybe this was some sort of jailbreak that I couldn’t figure out. Maybe not. Maybe them Anchor Ranch rannies was going on a picnic, just like they said. Someday, I’d get the rest of the story. Something like this didn’t just vanish into air. Someone would be babbling, and my guess was Queen.
I scraped the last coin out of my purse and laid it on the lady, and got out of there. It sure was a nice spring day. I didn’t see no riot at the jailhouse, or hear shots being fired, so I walked over there, knocked, and this time DeGraff let me in and locked the door behind me.
“Anything perky around here?”
“No,” he said. “I’m on catnap duty.”
“There’s something out there. A lot of Anchor men in town, at the Sampling Room. Admiral Bragg and his girl are floating around.”
“So I heard.”
“I can’t get a handle on it.”
“Maybe it’s nothing.”
We laughed.
I pulled a key off the wall and headed back into the cell block. There was four cells, two on a side, separated by an aisle. King was in the one farthest back and on the left. It was gloomy in there, with only a barred window high up tossing light anywhere.
King was pacing round and round his ten-foot exercise yard. There were thick iron bars between him and me.
“You all right?”
He stopped suddenly. “That’s not a question that needs answering.”
He had a disheveled look about him. First time I’d seen that. Somehow, he always kept himself neat.
“Your pa and sister came in.”
“I heard about it from your deputy.”
“I couldn’t let them back here without them being searched.”
“My father usually has a dozen plans all going at once.”
“I think he wanted to bust you out. There’s a lot going on around here I’m not smart enough to figure out.”
King smiled harshly. “I’m not either.”
“He was carrying. Maybe she was too. She had more metal in her underwear than a tool and die maker.”
“Don’t talk about my sister like that.”
“I figure he was going to slide you a derringer or two, and she had a collection of rat-tailed files and blank keys for you to work on.”
“I wouldn’t have taken them. I’m not interested in a breakout.”
I wanted to laugh, but didn’t. He was serious. His gaze fixed me intensely.
“You don’t know me,” he said. “I want one of two things. To be proven innocent and cut loose, or to die. I don’t want to be called an outlaw or a fugitive or a criminal on the run. I’m a proud person, Sheriff. I won’t go for half a life. I won’t go for a life on the lam. If he’d laid all that stuff on me, I’d have turned it over to you the moment they left here.”
He stared at me in a way that almost knocked me backward a step or two.
The thing is, darned if I didn’t believe him.
“Tell me again what you know,” I said.
“About that afternoon? I walked into the Last Chance for a drink. Yes, I was looking for trouble. I like trouble. I had a few drinks. Upward poured some red-eye, and I sipped, and heard some laughter behind me. That’s all I remember.”
“And?”
“I was on the floor looking up at several men. There was gunsmoke in the air. My six-gun, a Peacemaker, was in their hands, and every chamber was empty. If I did it, I did it. If I didn’t, I didn’t. I have nothing more to tell you.”
“Upward says he didn’t see it. He says he was in the storeroom getting a bung starter when he heard the shots. And he says the two witnesses, both T-Bar men, have drawn wages and vanished.”
“Then there is no witness you can call a liar,” King said.
“Was there anyone else in there?”
“A few T-Bar men.”
