“No, in my holster. They took it out and told me every chamber was empty and I’d soon hang.”
“Why didn’t your lawyer, Stokes, go into this?”
The boy stared. “What’s there to go into?”
I sure had a prickly feeling in me. “All right, I’ll go over to the cafe and get you a meal. You want something in particular?”
“What’s this, my last supper?”
I didn’t feel much like answering. I locked up and headed down the street to Toady’s Beanery, where we sometimes got our chow for our prisoners. We had a regular account with Toady, and he billed the county. He also kept some of our tin bowls on hand, so he could dish up a meal real quick.
Toady was a one-eyed Civil War veteran, and he didn’t wear a patch either. Beans was all he made, but some weeks the beans would have bacon, and some weeks beef, and some weeks other stuff, like tomatoes, just for variety.
“Wondered when you’d come,” Toady said. He reached for one of them mess bowls and filled it. “You still have that boy in there? You feeding him somewhere else?”
“You mean he hasn’t been fed?”
“Not this morning or last night.”
I got angry. Half the time my deputies forgot to feed the prisoner, and I’d told them about it over and over, and now the boy was starving once again. It was one hell of a way to treat someone caged behind iron bars and helpless.
“Make it double, Toady,” I said.
The man ladled another round of the beans and handed it to me, and I headed back through the quiet afternoon to my jailhouse. You’d think Doubtful was the peacefullest town in Wyoming. There wasn’t no one in sight, not even them T-Bar men of Ruble’s keepin’ an eye on my office. I unlocked and took the bowl straight back to King Bragg, who accepted it with both hands, like it was a communion plate.
He sat on the bunk with the bowl in his lap and clasped his hands together.
“I thank you Lord for these thy gifts. Amen,” he said.
He glanced at me, saw me standing there, and turned his face away from me and kept on praying. I didn’t know what he was saying, but a boy who’s gonna be hanged in a few days might have an awful lot to say to God. I didn’t know whether to stand there or get out and give him his privacy, but somehow I just stood there and watched while he said whatever he had to say. Then, finally, he was done.
He took the metal spoon I’d given him and dug in, and I noticed his face was wet with tears, and those tears just kept flowing and flowing down his cheeks even as he downed the beans. It was so bad I could hardly look.
TWENTY
Judge Nippers was parked in his swivel chair, drunk as a skunk, so I rattled his shoulder some to fetch him awake.
“Huh? Huh?” he said, and grabbed for the little revolver he kept in his desk drawer.
“It’s me,” I said. “Put that piece back.”
He did.
“You up to talkin’?”
“I’m up to whatever the world throws at me. I am a sterling public servant, and won’t abide your insults.”
“You mind if I hang King Bragg from a cottonwood limb?”
“Mind! Of course I mind! The boy’s gonna be hanged proper, from a scaffold, by the Territory of Wyoming, just as fine and fitting as can be done. And no shortcuts. No tree limbs. This’ll be done in a professional fashion.”
“Ah, there’s a little problem,” I said. I told him about the Cleggs comin’ to town and getting their timbers stolen.
“Admiral Bragg’s work,” Nippers said.
“The robbers were masked, and we can’t prove it.”
“Well, it’s perfectly obvious. You tell Admiral Bragg to cease and desist or I’ll hang him from the same gibbet after he watches his boy swing.”
That was booze talkin’ and I let it pass. “It may take the Cleggs a while to get that scaffold up, if we keep running into trouble. It may not be ready in time.”
“Well, then I’ll issue a brief stay. When it’s up, I’ll give the go-ahead.”
“There may be a lot of delays. Depends on how much Admiral Bragg wants to slow it down.”
Nippers eyed me coolly. “Then spirit the young punk to Laramie. Armed guard, middle of the night. Let Laramie enjoy the hanging.”
“Our merchants won’t be happy with that,” I said. “They’re already stocked up for crowds of people having a party. George Waller, he says most every merchant in town’s laid in food and picnic stuff. There’ll be people from all over Puma County coming in for the show, and they’ll spend good money. If we move the hanging, you’re gonna have Mayor Waller and every merchant in town mad as hornets. It ain’t just the merchants either. I’ve already employed Doc Harrison to declare him dead. And Sammy Upward’s advertising half-price drinks after the show, and free hard-boiled eggs.”
“Tough beans,” Nippers said. “If I say spirit the prisoner out, you’re going to spirit the prisoner out. If I say
