“He did. They was all in a row next to him while he was sucking red-eye, and next I knew, there was all this gunfire, and I was in the storeroom. When I stuck my head out for a peek, there they were. Three dead men on my sawdust, leaking blood and coughing their last. Oh, man, Sheriff, that was a bad moment.”
“Must have been,” I said.
One of them T-Bar men came up to me. It was Carter Bell. He had witnessed the shooting and testified at the trial. So he was still around town.
“That hanging going to happen like it should, Sheriff?” he asked.
Carter Bell had a real nice-sounding name, but he reminded me of a rodent. I swear, every time I looked at him, I thought of rats. He had that rat-face on a skinny body, and if I didn’t know he was a live person, I’d of thought him to be a big old alley rat. He didn’t have rat whiskers, but he had little buck teeth at the end of a long snout, just like one of them big gray rats. You sure couldn’t always tell a person by his name.
“Everything’s going just as the court directed,” I said.
“Well, if it ain’t, there’s going to be a hanging anyway,” he said.
“You planning on doing it?”
He smiled, his little rat-mouth widening. “Count on it, Sheriff.”
“You got the itch to string up the boy, do you?”
“I got that itch so bad, I’d like to bust in there and do it all by my lonesome before anyone else has the chance, Sheriff.”
“How come? What did the boy do to you?”
“He killed three T-Bar men in cold blood, and I saw it.”
“I guess you and Plug Parsons were the two that saw it happen, with Sammy here.”
Then this lobo wolf Bell, he said, “if you don’t hang that punk proper, watch your back, Sheriff.”
“Well, my ma, she always said I needed an eye in the back of my head.”
“You ain’t hearing me. I saw the Bragg boy shoot our friends deader than buzzard bait. The court settled it weeks ago. So drop it now, damn you. You gonna quit sniffing around or not? Answer me, dammit.”
He was standing there, hand hovering over that sidearm of his, looking for an excuse to yank it out.
“Bell, cut it out,” Sammy said.
Bell sure got himself riled up. He was crowding me, and if he’d try to pull iron he would have gotten a knee right where it hurts. Maybe I’m a little thick in the head, but I’m fast with the rest of me. But the steam sort of hissed out of him, like maybe Sammy was giving orders, and pretty soon he backed off. But he was hot and stayed hot and looked like he’d go for iron any moment.
“Just ’cause you’re wearing a star don’t mean you’re bulletproof,” he said.
I turned my back on Bell. “Thanks, Sammy.”
“Don’t thank me. He’s right. Quit sniffing around and get on with the hanging.”
I got out of there and wondered whether to go visit Rosie. But hell, Rosie’s place was full of them T-Bar boys, and Crayfish himself, so I thought maybe I’d go talk to Big Lulu, who ran the Home Comfort, where one could hire several temporary wives.
Big Lulu was a rival of Rosie, and half a block away, but Lulu had a different clientele, mostly shopkeepers, bankers, tent preachers, traveling salesmen, piano tuners, and folks like that who wanted all the comforts of home, especially when there weren’t any comforts of home available to those fellers. And Crayfish was there as often as he was at Rosie’s, singing fine old hymns around the parlor organ, joking with one of them wives that made the gents comfy, or taking tea and crumpets in the parlor with a few of the gals.
I had in mind a little conversation about Rocco.
TWENTY-TWO
Big Lulu’s was sure a nice place, with a homey parlor where lots of swell folks gathered. I went in there, and felt right at home. Big Lulu herself was at the parlor organ, wearing a gray wrapper with purple petunias on it, just like my ma’s. She was a little on the plump and curvy side, but lots of fellers preferred that to skinny and bony.
She was playin’ “Rock of the Ages,” and some fellers were singing away. I saw George Waller, the mayor, warbling away so that his Adam’s apple sort of wiggled his red bow tie. After that, Big Lulu paged through some other music and started in on “Nearer My God to Thee,” which was real nice. It was a good song for tenors, but was all right for baritones.
She had horsehair sofas and chairs in there, and ivory lace curtains, and some Brussels carpets on the plank floor, so it was all fixed up good. After a bit, one of them young ladies of hers, all dressed up in lavender gauze, came out with a tea cart and began dishing up hot tea from a blue pot. She smiled and offered me some, but I was waiting to talk to Big Lulu, so she turned to a drummer that was in town selling schnapps, and offered him some. He licked his lips and smiled.
Finally, Big Lulu, she wrapped up her concert, and everybody was feeling real uplifted, and she turned to me.
“You want something, Sheriff, or shouldn’t I ask?”
“Well, yes, I’d like to talk with you private.”
“Well, that’s five dollars, same as everybody.”
“No, I mean talk with you about stuff.”
