down, and was watching the sheriff of Puma County, Wyoming, skedaddle away from there.
If this was evidence, I reckoned that Judge Nippers would have no part of it. But it was something I’d sure tell Nippers about if he was sober enough to listen. I thought a little about sliding back there and nabbing the old boy and hauling into Doubtful and making him tell his story to the judge, but I knew by the time I’d gotten Rudy Beaver in front of the judge, he’d either act crazy or claim he didn’t know a thing. Which, come to think of it, might just be true.
TWENTY-SIX
Critter was really dragging when we got back to Doubtful late in the evening. This time, his box stall would look pretty good to him. I steered him up Wyoming Street, wondering whether I’d find bodies stacked like cordwood, and blood blackening the street, but everything looked peaceful. There was a few lanterns still lit on Saloon Row, and I figured them riders were all celebrating.
This was Christmas for some of them boys. Two rival outfits, looking to kill each other, both in town, maybe sixty men all with itchy trigger fingers, drinking red-eye and working up to some fun. Some fellers dream of lollipops at Christmas, but these men dreamed of powder and bullets and having a fine old time.
But it hadn’t happened this night. I turned Critter toward the livery barn, rode him straight into the aisle, and slid off. It was dark, so I scouted out a hurricane lamp in the office, lit it, and hung it on a peg in the aisle. I pulled Critter’s saddle and blanket and bridle off, haltered him, brushed him down some, let him drink at the trough, and then led him to his stall. I swear, he trotted right in. Usually it’s all pull and haul, but this time he was ready for some oats and sleep. I fed him some of them lousy oats Turk kept around there, and forked some hay in, and closed the gate behind him. Critter and I had come to an understanding. He wouldn’t kill me and I wouldn’t kill him.
That was more than I could say for half the men in town this night. I strolled through the darkness toward the square, and saw the gallows sitting there, the noose dangling in the moonlight. That noose was now the center of the whole town. Everything in Doubtful radiated outward from that noose. A night wind started it swinging, back and forth, twisting this way and that. There was no one else around there, so I hiked over to the sheriff office and knocked. Burtell let me in.
“Everything quiet?” I asked.
“Sort of,” he said. “I think every rider for the Anchor Ranch rode up to that gallows and studied it some.”
“The prisoner is all right?”
“Last I looked. His pa and his sister want to see him, and I said they should talk to you in the morning.”
“I guess they have a right to, tomorrow being the boy’s last full day,” I said.
He grinned. “I’ll make sure Queen is clean.”
“No, we aren’t going to search them. We’re going to let them in back there.”
“Not pat them down? After all they done to bust him out?”
“I’m going to let them go back and see the boy without us staring at them or waving a gun at them. That’s how it’ll be.”
“Well, I don’t want to be here when they come out of the cells shooting.”
“Bragg loves that boy. His sister does too. They got a right to spend some time back there on his last day.”
“After we remove all those derringers and hacksaws and shotguns she’s got in her skirts.”
I sighed. “That’s how I want it. Leave her and her pa alone. Tell the rest, if I’m not here.”
“You’re nuts, Pickens.”
“I think the boy didn’t do it. I think he got roped into something, and I think I’m going to be hanging a boy who didn’t shoot anyone.”
Burtell stared at me like I was loco.
“I’ve got to talk to the judge.” I said.
“Now? Middle of the night?”
“A witness I talked with says it was Crayfish that killed the three T-Bar men.”
Burtell whistled. “That could change things some,” he said. “Who was it?”
“Rudy Beaver.”
Burtell, he started laughing so bad I just wanted to get outside.
I hiked over to Judge Nippers’ house through pitch-dark streets and knocked. I knocked again and again, and nothing happened. Pretty soon a lamp glowed in the back, and then the door creaked open and the judge stuck a short gun into my ribs. He was wearing one of them nightshirts. You’d never catch me in one, dead or alive. I’ve always been a pants man. He eyed me up and down while I stood there, and finally decided I was the sheriff.
“Next time, I’ll shoot first,” he said. “This better be important, or it’ll be your neck in the noose.”
He motioned me in, closed and bolted the door, and led me into the kitchen, where the lamp burned.
“This better be important,” he said again.
“I was poking around on the T-Bar, and got to talking to that old cowboy Rudy Beaver, who’s guarding the place. He told me all about how Crayfish tortured and killed the girls that Rocco rented from the cathouses and took out there, and he said Rocco was going to tattle on Crayfish, so Crayfish shot him and shot the Jonas brothers that were mavericking calves. Only then the old coot turned around and said he was just inventing it all, and he didn’t say any of it and I didn’t hear it. Is that good enough evidence for you to stay the execution?”
“Evidence? Did anyone see Crayfish shoot those three? What evidence? Pickens, you hang that boy good and
