the brink of tears. If there’s anything that scares me, it’s a woman crying.
“I got this here blue glass eyedropper bottle out of the Last Chance,” I said. “Sammy Upward had it hid under the bar beside his sawed-off scattergun. My deputy, he told me it was knockout drops, so we tried it on a couple of them T-Bar men outside the sheriff office. Sure enough, they keeled over. So I sort of figured Upward put some of that stuff into King’s red-eye when he went over there.”
“What happened to the T-Bar men?”
“They come to, after dozing a little in the sunlight, and thought they’d had a nap.”
Well, I told her the rest of the story. How I’d talked to Big Lulu about them women that Crayfish rented, and about Rocco, and about riding out there this long day and talking with that old loco coyote Rudy Beaver. I told her how Beaver spilled a lot of beans and then said it was all talk, and didn’t mean a thing, and he was just thinkin’ up stuff, and I should forget he ever said it. I told her what I think happened; Crayfish had a few executions in mind, for them two Jonas brothers that was altering brands on the ranch, and for Rocco, who was gonna spill the beans on him unless he got a lot of money. And how Crayfish got the idea of pinning it all on her brother, who was always wandering around with that shiny gun looking for someone to bury six feet under. And I told her I just now got back from waking up Judge Nippers and telling him the whole shebang, but he said I ain’t got one piece of evidence, real evidence, and it’s all just notions and thin air, and he told me not to bother him no more, not unless I got a real witness, someone who saw Crayfish kill them three T-Bar men in the Last Chance Saloon.
“We knew he didn’t do it,” she cried. “We knew it.”
“I ain’t got any proof yet,” I said. “And now I got one and a half days. Tomorrow, and the next morning before eleven o’clock.”
“He didn’t do it, he didn’t do it,” she said.
“I don’t know, one way or the other. But I’ll keep trying to shake the truth out of someone. There’s a few witnesses. Plug Parsons, Carter Bell—”
“You’ll try, Cotton?”
“What do you think I’ve been doing?”
“Oh, Cotton.” She clutched me to her and hugged tight, and next I knew she was crying hot tears into my cheek, and I held her for a long time, till she finally pulled free, wiped her eyes, took my hand and kissed it, got into her blue dress, and slid into the night.
TWENTY-SEVEN
I sure didn’t want to get up the next day. I just wanted to pull my blanket over me and stay in the sack until the day went away. And if I thought that day would be bad, the following day, Doomsday, would be far worse. It was too late for me to escape now. I’d do my job, or brand myself as a coward the rest of my life.
So I made myself put my two bony feet on the planks and get up. It wasn’t Saturday yet, so I had a few days to go before I would head for the tonsorial parlor and rent the tin tub in the back room while Billy the Barber poured a few buckets of warm water into it. I was feeling more dirty on the inside than the outside anyway. I wanted to stop this freight train, and I couldn’t even flag down the engineer. I wished I was ten times smarter, but all I got is what I was born with. My pa used to say a man’s hands were worth more than his brain anyway, which is about the only thing I had in my favor.
I finally got myself together and headed into the streets of Doubtful. There sure was something in the air. No sooner did I step outside than I could sense it. The town was strung tight as a fiddle string, and there wasn’t no shoppers or women or such on the streets. What with two rival outfits in town, both armed to the hilt, and a hanging, most everyone figured there’d be a lot of flying lead and it would be better to stay behind walls. After my morning trip to Belle’s outhouse, I took a look around. There were a few gunslicks around, for sure, most of them lounging in the shade of them storefronts. I knew the sort. They was just itching to start the ball rolling. They pretended to build themselves smokes, standing there, but they were looking slit-eyed at everything and everyone moving around, especially anyone from the other outfit. And most of that wolf pack was wearing a sidearm, but two or three was openly toting around scatterguns. They sure were itching to spill some bright blood onto the clay of Doubtful.
I spotted Big Nose George blowing snot out of one nostril, and Smiley Thistlethwaite leaning against a storefront. And I watched Plug Parsons deliberately walk down the middle of Wyoming Street, bull-necked and mostly bald, and not wearing a sidearm at all just to show off. Carter Bell was lounging in front of Toady’s Beanery, like he would decide who’d go into the place for breakfast and who wouldn’t. He had twin Peacemakers poking from low-slung holsters tied down to his thighs. I thought that was sort of dumb, but that’s how Bell wanted it.
I decided to hold off on breakfast. Right now, there was a few things that needed doing. I walked toward Rosie’s whorehouse, and knew that every one of them gunslicks was watching my progress, and a few were thinking it might be the day’s entertainment to shoot me in the back. But I had a task to do. I was the peace officer, and my business was to enforce the peace, and I would do it one way or another.
Rosie’s was over on the next street, on Red Light Row, but now there was no lamps burning and the girls was all snoring away. They hardly got up before noon unless there was some urgent customer with a lot of cash in his britches, in which case they came awake fast.
Rosie’s was where I’d likely find Crayfish Ruble. I was gonna talk to him, and to Admiral Bragg, first off. So I walked up the wooden steps to Rosie’s in broad daylight and knocked. Pretty soon, the door opened up, and Street let me in. Street was some sort of Hell’s Kitchen hooligan from back East, and Rosie paid him good to keep order in her parlor house. I’ve always liked Street. He could hammer someone to pulp and break a few bones and never get close to homicide. And besides, he was as good as a spare deputy sheriff if I needed him. His only vice was emptying the pockets of customers now and then, when they was off doing what they came to Rosie’s to do. But no one ever complained about Street.
He nodded, licked the gap where he was missing three front teeth, and let me pass.
“I need to talk to Crayfish.”
“He’s busy now, Sheriff.”
“Right now.”
Street sighed. “He ain’t gonna like it.”
