There was that feeling you get right after you see someone die like that. You’re mostly thinking it could be you. And for a moment, I wondered if Bragg had me on his list, just as he threatened a few times. But no one was paying me any attention. I could have walked to my office and no one would have known it.
You know, it was a funny thing. The law said this was wrong. Ruble hadn’t been tried. He’d been lynched. And I sure would have trouble coming up with real good evidence. He had killed the Jonas boys and Rocco, but proving it was something else. There was a bunch of stuff needed looking into, including them graves out on his place.
Still, I had something to do. I pushed through them people until I got to Admiral.
“Got to take you in, Bragg.”
“Of course you do. But I might not go.”
“You come along now.”
“I tell you what. You come along with me,” he said. “To the courthouse.”
He plunged through the gathering crowd, like a horse with no bit, and I raced along making sure I didn’t lose him. He swung open the door, and headed up them wide stairs toward Judge Nippers’ chambers, and stopped at the big desk there.
He handed me a paper lying on the desk. It was in Nippers’ hand, all right, but I sure couldn’t make out all them curly letters. Bragg stared at me, annoyed.
“It’s Bell’s confession. Nippers wrote it all down. How my boy was framed. And that’s Bell’s X for a signature.”
“That don’t make it right, what you did,” I said. “You got to come in and get yourself tried for that hangin’.”
“Come get me,” he said, “whenever you’re ready.”
I collected that confession, before someone else took it off.
Bragg knew he’d never spend a day in my jail, at least not for that. Them good folks in Doubtful would cut him loose, especially when they saw the confession Nippers had gotten out of Bell. I knew it too. They’d figure everything was even and justice got done. At the moment he held the cards, and the biggest one was the revolver hangin’ from his hip.
I followed him out, into the silent square, where Crayfish Ruble was twisting and turning in the June breeze.
“One thing more, Bragg. Where’s King and Queen?”
“Locked in the hotel liquor closet,” he said. “They’ve betrayed me. They’ll never set foot on Anchor Ranch again.”
“Might be a good deal for them,” I said.
He laughed. “Cotton, you’re a card,” he said.
I’d get over there in a moment and spring them and make sure they was both all right. They weren’t the same two Braggs as they once were, and I was sort of sneakin’ proud of them defying that holy terror of a father of theirs.
Next I knew, all them Anchor Ranch riders were collecting their horses and riding out. I saw some T-Bar men riding out too. They’d have no payday there. I wondered who’d get the place and all them cattle out there. Them T-bar men would likely alter a few brands and take some beef with them. I thought that the whole ranch would vanish in about a week, and there’d be a few riding the owlhoot trail. There was nothing permanent about that place. Crayfish hadn’t built anything for the future. And the future ended on that gallows a little while before.
I had some business to do out there. Four graves to open up. Four women to identify. I thought Lulu and Rosie would shed a few tears.
There was plenty of folks standing around the square, gawking.
“Get on away from here,” I said. “Go home.”
But no one did.
My landlady, Belle, as wide as she was tall, come steamin’ up. “It’s a good thing,” she said. “That Crayfish. There’s not a virtuous woman left in town, except me.”
She looked like she wished she weren’t.
I spotted Rusty wobbling along with Burtell and DeGraff, so all the lawmen were present at last. They paused in front of Crayfish, who was sort of smiling down at them.
“Serves him right,” Rusty said. “You do the honors?”
“Nope, it was Bragg done it.”
“You arrest him?”
“I tried to.”
“Glad you didn’t,” Rusty said. “That Bragg. He’s a son of a bitch, but my kind of son of a bitch.”
“He’s not my kind,” I said.
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SHOOTOUT OF THE MOUNTAIN MAN
