shooting had been an accident, and made it plain that she thought he ought not to let Peach Johnson bully him into making a long trip.
While July was waiting for Peach to leave, the rooster, annoyed at being held so tightly, gave Peach's hand a couple of hard pecks. Without an instant's hesitation Peach grabbed him by the head, swung him a few times and wrung his neck. His body flew off a few feet and lay jerking. Peach pitched the head over in some weeds by the jailhouse porch. She had not got a drop of blood on her-the blood was pumping out of the headless rooster into the dust of the street.
'That'll teach him to peck me,' Peach said. 'At least I'll get to eat him, instead of a skunk having the pleasure.'
She went over and picked the rooster up by the feet and held him out from her body until he quit jerking.
'Well, July,' she said, 'I hope you won't wait too long to start. Just because you're a little yellow don't mean you can't ride a horse.'
'You Johnsons marry the dernest women,' Roscoe said, when Peach was safely out of hearing.
'What's that?' July said, looking at Roscoe sternly. He would not have his deputy criticizing his wife.
Roscoe regretted his quick words. July was touchy on the subject of his new wife. It was probably because she was several years older and had been married before. In Font Smith it was generally considered that she had made a fool of July, though since she was from Kansas no one knew much about her past.
'Why, I was talking about Ben and Sylvester,' Roscoe said. 'I guess I forgot you're a Johnson, since you're the sheriff.'
The remark made no sense-Roscoe's remarks often made no sense, but July had too much on his mind to worry about it. It seemed he was faced every single day with decisions that were hard to make. Sometimes, sitting at his own table, it was hard to decide whether to talk to Elmira or not. It was not hard to tell when Elmira was displeased, though. Her mouth got tight and she could look right through him and give no indication that she even saw him. The problem was trying to figure out what she was displeased about. Several times he had tried asking if anything was wrong and had been given bitter, vehement lectures on his shortcomings. The lectures were embarrassing because they were delivered in the presence of Elmira's son, now his stepson, a twelve-year-old named Joe Boot. Elmira had been married in Missouri to a fellow named Dee Boot, about whom she had never talked much-she just said he died of smallpox.
Elmira also often lectured Joe as freely as she lectured July. One result was that he and Joe had become allies and good friends; both of them spent much of their time just trying to avoid Elmira's wrath. Little Joe spent so much time around the jail that he became a kind of second deputy. Like Elmira, he was skinny, with big eyes that bulged a little in his thin face.
Roscoe was fond of the boy, too. Often he and Joe went down to the river to fish for catfish. Sometimes if they made a good catch July would bring Roscoe home for supper, but those occasions were seldom successful. Elmira thought little of Roscoe Brown, and though Roscoe was as nice to her as he could be, the fish suppers were silent, tense affairs.
'Well, July, I guess you're between a rock and a hand place,' Roscoe said. 'You either got to go off and fight them Texas Rangers or else stay here and fight Peach.'
'I could send you after him,' July said. 'You're the one that let him get away.'
Of course he was only teasing. Roscoe could hardly handle old man Darton, who was nearly eighty. He wouldn't stand much of a chance against Jake Spoon and his friends.
Roscoe almost tipped over in his chair, he was so astonished. The notion that he might be sent on a job like that was ridiculous-living with Elmira must have made July go crazy if he was thinking such thoughts.
'Peach ain't gonna let it nest,' July said, as much to himself as to Roscoe.
'Yes, it's your duty to catch the man,' Roscoe said, anxious to get himself as far off the hook as possible. 'Benny was your brother, even if he was a dentist.'
July didn't say it, but the fact that Benny had been his brother had little to do with his decision to go after Jake Spoon. Benny had been the oldest and he himself the youngest of the ten Johnson boys. All but the two of them went away after they grew up, and Benny seemed to feel that July should have gone away too. He was reluctant to give July the sheriff's job when it came open, although there had been no other candidate than Roscoe. July got the job, but Benny remained resentful and had balked at even providing a new lock for the jail's one cell. In fact, Benny had never done one kind thing for him that July could remember. Once when he pulled a bad tooth of July's he had charged the full fee.
July's feelings of responsibility had to do with the town, not the man who was killed. Since pinning on the sheriff's badge two years before, his sense of responsibility for the town had grown steadily. It seemed to him that as sheriff he had a lot more to do with the safety and well-being of the citizens than Benny had as mayor. The rivermen were the biggest problem-they were always drinking and fighting and cutting one another up. Several times he had had to pile five on six into the little cell.
Lately more and more cowboys passed through the town. Once the wild men of Shanghai Pierce had come through, nearly destroying two saloons. They were not bad men, just rowdy and wild to see a town. They tended to scare people's livestock and rope their pets, and were intolerant of any efforts to curb their play. They were not gunmen, but they could box-July had been forced to crack one on two of them on the jaw and keep them in jail overnight.
Little Joe worshiped the cowboys-it was plain to July that he would run off with one of the outfits, given the chance. When not doing chores he would spend hours practicing with an old rope he had found, roping stumps, or sometimes the milk-pen calf.
July was prepared to accept a certain rowdiness on the part of the cowboys as they passed through, but he felt no leniency at all for men like Jake Spoon. Gamblers offended him, and he had warned several out of town.
Roscoe loved to whittle better than any man July had ever known. If he was sitting down, which was usually the case, he was seldom without a whittling stick in his hands. He never whittled them into anything, just whittled them away, and the habit had come to irritate July.
'I guess if I leave you'll whittle up the whole dern town before I get back,' he said.
Roscoe held his peace. He could tell July was in a touchy mood-and who could blame him, with a wife like Elmira and a sister-in-law like Peach. He enjoyed his whittling but of course he was not going to whittle down any houses. July often exaggerated when he was in a bad mood.
July stood up. He wasn't very tall, but he was sturdy. Roscoe had once seen him lift an anvil down at the blacksmith's shop, and he had just been a boy then.
'I'm going home,' July said.
'Well, send little Joe over, if he ain't busy,' Roscoe said. 'We'll play some dominoes.'
'It's milking time,' July said. 'He's got to milk. Anyway, Ellie don't like him playing dominoes with you. She thinks it'll make him lazy.'
'Why, it ain't made me lazy, and I've played dominoes all my life,' Roscoe said.
July knew the statement was absurd. Roscoe was only a deputy because he was lazy. But if there was one thing he didn't want to get into, it was an argument over whether Roscoe was lazy, so he gave him a wave and walked on off.
27.
WHEN JULY GOT HOME it was nearly dusk. Home was just a cabin on the edge of town. As he passed the horse pen he saw that little Joe had roped the milk-pen calf again-it was easy to do, for the calf seldom moved.
'You've got that calf broke,' July said. 'You could probably saddle him and ride him if you wanted to.'
'I milked,' Joe said. He got the pail, and the two walked to the cabin together. It was a fairly good cabin, although it didn't yet have a wood floor-just well-packed dirt. July felt bad about bringing his bride to a cabin without a wood floor, but being sheriff didn't pay much and it was the best he could do.
It was a high cabin with a little sleeping loft in it. July had initially supposed that was where they would put the boy, but, in fact, Elmira had put
