Savage Guns

FOURTEEN

It couldn’t be better. There was Plug Parsons, the foreman, sipping red-eye along with Upward. Plug was the straw boss of the T-Bar, and also was one of the two witnesses that got hauled in to testify about the shooting.

Upward, he glanced at me like he was none too pleased to see me. But he gave me a fake smile.

“What’ll it be? Sarsaparilla?”

“Naw, Sammy, I’ll buy me a shot.”

“You must be off duty, eh?”

“I’m always on duty, Sammy.”

He set a glass in front of me and pushed the bottle toward me. It had been in front of Plug Parsons.

“Good to see you, Plug. Ain’t hardly seen you in town since the trial.”

Plug eyed me a moment, and then shrugged. “We’re here for the hanging,” he said.

I poured two fingers and sipped. That stuff, it was pure firewater, distilled maybe two weeks ago and left to cure maybe two days. That splash, it attacked my teeth, scraped my nostrils, sandpapered my throat, and needled me all over.

“Mighty fine,” I said. “Best sipping whiskey I’ve had in a while. Probably won some gold medals somewheres. Guess I’ll add a splash, Sammy.”

They smirked. Watering down the booze was a sign of being a sissy, but I didn’t care. Let them think I’m a sissy. It actually would give me an advantage if I needed one in a fight. I hardly had a hair on my chest neither. Not like Crayfish, who was the hairiest man I ever did see, with a mat of it all over his chest and arms and neck. I sure was glad I didn’t grow hair like that. Some fellers thought hairy men was meaner and harder than smooth men, but I never thought so. But I’m pretty smooth myself, and don’t need to scrape my face but once every two or three weeks. I like a little stubble anyhow just to keep the wind off my chops.

Upward, he added a little water while Plug got smirky.

“That’ll be an extra two cents for the water,” Upward said.

Plug got pretty tickled about that, and started watching me sip.

“You hear the old one about the feller who was dining, and he says to the waiter, ‘There’s a fly in my soup.’ And the waiter, he says, ‘That’s an extra nickel for the meat, sir.’”

“You got a real sense of humor, Sheriff,” Plug said.

“Yep, that’s a knee-slapper,” Upward said.

I studied Plug some. “I guess you fellers are gonna stick around for a few days,” I said. “Well, that’s fine.”

“We’re making sure that little bastard gets strung up proper,” Plug said.

“Oh, he will be,” I said. “But you know, he sort of did a favor around here, plugging a pair of outlaws like the Jonas brothers.”

“They was outlaws, all right,” Plug said.

“There are warrants out of Colorado on that pair,” I said. “They were a pair of bad boys, for sure.”

“What were the warrants for?” Plug asked.

I sipped a little, now that I had their attention.

“Oh, a mess of stuff. Rustling. Bank robbery. Train robbery. And they was wanted for questioning in the death of a rancher down there. Seems the rancher caught someone making off with his cows, so maybe them two kilt him. Stuff like that.”

“Ain’t that interesting,” Plug said. “I didn’t know that part. Crayfish, he thought he was hiring a pair of gunslicks to keep the lid on around here, with Admiral Bragg pushing and shoving the way he did.”

“I ain’t got anything on Rocco, except he was palled up with the Jonas boys,” I said. “Maybe the boy did the world a favor.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, King Bragg wiped out two real bad fellers and maybe one more, fellers that would have turned on their boss, and maybe were fixing to get real mean with Crayfish.”

Plug, he suddenly turned real quiet. “No, nothing like that,” he said. “Crayfish, he can take care of himself.”

Upward smiled and nodded.

I sometimes ain’t the brightest candle in the lamp, but I got some instinct, and I knew from how this was going that I was poking into places where them two didn’t want me to travel. So I let it lay a minute.

“Them dodgers that come in the mail, half of them are so blurry they don’t help none. I get them all the time. The good ones, they got a photograph, but most just got a sketch and some information that don’t help at all. Like, the wanted man’s medium, and light haired, and got a scar over the left eyebrow and shifty eyes. How am I supposed to do something with that? You got any notions, Plug?”

“I’m not a lawman, Cotton. Me, I like to hear about reputations. Someone wants me to hire them on the T-Bar, half the time someone else knows something about the man. The boss keeps his ear to the ground too. He knows who he wants on the place.”

“I guess maybe he’s plumb glad them three got shot,” I said.

“Wouldn’t know about that,” Plug said swiftly.

Upward hastened to tell me how wrong I was. “Crayfish felt real bad about it, good men down, shot in cold blood by that punk kid. Crayfish, he paid for the burying and declared a day of mourning on the ranch, and I served free beer all that day of mourning. Sort of like a wake, Sheriff. Lots of T-Bar men in here, and a few tears. We hated to say good-bye to some T-Bar riders.”

“That so?” I asked. “I sort of thought them three were about as rotten as they come.”

“It don’t matter,” Plug said. “They was with the outfit, and we’re loyal to the brand, every last one of us. When anyone in the outfit goes down, we all pull together. Crayfish started a widow and orphan fund for them, put in ten dollars for starters, but no one claimed it. Them two Jonas brothers were loners, I guess.”

“They’d have to be loners, rustling their boss blind,” I said.

“Who says that?” Plug asked.

“It’s on the dodgers from Colorado,” I said. “They were makin’ a dime or two on the side, and not telling anyone about it. But they got caught, and then escaped.”

“You don’t say,” Plug said. “That’s sure news to me. You sorta wonder about people sometimes.”

“Was them two moving a few beeves out of the T-Bar?” I asked. That was sort of the jackpot question.

Upward and Parsons, they just glanced at each other. “Not as I know of,” Plug said. “I’d have heard of it. Mr. Ruble, he never asked me to look into it.”

“How come King Bragg put bullets into those two? Were they rustling beef from the Anchor Ranch?”

Plug, he just shrugged. “He just walked in, got himself a drink, and started pumping bullets. That’s what he had in mind before he set foot in here. He just walked in and pretty soon there was three dead T-Bar men, good hands, bleeding on the sawdust.”

“I don’t get it. How did he know them three were here?”

“Someone must have told him.”

“Who?”

“Beats me,” Plug said.

This whole thing didn’t add up as far as I could see. It all added up for the court, which is why Judge Nippers sentenced the boy to hang. But there were a lot of questions in my mind, and I sure wasn’t getting any answers.

“Sheriff,” Upward said, “you’re sniffing around the way a dog sniffs at vomit. Why? Just let it go, all right? The whole thing was tried, there were witnesses including me, and the jury convicted King Bragg of triple murder, and the judged sentenced him. Just let her go now, and get back to keeping the peace.”

There sure was an edge to Upward’s voice. Almost like he was commanding me. Almost like he was threatening, even though there wasn’t no threats that I could hear. He was just telling me to lay off, and I guess he was right. The thing had been worrying around in my head for days, and I needed to let it go.

But I knew I couldn’t. Things didn’t seem right. A boy was about to get himself hanged. And time was running out.

“Well, it’s Rocco that interests me,” I said. “I’m just not sure who he was.”

“He was just a drifting bum from back East,” Plug said.

“Why’d you hire him then?”

“For safety. Rocco never wore a gun. You never saw a short gun on him. But he’s the one I’d like to have with me in a saloon. He could cut someone up so fast they’d be dead before they knew they had a knife in ’em.”

“A knifer?”

“The best. You never saw a knife on him either, but he always had two: one sewn into his boot, and the other in a pouch hanging behind his neck under his shirt.”

“Why would Crayfish Ruble want a knifer on his payroll?” I asked.

“Beats me, Sheriff.”

“Castrating bull calves,” Upward said.

“That takes a knife fighter? It didn’t spare him from a bullet from King Bragg,” I said. “Now why’d the boy shoot him too?”

“Let it go, Sheriff.” That was Upward talking, and he was plain irritated.

“So why’d he die?” I asked.

No one said nothing. The question hung there. Plug Parson, he sipped his drink, and Upward, he polished his bar, and me, I just stood there waiting for some answer that didn’t come.

“Did Rocco get crosswise of anyone?” I asked.

Plug Parsons, he swilled the last of the drink down his gullet. “I’m going back to Rosie’s,” he said. “I come here for a good time, nice afternoon, and next thing I know the damned sheriff’s digging up old bones.”

I watched the straw boss hike his jeans up and walk out.

Upward, he got the bottle of red-eye from me, and put it on the back bar out of my reach, and turned his back to me. Things was getting sort of unfriendly at the Last Chance.

I left two bits on the bar and headed into the sunlight of late afternoon. The town was peaceful enough, but all them T-Bar men was keeping it peaceful. Maybe too peaceful. I got to thinkin’ about that little visit. Plug wasn’t even curious when I told him the Jonas brothers had a record. He must have known it. He didn’t ask to see the dodgers either. I wondered if Plug knew they had changed their name from Ramshorn to Jonas. Plug sure was not surprised. Sammy wasn’t surprised. And strange to say, I wasn’t surprised that they weren’t surprised.

Back at the jailhouse and sheriff office, I seen that Rusty had taken over from Burtell and that things was peaceful enough.

“You been running around to bars and cathouses, I hear,” Rusty said.

“It sure was an education. Over at Rosie’s, Crayfish and Rosie were having a horizontal business conference, and over at the Last Chance, Plug Parson and Sammy Upward weren’t very happy when I started talking about them three that King Bragg shot. But I don’t know much else. You know anything?”

“Yeah, King wants to ask you a question.”

“I’ll go talk to him.”

The kid was peering through the bars.

“How many drinks does it take to knock someone out?” he asked.

“I sure don’t know,” I said. “Some fellers, they can drink all night and never even get fuzzy. Other fellers are flat on their ass after a couple.”

“One drink?”

“I never heard of one drink knocking anyone out,” I said.

“I only had one drink of ale at the Sampling Room that night,” he said.

“You sure?”

“One drink. Then I went over to the Last Chance, and Sammy Upward served me.”

“And after that?”

“I was lying on the sawdust. I think I got hit on the head.”