Savage Guns

TWENTY-ONE

Lem Clegg and his boys was putting up the gallows in fine style, taking real pride in their work. I kept an eye on them, but no one was bothering them none. They’d got the hanging part of it up, good and solid, and now they was working on the platform and the trap. They’d put in posts and stringers, and soon they’d be running plank across. They sure knew what they were doing, and I wondered if they’d built a few other gallows in their day. It felt real good to have some professionals doing the job.

There was a mess of people watching them work, most all the time. A lot of Doubtful mothers, they’d bring their young ones over for a look, and tell them kids to behave themselves or they’d get themselves hanged just like King Bragg was going to in a couple of days. Some of these boys, they got real excited by it and wanted to get real close to see it when the moment came along.

Mrs. Cadbury, the schoolmarm, she brought the fifth grade over to see the gallows going up, and told them all how it would work. Them little kids were impressed, and I thought they’d stick to the straight and narrow rather than get their necks broken. When she came back with the seventh graders, they all begged her to watch it when the time came, and she promised them she’d let them out of school so they could see justice done and take part in the hanging of a mass murderer. I thought that was pretty good myself, and it’d keep the peace around there real good. The more people saw King hang, the better, when it came to stopping crime in its tracks. She told me it was better than reading the Bible to them every morning, and since the gallows had started to go up, she’d had no trouble in class and not even much truancy. So that gallows was sending a message, all right.

Doubtful didn’t have no high school, just grades one through eight, so there weren’t any older children seeing the gallows go up. That was too bad, because the older ones, they’d see that King Bragg was eighteen, about their own age, and that would make some sort of impression on them. The more that came to the hanging, the better off Puma County would be, and of course the merchants were expecting a big day in their shops too.

It sure was a nice spring, and I thought if the weather held, King Bragg would get himself hanged on a fine, warm, sunny day, and that would be good. I’d hate to hang a feller on a cold, mean day.

There was a mess of T-Bar men floating around, but the Anchor Ranch outfit was staying away. That suited me fine. Admiral Bragg, he’d tried everything from a fake hanging to scare me to smuggling stuff to his boy, and only a couple days earlier I’d stopped them from robbing the gallows timbers and trying to slow down the hanging. So I wasn’t very fond of that one, him with all them airs. And his daughter Queen was just as bad, except once in a while when her pa wasn’t around. I felt sorry for her, under his thumb like that. But maybe she deserved it, being so snotty like that.

Crayfish Ruble was whiling away his days over at Rosie’s, and I hardly saw him. But I knew he was around, and I knew he was pulling strings. His gunslicks were all over town, almost patrolling it, like they were the lawmen and not me. But it was peaceful enough, and as long as they didn’t bust any laws or cause trouble, I had no reason to mind. Maybe it was even to the good, because it kept Admiral Bragg and his bunch out of Doubtful so the hanging could go ahead real peaceful.

After watching the Cleggs saw planks and hammer them down, I headed out Wyoming Street, thinking to have a visit with Sammy Upward. He might still be mad at me, but I didn’t care. I was as itchy as ever about what was going on in my town.

The moment I walked in there, Sammy starting rubbing the bar with his rag, and I knew I wasn’t very welcome. There was a bunch of T-Bar men in there, and it was like I’d walked into their private club and they didn’t like it none.

Sammy just slapped a bottle of red-eye on the bar, and a tumbler, and told me it’d be a quarter. “I’m charging one bit now,” he said.

It had been a dime. I didn’t object, and laid out two bits.

“I’m looking for a few things,” I said.

“You got something to tell me first?”

Sammy was back in his trading mood. He’d tell me something if I told him something.

“Sure,” I said. “Admiral Bragg tried to stop the scaffold going up. I put some buckshot into the ambush.”

“That so?” Sammy seemed impressed. I hadn’t told anyone about that predawn fight when I rode with the Cleggs. “You know who took some shot?”

“Nope. Anyone that got hit’s staying out at the Anchor Ranch. I’ll pinch anyone with a bandage on him just now.”

Sammy polished away at the bar, and finally decided it was okay to cut loose with something I might need. “Well?” he said, sounding irritated.

I peered around a little. All them T-Bar men had quit their talking and were listening to me. They wanted to know what the sheriff was askin’ about, so I decided to give them an earful.

“This fellow Rocco, the one that King Bragg shot. I’m just curious about him. I got some flyers on the two brothers, so I know they were up to no good, but I don’t know a thing about Rocco. Crayfish hired him, and he didn’t seem like one of the regular bunch out there. You gonna help me with that?”

“What do you want to know for?”

“I was sort of wondering if maybe King Bragg did the world a favor.”

Upward thought about that a little, polishing away on his bar, and then said, “He didn’t do the world any favor. Rocco, he was different all right. He wasn’t a regular cowboy living in the bunkhouse like the rest. He lived up at the house like Mr. Ruble. He was Mr. Ruble’s manservant, you know? The gent that kept the big house and got whatever Crayfish needed and took care of things. Mr. Ruble, he has no woman, you know. So he had this Eastern gent, Rocco, do all that stuff.”

“What stuff?”

Sammy eyed the silent crowd, and then leaned forward, almost whispering to me. “Crayfish Ruble sure liked his women, and once in a while he’d send Rocco to town, with the black buggy, to fetch him a woman. Rocco would go rent one from one of the parlor houses. He’d go to Rosie and rent one for a week, and bring her out to the ranch, so Crayfish could enjoy her for a few days.”

“Then he’d take her back?”

Upward shrugged. “I only know what I heard. That’s all I’m telling you.”

“Rocco, did he spend time with the rest of the T-Bar men?”

“Naw, he was a loner. He was real well educated, and talked different. He never talked about cattle or guns or anything like that. When he came in here with Crayfish, they would talk about good wines, or how to cook venison, or what women in Paris were wearing.”

“Rocco was from where?”

“How should I know? But I once served a man from that hellhole called Brooklyn, and this Rocco, he sounded like that. I couldn’t place it if I tried. But he was smart.”

“And Crayfish employed him as a manservant? Anything else?”

Sammy sighed. “Maybe an informer. I think he was Crayfish’s eyes and ears. Now that’s all I’m gonna say. I’m done. I told you more than you told me.”

He stalked off to serve one of the T-Bar cowboys, who was wanting another shot. I just waited real quiet. I wasn’t done with Sammy.

Pretty soon I had another crack at it. “How come King Bragg shot him?” I asked.

“I don’t know or care. King Bragg shot Mr. Ruble’s best friend and two of his best hands in cold blood. Crayfish Ruble told me a dozen times, Rocco was the most valuable help he had, and them Jonas boys, they was harder working than most everyone in the bunkhouse. I’ll tell you something, Cotton. When that boy killed three of his best men, Crayfish broke down and pretty near cried some. He’d hate me for saying it, because men don’t shed tears, but I saw Ruble kneel over those three murdered men and fight back a tear or two, not wanting anyone to see how bad he felt.”

“Were they baiting King?”

“Naw, it was cold-blooded murder, an execution if you ask me.”

“The kid simply pulled his gun and shot the three of them?”

“He did. They was all in a row next to him while he was sucking red-eye, and next I knew, there was all this gunfire, and I was in the storeroom. When I stuck my head out for a peek, there they were. Three dead men on my sawdust, leaking blood and coughing their last. Oh, man, Sheriff, that was a bad moment.”

“Must have been,” I said.

One of them T-Bar men came up to me. It was Carter Bell. He had witnessed the shooting and testified at the trial. So he was still around town.

“That hanging going to happen like it should, Sheriff?” he asked.

Carter Bell had a real nice-sounding name, but he reminded me of a rodent. I swear, every time I looked at him, I thought of rats. He had that rat-face on a skinny body, and if I didn’t know he was a live person, I’d of thought him to be a big old alley rat. He didn’t have rat whiskers, but he had little buck teeth at the end of a long snout, just like one of them big gray rats. You sure couldn’t always tell a person by his name.

“Everything’s going just as the court directed,” I said.

“Well, if it ain’t, there’s going to be a hanging anyway,” he said.

“You planning on doing it?”

He smiled, his little rat-mouth widening. “Count on it, Sheriff.”

“You got the itch to string up the boy, do you?”

“I got that itch so bad, I’d like to bust in there and do it all by my lonesome before anyone else has the chance, Sheriff.”

“How come? What did the boy do to you?”

“He killed three T-Bar men in cold blood, and I saw it.”

“I guess you and Plug Parsons were the two that saw it happen, with Sammy here.”

Then this lobo wolf Bell, he said, “if you don’t hang that punk proper, watch your back, Sheriff.”

“Well, my ma, she always said I needed an eye in the back of my head.”

“You ain’t hearing me. I saw the Bragg boy shoot our friends deader than buzzard bait. The court settled it weeks ago. So drop it now, damn you. You gonna quit sniffing around or not? Answer me, dammit.”

He was standing there, hand hovering over that sidearm of his, looking for an excuse to yank it out.

“Bell, cut it out,” Sammy said.

Bell sure got himself riled up. He was crowding me, and if he’d try to pull iron he would have gotten a knee right where it hurts. Maybe I’m a little thick in the head, but I’m fast with the rest of me. But the steam sort of hissed out of him, like maybe Sammy was giving orders, and pretty soon he backed off. But he was hot and stayed hot and looked like he’d go for iron any moment.

“Just ’cause you’re wearing a star don’t mean you’re bulletproof,” he said.

I turned my back on Bell. “Thanks, Sammy.”

“Don’t thank me. He’s right. Quit sniffing around and get on with the hanging.”

I got out of there and wondered whether to go visit Rosie. But hell, Rosie’s place was full of them T-Bar boys, and Crayfish himself, so I thought maybe I’d go talk to Big Lulu, who ran the Home Comfort, where one could hire several temporary wives.

Big Lulu was a rival of Rosie, and half a block away, but Lulu had a different clientele, mostly shopkeepers, bankers, tent preachers, traveling salesmen, piano tuners, and folks like that who wanted all the comforts of home, especially when there weren’t any comforts of home available to those fellers. And Crayfish was there as often as he was at Rosie’s, singing fine old hymns around the parlor organ, joking with one of them wives that made the gents comfy, or taking tea and crumpets in the parlor with a few of the gals.

I had in mind a little conversation about Rocco.