Savage Guns

TWENTY-FIVE

It sure was tempting to run ahead of that bunch and try to stop the bloodbath when they rode into Doubtful. There’d be two gangs, one in favor of the hanging and one against it, and ready to kill one another, and maybe half the town in the process. It sure looked like real bad business.

But then I sort of took stock. They weren’t there to fight each other. The Braggs, they were there in sorrow and grief. The T-Bar bunch was there to see justice done. They would probably settle down for the long wait, while the sands of time ran out for the Bragg boy, and then they’d just pack up and leave. I hoped so anyway.

There was something else on my mind. Now that both outfits were going to be in town, I had the whole countryside pretty much to myself. I had a little business out there, on Crayfish Ruble’s range. Queen had shown me some graves in a side gully of a nameless gulch, and it was time to find out what that was about. But that ranch was a long piece away.

“Critter,” I said, “are you good for a run?”

He yawned, chewed on his bit, and dropped a few apples. That meant he was bored, and a run would make life real interesting in the day of a horse.

“All right then, we’re going on a round trip to hell,” I said.

He took off so fast he almost pitched me out of my saddle, but I got upright again, and reined him in a little. He steadied into a rocking-chair lope, so easy it was like walking for any two-legged critters. He wasn’t even breathing hard, but just to play it safe, I tugged him down to a trot once in a while. A trot is the most infernal tail-banging gait on earth, but it rests a horse if he can stand the hammering of a hind-end on his backbone. I kept to a trot only long enough to give him a rest, because more than five minutes of it turned my butt into hamburger.

We kept at it, through country so big it was beyond the imagination of folks living cramped lives back East. Here was land as far as the eye could see, land without a building on it, land enough for everyone. The West was land, lots of land, land for the poor, the people starting out, the helpless, the brave, and everything in between. The trouble came when some fellers with a lot of self-importance wanted all the land and then some, and began pushing others out. Those fellers wanted the best valleys, the best water, the biggest ranch house, and a private army besides, just so they could be the biggest rooster. Admiral Bragg was like that. Crayfish Ruble had different goals. He wanted to get rich and get out. He wanted to run cows until there was no grass, make his pile, and head for the biggest town. If he left a land that was gnawed down to dirt, that didn’t bother him none, so long as he got the last dime he could get out of the place.

Neither of them fellers was the sort to admire, in my book. Bragg had tried to scare or push me into letting loose of his boy, and that didn’t sit well with me. But this trip I was going to look at Ruble’s place, because there was something real bad going on, and I sure wanted to find out what, and whether it had some connection to this hanging that was coming up.

Critter, he began to darken around the neck and withers, so I slowed him down. I didn’t want him to get too sweated up. We had a long ride back to Doubtful coming pretty quick. Besides, I wanted a little time to enjoy the air, the puffball clouds, the snowy mountains off to the west, and the greened up pastures, mostly giant wide gulches, that shone with spring wildflowers and emerald grasses. I sure didn’t know why I was being a sheriff in Doubtful when I could be out in this, riding the range for some outfit. We never know why we make choices, and I still didn’t know why I’d stuck with the sheriff job. I wasn’t even qualified for it. Judge Nippers had just reminded me I didn’t even know the law.

Critter and me, we rode into the yard at Ruble’s headquarters and sure enough, we was met by Rudy Beaver, a shotgun-toting old boy I knew a little. He was a bearded old coot, a real cowman and not a gun hawk. He was grimy, and water-eyed and I don’t think he’d washed for a year or so. He’d be the one to leave behind, looking after the place and the cows, making sure there was feed and water, and the dogs got fed, and the coyotes got shot, and lightning didn’t burn down the barn.

He hobbled my way, cradling a shotgun in his arm, and I settled down Critter and waited for Beaver to come closer. I didn’t know much about him, but I’d heard he had done some hard time somewhere long ago, and was mean as horseshoe nails.

I was wearing my star, which caught the sun and made my visit official. He just hobbled up, with the muzzle of that scattergun pointing low, like it should. He seemed peaceable enough.

“Sheriff? You need something?” he asked. “You ain’t at the hanging?”

“That’s in two days,” I said. “No, I’m just looking around, and I’m hoping you’ll answer a few questions for me, since I just don’t know much of anything about this outfit.”

He nodded, sort of wary, and laid a gob of spit at Critter’s hooves.

“Your bunch is in town waiting for the hanging, and they’re behaving themselves, far as I know.”

“Far as you know,” he said, a wicked twinkle in his eyes.

I sort of thought I might like the old boy. “Your boss is living in Rosie’s. Half your crew’s in there too. That and the Last Chance Saloon.”

“Yeah, that’s him all right. He’s gotta have a woman every hour of every day. Me, I got weary of that about age thirty, and I’ve been happier ever since.”

“Crayfish likes some women more than others?”

The old boy grinned. “Yep.”

I waited a while. The old guy was happy to have someone to talk to. They’d left him alone on the place for days and he was feeling the itch to flap his gums a little. “He wants women that have never seen the inside of a church and don’t ever plan to,” he said.

“What doesn’t he like about church ladies, Rudy?”

The feller just wheezed. “You’re a dumb-ass, Sheriff,” he said.

“Is it true he rented a few and brought them out here?”

Rudy Beaver stared into space. “I didn’t hear what you said, so it never was asked,” he said.

“I heard that his man Rocco rented some gals and brought them here.”

Rudy, he worked up a gob and spat it into the clay. “You looking for something, Sheriff?”

“Yes, there’s four graves out there.” I pointed toward the lonely hills to the north. “They’re girls Rocco brought here. Girls that never returned. The madams were told the girls hopped a stagecoach to Denver.”

Rudy Beaver was turning real quiet.

“You know something about it,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

“I didn’t have a thing to do with it. You done, Sheriff?”

“No, not done. Until this is cleared up, everyone on the place is under suspicion, and that includes you.”

“How’d you find out about it?”

“How’d you know about it, Rudy?”

“Rocco. He liked hinting at things.”

“Like killing girls?”

“I don’t think Rocco did it. I think the boss himself got tired of them and did it.”

“How’d they die?”

Rudy Beaver shrugged. “I never wanted to know.”

“Why did you hide this from the law? Why didn’t you come to town and tell me?”

“You don’t know nothing, Sheriff, and you didn’t learn a thing from me. Zat clear?”

“Did Crayfish kill Rocco?”

“No, that Bragg kid did it.”

“Why would the kid do that?”

“Beats me, Sheriff. But that Bragg kid solved all of Crayfish’s problems for him, including the calf-rustling of those Jonas boys.”

“Sure is wonderful, how King Bragg solved all of Crayfish’s problems, ain’t it?”

Rudy, he just wheezed and laughed and winked at me.

“That Double Plus brand I saw on some calves, is that Crayfish’s new brand?”

“It is now, because the Jonas boys sort of surrendered it.”

“So when we hang King Bragg, it’ll all be over. The killer got hanged. Crayfish won’t have anyone rustling his calves, and there won’t be anyone blackmailing him either.”

Rudy Beaver wheezed. “You’re a real card, Sheriff. Watch your back!”

“How do you know this stuff, Rudy?”

“Because I’m deaf and read lips mostly.”

“So nobody cares what they say around you?”

“Naw…Lookee here, Sheriff. I’m crazy and I made all this up.”

“Just imagining it, I guess.”

He peered right into my face. “Just thinking stuff up to pass the time. It sure is slow, nothing happening on the place. You get the picture? Just thinking stuff up. I’m crazy as a loon.”

“Crayfish, he’s a fine fellow, right?”

The old boy eyed me. “Nobody pays attention to a crazy old loon like me. Don’t you either. I’m half blind, half deaf, and half crazy, so what I think don’t matter none.”

“You see any of it? You see Catfish do anything to them girls?”

“Don’t even know what you’re talking about, dammit. Now you’re trespassing on private property. This is the T-Bar ranch, mister, so you just turn that horse around and get your skinny butt off the place.”

“How did Crayfish kill them women out there?”

“How should I know!”

“You like to imagine things. That’s what you said. So in your mind, when you’re thinking about stuff around here, how did Crayfish do it?”

“Bullwhip.”

That sure startled me some. I got so I could hardly sit on Critter. “Bullwhip? Whipping those girls he rented from the parlor houses? Whipping them to death?”

“Just my notions floating around in my head,” Rudy said. “Don’t matter none.”

“But you saw it happen? Saw Crayfish—”

“Naw, I’m the hear no evil see no evil do no evil monkey.” He laughed, and suddenly lifted the shotgun until its twin bores were poking straight at me.

“Okay, okay, I’m going,” I said.

“You never was here. I just think up things to pass the time away.”

“Okay, I never was here. See ya.”

I slowly wheeled Critter around, before he kicked Rudy to death, and we edged away. Them black bores of that scattergun sure made my back itch.

The shotgun blast startled me bad; Critter began pitching and screeching. I was lifted out of the saddle a couple of times, and then Critter started to whirl and fishtail and rear up and land hard.

But Rudy Beaver, he was wheezing and slapping his knee, and waving that shotgun all over the place. I looked around for bright red blood on me or Critter, but didn’t see nothing at all, just brown horse and a lot of me sitting on him. That buckshot had splintered some rough-sawn wood of a shed nearby.

“You ha! Hoo we! Har de har,” Beaver was yelling. He had pulled his ancient, sweat-stained hat off, and was flapping it as fast as he flapped his gums. “I bagged a sheriff!”

It didn’t take any encouragement from me for Critter to bolt out of there. I peered back, fearful that the old boy would be lifting that shotgun, and I’d have to shoot him, which I knew I could do. But Rudy Beaver had settled down, and was watching the sheriff of Puma County, Wyoming, skedaddle away from there.

If this was evidence, I reckoned that Judge Nippers would have no part of it. But it was something I’d sure tell Nippers about if he was sober enough to listen. I thought a little about sliding back there and nabbing the old boy and hauling into Doubtful and making him tell his story to the judge, but I knew by the time I’d gotten Rudy Beaver in front of the judge, he’d either act crazy or claim he didn’t know a thing. Which, come to think of it, might just be true.