William W. Johnstone (5 page)
Read William W. Johnstone Online
Authors: Massacre Mountain
Tags: #Murder, #Western Stories, #Wyoming, #Westerns, #Fiction, #Sheriffs - Wyoming, #General, #Mountain Life
He’d taken advantage of the show. No one was around the boardinghouse or out on the streets as long as Ralston’s place was filled up with folks. I’d started the day mad, and now I was mad all over again. Someone was after my job. And trying to make me look as bad as possible.
If Ike Berg hadn’t been sitting right there in front of me the whole show, I’d have gone after him. But in fact, I plain didn’t know who, or why.
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I did what I had to do. I walked over to the office and put the theft in the logbook. I don’t write so good, but I spelled out the letters and got it in. Anyone looking at the sheriff’s log would see a mess of trouble for the sheriff himself. He’d gotten himself robbed, had his horse stole, and now he’d lost his service revolver and other stuff in a rooming-house burglary.
I got the letters all spelled out and then sat in that lamplit place alone. Burtell was out, checking up on places. But he’d see the log when I got in and probably have a good laugh on the sheriff.
I sure wanted my gun back. It was an ordinary Peacemaker Colt in an ordinary holster. I’m good with a gun but I don’t much care what kind of weapon I’ve got as long as it’s easy to use. This here Colt of mine, it’d been put to use a few times, keeping the peace in Doubtful. It wasn’t filed down or slicked up. It didn’t have any work done on the trigger or the firing mechanism. That ain’t the way I use guns. When I need a gun I don’t much care if it’s fast or slow. I just want to get it aimed right and make sure it shoots true. All those fellers who work on slick holsters and fast draws are just finding ways to get themselves dead. That’s about the whole of it, too. Them that get reputations all end up under six feet of earth in a couple of years. I liked that revolver, with its forty-four caliber barrel and shells, and that’s all that needs saying. And now someone had it. Someone determined to push me out of my job, most likely. I’d get this solved one way or another, and then we’d see who might have the job, him or me. A stickup, a horse theft, and a burglary wasn’t exactly a recommendation for a sheriff job.
I waited a while for Burtell, but he was off and gone. I was worn out. I’d had a long evening, seen the first show I ever saw, hung around afterward to make sure the town was at peace, and then went to my room only to find myself the victim of a burglary. I thought about going to my room and getting some shut-eye, but the truth of it was that I was not going to sleep that night.
I picked up the sawed-off twelve-gauge from the rack, threw some shells in my pocket, and headed into the night. It was black and cool, with only a sliver of moon to light my way. I needed to walk my town. I needed to walk every street, pass by every house, and check the door of every business. Maybe it was because I was the one who’d been robbed, but the need in me was to be the protector of Doubtful, the guardian of the ones I disliked as well as the ones I liked, the peace officer walking his beat in the depths of the night so that the people behind all those dark windows and closed doors could rest peacefully. I don’t know where the need came from; it was just there, guiding me as I walked down Main, checking doors, studying windows. I’d do the south side first, because that was the poorer, the rowdier, the looser side, and then the north side, where the gentry lived in comfortable homes, with picket fences around them, and nice white privies behind big houses.
I was all alone. I wasn’t sure what the hour was, but it was well after midnight, and Doubtful had pulled its shades and was slumbering. I carried the shotgun in the crook of my arm, easy-like. I knew how to swing it up and aim it fast, if it came to that, but this wasn’t a night for that. I worked my way past Turk’s Livery Barn, and saw the darkness within, and a few horses standing in the pens, legs cocked, dozing. I shook the doors of a couple of stores, Alden’s Drygoods and Marcella’s Millinery. I came to the red brick walls of the bank, and the granite stairs leading to its front doors. It had been built for permanence, unlike the rest of Doubtful. There were places that looked like they’d blow away in the next wind.
The bank stared back at me, dark and cold and mean. This is where calculating men made hard decisions, and stared at columns of figures, and connived to ruin the rest of us. This was Hubert Sanders’s place, and from these granite steps he had demanded that I shut down the variety show and drive Ralston out of town, whether or not anyone had transgressed the law. I thought maybe Sanders wanted to live in a joyless world, where happiness was counted in figures and coin and bills. But now the bank was quiet. Its doors were secure. Its windows were black rectangles, vaguely reflecting the sliver of moon.
I was feeling better. This business of walking the streets of Doubtful to keep folks safe was lifting me up some, so I stopped thinking about the missing revolver and my room in a shambles. I’d find out who done it, and I’d keep looking, even if it took weeks or months. I was going to lock up someone and toss the key.
I worked my way east, rattling storefront doors, until I came to the saloon district. There was only one still lit, the Last Chance, where my friend Sammy Upward manned the bar. He was a good man most of the time, and kept an orderly house. If he didn’t complain about city taxes so much, we’d get along better. There sure wasn’t much light coming out of the single window. But there still were two horses standing at the hitch rail, legs cocked, waiting for the trip out to one ranch or another. I was fixing to go in when I spotted the drunk on the road, between the two horses, sprawled out flat, so the horses had a hard time keeping their hooves off him. Well, drunks was ordinary enough. I’d get him up and haul him to the nearest pool table, or maybe the pokey for the night. It would all depend.
I pushed them skittery horses apart and kneeled down over the man, who was lying on his stomach, his arms pitched outward under the nags.
“Hey, you, get your butt out of here,” I said. But there wasn’t no answer from this one. He’d had about six too many. I poked him a time or two, and he didn’t budge. He sure was drunk as a sergeant away from the fort.
“Well, all right,” I said.
I stepped into the saloon, where Sammy was polishing glasses and waiting for two ancient cowboys, so old they leaned into each other to stay on their stools, to finish up their suds.
“Sammy, I got a drunk out here,” I said.
“I plead guilty,” Sammy said. “I wouldn’t want one to leave here sober.”
He wiped his hands on his bartender apron, and followed me out to the street. I got this feller by the shoulders and Sammy got him by the feet. The drunk seemed stiff and cold, and I was having a few doubts about all this, but we lifted him up and toted him in, and laid him across a table, faceup.
He was looking almighty dead. And acting dead, too, by which I mean he was a cold flop, and there was some blood on his shirt, but in the lamplight it was hard to say for sure. He was dressed in a blue shirt and black broadcloth trousers, and had a trimmed, brown beard shot with gray. His boots looked pretty new. He was about fifty, but I’m not much good at putting the age to a face. His hands were soft and showed little sign of hard use or calluses. He had seen plenty of sun, and his flesh was darkened from outdoor living. He was clean-shaven but for some long sideburns.
“He don’t look very lively, Sheriff, Upward said. “In fact he looks more unlively than lively.”
“I think you got a point, Sammy.”
The barkeep produced a pocket mirror and held it to the drunk’s nostrils. It didn’t steam up none.
One of the two ancient cowboys at the bar toppled to the floor, and got up cursing. “You’re a sonofabitch, Sammy,” he said, peering up from the sawdust with rheumy eyes, and fingering his ancient, sweat-stained hat.
“Those your nags out there?” I asked.
“How should I know?” the one on the floor said.
“Don’t leave. I’ll talk to you later,” I said.
“That feller sure took on a load,” said the other cowboy.
“Was he in here?”
“Not as I remember,” the cowboy said.
“No, this man’s never been in here,” Sammy said. “He’d be a one for the Sampling Room, but not likely here. This isn’t the sort that comes in here. He’s got money, or some comfort anyway.”
“I think he’s pickled,” I said.
“Dead,” said Sammy, putting the mirror away. “Should I go for Doc Harrison?”
“Maybe we won’t need him,” I said, eyeing that nasty bloodstain spreading over the back of the man’s shirt. I tried to find a pulse and couldn’t. I noted that the man’s flesh was plenty cool. I laid my ear on his chest, and heard nothing.
“He’s gone, Cotton,” Sammy said.
I turned him slowly over to look at that wound in his back. The blood was caked around a wound below the ribs. I pulled the shirt up and exposed the injury, which appeared to be a stab wound.
“Knifed him,” Upward said.
I agreed. Someone had killed this party with a large knife, judging from the size of that cut, near here or even out in front of here. He was no one I’d seen in Doubtful before. I wondered whether he was connected to the Gildersleeve Variety Company. So, there was no more peace in Doubtful. I sure hated that. I’d kept the lid on for a long while, and now there was trouble, seemed like everywhere.
I pulled his pockets out, looking for a purse or something that would put a name to him. Except for a couple of two-bit pieces in his trousers, he had nothing in his pockets. No purse or billfold. Likely his purse got took by whoever stabbed him in the back.
“You think maybe he was with the show?” Sammy asked.
“I’m going to have to ask. That Mrs. Gildersleeve is over to the hotel, and she’s the one to tell me. I’m going to wake her up.”
“He don’t look like one of that traveling company,” Upward said. “They’re rough. The men got skin like leather, and the women more so. The roustabouts look like they came out of some mean place, like St. Louis or Memphis. All that company got flesh so hard you could turn it into alligator boots.”
“Mrs. Gildersleeve was traveling with a gent,” I said. “I hardly got a look at him, but this one fits the bill.”
I watched that cowboy clamber up on his barstool. The other one stared, his head in his hands, his elbows propping him up.
“You a couple of cowboys?” I asked.
“Cowboys? Cowboys? Scum of the earth, if you ask me,” said the wizened older one.
“Cooks, sir. Cooks, and don’t you forget it. I cook for the Admiral Ranch, and him, there, cooks for the Baker Ranch. And if you call me a cowboy again, I’ll skin you with a paring knife.”
“You cook a good meal, do you?”
“Absolutely not, Sheriff. It would offend the universe to treat cowboys to a good feed. The idea, Sheriff, is to produce hog slop for them rannies, and let them suffer.”
“Was this here body we took from under your horses there when you got here?”
“I never examine the manure, Sheriff.”
“Naw, he got there when we was drinkin’ in here,” said the other.
“That’s right,” Sammy said. “I’d have heard about it.”
“You know this dead man?”
“I wouldn’t want to know him. I refuse to know him. If I knew him I’d have to quit my job and go to Colorado.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because he’s dead drunk.”
I wasn’t getting anywhere with that pair, and they were too far gone to help. I thought of locking them up and questioning them when they had a morning headache, but thought better of it.
“All right, go on. If I need you I know where to get you,” I said.
They didn’t move. One was asleep, the other one nearly so.
“I gotta get Maxwell,” I said.
Upward shrugged. He woke his two customers and managed to steer them to the billiard table. I ducked out, headed across town, rang Maxwell’s gong, and he showed up at the door with a bull’s-eye lantern.
“Got an unidentified body at the Last Chance.”
Maxwell yawned. “You would, wouldn’t you?” he asked.
“I’ll be sending people over in the morning to get the story on him.”
“Who’s going to pay me?”
“You take your chances, Maxwell.”
The door slammed in my face. He would arrive with a handcart at the saloon in twenty minutes.
I was tired. I’d been held up, my horse stole, my room burglarized, and now I had a murder, all in two or three days. It was dark and mean as I made my way through the slumbering town to the sheriff’s office. Burtell was there, feet up, half asleep. He was startled when I walked in.
“We have a body, no name, no one from here,” I said.
“How’d that happen?”
“I found it walking the town. Where were you? Why weren’t you out?”
“Outhouse,” he said. “When a man has a bad bowel, he sits for hours in the outhouse. I spend half my life in an outhouse.”
“I’m going to bed,” I said. “You get out there, to Last Chance, and help Maxwell. I’ll put what I know into the log.”
He nodded, and headed into the deep dark night. I got a pencil ready, and did my best to get them words down, one letter at a time, like I learnt in sixth grade. “Unknown man kilt.” That’s all it took. I put my shotgun back on the rack and went to my room, hoping for some shut-eye.
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