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Authors: Massacre Mountain

Tags: #Murder, #Western Stories, #Wyoming, #Westerns, #Fiction, #Sheriffs - Wyoming, #General, #Mountain Life

BOOK: William W. Johnstone
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C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-THREE
 
It didn’t take but a few minutes before a mess of them officials trooped in. Hubert Sanders was leading the pack, and right behind him were Puma County’s virtuous politicians, Reggie Thimble and Ziggy Camp, along with Mayor George Waller, and Lawyer Stokes.
It was the attorney who started the grilling.
“Where’d you get this?”
“In the undies,” I said.
“Where’s the gold?”
“I haven’t the faintest notion, but I think I know who got it.”
“Who got it?”
“Your former employees Ike Berg and Luke the Butcher.”
“Why haven’t you arrested them?”
“Well, it’s on my mind.”
“You don’t have a mind. Go get them.”
“Wait!” said Sanders. “I need him here to guard this cash. I have no safe. Its door won’t shut. These bills are naked to the world.”
“You could store it in a jail cell until you get a new safe,” Rusty said.
“I don’t want bedbugs eating the new fifties,” Sanders said.
“You just give it all to Delphinium,” I said. “She can tuck it down her dress and no one will ever get it.”
“Thimble, fire that man,” Sanders said.
“Actually, that’s a good idea, Hubert. You just give the bills to Mrs. Sanders and they’ll be safe as Gibraltar,” Reggie Thimble said.
“That’s the first intelligent thing ever to issue from Pickens’s mouth,” Ziggy Camp said.
“My ma used to say that nothing could ever get into a whalebone corset,” I said. “Of course she was talking about men.”
“You’ve insulted my wife,” Sanders said.
“Well, she’ll keep all them fifties warm,” I said. “Nothing like hot money.”
The banker knew we had a case, but Stokes had another idea. “We’ll give it to the postmaster. Alphonse Smythe has a small lockbox.”
“You could keep it in the rear cell, next to the guncotton,” Rusty said.
“Guncotton!”
“Yep, guncotton and blasting oil, taken off of the late Jardine. If he’d been shot ten inches lower, it would’ve blown up the robbers.”
“Why isn’t it three miles out of town?” Stokes asked, real lawyerly.
“Maybe some drunk will polish it off,” Rusty said. “He’ll think it’s Old Crabapple. Schnapps. He could blast himself to smithereens if he lights up a cheroot.”
“Guncotton? Doesn’t that stuff blow if someone looks at it cross-eyed?” Camp asked.
“I’ll show you,” I said, heading toward the cells.
“I’m getting outta here,” Thimble said.
“So am I,” I said. “I have to find them two and get the gold.”
“Oh no, you don’t. I’ve got no place to keep it secure. You wait until they deliver a new safe to my bank,” Sanders said.
“You don’t want me to fetch Iceberg and the Butcher in?”
All them politicians, they just stared at each other.
“You don’t want me to arrest them? Get the gold they took?”
“Of course we do,” Camp said. “Arrest those crooks and get the gold back.”
“You should have done it already,” Thimble said. “You’ve done a half-assed job. That’s been the whole trouble with you all along. If you’d done it right, you would have come back with all the loot, not just part of it.”
“You want to join my posse?” I asked.
“I’m sure you can manage, Pickens.”
“I’d like you and Lawyer Stokes on my posse,” I said. “Politicians make the best posse of all.”
“What for?” asked Lawyer Stokes.
“So you can talk Iceberg and the Butcher into giving up.”
“Yes, I’d be excellent at that,” the attorney said. “But I have a lame knee and can’t ride more than a few minutes.”
“I’ve got bursitis of my elbows,” Ziggy Camp said. “Doc Harrison tells me not to board a horse for the next three years.”
“I’m subject to seizures on horseback,” Reggie Thimble said. “It’s the saddest thing. I get onto a nag and get all seized up. Doc Harrison says it’s congenital.”
“I need to keep Doubtful prosperous and moral,” said Mayor Waller. “What would Doubtful do without me?”
With that, them pols quit me and headed into the bright day.
Rusty, he was smirking at me.
“Guess I’m still a one-man posse,” I said.
“Before you go, you got any notion of how all this worked?” Rusty asked. “We got greenbacks, a blown safe, undies, and guncotton.”
“I don’t know yet. It looks like Jardine slid out of a show when most of the town was in the opera house, and cracked the safe, and hid the cash in those satchels of undies, and the gold in the false bottom of the boot.”
“You think that whole company was crooked?”
I got up and pulled gray undies out of them bags. “These are just rags or spares. I don’t think these belonged to anyone at all except Jardine,” I said.
“Are you an expert on undies?”
Rusty had me there, but I seen a bunch of my ma’s, and they were cleaner because she washed them regular.
“These here are grimy,” I said.
“Showgirls are grimy,” Rusty said.
“No, not Ambrosia. She was clean. I think showgirls aren’t grimy. Too many people would see the dirt. You can’t expose acres of grimy flesh.”
“You got me there,” Rusty said.
“I think Jardine owned all of these satchels and trunks, and he told people they were all for spare clothing for his show, but he really wanted them to hide his loot.”
“Didn’t work this time. He’s dead. Iceberg figured out where he kept the gold and they got it and didn’t hardly look for the greenbacks.”
“Iceberg’s real smart,” I said. “He got ahead of me on Jardine. I thought the little twerp was up and up.”
“Yeah, and you thought Iceberg was up and up.”
“I never laid claim to smart,” I said, feeling tetchy.
“You going out now? Get the gold?”
“I’m the posse. It’s not the gold that gets to me. It’s two murders, killing my horse Critter, which is pretty near a third murder, and robbing me and the stagecoach and all. If I get the gold, that’s fine. But whoever killed Critter, he’s going to swing.”
That reminded me that Turk’s miracle horse was still tied to the hitch rail.
“I’ll see you around,” I said.
“I’ve got to watch this,” Rusty said.
“No, you don’t. You go play with the guncotton. Get yourself blown to bits.”
I stepped out and eyed that yeller brokentooth nag, and looked him over real good. He stared back and yawned. I anchored my bedroll behind the cantle, and decided I was as ready as I’d ever get. So I untied the reins and stepped aboard, and he took off, crow-hopping, whirling, bucking, lifting me straight out of the saddle and letting me crash down just when he was coming up again. I was hurting, and thought I’d get pitched half up the office stairs. I was getting a little put out.
“Jesus Mary Joseph!” I hollered.
The miracle horse quieted right down. The nag rotated his ears back, checking to hear any further instruction. Rusty, he just shook his head and went back inside to flirt with the nitro.
Turk’s nag swung his head around and gave me the eye, and then we trotted smartly out of town.
I took him out that same road and when we got to the robbery site, I began running circles, looking for hoofprints leading in and out of there. It was pretty dry and hot, and I didn’t scare up much at first, but I kept spiraling outward and finally did connect with some faint tracks out of the north, maybe up around Douglas or Casper or somewhere over there. There sure was a mess of open country around there, and looking for them two bastards would be like hunting mosquitos.
But then the tracks began to curve west, and finally southwest toward Medicine Bow County, where Sheriff Ike Berg once was the law. There appeared to be three sets of prints, one with narrow hooves, probably a pack mule. So Berg was heading for home turf. I wondered if he was still sheriff down there. I hadn’t heard a thing.
That sure was a lonely ride. I was working toward a gold sunset through a vast land, with distant mountain ranges and arid flats sliced by washes where anyone could hide. A feller who wasn’t watchful could get into trouble fast. In fact, a watchful feller could, too. In that country, human beings were ants crawling over a giant land.
I lost the trail now and then, when cattle stomped it out, but I knew where them two was heading. Medicine City, Ike Berg’s old haunt, where he was sheriff for years. Maybe he’d got his job back after trying for mine. That was a horrifying thought. Ike Berg had gone bad, and he never had been good. I kept on going, heading for Medicine City now, and not worrying about hunting down hoofprints. I crossed the line somewhere in there, and now my Puma County badge was no good so I pocketed it. If Berg was wearing a star, he’d have the law on his side, such as it was. In Medicine Bow County, he was about the only law around, so he always did what he felt like doing.
It was a long, lonely ride, and I wished I was back in Doubtful and enjoying a nice day at the jail. I rode straight over a long hogback and descended into the broad valley where Medicine City slumbered. It mostly catered to ranch owners. It was just about the deadest place in Wyoming. It was half desert and half jackrabbit. The people there all tried suicide after a few months, and some succeeded. Thanks to Berg, there wasn’t even a saloon, and the only restaurant in town opened for lunch and then quit so the owner could go home for supper. There wasn’t even a church because no one felt the need. Someone in Medicine City had an alkali spring and bottled the water as a tonic. That’s how the town got its name. It was supposed to improve the bowels and bring a little color to the flesh. The population of Medicine City was growing a bit because word got around that it cured melancholia. All them that felt blue gravitated there, hoping to improve, but once they got there they discovered they was no different than anyone else. It’d been ten years since anyone happy had lived in Medicine City.
I rode in there to the sound of silence. Even the June breeze kept its mouth shut. There wasn’t a mutt around, but maybe I could find a black widow spider. Medicine City had no small children, so it had no schools. Women were scarce. I rode straight down the main drag, since there wasn’t hardly no side streets. Medicine City was just a single stretch of false-front whitewashed wooden structures, plus the town cemetery that was mostly empty and full of weeds. Half them structures had nothing in them but packrats. But down at the far end was the log courthouse of Medicine Bow County, and a stuccoed-up jailhouse that was where Ike Berg sheriffed, or used to. He might be in there, so I looked around real sharp before I steered that livery stable nag over to the hitch rail.
If he was in there, I was going to arrest him and ditto for the Butcher, and it didn’t matter that my star was no good here. I didn’t know how I’d get them back to Puma County, but I would. I tied up that nag and eased toward a barred window and peered in real quick. There was some fat fellow sitting in there, his boots on the desk, his spurs dug into the top. It wasn’t anyone I was looking for, but maybe that was good. I saw a square badge on him, the kind mostly wore by deputies. That was good, too.
So I meandered in there and took the measure of the man, who eyed me like I was a tarantula.
“I’m looking for Ike Berg,” I said.
“Not here.”
“Where is he?”
“Took a leave.”
“He the sheriff?”
“Imagine so; he ain’t said otherwise.”
“You seen a blocky fellow known as Luke the Butcher?”
“He ain’t around either.”
“What’s your name?”
“Ernest Howitzer.”
“I’m, ah, Cotton Pickens. Sheriff over in Puma County.”
“No, you ain’t. You’re a horse thief.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That there horse. That’s the best known horse in Wyoming.”
“That’s a Turk’s Livery Barn nag.”
“No, that’s Jesus Mary Joseph, and you’ve took him. You’re under arrest.”
“Took him! Turk rented him to me.”
“You stole the most famous horse in history.”
He had a six-gun out and aimed at my bellybutton almost before I could get a handle on what was happening.
“Get in there,” he said, nodding me toward the single iron-barred cell.
This wasn’t the way I thought it’d play out.
C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-FOUR
 
I gave that feller the evil eye. My ma used to give me the evil eye, and it reduced me to butter every time. So I stared at him without a blink, fixing my glare right on his fat carcass.
“You know who I am? I’m the sheriff of Puma County. And if you discharge that piece in my direction, you’ll swing.”
He wavered a moment.
“I’m going to reach real slow inside my shirt pocket. And I’m going to pull out a star. And I’m going to pin the star on my shirt.”
I did so, wondering if the beebee-brain would shoot. But he didn’t. And pretty quick he saw the star that said Sheriff Puma County Wyoming on it, and slowly lowered his piece.
“How come you got that horse? There’s a reward for that horse,” he said.
“That’s news to me,” I said.
“I’ve always wanted to ride that horse. I’ve heard about it for three years. That horse has started more bar fights and saloon brawls than any horse alive.”
“You want to ride him? Let’s go out and you can ride him.”
Howitzer looked hesitant. “He sort of kills, don’t he?”
“Yep.”
“He sort of bites, don’t he?”
“Yep.”
“When you land on the saddlehorn your privates are done for, ain’t they?”
“That’s the horse, all right.”
Howitzer sighed. “I’m a fool,” he said.
He arose from his chair and we headed out to the clay road, and I undid the reins from the hitching post and handed them to him. He looked a little green, but he was game.
He stepped aboard, and that nag erupted like nothing I’d ever seen before, crow-hopping, whirling, knocking Howitzer upward, and meeting him coming down, just one bad crash after another.
“Jesus Mary Joseph!” Howitzer yelled, and that miracle nag, it quit right there, midair, and a couple seconds later that horse was the gentlest piece of horseflesh in Medicine Bow County. Howitzer rode him up and down and around, and the horse responded instantly, just as sweet as it gets. Finally, Howitzer rode him back to the rail and got off and tied the reins to the hitching post, shaking his head.
“I’ve been waiting all my life for that,” he said. “Now I got a story to tell. But no one will believe it. That’s the trouble with this town. No one believes anything.”
He headed back inside where it was cooler, and we settled down.
“You want some java? I could make some.”
“It gives me the fits except early in the morning,” I said.
“Sends me to the outhouse,” Howitzer said.
“You the law here now?” I asked.
“Yep. Until Sheriff Berg gets back, but there’s some wondering if he will. He put me in charge and took off and said he was taking a break for a few weeks, and that’s the last anyone’s seen of him. So I’m it. I’ve got the whole county and I don’t even have a deputy of my own. So I keep office ten hours a day and there’s no law the other fourteen.”
“That’s the way law should be,” I said. “My theory is that criminals should all do their stuff by daylight so everyone can sleep at night.”
Howitzer sighed. “No one’s even woke me up since I’ve been filling this chair.”
“Well, maybe Medicine Bow County’s got no criminals in it.”
“That’s an entertaining idea,” he said.
“I’m looking for a gent named Luke the Butcher. I’ve got a score to settle with him.”
“Oh, him. He was in that cell there, and one day Ike Berg let him loose. I’ve never seen him since.”
“What was he in for?”
Howitzer laughed. “You name it, you got it.”
“And Berg let him out?”
Howitzer just sighed. “In one day, out the next.”
“Was he actually a butcher?”
“That’s his trade. But he got to carving on a lot more than beef. He cut the ears off some rancher he didn’t like, and killed a few cows.”
“Rustler?”
“Oh, sort of. Mostly he wanted supper and if one wasn’t on a plate in front of him, he went off and butchered his supper.”
“Did Berg ever say why he sprung him?”
“Nary a word, Pickens. Ike Berg, he just kept his mouth shut. He never spoke more than two words to anyone. He just ghosted around the county, and maybe still is. He’s my boss. He could take my badge back.”
“Did he say where he was going when he left?”
“Nope. He was the quietest man around.”
“If them two show up here, would you mind putting them in that cell?”
“You got warrants?”
“Nope, but I got a grudge or two. And if I rattle the Butcher hard enough, I’ll shake a couple of murders out of him. Over in my county.”
“Why do I believe you?” Howitzer asked.
“He butchered my horse. So I’m looking to butcher him.”
“What am I gonna do about that horse out there? There’s a five-hundred-dollar reward for him. Down to Laramie, that’s where the owner is.” He showed me a reward sheet with a description of the miracle horse in large print. That was the horse, all right.
The bad thing was, I wanted to keep him. He was my kind of horse. Except for Critter, I never had a better one. But if the nag was stolen, I plain couldn’t keep him.
“You got a horse for me? One I can give to the livery-barn man in Doubtful?”
“What are you looking at?”
“You give me a real good horse, you take this one and get him back to the owner and collect your five hundred. You buy yourself a new horse.”
“You mean you won’t ride him down there yourself?”
“I got things to do,” I said. “The horse you give me’s got to be as good as that one out there. It’s going to the livery man who rented that one to me. And I want that dodger so I can show him it was a stolen horse he couldn’t keep.”
Howitzer stared outside, stared at the nag, stared at me. “All right, dammit,” he said.
“And you write it up good,” I added. “And I’d better like the one you’re going to give me or it’s no deal.”
He wrote out a bill of sale for a three-year-old gelding, in that curvy longhand.
“You mind reading that to me?” I asked. “My eyesight is a bit weak.”
“I, Ernest Howitzer, sell a three-year-old red roan gelding with a slash-Q brand on left thigh to Sheriff Cotton Pickens,” he read.
“Let’s go see your nag.”
We hiked over to a place with a weathered sign that said H
ORSES
B
OUGHT AND
S
OLD
, B
OARDED AND
R
ENTED
, R
AMBO
M
CCOY
,
Prop.
There wasn’t hardly anyone in there, and not many nags either. Medicine City was giving me the willies. Howitzer headed for a stall with a strawberry roan in it, bridled him, and backed him out. It was a decent-looking nag except for a roman nose. The deputy saddled him up and handed the reins to me.
I looked at the hooves first, and the hocks. An unsound horse wasn’t worth beans to anyone. This one was well-shod, had no hoof cracks, no splints, no trouble that I could see. I got onto him, and rode him away from the stable, and the nag didn’t fight me. I rode him up that desolate main drag, and the horse moved along, shifting gaits when I put heel to flank, and at the edge of town I settled him into a lope for a while. He wasn’t smooth, and bounced me some, but he’d do. So I took him back and shook hands with the deputy. We switched saddles, and I was fixing to ride out of that cussed town when I saw a nag in the pen in the back that plain shook me. I swore I was studying Critter. I walked out to the pen and eyed that beast. He was younger, maybe a three-year-old. He sure stabbed at something in my heart.
“You know anything about him?”
“He’s mine. Greenbroke, just started.”
“He looks like one of mine, got killed a while ago.”
“Klled?”
“Throat cut by Luke the Butcher.”
“You know that for sure?”
He had me there. I didn’t know it for sure. “Nope,” I said.
“You want that one?”
“I can’t afford a horse now. I got robbed in Doubtful and I might not have a job for long.”
“He’s yours if you want him.”
I started to shake my head, but Howitzer pressed on. “Take him. I’m collecting the five hundred reward, and that’s enough to buy me two good horses and have half left over.”
I stared at that young critter, feeling real strange. It was like maybe I’d betray the real Critter if I took this one.
“Ride him if you want,” Howitzer said.
We saddled him up, and he was sort of dumb, but I didn’t mind. I pulled and hauled him around for ten minutes. He didn’t pitch. He was eager. Next I knew, I had another bill of sale in hand and a horse that might turn into a new Critter if I was lucky. That new one wouldn’t replace Critter; nothing could. Critter was one of a kind. But we have to get past what we’ve lost and get on with life, and this new one might work out.
I got another bill of sale out of Howitzer, and he threw in a halter and a lead rope, and I was ready to ditch that place. I wouldn’t recommend Medicine City to anyone except maybe Hubert Sanders. In fact, I thought I’d tell him to move his bank over there.
“Deputy, if you see Luke the Butcher around here, would you send for me?”
“If you want him, I’ll make sure you get him.”
“I do,” I said. “Real bad.”
We shook on it.
I eyed that yellow miracle horse, which was still tied at the hitch rail.
“You’re not worth five hundred,” I said.
Jesus Mary Joseph yawned.
I rode out of Medicine City leading the horse, wondering if I should call him Critter. I decided I’d wait. The real Critter was real ornery, and if this one wasn’t I sure wasn’t going to give him the same name.
I didn’t find my quarry around there, but I’d keep looking. Somewhere around there was a crooked sheriff and a common criminal. I kept a sharp eye out, but knew my chances were pretty slim. The strawberry roan was a good horse, and Turk would be pleased to get a trade for the stolen nag. It would be two days of hard riding to get back to Doubtful, and I’d have to find a meal somewhere or ride on a real empty belly. I got into the rhythm of it, eating up the miles. Wyoming was a big and good land, with great arid flats and forested mountains. I got as far as the Puma County line that day, camped at an alkali spring that would clean out my innards, and spent a hungry night while the horses grazed on thin, short grass around the spring. The next dawn I got off fast, knowing it would be a hot day and Wyoming could turn into a frying pan fast. Them days I’d just as soon move to Canada.
So I took off at first light and we covered ground fast until mid-morning, when it got heated up and the horizons shimmered and the horses began to drag. I kept going at a real slow pace, and made it to Doubtful early afternoon, while it was so hot that not even a dog was out.
Rusty, he was sleeping in my chair, and woke up with a start as I came in.
“How’d the posse go?” he asked.
“It didn’t,” I said. “What’s new here?”
“The new show, Royal Arabian Nights, came in. And Ambrosia’s in it. She said she hired on as a harem wife.”
“She’s gonna be wearing something this time?”
“Not much. They open tonight and we can find out.”
I remembered the playbills plastered all over Puma County, announcing Sheik Barbousse, his fourteen wives and twelve eunuchs, belly dancers, sword-swallowers, fire-eaters, jugglers, and the Masked Executioner. There wasn’t anything like that ever come to Doubtful before. I mostly wanted to know how all them wives shared one sheik. It must have wore the fellow out.
I sucked up some fresh water and led them nags over to Turk’s Livery Barn. He saw me coming and stared at one nag and then the other.
“Jesus Mary Joseph was a stolen horse,” I said, “but I got you another.”
It took some explaining and I showed him the flyer. He eyed the strawberry roan, rode him a little, accepted the bill of sale, and nodded. That was as much of a thanks as I’d ever get out of Turk. He’d done real good. I arranged to board the colt.
“He looks like Critter, all right,” Turk allowed.
“I ain’t named him yet. If he’s as ornery as Critter, I might call him Critter. If he ain’t, I’ll name him Apples. Making apples is all he’s good for.”
“You catch any criminals?” Turk asked.
“They’re still loose,” I said.
“Maybe the new show’s full of ’em,” he said.
“I’m going to fetch a nap and then find out,” I said.

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