Savage Guns Read online

  I wasn’t too pleased with that. This here day started out with a Bragg, and was ending with a Bragg.

  I sensed her steer her nag close in. I kept my six-gun in my hand, just in case this was another abduction. I wasn’t gonna let any more Braggs haul me to any more hanging trees.

  But she settled in beside, and I could sort of make her out in the dark. Everything I knew about her was gossip, because she’d never given me the time of day. The story was, she was another high-handed Bragg, like her old man, only worse.

  I didn’t say nothing, and let her ride beside for a while. We were sort of taking the measure of each other. I knew what would come next. Another demand. Braggs never asked anyone for anything. She’d demand that I stop the hanging.

  “I’m sorry my father did that to you,” she said.

  I pretty near fell off Critter. I’d never heard a Bragg apologize for anything, not even a fart.

  “I don’t ask you to forgive him, or me,” she said. “It’s his way, and it’s what got King into trouble, and why I don’t have friends.”

  I just grunted something. I don’t come up with words very good.

  “He shouldn’t have shot at you in the outhouse. That was reckless. And it wasn’t necessary.”

  I could hardly believe my ears. Here I was, listening to a Bragg actin’ halfway civilized.

  “It sure was reckless. What if I’d been standing up and getting my pants up? I’d be dead.”

  “I know,” she said. “They laughed about it. They know you usually sit for twenty minutes reading the Montgomery Ward catalog.”

  I sure didn’t have any handle about how this was going to play out. Critter, he kept eying the mare like he was going to bite it, which he probably would pretty soon. But I just reined his head away a little, and let the two nags pick their way through the black night.

  “You sure you’re Queen Bragg?” I asked, not really believing.

  “I’m Queen. And I’m apologizing.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that.

  She laughed. “It doesn’t figure, does it?”

  I shook my head, and then realized she couldn’t see it. “Always a first time,” I said.

  “And I’m sorry he tried to scare you half to death with that noose and the whole hanging. And I’m sorry he’s pushing you the way he is. You must be angry.”

  “All in a day’s work,” I said.

  “I don’t think the way my father does. We all want to enlist your help, but he thinks you’ve got to be pushed.”

  “I don’t get enlisted,” I said. “I do my job and try to do it right.”

  “That’s what I told Admiral. But he just smiled, like I was some simpleton girl, and said, ‘Well, look at him now. He’s got the case wide open and talking to everyone that was caught in it. Scare a man enough to wet his pants, and he’ll do his best for you.’ I don’t agree.”

  “Well, in fact he got me running, all right.”

  “Yes, you’ve talked to the barman, Upward, and to King in jail, and to Crayfish Ruble this evening. Did you find out anything?”

  “Enough to make me itchy is all.”

  “You’ve got two weeks to be itchy, and then King dies,” she said.

  “How come you’re here? Scaring me in the night?”

  “To ask you to keep looking. To thank you for doing what you can do.”

  That sure wasn’t the usual Bragg talk. Braggs never asked anything of anyone. And no living person ever heard a Bragg say thanks.

  “And to tell you I apologize for all of us.”

  I didn’t much like it. I’d like it if all the Braggs were the same type, and I could count on ’em to be ornery.

  “All right, you run along now, and don’t point loaded Greeners at lawmen. It ain’t right, and you’re lucky I’m not hauling you in and tossing you in with your brother.”

  “Why are you itchy?” she asked, gently ignoring me.

  “Some things don’t match up with the trial. Like King saying he don’t remember none of it. Like Crayfish in an uproar at the trial about the death of three of his best men, and demanding fast justice—at the same time he let the county put them dead bodies in a potter’s field, and he never did try to find their next of kin. It’s all nothing, just Ruble being his usual self. But it makes me scratchy.”

  We reached the turnoff to the Anchor Ranch, her place, which she recognized a lot better than me, and she drew up her mare there.

  “I guess this is where we part,” she said.

  I was sure uncomfortable, and itching to get back to Doubtful.

  Then she leaned over, until she was half out of her saddle, and I grabbed for my six-gun not knowing what came next. But it was a quick kiss on the cheek. One quick peck on my stubble, and then she turned her nag into her lane, and I found myself rubbing my cheek, like I had been branded.

  SEVEN

  I cussed Queen Bragg clear back to Doubtful. I thought I had all them Braggs figured out. But she was running against form. I imagine I was the first person on earth to hear a Bragg ask for something, or hear an apology from a Bragg. It made me feel cranky. Just when I thought I knew something, it turned out I didn’t. I tried to think what my ma or pa would say about that, but I came up with nothing. They likely never heard of someone goin’ against the grain.

  It was bad enough that she apologized, but worse, she kissed me. Maybe it was just a swift peck, but it was a kiss, all right. Last time she got that close to a male, she beat him with a riding crop. I guessed she’d beat me with one soon enough. She’d do anything to get the sheriff to reopen the case. That’s all there was to it. Absolutely nothing more. Just another Jezebel stirring a man up.

  I put Critter in the livery barn. It sure was dark in there in the small hours of the night. I didn’t know what time, only that Doubtful was quiet and peaceful. Critter was out of sorts himself, having got ridden too long, and cussed out. Between cussing at Queen, I was cussing at Critter and tellin’ him he was about ready to get hisself sold at the next auction. He bit me as I was hauling the saddle off his back, so I got kissed and bit in the same day I got shot at and hanged. Or hung. I called it hung, no matter what Crayfish Ruble thought. I didn’t give a hang.

  I found the door locked, which was good. I banged on it until Rusty slid open the peep.

  “Lemme in,” I said.

  “You could say please,” he said from the other side of that massive door. He swung it open, and first thing I saw was the big old Dragoon Colt in his hand. He seemed to favor that antique. That was good too.

  He had a lamp lit at the rolltop desk, but the rest of my office was pitch dark.

  “All right, you can go home,” I barked.

  “You mad at something?”

  “No, it was a good ride, and now I’m here. Go home.”

  He shoved that cannon back into its holster. “Quiet here too,” he said.

  “Prisoner quiet?”

  “Sleeping, last I knew.” He stared at me. “What’s wrong?”

  “Don’t ever trust a woman. You think you know a woman and she’s the exact opposite.”

  “You run into a woman?”

  “She run into me.”

  “What’s the deal, Cotton?”

  “Never mind. It ain’t nothing. Now git.”

  “You could thank a man for staying late and putting in extra.”

  “I never thank anyone. You done your duty, so you’re dismissed.”

  Rusty smiled. “It’s a woman,” he said. He collected his gray felt Stetson and headed into the night. I slammed the door behind him and latched it tight as it would go.

  There was not much night left, but I could snatch an hour or two in the other cell. And I’d be ornery all day. I checked for messages, but it had been a quiet night. And nothing on the log either. No drunks spent the night sleeping it off; no cat burglars snatched any woman’s brooch. No one busted into the hardware and stole all the shotguns.

  It was chill in there, but it wouldn’t m
atter. I’d pull a jail blanket over me and settle down. I put the cell key in my britches, so I wouldn’t lock myself in. Them bunks was nothing but a sheet of metal, but I’d slept on worse. So I peered into the other cell, which was murky black, and then lowered myself. Cold iron ain’t exactly a comfort, but I was so tired it didn’t matter none.

  “You were talking about my sister.”

  That was King Bragg. I peered into the murk. He was standing in the cell across the aisle, his hands on the bars.

  “Yeah, Queen. She pulled a Greener on me.”

  “For what?”

  “So she could talk. I can’t figure you Braggs out.”

  “Neither can I,” King said. “But she’s breaking the mold. Maybe she’s the lucky one. I got stamped in my father’s cookie cutter. I’ve never asked anyone for anything, and I never will.”

  I was tired and out of sorts but he stood there waiting, and I needed someone to talk to, so it might as well be him. “She said she was sorry about what your pa did, shooting and hanging me, and she asked me to help you if I would. Now ain’t that something?”

  “It runs contrary,” King said. “Pa always told us never to apologize.”

  “It was like an earthquake. A Bragg apologizin’ to me. Asking for help. In all my years, I never heard of it.”

  “You’re not old. Just a few years older than I was.”

  He was calling himself was. It fit.

  “I’m getting some rest now. I rode out for a little talk with Ruble. It didn’t come to much.”

  “In a few days you’ll walk me out to the courtyard and up some steps. There won’t be a thing I can do about it. If I don’t walk, you’ll carry me. If I don’t want to go, I’ll be taken. And my hands will be tied behind me, so I’ll be helpless. Then you’ll put the hemp noose over me and tighten it some and turn it off a little so it breaks my neck clean. Then I’ll feel the floor go out from under me, and I’ll fall fast and then there’ll be a crack, and then nothing. A flash of pain and then nothing. No heaven, no hell, no hearing birds sing in the morning. I just turned eighteen. And that’s as far as it went.”

  I felt bad, and wanted to tell him to shut up, but I just lay there. I didn’t feel much better about it than he did.

  “Are you satisfied I did it?”

  “I ain’t heard nothing to the contrary.”

  I sure wasn’t enjoying this.

  “Maybe I did it. I don’t know. I have no memory of it.”

  “The court heard you were fallin’-down drunk.”

  “I’d had one or two. I wasn’t falling down. But next I knew, I was on the floor looking up. People standing over me. Gunsmoke in the air. They were checking my six-gun, and said all six rounds got fired. And there were three dead.”

  I didn’t say nothing. He was working up to pleading that he didn’t do it. I’d heard that song a few times.

  “You know them three? Rocco and Foxy and Weasel?”

  “No. But they were T-Bar riders. Everyone in there’s T-Bar.”

  “Tough customers. Some wanted dodgers on them. I looked through all them dodgers come into this office, and they weren’t upright citizens.”

  “Why did I shoot them?”

  “You asking me, boy? Answer it yourself.”

  “The Jonas boys were horse thieves and rustlers. Rocco was a con man, crook, ravisher of women, and things like that. They tell me that’s why I shot them. If I did. Somehow I supposedly knew all that, and went in there and killed them, just like that. And never popped a shot at the regular T-Bar cowboys.”

  “That’s how the testimony went, King.”

  “I guess I knew more than I thought I did, killing off three crooks.”

  “Guess you did. Your pa, he must’ve given you the scoop on them three.”

  “No.”

  “Then someone else did.”

  He sighed. “It doesn’t make any difference. When you’ve got a few days left, it doesn’t matter. I don’t know what happened, and that’s how I’ll die.”

  “Who else was in the Last Chance?”

  “I don’t know, Sheriff. I walked in, asked for a drink from Upward, he hands one to me, and I don’t remember the rest.”

  “I guess there’s fellers who blank out, get just enough sauce in them.”

  “Maybe I deserve hanging,” he said.

  “Not for me to say, King.”

  He didn’t reply. I could see he wasn’t standing at the bars any more.

  I didn’t like lying there in the same jail room with him, so I took the jail blanket with me and settled into my swivel chair and tried for some shut-eye. It wasn’t far from dawn anyway, and I might as well look a little like I was on duty.

  But I didn’t like sitting there in the office with him back in the cell. What he did, he did, but maybe he wasn’t even aware of it. Didn’t give them kilt men a life back, but maybe he didn’t know what he was doing. Maybe they should have shipped him to the asylum instead of hanging him. I couldn’t say. I was as helpless as he was. In a few days I’d have to do stuff I didn’t want to do. I wouldn’t want to tie his hands behind him, lead him out to the courtyard, and up them steps. But I had to do it, just as he had to submit to it.

  I quit thinkin’ like that. His pa, Admiral Bragg, he’d tried to scare the bejesus out of me just one morning ago. Pretty near did me in. Let the boy hang. Hang all the Braggs, Queen too, and the world would be a better place.

  I got under that blanket in the chair, but pretty quick, there was hammering, and I let DeGraff in. He pitched his hat onto a peg—a trick I never could master.

  “How come you’re here, Cotton?”

  “How many times do I tell you, don’t Cotton me. Just call me Sheriff. I never liked the name that got hung on me, and hold it against my parents. They were okay in the rest, except Pa never earned nothing, but they hung that name on me and I’d just as soon trade it.”

  He grinned. “How come you’re here, Cotton?”

  He was bein’ inflammatory, and he knew it.

  “I been riding,” I said.

  “Story is, you get held up by Queen,” he said.

  “Word sure gets around,” I said. “A man can’t take a leak in Doubtful but everyone knows about it.”

  DeGraff poured some ancient java from the speckled blue pot, which hadn’t had a fire under it for days, and began sipping. He saw the cell block door was closed, and then settled close.

  “I wandered into the Last Chance last night, just to give it the eyeball, and Upward nodded to me sort of strange. It was full of T-Bar men, and they were all sucking beers, one or two sipping red-eye, and mighty quiet. None of them had hung up their artillery either. It was all just dangling from their waists, not on the pegs Upward put in the wall. It was peaceful enough, except that it was all-fired quiet. I just smiled a bit and went out, and hung around under a porch in shadow, and pretty soon they came out of there, got on their nags, and rode out. There was maybe ten of them.”

  I waited for more, and sure enough, it was coming.

  “I let ’em go. They wasn’t causing trouble, and they was heading out. But I was a little curious, so I slipped back in there later. Just a couple of old soaks in there then, trying to blot out what’s left of themselves. Well, Cotton, I leaned into the bar and asked Upward what it was about, and he just smiled.

  “But then he fessed up. Them T-Bar men, they were doing a little practice run. One of these moments they’re going to hit the jail, drag King Bragg out, and lynch him at the nearest cottonwood tree.”

  “Upward told you this?”

  “He did, while polishing the bar top like he always does when he’s talking. And one more thing. He said word is out that Bragg’s putting some heat on you to free the boy. If you keep poking around, trying to open a closed case, then the T-Bar will settle the case its own way. With its own rope. Just a little warning, was how Upward put it. You quit poking around, and they won’t break down the jail door.”

  “That makes two bunche
s wanting to bust in,” I said. “Bragg wants to spring the boy and get him out of Wyoming. And this Ruble bunch wants to speed up justice a few days. I imagine we got our hands full. You up to it?”

  “I always knew I’d get myself kilt,” he said.

  EIGHT

  I got a little shut-eye, not half enough, and headed back to the office. They was all there when I knocked and got let in. Three ornery deputies. Rusty, who come over from the wild side a year or so earlier and joined up with me. He was the only one in the lot who was cheerful now and then. And them pals of his, DeGraff and Burtell, both a good piece older than me, tough as barbwire, and the sort never to waste a bullet because they always hit their target the first time. Them three made a bunch, all right, and the county was halfway safe because I had good men standing with me. None was married, and none wanted to be. They all had been drifting cowboys once, selling their skills to ranchers for forty and found.

  I was glad to see them together, because we had a little talkin’ to do. Rusty, he poured himself some week-old java from the blue speckled pot, took a sip, and managed to get it down his gullet. The others, they were kinda waiting for me, like they had expected a little talkin’ this afternoon. They were right.

  “King Bragg is enjoyin’ his visit?” I asked.

  “Last I looked,” said Rusty. “He ain’t taking doom easily, and has gotten to pacing. Not any direction you can go in a ten-foot cage.”

  “He should of thought about that before he kilt them T-Bar men,” I said.

  I got myself some of that coffee, and it was so bad I spit it out. “Make some fresh one of these weeks,” I snapped.

  But them deputies, they just lounged around, staring at me.

  “All right. We gotta do some thinking. It’s hard enough for me to do any, so maybe you can do better. There may be trouble coming at us any time. Admiral Bragg’s itching to bust his boy outa here, and we can count on it if I don’t come up with something to spare the boy. He’d like to get aholt of his boy and ship him to California or some ugly place like that, outa my grasp. He’s got his own way of putting some heat on me, and it just riles me up some. Now, he ain’t the only one rubbin’ me sore. Crayfish Ruble’s rannies are getting ready to bust in here and hang King Bragg before the execution. They’ve got word that Admiral Bragg’s putting some heat on me to spring his boy, and they’ve warned me to quit looking; it’s over and the boy’s gonna get his neck in the noose. And the word is, if I don’t quit lookin’, they’re gonna bust in here and have their own necktie party.”