Читать книгу Savage Guns - William W. Johnstone - Страница 10

Crayfish Ruble stared at me from his good eye, a liquid brown one, with an eyebrow showing a few gray hairs. It was that gold eye patch with the turquoise sewed on that done me in.

“You don’t like my eye patch,” he said. “An eye patch should be dignified.”

“Well, it gets attention, Crayfish.”

“Now then. You ride clear out here late in the day looking for something that could be gotten any time I’m in town. And you come out here weeks after my men got shot. That’s mighty interesting, Sheriff. I think you’d better tell me what’s going on.”

“Oh, I was just looking at things that ain’t finished up yet, like getting word to those poor relatives.”

Crayfish sort of grinned at me. “And maybe a little pressure on you from Admiral Bragg to see if his boy can get sprung.”

“Well, he ain’t getting sprung unless there’s something didn’t get said in the trial.”

“And of course you’re looking for it.”

“Things don’t add up, is all,” I said.

“Word I got is that you had yourself a rough morning,” Crayfish said. “How does it feel, having a noose around your scrawny neck and dropping off a wagon?”

Word got around, all right. I shoulda knowed I couldn’t keep anything a secret for long. “Well, I didn’t much care to be hung, Crayfish.”

“It’s hanged, Sheriff. The correct word is hanged. That’s when you’ve got a noose around you. Hung is something else. If you’re hung, you get to please the ladies.”

I blushed clear through. My ma, she never told me the difference, and five grades of schoolin’ didn’t help me none. He was standin’ there sort of smirky, and I was thinking maybe I ought to do something else with my life. I never was any good with all them highfalutin words anyway. I got a few basic ones, and that’s all I ever needed. Here he was, maybe the richest rancher in Wyoming, making a fool of me. I am a good shot, and fast with a handgun, but there ain’t much else going for me.

“How about a refill, Sheriff?” he asked.

I debated it, but not for long, and pushed my tumbler his way.

“You know of any reason King Bragg woulda shot Weasel and Foxy and Rocco?”

“I think King Bragg would have shot his own grandmother if he felt like it,” the rancher replied.

“I’m lookin’ for reasons,” I said. I wasn’t gonna let him give me windies instead of facts.

“He was drunk, by just about everyone’s account. What a man does with that much booze in him is beyond knowing, Sheriff.”

He handed me the Valley Tan, which was awful stuff that bit and snarled its way down my throat. He sure didn’t drink it himself. My ma used to tell me you could get a handle on anyone just by seein’ what he served up for company.

“Well, you tell me what you heard again,” I said. I wasn’t gonna quit on this.

“I don’t have the details.”

“You’re the boss, and you don’t have the story?”

He sighed. “By the time I got there, my men were laid flat, cold, and gray. They’d all been shot in the chest, just once. And Upward was holding a shotgun on King Bragg, who was sitting stupidly on the floor, too drunk to stand. Upward had looked at the kid’s six-gun. King Bragg fired six shots, killed three of my men.”

“I’m still lookin’ for reasons,” I said.

That Valley Tan was awful, but it was doin’ its work in my belly.

Crayfish eyed me a moment, I mean with the brown eye, not with the turquoise stone on gold. “To get a look at King, just have a close look at Admiral,” he said. “King’s a good son, taking his pa’s side always. The Braggs, they ain’t glad to have Ruble around. It’s almost, but not quite, range war, with big ranchers collecting gunmen and having it out. Only it’s not. I’m too busy trying to turn this place into a bonanza and get out of here. This is the loneliest and most godforsaken land a man could get mired in. I want city lights, Sheriff. Ruble’s no enemy of the Braggs. Crayfish Ruble would like to clean up. In fact, I was hoping to sell everything I possess to the Braggs, and even do it on generous terms. But there’s a little fly-in-the-ointment, Sheriff. The Braggs don’t see me like I see me. You know? They’re not my enemy, but I seem to be their enemy. And they’ve worked themselves up about the T-Bar Ranch, my brand, and now they kilt three of my men.”

It made sense. I got to thinking about trouble in Doubtful, and it wasn’t the T-Bar drovers that was causing trouble. They were mostly quiet fellers, downing a few ales in Upward’s watering hole. It was the Bragg men raising hell, when there was hell-raising in town. But I wasn’t feelin’ very good about all this.

“Crayfish, how come you’re out here if this country don’t appeal to you?”

That question caught him off guard, for sure. For a moment he just flapped his lips, trying to come up with something.

He smiled and shrugged. “How’d you end up sheriff?” he asked.

“It got laid on me,” I replied.

“Well, this got laid on me, Sheriff.”

“You coulda stayed in the city.”

He yawned. It was clear he wasn’t eager to continue this little talk. “That’s what separates you and me from Admiral Bragg and his strange-named brood, Sheriff. Bragg likes it here. He likes cows and cowboys and land. He likes this cold weather. He likes no one being around. He likes having his own trees and grass. He likes being alone and being lord of his whole universe. Me?” He shrugged again. “Accident. I won the original T-Bar in a poker game. I bet a night with my lady friend, Maybelline, against Arnold Austria’s ranch, and a full house won. So there it was. I got turned from a gambler into a rancher. Everything in my life’s a turn of the card, Sheriff. I have no ambition. If Admiral Bragg beat me out of my place tomorrow, I’d pack up and walk away. What does it matter?”

“You coming in to watch King Bragg hang?”

“I wouldn’t miss it, Sheriff.”

“Then maybe you care more than you’re saying.”

That sure surprised him. He frowned some. “You know,” he said, “it’s the justice of it I care about. Yes, three of my men got kilt, and that’s something to care about. I’ll be in Doubtful watching real close when you spring the trap,” he said.

Something wasn’t right with Crayfish. “You didn’t care enough to contact their next of kin,” I said.

He stared at me. “What are you up to?”

“I’m up to making sure justice is going to be done.”

“You’re a card, Pickens.” He began crowding me toward the door, and then he opened it. “Long ride for nothing,” he said.

“I got two weeks,” I said. “And I’ll use them.”

I handed him the tumbler and stepped onto his porch. Behind me the door closed quietly.

The bunkhouse was dark. Them cowboys sure didn’t burn any oil. But they were up before dawn, and out with the cattle while there still were stars showing. Chill air was rolling down from the mountains. It sure as hell would be a long ride back, but me and Critter, we’d manage it if I let him rest.

I collected my nag. Critter snarled at me. He was lookin’ for some hay and a good roll after the saddle was off, but here I was getting on him and steering him away from the pens and hay ricks.

We rode out quiet, in starlight, and I let Critter pick the way. Horses can see better than people, and he had no trouble takin’ me down that road. It sure was peaceful. Night is when it’s a joy to be out in the country, with no one nowhere, just walking along and owning the whole universe.

My stomach was tellin’ me it was owed some chow, but I had none, so there was nothing to do but ride them long miles back to Doubtful, so that’s what I set out to do. Wasn’t anyone gonna drop a rib roast and mashed potatoes and gravy into my mitts.

I like my sleep, but this was such a fine spring night I didn’t mind. It’d be maybe one or so when I raised Doubtful, more if I let Critter graze and fart along the way. I always use a single loop rein, so I just let her ride behind the horn, and stretched my arms and cracked my fingers some.

I was dozin’ along, letting Critter find his way back to Doubtful, when I got woke up sudden. I didn’t even know where I was. But a soft voice ripped out of the night.

“Stop,” said this female voice. I don’t rightly know why I thought it was female.

I woke up fast, and debated kicking Critter into a gallop, but instead I reined him in.

“I’ve got you skylined, Sheriff. I can see you but you can’t see me. You’re where the stars are blotted out. There’s a Greener loaded with buckshot aimed at you, and if you mess with me, you’ll be hamburger. That clear?”

“Mighty clear,” I said.

“Then I’ll put this shotgun away. I just want to talk to you, and not get shot at by an itchy lawman.”

“Well, you coulda chose a better way.”

“I’m sorry. It’s dark, and I thought if I called, you’d pump a bullet at me.”

“What do you take me for? I want to know what I’m shootin’ at, especially if it sounds like a woman.”

“You mind if I ride with you a way, and just palaver a bit?”

“I ain’t used to riding with strangers in the night, ma’am.”

There was a long pause, and I wondered whether she would beat a retreat.

“I’m Queen Bragg. Call me Queenie.”

Well, that wasn’t no surprise. “All right, what?” I asked.

“I’m getting my mare and we’ll ride together,” she said.

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.