Читать книгу Savage Guns - William W. Johnstone - Страница 5

I was mindin’ my daily business in the two-holer when I got rudely interrupted. Now I like a little privacy, but this morning I got me a bullet instead. There I was, peacefully studying the female undies in the Montgomery Ward catalog, when this here slug slams through the door and exits through the rear, above my head.

“Hey!” I yelled, but no one said nothing.

“You out there. Don’t you try nothing. This here’s the law talking. I’m coming after you.”

But I sure didn’t know who or what was in the yard behind Belle’s roomin’ house. I thought maybe a horse was snorting or pawing clay, but I couldn’t be sure of it. I wanted to see what was what, but the half-moon that let in fresh air was high up above me, and I had my business to look after just then. You can’t do nothing in the middle of business.

I don’t know about you, but I wear my hat when I’m in the two-holer, just on general principles. A man should wear a hat in the crapper. That’s my motto. It was a peaceful enough morning in the town of Doubtful, in Puma County, Wyoming, where I was sheriff, more or less. So that riled me some, that bullet that slapped through there knocking my good five-X gray felt beaver Stetson topper, which teetered on the other hole but did not drop. If it had dropped down there, I’d a been plumb peeved.

I thought for a moment I oughta follow that hat through the hole and get my bare bottom down there in the perfumed vault, but that was plum sickening, and besides, how could I slide a hundred fifty pounds of rank male through that little round hole? I don’t need no more smell than I’ve already got. When I pull my boots off, people head for the doors holding their noses. It just wouldn’t work. If someone was gonna kill me, they held all the aces.

The truth of it was that I wasn’t finished with my business, and all I could do was sit there and finish up my private duties, and rip a page out of the Monkey Ward catalog, and get it over with. Like the rest of us who used the two-holer behind Belle’s boardinghouse, I was inclined to study ladies’ corsets and bloomers and garters for entertainment, saving the wipe-off for the pages brimming with one-bottom plows, buggy whips, and bedpans. Them others in Belle’s boardinghouse, they felt like I did, and no female undie pages ever got torn out of the catalog. That sure beat corncobs, I’ll tell you.

“Sheriff, you come outa there with your hands up and your pants down,” someone yelled. I thought maybe I knew the feller doin’ all that yelling, but it was hard to tell, sitting there with pages of chemises and petticoats on my lap.

“Hold your horses,” I said. “I ain’t done, and the longer it takes, the better for you, because I’m likely to bust out of here with lead flying in all directions.”

That fetched me a nasty laugh, and I knew that laugh, and I thought maybe I was in more of a jam than I’d imagined.

But no more bullets came sailing through, and I finished up, and ripped out a page of men’s union suits, and another page of hay rakes and spades, and got it over with. I wasn’t gonna bust out of there with my pants down, no matter what, so I stood, got myself arranged and buttoned up, drew out my service revolver, and with a violent shove, threw myself out the door and dodged to the left just to avoid any incoming lead.

It sure didn’t do me no good. As my mama used to tell me, don’t do nothing foolish.

Sure enough, there before me were eight, nine ratty-assed cowboys on horses, all of the lot waving black revolvers in my direction, just in case I got notions. And also a dude with a buckboard, holding some reins.

“I shoulda known,” I said to the boss, who was the man I figgered it was.

“I told you to come out with your pants down, and you didn’t. That’s a hanging offense,” the man said. “You do what I say, and when I say it.”

“My pants is staying put, dammit,” I replied.

I knew the joker, all right. I’d put his renegade boy in my jail a few months earlier, and now the punk was peering at the blue skies through iron bars. This feller on a shiny red horse waving nickel-plated Smith and Wesson at me was none other than Admiral Bragg. And the boy I was boardin’ in my lockup, he was King Bragg, and his sister, she was Queen Bragg. Mighty strange names bloomed in that family, but who was I to howl? I sure didn’t ask to have Cotton hung on me, and Pickens neither, but that’s how I got stuck, and there wasn’t nothing I could do about it except maybe move to Argentina or Bulgaria.

Them names weren’t titles neither. Bragg’s ma and pa, they stuck him with the name of Admiral. If he’d of been in the navy, he might have ended up Admiral Admiral Bragg. But the family stuck to its notions, and old Bragg, he named one child King and the other child Queen. It was King Bragg that got himself into big trouble, perforating a few fellers with his six-gun, so I caught him and he would soon pay for his killin’ spree. I think the family was all cheaters. Name a boy Admiral, and the boy’s got a head start, even if he ain’t even close to being an admiral. Name a girl Queen, and she’s got the world bowin’ and scrapin’ even if she ain’t one.

I was a little nervous, standing there in front of his pa with seven or eight Bragg cowboys pointing their artillery at my chest. Makes a man cautious, I’d say.

“Drop the peashooter, Sheriff,” Admiral Bragg ordered.

I thought maybe to lift it up and blow him away, which would have been my last earthy deed. It sure was temptin’ and my old pa, he might’ve approved even as he lowered the coffin. Nothing like goin’ out in style.

But there was about a thousand grains of lead pointing straight at me, and I chickened out, and set her down real slow, itching to pull a trick or two on these rannies. I sure was mad at myself for not spitting a few lead pills before I got turned into Swiss cheese. It just put me out of sorts, but I figured at least I was alive to get my revenge another day. So I set her down slow.

Now you get into the buckboard, Sheriff,” said Admiral Bragg. “We’re taking you for a little ride.”

I got in, sat next to the old fart who held the reins. I knew the feller, old and daft, with a left-crick in his neck that some said was from a botched hanging. He spat, which I took for a welcome, so I settled in beside him. There was still about a thousand grains of lead aimed at me, so I sat there and smiled at these gents.

The old feller slapped rein over the croup of the dray, and we clopped away from there, heading down the two-rut road out of Doubtful in the general direction of the Bragg ranch. I sort of had a hunch what this was about, and it wasn’t too comfortable thinkin’ about it.

Bragg was one of the biggest stockmen around Doubtful, and had a spread up in the hills north of town that just didn’t quit, and took a week with a couple of spare Sundays to ride across. He called it the Anchor Ranch, and it sure did anchor a lot of turf. He controlled as much public land as anyone in the West, and had an army of gunslicks to pin it all down, given that it wasn’t his turf but belonged to Uncle Sam.

I guess that wasn’t so bad; he raised a lot of beef and his men kept the saloons going in Doubtful. Admiral was a tough bird, all right, but I didn’t have no occasion to throw him into the iron-barred cage in the sheriff office, so I pretty much ignored him and he ignored me until now.

I sort of didn’t like the way this buckboard was surrounded by his gunslicks and we was headin’ out of town, me a little bit against my will. But the bores of all them pieces aimed my way kept me from doing much complainin’ about all that.

Old Admiral, perched on that shiny red horse, he ignored me, so I didn’t have a notion what this was all about or how it would end. Or maybe I did. All this here stuff had to do with that scummy son of his, King Bragg, who grew up twisted and bad, and got himself into big trouble. From the moment King was big enough to wave a Colt six-gun around, he was doing it, shooting songbirds and bumblebees and gophers and snakes. It must have been a trial for old Admiral to keep that boy in cartridges, because that’s about all that King did. He got mighty fine at it too, and could shoot better and faster than anyone, myself included. He could put a bullet through the edge of the ace of spades and cut that card in two.

Well, that kid, soon as he was big enough to ride into town on his own, without his ma or pa, was bent on showing the good citizens of Doubtful who was who. It wasn’t lost on that boy that his pa was the biggest rancher in those parts, and maybe the biggest cattleman in the Territory, if not the whole bloomin’ West.

He also was fast. Throw a bottle or a can or a silver dollar into the skies, and King would perforate it, or pretty near sign his name with bullet holes in a tomato can. I had to chase the kid out of a few saloons because he was only fifteen or so, and he didn’t take kindly to it, but that was all the trouble I had, until the day he turned eighteen.

He come into Doubtful that day, few months ago, on his shiny black stallion, wearing a brace of double-action Colts, a birthday gift from his old man. I didn’t pay no attention, but maybe I should have. I was busy with all that paperwork the Territory wants all the time, full of words I never heard tell of. I don’t lay any claim to being more than fifth-grade schooled, so sometimes I got to get someone who’s got more smarts to tell me what’s what. But I make up for it by being friendly and enforcing the law pretty good.

Anyway, King Bragg tied his horse up on Saloon Row and wandered into the Last Chance wearing his new artillery. I wasn’t aware of it, or I’d of kicked his ass out. He’s too young to hoist a few shots of red-eye, and I’d of turned the brat over my knee and paddled his butt for pretendin’ to be all growed up.

Well, next I knew, there was a ruckus, a bunch of shots to be exact, and I pop out of my office and hustle over to Saloon Row. There’s a mess of shouting from the Last Chance, so I hurry over there and it was plain awful. There were three dead cowboys sprawled on the sawdust, leakin’ blood. A few fellers were trying to stanch the flow some, but it was hopeless, and that threesome finished up their dying while I watched, and then people were just staring at one another. King Bragg was sitting in the sawdust, his emptied revolver in his hand. The barkeep, he was starin’ over the bar, and them cowboys in there, they were staring at the dead ones, and there’s me, law and order, staring at the whole lot, wondering who did what to who and why. It wasn’t a very fine moment.

Well, I asked them cowboys a few questions and then pinched the kid, brought him in and locked him up, and got him tried by Judge Nippers, who told the jury the kid was guilty as hell, and sentenced him to hang by the neck until dead. And Doubtful, Wyoming, was going to see a hanging in just two weeks. In fact, I’d just hired Lemuel Clegg and his boys to build me a gallows and charge it to Puma County. Meanwhile, the Bragg family lawyer was screechin’ and hollerin’, but it didn’t do no good. That punk killer, King Bragg, was going to swing in a few days. Me, I’m all for justice, and with all them dead cowboys lying around, I’m thinkin’ it ought to be sooner, but all that was up to Judge Nippers.

I sorta thought maybe this was connected to that, but I don’t take no credit for smart thinking. Whatever the case, I was being transported by a rattling old buckboard out of town by some pretty mean-lookin’ fellers with a lot of .45-caliber barrels poking straight at me, so I didn’t feel none to comfortable.

“What’s this here all about, Admiral?” I asked.

But that wax-haired, comb-bearded blue-eyed snake wasn’t talking. He was just leading this here procession out of Doubtful, with me in the middle. I sure was getting curious. But I didn’t have to wait too long. About two miles out of Doubtful, right where a bunch of cottonwoods crowded the creek, they were steering toward a big old tree, with a mighty thick limb pokin’ straight out, and hanging from that limb was a noose.