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.
TWO
I sure didn’t like the looks of that noose. That thing was just danglin’ there, swaying in the breeze. That rope, it was thick as a hawser, and coiled around the way them hangmen do it. Like someone done it that had done it a few times and knew what to do.
Them cowboys and gunslicks was uncommon quiet as we rode toward that big cottonwood, which was in spring leaf and real pretty for May. But I wasn’t paying attention to that. All I was seein’ was that damned noose waiting there for some neck. I was starting to have a notion of whose neck it was waiting for, and that didn’t sit well with my belly.
It got worse. That old goat driving the buckboard headed straight to that noose, and when it was plain dangling in my face, he whoaed the nag and there it was, that big hemp noose right there in front of me. None of them slicks was saying a word, and none of them had put away their artillery neither. I knew a few of them. There was Big Nose George, and Alvin Ream, and Smiley Thistlethwaite, and Spitting Sam. They didn’t think twice about putting a little lead into anything alive. You had to wonder why Bragg kept those gunmen around. Times were peaceful enough, at least until now.
“Admiral, this ain’t a good idea,” I said.
He laughed softly. You ever hear a man laugh like that, like he was enjoying my fate? Well, it’s not something a person forgets.
“I’m the law, Admiral, and you’d better think twice.”
I was thinkin’ maybe I’d go down fighting, but before I could think longer, that old boy beside me wrapped his knobby old arm around me, and one of them slicks grabbed my hands, yanked them behind me, and wrapped them in thong until my arms were trussed up tighter than a fat lady’s corset. Me, I’m not even thirty and had a lot of juice in me still, and I wrestled with them fellers, but it was like kicking a cast-iron stove. They knew what they was up to, and had me cold.
I began thinking that them spring leaves coming out on the cottonwood would be about the last pretty thing I’d ever see. I don’t rightly know why I kept that sheriff job, but I had. I sorta liked the fun of it, and I was never one to dodge a little trouble. I kinda thought one of my deputies might be hunting