is mean, Sheriff. You know that. You can figure it as well as I can. Foxy, too, you get the man’s character without any more than the handle.”
“I guess I sort of do,” I said. “Now how about that other, the third that got kilt by King Bragg. What was he doin’ here?”
“Oh, Rocco, poor devil. Just a drifter. I hired him straight off. I need all the hands I can get, and he seemed fit enough.”
“How do I get ahold of his folks, Crayfish?”
“Blamed if I know, Sheriff.”
“Any reason that King Bragg would pump lead into those three?”
“Yes. He was drunk. He and his pa don’t much care for me. And those three were all of my hands that were in the saloon when he wandered in, looking to cause trouble.” He shrugged. “I guess you know the rest.”
I wasn’t so sure I did.
SIX
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.
