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
