Savage Guns. William W. Johnstone

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.

      SEVEN

      I cussed Queen Bragg clear back to Doubtful. I thought I had all them Braggs figured out. But she was running against form. I imagine I was the first person on earth to hear a Bragg ask for something, or hear an apology from a Bragg. It made me feel cranky. Just when I thought I knew something, it turned out I didn’t. I tried to think what my ma or pa would say about that, but I came up with nothing. They likely never heard of someone goin’ against the grain.

      It was bad enough that she apologized, but worse, she kissed me. Maybe it was just a swift peck, but it was a kiss, all right. Last time she got that close to a male, she beat him with a riding crop. I guessed she’d beat me with one soon enough. She’d do anything to get the sheriff to reopen the case. That’s all there was to it. Absolutely nothing more. Just another Jezebel stirring a man up.

      I put Critter in the livery barn. It sure was dark in there in the small hours of the night. I didn’t know what time, only that Doubtful was quiet and peaceful. Critter was out of sorts himself, having got ridden too long, and cussed out. Between cussing at Queen, I was cussing at Critter and tellin’ him he was about ready to get hisself sold at the next auction. He bit me as I was hauling the saddle off his back, so I got kissed and bit in the same day I got shot at and hanged. Or hung. I called it hung, no matter what Crayfish Ruble thought. I didn’t give a hang.

      I found the door locked, which was good. I banged on it until Rusty slid open the peep.

      “Lemme in,” I said.

      “You could say please,” he said from the other side of that massive door. He swung it open, and first thing I saw was the big old Dragoon Colt in his hand. He seemed to favor that antique. That was good too.

      He had a lamp lit at the rolltop desk, but the rest of my office was pitch dark.

      “All right, you can go home,” I barked.

      “You mad at something?”

      “No, it was a good ride, and now I’m here. Go home.”

      He shoved that cannon back into its holster. “Quiet here too,” he said.

      “Prisoner quiet?”

      “Sleeping, last I knew.” He stared at me. “What’s wrong?”

      “Don’t ever trust a woman. You think you know a woman and she’s the exact opposite.”

      “You run into a woman?”

      “She run into me.”

      “What’s the deal, Cotton?”

      “Never mind. It ain’t nothing. Now git.”

      “You could thank a man for staying late and putting in extra.”

      “I never thank anyone. You done your duty, so you’re dismissed.”

      Rusty smiled. “It’s a woman,” he said. He collected his gray felt Stetson and headed into the night. I slammed the door behind him and latched it tight as it would go.

      There was not much night left, but I could snatch an hour or two in the other cell. And I’d be ornery all day. I checked for messages, but it had been a quiet night. And nothing on the log either. No drunks spent the night sleeping it off; no cat burglars snatched any woman’s brooch. No one busted into the hardware and stole all the shotguns.

      It was chill in there, but it wouldn’t matter. I’d pull a jail blanket over me and settle down. I put the cell key in my britches, so I wouldn’t lock myself in. Them bunks was nothing but a sheet of metal, but I’d slept on worse. So I peered into the other cell, which was murky black, and then lowered myself. Cold iron ain’t exactly a comfort, but I was so tired it didn’t matter none.

      “You were talking about my sister.”

      That was King Bragg. I peered into the murk. He was standing in the cell across the aisle, his hands on the bars.

      “Yeah, Queen. She pulled a Greener on me.”

      “For what?”

      “So she could talk. I can’t figure you Braggs out.”

      “Neither can I,” King said. “But she’s breaking the mold. Maybe she’s the lucky one. I got stamped in my father’s cookie cutter. I’ve never asked anyone for anything, and I never will.”

      I was tired and out of sorts but he stood there waiting, and I needed someone to talk to, so it might as well be him. “She said she was sorry about what your pa did, shooting and hanging me, and she asked me to help you if I would. Now ain’t that something?”

      “It runs contrary,” King said. “Pa always told us never to apologize.”

      “It was like an earthquake. A Bragg apologizin’ to me. Asking for help. In all my years, I never heard of it.”

      “You’re not old. Just a few years older than I was.”

      He was 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.