Savage Guns. William W. Johnstone

likely to try to draw us out,” I said. “Trouble out there somewhere. But trouble, lawmen needed, so we rush outa here. I ain’t got much of an answer to that. If there’s trouble, one or more of us gotta go. I’m thinkin’ maybe I’ll stay out of here, and you three guard the prisoner. I’ll do better roaming around.”

      Rusty grinned. “You’re jailing us and keeping the best job for your lonesome self.”

      I ignored him. “Now we got another possibility. They might try to starve you out. A siege where they got the jail surrounded and hope we run outa food and water. DeGraff, it’ll be your job to keep plenty of water in there, and keep them chamber pots and thunder mugs emptied, and keep some hardtack or crackers or jerky or something in there. Stock up and put it on the county bill.”

      DeGraff, he nodded. They had twenty years on me, and I felt some ridiculous, giving ’em orders like that. Still, the sheriff job got dumped on me during a set-to a year or so earlier, and the town was happy with me—so far. No telling how they’d feel if I drove off their best customers.

      “There’s more,” I said. “If Admiral Bragg and his bunch rush this place, you let him know he’s putting his boy’s life on the line. I hate that, but if it’s war, they can expect us to do what we gotta do. That won’t work with them Ruble boys, who’d just tell us to hand the boy over.”

      “Cotton, that’s not good. Our job’s to protect King Bragg any way we can,” DeGraff said. “That’s the law and that’s justice.”

      “You sure are right,” I said, seeing the merit in it. “I’ll back off. We’ll protect that boy as best we can, any way we can. Thanks, DeGraff.”

      The man barely nodded. He was as lean as a hungry crow, and had the look of a hawk in his skinny face.

      “That do it?” I asked.

      “I think we got it covered,” Rusty said. “Ain’t nobody gonna bust in here without paying a price.”

      “And I hope they know it,” DeGraff said. “I’ll see how we’re fixed for powder.”

      “Good idea,” I said. I was pretty sure we had plenty of cartridges and shotgun shells, but it never hurt to check it all out.

      We worked out a schedule that would keep two deputies in there at all times. DeGraff headed out to the pump and jacked some water into a pail, and then filled up the spare. After that he would head for George Waller’s store and get some food that would last and keep a man’s belly at bay. I didn’t want no hungry, thirsty, desperate men in here if the place was under fire.

      Three or four men defending a jail against maybe twenty-five. I didn’t like them odds, even if we had got ourselves into good shape. But the thing was, it probably wouldn’t happen. Neither Crayfish Ruble or Admiral Bragg would be as dumb as that. Busting a jail and shooting at sworn peace officers would put them on the wrong side of the law for the rest of their days.

      There was still a worry or two, when I got to chewing on it. In a few days a crew would start to put up the gallows in the courtyard square. What if them Bragg men tried to stop it? Tore everything out? Well, I’d deal with it. Maybe a town posse could make sure them timbers rose they way they should. I’d talk to the town merchants about it.

      Still, the whole thing made me itchy. This was war, and a good way to win a war was to hit where no one expected to be hit. What had I missed? Where was my weak spot? I sure didn’t know. I wish I had a few more aces in my deck, but I don’t know how to be anyone else, and as far as I could see, I’d got us set up for trouble pretty well. There was a few odds and ends, though. I wanted to make sure that someone in town slipped away to get help from the next county if it came to that. I’d need to talk to some of them merchants, and work up a plan. Puma County was a long way from anywhere at all, at the ass-end of Wyoming, and it’d take three, four days to get a force together to break the siege. It wasn’t no fun to think about. But my pa, he always said not to worry about what you don’t know and can’t fix. So that was that.

      I made sure my boys was getting the place ready for whatever might come, and then I left the deputies and headed toward Saloon Row. I wasn’t done lookin’ into this business, not by any means.

      The town looked quiet. There was a few ranchers and their women loading up at the mercantiles. The Wyoming flag barely flapped at the courthouse. The square in front of the courthouse was quiet. I wanted the gallows builders to put it in the middle of the square, well away from the streets. I’d asked Will Wiggins at the lumber yard about getting the gallows built, and he said he would bid on it.

      “I’ll see about a proper design, and get to sawing the timbers,” he’d said. “I think some good solid pine eight-by-eights should do it. Regular two-by-fours and plank for the deck. I got some hinges here for the drop, which I’ll throw in, since I get ’em back anyways. That deck’s gotta be about eight feet up, so there’s a good neck-cracker fall. Seems to me we don’t want to be hard on the boy, and a good fall’s important.”

      He had seemed uncommon eager. I guess it’d give him something to talk about at the potluck suppers over at the Rock of Gibraltar Chapel where he and his woman went at nine o’clock every Sunday morning. The services at that outfit lasted three hours, with a lot of hallelujahs, and I was awful glad I wasn’t of that persuasion.

      But after that Sunday, he’d backed off and said he didn’t want the business, so I got Lem Clegg to do it. There was something else I didn’t know nothing about, which was makin’ a noose. A hanging rope is no lariat. It’s entire different, and I was still looking around for someone who could make me one. I’d asked around some, but so far I hadn’t come across anyone to make one for me. That was a noose for sure that Admiral Bragg’s rannies dropped over me, but I sure wasn’t going to get anyone from that outfit to make one for me.

      I hitched my holster around. I hated carrying heavy metal all the time, but nowadays I had to. I drifted along Wyoming Street, and finally hit Saloon Row, where the smell of stale beer drifted out of every batwing door. It wasn’t much different from the rest of town, mostly board-and-bat buildings thrown up fast, but it had a different smell.

      I went into the Last Chance, looking for Upward. The place was dark and quiet, and I couldn’t see him nowhere, but he wouldn’t be far away. I finally discovered he was out back, liming the outhouse. The outhouses behind Saloon Row stank so bad they sometimes made the whole town stink. Upward and Mrs. Gladstone at the Sampling Room was the only ones that did anything about it, dumping a few loads of lime down the holes once in a while. Doubtful sure didn’t smell like lilacs most of the time, especially on Sundays, after Saloon Row had seen a Saturday night.

      He come in, carrying an empty dipper.

      “Keeps it down a little,” he said. “You want a shot?”

      “No, just want to talk some.”

      “What have you got for me, eh?”

      There it was again. To get anything out of Upward, you had to whisper something to him.

      “I had a little meeting with Queen Bragg in the middle of the night,” I said.

      Upward’s eyebrow arched.

      “It didn’t come to nothing.”

      Upward sighed. “That’s because you don’t have what it takes, Sheriff. Now, if she met with me in the middle of the night, it’d be different.”

      “Okay, where are them two witnesses, the ones that testified that King Bragg plugged three T-Bar men?”

      “Oh, you mean Plug Parsons and Carter Bell.”

      “Yeah, them two. They’re the ones saw it happen. And you were there too.”

      “I heard they left the country, Cotton. Right after the trial. They drew wages from Crayfish. The word was, they were scared that Admiral Bragg would string them up, and I can’t say as I blame them for pulling outa here. That’s what I heard, but I don’t know the truth of it.”

      “They