The Savagers of Cutthroat Canyon

Chapter 3

3

Our first jail was destroyed when Torp and his hired assassins from the Triple R ranch came in one night and broke their fellow outlaws out, burning the jail to the ground in the process. The new jail was larger, with more cells, and I took great pride in its existence. It was a symbol of the triumph of good over evil, and a continuing of the peaceful legacy of the great Jim Shepland.

On the wall above my desk, among all the WANTED! and REWARD! posters, was the dried-out scalp of old Torp Mayfair. It was nailed up there like a trophy, another symbol—one of seeing justice served. I put it there as a reminder, but also as a threat. This is what happens to people who break the law, it told people. This could be your dried-out, scraggly old scalp. Of course, I have to admit it was also a little on the creepy side. Sometimes, I would look at the scalp and feel like it was watching me back, like there was some leftover evil in it from the man who had once owned it. And I would reach under my shirt and rub on the eagle feathers there to protect me from any radiating bad intentions left in that son of a b***h’s rotten scalp.

I didn’t do a lot when I sat in the jail, aside from sitting in it. The town would sometimes go days and even a week without me having to do much of anything at all. But when something happened, it was usually bad, and then me and Baxter and Merle would have to jump to. So I had to be patient as a long afternoon of nothing would slow to a crawl, and I would get ants in my pants, and start craving a belt of whisky. But I couldn’t do that because if something actually did happen, I would need my wits about me.

I’d had a lot more practice at being the sheriff since I’d first got started as a deputy, and I’d become a great fan of the sudden pre-emptive whomp. What I would do is, when someone was getting to feeling like a scrap, I would just turn my Colt around and hammer them over the head with it. The great thing about being a sheriff is you get a license to whomp on people when they deserve it.

It’s harder than it looks, to whomp someone. The first person I whomped in the head, he just turned and looked at me, and I looked at the bottom of my Colt Navy to see what was wrong with it, and if Baxter hadn’t been there, I might have gotten whomped myself. The next time I whomped someone, I made sure to give them a good solid whack—and it worked. The person slumped to the ground and took to snoring. Now, I considered myself quite the whomper. Right up there with the best of them.

The only thing that happened on this particular day, a Wednesday, was that Deedee Yonder stopped by to ask me if I was planning on voting for Pap Kickins for mayor. Deedee Yonder was a schoolteacher, but given to violent tendencies, and she carried all manner of weapons on her person, including a knife she’d lashed to her leg that was so long, it made her limp. I was always a little unnerved by her presence. She gave the impression that she was holding on to reality by a thread, and the wrong word or gesture could render her insane. She wasn’t very tall, and she was quite skinny, but a tameless ferocity oozed out of her all the same.

“We don’t even have an old mayor, or any mayor of any kind, and we never have,” I pointed out. "So why do we need any mayor at all?"

“Pap thinks we need a mayor and he’s written an editorial on why it should be him.”

I shook my head. “I’m not voting for any mayor. All they do is make speeches and smile all the time. Maybe kiss a baby now and then. Mayors are dumb.”

“I ain’t voting for no Pap Kickins, not for nothing, but if I had to vote for a mayor, if the idea of needing a mayor doesn’t go away, I was thinking Frank could serve.”

Frank Yonder was Deedee’s husband and the town’s minister, and nobody but the very desperate ever went to listen to his fiery words as he had a tendency to yell at people and slam his Bible and point at people while frothing at the mouth. He would do it for hours on end if you let him. The best thing he did came at the very end of his unhinged sermons, when his eyes would roll up into the back of his head and he would start jabbering in some unknown language before flopping to the ground like he’d been struck by lightning. But it came so late in his sermons, that usually there was nobody left to see it. Deedee liked to whomp on Frank whenever she felt he got out of line, which was quite often, judging by his bruises. Frank also had a bit of a temper and a chip on his shoulder, and thought just about everyone he ever met was at least on some small level possessed by the devil. Not the right temperament for a mayor. Even a needless mayor, in my opinion.

“Well…” I said, thinking desperately of a way out of answering, hoping someone would come barging in with news of an argument at Eli Turner’s Mercantile, maybe a fight between a couple of miners arguing over a pick-axe. I would have even been okay with a stabbing, so long as it wasn’t deadly.

“I suppose it would all depend on whether or not it was truly necessary and also what words were said by various parties as to their intentions for the town.”

“My God, Sheriff, maybe you should run for mayor, as slippery as that tongue of yours is. That was spoken like a life-long member of the legislature if ever anything was! Just you think about it! Frank is a good man! He just needs something to do.”

“I will,” I said, praying for her to leave, then up and asking her a question anyway. “How is little Tommy getting along?”

Tommy Yonder had been quite a handful when he was rescued from a deadly raid on his original parents’ homestead. The Johnsons were killed by Torp Mayfair and his minions, who tried to make it look like they were attacked by the Comanches. The Yonders had been kind enough to adopt little Tommy Johnson and raise him as their own.

“Little Tommy isn’t quite the hellion he was, but he’s got a short fuse and can fly off the handle at the slightest provocation.” A description, I noted to myself, that could be said for the Yonders themselves.

“Well, he’s a damn sight less of a nuisance than he used to be,” I said. “The next time I go visit Scout, maybe he can tag along.”

Scout was a teenage Comanche boy I'd taken into my home, which didn't work out at all, but he and Tommy Yonder had become fond of each other.

“I expect he’d like that, Sheriff.”

“Well, I've got to get on,” I said.

“Think on what I said now,” Deedee said before limping off.

As she hobbled down Main Street, I could see miners and ranchers, and even some of the horses, scrambling to give her a wide berth.

That night, I was working my main job as saloonkeeper at my saloon. I caught Micah Poom red-handed sneaking a belt of the good stuff, which I kept hidden under the bar behind several decoy bottles. When I came downstairs, he fumbled about and knocked two of the bottles to the floor, where they rolled about.

“Why, Curly,” Micah said, “I was just cleaning some of these bottles under the bar that don’t never get no attention.”

“That’s very nice of you, Micah,” I said. “They don’t get much attention because they’re under the bar, where people can’t see them because I have hidden them there quite on purpose.”

“Still ought to be shiny,” Micah said, letting loose with a hiccup.

“Your job is over there on the piano, unless I say otherwise.”

You had to be hard on old Micah. And you had to watch him like a hawk unless you wanted all your whisky to make its way into his belly.

Micah tottered over to the piano and had to grasp at it to keep from falling over.

“How long you been cleaning the bottles?” I asked.

“Oh…not long.”

I was about to respond, maybe throw something at him, but then Doc Watson came through the flapping doors. The only time Spack Watson was sober was never. He dosed himself with his own medication throughout the day, often spending entire hours staring into complete oblivion, drool snaking out of his mouth and off his chin like a cascade. But then, when it comes to doctors, beggars can’t be choosers, and to his credit, he did sober up whenever confronted with a grievous wound.

“I would, thanks,” the doctor said. I hadn’t asked him anything, but the doctor probably hadn’t been addressing me anyway, and so I put a belt of whisky in front of him. Regardless of what he said, that’s what he wanted.

He quickly swallowed it down, so I gave him another one, which he also sloshed down.

“Is that you, Curly?” The doctor was coming around.

Baxter and Merle came in and went to the billiard table so they could get on each other’s nerves and maybe take to whomping each other. Then Bernie Waco and Tack Randle wandered in. Bernie was one of the biggest ranchers in the area, now that Torp was gone. He'd swooped up some of Torp's cows, those that weren’t claimed by their original owners. Torp didn’t go in for fair play and had gotten most of his land and cattle by stealing it. Tack Randle used to work for Bernie, but now, he had a spread of his own, part of what had been auctioned off from the old Triple R. They were friends and rivals, and sometimes Bernie would have a few too many and talk about how grieved he was by Tack abandoning him for his own spread.

“Curly, do us a favor and make it rain,” Bernie said.

“I might be able to make it snow,” I said. “Reckon it’s too cold for rain. But snow is just another form of water.”

“Snow is no good. Rain is what’s going to get the grass to growing,” Bernie said as if he were talking to a toddler. The land had been drying up for some time, and rain was always precious. My snow remark didn’t cheer them up any.

“I’ll pass your request on to management,” I said. I gave them both toots of whisky and took one for myself as well.

"It's quiet," Bernie said, looking around the bar. “Not like before.”

He was talking about Eli Turner’s Meteor Hole. It was a giant hole in the ground created when one of the town’s old coots, one with a fondness for dynamite, accidentally blew himself up when he stepped on one of his own booby traps. But Ely Turner was clever, and along with Pap Kickins, they marketed the hole as being created by a meteor. People came from as far away as Amarillo and beyond to pay their two bits to look down into a pit full of dirt. And they got thirsty. And for a while, the bar was packed day and night. The novelty had worn off, however, as word got out that a hole in the ground is just what it sounds like, and the weather had turned cold, and now the town was back to its pre-meteor normalcy.

“Tuesdays are usually quiet,” I said, perhaps a tad defensively.

“I suppose,” Bernie said cautiously.

“I like it slow myself,” Tack Randle said. “Not as much smoke to contend with. Don’t have to wait as long for a drink. Can hear Micah tickling them keys over there. Fewer arguments and fights. Less puke.”

I liked Tack. He was big as a bull, with a huge bald head and a scar that ran down his face along the left side. Looks aside, he was a very happy guy, and he was going out of his way to put a good face on what I knew was a problem.

The truth was, for the first time since I’d moved to Silver Vein, I had competition in the whisky department. There was a new tented bordello and saloon outside of town, and it was proving to be quite an attraction for the miners and ranchers and cow-boys looking to let off steam. Also, a lot of people had come into the saloon on any given night to gawk at Sally, being as she was very pretty. But now that we were married, she spent her time upstairs with Bart, which meant she was no longer around to be gawked at. With her gone, a lot of the local drunks and perverts had taken up with either not coming in at all or coming in far less frequently.

Much as I hated to admit it, Bernie was right: the saloon was less lively than it had been, and I would be lying if I said it didn’t make me grumpy.

“You could make us part owners of your saloon,” Tack suggested.

“I could do what?” I asked, not sure I’d heard correctly.

“The way Fenton does it, he takes in investors, which allows him to sell his whisky at a lower price than you do,” Tack said, not knowing he was steering his boat into dangerous waters.

“Hold on a minute. Fenton makes people invest in the whisky? How the hell does that work?”

“Well, he doles out samples, you see, and, um, then, when you sample something you like, you give him a down payment—"

“—a down payment—"

"—and then he orders the whisky you want at a rate that, frankly Curly, might be why it's so slow in here."

I've been around saloons most of my life, and this whole investor business made no sense to me.

"So, Tack, let's see if I've got this straight. Fenton gives out samples of whisky, and then people give him money in advance for the whisky they want?"

"That's about it, Curly," Tack nodded. "Only reason I'm here is on account of I've used up all my free samples. You're only allowed two, you see, and—"

"Tack, I appreciate your honesty. To think, in all the long years we've known each other, that I never got around to giving you a toot on the house, why, it's a shame!" I slammed down a shot of whisky in front of Tack loud enough to make Micah jump.

"Say now—" Tack said, suddenly wary, no doubt not used to seeing me when I've got my Irish up.

Then it hit me. "Tack, what is to prevent Fenton from taking the investments for everyone's whisky and just up and leaving town? You ever think of that? Cheers!" I took a shot of whisky and belted it down, then filled my glass back up again.

I turned away from them, chewing over Fenton and his foul whisky scheme, when I saw there was some new cow-boy at the end of the bar tapping his foot to Micah on the piano. I walked over and asked him what he was about.

“Rye whisky, if you don’t mind.”

“Sure thing, friend. Two bits.” When he reached into his pocket for his money, I noticed his gun belt.

“I’ll have to take them guns,” I said pointing at the large sign behind the bar that read: “Please Surrender Guns On Arrival. You Can Have Them Back When You Leave.”

“f**k that,” the man said. “Don’t nobody take my guns.”

“I will,” I said.

“The hell you will. What’s to say I don’t—"

One thing I learned from the great Jim Shepland, as well as from my friend the Texas Ranger Hap Morgan, is you don’t spend a lot of time arguing with an asshole. I walked around the bar and took the gun belt off the man, who was now on the floor, flopping about like a fish and howling to wake the moon.

“You can have these back when you leave,” I said.

“Ow!” he said.

“Aw, you’ll be okay. I only half-whomped you.”

“I’d say that’s assault, mister! Damned if it isn’t.”

“It ain’t,” I said.

“Who are you to say?”

So I opened my coat up to let him see the sheriff's badge, which took what fight was left right out of him. His shoulders sagged, and he looked around, thought it all over, and then settled down and leaned against the bar, set to sipping on his whisky. That’s the magic of whisky. People like it so much, they can even forget getting whomped on.

I walked back over to Tack and Bernie.

“Curly, I can’t hardly believe this new version of yourself,” Bernie said. “You ain’t the same Curly of two years ago. That one would have gone and hid under the bar.” Bernie had no idea how right he was. In fact, I had built a secret compartment behind the bar specifically to hide in should there be any bouts of gunplay. But I never used it because when there was gunplay, I was too terrified to remember I had a hiding place. All of that was before I became the sheriff because a sheriff can’t go hiding himself when trouble pops up.

“The old me wouldn’t have even asked about the guns or I would have asked, and if the fella refused to surrender them, I’d have let him be. But I wasn’t the sheriff then.”

What I didn’t say was that when the old sheriff was killed, and I had to live up to the responsibility he’d entrusted me with, it did indeed change me. I wasn’t quite so happy-go-lucky, but I also wasn’t the coward I had been, either. Which is not to say I didn’t still get scared.

The new me was also less willing to put up with foolishness. I’d say I dished out maybe six or seven whomps a week. I didn’t hit people so hard their brains turned to mush, but just enough to distract a fella long enough to either disarm them or shove them out the doors into the street or walk them to the jail.

Aside from taking the cow-boy’s guns, the night proceeded like usual, slow and steady, but dammit, never busy. And then, old Ely Turner showed up. Ely didn’t come in too often because whisky costs money, and old Ely didn’t believe in spending money, only in making it. He also didn't recognize other people as human beings. He only saw them as opportunities to make money.

Ely owned the Mercantile and the hotel and the meteor hole that wasn’t a meteor hole and the new bank. He had even tried to buy me out a time or two, though the prices he’d offered were insultingly low. Sally worked at his hotel serving up hot water for customers that wanted baths. I know for a fact he paid her hardly anything.

“You want your usual?” I asked. His usual was a belt of moonshine of such questionable character, it had made some men piss themselves. I know for a fact it had gunpowder as one of its ingredients, and tobacco, and who knows what all else. I kept it because it was extremely cheap, and cheap people needed to drink, too.

“No. Curly, I’m here to talk to you about this whole mayor nonsense Pap’s got stirred up.”

“I heard,” I said. “Deedee visited me earlier talking her husband up.”

“I don’t see why we even need a mayor,” Ely said. “Seems to me things are just fine the way they are.”

“I agree,” I said. “I expect it’s because old Pap didn’t get elected sheriff.”

“Of course he didn’t get elected sheriff! He’s a doddering old coot! He’s always misplacing his ear trumpets, you know. Can’t hardly keep them in stock and he's the only one that buys them. He bought so many ear trumpets, only to lose them, I couldn’t find any more to order, and so he had to go to making his own. Even if we did need a mayor—and I sincerely don’t think we do—the last person it should be is someone who can’t keep up with his own ear trumpet!”

“I can’t argue with that logic,” I said. Though I would have liked to. Ely Turner was not my favorite person. I sometimes argued with him just because his very presence riled me up.

“New York has a mayor, and that doesn’t stop people there from behaving like absolute devils. Have you ever been to New York City, Curly?”

“Haven’t had the pleasure,” I said.

“You’re not missing anything. They’re all a bunch of sodomites. If they aren’t sodomizing one another, they’re sodomizing their livestock. Heathens, the lot of them!”

“Is it true about how tall the buildings are?” I asked.

“I haven’t been there, Curly. And I’m not planning on visiting any time soon. I have no desire to be sodomized, you see.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Speaking of sodomites, where is that deputy of yours. Where’s Baxter?”

“He was in here earlier playing billiards,” I said. “You just missed him.”

"Just let him know I got in a new shipment of knives.”

“Will do,” I said.

“And tell him I will never sell him one. Not if he is the last person on earth.”

“I’ll let him know,” I promised. “Though, if you think about it, and he was the last person on earth, he could just up and take all the knives he wanted because you wouldn’t be on earth to stop him.”

It felt good having a go at old Ely. He just stared at me unblinking for a bit, like a dead fish stuffed and hanging on the wall.

Then he started playing with some groove in the bar's wood, and said, “We don’t need a mayor, Curly.”

“No, we don’t.”

“So long, Curly.”

“So long, Ely.”

And with that, Ely Turner turned on his heels and left.

He had a one-way feud with Baxter. Ely felt Baxter owed him some money and Baxter had no idea what Ely was even talking about. As a result, Ely had launched a campaign of trying to cause Baxter pain, a campaign that, so far, hadn’t worked at all.

I kicked out a couple of miserable miners and let the saloon air out a bit to get some of the ripeness out of it, and then wiped down the bar, locked up the saloon, and made my way upstairs to Sally and Bart and bed.