Support Your Local Deputy: A Cotton Pickens Western

by W. , Johnstone, William

  At least, I wasn’t likely to be fired. Most days around Doubtful, some leading citizen or official was planning to evict me from my sheriff office, and hire someone more to his liking. But I managed to hang on, one way or another. My ma, she always said just live a day at a time and keep plenty of corncobs in the outhouse. I prefer cobs to Monkey Ward.

  A couple of days later, a tent preacher came in, with his own show, and set up shop right where Zimmer’s Medicine Show was playing. He put up a big, worn canvas tent, and a sort of pulpit he could thump with his fish-belly-white fist. This feller, Mr. Elwood Grosbeak, was a sinner-collector. And a first-rate pulpit-thumper. He was looking for sinners under every bush, and inviting them over there to hear all about their evil ways. And he had other things to talk about, too. He said the world would come to an end in three weeks, before sundown, May 28, and woe to anyone who wasn’t real prepared. That sure scared the crap out of a lot of people. But there wasn’t any crime emanating from his shabby tent, so I just stayed away. Mostly, he was attracting townspeople; I hardly saw a cowboy off the ranches anywhere near. They were too busy looking after the crop of new calves to worry much about the world coming to a halt or all the elect sailing off into the wild blue heavens, never to be seen again, at least on earth.

  But a teamster down from Douglas told me that Grosbeak had been pulpit-thumping up there, only he told those folks the world would end on May 1, and that had scared the dickens out of some. Come May 1, and Grosbeak was nowhere to be found there, and the sun came up and the sun set, and all that happened was that Grosbeak had cleaned Douglas out of about four hundred smackerinos, before rolling into Doubtful. Now that was an interesting scenario. I sort of wondered if it was proper to scare the hell out of people and run off with their cash.

  I asked Lawyer Stokes, who doubled as county attorney when Puma County gave him some business, whether Grosbeak was doing stuff illegal, and he said let it alone. So Grosbeak was holding his camp meetings each night, and hammering his pulpit, and saying May 28 would be the last day on earth, and scaring the crap out of some folks around town. And they were filling the collection plate he passed around in the middle of all this.

  I don’t take kindly to it when I see the people I try to protect being fleeced, and I didn’t have much of any notion how to slow it all down. I stopped in at the Last Chance Saloon, where my friend Sammy Upward tended bar, and asked him what he planned on Doomsday and he said he was handing out free drink tokens that could be redeemed the evening of May 28 after the sun set. I told him about the deal up in Douglas, and he enjoyed that, and said he’d maybe he’d invite Grosbeak to the Last Chance to deliver his tub-thumper right there in the barroom and entertain the cowboys at the finish line.

  Well, the whole idea just bloomed, and pretty soon all the saloons in Doubtful were passing out tokens for a free drink on May 28, after the sun set. Barney’s Beanery got into the act, and offered a free breakfast to survivors who were still around the next morning. And then the madams got into it, and offered one free lay between midnight, May 28, and dawn the next morning. That sure got the cowboys interested.

  Rusty, he had the best idea. “We’ll offer one free hanging at dawn, May 29, and we’ll announce a ballot to select who gets to enjoy the noose. Now if the world ends on the twenty-eighth, like the man says, no one gets hanged.”

  “I got an idea, Rusty. We’ll invite Grosbeak to stand there with a noose. If he’s right, he’ll vanish into the heavens. If he’s wrong, he gets hanged.”

  Rusty, he whistled. That was Rusty for you. When he really liked an idea he didn’t just say so, he whistled. And now he was chirping like a canary.

  That sure was good scheme, all right, and I was wondering how I could pull it off. There were a few in Doubtful that deserved a good hanging, but getting them up on the gallows would take some doing. Getting Grosbeak up there might be a lot easier. If he believed in what he was talking about, he’d gladly step right into that noose.

  I decided it was time for a little talk with Elwood Grosbeak. He was staying at the Wyoming Hotel. It wasn’t much of a hotel, but it was the best in town. His six staff people, I don’t know where they were staying. There were rooms for rent over most of the saloons and likely they were parked in those. Sometimes a visitor could arrange a room at a cathouse.

  They had a little dining room there in the hotel, so I tried that first. Sure enough, he was sipping java in there. He was a formidable man, with hair slicked back with goose grease, and a fresh white shirt, and one of them huge cravats, red paisley, and a pretty nice suit coat and britches with a knife-edged crease in them. He didn’t wear that stuff in his revival tent, but just a plain gray outfit. The first thing you notice about him was his eyes, big and burning, and lips that seemed to mock even when he wasn’t saying a word.

  He saw my star, and rose at once.

  “Sheriff Pickens, I believe?”

  “You got her,” I said.

  “What brings you to my table, sir?”

  “Well, there’s fellas around here who don’t think the world’s coming to an end, and they’re getting up some entertainments to celebrate when nothing happens and it’s time for a drink.”

  “There’s always skeptics,” he said. “I deal with them regularly. They don’t grasp my message, which is not that the earth beneath our feet will vanish, but that the elect will be whisked away to their eternal reward. One hour you see us; the next hour, we’re gone. The lady down the street has vanished. The man you called a friend is departed. The child you watched grow up has gone away. That’s the story, sir, and that’s what I preach.”

  “Yeah, well, are you going up the golden stairs?”

  “If I am called, and I am sure I will be, I’ll be gone. Do not look for me on this earth on May the twenty-ninth, because I will have joined the angels, and the seraphim and cherubim.”

  “What are those? You got me there.”

  “It’s too long to explain, sir, but call them helpers. They are assistants in heaven.”

  “Well, Rusty—he’s my deputy—he has a dandy idea. The sheriff office wants to join this here party, and what we propose is to put up our gallows, and have you volunteer for a hanging on May 29. Comes dawn and you’re still around, you get hanged. If you got taken up, there’s only an empty noose dangling in the sunlight of a new day.”

  That sure took him aback. He stared with the smoldering eyes until I felt a little put upon.

  “You mock me, you mock my beliefs, you laugh at the powers above.”

  “Well, my ma used to say, put your money where your mouth is. She also used to say, actions speak louder than words. You want to prove your beliefs? You can come to the necktie party. Your very own party.”

  “I am speechless, Pickens, absolutely speechless. You should be recalled or fired.”

  “Seems like a good idea, this gallows party. Think what it gets you. A mess of believers everywhere.”

  “You forget, sir, I am a man of the cloth, a prophet, and you must not insult anyone who’s been set apart to bring people the good word.”

  “Well, they tell me up in Douglas, you collected about four hundred dollars before you vamoosed in the night, on May 1, and now you’re here, and the greenbacks are landing in your collection plate, and I just was sort of wondering if we’d see your outfit on May twenty-ninth. If you all are on your way to heaven, I guess you’d leave behind your tent and wagon, right?”

  “Are you done insulting me, sir?”

  “I ain’t very good at it, but I am getting better, the longer I’m in office. Maybe, before they fire me, as they’re fixing to do, I’ll get real good at insulting. You could prime me a little.”

  Grosbeak, he just glared, and seemed to shut me out. It was like he was no longer sitting there eating his eggs Benedict, oatmeal, tea, toast, and strips of bacon.

  “Where are you going next?” I asked.

  “What business is it of yours, sheriff?”

  That was as much a confess
ion as I needed, I figured.

  “I got a saloonkeeper friend, Sammy Upward. He says he’s having a big End of the World fiesta the afternoon of May 29, and you’re invited. He’s giving out tokens for free drinks, and says you’ll get one. He says you can come on in, and spread the word, and he’s got a whole bar full of cowboys waiting to listen to the whole mess. You gonna come on in?”

  But Grosbeak, he was methodically eating and ignoring me, and I saw how it’d go.

  “You got many of the town’s ladies going out there in the afternoons? They laying out a lot of quarters and dollars to get themselves in good shape to be hauled up to heaven?”

  He ignored me.

  “If I was you, Reverend, I’d think about giving all that cash back, or donating it to the Doubtful Chamber of Commerce. They could always use a little infusion.”

  “You are a crass materialist, sheriff. You haven’t the faintest notion of spiritual matters.”

  “Well, my ma used to say, being spiritual is what you do if there’s money left over after paying your bills. I’m thinking, Mr. Grosbeak, maybe you should pull up stakes and get on the road, just as fast as you can, before someone gets his neck broke.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Well, that done her. By the time I got out to the campsite, them doomers—that’s a good word for it—the doomers were packed up, and fixing to go. They didn’t even bother to come over and complain. They just loaded up that ragged canvas, heaped stuff in another white wagon, and drove off. I noticed that Elwood Grosbeak, he had a fine ebony carriage, but the rest, a ragamuffin bunch, mostly walked beside the mule-drawn whitewashed wagons.

  “You heading for greener pastures?” I asked Grosbeak.

  “You won’t escape your reward,” he said, mysteriously.

  And then they rolled away, on the rutted road to Laramie, and I thought them nice folks in Laramie were in for it. I watched them go, with a lot of cash they’d extracted from the good citizens of Doubtful. Grosbeak had been passing the collection plate for days, and scaring people half to death for days, and it probably didn’t matter to him if he skipped town a little ahead of Judgment Day.

  Me, I was feeling pretty good about getting rid of a parasite, and thought I should ask the Puma County supervisors for a raise. But then I spotted something I didn’t want to see. A whole mess of Doubtful women, every last one of them dressed in white, head to toe, even white hats and veils, was coming along on Wyoming Street, and they each had a little basket, and I knew what was in them baskets. It would be money. Greenbacks, mostly, but silver and gold and jewelry, and I knew what all this was about, and I knew what would have happened if Grosbeak had hung around instead of skedaddling.

  So I just waited there on that field, with all the spring grass trampled down by crowds, and the sun playing tag with puffball clouds. I just waited there for them ladies in white, all dressed to the nines, a mess of fevered-up ladies, fixing to pave their way through the pearly gates.

  They flooded onto the flat, saw that it was empty, and there was only Sheriff Pickens standing there. They hadn’t expected it. Finally, one of them approached me. It was Reggie Thimble’s third wife, Matilda, and she was the leader of this bunch.

  “Mr. Grosbeak has departed?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And was he taken up to heaven?”

  “No, ma’am, he got out of Doubtful just as fast as he could pack up and vamoose.”

  She contemplated that for a moment. She was flanked now by a few more of the ladies, making a kind of white wall in front of me. I knew them. They were merchants’ wives mostly, and a few maiden girls waiting for handsome and promising husbands. They sure looked nice, all gussied up in white, with flowery white hats.

  “Did you cause the reverend to depart, Mr. Pickens?”

  “No, ma’am, but I did make a suggestion or two. I said, says I, Mr. Grosbeak, you should put your money where your mouth is. I’ll setup the gallows and you step right up and put that noose over your neck, and if you ain’t taken up by the morning of the twenty-ninth, says I, we’ll drop the trap. He sure got offended, and said I was disrespectful, and I said a person’s got to act on his beliefs, and if he wasn’t gonna get took up to heaven, then a hanging wouldn’t scare him.”

  Well, Matilda, she stared and stared at me. “You have desecrated the sacred,” she said.

  “Well, ma’am, this outfit come down from Douglas, and I got word of how it went up there. Grosbeak, he says, doomsday is May 1, and he preaches it and gets them folks upset and they heap cash into his collection plates, and then the last hours of April, he and his bunch, they harness up and pull out, with a mess of greenbacks in their britches. And they come here, but now the date’s May twenty-eight.”

  “The devil has you by the throat,” she said.

  Me, I wasn’t going to argue with her. There’s no arguing that stuff. You either accept it or not, but facts don’t matter none. I rubbed my Adam’s apple a little to let her know it was still operating.

  She turned to the whole mess of ladies, and she says, “This doesn’t matter. The Hour of Salvation is at hand, even if this evil man has driven away our prophet. His words are true, and we must have faith. So, instead of cleansing ourselves of all worldly possessions by placing our baskets on his table, we will proceed to the creek, and we will divest ourselves of everything, and then await the chariot of fire that will carry us upwards into glory.”

  “Ma’am, don’t do that. Give it to the Sheriff Department Retirement Fund, or whatever.”

  “You are loathsome, Mr. Pickens. We will toss our filthy lucre away, and prepare for the end and the beginning.”

  “Ma’am, you been bamboozled, you been conned. You just take all that stuff to Barney’s Beanery and get a good bowl of oatmeal, and then go on home to your folks.”

  “You are unspeakable.” She turned to the rest. “Come with me,” she said.

  She led that whole lot of nice ladies in snowy outfits toward the creek. I had an awful sinking feeling in my gut, but what they did with their own money was up to them, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

  The ladies, looking determined and soulful, like Joan of Arc about to be burned as the English heaped kindling at her feet, these sainted women began their stately walk toward Doubtful’s dubious creek, which supplied water to the town, and removed other stuff. There, in a sort of grassy glade, the women collected along the bank, and plunged into mournful silence.

  About then, Cronk, the faro dealer at Mrs. Gladstone’s Sampling Room, he waited on the path with questions written all over him. He was out early, enjoying his morning dog-turd-colored cigar and the fresh air.

  “What are they up to?” he asked.

  “They are surrendering all their worldly possessions, to prepare themselves to be swept up to the pearly gates in a day or two.”

  “What’s in them baskets, sheriff?”

  “You leave that stuff alone, hear me? I’ll fetch their husbands in a bit, and try to get it all back.”

  “Any law keeping me from trying?” Cronk asked.

  “My law,” I said. “That stuff, it’s going back just as quick as I can get it back.”

  Cronk, he just smiled and puffed away, enjoying the May weather.

  Them women in white, they all raised their arms and waved at the sky, and then one by one they approached the creek and tumbled the contents of their baskets into the purling water. I sure saw a mess of green fluttering down. Them greenbacks, they didn’t sink, like the coin, but simply floated leisurely down the creek, which ran behind Saloon Row and the red-light district, and toward the Platte River, miles distant.

  Cronk sighed. But he knew if he dove for that loot, I’d buffalo him so fast he wouldn’t know what bounced off his skull.

  One by one, the shining white-clad women tilted their baskets over the creek, and loosened a small fortune. I thought I saw a few gold rings and maybe a gemstone or two in there, but I was standing a respectful distance. And C
ronk, he was smiling to beat the band, just sucking on his fat cigar and smiling, like he had a sudden vision of retirement from the shadowy confines of the saloon where he ran his faro game month after month.

  There sure was a mess of greenbacks bobbing downstream. I shoulda guessed what came next. When the bills got near Denver Sally’s place, a mess of women in wrappers and kimonos came boiling out. It was early for them gals to be up; their business day didn’t start for some while, but somehow they got wind of this, and were heading toward the creek to harvest the crop floating in.

  Cronk, he was just standing there with an arched brow. “They get in, but you keep me out?” he asked.

  He sure enough had a point. “You steer clear of these women here,” I said.

  Cronk, he went running toward the belles of the evening, planning to improve the day’s take from his faro game. Me, I stood on the riverbank and watched them beautiful women in the whitest white unload their worldly goods, and when it was over, I headed for the courthouse. I wanted to talk to the supervisor, Reggie Thimble, about what his latest wife was up to, and suggest that maybe a few husbands around Doubtful might want to reclaim what was left of the family stash.

  Them women, they were in no hurry, and headed back to the empty field for some reason, probably to await their ascent into the cloudless skies. That suited me fine. I’d get the husbands out to the creek and let them collect what they could, and hope they wouldn’t get into a brawl doing it.

  I started into town, but I was too late. There were ladies of the evening, and barkeeps, and even a few old drunks down there on the creek, scooping up the loot, much of which shone brightly in the pebbled bottom of the creek. Oh, there’d be some unhappy households this eve, and there’d be a few people from the sporting district who would be partying.

  I spotted Rusty on the way, and told him about it, and Rusty just shook his head. “I think you got your tail in a crack,” he said.

  So I clambered the courthouse stairs and found Reggie Thimble sharing a little toddy with Silas Jones, who owned the Blue Rib Ranch, way west of Doubtful.