Wyoming Slaughter

by William W. Johnstone

  “Now, there’s more. Close the parlor houses and the last attraction for the ranch trade will vanish, especially because rival towns and county seats are already gearing up to welcome drovers and cattlemen and whiskey drummers and all of that. What will bring the ranch trade to Doubtful? Not a thing except proximity. You think you have an advantage because the ranches are mostly within a few miles, but you will be surprised. I already know of peddlers who will visit ranches with vital supplies, from horseshoes to flour, in their wagons. And Doubtful will lose that trade.”

  I spotted Mayor Waller standing against a wall, nodding his approval.

  The Temperance Women stared at Mrs. Goodrich, fascinated by her and her trade.

  “Are you quite done?” Grosbeak asked.

  “Not at all. I’m just getting cranked up. Now consider that ladies in my profession are really educators, teachers, mentors, who improve a man and give him practice in all the happy arts. We help poor wretches become manly men, enable them to bring delight sublime to their wives. That’s why my resort is called the Gates of Heaven. Take it from me: many a grateful man has returned to my house with happy stories about the improvement of his domestic life, and the smile on his wife’s face, and the love blossoming in her gentle eyes.”

  There was a considerable stir among the ladies. Some looked stricken. A few smiled. Some fanned themselves furiously.

  “Modesty prevents me from naming the names of these satisfied customers, but I see some here and know that there are many more who are hoping that Sporting Row may continue to benefit the entire community of Doubtful.”

  “Are you done, madam?”

  “I’m getting there. This ordinance is much too hasty, and therefore unjust. It requires us to dispose of real property in two or three weeks, if enacted, or see it confiscated. Like all of you, we have engaged in hard and perilous work, and have invested our proceeds in property, but now we are threatened with grave loss. If you enact this ill-advised ordinance as it stands, you will profiteer at our expense. It is akin to theft. If you must enact this law, at the very least provide us with six months to divest our real property and any other goods.”

  “We’ve heard enough! This is becoming redundant.”

  “Well, thank you. I am, of course, opposed, and hope you will vote that way. Shall I leave my list of customers for you?”

  “What list?”

  “Why, my patrons. I copied them off. You’ll see that I have widespread support in Doubtful, and even wider in Puma County.”

  She waved a few papers before the crowd. The women of the Temperance Union stared, fascinated. For once, no one was fanning.

  “I think we’re done here. Sheriff, would you escort the lady to the door?”

  “Who, me?”

  “Do we need a new sheriff here?”

  I got up, began toward the door, but Mrs. Goodrich had already exited, her jet dress rustling softly. She had left a heavy shawl in the anteroom, and wrapped herself in it.

  “You suppose it made a difference?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. Some of those wives, they got educated. But I don’t know it’ll affect the vote any.”

  “Well, we’re packed and ready to leave. We should be off tomorrow, if the law goes through.”

  “Where you headed?”

  She smiled. “I don’t think it is prudent to tell you.”

  “I’ll sure miss you, ma’am.”

  “You’re about the only man in Doubtful we never took to bed. You’re an enigma, Cotton Pickens.”

  “Whatever that is,” I said as she slipped down the stairwell. The stairs didn’t even creak.

  I returned to the courtroom just as Grosbeak was calling for a vote.

  “Aye,” said Twining.

  “Aye,” said Thimble.

  “And aye,” said Grosbeak. “The ordinance is enacted. Sheriff, see to it. On the first day of March, you will close any remaining violators. Distribute notices as soon as we get them printed up.”

  The perfumed women all stood at once, stirring the air in that overheated room, and I watched them drift out, most of them pensive. They weren’t quite as frisky about all this as I might have thought, and I knew Mrs. Goodrich’s little argument had not gone unheeded.

  “Well, Pickens, you ready to shut ’em down?” asked George Waller.

  “I do what the law requires,” I said. “I’ve heard that the ladies are going to outlaw tobacco next. Next thing I know, I’ll be nabbing people who chew.”

  “Well, that’s going too far. A man can do without spirits. He can do without women. But no man in his right mind, of normal body, can do without a smoke or a chew. If that’s the plan, I’ll fight it. Doubtful needs tobacco. Doubtful needs Bull Durham. Doubtful needs real men, who chew and spit and smoke up a storm.”

  “You aren’t going to tax it?”

  “No, it won’t work. Pickens, you’ll see most everyone in sight move out. There won’t be a Doubtful anymore. I’ve got another revenue source in mind that’ll work better. I’m going to have the city council outlaw public spitting. It’s a disgusting habit, spitting. We’ll put a five-dollar fine on it and start you to enforcing it. If you ticket ten spitters a day, that’s fifty dollars in the coffers each and every day. We’re going to depend on you, Cotton. You’ll slow down a filthy habit and keep Doubtful in buffalo chips.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I sure didn’t want to take the word to the madams. They probably knew they were doomed in Doubtful, Wyoming, but it was my official duty to give them all notices. They had to shut down before March 1 or face the music. And that went for the gals in their houses, too.

  They knew, of course. Mrs. Goodrich had told them, even though she wasn’t present during the vote. But still, I had to make it official, and now that the notices had been printed up by the Doubtful Advertiser I had to stuff them into the hands of the owners, and maybe leave a few around for the girls to pick up and study, always assuming they could read. Reading wasn’t easy, especially public notices that used big words and were just as pompous as any lawyer could dream up.

  So one February afternoon I loaded a sheaf of them in my arm and headed for the sporting district. It wasn’t doing so well since the saloons had been shut down, but it was lively enough, getting trade off the ranches. I thought I’d start with Denver Sally. She had the biggest house, two stories, with a dozen rooms upstairs and a parlor, kitchen, and closed-down saloon, along with her private suite, downstairs. It was right nice in there, with an upright piano and red damask drapes with heavy tassels, and doilies on the horsehair furniture. It was a real nice place for a feller to select a girl. They drifted in, wearing gauzy stuff, and a feller could sit in a horsehair sofa, just like he was at home, and study the shadowy figures of the girls under that gauze and point to one or another, and pretty quick Sally would have two dollars and that cowboy and his temporary bride would be climbing the creaking stairs. Old-timers could tell if she was busy just by listening to the stair creak or feeling the whole place vibrate. There were cowboys who could make the whole place thunder for a moment or two. It sure was a nice, homey, cheerful place that reminded most of the cowboys of their family parlors.

  But since the saloons got shut down, Sally’s trade had diminished a little, and she had let two of her dozen girls go. She’d paid them off, given them a mud-wagon ticket to Cheyenne, where they could reach the railroad, and the gals just sort of vanished from town. That was pretty normal; there were all sorts of ladies coming and going from the district, but this time a few cowboys had broken hearts. Sally encouraged cowboys to fall for any gal, real hard, except that she sometimes had to ban some feller or other when he got jealous and didn’t want a girl to work her trade. That’s when Sally got stern. She had a small list of gents who were not welcome, and she had a burly hooligan who enforced her will with a knout and brass knuckles and a blackjack and boot knife. But only rarely did a cowboy ever get cut up, and he usually deserved it.

  I walked in t
here just after noon, when the place would be real quiet and the girls were either sleeping or painting their toenails, and sure enough, the jangle of cowbells on the door drew Sally out of her suite. She was dressed just as gauzy as her girls, and that made life interesting for me because Sally was a real pretty forty or so, not much older than all the gals she imported, mostly from Denver.

  “Well, if it ain’t the sheriff. How’s your pecker, Cotton? Need a little exercise, does it?”

  “Well, ma’am, I come to give notice.”

  “That’s not how most people do it. Tell you what, Cotton, you come on in here and try a free one with me.”

  “Ah, ma’am, I just stopped by to tell you.”

  “Oh, I’ve known about it for days. Come on back where the merchandise is ready. Sheriffs get it for nothing. It’s a perk of high office.”

  “Denver, you’ve got to shut down at the end of the month. This here notice says so.”

  “Read it to me. I’m better horizontal than upright.”

  “Okay, I memorized it anyway. It says you got to quit, and that you can get fined real heavy and thrown in the slammer if you don’t.”

  She steered me into the parlor and sat me down in one of those horsehair chairs, and then she tucked her robe tight, hiding all the joyous views.

  “They did it deliberate. Do you think I could sell this parlor house in two or three weeks? Hell no, unless I give it away. I got a lot invested in this. So what do I do? Walk away? There’s plenty of gents who’d like that. They’d get themselves a nice building in good shape for a song. It’d take no time to condemn it for taxes or something and arrange a quick little sale, even if I still got the deed. It was deliberate, you know. That’s the fate of working women. We get screwed.”

  “It’s not very pretty, Sally.”

  “Not pretty! Once you climb into my world, Cotton, you find out you ain’t got any of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution. You think I don’t know about that? I know plenty. You get pushed into a half-world, like slaves. Slaves were three-fifths of a human in the Constitution, but we aren’t any fraction at all. We get to walk away and leave our property behind. There’s a few ways out. You want to marry me? You marry me, and they wouldn’t take my stuff. I’d be Mrs. Cotton Pickens, and you’d own me and the parlor house, sort of anyway. You want to get married? Hell, we can walk over to the judge and tie it in five minutes, and you’ve got me and a twelve-room cathouse, and a free lay the rest of your life.”

  “I just stopped in to give you the word, Sally. It’s not my idea of what’s right, but I got no say in it.”

  She laughed. “No one’s got a say in it. We live in high-minded times. When the whole world is high-minded, there’s a lot of places like mine. When the times are low-minded, and females are available, there ain’t hardly any parlor houses. Who needs ’em? All I need is a change of viewpoint. All those ladies on the north side, they’re against us here. They want to make the world a perfect place, only life isn’t like that. Hell, Cotton, half of them secretly are glad we’re here. They don’t like marriage, not this part of it. High-minded women, they’d just as soon get babies via the stork and never get touched by a male. But they can’t ever say that. They can’t say to their husbands, go over to the district for your animal needs, and leave me to my lofty ideals. Nah. But they’re over there.”

  She eyed me. “I like my business. Always have. I like men. I like bedding them. I like the money, and I like being my own boss—at least if they let me. But hell, Cotton, those girls upstairs, most of them are there because they got no choice, because they’re desperate. There’s girls upstairs got abused by their old man. Girls driven off of farms. Girls who got pregnant from a boyfriend and got kicked out of their homes. Girls fleeing from killers and white slavers. Girls who are a little crazy or slow. Girls, hell, Cotton, they’re just all the hard-luck women in the world, no less or more moral than the respectable ones, but much more desperate. And now Doubtful, Wyoming, is going to get rid of them, and they’ll flee from here and end up in some worse place, or maybe just go off and die of some disease somewhere, and get buried in an unmarked grave in some potter’s field. So Doubtful will boot them out and feel superior, and think that it’s a better town, and now everyone will be virtuous and it’s going to be like paradise in Puma County. And you know what, Cotton? It’ll be darker and meaner than before.”

  “Well, Sally, I got no choice.”

  “I do. I’m staying.”

  “But Sally—you can’t.”

  “On the last day of February I’m going into a different business. This here parlor becomes a rooming house. I’m going into the boarding business. I’ll fire all the girls. I’m going to run an ordinary house, and my first tenant’s gonna be you. I’ll make you a better room and board deal than your pal Belle, and you’ll get some nice quarters. And if you want me, you’ve got me just for fun.”

  “You’re going to fire all them gals?”

  “Tough, ain’t it? I just got through telling you how they got beaten down, and now I’m gonna beat ’em down some more.”

  “What if they want to stick, and rent a room, and find work as a chambermaid or something?”

  “They’re welcome. My price is ten a month for a room with breakfast and supper. But Grosbeak and all them, they’ll just drive the girls away and bring up charges against them. That’s how it goes. They’ll say I’m still in business and the girl’s in business and the rooming house, it’s just a false front, and it’s really just a cathouse. You ready for that?”

  “Now I am. If they put any heat on me to charge you, I’ll just tell them to prove it. You gotta have some evidence.”

  She eyed me for a while. “You sure you don’t want to get married, Cotton?”

  “No, I’m not sure of anything.”

  “You want a sample?”

  She laughed, knowing I did and that I was a little slow about everything.

  “I got to deliver these notices to the rest of the houses,” I said.

  “Stop by after, and tell me what they say.”

  “They’ll all try to get my pants off.”

  “I knew I liked you, Sheriff.”

  I headed into the sunlight. It sure was quiet. The ruins of the saloons stretched along the alley, visited by reform. And now the reformers were striking again. And the funny thing was, Doubtful seemed to be croaking along with the reforms.

  Next door was Mrs. Goodrich’s Gates of Heaven. And even though she’d been at the supervisors’ meeting, I had to give her official notice anyway. So I drifted that way, enjoying the pale sunlight. It sure seemed eerie, this part of Doubtful without a horse tied to a hitch rail, and without a sound issuing from the saloons.

  Mrs. Goodrich, perpetually in black, greeted me coolly.

  “You’ve come to serve notice,” she said. I handed one of the sheets to her. “You want to read this to me, or should I read it to you?”

  “I guess you can figure it out,” I said. “I got to fifth grade and know a few words beyond, but not many.”

  “I’ve debated it for three days, and am not sure what to do. This building, it’s worth four thousand and a half. Or was. It’s worth about ten cents now. One of your town fathers will end up with it. Maybe Mr. Twining, since he stopped here all the time to untwine himself.” She smiled. “That’s how it is in my profession. Make a friend and he has you for dessert.”

  “It’s not any law I want on the books, ma’am. I’d just as soon let you all bang away, night and day.”

  She brightened briefly. “But you have to enforce the laws, and you’re not going to play favorites, and you’re going to do your best, and you’ll be fair and square. That’s what I like about you, Sheriff. Well, I tell you what. Come March one, this place will be inhabited by rats and garter snakes. I’ll take my girls with me, every one. I won’t abandon them. They’re some of the best girls I’ve ever had, and they’ve been good to me. We’re going to get a couple of freight wagons and take our beds a
nd bedding with us, and we’ll set up shop somewhere . . .” Her voice trailed away.

  “Where’s somewhere, Mrs. Goodrich?”

  “I wish I knew,” she said. “Somewhere. Maybe a mining town.”

  I felt sorry for her. She hadn’t asked for this turn of fate, and now she was being hounded out of Doubtful by some triumphant reformers who never paused to wonder how many people they were ruining along the way to their paradise on earth.

  “Don’t worry about us,” she said. “But maybe blow the girls a kiss when we leave. There are a lot of cowboys who are sweet on some of my gals, and some of my gals are sweet on them. There’ll be a few tears, Sheriff.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Well, the madams didn’t put up much of a fight. Maybe that’s because they were used to it. Most madams had gotten kicked out of five or ten towns, and Doubtful would be no different. Their trade was barely tolerated, and often isolated or confined to special districts, where it would be mostly invisible to the rest of the burg.

  About half of them houses were already gone before the March 1 deadline rolled around. Lillian Labrue, who ran Lucky Lil’s, a cowboy favorite because she charged a dollar, with regular fifty-cent specials, was one of the first to pack up.

  “It’s not been the same, not since they shut down the saloons,” she told me. “Cowboys used to roll in here, drink a few and come for a visit, and times were good. But now the whole place is dead, and my trade’s down to ten percent of what it was. Not that it was ever tops. Doubtful is not a real good place for a parlor house. Too many cowboys, not enough other sorts around here. You spend your life on a horse, and your equipment knows it. There’s not one cowboy in ten that’s up to snuff. My poor girls would try real hard, but most of the time it was just wishful thinking for the cowboys that would come in.” She eyed me. “I hope you don’t ride that horse of yours too much. You can be salvaged. I could work with you. But you turn yourself into a cowboy, riding broncs all day, and you’re not gonna get yourself a wife or family. Look at the ranches. Hardly a woman or a child on them. There’s a reason for it.”