Chapter Forty-two
No one was talking. I intended to level murder charges against those who’d lynched four mortals that August afternoon. I knew plenty of the people who were rioting at the racetrack, but that didn’t help. They all professed not to know who strung up the match race contestants and my part-time deputy.
Puma County had a guilty secret, and it looked like it would stay that way and that’s the way they wanted it. I spent days poking and probing, and got nowhere, but I knew that someday, sooner or later, some witness would start spilling the facts. And then I’d make sure the guilty were brought to justice.
Odd how the town changed. People were afraid to talk to me. I walked around there in isolation. Maybe the ones who did the lynching were threatening those who watched them do it. Maybe the reason no witness came to me was because he feared for his life if he did. I could only wait because someday the whole story would spill, and I’d do what the law required me to do.
There was new pressure to get rid of me, too. The fastest way to bury the lynching was to oust me from the sheriff office, and sure enough, that’s what happened. The county supervisors called me in one afternoon and told me they were firing me. They said I’d caused damage to county property, namely the cell door, and that was reason enough to discharge me. I stared at Reggie Thimble, and Ziggy Camp, and smiled. They smiled back. They knew what they were doing and why, and it didn’t have anything to do with the wrecked cell door.
“Have a cigar on us, Cotton,” Thimble said. Rusty and I buried Burtell, since no one else was around to do it. The old deputy was a loner, with no family we could find, so we got Maxwell to dig a grave for us in the town cemetery, and we laid our friend to rest there. His last efforts were to restore peace in town, and he deserved better than he got. He took with him the secret of who strung him up. But me and Rusty, we knew we’d find out eventually.
Bad secrets always boil to the surface.
The supervisors didn’t appoint Rusty sheriff. They knew he’d do what I would do, and keep after the case until he had the lynchers behind bars. Or maybe they didn’t like the idea of a sheriff married to Siamese twins. By then, both Natasha and Anna were expecting, and Rusty’s family would soon grow. I sort of hoped that each twin would not produce twins, but the thought was entertaining. They let Rusty stay on as deputy, mostly because the Siamese twins were becoming a tourist attraction, and bringing coin to Doubtful. And until supervisors got around to finding someone new, Rusty would be the acting sheriff.
I didn’t fight the dismissal, figuring my time in Doubtful was up, and it was time to move on. But even before I collected Critter and moved out, I got word from the Wyoming Cattlemen’s Association that they wanted to talk with me. So I did, and the upshot of all that was a new job, at eighty a month, as a range detective with the association, keeping rustling at bay. The cattlemen had been losing a lot of beef, and they wanted to put a stop to it, and figured I was the man. And I could stay right in Doubtful.
So I left my shiny badge with Supervisor Thimble. It was untarnished. I’d never dishonored my badge. But the county and town that employed me now had a guilty secret, and I thought it was a good thing to let go of it, at least for a while. And I had a hunch that my new job, as a range detective, would lead me to the things no one was talking about. Such as who did the lynching in Puma County that August day. The story wasn’t over yet. And neither was my life.
As my ma used to say, you ain’t old until you’re forty.
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Following the death of William W. Johnstone, the Johnstone family is working with a carefully selected writer to organize and complete Mr. Johnstone’s outlines and many unfinished manuscripts to create additional novels in all of his series like The Last Gunfighter, Mountain Man, and Eagles, among others. This novel was inspired by Mr. Johnstone’s superb storytelling.
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