I.
“Sweet Je-zus, Sheriff! Can’t you,” and here the wormy little profligate falls into a mumbling bit of whimper. “Can’t you just flog me, send me off and all? I won’t come back!”
Miserable little weed.
“Nah, Ned, you won’t be coming back any time soon,” I tells him matter o’ fact like, rummaging through the chest o’ drawers next to the gun cabby. “I do declare-” and I pause to relight my pipe as my thoughts hurry about the office. Where, o where, have our black hoods gone…. They’re normally kept in the second drawer, next to the manacles.
It’s hard to think, what with Ned yammering on from the town cell. Not really a cell even, more an elaborate cattle pen hemmed with barbed wire and glass fragments. Iron bars don’t grow on trees in Skokie Pines. He stands as close to the slats as he can, pleading for his useless life with such gibbering despair.
“Gawd- I’ll fly right off, Sheriff, it doesn’t haftabethiswayouknowIdon’t- deservetodielikethat please Sheriff, pleASE!!!” Bawling and slobbering and snotting on, shaking like a leaf in an autumn breeze.
I head for the door. “No need to shout, Ned, keep your pants on. I’m over to Betsie’s, see if she can fix you up a proper hood and all.” And I look back, a grin on my face. “Wouldn’t want the townfolk have to watch your perfidious mug die, right-right?” And I shut the door as he begins a-wailing again.
It’s a beautiful day out the day, bright enough to blind a fella. Course, the office doesn’t have any windows. Very stoutly built, if simply so. Angus idles in a rocker on the porch, hat pushed over his eyes. “Lotsa noise he’s making in there, Sheriff. Want me to shut’m up?” And he gives one of those sour rotten smiles Angus and his braars are known throughout the county for. Teeth’re the first to go in that fam.
 |
| '...more an elaborate cattle pen...' |
I walk on, boots scuffling along the rough dusty stretch of road that cuts through town. Hard on the heels mostly, but a gluey morass at the first sign of rain. Old Milo once suggested we lay down some broken stones from the mining op uphill. A grand idea, if anyone wanted to shift them down here. I think Milo really just wanted the township to pay him something extra, proposing it in that roundabout way of his. In any case, it in't as though it comes as any detriment to the regular pace of things. Old Skokie is a small sort of place, eleven buildings thrown up at the foot of the Scarsdales and the little mines and paltry claims that operate there.
I saunter across to Weebleman’s, a sort of one-stop for dry goods and much-about everything. Uncle Weeb is dead now, stuck in the dusty ground behind First Church. The store lives on via my brother Paul and his wife Betsie, formerly our Weeb’s eldest. Course, Betsie’s sort of the family facet. A harbringer, our stagecoach regular Emmitt once called her. She’s outlived three husbands now; two of our cousins and another of my brothers, Geoff. Now facets themselves behind the First Church.
I push open the only screen door in town and step inside to the murky cool of the shop. “Mornin’ Spur,” Betsie pipes up from behind the far counter. That’s me by the way, Spur; called so because I don’t wear spurs, on account of my piles. Horses and I aren’t the best of friends, let’s say. “Ned still due for dusk?”
“Yup, I do believe he is. Course, do you think you can fix up a hood for him before then? Can’t seem to find any in the office.”
“Hrmmm,” she thinks audibly back in the coquettish, playful sort of way she does. Everybody has a way, I suppose. But she scrunches her face and puts a finger on those lips, amber eyes upturned off and away presumably finding the answer somewhere among the pressed tin ceiling tiles. “You know, I think I can solve that problem right now. We could use one of these barley bags instead.”
She rummages one out from a pile of cloths and hands it to me, smelling of gal-musk and sassafras. I roll the bag around in my hands; seems a proper fit for a head. We can affix the appropriate stars and signs later. “I dare say you’re a clever devil, Miss Betsie. What might the township owe for this generosity of yourn?”
She pulls the pipe from my teeth. “Paul is away yet, 'til sometime later this afternoon. I don’t suppose the township could part with a sheriff, at least for a little bit?” And I hafta say, there’s nothing like a little anarchy now and then to make a community stronger.
* * * to be continued * * *
