Outlaw Train by Cameron Judd Page B

selling herself up in her room, you know.”
    “Well, if she is, she’s got a good product for drawing customers,” said Wilton Brand. “Lord, I might find myself paying a visit to her myself, if I can do it without Lawman Luke here catching me!”
    Luke tried to keep the conversation more maturely focused. “Is she really whoring herself, Dewitt?”
    “That’s what Jimmy said. That’s all I know. I never saw none of it happening myself. Just saw her come down the stairs and go out onto the street, that’s all.”
    “Well, all joking aside here, if she’s using the hotel for the practice of prostitution, I intend to see that brought to an end. Ain’t going to happen in my town!”
    Crowe snorted with laughter. “Luke, boy, who do you think you’re fooling here? There’s always been soiled doves in Wiles County, and in Wiles itself. I’ve locked a few of them up from time to time, but the fact is there ain’t much gain in trying to halt that kind of thing. It’s been around as long as there’s been people, and it ain’t likely to go away.”
    “Not without the power of God,” threw in Dewitt, to Crowe’s obvious annoyance.
    “Well, I can’t sit back and let it go if I’ve been told about it,” Luke responded. “That would be negligence of my duty.”
    “Do what you got to do, then,” Crowe said. “I, for one, am an officer of the law who prefers to spend his time fighting crimes that actually hurt people.”
    Luke shrugged.
    “Would I be gossiping if I told you something I seen that might have something to do with this?” Dewitt said.
    “If it’s something we need to know to enforce the law, I think you ought to tell,” Luke replied.
    “Well…all right. It was two nights ago. I was out walking in town because I’d finished up my work here and there was nobody to watch in the jail. I figured a little exercise might make me sleep better, so I walked. Kept an eye on things while I did, kind of like making rounds like you do, Luke.”
    “I appreciate that, Dewitt.”
    “Anyway, I was over near the Gable House and thought about stopping in to say hello to Jimmy Wills, figuring he was working the night duty as usual. But I never actual went into the hotel lobby. I stopped in the alley for a piss there across the street from the hotel, and when I was coming out to cross the street, I seen somebody I recognized going into the hotel. And I wondered why he’d be out visiting the hotel at that hour of the night. So I kind of watched, and through them front windows that look into the staircase over near where it goes down into the lobby, I could see him going up. And I remembered that woman living there, and it come to me what he was up to. Surprised me, I got to say.”
    “Who was it, Dewitt?” asked Crowe.
    Dewitt opened his mouth and closed it again, frowning. “Go on and tell, Dewitt,” Luke said.
    “Howard Ashworth,” Dewitt said softly.
    There was silence as the group took it in. Then Crowe chuckled softly, the chuckle growing into a full laugh that spread to the others. Luke managed not to join the laughter, but couldn’t suppress a smile.
    “Oooh, Lordy!” Crowe said. “Can’t say I can hold old Ashworth much at fault for that sin, considering what he’s got to go home to!”
    “Typical old hypocrite!” said Wilton Brand in a tone almost triumphant. “Just the kind of thing you can expect from them what wave their religion like a banner over everybody else they think they’re better than! Old church elder Ashworth sits there on that pew with his old cow of a wife Sunday after Sunday, singing praises to heaven, and all the while he’s sneaking out in the night making his own kind of heaven with a whore in the hotel! Bah! That’s what keeps me out of church. All the damned hypocrites!”
    “Why, Wilton, even if you ain’t a churchgoer, I thought you professed to be a man of faith,” Luke said. “Ain’t that so?”
    “I got faith. I just ain’t one to go strut it down