Support Your Local Deputy: A Cotton Pickens Western by William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone Page A

Finn said. “It’s in the wagon. I’m gonna go on a wild ride.”
    “Where’d you get that?”
    “Right off the table when that big galoot was making change.”
    “What do you want to be when you’re grown?” I asked.
    “A paid clock-stopper. Them gents get a hunnert dollars for each hit. I’d kill me half a dozen and live like a king. I’d slit their throats; beats having a gun.”
    By this time, I sure was wondering what to do, and the most likely thing to do was get these two out of town as fast as the orphan train would take them. I couldn’t think of anything that would slow this pair down.
    That’s when King Glad walked in. King, and his sister, Queen, ran the Admiral Ranch outside of Doubtful. They were both tough customers, as hard as any people got, but straight shooters. Their pa had started the outfit, and employed the roughest hands in Puma County, including Big Nose George, Spitting Sam, Smiley Thistlethwaite, and Alvin Ream. They sure weren’t men to mess with, and most of them were recruited from jails back East. The Glads ran their outfit with an iron hand, and smart people left them alone.
    “I heard about the ruckus,” King said. “These the little punks?”
    “Yep, this here’s Mickey, from off the streets somewhere, and this one’s the Big Finn, from Hell’s Kitchen, wherever that is.”
    “Perfect,” said King. “They’re just what I’m looking for.”
    “Naw, they’re not. This one here, he wants to stay in jail because he gets meals and no work; this other, he wants to be a contract killer and live easy.”
    Glad turned to the punks. “My kind of fellers,” he said. “I’ll indenture you tomorrow, when they have that hoedown on the courthouse steps.”
    “You know what you’re doing, King?”
    He grinned at me. “Sheriff, I run the best reform school in Wyoming. A few days with Spitting Sam and Big Nose, and they’ll be the best little workers around.”
    “I’m locking them up tonight, King.”
    “I’ll buy them tomorrow,” he said.
    Not a bad deal, I thought. Except maybe the brats would steal the ranch.

Chapter Nine
    I went to see the medicine show off at dawn. I sort of hated it; I hadn’t figured out who nipped the boodle in Zimmer’s cash box, and I hadn’t come up with any suspects at all. I wished I could set it right with him.
    I wrestled myself out of my cot at Belle’s Boarding House and got out there just as the outfit was fixing to roll.
    “You, is it?” Zimmer asked. “You found some hard-won and easily nipped greenbacks that belong to me?”
    “No, sir, I reckon I ain’t. Not even a likely prospect. But I want an address so if I get aholt of it, I can return it.”
    Zimmer sighed. “I have none, sir. I hope to retire in Ames, Iowa, when I’ve advanced a few more years, but my home, sir, is only a soft and seductive dream.”
    The feller sounded sort of lonely. It would be a strange sort to run around the country peddling tonic all his life, with nary a hope of home and family. But the world’s full of odd sorts like him.
    “You do well here?”
    “I would have, but for the theft, sheriff.”
    “You sure it ain’t someone in your company? Someone who wouldn’t be noticed sawing away on the padlock in your wagon?”
    “It pains me to see you drive a wedge between my loyal people and me, sir. No, they are stalwarts. The visit to Doubtful was a wash, thanks to some culprit in your town. And now, sir, we make haste for Douglas, up north a way.”
    Those people were standing around, waiting for me to let them loose, it seemed, so I waved them off. For once the professor wasn’t in his tux and tails. He wore soft britches and shirt, and was going to drive one wagon.
    The whole business seemed unfinished to me, but that’s how it is with law enforcement. Stuff goes unresolved. For all I knew, this outfit pilfered all the stuff from George Waller’s mercantile, and maybe more.
    “One last word, sheriff. People in towns like yours are