The Lawman Takes A Wife. Anne Avery

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СКАЧАТЬ town hall had lasted just long enough for a brief swearing-in and handshakes all around before they’d adjourned to the Grand Hotel’s private dining room—at the taxpayers’ expense, no doubt—for dinner and drinks and a sometimes heated political debate.

      Three hours later, their political differences temporarily discarded under the mellowing influence of the Grand’s best whisky, the council had adjourned again, this time to the livelier environs of Jackson’s saloon.

      Only Hancock had bowed out, saying something about a widow and the attentions due her that had roused good-natured laughter from the other council members and a strong urge on Witt’s part to flatten the man’s pretty nose. It was none of his business to wonder who the widow might be, but Witt found himself hoping it wasn’t Mrs. Calhan.

      Mayor Andersen clapped him on the shoulder, driving out the thought of the woman and her smile and the tempting way those stray locks of hair had drifted against her cheek and throat.

      “Move on in, man, move on in! Can’t stand in the doorway blockin’ traffic, you know!”

      Witt slipped his watch into his vest pocket and stepped to the side, out of the way. Bert Potter swayed after him.

      “Good place, Jackson’s,” he said with only a faint slurring of his sibilants. He cast a slightly bleary gaze over the room. “M’wife hates it. Won’t speak to me for a week after I’ve been in.”

      “That so?” said Witt.

      “Yup.” Bert looked around in satisfaction. “I try’n come once a month, at least.”

      As Elk City’s only pharmacist, Bert had inquired right off into the general condition of Witt’s stomach, bowels and liver. The assurance that all Witt’s organs were in good working order and in no need of a revivifying tonic had been met with a resigned sigh. Since then, the man had been industriously trying to pickle his.

      As the mayor stalked to the bar to order a bottle of whiskey and some glasses, Billie Jenkins, proprietor of Jenkins Hardware and one of Elk City’s leading businessmen, sidled closer.

      “Don’t tell my wife about this, will you?” he said in what he no doubt thought was a low voice. He hiccuped solemnly. “She thinks I’m at a council meeting.”

      Bert frowned. “Hell, Billie. If she don’t know what you’re up to by now, I’ll eat my boots.”

      “Damn good thing there ain’t a chance in hell of that, Bert,” a man at a nearby table jeered good-naturedly. A rancher from the looks of him, rather than a miner. “Them’s the damned ugliest boots I’ve ever seen.”

      “Savin’ yer own, Tony!” his victim returned. “And mine ain’t caked with that peculiarly odiferous stuff that’s adornin’ yours!”

      Tony laughed and rose to his feet, gesturing to the empty chairs at the opposite side of his table. “Pull up a chair and join us.”

      He eyed Witt, grinned, and stuck out his hand. “Judgin’ from the size of you, you’d be the new sheriff. Heard you were in Jackson’s last night. Zacharius Trainer must be some put out.”

      Witt took Tony’s proffered hand. Before he could ask who Zacharius Trainer was and why he should be some put out, Josiah Andersen returned, loaded with glasses and a bottle.

      “Don’t let Trainer worry you, Gavin,” he advised. “He don’t mind we didn’t elect him sheriff. It’s the missus Trainer you gotta look out for, not ol’ Zach. She’s twice as mean as he is, and carries a grudge, besides.”

      Laughter swept the table. While Josiah passed the glasses round, Witt studied the room around him. Last night had been a workday night and the place had been relatively quite. Tonight, however, was Friday and the place was crowded.

      According to the mayor, there wasn’t much else in the way of entertainment in Elk City except two smaller, less popular saloons at the opposite end of town and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union’s reading room. And that, thank God, Josiah had said, was closed of a Friday evening.

      Though there were a few women scattered here and there through the crowd, none of them had the look of trouble. They were with their men and it didn’t take much looking to realize that an invisible and unmistakable hands-off sign had been posted on every one of them.

      The men in Jackson’s didn’t seem to mind. The ones who wanted a woman had already taken the last train into Gunnison, twenty miles away. According to Josiah, who’d said his wife would have a stick to him if she ever found out he’d dare think such a thing, Elk City’s one lack was a good whorehouse.

      The respectable ladies of the town had long since forced the closure of the two brothels that had provided the early miners’ entertainment. Josiah admitted the establishments had never been all that impressive, but they’d been Elk City’s own, and he missed them.

      There were still a couple of women who entertained visitors privately, though, and the mayor had taken pains to tell Witt exactly who they were and where they worked. He hadn’t come right out and said it, but Witt had the feeling it would be as much as his job was worth to drive the last of those enterprising females out of Elk City. So long as they minded their business and didn’t disturb the peace, he didn’t have any intention of trying.

      A checkers game in the corner had drawn a few onlookers, all of whom were more than willing to tell the players what they ought to have done and to argue over the differing strategies. In the opposite corner, a burly miner sat picking out a song on a battered, out-of-tune piano that didn’t look as if it had ever had much in the way of better days.

      The pianist’s friends were urging him to play something else, anything else but that same, damned “Clementine” with which he’d been assaulting them for hours. Impervious to their pleas, he simply played louder. He couldn’t possibly have played worse.

      The air reeked of cheap whiskey and cheaper cigars, and the language coming from a couple of the patrons would have gotten the ladies of the church going something fierce. A freckle-faced boy kept busy moving the spittoons and cleaning up the spills, and so far as Witt could see, there wasn’t anything other than the foul language that a boy his age shouldn’t be seeing or hearing.

      Friday night at Jackson’s was remarkably peaceful. Provided the checker players didn’t turn violent from a surfeit of advice, Witt decided he could stop worrying about trouble. If this was the wildest Elk City had to offer, his tenure as sheriff was going to be a mighty peaceful one.

      He settled comfortably back in his chair while a dozen threads of conversation swirled around him. Beneath the noise, he caught the faint rustle of the paper bag of chocolates in his shirt pocket as he shifted.

      He stilled, but not soon enough to stop the sudden itch in his palms, and the bigger itch a little lower down.

      Maybe not so peaceful, after all.

      The Elk City Ladies’ Society biweekly meeting was in full swing. The group, which was presently engaged in making quilts for a church-sponsored orphanage in Chicago or New York—there was some disagreement about which, though they were all agreed it would be one or the other of those licentious hellholes back East—had assembled in Elizabeth Andersen’s parlor for this week’s session.

      “The new sheriff’s been busy,” Coreyanne Campbell said approvingly. She finished pinning the fabric she was piecing and СКАЧАТЬ