“You have a new client,” I said.
“I know,” Monk said. “I could smell him from a hundred yards away.”
“You say that about everybody except me.”
“Because nobody except you in this town bathes and wears fresh clothes each day,” Monk said. “And many of them regularly sit astride filthy beasts.”
“You mean horses.”
“That’s what I said.” Monk took the bag from me and retreated to his laboratory, closing the door behind him.
“I’d ride a horse if I could afford one,” I said.
Monk never rode horses and believed they should be prohibited from the streets. If he had his way, everybody would have to hitch up their horses in a corral outside of town and clean up after them.
He emerged again a few hours later, a bewildered look on his face.
“Is there an animal being slaughtered on our front porch?”
Monk was referring to Nate Klebbin, who’d fallen asleep the instant after he sat down on the bench and had been snoring loudly ever since.
“That’s the fellow who brought in the sample for you,” I said. “He’s sleeping on the porch.”
“It sounds like he’s being murdered, and yet it smells like he died two weeks ago.”
“I’m sure he’ll be flattered to hear that,” I said.
Monk opened the door and stepped out onto the porch, where Klebbin was snoring away. “Mr. Klebbin?”
The man was too deep asleep to be stirred by the mere mention of his name. So Monk reached back into the cabin, grabbed the broom, and poked Klebbin in the side with the handle.
Klebbin jerked awake. “What are you poking me for?”
“I’m Artemis Monk, the assayer. I’ve finished studying your sample.”
Klebbin sat up straight, his eyes flashing with excitement. “Did you find color?”
“I did,” Monk said.
“A lot of it?”
“Enough to indicate the possibility of much more to be had with hard labor,” Monk said.
“Yee-haw!” Klebbin said.
“I wouldn’t yee or haw just yet,” Monk said. “Where is your claim?”
Klebbin reached into his shirt for a folded sheet of sweat-stained paper, which he held out to Monk. “It’s right here.”
Monk took a step back as if he was being offered a dead rat. “I mean, where is your parcel located?”
“In a gulch west of Juniper Creek,” Klebbin said. “I bought it from Clem Janklow. You know him?”
Monk knew Clem, and so did everybody else in town. Clem was a prospector who scraped by but never struck it rich and what gold he did find he quickly spent at the saloon. He was always broke and perpetually drunk and relieved his prodigious bladder wherever, and whenever, the urge struck him.
This, of course, disgusted and infuriated Monk, who demanded that Sheriff Wheeler lock Clem up or throw him out of town. But Wheeler was reluctant to do either.
“If I lock him up, then he’ll just piss all over my jail,” Wheeler said. “And if I drove out everybody who pisses in the street, the town would be deserted. Besides, Clem can’t help it. He’s got a kidney ailment.”
“The ailment is whiskey,” Monk said.
But Clem claimed it was more than that, but that he couldn’t afford the medicine that would lessen his need for alcohol and relieve his kidney problem. Monk talked to Dr. Sloan, who confirmed Clem’s account and recommended an elixir known as Greeley’s Cure, which was used to treat syphilis, alcoholism, opium addiction, and digestive troubles.
So Monk made a deal with Clem. He’d pay for the medicine himself if Clem agreed to stay out of the saloon and not to relieve himself on the streets.
Since then, Clem hadn’t relieved himself once in public and stayed away from the saloon. The bottles of Greeley’s Cure cost Monk several dollars a day, but he figured it was a small price to pay to save a man’s life and keep the community clean.
Now Monk’s face was turning beet red with anger.
“Why did Clem sell you his claim if it was still producing gold, Mr. Klebbin?”
“Clem told me he’s too sick and feeble to work it anymore but it ain’t played out yet,” Klebbin said. “He’s got some kind of kidney problem from too much rot-gut whiskey. It’s got so bad, he’s pissing day and night all over the place out there. You wouldn’t believe the stink, but I don’t mind if there’s gold.”
Monk shivered. “You’ve been swindled, Mr. Klebbin, and so have I.”
“But you found gold in them rocks, didn’t you?” Klebbin said.
“Indeed I did,” Monk said. “Stay here while I get the sheriff.”
Monk marched away and I hurried after him to Main Street. He kept his head down, watching the planks as he stepped on them.
“I don’t understand the trouble, Mr. Monk. Everything Clem told Mr. Klebbin is true.”
“That’s what makes it so infuriating,” Monk said. “The audacity of the crime.”
Monk stopped and pointed to a warped plank. I bent down and marked a big “X” on it with a piece of chalk so that the wood could be replaced later. I carried the chalk with me at all times for exactly that purpose.
He took another step and pointed to another plank. This one was cracked.
“I thought you were in a hurry,” I said.
“I am,” Monk said. “But I’m not going to kill myself getting there.”
“You can’t die from stepping on a warped board,” I said.
“You can trip and break your neck. Or you could get a splinter in your toe that becomes infected. Next thing you know, Dr. Sloan is chopping off your leg to prevent gangrene, but he’s too late. You’re already dead.”
I marked the plank and we were hurrying along again when a man rode in, dismounted, and hitched his horse to the post a few yards ahead of us.
He was a cowhand, not a prospector. He wore a wide-brimmed hat, a calico shirt, a beaten-down charro jacket adorned with silver-threaded brocade, and a pair of chaps. His boots were muddy and his clothes were dusty and stained with splotches of tar.
The cowboy spit some tobacco into the street and stepped up to the sidewalk in front of the saloon, slapping dust off of himself with his hat.
“You can sweep that right up again with that hat of yours,” Monk said. “We like to keep our town clean.”
The cowboy turned to look at Monk. “What did you say to me?”
“And when you’re done sweeping up your dust, you can pick up that disgusting gob of tobacco you left in our street.”
The cowboy smiled, flashing his yellow teeth, and scratched at some welts on his chest. There was a murderous glint in his eyes. But he was wearing a gun belt and Monk was not, which may have been the only thing that saved Monk from getting gunned down.
“I’m walking into that saloon and having myself a drink, mister. Maybe you and the pretty lady would like to join me.”
“Not with those muddy boots on you’re not,” Monk said. “People eat and drink in there. Why don’t you take them off and leave them by the door?”
“I got to get me some of whatever you’ve been drinking,” the cowboy laughed and went inside.
Monk was about to go in after him when the horse passed gas and let loose some droppings. He screamed and ran back the way we’d come, careful to step on the same boards that he had before.
I caught up with Monk around the corner on Second Street, out of sight of the horse and the droppings. He was breathing with a handkerchief over his nose and mouth.
“How are we going to get to the sheriff now?” he said.
“Easy,” I said. “We walk down the sidewalk to his office.”
“We can’t with that in the street.”
“Unless you walk right behind that horse, there’s no danger of stepping in the droppings.”