But the jailhouse is empty, nobody in there except an old codger with an eyepatch, slumped in the wooden swivel chair, wearing a deputy’s badge on his raggedy red undershirt. There is a thick gully of scar running through his gray beard, down which a trickle of tobacco juice dribbles, and his lone eye is red with drink. Hlo, sheriff, he drawls, trying to stand. Glad yu’re back. Yu’re jest in time t’hang thet rapscallious hoss thief yerself. He chortles, then falls back into the swivel chair, takes a swig from a whiskey bottle, belches, offers it out. Yer health, sheriff!
Whar is she? he says.
The prizner? They tuck her over t’the saloon t’shuck her weeds offn her’n scrub her down afore her hangin.
The saloon?
Yup, well they got soap’n water over thar and plentya hep in spiffyin her up. The boys wuz plannin t’rub her down good with goose grease’n skunk oil after, polish her up right properlike. He’s already at the door and there’s a pounding in his temples that’s worse than snakebite. Hey, hole up, sheriff! Ain’t thet a outlaw hoss out thar?
Mebbe. I’ll check into it. Yu stay here’n keep yer workin eye on thet whuskey bottle.
I aim to.
The mare is wild-eyed and frothing, rearing against her hitching rope, so he lets her go. Stay outa sight, he whispers to her as he unties her. This wont take long. I’ll whistle yu when we’re set t’bust out. The horse hesitates, pawing the ground, whinnying softly, but he slaps her haunches affectionately, and, glancing back over her shoulder at him, she slips away into the shadows behind the jailhouse.
The object of his quest is not in the saloon either. It’s quiet in there, four men playing cards, a couple more at the bar, a puddle of water in the middle of the floor where a bucket of soapy water stands, a lacy black thing ripped up and hung over its lip. The men at the bar are laughing and pointing at the bucket or else at the wet long-handled grooming brush beside it. Thet goddam humpback! one of them says, hooting.
Hlo, sheriff, grins the bartender, a dark sleepy-eyed man of mixed breed with half a nose. Welcum back. Whut’s yer pizen?
An argument breaks out at the card table, the air fills with the slither of steel flashing free of leather, shots ring out, and a tall skinny man with spidery hair loses most of his jaw and all else besides, slamming against the wall with the impact before sliding in a bloody heap to the floor. Looks like they’s a chair open fer yu, sheriff, says the thin little bespectacled man who shot him, tucking his smoking derringer back inside his black broadcloth coat. Set yer butt down and study the devil’s prayerbook a spell.
I aint a sportin man. Whut’s happened t’the prizner?
Yu mean thet dastardly hoss thief? Haw. Caint say. He aims a brown slather of juice at a brass spittoon, and it crashes there, making the spittoon rattle on its round bottom like a gambling top. She might could be over t’doc’s fer a purjin so’s t’git her cleaned up inside as smart as out, though after her warshin in here, I misdoubt she needs it.
The others snort and hoot at this. Naw, I think doc musta awready seed her, declares the barkeep, a toothpick stabbed into a gap between his tobacco-stained teeth. He was in here shortly sniffin his finger.
Probly then, laughs another, they tuck her up t’the schoolhouse fer a paddlin.
Whut’s thet got t’do with bein a hoss thief?
Nuthin. It’s jest fer fun. Give the jade summa her own back. And they all whoop again and slap the bar and table.
He pushes out through the swinging doors, his blood pounding in his ears and eyes. Can’t recollect where the doctor lives, if he ever knew, so he heads for the schoolhouse. On his way over, he hears a banging noise coming from a workshop back of the feed store. It’s a lanky hairy-faced carpenter knocking out a pine coffin. Howdy, sheriff, he says, lifting the coffin up on its foot. Jest gittin ready t’eut the lid. Inside, on the bottom, there is a crude line drawing of a stretched-out human figure, no doubt done by tracing around a person lying there. One of the faces from the hanging posters has been cut out and pasted in the outline of the head, and nails have been driven in where the nipples would be. The arms go only to the elbows (probably her hands were folded between the nails), but the legs are there in all their forked entirety. I reckon it should oughter fit her perfect. Whuddayu think?
I think yu should oughter burn it.
The schoolhouse is not where he remembered it either. Instead, he comes on a general dry goods and hardware store in that proximate neighborhood and he stops in to ask if she’s been seen about.
Sheriff! Whar yu been? cries the merchant, a round bandy-legged fellow with a black toupee and his nose pushed into his red face. They’s been a reglar plague a hell-raisin bandits pilin through here since yu been gone! Jest lookit whut they done t’my store! Shot up my winders, killt my staff, stole summa my finest goods, ‘n splattered blood’n hossshit on all the rest! Yu gotta do sumthin about this! Whut’s a sheriff fer ifn honest folk caint git pertection!
Thet’s a question I aint got a clear answer to, he says, staring coldly into the fat merchant’s beady eyes. Right now I’m tryin t’locate a missin prizner.
Whut, yu mean thet ornery no-account barebutt picaroon? She aint missin. Yer boys wuz by here a time ago with her, plain cleaned me outa hosswhips’n ax handles; she wuz in fer a grand time. I think they wuz makin fer the stables. Yu know. Scene a the crime. He turns to leave, but the merchant has a grip on his elbow and a salacious grin on his round red face. I gotta tell yu, sheriff, I seen sumthin when they brung her by I aint never seed before. He glances over his shoulder with one eye, the other winking, and leans toward him, his cold fermented breath ripe with the stink of rot and mildew. She wuz — huh! yu know, he snickers softly in his ear. She wuz cryin!
He tears free from the merchant’s greasy grip and strides out the door onto the wooden porch, his spurs ringing in the midday hush. He pauses there to stare out upon the dusty town. No sign of them. They could be anywhere. There’s a dim shadowy movement over in the blacksmith’s shed, but that’s probably his horse pacing about. He should just go back to the jailhouse and wait for them. But then the white church steeple beckons him. She gave him a Bible once, he recalls. They’ll have to take her there sooner or later if she wants to go, and she surely will. There’s probably a law about it.
He is met inside the church doors by the parson, or a parson, standing in a black frock coat behind a wooden table with a Bible on it, a pair of ivory dice (REPENT, says a tented card beside them, AFORE YU CRAP OUT!), a pistol, and a collection plate. Howdo, sheriff, he says, touching the brim of his stovepipe hat. He’s a tall ugly gold-toothed man with wild greasy hair snaking about under the hat and a drunkard’s lumpy nose, on the end of which a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles is perched like two pans of a gold-dust balance. Welcum t’the house a the awmighty. Yu’re jest in time fer evenin prayers!
I aint here fer prayin. I’m lookin fer a missin prizner.
Y’mean thet jezebel hoss thief? She gone missin? A leather flap behind the parson blocks his view, but he can hear the churchgoers carrying on inside, hooting and hollering in the pietistical way. Well she’s probly in thar, ever other sinner is.
Thanks, revrend, he says, and heads on in, but the parson grabs him by the elbow. The pistol is cocked and pointed at his ear. Whoa thar, brother. I caint let yu go in without payin.
I tole yu, I aint here fer the preachin, I’m on sheriffin bizness.
Dont matter. Yu gotta put sumthin in the collection plate or I caint let yu by.