Shotgun gold

“And that’s how it comes that I’m sheriff of Black Horse--and may I be hung with horseshoes and rabbit-feet, et cettery.”

Roaring Rigby tilted back in an old swivel chair and looked disconsolately at the white-haired man who sat across the battered desk. The man had a long, deeply-lined face, slightly reddish nose, somber blue eyes beneath white eyebrows.

Roaring Rigby himself was long, lean, bony of face and figure, with the pouched eyes of a bloodhound. His nose was long too, and slightly out of line; his cheekbones were almost visible through the tightly stretched skin that covered them. His ears were of the hating variety, and his neutral-colored hair was thin, like foxtail grass on alkali flats.

The room in which these two men sat was the sheriff’s office in the town of Turquoise, the county-seat of Black Horse County. It was a small room, unpapered, except for an array of reward notices, a State map and a calendar of the previous year. A desk, several chairs and a gun-cabinet completed the furnishings. The floor was uncarpeted and had been scored deeply by years of high heel scraping.

Roaring Rigby lifted his feet and rasped one spurred heel across the top of the desk, as if to express his contempt for such a piece of furniture.

“And so Jim Randall, sheriff of this county, went away, did he?” sighed the old man.

“He did that.”

Roaring Rigby turned his sad-dog eyes upon the old man.

“Yea-a-ah, he went away, Jim Randall did. He wrote out his resignation, packed up his fambly, folded his tent, as you might say, and silently stole away. But I don’t blame him, Judge. He’s a married man. You’re as much to blame as he is. You two opined to make Turquoise sanitary. You ought to know better, Judge; you’re an old-timer. Jim Randall was born and raised in a cow-town, and he knew better. ’Sall right to set down upon crime. Oh, I ain’t sayin’ your motives ain’t right. Turquoise needs cleanin’. English Ed’s honkatonk ain’t noways a Sunday School, and that redlight district hadn’t ought to be there, but--”

“I know,” nodded Judge Beal.

“Yea-a-ah, you know now. You should have knowed before. Jim Randall got his warnin’ twice. They told him he’d get the third one in the dark, and Jim always was scared of the dark. You’ve got your first one, Judge.”

“Turquoise isn’t fit for a decent woman. Why, a--”

“It was before you two started yore crew--crew--”

“Crusade, Roaring.”

“Yeah, that’s it. You posted your notices, and you didn’t have nothin’ to back ’em. Jim Randall posts his notice, demandin’ that every puncher bring his gun to the sheriff’s office when he got to town, or get arrested. Did they, I ask you, Judge? They did like hell! You told ’em in plain English that the honkatonk must go. Did it?”

“No,” said the judge sadly. “I am obliged to admit that it is still there. I heard that Jim Randall had resigned, so I came to you, Roaring; you will be appointed sheriff, because you were Jim’s deputy. Now, what are you going to do?”

“Me, huh?”

Roaring savagely rasped his spurred heel half-wayacross the desk top.

“I’m goin’ to try and hold the job, Judge.”

“Meaning that you are not in sympathy with my campaign?”

“Meanin’ that I’m in sympathy with my own skin. Your campaign! Judge, if you’ll take my friendly advice, you’ll foller Jim Randall. The road is plenty wide. Why, doggone you, Judge, nobody takes you seriously. You drink more liquor than any single drinker in this town.”

“Granted.”

“And you’re single.”

“Fortunately.”

“There you are, Judge. You want to clean up the town. Do you love the morals of your feller-men so much that you’d take a chance on gettin’ shot? You’ve got no wife to be offended by the honkatonk girls, and it’s a cinch you ain’t temperate. Go back and set on your bench, Judge. Cleanin’ up Turquoise ain’t no single-handed job.”

“They’ll not run me out.”

“Mm-m-m-m-m-mebby not, Judge. Damn it, I’m not any more stuck on things than you are! I don’t like hornets, but I don’t poke their nests.”

“In other words, you are not going to enforce Randall’s notices regarding carrying arms in town?”

“Well, I’m no fool, if that’s what you mean, Judge.”

The old judge nodded sadly. His was a forlorn cause, the cleaning up of Turquoise City. The sheriff, backed by a county judge, had made a half-hearted attempt to change conditions; but he had been virtually run out of town. He had resigned, taken his family and moved away, fearful of what might happen to him.

The old judge was sincere, drunkenly so most of the time, although in a dignified manner. That is, he was drunkenly dignified. Judge Beal had come of a good family and was well educated. He might have gone far in his chosen profession, except for his love of liquor; he had drifted into Turquoise City, when that place was in the throes of a mining fever, so he hung out his shingle and became the lawyer of Turquoise.

That was twenty years ago. His old shingle still hung outside of his office, but the lettering had long since faded. For five of those years he had been the county judge. He had seen Turquoise City in boom days, when men scrambled for raw gold; he had seen it gradually change after the days of the big strikes to a commonplace cow-town. When the railroad came along it boomed again, in a way. The railroad made it the shipping point of the valley, the logical shopping city for the surrounding range and for the mining district northeast of Turquoise. It was a busy county seat.

It had also become the gambling center of the country--the flesh-pot of the cowmen and miners. Turquoise City was unmoral rather than immoral. It was a wide-open town; business was good. Even if painted women did flaunt themselves on the streets, and an occasional cowpuncher decided to make the main street a bucking-chute, or shot at some one’s sign, it did not seem to hurt business. Many liked the wild excitement.

But to Judge Beal it was an offense to decent folks. He had persuaded Jim Randall, the sheriff, that something must be done, and they had started a two-handed crusade, which was doomed to fail, for Turquoise City did not want reform.

Jim Randall had received two warnings. The second one said:

There will be one more but you won’t see it, because it will come out of the dark.

No name had been signed. The old judge had received one that read the same as the first one Randall had received.

The road is open. This is your first warning.

It was evident that the gambling element of Turquoise City did not desire the continued presence of Judge Beal, although he had accomplished nothing against it.

He left the sheriff’s office and crossed the street to the front of the Black Horse Saloon, gambling-house and honkatonk, the largest building in Turquoise City. It was a huge, barn-like structure, not at all ornamental.