The Lawman Takes A Wife

“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 reached for the spool of thread on the table in front of her. “Already been to half the stores in town, introducing himself around. My Sam ran into him coming out of Potter’s Pharmacy this afternoon. Had a nice talk, the two of them, or so Sam said.”

Everyone tactfully refrained from mentioning that Sam and the sheriff already had a basis for friendship since the two of them had spent the previous evening drinking in Jackson’s saloon.

“Heard he visited you first, Molly,” Emmy Lou Trainer commented. Above the gold-rimmed glasses perched on the tip of her nose, her eyes narrowed. “That true?”

“He visited me,” Molly replied noncommittally. “I have no idea if I was the first, but he did stop by.”

After he’d left the bank, she’d watched him work his way from store to store down the street. Which was sheer foolishness, and probably due to her having been so tired and suffering from the headache generated by that morning’s free-for-all. At least, that’s what she’d told herself when she’d caught herself staring out the window for the dozenth time that afternoon, waiting for him to reappear. Simple curiosity. It had nothing to do with the cut of his jaw or the breadth of his shoulders or the way he’d looked, savoring that chocolate.

Becky Goodnight, whose husband ran the smallest and least profitable general store in town, reached for the scissors that lay on the table beside her. “My George wasn’t impressed. The man didn’t have much of anything to say for himself, or so George said.”

Emmy Lou’s mouth pinched into a frown. “He’s certainly big enough. MayBeth Johnson said the floor shook with every step he took.”

“It would, as rickety as the Johnsons’ old building is.” The snick of Becky’s scissors seemed viciously loud.

Molly winced. George Goodnight had been spending most of the small profits from their store on a fancy woman down in Gunnison lately, so Becky was awfully touchy these days. It was easier to take her resentments out on her flourishing competitors than to admit that her husband wasn’t much good as a storekeeper, and an utter failure as a husband and father.

Sometimes, when she started thinking about remarrying, Molly remembered George, gave a little prayer of thanks for the good years she’d had with Richard and made herself think about something else entirely.

Nineteen-year-old Louisa Merton sighed, oblivious to Becky’s problems. “I was in the Johnsons’ store when he came in. I swear, I was never so disappointed in all my life! He looked so…old. He wasn’t at all handsome and he didn’t say two words when MayBeth introduced us.”

Old? thought Molly. She frowned down at the pieces of the wedding ring quilt in her lap. DeWitt Gavin wasn’t old. And only a mooney young girl like Louisa would think he wasn’t good-looking.

“And on top of it all, he’s divorced,” Louisa added, heaving another, deeper sigh. “At least Mr. Hancock’s always been a bachelor.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve gone chasing him!” Emmy Lou protested, clearly shocked.

“Wouldn’t have done me any good if I had. The only lady he ever looks at is Molly, and she’s always turning him down.”

“Really?”

All eyes turned on Molly.

Molly bristled under their stares, but managed to say evenly, “Louisa is mistaken. Mr. Hancock has not come courting me and never will.”

Which was the truth. Though he’d never been so crass as to say so outright, Gordon Hancock was interested in gaining her bed, not her heart.

“But he asked you out to dinner at the Grand, Molly. I heard him,” Louisa insisted.

“A business discussion,” she lied.

“Gordon Hancock never invited my Zacharius to dinner for a business discussion,” Emmy Lou observed tartly.

“Probably because he couldn’t afford the bill for the drinks,” said Thelma Thompson.

Thelma didn’t do much quilting—too expensive for a poor widow woman she often said—but that didn’t stop her from showing up at the meetings. Especially when they were being held at Elizabeth’s house. Elizabeth’s cook made the best sweet biscuits in town, though it wasn’t the quality so much as the quantity and the fact that they were free that was the main attraction for Thelma.