“Looks like they’re gonna let it go,” Scratch commented.
“For now.” Bo didn’t look around. “I’ll bet Luke meant what he said about it not being over, though.”
“You believe they really had a right to charge us that toll?”
Bo shook his head. “Not for a second. But if it turns out we’re wrong, we’ll settle up.”
A humorless laugh came from Scratch. “I don’t think payin’ the toll’s gonna be enough. Not after we made ’em back down like that. We better keep an eye out for trouble.”
“Just like always, you mean?”
Scratch grinned. “Yeah. Just like always.”
They started up the sloping main street. At the far end of it, sitting square in the middle of where the road would have run if it had continued past the town, was a large, ramshackle old house that looked older than any other building in Mankiller. It had a broad verandah along the front with a roof supported by thick, square beams.
As Bo and Scratch rode along the street, Bo looked for the sheriff’s office. They passed a number of businesses, including a couple of hotels, a bank, a newspaper office, an assayer’s office, a pair of decent-looking restaurants, a hole-in-the-wall hash house, and more than a dozen saloons. In fact, there were so many saloons that each of the more respectable businesses seemed to be completely surrounded by them, as if they were little islands in a sea of debauchery.
Tinny music came from each of the saloons, the competing tunes blending together to create a discordant racket. Men laughed and cursed. Women shrieked and cursed. A fat man in a derby and a gaudy checked suit stood outside the door of a gambling hall and bellowed, “Honest games! Honest games of chance!”
Scratch leaned over in the saddle and asked Bo, “What do you reckon the odds are he’s tellin’ the truth?”
Bo shook his head and said, “I wouldn’t bet a hat on it.”
They passed a two-story frame building with a number of windows on the second floor where women in low-cut gowns leaned out and called obscene invitations to the men in the street. One of the soiled doves looked at Scratch and yelled, “Hey, handsome! You there in the buckskin jacket!”
Scratch looked up at her and ticked a finger against the brim of his Stetson as he nodded. “Ma’am.”
“Come on up here!” She squeezed her ample breasts together so that they seemed to be on the brink of spilling completely from her thin wrapper. “These’ll make you feel young again!”
Bo and Scratch rode on, although Scratch sighed a little.
“You’d be taking your life in your hands if you went in that place,” Bo told him.
“Maybe so, but I’d be takin’ somethin’ else in my hands, too.”
Bo laughed, pointed, and said, “There’s the sheriff’s office.”
It was a blocky building made of the same sort of whipsawed planks that had been used in many of the other buildings in Mankiller. A sign nailed above the door read SHERIFF’S OFFICE AND JAIL. The sign was pocked with holes.
Scratch frowned up at it as he and Bo reined in. “Those are bullet holes all over that sign, ain’t they?”
“That’s what they look like,” Bo agreed.
“Well, that don’t bode well. Seems like a lawman wouldn’t take it kindly if folks did that.”
“Let’s go in and see if he’s there.”
The Texans dismounted and tied their horses and pack animal at a hitch rail in front of the sheriff’s office. It was just about the only hitch rail in town that wasn’t already full up, Bo noted. In a boomtown like this, he was a little leery of leaving their supplies outside, so he said, “I’ll watch the horses. You can go inside and talk to the sheriff.”
Scratch shook his head. “Let’s swap those chores around. You’re better at talkin’ to lawdogs than I am. I always feel like they’re suspicious of me, even when I ain’t done nothin’.”
“That’s because you know you’ve gotten away with enough in your life that you always feel a little guilty,” Bo said with a smile.
“Hey, if nobody saw me, they can’t prove I done it! And if I did, I had me a good reason.”
Bo laughed and went to the door of the sheriff’s office. He opened it and stepped inside. The room was gloomy, choked with thick shadows. No lamp was burning, and the windows were so grimy they didn’t admit much light. Bo’s eyes adjusted quickly, though, and he stiffened as he spotted the figure sitting at the desk.
The man was sprawled forward, his head twisted to the side and lying on a scattering of papers. Those papers were stained by the dark pool that spread slowly around the man’s head, as if his throat had been cut and his life was still seeping out.
CHAPTER 7
Bo backed away until he was standing in the doorway. His hand moved toward his gun, just in case any threat still lurked in here. The office was quiet and apparently deserted, though, except for the man sprawled on the desk.
“Scratch!” Bo called over his shoulder. “Get in here.”
Scratch was there instantly, alert for trouble. “What is it?”
Bo nodded toward the desk.
“Son of a bitch,” Scratch said. “You reckon he’s still alive?”
“I don’t see how, with that much blood on the desk. But we’d better make sure.”
They started forward warily, splitting up so that Bo went to the right of the desk and Scratch to the left. Bo glanced through an open door that led to a small cell block. He could see see into two of the cells. They were empty, and when he called, “Anybody back there?” no answer came from the cell block.
“Who could’ve cut the sheriff’s throat in his own office?” Scratch asked in a low voice.
“That’s assuming he’s the sheriff,” Bo pointed out. “We don’t know that.”
“No, I reckon we don’t. But if he is, I wonder if he’s got any deputies. We’ll have to report this to somebody.”
Bo nodded. “And hope that we don’t get blamed for it.”
“Yeah, that’s just the way our luck runs sometimes, ain’t it?”
They were at the desk now, and as both Texans leaned toward the body, Scratch suddenly sniffed and said, “Bo, somethin’s wrong here. Up close like this, that don’t really look like blood. It don’t smell like it, neither. In fact, it smells like—” Scratch reached out, dipped a finger in the dark pool, and lifted it to his nose. He sniffed again, then licked his fingertip. “Yep. Rum.”
Bo sighed in mingled relief and disgust. “Yeah, I can see part of a flask lying there under him now. I guess—”
The man chose that moment to give out with a loud, gasping snore that filled the office. He jerked, then lifted his head from the desk, having woke himself up.
Seeing the two Texans standing there so close to him must have startled him, because he shoved his chair back so hard and abruptly that it started to tip over backward with him still in it. He waved his arms in the air frantically and yelled, “Whoa, Nelly!”
Scratch grabbed hold of the man’s right arm while Bo caught the chair and kept it from tipping over. He righted it, causing the chair’s front legs to thump heavily on the floor. That threw the man sitting in it forward again, and only Scratch’s strong hand on his arm kept him for falling face-first on the desk again.
The man’s bleary eyes opened wide at the sight of the dark, liquid pool on the desk. “Godfrey Daniel!” he cried. “What a catastrophic turn of events!”
He wrenched free of Scratch’s grip with unexpected strength and leaned forward, plunging his face toward the desk so that he could start lapping up the rum like a dog.
“Good Lord, man,” Bo said, completely disgusted now. “Don’t you have any self-respect?”
The man glanced up at him and said, “There are some circumstances, sir, when shelf-respect is…is painfully inshufficient for a man’s needs.”