I let Plug cool down a couple of hours, and then headed into the cell block. He was standing with those ham hands on the bars, glaring away.

“You can go,” I said.

It sure startled him some.

“You ain’t done nothing much except grab my shirt and cuss me out. I guess I can forget that fast enough.”

He simply dead-eye glared at me so much, I thought to go real easy. I was ready—just in case.

I unlocked the cell door, and he bulled through hard, maybe to knock me off balance, but he saw I was ready, with a billy club that I knew how to use hard and fast.

Instead, he simply stopped and fixed me with that glare. “I’ll kill you soon as I can, Pickens. I’ll kill you and kick in your face and hang you from the nearest tree. It don’t matter whether I kill you face-to-face with a short gun or shoot you in the back with a long one, because either way, you’ll be cold meat.”

“You go cool down at Rosie’s, and stay quiet. I don’t want to see you runnin’ around Doubtful for a while.”

He clenched those ham hands, and I stepped slightly back. I was waiting for him, and he saw it. He knew what a billy club could do, which made him halfway smart.

“Punk kid wearing a star. You’ll pay, Pickens. You’ll be horsemeat before you know it.”

“Get along now,” I said, edging him toward the front door.

“I won’t forget this, you punk. As long as I live, I’ll remember this, and I’ll come kick manure on your grave.”

Plug was sure fussing at me, but I eased him through the sheriff office, while Rusty watched real careful, and then I pushed Plug out the door and locked it.

“You didn’t charge him? You let him go?”

“Oh, he’ll get past it.”

“You coulda charged him with a dozen things. Haul him in front of Nippers. Put him behind iron for six months.”

I laughed. “He got whupped. Not many foremen ever get whupped.”

“He was madder because you let him go than he was when you dragged him in.”

“He’s the big bull, and you know how them bulls are, Rusty. Now he don’t have much to bitch about. I let him go! Only thing he’s really mad about is because I got the drop on him and hauled him in.”

“You better watch your back.”

“It’s a gamble,” I said.

I figured it was better for Plug to be outside of the jail than in. I didn’t have the manpower to keep twenty or thirty T-Bar men from busting in, grabbing Plug, and killing King too.

Rusty eyed me like I was plumb loco, but I made my choice and now I’d live with it.

We watched Plug race down Wyoming Street toward the Red Light District, and I knew that within minutes the story, Plug’s version anyway, would be spreading around there.

“We better fort up,” I said.

Rusty, he spread the spare shotguns at the barred windows and we dropped the bar on the door. We had boxes of buckshot shells that could make nasty holes in crowds. It would be Rusty and me against them T-Bar men, and I thought we’d do pretty well. We’d get help too, soon as Burtell and DeGraff heard the banging.

I headed back into the cell block, and found King Bragg standing just behind the bars.

“You enjoy that?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I thought he’d tear those bars apart and kill me before he killed you.”

“You talk about anything?”

“I asked him a few things. Like, what happened after I walked into the Last Chance, with him dogging me.”

That caught my attention for sure.

King smiled suddenly. “‘Wouldn’t you like to know,’ Plug said. And I said I would because I sure don’t know what happened. All I know was, I walked into the Last Chance and there were a few T-Bar men, and Crayfish, and Upward served me a red-eye, and I waited to see what they were gonna say to my face.”

“And then?”

“I’ll never know, Sheriff, and I’ll hang for not knowing what happened next.”

“Who else was in the Last Chance?”

“Foxy and Weasel Jonas, and Rocco, all bellied up to the bar, sipping whiskey.”

“And somehow you shot them.”

The look in his face was about as sad as any I ever did see.

There was something about this that was nagging at me, but I sure couldn’t figure what, so I changed the subject.

“I’m expecting some visitors,” I said.

“Armed and ready to break in, kill you and Rusty, and then kill me.”

I hesitated. “If it comes to it, I’ll free you and give you the means to defend yourself. But I want your word of honor—”

He snapped, “I won’t give you my word of honor, so forget it. If they catch me in here and kill me, that’s how it’ll be.”

He was some riled up. I sort of admired him, but I didn’t know why.

“You want anything? Water?”

“You want to take my pisspot out and empty it?”

“In a while. Right now, I got to deal with Plug. He sure had some heat in him.”

“Nothing’ll happen,” King said.

I wasn’t so sure. I locked up the cell block and slid the key into my pocket. Rusty, he was studying the streets, but they looked calm enough. It wasn’t yet dark, this being late spring with lots of long light. I decided not to light the kerosene lamp. Not this eve. We were gonna sit there in the dark and watch the streets and close the shutters if lead started flying. But the seven-day clock in there just kept ticking away, minute by minute.

“You think they’ll try midnight or later?” Rusty asked.

“I’m thinking maybe dawn, when they figure we’ve drifted off.”

“Go to sleep, Cotton, and I’ll watch.”

“I couldn’t if I wanted to.”

It sure was a long dark night, and I was askin’ myself what I was sheriff for. It wasn’t any job I wanted, but I got stuck with it when the city of Doubtful had a hankering for my services, seeing as how most everyone else was dead that wore their star. But there wasn’t any point in grousing about it. Sheriff is what I was and would be.

The night was real quiet, and we saw no one hunkered down out there. With dawn, Burtell and DeGraff showed up, and I was glad to see them. We filled them in and left them in charge, while I headed back to Belle’s boardinghouse where I had me a little room. I didn’t need much from life. There was an iron bedstead in there, a blanket and pillow, a place for a trunk, and a place to hang up a few clothes. Maybe someday I’d have a woman to care for, and I’d want a little cottage somewheres, with some rambling roses around, but there weren’t no prospects. I thought some about Queen, but she wasn’t thinking about me, and I didn’t like her anyway, except when she smiled a little, which wasn’t very often.

So I walked home through empty streets, since the merchants weren’t up and around yet. Belle’s boardinghouse sure was quiet. I was ready for a good sleep, having spent the night awake, waiting for trouble at the jail. My room was up on the second floor, at the rear, where the sole window looked out on the alley and the outhouses. It was fine in the winter, but a feller didn’t want to sleep with an open window in the summer. I went down that hall, feeling them planks creak under me, and then I noticed the door was ajar a little. I whipped out the .44 without thinking twice. My ma used to tell me I was a little slow, but made up for it by being quick. I never quite figured that one out, but it didn’t matter none. That door was not tight, and I thought I might meet a hail of lead if I opened it more. In fact, there wasn’t nothing but a skinny layer of veneer between the killer in there and me, and that creaking hallway gave me away. So I just paused, wondering what to do, thinking maybe I should get flat on my belly.

“Do come in, Mr. Pickens. I’ve been waiting most of the night for you.”

I fear I recognized that voice straight off.

“You alone in there, Mrs. Gladstone?”

“Certainly. Three’s a crowd at a rendezvous.”

“A who?”

“A lover’s meeting, my dear.”

This was getting worse than being shot.

I edged the door open, ready to shoot, and saw she was alone, sitting in the one chair I possessed. I slid my revolver back in its holster and eyed the lady. She sure was nice-lookin’ wearing a white wrapper, with her hair down and falling over her shoulders. The dawn light from the window seemed to flow like gold over her. She had some slippers on too, with a hole in the side of one for her bunion. Them bunions are awful. My ma and pa both had bunions, mostly from buying bad shoes.

“Come in, dear boy,” she said. “We’ll have a little tête-à-tête.”

This was making me plain itchy. I didn’t dare ask what them words meant.

She motioned me toward the bed, where I sat down real gingerly. She sure was pretty, all soft and gentle, with a brightness in her eyes. I’d never seen a lady in a white wrapper before. My ma, she pined for a white wrapper all her life. Pa got her a gray flannel one with purple petunias on it, and I never knew that wrappers came in other colors until I was off on my own. This white wrapper flowed over the Widow Gladstone in a way that didn’t quite hide much.

But I couldn’t think of a blasted thing to say, and if I tried I’d just babble out a mess of words, so I swallowed real hard and settled on the bed and tried to make sense of this.

“Now then, we’ll just talk a little. I might have some information for you. I know you’re looking into that whole tragedy. You’ve been asking questions. I’m hoping you’ll save the dear boy. I’m very fond of him.”

The way she said that sure stirred up stuff in my head.

She waited a moment, while I studied her white wrapper. I couldn’t keep my eyes off that white wrapper. That wasn’t much under there. Her dress and all that other stuff, all them thingamabobs women wear, she had folded them all into a stack sitting on my dresser. So I was stuck with staring at her wrapper, because I didn’t know what else to do.

“My information might lead you to the truth about King, and might free him from the awful fate that awaits him,” she said.

“Well, what is it, ma’am?”

“Oh, I’m not going to tell you. Not unless I have my way with you.”

This sure was getting peculiar. I tried to run that through my head, and it kept bucking like Critter in a bad mood.

“Mind you, what I know might not change anything. I know nothing about what happened next door, after King left along with Mr. Parsons.”

“Well, seems to me if you’re keepin’ stuff from me, then you’re going against the laws,” I said. “Someone told me that once. You’ve got to fess up all you know.”

“Well, that’s for you to decide,” she said. “I have a price.”

She had a price, all right. That there white wrapper was just the butcher paper on the package.

“We would have a lovely time,” she said softly. “I am an experienced woman.”

Well, I sure didn’t have a clue about what to do.

“You got to tell me what you know, how you know it, and why you’re telling me,” I said, trying not to look at that wrapper, which was sort of sliding down her shoulders a little.

“Just say Open Sesame, and magic will happen,” she said.

“Now what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Ah, dear boy, I’m looking forward to teaching you.”

She sure was pretty. She might be older, but she was just fine, sitting there, smiling, looking like an angel in the dawn light, making life sweet in the town of Doubtful, Wyoming Territory. I sort of figured she was trying to save King Bragg’s life, and maybe she’d worn that white wrapper with King Bragg as her company. Who could say? She was like some loving angel lookin’ down on us poor mortals.

“Ma’am,” I said, real firm. “I’ve got a headache.”

“That’s very familiar,” she said. “You may turn your back.”

I did, and when she told me I could turn around, she was dressed, with a small sad smile on her lips. She leaned forward and kissed me softly, and left my boardinghouse room.

My ma always told me I’m a little slow.