Critter was really dragging when we got back to Doubtful late in the evening. This time, his box stall would look pretty good to him. I steered him up Wyoming Street, wondering whether I’d find bodies stacked like cordwood, and blood blackening the street, but everything looked peaceful. There was a few lanterns still lit on Saloon Row, and I figured them riders were all celebrating.

This was Christmas for some of them boys. Two rival outfits, looking to kill each other, both in town, maybe sixty men all with itchy trigger fingers, drinking red-eye and working up to some fun. Some fellers dream of lollipops at Christmas, but these men dreamed of powder and bullets and having a fine old time.

But it hadn’t happened this night. I turned Critter toward the livery barn, rode him straight into the aisle, and slid off. It was dark, so I scouted out a hurricane lamp in the office, lit it, and hung it on a peg in the aisle. I pulled Critter’s saddle and blanket and bridle off, haltered him, brushed him down some, let him drink at the trough, and then led him to his stall. I swear, he trotted right in. Usually it’s all pull and haul, but this time he was ready for some oats and sleep. I fed him some of them lousy oats Turk kept around there, and forked some hay in, and closed the gate behind him. Critter and I had come to an understanding. He wouldn’t kill me and I wouldn’t kill him.

That was more than I could say for half the men in town this night. I strolled through the darkness toward the square, and saw the gallows sitting there, the noose dangling in the moonlight. That noose was now the center of the whole town. Everything in Doubtful radiated outward from that noose. A night wind started it swinging, back and forth, twisting this way and that. There was no one else around there, so I hiked over to the sheriff office and knocked. Burtell let me in.

“Everything quiet?” I asked.

“Sort of,” he said. “I think every rider for the Anchor Ranch rode up to that gallows and studied it some.”

“The prisoner is all right?”

“Last I looked. His pa and his sister want to see him, and I said they should talk to you in the morning.”

“I guess they have a right to, tomorrow being the boy’s last full day,” I said.

He grinned. “I’ll make sure Queen is clean.”

“No, we aren’t going to search them. We’re going to let them in back there.”

“Not pat them down? After all they done to bust him out?”

“I’m going to let them go back and see the boy without us staring at them or waving a gun at them. That’s how it’ll be.”

“Well, I don’t want to be here when they come out of the cells shooting.”

“Bragg loves that boy. His sister does too. They got a right to spend some time back there on his last day.”

“After we remove all those derringers and hacksaws and shotguns she’s got in her skirts.”

I sighed. “That’s how I want it. Leave her and her pa alone. Tell the rest, if I’m not here.”

“You’re nuts, Pickens.”

“I think the boy didn’t do it. I think he got roped into something, and I think I’m going to be hanging a boy who didn’t shoot anyone.”

Burtell stared at me like I was loco.

“I’ve got to talk to the judge.” I said.

“Now? Middle of the night?”

“A witness I talked with says it was Crayfish that killed the three T-Bar men.”

Burtell whistled. “That could change things some,” he said. “Who was it?”

“Rudy Beaver.”

Burtell, he started laughing so bad I just wanted to get outside.

I hiked over to Judge Nippers’ house through pitch-dark streets and knocked. I knocked again and again, and nothing happened. Pretty soon a lamp glowed in the back, and then the door creaked open and the judge stuck a short gun into my ribs. He was wearing one of them nightshirts. You’d never catch me in one, dead or alive. I’ve always been a pants man. He eyed me up and down while I stood there, and finally decided I was the sheriff.

“Next time, I’ll shoot first,” he said. “This better be important, or it’ll be your neck in the noose.”

He motioned me in, closed and bolted the door, and led me into the kitchen, where the lamp burned.

“This better be important,” he said again.

“I was poking around on the T-Bar, and got to talking to that old cowboy Rudy Beaver, who’s guarding the place. He told me all about how Crayfish tortured and killed the girls that Rocco rented from the cathouses and took out there, and he said Rocco was going to tattle on Crayfish, so Crayfish shot him and shot the Jonas brothers that were mavericking calves. Only then the old coot turned around and said he was just inventing it all, and he didn’t say any of it and I didn’t hear it. Is that good enough evidence for you to stay the execution?”

“Evidence? Did anyone see Crayfish shoot those three? What evidence? Pickens, you hang that boy good and proper, no matter whether he did it or not. We’re going to have justice here. You understand me?”

“I sorta don’t.”

“You bring in evidence, someone who actually saw Crayfish shoot those punks, and I’ll cancel the show for you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I want evidence. I’ll spell it out. E-V-A-D-E-N-C-E.”

“I understand, Your Honor.”

He turned down the wick. “And don’t wake me up in the middle of the night again. Especially for this nonsense.”

He let me out, and I heard the door thunder shut and the bolt drop. It sure was dark. I’d never seen it so dark. There were stars up there, but nothing to guide me and I hardly knew where to go. Back to my room at Belle’s boardinghouse, I supposed, but I didn’t want to sleep. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, except pull this case wide open and find out for sure what happened there in the Last Chance that evening. I had a day and a half to find out, and after that it would be too late. I didn’t know how to stop this freight train that was roaring down the rails.

I found my way to the boardinghouse in the blackest night I’d ever known, and climbed the creaking stairs to my room, mostly by feeling my way. I was just at my door when I sensed it was ajar, and when I slid my hand out, it was ajar, all right. I pulled my Colt .44 out, and jammed the door open with my boot. At the same time I jumped aside, waiting for the assassin bullet to sail by. But it didn’t happen.

“I don’t bite,” she said.

I wasn’t sure who was in there, but a flaring lucifer resolved that for me. The match revealed Queen, sitting on my bunk. She was dressed proper all in blue, but I wasn’t sure she intended to stay that way, from the brief smile she flashed at me. She lit another match and put it to the kerosene lamp and replaced the chimney, and stared at me primly.

“You can put that away,” she said, staring at my piece.

“How do I know you ain’t got a mess of hardware on you?” I said. “Last time we knocked heads together, you must have been carrying more metal than a hardware store under all them skirts.”

She pouted a little. “Well, I’m not,” she said. “I’ll prove it.”

She stood up and started undoing all them buttons down her front.

“Wait!” I said, wondering why the devil I was trying to make her stop. “Wait!” I said, real weak. I had to say that just for the record, so no one could accuse me of not slowing her down, but she was a spitfire and ignored me, so I quit whispering it.

She wasn’t in a stopping mood, and pretty quick she had that blue dress undone and was pulling it off, and I was too interested in all that to tell her to get it back on again. Then she was in her chemise and petticoat, or whatever all that stuff is called, and this time she did stop, sort of. She ran her hands all over herself, showing me that she didn’t have any derringers or howitzers or Gatling guns or mortars or torpedoes or grenades hidden in there somewheres.

“Happy now?” she asked.

I nodded. She sure was pretty.

“Then you can put your revolver back where it came from.”

I obeyed her. I’m danged if I can understand why I’d obey her and why she could boss me around, but that’s what she was up to.

“Am I pretty?” she asked.

“Miss Queen, you don’t need to ask.”

She smiled. “That’s the first civilized thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“I’m not used to smiles. When you’re with your pa, all I get is cold stares.”

She sighed. “When I’m with my father, I’m under his big thumb. I can’t escape it. I’m his wind-up toy. You know what he tells his friends about me? She’s a pistol. That’s what he calls me.” She smiled again. “But right now, I’m not under anyone’s thumb. And he thinks I’m sound asleep in the hotel. And the only pistol I’m interested in is yours.”

I was sure getting sweaty. “See here, miss, I’m a peace officer,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else.

“I like you, Cotton. That’s one reason I’m here. The other reason is to find out about my brother. Whether there’s anything new—”

“I knew it. You think you can tempt me into cutting him loose.”

She stared at me so bleakly I felt bad.

“I didn’t mean that,” I said. “I sure don’t have women figured out yet. My ma, she always told me I needed a sister.”

But the coldness was back in her face again. The other Queen. She rose, and reached for the blue dress.

“I’m trying to save your brother,” I said. “I don’t think he did it. I get little pieces together, but the judge, he just hits them with a flyswatter.”

She stared, and sat on my bunk. “You don’t think he did it?”

“No, I don’t. But trying to stop this here execution is like trying to stop an express train. I can’t even slow it down.”

She sat there in the lamplight, her gold flesh glowing, the blue dress crumpled in her lap. She looked to be at the brink of tears. If there’s anything that scares me, it’s a woman crying.

“I got this here blue glass eyedropper bottle out of the Last Chance,” I said. “Sammy Upward had it hid under the bar beside his sawed-off scattergun. My deputy, he told me it was knockout drops, so we tried it on a couple of them T-Bar men outside the sheriff office. Sure enough, they keeled over. So I sort of figured Upward put some of that stuff into King’s red-eye when he went over there.”

“What happened to the T-Bar men?”

“They come to, after dozing a little in the sunlight, and thought they’d had a nap.”

Well, I told her the rest of the story. How I’d talked to Big Lulu about them women that Crayfish rented, and about Rocco, and about riding out there this long day and talking with that old loco coyote Rudy Beaver. I told her how Beaver spilled a lot of beans and then said it was all talk, and didn’t mean a thing, and he was just thinkin’ up stuff, and I should forget he ever said it. I told her what I think happened; Crayfish had a few executions in mind, for them two Jonas brothers that was altering brands on the ranch, and for Rocco, who was gonna spill the beans on him unless he got a lot of money. And how Crayfish got the idea of pinning it all on her brother, who was always wandering around with that shiny gun looking for someone to bury six feet under. And I told her I just now got back from waking up Judge Nippers and telling him the whole shebang, but he said I ain’t got one piece of evidence, real evidence, and it’s all just notions and thin air, and he told me not to bother him no more, not unless I got a real witness, someone who saw Crayfish kill them three T-Bar men in the Last Chance Saloon.

“We knew he didn’t do it,” she cried. “We knew it.”

“I ain’t got any proof yet,” I said. “And now I got one and a half days. Tomorrow, and the next morning before eleven o’clock.”

“He didn’t do it, he didn’t do it,” she said.

“I don’t know, one way or the other. But I’ll keep trying to shake the truth out of someone. There’s a few witnesses. Plug Parsons, Carter Bell—”

“You’ll try, Cotton?”

“What do you think I’ve been doing?”

“Oh, Cotton.” She clutched me to her and hugged tight, and next I knew she was crying hot tears into my cheek, and I held her for a long time, till she finally pulled free, wiped her eyes, took my hand and kissed it, got into her blue dress, and slid into the night.