I sure didn’t want to get up the next day. I just wanted to pull my blanket over me and stay in the sack until the day went away. And if I thought that day would be bad, the following day, Doomsday, would be far worse. It was too late for me to escape now. I’d do my job, or brand myself as a coward the rest of my life.

So I made myself put my two bony feet on the planks and get up. It wasn’t Saturday yet, so I had a few days to go before I would head for the tonsorial parlor and rent the tin tub in the back room while Billy the Barber poured a few buckets of warm water into it. I was feeling more dirty on the inside than the outside anyway. I wanted to stop this freight train, and I couldn’t even flag down the engineer. I wished I was ten times smarter, but all I got is what I was born with. My pa used to say a man’s hands were worth more than his brain anyway, which is about the only thing I had in my favor.

I finally got myself together and headed into the streets of Doubtful. There sure was something in the air. No sooner did I step outside than I could sense it. The town was strung tight as a fiddle string, and there wasn’t no shoppers or women or such on the streets. What with two rival outfits in town, both armed to the hilt, and a hanging, most everyone figured there’d be a lot of flying lead and it would be better to stay behind walls. After my morning trip to Belle’s outhouse, I took a look around. There were a few gunslicks around, for sure, most of them lounging in the shade of them storefronts. I knew the sort. They was just itching to start the ball rolling. They pretended to build themselves smokes, standing there, but they were looking slit-eyed at everything and everyone moving around, especially anyone from the other outfit. And most of that wolf pack was wearing a sidearm, but two or three was openly toting around scatterguns. They sure were itching to spill some bright blood onto the clay of Doubtful.

I spotted Big Nose George blowing snot out of one nostril, and Smiley Thistlethwaite leaning against a storefront. And I watched Plug Parsons deliberately walk down the middle of Wyoming Street, bull-necked and mostly bald, and not wearing a sidearm at all just to show off. Carter Bell was lounging in front of Toady’s Beanery, like he would decide who’d go into the place for breakfast and who wouldn’t. He had twin Peacemakers poking from low-slung holsters tied down to his thighs. I thought that was sort of dumb, but that’s how Bell wanted it.

I decided to hold off on breakfast. Right now, there was a few things that needed doing. I walked toward Rosie’s whorehouse, and knew that every one of them gunslicks was watching my progress, and a few were thinking it might be the day’s entertainment to shoot me in the back. But I had a task to do. I was the peace officer, and my business was to enforce the peace, and I would do it one way or another.

Rosie’s was over on the next street, on Red Light Row, but now there was no lamps burning and the girls was all snoring away. They hardly got up before noon unless there was some urgent customer with a lot of cash in his britches, in which case they came awake fast.

Rosie’s was where I’d likely find Crayfish Ruble. I was gonna talk to him, and to Admiral Bragg, first off. So I walked up the wooden steps to Rosie’s in broad daylight and knocked. Pretty soon, the door opened up, and Street let me in. Street was some sort of Hell’s Kitchen hooligan from back East, and Rosie paid him good to keep order in her parlor house. I’ve always liked Street. He could hammer someone to pulp and break a few bones and never get close to homicide. And besides, he was as good as a spare deputy sheriff if I needed him. His only vice was emptying the pockets of customers now and then, when they was off doing what they came to Rosie’s to do. But no one ever complained about Street.

He nodded, licked the gap where he was missing three front teeth, and let me pass.

“I need to talk to Crayfish.”

“He’s busy now, Sheriff.”

“Right now.”

Street sighed. “He ain’t gonna like it.”

I watched Street lumber up the stairs toward Rosie’s suite at the rear, and knew that he’d have Crayfish in tow when he returned. But it took a while, and when Crayfish showed up, Street wasn’t with him, and I found myself wishing I’d come a few hours later. Crayfish was buck naked, walking down them stairs to the parlor. Bare-ass naked and yawning.

“Well? This better be good,” he said.

It ain’t easy being sheriff sometimes, and this was one of them. Somehow, he was forcing me to think up what I wanted to say.

“I’m here to tell you that no one wears sidearms or carries any sort of weapon at the hanging tomorrow. Any of your men are carrying, my deputies will throw them into my jail and they’ll stay there until they pay the fine for disturbing the peace. And it’ll take a month before I’ll give them their sidearms back. Get that?”

Crayfish, he just scratched his hairy chest with his hairy arm. “Good luck,” he said, and smiled.

“You got the word,” I said.

He yawned. “You shouldn’t have got me up. Now I’ll go pester Rosie, who likes her beauty sleep, and the whole day will be off to a bad start.”

He started up the stairs, and I watched his skinny butt vanish, and got out of there.

Next stop would be the hotel. I started up Wyoming Street, and I swear there was a mess of eyes focused on me, stares coming at me from shadowed doorways, windows, alleys, and from the plank walks in front of the stores. I never felt so looked-at in all my days. That was all right. Let them see the law walking up Wyoming Street. Let them know the law was still keeping the peace in Doubtful. For the moment anyway. That was the thing about this day. Peaceful one moment, but what about the next?

Still, it was sunny and cheerful, so I walked past all them lounging riders and gunslicks, and pretty quick I was at the hotel. I found Admiral Bragg and Queen in the dining room, like I’d hoped. They was just finishing up so I headed for their table.

Queen gave me a cold stare and lifted that chin of hers a notch or two. This was the other Queen, the one when her pa was ruling the roost. I didn’t see the slightest nod, not the smallest signal that she remembered the night before, and the hug, and the tears she shed that flowed down my cheek.

“Want to talk to you, Mr. Bragg. Tomorrow, I’m forbidding sidearms at the courthouse square and anywhere else in town. We’re gonna keep the peace here. Any rider wearing a sidearm or carrying a weapon, he’s going to get pinched by my deputies and kept in the jail until he pays a fine for disturbing the peace. And it’ll be thirty days before he can collect his guns.”

“Are you quite through, Sheriff?”

“And that goes for you too. It goes for Crayfish Ruble. It goes for anyone in town. My job is to keep the peace, and it’s going to be kept.”

Bragg smiled. “Except for the violence done to my son. When the peaceful noose peacefully ends his peaceful life.”

“That’s justice, and it’ll be done proper, and there’ll be no arms on anyone in this town. And now you’ve been told. So see to it.”

“Thank you, Sheriff. Your advice is always entertaining.”

Queen was staring at me. And this time, there was no ice in it, only something close to tears. I nodded slightly.

“I think it is a good idea,” Queen said.

Her father stared at her, his face reddening, steam rising in his boilers.

“Bullets have a way of finding the wrong targets,” she said. “Please, Mr. Pickens, do what you can.”

Well, I pretty near had a fit. Her sticking to her guns, and her pa looking like the safety valve was gonna blow on his boilers.

He smiled suddenly. “She takes after her mother.”

“Mr. Pickens is doing everything he can—for us!” she snapped.

That done it. He arose swiftly, yanked her up, and steered her toward the rooms in back.

She refused to budge, and he dragged her across the dining room and finally out the door.

Our eyes locked just as he propelled her into the lobby, but in that split second I saw something I can’t rightly put words to. Sorrow and triumph and iron will, I guess.

“Now then, what were you saying, Sheriff?” Bragg asked.

“I’m saying that if you or your men disturb the peace in Doubtful I’ll lock you all up, you especially, and toss out the key.”

He smiled at that. He grinned so wide he bared some teeth, and then patted me on the shoulder.

“Give it a try, sonny boy,” he said.

Meanwhile Queen, she was roaring back into the dining room, and headed straight for me, and before her pa could collect his wits and drag her off again, she came right up and kissed me square on the cheek. Then she stood there, daring her pa to have himself a heart attack.

“I’ll deal with you later,” he said to her.

His fist knocked me flat on my butt. I wasn’t looking for it. I wasn’t trying to get in the middle of a family fight. I come up hot and piled after him, but he was ready with a kick to my groin and some moves that told me that this man had some serious training. But I didn’t care; I was young and hot and went after him until he pulled my .44 from its holster, and then I was so mad I knocked him across the room, spilling tables and chairs, and landed on him just about when he was getting his arm around to point my piece at me. The shot hit the ceiling. Someone screamed. I got the best of him then, and twisted his hand until he dropped the iron, and then yanked him up and hit him again.

“You’re going to spend some time as my guest,” I said, shaking him until his teeth rattled.

I pushed him hard, scooped up my revolver, and marched him off toward my executive suite in the jail.

Queen, she stood there dry-eyed.

“Tell your riders. If they show up armed tomorrow, they’ll all go where your pa’s going.”

She nodded. I don’t think she liked that any. But she’d do it. Word was going out to the Anchor Ranch’s riders and gunslicks, so maybe something got done this morning.

“I suppose you know we’ll tear your jail apart,” Admiral said.

“Walk or I’ll drag you.”

He walked, soon resuming that disdainful way of his, as if I weren’t clutching his shirt and holding my six-gun in his ribs.

Now the whole town was watching. A lot of folks had heard that shot, and they were buzzing around Doubtful like hornets on the loose, looking to see who croaked. But no one croaked. What they saw was me, dragging the boss of the biggest ranch in the valley off to my iron cages, and it sure started the mouths flapping. We got to the sheriff office and jailhouse where a couple of them T-Bar men was lounging as usual, and they sure got an eyeful, me marching the biggest cheese in the valley through my doors.

Rusty, he saw me coming and let us in.

“Book him,” I said.

“For what?”

“I’ll think of something,” I said.

“Discharging a firearm?”

“That’ll do. Anything’ll do. Throw the book. Find enough stuff to keep him here for a few months.”

Rusty whistled.

“Pat him down,” I said.

Rusty went to work, and pulled out a double-barreled derringer from Bragg’s breast pocket, and a hideout ankle knife he kept for insurance.

“You’ll get these back when I feel like it,” I said. “Which I don’t.”

I steered Admiral Bragg through the jailhouse door and then into a cell opposite his boy. The door clanged shut behind him, and he turned to stare at me so hard it looked like murder was pouring out. Which probably was about right.

He saw his son across the aisle and stared.

“Queen disobeyed me,” he said to King.

King absorbed that some. “I’m glad someone finally did,” the boy said.

I sure hated to have to do what I would have to do on the next day.

Admiral Bragg, he just stood there, absorbing that, and not believing it could happen to a fine feller like himself. He clasped them iron bars, and pulled on them, and tugged on them and shoved on them, and I swear them bars bent a little, but maybe it was just my imagination. For the moment, King Bragg’s pa was there, across from his doomed boy, and maybe the boy would teach him a few manners.