THE SHERIFF PURGES TOWN OF BADGER
The sheriff, rather crestfallen, was obliged to return to Badger without
Moffatt. Having lost all trace of him, he was suspicious that the
gunfighter would strike unexpectedly from another direction; perhaps in
Badger itself, relying on Johnson's absence. His acquaintance with
Moffatt had been short, but sufficient to persuade Lafe that he was most
to be feared when nobody knew his whereabouts.
Arrived in town and refreshed, Lafe went straight to Dutch Annie. Nobody
in the community was especially predisposed toward Moffatt except a few
hangers-on at the Fashion who had enjoyed his largess, and a lady known
as Picnic Kate. Picnic Kate lived with Dutch Annie. Her name suffices to
describe her, and as persons who have no nice friends are unworthy our
consideration, I will let her case rest there. However, the sheriff had
a shrewd notion that if anybody knew, or was apt to learn, anything
concerning Moffatt, Picnic was the individual.
"I ain't saw him since him and you had that run-in up at the Fashion,"
said Kate.
The sheriff was convinced she was lying, but merely nodded.
Hetty welcomed him back with some shyness. It puzzled Johnson until he
recalled the date, and then he looked troubled.
"Hetty," said he, "we've got to put off the wedding again. We can't be
married yet."
"Why not?"
The sheriff gave a short laugh. "I don't want you a widow as soon as
you're a wife."
"What's the matter, Lafe? What do you talk that way for? A widow?"
"Moffatt's somewhere around here, I'll swear," said the sheriff. "Jeff
Thomas sent me a letter to-day--here, look. He says Steve swears he'll
get me."
"Well?"
They were standing in the front room of the Widow Brown's. Lafe sat down
and tried to talk naturally, preferring not to take cognizance of the
probing of Hetty's eyes.
"You see, hon, Steve is the last of the ol' tough bunch. I'll get him.
It'll only take a few days--something's sure to break right away--don't
look so scared, hon--we'll be married in a month, I bet you."
Hetty looked down at him like a queen of tragedy in a ten-twenty-thirty
tent show performance. She said slowly: "No, we won't. I've got a
feeling we won't ever be married."
"Pshaw!" said Johnson. "Don't talk like that."
"But I feel like that."
"Women always get ideas like that of yours in their heads. If somebody
looks cross at a feller, they can see a funeral with all his friends
sending Gates Ajar wreaths. No, ma'am. I ain't ready for mine yet
awhile."
"Why don't you throw it all up?" she asked abruptly.
"You mean my job? Resign? Quit being sheriff?"
"Yes, I do. Oh, you're bound to get killed some day. And for heaven's
sake, what is there in it? If things go right--well, that's what they're
supposed to do, anyhow. But if things go wrong, you get blamed." Hetty
spun around to the window when she saw Lafe's expression of amazement.
She gazed out at the ugly, huddled nakedness of Badger, and there was
loathing in her eyes.
"The place ain't fit for a human to live in."
"You won't have to stay here long, hon," the sheriff reminded her.
"But anything's apt to happen before that. We've put it off twice
already."
"Once," Lafe corrected.
He rose and stood before her. She kept her face averted, but did not
withdraw her hand when he took it. At last he said: "You'd have me quit?
You'd have me back down when they--all these here people--done put me in
just because they thought I was the best man to clean up this here
place? I don't believe it. Not for a minute, Hetty. It ain't like you."
"Gunmen aren't the only toughs in this town," she said darkly.
"I don't take you, ma'am. Oh, you mean--them?" He pointed to the
outskirts of Badger, to the red, tinned roof of Dutch Annie's abode.
"Yes, I do," said Hetty, flushing.
The subject was dropped for the time and they fell to discussing
furniture for the house in Hope Canon. Then, as he bade her good-night,
Lafe remarked in a casual voice, as though the step were routine: "I'll
do that, too."
"Do what?"
"Clear out that crowd. There'll be an awful howl all around town, but
I'll do it."
He had gone a hundred yards when she called him back.
"Oh, Lafe."
"What is it?" he asked, returning.
"That poor creature--Sarah--you remember Jackson?"
"I thought we agreed not to say nothing about that feller."
"Yes, but--well, I might--you'll look after her, won't you, Lafe?"
"Sure. They'll be all right. Don't you worry. Good-night."
He was very serious as he took his way homeward. What he planned to do
amounted to a moral revolution in Badger, and there would assuredly be
an outcry and a tremendous to-do. True, the town had been purged before.
Once, in the hottest of the hot weather, driven to frenzy by Brother
Ducey's exhortations--he was a genius in choosing the purgatorial months
for his vivid pictures of a living hell--a crowd of citizens had rushed
from the meeting, and, surging across the sand-flats to the
establishment of Dutch Annie's predecessor, had ousted the merry sisters
in the dark of the night. But, as is usual in such cases, reaction from
their zeal was swift and far-reaching. Dutch Annie came and flourished;
and when the citizens of Badger elected Johnson sheriff, no mention of
this cancer in the body social was made in the program of reform.
Lafe now reflected on these things from a new view-point. His conclusion
was: "It ain't decent. Hetty's got the rights of this, I reckon."
To many aspects of their Border life, he had given scant thought. Where
much that ought to be viewed with horror is tolerated as an established
factor in communal life by law-abiding people, a man tends to become
complaisant of laxity. Many evils existing in Badger had never struck
the sheriff as such, simply because they had always been; but he was
learning. Little glimpses of Hetty's healthy outlook on things shook his
own code of conduct to its spine and filled him with a species of awe.
"Let 'em roar," he said firmly. "It'll be a mighty fine wedding present
for her. Besides, it'll make Steve wild."
The sheriff was an execrable politician, else he would have proceeded
differently. Had he possessed the sagacity of a ward leader, how he
would have corralled the reform vote by going at his task with beating
of drums and a fanfare of announcements. Lafe took quite another method.
He paid a call, in a spirit approaching friendliness, and after some
vehement protests, he departed with a promise extracted.
Dutch Annie was as good as her word. Next day a little company of
pilgrims boarded the stage, bound for the railway. They looked sadly
worn in the glare of sunlight, in spite of extravagant efforts with the
rouge pot and the powder rag, but they put a brave face on the situation
and exchanged badinage with a few choice spirits gathered to witness the
departure.
"Well, so long, Lafe," said Dutch Annie, who was a just woman, according
to her lights. "It was right mean, but I reckon you had to do it. And
you've acted the gen'l'man, which is more'n I can say for a lot of
loafers in this here town."
Sellers cracked his long whip, the mules lurched against their collars
and the stage rattled away. This was the last that Badger ever saw of
Dutch Annie.
So quietly had the feat been accomplished that the town really did not
awake to the fact until they had gone. Then criticism broke out.
"I suppose you'd call it the right thing, looked at in a large way,
Lafe," ventured the landlord of the Cowboys' Rest in mild protest. "It's
more religious, in course. But you'd ought to have thunk of some of the
boys."
Others assumed a violent tone, but these excoriations were delivered
where the sheriff did not hear them. Consequently they hurt neither him
nor those who made them. They held that he had exceeded his duties and
powers; his job was to do what was bidden in the by-laws to preserve
order, not to regulate the private morals of everybody in the town. Man
alive, first thing one knew, Johnson would be breaking up card play, and
it wouldn't be safe for a man to shake dice with a barkeep for the
drinks. Jake Taylor, who had once been a miner, and who had now joined
the leisure classes through inclination rather than fortune, talked
freely of the referendum and recall.
The sheriff was fully aware of what was being said. Yet it gave him a
new sense of power to feel, also, back of his act, the support of the
better element. They arrayed themselves with him unostentatiously, for
fear of ruptures that might work harm to business. Nevertheless, he knew
their support could be counted on. Indeed, Turner and other substantial
men of the place hastened to assure the sheriff that he had done a brave
thing. Not a word of it did he breathe to Hetty, but when he called for
her to go walking the following night, she was waiting for him at the
gate, and when Johnson saw her smile of understanding and confidence, he
knew he would not repent, whatever might befall.
"No news of Steve yet," he told her.
"Oh, Lafe, do be careful. They tell such dreadful things about him. Mrs.
Brown says he could hit a two-bit piece at a hundred yards."
"Don't. Let's be cheerful," said the sheriff, and laughed. "It'll only
be a few days, hon. I'll get him all right."
"Well," said Hetty, with a sigh of content, clinging to his arm,
"there's one comfort. If anything ever did happen to you, I'd know it,
if you were in Jericho."
"How?" he asked, much diverted.
"Why, you booby, I could feel it. Isn't it strange, Lafe? I feel as if
we'd known each other all our lives. We must have been made for each
other."
"That's right queer," said the sheriff solemnly. "I often get that
feeling myself."
As I have a suspicion that other loving young people have talked like
this before, enough of it.