The Sheriff of Badger Part 19

"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, flus.h.i.+ng.

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 a.s.suredly 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 h.e.l.l--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 a.s.sumed 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 cla.s.ses 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 a.s.sure 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 b.o.o.by, 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.