The Sheriff and the Boy

The Sheriff and the Boy          

Leaning back in an old Windsor chair, the Lincoln County sheriff slowly stretched the trail stiffness from his knotted frame. Time in the saddle ages a man.

Easing into the smooth chair, the sheriff couldn't help but smile, his teeth surprisingly white under the gray hat still funneled low over his sun-baked face.

Late afternoon sun offered bleak light in the otherwise shadowy sheriff's office, as the tall lawman struck a match to a desk lamp. He liked the smell of the lamp oil, and how the warm glow shooed away the gloom. The room was absolutely still, hushed after days of clattering trail noise. A man vibrated for days after a ride of such duration. So much commotion for a land so eerily quiet at night.

At rest in the abandoned 19th century U.S. military frontier fort converted into a territorial jail, the lawman was picturing a stick of a man padlocked to an iron railing in a back cell. A kid, really, the killer in custody had shot many men over the last decade, most dubious characters: the owner of a crooked gaming empire, another a cross-border gun dealer, sleazy judges and bad lawyers, another man selling tainted beef to the territorial prison.

So it was that many in the Southwest Territory had a twisted fascination with these killers of the rich. The little man's last run came after shooting a cattle baron who traveled in a fast Concord coach with a dozen riders. The kid had vanished into a vast nothingness.

The sheriff was told enough, get a rope around that boy's neck. He was the only prisoner in custody, a fact not lost the next day on the Santa Fe Union newspaper. While visually astonishing, America's southwest was deadly. There was no lack of souls to fill the jail, a Santa Fe Union editorial noted.

This captured man, this scrawny demon with eyes like clear water, was a tough character. The sheriff pictured himself as the sun rose, sneaking up on the lone outlaw. He nudged the barrel of his Walker Colt in the smaller man's ear, pulled the hammer of the gun, the outlaw awakening and wondering aloud if the sheriff would back off, clearing the desert sand from his eyes, because he sure smelled like a skunk's ass. This midget killer that hadn't washed proper maybe in his entire twenty-five years.

Staring at the oil lamp, the sheriff grinned. The outlaw was a cool customer, but he also presented opportunity. The rich moved men like chess pieces, naming territorial governors, even to Washington, where much larger careers burst like a cactus flower. The East also presented opportunities of the heart. Desert women are sturdy, but hardly refined. The sheriff in his buffalo-hide boots desired a society woman scented like spring and as delicate as Chinese silk. One murderous little man could push this local sheriff towards this place among the stars.

And the sheriff was popular. Testimonials would fortify his great character and gentlemanly ways, tall and lean and graceful, his voice hardly audible in table conversation, a man even his enemies grudgingly admired. Among men he was bawdy and boisterous, drank well and wore a gray suit of impeccable taste. He looked the part and acted a man, yet was rumored to have said the setting sun lighting on the desert walls “landed in deep blood lavender and corrupting shades of lava red.”

But a small knot of men knew another side of “Long John” the sheriff, his checkered history, in mock wonder, golly, how could this man of lowly history so quickly assemble a prosperous beef ranch. Wasn't there a wispy tale about  dealings across the Rio Grande involving Long John and a boy rustler?

The sheriff's good character, however, was noted in a eulogy some years later that began, “I shall not believe that even now his light is extinguished.” Others spat at the dry dirt as it was shoveled over his remains. So, it was a mixed reaction the day the sheriff rode back to town with this miniature outlaw in tow.

Restless now the sheriff stood, his shadow from the desk lamp playing on the dark walls. Wiping his damp brow with a lace handkerchief and replacing the trail hat just so, the sheriff stepped to the barred window facing the western sky. He sighed. God, I'm tired.

Harnessed horses jingled in the downtown street, a teamster barking commands, the squealing of children playing a game he didn't know of. I couldn't think to raise children in this empty place, he thought. He closed his eyes to the smell of mesquite; probably Mexicans heating corn shells for evening meals.

The burning wood reminded the sheriff of childhood, a pleasant memory of a log cabin, buried under wool blankets, a mesquite fire in the hearth. The sheriff's father talked of a divided nation. Our family's sacrifices had accomplished little, his father had said. Men are still slaves.

They sure are, the sheriff now watching men on horses cantering through the town's shop district. The boardwalk creaked before the soft knock came. The heavy sheriff's door opened to a young woman holding a straw basket covered in fly cloth. The fragrance of baked food drifted into the room with a breeze at the woman's back. The sheriff gazing over the woman's bowed head saw a pair of hard characters loitering at the saloon, both men's eyes shaded by range hats.

No gifts, the sheriff told the woman, upon closer inspection a girl. Please, she said, a final warm meal. Looking down at the figure in clean but frayed clothing, the sheriff wondered what she meant by final meal. Girl, tell me what you are saying. Without lifting her face, she handed up the basket, arm locked, not a quiver. Her hand smooth and strong, blue veins lining the surface of her forearm, not unusual but certainly beyond the girl's apparent youth.

With a sigh, the sheriff accepted the basket, closing the door before she moved. The pair across the street had vanished as the sheriff peered from a spyhole in the door. Frontier people never stop amazing a man, he thought. His hob-nailed boots echoed walking back to the chair.

Quietly munching a browned biscuit, the sheriff pictured the outlaw. A tuft of dusty hair, over-sized ears and an Irish disposition, vicious in the snap of fingers. Yet he hardly looked dangerous, almost comical, like one of those white-faced characters playing with toothless bears in a gypsy circus. But nothing was funny about how this boy butchered, deliberately gut-shot to die slower, twisting in agony. Pure mean. The sheriff decided it's more thoughtful to shoot a man in the head and get it finished.

So, the lawman better have words, address hard feelings before the outlaw faced the lubricated hemp rope. He wiped biscuit crumbs onto the oak floor, breathing deeply as he stood, well over six feet. Again he adjusted the hat, but this time checking the holstered Walker that fit his large right hand.

Strolling to the rear of the lockup, the sheriff stopped, listening. Through protruding teeth, the outlaw whistled a popular tune. The clear sound, his apparent fun and carefree spirit, gave the sheriff pause to again smile. Here's a man facing the rope, whistling about a Florida river. Give this little pisser his due.

And there he sat on a rickety wood bench with a single barred window to light the room in the gathering dusk, the outlaw's left wrist manacled in heavy chain to an iron bar. He stopped in mid blow, his lips pursed to eye the sheriff, now towering next to him, looking nearly straight up with those blue eyes. At his side on the bench was a boxed and filthy bowler hat. He wore oversized blue wool trousers secured by suspenders. Only his riding boots beared noting, with thick soles and well stitched. The toe of one brown boot tapped idly as the pair exchanged looks.

On the outlaw's shirtless body, in various stages of recovery, were any number of welts and abrasions. There was a clear shotgun scar on his upper body, round as the morning sunrise. And it was more than plain he needed to bathe, flies buzzing and covered in baked trail grime. The man was a sight.

“Well,” the sheriff, with not a trace of irony, said. “Looks like the end of the line.”

The outlaw shook his head, thought maybe so. The sheriff was astonished. Why does he seem so at peace. It was like you'd expect him to stand and wave, as if this journey had ended well and a new adventure was about to begin.

Almost whispering to himself, the outlaw now fiddling with his fingers said, “Being the cast-iron idiot you are, Long John, there's no reason to exchange pleasantries.”

And then he said something completely out of character, his watery eyes swinging back to the sheriff's, just as calm as dipping into warm bathwater. “The Lord,” he said, “adorns the lowly with victory.”

Still marveling at the outlaw's biblical remark, the sheriff the next evening pondered, staring now at the kid lying in a wood box. He wore a clean white shirt too large for his small frame. The sheriff noted the undertaker had flattened his hair with an oil, giving the appearance of a school boy killed in a carriage mishap. It was troubling that a Santa Fe Union story suggested the outlaw wasn't really shot trying to escape. The sheriff also saw the outlaw's footwear had been replaced with a pair of drifter boots.

As his thoughts drifted off, a woman without notice approached the sheriff from the back of the undertaker's parlor. At her touch, the tall lawman jerked from his reverie, startled. She was pressing upward on her toes now, and the sheriff instinctively dipped close to her lips. Her breath was warm and her hair smelled like April. Those smooth and strong hands clutching his powerful shoulder, she whispered as the sunlight dyed the room red, “You pisspot you, he never had a chance.”