The Thicket Read Online Free PDF Page B

head was gone, along with an ear. His clothes were ripped up and stiff with dried blood. Nails were driven on either side of his head, and a rope was fastened to the nails and passed under his chin; that’s what was holding him up. They had folded one of his arms across his chest and had put a pistol in his hand to make him look ready for action. What he looked was dead.
    “Damn, now,” Tom said. “There has been some messy activity here of a sorts.”
    I was curious, of course, but my mind was more overwhelmed with my own worries. I thanked Tom and Matilda and started into the sheriff’s office as they rattled away in their wagon. The door was wide open. There was a fellow not much older than me standing behind a desk, emptying things out of a drawer, tossing them on the desktop. There was a jail cell at the back, and there was a thick blond man in it. He was sitting on a bunk and had a rag tied around his head; it was leaked through with blood. He had one leg in splints and his face was black and blue all over, as if he were a spotted hound.
    I said to the man emptying the drawer, “I’m looking for the sheriff.”
    “Don’t shut the door,” he said. “I don’t want nobody to think I’ve barricaded it.”
    I wasn’t sure what he was talking about, and I didn’t ask him to explain. Instead, I came up to the desk and asked about the sheriff again.
    “You’ll find him under a tarp in the back of that wagon parked across the street.”
    “Who are you?”
    “Deputy,” said the man. “Or was. I’m clearing out, taking what’s mine, and some of what’s the sheriff’s. He won’t care. He ain’t got no kin and wasn’t well liked.”
    I looked at what he was placing on the desk. It was little knickknacks and pieces of junk, except for a couple of badges and a ring of keys. I said, “Since you’re the deputy, I’m here to report a crime. And I’m going to need you to throw together a posse pretty quick.”
    He lifted his head and looked at me. “You are, are you? Well, I’m quitting, and in about five or ten minutes there’s going to be folks coming through that door with a rope, looking for these here keys, and that fellow there”—he nodded at the blond—“is going to end up at the end of that rope with his tongue hanging out, his pants full of shit.”
    “You don’t know that,” said the man in the jail.
    “About the shit in your pants, the tongue hanging out, or the part about the rope?” the deputy said.
    “Either part of it,” said the man.
    “I had a cousin hung himself over a girl split with him and married a carpenter,” the deputy said. “The rope killed him and the rest come naturally.”
    “You’re supposed to protect me,” said the man.
    The deputy poked a badge on the desk with a finger, said to the blond, “Fellow wearing a badge is. But that ain’t me anymore. I figure I don’t want to get shot by the likes of you, or get shot protecting you. No, sir. I am plumb out of the deputy business. I’m thinking of learning barbering.”
    “But what about me?” said the blond, sounding like a child who had missed his turn. “You can’t just leave me here and let them get me.”
    “Your situation might have been different had you not decided to rob the bank and kill the sheriff,” the former deputy said, closing the desk drawer. “You think on that?”
    “I wasn’t the one shot the sheriff,” said the man in the jail.
    “Well, I’ll let you and the townfolks sort that out,” the former deputy said.
    “Why me?” he said. “Them others got off all right. They rode right off. But I got nabbed.”
    The former deputy reached a hat off a peg on the wall behind him, scraped most of the stuff on the desktop into it, and left the keys and badge there. He placed the hat on the table and looked at the blond.
    “Your horse was slow and took a bullet, and that’s the end of that story. But you ain’t the only one with bad luck. There’s at least one more of you