The Deputy
by Alan Barkley

The Sheriff climbed down slowly from a buckboard wagon parked with its weary horse in Clyde Tolson's dusty front yard and sniffed the pungent air of the pig farm. He wore an unbuttoned canvas dustcoat over his black suit, trouser legs tucked into tall black boots. He took off his Stetson, swatted the range dust from his coat, and placed the hat carefully on the driver's bench next to his Remington rifle stuck upright into the buckboard-mounted holster.

The wagon was parked thirty feet away from a single-story, ramshackle sawn-plank home with a plain front porch that ran the width of the house, an unpainted wooden door to the left, an open window on the right. A weathered straight-back chair was the only outdoor furniture.

The Sheriff squatted beside a dark patch of earth with an irregular shape and scooped up a handful, watching the dirt slide through his fingers.

"Get off my fuckin' prop'ty!"

The Sheriff squinted towards the window. The porch roof intercepted the bright Arizona sun and cast a broad shadow across the front of the house except at the sill level of the window where he could see a dazzle of light glinting off twin barrels.

"You're a hard man to serve these papers to, Clyde, so I brought 'em over myself."

The Sheriff removed a sheaf of papers from inside his jacket and held them up. "Maybe your bride could read 'em to you." He put the papers back inside his coat and took a step toward the porch.

"I'm givin' you ten seconds." Clyde jammed the shotgun further though the window and his heavy, unshaven face became visible.

"I'd recommend staying aways from that window, Clyde." The Sheriff pointed towards the low hills behind him. "I mounted my deputy on the back ridge with a rifle. He might shoot you if you expose yourself. You best stay back there in the shadows."

Clyde startled for a moment and then recovered with a sneer. "You only got one deputy. I never seen a worst man with a rifle."

"Anson's a bit approximate with his aiming, I'll give you that."

"That ridge is a thousand yards away. But I got no worries about your deputy anyways, do I Sheriff."

The Sheriff took another step toward the porch. "I can't fool you, Clyde, that's a fact. Anson's spread out on a gurney while they try digging your bullet out of his spleen."

"He made a terr'ble mess in my yard."

The Sheriff remembered the bloodied dirt. "Anson fell off his horse when he got back to town. Didn't have much blood left."

"Man who shoots like shit never shoulda raised his gun at me."

The Sheriff took another step.

"Stay goddamn put!" Clyde leaned further out the window. The Sheriff could now see the shotgun was a Cimarron Coach twelve gauge, one of Clyde's arsenal of rifles and pistols. Clyde cocked the hammers noisily.

The Sheriff stopped and put up both his hands. He tilted his head, indicating the ridge behind him. "Caution, now, Clyde. I may have deputized another man with a Sharps long-barrel rifle."

"You ain't got no deputy, Sheriff. I know who lives in this town. Chicken-livered clerks and cobblers, ever' one."

The Sheriff nodded his head. "I agree with you, Clyde. You've bullied all the townsfolk you've met.

"Them people couldn't shoot the balls off my hog point-blank, and my hog's got a ballsack the size of a badger."

Clyde laughed until it began hacking and he spat tobacco-phlegm through the window onto the porch. When his coughing subsided he saw that the Sheriff was standing on the porch.

"I'm gonna kill you for trespass!"

"No disputing you're a good shot, Clyde. Why I come to you unarmed."

"Lawmen don't go nowhere unarmed."

The Sheriff removed his long trail coat and tossed it over the back of the porch chair. His metal star was pinned to his dark suit.

"No sense in making a ruckus 'round your new wife. Here, spec me out."

The Sheriff slowly pivoted in a full circle. He rolled up his sleeves and unbuttoned his suit-vest as he turned: no guns in sight.

"How is Helen, by the way?"

"Busy."

"I was hoping she might wish me good day, I like to hear her Boston speech. Would you call her for me?"

"She's cookin' my dinner."

"I'm going to sit down over in that chair, Clyde. I'm tired and you might prefer me stationary under the circumstances."

The dry joints creaked loudly as the Sheriff lowered his tall frame into the chair. He leaned back and stretched.

"Ah. That is better, Clyde. Right hospitable. Thank you." He reached into his folded coat again. "Now to business. I got to give you some papers."

"What's in 'em?"

"Letters of warrant, Clyde, many and various. If these here were playing cards you'd have enough for a game of Faro. 'Course, you wouldn't be holding a good hand."

Clyde repositioned his shotgun. "I think I got me a very good hand."

"You got supplies and know-how, Clyde, I know that. Not always sure about your strategy."

"Huh?"

The Sheriff looked at the first paper. "Here's a complaint . . . says you hit Calvin Lanyard unprovoked."

"He was speakin' rude to my wife."

"Calvin tipped his hat and said good morning. You broke all his teeth."

"I never give 'im my permission."

"Here's another. Says you hired a horse from Farrier Stables and never brought it back."

"Horse broke its leg so I shot it."

"They never found the horse's body."

"I buried the horse on the trail."

"That must have been an inconvenient amount of digging."

The Sheriff flipped to another document but didn't look at it. "Your wife Helen, she's had a lot of bruising?"

"Who's sayin'?"

"'Round her face. I noticed it a few times."

"She falls. She's a clumsy woman."

The Sheriff returned to the document in his hand. "Got a robbery here. Man shot a bank clerk carrying a money satchel. The clerk was walking in the alley with payroll money for the saloon."

"So?"

"Clerk was near death's door for two weeks but he identified you when he come to."

"That's bullshit."

"Says he knew it was you right away, wearing the same dirty overalls that smell like pig. Maybe you should wear a disguise next time. Least change your clothes."

"That's a fuckin' lie."

The Sheriff lifted up another paper. "This one here, I was writing this out all morning. Broke two pens and cramped my fist. Attempted murder of my deputy."

"Self-defense."

The Sheriff gathered the warrants together, shaping them with his hands into one neat pile. "Now I got to get these off my hands and into yours." He held the papers out, extending his arm towards Clyde.

"You think I'm some stupid woman!"

"What?"

"Sweet-talkin' me. You get me to lift my hand to take them papers and you go grab my gun!"

"Whoa there, Clyde. All I'm trying to do is . . . look, I need to tell the judge I served these warrants. Then I'm done. I'll go away. You come into my office at your convenience."

"Leave 'em on the porch then and bugger off."

"Can't do that. Got to see them directly in your hands."

Clyde was silent. "And then you go."

The Sheriff nodded. "Then I leave you in peace."

Clyde pulled himself back inside and slammed the window shut. The Sheriff could hear the shutters bang across the window, barricading that access into the house.

Clank. The Sheriff heard a heavy dead bolt drawn back behind the front door. He got up from his chair and walked across the porch. The door opened slowly and a long-handled straw broom snaked out, the broom-head lying flat to the floor. The tips of Clyde's gun barrels protruded from the crack in the door.

"Lay 'em on the bristles," said Clyde.

The Sheriff squatted down and placed the stack of papers on the broom head. He saw a cast-frog doorstop nearby and laid that on top to press all the papers down. From his position he could see through the front door into the small dining room beyond. A door at the back was closed.

"All set," said the Sheriff.

"Get off my porch now."

"Thought I'd hear a pot or two clanging from the kitchen. Pretty quiet back there for making dinner."

"Woman's a quiet cook." Clyde yanked the broom inside and slammed the front door.

"Always wondered what you wrote in those letters you sent to the Matrimonial Gazette."

"What?"

"Those letters sure did the trick. All the way from Boston this pretty young lady comes, smart as a whip. What'd you write to Helen?"

The front door opened an inch. "None a your fuckin' business."

"And who wrote 'em for you?"

The door swung open wide enough to reveal Clyde hefting the shotgun to his shoulder.

"What did you say?"

"Stands to reason, a man can't read nor write bullies someone else to write him up a correspondence for a bride. Write him up good."

Clyde took a step across the threshold.

"You shut your mouth."

"Words so sweet the lady can't believe what a paragon she's hooked, signs a marriage agreement before she even sees your sorry mug."

"You son of a bitch." Clyde moved forward, his gun held tight and high pointing at the Sheriff.

"They say love is blind. In your case Clyde, it's gotta be."

Clyde took another step on the porch, moving from the shadow cast by the porch roof and into the full sunlight. He jammed the barrels against the Sheriff's cheek.

"I'm gonna blow your face right off."

Clyde dropped his shotgun a half second before he heard the echoing retort of a distant gunshot, then Clyde collapsed face-down on the porch.

The Sheriff knelt beside Clyde and pulled him over on his back. Blood was spreading from the shoulder over the front of his dirty shirt.

"What the — ?"

"I don't think you have met everybody in town."

There was no dinner on the stove when the Sheriff kicked down the kitchen door. Helen Tolson's neck was tied with wire to a leg of the kitchen table and her mouth stuffed with a rag. Her hands and feet were hogtied and she had been beaten. He gently removed the gag from her swollen mouth. Her neck was red and raw.

"He was going to kill me. He found my train ticket." She whispered the words hoarsely.

"We'll buy you another one," said the Sheriff.

The Sheriff pulled tight on the ropes that trussed Clyde up securely at the back of the wagon. Helen stepped onto the porch holding a suitcase. She looked better he thought, spruced up and dressed for travel. He couldn't see the bruises, paled beneath makeup and her bonnet's partial veil. She wore a freshly-ironed dress that had simpler lines than those worn by the women in town. He thought it looked elegant.

"It's nice to put this dress on again," Helen said. "I only wore it once, on the train coming out here."

The Sheriff picked up his Stetson from the driver's seat and put it on. He walked back toward the house, pulling a pocket watch from his vest pocket by its gold chain.

"You might make the four-twenty eastbound. You can telegraph your folks when you get to Chicago and change there for Boston."

"Well, I'm all packed and ready to —" Helen looked past the Sheriff, startled.

Mounted on a spotted horse was a man with long black hair, a cloth band around his forehead and a rifle across his lap. She hadn't been long in Arizona but she recognized the light-colored, loose Apache clothing and calfskin boots.

The Apache made a short nod. She saw the Sheriff touch the brim of his hat in return.

"Who's that?" she asked.

The Apache turned his Appaloosa for the journey back to town. He lifted his Sharps long-barrel rifle from his lap and rested against his right shoulder, revealing the metal star pinned to his traditional vest-jacket.

The Sheriff reached down and picked up Helen's suitcase.

"Let's catch you that train."