Chapter Two
Rusty, he wanted a posse. He was plumb irate. Them was his brides got stolen, and he was rooting around, looking for ways to hang the wife-rustlers at the nearest cottonwood tree.
“Hey, cool her off,” I said. “Go saddle up and take some fixings. I’ll get Critter, and we’ll get this deal shut down in no time.”
“Who’ll run the office?”
“I’ll send Burtell,” I said, referring to a part-time deputy.
“I want a posse. That was Anna and Natasha got took. I want plenty of armed men.”
“This’ll be the easiest kidnapping we ever solved,” I said. “Where can they hide? We got some dudes in a red-and-gold chariot, kidnapping beautiful Siamese twins in one skirt, and they speak Ukraine, whatever the tongue is. We got ’em cold, Rusty.”
He didn’t want to believe it, and I didn’t blame him. He got robbed out of two real pretty gals, and a lot of real fine nights once he got hitched to one or the other or both.
But my ma, she used to say that twins were double the trouble. She’d settle for twin cocker spaniels, but not any pair that would put her out some. In truth, if we got them joined-up twins back, I wasn’t sure Rusty could handle the deal.
I headed for Turk’s Livery Barn, fixing to saddle up Critter the Second. The first got his throat slit, and I looked hard before I found the Second, who was meaner than the first, so it worked out all right. I don’t know what I’d do with a gentle horse. Horses are like women: If they don’t buck when you’re riding them, they’re no good.
Awhile later me and Rusty met up at the livery barn, and fixed to ride out.
“Shouldn’t we have a buggy or a cart?” he asked.
He was thinking about how to transport the Ukrainian ladies. You can’t expect Siamese twins to climb up on a horse, but maybe a pair of horses would work if they crowded close.
I noticed he was armed to the teeth, with a saddle gun and a pair of mean-looking Peacemakers hanging from his skinny hips. He was gonna get his women back, even if he burned some powder.
“You got any idea why them gals got took?” he asked.
“It sure is interesting,” I replied.
Critter was out in the yard, which wasn’t good. He kicked down any stall he got put into, so Turk often put him outside. I got the bridle and went after him, and sure enough, he headed for a corner in the fence and waited for me, his rear hooves itchy to land on me. I tried moving along one rail and he switched that way, so I tried the other rail, and he switched that way.
“Critter, dammit, we’re going to look for some women. Or one woman. I don’t have it straight. So shape up,” I yelled.
He turned and eyed me, and settled down and let me bridle and brush and saddle him without trouble. Critter was a philosopher.
“Dog food,” said Rusty. “He needs to be turned into dog food.”
“I won’t argue with it,” I said.
Turk spotted us. “You going after them stage robbers?” he asked.
“That’s my woman they took,” Rusty said.
“Double the feedbags,” Turk said. “You sure got odd tastes.”
That was my private opinion, but I wasn’t voicing it. Rusty was the best deputy I had, and I didn’t want to rile him up.
The town watched us ride out. Word spread through town like melted butter, and now they were all watching. Mostly watching Rusty, not me, because they were seeing Rusty in a new light. What sort of man would marry Siamese twins joined at the hip? Mighty strange. The women stood along Main Street with pursed lips, and I could read their every thought.
But soon we were trotting down the Laramie Road, heading for the ambush spot, so I could see what was to be seen, and we could see what the chariot wheels did to the turf. It should be easy enough to follow that cart, and with a little luck I’d have the bandits in manacles and heading for my lockup in a day or two.
Rusty, he sure was silent.
“What are you thinking, Rusty?”
“Maybe I won’t marry after all. They’ll be plumb ruined. I was marrying double virgins, and now look at it. It’s a mess.”
“You sure got big appetites, Rusty. Double everything—double marriage, double honeymoon, double household, double mouths to feed.”
“Yeah, that’s me,” he said, a little smirky. Somehow he was seeing all this as proof that he was double the rest of us.
“What if they both expect babies at the same time, eh?”
Rusty was still looking smirky, so I didn’t push it. Life sure was going to be interesting.
Critter loved to get out, and now he was pretty near popping along, and Rusty’s nag had to trot now and then to catch up. We were riding through empty country, nothing but hills and sagebrush, and not worth anything except to a coyote. But that was Wyoming for you—ninety percent worthless, ten percent pretty fine.
It took us about three hours to reach the ambush place, well chosen to hide the ambushers behind a curve in the road. The jehu had given me a pretty good idea of it. There were signs around there, all right. Some iron-tire tracks, some hoofprints, some handkerchiefs, and plenty of boot heel dimples in the dun clay.
Sure enough, the iron-tire tracks led straight west, off the road, over open prairie, so we followed them.
“We’ll nail ’em, Rusty. How can we lose? Look at them tracks, smooth and hard.”
But the tracks were gradually turning, and finally came entirely around and headed for the Laramie Road, maybe a mile south of where the ambush happened. And there they disappeared. Those clean iron-tire tracks vanished. We messed around there a while, widening out, looking for the tracks, and there weren’t any. It was as if that chariot had taken off from the earth and rolled on up into heaven.
Rusty was having the same sweats as me. That just couldn’t be. Big red-and-gold chariots didn’t just vanish—unless through the Pearly Gates. I wondered about that for a while. Were them Ukrainian ladies taken on up?
The road had plenty of traffic showing on it, and we scouted it one way or the other, checking hoofprints, poking at ruts, and kicking horse turds, but the fact was, the kidnappers had ridden off into the sky, and were now rolling across cumulus, or maybe thunderheads, to some place or other.
“You got any fancy theories, Cotton?” Rusty asked.
He sure looked gloomy, like he had been deprived of a night with two of the prettiest gals ever born.
“We could ride on down to Laramie and see what’s what,” I said.
“Who’d want ’em?” Rusty asked.
“Some horny old rancher, I imagine,” I said.
“Well, there’s no man on earth hornier than me,” Rusty said.
It was dawning on him that he’d lost his mail-order bride, or brides, I never could get that straight, and he was sinking into a sort of darkness. I thought it was best to leave him alone.
“I’ll get ahold of the sheriff, Milt Boggs, and tell him what’s missing, and to let us know if we got a red chariot and two hipshot blondes floating around southern Wyoming,” I said.
“We catch them, what are you going to charge them with?” Rusty asked.
“Now that’s an interesting question,” I said. “My ma used to say people confess if you give them the chance.”
“Well, she inherited all the brains in your family,” Rusty said, just to be mean.
Truth to tell, my mind was on what might happen when we got back to Doubtful without two hip-tied blondes and a red chariot and a mess of crooks trudging along in front of my shotgun. They’d be telling me to quit, or maybe trying to fire me again. Seems every time I didn’t catch the crook or stop the killer, they wanted to fire me. I’ve spent more time in front of the county supervisors trying to save my sheriff job than I’ve spent running my office.
Well, about dusk, we got back in, and all we raised were a few smirks. Like no one thought that kidnapping Siamese twins from the Ukraine was worth getting lathered up about. Especially when it was all Rusty’s problem. He’s the only one got shut out of some entertainment. So we rode in, by our lonesome selves, without a passel of bandits and bad men parading in front, and without those brides. People sort of smiled smartly, and planned to make some jokes, and maybe petition the supervisors to get rid of me, and that was that.
Me, I felt the same way. If Rusty hadn’t mail-ordered the most exotic womanhood this side of Morocco, it never would’ve happened.
Turk showed up out of the gloom soon as we rode into his livery barn.
“Told you so,” he said.
“Told us what?”
“That you’d botch another job again.”
I was feeling a little put out with him, and if there were any other livery barns in town, I would have moved Critter then and there. Critter chewed on any wood he could get his big buck teeth around, and sometimes Turk sent me a bill for repairs, but I could hardly blame Turk for that.
Rusty unsaddled, turned out his nag, and disappeared. He was feeling real blue, and I didn’t blame him.
“Hey,” Turk said, “while you gents were out the Laramie Road, chasing Ukrainian women, a medicine show came up the Cheyenne Road and set up outside of town.”
“Medicine show?”
“None other. Doctor Zoroaster Zimmer’s Three-Way Tonic for digestion, thick hair, and virility. Three dollars the six-ounce bottle, thirty-five dollars a dozen. And you get to watch a juggler, belly dancer, an accordion player, and a dog and pony act, and then lay out cash for the medicine.”
“Zimmer? Seems to me he’s on a wanted dodger in my office. Whenever he hits town, jewelry and gold coins start vanishing, and dogs howl in the night. I think his tonic’s mostly opium, peppermint, and creek water, but I’ll find out.”
“Yeah, sheriff, and guess what? I wandered over there to have a gander. He’s driving a big red-enameled outfit with gold trim. But there’s no chariots or Ukrainian blondes in sight.”