Justice. Larry Watson
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They sat quietly on the floor of their hotel, smoking cigars and sipping whiskey. They were pleased with their behavior, and often in the last two hours, ever since they arrived back in the room, one of them had commented on their maturity, on how they were able to enjoy a glass of whiskey for its taste rather than simply drinking to get drunk as many of their peers would do. Wesley, however, had begun to feel shivery and unsteady from the drink. He knew if he closed his eyes he might topple over into sleep.
They had long since stopped discussing the Indian girls. The argument finally ended when Frank, conceded as the authority on such matters, announced that it was not Tommy bringing out the gun that ruined their chances with the girls but the fact of Beverly’s boyfriend. As long as she insisted on remaining loyal to him, she could not be persuaded to come with them. And Anna would not come without her friend. “Sacred Heart didn’t help either,” Wesley added.
“No, it sure didn’t,” agreed his brother.
When the knock came, it was so soft—three taps almost like brush strokes—Wesley thought, and he was sure the others did too, that they had been wrong. The girls had decided to come after all! Tommy jumped to his feet to answer the door, while Lester had the presence of mind to cork the whiskey and roll it under the bed and to throw his coat over their glasses.
Standing in the doorway was a portly man of average height wearing a wool overcoat with a black mouton collar. Visible beneath his open coat was a three-piece suit of heavy salt-and-pepper tweed, white shirt, and tie. He wore a fedora tilted back. His large moon face was split by a wide smile.
As soon as the door opened, the man lifted his hand in a casual salute. “Howdy, boys.” His voice was as high pitched and soft as a woman’s.
Wesley could see why the knock on the door was so faint. The man wore bright yellow buckskin mittens with fur-lined cuffs that came halfway up his forearms. Wesley had seen similar mittens, designed especially for hunters, but the ones he had seen had the trigger finger cut free. The man’s rimless spectacles were well down his nose; no doubt he had tilted them down when he came in out of the cold and they steamed up in the sudden warmth of the hotel. “I’m Sheriff Cooke,” he said. “And might you be the boys from Montana?”
In the silence that followed only Wesley was able to find his tongue. “That’s us,” he said. As soon as he spoke he felt as though he had already admitted to some guilt.
Sheriff Cooke stepped into the room alone, but Wesley felt as though others were with him. Once Wesley got to his feet and looked into the hall he saw his intuition was right.
Two men in wool caps waited a few yards down the hall. They faced the open door and stood with their legs spread wide as if they were prepared to block the way. One of the men wore a long belted overcoat that looked as though it might at one time have been military issue. The other man wore a short wool jacket, and he was carrying a rifle or shotgun. Wesley didn’t know for certain because the gun was in a cloth scabbard. He cradled the gun loosely in his arms.
Sheriff Cooke waved his hand in front of him as if to clear the air. “Better pull on your boots, boys. I’m going to have you come with me.”
“What’s the trouble, sir?” Frank asked.
The sheriff kept waving his hand, and now he began to sniff the air as well. “You suppose you could spare one of those cigars?”
Wesley wondered if this might be a trick of some kind—first they would admit to smoking cigars and next he would inquire about the whiskey.
Tommy, however, had already reached into the box and was handing a cigar to the sheriff.
Sheriff Cooke held the cigar to his nose and inhaled deeply. “You won’t need your coats. We don’t have that far to walk.” He put the cigar in his coat pocket and led the way out of the hotel room.
Wesley had a momentary impulse to hang back and then slam and lock the door behind the sheriff’s back. Then—then what? Leap from the window? Wait for the sheriff and his deputies to crash through the door and drag him out? Frank followed the sheriff, and Wesley fell in behind his brother.
The sheriff’s office was not at all what Wesley expected. Their own father’s office was in the basement of Mercer County courthouse, a large stone building fronted by a long flight of steps leading to heavy glass doors between massive fluted columns. The Great Northern depot was the only public building in Bentrock older than the courthouse.
McCoy, North Dakota, had its sheriff’s office and county jail in a small, simple one-story building made of the same orange brick as the hotel.
The boys had walked coatless the length of McCoy’s main street, and though the snow had stopped and the wind died down, the temperature had continued to drop. The windpacked snow crunched underfoot, and their breath formed great clouds of steam. They thrust their hands deep into their pockets or wrapped their arms around themselves trying to make smaller targets for the cold. Once inside the jail they relaxed their shoulders and raised their eyes to examine their surroundings.
The jail’s interior was as plain as the exterior. There was a desk and swivel chair, a long bench that could at one time have been a church pew, and a coal stove with its pipe extending sideways through the wall. An empty electric light socket hung from the ceiling, and the room’s only light came from two kerosene lamps with soot-blackened chimneys. A telephone and a gun rack hung on the wall by the door. As Sheriff Cooke led them into his office he asked cheerfully, “What do you think, boys—down below zero yet?”
“Ten below, I bet,” Tommy said.
“Wouldn’t doubt it. Wouldn’t doubt it one bit.”
The two men from the hotel had filed into the jail behind the boys. The one in the jacket leaned his gun against the wall by the door. Wesley hadn’t heard either man speak, and now they stood by the door as if awaiting orders.
Sheriff Cooke pointed to the bench across from his desk. “Why don’t you boys sit yourselves down right over there.” He dropped his weight into the swivel chair, which gave out a rusty whine.
Sheriff Cooke nodded to the men by the door. “You can go take care of matters back there.” They left the jail immediately, and the shorter man left his gun behind.
Wesley could see inside a back room the bars of jail cells.
“They’re not both deputies,” Sheriff Cooke explained. “Just Mr. Rawlins in the overcoat. Mr. Rozinski lends us a hand now and then.” He chuckled in a way that caused the loose flesh of his jowls to vibrate. “When we’ve got more outlaws on our hands than we can handle.”
“Maybe you could tell us what you think we did,” said Tommy.
The sheriff didn’t answer for a long time. He reached into his desk drawer and took out a tin of Velvet tobacco and a packet of rolling papers. He took his time rolling his cigarette, as if he were a man who did not smoke often and so wanted each cigarette to be as well made as possible. He moistened the paper not by drawing it the length of his tongue but by flicking out his tongue in tiny licks.
When the wooden match flared, Wesley jumped. He knew then that he was not simply frightened but still a little drunk.
“You have pie over at the cafe?” Sheriff Cooke asked them.
“Yes,” answered Frank.
“What’s she serving today?”
“We had apple.”
Sheriff Cooke nodded as though Frank was merely verifying something the sheriff already knew. “If there’s someone on the face of this earth who bakes a better pie than Florence Spitzer, I’d like to know who. You did right having pie at the Buffalo Cafe. . . .”
Wesley thought the sheriff was going to go on and say, “But you did wrong when you—” but his soft high voice just faded away