‘All we can do is clear up the mess,’ said Emmett when he sent me out early this morning. I don’t what he expected me to find but the nearest thing to a corpse I found was Pecos Joe. He looked pretty deathly when I stepped over him in an alley, but he stirred soon enough once I’d kicked him.
I should have been shoulder to shoulder with Emmett at Miss Sweet's place last night, not moping around in the office, and I said as much when I met him for breakfast. He shrugged and told me to forget it. Then he asked how I was, giving me the kind of look that killed any notion I had to act dumb and pretend I didn’t know what he was getting at.
‘I’m fine.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Sure I’m sure.’
Emmett did what’s best for Plato, I know that. I liked the little fella and I guess he took a shine to me, but a kid like him needs a good home and a mother’s love, and there’s no getting away from that. All the same it’s a fine thing to have a kid look up to you, even for a little while. Makes me wonder what kind of father I might have been. An absent one, I guess.
Me and Emmett went separate ways after we left the steakhouse. While he looked into a complaint made by a customer at the hotel, I bought some fresh tobacco and then went back to the office, where I familiarized myself with a new batch of wanted posters. I’d have familiarized myself with some fresh coffee too, if Sam Holder hadn’t busted in and told me about a ruckus at The Cat’s Whisker’s. Someone’s eye had been taken out by a fork he said, as I buckled on my gun and dashed outside.
‘Alright, what’s going on?’ I hollered as I rushed through the doors of The Cat's Whiskers.
Amidst a whole lot of finger pointing and men shouting each other down, I looked around. I couldn’t see an eyeball on a fork anywhere but it was plain to see the victim, an Irishman they called O’Mara, was hurt bad. Propped against the bar, he was clutching his face and cussing.
After firing a shot in the air to hush everyone down, I asked O’Mara what happened.
‘T’was himself. He stuck me widda focken fock.’
O’Mara took his hand from his bloodied face just long enough to point out a man in a duster coat. Though O’Mara’s eyesight seemed fine, an ugly gash on his eyebrow needed stitching. I told him he’d better get to Doc’s.
As for Duster Coat, he wasn’t for coming peaceably…
…but he came anyway. I didn’t trouble myself to ask his name but whoever he is; he’s got the distinction of being the first man I ever put in jail.
From thereon in the day got busier and busier. Nothing too serious but a theft at the assay office, a fracas outside The Parlor, a pickpocket at the hotel and a drunk arrested for watering flowers in a manner likely to offend public decency sure kept me and Emmett on our toes.
It was a few hours before I saw Emmett again. He’d just tucked another drunk in for the night when I brought in another. ‘It’s Saturday’ was all he said before he went straight back on the street.
Knowing when to step out and when to step in got me through the night. And a cool head. Sure, there was plenty of ballyhoo and bluster, but nothing I couldn’t handle. A friendly word at the right time can save an awful lot of trouble. Same goes for a kick in the nuts, when a friendly word don’t work. Hell, if I’d known being a lawman was so much fun I’d have pinned a badge on years ago. Saved a couple of poker cheats from something worse than a hiding too, when I dragged them out of Miss Sweet’s place. They seemed surprised, even grateful when I told them to get out of town, but with the jail being so crowded I didn’t have much choice.
It was sometime after midnight before things calmed down, when a growl in my gut reminded me I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Since it was too late to do anything about it by then, I lit a cigarette and gathered my thoughts. Sure, I was hungry and tired but I felt good, real good, like I’d come out on top and achieved something. If only Housty could see me now, I thought, as I blew a smoke ring in the air and turned in for the night.
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