SHERIFF GREGG
&
THE RIGHTEOUS WIDOW
By Hank Florentine McLoskey
Copyright 2011 Hank Florentine McLoskey,
Smashwords edition
First time I saw Hester Jones I liked her, even though I couldn’t figure out what she was at - and that’s how it was between us, right up to the very end.
She turned up off the train one day with a suitcase in either hand, dressed all in black. Even the big feather boa wrapped around her shoulders was black.
“What you wearing that thing for?” Sheriff Gregg demanded. Those suitcases were heavy and she’d stopped to take a breather right in front of his porch. That must have been the first time he and I were of similar mind – ‘cos I wanted to ask her the exact same thing. She was a small woman who carried herself very upright and if it hadn’t been for that boa, I would have had her figured as a widow woman of the careful, respectable thrifty kind. It looked – what’s the word agin? Incongruous. Like somebody draping bunting over a funeral parlor window.
“Why you must be Sheriff Gregg!” she said. Our good sheriff was idly twirling his two six shooters even as he rocked slowly back and forth, studying her with narrowed black eyes, the faintest of smiles playing on his lean yellow face. So no wonder Hester added – “you certainly know how to fool around with them things! Are you as good at using them as you are at playing with them, I wonder?”
And that was why I liked Hester Jones. On account of how she stood up to Sheriff Gregg. His little face darkened into a scowl. “What’s it matter to you one way or the other?” he snapped. “And you still ain’t answered my question.”
“Well why wouldn’t I wear such a thing?”
Deputy Dawson grinned and shook his head in disbelief while Gregg’s frown grew ever deeper. “’Cos a woman who wears them kind of fripperies is likely to be taken for a whore. At least, round these parts.”
“Is that so?” she said. “Well in that case I shall remove it as soon as is convenient.”
See what I mean? That woman knew how to handle Sheriff Gregg. Simple good manners put that feller in his place.
She came into my shop right after. “I’m planning on staying here in Butterfield a while and wonder if you could recommend a nice, respectable guesthouse.”
She spoke to me with a twinkle in her grey eyes, maybe on account of how I was still smiling after seeing how she’d handled the good sheriff. She must have guessed she’d already found herself an ally. I wouldn’t have put her much past forty. She still had her figure and I could still see the girl she’d once been in that pale, heart-shaped face, for all the mark hard times had left on it.
“Abigail Crabworth lives three doors down. She’ll rent you out a room. Just mention my name.”
“And that is?”
“Charles. Charles Nash.”
“A pleasure.” She held out one petite white hand. “Hester Jones.”
Hester Jones’ palm was rough as sandpaper. That girl had known some hard times all right.
“You planning on stayin’ round here long?”
We got to yakking then. Hester Jones was St Louis born-and-bred and been a seamstress most of her life. Her husband had died a few years back and her maiden aunt the month before. The aunt had left her a big farm up in the Smoky Hills which was how she’d fetched up in Butterfield. It was her intention to buy some supplies and maybe hire a few men to help out on the farm, if she could find any interested in making the journey.
I liked her. I liked the way those grey eyes met my own, frankly and openly. I liked her laugh. Only there was some things about her that just didn’t make sense. She sure sounded like she was from St Louis, but she looked like a woman who’d grown up on the plains. Plains life is hard and it leaves its mark on people, the woman folk more so. The weather ain’t very kind to a woman’s complexion for one.
The other thing that got me wondering was minor enough in itself. Little Beaver came in to buy hisself some tobacco. Me and Hester was swapping jokes like old friends by then, and cackling away fit to beat the band. Hester didn’t stop laughing but her eyes slid over in Little Beaver’s direction than back to mine and I thought I saw something there that I didn’t like. After he was gone, she said – “you serve Injuns here?”
“Well there’s injuns and there’s injuns. There’s some will give you grief – especially where you’re heading – and there’s some wouldn’t hurt a fly. Little Beaver’s people are the peaceable kind. Besides, most of them were moved to Oklahoma a few year back. He stayed.”
“How come?”
“Damned if I know.”
“I don’t care for ‘em,” she said flatly, in a voice that brooked no contradiction.
“Don’t believe everything you read in some dime novel Hester,” I said, not wanting to get on the wrong side of her but still wanting her to see sense.
She smiled again. “I’ll try not to. Good day, Charles.” She held out her hand, I shook it a second time, and then she left. Watching her vanish up the street, I was sorry I’d never offered to carry her suitcases - although she struck me as the kind of woman who liked to carry her own suitcases anyway.
She came back two days later with a list of stuff she wanted to order. I told her it’d take a while to get it all together and to call back mid-week to see how I was getting on. I gave her a list of men I reckoned she could hire – men I knew were trustworthy and hardworking but still footloose enough to leave Butterfield without a backwards glance. She didn’t even look at it, just stuffed it straight into her purse.
Not fifteen minutes later Sheriff Gregg sauntered across the street to buy some cigarillos. “What she want?” he asked. No pussy-footing around. I didn’t want him giving Hester any grief and it seemed to me the easiest way of making this so was by convincing him Hester was on the level. So I told him how she’d inherited this farm and just been ordering some farm stuff – grain and tools mostly – as well as looking for some likely fellers to hire.
Sheriff Gregg listened to me without ever looking me in the eye, then lit his cigarillo with one quick flick of his hand. “That’s what she told you?” he asked, after taking a few deep drags and blowing a cloud of pale blue smoke into my face. “You believe her?”
I hated the little feller and he was crazy, but he was pretty sharp too. “Yeah,” I said. “’Course. Why wouldn’t I?”
“Cos I don’t,” Gregg sneers. “If she’s just looking for fellers to help her run this farm of hers how come she’s been hanging out at Grundy’s place?”
Grundy’s was a saloon at the other end of town and home to Butterfield’s criminal elements – mostly bored veterans of the war. “Search me,” I said.
Sheriff Gregg crooks one thumb into his waistcoat pocket, leans against my counter - no mean achievement for a man of his diminutive stature – and puffs away at his cigar for another minute or two, studying me with those nasty little eyes of his the whole time. “And how come she still dresses like a whore?” he says softly at last. He was trying to rile me, see.
“There’s a difference between dressing like a whore and acting like one,” I said. “And if you’re taking such an interest in Hester you should know by now she ain’t no whore.’
Well Sheriff Gregg just shakes his head at this. “Maybe not,” he says. “But she’s up to something.” And he starts to saunter slowly back out, ‘cept he stops and turns at the doorway, real dramatic like, so he’s just a silhouette against the sunwashed street outside. “You watch yourself, Charles,” he says. “That girl is bad news. And once you find out what she’s up to – you come to me. Understand?”
“Sure thing, Sheriff Gregg,” I says. Not that I had any intention of doing any such thing. I just didn’t want to get into no row.
Afterwards I got to wondering, though. What was Hester up to? Why was she still wearing that stupid boa? Fact was, whores did wear stuff like that. You don’t need to dress up like a whore to get good farmhands, not if you’re offering them decent money. Not that you’d find any farmhands down at Grundy’s. Which was the strangest part. Why was Hester trying to work her womanly wiles on that bunch?
It just didn’t make no sense, so much so I decided to ask her myself, next time I saw her. We was friends, right?
“You ain’t going to find no farmhands down at Grundy’s. Just gun-slingers and trouble-makers.”
This was early next morning. She’d come in to see how much of the stuff she’d ordered was packed and ready. She was calling out each item in turn while I checked then nailed each crate shut. Now she glanced over at me, a faint smile playing on her face. I’d only just started noticing how pretty she was, lines notwithstanding. “Well maybe I ain’t looking for farmhands,’ she said tartly. Before I could ask her what the dang hell she was looking for, she went on – “what you say we go for a walk, Charles? This evening? Just you and me?”
I straightened myself up, all too conscious of my aching back and the fact that I was over sixty years of age and she was barely forty and found myself wondering more than ever what Hester Jones was about.
Not that I turned down that invitation. No sir. I liked her. Besides, I was curious.
That same evening, after I’d locked up the store, we went for our little stroll. Butterfield ain’t that big and there ain’t that much to see - most of it was re-built after the war anyway – so we decided to just walk to the courthouse and back. It was a nice evening, starting to cool after what had been another hot day, and she hooked her arm in mine for all the world as if we’d been married ten year or were courting or some such nonsense. “I only just noticed your wedding ring, Charles. I had you pegged for a life-long bachelor.”
“Nah,” I said. Truth be told I was feeling a mite bashful. It had been a very long time since I went out promenading with a woman. Maybe too long. “I was married once upon a time.”
“What happened?”
“She died of Cholera back in ‘51”
Hester squeezed my arm. “It’s a terrible thing, ain’t it? To lose a loved one?”
“It sure is. You still haven’t told me what you’re doing hanging round Grundy’s.”
“Oh that.” She laughed, a low sweet laugh. “That was on account of something you said.”
“What?”
“Don’t you remember? You said the injuns round here were peaceable enough but that it might be different where I was heading. So I reckoned I needed to get me some fellers used to toting a gun.”
“Well you'll certainly find fellers like that down at Grundy’s. What you won’t find is a decent farmhand. You got your priorities all mixed up, Hester.”
She stopped me then so we were face-to-face, searching my features with those big grey eyes of hers. “You reckon?”
“Yeah. What you think the volunteers are for? They’ll take care of any injun trouble you’re likely to have – ”
Those grey eyes flashed and those red lips twisted scornfully. “The volunteers? Them boys ain’t worth a damn – leastways, that’s what I heard.” But she only said the last bit as an afterthought.
Curioser and curioser.
“Well, well! The storekeeper and the whore gettin' all lovey-dovey! Ain’t that a sight for sore eyes!”
I was just dropping Hester off at Abigail’s and she’d given me a quick peck on the cheek, nothing more. I’d forgotten all about Sheriff Gregg, who was sitting out on his porch as usual, puffing away at his cigarillo and watching us from the shadows like a toad eying up a couple of gnats from under some rock.
“Sheriff Gregg,” Hester said with a smile. “I’m gonna pray for you tonight - ‘cos if ever a man was in need of the Good Lord’s intervention, that man is you!”
I could barely make out Sheriff Gregg’s face in the gloom but I could still see him scowl. “I don’t need no whore praying for me!” he snapped.
Only he was too late. Hester had already vanished back inside without saying another word.
Like I said, I’m not the sort of feller who picks fights. So how come I stopped in front of that porch? Search me. I just remember saying – “I really don’t appreciate you calling Miss Jones a whore, Sheriff.”
He was still scowling away. He looked like an oriental statue I’d seen one time, in a Chicago store window. “That girl’s trouble, Charles,’ was all he said. “You mark my words.”
I’d barely made myself some coffee when there was a knock on the front door. I won’t lie to you. Fool that I was, I was kind of hoping it might be Hester. Only when I answered it, Abigail bustled in past me. “What you know about this girl – Hester Jones?”
“Precious little,” I admitted.
“You sent her to me, didn’t you?”
“I’d only just met her Abigail. She seemed straight enough. She sure knew how to rile Sheriff Gregg! Why? What’s she gone and done?”
She pay you for all that stuff she ordered yet?”
“Nope. Told me she was leaving Monday at the earliest and she’d settle up with me then.”
“You plannin’ on letting her take some of the stuff before that?”
“Sure. She wanted to move five or six crates over to the station and I didn’t see the harm. They was only cluttering up the shop anyhow.”
Abigail studied me with her sharp little eyes. “What if I told you that she’s planning on leavin' Saturday morning?”
“I’d ask how you could know such a thing.” But I felt as if an icy fist had just grabbed my heart and was squeezing it real tight.
“I knows ‘cos she’s gone and hired Curley Peterson and his crowd of no-hopers and Curley hisself told me only this evening.”
Curley was a classic example of a man who comes in mighty useful when there’s a war on and is a first-class nuisance in peace time. He wasn’t a bad sort, but boy, that feller loved to scrap!
“How come he’s going with her if she can’t pay him?”
“Oh she can pay him all right!” I could see this annoyed Abigail most of all. Her round little cheeks were quivering with indignation. “It’s you and me she don’t want to pay! Or can’t. Same difference if you ask me.”
“You talk to her about this?”
“Nope. I figured – seeing as she’s your friend – that I was best off leaving it to you.”
“I was thinking of getting me some firepower.” Hester was studying me with those steady grey eyes of hers. I hadn’t said anything to her about what Abigail had told me. I was still trying to figure her out, see. Once I had her figured, I’d know what to do.
“Yeah? Come this way.”
I bought her down to the rear of the shop. I keep a big rack of Sharps rifles down there, various types and models. She cast an appraising eye over them then lifted down a ‘74. She dropped the block, checked the bore, then cocked the hammer and set the trigger. This girl knew her guns. She was smiling to herself as she peered down that barrel only it wasn’t a very nice smile, and for a second I might as well not have been there. Hester was a million miles away, some dark place inside her own head, and whatever she thought she was shooting at, I was pretty sure it weren’t no buffalo.
“You ain’t from St Louis, Hester.”
“Nope. Spent the last four years there mind. I’m a plainswoman born and bred.” She didn’t look at me as she spoke. She must have realized this moment would come sooner or later. She swung the rifle in a slow arc, squinting down the length of it the whole time, then pulled the trigger. “Handles well enough,” she said grudgingly before putting it back.
“And I’m guessing your aunt never owned no farm in the Smoky Hills.”
“You’d guess right. Me and my husband had a farm there. And two children, a boy and a girl. Until those Cheyenne sons of bitches burnt us out.”
“You the only survivor?”
“Yup.” Tears welled up briefly in her eyes as she met my gaze, then she scowled and looked away.
“Dog soldiers, more than likely.”
“That’s what I reckon. Will you come with me, Charles?” Suddenly she was staring at me real hard, almost as if she thought she could make me come along through will-power alone.
“What in tarnation would you want with some old timer like me, Hester?”
“’Cos Curly and his gang are none too bright and you’re a good man as well as a smart one, Charles. The kind of feller a gal needs when she's caught between a rock and a hard place.”
I liked that woman. I really did. Nonetheless I shook my head. “Sorry Hester.”
Her cheeks flushed. “Why not?”
“Cos I’m guessing that if the volunteers couldn’t help you, your farm is deep in the heart of Cheyenne territory. You won’t just get yourself killed with this foolishness. You know that, don’t you? Curly and his gang will end up getting killed too. And what if one of them injuns gets it into his head to come down to Butterfield and visit some pay-back down on our heads? You ever think of that?”
She was furious with me. I could see it on her face. “And here was me thinking you was the sort of man who’d fight for a righteous cause!”
“Same as I might lie or steal for one?”
Her cheeks flushed a deeper crimson. “You aiming to tell Sheriff Gregg?”
Until then I had no intention of doing any such thing, but it suddenly struck me as the only sane thing to do. I told Sheriff Gregg, he’d throw Curly and his gang in the town jail rather than let them leave on the train, if only to make sure no Cheyenne turned up in Butterfield. “I guess.”
“What if I was to get out of town right away? Would you keep your mouth shut then?”
“Maybe. If you pay Abigail Crabworth what you owe her.”
“Guess we got ourselves a deal, so.”
We shook hands. Then she said – “I like you, Charles. Maybe I wasn’t square with you, but that part wasn’t just play-actin’.”
“I know, Hester, I know. Same as I like you.”
I watched her walk back up to Abigail’s, then come briskly back down the street not ten minutes later, a suitcase in either hand. I was glad to see she’d got rid of that feather boa. It had never suited her anyway - she was way too short for such a thing. She nodded at me as she passed and I nodded back at her.
A second later she was swallowed up by the dusk; a little woman with a big hatred burning away inside her. There was a train due in little under an hour. She’d be on that train, already planning what lies to tell, next town she found herself in. I didn’t care, just as long as she didn't tell them here in Butterfield.
“All’s well that ends well.”
I couldn’t see Sheriff Gregg; just the orange tip of his cigar in the gloom.
“I guess.”
“I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me what she was up to?”
“Nope.”
“That’s your prerogative, Charles. Now she's gone, I don’t care much one way or the other.” I heard the creak of his rocking chair as he sat back, no doubt smirking away to hisself as was his fashion.
He only cared about being right. That was Sheriff Gregg all over. Well, I guess if you think everybody is up to no good, you’re bound to be right some of the time. Either way, I’d had my fill of him.
“Good night, Sheriff,” was all I said.