The Sheriff of Badger A Tale of the Southwest Borderland

Excerpt

LAFE JOHNSON ARRIVES AT THE LAZY L RANCH

It may come as a shock to many to learn that we have in cowland a considerable number of full-blooded men who have never made it a practice to step outside the door of a morning and shoot a fellow-citizen before breakfast. This is true; vital statistics and fiction to the contrary, notwithstanding. They are well-grown, two-fisted men, also, and work very hard seven days in the week, and whenever they go to town they get drunk. But in the main they are law-abiding, and steal calves only for their employers.

There was Lafe Johnson. This story has him for its central figure.

"It's right queer about men," Lafe used to say, when in a reflective mood. "A feller will knock in a friend what he'd be like to do himself. And he'll act mean one day so he's sure ashamed of it the next. Yes, sir; the best of 'em will. It all depends on how a man feels, I reckon, and what shape his stomach's in. No man ain't always going to do the right thing, and I've never met a feller yet who was all bad. What's more, nobody thinks he's bad, or I expect he wouldn't be. Don't you reckon? Why, a man'll be plucky one day and the next morning he'd cry if a jackrabbit was to slap him in the face."

Lafe started man's estate as a cowboy. What his antecedents were I don't know and don't care, nor did anybody else in our country. We have so many more important matters to engage us. Punching cattle happened to be his profession. In every other respect Lafe was a normal individual—no better than you or I, and assuredly no worse. Some thought he was worse, and among them a Mrs. Tracey—or she pretended to—who thought that and a few other things besides. That was why Mrs. Floyd, just before Johnson departed the ranch, insisted that he accompany her to the Tracey home in Rowdy Cañon.

"I'll tell her to her face what I think," she said.

Lafe tried to pacify her.

"I ain't much of a fighter, ma'am," he said. "You'd better go alone and have it out. Miz Tracey, she's got me scared off the map right now."

"You'll come, too!" Mrs. Floyd assured him, pulling on her gauntlets.

This is what Mrs. Floyd said, sitting her horse in front of the Tracey gate, her erstwhile friend being on the veranda: "I've heard the stories you've been spreading about me, Tracey!"

"Stories? Gracious, what's got into you, Sally? I never mentioned your name! Do you reckon I've got nothing better to talk about?"

"Don't lie," Mrs. Floyd continued, her voice rising. "You know what I mean. And I've got Mr. Johnson with me to hear it, too. You keep your mouth shut about me—do you hear? If you don't, I'll shut it for you. I'm right proud and glad to know Lafe Johnson—he's a friend of my husband, too—and—and—"

She had much more to impart, having rehearsed it mentally on the way over in order to be effective, but here rage and tears choked speech. Perhaps it was as well; finical people may even find something to deplore in what Mrs. Floyd did say. Mrs. Tracey answered, tucking her chin into her neck, that she was very, very glad to hear it, but, for herself, she must confess complete inability to discover any grounds for pride in Mr....