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Bass Clayton did not care much for jailhouses.
They were generally built way too damned tight and confining, fencing off all hope of possibility in a way that only the barbed wire and slide rule mentality of the human civilized brain could conceive of.
He hated them.
The locks on the doors spoke of noose knots and shackles and the wall-to-wall iron bars seemed to slice up a man’s vision and just get in the way of EVERYTHING that ought to be important in this here life.
He sure hoped that he was just visiting this jailhouse for a very temporary stay.
“Don’t we even get to see a judge?” Bass Clayton asked the sheriff.
“Why?” Silver Grimes asked. “You figure the situation is going to improve judiciously?”
Sheriff Joe Partridge stared flatly at the two men in his jail.
The sheriff was a stout little pudding of a man with a mouth that had the appearance of having recently tasted curdled milk. He used to grin once in a while just for practice but as of late he had fallen out of the habit. There just wasn’t all that much to grin about, living in a jailhouse like he did.
Not many people knew it but those locks and bars worked in both directions.
“Well that is about as pretty a though as I have ever heard,” Joe Partridge said. “Too bad fairy tales never come true.”
“Well, we’ve got a right, don’t we?” Bass Clayton went on.
Mind you, Joe Partridge didn’t always have to live in a jailhouse. He used to spend his time with a sweet little lady named Magdelena Montressor who got tired of his farting ways and kicked him out. Joe Partridge stole Magdelena’s favorite pillowcase before he left her residence and he kept it upon his own pillow. He hadn’t washed that particular pillowcase since he had first stolen it but he still believed that he could smell the memory of Magdelena in those greying mildewed cotton fibers.
In the six years that Joe Partridge had served the town of Rueful Regret as a sheriff he had never had to pronounce sentence before over the murder of a bar-crashing sow – but he guessed that there was a first time for everything.
“Yep,” Joe Partridge said. “You have got a right and a left, which is maybe twice as much as your buddy Silver Grimes over here can say. Mind you though, you still don’t get to see anyone if I say that you are guilty.”
“I think I ought to see a judge,” Bass maintained.
“The judge is indisposed.”
“He’s in where?” Bass asked.
“He’s home drunk and I am not waking him up for no sorry-assed unmeditated case of sudden sow-icide.”
Grimes snickered.
As far as Bass could tell the man was enjoying himself – which didn’t make much sense at all.
Jail time – as far as Bass was concerned – was serious business.
“You seem to be in good spirits,” Bass said.
“I have my moments,” Bass replied.
“And I have mine,” the sheriff said. “I’m not charging either of you for murder but I am charging you both for burial expenses.”
“For the pig?”
“For Newt. You two shot him. You two pay to get him buried. Or else the two of you can bury him yourself up on Toes-up Rising. I figure that’s a fair deal.”
“But I didn’t shoot him,” Bass protested.
“You shot the pig,” the sheriff said. “That’s an instigating circumstance in my book – which makes you an accessory to the act. It is a clear-cut case of habeas corpus hambone. That’s Latin for you two got to pay to get Newt Gallagher buried on account of the county is stone cold broke at this particular moment in time. Either that or the two of you can dig a grave.”
“Sounds like Pig Latin to me,” Grimes pointed out.
“The pig was attacking me,” Bass argued. “That makes any killing self defence.”
“You left that pig’s body lying on the saloon floor,” Joe Partridge offered in rebuttal. “That makes it littering. The sentence is final and I fine you one decent dirt-hole burial.”
“That fine is fine by me,” Grimes said. “It’s a good day for digging.”
Bass just scowled.
“What about it, Bass?” the sheriff prodded.
“I’d rather see the judge,” Bass said. “As far as I’m concerned funerals and jailhouses aren’t nothing more than a total waste of good drinking weather.”
“The judge might agree with you on the drinking part of that equation,” the sheriff admitted. “But that’s not what I mean and you know it. So what about it? Are you fine with the sentence?”
“Do you really have to ask?”
“I’m asking because I want to ask,” the sheriff said. “And I also enjoy hearing the sound of my own voice speaking. As far as I’m concerned you two are wearing the only got-to around here.”
“You’re going to have to run that one by me again just a little bit slower,” Bass said. “So that I can catch it.”
The sheriff smiled patiently.
“I’ve got the badge,” he thumbed himself in the chest. “And so long as I have got it you two have got to do just exactly what I tell you to – or else you got to stay in one of my many fine jail cells – of which there are two. Got it?”
“I counted two,” Bass admitted.
“I guarantee you I’ll put you in the drafty one,” the sheriff said.
They both looked pretty damn drafty to Bass. The bars couldn’t break the wind any harder than a sorry wet beer fart.
“I can’t pay for no damn burial,” Bass protested weakly.
The sheriff scratched his teapot belly through a hole in his shirt and pointedly yawned.
“It seems to me that you pay for your drinking just fine,” the sheriff pointed out after finishing with his yawn. “You must have some money kicking around. Didn’t I see you up by Sally’s window tent just last week?”
“Sally who?” Bass innocently asked.
Partridge just grinned.
“I didn’t get to be sheriff by being stupid.”
“I thought it was on account of your good looks,” Bass said.
“Bring a bouquet of posies along with that compliment and I might even kiss you,” the sheriff said with a grin.
“I can’t afford any posies,” Bass replied. “Unless I steal them from the graveyard.”
“I bet you’ve got lots of money left over from all of that bounty-killing you used to do,” the sheriff said.
“Not lately,” Bass let on. “Lately I’m on a budget.”
“Come again?”
“I’m damn near broke,” Bass said. “As a matter of fact I was sitting there in that barroom just minding my own business, considering the possibility of making a change in my career. The position of town drunk just isn’t paying off the way that it used to.”
The sheriff chewed that over thoughtfully.
“Have you given any thought as to what sort of a career you might take up?” Grimes asked.
Bass shrugged.
“Right now I am thinking about running for town sheriff,” Bass said. “The way things keep going I suspect there might be an opening in that particular situation.”
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” the sheriff answered coolly. “These aren’t exactly the kind of bars that you’ve grown used to hanging around.”
“You’ve got a point there,” Bass agreed. “It’s too drafty and dry for sure.”
“And besides,” Partridge went on. “You’ve still got to pay for what you did.”
“I’m not digging or paying,” Bass argued, folding his arms across his chest.
“Would you rather I just lock you up?” Partridge asked.
Bass considered the notion.
“I’ll thank you not to be pertinent when I’m talking to you,” Bass said. “And I fully look forward to this grave new experience.”
“I figured you would,” Partridge said.
“So what happens to the pig?” Grimes asked.
“Well, Willy Jake has already said a pig-like prayer over its carcass and has begun the cremation process even as we speak.”
Grimes grinned and licked his lips.
“I thought I smelled barbecue,” he said. “Do you mind if we eat before we dig?”
“What do you mean we?” Bass asked.
“Eat later,” the sheriff said. “The barbecue is for the funeral and that body is getting riper by the minute. Do you two need directions to get to Toes-Up Rising?”
“Not hardly,” Silver Grimes said. “I’ve been living out there for the last three days.”
“In a graveyard?”
Grimes shrugged.
“Why not? I like the neighborhood,” he said. “It’s quiet and the view is breath-taking and there’s nobody shooting shotguns at you or riding in on pig-back.”
“Not so far, anyway,” Bass pointed out. “You never can tell what the day will bring a fellow.”