Inside the driver’s box of a six-horse stagecoach, John Coffee held the reigns, donning a red cotton vest and the iciest scowl seen in the blistering West. On the stagecoach’s roof, Chip Blaze, known as the “grappling sheriff,” squatted in a stance as if he would spring up to tussle right then and there.

  One thing about Chip’s sheriff run in 1860, everybody knew he’d rather wrassle than shoot, and I recoiled at the prospect of standing across from him. After all, I didn’t graduate school to roll around in no dead leaves, and if I did, I’d pick a less formidable opponent to do it with. He may have been a short man in tall boots, but he had the stocky frame and big hands of a lowland gorilla. Grinned like one too at the chance of getting a hold on anyone.

  As John stayed put, the sheriff climbed down to the sandy driveway and placed his hands on his gun belt. He wore a wild rag that he somehow got around the width of his neck, a pin striped shirt, and a badge, but never a cowboy hat. For some odd reason, I respected his unique choice to forgo it. But respect ended there— the way he gawked at me like I was some kind of goddamn appetizer.

  “Good day, Sheriff, how can I help?”

  Before I could finish, he dove for me. He’d been the Virginia City Collar and Elbow Champion a few years prior to moving here and had me tied up faster than I could react. He got my head tucked under his torso and restricted me from breathing. Was I going to jail?

  As he walked me to the top of the coach, he applied pressure onto my neck. What’s more, during the ride, he suffocated me with his perspiration odor for two hours.

  When we reached the town, the humiliation became unbearable as I heard the laughing, a-whistling, hooting, and hollering from people on either side of the road. He still had me hooked atop the stagecoach.

  It seemed as though this ape man’s primitive instincts spread to me like smallpox. I started to fight back—forced myself to my feet and squirmed.

  As he bore down on me, bending me over, he said, “Barking at a knot, aren’t ya?” With any effort to escape, I was only wiggling my skinny hide at all those I had hoped to impress.

  “Nice caboose,” I heard a woman shout.

  “Sheriff got a negro; Sheriff got a negro,” another onlooker said.

  Chicanery only mounted as we passed the Saloon. Someone tossed a bottle that broke against my calf, took me down to a knee.

  I grabbed at the sheriff’s leg, but he easily broke up my attack by lifting me then skinning my arms and knees on the wooden base beneath us. Somehow, he maintained his grasp as we slowed down. Scads of townspeople celebrated his strength with cheers. Some hopped up and took turns giving me spankings.

  “Make way for the sheriff,” John Coffee said, firing a gunshot into the air that scattered the crowd.

  Sheriff Chip walked me down the coach and through an entrance. After a door slammed behind us, he slung me three feet, finally breaking his hold.

  When I lifted my gaze, we were in his office; in my backdrop, a jail, in his, a wooden desk, John Coffee, and a staircase winding up to a bedroom, in front of us, big windows with an audience screaming for more.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  I pointed at him and yelled, “I’m law abiding, essential even. What in tarnation is the meaning of this?”

  “Why don’t you tell me, Doc,” the sheriff said, retrieving from his desk a wanted poster of a lady with a beret, silver hair, and a distinct pointy nose. “I picked this up in El Paso.”

  “Georgine Myrtle. I ran her out of town.”

  “But you didn’t report her.”

  “All I know is she seems to have a fascination with the dark entity, Sam Hill. Didn’t know it when I used her as a midwife. Would never have selected her.”

  “I’ll say it again. You didn’t report her.”

  At his insistence that I was somehow obligated to report this to lawmen, my indignation made me fling my finger in the air and sound like some attorney. “Last I checked we have the freedom of religion in this country. Whatever she’s into—as far as I know—it’s no matter for the authorities. This is not Salem.”

  John Coffee advanced toward me with a knife in his shaky hand. “My would-be son is up the spout because of her, and you want to talk about her constitutional rights, you son of a bitch.”

  Chip restrained him and wrassled the knife away.

  I replied, “The Bowie Knife. I—I’m sorry, John. She told me she put it under your bed. That’s why I banned her. I don’t know what else to say.”

  “Don’t say you have great judgement, Doc,” Chip interjected. “Her name isn’t Georgine Myrtle. Turns out its Calamity Dyer. Turns out she used a Bowie Knife to inscribe the words “Bugger Bill” in blood under the Coffees’ bed.”

  I gaped at Chip. No words came out.

  “I’m not finished,” Chip declared. “Turns out she sold her soul to the dark entity, Sam Hill, and has dedicated babies’ shadows to the purpose of destroying everything we’ve manifested here in the West. She fraternizes with some kind of savages, and sees us, Mexicans, and Spaniards as privileged oppressors. She raised her son to be an assassin and curses our babies with Bowie Knives that are marked with the blood of Mexicans whom he killed.”

  By-fucking-Jiminy. I’d placed a wanted woman into the homes of those in my community and put the most vulnerable into her hands. Years of drinking and bad decisions led to this. Yet, this still sounded like nothing more than a bunch of mumbo jumbo. Where was the real threat?

  Chip went on, “Believe it or not, I’m not just a nincompoop, curly woof. I’ve developed pretty good investigational skills and have been busy across city lines in El Paso, doing some digging.”

  The beam on this braggart’s mug astounded me. Stopping for applause at a time like this? One thing I knew for sure, the way he whupped my ass, he wasn’t getting any from me. “Get on with it. What are we worried about, Sheriff?”

  “This bad egg you hired, Doc—she’s seeking to summon Sam Hill’s outlaw, Bugger Bill.” Chip paused one last time to afford John the opportunity to air his lungs at me with more profanity than I’m comfortable writing.

  Then, the sheriff outstretched his arms and said, “You brought her to us, and her sacraments to Sam Hill are the shadows of our children, whom she’s cursed. No telling how many victims we have in Grand Jose. ‘Take pride in your work’ is part of the code of the West. Nicely done, Doc. Hope you’re proud.”

  Still feeling the pain in my neck, I fired back. “That code also says never hit a smaller man. Sheriff, with all due respect, this is the most legendary wobblin’ jawing I’ve ever listened to. Why are you given credence to that woman’s horrific fantasies?”

  A baby’s cry came through from the top of the staircase. In a purple dress and with a sheepish, pallid countenance, LeeAnn appeared, coddling the screaming, thin Martin.

  “Shut up, freak,” John yelled, pointing up at his own son.

  Pity tugged at my heartstrings for the unwanted child.

  “He hasn’t stopped crying since he was born,” LeeAnn said.

  I raised my palms upward in a surrendering posture, while slowly climbing the stairs to approach baby Martin. “Shh,” I said, acquiring all six pounds of him from LeeAnn and cradling him. “You’re alright, son. A lot of babies cry nonstop.” I looked up at LeeAnn. “Maybe, we can find something with some opium at the pharmacy. This boy is going to be alright.”

  “How many shadows do you see on the wall?” John said.

  LeeAnn’s hung some steps above mine. Supporting Martin’s head, I lifted him high and— I saw nothing.

  “That son of Sam Hill aint got one,” John grumbled. “I’m getting this critter out of Texas. Won’t let him be the reason we lose the destiny we’ve manifested in Grand Jose. Sheriff, I beg you, arrest this quack doctor. Hang him like the heretic he is.”

  Against my kicking and protesting, they threw me in jail, shut the door, and locked it.