Mr. Monk in Trouble (8 page)

He took another step and pointed to another plank. This one was cracked.

“I thought you were in a hurry,” I said.

“I am,” Monk said. “But I’m not going to kill myself getting there.”

“You can’t die from stepping on a warped board,” I said.

“You can trip and break your neck. Or you could get a splinter in your toe that becomes infected. Next thing you know, Dr. Sloan is chopping off your leg to prevent gangrene, but he’s too late. You’re already dead.”

I marked the plank and we were hurrying along again when a man rode in, dismounted, and hitched his horse to the post a few yards ahead of us.

He was a cowhand, not a prospector. He wore a wide-brimmed hat, a calico shirt, a beaten-down charro jacket adorned with silver-threaded brocade, and a pair of chaps. His boots were muddy and his clothes were dusty and stained with splotches of tar.

The cowboy spit some tobacco into the street and stepped up to the sidewalk in front of the saloon, slapping dust off of himself with his hat.

“You can sweep that right up again with that hat of yours,” Monk said. “We like to keep our town clean.”

The cowboy turned to look at Monk. “What did you say to me?”

“And when you’re done sweeping up your dust, you can pick up that disgusting gob of tobacco you left in our street.”

The cowboy smiled, flashing his yellow teeth, and scratched at some welts on his chest. There was a murderous glint in his eyes. But he was wearing a gun belt and Monk was not, which may have been the only thing that saved Monk from getting gunned down.

“I’m walking into that saloon and having myself a drink, mister. Maybe you and the pretty lady would like to join me.”

“Not with those muddy boots on, you’re not,” Monk said. “People eat and drink in there. Why don’t you take them off and leave them by the door?”

“I got to get me some of whatever you’ve been drinking.” The cowboy laughed and went inside.

Monk was about to go in after him when the horse passed gas and let loose some droppings. He screamed and ran back the way we came, careful to step on the same boards that he had before.

I caught up with Monk around the corner on Second Street, out of sight of the horse and the droppings. He was breathing with a handkerchief over his nose and mouth.

“How are we going to get to the sheriff now?” he said.

“Easy,” I said. “We walk down the sidewalk to his office.”

“We can’t with
that
in the street.”

“Unless you walk right behind that horse, there’s no danger of stepping in the droppings.”

“It’s still there,” Monk said. “You can see it and you can smell it.”

“So close your eyes and plug your nose.”

“I’ll die of asphyxiation,” Monk said. “If my skin doesn’t rot off first.”

“Why would your skin rot off?”

“Did you see what’s in the street?” Monk said. “What I need is my own telegraph in my cabin that’s connected directly to the sheriff’s office.”

“I’m sure he’d love that,” I said. “But since it may take some time to build a telegraph line, I’d better go fetch Sheriff Wheeler myself.”

I started back towards Main Street but, as it turned out, I didn’t have to go far. The sheriff was riding by on horse-back with his deputy, Parley Weaver. I ran into the street and flagged him down.

The sheriff drew up beside me. He had a bountiful mustache that looked like he’d skinned a raccoon and hung the pelt from his nose. I’d heard he’d been a gunfighter before he settled in Trouble in search of a peaceable life. Most sheriffs had the same story.

Deputy Weaver was reed-thin and lazy, but moved as fast as a jackrabbit when food, drink, or the attentions of a sporting woman were involved.

“What’s the problem, Mrs. Guthrie?” Wheeler asked me.

“It’s Mr. Monk, Sheriff,” I said.

“You need to arrest Clem Janklow,” Monk yelled from where he stood, a safe distance away from the sheriff, Deputy Weaver, and their horses.

Wheeler groaned. “I got bigger problems than Clem’s pissing, Monk. There’s been a murder. Somebody killed Bart Spicer and stole his poke.”

“Did it happen at his mine?” Monk asked.

“As a matter of fact, it did,” the sheriff said. “I’m on my way out there now.”

“Why are you going there when the murderer is right here in town?”

The sheriff raised his eyebrows. “He is?”

“He’s having a drink in Bogg’s Saloon,” Monk said. “Now can we please go find Clem Janklow?”

The sheriff and his deputy looked perplexed and I suppose that I did, too. Wheeler asked the question that the three of us were thinking.

“How can you be sure that Spicer’s killer is sitting in Bogg’s Saloon when you didn’t even know that Spicer was dead until I told you?”

“Was Spicer killed with a mine timber?” Monk asked impatiently.

“Someone dropped a timber on his head while he was sleeping,” Deputy Weaver said. “How’d you know that? Did somebody tell you?”

“The murderer did,” Monk said.

“He was bragging about what he done?” Weaver asked.

“He didn’t say a word about it,” Monk said. “He didn’t have to. He was wearing his confession.”

“What’s this feller’s name?” Wheeler asked.

“I don’t know,” Monk said. “He just rode into town and messed the whole place up.”

Wheeler groaned. “How did he do that?”

“He spit tobacco in the street, brushed dirt on the sidewalk, walked into the saloon with muddy boots, and his horse did the rest.”

“Because of that, you think he’s also got to be a murderer,” Wheeler said.

“I can prove it,” Monk said.

If it was anybody else but Artemis Monk who’d said that, the sheriff would have ignored him and rode on to Spicer’s mine. But Monk wasn’t anybody else.

The sheriff turned to his deputy. “Go over to Bogg’s and invite the cowboy to join us.”

Weaver rode away. Sheriff Wheeler got off his horse and tied him to a hitching post.

“We’re wasting time, Sheriff,” Monk said. “Clem might be getting away.”

“He’s not going anywhere, Monk. And even if he was, he wouldn’t be hard to track,” Wheeler said, then turned to me. “How are you, Mrs. Guthrie?”

“I’m getting along fine, Sheriff.”

“Monk hasn’t driven you crazy yet?”

“No, sir,” I said, mindful of who paid my wages and gave me room and board.

“It’s early yet,” the sheriff said just as Weaver approached with the cowpoke at his side.

“This here’s Bud Lolly,” Weaver said.

Lolly smiled when he saw Monk and me. “You again? Is there a law in this town against spitting?”

“Not yet, but I’m working on it,” Monk said.

“Believe me, he is,” the sheriff said. “But we do have a law here against murder.”

“I ain’t killed nobody,” Lolly said.

Monk took a handkerchief from his pocket, squatted down, and removed some mud from Lolly’s boot. We all stared at him as he did it.

“You want to shine my boots, mister, I’ll be glad to take ’em off for you,” Lolly said.

“This dirt is from Bart Spicer’s property,” Monk said. “I recognize the hue, which is indicative of the unusually high silica content.”

“I ain’t never heard of no Bart Spicer,” Lolly said. “And even if I did, you can’t know where I’ve been from the mud on my boot.”

“Actually, he can,” I said. “Mr. Monk is the town assayer. He knows his dirt.”

“The geology and metallurgical content of every piece of property is unique and so is the gold that comes out of it,” Monk said. “This mud definitely came from Bart’s claim. I can match it to the sample I kept of Bart’s rocks. I’m sure if I saw the gold dust in your poke, I’d recognize the color of that, too.”

“That don’t prove nothing,” Lolly said. “I might have walked across his land without even knowing it. And there’s lots of gold dust being passed around in these parts. I got no idea where my gold was before it ended up in my pouch.”

“He’s got a point,” Wheeler said. “I can’t hang a man because he’s got mud on his boots and gold in his poke.”

Monk looked Lolly in the eye. “Do you swear that you’ve never been in Bart Spicer’s mine?”

“I’ve never been in nobody’s mine,” Lolly said. “I’m a cowhand, not a gold digger. I earn an honest wage.”

“That’s not what your clothes say.”

“What are you talking about?” Lolly said.

“Mines are held up with bracing timbers that are covered in bark and splinters. They’re prickly as a cactus and coated with coal tar,” Monk said. “So if you’ve never been in a mine, or picked up a bracing timber, maybe you could tell us how you got those splinters in your chest and that tar on your shirt?”

He couldn’t. Lolly hesitated for a moment, then went for his gun. But he wasn’t as fast as Wheeler, who had his gun out and aimed before Lolly’s hand even reached his holster.

“Go ahead, Lolly, it’ll save the town the trouble of hanging you,” Wheeler said.

Lolly raised his hands and glared hatefully at Monk. “I should’ve followed my gut and killed you when we met. But I don’t shoot unarmed men.”

“You just smash in their skulls while they’re sleeping and steal their gold,” I said. “That’s much more noble.”

“Parley, take Lolly back to the office and lock him up,” the sheriff said.

Deputy Weaver took Lolly’s gun and aimed it at him. “Let’s go. You walk in front of me. No funny stuff or I’ll shoot you full of holes.”

“What about the mess his horse made in the street?” Monk asked the sheriff.

“Parley,” Wheeler said, getting his deputy’s attention. “Have Lolly pick up his horse’s droppings on the way.”

“Yes, sir,” Weaver said. “Where are you gonna be, Sheriff?”

Wheeler glanced at Monk. “Hot on the trail of that rascal Clem Janklow.”

We found Clem Janklow a few minutes later sitting on a bench outside of the general store, surrounded by bags of supplies. His bloodshot eyes peeked out from a face full of mangy whiskers and wild hair and he reeked from days of sweating in the hot sun in clothes that hadn’t been washed in weeks, if not months. The once-red wool shirt had faded to a ghastly purple and was caked in a fine layer of dirt. His ragged pants hung from his shoulders from frayed suspenders, the leggings tucked into his mud-caked boots.

He was slurping up sardines from a tin with his fingers, bits of fish sticking to his prickly beard. When miners struck it rich, they were quick to spend the gold on canned oysters, olives, turtle soup, and other delicacies and, thus fortified, moved on to champagne, whiskey, and sporting girls.

“You’re under arrest, Clem,” Monk said.

“You can’t arrest anybody, Monk,” the sheriff said. “That’s my job.”

“I haven’t done anything wrong,” Clem said. “I’m a law-abiding citizen.”

“You swindled me out of a hundred dollars and I don’t know how much you took from Nate Klebbin.”

“I’ve never taken a plug nickel from you, Mr. Monk, and I sold my claim to Klebbin fair and square.”

“Did you see Dr. Sloan for another dose of Greeley’s Bichloride Tonic Cure while you were in town today?” Monk asked.

“I don’t need it no more,” Clem said. “I’m feeling much better and I thank you dearly for it, Mr. Monk.”

“Because without me you couldn’t have pulled off your fraud,” Monk said. “You relieved yourself all over town, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to stand it and that Dr. Sloan would prescribe Greeley’s Cure for you.”

“It cures your taste for whiskey and calms your kidneys; that’s why the doc said I had to have it,” Clem said. “But I couldn’t afford my own salvation, which is why I’m indebted to you for your kindness.”

The sheriff sighed. “If there’s a crime here, Monk, I don’t see it.”

“Do you know what Greeley’s Bichloride Tonic Cure is made of, Sheriff?” Monk asked.

“Nope,” Wheeler said.

I didn’t, either.

“It’s a mix of sodium chloride, glycerin, strychnine, cinchona, and gold chloride, among other things,” Monk said. “The tonic, paired with injections, is commonly used in the treatment of various addictions. You have to drink a dram of it every two hours for a month.”

“I don’t see your point,” Wheeler said.

I didn’t, either.

“The gold in the tonic and the injections passes right through your body,” Monk said. “Clem’s been out there relieving himself all over his property for weeks, infusing it with gold, so he could sell it to the first greenhorn who came along. And he forced me into bankrolling his crime.”

“How did he force you into it?” Wheeler asked.

“If I didn’t pay for his medicine, he’d continue his drinking and indiscriminate urinating,” Monk said. “He knew I couldn’t take that. But it was all a clever scheme to sell his nearly worthless claim.”

Now that Monk had explained it, I saw the past events in an entirely different light and knew that he was absolutely right.

Clem licked his oily fingers. “I had no idea my pissing was salting my claim and you can’t prove that isn’t so.”

“He’s convinced me,” Wheeler said. “You’re going to return the supplies you haven’t already consumed and give Mr. Klebbin all of his money back and let him keep your claim for nothing if he wants it. And then you’re going to repay Monk by getting the hell out of town and never coming back. Because if I see your face in Trouble again, I’ll put a bullet in it.”

“You can’t do that,” Clem said.

“I’m the law,” Wheeler said. “Maybe you’ve been too drunk to notice, but we don’t have any judges or courts here. So if I was you, Clem, I’d skedaddle before I change my mind and decide to shoot you right now.”

Clem gathered up his bags and shuffled back into the general store without another word.

Wheeler turned to Monk. “Satisfied?”

“This all could have been avoided if we had a law against relieving yourself in public,” Monk said. “And spitting.”

“What does spitting have to do with it?”

“That’s how it all starts,” Monk said. “You get away with that and, before you know it, you’re letting go of your sphincters willy-nilly, robbing trains and killing old ladies.”

“I see,” Wheeler said. “So if we outlawed spitting, we could eventually put an end to all the indecent and criminal behavior in the West.”

“It couldn’t hurt,” Monk said. “What have we got to lose by trying?”