A Shiny Tin Star by Jon Wilson

Author:Jon Wilson [Wilson, Jon]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: colorado, gay fiction, Western, Cowboys, old west, gay historical romance
Publisher: Lethe Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Nine

I got Melville from the livery and rode back up to my house to check on Forest. I found Etta there, and was informed that the marshal had gone out about an hour before. I wondered where to, but didn’t pursue the subject with her and set off toward Clearview.

That ugly little burg was not quite seven miles from Canyon Creek—and made the latter look like a metropolis. There was only one real street, with a few alleyways branching off of that. There was a saloon, a bank, a post office, a livery and a general store that supplied practically nothing, but everything available in Clearview. It was a roughneck place, filled with folks who wanted to get rich without any viable skills. Mostly, though, it was dirty, and always seemed caught in a perpetual cloud of dust. I reckon that suited the miners, though, as it diffused the sunlight and kept them from getting a good look at their predicament.

At the sheriff’s office I found Mack Thomas (whose real name, I believe, was Jeremiah) sitting inside reading a book. He was a big, strapping boy with just enough sense to realize he was stupid, and I had him pretty much running things over there. He was always trying to improve himself, reading books and such, which I thought was a ludicrous waste of time but otherwise admirable. He liked me, too, I think.

“Hey, Mack,” I said.

He looked up, confused. “Sheriff?”

“In the flesh. How’re things going?”

Mack laid his book facedown, opened to the page he was reading. “What’re you doing here?”

“Well, checking up on you, of course. I ain’t heard nothing but complaints ’bout the way things have been run over here since I got back from my trip.” I ought not to have teased him like that since he took me so seriously all the time, but I always figured that, working where he did, he needed to learn to lighten up.

“We had us a murder.” He made it a somber admission.

I nodded, adopting a mock-serious grimace of my own. “So I heard. Now, that’s just the sort of thing folks are apt to frown on. How’d you let that happen?”

“Higgeson just up and shot him.”

I shrugged. “That’s fine to say, Mack, but as lawmen it’s our duty to discourage that sort of behavior.” He nodded as if to say in the future he would endeavor to do better. I took a seat and smiled at him. “Maybe you’d better tell me everything that happened.”

I can’t say for certain he realized at that point I had been pulling his leg, but he did relate the events of Clive Goodall’s murder to me. He was good at relaying facts, and he kept notes which he referred to when he wasn’t certain of something.

There didn’t seem to be much mystery surrounding the killing. Goodall held the deeds to two mines in the foothills west of town. He’d been shot in the act of firing one of his hired men, Thaddeus Higgeson.

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