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    â€œLooks like he’s doing it, Junior!” that woman who’d mentioned something about a double eagle laughed. I guessed it was her.
    I locked up Junior and went back outside. A.J. was out of his buggy—Joy hadn’t fainted as yet—and was standin’ on the boardwalk talkin’ with the gent who’d been earlier pointed out to me as Lawyer Stokes. A.J. was flapping his arms and hollerin’.
    â€œYou there, Sheriff!” Stokes hollered.
    I pushed through the knot of horses. “Get these horses off the street and stabled or reined down! Or I’ll stick the whole bunch of you in jail for blockin’ a public road.”
    Now I didn’t have no idea if that law—or any other law, for that matter—was on the town’s books. But it sounded good, and it got results.
    I met Johnny Bull’s eyes. He nodded at me and said to a rider, “He means it. We could take him, but he’d kill half a dozen of us before we did.” To me, “Some other time, Cotton.”
    â€œI’ll be around, Johnny.”
    The street cleared, the riders breaking up and moving out.
    â€œSheriff!” Lawyer Stokes shouted. “I demand you release young Lawrence and that you do so immediately.”
    â€œAnd I demand that you git your face outta mine ’fore I put you in jail for interferin’ with a peace officer.” Good thing I’d read that book on law that time, one writ by some Englishman named Blackstone, I think he was. Cowboys that can read will read anything; bean-can labels, five-year-old newspapers, mail-order catalogs . . . even the Bible when times get desperate.
    I told Rusty, “You get over to the office and find that bond sheet, get the dollar amount for Junior’s charge. Write it up and then daddy can come up with money and get his big-mouthed kid out of the calaboose.” I looked around, “OK, folks, show’s over. See you all tonight at the social.”
    The townspeople, all of them grinnin’, began movin’ out.
    A man held up a heavy-lookin’ hat. “I’ll bring this by your office, Sheriff. And it was worth every penny, believe me.”
    â€œWill you listen to me, Sheriff?” Lawyer Stokes hollered. I looked at him. He was so mad he was shakin’.
    Then he made the mistake of grabbin’ my arm and jerkin’ me back, spinnin’ me around.
    I poleaxed the lawyer and dropped him to his butt in the horse-droppin’s.
    â€œYuk!” Stokes said, then put down his hands and stuck both of them in piles of manure.
    â€œIf your nose gets to itchin’,” I told him. “I’d suggest you scratch it with your knee.”
    That young woman was laughin’ so hard she was leanin’ up agin’ a buildin’ for support. And from what I could see, she was sure some fine-lookin’ filly.
    â€œRusty! Come put Stokes in the bucket and charge him with battery on a peace officer. Set his bond, too.”
    â€œOutrageous!” A.J. yelled.
    â€œYou want to go to jail, too?” I asked him.
    He closed his mouth.
    â€œYou get five dollars for every arrest you make, Sheriff,” George Waller said.
    That got my attention, ’Way things was goin’, I’d have that spread and all stocked, too, ’fore summer was out.
    Howsomever, ’way I was fast makin’ enemies, I just might not live to the end of summer.
    Stokes was sittin’ in the dirt, in the horse shit, on his butt, his mouth all swole up. Rusty helped him up, just a tad rough, and marched the lawyer off to the jailhouse.
    A few punchers had returned to the street.
    â€œClear the street!” I hollered. “And do it right now.”
    Man, that street cleared so fast you could fire a cannonball up it and not hit nothin’ .
    Turning, I looked at the woman who’d thought it all hysterically funny. She met my eyes, and like them writers say