“Wade, I wasn’t the man to witness marriage. But he wanted it. We stood together, we pushed through all them women. And if I wanted I could have broke it up, I could have run the lot of them out of town. This cell here hasn’t changed, it’s just kept some of that celebration ever since the time I met him.”
“ Sheriff,” Wade peered at the sleepers — one lay almost near enough to touch by stretching a restless foot — and his body slackened, fists settled heavily, arms rested high, “have they been fed?”
“Watered,” continued the Sheriff in a voice low and wandering from the heat, “I watered them.” The other nodded. “You know, Wade, I didn’t even see his brother that night. Two years before I saw him though. I knew that he was marrying, but for all I care he didn’t speak that night.
“But Luke spoke. By the time they had been married half an hour, with all those women trailing after them, and set maybe in some dark room with a latch on the door — I never cared to know where they spent that night — we were in the office, tipping easy together in our chairs. He could have been one of my boys right then, Wade. He was young enough. I could tell he liked it. But I sent him back and waited for morning by myself.”
“You’re not alone tonight, Sheriff. But, you sure these men ain’t sick?”
“Wade, stop putting me off my thought. They’re just locked up for the night is all.” The Sheriff turned, placed his wide face between the bars so that they pressed on his temples and stared into the cell.
The prisoners did not rise. Occasional words, lights burning past the hour, caused no awakening fumble or sudden oath. A few Red Devils lay awkwardly spread eagle in the cell, the black driving mitten of one flung upon the seamless snout of another, tangled, sleeping, perhaps ready to spring with wild rubber limbs high and low against the bars. In captivity, sometime during the night, they had heaped themselves in the middle of the painted floor like a stack of slashed and darkened tires. The Sheriff and Wade slumped, grinned.
“Sheriff, watch this.” Wade, beginning silently to shake, stooped and squeezed, pushed his leg recklessly through the bars. He puffed and it thrust forward, trousers sticking and riding up the bulky calf.
“Wade,” the Sheriff chuckled and whispered, “you’ll get it bit off.”
The dusty shoe of a full sized man probed toward the small formless foot of the nearest sprawled prisoner. Wade hung low and twisted, stopped breathing and bent his head to aim. The Sheriff waited.