Chapter 10 - Time to Say Good-Bye
I spent another three years learning the ropes with Sheriff Abraham. He had been a very patient teacher and I would miss him but the urge to move on had come. The Civil War had ended a year earlier. The North had prevailed but President Lincoln had been assassinated. I expected there would be a lot of changes down south. I was a bit curious to see what was going to take place.
In those three years I had run some thirty-or-so travelling salesmen out of town, arrested ten others for seven days free lodging in what Abe and I referred to as The Heartbreak Hotel. There was never a robbery when I was Deputy there. There was an arsonist we arrested after tracking him down for five days. He was found guilty of burning down the hardware store and was sentenced by Judge Harris to two years in jail. I was the one who escorted him to Cougar Gulch, Montana, where he served his full twenty-four month term.
On Jeremiah’s final day in jail, I did have Amos serve him his last supper. He refused to eat it and left the jail hungry. Amos, Abe and I all had a hearty laugh over that.
As for the Gatlin Brothers, they were never seen in town again. There was a rumour that went about town that they had tried to rob a bank in San Francisco but were caught in the act. One of them was gunned down in the shoot-out in front of the bank and the other was captured and was serving time in a prison somewhere in California. I figured it was probably true. I suspected that they had changed their names after they had left our town and that was what accounted for me never being able to confirm the rumour.
There is one thing I’ll never forget and it happened a week before Christmas when Santa Claus came into town with a sack over his shoulder. Absolutely drunk he was, and the bag kept moving back and forth as though there was something inside it. Abe stopped him just before he went into the Twisted Tree. Santa had six live chickens in the sack and he was intending to sell them to the owner of the Twisted Tree. I guess he figured it was time for the locals to have some barbecued chicken for supper. Luckily Santa told us who he stole the chickens from and we took them back home to their owner. We put him in jail overnight and in the morning, after giving him a stiff warning, let him go on his way. After all, it was Christmas. We never did know his name, what he really looked like, and we never saw that particular Santa ever again.
I had kept in touch with everyone I had written to by exchanging letters back and forth every few months or so. My family was fine, So were Sam and Mary. I was saddened to hear though that Mary was married and had started a family. I was happy for her but it reminded me that I was still single and might always be so. I hoped not.
Thankfully in those years I never got hurt except during one fight which I was trying to break up, I did suffer a broken finger on my left hand. Thankfully, I am right handed. There was also a black eye or two but I really don’t count those.