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In the last episode, Buck Turner tries to convince us that with the brrkup, the brain-control device from the crash-landed alien spaceship, that he’d be the best man for the sheriff job in Contention City. After all, look at all of the changes it brought forth in the previously shiftless Renner. He’s never seen anything more amazing than the changes it brought forth in him.
Episode 19
Like Brucker, I dreamed of becoming a sheriff when I was a boy, ever since I found out there was such a man. I remember the first one I met when I was a boy in Texas—he stood so proud, so tough. Everybody treated him with a great deal of respect. We'd been playing a noisy game of horseshoes, and he told us to move on.
My dad would hear none of my talk. "It's dangerous! The bad men you'll come into contact with won't think twice of killing you," he said, presaging men like the Thomas brothers. "You won't see anything for it."
My mother, too, chimed in with a caveat against police work.
All the money to be had can be made running your own business, my dad said, whatever it is. "You can't be both rich and honest working the law. If you're in business for yourself, you can be as rich as your smarts and hard work can make you."
Allan Pinkerton later proved my dad wrong. He made himself a fortune in the law-enforcement business.
To get away from my parents, I joined the Army and headed west. When my enlistment was up, I found myself doing everything they wanted me to do.
As new property owners were gradually fencing off the open range, I hired onto the JA Ranch in Texas, Charles Goodnight's operation.
A few years later, hearing the government was giving away land in Arizona, I struck out on my own to start my own operation.
Before I left Texas, I proposed to Edith, Charles Goodnight's niece. I was the happiest man in the world when she accepted. We moved to southeastern
Arizona and started the K-10 on a shoestring, raising the herd up from a few cattle, eking out a living by raising our own food. I named it the K-10 because it was a hand I'd won with in blackjack when I had to gamble once for extra money at a saloon in Tucson. I took my winnings, left and didn't look back at the table ever again. I looked upon that fifty dollars as a gift from heaven. Greediness is what gets every gambler sooner or later. Eventually, we started making it. When we could afford it, we ordered the medical books Edith wanted from a company in Boston, Massachusetts.
I didn't believe in gouging any customers on price when beef became scarce. Because of this, our customers regarded the K-10 brand with goodwill. They came to me first when there were gluts.
I wasn't entirely happy in the cattle business. One day blended into the next. I wanted to have more to look back on in my life than stories of raising cattle and driving them to market. I had more of those stories than anyone ever wanted to hear, and more than I cared to think about.
"If you think we can do good for your world with the brrkup, I want to help you in whatever way I can, Buck," Graax said when I asked him if he'd move to Contention City with me.
"We can make only six brrkups per day, though. There are limits to the equipment."
"That'll be fine," I said. Maybe make the world better six people at a time. "And we can make them ahead of time, right?"
"Yes, although they won't work after a week or two," Graax said.
I needed him. There was a lot I didn't know about the brrkup that I had to if I was going to use it when I became sheriff. I only knew enough to put them in and make more.
"Then I'm going to go do it if they'll have me," I said. "It'll be good for us. I need to get out of ranching, and you need to make a report to your bosses on Squaattoos. This job will be good for that. You're going to meet the good people and the bad and every shade of people in between!"
"That's good Buck!" Graax said. "I'm glad to be of help."
I suggested he go to Tucson to see the University of
Arizona. It was the best we had out here. "With the rate you learn, you'll likely learn every fact in the place in a month, if not sooner. Then you can come back and see if we're going to be the sheriffs of Contention City."
I got together everything I needed for a week in Contention. Edith packed up two bundles of hardtack for Graax and me for when our money ran out, and eating in the restaurant got too expensive.
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