Shadow of the Hangman Read online

  “Travels? Where?”

  Dunkley smiled. “Not far, just out of town a ways.”

  He rose to his feet. “Mr. O’Brien, at the moment I am all that stands between your brother and the gallows. I will not fail him.” He picked up a pile of papers from his desk and riffled through them. “Now, business matters press, so if I could beg your indulgence?”

  Samuel rose to his feet. “Yes, of course.”

  “Come back and see me two days hence at this same time,” the lawyer said. “I believe I shall have news of the greatest import then.”

  “Take care of yourself, Lucas,” Samuel said.

  As he left, the office wall clock chimed noon, as solemn and foreboding as a tolling church bell.

  Samuel O’Brien rode west toward Dromore, the great plantation house his father had built at the base of Glorieta Mesa. He wanted to be there when Jacob showed up, if only to head off the usual friction between his brother and the colonel.

  Pa insisted that Jacob’s place was at Dromore, running the ranch with his brothers, not forever roaming restlessly from place to place, earning a living by the speed of his gun.

  It was a case of an irresistible force meeting an immovable object, and both parties were too hardheaded to realize there could be no compromise and no winner.

  Samuel smiled and shook his head, remembering past clashes between the colonel and Jacob. He’d no confidence that this time would be different, though the fact that Patrick’s life hung in the balance could change things.

  Samuel crossed Apache Canyon and was a mile west of the Pecos when he spotted dust on his back trail. At first he thought it a trick of the shimmering heat, but when he looked again he saw a veil of yellow lift above a ridge just a couple of hundred yards behind him.

  A man on a horse makes a fine rifle target, and Dunkley’s warning had made Samuel wary. He swung out of the saddle and led his buckskin to a stream that ran clear and cold off the mountains. He let his mount drink, his eyes on the ridge. The dust was gone.

  Samuel got down on one knee and with his left hand cupped cold water into his mouth. His eyes moved constantly in the shadow of his hat brim. The hilly, treed land around him was still, silent, waiting . . . but for what?

  The answer came when an exclamation point of water spurted from the stream, followed by the roar of a rifle. Samuel dived to his right, rolled, and fetched up against a barkless tree trunk, its white branches rising above his head like skeletal arms. He drew his Colt, wishful for the Winchester on his saddle, and raised his head above the trunk.

  Samuel saw nothing, but a second bullet chipped splinters from the dead tree. Whoever the bushwhacker was, he had him pinned.

  A drift of white gun smoke rose from a stand of juniper and piñon about fifty yards to Samuel’s right. He thumbed off a shot in that direction, a forlorn hope with a short-barreled Colt’s gun. He’d no idea where his bullet went.

  A couple of minutes ticked past. Samuel had no shade, and the relentless sun hammered him, drawing sweat from his armpits and the middle of his back. The land undulated in the heat as though hiding behind a row of transparent snakes. Nearby, insects made their small sound in the grass, and a bashful breeze stirred the pines.

  The crack of the rifle and the burn of the bullet came at the same time.

  Samuel felt a sting on the outside of his right knee. He glanced down and saw that his pants were torn and already bloodstained.

  He cussed a blue streak. The bushwhacker had moved, and the bullet had come from behind him to his right. He should be dead, but wasn’t. That could only mean the would-be killer was not a fair hand with a rifle, and Samuel wasn’t about to make it easy for him.

  He rolled on his back and pinpointed the smoke drift, a gray smear forty yards away among a stand of juniper and scrubby wild oak.

  They say that fortune favors the brave, and Samuel was about to try to prove it.

  He swallowed hard and rubbed sweat from his gun hand. Then he fisted the Colt again, jumped to his feet—and charged.

  His wounded knee felt a little gimpy as Samuel ran for the trees, but it was holding up well. A bullet kicked up dirt at his feet, and a second one split the air close to his head. He shot at the smoke, shot again—wild, inaccurate fire—hoping it might keep the gunman’s head down.

  As it turned out, he’d played hob.

  The rifleman stepped out of the trees, a Winchester to his shoulder. The man seemed unhurt, but Samuel figured his bullets must have come close enough because the bushwhacker was looking to end it.

  The distance was twenty yards, and for a moment the eyes of the two men met and held, and Samuel read the signs. He moved to his right just as the rifle roared. A clean miss. Samuel dived for the ground, rolled to the shelter of a mesquite bush, and then scrambled to his feet. He raised his Colt to eye level with both hands, sighted for an instant, and fired.

  The bushwhacker took the bullet high in his chest. Blood staining his mouth, he tossed the Winchester away, signaling that he was out of it. The man was a back-shooter who lacked sand and bottom, and now, hurt bad, he wanted no part of Samuel O’Brien.

  The would-be killer hunkered down, and when Samuel came close enough, he said, “I’m done, mister. I’m done for good. Hell, I’m leaving . . .”

  “Who paid you to dry-gulch me?” Samuel said. “Damn you, tell me.”

  But he realized he was looking into the stiff face and distant eyes of a dead man.

  Samuel studied the dry gulcher. He was small, thin, with the haggard look of someone who’d gone hungry as a child. His entire outfit, a ragged high-button suit a size too big for him, black bowler hat, and scuffed, elastic-sided boots, was worth maybe a dollar, if that. But the Winchester was almost new, a model of 1886 in .45–.70 caliber. The rifle cost around twenty-one dollars, or an ounce of gold, more than this bushwhacker could ever have afforded.

  Samuel O’Brien reloaded his revolver, but his mind was elsewhere.

  Somebody had hired this man to kill him, and that somebody had supplied the murder weapon.

  But who? And why?

  He had questions without answers.

  He didn’t know whom, but he was certain that Patrick and lawyer Dunkley were a major part of the why.

  Samuel had a choice, and he contemplated his options: ride on to Dromore or return to Georgetown and report the bushwhacking to Sheriff Moore. He settled on the latter. If someone in town had hired the man, the sight of his would-be assassin’s bloody body draped over a horse might flush him out. Then again, it might not. But until he heard from Dunkley again, all Samuel could do was roll the dice.

  Chapter Three

  “Sure I know who he is,” Sheriff John Moore said. He let go of the dead man’s hair and let the head drop. “Name’s Arch Harris, and he didn’t come to much. Did odd jobs around town for whiskey money and stole a chicken now and then. He lived with his wife and two kids in a tarpaper shack just outside of town when he was to home, which wasn’t often.” He looked at Samuel. “Arch had a real liking for whores, when he could afford them. He was involved in a cutting over a six-foot-tall whore who went by the name of High Timber, but that was a few years back.”

  “Is the mustang his?”

  “Yeah, I guess. I seen him ride it before.”

  “What about the Winchester, John?”

  “He never owned a rifle like that in his life. He either stole it or somebody gave it to him.”

  “To murder me?”

  “Seems like, Sam. Unless he had a beef with you, personal.”

  Samuel shook his head. “I never saw this man before in my life.”

  “Well, he doesn’t have any money on him, but that don’t mean nothing,” Moore said. “Probably it was to keep him sober until the job was done.”

  “Who hired him, John?”

  “Hell if I know,” the lawman said. He glanced at a washed-out blue sky streaked with purple strings of cloud, like an upturned porcelain bowl that had spent too long in the kiln.
Moore’s eyes were tired; he was a hard-nosed lawman who’d done too much thinking of late. “I’d say whoever murdered Molly Holmes hired Arch to kill you, Sam. That’s what I’d say. But the hell of it is, I’ve got no way of proving it.”

  An excited crowd had gathered around the dead man hanging belly-down over his horse, and Samuel O’Brien looked past them to Lucas Dunkley’s office across the street.

  Moore read Samuel’s eyes. “Lucas ain’t there, Sam,” he said. “He rode out of town about half an hour after you did.”

  “Say where he was going?”

  “I didn’t speak to him.”

  The meaner the town, the more prosperous the undertaker.

  Jasper Light, in broadcloth and a silk top hat, pushed through the onlookers, tiptoed to the sheriff’s side, and said, “And who is the deceased?”

  Moore looked at the undertaker with all the enthusiasm of a man regarding a fly in his soup. “I swear you can smell ’em, Jasper,” he said.

  Light wrung the undertaker’s hands, his narrow shoulders hunched like a carrion-eater. “Mine is a competitive profession, Sheriff Moore,” he said. “The early bird gets the worm, you know.”

  “He’s got no money on him, Jasper,” Moore said. “The normal burial rate set by the Vigilance Committee applies.”

  Disappointment clouded Light’s eyes. “Oh, dear, yet another pauper.”

  “I’m afraid so,” Moore said. “Plant him in a pine box, then send your bill to the committee. Three copies, mind. You didn’t do that the last time.”

  “The horse, saddle, and bridle?” Light said, hope rising in his voice.

  “Go to his widow,” Samuel said. Like Moore, he had no liking for the man. He reached into his pocket, then peeled off a ten-dollar bill. “Take this,” Samuel said, “and treat him decent.”

  Light reached out and grabbed the money like a striking rattlesnake. “He’ll go first class all the way,” he said.

  “He’d better,” Samuel said. “I’m bringing his wife and kids to the funeral, so make sure he’s boxed and ready to go in an hour.”

  Light smiled. “It will be as you say, Mr. O’Brien.” He gave a little bow. “And how is your dear father, the colonel? In good health, I trust?”

  “He’s not ready for you yet, Light, so don’t get your hopes up.”

  “Ah, a little joke,” the man said, his thin face empty. “Those in my profession do appreciate them so.”

  “Get him ready,” Samuel said. “I’ll swing by your place and pick up the horse.”

  The undertaker gave another little bow and led away the mustang with its swaying burden.

  After Light was gone, Moore said, “Sam, you really going to talk to the widder woman?”

  “Yeah, I reckon.”

  “She won’t thank you for it, you being the one who did the killing an’ all.”

  “Maybe so, but I can’t kill a man, then walk away from it like he never existed.”

  “A lot of men don’t think that way, Sam.”

  “Then their way isn’t my way.”

  The sheriff hesitated, about to say something that didn’t set easy with him. Finally he said, “I have to make a report on the death of Arch Harris, Sam. It’s a formality, you understand, but the Vigilance Committee will probably want to talk with you.”

  Samuel smiled. “They going to lock me up, John?”

  “Hell, no,” Moore said. “Two O’Brien brothers in the same jail are more than this town can handle.”

  A wind had picked up, blowing fair off the Santa Fe Mountains, and across the way the batwings of the Sideboard Saloon rattled like a snare drum. Somewhere a screen door banged open and shut, and a dog barked, then fell silent.

  Moore looked at Samuel for a long time, studying the younger man. He looked as though he wanted to say something but first had to get the words straight in his mind. Finally he said, “See this hand I’m holding up?”

  Samuel smiled. “Yeah, it’s your gun hand; looks like a bear paw.”

  “See the palm right here?” Moore scraped his fingernails back and forth across the hard skin. “It’s been itching like hell since Molly Holmes was murdered. Know what that means, Sam?”

  “You’re going to shoot somebody, maybe?”

  “No, it means hard times are comin’ down, Sam. Killin’ times.”

  “I already worked that out for my own self, John.”

  “You be careful, Sam,” Moore said. “Somebody wants you dead real bad, and next time they won’t send an amateur.”

  The Harris shack, a sagging frame-and-tarpaper structure no bigger than a hatbox, lay on the bank of a dry wash a mile to the east of Apache Canyon. A few cottonwoods and piñon grew close to the cabin, suggesting the wash had an underground stream, and stands of cholla dotted the dusty landscape. Farther east, rugged mountain peaks stood like silent sentinels against the sky.

  It was a pleasant enough spot, Samuel O’Brien decided, but the shack itself was a mean, miserable place, sadly neglected, its only sign of prosperity the few scrawny chickens that scratched in the dirt around the front door.

  As good manners dictated, Samuel sat his horse and called out, “Hello, the cabin.”

  The door opened almost immediately, and a thin, careworn woman stepped outside. Her eyes went to Samuel, then to the mustang he led. Before her visitor could speak, the woman said, “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, ma’am, he is,” Samuel said.

  The woman showed no surprise, no grief, only a numb acceptance of a day she’d known would inevitably come. “How did it happen?” she said.

  Samuel shifted his weight in the saddle, dry-mouthed and uneasy.

  The woman saw his discomfort and said, “I see.”

  Samuel finally found his tongue. “I believe someone hired your husband to kill me,” he said. “He bushwhacked me south of Georgetown and—” He stopped, hunting for the right words.

  “And you defended yourself,” the woman said.

  Samuel nodded. “That’s how it stacks up, ma’am. He left me with no choice.” He held up the mustang’s reins. “I brought back your husband’s horse.”

  “Thank you,” the woman said. “Thank you kindly.”

  Mrs. Harris was not pretty and had never been pretty. She was thin, slack-breasted, and barefoot. Dust had settled between her toes, and the bottom of her threadbare calico dress was much stained and frayed. Two silent children, a boy and a girl, joined her at the door. The girl, dark circles under her huge brown eyes, looked to be about ten, the boy a year or two younger and frail.

  “Is there anything I can do for you, ma’am?” Samuel said.

  The woman shook her head. “No, there’s nothing you can do for me.”

  “May I escort you to your husband’s funeral?”

  “No, I don’t want to see Arch go under the ground,” Mrs. Harris said. “What words could I add to the ones that have already been said between him and me and those I’ve said to our God?”

  “Did he abuse you, ma’am?” Samuel said.

  “No, he was a good enough husband when he stayed away from whiskey and fancy women.” She met Samuel’s eyes. “He brought home a whore’s disease that will kill me sooner or later. But before I die, I want to see my children settled.”

  The afternoon was hot, oppressive, and Samuel O’Brien felt penned up, as though the day was crowding him close, refusing to let him move. Sweat trickled down his back and seeped from under his hat brim and stung his eyes.

  Now he tried hard to do the right thing.

  “Mrs. Harris,” he said, “you and your children would be welcome at my ranch. There’s always plenty of work to be done around Dromore, and you’d have a steady wage and a place to live.”

  “You’re one of them O’Brien boys, aren’t you?” the woman said. She had faded gray eyes, the color of wood smoke.

  Samuel touched his hat and smiled. “Yes indeed, ma’am. My name’s Samuel, or Sam if you like.”

  The woman nodded. “That�
��s a very kind offer, Mr. O’Brien, but we can fend for ourselves.”

  “But how will you live?”

  “We’ll get by.”

  Samuel felt a twinge of desperation. “You’d be happy at Dromore, Mrs. Harris, and we can bring in a doctor to treat your”—he searched for a kinder word than disease—“misery.”

  The woman was silent for long moments, then she said, “The day is hot, Mr. O’Brien. I must get the children inside.”

  Defeat weighing on him, Samuel said, “Mrs. Harris, about your husband . . . I’m sorry.”

  “One way or another, we’re all sorry, Mr. O’Brien. Some of us are even sorry that we were ever born.” She turned and pushed the kids inside, and the door closed behind her.

  Samuel sat his horse, feeling drained and lethargic in the heat. Finally, he swung away from the shack and headed west toward Dromore. He felt he’d lost something, a part of himself that he’d never regain. But as to what it was, he had no idea.

  Chapter Four

  Samuel O’Brien rode up to the big house at Dromore under a flaming sky that roofed the timbered high country with bands of scarlet and jade. The heat of the day was over and the dust had settled, leaving clean air that smelled of pine resin and the wildflowers night-blooming among pinnacles of mountain rock.

  When Samuel swung out of the saddle, a Mexican boy ran to take his horse. “Is Señor Jacob here?” he said to the kid.

  The boy shook his head. “No, patron. He did not come, I think.”

  Disappointed, Samuel nodded and stepped inside. The butler met him in the foyer and told him that his wife and son were in the study with the colonel.

  “Jacob didn’t arrive?” Samuel said, hoping that the boy could’ve been mistaken.

  “No, sir,” the butler said. “Dromore has had no visitors today.”

  When Samuel walked into the study his wife ran to meet him. She threw her arms around his neck, kissed him, and then stepped back, studying his face. “You look tired, Samuel,” she said.

  Samuel gave her a weak smile. “It’s been a long day, Lorena.” He looked over her shoulder. “Pa, are you spoiling my son again?”