Dead Man's Return

by Derek Rutherford

  ‘You tell us.’

  Allan tried his big arms against the knots again. He sighed. ‘Damn head hurts now. Why d’you do that? All we boys went through together. You could have just ridden in and said hello. I’d have even bought you a drink for old time’s sake.’

  ‘Really.’

  Jim Jackson pressed the gun against Allan’s neck. Allan stopped moving.

  ‘You want to take that gun away from my neck?’

  ‘You want to tell me why you did it?’

  ‘Why I did what?’

  ‘You’ve been talking it up,’ Jim Jackson said. ‘Reliable sources – the most reliable – informed me you’d been telling folks how you killed a Texas Ranger during a train robbery some twelve years ago. It’s helped you build your reputation, that killing. Helped you build an empire run by fear.’

  John Allan laughed beneath the hood.

  ‘It’s a story, my friend. A story. You know as well as I do that I never killed anyone. I don’t know who did it, but it wasn’t me. It was a good story though, and sure, I appropriated it. Hasn’t done me any harm.’

  ‘Until now,’ Jim said.

  ‘You gave us up for your own skin,’ Leon said.

  Allan turned his head to face the new voice.

  ‘No. You got it all wrong, fellers. Now you want to take this hood off? Move that gun, too. Let’s talk it through like the old friends we are.’

  Jim Jackson looked across at Leon Winters.

  ‘Shoot him,’ Leon said.

  Jim was trying again to find and hold onto the fire within that had driven him for so long. But it was hard. It was too hard.

  ‘Please!’ Howard said.

  Leon must have seen something in Jim’s body language for he said, ‘If you won’t shoot him, I will.’

  In the main room back in the sheriff’s office Emmett Maine said, ‘Where in the hell is he? Townsfolk are getting restless.’ The door to the lock-ups was open and they could hear the boy sobbing. Toby Moon was back there cradling a shotgun and watching the boy cry his last few earthly minutes away. They should all have been halfway to the scaffold now, dragging – maybe carrying – the boy. Instead there’d been this delay caused by a damn telegram.

  Outside the crowd was getting edgy and vocal. Every once in a while, someone shouted that they were evil, that if they believed in God and justice they would let the boy go.

  ‘Don’t fret none,’ Harry Dillon said. ‘They ain’t got an ounce of courage between them. They’ll wait here until it’s done. They’ll cry and they’ll shout and they’ll spit on the ground in disgust. But secretly they’re happy it ain’t them. Secretly they’re happy they get to sleep safely at night.’

  ‘I’m not worried ’bout the crowd,’ Maine said, looking out of the dirty window at the people outside. ‘I’m wondering what’s keeping Jack. He didn’t look happy.’

  ‘You want me to go and check?’

  ‘Yeah. Can’t hurt. Me and Toby have got the boy covered. Like you said, ain’t no one brave enough to try anything.’

  Dillon grabbed a double-barrelled Ithaca shotgun from the rack behind the sheriff’s desk. Jack Anderson always recommended shotguns around town. Folks generally weren’t as scared of a revolver as they ought to be, Anderson told them. But a shotgun. . . Once they’ve seen how much mess a shotgun can make of their faces then they get in line a whole lot quicker.

  ‘I’ll be right back,’ Dillon said.

  Rosalie knew she shouldn’t have insisted on them rushing into something. They should have taken their time. It was just. . . . How could you stand by and let them hang a young boy like that Martin? No, it had been the right thing to do to try and stop the hanging, although now, even to her, the plan felt too vague, not thought through.

  She was with the horses, standing at the back of the telegraph office. The town in front of her, behind her scrub land, gently rising to the treeline. And once in those trees, well, all of Texas and beyond was there.

  She knew Jim was no killer. Leon, neither. But she also knew what they had been through and why they had to do this. They had to become what they weren’t, even for one second, and then they could head back into that vastness of Texas and beyond and live their lives. She did worry that after the event – after the coming killing – things might be different. No, she knew things would be different. Many years ago a friend who had just started studying medicine back east had explained there was always a risk when cutting out a diseased part of a body. The patient might suffer or die in the process of trying to save their life, her friend had said. But if you don’t try, then the patient will surely die anyway.

  Rosalie had heard the telegraph office door slam, and a moment later she had watched Leon go in through the back door with the feedbag and rope in one hand, and a drawn gun in the other.

  It had felt like hours ago, although she knew it was only minutes.

  And there had been no gunshot.

  Yet.

  Billy said to his friends later, ‘Then I saw Harry Dillon coming. I didn’t know what to do. I mean, I was looking in the window and these fellows had the sheriff tied up and here came Dillon and he had a shotgun in his arms and he had that look, you know, the look he gets when he kicks a dog or breaks a fellow’s nose to calm him down.

  ‘So what I did, I turned round and I said you can’t go in there, Mr Dillon, sir. It’s a private telegram they’re writing.

  ‘And Mr Dillon looked at me like he was going to break my nose. And he says, ‘Is that right, son?’ I said, ‘That’s what Mr Howard told me, sir.’

  ‘And then he stopped, Mr Dillon did. And he slowly walked those last few yards and he peered in the window just like I had been doing.’

  Harry Dillon couldn’t believe it. They – two fellows – had Jack Anderson tied to a chair. He was hooded, but it was clearly Jack. And one of them had a gun pressed right up against Jack’s neck.

  He stepped back from the window just as the man standing next to Jack turned and looked his way.

  Did he see me? Dillon wondered.

  He looked at the boy, Billy. The kid raised his hands. It was almost comical.

  ‘They made me do it,’ he said. ‘Made Mr Howard, too.’

  Dillon started towards the door. His urge was to kick down in the front door and burst in shooting. But then he stopped. What if that fellow had seen him? Would they be waiting? And how could he be sure he wouldn’t hit Jack? The shotgun might be good for bringing a rowdy crowd to order in one of the town’s saloons, but in such a small room it wouldn’t distinguish friend from foe.

  There had to be a better way.

  Perhaps he could come in from the back? One of the fellows had been standing with his back to the rear door. He could open that door and blow that fellow’s head clean off.

  But what then?

  What of the second fellow standing right by his boss?

  No, that wouldn’t work either.

  What he needed was help.

  ‘Billy,’ he said.

  The boy was watching him, looking scared, hands still in the air.

  ‘Billy.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We could hang you, you know?’

  ‘Hang me?’

  ‘Like we’re going to hang that other boy this morning.’

  ‘I didn’t do nothing. They made me.’

  ‘I ain’t sure.’

  ‘It’s the truth. I swear.’

  Dillon looked back at the telegraph building. His finger rested on the shotgun trigger. The men inside hadn’t looked like they were rushing, if all they’d wanted to do was to kill Jim then they’d have done it by now. But that didn’t mean things couldn’t change in a heartbeat.

  ‘Listen, maybe you can redeem yourself.’

  ‘What’s redeem?’

  ‘Never mind. Just you run as fast as you can and you tell Emmett to get over here as fast as he can. Tell him to bring pistols.’

  ‘And you won’t hang me?’

  ‘Just do it! G
o!’

  Jim Jackson said, ‘Who was that?’

  He thought he’d seen a face at the window. A movement in his peripheral vision.

  ‘It’s the boy,’ Leon said.

  ‘Billy,’ John Allan said. ‘His name is Billy. He’s a good lad.’

  ‘I don’t want him watching,’ Jim said. ‘Tell him to scoot.’

  ‘You don’t want him to watch what?’ John Allan said. ‘You’re Gentleman Jim. That’s what they used to call you, yes? The kind one. The honourable one. You’d struggle to kill a guilty man, let alone an innocent one. And as for shooting a man tied up and hooded. Little Billy isn’t going to be watching anything, is he? There’s going to be nothing to watch.’

  ‘Have you finished?’ Jim said.

  ‘I haven’t done anything,’ Allan said. ‘Sure, I used the story to build my reputation, but I never killed anyone.’

  ‘Listen to him!’ Howard said. He had backed himself into the corner of the room, up against his telegraph table. ‘You can’t shoot him. It would be murder.’

  ‘Tell the boy to make himself scarce,’ Jim said to Leon.

  Leon walked over and opened the door. He looked outside.

  ‘He’s gone anyway.’

  Harry Dillon wandered carefully around the back of the telegraph office. He’d figured the men might have their horses there ready for a quick getaway.

  He’d figured right.

  Except there was also a woman there. A very pretty woman, standing with three horses, looking pale and very frightened.

  He lowered the shotgun so it was pointed in the general direction of her face and he stepped into view.

  ‘If it doesn’t kill you, it’ll blind you,’ he said. ‘You and the horses.’

  She turned and her mouth opened as if to scream.

  ‘Any sound and I’ll shoot you. Now raise your hands where I can see them.’

  She raised her hands and he could see them shaking. He smiled. He liked it when they shook. Men or women.

  ‘Walk towards me, slowly.’

  He led her around to the front of the telegram office and here came Emmett Maine, running.

  ‘What in the hell’s going on?’ Maine said, slightly out of breath. He had a pistol in his hand.

  ‘A little bit of trouble,’ Dillon said. ‘But I just found us a winning card.’

  ‘Wait!’ John Allan said. ‘I admit I did hear something about you two. And the other boys, too.’

  ‘He’s playing for time,’ Leon said. ‘Give me the word.’ Leon had his own gun in his hand now.

  ‘I can do it,’ Jim said.

  ‘Let him speak,’ Howard said. ‘Please.’

  ‘I would have done something,’ John Allan said. ‘But what? I mean, what could I do?’

  ‘You were the only one didn’t get sent to hell,’ Jim said. ‘How do you explain that?’

  Now, finally, Jim felt a little of the heat that he’d been searching for start to rise inside him. Yes, that was it. He could feel his breathing getting shorter. What he and Leon – and the others – had been through, whilst this man had been living it up, benefiting from betraying them all.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Allan said. ‘I guess I can’t explain it.’

  ‘Give me the word,’ Leon said. ‘I still get pains all over from what they did to me.’

  ‘Just watch Howard,’ Jim said. ‘I figure he’s looking to run.’ The telegraph operator had been edging towards the rear door.

  ‘No, no,’ Howard said. ‘I’m just—’

  ‘Sit down,’ Leon said.

  Jim ratchetted back the hammer on the Colt.

  ‘The fellow whose gun this was died because of what you did,’ Jim said to the hooded man on the chair in front of him. ‘All of your old friends died, too.’

  The fire inside had caught hold now. A few more old images and it would be raging. Then. . . .

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ John Allan said. His voice was no longer so strong.

  ‘We got beaten almost every day. The way they did it. . . . What they used.’ Jim shook his head even though the hooded man couldn’t see the gesture. It wasn’t for Allan anyway. It was for that fire. It was to fan those flames.

  ‘That wasn’t down to me.’

  ‘It was all down to you.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘It’s too late for pleases. I’m sorry, but I’m not sorry, John. If you know what I mean.’

  ‘Please!’

  Jim Jackson thought back to the humiliations, the degradations, the endless agonies of his time in the prison leasing system. It all led to this moment. The fire of revenge now scorching his nerve endings.

  His finger tightened on the trigger.

  The sound of the gunshot was deafening in the small room, the walls capturing the sound, amplifying it, sending it bouncing from ear to ear like a wild echo. Jim Jackson felt numerous tiny stings across his shoulders and his neck and the back of his head, and suddenly the light was different in the room.

  He turned, his ears ringing, and saw the upper half of the telegraph office door splintered, and then the door itself exploded inwards and there was the silhouette of a man against the morning sun, and he had a short shotgun in his hand, its barrel sawn off, and he was holding Rosalie in front of him like a shield and the barrel was pressed against her throat and he was laughing.

  Even as the images and the sound registered, the rear door burst inwards and another man said, ‘One move and you’re both dead.’

  Jim couldn’t bring himself to turn away from looking at Rosalie, tears on her face, and a terrible look of loss in her eyes, but he heard Leon start to say something, he heard the sound of a gun butt on a skull, and he heard his partner crumple to the floor.

  ‘Drop the gun,’ the man holding Rosalie said.

  For a moment, just a split second, Jim thought about trying to shoot the man. He might be quick enough, but any pressure on that shotgun’s trigger and Rosalie would be dead.

  ‘Drop the gun.’

  Footsteps behind him. A gun pressed up against his own neck.

  Jim dropped the gun.

  Chapter Five

  ‘You always were a soft son-of-a-bitch,’ John Allan said.

  Jim Jackson looked up at him. Allan was a little out of focus from where Jim’s eyes were swollen. He could taste blood, too. A tooth was loose and he couldn’t help but press his tongue against it, pushing it, creating a tiny flare of pain amongst a far greater inferno. They’d beaten him, kicked him, pistol-whipped him, and finally knocked him senseless with the cut-down butt of the shotgun.

  He’d come round tied to a chair in the sheriff’s office.

  ‘Used the same rope you tied me up with,’ Allan had said, just after he’d thrown a cup of water into Jim’s face.

  Jim shook his head.

  ‘No?’ Allan said. ‘What does “no” mean? You’re not soft? Or that you can’t believe what happened?’

  Allan reached behind his head and pulled something from the back of his collar. He looked at it for a moment and then tossed it on the floor.

  ‘Quite pleased I had that hood on,’ he said. ‘It was thick enough that it was hard to breathe but at least I didn’t get a headful of pellets.’

  ‘I aimed at the roof, boss,’ a wide-shouldered man with a full beard and brown teeth, standing behind Allan said. ‘Didn’t want to blast you.’

  ‘I know. And I appreciate it, Emmett. You sure kept me waiting though, didn’t you?’

  ‘It’s all good now though, isn’t it, boss?’

  Allan smiled. ‘Oh yes. It’s all good.’

  ‘So, you came to kill me and you were too soft-hearted,’ Allan said. ‘Gentleman Jim. A dead man returning.’

  Jim Jackson spat blood on the floor. His loose tooth came out, too.

  ‘Don’t be messing my office up, now,’ Allan said. ‘Or I’ll have the girl on her hands and knees cleaning it.’

  Jim looked through the open door to the cells.

  He could
see Leon standing at the bars of the closest cell. In the cage beyond that was Rosalie and the young boy Martin. There were cuts and bruises on Leon’s face, and even as he looked over at his friend he saw Leon start coughing and there was a spray of blood in the air.

  ‘I’m going to hang you all, of course,’ Allan said. ‘One at a time. Maybe tomorrow after we hang the kid. You know, it takes a lot of arranging and you messed that up good and proper for me. Lucky for you I’m a forgiving kind. It’ll be quick.’

  Jim squeezed his eyes shut, trying to clear them of blood. Thoughts and images cascaded through his brain. Why didn’t I just shoot him when I could? Has it all been for this? Has everything I’ve been through – we’ve been through – counted for nothing? To be hanged by the same man that betrayed us all those years ago? How could it be that I couldn’t just put a bullet into him?

  He could hear Martin crying in the far cell. Rosalie was whispering to him, comforting him. Images of he and Rosalie whipped through his mind like tumbleweed before a storm. He remembered first meeting her on the train to Austin, a few moments before train robbers tried to rob them. She was beautiful then, as now. He loved her. And he had brought her to this. To a death in a dusty town that no one had ever heard of. Far from the city where she would have lived safe and sound to a ripe old age.

  Allan’s other deputies were in the office, too. The one who had come in through the back door at the telegraph office and had knocked Leon down, standing over there by Emmett, the two of them like big brothers, the same sneer, the same cold eyes, and the same stink of whiskey and sweat and cruelty rising off them in the heat of the room.

  Then over to his left, another one. Not quite so wide, and a bit younger. He was cradling a shotgun in his arms like it was his baby.

  ‘You ain’t saying much,’ John Allan said.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Jim said. It hurt his mouth to talk. ‘It wasn’t just a story was it?’

  ‘Ah, he speaks. Tell you about it, huh? You want to go to your grave knowing?’

  ‘I – we – deserve that much.’

  ‘Well, say please, and I might.’

  Jim looked up at Allan. They’d tied the knots tight. The rope was biting into his flesh. He’d tried to move his wrists, maybe work the knot loose, but to no avail. His belly was hurting. His face, his back, his legs. Everywhere. But the torture in his mind was the worst of it all.