“It won’t be what I remember,” Rat assured his old friend. “I’ll only think o’ the very best.”
“That’s more comfort’n you can know.”
The Turleys took charge of Mitch thereafter, and Rat stepped away. He lacked the courage to watch.
“Sheriff, you sure you couldn’t look the other way a minute?” Mitch asked as Clem bound his hands. “Only take me a minute.”
“Make peace with the maker, Mitch,” Cathcart urged. “Won’t be another chance.”
It was then, as the Turleys placed the noose around the quivering young man’s neck and hauled him atop his nervous horse, that Mitch’s face paled.
“Lord, you really aim to do this, don’t you?” he shouted.
“Man’s got to pay for his wrongs,” the sheriff insisted.
“A man?” Mitch cried. “I ain’t but twenty. Shoot, look at me! I ain’t full growed!”
“Grow some backbone,” Clem urged.
“You go to blazes!” Mitch growled. “Look at me, you men. I’m about to die at your hands. Look at me, Rat!”
Rat turned and gazed upon a man gone mad. Mitch’s eyes seemed to blaze with sudden hatred.
“Damn you all,” Mitch muttered. “And damn this place. If I got to die here, then I curse the life out o’ this place. May nothin’ grow here ever again. And …”
Mitch never finished. Clem Turley slapped the horse’s rump, and the animal sped away, leaving Mitch dangling by the rope. He coughed and kicked and died.
Rat was transfixed by the glassy glimmer in Mitch’s eyes. Life had slipped away. It hadn’t walked softly into a fog as his mother had once described it. No, death had come like a thief to snatch Mitch’s essence.
“Cut him down,” Sheriff Cathcart instructed.
Charlie reached up and slashed the rope. Clem dragged Mitch to the open grave and dumped him in like so much useless fodder.
“I’ll do that,” Rat said when the Turleys started to kick dirt over Mitch. “I know how he’d want it.”
“No markers,” Cathcart insisted.
“No name,” Rat argued. “Only fittin’ there’s a marker.”
“All right,” the sheriff agreed. “Should we wait on you?”
“No, go ahead,” Rat urged. “I got some peace to find.”
“Here?” Clem asked, staring nervously at the dangling rope.
“It’s as good a place as any,” Rat told them. “I’ll see you all in Thayerville.”
“Sure, son,” Cathcart said as he turned to leave. “Be back in time for supper, though.”
“I will,” Rat pledged.
Epilogue
Five years had passed since Erastus Hadley had gently eased dirt over the features of the best friend he would ever have. The grave had been outlined in gray limestone rocks, and Erastus had erected a marker with the simple epitaph FRIEND carved with a knife. Wind or visitors had carried off the plank by summer, and gradually the rocks had rolled away. Nature had its way of accepting the dead, taking them to her heart.
The white oak lost its leaves that next fall, but they didn’t return in April as before. Thistle and briars grew by that tree, and pencil cactus, too. The grasses and the wildflowers vanished, and the tree turned ghostly white. Perhaps it was Mitch’s curse killed the giant white oak. Or maybe time caught up with the place as it did all things. Erastus Hadley didn’t know. Years had passed since he’d buried his father on another hill, and he’d seldom since searched for answers or expected to find any.
He’d returned to Thayerville as promised, in time for supper. Afterward Becky had led him out to the porch, and they made their peace. They were married under an August moon, and Erastus had used his share of the reward to purchase the old Plank place. It seemed right somehow that such a dark, haunted sort of place should see new beginnings.
Erastus never had the heart to ride guard for the Western Stage again, and he instead accepted a deputy’s badge. He wore it three years until the horse and cattle markets revived, and his hands turned to their first love—breeding ponies. He ran a few hundred head of cattle as well, and Becky planted the largest garden in the county. Three children were born in turn, and the youngest was called Mitchell.
“I wonder what ever became of Mitch Morris,” Becky often remarked. Thereafter she and Erastus would make up tales of the mysterious gambler to amuse the children. Erastus never shared the truth.
“I only hope he found some peace,” he would confide to Becky.
“Have you?’ she’d ask.
“Long since,” he always answered. “You should know. You brought it to me.”
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