Shadow of the Hangman

by J. A. Johnstone

  Caldwell reined up, and the mustang stopped behind him, its ugly head hanging. “He tried to dry-gulch me,” Caldwell said. “Then, when I attempted to arrest him, he pulled a gun on me.”

  “You were quite right, Marshal,” a storekeeper with a florid face and white apron said. “Mathias Knowles was a damned nuisance.”

  “You kill a man in this town for being a nuisance?”

  Jacob had stepped onto the boardwalk, and he stood watching Caldwell, his hand close to his holstered Colt.

  The Texan’s face registered alarm, then anger, and finally mild amusement. “Howdy, Jacob,” he said.

  Jacob nodded. “Luke.”

  “What are you doing here?” Caldwell said, as though talking to an old friend.

  “Passing through. I’ve got a job to do, and then I’m riding.”

  Caldwell’s eyes hardened, then he looked over to the growing crowd. “One of you men get Abe Clay,” he said. “He’s got a burying to do.”

  “Where’s his gun, Luke?” Jacob said.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Caldwell said.

  “You claim he drew down on you. Where’s his gun?”

  A few people muttered to one another, and a couple of men nodded, as though they expected an answer.

  “Hell, I don’t know,” Caldwell said. “I forgot to pick it up.”

  “What kind of gun was it?” Jacob said, pushing it.

  “I don’t know. A man draws down on you, you don’t take time to see what kind of revolver he’s got in his hand.” He looked to the crowd again. “Ain’t that right, folks?”

  “That’s right, Marshal,” the florid man said.

  “After you shot him, did he drop his gun?” Jacob asked, enjoying himself.

  But Caldwell, his face furious, knew he was being railroaded and didn’t answer. He was saved from further questions by the appearance of the undertaker, who glanced at the ragged corpse and said glumly, “City rates?”

  “Speak to the mayor,” Caldwell said.

  Abe Clay nodded. “City rates.”

  As Clay took the mustang in tow, Caldwell threw a single, vicious glance at Jacob, then rode down the street and dismounted outside the marshal’s office.

  After Caldwell vanished inside the adobe building, the florid storekeeper said to Jacob, “What are you, mister? A troublemaker?”

  “I sure am,” Jacob said. “You want me to make some?”

  The man looked into Jacob’s eyes and didn’t like what he read there. Muttering to himself, he walked into his store and slammed the door behind him.

  Jacob stood for a while, watching the marshal’s office. He’d opened the ball. How would Caldwell respond?

  Whitey Morehead answered that question.

  He found Jacob in the Oxtail, a saloon and dancehall that had a tuned piano and a tolerant bartender.

  “Been looking fer you all over, Jake,” Morehead said. He was a short, wiry man with hair so blond it looked white. He wore a deputy’s star on his vest, but no belt gun.

  Jacob had taken the precaution of turning the piano to face the door. He watched Morehead’s hands but continued to play.

  “What do you need, Whitey?” he said.

  “Me? Nothing. But Luke wants to buy you a drink at the Lone Star tonight. He says around seven if that’s convenient.”

  “Why would Caldwell want to buy me a drink?” Jacob said.

  Morehead shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know. Maybe he likes you.”

  “I heard you were in Yuma doing twenty to life, Whitey,” Jacob said.

  “You heard wrong, Jake.” He took a couple of steps closer to the piano. “What the hell is that tune?”

  “Chopin.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “No, Whitey, you wouldn’t,” Jacob said. “And a word of advice—if you take a step closer you’ll have to skin the hogleg you got shoved into the back of your pants.”

  “I came peaceful,” Morehead said.

  “You’re a snake, Whitey, and just as low-down.”

  “That’s a hell of a thing to say to a man, Jake. I’ve got friends in this town.”

  “I know. Caldwell’s one of them, and with friends like him, who needs enemies, huh?”

  Jacob continued to play as Morehead said, “Bob Lambert’s in town. He’s a deputy like me.”

  “And he’s an even meaner and lower-down snake than you, Whitey.” Jacob shook his head. “You’re in some mighty bad company.”

  “Damn you, Jake, do you accept Luke’s invitation or no?” Morehead said.

  “Tell him I’ll be there.”

  The gunman smiled. “I’m looking forward to it, Jake.”

  “Crawl out of here, Whitey,” Jacob said.

  After Morehead left, the bartender stepped to the piano, a towel over his shoulder and a worried expression on his heroically mustached face.

  “Mister,” he said to Jacob, “you don’t know me and I don’t know you, so here’s a word of advice I’d give to my own son—get on your horse and ride, and don’t come back to McGowan again.”

  Jacob looked up from the piano keyboard. “Who is it?”

  “All three of them. Caldwell’s fast, so is Whitey, but Bob Lambert is pure pizen. When you get an invite like that, they mean to kill you. It’s happened before.”

  “I know about Lambert,” Jacob said. “Uses a crossdraw pretty well. He killed Steve Lupton up in the Nations six month ago, and nobody, including me, considered Lupton a bargain. Whitey’s a snake. When bullets start flying there’s no saying which way he’ll wriggle.”

  “Well, anyway, now you know.”

  “I guess I do.”

  The bartender stood listening for a while, then said, “I’ve always liked Chopin’s Nocturne in G Minor. It departs from his usual ternary form, and I find that refreshing.”

  Jacob shook his head and smiled. “Is there anything western men haven’t done or don’t know?”

  “If you mean collectively, the answer is, damned little,” the bartender said.

  The railroad clock on the wall chimed six, and suddenly Jacob was on a high lonesome, and the black dog that was his depression crouched in a corner, waiting.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  A gunfight is a sudden thing, but Jacob O’Brien had time to think about it. In an hour he’d face three fast guns, two of them with whom he had no quarrel.

  Bob Lambert worked both sides of the law. He’d been a shotgun guard for Wells Fargo and had done a couple of hellfire stints as a boomtown lawman. Some said he’d ridden with Jesse and Frank and them, but for sure, and until recently, he’d hired out his gun as a range detective up Montana way. Whitey Morehead would kill anybody if the pay was enough, and he’d always been on the wrong side. He’d spent time in Yuma Territorial Prison, and Jacob reckoned he’d only been enjoying the outdoors for a few months.

  Both men were professional gunfighters, and their services didn’t come cheap. Luke Caldwell must have big plans for McGowan if he’d hired those two.

  Jacob finished playing and closed the lid on the piano. His gun hand felt good, and it would have to be.

  “You’re not taking my advice, huh?” the bartender said.

  “Seems like,” Jacob said.

  “Then have a drink on me; take the edge off.”

  The bartender passed a glass to Jacob and poured a shot. “You hungry?” he said. “I got some cheese and green apples.”

  “Green apples?” Jacob repeated, surprised.

  “They’re tart, but folks like them with a piece of Stilton.”

  “No, I guess I’ll pass,” Jacob said.

  “Maybe that’s best,” the bartender said. “Green apples can give a man a bellyache.”

  “There’s a mission where green apples grow,” Jacob said.

  “Is that a fact?”

  “Uh-huh. There’s a tree full of them behind the mission. And there’s a blue-eyed monk in a brown robe, and he looks after the tree.”

  “Now
where would that be?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The bartender was silent, staring into Jacob’s eyes. Then he said, “Drink your whiskey, piano player. It’s almost time.”

  Jacob O’Brien’s spurs rang on the boardwalk as he walked in the direction of the Oxtail saloon. Night shadowed the town, and a warm breeze from the south carried the cinder and timber smell of the Malpais lava beds. Ahead of Jacob a sudden gust lifted a scrap of newspaper from the street. It hung in the air for what seemed an eternity, then fluttered back to earth like a stricken dove.

  Jacob stepped into the Oxtail.

  The night was young, but the sporting crowd was out in force, gamblers, whores, loungers, and a few miners and cowboys rubbing shoulders with big-bellied men in broadcloth.

  Jacob smiled to himself. It seemed that the word had gotten around that a man would die in the saloon that night, and folks wanted to see the action.

  A piano man had been tickling the ivories, but the music strayed to a stop when Jacob stepped to the bar. The crowd that had been laughing and noisy when he’d entered now fell silent and cleared a space to give him room. Jacob glanced at the faces of the people around him. A few showed sympathy, even concern, but most revealed a feral anticipation of what was to come. This promised to be a big night in McGowan, and the excited crowd didn’t want to miss a single moment of it.

  “What can I get you, mister?” the bartender said. He used a dirty towel to describe a beer-streaked circle in the mahogany in front of Jacob.

  “Luke Caldwell,” Jacob said. “But I guess he already knows I’m here.”

  The mirror behind the bar provided Jacob with a view of the crowd. He watched it part, like a wave breaking over a rock, as Caldwell pushed his way through. Whitey Morehead and Bob Lambert followed in his wake, grinning their arrogance.

  “Right on time, Jake,” Caldwell said. “Must be that good Irish breeding of your’n.”

  Jake turned and smiled. “What would a mongrel like you know about breeding, Caldwell?”

  Morehead and Lambert flanked the Texan and saw the sudden fury in his face. They moved aside a couple of feet and cleared room for their gun hands. Behind them, the crowd shuffled away from the line of fire, and a saloon girl giggled in nervous anticipation.

  Caldwell was on the prod, but he refused to be baited; he was prepared to let the pre-gunfight ritual run its course.

  Jacob tried for an edge, anything to get the Texan rattled.

  “Still worshipping the dark forces, Luke, or have you given up on that after what happened to Dora DeClare?” he said.

  “Nah, I never held with that hell, Jake,” Caldwell said. “And Dora, well she was a hack for rent, any man’s ride. Besides that, she was crazy.”

  Jacob made no answer, and Caldwell let the silence stretch taut before he said, “You said some hard words to me out in the street, Jake.”

  “I reckon I did,” Jacob said. “You killed an unarmed man, like the lowdown, dirty yellow dog you are.”

  Fighting talk. But Caldwell again let it slide.

  “I’m going to buy you a drink and then I’m arresting you,” he said.

  “On what charge?”

  “I’ll come up with something.”

  “You think I’ll let you and those two coyotes with you take me into your jail?” Jacob said. “What are the chances I’d come out alive?”

  “About the same chance as you’ve got right here and now if you don’t come along quiet.”

  “Morehead, Lambert, I’ve got no quarrel with you,” Jacob said. “You can step away from this.”

  “Go to hell,” Lambert said. And Whitey Morehead grinned.

  Jacob nodded. “You two were notified.” He met Caldwell’s eyes. “The sand has run through the glass, Luke. My talking is done.”

  And he drew.

  Jacob fired at Lambert first, figuring he was the fastest of the three. He saw Whitey hesitate, not liking this, and switched to Caldwell. Jacob and the Texan fired at the same time. Caldwell took the hit, staggered, and fired again; his bullet tore into Jacob’s waist an inch above his empty holster. Lambert was sprawled on the sawdust, out of it, but Whitey decided to make his play. Jacob’s bullet hit Whitey in the chest and clipped a half moon from the little man’s tobacco tag. Sudden blood erupted from Whitey’s mouth. His eyes wide with shock and disbelief, he raised onto his toes, then fell, dead when he hit the floor. A bullet burned across Jacob’s right bicep. He saw Caldwell, his gun up, back to the far wall of the saloon, blood on his shoulder, and he fired at the Texan. The bullet hit the trigger guard of Caldwell’s Colt, ranged downward, and clipped off his pinkie finger before it slammed into the revolver butt. The big .45 round, now jagged and misshapen, caromed into Caldwell’s right kneecap and splintered bone. Caldwell screamed, hit the floor, and the Colt dropped from his hand.

  “Two and a half seconds, folks,” a man in broadcloth yelled, holding up a gold watch for all to see. He grinned, and a front tooth made from the same metal as his watch gleamed. “Three men down in two and a half seconds.”

  This announcement drew a few cheers from the sporting crowd, but most of the onlookers stood in stunned silence, gun smoke drifting thick, pungent, and gray around them in the roaring silence.

  Jacob ignored the crowd. He stepped around Lambert’s body and walked to Caldwell, his chiming spurs knelling an elegy.

  “Pick up the Colt, Caldwell,” he said. “Get back to your work.”

  “Damn you, O’Brien, my gun hand’s all shot to pieces,” the Texan wailed, his eyes scared.

  “Pick it up,” Jacob said again, holstering his own revolver.

  “I have no chance with you,” Caldwell said.

  “I’m giving you the same chance you gave me in the cave, remember?”

  “And you didn’t pick it up,” Caldwell said.

  “I tried, and so will you.”

  Caldwell looked around him and spread his arms wide. Blood dripped from the stump of his finger. “I have friends here. Step forward and help me.”

  No one moved. The saloon girl giggled again, and a man told her, “Shut up.”

  Caldwell glanced up at Jacob. “Damn you to hell,” he said.

  He dived for his gun, and Jacob shot him in the head.

  Caldwell died with his face in the sawdust.

  After he took time to reload from his cartridge belt, Jacob glanced around the silent saloon and then stepped to the door. To the man with the gold tooth and watch, he said, “Add another half-second.”

  Then he opened the door and walked into the bone-white glow of the moonlit street.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Jacob O’Brien rode in the shadow of the Zuni Mountains, a high-country caravan of rawboned peaks, hanging valleys, deep canyons, and piñon and pine forests marching parallel to the Continental Divide.

  He rode at a walk on a tired horse, heading nowhere through a vast and aloof wilderness of trees and rock that wore its majestic quiet like a cloak.

  Blood, long crusted and black, fanned up above Jacob’s belt on the right side and caused him pain. Caldwell’s bullet had ripped away two inches of flesh and skin and left a wound that was raw and hard to heal.

  Following a faint trail, Jacob came up on the ruin of an ancient pueblo, three of its adobe walls still standing. He drew rein in the shade of a wall and built a cigarette, a man without purpose or direction, a deep, dark depression weighing on him like an anvil.

  He could have returned to Dromore, but the thought of burdening the colonel and the others with a wounded man didn’t enter into Jacob’s thinking. They’d been through enough recently without him adding to their troubles.

  Only the mountains offered a refuge where he would be a burden to no one. Maybe come winter he’d find a cave, snuggle next to a big mama cougar, and sleep until spring. Or he could crawl into a hollow log. Now that would be right cozy when the snows came.

  Jacob ground out the cigarette butt on his boot heel.

 
A complex, often troubled man, Jacob felt the need to be alone, to think, to plan his future, if such even existed. He was tired, sick of killing and death, and he was uneasily aware that Dora DeClare had opened a gateway to the darker recesses of his mind that should have remained forever closed.

  He felt the need, for the first time in his life, to get closer to his God.

  Again, where better to find him than the mountains?

  Jacob rode away from the pueblo, a terrible weariness on him.

  Damn, he was exhausted, body and soul.

  Jacob took to the ribbon of trail again and then swung his horse toward the mountains. He followed a switchback game trail back and forth up a piñon-covered slope, then into ponderosa where there was dappled shade. He kept to the dim trail until suddenly it led into a hanging valley of high grassland. The surrounding slopes were covered in pine, and here and there outcroppings of sandstone rock, formed into grotesque shapes by erosion, perched like gargoyles on the façade of a Gothic cathedral.

  Jacob kneed his horse forward, and it walked slowly, neck arched and ears pricked, wondering, as its rider did, at the building a hundred yards away, sitting on a shelf of rock among the trees.

  The valley was an isolated, lonely place where shadows came early and lingered late. A stream, fed by an underground spring, bubbled over a pebbled bottom near the house, and on its banks a few willows struggled for life, raising their thin arms in supplication to an uncaring sky.

  Despite the heat of the day, the breeze blowing off the surrounding crags was cool and smelled of pine and of the bitter loneliness of a place lost between earth and sky, an odor like ancient rock.

  When he was fifty yards from the house, Jacob drew rein and took stock.

  The building was a mission in the Old Spanish style, but constructed of gray stone, not adobe, and it glowed with the patina of centuries.

  Jacob was tempted to slide the Winchester from under his knee, but he dismissed the idea. He sensed no threat. There was a strange peace about the place, quiet, like a hush of a confessional.