He helped Stanhope into a chair. “Let me get you some water.”
The woman’s head bobbed ever so slightly, and Keegan hurried, found a canteen, filled a cup, and returned to the condemned murderess, easing the tin container into her trembling hands.
“Thank . . . you. . . .” She took a sip, brought the cup down, and smiled. Then she made the mistake of looking at the window they had just barricaded with a dead man.
“I suppose . . .” Her head shook, she lowered it, and finally looked Keegan in the eyes. “Will you do that to my body when I’m dead?”
“No, ma’am. Won’t have to. My plan is to kill the actor and the newspaper piece of filth and use them.”
She stared at him, her mouth fell open, and then she grinned, shaking her head. “I . . . well . . . there’s still one window left.”
He nodded.
“Breen?”
Keegan shook his head. “McCulloch’s bigger.”
“Galgenhumor,” she said.
He blinked, uncomprehending.
“A German I played poker with in Waco,” Gwen Stanhope explained. “He used it. He said it meant ‘gallows humor.’”
“I don’t know what—”
“You’re not German. It’s making a joke, in bad taste, or at least rather morbid. Say someone’s on the gallows about to be executed. You make a crass joke. Galgenhumor. Gallows humor.”
“We’re not getting hanged.”
“Yes. I know. It’s just a saying, Sergeant. You said that about McCulloch. Gallows humor. A bad joke. Morbid. Crass.”
Keegan suddenly grinned. “Oh.” The light in his eyes died and he said, “I didn’t think it was bad, though.”
“It was funny as hell, Sergeant. I needed a laugh. Thanks for the joke.”
“What made you think I was joking, ma’am?”
Her face turned blank. She stared at him and could not look away. Finally, Keegan smiled, and she laughed.
“Galgenhumor,” she said again, and her head hung down. “Gallows. I wonder if I can find any humor when I’m standing on that scaffold in El Paso.”
“Drink your water, ma’am. Don’t worry about El Paso.”
She tried to sip, but looked again at Keegan. “You don’t have to ma’am me, Sergeant.”
“Yes, ma’am, I do. Way I was brought up. Even if you was my wife, or my sister, or a whore, I’d ma’am you.”
“Well.” She finished the water. “You have manners, Sergeant. That’s a rare commodity in this harsh land.”
“You don’t have to call me Sergeant, ma’am. That’s past.”
“I know.” She tilted her head and smiled. “I was dealing in El Paso once when you came into the saloon.”
“I remember.”
“Do you?”
“You’re not the kind of lady a man forgets.”
Her head straightened, and she reached out and touched his leg. “No one has called me a lady in a long time.” She patted the thigh, and quickly pulled her hand away.
“What will you do, Sergea—. . . well . . . ummm . . . ?”
“Name’s Keegan, ma’am. No Mister. Just Keegan.”
“I like Sean,” she told him.
“Well, ma’am, I like the way it sounds when you say it.”
“Sean?”
He waited.
“Why don’t you try Gwen? At least once.”
He stared at her, frowned, stared some more, and at length said, “All right . . . Gwen.”
Her eyes brightened. “I like the way you say that, Sean.”
“I’m just glad your name ain’t Desmondonia,” he told her.
And she laughed.
“You busted our saloon up pretty good,” Gwen said, and leaned back as if remembering that time, maybe a year, perhaps as long as two years ago.
“I had help,” he said.
“Yes, you did. Van Hickson was our bouncer, and he was really big and really mean.”
“And swung a bung starter like no man’s business.” Keegan rubbed the back of his head and grinned.
“Well, he was eating soup for about a month after that ruckus, Sean. Everton, our boss on the floor, he couldn’t spin a roulette wheel until they took off both casts six weeks later. One arm was shorter than the other after you broke both of them.”
“I tried to tear them both off.”
“I wish you had, Sergeant . . . I mean, Sean . . . because he was lousy.”
“He cheated.”
She nodded. “That’s what I mean. He was lousy. He was a sorry cheater. We all cheated, Sean. At least, we all cheated when we were working for Jules Hazelwood. The problem is that Paul Everton got caught cheating.” She let out a sigh, shook her head, and looked deeply into Sean Keegan’s eyes. After a moment, she made herself take in the rest of the station. “How much did that cost you, Sean?”
“Two months in what you call a jail in El Paso. Two months’ salary from the United States Army. I think it was ninety-eight dollars that I had to pay—”
“For the roulette wheel.”
Keegan nodded. “And the mirror behind the back bar. And the chair I busted over Van Hickson’s head.”
She shook her head in amazement. “Sean, do you know how many hellholes across the West I’ve worked?”
He waited for her answer.
“Fort Worth. Houston. Dallas. San Antone. Baton Rouge. New Orleans. Jacksboro. Caldwell. Baxter City. Sedalia. Springfield. Kansas City. Abilene. Ellsworth. Great Bend. Newton. Dodge City. Cimarron. Santa Fe. Mesilla. Tucson. Yuma. Trinidad. Denver. Cheyenne. Deadwood.” She grinned. “All those towns and cities. All those railroaders and cowboys and miners and soldiers. All those tinhorns and outlaws and gunfighters. I’ve seen my share of fights, Sean. Veritable brawls that pretty much wrecked the joints. But until that evening I had never seen one man inflict so much damage in such a short time.”
“Wasn’t even my best, ma’am . . . I mean . . . Gwen.”
“It was glorious, Sean. Simply glorious.”
He rose. “Glad I could entertain you. You going to be all right now?”
“I guess.”
“Then I need to get back to work, ma’am.”
“Gwen.”
“Gwen. Yes, ma’am. Old habits, you see.”
“You’re not a jackal, Sean Keegan.” She looked past him at the newspaperman who trembled at the shutter.
“Sure I am, Gwen.”
She turned back to him. “What are you going to do, Sean? I mean, you’re no longer in the Army. Have you thought about what you will do, where you’ll wind up, how you’ll make a living?”
He didn’t answer.
“Nobody lives forever, but you ought to live while you can.” She smiled. “What do you want to do? With the rest of your life?”
“Get out of Culpepper’s Station,” he told her.
Gwen Stanhope smiled. “Sean . . . I’m facing death. A hangman’s waiting for me in El Paso. And—” She looked away, and found herself staring at the macabre sight of a dead man whose body had been nailed to the wooden shutters to offer some protection from marauding Apache warriors. When she looked back, she dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. “You know what Griffin did, don’t you?”
“I’m not sure, Gwen.”
“He has taken some of that money from the late Mr. Henderson’s bags, put them in his own pockets.”
He nodded. “That doesn’t surprise me.”
“I shouldn’t have told you that. You might—
Keegan’s head shook. “Pretty good chance he won’t live to spend what he stole, Gwen. I’m a hard man. I’ve busted up saloons, gambling halls, brothels . . . begging your pardon, ma’am . . . and have more blood on my hand than all the kings in the Old Testament. But I won’t deny even a heel like Alvin J. Griffin the Fourth the chance to die thinking he was rich.”
“You’re an odd man, Sean Keegan.”
He nodded. “There’s plenty that will agree with you, Gwen. And plenty more who’ll think you could’v
e chose a more appropriate name to call me.”
“Like?”
“I’ve been raised not to use such language in front of a lady, especially a pretty lady.”
She brought a hand to her face. “Do you think I’m pretty, Sean?”
“I’ve been taught not to lie, too. Don’t always remember that. But I try.”
“Thank you, Sean.”
Their eyes locked.
“More?” she asked.
Keegan shook his head. “Best save what we have, ma’am . . . Gwen.”
“I understand.”
“I do, too,” he told her.
Her head tilted, and she studied him with hard intensity.
“Fifty thousand dollars,” he told her. “That’s a lot of money. It could get you out of the country, away from that hangman in El Paso. But I ain’t the one to help you get it, ma’am—Gwen, I mean. I told that gent I just nailed to that window that I’d get all that money to his wife. And that’s what I aim to do, God or the Devil willing.”
He tipped his hat, and left her on the chair, but turned after only a few steps, and smiled. “But, Gwen, if you’re still alive after all this is over, and the law hasn’t locked you up, yet, you come see me. My share of the reward, even if McCulloch and Breen ain’t dead and I only get my third, well, that’s too much money for a man like me to keep. I’ll see that you get some. Enough to get you across the Rio Grande. Maybe you ought to have one more cup of water, Gwen. You’re looking a little off your feed right about now.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The gallows were the finest Charles Van Patten had ever seen. El Paso had spared no expense in constructing the fine scaffolding behind the courthouse. Judge Martinez y Del Blanco had originally said the hanging of Gwen Stanhope would be by invitation only, but the editor of the Purgatory City newspaper, a man named Griffin, and some well-placed bribes had changed the judge’s mind.
A hanging like this would bring in many people from miles around. It would be good for all the businesses in El Paso and the county. You didn’t get a chance to see a woman dance from the end of a rope every day.
The murdered man was Kirk Van Patten. One of the finest men in that part of the country, he had done a great deal for the growth of industry and of the population, and knew important figures in Austin, New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Kansas City, and Mexico City. The deceased’s brother was the county sheriff, twice elected. The Democratic Party would help foot the bill for the gallows. The Democratic Party of Texas had helped Martinez y Del Blanco avoid scandal after that sordid little affair with that fifteen-year-old girl from Juárez. Sheriff Charles Van Patten had seen to that, too.
The sheriff wanted everybody in town, everybody in the county, everyone from Fort Stockton to the east and Lordsburg to the west, to see Gwen Stanhope’s neck stretched. Nobody killed Kirk Van Patten and got away with it. Stanhope deserved to hang. Shooting that no-account brother of Charles Van Patten was going to make things difficult for Van Patten to keep his job as county sheriff. County peace officers didn’t make much money, and now that his brother was dead, the sheriff wasn’t going to get a percentage of the money Kirk somehow came up with. Texas Rangers, the US Army, a federal prosecutor, and the state’s attorney general were already investigating those little dealings going on in the salt fields and some alleged cotton thefts and how some revolutionaries down in Mexico were winding up with rifles stolen from the arsenal up in Jefferson City. And if Kirk Van Patten was around to see that some voting officials in the county got extra pay and bottles of fine Scotch whiskey, then chances were that Domingo Rodriguez would win the next election for sheriff.
That would likely mean Charles Van Patten would have to go back to rustling cattle and stealing horses. He had almost been hanged up around Tascosa for those very things.
Charles Van Patten was lean, his face darkened and chiseled by the wind and a life in the sun. His graying hair was close-cropped, unlike the drooping bushy mustache and pointed goatee. County sheriffs were supposed to be politicians, but that never was Van Patten’s strong suit. He didn’t act like a palm-greaser. He didn’t dress like the governor. His boots were tall, scuffed, and worn, his spurs were plain, the tan britches were patched, his shirt was loose cotton with frayed sleeves, and his brown corduroy vest was missing two of its five buttons. About the only thing fancy about him was a bowler, and it hadn’t cost more than two dollars at Strauss’s General Store.
Well, his guns were fancy. He wore two, butts facing forward, and those were nickel-plated Colt .45s with mother-of-pearl grips. They were pretty, but Van Patten wore them because they served his purpose—they were accurate. And he was damned good with them.
Van Patten met Enrico Valdez underneath the trapdoor of the gallows.
The fat, one-eyed Mexican with the greasy hair and salt-and-pepper beard grinned when he saw the sheriff. “Amigo, buenos tardes.”
“Everything ready?” the sheriff asked.
“Sí, Señor Alguacil, sí. Todo lo que necesitaré hacer—”
“English, you damned greaser,” Van Patten said. “This town hasn’t been part of Mexico for many years. Speak American.”
“Very well.” The hangman no longer smiled. “I shall just need to weigh la patrona . . . the lady . . . the killer of your brother . . . so I know what weights to use when we drop the door underneath her feet.”
Van Patten grinned. “And when you don’t get those weights calculated correctly?”
The hangman shrugged. “Well, it has been reported that a condemned person’s head could come off.” He shook his head in disgust. “It is not pleasant to see.”
“But,” Van Patten said, “of course it has never happened to you.”
“Es verdad. It is true. But even a hangman of my reputation can err.”
Van Patten reached into his vest pocket and withdrew the pouch. He tossed it up, and when he caught it, the jingle of coins made Enrico Valdez smile. The sheriff tossed the pouch to the hangman, who caught it, jingled it some more, and shoved it into the deep pockets of his pants.
“Half now,” Van Patten said, “the rest after the bitch’s head comes off.”
“And I still collect my five dollars from the county?”
“For the hanging. You get paid the five dollars if she’s decapitated, if she just strangles, or if her neck pops in a clean execution. But you’ll never live to spend it. That head comes off, Valdez. You savvy?”
“Sí. Yes. It will be as you wish, Mister Sheriff. I am good at these things.”
“You better be.” Van Patten turned and walked out of the courtyard behind the courthouse. He found his horse and was starting to swing into the saddle when Windy Bly, the telegrapher, called out his name.
Swearing underneath his breath, Van Patten held the reins and turned to meet the sweating, bald, fat man.
“It’s from the marshal over in Sierra Vista, Sheriff.” Windy Bly started to hand the yellow slip of paper to Van Patten.
“Sierra Vista’s not my jurisdiction,” Van Patten said. “That’s two counties over.”
“Yes, sir.”
Van Patten looked at the telegraph with disdain and did not let go of the reins. “Read it,” he ordered.
He had to wait for the old geezer to catch his breath. “He just says that the posse lost the trail of the bank robbers. He asked for you to keep a lookout.” The fool’s eyes widened. “Says they think it was the Hawkin boys.”
“Yeah.” He swung into the saddle.
“You want to answer him?” Windy Bly pulled the pencil off his ear.
“No.”
The telegrapher frowned. “Well, are you gonna deputize a posse?”
“You volunteering, Windy?”
The man chuckled. “No, Sheriff, you don’t want me. Last time I fired a gun—”
“You almost blew your foot off. Yeah. Don’t worry. I’m not organizing a posse. If the Hawkin boys ride into El Paso and break the law, then I’ll do my job. But I can’t spare a
ny deputies or any good men to go on some wild-goose chase. I’ve got a hanging to oversee.” Van Patten swung into the saddle and spurred the black gelding toward the stagecoach station across from the Southern Pacific Railroad depot.
* * *
“It’s still not here, Charles,” the station agent said.
Sheriff Charles Van Patten fumed. “Ever been this late before, Vern?”
“Sure. More times than I can count.”
“Even with Petey driving?”
“Petey can’t fly a Concord coach over a road that’s washed out. That’s usually the case and—”
“When’s the last time it rained, Vern?”
“It could have rained up in those hills, though, and—”
“Apaches?”
The station agent turned his head to spit tobacco juice onto some cactus. After wiping his mouth with his shirtsleeve, he sighed. “That’s a possibility. I know Captain Trudeau sent out a couple of patrols yesterday. And you know about that bank robbery over in Sierra Vista. Jake Hawkin and his black-hearts could have waylaid the coach.”
“With Rourke riding shotgun? Hawkin ain’t that stupid.”
“I can send out a rider, but Captain Trudeau come by before and said I shouldn’t. He’s got Holy Shirt and some of those wild young bucks raising hell. Plus a bunch of others under some chief nobody’s heard of yet cut down some patrol riding from Fort Spaulding over in Dead Man’s Canyon.”
“Don’t send out any rider, Vern,” the sheriff said. “No use getting some civilian killed. I’ll go. The marshal from Sierra Vista telegraphed me and asked me to ride out, see if I could cut sign of Jake Hawkin.”
“Are you going alone, Sheriff ?”
“Not hardly. Where do you think Petey and Rourke would fort up? If it was Apaches, not bandits, not weather?”
“Well.” Vern spit again. “We would have heard from them if they made it as far as Hueco Tanks. And we know they made it to Sierra Vista. Got a telegraph to that effect.”
“Still leaves a lot of country.”
“Yep. But that’s one thing Texas has going for it. A lot of country. Even in this county.”
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