When Peabody was gone, Halliday turned his wolfish gaze on his prisoner. “You might want to massage your neck muscles, kid. They don’t call him Hang-’em-high Hank for nothin’!”
Halliday laughed.
Lonnie sagged back down on the cot. He rolled onto his side and choked back tears of fear, fury, and frustration. It was a hard-fought war, but he would not, could not, let himself break down in front of Halliday. If he allowed himself to succumb, the corrupt sheriff would know he’d broken Lonnie’s spirit. Halliday would have won.
Somehow, Lonnie had to keep his emotions on a leash.
And, somehow, he had to figure a way out of this current mess he was in.
As he lay there, calming himself, he drifted off to sleep. He woke once when the doctor came into his cell to replace the bandage on his head. Then his fatigue, as well as the tea that the doctor gave him for the pain, caused him to drift back off into the land of blissful slumber.
He woke later in the afternoon and lay there on his cot, trying to pick his spirits up by thinking positive thoughts. But positive thoughts were few and far between. How could he think positively when he was due to be tried the very next day for three murders he had not committed by a judge known as Hang-’em-high Hank?
Not only that, but he was alone. He did not know if anyone had gotten word to his mother about his current predicament. He hadn’t thought to ask Casey about that. Surely, Casey would have sent word out to May Gentry. But even if Lonnie’s mother knew about what he was going through, she was tied down with little Jeremiah. She couldn’t very well leave the baby to ride through the mountains to visit her jailed son.
Besides, what could she do to help?
She’d probably only become hysterical and cause Lonnie even more frustration, even more worry.
Lonnie rose with a wince, hardening his jaws against the thundering pain that the movement caused his battered head, and moved to the window. There was nothing to see out there but trash and stacked, split firewood and a two-hole privy flanked by pine trees. But it felt good to sniff the warm breeze, to smell the weeds and the creeks that meandered around the edges of the town.
Who knew when he’d be able to enjoy such smells again?
Who knew if, after tomorrow, he’d ever smell anything again?
Dead men didn’t have much of anything to smell, most likely.
He gave a shiver at the thought of his own demise. Especially his own demise by hanging . . .
But surely the judge wouldn’t hang a fourteen-year-old boy. He might say he would, but when it came right down to it, he’d most likely send Lonnie to some reform school in Denver. The possibility began to seem more and more likely the more Lonnie thought about it, for surely the good, law-abiding citizens of Arapaho Creek wouldn’t let the judge and Halliday hang a boy.
No doubt about it. He’d likely be sent to Denver. He should be able to escape such a school for wayward boys fairly easily, given the cunning qualities he was so well known for.
When he managed to make his break, he’d find a way to prove his innocence as well as prove, once and for all, that Sheriff Frank Halliday himself was the one responsible for murdering Marshal Appleyard.
Somewhat relieved by the more optimistic train of his thoughts, Lonnie drifted back to sleep.
CHAPTER 38
Lonnie was awakened early that evening by Deputy Bohannon bringing him a bowl of thin stew and a chunk of dry bread from one of the town’s lesser eateries. When he was nearly finished with the Spartan meal, Lonnie was paid a visit by the attorney whom the county had assigned to represent Lonnie in court the next day.
Vincent Briggs was a known drunk and whoremonger. His suit was too small for him, and his longhandles showed through several places in his threadbare pants. He smelled like a walking spittoon and a beer bucket.
Lonnie dutifully related his version of the tumultuous events to the man with no real passion. His audience seemed to have trouble staying awake and upright. Briggs kept blinking his eyes exaggeratedly, grunting and wetting his pencil’s dull point on his tongue.
About all he said was: “Hmm. Uh-huh . . . hmmm.”
Heck, if Lonnie’s own girl, Casey Stoveville—at least, she’d once been his girl—didn’t believe Lonnie’s story, why should anyone else including a drunken, old, used-up attorney who couldn’t have done Lonnie much good if he’d even believed his tale?
When the attorney left after penciling only a few brief notes in a yellowed pocket notepad, Lonnie lay back down for another badly needed nap.
A raucous clattering assaulted his ears and set his head burning afresh.
He sat up, wide-eyed. Instantly, his guts recoiled.
Randall “Walleye” Miller was raking a tin coffee cup across the bars of Lonnie’s cell door. Miller lowered the cup and grinned, his wandering eye roving to the outside edge of its socket. He had a crutch under his left arm. His left thigh was thickly padded beneath his greasy denim trousers.
“Sorry, killer—didn’t mean to wake ya!”
Miller chuckled. Judging by how glassy his eyes were, he had a few drinks under his belt.
“Just thought I’d let you know I got office duty tonight. I always got office duty, seein’ as how I ain’t gettin’ around nearly as well as I once did.”
The deputy’s smile evaporated. He scowled at Lonnie, broad nostrils flaring angrily.
“The doc said I come close to losin’ this leg.”
“Yeah, well, you only got yourself to blame for that,” Lonnie said.
Walleye scowled at him again through the bars. Then he swung around and hobbled over to the ceiling support post from which the iron key ring hung. Walleye removed the ring from the spike in the post, and returned to Lonnie’s cell.
Lonnie’s heart thudded.
“Say, now . . . ,” the boy said, staring at the key in Walleye’s hand.
Walleye smiled with one half of his mouth as he stuck the key in the lock. There was the metallic rasping, scraping sound of the locking bolt being slid back into the door. The bolt clicked. The door sang as it sagged in its frame.
Walleye pulled the key out of the lock.
“You wanna run, boy?” The deputy paused, eyes narrowed, malicious. “Here’s your opportunity.”
Walleye hobbled back to the support post. He returned the key ring to the spike then sat down in the swivel chair behind the rolltop desk. He turned the chair toward Lonnie’s cell. Walleye removed his sawed-off, double-barrel shotgun from atop the desk, and set it across his lap.
“Go ahead, killer. Make a run for it.” Walleye smiled again with challenge, one nostril flaring, a dark flush rising up behind his thick, curly beard. “I want you to.”
He caressed the gut-shredder’s rabbit-ear hammers with his thumb.
Lonnie looked at the shotgun’s wicked double bores. He looked at Walleye’s savage features.
Lonnie sagged back down on the cot and rested his arm on his forehead with a ragged sigh of defeat.
Lonnie lay on the cot for a long time, considering his situation.
While the events of the past several days, starting with his being nearly run down by the four horseback riders in the high mountains, galloped across his mind like a herd of wild horses heading for water, he found himself wondering if he really was as bad as everyone said he was.
Was he a wicked, no-account kid who’d been steered in the wrong direction by the early death of his father and his lonely, wayward mother? He supposed he was a headstrong boy. He had things he wanted to get done in this life. And he was bound and determined to make a good life for himself. Before the trouble outside Skull Canyon, he’d wanted to make a good life for himself and his mother and brother.
Only after the trouble had not only started but had risen like water in an arroyo during a flash flood, he’d decided to search for the stolen payroll money, collect the reward on it—if a reward was being offered, that was—and light out on his own.
That was probably where he’d g
one wrong, he decided. After the trouble with the four riders and then finding Cade McLory on death’s doorstep and being nearly drowned in the stock trough by Walleye, not to mention discovering that Casey had set her hat for the fancy Dan, he should have forgotten about the loot. He’d told himself he’d gone back to Skull Canyon to fetch McLory back to town, to help prove his own innocence in shooting Walleye.
But that had been a fib he’d told himself as well as Casey.
He’d really gone back to the canyon because he’d been drawn to the attraction of the buried loot. He’d felt sorry for himself, for the way his life had turned out, for the abuse he’d taken from brutish men, for suffering the indignities of a wayward mother and other folks around him who didn’t understand him—who mistook his independence and determination to be taken seriously for recklessness.
He’d intended on abandoning his mother and his baby brother.
Self-pity was what had drawn him back to the cursed canyon and the money. He’d wanted a chance to leave these mountains and start a new life for himself, believing wrongly that you could leave one life cold and start a whole new one without bringing the core of yourself along for the ride.
Self-pity.
That was his mistake.
Self-pity and believing that money could change your life in anything more than superficial ways.
If he got out of this tight spot alive—and that was starting to look more and more unlikely—he’d keep that in mind the next time he considered abandoning his responsibilities to ride off seeking greener pastures. His life was here in these mountains with his mother and his brother. He wished it could be with Casey, too, but that looked as unlikely as his living through tomorrow without having his neck stretched.
Still, he made a mental note to try to be better.
Then he heard Walleye snoring.
Lonnie looked up from his cot.
Sure enough, the big, bearded deputy sat in the chair facing Lonnie, his head dipped to his chest. His hands lay slack on the shotgun. Deep snores rose from his fluttering lips.
Lonnie looked at his unlocked cell door, and his heart gave a hard, anxious thud.
CHAPTER 39
Lonnie looked at Walleye again.
Was he pretending, or was he really asleep?
The big deputy’s broad, lumpy chest rose and fell heavily as he snored. His lips continued to flutter with each exhalation.
He sure looked asleep.
Lonnie dropped one leg over the side of the cot. Then the other leg. He winced when the cot’s chains jangled faintly. He rose slowly and moved just as slowly toward the door, walking on the balls of his boots.
He stopped at the door, looked once more at Walleye. If the man wasn’t really asleep, if he was only faking it, as soon as Lonnie started to open the door, Walleye would likely lift the shotgun and blow Lonnie to Kingdom Come.
Lonnie’s heart skipped a beat.
But, then again, what did it really matter? Tomorrow, there was a good chance he’d be hanged from the judge’s famous gallows, which, constructed on a large, wheeled wagon bed, could be moved quite handily from town to town. He knew that hanging was a bad way to die. He’d heard the stories about men strangling slowly and soiling themselves as they danced bizarrely several feet from the ground, a gathered crowd cheering them on while eating popcorn and ham sandwiches.
A far better fate would be a quick death being blown into little pieces by Walleye Miller’s barn blaster from a distance of ten feet.
Lonnie placed his right hand on a bar of the door. He gave it a slow, easy shove. The door opened, the hinges groaning very softly but still too loudly for Lonnie’s comfort. He pushed the door more slowly, an inch at a time, gritting his teeth at the very low singing sound that the hinges made.
Lonnie’s heart raced. The door was open two and a half feet. He could slip through the opening and be across the office to the front door in about three seconds.
Lonnie drew a deep breath. He glanced once more at Walleye. No doubt about it—the man was dead out.
Lonnie sidestepped through the opening. Keeping his eyes on the ugly shotgun resting across Walleye’s broad thighs, he made his way across the room on the balls of his boots. He made it to the front door. He placed his hand on the knob and glanced once more at Walleye.
Suddenly, Walleye lifted his chin from his chest.
He threw his head back against the chair and opened his eyes. He stopped snoring.
Lonnie’s blood turned to ice. He stared, ready for the hail of buckshot that would end his days.
Walleye’s eyes rolled back in his head, showing the whites. His eyes closed and his chin dropped again to his chest without resistance. The deputy wagged his big, bearded head a couple of times, groaning and smacking his lips.
Then he became very still. Lonnie waited, his heart hammering in his ears. Soon, Walleye began snoring again, inhaling slowly, broadening his shoulders and then exhaling through his mouth, making a sawing sound, causing his lips to flutter.
Lonnie’s own shoulders sagged with relief. He turned to the door in front of him and started to turn the knob. He stopped when a voice sounded outside the sheriff’s office.
“All right, Gandy. I’ll be around again in another hour or two. I’ll check your back door!”
Deputy Bohannon was heading toward the jail office!
Lonnie jerked another look at Walleye, whose head was still down. But he’d stopped snoring. Outside, footsteps were growing louder. Lonnie swung around and beat a hasty, quiet retreat back to his cell. He drew the door closed behind him but did not latch it.
Footsteps thudded on the stoop fronting the sheriff’s office. The front door opened.
His heart beating wildly, Lonnie sat down on his cot and took his head in his hands, rubbing his eyes and yawning, as though he’d just awakened.
Bohannon stopped just inside the open door through which the smells of the night came on a breath of cool mountain air. He looked at Lonnie and then turned to Miller.
“Walleye!”
The walleyed deputy jerked his head up with a start. He rose from his chair, widening his eyes, and aiming his shotgun at Lonnie’s cell.
“Hold on! Hold on!” Lonnie yelled, throwing his hands up.
Bohannon scowled at the cell door. He moved forward, stopped just outside the cell, and looked at the gap between the door and the cell. He looked at Lonnie and gave a dry chuckle.
He looked at Walleye, slammed the cell door closed, and said, “Bad luck to cheat the hangman, fool!”
Lonnie had a miserable night’s sleep.
He probably wouldn’t have slept at all for anticipating his date with Hang-’em-high Hank the next day, but the head wound kept pulling him under into a harried race of dreams that included images of a shadowy gallows and of hang ropes and a laughing, cheering crowd. Lonnie’s own death dreams were confused with images of Cade McLory wandering through a cave and calling for Lonnie to come and bury him.
On the heels of the McLory dream, Lonnie woke in a cold sweat. He’d been so preoccupied with saving his own neck that he’d forgotten about McLory’s body, which lay where Kinch and Engstrom had invaded Lonnie and Casey’s camp in the mountains. Thoughts of poor McLory being dined upon by mountain lions, coyotes, and wolves added a whole new, grisly dimension of horror to dreams of Lonnie’s own demise.
He was almost glad when Walleye woke him by wickedly raking the tin cup across the bars of his cell, even though the sound was like a long, rusty nail being driven into the same place the bullet had cut a nasty furrow across his head. After he’d eaten a breakfast as Spartan as his supper, the doctor returned to clean the wound, apply a fresh smearing of arnica, and change Lonnie’s bandage.
At ten a.m., both Walleye and Bohannon handcuffed and shackled the boy. They prodded him out of his cell and down the street to the courthouse, a two-story log building with a courtroom on the lower floor heated by a large, fieldstone hearth. The dozen or so spectator benches quickly
filled with a milling crowd of townsfolk—men as well as women and even a few children—always eager for the spectacle of a trial and a possible hanging.
In fact, trials and hangings were more eagerly anticipated than the revelry that accompanied the Fourth of July.
The two Pinkerton detectives, Brocius and Madsen, were sitting on a bench in the front row. Lonnie wondered if they were still staying out at his ranch. Then he wondered if his mother might have made it to town for the trial—certainly she’d heard about it by now from the two Pinkertons if from no one else—but after sweeping the room with his gaze, he decided she hadn’t.
May Gentry had her hands full with little Jeremiah.
As Lonnie’s eyes swept the room, he found himself meeting Casey’s concerned, worried gaze. The girl sat on a bench in the middle of the room. She wore a small, straw hat trimmed with fake flowers. Lonnie tried to send her a smile, but then he remembered her skepticism regarding his story, and fancy Dan.
Lonnie’s cheeks turned to stone. He looked away from the girl.
The trial was delayed when a young collie dog followed its owner into the courtroom and then didn’t want to leave when its owner ordered it back outside. Instead, the pup sought refuge behind the judge’s bench sitting up high at the front of the room. Enflamed by the crowd and the judge’s raucous gaveling, the young dog ran barking around the room while its owner and Sheriff Halliday and Deputies Walleye and Bohannon chased the creature through the laughing crowd and back out the double front doors into the street.
Only after the dog was gone and the doors were closed did someone notice that Lonnie’s attorney, Vincent Briggs, was not sitting with his client at the defendant’s table before the judge’s bench and to the right of where the grim, straight-backed prosecuting attorney, Archibald Fleischman, sat trimming his nails with a clasp knife.
Bohannon was ordered to locate Briggs, who came in ten minutes later smelling as he always did but more so—like a spittoon and a beer bucket. Bread crumbs no doubt from a free saloon lunch counter clung to his necktie and ratty wool vest.
Curse of Skull Canyon Page 17