The Hangings

by Bill Pronzini

  "I'll fill you in on the way. About something that happened last night, too."

  We managed to get our horses out of the Union Hotel stables, and them and ourselves across the Basin Drawbridge and out of town, without running into Perkins or any of his deputies. There were knots of men milling restlessly outside the saloons on north Main and those over by the S.F. & N.P. yards, which meant that word of Emmett Bodeen's murder had already begun to spread. I had sworn Ivy to secrecy about last night, but still she might let something slip; and if she did, that news would only fan the flames.

  In any case there was nothing Boze or I could do about public unrest. The mayor would be in Perkins's corner now, with both of them mad as hell at me, so the problem was theirs. Whether Boze and I stayed in town today or not, it was a good bet neither of us would have our city jobs waiting for us by nightfall.

  Frustration rode with me all the way out to Stage Gulch. A bitter feeling of failed responsibility, too. If I had managed to put a bullet in that son of a bitch last night, the town would not be a powderkeg today and we would not be facing the scorn and anger of everybody in it. I tried to tell myself I had done what I thought was right, in everyone's interest. Tried to tell myself, too, that maybe Morton Brandeis knew something, no matter how small, about the murders. But none of that held off a galled suspicion that here I was doing the very thing Morton had: running away.

  *****

  The Abbott ranch buildings were tucked back in a cleft where two low hills folded against each other. Sheep graze spread out in front of them, supporting over two hundred black-faced woolies. It was a pretty little place, with shade trees around the house and a stream that meandered nearby. Clemmie Abbott had managed to keep it up since her husband’s death, thanks to the efforts of her two boys and a pair of hired hands.

  It was coming on noon when we drew rein in front of the ranchhouse. The youngest of the Abbott boys, who was about twelve, was over in the shearing pens; he stopped what he was doing to watch us approach but he did not come near us. It wasn't until I hailed the house that we saw anyone else. And at that it took half a minute for Mrs. Abbott to appear.

  She was a sweet-faced woman; the years of hard toil did not seem to have taken much of a toll, even though she was near forty. Dressed as she was now, in a man's Levi's and a linsey-woolsey shirt, with her brown hair gathered back into a couple of braided tails, she looked ten years younger than her age.

  "Morning, Mrs. Abbott."

  "Mr. Evans. What can I do for you?"

  "I think you know why we're here," I said. "We're looking for Morton Brandeis."

  "Why would you think he's here?"

  "We know he is and there's no good pretending otherwise. If he's in the house, ask him to come on out. If he's somewhere else, you'd best tell us where."

  She hesitated. But she did not have to make up her mind one way or the other; Morton made it up for her. He came out of the shadows inside the house, walking slow, and stopped beside her and put his arm around her shoulders in a way that was both possessive and defiant. He didn't look defiant, though. He looked tired and a little haggard, as if he had not been sleeping well lately; as if his conscience might be bothering him some.

  "So you found out," he said.

  "Only a matter of time, Morton."

  "Who told you? Maude or Luke Preston?"

  "Luke."

  "Shouldn't have told him. I knew that but I did it anyway."

  "Had to come out sooner or later."

  He studied me for a few seconds, then shifted his gaze to Boze. There was a set disapproval on Boze's face—the news had dealt him a harder jolt than it had me—and I suppose some of my feelings showed on mine too. Morton's arm tightened around Mrs. Abbott's lean shoulders.

  "Clemmie and me, we love each other," he said, the defiance in his voice now. "I'm not going to apologize for it. It happened and that's that."

  "You might have waited," I said.

  "Until Lucy passes on? Yes, I might have. But that could be a year or more and I . . . Linc, I couldn't stand it anymore, there in that house with her dying by inches and that sister of hers harping at me all the time. When I heard about Pike, when that got heaped on my back too . . . Christ, a man can only take so much!"

  "Morton is entitled to some peace and happiness," Mrs. Abbott said. "Everyone is."

  "What about Lucy's peace?" Boze said thinly. "You reckon she'll have any now, lyin' there so sick and knowin' her husband deserted her for another woman?"

  Morton said, "She don't care about me anymore. Neither of them do. Lucy and me . . . even before she got sick, it was finished between us. We hardly said a private word to each other in more than a year."

  "She's still your wife. And she's dying."

  Morton's mouth set tight. "I been all through that with myself and with Clemmie. My mind's made up—I'm staying right where I am. I talked to a lawyer in Petaluma about a divorce and putting the livery up for sale. Lucy can have the house. So if you come to try talking me into going back, you're wasting your time."

  "You do whatever you have to do, Morton," I said. "That's between you and your conscience."

  "Then why're you here?"

  "The hangings. Three of 'em now."

  "Three? Lord, Linc, I don't know anything about it. What makes you think I do?"

  "I didn't say I thought you did. You hear of anybody suffered a gunshot wound recently, left arm or shoulder?"

  "No. Why?"

  "Never mind why. You, Mrs. Abbott?"

  "No," she said.

  "Morton, you have any idea why Jacob Pike was killed?"

  "I've thought about that," he said. "No. It don't make any sense to me."

  "He have any trouble with anybody lately?"

  "Not that I know about."

  "Seem worried or nervous to you?"

  "No. Same as he always was."

  I fished the presidential medal out of my pocket; Boze had returned it to me yesterday and I had been carrying it ever since. "You ever see this before? Or one like it?"

  Morton took the medal, studied on it for a few seconds. "Where'd you get it?" he asked.

  "Found it in the livery Monday morning. Whoever killed Pike likely dropped it. Have you seen one like it?"

  I expected him to say no, just as everyone else had. Instead he said, "Matter of fact, I have."

  I stared at him, coming tight inside. There seemed to be a sudden crackly feel in the air, the same kind as when an electrical storm is about to break.

  "In Tule Bend?"

  "In my livery not long back. Man was paying me for some work I done and he pulled this out of his pocket by mistake. Said it was a good-luck charm."

  "What man? Name him."

  And Morton said, "Jubal Parsons."

  Chapter 19

  IT WAS AFTER TWO BY THE TIME WE REACHED THE RUTTED trail that hooked up to the Parsons' farm. Just inside the gate, I drew rein; and when Boze followed suit I said, "You sure you want to go through with this?''

  "We already talked it out," he said.

  And we had, on the ride in from the Abbott ranch. We could have gone straight into Tule Bend, rounded up Joe Perkins and his deputies, come back out here in force. But that was not the way to do it. Just because Jubal Parsons owned a presidential medal did not mean the one I'd found was his or he was the madman. Tell Perkins about it, let him lead a manhunting posse when feelings were already running at fever pitch, and there was liable to be the kind of consequences where innocent people got hurt.

  No, this was the right way to do it: one or two men, taking it slow and cautious. It was my job—and I had a vested interest in the outcome anyhow, for more reasons than one—but Boze was only a part-time deputy, with no personal stake except maybe the saving of that part-time job. He did not have to put his life at risk, not with a wife and two kids waiting at home and not on a mission like this one.

  I said as much to him now, for the second or third time: "You don't have to do this."

 
; "You think I'm goin' to let you go up there alone? Think again, Linc. We been friends too long."

  "Sure?"

  "Sure enough."

  His jaw was set, white with bunched muscle below the mouth corners. His hands moved restlessly on the pommel of his saddle, but it was just a normal edginess; there was no scare in his eyes. Neither a hero nor a coward, that was Ed Bozeman. Just a man with a disagreeable task to do. And that was me, too, I thought. I could trust Boze and he could trust me, and more than that two men—two officers of the-law—could not ask.

  "All right," I said. "Let's get it done."

  I made sure my revolver was loose in its holster and my coat was tucked back away from the butt; then we proceeded up the trail. As we rode, I thought that it was peculiar how things worked out sometimes. All cork-screwed and unpredictable. On the trek out from town I had been worried that I was running away from responsibility, and all along maybe I had been pointing toward it instead. It was such circumstances that made you believe in divine guidance.

  And yet, on the other hand, Morton running off when he had might only have prolonged the outcome. If he had just stayed in town long enough on Monday morning for Boze to show him the medal, all the anguish of the past two days— the attempt on my life last night—might never have happened. Where was a divine hand in the actions of a coward and a lovestruck fool?

  I thought about Jubal Parsons, too. The way he'd looked and acted on Sunday, the strangeness of him. But there was no way I could have suspected him for that alone. Plenty of men were strange, and none of them went around committing wanton murder. No, there was just no way for a reasonably sane man to know, or to understand, what went on inside the head of a madman.

  The sun had broken through the cloud cover but there was no warmth in it where it touched my back. A chill wind blew down off the mountains, carrying the creak and rusty flutter of the windmill to us long before we could see it. Needed grease and plenty of it, that mill. Had it been my responsibility, I would have tended to the greasing long ago; on windy days a steady screeching sound like that could fray your nerves. Just a few minutes of it, here and now, put an extra twist in the knot of tension between my shoulder blades.

  We topped the low rise from where the farm buildings were visible. Someone was sitting on the farmhouse steps: Greta Parsons, the skirts of her dress billowing in the wind. There was no sign of Jubal Parsons, or at least none that could be seen from a distance. I laid my right hand on the Starr's handle as we continued downhill and into the farm yard. All the while that confounded windmill kept up its shrieking, loud and then soft, soft and then loud, like the souls of the damned pleading in endless torment.

  Boze and I stopped our horses a few yards from where Mrs. Parsons was sitting. Her head had lifted at our approach, then lowered again to the cream separator on the ground before her. She still had her head down as she strained milk into the separator, placed a cream can under one spout and a bucket under the other, began to turn the crank.

  I let my gaze rove the house, the yard, the other buildings. Still no indication of Jubal Parsons. But there was one thing I did see and take note of: Two horses stood in the pole corral out beyond the barn, one the ploddy gray that had been hitched to the farm wagon on my last visit and the other a sorrel saddle horse. I had not noticed the sorrel last week, if it had been there in the corral for me to notice. No reason I should have. Sorrel was a common color for a horse.

  "Mrs. Parsons," I said, and waited until she raised her head again after a few seconds. Then I said, "We'd like a few words with your husband. Would he be in the house?"

  "No. The barn."

  "Alone, is he?"

  "Oh yes. He has always been alone, that man."

  There was an odd note in her voice—a kind of dull emptiness as if she were greatly fatigued. She moved that way, too, loose and jerky. She did not seem to notice the way Boze and I sat our horses, poised, hands laid on the handles of our sidearms. Or if she did notice, she didn't seem to care.

  I asked, "Mind saying if he has been hurt recently, left arm or shoulder?"

  "Shot, you mean. Yes, someone shot him."

  Boze and I exchanged glances. No more question now: Jubal Parsons was our man. I let my gaze shift sideways to the barn. The doors appeared to be shut tight and so did the loft door above. There was a window on the near side but it, too, was closed.

  "How bad is his wound?" I asked her.

  "Very bad," she said, and for an instant something that might have been the ghost of a smile twitched at her lips. "Very, very bad."

  "Then . . . why is he in the barn and not the house?"

  "I wouldn't let him stay in the house. No more, I said, no more. I told him he'd have to sleep in the barn until you came for him. That is where he has been ever since . . . except for last night. He went away late last night and came back just before dawn."

  She knows, I thought. But hell, how could she not know?

  "Is he armed?"

  "Yes, but you needn't worry. He won't use his weapons against you."

  "How do you know that?"

  "I just know."

  "Is he unconscious?"

  "You can walk right in," she said, as if she had not heard me. "It's all right. You haven't anything to fear."

  I traded another look with Boze. Then we both stared over at the barn again.

  "Truly," Mrs. Parson said. And then lowered her head and once more began to turn the crank on the separator. The sound the crank made was like a miniature echo of the shriek of the windmill blades.

  I could see no reason to disbelieve her. There was no sense in her trying to lead us into a trap. She wasn't crazy; she had to know that there would be others after us, that you can't murder everybody who poses a threat to you. No, it was not a trap. We had been sitting here close to five minutes now and nothing had happened. If Parsons was conscious he had likely heard us ride in; and if he was able to get up and around, he could have poked that rifle of his out through the barn door or loft door or side window, even with a crippled arm, and pumped a dozen bullets at us by now.

  I dismounted, waited for Boze to do the same, then drew my revolver and headed slowly toward the barn. Boze drew, too, and fell into step beside me. There was no change on the face of the barn as we approached, nor anything to hear from inside. The smell of dust and earth and manure was ripe on the chill air.

  I motioned to Boze that he should go over to the side window; he nodded, sheered off that way. I stepped around an old McCormick & Deering binder-harvester, came up to the closed doors. Still nothing to hear from inside, but then I would not have been able to make out soft sounds because of the wind and that banshee windmill.

  No point in prolonging things: With my left hand I found the latch on the left door half and then yanked the door open, keeping my body out of the way against the right half. The sudden action drew no gunfire, brought no response of any kind. Even so, an oily flow of sweat trickled down from under my arms. I waited through a count of ten, then shouldered through the right door half, inside.

  Still no response or resistance.

  It was shadowed in there, even with the open doors; those parts of the interior that I could make out were empty. Outside the daylit rectangle of the windows I saw Boze's face peering in. I moved forward a few paces, toward where the corn crib was.

  Sudden sharp rapping noises from the direction of the window: knuckles on glass. Boze. When he had my attention he found purchase on the window sash, slid it up, and ducked his head underneath.

  "She was right, Linc," he said heavily. "We got nothing to fear from Jubal Parsons."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Wait for me to come in."

  I waited, and in a few seconds he was beside me again. "Over where that tack is hangin' under the loft," he said. "I had a good squint from the window."

  He led me over that way. And what I saw put a slithery feeling on my back, the taste of metal on my tongue. Jubal Parsons lay crumpled face-up on the
sod floor, a Colt Sidearm and rigging strapped at his waist, left arm held in tight against his body by soiled and blood-stained bandages. There was blood all over the front of his shirt and tan jacket, too; streaks of it on his neck and the side of his face. From the look of the blood he had been dead several hours. Shot dead, likely with the .45-70 Springfield rifle that lay beside the body; when Boze bent down and struck a match you could see the black-powder marks mixed up with the blood on his chest.

  "Shot twice, looks like," Boze said.

  "Which means that he didn't do it himself."

  "Not hardly," he said.

  Our eyes met in the dim light. Then we turned and crossed back to the doors. When we came out Mrs. Parsons was still sitting on the farmhouse steps, still working with the cream separator. We walked over and stopped in front of her. The sun was at our backs, and the way we stood put her in our shadow. That was what made her look up this time; she had not seen or heard us approaching.

  She said, "Did you find my husband?"

  "We found him," I said. "What happened, Mrs. Parsons?"

  "I shot him," she said. Matter-of-fact, as if she was telling you the time of day. "This morning, right after he came back from wherever he went last night. Ever since I have wanted to hitch up the wagon and drive in and tell you about it, but I couldn't seem to find the courage. It took all the courage I had to fire the rifle."

  "Why did you do it?"

  "Because of what he did. All the terrible things he did."

  "You knew all along? Last Sunday when I was here?"

  "No, not all along." Then she blinked and said, "Well, that is not quite true. I suspected. I just wouldn't believe. I didn't know until he came back Monday evening, hurt the way he was, half out of his head. Then I asked him, straight out."

  "And he told you?"

  She did not answer right away. She was still fiddling with the separator and the cans, as if they were things—normal, familiar things—she couldn't bear to let go of. She had finished separating the cream; now she put the lid on the cream can and the bucket of skim milk to one side, and began taking the separator apart for washing.