Sam pointed Dusty’s head west, urging the animal forward. The line of horses advanced, crossing the basin floor.
Sam glanced back for a last look at the Vard gang, but all he could see were the vultures massing them. Sam sighed. As a bounty hunter he was leaving a lot of money on the table in the persons of Loman Vard and a couple of his top henchmen, all of whom had prices on their heads.
But duty called. Malvina the Gypsy was at the top of the Department of the Army’s Most Wanted list. Any lead to her whereabouts had top priority and must be followed to its source.
Let the buzzards have Vard and company.
When the last scavenger bird quit the scene, Sam knew, hardly a trace of flesh would remain behind on the dead men’s bones.
But the evil they did would live on . . .
It would be Sam Heller’s mission to track down the source of that evil and wipe it out, branch, stem, and roots.
His mission, his duty, and his pleasure.
* * *
It was late afternoon when Sam Heller’s caravan came to a long low rise. The slope ahead was over a mile long, but the incline was a slight one of only a few degrees.
The horses made the climb with no difficulty, not even breathing hard when they reached the top.
To the west lay a deep narrow valley that ranked as a gorge. A watercourse ran north-south through it. It was called Swift Creek, but it was more of a river than a creek. It ran fast and deep with a treacherous current, rushing south through the gorge, then across a flat for several miles before feeding into the Liberty River, a major watercourse stretching southeast for several hundred miles.
The west bank of the gorge was crowned by a wide flat-topped summit bristling with a thicket of woods. The woods screened the view of what lay beyond, veiling it.
Sam got down from his horse to have a word with Bill Longley.
“We cross Swift Creek next. Hangtree is on the other side.”
Bill nodded, forcing a grin. It looked thin, skeletal. He’d suffered a relapse during the long hours of travel. Glazed eyes stared out of a sallow face.
Sam checked Bill’s shoulder wound. It checked out okay, not having reopened. But his fever had returned. His forehead was hot to the touch and his teeth chattered. He was suffering from fever and chills at the same time.
“There’s a good doctor in Hangtree, so hold on,” Sam said.
“I didn’t come this far not to make it now,” Bill rasped.
“Good man,” Sam encouraged.
“Not so’s you’d notice,” Bill joked feebly.
Sam went to the head of the line and stepped up into Dusty’s saddle. They started forward, the rest of the string following.
The gorge was thick with dusky shadows and filled with the sound of fast-rushing water. Sam Heller led the procession of horses down a trail that switchbacked across the eastern bank. A low stone bridge spanned Swift Creek, its side rails barely rising to knee height.
Sam dismounted to oversee on foot the string’s crossing of the bridge. The Swift’s waters were dangerous. Few who fell in ever came out alive. Holding on to Dusty’s halter, Sam started across the span.
The steel-dust horse advanced without hesitation, but some of the animals farther back in line grew restive and balky. Alternately coaxing and cursing the horses, Sam eventually got them across the bridge to the safety of the other side.
“Nothing to it,” Sam remarked in passing to Bill stretched out on the travois.
“How come you’re sweating?” Bill said.
Ignoring the comment Sam returned to the head of the line and mounted up. The string of horses threaded a switchback trail on the west bank, following it to a flat-topped summit. The crest was covered by a narrow band of thick woods, pierced in the center by the westbound trail. Sam’s string entered the gap, continuing through to the other side.
Below the ridgetop, the far side of the slope made an easy descent for about a fifth of a mile before spilling on to a vast tableland. The trail followed the downgrade into the flat where it became Trail Street, the east-west centerline and main drag of Hangtree town. The settlement spread north and south on both sides of Trail Street.
The setting sun cut a scarlet razor line above the western horizon and below the bottom of black thunderhead clouds with slate-colored edges that towered into a darkling sky.
Hangtree was a vista of yellow lights floating in purple-black shadows.
SEVENTEEN
Sam, Bill, and the string of horses rode downhill into Trail Street and the town proper. Lights glowed behind shaded windows and in lanterns hanging from ridgepoles and projecting building beams.
The eastern mouth of Trail Street opening on the west was bracketed by two old stone structures: a three-story courthouse on the right-hand side and a one-story flat-roof jail with iron-bar windows on the left.
At the opposite, western end of town, where Trail Street petered out and once more became the Hangtree Trail, the thoroughfare was braced by a pair of sentinel-like landmarks.
On a rise to the left was a white-painted church whose lofty bell tower was topped by a slim octagonal spire. A piece of land adjacent to the building served as the church graveyard. Its neat orderly grounds with well-kept plots and upright tombstones and markers was bounded by a black iron spear fence.
On the right-hand side of the street-turned-trail stood a shaggy knoll dominated by a gnarly, towering dead tree, ancient and blasted black and charred by multiple lightning strikes. This was the Hanging Tree, which served as the gallows from which condemned prisoners were hanged by the neck until dead.
The same Hanging Tree that had given its name to the county and the town that was its capital.
Sam reined in in front of the Golden Spur Saloon on the north side of Trail Street, a few lots west of the courthouse.
The saloon was a big two-story structure sitting solid and foursquare on its lot site and fronting on Trail Street. Its interior glowed with rich yellow-brown light.
From behind batwing saloon doors came the tide-like rise and fall of talk, laughter, crowd noises, the clink of glasses and bottles, the rinky-tink notes of a piano, the humming whirr of a spinning Wheel of Fortune, and jaunty percussive clatter of a metal ball racketing through the slots of a roulette wheel before coming to a silent halt.
Sam got down from his horse and secured several animals in the line to a hitching post, enough to anchor the entire string and ensure they would not go wandering off.
He went to Bill Longley in the travois. Yellow-brown light from the saloon washed over the youth. He looked gaunt, haggard. The hollows of his eyes and cheeks were thickly shadowed. His mouth gaped open.
Sam wondered if Bill had passed out. But in the dark blots of their sockets his eyes were open, intent.
“Where are we?” Bill’s words came as a harsh croak. He took a deep breath, swallowed hard. His voice sounded stronger, clearer on his second try as he asked.
“This is the end of the line for you, the Golden Spur Saloon in Hangtree,” Sam said. “It’s owned by Damon Bolt, a friend of Johnny Cross.”
It was that last that did it, the name of Johnny Cross. Bill summoned up his willpower, making a conscious effort to fight through the strength-sapping fires of the fever racking him.
“You knew ! You knew all the time,” Bill accused. “How?”
“You told me,” Sam said gently.
“I never,” Bill began.
“You told me last night, during a break in the height of your fever.”
“I don’t remember.” Bill rubbed his face with his hands. “I couldn’t tell the dreams—the nightmares—from what was real. Come morning it was all a jumble in my head.”
“You didn’t say anything discreditable, just that you had a message for Cross you had to deliver. Matter of life and death, you said. It happens that Johnny Cross and I are acquainted. We’ve done some work together,” Sam said.
Killing work, he thought but didn’t say. He didn’t have t
o. Bill got the idea, Sam could tell by the look on his face. Simple logic, really. There was only one kind of work on which Johnny Cross and Sam Heller were likely to find common ground.
“Johnny and you . . . a Yankee? Hard to believe!” Bill said, shaking his head.
“Why not? The war’s over,” Sam said.
“Says who?”
“Robert E. Lee, at Appomattox in sixty-five. That ought to be good enough for even the most stubborn of you diehards.”
But even as he said it, Sam knew it was a long way off from being generally accepted by the embittered Southrons, Bill Longley very much included.
“I’m going inside to find Damon Bolt and tell him what it’s all about. Once I’ve got you squared away I’m going to send a messenger out to Cross Ranch to tell Johnny you’re here,” Sam said.
He was in a hurry to get things moving. He turned, preparing to start into the saloon when Bill thrust out an imploring hand and cried, “Wait!”
Sam paused in midstride, arrested by the urgency in the other’s voice. Bill motioned for Sam to lean in closer. Sam did so.
Bill had the air of one with something confidential to say. Sam tilted his head, putting an ear close to Bill’s mouth so he alone could hear.
“For God’s sake get me out of this thing!” Bill said, his voice hushed, urgent. “Don’t leave me lying here looking like a damned fool!”
“All right,” Sam said solemnly, indicating he understood the gravity of the situation. And he did.
Bill Longley regarded himself first and foremost as a Southern gentleman and would do what he had to do to maintain that hard-won status, that precious sense of self. It was part of an unwritten Code of Conduct.
To be a gentleman, to hold oneself as such and to be so regarded by one’s peers, was literally a matter of life and death. A gentleman did not allow himself to be cheated, insulted, made a fool of, to have one’s dignity or honor impugned—these were literally killing matters, worth fighting and dying for.
To be secured in the travois in the wilderness was a matter of enduring an uncomfortable situation to save one’s life.
But to arrive in a new town, a Texas town, a stranger, to be on public display in a conveyance associated with “squaws and sick old men,” as Bill had earlier so witheringly described it, would be to undergo extreme humiliation.
To play the fool, gawked and jeered at by passersby in the street, would be well nigh unendurable.
Ridiculous? To an outsider it was, but Sam Heller understood. He’d often found absurd some of the touchy pretensions of these hypersensitive Southern gentlemen, ever alert for a slight or insult to their honor.
Yet was he so different? There were certain insults to his sense of rightness that he could not abide and was ever ready to take up arms to wipe out said offense in spilled blood—
No, Sam understood the likes of Bill Longley and his kind all too well.
Sam took Bill’s good right arm over the elbow, helping the other to his feet, half-lifting him out of the travois. Sam was a powerful man with great bodily strength, so it took no real effort for him to hustle Bill up the wooden stairs accessing the boardwalk sidewalk fronting the Golden Spur.
Several wicker armchairs, high backed and deep seated, were lined up along the wall to one side of the entrance, for the use and convenience of patrons who might wish to enjoy a social glass of beer or spirits or simply pass the time while enjoying the outside air and the passing parade.
This being the dinner hour, the chairs were empty. Sam eased Bill into the middle chair. A shaded window was above and behind the chairs. In the rich bronze light shining through the glass, Bill could be seen sitting huddled in the chair, white lipped and trembling from the strain of being moved. He was fighting to show no sign of weakness or give vent to his sufferings aloud.
For this, too, was part of the Code.
Low voiced, discreet, careful to make no fuss that would draw undue attention to Bill and himself, Sam asked, “How you making it?”
“Better now—that I’m sitting up. Damned near busted my tailbone in that blamed carryall,” Bill said tightly.
“You can joke. Good. Sit tight, I’ll be right back,” Sam said.
“I’ll be here.”
“Make sure nobody steals the horses.”
“I couldn’t stop them from stealing me!”
“Well, try.”
Sam Heller went into the Golden Spur Saloon, batwing doors swinging shut behind him.
Bill let out the breath he’d been holding. He was hurting. He rested the back of his head against the top of the chair and closed his eyes . . .
* * *
“Longley, Longley!”
Bill didn’t remember falling asleep but the next thing he knew, he was being gently shaken awake by Sam Heller.
Bill opened his eyes. A group of people was gathered around the chair in which he sat.
There was a gambling man with jet-black hair and mustache, clad in a dark brown velour jacket and a maroon cravat. Standing beside him, holding on to his arm, was a lean woman with brick-red hair in a green dress. Her long horsey face was saved from plainness by bright green eyes and a vivid red-painted mouth.
There was a large-sized barkeep, his curly hair parted in the middle, and a small neat black-clad man, who wore the green visor shade of a house card dealer, and was pale with long-fingered hands.
Sam handled the introductions, brief though they were. “Damon Bolt and Mrs. Frye, owners of the Golden Spur,” he said, indicating the couple.
“And these two stalwarts are Mr. Morrissey and Ace-High”—the barkeep and the card dealer, respectively.
“Pleased to meet you,” Bill murmured.
Morrissey and Ace-High helped Bill to his feet, shaky and unsteady though he was on them. They held him, keeping him upright. Sam had one last surprise for Bill. He held a gunbelt with two holstered guns. “These are yours, Bill, the ones you had at the basin,” he said. “They’re not loaded, so don’t get any ideas.”
“I’ll hold them,” Damon Bolt said.
Sam handed the guns to him. “I’ve done my bit. I’ll leave Mr. Longley in your care.”
“I sent for Doc Ferguson,” Mrs. Frye said.
“Good.” Sam turned to Bill Longley. “You made it to Hangtree. Congratulations,” he said, starting to move off.
“Hey, Billy Yank!” Bill called.
Sam paused, looking back at him.
“Thanks,” Bill Longley said.
“Anytime, Reb.” Sam gave him a two-finger salute and went down the wooden front steps to the horses.
“Let’s get him inside,” Mrs. Frye said.
Morrissey and Ace-High started to steer Bill to the front entrance. Bill dug in his heels, drew himself up straight, “I can do it by myself.”
Morrissey and Ace-High let go of him. Smiling jauntily, Bill took a step forward. His eyes rolled up in his head, showing only the whites. Bill shut down, blackness felling him like a scythe. He was falling before he knew what hit him.
Morrissey caught him before he hit the veranda. He scooped up Bill in his brawny arms, holding him as easily as if he had been a sleeping child. Morrissey carried Bill through the swinging doors into the saloon, the others following.
“Put him in one of the guest rooms upstairs,” Mrs. Frye said. “He’ll like that.”
Two drunks who’d been thrown out of a saloon on the next block over came staggering along Trail Street, pausing in front of the Golden Spur. They were as plastered as two boiled owls, leaning on each other for support. They watched as Morrissey caught up Bill and carried him into the saloon.
“There’s something you don’t see every day,” one drunk said.
“What’s that?” queried the other.
“I’ve seen plenty of them carried out like that, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen one carried in!”
EIGHTEEN
Johnny Cross went into the Golden Spur Saloon. It was mid-afternoon of the second day
after the night Bill Longley came to town.
Bill was just about the last person Johnny expected to encounter in his hometown of Hangtree, Texas. The last time he’d seen Bill had been almost two years ago in Halftown in Moraine County on the Blacksnake River. They’d both been riding then with Cullen Baker’s gang. That had been a bad time in Johnny’s young life, a low point. He’d been drinking too much, brooding too hard, and shooting too quick. And the Blacksnake had been pure hell.
Johnny hated the swamplands. You wouldn’t think that a patch of East Texas near the Sabine River and the Gulf of Mexico could be so much like the Louisiana bayou country.
It had all the disadvantages of a swamp—heat, humidity, mud, insects, gators, venomous snakes—and none of the attractions of the Louisiana bayou such as good food and drink, good times, and good-looking gals who were sweet and willing.
It was what the Blacksnake country didn’t have that made it attractive: lawmen. It didn’t have lawmen. No federal occupation troops, U.S. Navy patrols, National Police Bureau detectives, federal marshal fugitive chasers, Pinkerton men and suchlike, and damned few Home Guards, vigilance committees, bounty hunters, and organized networks of paid informants.
None of them wanted to go into those trackless swamplands with their intricate mazes of rivers, lakes, bayous, and back channels so useful for hiding out and evading man-hunters; roads and trails hemmed in by abundant jungle foliage so advantageous for bushwhackers and ambushers; and their bogs, marshes, and sinkholes so handy for hiding bodies so they’d never be found, no, not in a thousand years.
Johnny Cross had appreciated those features of the Blacksnake River country then, for he’d been a Wanted man, a most Wanted man.
He had ridden with Quantrill’s guerrilla raiders for practically the duration of the war, and the members of that band had specifically been denied amnesty after the surrender at Appomattox but instead had been posted with open warrants with no expiration dates or statutes of limitation on them.
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