Hart the Regulator 1

by John B. Harvey

  Hart glanced at the marshal again. ‘I shouldn’t like to say, judge. Just having taken on the job a few weeks back.’

  Judge Parker smiled. ‘Very well, Hart. Perhaps I shouldn’t have put you on the spot like that. And it’s heartening to see that you’re unwilling to say anything that might clash with the views of your superior here. Loyalty is a fine feeling and should be cherished. Yes.’

  He drank the remainder of his sherry and got up to refill his glass; he offered more to the two lawmen, who both refused, Hart looked at him again as he stood by the rosewood table with its inlaid leather top, row upon row of bound law books reaching up to the ceiling behind him.

  Shorter than Hart, the judge stood erect with only a suggestion of a spreading stomach due to too much good living and too long a time spent sitting in his courtroom chair. He wore a neatly trimmed moustache and a goatee beard, the sides of which extended into twin points. When he returned Hart’s gaze his eyes were a brighter blue than Hart’s own and more piercing.

  ‘You are to be congratulated, I hear,’ he said. ‘You handled a difficult situation well.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  The judge smiled as he sat down. ‘As for any capital this villain may try to make out of what took place between yourself and Belle Starr, I think we can safely assume that counsel for the prosecution will show that up as a tissue of rather desperate lies.’

  The room fell silent; somewhere the muffled ticking of a clock.

  ‘You had an encounter with the Indians, I believe?’ said Judge Parker after a short while.

  Hart nodded.

  ‘And were wounded.’

  ‘Weren’t nothin’. Knife opened the skin on my leg a little is all.’

  The judge smiled, tight-lipped. ‘The savages have been running wild in that part of the territory. We had a report from...where was it, marshal?...yes, Cimarron way. Raids on homesteads, ranches, settlements even.’

  He stopped, seeing the concern in Hart’s face.

  ‘You got a special interest in that area, Hart?’

  Hart hesitated, shrugged. ‘Stillwater was where I met up with the marshal. Where he swore me in.’

  ‘I see. Nothing more than that?’

  Hart evaded the question and asked another. ‘These places that were attacked—you got any details?’

  The judge shook his head: ‘Nothing more than a general picture.’

  Hart sat back in his chair, saying nothing more. Judge Parker and Marshal Fagan talked about the possibility of persuading a detachment of cavalry to make a sweep through the area. All the time Hart’s mind ran with thoughts of the Peterson place and the trees at the back of it, closing it in. Dark, tall. He heard the call of a night bird that was not the call of a night bird. Saw Carol Peterson’s face.

  ‘One other thing gives me some cause for concern.’ Hart realized the judge was speaking to him. ‘The marshal says you think we should deal leniently with this other outlaw that you brought in, this young Drew.’ Parker intertwined his long, white fingers. ‘Frankly, you surprise me. Disappoint me, even.’

  ‘I’m sorry, judge, but I...’

  ‘To risk your life in capturing two men such as these and then be willing to see one of them go free after merely a few years in jail so that he can return to a life of violence and crime.’

  The judge stared at Hart, leaving the rest of the sentence unspoken.

  ‘I don’t think you can class them together like you’re doin’ that’s all. That boy...’ Hart leaned forward, pointed. ‘Look, I rode with the Rangers down in Texas. That wasn’t no soft outfit, We didn’t have no legal system the way you’ve got it here, not all the time we didn’t. I ain’t afraid of killin’ a man if he needs killin’. What I’m sayin’ is that boy’s no more’n a damned fool. He wants his britches pulled down an’ his rear let into with a stick. That’d keep him from strayin’ again.’

  Judge Parker’s face seemed frozen; elbows on the ends of the chair, his fingers touched at the tips. He waited a moment after Hart had finished, as if controlling himself inwardly.

  ‘The trouble with that attitude is that it achieves the opposite of what it claims to be doing. Instead of dispensing with criminals in our society it creates them. It’s not far removed from the thoughts of the do-gooders who seek to reform prisoners through their acts of supposed kindness.

  ‘Women like my own wife go down into that basement prison across town and soil themselves with the language of outlaws, the smell and stench of sweat and urine, so as to bring them comfort. And how would those men react if for an instant they were unchained? I’ll tell you what you probably already know they would attack any of those misguided females, rape and defile them and make their escape back to the lives we have lifted them from.’

  The long fingers pressed hard together, then relaxed. Above them the eyes in the still head were bluer, more piercing than ever.

  The judge stood up and walked to the shelves behind his desk, taking down a leather-bound Bible and opening it with little flicking of pages.

  He stood with one hand behind his back, looking first at Hart and then at Fagan.

  ‘It says in the Book of Psalms, “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.”’ The judge looked up from the Bible, knowing the words by heart, his voice resounding now, eyes fiery as if he was addressing a crowded court, a congregation.

  “For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish!”’

  He slammed the Bible shut. ‘Perish! The ungodly shall perish. Those are the words of God and it is my sworn duty to see that they are carried out.’ He pointed at Hart. ‘You may take my word for it, those two will hang!’

  Chapter Fourteen

  George Maledon stood stark naked in the scullery of the small house that had been handed over to him rent-free when he gave up his job as deputy U.S. marshal and became Judge Parker’s official hangman.

  He scooped freshly drawn water from the tin bowl up into his face and round his neck, splashing it over his chest and shoulders, letting it run down his back and collect in pools on the floor. He bent down and washed between his legs, the legs themselves, his feet and then again his face. Maledon stood away from the bowl, water dripping from every part of his body.

  He was a small man, thin, his chest caved in between ribs that showed their lines clearly through his pale skin. His legs bent inwards at the knees and, like his arms, were tightly muscled and free from any hint of surplus flesh. His high-domed forehead bulged outwards above sunken eyes. The hair on his head was grey and thinning, the wet, straggly moustache and beard that fell well below his neck was almost white. Apart from that there was not another hair on his body.

  The hangman rubbed himself dry with a towel and went through into the other room to get dressed. He selected his clothes with care, buttoning up the new pepper grey suit he had bought less than a month before. It looked a size too large, making Maledon himself appear shrunken inside it.

  He went up the stairs and opened the door to the single room. The bare boards on the floor were varnished and recently polished; the walls painted white. There was no furniture in the room. Wooden pegs had been hammered into the walls at regular intervals and from each of these hung coiled lengths of rope. Kentucky hemp shipped all the way from St Louis. The most expensive rope he could buy.

  Each length had been stretched with sandbags until it was an inch thick, no more and no less. It had been oiled and oiled until it shone dully.

  Maledon went over to the far wall and touched one of the ropes: stroked it. He lifted it from the peg, thought, selected another. With one length over each shoulder he went back down the stairs and out into the street. It was still short of daylight and there was no one about, only a dog that scrambled up from where it had been lying on the sidewalk opposite and hurried off, its tail between its legs.

  The hangman climbed the steps up on to
the twenty-foot-high platform and set down one coil of rope. He took up a ladder and set it against the thick oak crossbeam, going up to fix the first noose in place. That done, he moved the ladder along and attached the second.

  Carefully, he tied sandbags to the bottom curve of each noose. Then he leaned his body against the supports of the beam overhead. Maledon went back down the dozen steps from the twenty-foot-high platform and oiled the hinges on the trap doors, operating them several times manually.

  Satisfied, the hangman moved over to the wooden trigger arm and grasped it with his left hand. In his head he counted down from six seconds. On the word six he pulled the lever back hard and fast. The doors fell open as two two-hundred pound sandbags dropped through, bouncing, bounding, only gradually becoming still.

  Maledon waited before untying them and returning both trapdoors and ropes to their previous position. When he walked back along the street towards his house a boy in bare feet was hurrying along with copies of The Fort Smith Independent. To the east the sun was rising like a pale yellow ghost.

  ‘Potatoes! Hot potatoes!’

  ‘Salt beef! Salt beef!’

  ‘Potatoes!’

  ‘Paper! Paper! Get your paper!’

  ‘Souvenirs! Buy one for the children. Real working models.’ The man lifted one of the toys from his broad tray and held it up; he pulled a little switch and the washing peg figure of a man, his neck encircled with string, fell flimsily through the miniature trap door.

  ‘Take one home for the kids! Get one now!’

  ‘Salt beef!’

  ‘Hot potatoes!’

  Hart pushed his way through the crowd, looking neither to right nor left but only at the scaffold at the far side of the square. People were standing forty or fifty deep on three sides of it« others had spread themselves out all over the grass, even up to the steps to the courthouse. For the most part they sat in small circles, turned in upon themselves, groups of women, some with their children, babies held in their arms. Elsewhere there were whole families, picnicking.

  The few that noticed Hart nudged one another as he went past. They commented in lowered voices on the pearl-handled butt of the gun at his hip, on the Indian blanket that was folded over his left shoulder, on the look of concentration in his eyes.

  ‘That’s him!’ called one man excitedly to his friend. ‘That’s the one who brought ‘em in. He’s come to see it finished. Come to see ‘em swing.’

  Hart heard the man and stopped, turned. Immediately the speaker shut up, hand to his mouth, and began backing away. Hart went for him fast, grabbing at the front of his plaid vest and pulling the frightened man towards him.

  ‘Marshal, I didn’t mean to speak out of turn. Honest. I ... you did... I mean...’

  For a moment he thought Hart might be about to use his gun. But instead the deputy tightened his grip until the man was pressed hard against him and then straightened his arm, sending the man sprawling across the grass.

  Several onlookers gave a shout but the noise was immediately swallowed up in a far greater clamor which announced the arrival of the two condemned prisoners, along the way from the jail.

  Hart turned his back and hurried through the crowds to the edge of the square.

  Dury and Drew were standing in the back of an open wagon, their wrists handcuffed behind their backs. Behind them stood a deputy marshal armed with a shotgun. Two other deputies were up front, one driving, the other pointing a rifle back behind the seat. Marshal Fagan rode behind the wagon, his battered Stetson set to one side and his buckskin coat open and hanging wide of his gun belt. He spotted Hart and nodded curtly in his direction, looking away again almost immediately.

  Inside the wagon Dury had noticed Hart too. He threw back his head and yelled at the top of his voice, calling Hart every cursed thing he could think of. The deputy standing by him brought the shotgun round and struck the butt of it into the back of Dury’s ribs, making him drop heavily to his knees. He went on shouting till the man hit him round the head several times as well. By then the crowd had surged round the wagon, drowning Dury’s curses with their own.

  Women jeered Dury, as he knelt forward, a cut opened at the back of his head. Some of them spat at him, trails of phlegm running through the lank strands of black hair, dribbling down his face. The men called out and threw punches. Children tried to clamber up on to the wagon and the guards pushed them away.

  During all this Drew stood with his eyes clenched tightly shut, arms pushed straight behind him; under his curly brown hair his face was white as alabaster.

  ‘Hang ‘em!’ The cry soared jagged-edged above the crowd.

  ‘Hang ’em! Hang ’em!’

  Within minutes the chant had been taken up by so many of the spectators that it drowned the calls of those with things to sell. Mothers sitting on the grass bounced their babies on their knees to the rhythm.

  ‘Hang ‘em! Hang ‘em! Hang ‘em!’

  ‘Mister! Mister! You really the one as brung ‘em in?’

  The boy clutching at Hart’s sleeve was ten, maybe eleven. His eyes shone with excitement.

  ‘Can I touch your gun? Can I, mister? Can I touch it? Just the butt of it. So I can tell...’

  Hart pushed him away, turning fast. As he did so the adrenalin in his body surged; the short hairs at the back of his neck and along the backs of his arms tingled. Through the crowd, forty yards off, a glimpse of a face that he half-recognized.

  Hart’s mind raced. Who? Where? Where?

  He began to elbow his way through the crowd, people pushing back at him, telling him to keep his place like everyone else. And then they would catch sight of the star pinned to his vest and the look in his faded blue eyes and move aside quickly, nervously, their protests dead on their lips.

  Hart glanced towards the scaffold as an almighty cheer went up and he saw that both Dury and Drew had been led up on to the platform, guards standing at either side of them.

  He carried on to the spot where he’d seen the man he thought he recognized but there was no one there that looked like him, not any longer.

  A mistake? No.

  There were so many people, pushing, shouting, moving and he had glimpsed one of those faces for an instant...No. He was sure: it was a man he knew. Had known. But who? Hart tried to think as the crowd about him went wild with the sight of the small, bearded figure of George Maledon stepping with precise authority on to the scaffold.

  Then it was Judge Parker, stepping forward and raising both hands for silence, standing in front of the two condemned men.

  Gradually the mob quietened down until there was only the occasional whispered remark, the whine of a young child.

  ‘Citizens. Friends. Once again it is my duty to stand before you on the occasion of the awesome spectacle of execution. These criminals you see behind me have been sentenced by this court to the ultimate penalty. The penalty for refusing to live by the laws that you and I hold dear to us. The laws that are designed to enable us all to live as we would wish. To live a life of hard work and industry and to be able to enjoy the fruits of those labors with our families and loved ones.’

  Judge Parker gestured towards the center of the crowd. ‘Let us be thankful for the work of those brave men, sworn officers of the law, who risk their own lives to bring vicious criminals such as these to justice. And who do it so that our lives and our property will not be endangered.’

  On all sides of Hart a roar of approval went up.

  The judge raised both hands again.

  ‘Friends. I would ask you to join me in a minute of silent prayer for the souls of these two men who are about to pay the penalty for their crimes.’

  He joined his hands together away from his chest and lifted his face to the sky, eyes closed. The mob was quiet for a short time then people began to fidget and murmur, murmur and talk. Just as the noise was spreading to the point where it could no longer be ignored or contained, the judge opened his eyes, lowered his hands and said ‘Amen.’


  Immediately the jostling and shouting began again in earnest and Hart found himself pushed even closer to the scaffold. He could see the fear in Drew’s eyes, the boy’s face looking younger than ever. For a moment Hart wondered about the boy’s parents, about his father...

  ‘Let’s see them bastards swingin’!’

  ‘Yeah! Come on! What you waitin’ for?’

  Maledon stepped up behind Drew, a black cotton hood in his left hand. He reached up and held the hood above the boy’s head, opening it wide and then slipping it down.

  A whoop rang out from someone to Hart’s right. Hart looked around, searching the faces again and seeing no one that he knew—only Judge Parker and Marshal Fagan, who were standing together at the bottom of the scaffold steps, staring up.

  George Maledon started to drop the second hood over Dury and the big man twisted his bull-like neck this way and that, making it impossible. The nearest guard thrust the barrel ends of a shotgun hard into Dury’s stomach and shouted for him to keep his goddamned head still. Dury said something which made the guard bring back the weapon and then sink it hard into the prisoner’s belly. When Dury bent forward in pain, Maledon came adroitly round and dropped the hood into place.

  The hangman nodded at the guards and began to move away off the platform. Each guard picked up a short length of rope and quickly bound it round the men’s legs, just above the ankles. Dury tried to kick out but, hooded, he was too aimless and slow.

  The guards went to either end of the platform.

  The crowd noise rose towards a crescendo that made Hart want to put his hands to his ears: a solid slab of sound.

  Out of sight of everyone except Judge Parker and the marshal, Maledon gripped the lever tightly, his sunken eyes fixed on the two trap doors that were to swing open.

  Hart’s mouth was dry; the palms of his hands were wet with sweat. His pulse raced.

  Close to him a woman suddenly turned away, putting her back to the spectacle, hands clenched together, eyes closed.