Ralph Compton Blood on the Gallows

by Joseph A. West

  That was McBride’s second shock of the day, and he was about to get a third. ‘‘When did this happen?’’ he asked.

  ‘‘Six days ago,’’ Gravett answered. Then with subtle emphasis, ‘‘The day I found you shot on the trail.’’

  The man’s accusing tone cut McBride like a knife. ‘‘I didn’t kill Hemp O’Neil. I was shot by Thad Harlan after some Mexicans broke me out of his jail in Rest and Be Thankful. He was planning to hang me.’’

  ‘‘Hang you? Why would he do a thing like that?’’

  ‘‘Because I broke Lance Josephine’s nose, that’s why.’’

  To McBride’s surprise, Gravett threw back his head and laughed. ‘‘Man, oh man, I would have loved to see that.’’ He squatted on his heels beside McBride, still grinning. ‘‘The day after Hemp was killed and I found you, I shot a deer over to Escondido Creek. I was skinning it out when Harlan, Lance Josephine and his pa rode up on me. They had maybe a dozen men with them. I recognized all of those boys, every man jack of them an outlaw and all of them slick with the iron. At the time I wondered about the plaster across young Lance’s nose, but I didn’t reckon it was my place to ask how it happened.

  ‘‘Well, anyhoo, Jared Josephine had a new hemp rope hanging from his saddle horn and it was him who did the talking. First he asked me if I’d seen a man answering your description. Then says he, ‘For I mean to hang him before this day is done.’

  ‘‘Says I, ‘What did this man do, if I come acrost him, like?’ And Jared says, ‘By God, sir, he murdered harmless old Hemp O’Neil and maybe his daughter, my son’s intended.’ ’’

  McBride jerked bolt upright. ‘‘Clare is—’’

  ‘‘Missing. That’s all I know.’’

  It took a while for McBride to untangle his conflicting emotions; then he asked, ‘‘Why didn’t you turn me in, Luke?’’

  Behind Gravett his woman slowly stirred the bubbling cooking pot with a horn spoon, and the smell of stewing venison made McBride’s stomach rumble.

  ‘‘For starters, I didn’t think you were going to make it,’’ the man said. ‘‘And I didn’t reckon there was any merit to the idea of dragging a dying man out of a cave and stringing him up. And then there’s the fact that I don’t care too much for Lance Josephine. He killed a man I knew.

  ‘‘Now, this feller wasn’t what you’d call a pleasant man and he was mean as a snake in drink, but he had sand and saved my life once, helped me fight off a passel of Utes that was after my hair. Mean and ornery he might have been, but he didn’t deserve to die with his beard in the sawdust and Lance Josephine standing over him, a smoking gun in his hand and a grin on his face.’’ Gravett thought about that for a few moments, then added, ‘‘He sure didn’t, no.’’

  ‘‘Do you think I killed Hemp O’Neil?’’

  ‘‘I wasn’t sure at first. But then your face told me all I needed to know, especially when I told you what Jared Josephine said about Clare maybe being dead.’’ Gravett rose to his feet. ‘‘No, John McBride, I don’t think you murdered the old man.’’ He smiled. ‘‘For what that’s worth.’’

  ‘‘Lance wants the O’Neil ranch. After our fight in Deadman Canyon he could have headed for the place, killed Hemp and waited for Clare to arrive.’’ McBride shivered in the cold of the cave. ‘‘That man who saved you from the Utes, well, Clare did that for me. She killed one of Harlan’s men and drove off the rest, including Josephine.’’

  ‘‘Why did she do that?’’

  ‘‘She figured she owed me since I stopped Lance abusing her in the dining room of the Kip and Kettle Hotel back in Rest and Be Thankful. He was demanding that she marry him.’’

  ‘‘That’s when you broke his nose?’’

  ‘‘Yes. It was then.’’

  ‘‘Lance is good with a gun—apart from Thad Harlan, maybe the best around. How come you didn’t get yourself shot?’’

  ‘‘Just lucky, I guess.’’

  ‘‘With that kind of luck, you’re a man to ride the trail with.’’ Gravett smiled. Then a frown gathered on his forehead. ‘‘At least until it runs out.’’

  Chapter 14

  The Tonto woman brought McBride a bowl of food, a stew of venison, corn and beans, swimming with wild onions. He ate that bowl, then another and felt stronger. Gravett had been headed for Lincoln and although the man did not voice a word of complaint, McBride knew his presence was keeping him and his woman at the cave. He had to get on his feet and become less of a burden.

  The following morning he dressed himself, left the cave while Gravett and the woman were still asleep and filled the coffeepot from a natural tank in the lava that had collected rainwater.

  His side was still raw and sore, but he felt better, well enough to ride a horse. At least, so he hoped.

  To the west, the cinder cone of Sunset Crater was outlined against a cheerless gray sky, the pines on its lower slopes just visible. Here the lava flow was as tall as a man on a horse, its top crested with piñon, juniper and bunchgrass. The coffeepot in his hand, McBride looked over to the cave, formed, he guessed, when the moving lava cooled, ground to a halt and formed a crust. The red-hot magma underneath continued to flow and had drained away, creating caves of varying depths.

  The black, broken lava field seemed a bleak, inhospitable place for animals, but on his short walk to the water tank, McBride saw a lizard, a running jackrabbit and watched blue jays quarrel in the trees.

  In a vaguely comforting way, to McBride the flourishing flora and fauna of the hostile malpais were a reaffirmation of life. And with that thought came the notion that all existence is a struggle, a series of crises that have to be faced and overcome.

  He had thought to run away, telling himself that what happened in Rest and Be Thankful was no concern of his. He’d been wrong. People were depending on him. Clare O’Neil, if she was still alive, needed him. The soul of the dead Mexican boy cried out to him for vengeance and then there was the future. As of now the future victims of Thad Harlan and Jared and Lance Josephine were nameless, faceless shadows, but didn’t he owe it to them to act and change the direction of their fates so that they lived and did not die?

  And what of John McBride?

  He had been made to feel small and insignificant, a nonentity who had dared to defy important and powerful men. He had not been welcome in the town and it had been made clear that none would be sad at his leaving. He had been wrongly thrown in jail, warned that his fate would be the rope and then he’d been hounded and shot by a man who held him in no higher esteem than he would the jackrabbit McBride had seen run across the malpais.

  He hefted the coffeepot in his hand, a tall, wide-shouldered Yankee in worn, shabby clothes, elastic-sided boots and a battered plug hat. A man who had just made up his mind.

  The time for running was over. The time had come to make his stand . . . and fight.

  McBride added some sticks to the fire and placed the coffeepot on the coals. Gravett and his woman were still asleep and he went back outside.

  His mustang was grazing with Gravett’s riding horses and pack mule and seemed none the worse for wear. He patted the mustang’s neck and said quietly, ‘‘Ready to ride, old feller, huh?’’

  The little horse went back to grazing, giving no indication that he was or wasn’t, and McBride smiled and walked to the cave through a sudden, windblown rain.

  ‘‘Why would Lance Josephine and his father want old Hemp’s place?’’ Gravett asked. He and McBride were squatting by the fire drinking coffee. Outside, the day was gray, the morning shadows long and deep. The man attempted to answer his own question. ‘‘It’s a two-by-twice ranch with a run-down cabin and maybe fifty cows on poor grass. There’s better land for the taking anywhere around here.’’ Gravett’s brow furrowed in thought; then, as though he realized he could find no answer, he admitted, ‘‘I just can’t figure it.’’

  ‘‘Me neither,’’ McBride said. ‘‘That’s why I intend to ride out that way today. Maybe I can disco
ver what makes the place so damn special.’’

  ‘‘You sure you want to do that? Your wound still has a power of healing to do.’’

  ‘‘I’m beholden to you and your lady for saving my life, Luke. But I’ve imposed on you long enough. I have to be riding on.’’

  ‘‘You’re going to try and find Clare O’Neil.’’

  ‘‘Yes, that, and other things.’’

  ‘‘And you plan on going up against Thad Harlan and them?’’

  ‘‘I’ve been thinking about it, and I can’t say with much pleasure.’’

  Gravett placed his cup on the ground; then his hand moved in a blur of motion and McBride found himself looking into the muzzle of the man’s .45.

  ‘‘Can you do that?’’ Gravett asked. ‘‘Only a tad faster?’’

  ‘‘No. Not on my best day.’’

  ‘‘Then you best leave Harlan alone.’’ The Colt spun and thudded back into the holster. ‘‘Them’s words of wisdom. Or warning. Take them however you like.’’

  McBride smiled and shook his head. ‘‘Words of wisdom, Luke. But I’ve got it to do.’’

  ‘‘Then God help you.’’

  McBride rose to his feet and crossed the floor of the cave. He shrugged into his slicker, shoved his revolver into the waistband of his pants and picked up his rifle.

  ‘‘How are you fixed for money?’’ Gravett asked. ‘‘I don’t have much but—’’

  ‘‘I’ll make out. Thanks.’’

  ‘‘Then at least let me saddle your horse.’’

  McBride stepped to the Tonto woman, who had her head bent, busy with a needle, repairing a small tear in her deerskin dress.

  ‘‘She won’t look at you, John,’’ Gravett said. ‘‘Apaches don’t have a word for good-bye.’’

  ‘‘Then tell her . . . tell her I’m grateful.’’

  ‘‘She knows that already, but I’ll tell her anyway.’’

  Luke Gravett stood in the rain, watching McBride climb awkwardly into the saddle, a faint smile playing around the corners of his mouth. ‘‘Where you from, John? I mean originally. Somewhere back East, I reckon.’’

  ‘‘Yes. New York City.’’

  Gravett nodded. ‘‘That figures.’’

  McBride felt the need to defend himself. ‘‘I never rode a horse until I came west.’’

  ‘‘You don’t ride a horse now. You just kinda perch on it like a big grizzly bear.’’

  McBride smiled and touched the brim of his hat. ‘‘Thanks for everything, Luke. Vaya con Dios, mi amigo.’’

  ‘‘You too. Ride easy, John McBride.’’

  The gloom of the morning crowding close, McBride headed northwest, in the direction of the rise where he’d fallen off his horse. Clare had said her father’s place was just over the ridge and he planned to comb every inch of it. What was Lance Josephine after? And had he killed Hemp O’Neil to get it?

  The answers had to be somewhere on the ranch—and within them could lie the key to destroying the man and all the evil he and his father stood for.

  Chapter 15

  John McBride topped the ridge where he’d last seen Clare O’Neil, and his eyes reached into the vast, empty land around him. The wind was shifting, restless, driving the racketing rain in one direction, a moment later in another. The aspen on the downward slope of the rise tossed their branches in an abandoned, frantic dance as though worshipping the dark clouds that scudded across the gray sky.

  McBride pulled the collar of his slicker closer around his neck and kicked the mustang into motion. The rise dropped gradually to a grassy flat, studded with rocks and stands of prickly pear. Ahead of him lay a narrow creek, bordered by cottonwood and willow, and through their heaving branches he made out the outline of a cabin and a few other buildings. In the distance, McBride estimated two or three miles away, but realized it could be farther, another volcanic malpais smeared across the horizon like a smudged black pencil line.

  McBride stopped the mustang a few yards from the fast-rushing creek. He studied the cabin, almost lost behind tree foliage and rain, a strange wariness in him he could not explain. He sensed another human presence. Close by. Waiting. The reassuring weight of the Colt in his waistband brought him a measure of comfort, but he looked on the cabin without pleasure.

  Was he about to walk into a carefully laid trap?

  He shook his head. No. That was impossible. The only person who knew he was here was Luke Gravett and he would not have told anyone. Of course, there was always the possibility that Lance Josephine had returned to the scene of the crime. Even now the man could be riding the boundaries of a ranch he had gained by murder.

  The old, answered question sprang into McBride’s head: why did Josephine want the place?

  To the east rose the rugged escarpment of the Capitan Mountains, to the north and west lava beds that were of value to no one. Broken, hilly country rolled away for miles to the south, cut through by deep canyons and treacherous stretches of thin-crusted lava rock. The cabin itself was fairly large and well built. Four windows showed to the front and a brick chimney rose at each end of the steeply pitched roof.

  But again, why had Lance Josephine, a creature of towns and what they represented, set his sights on this place? Why did he want it bad enough to kill for it?

  McBride shook his head, the answer as elusive as ever.

  He kneed the mustang across the creek, then rode through the trees. Only then did he see the spanking-new surrey outside the cabin, an expensive Morgan in the traces.

  It was unlikely that either Josephine or Thad Harlan would drive a surrey to the ranch, but McBride was suddenly on edge. He stepped out of the saddle and pulled the Colt from his waistband. On silent feet he walked to the cabin. The door was ajar and he pushed it open with the muzzle of his revolver. He heard no sound inside but for the slow tick of a clock.

  Then a woman’s voice, one he had heard before. ‘‘Step right in, Mr. McBride. I won’t bite you. Where’s your cat?’’

  The door led into a long hallway, several rooms opening to it on each side. McBride stepped along the corridor, his feet silent on carpet, his gun up and ready, hammer thumbed back.

  ‘‘In here. Second door on the left.’’

  McBride stood to the side of the door and glanced inside. Denver Dora Ryan was sitting in a rocker in what must have been the O’Neil parlor. She had a china cup and saucer in her hand as she looked at McBride and smiled, her perfume, warmed by her body, reaching out to him like the sweet breath of an angel.

  McBride let down the hammer of the Colt and shoved the gun into his pants. ‘‘What are you doing here, Miss Ryan?’’

  ‘‘I could ask you the same thing, Mr. McBride.’’

  The big man decided to give it to her straight. ‘‘I’m trying to find out what makes this ranch so important to Lance Josephine.’’

  ‘‘Nothing. This cabin, a few head of cattle, some grass, the rest sand and cactus.’’

  ‘‘Then why does he want it?’’

  ‘‘Does he want it? The word in town is that you shot old man O’Neil and abducted his daughter. Lance is telling everybody you want this place and the girl that goes with it.’’