Ralph Compton Blood on the Gallows

by Joseph A. West

  ‘‘Do you believe him?’’

  ‘‘I don’t know what to believe, Mr. McBride.’’ Her eyes lifted to his. ‘‘Can I get you some tea? I believe there’s another cup in the pot.’’

  McBride nodded absently. He followed Dora to the kitchen and set Sammy down on the floor. ‘‘I had some trouble getting a fire started in the stove,’’ she said. ‘‘I’m not very good at it.’’

  ‘‘Neither am I,’’ McBride said. He took the cup the woman proffered to him. ‘‘You still haven’t told me why you’re here.’’

  ‘‘I don’t attend funerals. I came here to honor an old man I liked.’’

  ‘‘Rough drive from town.’’

  ‘‘Maybe. But I’ve driven worse.’’

  McBride took a seat at the kitchen table and tried the tea. It was hot and good. Rain drummed on the slate roof of the cabin and the wind whispered around the eaves. The fire in the stove crackled with a scarlet flame, consuming the last few sticks of firewood. He was very conscious of the woman standing close to him, of the heat from her body and the arrogant upthrust of her full breasts under the tight bodice of her green travel dress. The swell of her hips . . .

  Dora Ryan was, he decided, a beautiful, desirable woman.

  With her female instinct for such things, Dora was aware of McBride’s thoughts and it showed in a slight tug at the corners of her lips. She teased him. ‘‘Right now, Mr. McBride, you look like a fallen god who remembers heaven.’’

  ‘‘It’s that obvious, huh?’’ He felt his cheeks color.

  ‘‘You’re a man. Men are always obvious.’’

  McBride rose to his feet. ‘‘Thanks for the tea. I’m going to take a look around the ranch. That’s what I came here to do.’’

  ‘‘And I am leaving also,’’ Dora said. ‘‘I believe I’ve paid my respects to Hemp.’’

  The woman got her cloak from the parlor and met McBride at the door. She stepped close to him and looked into his face. ‘‘You’ve made a lot of powerful enemies, John McBride, and I don’t know if you’ll even live out the week. But speak to me again. Maybe I’ll be the one to teach you how to reenter paradise.’’

  The promise was there, plain to read in Dora’s face. But it was distant, a thing for the future, like a girl asking a boy she likes to a dance that’s still weeks away. McBride accepted it as such, and put it out of his mind.

  ‘‘Still raining,’’ he said. ‘‘You’ll have a rough ride home.’’

  He helped Dora into the surrey and watched as she took up the ribbons. ‘‘John,’’ she said, ‘‘I don’t believe you killed Hemp O’Neil. I say that for what it’s worth.’’

  McBride smiled and nodded. ‘‘It’s still good to hear.’’

  ‘‘Just don’t put yourself in danger searching for Clare. I think she’s already dead.’’

  ‘‘She saved my life, Dora. I owe her.’’

  The woman’s eyes flecked with quick anger. ‘‘Then you’re a fool.’’

  Only after Dora Ryan’s surrey vanished into distance and rain did McBride consider the strangeness of her being at the ranch. It was a long way from town and the weather was bad. It was an odd way to grieve for a reclusive old man she could rarely have met or gotten to know well. And she’d lit the stove, brewed tea and made herself comfortable in the parlor. Hell, she’d done more than that; she’d made herself right at home, as if she owned the place.

  ‘‘Denver Dora Ryan.’’ McBride said the woman’s name aloud. Then to himself: what exactly did the lady do in Denver?

  That thought led to another, and a plan began to take form in McBride’s mind that pleased him greatly. But for now he was willing to let it go. Like Dora’s promise to him, it was something for the future.

  McBride brushed rainwater off his saddle with the palm of his hand, then climbed into the leather. He swung past the cabin and headed for the O’Neil barn. The door was open and he rode inside. The place had been built well and the slanted roof had kept out most of the rain. There were stalls for eight horses, but all of them were empty. A few pieces of tack and some tools hung on the walls, and the hay-loft was stacked high with bales.

  After one last look around, McBride left the barn, passed the smokehouse and other outbuildings, then rode into open country.

  He found a fresh grave less than a quarter mile from the cabin. The site had been chosen with care, at the bottom of a stepped, sandstone bluff in the break between stands of aspen. There was no marker, but a bunch of wildflowers, now withered, lay on top of the wet, black dirt. The flowers suggested a woman, and McBride had no doubt he was looking at the last resting place of Hemp O’Neil.

  Clare had been alive still after her father’s murder and had taken time to bury him. But where was she now? McBride’s gaze swept the bluff and the land around him, but nothing moved, only the wind-tossed rain and the trembling leaves of the aspen.

  He swung the mustang away from the grave and rode on. Dora Ryan had told him Clare O’Neil was dead, and now he was reluctantly willing to believe her.

  At first McBride had thought there were no cattle on the ranch, but now he began to see white-faced cows in the arroyos and along the numerous narrow creeks that scrawled across the flat. After an hour, he’d counted at least eighty head, including a good-looking bull and a number of what McBride described to himself as ‘‘baby cows.’’

  He had no idea how many cattle a man needed to make a ranch a paying concern, but he guessed there had been enough on the O’Neil range to keep it afloat.

  Was that the reason Lance Josephine wanted it? It seemed unlikely. On any given night the man probably dropped more money at the poker table than the entire place was worth.

  Riding through a day dark with cloud and rain, McBride looped to the north, then swung west toward the foothills of the Capitan Mountains. So far he’d seen nothing on the O’Neil range that Josephine might covet. There was good grass and water along the creeks and in a few arroyos that weren’t clogged with prickly pear and brush. But most of the range consisted of sand and cactus, stands of juniper and piñon growing on the higher elevations.

  McBride reached the foothills, seeing a few more O’Neil cattle. Then, as the heavens opened and the downpour grew heavier, he rode into a narrow arroyo, crouching low to avoid overhanging piñon limbs. He drew rein and sheltered under the trees until the rain lessened, then headed back into the open.

  He’d covered a fair amount of country and had seen nothing that would explain Hemp O’Neil’s murder. A few cattle, some good grass and water and a well-built cabin and barn. It was a good enough spread, but not so valuable a man would kill for it.

  Sitting his horse, McBride looked up at the mountains towering above him. The rocky inclines were green with ponderosa pine, wild oak and Douglas fir and their bare, windswept peaks were lost in the black mist of the sky where lightning flashed. Rain swept in torrents off craggy ridges of rock, violent cataracts that fell for a mile before exploding into cascades of water upon huge boulders lower on the slopes.

  It was a magnificent sight, one that made McBride’s breath catch in his throat. In moments like this, as he witnessed the untamed beauty of the lonely land, he realized how far he’d traveled from the concrete canyons and teeming, fetid alleys of New York. In the city, he had been made aware of his insignificance and isolation, dwarfed by the buildings around him, hostile and menacing monuments to greed that bartered for his very soul.

  But this land reached out and embraced him, made him part of it, one with mountains, the great rivers and the vast plains. It would nurture him for a while and when he was gone it would cover him gently, and soon he would nourish the earth and help the trees, the wildflowers and the grasses grow for those who would come after.

  McBride was not by nature a philosophical man, but on this matter he had the beginnings of belief. It had only been a year, a little more, but already New York and all it stood for was receding into memory.

  He would have vehemently denied it
had anyone suggested such a thing, but Detective Sergeant John McBride, NYPD, was taking his first faltering steps on the way to becoming a man of the West.

  As McBride turned away from the foothills, the dark day was shading into a darker evening. The rain had settled into a steady downpour, but the sage and dwarf juniper flats were white with lightning and the wind was rising.

  It had been in McBride’s mind to head back for the O’Neil place and seek refuge in the barn for the night. To sleep, uninvited, in the cabin would have been a breach of etiquette he would not allow himself to consider.

  But the rain and wind forced him back toward the hills, where there was at least a hope of shelter. The mountains were now lost in darkness, visible only briefly when lightning flickered wetly on their slopes.

  McBride urged the tired mustang toward a break in the hills, where they might find a spot to hole up for the night. He never heard the bullet that sent his horse galloping into the gloom and hurled him tumbling, headlong, from the saddle.

  Chapter 16

  For a few moments John McBride lay stunned on the wet grass, fighting for breath. He had been shot. But where? Apart from the gnawing pain in his side he felt nothing. After a while he moved his arms, then his legs. Finally he sat up, his eyes on the shadowed hills. His Colt was still in his waistband and he drew the revolver. He was waiting for the impact of another bullet and it felt as if ants were crawling all over his skin.

  ‘‘Stay right where you are, mister. Even in the dark I can scatter your brains.’’

  McBride knew that voice. It was Clare O’Neil.

  ‘‘Clare, it’s me! It’s John McBride!’’ He felt a sudden surge of joy and relief.

  A silence followed, so intense McBride felt it drift out of the shadow-scarred hills and surround him. He was aware of the mustang grazing close by, its reins trailing.

  Then, finally, ‘‘John, is it really you? I thought you were dead.’’

  ‘‘It’s me, and alive as ever was.’’ He hesitated. ‘‘Well, more or less.’’

  ‘‘Stand up. Let me get a good look at you.’’ Clare was taking no chance and McBride didn’t blame her for that. He rose to his feet, shoved the Colt back in his pants and said, ‘‘See, it’s really me.’’

  ‘‘Yes, I’d recognize that hat anywhere,’’ Clare said.

  Then she shot him.

  McBride felt a sledgehammer blow to his belly and for a moment he stood still, shocked, leaning into the wind. Then the pain hit him like a mailed fist and he collapsed and mercifully knew no more.

  He dreamed of Bear Miller.

  They were on top of a high mountain, on raw, blue granite swept by a soaring wind. McBride lay on his back, his belly on fire.

  ‘‘Snow’s coming,’’ Bear said. ‘‘Cool you down some, son.’’

  The old man’s long hair shredded over his left shoulder and his blue eyes were like glass. ‘‘You’re shot through and through,’’ he said. ‘‘Didn’t I tell you to ride on?’’

  McBride watched the scarlet sky where vultures glided like kites on the end of strings. ‘‘It was the woman shot me,’’ he said. ‘‘I didn’t expect it, not to be shot in the belly like that.’’

  ‘‘I told you to ride on,’’ Bear said.

  ‘‘You warned me about a woman,’’ McBride said. ‘‘Was Clare the woman?’’

  ‘‘You got woman problems and you’ve got men problems, boy. And you can’t step back from either one.’’

  McBride raised his head. Someone was reeling in the black kites. ‘‘What do I do, Bear, huh? What do I do?’’

  ‘‘You live, that’s what you do.’’

  Bear picked up his Henry rifle. ‘‘I got to be going now.’’

  ‘‘Don’t leave me here,’’ McBride said, panic slashing at him. ‘‘I’m gut shot and I don’t want to be alone on this mountain.’’

  Bear had been walking away, but he stopped and said, ‘‘You climbed it, John. Now you have to get yourself back down to the valley where the grass is green and the air is clean.’’

  The old man stood for a few moments looking down at McBride, smiling, the red sky at his back. Then widening pools of crimson rippled over his body and Bear Miller slowly faded until all that was left was the sky.

  A vulture, flapping like a black blind in a high wind, landed on McBride’s chest, its cold, merciless eyes on his. It squawked; then its head moved, swift as a jackhammer, and the vicious, curved beak stabbed into his belly.

  McBride raised his face to the sky and screamed.

  McBride’s eyes fluttered open. The mustang’s hairy nose was nuzzling his chest, its natural curiosity overcoming its fear of blood’s smell. McBride patted the horse’s muzzle, then pushed its head away. He lay still for a while, wide awake, and let the rain fall on his face. The sky above him was laced with lightning, and thunder growled as it paced among the mountain peaks.

  After a while McBride slid a hand under his slicker and laid it on his belly. The hand came out running with blood and rain. He’d been hit and hit hard and now he needed a place to hide out. Painfully, he struggled to a sitting position, determined to die like a civilized man with his boots off and a roof over his head.

  The mustang was standing a few feet away, head down, its wet hide glistening white in the lightning flashes like a ghost horse. McBride struggled to his feet, and staggered, bent over, to the saddle. He clamped a hand on the horn to support himself and for a few moments clung there, his head on the seat of the saddle, fighting down his pain and exhaustion.

  The pain in his belly didn’t seem so bad, but McBride was not fooled. He had heard what happened to gut-shot men, how they screamed in agony for hours, cursing God, man and the mother who bore them. He was determined that wouldn’t happen to him. When the pain got too bad, he vowed, he’d end it with a bullet.

  After a few tries McBride got his foot in the stirrup. His jaw was tight, the muscles bunched and his labored breath hissed through clenched teeth. He climbed into the saddle, sat for a minute to regroup his failing strength, then swung the mustang toward the O’Neil cabin.

  Clare might be waiting for him with her rifle, but that was a chance he’d have to take. She probably figured he was already dead anyway. She’d told him that most times she hit what she was aiming at. The woman had aimed for his guts, had seen him drop and must believe he was dead. If that was the case, she was right—she had killed him, only he was dying a little more slowly than she’d intended.

  McBride rode into the violent night, bent over in the saddle. He had lost blood he could ill afford from his previous wound and his head spun like a child’s top. Around him the land flared stark white as lightning flashed and the rain threatened to beat him from the saddle. After an hour of painful, jolting misery, he saw the cabin. The place was in darkness, but he looped wide around it and came up on the barn from the north.

  He rode inside, into a dry darkness that held the memory of horses. He climbed out of the leather and swayed dizzily when his feet touched the ground. It took a great deal of effort and most of his waning strength, but McBride unsaddled the mustang and led it to a stall. Staggering now, groping his way around, he threw the horse hay and a handful of oats he found in a burlap sack.

  Luck is a fickle lady and recently it seemed she’d decided not to stand at McBride’s shoulder as he rolled the dice. But that night he threw a natural when he bumped against an oil lamp standing on the partition of the stall in which he’d chosen to die.

  He tore off his slicker and slumped into a corner, the lamp in his hands. After several attempts he managed to light the wick and a thin orange glow spread around the barn but left the corners in darkness.

  Preparing himself for the worst, McBride opened his coat, then unbuttoned his bloody shirt. He’d expected to see blue intestines looping out of his belly, but saw no such thing. A raw, furrowed scar about five inches long creased his stomach just above the navel. The bullet had not dug deep, but the wound had bled considerably. He
reached down and eased the Colt out of his waistband. To his surprise, the back strap of the handle’s steel frame was slightly bent, the walnut grip splintered.