Ralph Compton Blood on the Gallows

by Joseph A. West

  McBride nodded. He had nothing to say.

  ‘‘So you think Clare O’Neil murdered Dora Ryan?’’

  Remorse waited for an answer, his hands paused on his saddle hitch.

  ‘‘I’m sure of it.’’

  ‘‘Why? A lovers’ quarrel perhaps?’’

  ‘‘Yes, maybe that,’’ McBride said uneasily, still grappling with a thing he did not understand. He tried for firmer ground. ‘‘Either that or Clare wants to keep the silver mine to herself.’’

  ‘‘But Dora had no claim on the mine, that’s what I learned at the courthouse. In June 1845, the Mexican government deeded the ranch to Hemp O’Neil and his heirs free and clear. As it turned out later, the property included a mine that neither the Mexicans nor old Hemp knew existed. Legally a fortune in silver now belongs to Clare. She had no reason to kill Dora Ryan.’’

  McBride was thinking, his detective’s mind attempting to remove clutter and concentrate on the facts and the obvious question: could Clare, a small, slender, slip of a girl, have driven a Bowie knife through a whalebone corset and into Dora’s back with such force?

  In the past, McBride had arrested people who had committed crimes of passion and had somehow gained superhuman strength to strangle or beat their victims to death. But this seemed like a cold, calculated murder. It was possible that Dora Ryan died only because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  ‘‘So, John, what do you think?’’ Remorse asked, tightening his saddle cinch.

  ‘‘There was somebody in Dora’s room just before we left for Jared Josephine’s office,’’ McBride said. ‘‘I was looking up at her window and whoever he or she was quickly closed the curtain.’’

  ‘‘It could have been the killer.’’

  McBride nodded. ‘‘I don’t think Dora was the intended target. According to the hotel clerk, Clare was with her, and she was the one the killer wanted. Between the time I saw the curtain close and we left for Josephine’s bank, he would have had plenty of time to kill Dora, then drag Clare out the back way and into the alley.’’

  ‘‘You say ‘he.’ What makes you so sure it was a man?’’

  ‘‘The Bowie knife went through a whalebone and silk corset and then four inches into Dora’s back. A woman wouldn’t have the strength to do that. I think the killer blocked the door and Dora was running to the window to cry for help when she was murdered.’’

  ‘‘Any suspicions?’’ Remorse asked. He rubbed his horse’s pink nose, his hard eyes studying McBride’s face.

  ‘‘Lance Josephine could have done it. He had time to kill Dora, then hide Clare somewhere in town. Maybe in an abandoned shack—there’s plenty of them around. He could have bound and gagged her and then beat his feet to the bank.’’

  ‘‘Want to look for her? It could take time and she might have been moved by now.’’

  ‘‘No, we’ll head for Lincoln and send my wire.’’

  Remorse nodded. ‘‘Suit yourself, John. Let’s hit the trail and ride.’’ He hesitated a moment, then added, ‘‘Leave your cat with Jed, though he’ll probably charge you two bits for a stall and feed.’’

  Chapter 24

  The Fort Stanton Road through Lincoln was a rutted, dusty track flanked by stores, adobe houses and corrals. Rolling, bronze-colored clouds touched with streaks of violet spanned the entire sky and the air smelled of rain. The red-hot coin of the sun was drifting lower in the west, and the slender arc of a children’s moon was already making its shy debut.

  McBride turned in the saddle and said to Remorse, ‘‘This is where Billy the Kid, the carefree Prince of Bandits, escaped from jail. He killed half a dozen lawmen and then fought off a hundred bloodthirsty Apaches ere he made his gallant getaway into the prairie.’’

  To his disappointment, McBride quickly realized he was telling the reverend something he already knew. Remorse nodded toward a substantial, two-story building. ‘‘Over there, that’s the courthouse. Billy was being held on the second floor and that’s where he murdered two deputies before he skedaddled. He ended up in Fort Sumner, where Pat Garrett found him and killed him.’’ Remorse grinned. ‘‘I never heard about those hundred bloodthirsty Apaches.’’

  He drew rein and thumbed over his shoulder. ‘‘The building we just passed, the Wortley Hotel, is owned by Garrett, at least that’s what I’ve heard.’’ Remorse glanced at the fiery sky. ‘‘We may end up spending the night there.’’

  His high opinion of the Kid considerably deflated, McBride now sought to restore it. Perhaps Remorse was only repeating slanders he’d heard. ‘‘Saul, did you know Billy?’’ he asked.

  ‘‘I knew him.’’

  After a minute of silence, McBride prodded: ‘‘Well?’’

  ‘‘Well what?’’

  ‘‘How was he?’’

  Remorse smiled. The steel of the Remingtons on his chest captured the crimson glow of the sky as though the metal were again molten. ‘‘Billy was all right. He was just a wild kid caught up in a trade battle between rich and powerful men.’’

  ‘‘Did you see the twenty-one notches on his guns?’’

  ‘‘John, Billy killed only men who need killing and those were few. And he didn’t notch his guns. That’s a tinhorn’s trick and it was something Billy would never do. For all his faults, he had style.’’

  Remorse kneed his gray into motion and McBride fell in beside him. ‘‘John,’’ the reverend said, shaking his head, ‘‘promise me you won’t read any more of those Ned Buntline novels, huh?’’

  McBride grinned. ‘‘I don’t read about the West any longer. I’m here. I’m living it.’’

  ‘‘So you’re fully awake now, and all you did in New York was only a dream.’’

  ‘‘It seems that way at times, maybe more recently than before.’’

  Remorse nodded, but said nothing.

  The two riders passed a steep-sided hill that looked like an ancient volcano cone, then the Stanton Saloon and the Torreon, a stone tower built as a refuge in the event of Indian attack.

  The post office lay just beyond the tower, on the same side of the street, and McBride stepped inside and wrote out his wire. When the clerk read it, a raised eyebrow was his only comment.

  ‘‘Will it get there?’’ McBride asked.

  ‘‘Sure.’’ The clerk nodded, a middle-aged man wearing a green eyeshade. ‘‘If the Indians didn’t cut the wire and if the poles haven’t been swept away by flood or landslide and if there’s been no earthquakes, blizzards, wildfires or hailstorms at any point along the line.’’ He raised washed-out blue eyes to McBride. ‘‘If none of those things happened, it will get there.’’

  ‘‘Well, that’s reassuring,’’ McBride said, irritated.

  The clerk shrugged. ‘‘I make that speech to everybody who sends a wire from Lincoln and dang me if they don’t always get a burr under their saddle, just like you.’’

  When McBride stepped out of the post office, Remorse had dismounted and was holding the reins of both horses. A flurry of rain tossed in the wind and the sky was turning black.

  ‘‘Send your wire?’’ Remorse asked.

  McBride nodded, his face bleak. ‘‘Yes, if there’s no fire or flood between here and its destination.’’

  ‘‘Think the wire will help?’’

  ‘‘I don’t know. Time is not on our side.’’

  ‘‘Then we go it alone, John,’’ Remorse said. ‘‘We stay alive and bring about a reckoning in Rest and Be Thankful.’’

  A freight wagon drawn by four oxen and a lead pair of longhorn steers creaked past and McBride watched it stop outside the Tunstall Store. A bearded and solemn farmer and his thin wife rode past, both of them on the bare back of a huge gray Percheron. The couple ignored the two armed riders standing outside the post office and kept their eyes fixed on the road ahead. The Lincoln County War had not yet receded into memory, and people were still suspicious of hard-bitten men who carried revolvers.

  McBride was completel
y unaware of it, but he had changed much since fleeing New York. He’d grown leaner, stronger, every ounce of fat burned off by harsh weather and long, arduous trails. His gaze was never still, reaching out around him, seeing everything, missing nothing. His face had planed down to hard angles and his mahogany skin stretched tight to the bone. Although he was a man who smiled often and took a childlike joy in many things, past events had made his capacity for sudden violence grow and at such times his rage was terrible to see. As he and Remorse walked their horses along the street, past the White Elephant Saloon to the Wortley Hotel, they looked exactly like what they were: lean, dangerous lobo wolves on the prowl.

  The hotel clerk directed the two riders to put up their horses in the barn out back where there was a good supply of hay and oats. McBride and Remorse were the only guests and the steak and potatoes the clerk prepared for them were a rough and ready meal but tasty enough.

  After they’d eaten, the clerk, impressed by Remorse’s clerical collar, sat at their table and soon engaged the reverend in a discussion on whether there is a conflict between faith and reason and demanded to know if faith without proof is mere superstition.

  Remorse eagerly picked up the philosophical gauntlet and the two men went at it, arguing back and forth, their index fingers poking holes in the air. McBride listened for more than an hour, contributed nothing, then, bored into semiconsciousness, staggered to his room.

  He dreamed of Bear Miller again.

  McBride was standing in the middle of a vast, open prairie under a sky the color of tin. Old Bear sat his horse, a blanket roll behind his saddle. Behind him moved an immense herd of buffalo, flowing over the grass like a muddy brown river.

  ‘‘I got to be going, John,’’ Bear said. ‘‘I’m following the buffalo. Going to find me a new range for a spell.’’

  A warm wind tugged at McBride, and the air smelled musky, of the buffalo herd.

  ‘‘You were right about the woman, Bear,’’ McBride said. ‘‘She tried to kill me. I thought I was gut-shot.’’

  The old man smiled. ‘‘There’s just no accounting for female folks, is there, John?’’

  McBride looked around him, his eyes reaching into the endless land. ‘‘I wanted you to meet someone. His name is Saul Remorse. He’s a reverend, but I don’t know where he is.’’

  ‘‘Don’t matter, John, I know him anyhow. He’s followed the buffalo, rode after them a long ways, eating their dust.’’

  ‘‘He’s a sorrowing man. His wife died, you know. She was Chinese and she hung herself from a pear tree.’’

  ‘‘I know,’’ Bear said. ‘‘But his suffering will not last forever. It had a beginning, and it will have an end.’’

  McBride took a step closer to the old man. ‘‘Where will you go, Bear?’’

  Bear made a chopping motion with his bladed hand. ‘‘That way, south. I have no way of knowing where the trail will end.’’

  ‘‘Will you come back?’’

  ‘‘I don’t know that either. Maybe where I’m going there’s no coming back.’’ The old man touched his hat. ‘‘I hope to see you around, John McBride.’’ He swung his horse away, then, grinning, yelled to McBride, ‘‘Here, John, catch!’’

  A green apple soared through the air and McBride caught it with both hands. He watched as Bear rode into the buffalo herd, then vanished into dust, distance and wakefulness.

  McBride opened his eyes to gray dawn light and loud pounding on his room’s door. It was Remorse, telling him that breakfast was on the table.

  ‘‘Don’t you ever sleep?’’ McBride asked, opening his door an inch.

  Remorse stood there freshly shaved, bright-eyed and anxious to meet the day. ‘‘No, John, I seldom sleep. I sat up all night arguing with Bartholomew. That’s the clerk’s name, you know. He’s a bright enough lad, but much given to certain doctrines of popery that I cannot abide.’’

  ‘‘He didn’t think it strange, a reverend armed with Remingtons?’’

  ‘‘If he did, he didn’t say. Bartholomew is a very polite young man.’’

  McBride scratched his chest and yawned. ‘‘All right, I’ll be there in a few minutes.’’

  Remorse smiled. ‘‘Good. I’ll try to save you some bacon.’’ He hesitated. ‘‘Oh, here, this is for you.’’ He handed McBride a green apple.

  ‘‘Where did you get this?’’ McBride asked, shocked.

  ‘‘I found it in the kitchen. It’s good for a man to eat a green apple in the morning. I always do before I ride a long trail.’’

  Both men wore slickers as they rode out of Lincoln under a broken sky that threatened rain. The morning was murky, night shadows still clinging to the ravines between the hills. The air was heavy and damp and hard to breathe.

  After a mile of silence passed between them, Remorse smiled and asked, ‘‘John, you’re not still sore about the bacon, huh?’’

  McBride shook his head. ‘‘No, the eggs were just fine.’’

  ‘‘Then why has the cat got your tongue?’’

  ‘‘I’m thinking. No, not really that. Maybe wondering is a better word.’’

  ‘‘Wondering about what?’’

  ‘‘Where we go from here. We ride into Rest and Be Thankful and then—’’

  ‘‘And then the trouble comes to us,’’ Remorse said. ‘‘You don’t need to worry about what happens next. Jared Josephine will dictate those terms.’’

  ‘‘And when he does?’’

  ‘‘Then we deal with whatever he throws at us.’’ Remorse nodded, more to himself than McBride. ‘‘No, we won’t have to force it. The war will come right at us like a cannonball express.’’

  ‘‘If the telegram does no good, can we win it? The war, I mean.’’

  ‘‘John, if only half, a quarter, of the outlaws in town side with Jared we’re done for. There’s only two of us and we can’t win that battle.’’

  ‘‘Then why are we riding toward a lost battle as though we couldn’t help it?’’

  ‘‘Because the outlaws are an ‘if.’ The telegram is an ‘if.’ And then there’s pride. We’re both named men and if—there’s that ‘if’ again—we turn tail and run, the news of our rank cowardice will spread far and wide. I can’t afford to let that happen. Can you?’’

  McBride shook his head, thinking that turning tail had one big advantage—while all those people were talking about his rank cowardice he’d still be alive. But aloud he said, ‘‘I guess I’ll stick. Besides, I owe Thad Harlan for putting a bullet in me. I can’t just light a shuck and forget it happened.’’

  ‘‘Death or glory!’’ Remorse exclaimed. ‘‘We ride gallantly to our fate, John . . . whatever it may be.’’

  ‘‘Huzzah!’’ McBride said, the word coming out as flat and lifeless as he could make it.

  McBride and Remorse followed a wagon road out of Lincoln that turned south after three miles and headed for Fort Stanton. The fort had been built to protect the Mexican farmers of the Rio Bonito Valley from Apache raids and was manned by buffalo soldiers of the Ninth Cavalry.

  An old woman, dressed in black, stood at the side of the road and watched the riders come. Her head was covered by a woolen shawl, her face deeply wrinkled by long hours of toil in the sun. But her black eyes were bright, and though she looked to be in her eighties, she was probably no older than forty.