Ralph Compton Blood on the Gallows

by Joseph A. West

  The small man was dressed in black from boots to hat, the only color about him the ivory handle of his gun on his hip and the cold blue of his eyes. He was smiling thinly at McBride and looked confident and dangerous.

  ‘‘I’m calling you, McBride,’’ he said. ‘‘You claim to be the man who killed Hack Burns and I say you’re a damned Yankee liar.’’

  A number of diners had left the restaurant and were lining the boardwalk, including a tall, slender man with a flowing dragoon mustache who was watching McBride with interest, a toothpick pinned between his teeth.

  It was Remorse who spoke for McBride. ‘‘Shem, we’re in a hurry,’’ he said. ‘‘We don’t have time for this.’’

  ‘‘He’s not talking to you, preacher,’’ Beaudry said. ‘‘Now keep your trap shut.’’

  Remorse ignored the gunman. ‘‘Shem Trine,’’ he said, ‘‘be about your business and give us the road. Gun reputations will not be made this day. Now, please, my son, go in peace.’’

  Trine grinned. ‘‘I’ve always loved Holy Roller words like that, Reverend. Now step aside. My business is with the no-good liar beside you.’’

  Up on the boardwalk, the slender man hitched his gun belt higher, but then let his hands drop to his sides. The morning sky was losing color, shading to fish-scale gray, and the silence was so profound McBride heard dishes rattle in the hotel kitchen.

  He knew there was no talking his way out of this, and his hand inched toward the Colt in his waistband. Ten feet way, Trine was grinning, ready, eager, his fingers clawed over the handle of his revolver.

  McBride never got a chance to draw.

  Shem Trine’s hand blurred and his gun came up, but not high enough or fast enough. Remorse’s Remingtons hammered and the little man was hurled backward, four scarlet roses blossoming on his black shirt. He hit the mud hard, arched his back and his hands reached out to the threatening sky. Then he gasped and all the life that had been in him fled.

  McBride grabbed his Colt, eyeing Beaudry and the other man, but they wanted no part of him. The two gunmen backed up, their faces haggard from the shock of Trine’s death.

  ‘‘We’re out of it,’’ Beaudry screeched. ‘‘Don’t shoot no more, parson.’’

  McBride took a few steps toward them. ‘‘You two, get on your horses and ride out of town. If I see you again in Rest and Be Thankful, you’re dead men.’’

  The gunmen nodded, their throats moving as they tried to gulp down their fear. They’d listened to McBride but their eyes were on Remorse, who was standing still, guns smoking by his sides.

  Beaudry turned to his companion and said, ‘‘You heard the man. C’mon, we’re lighting a shuck.’’ He turned and ran for the livery, the other gunman hard on his heels.

  His hands steady, Remorse punched the empty shells from his guns, reloaded and holstered the Remingtons.

  The tall man stepped casually off the boardwalk, glanced at Trine, then looked first at McBride, then Remorse. ‘‘He called it,’’ he said, the toothpick bobbing in the corner of his mouth. ‘‘He should have known, but didn’t, that he wasn’t near fast enough.’’ He shook his head, a man acquainted with human frailty in all its forms. ‘‘It’s a pity.’’

  The man stepped over Trine’s body, then crossed the street, the jingle bobs on his spurs chiming. McBride watched him go, a feeling in him that the tall, hard-eyed man with the long-barreled revolver on his hip might well be Ranger Pat Dooling.

  Remorse glanced up as Beaudry and the other gunman cantered out of the barn and headed west. They didn’t look back. His eyes moved to McBride. ‘‘We go after Josephine and his boys and end this thing. Still want to play it that way?’’

  McBride nodded. ‘‘Yes. It’s time.’’

  Remorse stepped up to Trine’s sprawled, still form. He took a knee beside the dead man, removed his hat and bowed his head in prayer, his lips moving. After a while he reached into his pants pocket, counted out five silver dollars onto Trine’s chest, then looked up at the men on the boardwalk. ‘‘Bury him decent,’’ he said.

  He rose to his feet and his eyes moved to McBride. ‘‘Let’s ride, John,’’ he said. ‘‘Like you say, it’s time.’’

  Chapter 29

  McBride and Remorse rode east under a brooding sky. Scrub jays rustled and fluttered in the piñon and mesquite, made restless by the heavy, oppressive morning. Overhead ravens scudded, driven by an upper-level wind, irritable and quarrelsome, screeching demented curses. In the distance a small herd of antelope threaded through a stand of juniper, heading higher toward the yellow and silver aspen line of the Capitan peaks.

  Remorse followed McBride into the arroyo that led to the silver mine. They rode into the clearing where they’d camped, but found no sign that anyone besides themselves had been there.

  ‘‘Where to now, John?’’ Remorse asked, looking around him, his suddenly disinterested eyes seeing nothing.

  ‘‘We’ll head for Julieta’s cabin,’’ McBride said. His saddle creaked as he shifted his weight. ‘‘The Apache Josephine took with him is starting to worry me.’’

  A drift of rain, coming down in large drops, kicked up Vs of dust around the two riders, and high on the slopes of the mountains the aspen were shivering in a rising wind.

  Remorse shrugged into his slicker. ‘‘Then lead the way to the pass, John, and we’ll see if we can at least put one of your worries to rest.’’

  They headed west, staying close to the foothills of the Capitans, riding through brush and cactus country cut through by dry washes and deep arroyos. As they passed under the shadow of Sunset Peak, Remorse looked around him and said, ‘‘Things just don’t seem right today. The wind is driving hard from the east and that’s unusual in this part of the country. I get the feeling that Yaponcha is up there on the peak watching, and he doesn’t approve of us being here.’’

  McBride smiled. ‘‘I heard about him from Clare O’Neil. He’s the Hopi wind god, isn’t he?’’

  ‘‘Yes, and he’s close by.’’

  This time McBride laughed. ‘‘I didn’t think you’d believe in superstitions like that, Saul.’’

  ‘‘God can’t be defined, John,’’ Remorse said. ‘‘Who’s to say an infinitesimal part of Him doesn’t dwell on Sunset Peak? Us, the Hopi, so many others, it’s like we look for God in a mirror. The mirror never changes, but each of us sees a different face.’’

  McBride shook his head. ‘‘For a man who lives by the gun, I’ve got to admit, you do sound like a reverend sometimes.’’

  ‘‘The gun is only a means to an end, John. Four, five hundred years ago I would have carried a sword. The result would have been the same.’’

  ‘‘Maybe after all this is over, you can put your guns away,’’ McBride said.

  Remorse looked at him. ‘‘A man follows his destiny. One day, I don’t know when, I’ll be gone. Until then, I’ll continue to do what I do.’’

  ‘‘Ah yes, the knight errant, forever riding out to right wrongs wherever he finds them.’’

  McBride had been teasing, but Remorse took him seriously. ‘‘Not forever. I think I’d go mad if I thought all this was forever.’’

  McBride did not answer, his eyes on the trail ahead. He was thinking that at times—no, all of the time—Saul Remorse was a mighty strange person.

  Remorse’s uneasiness grew as they neared Capitan Pass. His eyes constantly scanned the rain-lashed country around him, and he turned repeatedly in the saddle to check their back trail. The open brush had given way to timbered country that pressed the trail close on both sides, and they often had to ride around rock slides that blocked the way ahead.

  ‘‘Thinking about the Apache, huh?’’ McBride asked as he again saw Remorse turn and look behind him.

  The reverend shook his head, water running off the flat brim of his hat. ‘‘No, not really. I just have the feeling that something is wrong.’’ He managed a smile. ‘‘Then again, maybe it’s just the east wind that’s troubling me.�
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  The wind was blowing strong and McBride had jammed his plug hat all the way down to his ears for fear of losing it. Rain hammered on their shoulders and rattled over the surrounding junipers and piñons as they swung north in the direction of Julieta’s cabin.

  McBride led the way around the screening trees to the front of the cabin. The door was banging open and shut in the wind, and a window had been broken, its white lace curtain fluttering like a stricken dove.

  As McBride climbed from the saddle, Remorse pulled his rifle and headed for the rear of the cabin. His Colt in his hand, McBride stepped through the open door. The baby’s cradle was tipped on its side and a white shawl that had been tossed on the floor looked like spilled milk. The child was gone.

  McBride strode quickly to the bedroom. Everything was in place, the bed neatly made up, but there was no sign of Julieta.

  Remorse was standing in the middle of the room, looking down at the cradle, when McBride stepped beside him. ‘‘Jared Josephine got here before us,’’ the reverend said.

  ‘‘Yeah, but just before us.’’ McBride kneeled and his fingers probed the pine floor. He picked up a piece of mud and rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger. ‘‘Still wet,’’ he said to Remorse. ‘‘The boots that left this mud and took Julieta and the baby are still close by.’’

  He rose to his feet. ‘‘We’d have seen anyone riding toward us, so they must be holed up behind the cabin somewhere.’’

  Remorse nodded and walked to the back door. Immediately a bullet shattered the glass and sent him ducking for safety behind the sturdy log wall.

  ‘‘He’s up on the slope,’’ Remorse said. ‘‘We must have surprised him.’’

  McBride opened his mouth to speak, but his words were lost as a hail of bullets crashed through the cabin door, breaking glass and splintering furniture into matchwood.

  ‘‘What in hell and damnation has he got up there?’’ Remorse yelled. He was not by nature a profane man and his choice of language betrayed his agitation.

  ‘‘He’s got Julieta’s thirty-shot Volcanic rifle,’’ McBride said. ‘‘And I fancy she kept plenty of shells for it.’’

  Remorse cursed under his breath, and McBride said, ‘‘Saul, try to keep him busy with your rifle. I’m going out the front and I’ll see if I can swing around behind him.’’

  The reverend nodded, but as McBride crouched low to leave, he said, ‘‘John, we don’t know who’s up there, but I think he’s good. You’re not, so be careful.’’

  Despite the danger he was in, McBride smiled. Remorse had a way of bolstering a man’s confidence.

  The rain was heavier. It had defeated the wind and was coming straight down in torrents. McBride paused beside his horse, tempted to take his rifle. But he was no great shakes with a Winchester. If the bushwhacker was keeping Julieta close to him, which seemed likely, he couldn’t risk a long-range shot. In this rain, he was just as likely to hit the girl as he was the gunman.

  It would have to be up close and personal and there was nothing else for it; he’d need to get his work in with the Colt.

  McBride swung wide of the cabin, holding to any cover he could find. The rain helped, drawing a shifting screen between him and the rifleman on the slope. He ducked under a juniper and immediately a shower of raindrops shook loose and rolled down the back of his neck. He could never understand why it was that only the coldest drops did that.

  The cabin was about a hundred yards away to his left. Between McBride and the base of the mountain bulking gray against the sky lay a wide stretch of brush-covered ground that rose steeply into the ridges and arroyos of the foothills. As far as McBride could tell, there were trails higher on the mountain slope, doubles and switchbacks that had been made by either Apaches or game, or both. The trails wound through thick stands of ponderosa pine and Douglas fir, then, higher, lost themselves in the aspens.

  McBride waited by the juniper, his breath, abbreviated by fear, coming in fast little gasps. Could he cross that open brush flat without catching a bullet?

  Suddenly Remorse’s rifle opened up, two spaced shots, as though he’d drawn bead on a target. A pause, then an answering shot from the slope. Another pause, then a second shot.

  There! McBride saw it—a puff of smoke from just below the aspen line, drifting out of the pines. He knew what he had to do, where he had to go. He looked out at the flat and swallowed hard. No, no matter how he cut it, there was no other way. He’d have to put himself through it.

  A run across the flat, then a climb up the slope and into the aspens. Once in the cover of the trees he could work his way behind the rifleman and . . . well, after that he’d have to wait and see what happened.

  McBride was a tall, muscular man and usually he moved gracefully enough, but he had a city copper’s big feet. He might make so much noise moving around in the aspens he’d get shot before he even got halfway.

  No matter. He had it to do. His hand moved to the Colt under his slicker. Then he hit the flat at a plunging run.

  His elastic-sided boots splashing through mud, McBride charged across the level ground, dodging his way through the brush. He heard the angry statements of dueling rifles, but no bullets came in his direction. Remorse had cut loose at exactly the right moment!

  He ran into an arroyo but was stopped by an impenetrable wall of prickly pear and cholla. He climbed out, vicious little clumps of fishhook cactus tearing at his hands, and slid into another. This time the way was clear and he followed the upward slope of the arroyo until it met the base of the mountain. He began to climb the lower slope of the peak, hiding among cedars when he could, pausing often to check his surroundings. The incline was growing steeper, and the aspens looked impossibly distant. Now and then he heard the report of a rifle, the echo racketing around the rocky mountainside.

  McBride climbed higher, the pelting rain making the going treacherous. Once he had to negotiate a deep draw carved out of the slope, a crashing cascade of water running along its bottom. By the time he scrambled across, his elbows and knees were scraped and bruised and he was even more thoroughly soaked.

  After moving through a mixed band of cedars and piñons, he reached the pines and had to scramble higher on all fours, fighting for breath in the rapidly thinning air. When he stopped to rest, as he did more and more often, the only sound was the rustle of the rain in the trees and the moan of the wind in his ears. McBride was wet, muddy, scraped by rocks and gashed by cactus and he knew his strength was failing.

  His eyes lifted to the aspens, their yellow leaves fluttering as though urging him closer. Beyond the pines the muddy slant leveled out considerably. The approach to the aspen line was a grassy hanging meadow littered with rocks that varied in size from pebbles to monstrous boulders as big as barns.

  Not far, McBride told himself, only a few hundred yards of ground to cover, even though some of it was standing on end. He could make it.

  He clambered through the pines and onto the grass. He lay on his back for several minutes, catching his breath, letting the rain fall cool on his face. Then he rose and stumbled upward, keeping to the cover of the rocks where he could.

  Half a mile below him, Remorse was still trading shots with the rifleman and it seemed that neither man had yet scored a hit.

  Slipping, falling, taking shelter behind boulders, McBride took almost thirty minutes to reach the aspens. He stood within the trees, his head back, gulping down air, grateful that, for the time being at least, he was partially shielded from the rain.

  Thunder rolled among the crags of the higher peaks and lightning flashed as McBride made his way through the trees. The brushy undergrowth made the going difficult, but he was finally on more level ground that actually seemed to be dropping slightly as he grew nearer to the gunman’s position.