“Do you think it’s working, Marshal?” Lanie asked.
Dawkins shook his head sadly. “Not that I can tell. It’s just that no matter how many you hang, there’s always gonna be a bunch more that are willin’ to take a chance on it. You goin’ down to see the execution, Missie?” He looked at Lanie with faint disapproval.
Lanie lifted her chin and nodded. “Yes,” she said firmly. “I want to see it. I never thought I’d want to watch a thing like that, but I want to know just exactly what kind of world this is—here in the West.”
“Well,” Lorenzo Dawkins said pensively, his dark eyes studying her, “I s’pose this here hangin’ is a part of the real West, Missie, if that’s what you want to see. C’mon, it’s gonna be crowded. I’ll find you a good seat.”
They followed close behind him as he made his way through the crowd. They passed the federal courthouse, rounding to the north end, and there they saw the platform where the hangings took place. To Lanie, the scaffold looked like a band shell. It stood at the southwestern end of what had been the old army fort compound, the size of a city block or more, surrounded by six-foot stone walls. The scaffold had thirteen steps—Lanie counted them as they came to stand about ten feet from the platform. The floor of the scaffold extended twenty paces under a slanted roof and back wall.
“That trap runs the entire length of the platform,” Dawkins informed them. “They say eight people can be hanged at one time. Biggest crowd they ever had, back in June, on a single drop, was six.” A serious expression came over his face. “The local citizens called it ‘The Government’s Suspender.’ ”
Lanie felt nervous standing in this place and almost turned to leave. She had always prided herself on being able to look at reality, though; and if she was going to face the reality that lay outside this city in Indian Territory, she reluctantly decided that this might be the right place to begin. I’ll watch it, she told herself sternly, even if it makes me sick. I want to see the worst there is here before I go on.
A man appeared at the foot of the gallows and climbed the steps. “That’s George Maledon,” Dawkins said, nudging her with his elbow. She was accustomed to his nudge by now; she realized that the marshal was not even aware he did it.
“Who’s he?” she asked.
“The hangman.”
Both Stone and Lanie gazed intently at the man. He was small, with a huge beard and deep-set eyes. His forehead projected so far that his eyes looked as if they were in a cave. “He brought his ropes from St. Louis,” Dawkins said informatively. “He oils them every morning before a hanging. Comes out and tries ’em on a sack of sand to be sure they’re all workin’ right.”
“He doesn’t look like a hangman,” Wesley observed. “Why does he wear those big guns?”
“He’s an official of the court. He’s shot more’n one man trying to escape. Funny sort of fellow, Maledon is,” Dawkins philosophized. “Strange job, I guess, bein’ a hangman. Lots of folks won’t have anything to do with him. Superstitious folks claim they see ghosts around those gallows,” he went on with relish. “I’ve heard ’em tell about how the spirits gather there. Nothin’ to it, of course.” He looked back up at the small man who was busy on the platform. “I asked Maledon one time if he had any qualms of conscience about the hangings. He just said, ‘Nope. I simply do my duty. I never hanged a man who came back to have the job done over.’ ”
“I wonder what he’s thinking about, that man who’s going to hang,” Wesley Stone murmured softly.
“Couldn’t tell you,” Dawkins said. “He ate a big breakfast, I know that. He was smokin’ a cigar thirty minutes ago.” He smoothed his mustache, another gesture that had grown familiar to Lanie. “He’s a hard one. Name’s John Childers. Been a member of one of the worst bands of brigands and plunderers in Indian Territory. Killed an old man for his horse, dumped the body in the river, then just rode off.” His voice softened with regret. “I tried to talk to Childers last night. Told him he was going to face God and it weren’t too late to repent, to trust in the Lord. He just laughed at me.”
“How awful!” Lanie exclaimed.
Dawkins was silent for a moment, a faraway look in his eyes. Then he looked at Lanie and his voice grew brisk and businesslike again. “Awful enough. They get mighty hard out here on the frontier, Miss Winslow. Sometimes I think they’re more beast than animal. But that ain’t the way the Bible says it. They’re all of ’em men the Lord Jesus died for.”
Stone studied him with renewed interest. “You’re a Christian, I take it, Marshal.”
“Well, my pa, he was a Methodist preacher, and I guess some of it stuck on me. Hard to be a Christian and a marshal out here at the same time, but I do the best I can.”
Just then, three deputy marshals armed with Winchesters appeared and took positions around the gallows. Toward the river a freight train passed, the engine whistle giving out shrill warnings to those coming from Choctaw territory. There were crows in the elms and sycamores along the Arkansas River, and their raucous calling came strongly on the wind.
“Them crows are always here on hanging days,” Dawkins said. “Now, that’s somethin’ a little spooky. Don’t know how they know about things like this. Just the crowd, I reckon.”
Lanie looked up at the crows circling overhead. In spite of the somber situation, Lanie noticed little things: the yeasty odor of fresh bread that the wagons from the nearby bakeries had unloaded on their morning runs; the barking of a dog; a mill whistle sounding out a call to work. Then a bank clock along the avenue struck. Ten o’clock.
With the last stroke of the clock, George Maledon began to attach a heavy rope to the bar at the top of the gallows. A man came up on the platform—evidently his assistant. Every eye was glued to the actions of the man with the rope.
Shortly, two deputy marshals armed with rifles behind a man came out of the courthouse and started through the human corridor, which the deputies kept open despite the press of the crowd. The man was middle-aged, muscular, with a shock of black hair and a pair of dark eyes. Twice in the short walk to the gallows, he brushed his hair back from his face, lifting both hands in the manacles to do so. A minister followed behind him, carrying a Bible. Once the prisoner turned and said something, seemingly unkind, to the preacher, who fell back a few steps.
When the man passed in front of Wesley and Lanie, horror gripped her as she looked into his face. He was hard-looking beyond belief, cynicism marring his face, his jaw painfully set. He climbed the thirteen steps, and one of the marshals faced him and read the death warrant. Childers puffed a cigar with an air of indifference.
“Are there any last words you wish to say, Childers?” the marshal asked, folding the paper and putting it into his pocket.
Childers tossed his cigar away and began to talk. He documented his entire trial, claiming that he had not done the murder he was accused of, and that they were hanging an innocent man. Then he looked out at the crowd, which was eagerly drinking in all of his words. “Someone else done that murder,” he said stoutly. “It was one of my pals, maybe, but not me.”
The marshal who had read the death sentence said, “If you’ll give me their names, Childers, I pledge not to hang you now. What’s your answer.”
It grew so quiet that Lanie could hear the drone of insects in the nearby trees shading the crowd. Dust and tobacco smoke hung motionless in the air. The heat was stifling.
The condemned man’s gaze jerked away from the marshal and flickered over the crowd. His eyes focused and paused momentarily here and there. Stone whispered, “He knows some of them. His buddies are in the crowd.”
Lanie half expected Childers to point them out, but suddenly he waved farewell with a general sweep of his hand, then turned to the marshal. He spoke out in a firm, loud voice that everyone could hear. “Didn’t you say you were going to hang me?”
“Yes,” the marshal replied.
“Well, why in blazes don’t you?” Childers rasped.
The marshal’
s head jerked back, and he nodded at Maledon, who stepped forward and put the rope over Childers’ neck, adjusting the hangman’s knot below the convict’s left ear. Then Maledon pulled a black hood over the man’s face.
A solemnness enveloped the courtyard; every eye was fixed on the doomed man.
Maledon walked to the lever that released the trap and gave it a hard jerk. John Childers’ neck tilted to one side as he shot down to the end of the rope.
And at that moment, as the door fell from under his feet, a tremendous clap of thunder shook the earth, completely drowning the noise of the cumbersome trap. A bolt of lightning shot from the black cloud overhead, striking the frame of the gallows and shooting a thousand tiny sparks into the air.
“John Childers’ soul has gone to hell—I done heerd the chains a-clankin’!” screamed an elderly black woman as she hysterically waved her arms and fell to the ground in the center of the throng. For several minutes the rain poured down, soaking the frightened and confused people.
“Let’s get out of here,” Stone said and grabbed Lanie’s arm. By the time they had escaped the courtyard and reached the hotel, the dark cloud seemed to have vanished and the thunder had stopped.
“That was frightful . . . frightful!” Lanie said in a shaky voice. Her face was ashen and her lips trembled. “I don’t know why I wanted to see a thing like that! I must have been crazy!”
“We both were,” Wesley said briefly, then added, “You ready to give up on the idea of going after Perrago yourself, Lanie?”
Her eyes shot up to meet his. Her face was still pale, but she drew her lips into a firm, tight line and retorted, “Give up? No! I’ll not give up! You stay here if you want to, Wesley, but I’m going to find my sister.” She whirled and stomped into the hotel, letting the door slam behind her.
Wesley stood on the sidewalk, considering whether he should knock her in the head, or perhaps throw her into a train and kidnap her. Maybe take her back to Chicago and have her father deal with her. Of course, he knew he would do nothing like that, and his anger slowly dissolved.
I’ll have to go with her, he sighed. But we’ll need better help than we had last time.
****
Wesley awoke with a start, hearing a loud pounding on the door. He rolled off the bed, confused, disoriented, and so befuddled that he reached for the gun he had left on the table beside his bed. Then the insistent voice penetrated his consciousness; it was Lanie.
“Wes! Open the door! Let me in!”
He quickly crossed the room and stuck his head out the door. “What is it, Lanie?” he demanded.
“It’s a telegram! It just came!”
She handed it to him and he scanned the words:
LANIE,
HAVE WORD FROM BETSY STOP BELIEVE SHE IS A PRISONER STOP AM CONVINCED SHE WANTS TO COME HOME BUT CAN’T STOP MAKE THE CHARGE KIDNAPPING STOP URGENT THAT YOU FIND HER SOON STOP
ZACHARY WINSLOW
“She’s been kidnapped!” Lanie exclaimed.
Stone’s lawyer mind, already dissecting the new information, was cautious. “It doesn’t say that, Lanie. I mean, Betsy hasn’t said that—not to any of us.”
“What do I have to do to make you see it, Wes?” Lanie said wildly. “My sister is in trouble—my little sister! She’s been kidnapped, and we’ve got to find her!” Her face was twisted with anger, but there was a vulnerability Stone had never seen before.
“All right, Lanie. Let’s go see Lorenzo Dawkins again,” Wesley said calmly. “That old man’s got a lot of sense. He can tell us what to do now.”
Wesley closed the door and dressed. Although he was very quick, he could hear Lanie pacing impatiently outside his door.
“Hurry up, Wesley!” she said furiously.
Grabbing his hat, he rushed out, Lanie already running ahead.
They found Dawkins at the courthouse and asked him to step outside with them. Lanie showed him the telegram, then waited with bated breath.
After reading it, he looked up at her with sympathy but spoke with finality. “There’s already a warrant out on Perrago. I don’t think addin’ kidnapping is going to bring him in any quicker, Miss Winslow.”
“But we’ve got to do something! Please, Marshal Dawkins, can’t you help us?”
Dawkins ran his hand through his shaggy white hair with obvious frustration. He finally said reluctantly, “Well, one thing’s sure, you can’t wait for us marshals to go pick him up. Right now we got two hundred marshals out there. But you know how many we’ve done lost? Shot, or stabbed, or clubbed and left to die in some ditch? Over fifty!” He clapped his hat back on his head. “Why, the things that go on here makes some of them towns like Dodge City and Hayes look like a girls’ school promenade! We have over 74,000 square miles to cover! That’s bigger than New England!”
“I know, Marshal,” Lanie said meekly, “but she’s my only sister. And she’s so young! Isn’t there something you can do? My father will gladly pay whatever it costs!”
Dawkins rammed his hands into his pockets and dropped his head, evidently trying to come to some decision. After a few moments he looked back up at Lanie and said thoughtfully, “Well, it don’t hurt to have some money. You wouldn’t believe how much it costs to go on these here escapades.” Lanie and Wesley glanced at each other painfully, reminding Dawkins of their mishap with Jacks and Bailey. He shrugged and said, “Oh, yeah, I guess you do know about that. Well, you’ll have to outfit all over again.”
“That doesn’t matter.” Lanie waved her hand in dismissal. “Just tell us, how can we do this?”
“All right,” Dawkins said, drawing the last word out slowly. “I guess you gotta have a man like Lobo.”
“Yes, you mentioned him before,” Wesley said. “Who is he?”
“Lobo Smith’s a cross between an outlaw and a marshal, I guess you might say,” Dawkins answered cryptically. “Now he ain’t got no badge. But he could have one. Judge Parker, he’s tried to make a marshal outta Lobo many a time, but Lobo, he just won’t do it. He’s just a—just a—” Dawkins seemed to be carefully choosing his words, “a triflin’ sort of fellow, I reckon. But he knows his way around the inside of that Indian Territory, even better than the Indians do. Raised by a Indian, so they say.”
“Is he tough enough to take on a bunch like Perrago’s?” Stone urged.
Lorenzo Dawkins’ weathered face creased into a grin. “That fellow Smith would fight a steam sawmill! I reckon,” he said with relish. “Lobo Smith is tough enough to raise perdition—and put a chunk under it!” Then he grew sober. “But it ain’t no good anyways. You can’t get Smith right now.”
“You mean it would cost too much?” Lanie probed.
“I mean he’s in jail. Charged with selling whiskey.”
“That’s not much of a charge,” Lanie said as if the man had been jailed for swatting flies. “Surely we can get him out.”
“You might do that,” Dawkins said with spirit, “but what would you do with him when you got him out? That fellow’s stubborn as a blue-nosed mule! Never knowed Lobo to do nothing he didn’t want to do, and something tells me he ain’t gonna want to do what you want, Missie!”
“Can you arrange it so I can talk to him?” Lanie pleaded.
Dawkins shrugged. “I reckon I can do that. Come on, and I’ll set up an appointment for you right now.” He turned and started toward the jail, Lanie keeping pace with him, and Wesley trailing behind as usual.
When they got inside, Dawkins said, “Now, I’m going to put you in this here office, and bring Smith up to you, Miss Winslow. You ain’t a-going downstairs with that bunch of yahoos!”
He disappeared and Lanie turned to Wesley. “We’ve got to get this man, Wes.” She looked at him imploringly and stepped a little closer to him. “I want to talk to him alone.”
“Why?” Wesley was suspicious. “It’d be better if both us did, wouldn’t it?”
She laid her hand on his arm. “Just let me have my way this time, Wes,” she pleade
d. “There’re some things I might want to say to him that would be private.”
“All right.” His feelings were hurt, but he promised to leave the room once he had met the convict.
Lanie began to pace back and forth. She had never seen a man she couldn’t bend to her will, and she was mentally practicing how she was going to persuade him to do exactly what she wanted.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“I Won’t Work for a Woman!”
“This here’s Lobo Smith,” Marshal Dawkins said. “Lobo, like you to meet Miss Lanie Winslow, and this here’s Wesley Stone.”
Wesley hesitated, not knowing what response to make. Then he put out his hand, and the prisoner, after giving him an amused look, took it. “Glad to know you, Smith,” Stone said. For some reason Stone didn’t like the looks of the man and said shortly, “I’ll wait outside while you two talk.” He left, followed by Marshal Dawkins.
“Thank you for coming to see me, Mr. Smith,” Lanie said.
“I wasn’t all that busy.”
The dry humor in the man’s reply made Lanie revise her plan. She had been expecting a rough-looking man, much larger than this one, a man who looked more like those she had seen being taken from the prison wagon. Lobo Smith, she saw, had a neat appearance, for the most part. She guessed he was about twenty-six or twenty-seven, and not tall, no more than five foot ten. He probably weighed around one hundred and sixty pounds; and there was a roundness to his arms revealed by the tight tan shirt that he wore. He had a muscular chest and carried an aura of strength about him. His hair was curly and brown, and a fresh cut would have suited him well. But the most striking aspect of the man was the black patch he wore over his left eye. It gave him the look of a bandit or a pirate, she thought. The right eye was an unusual shade of blue—indigo, really. He was tanned very deeply—a dark golden color; and his teeth were perfect and startlingly white against his skin.
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