By the Neck

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  “Why are you here?” Rollie didn’t wait for a reply. He smacked the man again, snapping his head to the other side.

  “Stop hitting me.”

  “Don’t like that, huh?” said Pops. He cinched the man’s shirt collar tighter in his big hand. “Too bad.” He smacked the man on the side of the head. “I ought to knock your teeth out, but it looks like somebody beat me to it.”

  “Now that ain’t right.”

  “What isn’t right?”

  “Funning on another man’s infirmities.”

  “Hmm, never thought of it like that. You may be right. But it’s true.”

  “I know it,” the man said.

  Rollie noted the man’s head was bleeding. “I see Nosey’s beer mug landed a blow.”

  Nosey ambled over, nursing his strained arm. “Hit him again. He nearly broke my arm.” He gritted his teeth tight and leaned close to the little man’s face. “If I can’t write, I’m going to . . . well, I’ll think of something. And it will be unpleasant.”

  “He means it,” said Rollie. “Now talk. Or I’m going to shoot you in the gut. Once.”

  The man swallowed, his eyebrows rose higher.

  “Ever seen a gut-shot man?” said Pops. “You will. Takes forever and a day to die. Got to work through all that poison first.”

  Again, the man swallowed. “It was Joe. He’s dead.”

  “Both of your friends are dead. Which one was Joe?”

  “You killed Bonny Bob? Oh, he wouldn’t have hurt you.”

  “His pistol pointed at me led me to think differently.”

  The man lolled his head and it looked like he was about to sob.

  Rollie raised his Schofield, opened the cylinder, and emptied it of five bullets. “Tell you what. I’ll leave one in and spin it. See what happens. Okay?” He held the pistol to the man’s head, spun the cylinder, and triggered. It clicked.

  The little man howled. “What do you want to know? Oh God, oh God . . .”

  “God?” Rollie looked around the room. “In Boar Gulch? I think not.”

  “Oh God, oh God. Look in Joe’s pocket somewheres. He’s got a page he tore out of a newspaper. In Denver, I think it was. He said he owed you one. Me and Bonny Bob, we rode along with him. We was hoping he had another job in mind. We been broke since we took that bank—”

  Rollie nodded. “I’m guessing you were about to tell me about a bank you all robbed, huh?”

  The man stared at Rollie, eyes wide. Rollie jammed the snout of the Schofield’s barrel under the man’s chin and jerked it upward. “Which bank?”

  “I don’t know.” The man tried to shake his head but the barrel prevented it. “Brick, in Virginia City. All I know.”

  “Okay, I believe you.” Rollie lowered the pistol.

  The ratty man relaxed, shaking as if a fever gripped him. “You could let me go. I didn’t know any of this was going to happen.”

  “Oh, we’ll let you go. In a manner of speaking.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  Rollie turned to Nosey. “When you’re through nursing that wounded wing of yours, go fetch a rope from the corral out back, would you?”

  Nosey paused in rubbing his elbow. He looked from the man to Rollie and back, then to Pops, who nodded. As if agreeing with himself, Pops nodded once more.

  “Wait now,” said the man in his grasp, struggling and squirming. “You . . . you said you was going to let me go!”

  “Oh, we’ll let you go, of course, but you’ll be going in one or two directions, depending on the life you’ve led.”

  “I-I don’t understand.” The man’s voice came out choppy, sounding dry and small.

  Rollie had turned away and was peering out the door at a big ponderosa pine with a branch twenty feet up, thick around as a man’s thigh. Toward the south end of the street it appeared stout enough for the job.

  “Why you need rope? Why you need rope? It ain’t right!”

  Rollie pulled in a deep breath through his nose and bent close to the little man’s face. His voice came out as a low, even growl. “Mister, by your own mouth you admit you have robbed a bank and ridden with outlaws who tried to kill me and my friends. You are men who rode here with vengeance in mind. And you put the lives of all these hardworking people of Boar Gulch in danger. No sir. That cannot stand.”

  “It ain’t lawful!”

  Pops chuckled. “That’s good, because there’s no law in Boar Gulch, mister.”

  “But there will be justice.” Rollie said this low, almost muttering to himself, but Pops and the simpering man heard him.

  “That ain’t right! You . . . you’ll be no better than murderers yourselves! It ain’t lawful, I tell you!”

  “Law can go to hell. I’ve had my fill of it. It’s justice we deal in.” Rollie echoed his own sentiments.

  The man’s knees gave out and he sagged against Pops.

  Pops pulled the back of the man’s collar high. “Get up, fool.” He jerked the man upward.

  The man stood, trembling and mumbling, “Ain’t right, ain’t right . . .”

  Rollie stepped in close. “You have any kin, anybody who’ll miss you?”

  “No,” the man shook his head. “I don’t know nobody.” He looked up at Rollie, thin hope on his puckered, trembling features. “I am an orphan, alone in the world.”

  Rollie nodded. “That makes two of us.”

  “But it ain’t right. I didn’t shoot at any of you.”

  “You would have,” said Rollie.

  “Now, don’t disagree with the man who has all the cards when your hands are empty.” Pops turned his gaze on Rollie. “I will see to it you have a marker.”

  Rollie looked away. “The others, tell me their names as you knew them.”

  “Oh God. I-I’m Pippin Salazar.”

  “Pippin? Like the apple?” said Pops.

  The man shrugged. “Don’t know nothing about apples. Only name I ever had. I expect it’s true.”

  “The others,” said Rollie again. He nodded toward the street. “Your man out there. You called him Joe. Got a surname?”

  “Joe. That’s all I know.”

  Rollie nodded and stared at the floor, eyes sharp and jaw muscles bunching, nostrils flexing.

  “You’re him, ain’t you?”

  Rollie looked up. “What?”

  “Stoneface Finnegan. That’s you.”

  Rollie said nothing.

  “Joe, he talked about you. Was crazy-like ever since he found that newspaper at the bar in Denver. God, I wish he didn’t know how to read.”

  “Your bad luck,” said Pops, guiding the man over to a chair.

  Rollie poured three shots of whiskey, passed one to Pops, one to the man, and downed one himself. “The other man, black hat—what was his name.”

  “Oh him, he was Bonny Bob. He was okay. But that Joe, he was mean as a two-headed snake. Foulest sort. Always picking at something, calling me names.”

  “Like what?” said Pops.

  “Huh?”

  “Names. You said he called you names. What did he call you?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  “Man called hurtful names by another ought to recall what it was that set him off.”

  Pippin shrugged.

  Pops ignored him. “Could be he was tainted in the head from birth.”

  Rollie looked at both men and rubbed his temples. Nosey walked in the front door, a coil of thick rope wrapped like a bandolier around his chest.

  The toothless man’s eyes widened. “Oh, we won’t be needing that, mister. We come to an agreement.”

  “Like hell,” said Rollie.

  “But . . . we was talking. Hell, we had whiskey together!”

  “Hang him high.”

  “I can’t participate in this, Rollie, Pops. It’s—”

  “It’s what?” said Rollie, taking the rope from Nosey. “Barbaric? Yep. Unlawful? Maybe, if we were anywhere but a place without law. Is it justifiable? That depends on yo
ur perspective. That man would have killed you if given the chance.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I know him. I know who he is, I know what he is. What he’s done.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “That’s right you don’t. And so far he doesn’t think I remember him. That’s why he’s calling himself Pippin.”

  Nosey softened. “Well, what’s this man who isn’t who he says he is supposed to have done?”

  “No supposing about it. He is one Tea Leaf Jackson, isn’t that right, Tea Leaf?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The toothless man sniffed and looked away.

  “Yeah, about what I remember, too. Denying everything right to the bitter end. Well this time, there’s no jury to watch you whimper and whine and pull a sad face. How about those children you sold as slaves to that old harpy of a witch woman who took them to Canada?”

  “They never proved that!” said the toothless man before pinching his toothless mouth shut.

  “Uh-huh. And those sheep you let starve to death because you were too lazy or too mean to haul water to them? Or the prostitute you gutted with a dull pocketknife so you wouldn’t have to pay her from the money you robbed from the missionaries in Wyamont’s Point?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “I do. It’s been, what? Twelve years since I last saw you in that courtroom, Tea Leaf? Because you lost all your teeth and most of your hair and shriveled up like an old apple-head doll doesn’t mean I don’t recognize you. Those other two, I don’t seem to recall. But you, I know who you are. And I know you deserved to die all those years ago and you deserve it even more now.”

  “He’s crazy, I tell you! Look at him! He’s got some sort of problem with his thinker.” The little bald man looked at Pops. “You have to believe me. I don’t know what he’s talking about.” He began to sob again, the sound louder. A wailing, keening moan.

  Pops looked at Rollie. “He’s good, I’ll give him that. I heard professional mourners who weren’t half as convincing.”

  “You mean—” said Nosey.

  “Yep,” said Pops. “Rollie is right. And even if he wasn’t, everybody in town knows who Rollie is by now. Who he was, what he was. They know, too, there’s likely to be a price on his head paid out by somebody he put away or somebody who was left behind after he brought in their kin who got his neck stretched.”

  “But this man, what if he didn’t shoot anybody here. I-I subdued him with a beer glass! It’s up to me, then, to deal with him. I’ll deal with him myself. I’ll borrow a wagon. Until then, we should imprison him, take him to the authorities.”

  Pops smiled. “I admire your thinking, Eustace. I do. But in life, we all make choices, see? Some of them don’t work out so well. Each one leads to another and another and so on until we draw our last breath. But each choice helps decide when that last breath will be. You see? This fool made some poor choices. Same as those weasels he rode with. And now those choices are biting him in the ass.

  “Besides, if we don’t do this, only thing saved this fool from a double dose of lovin’ from Lil’ Miss Mess Maker was your fool arm. Elsewise she would have cut him into bits. The rest is gravy on the potatoes.”

  “Stand up,” said Rollie to the toothless man,

  He begun to blubber again. His mouth was a quivering, pink, drooling mess.

  “Stop that and hold still. This is going to happen, mister,” said Pops. “So do yourself a favor and make peace with whatever it is you believe in. You trotted out the word God an awful lot, so might be you want to start there.”

  “Oh God, oh God!”

  “Yeah, like that. Only quieter.”

  The toothless man began sobbing and sagging again as Rollie tied his hands behind his back. He jammed a bar rag into a trouser pocket and they marched him out the door, down the steps. At the bottom, Rollie saw three horses tied together down the lane. “Which one is yours?”

  The man didn’t answer, but sobbed. Rollie jerked him hard by the wrists. “I said which one is yours?”

  “The buckskin.”

  “Okay.” He prodded the man again. Over his shoulder, he said, “Nosey, bring that buckskin along.”

  “Which one is that?”

  Rollie sighed, looked at Pops. “How did he ever make it out here?”

  “That brown one on this end,” said Pops. “Yep, that one.”

  By then the townsfolk saw what was coming and turned en masse to watch the small group of men walk toward the south end of the street.

  “See here, Finnegan.” The mayor hustled to stand in front of Rollie, and held out a pudgy hand. “You can’t hang a man!”

  “No?”

  “No! You above all others should understand that.”

  “I do.” Rollie pushed his way past the mayor,

  Wheeler hustled around him again. “See here!”

  Rollie sighed and stopped once more.

  “What’s he supposed to have done?”

  “Let’s see, it’s been a dozen years since I’ve been acquainted with Mr. Tea Leaf Jackson here, but when I knew him he was a murderer, a thief, and a coward. And as he was supposed to have spent twenty-five years in Silburg Prison, I’d say he’s also a jailbreaker.”

  Chauncey Wheeler put a hand over his mouth and backed up.

  “It ain’t true. None of it, “ wailed the toothless man. “I’m innocent. I ain’t killed nobody in a coon’s age, ain’t stolen nothing since the bank job. Oh, I can’t go back to prison!”

  “There you have it,” said Rollie. “Unless of course you’d rather I turn him loose here in Boar Gulch. Maybe you could take him on as a stock boy? Give him a room in your fine new hotel. As soon as it’s built, of course. Meantime, you could let him sleep in your store, in the back room.”

  “Oh, no, that’s quite all right Mr. Finnegan. I-I apologize for second-guessing you.”

  “Uh-huh.” Rollie nudged his prisoner in the back. “Let’s go.”

  Pops had gone ahead and had tossed an end of the rope up over the branch. He made it on his second try.

  “Easier if you make the noose first,” said Rollie.

  “Easier if I watch you do the whole thing.” Pops turned his back on Rollie and fussed with the rope.

  “Okay, okay.” He waited, listening to Tea Leaf ’s protestations and lamentations. “You do know how to tie a noose?”

  “One more crack and I’ll be tying two,” said Pops, turning around to reveal a perfect noose. The sight of it elicited a fresh round of wails from the toothless man.

  “Shut up, Tea Leaf. Or I’ll shoot you instead.”

  “It’d be a whole lot kinder,” said the whimpering man.

  “In the gut,” said Rollie.

  “Nah, the knees,” said Pops. “Then we can set him out in the woods for the bears to play with.”

  “Now that’s not a bad idea, Pops. Not bad at all. And here I was thinking you had no heart.”

  “I have my moments.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said Nosey. “Hang the man and put him out of his misery. If he’s done as much as you said, surely he deserves to meet his Maker with a quick jerk.”

  “Changed your tune, eh?” said Pops.

  “No,” said Nosey. “But I don’t think it necessary to make fun of a man when you are about to kill him. That’s what beasts do. They torture, play with their kill. Are we not men?”

  Rollie looked at him with narrowed eyes. “Bring the horse over.”

  Nosey led the buckskin beneath the swinging noose. The horse nudged him in the arm, then stood and flicked an ear.

  “He likes you,” said Pops.

  Rollie slipped the noose over the man’s head and tightened it behind his right ear.

  “Climb up there, Tea Leaf.”

  The man growled and kicked at them. They wrestled him up into the saddle and he fought them, thrashing the entire time. Rollie had to thumb back the hammer on
the Schofield to settle him down.

  Pops took the other end of the rope and looped it around the trunk of the tree twice, lashing the latter wrappings over the first, then tied it to itself to secure it. The rope was rigid from the limb down to the man’s neck. It was rigid, too, from the limb down at an angle to where it wrapped around the red, craggy trunk of the ponderosa.

  The man cried and dripped snot all down his shirtfront, blubbering and moaning.

  “Be a man about it. Be a man.” Pops said this in a low voice, squeezing the condemned’s boot above the ankle. Tea Leaf settled down to a hiccupping sob.

  “I’d like to say I hold no ill will toward you,” said Rollie, “but I’d be lying. You have anything to say, you best do it now.”

  “I’ll . . . I’ll . . .”

  “Yes?” said Rollie.

  “ . . . see you in hell!”

  “You bet.” Rollie smacked the horse hard on its rump and it lurched and bolted, whinnying.

  Tea Leaf Jackson was dragged backward over the cantle and out of the saddle. The branch tremored, the rope creaked, and Tea Leaf danced a jig in the air, one leg, then the other, stomping unseen floorboards. His head bent too far to the left, as if he were trying to watch his trembling boots.

  His tongue bulged from his vacuous mouth. His eyes popped wide and white, showing their amazement at the greatest shock of all. He swung in a slow arc and spun as he swung, his dying eyes taking in the view. He first saw the forest, the hills, and the far-off peaks. The long, grimy main street and the clot of townsfolk gathered halfway to the tree were next. They stared at him, no words spoken as he sagged and leaked out his fluids. The foul reek of him drew the first of a cloud of bluebottles.

  No one spoke as the three men walked back toward the saloon, passing the people of Boar Gulch. Rollie saw no anger on their faces, only fear, likely of him. Good, he thought. Keep it that way. His grim mouth and hard eyes bore into each that dared look on him. Except the mayor.

  Rollie sighed. “What is it now, Chauncey?”

  “If ever we possessed the fine line of law in this town, you stomped all over it.”

  “Yep,” said Pops, smiling and rocking back on his heels. “I’d say Rollie and me and Nosey are the closest thing to law this town has ever seen.”