By the Neck

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  He pooched out his bottom lip in anger and lifted Woburn up onto the black’s back. The horse sidestepped, held, and Rollie steadied the dead load, noted blood had soaked into the coat and seeped through into the blankets. One more length of rope lashed around the load and tied around the saddle horn secured the dead man.

  Rollie glanced back at Cap, who stood with ears perked looking toward Rollie and the black. “Don’t worry, Cap. I’ll be back. You’re not being replaced.” He led the horse through the trees and rocks toward the cabin. He lost sight of the roof a few times, then all of a sudden it was there before him, a tidy, four-square structure.

  From first glance Rollie could tell Jed knew what he was doing with wood. The cabin was trim, well built, no sloppy, jutting log ends. All were squared and the chinking showed no gaps. He’d even taken care to give himself a bit of a view by thinning out the trees before the cabin, the slope gradual and falling away suddenly for a long, deep, precipitous drop a good hundred feet before the site.

  The cabin was as solid but plain inside as out. Jed had even crafted a chair and a table, and though a packrat had taken up residence in the corner of the room in the few days since Jed had vacated the place, the single-room cabin was fresh and welcoming.

  Rollie lashed the horse’s reins to the nearest tree at the edge of the clearing before the cabin. He untied the dead man and let him slide and flop to the ground. The body made a hard, smacking sound. Rollie winced. He grabbed Woburn by the shoulders and leaned him up against a ten-foot log bordering the clearing, as if ol’ Chester were relaxing.

  “Okay then, chum. You hold on and I’ll go fetch our other party guest. Don’t go anywhere.”

  Later, as he sat on a stump seat before Jed’s well-built fire ring, Rollie was amused that he was there at all. He wondered if it was odd that he didn’t feel horrible about sitting before a fire in the wilderness with a dead man not twenty feet away. He’d killed the man. Shot him to death, in the seeds and then in the head, but a few hours before. In self-defense, yes, but did that matter? The man was as dead as he’d ever get.

  Pops would tell him he was thinking too much. Brooding, as Nosey called it. “To hell with them,” said Rollie, swigging once more from the bottle of the good stuff he’d brought with him. “Even if they are my friends.”

  He chuckled, then stopped, knowing how very drunk he sounded. It had been a long while before he let himself dissolve into a puddle of drunkenness. Why now? He thought maybe it had something to do with the dead man sitting not far away. He stared into the dark and wondered if maybe he should haul Chester over by the fire. He was close to rising, staggering over, and dragging the dead man closer, when he recalled Chester’s head exploding, spattering against the pretty tree.

  “Damn,” he said, and let the bottle slide to the ground, upright beside his boot. He wasn’t so drunk that he’d waste the rest of it.

  “Maybe it’s time to go to bed, eh, Cap?” He half-expected his horse to respond, but he heard only night noises—a cricket, some small critter high up in a tree scratching at bark, the yip of a coyote on another ridge, hunting for his belly, for his family’s bellies.

  Family, thought Rollie. Something he’d never had, never would, it seemed. Unbidden, Delia Holsapple’s pretty face danced into his mind as a spirit, not fiendish at all.

  Stoneface Finnegan stared at the dying coals in the fire pit as the night darkened and closed in around him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Chauncey Wheeler tugged shut the slab plank door of the back room of Wheeler’s Mercantile. He slipped the chain and padlock through the steel loop he had had Pieder Tomsen forge for the door. Let them break in now, he thought, giving the chain a last tug. But he knew the store was as secure as it was going to get for Boar Gulch.

  It mattered little, as he was always about the place. Where could a fellow go in the Gulch, anyway? The Last Drop, yes, and now the other businesses in town, too. Or heaven forbid, a walk in the forest. The thought shuddered him. All those dirty woodland animals . . .

  Chauncey had wanted a reason to interrupt the predictable routine of his days, and Delia Holsapple provided him with such an excuse. Ever since she came to town seeking her odd revenge on Rollie Finnegan, men such as Wheeler had wondered how she was going to make a living, a go of it in Boar Gulch. Turns out, they didn’t have a long wait to find out.

  Within a week, word among the camp’s single men, which meant nearly the entirety of the population, was that they had been invited, or thought they’d been, to Delia’s little rented cabin, a fair jaunt on down the lane off the north end of the main street.

  Miss Holsapple was not hosting card games, but what she was doing was earning money as she used to. And though it was tiring work, she was good at it and took gold dust from some of the men who spent time in the various streams about the local peaks. She called it mining the miners and would not have been surprised at all to learn that’s exactly what Rollie Finnegan called what he did, via The Last Drop.

  She was feeling tuckered out from having entertained three men since waking. She had to haul water from a stream that snaked down not far from her cabin, when she heard that annoying little man, Chauncey Wheeler. Her landlord, no doubt dropping by to “check on his investment.” As if the little cabin were worth anything more than what she did in it.

  “My word, Chauncey. You were here last week.” She rested the pail on a stump and dragged her wrist across her forehead. “You back to check on the ballroom of your investment, or perhaps the servant’s quarters? I tell you, it must be taxing for a fellow such as yourself to always be running here and there keeping an eye on his properties. Why, renting out an estate such as this to someone such as myself must be downright worrisome.”

  She tried to force a smile to show him she was funning him. He could be a sensitive little man, as she found most men were, particularly about their bodies. If she let slip one little word that didn’t sound as if it were mighty praise regarding their animal nature or their stunning muscles, why, they were apt to snap her mouth with a set of hard knuckles. Others might act moody and revert to grunts and single words. That’s when she had to work extra hard for her money, cooing and pretending they were something none of them were—real men.

  So far she hadn’t found one, not in Boar Gulch, not in Denver City, nor anywhere else she’d worked herself sore. She reckoned she had a wrongheaded notion of what men were. She damn sure knew what they weren’t. They weren’t tough. Inside, they were all like wilted flowers. Tender and whiny. But they did have money and that was one thing she wanted.

  After she’d tired of toying with Stoneface Finnegan, she was going to lay a price on his head and pay whoever laid the old Pinkerton agent low. Then she was going to bed that hired killer and kill him, then take back her money and leave the flea-ridden rat hole of Boar Gulch. But it was early days yet. Her notices in the newspapers were only beginning to pay off. She expected she’d see a whole lot more folks from Stoneface’s past make their way to the Gulch.

  In the meantime, she would mine the miners. Or in the case of Chauncey Wheeler, she’d mine the merchant. There was no doubt he was a rich little pig, if his boasts were to be believed. He owned a number of choice lots in the town proper, and a handful of claims in the hills surrounding town.

  In fact, he was someone she’d been trying to mine for a while. And she believed she was finally making headway. She knew he fancied her, maybe enough to do that thing so many men before him had tried to do—pay her to give up her occupation if she’d be true to them and them only.

  The thought made her snort back a laugh. Especially watching Chauncey panting and gasping his way up the path toward her.

  “Good day, Delia,” he said, smiling, even as he gasped and trembled for a breath, his red cheeks puffing.

  The sight of his gasping face reminded her of how he’d look in another ten minutes. She decided she’d better go easy on him. He looked pretty rough. She waited for him to catch his breath,
then played a little game with him. She looked at him, then down at the full bucket sitting on the tree stump between them. Then she looked back at him. Then back to the bucket. He knew what she was doing, but he pulled out his hanky, dabbed his forehead, and proceeded up the trail toward her cabin, talking as he walked.

  She sighed, grabbed the bail on the bucket, and did her best to keep it from spilling. “So how’s your friend, Stoneface Finnegan? He strung up anybody else lately?”

  That got to him. Chauncey stopped in the trail and didn’t look back at her. Delia stopped, the water sloshing on her begrimed work dress. Maybe Wheeler had limits. Maybe under all that bluster and baby fat, some part of a man was hidden. Doubtful, she thought, but possible.

  “He is not my friend, Delia. In fact, I’m not overly fond of him.” Chauncey turned to face her. “But that doesn’t mean I approve of what you’ve done to him.”

  “What I’ve done to him?” She slammed the bucket to the ground, advanced on the plump mayor, and poked a long, thin finger in the air, an inch before his nose. “You seem to think you know something you don’t know a damn thing about, is that it?”

  Wheeler blinked rapidly and shook his head. “I . . . yes, I mean, I . . . I don’t know what that means.”

  “You’re damn right, Mayor. Stoneface has caused me and mine no end of grief, and don’t go telling me what you think is the truth, ’cause it ain’t. I’ve heard it all and none of it makes a whit of difference to me. He was doing his job, my father broke the law, blah blah blah.”

  Chauncey bit the inside of his cheeks and had to keep his eyes from drifting down to her chest. My word, but she was something when she was testy.

  She caught him looking at her and said, “Get on up there to my cabin. I perform best when I’m worked up! Go on. Git!”

  He thought for a second she was going to spank him and send him packing, as if he was a shameful pup who’d filched pie off a windowsill. Oh, but this was far better. Chauncey scampered up the trail, trying his best not to look like he felt—chunky and awkward.

  From behind him he heard Delia’s voice urging him with shouts of “You best be ready! Git!”

  Not long after, Chauncey woke, moving only his eyelids, and saw an empty space next to him in the bed. And it wasn’t his bed. That’s right, he’d had a bit of a time with Delia Holsapple. Where was she? Usually when he awoke she was staring at him, shaking her head and wearing a look like she was sucking a lemon.

  He half-rolled over and saw her standing naked at the foot of the bed, his trousers in her left hand, his wallet in her right. For the first time since he’d met her, Delia looked surprised, maybe even shocked and ashamed. That emboldened him. “You afraid I wasn’t going to pay, Delia?” He smiled. “Or are you taking up the family line of work?”

  Her shocked look ended as soon as it began, and her eyes narrowed. “What’s that mean, Chauncey?”

  “Oh, you know.” He pulled the thin blanket up under his chin.

  “No, I don’t,” she said, staring at him. “Tell me.”

  He swallowed. “Oh, I was joking. I . . . I was going to say embezzlement, heh, heh, but that would be in poor taste, I see that now. Forget it, Delia.” He sat up.

  She dropped the trousers in a heap. The wallet, too, and moved toward him. “But that’s the thing, Mayor. I cannot forget it. Ever. Not until he’s dead and gone.” She lunged at him. “You too!” Her long fingers raked at his face, his bare chest.

  “Hey!” he shouted and shoved her away.

  She tripped up on something on the floor, and her hands flailed as she fell backward, offering up a surprised, “Ohhh!” as she dropped from his sight. Something smacked something else hard and she thudded on the floor.

  Chauncey knelt on the sagged bed and stared down at her. “Delia?” His voice was a quiet thing. Outside he heard a crow’s cry as it winged over the cabin. “Delia?” he said in more of a whisper. She didn’t move, and the way she was laying wasn’t the way anybody with a choice would arrange themselves.

  The cabin’s one window, an open-air hole with wooden shutters, was half-closed, forcing shadows across much of that far end of the room where Delia’s head lay. In the dimness, Chauncey saw a black shape beneath her head grow wider. She’d hit her head on the stove he saw behind her. On the edge of the rust-pocked woodstove.

  Oh no. What to do? Chauncey began breathing hard and fast, too much so, and he lost his breath. He’d never been useful in situations where most folks somehow knuckled down and did what needed doing. Not him, no sir. Alone, he was near useless in a bad situation. He needed to check on her, to see if he could do something for her.

  Somehow he found the strength to climb off the bed and placed his foot with care between her parted legs. Unable to help himself, he took a look at her, then, cursed himself for doing so. She was hurt, for pete’s sake. What’s wrong with him?

  “Delia, girl, look. You need to be okay. Come on now, you can have everything in the wallet. I didn’t mean a thing by my comment. It was in poor taste, yes, poor taste.” Chauncey nodded, agreeing with himself. He bent low over her, and saw the black thing that was moving, growing, saw that it was shiny. Even in the dim light, he knew it for what it was, though he’d hoped he was wrong. It was blood, spreading fast.

  It touched his big toe and he jumped and stumbled back onto the bed, which cracked under the sudden weight, and he sagged into it once more. “Delia!” he said louder, struggling to right himself.

  Standing again, he grabbed her leg and shook it, but she gave no response. He groped and found her right arm and felt along it until his fingers reached her neck. He thought that was the spot where pressing somehow, you could tell if a person was breathing. There was no movement. He cupped a hand close over her mouth, but felt no breaths.

  A thin sound filled the air of the little cabin. It took him a few moments to realize he was making the annoying noise. He was whining like a mosquito in the ear.

  “Delia Delia Delia . . .” He repeated her name like a prayer, and looked about the room.

  Wasn’t much there, a wooden crate along the back wall, atop which was heaped a jumble of clothes, none folded. Beside that, was a small table and a chair with one broken leg. A small looking glass hung on the wall behind the table. It held a silver-handled hairbrush, a bottle of toilet water, and a small jar of something, more lady things. He didn’t care what they were. He had to figure out what to do.

  Chauncey looked around the room again, took in the bed, the woodstove—that vile tool. Atop it sat a coffeepot, and in the back corner, another small table with a fry pan, an open flour sack, a plate and a bowl, and a few pieces of cutlery looking as if they’d been tossed from across the room.

  “Think, Chauncey, think.” He rapped himself in the forehead with white knuckles. He had to get dressed. That was the first order. He tugged on his shirt. Then what? Then get the hell out of here. Leave her? Let someone else deal with her.

  “No no no. That’s not right,” he said.

  It was sort of his fault she’d fallen. If he had only stayed asleep for a while longer, he knew she’d be alive. Why did he have to shove her? Sure, she was angry with him, but she wouldn’t have hurt him too badly. He recalled the fiery look in her eyes, felt anew the raw scratches she’d given him. He touched a finger to his face, patted the shirt where underneath she’d clawed his chest.

  As he pulled on the rest of his clothes, he made the whining sound again, and didn’t stop.

  The blood ooze had reached his trousers, bunched where she’d dropped them, and left a sopping spot on the left leg. He almost didn’t pull them on, but he had to walk back to town. He gently moved her legs to one side to get at his brogans. They slipped on easy enough, then he patted his pants, his pocket, out of long habit. The wallet! He fingered his pants, his coat again, but remembered she’d had it. It was down there on the floor somewhere.

  The room was beginning to smell of the warm stickiness peculiar to fresh blood, and Chauncey’
s finicky gut was beginning to rebel.

  He had to find that wallet. Then what? He had to tell somebody. He couldn’t leave her there. It was his cabin, after all. He’d been letting her stay for free. That thought came to him as his hand folded over the wallet. He felt it quickly and was relieved to find it was blood free.

  The cabin was his, and she had stayed there for free. Where would she keep her own money? The thought dogged him as he escaped outdoors. He breathed the fresh afternoon air, pulling in deep draughts of it over and over until he was dizzy.

  The thought of her money crawled back into his mind. Surely she had made a fair bundle while plying her trade in the cabin. Surely it was there somewhere. Likely buried, hidden away. He would have to find it.

  When? Now or wait until after he had gotten help? His first thought was Rollie Finnegan. No, the man and the woman hated each other. That would be a bad mistake. But Pops was a man who didn’t have a problem making money. Did he?

  Chauncey didn’t usually willingly associate with people like Pops, former slaves and all, but he had to admit that Pops seemed different, maybe even trustworthy. He might be able to help, might know what to do with her.

  No, he had to find that money. Chauncey reentered the cabin. A quick look at poor dead Delia showed she hadn’t moved. Somehow he had hoped she would have, surprising him, telling him she had a headache but felt like she would be okay. Maybe he could get her up on the bed.

  He turned and lifted the thick ticking of the mattress. It was a homemade layer, poorly done, and separated in his hand. Maybe she had hid her money in the midst of it. No, that would be uncomfortable to sleep on—or do other things on. He raised it and looked as best as he was able. Nothing. Once more he took in the room.

  Perhaps the flour bag, the other few cans on the shelf. He stepped over her and rummaged, spilling beans and flour and coffee beans, but turned up no money. He saw the crate again. Surely she would not hide her valuables in so obvious a spot. But might be something in there. An address to let her kin know she had gone to meet her Maker.