By the Neck

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  They gripped each other’s wrists and shoulders. The man bent his face low, his teeth coming together hard and fast, trying to bite Pops’ right ear. The idea of such brute fighting made Pops angrier and he bucked and kicked like a cornered mustang.

  Something solid connected with Pops’ left temple. Felt like a boot. He barked a quick oath and shook his head as if to dispel an irksome bee. “Play nice, you . . .” he muttered and ducked his head low, expecting a second hit.

  A second hit did swing down at him and he felt the breeze of it. He rammed forward as if he were a human sledge. The top of his head connected with the man’s side. The man stopped short, prevented by something, likely a big ol’ ponderosa. Pops kept ramming his head into the man’s lower chest like a battering ram and felt something crack and pop within the man.

  Air whooshed out of the man’s mouth in a gasping wheeze. Sounded to Pops as if he’d busted some of the man’s ribs. But the belligerent burner kept clawing and snapping his teeth as if he were trying to bite at Pops’ hair. At the same time, Pops dragged a hand along the ground beneath him, felt no knife. Stepping forward from the momentum, a hard knob wedged beneath his boot sole. His knife. Had to be. He would not consider otherwise.

  One more bend down low and he’d have it in his hand. But it was not to be at that moment, for despite the man’s cracked ribs and wheezing, short breaths, he shoved himself at Pops in a desperate, growling frenzy, like a skinny, cornered bear whipsawing at the presence of a mightier enemy.

  “Give . . . I give!” grunted the man.

  But Pops had heard such lies before, and was proved right as he saw the man’s outstretched arm clawing for the knife. One quick jerk downward and Pops rolled, snatched up the blade a breath before his foe, and in the same motion, rammed it upward, his fingers closing around the comfortable bone handle, as if shaking hands with an old friend. As if he’d planned out the most perfect way for the situation to unfold, his strike met soft flesh, slashing through stringy muscle as it drove in, caroming off bone.

  “Aah!” the man screamed and thrashed away from him. “You stabbed me in the . . . leg!”

  The leg? thought Pops. I meant to gut the fiend. He pushed away from his writhing foe and struggled to his feet.

  Pops looked down at his attacker. The morning sun had risen enough that, even under the dense canopy of trees, he saw the man clearly. He was lean, on the young side, with short dark hair, and high, sharp cheekbones.

  He looked none too tall, but it was difficult to determine as the man was sprawled on his back, his hands opening and closing, trying and failing to grasp his half-drawn leg, his head whipping side to side against the tree trunk. His eyes fluttered, and his chest rose and fell with speed. His breathing sounded rough.

  If he hadn’t been trying to kill Pops, he might feel bad for him.

  “You going to stare him to death?” said a voice from behind Pops.

  Even before he glanced over his shoulder, Pops knew it was Rollie. “Yeah, that’s how I usually work it.”

  “God, help me . . .” burbled the man on the ground.

  “I expect he’s the only one who can now,” said Pops to the man. To Rollie, he said, “You have questions, you might want to ask now, as I stoved him up in good shape. And while his injuries won’t kill him, the pain is going to get worse before it gets better.”

  Rollie didn’t need reminding. He was already at the man’s side and toed him in the ribs. The man howled and his eyes flickered open.

  “Who sent you?”

  “Huh?”

  Rollie kicked him again.

  Again, the man groaned and sucked in a hard breath through clenched teeth.

  “Who sent you?”

  “Have . . .”

  Another kick. “Who?”

  “Aaah! Haverty! Haverty’s idea. Said . . . said we’d collect the bounty.”

  Rollie looked over at Pops, who pulled his pipe from his mouth.

  “Bounty? On who?”

  The man on the ground opened his eyes and stared up at Rollie. A thin smile pulled his sweaty lips tight. “On . . . Stoneface Finnegan. On . . . you!” A wheeze burbled up from his mouth. It became a dry chuckle before collapsing into a rattling cough.

  “Whose bounty?”

  The man kept laughing and coughing. Rollie kicked him again, harder this time.

  “Gaaah!”

  “Who set the bounty?”

  “Okay, okay . . .” The man licked his lips and forced his eyes open again. “Don’t know. Have to ask Haverty.”

  “Can’t,” said Rollie. “He’s dead. I’m asking you.”

  That opened the man’s eyes wide. “Hav’s dead?” He slumped back against the tree with a wheeze. “Aw, no, no. He’s too smart for that.” He began laughing again. “I told him he wasn’t no smarter than me. Guess I was right.”

  “Don’t count on it.” Rollie walked to his horse and returned with a coil of rope. At the sight of it, the man on the ground tried to scrabble backward, his game leg seized stiff and blood pumped from the knife wound. He fought the pain with gritted teeth and hard, quick breaths, but never took his wide eyes from Rollie’s busy hands. “What you gonna do, man?”

  “What’s it look like, son?” said Pops, drawing on his lit pipe. “You got something you think we might want to hear, you best say it.”

  “Oh no, no! I can’t be held to blame for Haverty’s ideas! He’s the one, not me.”

  “You had a torch in your hand when I found you. Did Haverty put it there?”

  “No, I mean yes, I . . . oh hell, mister. I don’t know nothing. I swear it.”

  “That much I guessed.” Rollie whipped the freshly tied noose up over a stout branch. “On your feet . . . whatever your name is.”

  “No!” The man’s eyes widened until they seemed to Pops to be all white. “I won’t! No, I won’t!”

  Rollie sighed. “All right.” He bent to the man with the mouth of the noose looped wide. “I’ll jerk you up. Won’t be as quick or as clean, but the day’s young. I’m up to the task.”

  “Oh God, oh no . . .”

  “There you go again. You have something to say to your Maker, you best get at it,” said Pops. “We’re busy men.”

  The man regarded each of them and shook his head. Rollie sighed once more and shucked his Schofield. “Get up or get shot.”

  The man reached behind him and used the rough trunk of the pine to squirm and wheeze his way upright.

  “That’s better,” said Pops. “Now you sure you don’t know who set the bounty on Mr. Finnegan’s head?”

  The man’s face worked back and forth in a quick shake as if palsied. “No! I’d tell you if I did. I—” He licked his lips. “Don’t that prove I’m telling the truth? I could as easy lie to you, but I ain’t, am I?”

  “That’s true,” said Pops, rubbing his chin. “But it wouldn’t matter none. You see, you and your chum, Haverty was it? You both tried to burn me and Mr. Finnegan to death in our sleep, no less. That’s not right. No, no sir, not right at all.” Pops shook his head and made a clucking sound. “Shame on you. What’s your name, anyway, son?”

  “Why?”

  “Have to know where to send notice of your demise, don’t we? We’re not animals, after all.”

  A quick yelp jumped out of the man’s mouth and he lunged to his left as if to run. He piled up on the needles and jags of granite with an “oomph!” and moaned, scrabbling as if trying to stand.

  “You ought not to do that,” said Pops, pointing with his pipe. “That leg of yours won’t take much more abuse.”

  “Enough, damn your murderous hide,” growled Rollie. “Short of convincing me you weren’t the man holding the torch and giggling as you lit our saloon on fire, and with us in it, you’ll be swinging in a minute or so. Now take it like a man. I’m offering to end your life with a whole lot more dignity than you were fixing to end ours.”

  “But it ain’t right! It ain’t right!”

  “Maybe no
t, but it’s justice, son. Now stop pretending you’re a man and die like one.”

  The man on the ground seemed to cave in on himself. The only movement he made came from his torso heaving and jumping in time with his choking sobs. Long drips of snot trailed down his face and to the ground.

  Rollie traded a glance with Pops, eyebrows raised. When he looked back he was surprised to see the tiny snout of a two-shot derringer shaking slightly, staring straight up at him. And behind it . . . yellow teeth bared behind tight-stretched lips ribboned with snot.

  “What you gonna do now, huh?” The man snickered like a drunk coyote, rolled his head back a moment, glancing up at the branches.

  That was all Rollie needed. The ex-Pink stepped forward fast and raised one leg. He stomped down hard as the man looked back toward Rollie. The shriek almost, but not quite, drowned out the sound of the man’s leg bone snapping at the knee.

  The man filled the ridgetop forest with agony howls.

  The derringer spun by the ringlike trigger guard on his right hand’s pointer finger and then slipped to the packed forest floor. It clunked against a jag of stone and triggered, sending a bullet into the thigh of his stabbed leg.

  For a long moment, there was near silence, skinned over only by the echoes of his previous cries. The man resumed his screams again, keeping it up for a full half minute. His eyes bulged outward and his mouth was wide enough that Rollie wanted to jam a fist straight into it. But he held back out of deference to the fact that the man was about to die anyway.

  Pops puffed his pipe, cradled one arm in another, and shook his head as if he’d heard something down at the general store that sounded too odd to be true. They waited the man out. It worked, always did in such situations. The man worked his howls and screeches until they trailed out to a dribble of cries, then simpers, then sobs. His shoulders convulsed, sending tremors down the length of his body.

  “Okay then.” Rollie stepped forward once more.

  Despite the doomed man’s obvious agonies, he flinched, and offered a weak thrashing response when Rollie slipped the noose over his head and tightened it.

  Pops stepped over and the men nodded to each other. Each grasping the rope, they hoisted the energized man to his feet and let him totter there a moment.

  “Last words?” said Rollie, reaching to loosen the noose for a moment.

  The man spit a clot of snot and blood straight into Pops’ face.

  Pops’ jaw muscles clenched and he dragged a shirt cuff over his cheek and closed eye, wiping away the offense. Then he joined Rollie in sending the degenerate skyward, arm over arm, one heaving rope pull at a time.

  The man’s legs pedaled and whipped, his hands clawing in desperate drags at the tight rope. Scratching his own flesh as it bulged out over the rope left bloody runnels as his flesh purpled and veins grew, pushing outward. They looked like the rivers on maps come suddenly alive with color, with life, even as the man’s own life was pinching out.

  The two men watched from a safe distance as the whipping and bucking continued. One of the man’s legs looked to be lengthening, until they saw it was his left boot sliding off. A quick, snapping kick sent the boot pinwheeling in an arc right between the two spectators’ heads.

  “He’s a fighter,” said Rollie. “Didn’t expect him to be much. At least not until he pulled that derringer on me.”

  “Speaking of that little gun, if you don’t have designs on it, I think that would make a nice pistol for Nosey.”

  “Yeah, fine with me.”

  “You still angry with him, huh?” said Pops as he bent to retrieve Little Miss Mess Maker. He was pleased to find she was not badly damaged. Not that she wasn’t damaged—there was a knick in the smooth fore stock, a dent in the polished rear stock, and a couple of fresh scratches on her black barrels. He cracked her open, thumbed out the shells, and inspected the barrels skyward, eyeballing the twin discs of gray morning light. No visible dents in or out. Satisfied for the time being, he reloaded the shells, closed her with that satisfying punk sound, and cradled her once more in the crook of his arm.

  “Wouldn’t you be?”

  Pops shrugged, then said, “Look out.” He nodded toward the swinging man.

  His trembling legs were leaking out urine and worse. His left unbooted foot hung limp, the hole-filled sock begrimed, wet, and dripping. Finally, the man ceased his struggles.

  “Wish he would have taken it better. I hate to see a man meet his Maker with spite on his lips, anger in his eyes, and mean on his mind.”

  “We gave him the chance.”

  “That we did.” Pops walked around the slowly spinning dead man and nudged in the pine duff for the derringer.

  “More to your right,” said Rollie. “See it by that stone?”

  “Ah, good. Thanks.”

  “I was afraid of this.”

  “What? The derringer?”

  “The bounty. That fool girl’s newspaper notices are drawing flies and one of them got the wise idea to put a price on my head.”

  “Wasn’t her, though,” said Pops, drawing in his pipe. “I expect she spent her wad on the notices.”

  “Right. But she was the catalyst.”

  “You and your dollar words again.” Pops shook his head, smiling.

  Neither man spoke for long moments, then Rollie said, “Well, we better find his horse and yours. I expect yours will have nosed back to the Gulch, but his might be wandering or snagged or worse. Which way did he come from?”

  Pops let out a brief, low chuckle. “Came from out of the sky.”

  “What?”

  “Jumped on me like a wildcat. That tree there, I think. Or maybe off of that big ol’ rock.”

  “Likely heard you, or expected someone might come along trailing him. I’ll look over that way.”

  “You want me to cut him down?”

  “Not yet. We’re not all that far from town. Let’s leave him be for a day. He won’t get any straighter. Make it easier to bury him.”

  Pops didn’t argue with Rollie. After fighting the fire and eating smoke and ash for hours, then wrassling with the spitfire would-be killer, he was well and truly exhausted. Let Rollie find the horse. He’d rest up and contemplate the insides of his eyelids for a spell. Seemed he’d no sooner decided that when he was poked in the back.

  “Hey.”

  Pops shot forward, keeping low, and spun, Lil’ Miss Mess Maker leveled on Rollie’s trim gut. He saw a Schofield staring him down from Rollie’s left hand, the reins from a bay in the other.

  “Easy, Pops.”

  “You too, Finnegan.”

  Both men relaxed.

  “Shouldn’t have spooked you. I thought you heard me.”

  “Should have,” said Pops, blowing out a big breath. “More tired than I thought.”

  “Me too.” Rollie sighed. “I hate getting old.”

  “Getting? Man, you already are old. I’d say somebody forgot to tell you.” Pops chuckled and took the offered reins in hand. “I’ll see if I can hoist my old body up onto this steed and track down my own horse.”

  “Seems gentle enough. We’re building up a right fine herd lately.”

  “Yeah,” said Pops. “Wish we didn’t have to.”

  “I don’t see any way around it. But it’s my fight, Pops. I never expected you or anybody to be caught up in this thing. Now more than ever, considering there’s a price on my head by somebody for some amount.”

  “Nothing like being sure of a thing, is there?” Pops mounted up and the horse barely twitched. “Hmm. Less jumpy than that roan I’ve been riding.”

  “Sound looking, too.”

  “Now, as to that woe-is-me bit you were yammering on about before,” said Pops. “You know, how this is your fight and all? I hear that foolishness from you again and I’m liable to give you something to really cry about, little boy.”

  Rollie paused in climbing aboard his horse and stared at Pops over his saddle, eyebrows raised. “First you insult me by calli
ng me old, then you berate me and call me a little boy.” Rollie hoisted himself up into the saddle, smoothed the reins between his fingers. “Guess it’s true what they say about folks getting confused when they reach a certain age.”

  “Ha!” said Pops and heeled the bay into a gallop past Rollie. “Old folks can’t do this!”

  Rollie smiled for the first time in long hours and followed suit. Both men felt oddly good considering what they’d been through.

  After all, reasoned Rollie as they thundered down the trail toward Boar Gulch, they’d cheated death at least a couple of times since waking. Surely their week could only get better. What else could go wrong?

  * * *

  The next day, out behind the smoking ruins of the bar, Rollie and Pops, with the help of Wolfbait, Nosey, and Bone and his son, stomped the earth around the perimeter of the used but mended canvas campaign tent they’d purchased from Horkins’ Hardware.

  “It ain’t a palace.” Wolfbait turned and glanced down the street at the rising structure at the far end. “Nor a grand hotel such as our esteemed mayor is cobbling together”—he shook his head at what he considered a folly”—but it is a place for The Last Drop to keep up with the competition.”

  Pops bent low behind a sloppy stack of crates and planks topped with dirty shirts and came up holding a bottle of whiskey in each hand. “I’d say we all earned a dollop or two, right, Rollie?”

  Rollie looked up from untangling a clot of rope. “Huh?”

  “I see you haven’t had enough of playing with rope lately.”

  “Mmm,” he scowled and bent back to his task.

  Pops shook his head and poured out a healthy dose of whiskey for all involved in helping them set up the tent. He held out a glass to Rollie, who looked at the drink, dropped the wad of rope, and took the glass. “You’re right.”

  “’Course I’m right,” said Pops and made to sip.

  “Uh-uh,” Rollie shook his head. “First, a toast.” He raised his glass. “To friends. Much appreciated, and thank you.”

  Nosey Parker walked around the tent, mud smudging his face and hair, his knees, and arms.

  “Come on over here, Nosey. Wrap a hand around this glass.” Pops held out a tumbler of whiskey. “Me and Rollie appreciate what you did earlier. Helping to track down that man’s horse and all. Ain’t that right, Rollie?”