A Time For Hanging

by Bill Crider

  Willie closed his eyes again. The sun was giving him a terrible headache, on top of the one he already had. He felt like there was a bucking broncho inside his head, kicking him right behind the eyes, and he wondered just how much he'd had to drink the night before.

  It scared him a little that he couldn't remember.

  It was getting to be that way more and more. He'd wake up somewhere, and he couldn't remember how he got there or where he'd been before he got there.

  He thought about it for a few minutes, his shoulder rubbing on the barrel, but it didn't do any good. He was there, but that was it. How much he'd drunk or where he'd been the night before were as blank as the blue sky that hung over Dry Springs.

  Something almost came to him then, something that made his head slump suddenly forward and his knees jerk up as if he were going to jump up and run.

  Something had happened last night, something bad.

  Really bad.

  Willie hugged himself tightly as if he were cold and rocked gently back and forth, moaning. He was scared spitless.

  After a minute or two, however, he recovered himself. What was there to be scared of? Something had happened, and it had been awful, but he could not for the life of him recall what it had been. What was wrong with him? Why couldn't he remember?

  He sat a little straighter and pulled his had brim down so the sun didn't bother him quite so much.

  Hell, why should he worry about not bein' able to remember? That was why he'd taken up drinkin' in the first place, wasn't it? So as not to remember?

  Trouble was, he could remember all the things he didn't want to. He could remember Laura Lee just fine, see her face shinin' and smilin' and see her brown hair hangin' around it. He could see their baby, too, a little girl, it was. Laughin' and takin' on, grabbin' at her daddy's finger.

  That was theyway they'd been before the fever took 'em, and the only blessing in Willie's life was that he could remember them that way and not as they had been in the last days of the fever, just before they'd died.

  What was it the preacher had said? Randall, that was his name. "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust?" Somethin' like that. And somethin' about the sun also arising and going down and generations passing away, not one bit of which made a damn bit of difference to Willie.

  If it was meant as a comfort it missed the mark by a long sight, and since that time the only comfort Willie had found was in a bottle.

  He could afford it. He'd sold his little farm and was determined to drink up the proceeds. He figured he'd be able to drink himself to death before he ran out of money, and he hoped he could. He was too much of a coward to shoot himself, though it would have been a good bit quicker and probably cleaner in the long run.

  Clean was one thing that Willie was not. He couldn't recall his last bath, but he had slept out in the rain a time or two and so he figured that counted as a wash.

  He hadn't changed clothes in quite a spell, either, and he knew he smelled to high heaven. Well, it didn't bother him, and to hell with anyone it did.

  Using the wall, he pushed himself up.

  He knew exactly what he needed. He needed a drink.

  He moved away from the wall. His first step was somewhat unsteady, but by the time had gone four or five steps he was getting the hang of it and was walking almost normally. He entered the alley beside the saloon, appreciating the cool shade it offered. Feeling a wave of dizziness, he rested for a minute, steadying himself with a hand on the wall.

  After a while the dizziness passed and he went on down the alley. When he got to the end, he shaded his eyes with his hand. The street was not busy yet, but there were several wagons moving and some horses were tied to the hitching post in front of Danton's Saloon. They stood there calmly, twitching their sides when flies landed on them.

  He stepped up on the walk and entered the saloon. There was hardly anyone in there at this hour. Lane Harper was behind the bar, and several men were leaning on it, talking to Harper in low voices.

  Aside from them, there was no one. Roscoe, the piano player, would not be in until late afternoon, and few of the girls would be around before that time. Willie didn't care. He wasn't interested in music or women. All he wanted was a drink.

  He walked over to the bar. The conversation, which had been hushed to begin with, stopped altogether when he got there.

  He didn't give a damn. He reached into the pocket of his ragged jeans and came up with a coin.

  "Whiskey," he said, putting the coin on the bar.

  "Early, ain't it?" Harper said. "Even for you."

  Willie didn't say anything. Talking made his head hurt. He just waited, and Harper poured him a shot in a grimy glass, took the coin, and left Willie's change on the bar.

  Willie knocked the drink back. He felt better almost at once. He knew the feeling would not last; it never did. But it was enough to get him going for the day.

  He looked down the bar. Turley Ross was there, and Len Hawkins. Harl Case, too. To Willie, they looked to be in bad shape. Their eyes were as red as his probably were, and they were all scowling. Come to think of it, Harper didn't look so good himself.

  "You fellas look like you could use a drink," Willie told them.

  "Just go on off and leave us alone," Ross said.

  "Don't think so," Willie said. "Gimme another one, Lane."

  Harper poured another drink. Willie took his time with this one, waiting to see if the men would resume their conversation.

  Finally they did.

  "Be a damn shame if he got away with it," Ross said. "You never know what can happen in a trial."

  "You think we oughta do somethin' ourselves?" Harper said.

  "It ain't the time to be thinkin' of that," Harl Case said. "He's in the jail now. We got to let the law handle it."

  "Handle what?" Willie said.

  Ross gave him a speculative look, as if wondering whether to tell him. "Paco Morales," he said. "He killed a woman last night."

  "Paco did? I can't hardly believe that," Willie said. "He's just a kid."

  "Well, he killed her just the same," Len Hawkins said, running a hand over his bald head. "We seen it."

  "Who'd he kill?"

  "That preacher's daughter, Lizzie Randall."

  Willie Turner's stomach contracted itself into a knot and he doubled over at the bar, dropping his empty glass and clutching at himself.

  "Sonofabitch is gonna puke," Harper said. "Get him outta here before he does it."

  Turner was already coughing from deep within himself. Turley Ross, who was closest to him, got him turned around and headed in the direction of teh door. Then he planted his foot in the middle of Willie's backside and pushed.

  Willie went stumbling out the door, across the boardwalk, and into the middle of the street. He stood there hunched over and retched, bringing up a thin green bile along with the whiskey he had just drunk. It splattered into the dust of the street and on Willie's boots. It could have been worse, but Willie could not recall the last time he'd had a real meal.

  There was still hardly anyone on the street, and no one noticed Willie as he stood there heaving, bent over with his hands braced on his knees.

  Paco Morales had killed Lizzie Randall, he thought. That wasn't right. He was sure it wasn't right.

  He staggered back into the alley, into the shade.

  Lizzie Randall. That was the bad thing that had happened. He could see the blood. It was all over her. He leaned a shoulder against the wall and heaved again, but nothing came up.

  Lizzie Randall. Jesus, he was scared.

  He had to have a drink. No, not a drink. That wasn't what he needed right now. What he needed was a bottle. A full bottle.

  Maybe two.

  11.

  "She wasn't stabbed," Bigby had told Vincent when the sheriff had arrived at the doctor's office. Just cut real bad, slashed, you might say. That's why there was so much blood. What killed her was the beatin'." He wasn't smiling as much as he usually did.


  Vincent found it hard to believe that there was anyone in Dry Springs who could do a thing like that, and he said so to Bigby.

  "Anybody can do anything," Bigby said, shaking his head. "You put them in the right place at the right time, they can do anything."

  "Where's the body now?"

  "I called Rankin. He came and got it."

  Rankin was the undertaker.

  "Think he can do anything with her?" Vincent said.

  "You mean make her look better? Maybe a little." Bigby didn't sound as if he held out much hope.

  "The Randalls might be comin' by here. You send 'em on to Rankin's," Vincent said.

  "They took it pretty hard, I guess."

  "They did," Vincent said. "They surely did." He was thinking about the Randalls as he left Bigby's office.

  He was in the grove now, looking for something, anything, that would help him figure our what happened. For one thing, he wanted to find the knife, if it was still there, though he suspected the killer had taken it with him.

  He found the spot where the struggle had occurred. There were some blood stains on the ground, a piece of Lizzie's dress, but that was all. He took the piece of dress and put it in his pocket.

  He located the place where the horses had been tied last night and then walked along the trail looking for some sign of other horses. If he found none, he would look in the trees.

  He found soon found some droppings beside the trail. He broke them open. They were fresh, but the ground was too hard to offer any tracks, and though he looked for quite a while he found nothing that was any help to him. The droppings proved that someone else had been along the trail, maybe around the time of the murder, but that was all. They didn't have to come from the killer's horse. Lots of people used that trail.

  If Paco was telling the truth, of course, there had to have been someone else in the grove last night. It looked as if there had been, but that wasn't necessarily going to help Paco, who hadn't seen anyone except the men who had beaten him.

  He continued to look around, moving back into the trees to the place where Paco had been lying. Not too far away, Vincent found the twisted sacks of salt and sugar.

  He put them in his pocket with the piece of Lizzie's dress.

  They didn't prove anything either, except that Paco had been telling the truth when he said that he had been to the store. He could still have killed the girl.

  Vincent was liking the whole thing less and less. There was going to be trouble over this, he could tell it, the kind of trouble he had spent years trying to avoid.

  His stomach lurched. He told himself it was just that he hadn't eaten breakfast, but he knew better. He was afraid of what might happen.

  The men who had found the body were convinced Paco was guilty. They were going to start talking around town, and things could turn ugly fast.

  The sun was getting higher in the sky. It was going to be another hot day. Vincent found himself wishing for rain, thinking that heavy clouds and pouring water might calm things down or at least postpone any violence that might be coming. But there was no hope of rain.

  He walked wearily back to his horse. Maybe he would have been more optomistic if he had been able to sleep the night before, but it was too late to worry about that. He swung himself into the saddle and rode back to the jail, where Jack Simkins was waiting.

  "How's the boy?" Vincent asked when he had tied his horse to the rail.

  "Not doin' so good," Jack said. "He's scared."

  "Don't blame him much," Vincent said. "I'd be sacred, too."

  "You ain't gonna let 'em hang him, are you?" Simkins said.

  Vincent walked past him and into the cramped office. He opened a desk drawer and put the sacks and the piece of dress inside. "I don't intend to let them," he said. "Maybe they won't try."

  "They'll try, all right," Jack said. "We gotta stop 'em." His face was set in a determined expression that emphasized the strangeness of his features.

  Vincent hardly noticed the glass eye and the scar anymore, having to gotten used to them over the years, but there were no doubt some who still found Jack's appearance pretty unusual

  It wasn't something that the deputy liked to talk about, and although Vincent knew the whole story, he wasn't sure how many of the townspeople did. Jack was prone to tell different versions.

  "Lost it one time while breakin' a bronc," he might say. Or he might tell about the time he got in a little squabble with a grizzly bear over which one of them was going to cross a creek on a narrow log.

  Whichever version he told, Jack always said that he liked being a deputy. He was tired of his old life and looking for something a little less strenuous. Somehow he had drifted into Dry Springs about the time Vincent had become sheriff and had gotten himself hired on as the only deputy, another job he had showed little natural talent for. However, since there was rarely any call for extraordinary law-enforcement ability in Dry Springs, he had managed to hang on to the job.

  Vincent was surprised that he was taking such an interest in Paco Morales. Jack was usually looking for ways to avoid doing anything rather than ways to prevent trouble.

  "What's got into you, Jack?" he said. "You got some kind of a special interest in that boy?"

  Jack took off his hat and wiped the sweat band with his dirty bandana. He put the bandanna back in his pocket and settled the hat on his head.

  "Nope," he said. "I just hate to see him get railroaded."

  Vincent sat in the chair behind the desk. "I got to ask you somethin', Jack."

  "What's that?"

  "Did you beat on that boy along with the rest of them?"

  Jack looked at the floor, remembering the previous night. Finally he looked up. "Nope," he said. "I didn't."

  "That's good," Vincent said, relaxing a little.

  "But I stood there and watched 'em," Jack said. "Sheriff, I coulda stopped 'em if I'd just pulled my gun on 'em, but I didn't do it. I let 'em beat that boy to within an inch of his life, and I just watched. There wasn't nothin' he could to against all those men, and I let 'em hit him like that."

  "I'm not sure there was anything you could've done, Jack. You didn't let 'em hang him. Remember that."

  Jack did not seem reassured. "You better talk to the boy," he said. "It might make him feel better."

  Vincent got up and went back to the cells. Paco was still lying on the cot, staring at the ceiling.

  "You feel like you could eat somethin'?" Vincent asked.

  Paco shook his head.

  "How about some water?"

  "Yes," Paco said. "Water would be good."

  Vincent brought the bucket and dipper. Paco sat up and drank thirstily.

  "Look, Paco," Vincent said when the boy had finsihed drinking. "This looks pretty bad for you, but maybe we could do something about it. If you saw anybody there last night, anybody who could say you didn't kill the girl, you could get out of this. Or if you didn't kill her, maybe you saw who did."

  "I didn't see anyone," Paco said wearily. He sounded like a man who had already given up all hope. "I thought I heard someone once, but I was scared. I ran."

  "There's a lot of men in town who are sayin' they saw you do it," Vincent told him.

  "Then they are liars."

  "They wouldn't cotton to you callin' 'em that."

  "It does not matter. They will kill me anyway, the way they killed my father."

  "Your father was caught cheatin'," Vincent reminded him.

  "He cheated no one," Paco said. "That is another lie. But they killed him anyway, the same way they will kill me. You did nothing for him, and you will do nothing for me."

  Vincent sighed. He hated himself for thinking it, but he was afraid that Paco was probably right.

  Vincent went back to the office. Jack had gone off to make the rounds of the town, and Vincent had just settled back into the chair and thrown his legs up on the desk when the shooting started.

  12.

  Charley Davis was standing in the mi
ddle of the street looking up at one of the hotel's second floor windows, the one where the shots were coming from. He was yelling up at the blonde woman who leaned out the window, holding a .44 caliber Colt's in both of her small hands and trying squinting one eye as she sighted down the barrel.

  "Damnit, Lucille!" the man yelled. "You gotta listen to me. There's no reason for you to --"

  He was interrupted by the crack of a shot. Smoke seemed to puff from the pistol's cylinder and there was a short spout of flame from its barrel. The bullet whacked out a hunk of the dry street, and Davis hopped backward.

  Davis was a tall, sandy-haired cowboy, not that you could see much of his hair under the large, tall crowned hat he wore. He had thin legs encased in tight Levi's, and he was wearing a faded red shirt and a black vest. He felt silly, standing in the street and getting shot at, and he knew that he was making a fool of himself in front of the whole town.

  "Lucille, you got to listen to me!" he yelled. There were two more shots from the second floor window, and one of them almost clipped the front toe off Davis' left working boot. He tried to jump back, got his legs tangled, and fell on his butt in the street.

  He looked around to see if there was anyone laughing at him. By God, there better not be. If there was, whoever did it was going to be sorry if Charley got his hands on them.

  There was no one laughing. Most of the people on the street had taken cover when the shooting started, either in Danton's saloon, which was right across the street from the hotel, or in one of the nearby stores. There were a couple of kids behind a water trough, and Davis could hear them giggling, but that was all right. They were just kids.

  Lucille Benteen looked down at Charley, sitting there with his knees in the air, twisting his head around to look to see who was watching him; it was almost all she could do not to laugh herself. But she didn't; she wasn't going to laugh at Charley ever again, any more than she would ever believe a word that worthless wrangler said.

  While he was sitting there, trying to decide whether to get up or not, she had a chance to reload, and she thumbed the thick cartridges into the chambers of the .44 with a practiced hand. She wasn't going to kill Charley, but she could if she wanted to, and he damn well ought to know it. Before she was finished with him, he might wish she had killed him. She was going to embarrass the fire out of him, that was for sure.