Gallows Express

by Peter Brandvold

  Thank god that hadn’t happened to the six men who’d sat on Tierney’s jury the other day.

  “Listen, honey,” Stanley said, keeping his voice down and setting his hands on his wife’s slender shoulders. “I’m the lawman here in Trinity Ridge. It’s my job to uphold the laws of the town and the county. If the raw element doesn’t come to respect me—”

  Janelle cut in with, “Raw element? You mean killers! They won’t respect you, Aaron. They’ll kill you.”

  “I have Freeman backing me. A sheriff couldn’t ask for a better deputy.”

  “Matt’s big,” Janelle said, tears streaming down her heart-shaped face, her nose running as she squinted up at her tall, young husband, “but he can’t stop a bullet any better than you can!”

  “Everything’s going to be fine, honey. You and Jake run along home. I’ll be there in an hour or so for lunch.”

  “I want to go back to the ranch.”

  Stanley scowled. “The ranch?”

  They’d left their little ten-cow operation on the west bank of Sandy Wash over a year ago, because they couldn’t make a living on that parched bench, and Janelle herself hadn’t wanted to raise their newborn child in poverty. Medicine Bow County had needed a sheriff, so, having been in the cavalry and having been a deputy constable for a short time when he’d first come west, he’d run for the job and been voted in.

  No, Stanley thought. Janelle didn’t mean it. She’d been lonely out there and afraid of attacks by Ute renegades. She was just scared and didn’t realize what she was saying.

  “We could go back, raise a few cows,” she said now, weakly, desperately. “We’d get by. At least I wouldn’t have to worry about you, Aaron. Worry about you until I just can’t stand it anymore!”

  Stanley drew her and the boy to him, pressed both their heads to his chest. “You go on back home, honey.” He pressed his lips first to her head, then to Jake’s, who reached up and tried to grab the sheriff’s ear, gurgling incoherently.

  Stanley stepped back, caught the boy’s hand and kissed it, and gave Janelle a reassuring smile. “I’ll be along soon.”

  He glanced over his shoulder at the gallows. All three prisoners were hooded and noosed, and the hangman stood near big Matt Freeman to their left. The minister, Pastor Hawthorne, was delivering a prayer, facing the three doomed men. McGee was mocking him, steepling his hands beneath his chin, his shoulders jerking as he laughed.

  “Go along now, Janelle,” Stanley said, edging away from her and Jake. “Go home and throw a lunch together, will you? I’d love a roast beef sandwich.”

  Janelle stared up at him now as though she could see right through him. “He’s coming.”

  Stanley furled his brows and stopped backing away from her. He felt a familiar hitch in his chest. Oh, no, the sheriff thought. Not again . . .

  “He’s coming, Aaron.” Janelle’s voice was low and sinister, which was the way it sounded whenever she told him about her bizarre premonitions. “I’ve seen him.”

  She nodded, her eyes bright, glassy, and certain. “He and his men are headed this way right now. They’ll be here soon.” Her eyes flooded with tears once more, and she pressed Jake’s head to her bosom. “Oh, Aaron, please come home!”

  Stanley was getting peeved. He glanced around. More people were watching him and his “somewhat unstable young wife,” as the town had come to know her, giving them both strange, knowing looks.

  “Janelle,” he said, hardening his voice. “You listen to me, and go home. Now!”

  Stanley turned away from her and walked back toward the gallows. He was glad when one last glance over his shoulder told him that she was obeying him finally and walking away, heading back toward their house, Jake looking back toward his father and grinning.

  But Aaron Stanley couldn’t deny the little worm of dread flicking its tail in his belly, the long, cold fingers of menace tickling his spine.

  2.

  “AH, HELL”

  AS he made his way through the crowd, Sheriff Stanley glanced at the buildings around him, then looked down the street and into the rolling countryside beyond Trinity. Relief eased the flicking of the worm’s tail when he saw nothing but the rocky, snow-dusted hills and, beyond them, the jutting purple escarpment of the Rawhide Mountains.

  He stopped before the gallows where Matt Freeman stood with one foot on the bottom step, holding his double-barreled shotgun up high across his chest. “Let’s get this show on the road, Matt.”

  The deputy nodded and looked up at the hangman, Amos Scudder, standing on the platform above him. Freeman said something to Scudder, and the wizened little man with the sunken gums nodded and started turning away, toward the wooden, brake-like lever that would drop the trapdoor beneath the doomed men’s feet. He stopped suddenly when hoof thuds rose above the crowd’s low din, and scowled down a near side street.

  “Tierney!” someone shouted.

  All heads, including Stanley’s, turned to see a dozen or so riders galloping in from the north, rounding the corner of the side street and turning onto the main one, making a beeline for the gallows.

  “Ah, hell,” a man groaned near Stanley, and then the sheriff heard several men muttering anxiously before the sound of retreating footsteps, spurs chinging like sleigh bells. The rest of the crowd scattered like a playground full of misbehaving boys at first sight of the beetle-browed schoolmaster.

  A cold stone dropped in Stanley’s belly as an empty stretch of street yawned between only him, Freeman, and the fast-approaching riders. The gap narrowed quickly.

  Stanley went over and picked up his Winchester repeating rifle from where he’d leaned it against the side of the gallows. He racked a shell into the chamber and lowered the hammer to half cock as the lead rider of the well-armed, hard-faced bunch, old Blue Tierney himself, reined his big gray gelding down. Tierney kept a firm grip on the reins as the sweat-lathered mount tossed its head and blew, chomping its bit.

  Stanley glanced a warning at Freeman, who set his jaws and nodded resolutely as he drew a deep breath and raised his shotgun up high across his chest, raking his thumb across both rabbit-ear hammers.

  “Damn,” Tierney said, shuttling his gaze across the gallows and running a gloved hand down the gray beard stubbling his face. “Looks like we almost didn’t make it in time!”

  He glanced to the rider drawing up beside him, and the two men shared a chuckle. The other riders drew up around Tierney and this second man, who Stanley recognized as Tierney’s segundo, Jack Wildhorn. Wildhorn was a round-faced man with a frizzy red beard that hung to his belly and a savage-looking knife scar angling across his upper and lower lips and which, when he spoke, which was rare, caused him to lisp. Cold, stupid, umber-brown eyes stared out from deep, freckled sockets.

  Tierney himself was in his mid-fifties. Years of hard drinking had given him a consumptive look, pronouncing the hawkishness of his nose and eyes and drawing the chalky skin taut against his high-molded cheekbones. He was a medium-tall man, bowlegged, rangy, with the few pounds of extra weight on his slope-shouldered frame settling in his paunch. Gray-white hair curled down from beneath his hat brim to ring his ears and brush the collar of his long, blue wool greatcoat.

  All the other men before Stanley wore coats of various breeds and grades of fur. A couple wore wool caps. The others, including Tierney, wore ragged Stetsons with mufflers wrapped over their heads beneath the hats, and tied beneath their chins. The knotted ends of Tierney’s soiled cream scarf flapped in the chill breeze as he rested his hands over his saddle horn and looked around with a smug grin brightening his drink-bleary eyes.

  “Sorry, boy,” he said, directing his chin at the platform and raising his voice. “We was playin’ poker late last night, and we slept in this mornin’ !”

  “That you, Pa?” Brazos grated out from beneath his black hood, causing the hood to suck in and out around his mouth. “’ Bout goddamn time you got here. The sky pilot done already gave us the send-off!”

&
nbsp; Tierney chuckled and glanced at Reverend Hawthorne, who blanched at the rancher’s gaze and took a half a step back on the gallows floor, near the hangman, Scudder. The executioner was also suddenly looking a tad dyspeptic as his right hand dropped slowly down from the trapdoor’s release handle, and he swallowed hard.

  Stanley drew a deep breath as he and Freeman sidestepped away from each other, giving themselves plenty of room to work in front of the eight riders gathered before them, the horses’ breath jetting in the crisp, golddappled air. Had Janelle really presaged this? the sheriff absently wondered. Or was it just a coincidence? It didn’t take a fortune-teller to know there was a good chance that Tierney would try to spring Brazos. Word had been going around the saloons that he was planning something.

  “Look here, Mr. Tierney,” Stanley said, lifting his head and putting some official steel in his voice, “I don’t know what you think you’re doing here today, but I gave the order that Trinity is off-limits to Two Troughs men until the day after tomorrow.”

  He paused for effect, and Tierney studied him with one narrowed, violet eye, half his upper lip curled back from his teeth.

  “Now, your son, here—Brazos,” Stanley continued, “was tried all legally by a judge and jury. Said jury found him and his two cohorts, Mr. Hostetler and Mr. McGee, guilty of murder in the first degree.”

  “Mr. Hostetler.” J.T. Hostetler laughed behind his hood, lifting the toes of his worn, brown boots. “I like that. I’d like for you boys to call me ‘sir’ from now on!”

  “Yeah, well, first they should think about gettin’ us down off this platform,” McGee said, his voice tight and testy. “And I’d appreciate havin’ this rope removed from my neck. It’s startin’ to itch!”

  Keeping his eyes on Blue Tierney, Stanley said, “You’ll stay right where you are, McGee. Same with your friends. The jury has done decided their fates, Mr. Tierney. Now, before I have to arrest you for interfering in the carrying out of an officially sanctioned execution, I’ll ask you to ride on back to where you came from.”

  Tierney winced as though he’d been stricken with indigestion. “Look, Sheriff—why don’t you be a good young feller and turn these men loose? Do it the easy way? All right? I know you got a wife and a kid, and I’d feel bad as hell if I had to shoot you down like a damn dog right here in the street.”

  Stanley’s stomach rolled, and his heart hammered, but he kept his face implacable as he adjusted his grip on his Winchester. The man before him was hard. Frontier hard. With a criminal past. And Stanley knew Tierney would kill him if he had to, and he really wouldn’t feel bad at all about it.

  “Look, Mr. Tierney,” Stanley said. “You know I can’t do that. And while, yes, you have my deputy and myself outnumbered, if you try to release these convicted felons, you’re going to have a fight on your hands.”

  The young sheriff glanced at Matt Freeman standing about ten feet to his right, feet spread a little over shoulder width apart, holding his shotgun at once defensively and threateningly. His fingers looking thick and pink in his fingerless gloves, the deputy drew the barn blaster’s hammer back to full cock.

  “And you’ll be the first to die,” Stanley said, adding threat to his voice as his eyes held Tierney’s.

  Stanley heard a man behind Tierney growl, “Why, you little fuck!”

  A gun exploded.

  At the same time, Stanley felt as though his upper left arm had been struck by a thrown war hatchet. As he staggered to his right, he tried to keep his rifle aimed at Blue Tierney and squeezed the Winchester’s trigger. A sinking sensation was added to his sudden torment when he saw the rifle jerk up to send his triggered slug high and right of his target.

  Tierney’s gray gelding reared as Stanley dropped to a knee, gritting his teeth against the hot, jaw-grinding pain in his left arm and upper chest. In the left periphery of his vision, the sheriff saw Freeman swing his shotgun’s double bores in Stanley’s direction, intending to shoot over Stanley’s head at the man who’d shot the sheriff.

  But then pistols popped and smoke puffed around the men directly in front of Freeman, and Matt screamed. He triggered the twin bores of his shotgun with a thunderlike explosion—the report felt like an open hand smacking the side of Stanley’s head—and then the deputy screamed once more as he lowered the shotgun and staggered backward.

  After that, Stanley heard only a ringing in his ears though he knew more guns were being fired. He saw the flames stabbing from barrels and saw the smoke jet from pistol maws. Horses reared and jerked this way and that, and the mouths of Tierney’s men opened wide in jubilation.

  Stanley felt the hot jab of at least two more chunks of lead before he got his rifle raised once more, using only his right hand while his left arm dangled uselessly at his side. He cocked the rifle one-handed and fired, watching in horror as the slug blew up dust in front of him, before he felt an incredibly huge, powerful, invisible fist slam into his chest.

  Not a fist.

  Looking down, he saw stuffing puff from the front of his quilted red blanket coat and then a thick red substance dribble out through the ragged hole, rolling in thick beads down his coat and across the buckles of his double cartridge belts to the street beneath him, where they licked up little curls of frozen dust.

  He released the Winchester and flew back against the steps of the gallows and, no longer feeling anything, but now hearing the muffled whoops and yells and pistol pops of Tierney and his reveling men, looked up at the sky.

  He saw a bird wing past. Not an eagle, a hawk, or even a buzzard. Just a barn swallow, its little wings flashing silver in the sunlight.

  Odd, he thought with a startling clarity, that the last bird he’d ever see was one so benign as a common barn swallow.

  And then the young sheriff’s body spasmed violently as he lay there against the gallows steps. Blood welled from between his lips curled with misery. His eyes closed on the now-empty sky. And he died.

  He did not see or hear his young wife screaming his name as she ran toward him while several of Tierney’s men leapt from their skitter-hopping mounts to the gallows, where they began freeing Stanley’s prisoners.

  “Aaron!” Janelle screamed, dropping to her knees and cradling her husband’s lifeless body in her arms. She pressed her chin to his forehead and cast her agonized, horrified gaze at the sky as though trailing her husband’s fleeing soul there amidst the wafting gunsmoke. “Aa-ronn!”

  She was still screaming and cradling her husband’s lifeless head as the laughing riders, three now riding double, galloped back in the direction of the Tierney Two Troughs outlaw ranch.

  3.

  THE SHORTEST ROUTE TO TRINITY

  GIDEON Hawk drew his grulla gelding to a halt on the pine-stippled mountain shoulder and swung down from the saddle.

  He dropped the reins and walked down a slight grade through the columnar pines and firs. Staring off across a deep canyon, he saw three riders moving Indian-file along the narrow game trail angling down the opposite ridge on which few trees grew—mostly scrub juniper with a few spindly cedars.

  The riders were on the same trail that Hawk had been following.

  Three men. The same three who’d been following Hawk’s trail for the past hour or so, since he’d entered the central reaches of the Rawhide Mountains along the Colorado-Wyoming border. Three well-armed men, he saw now, not needing the help of field glasses to see the rifles jutting from their saddle boots as well as knife sheaths and holsters on the cartridge belts they wore on the outsides of their coats.

  As the riders followed the path down the steep mountain slope and into the canyon, they looked around warily though the lead rider always returned his eyes to the trail ahead of him and on which Hawk’s own sign was plainly visible, having been set there only about fifteen, twenty minutes ago. There had been several forking paths off the one that Hawk had followed, so it was likely no mere coincidence they were on Hawk’s trail.

  Hawk lifted his flat-brimmed black hat,
ran a gloved hand through his thick, dark brown hair, then set the hat back on his head and adjusted the angle.

  Turning back to his idly foraging horse, he reached under the belly to unbuckle the latigo straps, then pulled the beast’s head up to slip the bit from its teeth. As the grulla went back to foraging on the gama grass jutting up from the two or three inches of ice-crusted snow amongst the pines, the Rogue Lawman, as Hawk was known much farther and wider than he wanted to be, shucked his Henry repeater from his saddle boot angling up over the grulla’s right wither.

  He peered through the quiet fir boughs to watch the three riders drop down out of sight on the far side of the canyon, then racked a cartridge into the rifle’s breech and lowered the hammer to half cock. He walked back across the trail, into a bowl-shaped area cut into the slope, and leaned the Henry against a boulder.

  Looking around, he began gathering fallen branches and pinecones. He deposited the armload near an open patch of ground, then set about breaking the branches over his knee and arranging the pinecones and a handful of needles into a shaggy mound. Soon, he’d coaxed a small fire to life and set a coffeepot to boil on a rock in the center of the fire.

  He sat down on the ground and leaned his back against the boulder, the rifle within reach of his right hand. He hunkered down inside his three-point buckskin capote and raised the collar against a chill breeze blowing up from the canyon. He was sitting there, one knee raised, the pot beginning to rumble and send steam curling thinly up from its spout, when he heard a horse blow from up trail.

  The grulla had already sensed the approaching riders, and was staring up trail with its ears pricked, its eyes wide and alert. Hawk’s horse lifted its head slightly and loosed a shrill whinny. One of the mounts of the approaching riders returned the greeting, and Hawk heard a muffled, slightly breathless voice say, “Up there. I see his mount.”