Gallows Express

by Peter Brandvold

  Hawk went into the office to see about his prisoners.

  18.

  “WHAT GRADE O’ SUICIDAL FOOL AM I LOOKIN’ AT NOW?”

  “MAYOR Pennybacker said you wanted to see me, Gid?” said Reb Winter hopefully as he approached the jailhouse, flanked by the big Indian who’d helped him haul Brazos Tierney out of the Venus.

  Hawk had checked on his prisoners, all three of whom were for the moment quietly cowed, then took a seat on the jailhouse’s front porch where he could keep an eye on things and watch for the coming of Brazos’s old man.

  “I did at that,” Hawk said, holding a smoking coffee cup on his left thigh, along with his fully loaded and half-cocked Henry repeater. “I was figurin’ on putting you to work for a day or two, if you think Mr. Lundy can spare you. I need someone to keep an eye on the east end of town, where the trail comes in.”

  “For Blue Tierney?” asked Reb, squeezing his watch cap in his hands and leaning forward on the toes of his scuffed, square-toed boots.

  “You got it?”

  “Why, sure, sure.” Reb’s eyes sparkled with boyish delight. “I’m sure Mr. Lundy can spare me for a day or two—maybe even three!—since it’s such an important job, an’ all. Wouldn’t want ole Blue and his boys ridin’ in unannounced.”

  “That’s how I figure it.”

  Hawk glanced at the Indian, who stood off Reb’s left hip, his face a massive chunk of eroded granite. He was staring eastward along the street, as though his mind were elsewhere.

  “Who’s your friend?” Hawk asked Reb.

  “This here’s Alvin Gault. He tends the depot down at the train station.” Reb hooked his thumb to indicate the spur tracks and crude little station on Trinity’s southern flank. “There ain’t no train due till Monday, and he was wonderin’ if he could help, too?”

  “Why not?” Hawk dug into his pants pocket and tossed Reb two silver dollars. “How’s two dollars sound for the day?” He tossed Alvin Gault two coins, and the Indian caught them against the front of his patched blanket coat. “Two more if I need you another day?”

  Reb looked at Alvin, but Alvin kept his hard, black eyes on Hawk. As if some silent council had occurred—or maybe Reb could simply read the Indian’s mind by the subtlest change of his physical features, though if there’d been a change Hawk certainly hadn’t detected it—Reb said, “Fine as frog hair, Gid! Uh . . .”

  “What?” Hawk asked.

  “You think there’s any chance you might deputize us?” The sparkle in Reb’s eyes grew. “Maybe even give us badges?”

  For the first time, the big Indian’s eyes flung an excited spark of their own.

  Hawk snorted. “You know where Stanley kept ’em?”

  Reb said he did.

  Hawk jerked his thumb toward the office. Reb fairly sprinted inside and there was the raspy bark of a drawer being opened and closed. The big younker returned to the porch, pinning one deputy sheriff’s badge on his coveralls and tossing another to Gault. Reb’s cheeks were flushed with excitement.

  “Fire three quick shots if you see ’em comin’,” Hawk ordered.

  “Three shots—you got it!”

  As Reb and the Indian turned and began making their ways eastward, walking abreast and about ten feet apart, shoulders back and chests out, Hawk said, “Your jobs are done after you’ve fired those signal rounds, Reb. You remember that!”

  “Oh, I will, Gid,” Reb said, twisting around to yell behind him, throwing up an acknowledging arm. “Don’t you worry about a thing!”

  As they drifted down the street, Hawk turned his attention to a wagon moving up a southern side street. There were three men in the wagon, all dressed in carpenter’s aprons, and the driver swung the wagon onto Wyoming Street. A big collie dog was sitting atop the pile of green lumber in the box, tongue hanging, an eager, expectant look in the dog’s eyes.

  The driver, who wore a leather watch cap and a full, cinnamon beard, gave Hawk a wave then pulled the wagon to a stop in the middle of the street fronting the jailhouse, about twenty feet behind the still-smoldering ruins of the previous gallows.

  “About here, would you say, Sheriff?”

  “Looks good to me.”

  “All righty, then.”

  The man set the wagon brake, and he and the others climbed down from their perches in the driver’s box. The dog leapt from the top of the wood to the wagon’s side panel and from there to the ground, prancing around the wagon and waving its shaggy brown tail like a welcome flag. The men walked around the rear of the box and, donning leather work gloves, began unloading the lumber for the new gallows and piling it on the wagon’s far side, the sharp thuds of the boards resounding over the town.

  Hawk took a last sip of coffee, then tossed the tepid dregs over the pole railing and returned the cup to his desk inside the office. He closed the door on his way out and locked it. Since he was about to have a new gallows, it was time to call in another hangman.

  He knew of one up in Cheyenne.

  Hawk walked down to the depot station abutting the railroad tracks that still owned a new-silver shine and filled out a pink telegraph flimsy in pencil at the little shed that housed the Wells Fargo telegrapher, his telegraph key, and a fat tabby cat sprawled on the brick platform in the bright but cool spring sunlight.

  A dented tin milk bowl sat off the building’s southeast corner.

  When he’d finished writing his note, Hawk set down the pencil stub and dug into a pants pocket to pay the nickel-a-word fee. The telegrapher—a stooped gent in eyeshades and spectacles—stared darkly down at the flimsy, snapped his dentures, and shook his head.

  “Oh, lordy,” was all he said, as he picked up the flimsy and started the key tapping as Hawk strode away. As Hawk’s boots thumped and his spurs chinged, the cat lifted its head from the cobble platform, curled its tail, yawned, and went back to sleep.

  Back at the jailhouse, in front of which the carpenters had finished unloading the lumber from the wagon and were now dragging out toolboxes and nail pouches, Hawk heard a commotion. He went inside to hear the unmistakable clatter of a tin cup being raked across a jail cage wall. He unlocked the cell block door and shoved it open.

  The clatter grew louder, and one of his prisoners yelled, “Git back here, Sher’ff! We got something we need to discuss with you, ya plug-headed son of a bitch!”

  Hawk gave a snort, then sauntered a few feet down the corridor and turned to the cage in which Hostetler stood with a tin cup in one hand, his other hand hooked around a flat steel bar strap, and a menacing snarl on his lips. One-Eye McGee sat on the edge of one of the two cots. Brazos Tierney sat on the other cot, one knee up, resting his bloody head against the stone wall behind him. He had a blood-soaked bandanna wrapped beneath his chin and tied in a large knot atop his head.

  He looked mean and miserable.

  In fact, Hawk thought they all looked about as piss burned as three bobcats chained to the same plank and prodded with sticks.

  Hostetler said, “We’re thirsty. And hungry. And Brazos needs a doctor to sew his chin up and his tongue back together.”

  Brazos turned his head to regard Hawk through narrowed eyes, his raw, belligerent face looking ridiculous, framed by the bloody bandanna. He looked like an old lady in a nightcap. “I need a doctor, you son of a bitch! And a shot of whiskey.”

  Sitting on the cot running along the cage’s left wall and clutching his privates, One-Eye McGee said, “My oysters is puffed up so they’d do me as wheel hubs.”

  “You three bought into the wrong game, comin’ back here to trifle with them whores.” Hawk bit the end off a cigar. “You’ll hang as soon as the gallows are built—day or two. Just like the circuit judge ordered and Sheriff Stanley was about to see to.” As he scratched a match to life on his cartridge belt, Hawk grinned with menace. “I don’t see any point in wasting taxpayers’ money on medical services for three soon-to-be sides of human beef.”

  Hostetler stared hard at Hawk through the bars. H
is jaws bulged, and one eye twitched. “Mister, it’s you that bought chips in the wrong game. I don’t know how much Pennybacker and Tarwater an’ them is payin’ you, but oh, lord, it ain’t enough. Not near enough! You’re stackin’ trouble up right high for yourself!”

  “What about food?” McGee asked. “You gotta feed us.”

  “You’ll have plenty of food,” Hawk said, lighting his long, black cheroot. “Plenty of bread . . . and all the water you can drink.”

  The three glowered back at him. Their fury was like some rancid thing moldering in the air around them.

  Finally, Brazos moved his lips and then spit a dogget of blood toward Hawk. Amidst the blood was a tooth, which bounced off the barred door with a small ping, then clattered to the earthen floor.

  Puffing cigar smoke, Hawk turned and walked back into his office and drew the cell block door closed behind him. He turned the key, locking the door, then hung the ring on its hook, and returned to his chair on the porch where he saw that the carpenters were already framing one side of the gallows, their hammers sounding like echoing pistol shots.

  Except for the three sunburned woodworkers and the collie dog lounging in the shade of a building on the other side of the street, Wyoming Street was deserted. Not a soul remained of the scurrying crowd of a few minutes before.

  A chill breeze blew, shepherding a dust devil into town from the east. It sputtered this way and that and then died on the Poudre River House’s front porch. A small, black dog crossed the street at an angle, disappearing down a gap between a drugstore and a haberdashery, and then there were only the carpenters and the breeze and the napping collie.

  Hawk turned the cigar in his lips and smoked.

  The three signal shots came later that afternoon.

  Pow! Pow! Pow!

  They sounded like the carpenters’ hammers muffed by distance.

  The carpenters had taken a late afternoon break from their pounding and sawing on the replacement gallows and were nowhere to be seen as Hawk, who’d been catnapping on the jailhouse porch, poked his hat brim off his forehead and swung his gaze east along Wyoming Street. There was only one man on the street—he was crossing it, head turned in the direction of the shots. When he was halfway across the street he clamped his bowler hat on his head, broke into a run, and disappeared behind the post office.

  Beyond the town, brown dust rose like smoke from a small but growing wildfire. Bouncing human heads rose up beneath it and beneath them rose the heads of galloping horses.

  It was another minute before Hawk could hear the thuds of the horses’ hooves. He couldn’t count the number of approaching riders yet, but they all seemed to be flanking the lead man who rode a cream barb. Long, snow-white hair hung down from the leader’s white, brown-banded slouch hat to flop about his shoulders clad in a long, blue greatcoat like that worn by cavalry officers.

  The man wore a sweeping mustache the color of his hair, and as he and his followers galloped on into the town, the thunder of their hooves now echoing off the buildings, Hawk saw that his face was as red as old saddle leather, and that he wore two white-handled pistols up high against his belly, over his coat.

  Blue Tierney led the gang past the Poudre River House Hotel, and when they were within seventy yards of Hawk, Tierney held up his left hand, checking down his own horse and ordering his riders to follow suit. He stopped the cream barb after another ten yards, the gang stopping behind him, the horses snorting and blowing and shuffling their feet, lifting dust that glowed in the brassy, late afternoon sunshine.

  A long-bearded rider on a white-socked black moved up beside Tierney. He had a long horsey face with a knife scar across his lips, little red eyes, and a battered brown hat with the front brim pinned to its crown. He had two rifles in saddle boots, and Hawk counted three nice pistols visible on his otherwise raggedly attired person.

  Like Rance Harvin, a professional killer. Scum.

  Tierney stared at Hawk. Hawk stared back at him. The Rogue Lawman slowly gained his feet, set the Henry on his shoulder, and strolled on down the porch steps to stand in the middle of the street, feet spread wide, facing the group. A cold, half-smoked cheroot jutted from the left corner of his mouth.

  One of the riders behind Tierney laughed and said something, pointing, and Tierney looked at the charred gallows ruins.

  “I’ll be damned,” exclaimed the bib-bearded Wildhorn, his scarred lips causing a bizarre lisp. “They’re already throwin’ up another’n!”

  Tierney’s eyes raked the framework of the new gallows before sliding back to Hawk. The orbs were slitted, but through the slits Hawk could see that they were the color of a frozen lake not yet covered by snow. Hard, cold, and as brute mean as his son’s.

  Keeping his eyes on Hawk, Tierney turned his head slightly, said something, moving his lips, then rode forward until he sat the barb about twenty feet from the Trinity sheriff.

  Tierney filled his lungs with air, and let it out slow. “What grade o’ suicidal fool am I lookin’ at now?”

  Hawk rolled the cheroot to the other side of his mouth and grinned. “That’s funny. I was just thinkin’ the same thing.”

  19.

  DEEP WATER

  HAWK swung the Henry down from his shoulder and thumbed the hammer back, drawing a bead on Blue Tierney’s chest. Tierney’s eyes snapped wide in shock and sudden fear as Hawk said, “You and your boys are barred from town. It’s illegal for you to be here. Now, if you turn around and ride the hell out of here right now—pronto—I won’t arrest you.”

  Hawk felt his trigger finger tingle with anticipation and the barely bridled urge to drill a hole through the outlaw leader’s black heart. The only thing that kept him from following through on the urge was the knowledge that if he killed the man, he’d be starting a war he wasn’t likely to finish. He was outnumbered fifteen to one. The gunmen beside Tierney and the other men spread out across the street behind him were as savage and merciless a bunch of killers, not to mention well-armed, as Hawk had ever faced.

  And he wasn’t prepared to die. Not yet. Not until he’d seen Brazos and his other two prisoners dangling from hang ropes.

  If he killed Tierney outright, the others would storm him. Only Tierney himself could call them off. So he’d let the man live as long as he could. He had a feeling he’d have ample opportunity later to hunt the man down and kill him and the whole rest of his gang.

  “Christ, you’re a crazy son of a bitch!” Tierney said through gritted teeth, blue eyes flashing desperately. “A suicidal moron!” He poked a commanding finger at Hawk and narrowed a flinty blue eye. “You hang my son and One-Eye and Hostetler, they’ll be the last three you ever hang, you hear me, mister?”

  “I ever see your face in this town again,” Hawk snarled back at the man, pressing his cheek up hard against the Henry’s rear stock, “I’ll give it a third eye.”

  Tierney stared down, hard-jawed, from his saddle. His broad chest behind the blue wool greatcoat contracted and expanded as he breathed. His left eyelid twitched, and the ruddy, lightly freckled skin above the bridge of his nose wrinkled. “Well, I’ll be damned . . .”

  “What is it, Boss?” asked the bib-bearded regulator beside Tierney, keeping a tight rein on his black.

  “Why, it’s Gideon Hawk!” Tierney said with unbridled delight. He leaned against his saddle horn, showing two silver eyeteeth as he grinned. “Mr. Hawk, I’ve heard a lot about you. A very entertaining character. I hope you believe me when I tell you that I do regret having killed you.”

  Hawk had heard the faint crunch of gravel to his left, and the even fainter tearing sound, like that of coarse cloth catching on a stone wall. Like the stone wall of the jailhouse, say. Now, in the corner of his eye, he spied movement, and he whipped around so quickly that the man trying to sneak up on him by slipping around the jailhouse’s west side stopped suddenly without even raising his rifle and opened his mouth in shock.

  Hawk’s round took the man through his open mouth. It sla
mmed the man’s head back so violently that his gray, high-crowned hat bounced off his chest and hit the dirt as his feet jerked two feet off the ground. He triggered his own Henry repeater nearly straight into the air over Wyoming Street.

  Before the man’s head and shoulders struck the ground, Hawk had turned back to the gang before him, quickly ejecting the spent cartridge and slamming fresh into the Henry’s breech. Every rider that he could see was grabbing or aiming iron, and Blue Tierney was wrapping his hands around the two ivory-gripped gun handles jutting across his belly like twin bullhorns.

  Since the fuse of the powder keg had now been lit, Hawk had no reason to spare Tierney. He quickly lined up his sights on the outlaw leader’s chest, but just as he squeezed the Henry’s trigger, Jack Wildhorn, who’d filled his fists with two long-barreled Colt Navys, snapped off a shot. The slug burned across Hawk’s cheek, causing him to jerk his rifle slightly. His own slug tore into Tierney’s upper right arm.

  Tierney sagged back in the saddle, gritting his teeth, while Hawk levered and fired the Henry again, at the same time that Jack Wildhorn triggered his other Colt. Hawk had shifted his weight just enough that the regulator’s bullet screeched past his left shoulder to bark into the street behind him. Hawk’s own bullet painted a bloodred hole in the middle of Jack Wildhorn’s forehead.

  The man grimaced and blinked, and his eyes crossed as he lowered both arms, his black suddenly pitching.

  Hawk triggered another shot at Tierney, but Tierney’s cream gelding had curveted sharply, and the errant shot plowed into the face of a man behind him. Blood spurted onto the rider to the face-shot man’s left, causing that man’s own triggered round to sail wide of Hawk and hammer into a barber pole on the south side of the street.

  Hawk held his ground in spite of a half-dozen slugs screaming around and over him, most of them errant due to the pitching and pinwheeling and sunfishing of their startled mounts. One punched Hawk’s hat off his head, but the Rogue Lawman continued firing until he’d laid out two more riders in addition to Wildhorn, who’d dropped to the street and was kicked several times by his pitching black.