Shawn O'Brien Manslaughter

by William W. Johnstone

  Janacek was aware that his command was in jeopardy, and he said, “Hell, I’ll scout myself. One of you men come up here and take the reins.”

  The dray creaked as the brewer stepped to the ground and a man took his place in the driver’s seat. Janacek grabbed a lantern and said, “When I yell to come on, bring the wagon forward. And be alert, all of you.”

  This was met with no response. Janacek shook his head and stepped into the darkness, the lantern raised in his left hand, a Winchester in his right. Soon he was swallowed by gloom, and the Percherons stirred in their traces, uneasy with the night and the malevolent, hidden things that prowled its vastness.

  Several minutes passed. The moon spread a silvery light made for lovers, and the air was sweet and cool on the tongue, like mint.

  There was as yet no beckoning call from Oskar Janacek.

  The steel battle-ax is a cleaving weapon. Its honed edge splits bone apart to the marrow and therefore doesn’t crush like a club. When used on the human skull the ax doesn’t scatter brain but bites deep into the gray matter and inflicts a horrific wound that kills—or so Janacek’s loved ones later hoped—instantly.

  The lone survivor of what would be called “The Rattlesnake Hills Expedition” by the local newspaper would later testify that Janacek cried out only once and then fell silent.

  What is known is that after Dr. Thomas Clouston levered his battle-ax out of Janacek’s skull, he pointed his bloody weapon at the brewery dray and ordered his horsemen forward.

  Lit fore and aft by lanterns, the wagon was a blazing target in the darkness, its fourteen occupants packed so closely together they had little room to deploy their weapons, and Clouston’s riders fell on the men of Broken Bridle like the wrath of God.

  Madman though he was, the doctor had chosen his gunmen with care. Raised and trained in the Texan tradition, to a man they understood the ways of revolver fighting on horseback, and when they attacked the wagon they were as hawks descending on doves.

  Clouston’s riders attacked both flanks of the dray, raking it with a withering crossfire. They opened up as they rode past, then wheeled around and struck again.

  Cramming themselves together as untrained men do under fire, the men in the wagon lost half their number in the first two volleys, and suddenly the wood floor of the dray was awash in blood and scarlet beads ticked through the slats onto the ground.

  The man in the driver’s seat, a normally meek accountant named Lawson, was a dreadful sight. His lower jaw had been shot away, yet driven by some incredible force of will he managed to turn the wagon around before he was blasted into the dirt.

  Another man took Lawson’s place and urged the terrified team into a lumbering trot. Behind him, a rifleman cheered as he scored a hit, but his triumphant cry went unanswered by the living, the dying, and the dead. The driver had handled a team before, and he rammed the lurching dray into a narrow break between the trees, praying that he didn’t shatter an axle. For a few moments there was a respite from the constant, heavy fire as Clouston’s men slowed before funneling two abreast into the narrow clearing.

  “Can we hold them off?” the man at the reins yelled over his shoulder.

  “Hell no!” a voice answered. It sounded like McPhee. “We got mostly dead men back here!”

  The driver hoorawed the team, fear sweat trickling down his spine. Moonlight tangled in clouds of billowing dust, and the dray was momentarily lost in amber darkness, the lanterns long since thrown over the side. A couple of men fired into the murk, scored no hits, but a returning volley fire killed a man kneeling next to McPhee. Splattered by the dead man’s blood and brains, McPhee shrieked in horror, then mindless panic.

  “Damn you, slow down!” McPhee yelled. “We must surrender!”

  “Not this wagon!” the driver answered. He slapped the reins and the Percherons stretched into a gallop.

  Bullets splitting the air around him, fired by men who had not made a sound since the attack began, McPhee tossed his rifle away and drew a Colt from his waistband. Standing upright on the wagon bed was like balancing on the storm deck of a schooner in a force ten gale, but he held on to the back of the seat and shoved the muzzle of his revolver into the back of the driver’s neck.

  “Stop this rig now or I’ll kill you!” he yelled into the man’s ear. McPhee was hysterical with terror and his voice was shrill.

  “You go to hell!” the driver said.

  McPhee pulled the trigger. The driver fell forward in the seat, and McPhee snatched the reins from his lifeless hands and hauled the team to a shuddering halt.

  It was then, as the Percherons steamed in the morning chill and tossed their heads, that a sixteen-year-old orphan who went by the name Bobby Miller made his bid for freedom.

  The following dust cloud caught up with the wagon, and shrouded for a moment, the boy dropped over the side and crawled into the brush. Small and skinny for his age, he was soon hidden under a thick cover of sage and wheatgrass.

  The youngster looked back in time to see McPhee die.

  The riders had harried the dray and kept up a steady fire. They’d lost two of their number and that added fury to their bloodlust. After the lanterns had been thrown away, in the crimson-seared darkness three surviving Broken Bridle riflemen, two of them former soldiers, had calmly gotten in some plucky work with Winchesters, but now all three lay dead. Before they were gunned down, one of the veterans had hit a third Clouston rider . . . moments before a horn sounded from the hills and the attackers drew rein and ceased firing.

  Lou McPhee threw his Colt away and raised his arms. Because of the dust and darkness he saw nothing and heard only the groans of the dying in the bed of the dray.

  Long moments passed, then McPhee called out, “I surrender! I’m unarmed.”

  His voice sounded hollow in the terrible quiet. Insects chirped, a breeze moved in the trees, and a harness jangled as a Percheron snorted and shook its massive head.

  Bobby Miller tried to make himself even smaller, flattening himself against the ground. Scared, he kept his eyes on McPhee. If the man’s surrender was accepted, he planned to give himself up.

  Time ticked slowly, then a man with long gray hair astride a great horse appeared through the murk. He wore a cloak and Bobby thought he carried himself nobly, like King Arthur in the picture books. Surely such a chivalrous figure would be merciful to his captured enemies? But then Bobby saw the man’s bloody battle-ax and he became very afraid.

  The statuesque rider drew rein at the wagon, and McPhee swallowed hard and said, “I surrender.”

  “Are you sane?” Dr. Thomas Clouston said.

  “I just want out of the fight,” McPhee said. “I’m done. There are wounded men here.”

  “The fight is over, yet you don’t realize that it is,” Clouston said. “Ergo, you are completely insane and a danger to all of us.”

  “No . . . no, I’m not. I just want to go home to my wife and kids,” McPhee said.

  Clouston took a breath, then roared, “That won’t do! I will not release the mentally deranged back into the community. Lord God Almighty, how the souls of your victims would cry out to me for vengeance!”

  “I’m a laborer,” McPhee said in a small, timid voice.

  “Liar!” Clouston yelled, so loudly the normally placid Percherons jumped and McPhee grabbed the driver’s seat for support. “Who but an insane man would admit to being a common laborer?”

  The doctor indicated with his ax. “Come, stand before me in tribunal and I will render judgment, both on your sanity and your wanton, spiteful attack on my person.”

  “Don’t . . . don’t hurt me,” McPhee said.

  Huddled in the brush, Bobby Miller pressed his face into the dirt, ashamed for Lou McPhee and his cowardice.

  “Stand before me, cretin,” Clouston said.

  McPhee, sobbing, climbed from the wagon and walked to his fate.

  Bobby saw the ax rise and fall, heard the thin sound of its whispering death, then McP
hee’s shriek as he fell.

  Tears welling in his eyes, the boy heard Clouston call out, “Unhitch the great horses, then kill all in the wagon. Let none survive.”

  A few minutes later, after the team was unhitched, Clouston’s riders systematically and coldly shot both the dying and the dead.

  “Search around, make sure none escaped,” Clouston said.

  Bobby Miller lay still, hardly daring to breathe. He heard the footfalls of a booted man come close . . . closer . . . then a thick stream of warm water cascaded onto the back of his head. The boy stayed where he was. Better to be pissed on than have his skull split open with an ax.

  Finally he heard the man button up and step away.

  Then the man on the big horse said, “Let the dogs lie where they fell. Now back to the hills where we will mourn our dead.”

  Fifteen minutes later, amid silence, Bobby Miller got to his feet and ran.

  And ten minutes after that he met Sheriff Jeremiah Purdy leading a lame horse.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  “They’re all dead, Sheriff,” Bobby Miller said. “They shot every one of them.”

  “Who, Bobby, who shot them?” Purdy said.

  “Didn’t you hear it?” the boy said, a frantic light in his pale eyes.

  “I heard the shooting, but I saw nothing,” Purdy said. He felt sick to his stomach.

  “Riders came out of the hills and bushwhacked us. Everybody’s dead. Lou McPhee was killed with an ax and I reckon so was Mr. Janacek. They slaughtered us, Sheriff. They shot into the wagon and . . . and Lou tried to surrender and a man on a tall horse came and split his head open with an ax.”

  Purdy was in shock, beyond thinking logically. Now he tried to get it together. “Bobby, how do you know this?” he said.

  “I escaped and hid in the brush. I saw it all. Then a man pissed on my head. I need your canteen, Sheriff. I smell real bad.”

  “But how did—”

  “He didn’t know I was there.”

  Young as he was, Bobby saw that the sheriff was numb from the impact of what he’d told him. He stepped around Purdy and removed the canteen from his horse. The bay favored its right foreleg, holding the hoof off the ground.

  The boy lifted the canteen over his head and let the water tumble over his hair and face. Purdy watched him, a detached expression on his ashen face.

  “I’m not going back there, Sheriff,” Bobby said, strands of wet hair falling over his forehead. “Nothing on earth could make me go back.”

  “But what about the town?” Purdy said. “What’s to become of Broken Bridle? So many men . . .”

  Bobby realized the young sheriff was talking to himself, not to him, and he didn’t answer.

  Purdy stared into the darkness, at the moon-silvered peaks of the Rattlesnake Hills. Now the racketing roars of the guns were silent, the land was hushed, and the whispering wind sounded like the voices of the dead.

  Bobby drank from the canteen, wiped off his mouth, then said, “We’d better go back to town and get help, Sheriff.”

  Purdy roused like a man awaking from a deep sleep. “Help? There is no help. All the men are dead.” He gathered the reins of his horse and handed them to the boy. “Take him back to town.”

  “Where are you headed, Sheriff?” Bobby said.

  Purdy nodded in the direction of the hills. “There.”

  “Why?”

  “To make some arrests.”

  “You’re crazy,” the boy said. He grabbed Purdy’s arm. “You’ll get your head split open like the others.”

  “I plan to arrest Thomas Clouston and see him hang for murder,” the sheriff said, wrenching himself away from Bobby’s grasp.

  Bobby Miller had been raised hard in a succession of vile foster homes where he’d been beaten and worked like a slave. He’d run away from such a home six months before and now worked odd jobs around town, bedding down where he could and eating when someone felt inclined to pay him. As a result of years of hardscrabble survival he was wise beyond his age, and he revealed that now.

  “After you’re dead, Sheriff, and you will be, what about the people left in Broken Bridle?” he asked. “What about the women and children with no menfolk to protect them?”

  Purdy stared at the small, thin teenager as if seeing him for the first time. Bobby Miller’s eyes stared back at him, as big and round as silver dollars. Whatever he’d seen had thrust him into adulthood in the course of a single night. He’d been forced to grow up too fast too soon, just another casualty of Thomas Clouston’s mad ambition.

  The sheriff made up his mind, the reality of his situation hitting him like a bucket of cold water.

  “You’re right, we’ll go back,” he said. Purdy struggled for words to justify his action but couldn’t find any. Finally he settled on, “We’ll . . . regroup.”

  Bobby could have said, “Regroup what?” but he bit his tongue and said nothing.

  The haloed moon had dropped, leaving room for the stars, and the breeze rustled from the south, scented with sage and pine.

  Purdy let his hobbling horse set the pace, Bobby Miller walking close beside him, as though for protection.

  The sheriff walked with his head lowered, deep in thought, but he had lost his way and could think only of problems that had no solutions.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  At dawn Shawn O’Brien stood at his open hotel room window and watched women gather in the street. There were no wails, not yet, just worry and concern for husbands and sons.

  During his time in England, Shawn remembered seeing an illustration in the London Review of grim, shawled women standing vigil at a Welsh coal mine as they waited for news of the two hundred and fifty men and boys trapped below after an explosion. All the miners died and their once-thriving village, unable to sustain such a loss, died with them.

  Oskar Janacek and his men had not yet returned. Had they suffered a similar fate?

  Shawn dressed hurriedly and pounded on Hamp Sedley’s door. “Get up!” he yelled. “Meet me in the street!”

  Without waiting for an answer, Shawn ran downstairs and onto the hotel porch. Pete Caradas already lounged against a post on the opposite boardwalk outside the Streetcar Saloon. He wore a red robe with a velveteen black collar, Turkish carpet slippers, and smoked a cigar. A cautious man, his gun belt was slung over his left shoulder.

  Shawn was halfway across the street when Caradas answered the question he had not yet asked. “Dead or alive, they’re still out there,” he said.

  Shawn glanced at the score of women gathered in the street. Most stared fixedly in the direction of the Rattlesnake Hills, but a few pale faces turned to him and Caradas, anguished wives and mothers looking for someone, anyone, to blame for what they sensed was now an impending disaster.

  Hamp Sedley stepped out of the hotel and crossed the street, an irritated scowl on his face, a nocturnal creature forced to face the searing light of dawn.

  “What the hell?” was his surly greeting.

  “The wagon hasn’t come back yet,” Shawn said.

  Hamp looked at the women. “Seems like the ladies have buried them already,” he said. He opened his mouth to say further, then snapped it shut.

  The drums started again. The beat was the same, slow, monotonous, intimidating, designed by the warped genius of a malevolent psychiatrist to drive people mad.

  Judging by the reaction of the women of Broken Bridle, he’d succeeded. They held to each other, sobbing. Older women who could find no comfort of their own desperately tried to bring it to the young and the vulnerable. But hope hadn’t yet died. There was always a possibility their men had triumphed and had lingered in the hills to bury the dead and deal with prisoners.

  Shawn decided it was time to end the uncertainty.

  “Hamp, I’m riding out to take a look,” he said. “You want to come?”

  “You don’t need to ask me that,” Sedley said. He seemed offended.

  “Pete, will you join us?” Shawn
said. “We could use your gun.”

  Caradas shook his head. “Like I said before, my job is to stick right here.”

  “How is Becker this morning?” Shawn said.

  “Still the same. If he improves you’ll be the first to know.”

  Shawn nodded. “I’d appreciate it.”

  Caradas’s voice dropped to a whisper. “They’re all dead, you know.”

  “Maybe. But I reckon I’ll settle it one way or the other.”

  “O’Brien, don’t ride into those hills. Not today,” Caradas said.

  “I’ll study on that, Pete,” Shawn said.

  Caradas tossed his cigar butt into the street. “Then you ride careful,” he said. He turned and walked into the saloon.

  “Hell, does ol’ Pete know something we don’t?” Sedley said.

  “I reckon not. He just doesn’t like the odds.”

  “That makes two of us,” Sedley said.

  Shawn smiled. “No it doesn’t. It makes all three of us.”

  Petsha and Milos D’eth stood outside the livery and watched the women gather in the street. They’d been very aware of the presence of Pete Caradas and Shawn O’Brien, guns to step around until their work here was done.

  Milos broke his morning silence. “He will come to us,” he said.

  “Perhaps,” Petsha said.

  “We should be ready.”

  Petsha nodded. “The clock will soon strike midnight.”

  The promise of a bright morning was stillborn as purple thunderheads piled high above the Granite Mountains to the south and threatened to drive north on the prevailing wind. The air was thick with the scent of sage and the breeze was cool, but the growing gloom of the day boded ill, like a black-cloaked figure stalking a dark alley.