The garrote is a slow, painful way to kill a man. The victim convulses horribly before he eventually passes into death. Sometimes, as an act of mercy, an iron spike is incorporated into the garrote to break the spine and hasten the demise of the condemned.
But there was no such compassion for Temple Carstairs. He suffered his execution in full measure.
By the time it was over and the old man’s body slumped to the floor, Shel Shannon, a big man and strong, sweated like a pig and his cackle was gone, replaced by heavy breathing, his chest rising and falling from his great effort.
But Shannon wasn’t yet finished with Carstairs, not by a long shot.
He dragged the old man’s body out of the study, then under the cobwebs where spiders devoured mummified flies, and out through the rear of the house into darkness.
Shannon paused for a few moments and listened into the night. He heard only the endless yips of coyotes in the hills and the harsh rasp of his own breath.
The sky was clear, the moon rising high, and bats flitted close to Shannon as he let go of his burden and found the can of coal oil he’d already hidden in the brush.
Working quickly, he doused the corpse in oil and then thumbed a match into flame and set it alight.
Carstairs’s body burned well and Shannon was delighted.
Who would have thought that the old man had so much fat in him?
When the body was charred, Carstairs’s left arm had bent at the elbow in the flames and his open hand looked like a bird claw.
Shannon was pleased with the effect. It looked like the old man, in his final agony, had reached out for help from the deity, and that would suit the boss’s plan admirably.
Now to hide the empty oil can and proceed with the rest of Hank Cobb’s scheme.
As he ran toward the church, Shannon smiled to himself.
Damn it, the boss was brilliant. Only Cobb could cook up a plan like this and only he, Shel Shannon, could make it work perfectly.
Shannon pulled on the church door and it creaked open. It was dark inside, but for the beams of moonlight that bladed through the stained-glass windows and splashed pale rainbows of color on the polished wood floor.
The door to the bell tower lay to the gunman’s left.
Hitching up his monk’s robes, he ran for the door, yanked it open and sprinted up the wooden staircase, his boots thumping on pine, spurs chiming with every step.
Ahead of him the bell rope dangled and Shannon grabbed it and pulled.
The rewarding clash and clang of the bell urged him to greater effort and the clamoring carillon shrilled ringing echoes throughout the waking and thoroughly alarmed town.
Panicked voices were raised outside the church, but Shannon, laughing like a demented Quasimodo, yanked faster and faster on the bell rope.
Feet pounded on the stairs and Hank Cobb burst onto the platform, a couple of concerned citizens in his wake.
“Brother Uzziah, what in the world are you doing?” Cobb said, feigning surprise as he played his role to the hilt. He held a Bible in his right hand, pressed close to his chest, his forefinger jammed between the pages as though marking his place.
A nice touch, Shannon thought, as he let go of the rope and the bell chimed slowly into silence.
“Brother Carstairs is dead,” Shannon said.
“But how . . . what . . .” Cobb said.
“I found him behind his house,” Shannon said. “All burned up, as though he’d been struck by lightning.”
“There has been no lightning,” one of the citizens said. “The sky is clear and full of stars.”
“Yes, clear by God’s grace, but there’s enough evil abroad this night to darken any sky,” Cobb said. He stared at Shannon, his face empty. “Quick now, Brother Uzziah, lead us to the good brother’s body and keep your revolver handy.”
A large crowd, all of them in sleep attire, shuffled after Shannon to Carstairs’s house.
“The poor man is out back where he was struck down,” Shannon said. He waved the people forward. “Follow me, brothers and sisters and prepare yourselves for a terrible sight.”
“Aye, that we will,” Cobb said. “The air is thick and hard to breathe and smells of sulfur. It means that there’s witchery and wickedness afoot.”
If the crowd didn’t think that the air was hard to breathe and smelled of sulfur before, they did now, and a few of the women were audibly gasping.
Cobb turned to a man at his side and said, “Brother, fetch yonder storm lantern from Brother Carstairs’s porch. We’ll need it in this hellish gloom.”
The man nodded. “The night does smell strong of witchery, brother.”
“Indeed, it does,” Cobb said. “But never fear, we’ll hunt the vile creature down and burn her in the fire.”
Shannon stepped to the charred form sprawled on the ground, the left hand raised in macabre supplication.
The man with the lantern held it high. The fire had burned Carstairs’s face to a blackened skull, white bone showing here and there through the skin.
Before anyone could talk, or speculate, Cobb said with all the authority he could muster, “Struck down by a bolt of hellfire. That’s plain to see.”
The man with the lamp raised his nose and tested the air.
“The poor brother’s body smells of kerosene,” he said. “Like the lamp I hold in my hand.”
Cobb gritted his teeth. Damn the man for a meddling pest.
But aloud he said, “And think ye that kerosene doesn’t fuel the eternal fires of hell?”
“Yes, it is the devil’s way,” another man said. “Kerosene burns hot.”
A gray, slat-sided dog nosed its way through the crowd and sniffed the corpse’s crotch, its teeth bared.
Cobb kicked the dog away and glared at the woman. The damned stupid sow threatened to ruin the atmosphere he’d created.
He ratcheted up his rhetoric several notches.
“Many have been killed by the witch’s evil spell,” he said. “It was she who cursed the stage that brought her here and caused it to overturn. It was she who destroyed the brothers who so gallantly fought her to save this town, and it was she who hurled the bolt from hell that killed the good and honorable man who lies at our feet.”
Cobb raised his arms and his voice rose to a shout.
“Aye, and it was she who then fled into the night with Jasper Wolfden, the dead man who still walks the earth.”
“It’s the truth, by God,” Shannon said. “And she’ll try to kill us all.”
A woman screamed in terror and pointed at the sky.
“I saw her! I saw the witch.”
Even Cobb was unnerved by the woman’s shriek, a hysterical screech that slashed through the fabric of the night like a knife blade.
He stared at the sky and yelled, “Where?”
“The witch just flew across the face of the moon on a gigantic bat,” the woman said. She gagged in her throat and her face seemed to melt into a mask of fear. “God . . . help . . . us . . . all. . . .” she said.
“I see her!” Cobb said. “There!” He jabbed a finger upward. “And there! And there! And she has other demons with her!”
Shel Shannon, slow of wits but impulsive, drew his Colt and slammed shots at the cobalt-blue, star-strewn sky.
The firing added to the mob hysteria and people began to drift hurriedly away, seeking the safety of their homes.
Cobb noted the exodus and yelled, “Now do any of ye say we don’t need more fighting brothers?”
“Anything, Brother Matthias,” a man called out, his voice ragged with fear. “Just keep us safe from the fiends of hell.”
“Then ye heard it,” Cobb said. He raised his Bible for dramatic effect. “My brothers and me will begin to collect the tithe tomorrow, and woe betide those of you who hold back, for ye shall surely be struck down by the witch and her familiars.”
Again Shannon thought that an excellent speech on his boss’s part. He had no idea what “familiars” me
ant, and he suspected Cobb didn’t either.
Caught up in the enthusiasm of the moment, Shannon gestured at the sky and screamed, “She’s coming back!” He raised his gun again, but the hammer clicked on spent cartridges and ruined the effect.
But it was enough.
The crowd scampered, all but one tall, potbellied man who had a sour, slack look on his fleshy face, as though his before-sleep sex had been interrupted.
“Surely you will not tithe the bank, brother?” he said.
“Especially the bank,” Cobb said. “But you needn’t pay the tithe unless we really need it and there is no other course.”
It seemed like a magnanimous gesture on Cobb’s part. But it wasn’t. He wanted all the bank’s money in one place where he could get at it easily.
Banker Reuben Waters apparently didn’t see it that way. He took Cobb at face value.
“I trust the tithe will generate enough money for the men you need, Brother Matthias,” he said. “And without my bank’s involvement.”
“I’m sure it will, Brother Waters,” Cobb said, figuring he could afford to humor the man.
“Well, good night then,” Waters said. “Brother Matthias, you are indeed a fair and honorable man.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The crowd had dispersed and Shel Shannon, grinning, raised a hand to the sky, made a gun of forefinger and thumb, and said, “Pow! Pow! Pow! I got the witch.”
Hank Cobb chose not to be amused.
He toed Carstairs’s body and said, “One of you get the undertaker and get this buried. Then Shel, you and the boys start collecting the tithes at first light. I want every damned ring . . . I mean every piece of jewelry in this town.”
Cobb lifted his right hand and made a tight fist. “Squeeze them, Shel, squeeze ’em hard until their tongues hang out and their eyes pop. After we’ve wrung them dry, we’ll empty the bank and then quit this hick town forever.”
“Maybe we can head for Old Mexico, huh, boss?” Shannon said. “Money goes further there. I hear the whiskey and the señoritas come cheap.”
“I’ll study on it some,” Cobb said. “But I’m partial to the big towns. That’s where the easy money’s to be made.” He grinned. “Plenty of saloons and dark alleys, if you catch my drift.”
Then Cobb, a small-time crook with a politician’s smarts, had a moment of diabolical inspiration.
“Hold up just one damned minute,” he said. “I have an idea.”
“Hell, boss, you’re full of ideas,” Shannon said, grinning, proud to be associated with such a genius for business.
“Listen up, Shel, before you start on the collection, you and the boys arrest . . . what’s her name? The old bird that thinks her dead husband and son are still to home.”
“Annie Gaunt, you mean? Her old man and son went marching off to the war and never came back.”
“Yeah, her. Folks think she’s crazy anyhow, talking and cooking dinner for two men who ain’t there. At first light in the morning arrest her fer a witch. I think a burning before breakfast will show the good citizens of Holy Rood that there is”—he smiled—“evil in their midst and we’re taking care of it. I reckon it will make ’em more inclined to be generous, like.”
Cobb slammed a fist into his open palm and swore. “I’ve got another idea, but it’s too late for that now.”
Cobb’s gunmen had gathered around him and one of them said, “What was your idea, boss?”
“To put a bullet into the old gal, somewhere that wouldn’t kill her right away, and . . . wait a minute, we don’t need to hold on until sunup. We can do it right here and now. Everybody’s so scared in this town they won’t be asleep anyhow.”
Answering the question on Shannon’s face, Cobb said, “Shel, forget the undertaker for now. I want you and one of the boys to bring the old woman to me, while Carstairs’s body is still lying here. Beat her up some so the bruises show, but don’t kill her, understand?”
He saw no light of understanding in Shannon’s eyes and said, “After the good folks of Holy Rood retired for the night, we shot her out of the sky and she fell to earth with a thud. Now do you get it?”
Shannon’s chin dropped and he gave an openmouthed smile. “Hell, yeah, boss, now I catch your drift.”
“Good, then go fetch her. Hurt her, but not real bad.”
“Got it, boss. Hell, do you want me to shoot her? I never liked the crazy old biddy anyhow.”
“No, I’ll do that,” Cobb said. “When you come back with her you can shoot at the sky.”
Annie Gaunt was old, frail, with lost, empty eyes that had faded to the color of bleach. She wore a black, hooped dress of the Civil War era, made from bombazine, that dull, lusterless fabric, a widow’s cap, and her cuffs and collar were also black.
The townspeople thought Annie wore the mourning gown because her husband and son had been killed in the war. But since the old lady thought they were still alive, that was not the case.
No, she dressed in black out of sympathy for old Queen Vic who’d lost her husband to typhoid in 1862. After an initial exchange of letters, Annie and the queen had been corresponding regularly for twenty-five years and Victoria called her, “my dearest friend, confidante, and willing shoulder on which to shed my many bitter tears.”
Later, a two-bit gunman by the name of Frank Steele, acting on Cobb’s orders, would throw the queen’s letters into the flames of Annie’s execution pyre.
But that was then and this was now. . . .
When Shannon roughly dragged the old woman to Hank Cobb, he ran a critical eye over the deep bruises on Annie Gaunt’s face and arms and smiled his approval.
“Bring her here, Shel,” he said.
Shannon pushed the old woman forward and she said, “I’m old and sick and I want to go home. Why are you doing this to me?”
“Because you’re a witch,” Cobb said.
“I’m just a poor old woman who never harmed anyone,” Annie said, pulling her torn nightgown around her. “I could be your own mother.”
Cobb said nothing. He believed that some people, the poor, the sick, the old and the powerless weren’t worth talking to.
“All right, boys, start shooting at the sky,” he said. “Let’s hear the fire of the festive revolver.”
As pistols racketed around him, Cobb swung his boot and scythed Annie’s legs out from under her. He ignored her screams and cries for mercy as matters of no importance, drew his Colt, placed the barrel parallel to the woman’s forehead and pulled the trigger.
The effect was exactly what he wanted.
The .45 bullet grazed the old woman’s head, inflicting a shallow wound. But the powder burn and bleeding looked dramatic enough and Annie was stunned, so that would keep her yap shut.
“Shel, go ring the bell again,” Cobb said after the firing had died away. “Get them out here. By God, there’ll be no sleep in Holy Rood for anyone tonight.”
Summoned by the clanging clamor of the bell, the citizens of Holy Rood stumbled, heavy eyed, out of their houses.
Cobb’s men ran among them waving excited arms that rose above the crowd like tentacles.
“We got us a witch! Shot her out of the sky!”
Still half asleep, the townspeople blinked and staggered toward Cobb, who dragged Annie Gaunt’s frail unconscious form into the street.
He let go of the old woman and she fell onto her back.
“Why, that’s Annie Gaunt,” someone said in a shocked voice.
“Aye, that’s her all right,” Cobb shouted. “But a few minutes ago she was riding across the sky on a scarlet bat.”
The people crowded closer. A few of the more timid stopped at a distance and craned their heads forward to see.
One of them said, “She’s dead.”
“No, she lives,” Cobb said. “Only fire can kill a witch.” He pointed at the sky. “See yonder bright star, she fell from there, and look you, only a few bruises.”
“Her head is bleeding,” a woman said
.
“That’s where my bullet hit her,” Cobb said. “But mortal bullets can’t destroy a witch.”
He knocked off Annie’s nightcap, then grabbed her by the hair and hauled her into a sitting position.
The old woman looked around at the increasingly hostile crowd and screamed loud in apprehension and fear.
“Listen to her curse you,” Cobb said. “The witch is alive and still a danger to us all.”
“Is she such a danger?” said a voice in the crowd.
“Yes, she’s a danger,” a woman yelled. “She is visited by her dead husband and son and she talks with them. I’ve heard her.”
“Lay to that,” Cobb said. “That she does, and worse. With his own ears Brother Uzziah heard her talk to . . . I can’t bring myself to say it.” He waved at Shannon. “Tell them, brother. The witch has closed my throat and I can’t go on.”
Despite his slow wits, Shannon rose to the occasion.
“It was a cold evening last winter as I passed the witch’s house that I heard her speak with a demon. Aye, and not any demon mind ye, it was the Earl of Hell himself. Old Harry come to earth to plot mischief and evil.”
A gray-haired woman with yellowed store-bought teeth reacted as though she was in a revival tent.
“Tell us, brother!” she shrieked. “Was it really the devil?”
“It was him all right,” Shannon said. “Beelzebub, Lucifer, the Prince of Darkness, call him what ye will, but I heard him plain, talking in a growl like a wolf. An’ I heard him and Annie Gaunt touch glasses and drink to the evil they planned to befall this town.”
“Then the witch must burn at sunup, before the tithing begins,” Cobb yelled. He looked around him. “Can somebody give me an amen?”
A few people muttered the required word and then Cobb dragged the old woman to her feet.
“This will be the first of the damned evil brood to burn. But there will be more and we must fight them,” he said.
A child squealed at the edge of the crowd where she and a couple of older boys were using sticks to beat a rat. The rat, out of fear or because a blow had ruptured its bladder, urinated into the dust and the girl shrieked again.
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