Shawn O'Brien Town Tamer # 1

by W. , Johnstone, William

  One of the boys had a diseased eye and when he looked at Cobb and grinned in the moonlight, it gleamed like an opal.

  The only sane person in Holy Rood that night was Annie Gaunt.

  And now her fellow citizens bayed for her blood.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Shawn O’Brien woke with a start from shallow sleep, Judith again lost to him as his dream of her alive, laughing, beautiful, faded into transparency, then vanished into mist.

  My God, had it only been six months?

  Judith had been dead for a hundred and eighty days.

  It seemed like a lifetime. A hundred lifetimes. Yet the pain he felt over her death was still raw and scarlet red, a wound that would never heal.

  Shawn tilted back his head and stared through the lacy pine canopy at the star-scattered sky, a sky much different from the one that had cast a dark pall over the English countryside the night . . . the night . . .

  The night his life ended.

  He looked down at Sally Bailey lying asleep with her head on his lap. She was covered by Shawn’s frockcoat and Jasper Wolfden had made her a bed of pine boughs.

  Wolfden and Hamp Sedley were sleeping by the fire. Normally, a campfire to warm the night was a comforting presence, but without a coffeepot simmering on the coals, it was so much less than that.

  Wishful for a cigar, but having none, Shawn faced yet more sleepless hours, as he had since Judith was murdered.

  Unbidden, a man will often let his memory return to a place he no longer wishes to visit, and Dartmoor, with all the horrors it held for Shawn, was such a place.

  Maybe the trouble was the night it all ended for him was so vivid, so just yesterday in his memory, that he couldn’t let it go . . . would never let it go.

  He looked down at Sally’s face, so peaceful and pretty in sleep.

  How had Judith’s face looked that night, the night she’d died in pain and terror?

  A steel blade twisting into his gut, Shawn reluctantly let himself live that night again.

  It was a time and place he’d no wish to remember . . . but the siren song of the moor once again drew him close and would not let him forget.

  A moon as thin as a slice of cucumber hung high above Dartmoor and its wan light glittered on the hoarfrost that enameled every tree, bush and blade of grass.

  Shawn O’Brien’s breath smoked in the air as he turned to Sir James Lovell and said, “Did you bring your revolver?”

  The man nodded. “I have my Enfield.”

  “Then keep it close. You may need it.”

  Shawn rose in the stirrups and studied the bridle path though the marsh that showed in the moonlight as a twisting white ribbon.

  “The tracks of Judith’s horse look as though she headed straight for the tor,” Shawn said. “We’ll search there.”

  “Drago Castle is a couple of miles west of the tor,” Sir James said. “She may have been overtaken by darkness and headed there to spend the night. Judith and Lady Harcourt have been friends since childhood.”

  “The tor first,” Shawn said. His face was grim, lines of concern cutting deep like wires. “If I was an escaped convict that’s where I’d hole up. From the top of the hill, a man could hide among the rocks and scout the moor for miles around.”

  “There are other tors on the moor, Shawn,” Sir James said.

  “I know. And I’ll search each and every one of them.”

  Sir James reached inside his coat and produced his watch.

  “It’s almost midnight,” he said. “There are storm clouds coming in from the north. Soon it will be too dark to see.”

  “Then let’s press on,” Shawn said.

  He saw the exhaustion on his father-in-law’s face, the deep shadows under his eyes and in the hollows of his cheeks. Sir James was no longer young and the search for his daughter was taking a toll on him.

  But he was a proud man and it didn’t enter into Shawn’s thinking to suggest he turn tail and head for home.

  Sir James Lovell would be wounded deeply by such urging, a terrible slight to his honor that he would neither forget nor forgive.

  What Shawn did say was, “I reckon we should leave the horses here and cover the rest of the way to the tor on foot. The police inspector said the convicts had raided the prison armory before they broke out, and they may have rifles.”

  Sir James nodded. “A sound plan, Shawn. We’re sitting ducks on horseback.”

  Then, as gently as he could, Shawn said, “How are you holding up?”

  “Oh, I can’t complain, old boy. Elderly English gentlemen with weak hearts love to take midnight strolls on dangerous moors in the middle of winter, don’t ye know?”

  Shawn managed a slight smile. “To say nothing of hunting down escaped convicts.”

  “Oh, yes, I’d quite forgotten about those,” Sir James said.

  But he hadn’t, of course . . . and neither had Shawn O’Brien.

  They both had a feeling, for better or worse, the dreary, dreadful night would end with men dead on the ground.

  The tor was a rugged outcropping of bare granite rock that rose fifteen hundred feet above the surrounding mire. Treeless, scoured by the winds, snows and rains of centuries, the hill looked like the skeletal backbone of an enormous hound.

  Gray mist hung above the marshes like smoke and ice fringed the mud puddles. The night air was sawtoothed with frost and painful to breathe.

  “Here,” Shawn O’Brien said. “It happened right here.”

  Even Sir James, never schooled in the tracker’s art, could read the sign plain.

  “It looks like Judith was dragged from her horse at this spot,” he said. He looked like a man who’d just read his own death notice in The Times of London.

  Shawn nodded. “Three men. Judging by the depths of their boot prints and the lengths of their strides, all of them are tall and heavy.”

  “Just the kind who could kill their guards and escape from a prison,” Sir James said.

  Shawn nodded but said nothing. He took a knee and studied the tracks, most of them already obscured by snow and ice.

  “They dragged Judith toward the tor,” Shawn said. “And one of them led her horse.”

  Sir James suddenly looked old and tired.

  “Shawn, there are two hundred tors on Dartmoor,” he said. “This may not be the one.”

  “It’s the one,” Shawn said. Even in the gloom his eyes gleamed with blue fire. “There is no other.”

  The Anglo-Saxons have never understood, or quite believed, the Celtic gift of second sight, and Sir James had a right to look confused.

  However the ability, called in Gaelic the an dara sealladh, is not considered a gift by those who possess it, but rather a curse, for it imposes a terrible burden—the faculty to sense death, be it near or far.

  Now Shawn felt death reach out to him, its thin fingers as cold as the night, and he knew in that single, awful moment that his wife was no longer alive.

  Sir James Lovell watched the change in Shawn’s face, the skin draw tight to the bone, the mouth become a hard line. He had a fearful, haunted look, as though a wild, ancient war song heard in a nightmare had intruded into his waking consciousness.

  And then the older man knew what Shawn knew.

  “We’re too late, aren’t we, Shawn?” Sir James said. “My daughter is dead, isn’t she?”

  Shawn had no answer, or at least none he wished to make.

  He opened his coat and drew his Colt from the leather. With numb fingers he fed a round into the empty chamber that had been under the hammer and holstered the revolver again.

  “Let’s get it done,” he said.

  Sir James remembered words like these from his time in the West, said by hard men committed to following the code of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, no matter the cost or the consequences.

  When uttered by a man like Shawn O’Brien, there would be no turning back. Not now. Not ever.

  It was Sir James who first saw the man wal
king along the path through the mire, appearing through the mist like a gray ghost.

  Shawn, the instincts of the gunfighter honed sharp in him, saw the older man’s eyes narrow and he swung around to face the danger, the Colt coming up fast.

  “No shooting!” the stranger yelled. His voice croaking from cold and frost, he said, “It’s only harmless old Ben Lestrange as ever was. I mean harm to no one.”

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Shawn said. “I could’ve plugged you square.”

  He knew the ragged, bent old man was not one of the convicts, but right then he wanted to kill him real bad. It was as though an unwelcome stranger had walked into a private funeral.

  “What am I doing here, ye say. And I answer that old Ben has walked this moor, man and boy, for nigh on fifty year,” Lestrange said. He laid the pack he carried on his back at his feet and winked. “I know the secret places and where the ancient bodies lie buried.”

  “Did you see men on the tor?” Sir James asked.

  Lestrange’s wrinkled face, weathered to the color of mahogany, took on a sly look. “Old Ben seen a dead ’un, squire.”

  “Where?” Shawn said. “Speak up, man.”

  “At the foot of the tor. Only she wasn’t a man.” Lestrange shook his head. “Oh, dear no, she were a lady.”

  He reached inside his filthy greatcoat and brought out a silver chain with a heart-shaped locket. “Took this from her, and if it’s what you’re wanting, well it’s old Ben’s, not yours. Finders keepers, I always say.”

  “Let me see that,” Sir James said.

  Lestrange turned away, the locket pressed against his upper chest.

  “It’s old Ben’s,” he said. “Why would a fine gentleman like yourself want to steal what’s mine?”

  “I warn you, my man, let me examine the locket or I’ll have you in the dock at the next assizes, charged with vagrancy and theft from the dead,” Sir James said. “You’ll end your days at a penal colony in the West Indies.”

  Lestrange angrily shoved the locket at Sir James.

  “Here, take it and damn you for a thieving toff,” he said.

  Sir James ignored that and examined the locket, turning it over in his gloved hands.

  “Is it Judith’s?” Shawn said. “It’s not something I’ve seen her wear.”

  “No, it’s not Judith’s. The chain is silver but the locket is cheap, made of tin.”

  Sir James opened the locket, turned it to the pale moonlight, and stared at it for a long while.

  “What do you see?” Shawn said, stepping closer.

  “Two people and I recognize their likenesses.” He held out the open locket to Shawn. “It’s George Simpson the blacksmith and his wife, Martha. Their daughter Mavis was one of the girls abducted from the village.”

  Shawn swung on Ben Lestrange. “Take us to the girl,” he said.

  “I told you, she’s a dead ’un. You need have no truck with her, young gentleman.”

  “Take us to her,” Shawn said. “Show us where she lies.”

  Lestrange looked sly. “Do I get my chain back?”

  “Here,” Sir James said. He dropped the locket into Lestrange’s hand. “I rather fancy that Mavis has no further use for it.”

  The old man grinned, knuckled his forehead and picked up his pack.

  “Follow me, gents,” he said. “Mind you don’t step into the mire”—he cackled—“or you’ll end up dead ’uns like poor Mavis Simpson, God rest her.”

  The girl’s plump, naked body lay tangled in a gorse bush at the base of the tor. That she’d been badly abused and raped was obvious.

  “Found her lying there,” Lestrange said. “There’s frost all over her and that’s why at first I thought she was a silver woman. There are some who will pay plenty for a woman made out of silver.”

  Shawn’s bleak eyes searched the top of the hill, and then he lowered them to the tramp. “Go away,” he said. “Get the hell out of here.”

  “Can you spare me a shilling, squire?” Lestrange said. “Then you’ll never see old Ben again.”

  “No, Shawn!” Sir James placed his hand on the younger man’s gun arm. “Killing this poor, demented creature won’t bring Judith back to you.”

  For a moment Shawn teetered on the edge, breathing hard. Finally, he brought himself under control.

  To Lestrange he said again, “Just . . . go away.”

  Sir James fished in his pants pocket and came up with a coin.

  “Here, Lestrange, take this and go,” he said. “You’ve done us a service.”

  The tramp stared, big-eyed at the gold sovereign in his palm and knuckled his forehead. “Thank’ee,” he said. “You’re a real gent as old Ben knowed when he first set eyes on you.”

  Then, after a quick, frightened glance at Shawn, the old man shuffled quickly down the path and the moonlight cast his rippling shadow on the frozen earth.

  “I’d say the girl was murdered and then her body was thrown from the crest of the tor,” Sir James said.

  Shawn nodded. “Seems like.”

  The older man was quiet for a few moments, as though he was taking time to choose his words carefully.

  Finally, he said, “Shawn, let me go alone. I can use a revolver quite well.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because . . .” Sir James searched for the words. “Because I don’t want you to see Judith like”—his eyes moved to the girl’s stark body—“like her.”

  “You’re her father. Do you think that you can stand it?”

  “No. No, I can’t. But I’m an old man. You are young, Shawn. If you don’t keep seeing a terrible picture in your mind, you can recover from this.”

  “Recover if I don’t see what happened to my wife? Is that it?”

  Sir James floundered, his face strained. “Something like that.” He shook his head. “Be damned to it all, Shawn, I just don’t have the words.”

  Shawn looked at the sky. “It will rain soon and we’ll lose the moon to clouds.”

  “Then we both must face what’s before us in full measure,” Sir James said. “There can be no sparing you.”

  “No, I can’t be spared. As my father says, I’ll soon sup sorrow with the spoon of grief. But there’s no stepping away from it.”

  “Then let us climb the hill together,” Sir James said.

  The way up the tor was difficult, especially in darkness and a cold, ticking rain.

  Shawn and Sir James scrambled through gorse bushes and grabbed the twisted limbs of stunted birch trees to navigate the icy slope.

  Every now and then the moon entered a break in the black cloud and afforded a view of the granite rocks at the crest of the tor.

  Up there nothing moved and no sound carried in the rising wind.

  After fifteen minutes of climbing, the top of the hill still seemed a long way off and Sir James stopped on a flat ledge of rock to take a breather.

  Now the rain had turned to a slashing sleet, carried on the knifing north wind, and the night grew colder and darker.

  After scanning the tor, Sir James pulled the collar of his coat closer around his face, like a turtle retreating into its shell, and said, “There’s a wild sheep on the tor. Would it remain there with men around?”

  “I don’t know,” Shawn said. “Show me.”

  “There,” Sir James said, pointing.

  Shawn saw what the older man had seen, but with younger, farseeing eyes.

  How does a man look when everything inside him suddenly dies?

  He looks as Shawn O’Brien looked that night.

  Broken.

  The only possible word to describe it.

  There was no sheep on the tor.

  It was the slender white body of Lady Judith, spread-eagled on a flat slab, a naked sacrifice to the lusts of men who were not fit to breathe the same air as the rest of humanity.

  “Oh, my God,” Sir James whispered, reading Shawn’s face. He buried his face in gloved hands. “Oh, my God .
. .”

  Shawn did not cry out in his pain and rage; instead, he was silent, filled with an icy calm, his hands steady, as is the way of the gunfighter when there’s man killing to be done.

  Without waiting to see if Sir James followed, he climbed the hill.

  When Shawn kissed his dead wife’s lips, they were as cold and lifeless as marble. Pain that was beyond pain knifed through him and he wanted to turn his face to the torn sky and scream his grief.

  But that must come later. . . .

  Biting sleet cartwheeling around him, Shawn stood in darkness, gun in hand, and watched the dull orange glow of a fire among the rocks ahead of him.

  He was aware of Sir James stepping beside him. The man no longer wore his coat.

  Shawn accepted that without comment.

  Then, in a whisper, he said, “They’re camped out among the rocks, sheltered from the wind.”

  Sir James nodded.

  “This will be real close. When you get your work in, aim low, for the belly. A bullet in the gut will stop a man.”

  Again, Sir James nodded and said nothing. His eyes were lost in shadow.

  His face a stiff, joyless mask, Shawn said, “Then let’s get it done.”

  Their steps were silent on the slushy, uneven ground. Half-hidden behind the shifting shroud of the sleet, the two men advanced on the rocks.

  Shawn smelled wood smoke and the heavy odor of wet earth and the sword blade tang of the sleet itself, cold and raw and honed sharp.

  The three convicts sat between a pair of massive boulders, and had pulled over their heads a makeshift roof of thin sheets of black shale.

  Later, Shawn would not be able to recall their faces.

  When he brought the scene to mind, he saw again the small campfire and the three convicts dressed in blue canvas jackets, pants of the same color and heavy, steel-studded boots.

  The men were vicious predators who’d stalked a peaceful, pastured land with impunity. But the man now towering above them was no pale, puny, prattling prelate who’d just watched them rape his wife and loot his village church’s poor box.