But when Slash glanced at his partner, he saw that the man’s humor hadn’t made it to his eyes. The bigger man’s smile was more than a little stiff, and his cheeks were sweaty and pasty. That’s when Slash realized his own face felt a little warm and damp, as well. His hands, cuffed behind his back, were slick with sweat.
Slash tried to return his partner’s smile, but he could tell that it barely made his mouth corners rise.
He gave up and turned his head forward.
Grimes dropped the noose into place over Pecos’s head, then did the same thing to Slash. Deputy Tabor removed the spancels from the men’s ankles, making sure the two cutthroats could dance unimpeded for the crowd, while Vern Gables and Tyson Waite flanked the outlaws, aiming their rifles at their heads as though daring them to try to run.
The town marshal himself and his three deputies as well as the sheriff’s deputy, who’d been sent to oversee the hanging here in Saguache, stood to each side of the gallows, holding either rifles or shotguns up high across their chests. To a man, they were grinning mockingly up at the two doomed cutthroats, looking almighty pleased with themselves and their good fortune of having the privilege of watching two such notorious criminals stretch some hemp on the main street of their fair town.
Near the town marshal, a man in a shabby suit and bowler hat was scribbling into a small notebook. He was likely the local newspaper scribe taking detailed notes on this momentous day, anticipating a big sale, no doubt, to the eastern rags as well as Denver’s Rocky Mountain News. The trial had been scheduled and held so quickly—giving the cutthroats no time to slither out of Bleed-’Em-So’s clutches—that no newsman from Denver had probably had time to travel here to the southern Rockies, so this local reporter likely had the scoop of his career.
The sun was nearly straight up in the sky, its brassy light bathing the crowd that was a large, milling mass forming a ragged semicircle out front of the gallows. Ladies gussied up as though for church twirled their bright parasols and conversed with others similarly attired. Many of the townsmen had also raided deep into their closets and bureaus for the occasion, clad as they were in suits complete with foulard ties and derby or bowler hats. The bulk of the men were holding either beer schooners or whiskey glasses—sometimes both and some even with fat stogies drooping from between their mustached lips.
Several boys of various sizes ran wild amongst the crowd, two appearing to pretend they were the notorious cutthroats Slash and Pecos while four others were the posse giving chase and snapping off shots with their crude tree-branch rifles. Two dogs barked and nipped at their heels. Men cursed the rowdy horde, kicking at the dogs, while the jostled women berated them less saltily.
Ranch hands in dusty range garb including chaps and billowy neckerchiefs watched from the brush ramadas fronting saloons while painted “ladies” in all the colors of the rainbow and more lounged, laughing, drinking, and smoking, from second-floor parlor house balconies and occasionally lifting their camisoles to flash the young men ogling them from the street.
A few salesmen were weaving their ways through the crowd with their display kits, occasionally holding their wares up high above their heads and shouting sales pitches.
When the nooses were drawn almost painfully taut around the men’s necks, the crowd began to quiet down, men and women hushing each other and directing one another’s attention toward the gallows where the grand finale was about to commence.
A knot nearly as big and bulky as the coils on the noose drew taut in Slash’s stomach.
The executioner stepped up in front of the two doomed men and looked down at a short, big-bellied man in a bullet-crowned black hat and clerical collar and holding a Bible. Slash had seen him pacing around in front of the gallows for some time now, gesticulating as though quietly practicing his sermon.
“Ready to give ’em the final send-off, Preacher Donleavy?”
The preacher looked up, but before he could open his mouth to speak, Slash said, “Skip it. Pull that consarned lever!”
“Now, just hold on a minute, Slash,” Pecos said, glancing sidelong at his partner, his voice a little pinched because of the hangman’s noose around his neck. “I’m startin’ to think I might want a little extra . . .”
“All right, then!” said the executioner. He turned to one of the deputies manning the wooden lever bristling out the left end of the gallows and which when thrown would open the trapdoors. “Get ready, Deputy Samuelson!”
“Oh, hell,” Pecos said quietly, so the now-silent crowd couldn’t hear him. “Slash?”
“What?”
“I got a confession.”
“I don’t think there’s a priest on the premises. The preacher looks Lutheran to me. They don’t believe in confessin’ their sins, the Lutherans don’t. They just believe in payin’ for ’em.”
“Will you please shut up, fer cryin’ in the king’s ale? Our time is short!”
“All right—what is it?”
“I know . . .” Pecos hesitated. “I know about how you . . .”
Again, he let his voice trail off but not because he was hesitating. A drumming sound rose from somewhere Slash couldn’t distinguish. The crowd seemed to hear it, too, because the men and women and even the children were looking around, frowning curiously and muttering.
“What?” Grimes said, also looking around and frowning. “What on earth... ?”
“Want me to throw the lever?” asked Deputy Samuelson eagerly, grimacing up against the sun at the executioner.
Grimes held up a hand. “Hold on just a min—”
He cut himself off when a pistol popped beneath the drumming of what now sounded like a good dozen galloping horses.
Another pistol popped. Another. And another . . .
The crowd looked this way and that, men calling out inquiringly, women gasping and drawing babies and young children protectively against them.
The shooting and drumming grew quickly louder until the sounds fairly exploded as a gang of riders broke into view a block straight up the street from the gallows, turning sharply onto the main street from a cross street, triggering pistols and rifles into the air. The riders appeared to be wearing masks and long dusters that streamed out behind them on the wind.
They continued triggering their weapons as they crouched low over their horses’ wildly jostling manes, making a beeline for the gallows. The crowd lurched as one, then suddenly began scattering, men cursing sharply and yelling, women screaming and lifting the hems of their gowns above their ankles as they ran, one awkwardly pushing a whicker stroller.
“Good Lord!” intoned Grimes.
“What in Christ’s name?” shouted Vern Gables, stepping up in front of the two prisoners and loudly pumping a cartridge into his Winchester’s action.
A man in the quickly approaching group of horsebackers triggered his pistol toward the gallows.
Gables grunted and cursed as he lurched backward before dropping his rifle, then tumbling over the front of the gallows to the ground.
More of the horsemen’s fire was directed at the gallows and in seconds both Deputies Tyson Waite and Vince Tabor were down on the gallows floor, howling and writhing.
Slash and Pecos exchanged exasperated looks, both men’s lips moving but no words making it out of their mouths. They didn’t really have to speak, because they knew they were both thinking the same thing.
Are those hell-for-leather riders here for us?
If so, who in the hell were they?
A couple of the marshal’s deputies including Deputy Samuelson returned fire. As bullets stitched the air around their heads and popped into the dirt around their boots, they cut and ran, one man screaming, “Pull out, fellas! We’re outnumbered! Pull out! Take cover!”
Slash cut a glance toward the Colorado House Hotel. As most of the crowd beat a hasty retreat toward the doors, the men shouting anxiously, a couple dropping their beer glasses with the sounds of shattering glass, old Bleed-’Em-So himself shucked his sh
otgun from the leather scabbard strapped to his chair. Raging wildly, though Slash couldn’t hear what he was saying against the thunder of the gang’s horses and the caterwauling of their guns, he extended the big popper straight out over the veranda and added the thunder of his twelve-gauge to the rising cacophony.
As he reared back his shotgun’s second hammer, Abigail Langdon backed him toward the hotel’s front door, running up against several men beating a hasty retreat behind her and too frightened to stop and help with the old cripple. The judge, prosecutor, and even Lester Hyman were nowhere to be seen, likely cowering under a table in the hotel saloon.
Old Bleed-’Em-So was raging like an angry lion, showing all those false teeth as he flopped furiously around in his chair. He stabbed another bayonet of flames into the crowd of galloping riders, though if his buckshot struck any of the gang members, Slash didn’t see which one it was.
Suddenly, as the street cleared, one of the riders leaped from his bay horse onto the gallows platform. He was a tall man in a snuff-brown Stetson with an Indian-beaded band around the tall crown. The mask hiding his face was a flour sack with the eyes and mouth cut out. It drew back against his lean face as he breathed. He faced Slash, both blue eyes glinting sharply inside the off-white mask.
He drew a big hogleg from a holster tied low on his right thigh and clicked the hammer back. He stepped around behind Slash and pressed the pistol’s barrel against the chain between the two cuffs binding Slash’s hands behind his back.
Bang!
The chain broke.
Bang!
The chain between Pecos’s wrists broke.
Their savior holstered his smoking pistol and drew a big bowie knife from a sheath on his right hip. He thrust the knife up quickly, holding the razor-edged blade up close to Slash’s face, smiling menacingly.
“Slash Braddock!” he said with a sneer.
Slash winced, gut tightening, beginning to wonder if he hadn’t leaped out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Vigilantes out for the cutthroats’ blood?
“You got me at a severe disadvantage, friend,” Slash croaked out.
“Just know I’d as soon gut you as free you, but them’s the cards!”
The masked stranger raised the knife and swept it through the rope above Slash’s noose, freeing Slash from the rail above his head. He did the same to Pecos’s rope, and suddenly both cutthroats were freed, though the locked bracelets remained on their wrists.
Slash and Pecos shared a dubious look.
“Mount up!” their savior yelled as he leaped off the gallows.
“Who are you fellas?” Slash called.
“Mount the hell up!” their savior yelled again as he mounted his bay.
Slash looked into the street.
His own Appy and Pecos’s buckskin stood before the gallows, their reins being held by a second masked rider who swung his head this way and that, watching for enemy fire though it appeared the marshal’s deputies had run for their lives. The only shooting was coming from the masked riders, the other ten of which were circling the gallows and triggering their pistols and rifles warningly into the air, like Indians circling a wagon train.
The three federals lay in the street around the gallows, twisted in death.
As Slash and Pecos leaped down off the gallows platform, Slash cut a glance at Vern Gables, his gaze lingering curiously.
“Hurry up, Slash!” Pecos said, grabbing his buckskin’s reins and fleetly swinging his big body into the saddle. “This ain’t no time to be lookin’ a gift horse in the mouth!”
“Right,” Slash said, grabbing his own reins and leaping onto the Appy’s back. “I’m with you, partner!”
He quickly set himself in the saddle, and soon both he and Pecos were galloping hell-for-leather behind their gang of galloping saviors, heading south out of Saguache. The buildings and stock corrals dropped away behind them, and then they were out in the open country, fogging the sage for the high-and-rocky.
Slash had no idea who had freed them.
But they were free, by God. He could feel the thrill in his belly. His heart was singing. The San Juans loomed before them, severe and blue and beautiful, mantled by high, billowy, white clouds. Slash wanted to laugh and spread his arms.
Instead, he hunkered low over his familiar horse’s fluttering mane and squinted his eyes against the dust being kicked up ahead of him, by his and Pecos’s angels of mercy.
Soon, he found himself frowning. As good as he felt, there was a needling apprehension. It was like a fly buzzing in his ears.
Something told him that his initial feeling of having leaped out of the frying pan and into the fire hadn’t been entirely unfounded, and that his avenging angels might have black wings.
CHAPTER 18
Slash and Pecos followed their rescuers at a dead run straight south of Saguache, following a two-track stage road that cleaved a long, broad valley that appeared to end at the San Juan Mountains looming darkly ahead.
Crouched low over their horses’ polls, the two aging outlaws shared an incredulous look, then turned their heads back forward. Again, they were both asking the same silent questions.
Who were these men?
Why had they rescued the two cutthroats?
Where were they going?
All were questions Slash hoped he and Pecos would have answers for soon.
Soon it didn’t look likely. Roughly two miles from town, the gang halted near a large cottonwood where the fork suddenly grew two single-track tines, one tine angling southwest, one angling east. The gang members were still wearing their masks, as though they didn’t want even Slash and Pecos to know who they were.
The one who’d freed the two outlaws from the gallows rode back to where Slash and Pecos had stopped their mounts. He jerked his head to indicate the southwestern-angling horse trail, which dropped down into an arroyo sheathed in cedars and thick brush.
“Take that trail. After three miles, you’ll meet up with the old Gunnison Stage Road. Take it straight south for six or seven miles. You know Sam Scudder’s old station?”
“What about it?” Slash said, frowning curiously at the masked rider before him.
“Ride there. Stay there. Someone will come for you.”
The stranger started to turn his bay, but stopped when Slash said, “Who?”
“Someone!”
Pecos said, “You fellas wouldn’t happen to have our guns, would you? I feel a little naked without my weapons. I mean, if it wouldn’t be too much to ask . . .”
The leader of the masked riders just stared at him blankly, as though he wouldn’t lower himself to answer such a stupid question.
One of the other eleven masked riders behind him chuckled softly, dryly.
Pecos flushed, sheepish, and hiked a shoulder. “I was just askin’.”
“Who are you fellas?” Slash asked the mysterious stranger. “Why did you pull us out of that necktie party?”
But the mysterious riders, led by the tall man, had already swung their horses onto the northeastern-angling horse trail, in the shade of the sprawling cottonwood. Touching steel to their mounts’ flanks, they lunged off into another hard gallop, dust lifting behind them.
They galloped off around a low spur ridge and were gone, the thuds of their horses’ hooves dwindling gradually.
“I’ll be damned,” Slash said, staring after them curiously.
“I thought it was a fair question,” Pecos said. “I mean, what’s an outlaw without his guns? Especially one who likely has a posse foggin’ his trail.”
He turned a look over his left shoulder, to stare back toward Saguache, adding, “I bet that town marshal’s got one after us by now.” He turned to Slash again. “Didn’t you think it was a fair question?”
“It was fair.”
“Did you see the look that masked hombre gave me? Made me feel little more than change for a penny.”
Slash looked off down the trail he and Pecos had been dire
cted to take. “I reckon we’ll have to make do without our weapons.”
“I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful,” Pecos said, still injured by the masked rider’s mocking stare. “I mean, whoever they are, I couldn’t appreciate them rescuin’ us from that gallows any more than I do. My God, I’ve never felt so grateful to be alive in all my days! But, still . . . I’d like to have my guns.”
He glanced at the silver bracelets still adorning his wrists. “They mighta had a key for these cuffs, too. I wouldn’t mind bein’ rid of them, either. They’ll mark us as prisoners wherever we go.”
“I’d just like to know who in the hell they were. They sure didn’t seem friendly. Aside from keepin’ that hangman from playin’ cat’s cradle with our heads, that is.”
“That’s a fair bit!” Pecos threw his head back and laughed. He laughed a good long time, obviously thoroughly feeling the exhilaration of having been spared from certain death. After a time, he shook his head. “Whew! Look around, Slash! We’re alive!”
“Feels good, don’t it?” Slash took a deep breath. He felt a little dizzy, like a kid after his first few sips of his old man’s home-brewed wine.
He swung his head to stare after the masked riders again, frowning into their dust still sifting in the shade of the sprawling cottonwood. “Still, I’d like to know who they were . . . what this is all about.”
“Like I said,” Pecos said, turning his horse onto the trail they’d been directed to follow. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, mi amigo. Let’s just do as he says, head to Sam Scudder’s old station. Wait for whoever is supposed to come for us.”
As Slash turned his Appy onto the single-track trail, following Pecos down the gradual grade toward the arroyo, Pecos shot him a wide-eyed, eager look. “Hey, what if it’s Jay?”
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