Benedict and Brazos 20

by E. Jefferson Clay

  He tugged the rope free of the bag, then stood with it coiled in his big brown hands.

  What he held on this dusty ridge under the climbing sun was a hang rope.

  Chapter Three – Came The Hangman

  ELROY SMART SMACKED his lips as he lowered the bottle. “Ahh, that is much better, indeed it is. I’m not a drinking man usually, but there are times when ...” He broke off, realizing that his rescuers were staring at him curiously. “Is there anything wrong, gentlemen?”

  “Nothing is wrong,” Benedict assured him with his easy smile. “It’s just that I was trying to guess what line you might be travelling in, Mr. Smart. To be truthful, you don’t look like a salesman to me.”

  The portly Smart, who had given his occupation as a drummer, looked away. “General merchandise,” he murmured.

  “Well, friend,” Benedict said amiably, “I always say you can’t judge a man or his vocation solely on appearance. You’re a salesman, but you don’t look like one. You take my partner here and myself. What would you say our occupations might be?”

  Looking from one to the other, Smart said, “Gunfighters?”

  “Not even close, Mr. Smart,” Benedict replied. “Reporters.”

  Smart blinked. “Newspaper reporters?”

  “Benedict and Brazos from the Little Rock Courier,” Benedict supplied. “We’re on our way to Spearhead to cover the execution of Dusty Lane.” A cold look crossed his handsome face and Benedict turned his head to spit. “Not an assignment I have much stomach for, let me tell you, Mr. Smart. As a reporter I’m duty bound to cover everything my paper considers newsworthy, but personally I consider it disgusting, the publicity they give men of Lane’s stamp these days. Of course, there is some satisfaction in seeing one of the crimson stamp sent kicking into eternity, I suppose, but ...” His voice faded.

  Elroy Smart was sitting more erect now, his eyes a little brighter. “You have no objection to public executions then, Mr. Benedict?”

  “Objections?” Benedict sounded astonished. “On the contrary, my dear fellow, I’m one of the most vociferous supporters of capital punishment you’re likely to encounter in the entire Fourth Estate. Right, Hank?”

  Without the dimmest idea of what words like “vociferous” or “capital punishment” meant, and with only the vaguest idea of what the Yank was playing at with Smart, Brazos nevertheless nodded and began building a cigarette.

  “There is too much leniency shown to outlaws and desperadoes in the west these days in my opinion, Mr. Smart,” Benedict went on, looking more righteous by the moment. “If you ask me, every man found guilty of a major crime should automatically go to the gibbet, and every hangman should be treated as a hero.” His right index finger shot up in the air. “I repeat, sir, a hero.”

  He lowered his hand slowly, then smiled apologetically. “You must forgive me, Mr. Smart. Friends tell me I tend to become a little boring on the matter of capital punishment, but it’s something I—”

  “Please don’t apologize, sir,” a smiling Elroy Smart urged. “You can have no idea how good your honest words sound to the ears of a man who has grown accustomed, no, inured to all the cruel remarks and humorless jokes that are the cross borne by those committed to translating the words of justice into action.”

  Benedict managed to look puzzled. “I’m not sure I understand, Mr. Smart.”

  Elroy Smart looked from one to the other, looking a far cry from the shaken, ashen-faced man who’d emerged from the rock nest less than twenty minutes ago.

  “I’m afraid I was less than absolutely honest with you, gentlemen, but you must understand that my dishonesty was dictated by the bitter lessons of past experience. A man in my position has to be so careful about whom he chooses to reveal his profession to ... but there I am, beating around the bush again. The truth of the matter is, gentlemen, I am not a salesman. I am the state’s official hangman and it will be my honor and privilege to spring the trap on Dusty Lane in Spearhead.”

  “You’re not serious?” Benedict breathed, almost in awe. “You’re telling us that we have had the honor and pleasure of lending small assistance to none other than the state’s official hangman? Friend Hank, did you hear that?”

  Friend Hank had indeed heard, and now that the basking Smart’s identity had been established beyond all doubt, he was anxious to get on with things and see how they might turn this chance meeting to their advantage. It was Saturday morning. Dusty Lane was scheduled to hang on Monday. Over the next several minutes he did everything but send up a smoke signal to get Benedict away from the bragging executioner so they could confer, but his trail partner seemed to have all the time in the world. The Texan was tight-lipped with impatience by the time they moved off up the ridge together, ostensibly to look for Brazos’ dropped Colt.

  “Did you have to find out how many men his daddy had strung up before him, damn it?” he growled.

  “Quite fascinating,” Benedict murmured, unruffled. He drew up and turned to look down at the portly man below brushing dust from his business suit. “Imagine that your father was a hangman, Reb, and when he retired, the business automatically became yours. Can you picture that …?”

  “All I can picture is Dusty doin’ the rope dance if we don’t keep movin’,” Brazos cut him off. “Now that luck’s played our way here, Yank, let’s make the most of it.”

  Benedict eyed the bigger man coldly. “I was railroaded into this mess—as you are well aware, Johnny Reb. I resent whatever chicanery you employed to get me here, and I’m quite sure that, knowing me as you do, you realize that I shall pay you out in full before you’re very much older.” He held up a silencing hand as Brazos made to argue. “Spare me your protests if you will. As you pointed out, time is of the essence, so let me tell you what we must do. Listen and learn, Johnny Reb.”

  Elroy Smart couldn’t believe it. Why in the name of heaven would they want to overpower him, loop a long rope around his ample belly and lower him down the sheer wall of a box canyon?

  “Help!” the descending hangman cried, and the word bounced off the rocky walls. “Help me, somebody!”

  His descent stopped. Fifty feet above, one boot braced against the tree that was serving as a snugging post for the rope, Duke Benedict put a finger to his lips.

  “Quieten down, Mr. Smart. Comanches!”

  “What?”

  “Who is to say there aren’t still some about, Mr. Smart? If you make a great noise, you’re bound to attract them, so may I suggest that silence could well be the essence of survival?”

  “But—” the luckless executioner began, then broke off as he started to drop again. A short time ago, all he’d had to worry about was the possibility of starving to death before somebody rescued him. But now a new and infinitely more frightening element had been added to his plight.

  “You don’t believe there are any more renegades in this region, do you?” Benedict asked Brazos.

  “Not goin’ by the sign there ain’t,” Brazos replied, peering over the lip to see Smart’s boots touch the canyon floor. “Of course, if he kicks up a racket, no tellin’ what he might bring in.”

  “Then he would do well to heed my advice?”

  “Keerect.”

  “Emulate your name, Mr. Smart!” Benedict called down as he and Brazos tossed the hangman’s supplies after him. “We’re leaving you ample water and food, you’ll find shelter from the elements in those caves across the way. All you have to do is remain quiet and patient until we return. Try to think of it in terms of a vacation, Mr. Smart. I’m certain that a man of your calling must need a break from the rigors of his work from time to time.”

  The hangman made a grab for a plummeting saddlebag, missed and stumbled. Elroy Smart still couldn’t believe it was happening to him. What had he done to deserve such cruel and heartless treatment?

  “Why, Benedict?” he called up. “Just tell me—”

  “Comanches, Mr. Smart, Comanches,” came the clipped reply, and then they were gon
e.

  “Why?” Elroy Smart repeated, but in a whisper this time as a silence as deep as the grave came down over Dead Horse Canyon. “Why ...?”

  Saturday afternoons in Spearhead were pretty much the same as Saturday afternoons all over Arkansas. Cowboys rode into town to drink rye whisky and kick up as much hell as they thought they could get away with. Storekeepers and businessmen who’d put in a hard week serving customers and clients tended to rest Saturday afternoons to be fresh for Saturday night, which by custom was the big social night in town. For the young men and women, it was the best time of the week to promenade up and down Federal Street in their best clothes.

  But this was a special Saturday. From Dockerty’s Barn that marked the western boundary, all the way down to the seamy lanes and back alleys around River Street, and up to the handsome homes on what they called Nob Hill, the topic was the same: the hanging of Dusty Lane.

  Such stunning events as a double murder and a coming execution could be guaranteed to bring in crowds and stimulate gossip almost anywhere, but there were special factors connected with this gruesome business in Spearhead that seemed to make it unique. For every citizen who seemed ready to accept that Lane was guilty and the quicker he paid the ultimate penalty the better there was another expressing grave doubts about the affair. Added to these was a small but vociferous group who clung to the belief that, regardless of who had pulled the trigger on Vic Clanton, the murder was linked with the conflict between the Arkansas Cattlemen’s Association and the rebellious Spearhead Mississippi Combine.

  So there was enough uncertainty and conjecture to keep everybody occupied until at least daybreak on Monday morning. An added bit of interest was the news that the hangman was overdue and the law office was beginning to entertain grave doubts for his safety.

  But though animated gossip occupied most of the good, the bad, and the ugly of Spearhead that hot, clear afternoon in early August, there were those who had other and better things to do than sit around talking.

  Jubal Trogg was one of these. The chubby junior undertaker’s method of spending that particular afternoon might well have been the envy of most red-blooded young males of the town. For Jubal wiled away the sunny hours in Mrs. Delaney’s Rooming House on Blacksmith Street with Chastity Brown. There were those in town who said that Chastity was no better than she should be, and that she was only stringing young Jubal along because he gave her expensive gifts he could ill afford and treated her like a goddess whose dainty feet didn’t touch the ground when he proudly escorted her along the streets of Spearhead. Jubal knew all this and ignored it. Maybe Chastity was a little bossy, and maybe she did get on his nerves somewhat that afternoon, nagging at him and demanding to know when he was going to close the deal with Buckhout. But she was still his Chastity, and Jubal Trogg wouldn’t have swapped places with any young buck in town for a thousand dollars.

  Jubal’s employer spent the afternoon in a more sober, gainful way than his assistant. Behind the somber, stained glass windows of Buckhout and Company, Dignified Funerals, the undertaker was at his work bench putting the finishing touches to Dusty Lane’s casket. It was only a pine casket, but the undertaker had put love into it. Buckhout and Company would be on show on Monday morning. They were predicting that half the county would roll up to see the hanging, and it could only be good for business to show that Dignified Funerals did a good job, even when handling a cheap council burial. Occasionally the elephantine man would pause in his labors when he felt a pain in his chest, utilizing the rest periods to reflect on whether he should sell out to Trogg. Then he would take a sip from the bottle he kept handy and return to his work.

  At the jailhouse, Sheriff Jobe Calvin had been concerned enough about Smart’s failure to arrive that he’d discussed the formation of a search party with the marshal. Brand, indifferent and unhelpful as he mostly was these days, had evinced little interest, and Calvin had finally let the matter drop, not because of the marshal’s attitude but because of the news the mail rider brought in around ten. A trapper had been killed and scalped by renegades in the Big Horns on Friday afternoon. With renegade Indians about, a call for volunteers would be a waste of time.

  To the man for whom the arrival or non-arrival of the state’s executioner held the most immediate significance, Saturday’s long hours fluctuated between peaks of optimism and pits of despair. Pacing his eight-by-eight cage and smoking one brown-paper cigarette after another, Dusty Lane just couldn’t make up his mind what to believe. While half of his imagination pictured Elroy Smart being expertly scalped, skinned and skewered by a band of painted savages, the other showed the hangman delayed by nothing more serious than a lame horse or wrong turn on an unfamiliar trail. It was impossible for him to make up his mind what he believed, just as he couldn’t decide if his rotten little partner of the owlhoot had abandoned him, or if Tim Fenner right at this moment might be staging a dramatic scheme to extricate his partner Dusty from the foul clutches of John Law.

  So Saturday afternoon ticked away. Then, as the town hall clock tolled the hour of four, a pair of tall riders topped Clancy’s Crest in the Big Horn foothills—and a visitor arrived to see Dusty Lane in the jailhouse.

  The sheriff was snoozing behind his battered desk with his hat over his eyes when Tim Fenner appeared in the doorway. Turnkey Varn Haley sat in a chair tipped back against the wall near the gunrack, spooning juice from a can of peaches into his mouth. The front legs of the chair came down hard when he recognized Fenner. Sheriff Jobe Calvin grunted and blinked awake.

  “What the hell do you want, Fenner?” the turnkey barked.

  The lack of warmth in the turnkey’s greeting failed to dent the armor of runty Tim Fenner. Things were pretty much the same all over when you happened to be an ugly little man with a dull personality, a squinty eye and bad breath—especially if you were also a long-time associate of Dusty Lane’s.

  Standing just inside the doorway, Fenner turned his brown hat in his hands and looked nervously at the lawman.

  “Wonder if I might see Dusty, Sheriff?” Another strike Tim Fenner had against him was the fact that he whined when he was frightened, which was most of the time.

  “What for?”

  “Well, he’s my pard.”

  “Some pard. You ain’t been near him since the trial.”

  “Been kinda tied up, Sheriff.”

  “What doin’? Thievin’ again?”

  “You know I went straight long ago, Sheriff,” Fenner said lamely. Then he nodded at the archway leading into the cell-block. “Can I see him?”

  Calvin scowled across his desk top at the unimpressive figure for a full minute, then he sighed gustily. “I suppose a man would be heartless not to let Lane see an old pard at a time like this, though what the hell he ever saw in you, Fenner, I’ll never know.” He looked at the turnkey. “Let him go in, Varn. But search him first. Search him good.”

  “Sure thing, Sheriff,” Haley said, getting to his feet. A yard from Fenner, he propped and grimaced. “Judas, don’t you ever wash?”

  “Every birthday, whether I need it or not, Deputy,” Fenner grinned. That was the standard of his wit. His idea of a riotous joke was to lie about his age.

  Lane was leaning against the door of his cell building yet another cigarette when the deputy showed his well-frisked visitor through. The prisoner’s face showed a momentary flicker of anger, then blankness as he concentrated on his cigarette.

  “Not too thrilled to see him, Dusty?” Haley drawled. “Well, can’t say I blame you.” He made an elaborate business of holding his nose as he moved down the corridor to occupy a chair by the back door. “Judas!”

  Waiting until the lawman was out of earshot, Fenner approached the cell door. “How you been, Dusty?”

  “None the better for your askin’. Where the hell have you been?”

  “Around, Dusty.”

  “Doin’ what?”

  “This and that.”

  The dialogue was less than scintillating.
Angry with his so-called partner for his failure to come near the jailhouse since his trial, Lane would have liked to clam up and freeze Fenner out, but that was a luxury he couldn’t afford. For Fenner was his one hope of dodging Monday morning’s noose. During the long, hard days since the trial, Lane had fallen into the habit of bolstering his flagging spirits with the belief that somewhere out there, good old Tim was working day and night trying to figure out a way of getting him free. But he could tell just by Fenner’s manner and appearance now that most likely all he had been doing during that time was drinking and fretting about a certain two thousand in stashed money.

  But, unimpressive partner though he might be, Fenner wasn’t to be written off just yet. For Dusty Lane had the lever of hard cash, and the wild man knew it was the money and the money alone that had brought Fenner here today.

  He said softly, “No dice, Fenner.”

  Fenner stared at him. “What’re you talkin’ about, Dusty?”

  “Don’t act dumb ... pard. I told you before and I’ll tell you now—the only way you’re ever goin’ to see a nickel of that dinero is to get me out of here. Otherwise it goes with me.”

  “But, Dusty—”

  “That’s it.”

  Fenner’s ugly face fell, as well it might. Three days before the murder of Vic Clanton, Dusty Lane, spurred on by the sudden need to outdo his spendthrift rival for Chastity Brown’s affections, Jubal Trogg, had decided to hold up a stage. Prior to this, Lane’s illegal activities had never extended beyond rustling, an activity that was still semi-respectable on the frontier. But rustling was poorly paid and Dusty needed courting money, so the holdup was staged.

  It proved easier and more successful than either Lane or Fenner could have hoped. Without a shot being fired, two stage-robbing beginners were two thousand dollars the richer. But it was only then, with the money in their hands, that Lane started to think ahead. He and Fenner were familiar sights around Spearhead, he reasoned. If they started displaying signs of sudden wealth immediately following a stage holdup, people might start asking questions. So, Lane, had decided, they would play it smart and stash the loot, then sit back until things had cooled down. Because he was the boss man, and because Fenner couldn’t be trusted with the pennies on a dead man’s eyes, Lane had stashed the dinero in secret. Less than a day later he was arrested for murder.