Shadow of the Hangman

by J. A. Johnstone

  Shamus O’Brien sat in his wheelchair, the white bundle that was his grandson in his arms. “Young Shamus is too young to know I spoil him,” the colonel said.

  Lorena smiled. “He’ll know soon enough, and then watch out. First the pony, then the twenty-two rifle, and then—”

  “And then whatever he wants,” Shamus said. He lifted his eyes to Samuel. “Son, you’ve been through it.”

  “I reckon.”

  “Maybe you better tell us about it.”

  Lorena’s pretty face was suddenly concerned. “Samuel, it’s not about Patrick, is it?”

  Samuel nodded. “Patrick’s just fine, but yes, in a way it’s about Patrick, about all of us.”

  He poured himself a drink, sat by the fire, and accepted a cigar from his father.

  “Tell us what happened, Samuel,” the colonel said. “From the beginning.”

  Using as few words as possible, Samuel recounted his visit with Patrick and then his conversation with Lucas Dunkley. By the time he’d ended his account of the bushwhacking and his meeting with Mrs. Harris, his cigar was half smoked and his whiskey glass was drained.

  In the silence that followed, Lorena noticed her husband’s knee. “Samuel,” she said, “you’ve been wounded.”

  “It’s nothing,” Samuel said. “I got burned by a bullet, is all.”

  But Lorena wouldn’t let it go. She fussed her way out of the study and returned with a basin of warm water, washcloths and bandages, and some brown stuff in a bottle that Samuel knew from bitter experience stung like hell.

  Shawn, looking worried, followed Lorena into the room. “Damn it, Sam, how did you get shot?” he said.

  “Hardly shot,” Samuel said. “I got burned.”

  Shawn grabbed a chair and sat beside his brother. “How did it happen?” He glanced at the knee that Lorena now exposed when she rolled up Samuel’s pants leg. “That looks ugly,” Shawn said. “Some ranny beat you on the draw-and-shoot?”

  “I’ll tell this story one more time, then I’m done,” Samuel said, wincing as Lorena liberally applied the stinging stuff.

  He gave Shawn the same account as he had his father, dwelling longer on Dunkley and his suspicions. Then he said, “And that’s all I’ve got to say.”

  The study door swung open and Luther Ironside, Dromore’s segundo, thudded into the room, his spurs chiming. “Sam,” he said, “tell me how the hell did you get yourself all shot to pieces?”

  “What do you reckon, Luther?” Shamus O’Brien said.

  Taking his time, Ironside lifted the baby off Shamus’s knee, kissed the little one on the cheek, and handed him back to Lorena.

  “Colonel, I say we do as Sam said and get a couple of men into Georgetown to look out fer that lawyer feller,” he said finally.

  “Shawn?”

  “Makes sense to me, Colonel. Whoever wanted Samuel dead is sure as hell targeting Lucas Dunkley.”

  “Lucas says he’s taken to carrying a revolver,” Samuel said. “He knows he’s a target.”

  Shamus lit a cigar and studied Ironside through a blue haze of smoke.

  Luther had served under him in the late war as a top sergeant and later had helped found Dromore. He’d fought Apaches, rustlers, and bandits up from the Mexico border, and had been wounded in the Estancia Valley War. He was long past the first bloom of middle age, but there was steel in him and his bottom. He was fast on the draw-and-shoot and he’d killed men, but he’d never sought a gunman’s reputation. Still, he was the kind of man that named gunfighters called “Sir” and allowed the road. Luther was a brave man, there was no doubt about that, but he was also reckless, impetuous, insubordinate, quick-tempered at times, and a mite too fond of bonded bourbon and painted women.

  In other words, he was just the kind of heller the colonel needed in Georgetown. Him and Shawn. And Jacob. If he ever arrived.

  “Luther,” Shamus said, “I want you and Shawn to head out at first light tomorrow for Georgetown. Keep an eye on lawyer Dunkley and make sure nobody guns him.”

  When he saw Ironside and his son nod, Shamus added, “And I want Patrick safe. I don’t trust John Moore and never did. He’s got a long Yankee face on him, and I don’t cotton to that.”

  “I catch your drift, Colonel,” Ironside said.

  “John Moore’s all right, Pa,” Samuel said. “He knows Patrick didn’t murder Molly Holmes and said it out straight at the trial.”

  “He still plans to hang him though, doesn’t he?” Shamus said.

  Samuel could only stay silent and nod his agreement.

  “No son of mine will ever hang,” Shamus said, his face reddening. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, and all the saints in heaven bear witness that I’ll destroy that damned town and everyone in it before I’ll let them murder my blood.” He glared at Samuel. “Yes, it’s about the blood, Samuel. The same blood that runs in my veins runs in Patrick’s, and I’ll never turn my back on my own blood. Remember that well, because blood and honor are the very foundations of Dromore and all it stands for.”

  “And Ma’s hearthstone,” Samuel said, smiling.

  For a moment Shamus was taken aback. Then he smiled. “Yes, Shawn, you’re right. Saraid’s hearthstone is the bedrock for all the rest, for what has been and for what is still to come.”

  “Colonel,” Samuel said, “I understand what you say about the blood. I won’t watch Patrick hang.”

  “I know you won’t,” Shamus said. “But a lesson once given is worth repeating.”

  “Colonel,” Ironside said, “why don’t me and Shawn just ride into town, spring Patrick from jail, then hide out in the mountains for a spell?”

  “It’s a thought,” Shamus said.

  “I’ll put a bullet in Moore, if you like,” Ironside said, beaming, as though he’d just clinched the deal.

  The colonel was lost in thought for a while, but he looked up and said, “No, for the time being we’ll do it legally. Let’s wait and hear what Dunkley has to say.”

  “But it’s an option, though, huh?” Ironside said.

  “Yes,” Shamus said. He pushed his wheelchair to the window and stared out at the fading day. “It’s an option.”

  Chapter Five

  The bedroom was dark, lit only by the thin blade of moonlight that angled through the drawn curtains. A rising wind whispered slyly around the eaves of the house, and in the distance coyotes lifted their noses and questioned the night.

  “He done it again, Cap’n,” the man who stood at the bottom of the bed said. “He came home covered in blood that wasn’t his’n.”

  The bed creaked, but the man who sat bolt upright was invisible in shadow. “You were supposed to keep him confined to his room.”

  “We did, Cap’n, but he slung a chair and broke clean through the window.”

  “Who was it this time?”

  “Woman who lives in a shack over to Apache Canyon and her two kids.”

  The man in the bed groaned, like someone in pain. “Damn him, damn him to hell,” he said.

  “I’m real sorry, Cap’n.”

  “Did you see her? And the kids?”

  “Bill Anders rode over there, came back an hour ago. He hasn’t talked since, just sits on his bunk holding his head and sobbing, like.”

  “Bring Anders to me. Now!”

  The man called Anders stepped into the room, hollow-eyed, his hat in his hands.

  “Tell me,” the man in the bed said.

  “It’s bad, boss.”

  “Damn you, tell me.”

  “Near as I can put it together . . .” the man stopped, his words balling in his throat.

  “Tell me.” A hoarse whisper from the darkness.

  “Near as I can tell . . . he stripped the woman naked, then done her good. After he was finished, he killed her and the two kids.” The man called Anders hesitated, then said, “That’s as near as I can tell.”

  “Did he . . . did he use a poker like he did the last time?”

  “Running iron.�
�

  “Oh, my God . . .”

  “You have to kill him, Cap’n,” Anders said. “Shade is an evil thing that ain’t fit to live.”

  “He’s my son.”

  “He’ll ruin all our plans for the ranch, Cap’n.”

  “No, he won’t. By God, I’ll keep him chained for the rest of his life if I have to.”

  “He’s tied up already, Cap’n. Me and Clem got him roped hand and foot in the barn.” A sudden edge to his voice betrayed Anders’s agitation. “Cap’n, when the Georgetown vigilantes discover what happened, they’ll figger out pretty damned quick that they’re fixin’ to hang the wrong man.”

  “They won’t discover it, at least not the way you found it.”

  The unsteady breathing of the man in the bed was loud in the quiet. Then he said, “Go back to the shack and set it on fire. I want those bodies burned unrecognizable. As far as the vigilantes are concerned, the woman set the place ablaze by accident and she and her kids burned to death.”

  Anders pleaded. “This don’t set right with me, Cap’n, I mean Pat O’Brien gettin’ hung for something he didn’t do. Let me kill Shade for you, real easy like.”

  “No! Damn you, no! He’s my son. Now go and do what I told you.”

  “Like I said, Cap’n, he may be your son, but he ain’t fit to live,” Anders said.

  “I know that,” the man in the bed said. “God help me, don’t you think I know that?”

  After Anders left, the man in the bed spent thirty minutes in tormented thought. Finally, his face stricken, he rose and slipped on a robe. He opened the drawer of the bedside table and removed a short-barreled Colt. He checked the loads, then slid the revolver into his pocket. A tall, graying man with the erect bearing of a former naval officer, Captain Miles Shannon grabbed a pair of crutches that stood by the door and used them to limp into the hallway.

  The house was dark, and it took the tall man several slow minutes to hobble his way to the front of the house and step outside.

  A haloed moon rode high above Apache Mesa a mile to the north, and around Shannon the wind rustled among cedar and piñon and rippled the blue grama grass. His experienced eye ranged over a couple of yearling steers drinking at the creek, and it pleased him to see that they’d recovered from the hard winter and put on beef.

  Ice and blizzards had killed two-thirds of his herd and pushed him to the wall. Only an interest-free loan from Shamus O’Brien had stood between him and ruin....

  He supported himself on his crutches and turned his face to the star-strewn sky, sudden tears in his eyes, his conscience twisting inside him like a knife. He would repay Shamus’s kindness with betrayal and treachery, and a fine young man would die to save the unspeakable monster he himself had created.

  “My son . . .” he whispered, a man in mortal agony . . . “oh, my son . . .”

  Shannon’s hand slipped into the pocket of his robe and closed on the Colt.

  A woman and her two children dead to satisfy Shade’s perverted lusts. Anders had been right; there could be no forgiveness for that. No going back to what might have been. Not now. Not ever.

  Shade had to be destroyed, but Shannon would do it himself.

  The captain hobbled stiffly toward the barn. He was tormented by grief, but his eyes were determined. It was time to end it and send back to the hell where it had been spawned whatever had possessed his boy’s soul.

  The barn doors were wide open and moonlight slanted the dark interior. The musky odor of horses mingled with the night smells of cedar, prairie grass, and high-growing pine. A teasing wind slapped Captain Shannon’s silk robe against his wooden legs, and strands of iron-gray hair tossed across his face.

  Shannon drew the gun from his pocket and walked lamely to the entrance of the barn. Breathing hard, he rested on the crutches and said, “Shade, where are you? Speak up, boy.” Moonlight glinted blue on the barrel of the revolver by his side. “Shade?”

  Inside, a horse snorted and a hoof thudded on wood. Far off, Shannon heard an owl question the night, and closer by coyotes yipped at a moon as big and round as a silver dollar.

  “I know you’re in there, boy,” he said. “I’m here to cut you loose.”

  The answering silence mocked Shannon. He stumbled to the lantern that always sat on top of an upturned Arbuckle coffee box to the left of the doorway. A few matches lay next to the lantern, and the captain picked one up . . .

  Then screamed as a shocking pain hammered the back of his knees.

  Shannon dropped in a heap, and his Colt skittered away from him. He reached for the revolver, then collapsed again as an iron crowbar slammed into his left shoulder and shattered his collarbone.

  Through a scarlet haze of agony, he saw the silhouette of a man standing over him, saw the gleam of his teeth in the darkness.

  “Hello, Daddy,” the man said. “How nice of you to drop by.”

  Shannon was almost beyond speech, his terrible injuries taking their toll. During the late war both his legs had been amputated below the knees, and now one of his artificial limbs had followed the path of the Colt and lay several yards away.

  “I came to kill you, Shade,” he said.

  “I know you did, Daddy.”

  “Damn you to hell, you’re a monster.”

  Shade took a knee beside his father and stared into his eyes. “I know that, too. Isn’t it fun?”

  Captain Shannon made a lunge for his revolver, but the crowbar came down fast and hard and shattered his elbow. He groaned and fell on his back. “Finish it, Shade,” he said. “I don’t want to live in your world a moment longer.”

  Shade smiled. “Why, certainly, Daddy.” He raised the iron bar and brought it crashing down on his father’s head. Only when the older man’s skull was smashed into pulp did he stop.

  Slowly, Shade got to his feet, his thin chest rising and falling as he struggled to catch his breath. He stood still for a few moments and cursed the asthma that had plagued him since childhood.

  He looked at his father’s body. Damn him, not that he cared. Not that anyone ever cared. Shade kicked the lifeless man again and again, until his building fury was played out.

  Gasping again, he stepped from the barn into the mother-of-pearl moonlight, his hands clenched into tight fists, and he stared at the star-splashed night sky, the woman craving ravening at him.

  God, he needed a woman real bad.

  Chapter Six

  “Seems to me,” Jacob O’Brien said, “that we can settle this amicably.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” the older, bearded man standing beside him at the bar said. “Amic . . . ambly . . .”

  “It means, my ignorant friend, that we can settle this in a friendly manner, like,” Jacob said.

  “An’ suppose I don’t cotton to settling in a friendly manner?” the bearded man said.

  “Ah, a good question,” Jacob said. “The opposite of amicable is unfriendly, and we don’t want that, do we?”

  The bartender laid a plate in front of Jacob. “Cheese, hard-boiled eggs, and a stack of tortillas,” he said. “That’s the best I can do for you, mister.”

  Jacob smiled. “Hell, I’ve been living on salt pork for a week. This is a feast and sets with me just fine.”

  He picked up the plate and stepped toward the dugout saloon’s only table, where a whore from the adjoining hog farm was playing solitaire with a pack of worn, greasy cards. The bearded man’s voice stopped him.

  “Hey, you, we haven’t settled this,” he said.

  Jacob turned, moved the plate from his left hand to his right, and said, “Yes, we have.”

  The bearded man was huge, and the bear coat he wore despite the summer heat made him look bigger. His red beard, streaked with gray, spread over his chest, and he wore a couple of revolvers and an enormous pig-sticker in his belt.

  “How come we settled it?” he said.

  Jacob sighed. “Well, the fact that you didn’t know what the word amicably means pegs you as an
ignoramus. So when you say Grant was a better general than Lee, I realized that you are a simpleton who doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.”

  The bearded man turned to the bartender. “Hey, Lou, was that an insult?”

  The bartender shook his head. “I guess not, Tom. Man is only talking the truth.”

  The man called Tom slammed his hand onto the bar so hard the whore made a little yelp and jumped in fright. “I know what I know, feller,” he said. “And what I know is that Grant”—he removed his hat—“God bless him, was the best general who ever lived, and that includes the Frenchy, what do you call him . . . Nap . . . Napo . . .”

  “Napoleon,” Jacob supplied.

  “Yeah, him.” Tom replaced his battered hat and glared at Jacob. “Now it’s settled.”

  “Whatever you say,” Jacob said. “Let me buy the man a drink, bartender, seeing as how he won the argument.”

  Tom grinned. “That’s white of you, mister. Bless you, I’ll have a glass of rum.”

  “Be my guest,” Jacob said.

  The whore watched Jacob eat for a while, then said, “Big spender.”

  “Spending is better than shooting,” Jacob said.

  “And you’ve done your share of shooting, I’d say.”

  “More than my share,” Jacob said. “It wears on a man.”

  “My name is Amy,” the whore said. She looked worn out, and the hog farm was probably her final destination. The only thing lower was to become a soldiers’ woman, but she’d know that was the end of the line and fear it.

  “Pretty name, Amy,” Jacob said.

  “So, what’s yours?”

  “Jacob.”

  “Hello, Jacob.”

  “Hello yourself, Amy.”

  The girl reached out and picked a crumb of tortilla from Jacob’s untrimmed mustache, then said, “Where you headed?”

  “North.”

  “Where, north?”

  “A ways.”

  Amy smiled. “You’re not a talking man, are you?”