Shadow of the Hangman

by J. A. Johnstone

  “He may have written something down,” Jacob said.

  “He might at that,” the sheriff said. “I’ll take a look when I get back to town.”

  “We’ll take a look, you mean,” Jacob said. “I’m going with you.”

  Shawn looked at his brother. “Samuel, when you spoke to Mrs. Harris, did she seem suicidal? Did she want to end it now her husband was gone?”

  “No,” Samuel said. “She was talking about how she wanted to leave the territory and make a life for her children somewhere.”

  “The night wasn’t real cold, was it?” Shawn said.

  “Of course not, it’s summer.”

  “Then it’s unlikely Mrs. Harris left a fire burning, and she’d damp down the stove, don’t you think? I mean, it being hot and all. And she wouldn’t leave a lamp lit the whole night, oil being as expensive as it is.”

  “You mean somebody set the fire deliberately?” Samuel said.

  “To cover a triple murder. Yes, I do.”

  “Shade Shannon,” Jacob said.

  “It’s a real possibility,” Shawn said.

  Jacob turned to Moore again. “Looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us, huh?”

  “Hell, Jake, Shannon could be anywhere by this time,” Moore said.

  “I know, but we’ll find him and make him confess to killing Molly Holmes. Your word will hold in Georgetown, John.”

  “Hell, we’ll just drag him back and he can tell the whole town. If we find him, that is,” the sheriff said.

  “No, we’ll find him and he’ll confess in your hearing, John,” Jacob said.

  “And then?” Moore said.

  “And then I’ll put a bullet in his belly.”

  Shamus looked at Jacob, wondering at him. His son played Chopin with all the sensitivity of a poet and dreamer, a rare talent that displayed a certain beauty of soul. He was a man prone to bouts of deep depression as black as midnight, yet he could be a cold-blooded, ruthless killer. He was both sides of the same coin, something Shamus would’ve thought impossible before Jacob had showed him otherwise.

  “Sheriff,” Shamus said, “can you think of anyone who would want to harm Dromore badly enough that he’d commit murder to see us destroyed?”

  Shamus expected a quick “no,” but to his surprise Moore gave it some thought, then said, “Goin’ back a few years, do you mind Jes Murphy, the black hoss wrangler you caught rustling your cattle up on the Santa Fe River that time?”

  “He’s in Yuma,” Shamus said.

  “He was,” Moore said. “He got paroled six months ago.”

  “Hell, Jes had sand,” Shamus said. “If he had any hard feelings he’d come looking for me with a gun.”

  Moore nodded. “Well, that’s true. He did favor a Sharps right enough.”

  “I’m thinking more along the lines of somebody new in the territory,” Shamus said. “Somebody that’s down on me and mine but doesn’t have the cojones to do his own killing.”

  “Could be a woman,” Shawn said. He smiled, “Now that you’ve mentioned a lack of cojones, Pa.”

  “It’s not a member of the fair sex,” Shamus said. “A woman didn’t order the rape and murder of Molly Holmes.”

  Moore’s face creased in thought. After a while he said, “Colonel, I sure don’t recollect seeing strangers around.” He smiled, reared back in his chair, and slapped the top of his thigh. “Whoa there, John, you plumb forgot about Miss Dora DeClare and her brother.”

  Suddenly, Shamus’s face tightened with interest. “Who are they?”

  “Two young people, moved into a Mex village south of town,” Moore said. “Josh, that’s the brother, got crippled when a horse fell on him. He sits in a wheelchair, and he’s a skinny little feller and there sure ain’t much of him left.” Moore drained his glass and stared sadly into its arid depths. After Samuel refilled it for him, he said, “Josh is trying to make a name for himself as an artist, a painter, and Dora says they moved into the territory for his health.”

  “What does she look like?” Shawn said.

  “Pretty enough to make a man plow through a stump,” Moore said. “I mean, she’s got a fine figure, yeller hair, and the kind of big brown eyes guaranteed to keep a man like you awake o’ nights, Shawn.”

  “She sounds real interesting,” Shawn said, grinning.

  “More to the point, a crippled painter and his pretty sister don’t pose any danger to Dromore,” Shamus said. “They’re harmless.”

  Chapter Ten

  He awoke, lit the lamp beside the bed, and grinned as the whore shrank away from him.

  His voice sounded like the wind pummeling a rusty gate. “You don’t like my face,” he said.

  The girl was sixteen years old, fresh off the boat from Ireland, and she attempted a smile. “No, no, it’s just fine,” she said. “Honest, mister, I hardly noticed. See, when I was sent to your room it was dark and—” She stopped, knowing she’d made a mistake.

  “It’s burned,” he said. “Melted in fire. How could you not notice?”

  The girl bit her lip and made no answer.

  The man called Lum reached out, grabbed one of her breasts, and twisted hard. As the whore cried out in pain, he said, “How could you not notice?”

  He twisted harder and the girl screamed, “I noticed! I noticed!”

  “Kiss me,” he said. His flat lips drew back in a grin, exposing teeth as long and yellow as ivory piano keys.

  Again the girl shrank from him, her eyes wide and frightened.

  He turned onto his back and laughed, loud bellows of mirth that filled the hotel room. Finally, as his laughter receded, he said, “It was dark, huh? What am I to do with you?”

  “Please, mister, don’t hurt me,” the girl said, her bottom lip trembling.

  The girl was small, undernourished, and terrified. Her slender back arched as she fought against the ropes that bound her wrists to the bed’s brass spindles.

  “Are you trying to leave, and us just getting acquainted?” he said. Lum leaned on one elbow. “Did I ever tell you about Tom Scratcher of San Francisco town? No? Well, he was a rum one was old Tom. He’d always give you a fair go, no fears about that, but in the end he always came up trumps. Aye, many a lively lad rode Tom’s bullet to the grave, and many a woman and child as well, if the truth be told.”

  The whore’s eyes were as round as coins, damp with fear and dread.

  “See, Tom took me under his wing, like,” Lum said. “He taught me his ways, how to rob and kill and sleep sound o’ nights after the deeds were done.” Lum stabbed a stiff finger into the whore’s chest. “Do you know what they were, the ways of Tom Scratcher?”

  The girl shook her head.

  “They were the ways of hell,” Lum said. “Wherever he went, ol’ Tom brought hell with him.” He sighed deep and long. “ ’Course, they done for him in the end. He was strung up by vigilantes and me alongside o’ him. Damned hicks, they set fires under us, and Tom died in the flames, bold as brass to the end, a-cursing the hicks, seed, breed, and generation of them. As for me, I was burned, as ye can tell, but I fooled them. I was still alive when they cut me down and left me lying there for the buzzards.”

  Lum’s wolf teeth gleamed in the darkness. “Oh, no, he didn’t die, not ol’ Lum. Leastways, his body didn’t die. You know what died, missy?” He jabbed a thumb into his chest. “In here? No? Well, my soul died. It burned up in the fire, and I hauled it out as a cinder.”

  Lum laughed, as though he’d said the funniest thing that ever was.

  “Please let me go,” the whore said. “I have to make money to send to me mother.”

  “She won’t get any money,” he said. He shook his head. “Oh, no, no, no, not ever again.”

  “Please mister—”

  “Be quiet!” He slapped the girl so hard her blond head rocked on the stained pillow. His hands, the skin scraped raw by flame, circled the whore’s slim throat and he squeezed.

  He called himself Lum because, the dis
carded son of a two-dollar-a-bang whore, he had no other name. Without sparing a glance for the dead girl on the bed, he hurriedly dressed and buckled on his gunbelt. As was his habit, he drew his Remington from the holster and checked the loads. The revolver’s balance was excellent, as he knew it would be. An English gunsmith in Boston had fine-tuned the weapon’s action and closely fitted its ivory grips until the Remington was in itself a work of art.

  Lum had killed the man to make sure he’d never make another like it.

  He reholstered the gun, then settled a gray plug hat on his bald, fire-scalded head and studied himself in the small dresser mirror. In the guttering lamplight, half his face in shadow, he looked almost human. He scowled. What a pity.

  A fist pounded on the door, and Lum said, “What do you want?”

  A woman’s voice said, “Trippy is needed downstairs.”

  “Go away, she’s busy,” Lum said.

  The fist pounded again. “Open up, mister,” the woman said. “You’ve had your five dollars’ worth of Irish ass.”

  Lum cursed and stepped to the door, his huge six-foot-four-inch, former prizefighter’s frame filling the doorway.

  The woman saw him and took a step back, her face frozen in shock.

  “Trippy will be down in a minute,” Lum said, enjoying the effect his features and size had on people.

  The woman, plump, blowsy, showing six inches of sweating cleavage, couldn’t take her eyes off the burned mask that was Lum’s face. She thought his hairless skin looked like melting candle wax, and she wanted to cross herself and run away.

  But she’d been a madam with her own stable of whores for twenty years, and she was made of sterner stuff. She tried and failed to look around Lum’s shoulders, then said, “Let me talk to that lazy hussy.”

  “Come back in five minutes and you can have her,” he said. He reached into his pocket, showed the woman a five-dollar coin, then dropped it down her cleavage.

  “Five minutes,” he said.

  The woman fished between her huge breasts and recovered the coin. She smiled, “Hell, mister, so long as you’re paying, take all the time you need.” She leaned forward and, in a confidential tone, said, “Is she giving you value for money, doing little things for you? If not, I can send up a Chinese girl who’ll do anything you want.”

  “Trippy is just fine,” Lum said.

  “Tell her to”—the door closed on the woman’s face and she finished her sentence whispering to varnished timber—“do something nice for you.”

  Lum didn’t hurry. He took a letter from the inside pocket of his black ditto suit coat and reread it for the fifth or sixth time since it had reached him in Fresno.

  Brother Lum,

  It is the decision of myself and the rest of the brethren that we assist Brother Joshua DeClare in his struggle against a papist murderer and oppressor he will make known to you. It is our wish that you summon the powers of the Master we all serve to assist you in this endeavor.

  A map that will guide you to Brother DeClare’s location in the New Mexico Territory is enclosed and the sum of five hundred dollars to cover expenses.

  Needless to say, time is of the utmost importance and you will immediately leave on your quest on receipt of this dispatch.

  The only outcome of this enterprise I will accept is the complete destruction of our mutual enemy, his spawn, and all his works.

  Brother Lum, I warn you, fail at your peril.

  Dr. William T. March,

  Great Neck, New York

  Lum folded the letter and put it back in his pocket. March’s threat amused him. One day he’d break the little man’s back like a dry twig and take over the coven himself. Still, the money was welcome because, like whiskey, whores came easy, but never cheap.

  He had time and thought about banging the whore again, but he dismissed the idea. He felt as though the hick town was closing in on him, crushing the life out of him. Lum dashed sudden tears from his eyes. Nobody understood him, his needs, and his right to live as he chose and prey on whom he chose. The United States Constitution granted him that much, and he deserved to be protected from those who would do him harm.

  Devils! They had taken his soul and now they wanted the thin brew that was left.

  Feeling a deep sorrow for himself, Lum picked up his valise, eased the Remington into its holster, and stepped to the door. A few lamps burned along the hallway and cast shadows that crouched like black dwarves in the corners. The carpet under Lum’s feet and the stained walls smelled of mildew, dampness, and coal-oil smoke overlaid by the pungent aroma of ancient human sweat.

  Lum walked down the creaking stairs and past the desk. The clerk, a gangly, pimply youth with a shock of red hair and dull eyes, caught sight of the valise and said, “Hey, if you’re leaving, drop off the damned key.”

  A length of fence wire attached the key to an inch-wide iron canister shot. Lum turned swiftly, and his right arm slung the key at the clerk’s head with tremendous force. The shot hit the youth in the middle of the forehead and drove him back against the key rack and a large Chinese vase. Clerk, keys, rack, and vase clattered and shattered to the floor, and Lum grinned like a David who’d just overcome a diminutive Goliath.

  “There,” he said, “I dropped off my key.”

  But the drooling, eye-rolling clerk didn’t hear.

  Lum stepped into the town’s only street, a dusty track flanked by rickety timber buildings on either side. Behind him, he heard a man yell. Lum stopped and turned, and the man, short, fat, and agitated, hollered, “Hey you, get the hell back here!”

  The fat, blowsy madam stood beside the fat man and shook her fist, shrieking obscenities.

  Lum smiled. Drew his revolver. He shot the man in the head and then put a bullet between the woman’s huge breasts. He watched the pair fall, then resumed his walk to the livery stable, his Remington hanging at arm’s length by his side.

  He’d taken but a few steps when the door to the saloon burst open and a man wearing a lawman’s badge stepped into the street. Lum had time to ponder why it was that the smaller the town, the fancier its lawman’s badge, before the sheriff yelled at him to halt.

  Without breaking stride, Lum’s arm came up and he shot the lawman dead. Several men had followed the sheriff onto the boardwalk, and now they turned and bolted for the saloon door. Fists and boots swung as they battled to get inside, away from the death on the street. Lum smiled, fired again, and dropped a big feller in the doorway, adding to the yelling, cursing mayhem.

  It was, to Lum, all uproariously funny, and he tilted back his head and laughed his way to the livery, dust from the street swirling around his legs like smoke.

  Lum led his horse out of the stable and stood in the light of the lamp that glimmered on the adobe wall. He looked down the street where a crowd had gathered outside the hotel. A second, smaller group clustered around the body of the dead sheriff.

  “There he is!” a man yelled, pointing.

  Nobody made a move toward him, remaining still as painted figures on a canvas.

  Lum drew his Remington, a move that made several people step out of his line of fire. He held up the big revolver in the lamplight where all could see it, rotated the cylinder, and let the spent shells drop free. Then, slowly, deliberately, he reloaded.

  “You damned hicks!” Lum yelled, “leave me the hell alone!”

  Cowed, the people in the street shrank back. Skilled gunfighters who revealed a reckless readiness to kill were rare in the West, and though there were men in the crowd who did not lack courage or a familiarity with arms, they did not step forward and cross the line that separates bravery from suicide.

  Slowly, deliberately, Lum mounted his black and rode out of town. To the east, the bulk of Glorieta Mesa blotted out a vast rectangle of stars, and the sighing high country winds sang their requiem.

  Chapter Eleven

  “I won’t choose your requiem just yet, Patrick,” Jacob O’Brien said. “One way or another, we’re g
etting you out of here.” He studied his brother more closely. “You don’t look well.”

  “I don’t feel too good, either,” Patrick said.

  “What ails you?” Jacob asked.

  Sheriff John Moore said, “He’s burnin’ up, so I’d say it’s jailhouse fever. It can surely make a person feel right poorly pretty damn quick.”

  “What does the doctor say?” Jacob said. He laid the palm of his hand against Patrick’s sweaty forehead.

  “Nothing, on account of how he’s out of town,” Moore said.

  “The Vigilance Committee can’t hang a sick man,” Jacob said. “And my brother is sick.”

  “Well, Jake, they’ve took a different stand on that. Hugh Hamlin, tall, skinny feller that owns the general store, told me, ‘Sheriff, the sight of the gallows will soon restore the condemned to health. The rope is the sovereign remedy for fevers, agues, rheumatisms, the croup, and all derangements of the brain.’”

  Moore shrugged. “Sorry, Jake, but you see how it is with me.”

  “My brother needs a doctor and care,” Jacob said. “He’s got a high fever.”

  “Sorry, Jake,” Moore said. The lawman looked miserable and a tic twitched at his left eye. “There’s nothing I can do.”

  “There’s something I can do,” Jake said. Suddenly a Colt was in his hand, the muzzle shoved into Moore’s belly. “I never gunned a lawman before,” he said, “but there’s a first time for everything.”

  Moore took a step back. “Jake,” he said, “you’re crazy. Put the gun away.”

  “Unbuckle your gunbelt and let it drop, Sheriff,” Jacob said. “I’m not taking any chances with you.”

  “Jake—”

  “Do as I say, John, or I swear, I’ll drop you right where you stand.”

  Moore read the warning in Jacob’s eyes, and his gunbelt thudded to the floor of the cell.

  Jacob turned and looked at Patrick. “Can you ride, Pat?” he said.

  “No.” One word, but its quiet feebleness conveyed the fact that Patrick was desperately ill.