Shadow of the Hangman

by J. A. Johnstone

  Keeping to shadows, Thistledown scrambled down the slope and then stepped into a patch of darkness as he studied the barn. To his surprise, his heartbeats pounded in his ears and his breath came in short, quick bursts. Thistledown’s mouth tightened. The unexpected and unwelcome sight of Luke Caldwell had unnerved him. Angry with himself for what he perceived as cowardice, he strode toward the barn with more purpose.

  This was no time to be lily-livered. Timid men were too easy to kill.

  “Is there anyone there?” Thistledown said in a low voice. “And be warned, I’ve got faith in this here scattergun.”

  “Yeah, damn it, I’m here,” a man’s voice answered.

  “And who are you?”

  “Sheriff John Moore of Georgetown, and be damned to ye.”

  “Hell,” Thistledown said, “I heard you were dead or missing or something.”

  “I’m missing all right,” Moore said, his voice edged. “If I ain’t in Georgetown, then I’m missing.”

  Thistledown walked deeper into the barn and caught sight of Moore, who was chained to a huge slab of rock.

  “Just don’t stand there gawking, man, help me get loose,” Moore said.

  “I’m not, in the main, much inclined to assist lawmen,” Thistledown said.

  “Then make an exception, damn your eyes,” Moore said. “I’m to be sacrificed at midnight.”

  “To what?”

  “Hell, I don’t know, maybe some pagan god or something. How the hell should I know?” Moore looked hard at the diminutive bounty hunter, seemingly unimpressed. “What in the name of creation are you?”

  “If it’s my name you seek, then it’s Ernest Thistledown, out of Boston town, if you’ll forgive the rhyme.”

  “I’ve heard of you,” Moore said. “The Buggy Bounty Hunter.”

  Thistledown gave a little bow. “As ever was.”

  “What are you doing here?” Moore said.

  “I’m tracking a man I know only as Lum.”

  “The burned man?”

  “That would be him.”

  “Hell,” Moore said, “so am I.”

  “And you’re making an excellent job of it, I see,” Thistledown said.

  “Luke Caldwell—you heard of him?”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “Well, he crept up and buffaloed me,” Moore said. “When I woke up, I was chained up in this damned barn. Then they had a Mad Hatter’s picnic, right there where you’re standing, and the woman, Dora, told me I was to be sacrificed tonight.”

  “If I recall the novel correctly, that should be a Mad Hatter’s tea party,” Thistledown said.

  “I can read as good as you—”

  “I doubt it,” Thistledown said.

  “But this was a picnic. Every one of them is damned loco, and the woman is the craziest.” Moore yanked on the chains. “Now, see if you can get me loose.”

  “I told you,” Thistledown said, “that I don’t help peace officers.” He made a face. “And besides, all this is most inconvenient. I’m here to kill a man, not play nursemaid to you.”

  Moore’s anger flared. “Thistledown, if I get my hands around your scrawny neck, I’ll—”

  “Sheriff, your hands are shackled to great iron staples,” Thistledown said. “Or haven’t you noticed?”

  “All right, all right,” Moore said, letting his breath go, “please help me.”

  “No.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “I have a man to kill.”

  “Hell, you can’t go up against those crazies by yourself. A murderer by the name of Shade Shannon is with them, and he’s as bad as they come.” Moore looked at the shotgun. “Three bad men, two shells. You’re bucking a stacked deck, mister.”

  “I’ve managed before.”

  “You’ve never come up against Luke Caldwell before. He won’t stand around and whistle Dixie while you reload.”

  Thistledown made a tut-tut sound, then said, “This is most bothersome indeed. I just don’t have time for this kind of thing.”

  “You mean saving my life?” Moore said, outrage rouging his cheeks.

  “Yes,” Thistledown said. “Exactly that, my fettered friend.”

  Anger tightened Moore’s voice. “Little man, I swear I’ll . . .”

  But Thistledown was already examining the staples driven into the stone slab, and the sheriff let his threat fade away.

  “Can you do anything?” Moore asked.

  “I can shoot you,” Thistledown said. “Put you out of my misery.”

  “There’s a crowbar over there in the empty stall,” Moore said. “Use that to pull the iron rings free.” He couldn’t bear it that his words were almost civil, and, as an afterthought, he added, “And be damned to ye for threatening an officer of the law.”

  “And the same to you,” Thistledown said. He stepped to the stall and brought back the crowbar, a hefty chunk of steel about three feet long. He looked at Moore. “You know when you’re freed you’re going to clank like Jacob Marley, don’t you?” he said.

  “Who’s he?”

  Thistledown sighed. “No matter. Somebody you don’t know.”

  “Quit gabbing and get them damn rings out,” Moore said, suspecting that he’d just been slighted.

  To the surprise of both parties, when Thistledown used the crowbar as a lever, the iron staples broke free of the stone easily. The rings had been fixed in place with local cement of low quality that crumbled under pressure.

  Moore groaned in pain as he brought down his stiff arms. Then, with Thistledown’s help, he managed to get to his feet. “Thank you,” he said, grudging each word.

  But a split second later Moore dropped to the ground again, felled by the bullet that slammed into him, accompanied by a noise like thunder.

  Chapter Twenty

  “No thunder, just lightning flashes to the south,” Shawn said. “It’s kinda pretty.”

  Jacob nodded. “Usually means it’ll be a hot one tomorrow.”

  “Where you figure Thistledown went?” Shawn said.

  “Probably after that Lum character,” Jacob said.

  “So why aren’t we doing the same thing? Lum is high on our suspect list.”

  “I’m not interested in Lum for the moment,” Jacob said. He grunted as he jammed a knee into his horse’s belly, then tightened the cinch. “But I do want to talk to Miss Nemesis.”

  “We don’t even know if she’s in El Cerrito,” Shawn said. “And we don’t know if she’s Nemesis. I do know that if Wentworth’s vigilantes catch us sneaking out of town they’ll string us up for sure.”

  “They’re all in bed,” Jacob said, “sleeping like babies.”

  “Where we should be,” Shawn said.

  He and Jacob led their horses to the door of the livery, and Shawn said, “Brother, I think we’re off on a wild-goose chase. You really want to do this?”

  Jacob thought for a while before he answered. He took out the makings and without looking up from tobacco and paper, he said, “Remember when I brought John Moore to Dromore with Patrick?”

  “Sure, I remember.”

  “Moore said that young people, a brother and sister, had moved into a Mex village south of here.”

  Shawn said, “Yeah, the brother is a writer or something.”

  “Painter.”

  “And his sister is a beauty by the name of Dora DeClare.”

  Jacob smiled. “You never forget a pretty woman’s name, do you, Shawn?”

  “No, never.”

  “Tell me this,” Jacob said, “why would a woman and her talented brother choose to live in a jerkwater village like El Cerrito?”

  Shawn grinned. “To be close to me, of course.”

  Jacob was lifting his cigarette to his lips, but his hand froze midway. He turned his head slowly and stared at his brother. “Yes, to be close to you,” he said.

  The strange expression on Jacob’s face startled Shawn. “Jake, I was only joking,” he said.

  Again J
acob lapsed into a taut silence. Then he said, “Here’s another suppose.”

  “Let me hear it,” Shawn said.

  Jacob thumbed match into flame and lit his smoke. “Suppose Lum was headed for El Cerrito to meet the lovely Dora?”

  Shawn laughed. “Jake, now you’re trying to sweep sunshine off the porch, going from improbable to impossible.”

  “Suppose Dora DeClare is Nemesis, and suppose she’s the fellow Satanist Lum was sent to help?”

  “To help her get revenge on somebody?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. But I have a suspicion.”

  Shawn held up a hand. “Whoa, Jake, you’re not thinking about Dromore?”

  “How many men has the colonel hanged?”

  “You’re talking about Lucas’s drawing again.”

  “Suppose the hung man was really Dora’s father or husband? In that case, she stood under the cottonwood and vowed to be Dromore’s nemesis, her and her brother.”

  “The crippled artist?”

  “Yeah. He’s crippled, and that’s why she needs Lum’s help.”

  Shawn blinked slowly a couple of times and then said, “Jake, I’m putting you to bed. You need to rest.”

  “Shawn, think about it,” Jacob said. “Tell me it’s possible.”

  “It’s preposterous.”

  “Is it possible?”

  Shawn hesitated. “Anything is possible,” he said.

  Jacob swung into the saddle and looked down at his brother. “And that’s why we’re headed to El Cerrito.”

  “Let’s talk to the colonel first,” Shawn said. “Ask him to reason it out for us.”

  “We don’t have time for that. A few hours from now a hanging posse will be riding out of here to drag Patrick back to jail and the gallows.”

  A silence stretched between the two men. A horse kicked its stall, and rats rustled in the shadowed corners of the barn.

  Finally, Shawn mounted and then looked at his brother. “God help me,” he said, shaking his head. “I must be as loco as you are.”

  The man who stood in the shadows watched the O’Brien brothers ride out of town, heading south under a black sky shimmering with lightning.

  Now he had to hurry.

  He crossed the empty street and took the outside staircase that led to the cribs above the General Lee saloon two steps at a time. He opened the half-glass door and stepped into the hallway. There were two rooms on each side, where his men lay with whores and snored off the night’s whiskey.

  One by one, Joe Aiken woke up his cursing warriors, pulling them out of bed to the distress of their wailing, kicking whores.

  When he had all four of his men assembled and dressed, he said to his bleary-eyed crew, “The O’Brien brothers just rode out of town. Get saddled up; we’re going after them.”

  Hiram Post rubbed his belly and yawned. “Hell, Joe, them two looked like a pair o’ thirty-a-month punchers to me. What’s the damned hurry?”

  “They’re O’Briens, you idiot,” Aiken said. “They’re sitting three-hundred-dollar saddles on American studs that cost at least six hundred apiece. Throw in their guns and what they have in their pockets, and we’ll have enough money to keep us in whiskey and whores until winter.”

  “Hey, Joe,” a tough-looking towhead said, his holstered Colt and cartridge belt over his shoulder, “them O’Briens is mighty gun handy.”

  “Damn you, Dixie, there’s five of us,” Aiken said. “So we lose a couple of men, that means a bigger share o’ the spoils for them as are left.” Aiken scowled, his eyebrows meeting on the battered bridge of his twice-broken nose. “I’ll smooth it out for you, Dixie. I’m talking better whiskey and prettier whores for them as is still on their feet when the smoke clears.”

  “Joe’s talking sense,” Post said. “Let’s go get them. And I want that arrogant swine they call Jacob.”

  “You’re welcome to him,” Dixie Foster said.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  “It’s like an itch between my shoulder blades and it’s driving me crazy,” Jacob said. “Recollect that time when we were boys and the Kiowa stalked us and Pa down on the Chavez Draw?”

  “I remember,” Shawn said.

  “Well, I had the itch then.”

  “And the colonel said we should pay mind to you because you had the Irish gift. Worked out you were right and the damned Kiowa jumped us.”

  “Shawn,” Jacob said, “somebody’s riding our back trail. I’m certain of it.”

  “Who?”

  “Damn it, Shawn, I don’t know. I don’t have that much of a gift.”

  Shawn’s eyes were on the moon-shadowed darkness ahead of him. Then he turned to his brother and said, “Talking about the colonel, I remember him saying that cavalry should never charge through a clearing bounded by woods.”

  “Sounds like something he’d say,” Jacob said.

  “Well, there’s a clearing just like that ahead of us,” Shawn said.

  “Hell, Shawn, where? I don’t see it.”

  “About a hundred yards in front of us, a humpback ridge with pines on either side of a clearing.”

  Jacob leaned over the saddle horn and peered into the gloom. “How can you see that? I can’t see that,” he said.

  “Jake, I guess you’re not a night-seeing man, is all,” Shawn said.

  More than a little irritated, Jacob said, “Well, let’s take a look.” He turned in the saddle and glared at his brother. “Probably it’s a damned wall of rock anyway.”

  But it was a low saddleback as Shane had described, thick stands of ponderosa pine and a few piñon on either side of a grassy clearing.

  “You were right,” Jacob said as they topped the rise.

  Those three words were all the grudging recognition Shawn was going to get, and it made him grin, though he was careful to keep his face turned away.

  “How do we play it?” Jacob said. “One of us on either side of the clearing?”

  Shawn shook his head. “No. We’re liable to shoot each other that way. We’ll stay together.” He leaned over and patted his horse’s neck, then turned his head toward his brother. “Pick a side, Jake.”

  Jacob pointed to his left. “In there. It’s as good a place as any.”

  “Are you sure?” Shawn said.

  “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  “Suppose it’s the Georgetown posse or a whole passel of Apaches?”

  “Then we’ll hide out and let them ride past.”

  “Give me a number, Jake. Whoever it is will be here pretty quick.”

  “A number for what?”

  “How many we’re prepared to fight.”

  “Damn it, Shawn, you’re asking me conundrums. I’ll know when I see them.”

  “How will I know?”

  Jacob bit his tongue, let his annoyance settle, and then said, “I’ll nudge you.”

  “Got it,” Shawn said, enjoying himself. “Nudge means fight. What means don’t fight?”

  “How about a kick up the ass?” Jacob said.

  Shawn smiled. “Just wanted to get it right, Jake. Nudge—fight. Kick up the ass—no fight.” He nodded. “Yeah, I think I can keep it straight.” Shawn made to dismount, then stopped, one foot in the stirrup. “What if you’re wrong, Jake, and the only thing on our trail is your imagination? Suppose you’re like an old maid hearing a rustle in every bush?”

  “Then, brother, you get a kick up the ass anyway, because I’ll be so sorely disappointed,” Jacob said, feeling testy.

  Jacob and Shawn led their horses well back into the trees and then returned to the clearing, rifles in hand.

  Moonlight shone on the grass atop the ridge like a hoarfrost, an illusion because the night was warm, heavy with the scent of pine and night-blooming wildflowers. Somewhere in the woods coyotes called, and a startled owl asked a question of the darkness.

  Five minutes passed . . . then ten . . .

  The soft thud of a walking horse froz
e the O’Brien brothers into a crouch, and their eyes scanned the night. The quiet around them was so profound Jacob heard Shawn swallow his tension, his throat bobbing.

  A lone rider rode to the top of the ridge, then vanished from sight over the rim. A few moments later he reappeared piece by piece, starting with his hat, ending with the hooves of his horse as he again crested the rise from the far slope.

  Jacob saw the man’s face, framed by shoulder-length black hair, and silently cursed. He’d seen the man before, a French-Cheyenne breed by the name of Frenchy Petite. The last Jacob had heard, Frenchy, good with a gun and an expert tracker, was running with the Tewksbury brothers and that wild crowd down Arizona way. But now he was right there, within spitting distance, and it was the worst possible news.

  Shawn put his mouth close to Jacob’s ear and whispered, “Want me to gun him?”

  Jacob shook his head. If Frenchy was scouting, there would be others behind him, none of them model citizens, and a rifle shot would bring them running. But how far behind were they?

  Frenchy swung out of the saddle and jerked his rifle out of the boot. To Jacob’s relief the breed stepped slowly toward the opposite line of trees, his moccasined feet making no sound, silent as a silk nightgown dropping on carpet.

  Jacob reached into his pocket and dug out his knife, a Buck folder, its carbon steel blade honed to razor sharpness. He held up an open hand to Shawn, warning him into silence, then, crouching low, he left the trees.

  Keeping Frenchy’s horse between himself and the breed, Jacob covered ground, staying to patches of thin darkness. The moonlight gleamed on his open knife as he rounded the rump of Frenchy’s mustang and stepped into full view. Ten yards separated the two men, and Jacob made a run at Frenchy’s back.

  The breed turned like a striking snake, his rifle coming up fast. Jacob left his feet and dived for the man. Jacob’s right shoulder hit the stock of Frenchy’s rifle hard, and it jolted him with a sudden stab of pain.

  Both men hit the ground and rolled, teeth bared, growling like animals. Jacob was on top of the breed, looking for a chance to use his knife, but Frenchy was strong and he clamped Jacob’s wrist in a bone-breaking grip. The breed brought up his right knee, trying for his opponent’s groin. Jacob rolled away, and the knee hit him in the thigh, numbing his leg for a moment.