Shadow of the Hangman

by J. A. Johnstone

  “How many?” Shamus said.

  Ironside took time to count, then said, “Eleven. The one doing all the shouting is James Wentworth. He owns a saloon in Georgetown and heads up the Vigilance Committee. I see Tom Harkness, owns the hardware store. He’s on the square, deals honest and says what’s on his mind up front.”

  “And the rest?”

  “Wentworth scraped the bottom of the barrel,” Ironside said. “Looks like every grifter, pimp, and dancehall lounger in town signed up to earn their ten dollars.”

  “Will they stand, Luther?” Shamus said.

  “Maybe, for the first volley. But then they’ll break and run.”

  “How many vaqueros are here at the ranch?”

  “Three. All the rest are out on the range.” Ironside turned and looked at his boss. “It’s enough with Samuel and me.”

  Shamus nodded. “Bring the vaqueros here. But before you do that, get me my crutches. I’ll be damned if I’ll meet that scum in a wheelchair.”

  Shamus had been holding his baby grandson on his knee, and when Ironside brought him his crutches and gunbelt, he passed the infant to Lorena.

  “Shamus, you shouldn’t go out there on crutches,” the woman said. “A breath of wind could knock you over.”

  “I’d like to see the wind that will knock me over on my own ground and in the presence of my enemies,” Shamus said. He waved a dismissive hand. “Now, away with you, woman.”

  Lorena looked helplessly at her husband. “Sam, tell your father to stay inside.”

  Samuel shook his head. “Lorena, you should know by this time that when the colonel makes up his mind to do a thing, he does it.”

  “Damn right,” Shamus said. He rose unsteadily to his feet, buckled on his gun, and positioned the crutches under his armpits. “Come, Samuel,” he said, “let us read the book to the riffraff outside.”

  “Shamus O’Brien, you know why I’m here,” Wentworth said. The man had dismounted and stepped toward the colonel. He stopped when he was just five feet away and said, “Your son will hang today before sundown.”

  “No, he won’t,” Shamus said, his eyes full of blue fire.

  “He was found guilty in a court of law of murder and rape,” Wentworth said. “You are shielding a fugitive.”

  “I’m shielding my son,” Shamus said.

  Wentworth watched Samuel, Ironside, and the three vaqueros line up behind the colonel. All five were good with a gun and were not men to be underestimated. Wentworth didn’t make that mistake.

  “I have ten deputies with me, Colonel,” he said, “all well-armed and determined men. Now, I must take Patrick O’Brien into custody. Will you let me pass?”

  “Deputies? Is that what you call that hired scum?” Shamus said.

  “Wentworth,” Ironside said, “by all means pass, but I’ll drop you before you reach the door.”

  The saloon owner half turned his head. “Stand to your arms, men,” he said.

  “Wentworth, tell your deputies that at least half of them won’t live to spend the money you’re paying them,” Samuel said as the posse’s rifles rattled into position. “Ask them! Ask them if they want to open the ball.”

  Uncertainty showed on the faces of the posse. The colonel had made a show of force, but where were the two fast guns? Were Jacob and Shawn O’Brien somewhere inside the house, waiting?

  “Don’t listen to O’Brien’s bluster, boys,” Wentworth said. He waved a hand. “Wilson, Forbes, dismount and come with me.”

  The sudden snick of revolvers skinning from leather stopped Wentworth in his tracks. Now he faced five Colts, all pointed at his belly. He glared at Shamus. “By God, sir, you wouldn’t dare shoot me.”

  “The colonel might not,” Ironside said, “but I sure as hell will. And them two yellow-bellied skunks skulking behind you as well.”

  Wilson and Forbes didn’t look like they had sand enough to stand and fight at a distance of a few feet. In fact, both were green around the gills. It takes a certain kind of courage to engage in a belly-to-belly gunfight, and these men were lacking.

  The two posse members realized that Colonel O’Brien and the rest of his men might be willing to die for a cause, saving the life of the boss’s son. But Wilson and Forbes were not willing to die for a ten-dollar posse fee.

  The two men eased back, putting distance between themselves, the guns, and Ironside’s death glare.

  One of the posse members, a grizzled old-timer with mean eyes, spat a stream of tobacco juice over the side of his horse and said to the man beside him, “This ain’t goin’ too good.” Then he called to Wentworth, “Hey, Jimmy, are we gonna fight or just sit here pissin’ our pants?”

  But Wentworth wasn’t listening. He’d dug himself a hole and didn’t know how to get out of it. He’d believed that the men he’d brought with him would intimidate Shamus O’Brien. Now he realized that none of the Dromore hard cases, including the colonel, intimidated worth a damn. Worse, he knew that most of the rabble he’d hired would not stand.

  Ironside eyed the man, and his voice sounded like a threat made in a sepulcher. “No matter what happens, Wentworth, you get it first.” He smiled. “I never did cotton to that rotgut you sell as whiskey.”

  Shamus, never a man to hang back and let things happen, hobbled forward on his crutches and stopped when he and Wentworth were separated by inches.

  Then he did something that brought grins to faces, including the faces of a few members of the posse. Balancing precariously on one crutch, Shamus used the other to scrape a circle in the dirt around Wentworth’s feet.

  “Wentworth,” he said, “don’t move out of that circle until you’ve ordered your men to retreat.”

  Without a shot being fired, Wentworth knew he was beaten.

  Drawing the remains of his dignity around him like a ragged cloak, he said, “I’ll be back, and there will be more of us.”

  “If they’re the same stripe as the ones you got here, better bring a regiment,” Shamus said. His eyes hardened. “Now, order the retreat and scat.”

  After Wentworth and his crestfallen bunch rode out, Samuel said to his father, “Suppose he’d moved out of the circle?”

  Before the colonel could answer, Ironside said, “Then I would’ve shot him in the head and scattered his brains.”

  Samuel smiled. “Luther, sometimes you sound just like my brother Jacob.”

  “I should,” Ironside said. “I taught that boy all he knows.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  “They’re leaving,” Lum said. “Riding away.”

  “Good,” Dora DeClare said. “We don’t want anyone else doing our job for us.”

  “Do you see the woman?” Shade Shannon said. “I want to see the woman.”

  “She’s inside,” Dora said. She smiled the smile that so often transformed her beautiful face into the evil caricature of a witch. “You’ll see a lot of her soon enough.”

  Shannon giggled and Lum said, “Share and share alike, remember.”

  “Even you two won’t be able to wear out what she’s got,” Dora said. Her hand flew to her suddenly hot cheek. “Oh, how unladylike,” she said. “I can’t believe I said such a thing.”

  “You should know about wearing it out, eh, Dora?” Lum leered.

  And the woman blushed prettily again and fluttered her long lashes.

  Dora, Lum, and Shannon lay on the edge of Glorieta Mesa, hidden by rocks and a few wind-twisted junipers. Joshua had been tied to his horse for the journey from El Cerrito. But now he sat in a small meadow a mile west of the Pecos with Luke Caldwell and waited while the others spied on Dromore.

  Dora DeClare, dressed for the trail, wore a man’s hat, a white, tight-fitted shirt, and a split canvas riding skirt. A pair of English-made riding boots encased her lovely legs.

  “I think we’ve seen enough,” she said. “Josh will be pining for me.”

  Lum rolled on one elbow and said, “How do we play it, Dora? I counted eleven men down there who
couldn’t get inside Dromore.”

  “Leave that to me,” the woman said. “I’ll find a way.”

  “When we get Lorena O’Brien,” Shannon said, “how long do we play with her?”

  “For as long as it takes, Shade. I want her to be a raving lunatic after you and Lum are finished with her.”

  “Caldwell might want a taste,” Lum said.

  Dora smiled. “What’s the old saying? Ah, yes, of course, ‘the more the merrier.’”

  “What did it look like to you, Shade?” Dora said. She and her brother sat beneath a leafy tree, Joshua small, pale, and frail as a bisque sailor doll.

  “Looked like a posse to me,” Shannon said. He’d only been half-listening, looking at Dora, remembering her naked body in the casa at El Cerrito.

  “Why wasn’t the sheriff, what’s his name?”

  “John Moore,” Joshua supplied.

  “Why wasn’t he leading it?”

  “I don’t know,” Shannon said. He wore dark glasses against the sun glare. “Maybe he’s dead. There was blood in the barn.”

  “With or without Moore, why was a posse at Dromore in the first place?” Dora said.

  “Don’t know that, either,” Shannon said.

  “Maybe we should find out,” Caldwell said. He stood tall and rangy by the fire, a tin cup of coffee in his hand. “Could be there was something or somebody in the house they wanted real bad.”

  Dora thought about that. Around her crickets sawed fiddle tunes in the grass, mockingbirds sang, and jays quarreled in the juniper and wild oak trees. The high sun scorched the sky and the day was hot.

  “There are forces gathering against us, powerful forces,” Dora said. “That was revealed to me in a vision. The damned monk that chased us out of El Cerrito is a part of those forces.”

  “Dora, you should’ve let me gun the gospel-grinding SOB,” Caldwell said.

  “That would have been a mistake,” Dora said. “I sensed that he was protected, and he might have called destruction down on us.”

  “Hell, he was a hick Mexican monk,” Caldwell said. “A bullet in the belly would’ve dropped him like any other man.”

  Dora shook her head, her corn silk hair tangled with sunlight. “I couldn’t take the chance, Luke. Not while my father frets in hell because he is still unavenged.”

  “My sister is right, Luke, we can’t take any chances until Dromore lies in ruin,” Joshua said.

  Caldwell shrugged. “You pay my wages, so you call the shots.”

  “Shade,” Dora said, “ride into Georgetown and find out what you can about the posse and why it was at Dromore. If John Moore is dead, then that is one enemy less. If he’s not, then perhaps you can question him and then get rid of him. But be discreet.”

  Shannon smiled. “When I get back will you get naked again and lie on a table, Dora? Can we do some more of that there worshipping, huh?”

  Dora’s anger rose. “Shade, that is not an act of worship, it’s a sacrifice, and my maidenly modesty is the victim. After the sacrifice comes the worship. Remember that.”

  “Oh, never fear, Dora, I will,” Shannon said, grinning. A trickle of saliva ran from the corner of his wet mouth.

  “Now listen to me,” Dora said. “I suppose Patrick O’Brien is hanged by now. If he’s not, ask around and find out why. It could be that his father used his money and influence and saved his son from the gallows. But I suspect that’s not the case. Get the truth of it. And ask about the posse we saw. I feel that might very well concern Patrick O’Brien.”

  “You can count on me, Dora,” Shannon said. “I’ll get to the bottom of all this.”

  “Be back here no later than sundown tomorrow, you hear?” Dora said.

  “And if there are any O’Briens in town, stay clear of them,” Caldwell said.

  “Those damned micks don’t scare me,” Shannon said.

  Caldwell smiled. “Yeah? So how come you ran a hundred miles from one of them not too long ago?”

  “You’ve got a big mouth, Caldwell,” Shannon said. “One day somebody’s going to shut it for keeps.”

  “You want to be the one to shut it?” the gunfighter said.

  Shannon thought about it, his hand close to his gun.

  “Shuck it, Shade,” Caldwell said, standing relaxed and easy. “Find out what a bullet in the belly feels like.”

  Suddenly Shannon wanted no part of this. He turned to Dora, his voice rising to a whine. “Caldwell is threatening me,” he said.

  “Luke, back off,” Dora said. “There are few enough of us as it is. We can’t afford to lose anybody.”

  “Especially an officer and a gentleman,” Lum said. He hid a grin behind the palm of his hand.

  “Ignore them, Shade,” Dora said. “Now ride out and do what I told you to do.”

  “Everybody hates me,” Shannon said, dashing a tear from his eye, “and it’s not my fault.”

  He spun on his heel and walked toward his horse.

  Behind him Luke Caldwell shook his head. He very much wanted Shannon to bump into an O’Brien in Georgetown, preferably Jacob.

  He smiled. Now that was something he’d pay admission to see.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  “I’m sorry to see you so low, John,” Jacob O’Brien said.

  “How did you know where to find me?” Moore said.

  “The sheriff riding into town with a bullet in him attracts a lot of attention, even in a burg like this,” Jacob said.

  “The whores are taking good care of me,” Moore said.

  Jacob looked around the frilly pink and white room that smelled of lavender water and said, “I’m sure they are.”

  “Damned butcher that calls himself a doctor near killed me taking the bullet out,” Moore said. “That’s why Thistledown brought me here. He said I needed round-the-clock care.” With a dramatic flair Jacob didn’t know the man possessed, Moore laid the back of his hand on his forehead and whispered, “I’m just so weak and fevered.”

  Jacob grinned. “John, you’re a damned liar. You’re as strong as an ox, and it’s plain to see you’re faking it.”

  Moore raised a hand in alarm. “Shh . . . Jacob, somebody might hear you. The Vigilance Committee is paying for this, you know. I can stretch it into a week, maybe two.”

  Jacob sat on the bed, took a bottle of bourbon from the side table, and studied the label. “Old Fitzgerald,” he said. “They are treating you well.” He poured himself a drink and raised the glass. “Your good health, John.”

  “Don’t say that too loud, Jake,” Moore said. “And go easy on the whiskey. That bottle’s got to last until tomorrow. The whores ration me.” He tried to smile. “Bless their hearts.”

  “Tell me about the posse that challenged the colonel this morning,” Jacob said.

  “You heard about that, huh?”

  “How could I not? The whole town’s talking about it.”

  “They came back with their tails between their legs.”

  “So I understand. Anybody shot?”

  “Not a one. The colonel ran them off, and that was that.” Moore punched his embroidered pillows into shape and sat up. “Wentworth wants to bring in the army, but I don’t know if and when that’ll happen. The soldiers are still trying to round up a few bronco Apaches, and that might keep them busy for a spell.”

  “You were in El Cerrito,” Jacob said. “So were me and Shawn. We spoke to a Mexican kid named Pedro, and he told us about the monk.”

  Moore’s expression changed. He looked confused, like a schoolboy who doesn’t know the answer to a question.

  “Jake, I’m not a man who believes in ghosts and ha’ants an’ sich, but that whole business was mighty strange,” he said.

  “You and Thistledown met up in El Cerrito while you were both hunting that Lum character,” Jacob said.

  “Well, that ain’t exactly how it come up, Jake,” Moore said. “You might say Thistledown saved my life.”

  Moore told how he’d been captu
red and how the little bounty hunter saved him. He described the Mad Hatter’s picnic, and then said, “And you know what I saw through a back window before they put my lights out and dragged me into the barn?”

  The sheriff glanced around, as though he suspected there was a spy in the room. He leaned closer to Jacob and whispered into his ear, a cupped hand to his mouth. When he finished talking, he said, “So what do you make of that?”

  Jacob shook his head. “John, that takes a heap of figuring. And that thing about the upside-down cross is mighty strange.”

  “Told you it was,” Moore said. “But it got stranger when the monk showed up; called himself Brother Benedict.”

  Moore described how the monk had led them out of the barn, holding on to a huge crucifix.

  “Not a shot fired at us, even from Luke Caldwell, and he’s a shootin’ fool. And the scream Dora DeClare let out”—the sheriff’s eyes were haunted—“Jake, I never heard anything like that in my life. She’s a pretty little blond gal, Dora is, but she sounded like a wild animal. No, louder than that. Hell, she sounded like a whole pack o’ wild animals, and different kinds at that.”

  “You sure that was her on the table?” Jacob said.

  “I don’t mistake something like that. It was Dora all right, and she was naked as a jaybird.”

  Jacob poured whiskey for himself and Moore, and then he said, “I can’t figure it. Lum, Shade Shannon, and Luke Caldwell, all gathered in that house, I mean. It’s strange.”

  “Damn strange if you ask me,” Moore said.

  “John, did you hear anyone call Dora by the name Nemesis?”

  “No, never did,” Moore said. “What is it, a fancy back-east name?”

  Jacob didn’t feel like pursuing a dead end. “Yeah,” he said, “something like that.”

  “They called her Dora,” Moore said. “Just plain Dora.”

  “What happened to the monk?” Jacob said.

  “He took us to Thistledown’s buggy. You know that they call him the Buggy Bount—”

  “I know what they call him, John. What about the monk?”