Shadow of the Hangman

by J. A. Johnstone

  The little bounty hunter smiled. “Hah, a good joke, Mr. O’Brien.”

  A few sentinel stars still clung to the sky, and there was a growing light in the east when the three riders crossed the Pecos and swung north along Apache Canyon.

  Thistledown, who claimed to have learned the rudiments of tracking from army scout Al Sieber and his protégé, a bright youngster by the name of Tom Horn, rode on ahead.

  “Al helped me track down a breed over to the Mogollon Rim country a few years back,” he’d said. “Him and young Tom. I shared a two thousand bounty with the pair of them and never regretted it.”

  But Luther Ironside doubted the story and had little confidence in Thistledown’s abilities.

  “If the little runt can follow a cold trail, then I’m the queen of England’s uncle,” he said.

  But Thistledown did discover something—the body of Joshua DeClare.

  Shawn and Ironside followed him into a clearing a few hundred yards to the west of the canyon. The area was a small meadow, bounded by pine and a few juniper, aspen growing on the slopes above.

  DeClare’s body was wedged into a rock overhang, his twisted legs dangling in space.

  “Somebody arranged the little bastard like that,” Ironside said. “As a joke, maybe.”

  “He’s shot between the eyes,” Shawn said. “Nothing funny about that.”

  Ironside looked at him. “Jake?”

  Shawn shook his head. “Jacob’s mean, but he wouldn’t do something like that to a man.”

  “Boot tracks all over the place, so it wasn’t Apaches,” Ironside said.

  “Then it had to be Luke Caldwell,” Thistledown said.

  “Why would Caldwell gun a cripple?” Ironside said.

  “He was slowing them maybe, him and Dora,” Thistledown said.

  “I guess we should take him down from there, huh?” Ironside said.

  “Why?” Shawn said. “He’s nothing to us but an enemy.” He swung his horse away. “Let’s go find Patrick and Jake.”

  Thistledown again proved that he wasn’t on the brag when he mentioned his ability as a scout. He read sign like an Apache and found the cave and the ashy circle of a campfire.

  “They were here all right,” Ironside said. He swung out of the saddle and laid a hand over the fire. “Cold,” he said, “and they’ve been gone for a spell. Maybe they saw us coming and skedaddled.”

  Shawn dismounted, glanced at a noisy whiskeyjack jay attracted by the presence of humans, and stepped into the cave.

  At first he could see little, but as his eyes accustomed to the gloom, he caught a metallic glint at the back of the cave. Shane kneeled, thumbed a match into flame, and studied the ground. He saw bloodstains and something else—Jacob’s ivory-handled Buck knife lying on a flat section of rock.

  It didn’t look like the knife had fallen from Jake’s pocket; rather, it seemed as though it had been carefully placed. The top bolster pointed west, in the direction of Glorieta Mesa.

  Jacob was wounded, as the splashes of dried blood indicated, but somehow he’d managed to reach his knife and use it as a signpost.

  Shawn stepped out of the cave and said to Ironside, “They’re on top of the mesa.”

  Answering the question on the older man’s face, he told how he’d found Jacob’s knife and added, “There’s bloodstains all over the floor of the cave. Both Jacob and Patrick could be wounded.”

  “Then let’s get up there,” Ironside said.

  “I’ll tag along if you don’t mind,” Thistledown said. “Allow Lum to ripen, as it were, before I go looking for him.”

  “You’re welcome,” Shawn said. “But be careful with the scattergun. If it comes to shooting, which it will, we don’t want to harm our own.”

  Chapter Forty-four

  The remains of the night still clung to the mesa when Luke Caldwell climbed the ravine and reached the top. Dora DeClare, her rifle trained on the two prostrate O’Brien brothers, was waiting for him.

  “Well?” she said.

  “It went perfectly,” Caldwell grinned. He saw Dora looking at him expectantly and said, “I pinned it to the door with my knife, then hightailed it. Even if somebody had come out right away, they wouldn’t have been able to spot me in the dark.”

  “Are you sure they’ll see it?” Dora said. The sky to the east was aflame, and her golden hair was touched with red.

  “They’ll see it,” Caldwell said. He stepped to the mesa rim and looked over. “Still too dark to see, but Colonel O’Brien will be there soon. Count on it.” Caldwell hesitated, then said, “Dora, I’ve never been able to read and write and do my ciphers. What did the note say?”

  Dora stared at him in disbelief. She told herself again that she’d need to get rid of this illiterate, ignorant lout at the first opportunity.

  “Why, Luke, I’ll teach you how to do those things,” she said, smiling. “We’ll have lots and lots of time when we go back east.” Dora glanced at the O’Briens to make sure they were still in no fit state to fight. “As for the note, it said just what we discussed. If he wants his sons back alive, the colonel must pay us fifty thousand dollars and burn down Dromore.”

  “Do you think he’ll do it?” Caldwell said.

  “Of course he’ll do it. But we won’t live up to our part of the bargain. What I didn’t tell you earlier is that you’ll drag those two back from the rim and quietly cut their throats. Then, before Colonel O’Brien even knows what’s happening, we’ll be halfway to Santa Fe.”

  A grin split Caldwell’s face. “Damn it, Dora, you’re brilliant.”

  “Yes, I know I am,” Dora said. She looked at the sky. “Will the morning never come?”

  “It’ll be here soon enough, Caldwell said. “I’ll take the horses to the north edge of the mesa so we can make a fast getaway, like you said.”

  “Yes, do it, and hurry. I want the O’Briens right on the rim when their dear papa sees them.”

  After Caldwell led the horses away, Dora shivered, but not from cold. She felt as though she was being watched . . . watched by someone with hostile eyes.

  She glanced behind her, then, startled, turned and looked again.

  A sudden spike of fear hit her in the belly, like a steel arrowhead. It was a trick of the early morning light, nothing else. She closed her eyes, then opened them again.

  He was still there.

  “Damn you, what do you want?” she called.

  He made no answer. He stood silent and still as a statue, his brown robe flapping in the morning breeze.

  Staring at her.

  “What do you want?” Dora yelled, her voice almost a scream. “Go back to your God.”

  The monk stood, said nothing, staring.

  Dora heard the pound of feet behind her. She swung around, the Winchester coming up fast.

  “Don’t shoot! It’s Luke!” Caldwell came at a run, then stopped beside her. “I heard you shout. Is O’Brien here?”

  “It was the monk. Remember in El Cerrito, the damned monk?”

  Caldwell’s gun flashed into his hand. “Where?”

  Dora turned and pointed. “Over there.”

  “I see nothing,” Caldwell said. “A tree. There’s a twisted old tree.”

  The woman’s eyes speared into the dawning light. She saw only the stunted juniper.

  “He was there,” she said. “I saw him.”

  Caldwell holstered his gun. “A trick of the light, Dora, was all. And you’re as nervous as a horse on a high wire. You’ll be all right when we reach Santa Fe.”

  “Yes,” Dora said, managing a smile, “of course I’ll be just fine in Santa Fe.”

  “You scared me there,” Caldwell said. “I thought the O’Briens had got you fer sure.”

  The shout came faint but clear in the morning air.

  “You on up there on the mesa!”

  Dora stepped to the edge, then turned to Caldwell. “Get them on their feet at the rim.”

  Caldwell hoisted Patrick t
o a standing position, but Jacob was a dead weight and couldn’t be lifted.

  “Just prop him up against the other one,” Dora said. She waited until Jacob’s unconscious body leaned against Patrick’s legs, then she called out, “What do you want?”

  She saw Shamus O’Brien at the bottom of the slope, roped to a horse. But a dozen of his vaqueros were higher, making their way through tree and brush cover toward the top.

  “Luke,” Dora said, “climb lower. You have to get close enough to tell O’Brien to leave the money and pull his men away.”

  Suddenly, Caldwell didn’t like this. He didn’t like it one bit. Things were not going as planned. For one thing, they’d not considered how difficult conversation would be. And second, the Dromore hands were still climbing the slope.

  He ran to the gorge and clambered part of the way down. When he figured he was within hailing distance, he shouted, “O’Brien, call off your hounds or your sons are dead men.”

  Shamus heard that, because he yelled, “You damned scoundrel, if you harm my boys I’ll hang you.”

  “Where’s the money?” Caldwell yelled.

  “What?” Shamus answered, throwing his voice as he’d done on a dozen cannon-blasted battlefields.

  “Leave the money!” Caldwell yelled.

  “Not one red cent and be damned to ye,” Shamus yelled.

  A bullet spaaanged off a rock near Caldwell’s head and drove splinters into his cheek. His fingers came away bloody, and a surge of panic stabbed at him.

  Damn him, O’Brien was making a fight of it!

  Caldwell turned and scrambled back up the ravine, round after round smashing close, throwing dirt and gravel into his face. He reached the top of the mesa where Dora worked her rifle, shooting at targets on the flat.

  She saw Caldwell and screamed, “Kill the O’Briens! Cut their throats!”

  The Texan, frantically moving through a haze of fright and alarm, drew his knife. But he stayed where he was, rooted to the spot. Below him he heard voices, vaqueros yelling back and forth in Spanish he didn’t understand.

  “Kill them!” Dora screamed. “I want their throats cut!”

  She stood at the rim and fired, racked the Winchester and fired again.

  Anger is temporary madness, and Caldwell used it to overcome his fear. He worked himself into a killing rage, wanting only to smash, destroy, wipe the damned O’Briens from the face of their earth. Yes, cut their throats and watch the blood spurt, their smug faces dissolve into the terrifying knowledge of their own deaths.

  Knife in hand, Caldwell advanced on Patrick and Jacob, his face savage.

  Then Jacob moved.

  He swung his bound legs and hit Patrick hard behind the knees. Patrick yelled, collapsed in a heap, and took a header over the rim. Jacob rolled and followed him, he and his brother hollering as they tumbled through empty air.

  Caldwell, cheated of his prey and mad clean through, ran to the edge of the mesa, his gun in hand. A bullet split daylight an inch from his right ear, and he yelped in fright and surprise.

  That shot had come from behind him! Caldwell turned and saw three mounted men walk their horses toward him, two of them firing rifles from the shoulder. He was aware of Dora shooting at the riders, and for the moment she had them pinned in place.

  The Texan saw his chance and took it.

  He ran for his saddled horse, bullets kicking around him. Behind him he heard Dora scream, “Caldwell, you bastard!”

  He kept on running.

  A small man riding a red mule split from the other two and charged at Caldwell, his mount’s hooves clanging on the hard caprock. He held a scattergun in his right hand, wide of his body.

  A scared gunfighter running like a maiden aunt from an unbuttoned fly is still dangerous and a man to contend with.

  Caldwell stopped, turned, set his feet, and thumbed off two fast shots. Ernest Thistledown threw up his hands and tumbled off his mule, his shotgun spinning away from him.

  Caldwell ran to his horse, mounted, and galloped toward the north rim of the mesa. A few shots followed the Texan before he disappeared from sight.

  Dora DeClare had run her Winchester dry. But she pulled Jacob’s short-barreled Colt from the pocket of her dress and cut loose at Shawn and Ironside.

  Shawn hesitated, reluctant to shoot at a woman, but Ironside, hardened by war, had no such compunction. Firing his rifle from the hip, he hit Dora twice and calmly watched her fall.

  Ironside’s hard blue eyes looked beyond the woman to the north of the mesa. “Caldwell got away, damn him,” he said.

  “We’ll get him,” Shawn said. “I’ll go take a look at Thistledown.”

  But before he could move, Dora, the front of her dress covered with a scarlet bib of blood, rose to her feet. She ignored the Dromore riders and staggered to the mesa rim. There she did something strange that perplexed Ironside and troubled Shawn.

  Dora DeClare turned in the direction of Dromore. She lifted her hands, nails extended like talons, and made clawing motions, as though trying to tear down the house. A noise came from her throat that sounded like an animal growl, low, threatening, filled with hate.

  “Damn you, that’s enough,” Ironside yelled. He triggered another shot, and the woman toppled over the rim.

  But what had been strange before became stranger still.

  Later, when they talked about it, only Shamus, Samuel, and Shawn saw the phenomenon. None of the vaqueros saw it, nor did Luther Ironside, much to his chagrin.

  When Shamus described what he’d seen, he said, “A holy monk, a man of God, stood over the woman’s body, as though he was waiting for something. Then, after a few minutes he swung away, his arms extended, as though he was dragging away a person that I couldn’t see. And then I heard a terrible scream, and then nothing.” He crossed himself. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, and all the saints in heaven, it was an awful sight for a Christian man to see.”

  Shawn and Patrick said they’d witnessed the same thing and heard the scream.

  But Ironside said, “I saw an eagle flying around, and he could’ve made the scream you heard. As for the holy monk”—here he’d looked hard at the colonel—“it could be that three superstitious Irishmen saw a thing that wasn’t there, like see the banshee.”

  “Is that what you think, Luther?” Shamus said.

  “It’s what I know, Colonel.”

  “Then you could be right. But you’re not.”

  Dora DeClare and her brother were buried in unmarked graves on the open range. No one said words over them. A search was made by the Dromore vaqueros, but Lum’s body was never found.

  Chapter Forty-five

  The first snow flurries of fall tossed in a cold late September wind when Sheriff John Moore paid a visit to Dromore.

  The three invalids who sat with Shamus, Samuel, and Luther Ironside in the study were all on the mend.

  Patrick had suffered a broken leg in the fall from the mesa, Jacob three broken ribs and a fractured left wrist, and doctors had dug two bullets out of Ernest Thistledown’s chest. For a while the little man’s survival had been touch and go, but to everybody’s surprise he’d pulled through and was now talking about heading back east. Even Luther Ironside allowed that Thistledown was as tough as a trail drive steak and a credit to the bounty hunter profession.

  “The reason I’m here, Colonel, is about the recent misunderstanding involving your son Patrick,” Moore said. “In a word, I am the bearer of a written apology from Mr. James Wentworth on behalf of himself and the Georgetown Vigilance Committee.” He beamed as though about to say something important. “And it’s in duplicate.”

  With a flourish, he produced two sealed envelopes. “One for you, Colonel O’Brien.” He handed Shamus the letter. “And, last but not least, one for you, Patrick.”

  Shamus sat in his wheelchair, the unopened envelope in his hand. “I would hardly call condemning a man to death by mistake a misunderstanding,” he said.

  “For which Mr. Wen
tworth is most sorry,” Moore said. He looked anxiously at the envelope. “As you will read, Colonel.”

  “Later,” Shamus said. “Samuel, get the sheriff a drink.”

  “Not a single drop, if you please,” Moore said. “My recent brush with death has convinced me that the future of John Moore lies not in debauchery but in sobriety and a strict avoidance of fancy women.”

  Moore saw with some alarm that Samuel was about to sit down again and said, “Well now, Sam, as I think about it, I could have just a modicum to wet me pipe, like.”

  The sheriff watched anxiously as Samuel poured a dash of whiskey into a glass. “Ah, Sam, perhaps a slightly larger modicum.”

  After he saw Moore settled with a volume of whiskey that satisfied him, Jacob said, “Any word of Luke Caldwell?”

  “Jake, a man called Cassidy or Clifton was involved in a cutting in Santa Fe a month ago,” Moore said. “It could’ve been him.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Not that I’ve heard.”

  “If you learn anything, let me know right away.”

  “Oh, I will. How are your hands, Jake?”

  “They’re just fine, good enough to draw down on a snake like Caldwell.”

  Moore shook his head. “The whole affair with Dora DeClare and her brother was a bad business. Some of what happened I don’t understand myself, and some of it I played badly.”

  “No, you played a man’s part, Moore,” Thistledown said. “You have no call to beat up on yourself.”

  “Thank’ee for the kind words,” the sheriff said. He looked over at Shamus. “Colonel, did you ever recollect the woman’s pa that she said you hung?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Shamus said. “Luther, do you remember stringing up a rustler called DeClare?”

  “Sure don’t recollect, Colonel. When I hang a man, the last thing I want is to know his name.”

  “A bad business,” Moore said again. “So many dead people.” He held his empty glass out to Samuel. “Sam, I’m just so upset, another if you please.”

  “A modicum?” Samuel said, smiling.