Shadow of the Hangman

by J. A. Johnstone

  “Well, maybe a tad larger modicum than the last one.”

  “Hell, Moore, why don’t you just take the bottle?” Ironside said, his face sour.

  “Oh, no,” the sheriff said. “Remember what I told you, Luther? I’m done with strong drink. Well, in large quantities, that is.”

  As Moore rose to leave, a little unsteadily, he said to the entire room, “I heard this just yesterday. The morning Dora DeClare died, the Mexicans say the church bell in El Cerrito rang. Only thing was, there was nobody pulling on the rope.” He looked around him. “Strange, that.”

  “The wind,” Ironside said. “A prairie wind that blew in the right direction.”

  “Big bell,” Moore said. Nothing more.

  Sheriff Moore rode to Dromore again a week later and asked to talk with Jacob “on a matter of extreme urgency.”

  “Caldwell?” Jacob said.

  “Seems like.”

  “Where?”

  “A town called McGowan, north of the Malpais. Whiskey drummer just got into town, and he says his stage changed horses in McGowan and he met the new town marshal, a big feller by the name of Caldwell.”

  “Is it the same man, John?”

  “Could be. Seems that Caldwell was given a star just before he gunned a drifter an’ would-be badman by the name of Henry Sims. The drummer says Sims claimed to be the cock o’ the walk in McGowan—until Caldwell taught him otherwise.”

  “Straight-up fight?” Jacob said.

  “Uh-huh. The drummer says he was in the Stage Stop saloon when it came down. Sims was drinking at the bar when Caldwell walked in and said that Sims had been making some mighty loud noises around town and that he was sick and tired of hearing them. He told Sims to mount his horse, put a heap of git between him and McGowan, and never come back.”

  Moore put a hand to his throat. “All this talking is making me dry, Jake.”

  Jacob poured a whiskey for Moore, then the lawman continued, “The drummer says Sims said he was goin’ nowhere and that Caldwell could go stick his head up his ass. Well, Caldwell wasn’t gonna take that kind of sass, and he drew down on Sims. After the smoke cleared, the drummer put his business card on Sims’s chest and he says it covered all three bullet holes.”

  Moore sipped his bourbon and smacked his lips in appreciation. “That was good shootin’, Jake,” he said.

  “Depends on how fast Sims was,” Jacob said. “If a man has time, he can place three shots pretty close.”

  “Well,” Moore said, “I thought you might like to know.” He pointed the index finger of the hand that held his glass at the deep scar that ran from Jacob’s throat to the corner of his left eye. “On account of that.”

  “Yeah, he put the spur to me pretty good,” Jacob said. “He owes me.”

  “Big-time,” Moore said, turning away. He didn’t like to look at the scar.

  “Jacob, you’re still not completely well,” Lorena said. “And so skinny you’re nothing but breath and breeches.”

  “Better than anybody, Lorena, you know what we faced,” Jacob said. “It was an evil thing, and Luke Caldwell was a big part of it.”

  “Jake, your hands still haven’t healed,” Shawn said. “Maybe another six months and you could take Caldwell, but not now.”

  Jacob’s fingers strayed to the scar on his throat and face. “Forget this?”

  Shamus said, “Sit down, Jacob, and play me a little Chopin, perhaps the Nocturne in G Minor. It’s not a demanding piece, is it?”

  “No, Colonel, it’s not. It makes few technical demands of the pianist.”

  “Well, let me hear the intermezzo. I always think it sounds almost like a choral work.”

  Jacob sat and looked at his hands. They were still stiff in the knuckles and pale, as though the blood would never come back into them.

  “I can’t,” he said.

  Shamus nodded. “I know you can’t. Then, if you can’t play the piano, how in God’s name are you ever going to throw down on a practiced gunfighter who just killed a man?”

  “Luke Caldwell needs killing, and on the day I’ll be faster than he is,” Jacob said.

  “Hell, Jake, I’ll go after him,” Luther Ironside said.

  “You’re not fast enough,” Jacob said.

  “Then I’ll outlast the demon.”

  “Luther, listen to what Jacob told you—you’re too slow and too old,” Shamus said.

  As Ironside muttered objections, Jacob rose to his feet. “I want no more discussion about this. It’s my job. I’ve got it to do.”

  He stepped to Shamus’s side, and for the first time in years touched him, placing his hand on his father’s shoulder. “Pa, you didn’t give ransom money to Dora DeClare because Dromore pays tribute to no one. Instead you fought, but the battle isn’t over yet. As long as Caldwell’s shadow falls on the earth, it still rages.”

  Shamus put his hand on Jacob’s. “And we don’t surrender to anyone or forgive a wrong, do we?”

  “No, Colonel, we don’t.”

  “Then do what you have to do, son. But come back to us when the final bugle sounds.”

  Jacob nodded. “I feel a calling. I don’t know what it is, but when I’ve answered it, I’ll return to Dromore.”

  “May Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, and all the saints protect you, Jacob. And when you’ve answered your calling, return to this house.”

  Sarah waited by Jacob’s horse as he swung into the saddle.

  “You take care of yourself,” she said.

  Jacob said, “We haven’t spoken for a spell. How’s Dromore treating you?”

  “Very well. Samuel gave me the sorrel horse I rode when . . .”

  “Yes, he told me. The sorrel will make you a fine mount,” Jacob said.

  “Yes. Yes, he will.”

  After a moment, Jacob touched his hat brim. “Well, so long, Sarah.”

  “Jacob, I’ll worry, so please take care.”

  “I surely will.”

  Sarah watched Jacob ride away until he disappeared into distance and a shimmering heat haze. She felt a sense of loss, as though a part of her had gone with him.

  Chapter Forty-six

  McGowan, huddled close to the foothills of the San Mateo Mountains, was a cow town like any other, maybe a little less dusty, a little less shabby, and a lot more crowded. But it still boasted only a single street flanked by saloons, stores, and business premises, a stage and telegraph office, and, with a new town’s optimism, a half-constructed train station. But no railroad.

  It was full dark when Jacob rode into town. The saloons were ablaze with light, and reflector lamps lined the boardwalks, casting an alternating pattern of orange and black on the street.

  When he’d ridden only twenty-five yards he saw a livery stable, its doors wide open to catch the night breeze. An old-timer wearing somebody’s cast-off suit was tipped back in a chair near the door as he watched the world and his life go by.

  Jacob drew rein. “Howdy,” he said.

  “Right back at ya, I’m sure, sonny,” the oldster said.

  “Got room for my horse?” Jacob said.

  “Got room fer fifty hosses. Cost you two bits a night, another two bits fer oats.”

  “Your prices come high,” Jacob said.

  “You’re the one that needs a stable, sonny.”

  “I also need a place to wash up,” Jacob said.

  “There’s a pump around back, cost you two bits. Soap and towel is two bits extry.”

  Jacob swung out of the saddle. “You’ll be a rich man one day,” he said.

  “And who’s to say I ain’t already,” the oldster said. He looked over Jacob and his gaunt mount. “You come from the Malpais way?”

  “Hell, no.”

  “Just wondered. If you don’t mind me sayin’ so, you look all used up.”

  “Feel that way, too.”

  Jacob followed the old man into the stable, unsaddled his horse, and forked him some hay. He poured a scoop of oats into the bucket hanging
in the stall, then said, “I’ll use the pump now.”

  “Soap and a towel?” the oldster said.

  “Sure, why not? I don’t mind making you richer.” After he washed his face and hands and combed his wet hair, Jacob paid the old man. As casually as he could, he said, “Marshal in town?”

  Now the oldster looked at him more closely, his eyes lingering on Jacob’s Colt and the scar on his face. “He’s out of town,” he said, “over to Haystack Mountain way chasing a thief who robbed . . . well, you don’t care who he robbed, but he got away with two dollars and a silver-backed comb.”

  “Know when the marshal will be back?”

  “Maybe tomorrow, maybe tonight. Our new lawman don’t like being away from his whiskey an’ whores too long.”

  Jacob absorbed that and then said, “I need a room for the night.”

  “Only one hotel in town, sonny, an’ that’s run by the widder Milroy, but she tole me earlier today that she’s all full up, every nook an’ cranny.”

  The old man jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “You can bed down here. Got me a stall back there with an iron cot, an’ it’ll sleep you just fine. Cost you—”

  “I know, two bits.”

  “You learn fast, sonny.”

  Jacob O’Brien stepped along the boardwalk to a Chinaman’s restaurant recommended by the old-timer. He hadn’t been in a town of this size in a long time and noticed how both men and women gave him the road, their wary eyes angling to his gun and the terrible scar on his face.

  Jacob smiled, thinking that he must look like a real desperate character. When they looked past the scar, people saw a tall, lanky man with iron-colored eyes who wore a Colt like it was part of him. Apart from his gunbelt, boots, and spurs, all of them top quality, the raggedy rest of what he wore wouldn’t have sold for fifty cents in a used clothing store, and that included his battered hat and scuffed shotgun chaps.

  The restaurant was called Charlie O’Donnell’s Bar and Grill, because the Chinese family who bought it had never gotten around to changing the name. Without waiting for his order, the proprietor, a smiling, bowing man with a long pigtail, served Jacob a clear chicken soup with dumplings, some kind of pork stew with rice on the side, and a glass of beer.

  The food was good, and Jacob ate heartily. A pot of hot tea and delicate pink rice cakes completed the meal, and Jacob vowed that in future he’d be more favorably inclined toward the entire Celestial race.

  Now he’d eaten, Jacob felt better, but he was on edge, a niggling sick feeling deep in his gut. He smoked a cigarette and tried to relax, but when he stretched the fingers of his gun hand they were stiff and sore. He knew he was in no shape to go toe-to-toe with a gunfighter like Caldwell and beat him on the draw-and-shoot.

  Jacob had to face reality. Tonight or tomorrow he’d get into a gunfight he couldn’t win. There was no way around that stark fact. All he could hope to do was put enough lead into Caldwell to drop him before . . .

  He worked the fingers of his hand, opened and closed them, but after a few minutes, the pain and stiffness were as bad as ever. No, they were worse. Much worse.

  Suddenly, the Chinese man glided to his side, smiling. He turned toward the kitchen, waved, and jabbered words that Jacob couldn’t understand.

  A young girl, no more than sixteen, stepped to the table. The Chinaman talked to the girl, who listened intently. After the man finished speaking, the girl bowed to both him and Jacob and hurried away.

  Before Jacob could wonder at this strange behavior, the girl came back, carrying a small jade jar. A tiny carved dragon with ruby eyes adorned the lid, and when the girl removed it, Jacob smelled incense.

  The Chinese girl sat in a chair opposite Jacob. She took the cigarette from his fingers, ground it out in an ashtray, and then placed his right hand palm down on the table. The girl smiled at him and smeared a little of the jar’s contents on the back of his hand. The white ointment was strangely cool and slick without being greasy.

  “Make feel good, you see,” the proprietor said, beaming.

  The girl worked the ointment into the tendons of Jacob’s hand and then his wrist where the tight hemp had left scars. The pain was intense, and Jacob breathed through clenched teeth as the girl’s strong fingers dug deep.

  After ten minutes she moved to his knuckles and then the finger joints, and the pain grew, blossoming like fire. Jacob, fearful of being crippled, was tempted to pull his hand away, but the Chinese girl’s serene expression and focused concentration helped reassure him.

  It took thirty minutes, then the girl sat back in her chair and said, “Drink tea now and do not move hand. I come back soon.”

  The girl left, and Jacob used his other hand to pour tea into a tiny porcelain cup. He was trembling, the pain he’d felt an all too vivid memory.

  Two cups of tea and twenty minutes later, the girl returned. She smiled at Jacob and lifted his hand from the table. “Move now,” she said.

  Jacob did as he was told. Expecting pain, he was surprised when his clenching fist felt supple, the stiffness gone. He tried wiggling his fingers, and the result was the same.

  “My hand feels better than it ever did before,” he said.

  The girl smiled and showed her own hands, the knuckles red and swollen. “I have taken your pain,” she said. “But in a while it will leave me.”

  The Chinese refused any payment for the massage, saying only that relieving the pain of another human being was its own reward.

  His conscience flaying him, Jacob didn’t tell them his motives were considerably less pure—he wanted his hand to move smoothly because he needed it to kill a man.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  When the morning light woke Jacob O’Brien, he sat up with a start, the mission bells ringing in his ears.

  Even as the remnants of the dream faded, his heart still pounded and his mouth was dry. He glanced around him wildly, reestablished where he was in reality, and then he remembered . . . the dream returning piece by piece, as though he looked into a kaleidoscope and saw the fragments come together to form pictures in his mind . . .

  The mission’s walls were the color of sand, and behind it stood a green apple tree. The monk with blue eyes who stood at the open oak doors, said, “Jacob, it is harvest time. Help us pick the apples.”

  The monk handed him a basket. “When all the green apples are gathered, you may leave.”

  Jacob took the basket and picked the apples. But the more fruit he took from the tree, the more green apples grew to take their place.

  “My basket is full,” Jacob told the monk, “but there are more apples on the tree.”

  “You have many baskets to fill,” the monk said, “many green apples to pick. You must stay here at the mission until your work is done.”

  “But how long will that be?” Jacob said.

  “After the winter, after the spring, after the summer until autumn and the next harvest comes,” the monk said.

  “I’m a prisoner here!” Jacob said.

  “No, my son,” the monk said, “you are a tormented soul that needs rest and light in your darkness.”

  Jacob remembered no more because he woke up at that point, as the mission bells rang. He smiled and flexed his supple gun hand. It was not bells ringing he’d heard in his sleep, but the sound of a hammer on an anvil.

  He arose from the creaking iron cot, stretched the kinks out of his back, and stepped outside the rear of the barn to where the old-timer had a blacksmith shop. The man had been shaping a horseshoe on the anvil horn, but now he stopped and looked at Jacob.

  “You like green apples, sonny?” he said.

  “Talking in my sleep, huh?” Jacob said.

  “Yeah, about monks an’ missions an’ green apple trees.”

  “Sorry.”

  The oldster shrugged. “Ain’t nothing to me, but most gents that sleep here talk about whiskey and whores, though I’ve had a couple that had conversations with their mothers.” He nodded toward the front of
the barn. “Coffee in the office.”

  “Two bits?”

  “No, I provide hot coffee as a courtesy to my guests.”

  “You’re all heart,” Jacob said, smiling, taking the sting out of the remark.

  “I know. That’s why I ain’t gettin’ any richer.” The old man tonged the cooling horseshoe and plunged it into the cherry-red glow of the forge. Jacob left him to it and went after coffee.

  For the first time in months, he was able to build and light a cigarette without his useless fingers spilling tobacco down his front. His hand felt good. Now would it be fast enough to match Caldwell’s speed on the draw?

  Time will tell, Jacob thought.

  He buckled on his gunbelt and stood with his shoulder against the frame of the open barn door, drinking coffee with one hand and smoking with the other.

  The sun was only now lifting above the San Mateo Mountains, but McGowan had already come to life. Businessmen in broadcloth and housewives wearing bonnets, wicker baskets on their arms, trod the boardwalks while a few slugabed merchants hurried to open awnings and unlock doors. The sporting crowd, late sleepers, was nowhere to be seen, and the saloons were as yet not open for business.

  Jacob was drinking his third cup of weak coffee when Luke Caldwell rode into town.

  Stepping out from the angled shadow of the barn, Jacob saw people on the boardwalks stop to watch their new lawman ride down the middle of the street. Caldwell sat upright in the saddle, his face grim as befitted the town marshal who expected a hero’s welcome. He led a mustang pony, a man draped across its back, his wrists and ankles tied together under the animal’s belly.

  From what Jacob could see the dead man was a small towhead, thin and dressed only in pants and a faded red shirt, his feet bare.

  “What happened, Marshal?” a man on the boardwalk said.

  “He drew down on me,” Caldwell said.

  Jacob figured that a man desperate enough to steal two dollars and a silver-backed comb was unlikely to own a belt gun. If any of the onlookers thought the same, they didn’t let it show.