Don't Hang My Friend

by Raffensperger, John;

  The bottom road was muddy and cut up with ruts from wagon wheels. The horse wouldn’t do more than a slow walk until we got to the path that led around the hills alongside of Sandy Creek. It was a warm day and I had on the wool stockings that Aunt Alice had knitted and long underwear with a new wool coat. It was really sweaty inside all those clothes.

  After we had gone three-four miles, Billy got turned around. We went up alongside a trickle of water on what looked like an old game trail to where the stream came out from under a rock into a little pool. We stopped and had a drink of spring water and ate the chicken and bread. We were drowsy. It felt good to lie back on the leaves to let lunch settle. A whole bunch of crows landed on the branches of a tree right above our heads and made a lot of ruckus. I swear crows talk to each other just like people. Once I shot a crow with Billy’s rifle. He made me skin and gut it and roast it because he said you shouldn’t shoot nothin’ you don’t eat. It was a tough old bird and tasted even worse than it smelled. We were just putting off finding the graves, maybe because we really didn’t want to. The shadows were getting longer and the sun wasn’t so bright and we still hadn’t found the graveyard.

  “I gotta find a skull before it gets any later,” I said.

  “First I wanna see that pistol,” Billy said.

  I took it out of the tow sack. Billy checked the primers, pulled back the hammer and fired at a knothole in a walnut tree. There was a lot of smoke and a terrible noise and the bullet hit the edge of the knot. Billy had good eyes and steady hands. He would make a good soldier or an Indian fighter and would probably get to be a general.

  “All right, that’s enough. Now we got to find the graveyard.”

  I put the pistol back in the sack and led the horse down a path until Billy found another trail that led higher into the hills to a pretty meadow where there was an old cabin with a stone fireplace. It had been a farm once, but now the fields were overgrown. It looked like someone had partly rebuilt the cabin and out back, there was a corral made of fresh cut saplings. The ground was trampled with cattle tracks. Billy studied those tracks until I made him get along and find the gravestones.

  The old mare was shy and didn’t want to go no further, but Billy went on ahead, leading the horse up a hill back of the cabin past some outcroppings of limestone. It was fast getting dark and a gusty wind sighed through the trees. Limbs creaked and a squirrel scampered after hickory nuts. Off in the distance a twig snapped. I nearly jumped out of my skin, but after that, there were just the usual woodsy sounds. Billy said it must have been an animal. He knew better. Animals don’t break sticks.

  The ground on top of the hill was covered with leaves which had fallen from a grove of oak trees. Billy said this was the place and sure enough, after kicking the leaves we found four gravestones lying flat on the ground. The stones were ice cold and covered with a greenish moss. They hadn’t been touched for years and if the spirits had their way, they would never be disturbed.

  “This here is your old graveyard. You better do what you gotta do and then we skedaddle out of here,” Billy said.

  The gravestones were scratched with names and dates. The mother and three children had died in January 1840. I cleared off the stones until I found one for Elihu Jasper, born in November 1835 and died in January 1840. I hated to bother him, but a skull from a five year old child should be just about right. Bile came up in my throat and I tasted chicken. My legs turned shivery and I wanted to run down the hill and make for home, but didn’t want Billy to think I was a coward.

  The thick pile of leaves had protected the ground from frost and it wasn’t too hard to dig in the soft earth. I dug until I got tired, then Billy dug some. It was about a half hour before the shovel struck a rotted wooden plank with a hollow “thunk”. We stopped and rested a spell. By the time we got the dirt off the top of the coffin the sky was a dark gray with only a little light in the west. Sometimes a little sliver of moon shone through the clouds, but mostly it had got so dark the trees were just shadows. I was shivery and scared and Billy was skittish as a girl. When I pried the lid off the wooden box, he ran down the hill and stood by the horse. Ever since I got frostbit, I always took sulfur matches and a candle when I went out in the woods. I lit the candle and set it on the edge of the dark hole. The clothes were mostly rotted off the skeleton and the hands and arms crossed over the ribs. There was a musty odor, like from an animal that’s been dead a long time. I felt around for the skull and was wrenching it loose from the neck bones when our horse whinnied. Another horse down the hill, near the cabin, whinnied back. I raised up from the grave. My hair must have stood straight up, when the hant came up the hill.

  “Hey what’s goin’ on up there,” it said.

  It wasn’t no hant, but a flesh and blood man comin’ up the hill, makin’ a lot of noise. I scrunched down and blew out the candle, hopin’ that whoever it was wouldn’t see me. He stopped and lit a lantern and kept on coming up the hill. I was practically on top of the skeleton, hoping and praying that the hant or the man would go away. Instead, I could hear his footsteps scraping the rocks and breaking sticks. He got so close I could hear him breathing. My heart was thumping and I tried to scrunch down deeper into the hole, but my hand slipped and I fell against the ribs of the skeleton. The bones crunched like dry sticks. I groaned out loud. The lantern light shined right down into the grave where I had fallen over on my side and was looking up out of the hole.

  “You lil’ bastid, now I gotcha.”

  He had a greasy long beard and glittery, mean eyes and a scar on his forehead. It was Murphy. A gold tooth dangled from a string around his neck and sparkled in the lantern light. I let out a yell. He grabbed my coat with one big hand and hauled me out of the grave. I was shaking hard and figured I was a goner. There was a shot and the lantern shattered. The light went out. He cussed and let go. I got up and ran down the hill, but Billy and the horse were gone. I kept running and got into the woods, then tripped and fell down.

  “Tom, Tom, over here.” I ran into dense brush. Billy had put his hat over the horses head to calm her down. “I hid her in a gully and sneaked back up the hill. When I saw him lookin’ down in the grave, I shot out the lantern.”

  We lay on the ground and listened to Murphy thrashing around in the brush.

  “You little bastids. I’m a goin’ to kill both of you,” he shouted.

  “Murphy a gold tooth hanging from a string around his neck. That proves he killed Young Isaiah,” I said.

  “We are gittin’ outta here, fast,” Billy whispered.

  “I gotta go back and get the pistol and the skull,” I said.

  “God, no, Tom, he’ll kill us and won’t no one know the difference.” Then he thought a spell, while I caught my breath. “I’ll go down the road a spell and fire a couple of shots to draw him away; you go back a ways and shoot the pistol. He’ll think there’s a whole bunch of vigilantes in the woods,” Billy said.

  I couldn’t think of anything better and figured that I had to get the skull and the pistol or not go back home. Billy slipped away and led the horse down the gully toward the creek. After a while, there was a shot and then another from a slightly different direction. When Murphy went crashing down the trail, I sneaked back up the hill and got the feed sack. It took another minute to wrench the skull loose from the neck bones and put it into the sack. I stuck the pistol into my belt. By then, my eyes were used to the dark and I could make out the old cabin at the bottom of the hill. I went around back and pulled dry kindling up next to a pile of logs. I lit the dry sticks and pretty soon the logs blazed up. I ran back in the woods and sat down. When cabin blazed up, I ran like crazy up the hill and laid on my belly behind a stump. I was panting something terrible and scared, but excited too. When Murphy came running up the trail, I could see him, clear as anything in front of the flames. He was so close I could see that glittering gold tooth. I rested the Colt on the stump, but when the front sight was right on his chest I got to shivering like a bad chill.
I yanked on the trigger, but nothing happened because I hadn’t pulled back the hammer. It was just like the dream when something always stopped me from killing the ghost. Then a horrible feeling come over me on account of how close I had come to killing a man.

  I crawled through the woods until I came out on the trail by Sandy Creek. A twig snapped back in a willow thicket and a bobwhite quail whistled. When I hooted like an owl, Billy came out of the brush leading the horse. When he got close, I whispered. “Murphy had a clear look at my face and as sure as God’s in heaven, he will wait for us by the ferry landing,” said I.

  We led the horse and went through the brush away from the trail, stopping every so often to listen. We wouldn’t have a chance against that repeating rifle. I shivered every time I thought of the bullet holes in Young Isaiah. Billy sort of knew his way through the swamp but we went over our boot tops in water and had to walk around patches of quicksand. Once the horse got stuck and thrashed around but we pulled her loose. We were lost until I found the Big Dipper, standing almost on it’s handle and then saw the North Star. We headed north and a little after midnight come to the river about a quarter mile below the ferry landing. The moon was down, but sickly starlight reflected off the water. Every so often something that looked like a corpse floated by. The dark water was plumb scary and we jumped when a real owl hooted back in the brush. There wasn’t a skiff or even a big log to paddle across the river. We were shivering and scared of that river. “It’s too wide to swim, here. Let’s go to the ferry landing, where it is shallower,” Billy said. Then we heard the creak of a saddle and hooves clopping and sucking at the mud coming down the road.

  “Come on,” Billy said, “you get up on the horse and I’ll lead.”

  It was just about the bravest thing I ever saw. Billy took off his denim coat and his shoes and put everything into the feed sack with the skull and pistol. I slung his .22 rifle over my shoulder and held the sack with one hand and the horse’s mane with the other. The mare didn’t want to move, but Billy yanked on the halter until she started. When we got into deep water where the current was strong, Billy and the horse both had to swim and once, when the horse’s head went underwater, I thought we would all drown. All of a sudden, I thought about Elihu Jasper being lowered into his ice-cold grave in January. Somebody, probably his pa, had a hard time digging through the frozen ground.

  The worst part of dying was the cold. I never prayed so hard in my life and promised to never again get into trouble or have impure thoughts about Rachel or dream about being in bed with Mary. I would go to church and Sunday school and if Aunt Alice wanted, even Wednesday night prayer service. I thought about Pa dying all alone. I didn’t want to die in the middle of the river and have my corpse float all the way to New Orleans. Billy yanked at the halter and I kicked hard until the old mare swam like she was a young colt.

  We were half way across when Murphy fired the first shot. I ducked as low as I could and stay on the horse. There were a lot more shots, but it was dark and all the bullets missed. It seemed like half the night before Billy touched bottom so he and the horse waded up the bank. We got into the trees where Murphy couldn’t see us. Billy’s teeth chattered so loud it sounded like a blacksmith’s hammer on an anvil. I gave him my coat and held him up or he would have fallen down. We couldn’t have done a thing if Murphy had come across the river. The powder in the Colt was wet and the .22 rifle was filled with water. The old horse was about to fall down and croak.

  “My pa will whale the tar out of me for being out late, but if he’s gotta pay for a dead horse, he will like to kill me,” Billy said.

  “We gotta keep moving and get on home. Let’s take the horse to Doc’s barn and let her get warmed up and have some feed. You can stay overnight with me and get your clothes dried out before you go home. We can think up a story, so your pa won’t be so mad.”

  We pulled the mare into the barn and hoped to sneak in the back door, but we had no sooner got into the kitchen than Aunt Alice was all over us, bawling her eyes out. When she calmed down and I got loose from her, Doc and Bessie Pendelton and Billy’s pa came out of the back parlor. Mr. Malone had a long sad face that turned beet red and the corners of his mouth turned down. He grabbed Billy and would have whaled the tar out of his backside, but Doc got hold of his arm and kept him from hurting Billy. “Let’s hear what the boys have to say,” he said.

  Billy and I shivered and our teeth chattered so bad, neither of us could talk. Doc gave us each a cup of hot water with rock candy and a dash of whiskey. Aunt Alice built up the fire in the kitchen stove and wrapped us in quilts after we took off our wet clothes. I didn’t say nothin’, but took the skull and the pistol out of the sack and put them on the kitchen table. When the whiskey got to my brain, I told how Billy shot out the lantern and swam across the river to get away from Murphy. Then Billy told about the cattle tracks and the new corral. “The rustlers are back in the county and that must be where they hide stolen cattle,” Mr. Malone said. Aunt Alice put her arms around me and started to cry all over again. Doc might have been mad about the pistol, but was happy with the skull.

  Bessie Pendelton sat on the horsehair couch with her sour pickle look when Doc gave us the whisky. “We had to go out to the Bontrager place tonight,” she said.

  “Was it about Rachel?”

  “No, her mother has cancer,” Bessie said.

  Chapter Twenty One

  Doc turned the skull over in his hands and dusted away some dirt. “It’s a perfect specimen. Look here, there are twenty two separate bones in the skull, all fitted together with these sutures that allow the skull to grow. These holes where the cranial nerves come out of the skull. This big one is the foramen magnum, where the spinal cord passes from the brain into the spinal canal.”

  I couldn’t keep my eyes open and fell plumb asleep until he shook me awake. “Get on to bed, but starting tomorrow, study the skull.”

  I slept late on Sunday morning and forgot all about promising to go to church and Sunday school. The whole thing seemed like a bad dream until I went downstairs and found Doc matching up the holes in the skull with Gray’s Anatomy. It looked like he had never gone to bed. “Find the auditory canals,” said he.

  I turned the skull from one side to another and tried to forget it belonged to a five year old boy but his strands of light colored hair clung to the bone. There were missing teeth and the lower jaw bone was loose and his deep eye sockets stared at me. I was scared but figured out which were the ear canals. “It’s these two deep holes on each side,” I said.

  “That’s right. This bump behind the canal is the mastoid process with spongy spaces that fill with pus from an infected ear.” Doc touched the bump behind my ear. “We can make an incision through the skin here, then drill through the bone into the mastoid space and let out the pus,” he said.

  He made me study all day until I knew the Latin names like the foramen magnum and the foramen rotundum for all the holes and the separate bones like the occiput and the sphenoid and ethmoid.

  The next morning he sawed the top off the skull and chiseled a hole just behind the ear canal into the mastoid. It looked just like the picture in the book and Doc said he could drain pus when infection spread from the ear.

  That same week, Mr. Malone and the vigilante committee rode out to the corral. There were tracks and empty bean cans but Murphy and his gang had taken off. Almost every farmer in the county had lost cattle and a lot of poor folks took off for Kansas. The sheriff cleared farmers off their land when they couldn’t pay the mortgage to Mr. Farnum’s bank. Mr. Birt got the newspaper out the week after the fire. He wrote a story about the sheriff and his deputies. The next night, someone threw a brick through the front window of the newspaper office. On Saturday night, we had dinner at the Camp House and Doc had one of Isaiah’s toddy’s. “Is the gang bothering your people?” Doc asked. “No sah, we keepin’ a close watch. One of the boys stays up all night, lookin out,” said Isaiah.

  I got so I like
d the Academy, especially when Mr. Cromwell turned a magnet inside a copper coil with a hand crank to make electricity flow through wires and showed us how a telegraph worked. I got a hard jolt when I held the wires. I even thought of studying science instead of doctoring when everyone in town came down with pneumonia at the same time and I had to make poultices with flannel and menthol in grease to put on folk’s chests.

  Chapter Twenty Two

  When the big snowstorm blew in Doc rented a sleigh from the livery stable to make country rounds. Late one afternoon the oldest Bontrager boy, a big strappin’ fellow bundled up against the cold came to the back door and shook off the snow. “Ma is in terrible pain. Can you come?” He asked. “I will go, if you lead the way,” Doc said. I went to the barn and hitched Sam, a strong bay gelding, to the sleigh. You couldn’t have kept me away from seeing Rachel and besides, the trip would be easier with two of us. I got out the buffalo robe. Aunt Alice heated bricks and filled two canteens with hot soup in case we got stuck. Just before we started, I ran back into the house and took two oranges that came all the way from Floridy for Rachel.

  Big flakes of sticky snow falling from low gray clouds made it hard to see the road but we followed the Bontrager boy and flew over the snow. The runners sang and Sam ran as if he was happy to get out of the barn. We were plenty warm under the robe. I drove while Doc quizzed me on the skull. I couldn’t remember the names of the nerves on account of I had been reading Ned Buntline’s dime novels about the Wild West.

  “Tom, sometimes, I think you are too dumb for medical college.” He said in a joking sort of way.

  he dogs came runnin’ and yappin’ as soon as we came to the line of trees that marked the Bontrager place. The old man gave the dogs a kick. They growled and went back under the porch while I took the horse to the barn and Doc ran up the steps.