Lynch Law

by Len Levinson

  “I guess that’s it, then,” he said. “They’re gonna kill us.”

  Stone didn’t say anything. He’d figured the same thing himself.

  “I had me some good times and some good women,” said McDermott. “If this is the time for me to go, I guess there ain’t nothin’ I can do.”

  Stone had faced death many times in the war, but that’d been different, because he’d had a fighting chance, and a man could die with honor. He imagined himself strangling slowly, swinging in the breeze, for nothing.

  It was night, and he heard the barking of dogs. He thought of his mother and father, and the old plantation back in South Carolina. He remembered Marie, and the happy times they had.

  The door to the sheriff’s office opened, and the Chinese waiter from Gallagher’s Restaurant approached the desk.

  “What the hell do you want?” the sheriff asked gruffly.

  “I want talk John Stone.”

  “You got five minutes. Harry, you watch ’em.”

  Harry, one of the deputies, accompanied the Chinese waiter to the cell.

  “My name Hong Fat,” the Chinese waiter said. “I very sorry about what happen.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Stone replied.

  “You are brave man.”

  Hong Fat and Stone shook hands, and Stone felt a small object in his palm. He grasped the object and closed his fingers around it.

  “Good luck,” said Hong Fat.

  Hong Fat slouched toward the door, and Stone moved deeper into the shadows of the cell. He opened his hand and looked at what Hong Fat had given him. It was a small jackknife with a bone handle. He pulled out the blade, and it was sharp as a razor.

  McDermott moved beside him and whispered, “What he give you?”

  Stone showed it to him, then dropped it into his boot. He looked out the window again. A cool breeze caressed his face, and a half moon hung in the sky over the mountains in the distance.

  The door to the sheriff’s office opened and a deputy entered, followed by a man in a black suit.

  “Hello, Reverend,” the sheriff said. “We got somebody who wants to talk to you.”

  The sheriff unlocked the prison cell and the reverend stepped inside. He was short, round-shouldered, and bald.

  “You got ten minutes,” the sheriff said.

  “I’m Reverend Skeaping. Which one of you wants to see me?”

  “Me,” said Stone.

  “What can I do for you, my son?”

  “My name is John Stone. I’m going to be lynched tonight, and I thought I should speak with a minister of God.”

  “Do you have a family?”

  “No.”

  “Is there anyone whom you’d like me to notify?”

  “No.”

  “It’s not good to be alone. The Bible tells us we must be fruitful and multiply.” Reverend Skeaping turned to McDermott. “How about you?”

  McDermott sat sullenly on the floor in corner. “I done my share of multiply in’,” he said, “but they’re a-gonna lynch me anyways.”

  “Thou shall not kill. You’ve violated the commandment. Love of money is a sin.”

  “Tell that to Hank Dawson.”

  Reverend Skeaping looked at Stone. “I suggest you get down on your knees and pray to the Lord our God.”

  Stone dropped to his knees, and Reverend Skeaping placed his hand on Stone’s head. “Dear God,” he said, “please have mercy on this man, John Stone. Remember that he’s one of your children, as we are all your children. He may’ve sinned against you, but we are weak vessels. Please help John Stone through the difficult night that lies ahead. Thank you for the blessings you have given us. Amen.”

  McDermott snorted. “What blessings?”

  “Sheriff?” Reverend Skeaping said.

  Sheriff Perkins opened the cell door. Reverend Skeaping put on his black hat and left the sheriff’s office. Sheriff Perkins stood at the bars and looked at Stone. “Feel better now?” he asked sarcastically.

  Stone rolled a cigarette, then threw the bag of tobacco to McDermott. They sat in the darkness and smoked silently. Sheriff Perkins returned to his desk. Stone wondered when they’d come to get him. He wished he’d never set foot in that damned restaurant.

  A half hour later, Craig and Cynthia Delane entered the sheriff’s office, and they were elegantly dressed as always.

  “We’d like to speak to the prisoner,” Craig said.

  “Right this way, sir.” The sheriff led Craig and Cynthia back to the cell. “You’re havin’ a busy night,” the sheriff said to Stone.

  Cynthia looked at Stone in the cell, which was small and dirty, and Stone was locked in with a man who appeared to be a hardened criminal.

  “I spoke with Hank Dawson,” Craig said, “and tried to convince him to let bygones be bygones, but he wasn’t receptive.”

  Stone looked at Cynthia, and her eyes gleamed in the dark. “I wish we could do something,” she said.

  “Get me a bottle of whiskey.”

  Sheriff Perkins’s voice reverberated across the office. “No whiskey for the prisoners!”

  Stone, Craig, and Cynthia stood in silence for a few moments. “I can’t believe this is happening,” Craig said. “This is still America, a nation of laws.”

  “Not out here.”

  Craig turned and walked toward Sheriff Perkins’s desk, and Sheriff Perkins looked up from his newspaper.

  “I assume you’ve heard the rumors,” Craig said to him.

  “I hear rumors all the time. What ones’re you talkin’ about?”

  “The rumors about the lynching. Hank Dawson and his men are going to lynch John Stone tonight. I suggest you deputize some men to guard your prisoner. I volunteer to be one of the deputies.”

  The sheriff laughed. “You? Mr. Delane, I suggest you take your lady home and forget about bein’ a deputy. Why, somebody’s liable to take a shot at you, and then what’ll you do?”

  Craig blushed “If anything happens to this prisoner, I’ll report it to the governor.”

  “Report anythin’ you like, but I recommend you mind your own business. People who go up against Hank Dawson generally don’t last long around here.”

  “I’m not going up against Hank Dawson. I’m going up against you.”

  “Same difference.”

  Craig returned to the cell. “They have no concept of the fundamental principles of justice out here. It’s really quite shocking.”

  Stone said ruefully, “If I’d minded my own business, I wouldn’t be in jail.”

  McDermott arose from the floor and took off his black hat. “Ain’t nobody gonna introduce me?”

  “This is Tad McDermott,” Stone said. “If they hang me, they’ll probably hang him too.”

  “You’re the bank robber?” Delane asked.

  “That’s me,” McDermott said proudly. He looked at Cynthia and grinned. “What’s yore name, ma’am?”

  “Cynthia.”

  “You’re right purty.”

  There was a few minutes of awkward silence, then Delane cleared his throat. “We’d better be moving along. Good luck to you, John Stone. God be with you.”

  Cynthia reached forward and touched Stone’s hand. She wanted to say something, but only platitudes came to mind, and she didn’t want to give a man platitudes on his last night on earth.

  Craig and Cynthia left the sheriff’s office, but Cynthia’s perfume lingered behind. Stone and McDermott sat on the floor again.

  “Helluva woman,” McDermott said. “Wouldn’t mind runnin’ into her alone on the range some night, but I reckon she’d rather run into you. She was lookin’ at you like she wanted to eat you up alive.”

  Craig and Cynthia stepped out onto the sidewalk as a group of horsemen rode past. Their buckboard was tied to the hitching post, and two of Craig’s hands lounged about on the bench in front of the jail.

  “I don’t feel well,” Cynthia said to Craig. “Do we have to go home?”

  “Would you
like to stay in town tonight?”

  “I think it’d be best, if you don’t mind, Craig.”

  They crossed the street arm in arm and headed toward the New Dumont Hotel. Not far away, in front of a saloon, a drunken cowboy fired his pistol into the air.

  “Dreadful place,” Cynthia said, wrinkling her nose.

  “Someday there’ll be law here. It might take twenty years, but it’ll come.”

  “A lot of good that’ll do John Stone.”

  They climbed the steps of the New Dumont Hotel and entered the lobby. In one corner, a group of well-dressed businessmen held an earnest conversation, and against the far wall a cowboy slept, his feet propped up on a coffee table.

  Craig and Cynthia checked in. The clerk gave them a key and they climbed to the second floor where the best suites were. Craig unlocked the door to theirs and lit a lamp. The suite became bathed in a soft yellow glow.

  Cynthia crossed the room and pulled aside the drapes over the window. It faced the street, and she looked toward the jail. “That poor man,” she said.

  Chapter Three

  Stone sat on the floor of the jail, with his back against the wall. The only light came from the lamp on the sheriff’s desk, but the sheriff was gone for the night. Harry, one of his deputies, was in charge. He lay on the sofa underneath the rifle racks, fast asleep.

  McDermott sat opposite Stone, his unshaven face floating in the darkness.

  “It shouldn’t be long now,” McDermott said.

  “They’re mainly interested in me,” Stone replied. “Maybe you can escape. I’ll make a commotion when they open the cell door, to take their attention away from you. Just mingle with the crowd and walk out of here.”

  Stone took out his bag of tobacco, and there wasn’t much left. He rolled himself a skinny cigarette and then threw the bag to McDermott.

  “You scared?” McDermott asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “An old owlhoot told me all about hangin’ once. He said yore neck snaps right away, and you don’t feel nothin’. One minute you’re here, and the next minute you’re gone.”

  The thundering of hoof beats shattered the silence of the night as a small army of men rode their horses hard in the wan light of the half moon. They were on the wild prairie, heading for the town of Dumont, their horses straining their muscles as they stretched ever forward, the riders giving the horses plenty of rein.

  The ground shook with the pounding of hoof beats, and nocturnal animals ran out of their way. The wind pushed back the brims on the hats of the riders and whipped their clothes. There were over forty of them, grim-faced and heavily armed, all worked for the Circle Bar D. They were on their way to a lynching, and they were mad.

  Leading them, riding in tandem, were Hank and Wayne Dawson, father and son, two big men sitting atop big horses. Strings of saliva dripped from their horses’ mouths and flew back into the air as the men bounced up and down on their saddles.

  An expression of harsh determination was on Hank Dawson’s face. Two of his men had been killed and his son had been humiliated. There could be no mercy.

  Next to him, Wayne spurred his mighty sorrel and lusted for revenge. A stranger had pointed his guns at him, and he’d never been so afraid. Even women had seen him cringe, a terrible moment. He’d make the stranger wish he was never born.

  Behind the two Dawsons rode their private army of gunfighters and cowboys. They were a close-knit brotherhood similar to a military elite, and two of them had been killed by John Stone. They wanted to string Stone up, see the death agony on his face, and watch him twist and turn in the night breeze.

  The riders sped through the night, on their mission of hate. No one spoke; all knew what they had to do. In the distance they saw the lights of Dumont twinkling and sparkling in the valley.

  Cynthia Delane lay in bed beside her husband, staring at the ceiling. She couldn’t sleep, thinking about John Stone sitting in jail, facing the hangman’s noose.

  The bed was soft and comfortable, and she sank deeply into it. Her hips and shoulders touched her husband, Craig. Neither of them had brought bedclothes to town, so were clad only in their underwear, with a sheet and light blanket to protect them from the cool night air.

  Cynthia thought it must be after midnight, and wondered when the lynching would take place. Was it possible that Hank Dawson had had a change of heart?

  She’d met Hank Dawson a few times, and he’d disgusted her. He was big and fat, sloppy and unkempt, and his body exuded a sour stench. Yet he was the most powerful man in the region and everybody, including her husband, deferred to him.

  Hank Dawson had come to Dumont County ten years ago with a bunch of gunfighters, and gobbled everything up chunk by chunk as if it were a pie. If no one was on the land, he took it for his own. If someone was there, he convinced him to move away. If there was resistance, he overcame it with armed might. Now he was undisputed ruler of thousands of acres, and God pity any sodbuster who happened to wander onto his land.

  Cynthia wished she were home, so her maid could prepare a glass of warm milk to help her fall asleep. She was troubled by a headache and an upset stomach, but most of all she was troubled by John Stone. The man made her feel uneasy whenever she thought of him.

  I must be crazy, she thought, because she realized she was attracted, in a perverse way, to John Stone. Stone had walked into danger without hesitation to help a stranger, and should be praised, not lynched. She couldn’t imagine Craig intervening to help somebody, as Stone had done. Cynthia never had seen such a display of raw courage in her life.

  She heard a low rumble in the distance, and at first it sounded like a tornado, but then she realized it was a large number of horses being ridden hard. Here they are, she thought. Craig stirred next to her.

  “I think they’re coming.”

  He rolled out of bed and walked to the window, and he was lean and ghostlike in the light of the moon. He looked at the street and saw lamps in some of the windows across the street. The sound of the horses became louder, and Cynthia got out of bed, moving toward the window.

  The street was deserted, and she heard horse’s hooves pounding the ground. Then the first of the riders turned the corner and came into view. She recognized Hank and Wayne Dawson in front, not by their faces, which were obscured by their hats, but by their corpulence. The rest of the riders followed, grasping the reins of their horses. Hank Dawson pulled out his six-gun and fired a shot in the air. Then his men drew their guns, and a fusillade of shots exploded into the night as the riders passed in front of the New Dumont Hotel.

  Cynthia watched the horsemen ride up the street, heading for the jail. Some horsemen yipped and yelled, as though they were herding cattle. Cynthia looked across the street and saw faces in windows. Other citizens were awake too, and everybody knew what was happening.

  “Why doesn’t somebody do something!” she said.

  Craig placed his slender arm around her shoulders. “Hank Dawson will kill anybody who stands in his way.”

  Stone stood and placed his hands on the bars of the cell. “Here they are.”

  McDermott raised himself off the floor. The deputy turned up the wick on the lamp, then strapped on his gun belt.

  “Guess this is it, boys,” he said.

  The sound of horsemen came closer, and it reminded Stone of cavalry. He heard the firing of guns and whoops of cowboys. The horsemen came to a stop in front of the sheriff’s office.

  Stone turned to McDermott. “Remember what I told you. I’ll start something, and you make a run for it.”

  They heard the sound of boots on the boardwalk outside the sheriff’s office. The door was flung open and Hank Dawson walked in, gun in hand. Behind him was Wayne, and then came the cowboys.

  “We want your prisoner,” Hank Dawson said.

  “Can’t have him,” the deputy replied weakly.

  “That’s what you think.”

  Jesse Atwell stepped forward and lifted the gun out of th
e deputy’s hand. A few of the Dawson men chortled.

  “Turn around and shut up,” Atwell said to the deputy.

  Harry turned around and shut up. Wayne Dawson stomped toward the cell and looked at Stone. “You’re dead meat,” he said.

  Atwell opened the top drawer of the sheriff’s desk and took out the ring of keys. Meanwhile, Hank Dawson walked to the cell and looked at Stone. He was curious to see the man who’d shot two of his gunfighters and menaced his son.

  Stone stood solidly, his hands on the bars. Hank Dawson looked at his face and saw an aquiline nose and gleaming eyes. Stone’s body was muscular and suggested tremendous power. Dawson hated Stone, because Stone made him feel like a fat slob.

  “Get him,” Dawson said.

  Atwell stuck the key into the lock and twisted. Stone took a step backward and looked at McDermott. The door opened and Atwell entered the cell, followed by a swarm of his cowboys.

  Stone leapt forward and punched Atwell in the mouth, and Atwell went sprawling backward. An expression of panic came over Hank Dawson’s face, and he turned pale. He opened his mouth to give an order, but no sound came out.

  The other gunfighters didn’t need orders. Charging forward, they tackled Stone, and he twisted, punched, and kicked. They tried to grab his arms but he broke loose and smashed one cowboy in the stomach, doubling him over with pain. He kicked the next cowboy in the groin, flattened the nose of another cowboy, and slugged a third cowboy on the jaw.

  A wild melee broke out in the darkened cell, and it was difficult to see what was going on. A cowboy managed to grab Stone around the waist, but Stone brought his fist down onto the cowboy’s head, and the cowboy’s arms went slack. Stone kicked him in the face, jumped over him, and landed in front of Hank Dawson.

  Horrified, Hank Dawson backed away, and a group of cowboys moved to protect him. Stone punched one of them in the mouth, elbowed another in the throat, but a third cowboy was behind him and brought his gun down hard on top of Stone’s head.

  Stone saw stars, and his knees gave out. He fell to the floor, but before he could land he was caught by hands that drew him up to his feet again. Stone was dazed, hearing bells and birds. Pinwheels of light flew in front of his eyes.