Hang Him Twice

by William W. Johnstone

  “Me, too.” The wiry old driver stepped back and leaned against the warped pine planks used to wall the saloon. Dooley heard the sucking sound of boots walking through mud, and he stepped toward the first lawman.

  He was a robust man in a red and black mackinaw, with a high-crowned beige hat and a graying mustache that covered his upper lip and curled down past his chin. He did not look happy, but, then, it was cold, and dark, and damp, and a dead man was lying on the boardwalk, another in the alley, and a millinery shot all to pieces. Dooley wasn’t happy, either. In fact, he felt a bit on the queasy side.

  “What the Sam Hill happened?” the mustached man said. He pushed back his jacket just so everyone could see the six-point star pinned to the lapel of his vest. The other four men, who flanked him, wore stars, too, but theirs were pinned to their coats. They did not look happy, either.

  Dooley cleared his throat, but before he could say anything, the big marshal spit out a litany of curses, then spit tobacco juice into the mud. He pointed a stubby finger at the dead stagecoach guard.

  “That’s Horatio, ain’t it? Who the hell shot him down like a dog? Who done it? Why, I’ll string that miserable assassin up from the rafters of my brother-in-law’s livery stable on Blake Street, have him drawn and quartered, and toss his guts into Cherry Creek. Son of a gun. Horatio cut down in the prime of life. The lousy cur owed me seventeen dollars, too! Who done it?”

  Again, Dooley tried to speak, but one of the deputies interrupted him, saying, “Marshal Cavendish.” He pointed the barrel of his Sharps buffalo gun toward the millinery.

  When Marshal Cavendish saw the destroyed plate glass window and the splintered door and frame wall, he bellowed several more choice cuss words, including many that he had not sang out upon seeing the dead messenger.

  “I got a dead man that owed me money and the best ladies’ hat shop between San Francisco and St. Louey shot all to pieces. Some low-down snake’s gonna get himself in a heap of trouble if I don’t get some answers mighty fast. Now, who done it?”

  “Marshal . . .” That was all Dooley got to say, because one of the deputies on the lawman’s left—the one with the Sharps Big Fifty had been on Marshal Cavendish’s right—said:

  “Marshal, there’s some drunk sleeping in the alley next to Miss Starr’s place.”

  “Denver don’t tolerate no vagrants and no drunks sleeping in the streets or our alleys.” Marshal Cavendish stormed onto the boardwalk, followed now by his four deputies, and strode past the watering trough and into the darkness, his boots crunching on some of the shards of glass that once had displayed a finely painted star and the word’s STARR’S MILLINERY, and he stepped off the boardwalk, into the mud, and stared at the boots with the toes still pointing upward.

  “Jason,” Marshal Cavendish said.

  “Sir,” answered the one with the big buffalo gun.

  “Strike me a lucifer, son. It’s pitch-black here.”

  The deputy handed his buffalo rifle to another deputy, fished a sulfur-tipped stick from his shirt pocket, and struck it against the splintered corner of the millinery. The match blazed, and the deputy knelt beside the dead man.

  “This ain’t no drunk,” Marshal Cavendish said. “It’s Chucky Hart.”

  “How can you tell, Marshal?” asked the deputy holding his own Winchester carbine and Deputy Jason’s Sharps rifle. “After he done taken two loads of buckshot.”

  Dooley moved over to get a better look at the man who had almost sent him to the sweet hereafter. He wished he hadn’t. He seemed to recall seeing the man’s bib-front shirt explode from Horatio’s shotgun blast, but that must have been on account that Dooley had been looking at the gun the man held, aimed at Dooley Monahan, and not his face. Now there was not much of a face left. Dooley was thankful when Deputy Jason shook out the match before it burned his fingertips.

  “That’s his rifle.” Marshal Cavendish nodded at the weapon in the mud. “And those are his boots.” Because Deputy Jason had fired up another match, Dooley now saw the boots, black and up to the knees, and the aces of spades that had been inlaid into the uppers. He did not look at what was left of Chucky Hart’s face.

  “All right, Jason.” Marshal Cavendish turned away. “Go fetch Mort, the undertaker.” The big lawman spit again and stepped back onto the boardwalk. “I reckon I’ve figured it all out now. Chucky and Horatio got into a fight over cards. That’s ruined many a friendship and marriage.”

  “But,” Chester, the old jehu, said, “Chucky and Horatio didn’t even know one another. They wasn’t no friends.”

  “And they sure weren’t married,” said the saloon girl who no longer was on hands and knees in front of the doorway.

  A few men in the saloon laughed. Dooley didn’t find it funny. Nor did Marshal Cavendish.

  “So why in hell did y’all send me and my boys running yonder way?” His fat finger pointed across the street at the darkened alley and the corner of a vacant building that was splintered, but not in such dire straits as Starr’s Millinery.

  “Marshal?” Dooley said, and now the lawmen stared coldly at Dooley. So did the three deputies left as Jason had walked down the boardwalk to fetch the undertaker.

  “Who are you?” Cavendish asked.

  “Dooley Monahan,” Dooley said, and steeled himself for what he knew would be coming.

  Dooley Monahan! The famous bounty hunter? The gunfighter who killed Dev and Alf Baylor, and their brother Jason, and all their kinfolk and even some who weren’t kinfolk. That Dooley Monahan?

  Only, the lawman did not say that. He did not even open his mouth. He just glared.

  “What do you have to say, Dooley Monahan?”

  Dooley sighed.

  “I was playing poker,” he said. “When I stepped out, some fellow over there . . .” He pointed at the alley, and had to catch his breath. He felt himself shaking now that everything was over, now that the adrenaline had worn off. “Some man took a shot at me.” He picked up his hat and poked his fingers through the two holes. “I dived there.” He pointed at the water trough with new scars from bullets.

  “Un-huh,” the lawman grunted.

  “I got off a few rounds, and I’m pretty sure I winged the gunman in his left arm.” He considered that, and sighed. “Maybe his right.”

  “You can’t tell your right from your left, Dooley Monahan?” the marshal said without any humor.

  “Well.” Dooley tried to picture what he could remember, see the gunfight again, but he saw mostly darkness, a few muzzle flashes, and a dead stagecoach guard who had saved his life, and a man with fancy boots whose face had taken quite a few rounds of buckshot.

  “If he was left-handed, I’d say I winged him in his right hand,” Dooley said. “Around here.” He tapped his underarm between the wrist and elbow. “But if he shoots right-handed, I think I hit his left arm.”

  “Did you see him?”

  “Just his rifle. Too dark.”

  “Charley,” Marshal Cavendish said to the deputy holding his own Winchester and Jason’s Sharps. “Go back there and see if you spot any blood or maybe a left arm, or a right arm, or a Winchester, or anything that might tell me just why the hell some fools decided to shoot up Denver proper on a night when it’s twenty-two degrees and damp.”

  Deputy Charley handed his Winchester to one deputy and Jason’s Sharps to another and jogged across the muddy street.

  “So you’re shooting at this guy across the street,” Marshal Cavendish said. And waited.

  “Yes, sir. I got a few rounds off, and then I know I hit him because I heard him yell and drop the rifle. And I thought I had him, but then Blue . . . that’s my dog.” He stopped, looked around, and let out a sigh of relief when he found the dog back behind the water trough, waiting patiently.

  “Shepherd,” Marshal Cavendish said. “Good dog. Dog like that’d fetch six hundred dollars in Denver.” Dooley blinked. The merchant had not been exaggerating about the prices in Denver. “What’s a saddle tramp like y
ou doing with a good dog like that?”

  Dooley shrugged. “Lucky. Just lucky. Anyway, I was waiting for the man across the street to try for his rifle he had dropped when Blue started growling, and charged, and I turned around and saw that man.” He did not look in the direction of the late dead man with fancy boots and not much of a face anymore, but merely jutted his thumb in the general direction of what remained of Chucky Hart and Starr’s Millinery.

  “My Colt jammed. I threw it at him, but missed. It . . . um . . . well . . . it went through the millinery window.” He paused, but seeing no reaction, continued. “That’s when Horatio came from around the corner there. He shot that dead man with the boots.”

  “Chucky wasn’t dead then, was he?” the marshal said.

  Dooley studied Cavendish, thinking the man was joking, but then realizing it was a real question.

  “No,” Dooley said, shaking his head. “No, no, of course not.”

  “Sixty-five-dollar fine,” Cavendish said, “for shooting a corpse in this city.”

  Dooley couldn’t sink his teeth into that. He shook his head. “Well, Blue was charging, Horatio came out, and Hart, the man there, he tried to swing his rifle from me to Horatio, but Horatio shot first.”

  He seemed to see the whole thing happening again. Dooley leaned against the column, feeling the splintered post scratch his back.

  “So,” Marshal Cavendish said. “The old coot who owed me money up and killed the turkey trying to kill you, and then the turkey got off his last shot and killed the fellow that killed him. Is that what you’re telling me, sonny boy?”

  Dooley shook his head.

  “No, no, Hart didn’t kill Horatio.”

  “Then who, by thunder, done the dirty deed?”

  Dooley looked across the street and saw Deputy Charley jogging back through the mud until he stopped a few paces in front of Marshal Cavendish.

  “No rifle, Marshal,” the deputy reported, and took his Winchester from the hands of one of the remaining deputies but did not bother to relieve Jason’s Sharps from the other. “And the alley’s too muddy and it’s too dark to see if there’s any blood. But beyond the fence and the trash cans, I saw where two horses had been tethered. Some horse apples, right fresh, ground all churned up, and it stunk of horse pee. Found some boot prints. One horse was still there. The other was gone.”

  “You see all that, but no blood?” Cavendish asked.

  “Well, like I said . . .”

  “Don’t say it again, Charley.” Cavendish stared at Dooley again. “Go fetch the horse that was left. I figure it’ll be Chucky Hart’s, but my figuring ain’t been so good this night, so let’s make certain of things.” Deputy Charley handed his rifle to the deputy not holding another deputy’s rifle and, sighing, went back through the mud and slop to the alley again.

  “And look for blood this time, Charley!” Cavendish shouted.

  “Why don’t we come to my office.” The marshal was not asking a question. “Have some coffee. Warm our toes by my stove. And see if I can get my head wrapped around what happened here tonight. Ben, go into Miss Starr’s store and fetch this jasper’s pistol. And maybe one of them fancy hats. My wife, she’s partial to those pretty little things.”

  * * *

  Which is how Dooley spent the rest of the night. Marshal Cavendish turned out to be quite particular when investigating two killings in his city, because, he explained, Denver had plenty of newspapers and reporters asked plenty of questions. He took statements from all the witnesses and finally came to the conclusion that an unknown assailant had fired on Dooley Monahan, no permanent residence, with deliberate and willful intention to do bodily harm and perhaps even commit murder on said Monahan. Horatio Whitman, guard employed by the Leadville-Denver Transportation Company, then killed Chucky Hart, notorious scoundrel hanging his hat since September at the McAllister Wagon Yard on Broadway, who was attempting to kill the aforementioned Dooley Monahan, and leaden shot willfully fired from two barrels of a Parker ten-gauge shotgun duly dispatched the aforementioned Chucky Hart into Boot Hill by way of Mort’s Undertaking Parlor. Moments later, an unknown assailant fired a .44-40 caliber shot from a Winchester rifle or carbine and said .44-40 bullet penetrated the breast and heart of the aforementioned Horatio Whitman, killing the latter dead instantaneously. The assassin fled with the rifle used to dispatch the aforementioned Horatio Whitman and departed for parts unknown.

  “Sign there.” Marshal Cavendish tapped the paper and handed the pen to Dooley, who signed his name and leaned back in his chair.

  “And you got no idea who’d want to kill you?” the marshal asked as he sipped his coffee.

  “No, sir.”

  “Maybe,” Chester Motz, the stagecoach driver, said, “it wasn’t Dooley the cur wanted to gun down. Maybe he’d taken that shot at Dooley to lure Horatio out into the open. So he could shoot down Horatio, which he done, and get his mine.”

  “What mine?”

  “The one Dooley won offen him.”

  The marshal stared hard at Dooley, then at Chester, then at his four deputies, then at Mort the undertaker, and finally at Blue, who was gnawing on a steak bone.

  “You read too many dime novels,” Cavendish said. He slid his coffee cup across the desk, gathered the papers, stacked them into a neat pile, and laid them on top of the city directory.

  “I’m fining you, Dooley Monahan, three thousand dollars.”

  “What for?” Dooley sprang out of his chair so fast, Blue stopped devouring the bone.

  “Unlawful discharge of firearms in the city limits.” He shook his head. “We got a lot of fixing to do on Miss Starr’s store.” He stared at the hat he had procured for his wife.

  “But I didn’t start the fight. I’m a victim.”

  “All I know is I’ve got two corpses that didn’t have no money on them at all, and a store shot to hell that if it don’t get fixed and fixed up good might run off the best lady ever come to Denver for some hellhole like Cheyenne or Deadwood. You want that on your conscience, Dooley Monahan?”

  Dooley sat back in the chair. “I don’t think I have three thousand dollars,” he said.

  “What about that mine up in Leadville you won off the late Horatio Whitman?”

  Dooley glared. He found his poke and dropped it on the desk. Marshal Cavendish began counting, and adding on other fines he decided Dooley needed to pay. After all, two horses were now missing, scared off from the hitching rail in front of the Elkhorn Saloon, and there were other buildings, including the Elkhorn, that had been damaged.

  The marshal returned Dooley’s poke with thirty-two cents. Dooley shook his head.

  “Get out of town, Dooley Monahan,” Marshal Cavendish said. “We got us a city ordinance that doesn’t allow no vagrants here.”

  Dooley smiled. “I still have a mine.”

  “Yep. But I’ve seen plenty of mines in my day and plenty of broke miners.”

  Dooley was ready to leave Denver. He turned and saw Chester Motz staring at Dooley.

  “Old-timer, how do you get to Leadville again?” Dooley asked.

  “You ride the stagecoach with me,” the toothless jehu said.

  Dooley laughed. “I’m no messenger.”

  “You are now.” Dooley drew in a breath, slowly realizing that Chester Motz was not joking.

  “That’s another law we have in Denver, boy,” Marshal Cavendish said. “If you’re responsible for a man’s death, you got to fill his job for two or three days.”

  “But I didn’t kill Horatio,” Dooley said. “I . . .”

  And then it struck Dooley that, indeed, he was responsible for the stagecoach guard’s death. That he owed Horatio more than he could ever repay. The chair legs ground across the rough floor as Dooley slid away from the desk and rose.

  He shoved his not-so-heavy poke into his pocket.

  “Can I tie up my horse behind the stage?” Dooley asked.

  “Suits me,” Chester said. “I’ll only charge him half
fare.” He handed Dooley the Parker ten-gauge that had once belonged to Horatio Whitman.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  He woke up in the wagon yard, wondering how his luck had turned. One moment, he had a deed to a mine in Leadville and a small fortune in his poke. Now he was brushing hay off his bedroll and did not have enough money to buy a decent breakfast—not at Denver prices, anyway.

  On the other hand, Dooley thought as he rolled up his bedroll, he still had that deed to the mine the late Horatio Whitman—Dooley still found it hard to believe what had happened last night—had signed over to him. After getting most of the hay off his clothes, Dooley saddled General Grant, tied the bedroll behind the cantle, and washed his face in the water bucket outside the stall he had paid to sleep in.

  Once Dooley had slipped the bridle onto General Grant, he took the reins and led his horse into the early dawn.

  “Come on, Blue,” he called out. He saw his breath in what little light the clouds and slowly rising sun allowed. The merle-colored dog lifted its head, yawned, stretched, and slowly followed Dooley and the horse out of the wagon yard.

  Slowly, the city began to show life, and by the time Dooley had reached the Queen City Hotel, people began opening their stores, and the aromas of coffee and hotcakes and fried bacon and eggs made Dooley realize that he had not eaten in an eternity. Then he saw the stagecoach, and lost his appetite.

  “That’s not a Concord,” he told Chester Motz, who sat atop the wagon securing a trunk with some rope.

  The bald-headed, toothless old man in buckskins finished his knot and gave Dooley a quick glance. “And it ain’t no celerity wagon, neither.” The driver spit tobacco juice that splattered and steamed on the hard, cold ground. “You ain’t never seen no mud wagon before?”

  Dooley sighed. “I’ve seen them, but nothing like that.”

  Laughing, the old man backed his way back into the driver’s box and deftly climbed down, dropping from the cap of the front wheel and into the frozen street.

  “I call her For’,” the jehu said, and patted the side of the coach.

  “Four?” Dooley asked. “As in . . .”