“All rise!”
There was a scrape of chairs, a rustle of pants, petticoats, and skirts, as the spectators in the courtroom stood. A spittoon rang as one male member of the gallery made a last-second, accurate expectoration of his tobacco quid.
Ned Remington, a tall, strapping man with wide shoulders and a stubble-blue chin, stepped through a door behind the railing and surveyed the gallery. His eyes were gray as iron. He was wearing a converted Remington forty-four low on his hip, easy to reach with his long, lean arms. When he moved, he walked on the balls of his feet like a stalking cougar, or a prizefighter. A United States marshal’s star glistened from his lapel. His eyes touched every face in the gallery, burned into every soul, making even the innocent squirm. When he was satisfied that conditions were right, he nodded at the court clerk, and the clerk intoned his call.
“Oyez, oyez, oyez. The Western District Circuit Court of the United States, Stone County, Missouri District, is now in session, the Honorable Judge Samuel Parkhurst Barnstall presiding.”
The gallery was limited to fifty spectators, and tickets for attendance were as prized as tickets to a championship fight or a road show. Everyone knew that Judge Binder had run a crooked court. Now they were anxious to see what the new judge would do. There were some who expressed the belief that the only change would be new hands to take the bribe money. There were others, though, who had seen Judge Barnstall up close, who had measured the set of his jaw, the glint of his eye. They insisted there was a new day coming and they wanted to be around to watch him handle his first case.
Judge Barnstall stepped through the same door Remington had come through. Though the judge wasn’t as tall as Ned Remington, he was a robust man, with a square face and piercing blue eyes, so his presence was immediately felt. He moved quickly to the bench, then sat down.
“Be seated.”
The gallery sat, then watched with interest as the prisoner was brought into the room for the trial.
The case for the prosecution was quick and simple. An Indian girl named Sister Blue Dress had been tending a store in Tahlequah. Two witnesses saw Amos Mordecai Cullimore come into the store and reach behind the counter for the moneybox. When Sister Blue Dress tried to pull the moneybox away from him, Cullimore shot her. She was killed with a .36-caliber bullet. Cullimore was carrying a .36-caliber Navy Colt when he was arrested.
Silas Lovelady, Cullimore’s lawyer, called Lou Woods and Bill Sisley to testify for the defense. They both claimed that Cullimore had been with them on the day of the murder. Immediately after their testimony, Woods and Sisley were remanded into custody for murder charges not connected with the case at hand.
In his instructions to the jury Judge Barnstall said that Woods and Sisley were unreliable witnesses, whereas the two witnesses for the prosecution, a man and his daughter who had been in the store at the time, were known citizens of good character. The jury found Cullimore guilty.
After Cullimore’s trial, Woods and Sisley were tried and convicted in short order, despite the efforts of a court-appointed attorney named Gideon Ford. Cullimore’s attorney, as amicus curiae, objected to the scheduling of the trial so quickly after Cullimore’s, but Barnstall reminded him that “all prisoners are afforded a speedy trial.”
Woods and Sisley were convicted by the same jury that had convicted Cullimore. Less than an hour after Judge Barnstall entered the courtroom, three men stood convicted for capital crimes. Reporters from Springfield, St. Joe, St. Louis, and Fort Smith were present in the courtroom and they sensed that something exceptional was about to happen. They had already commented on the swiftest justice they’d ever seen, and now they realized they might be writing history as a new era began.
“Bailiff, would you position the prisoners before the bench for sentencing, please?” Judge Barnstall said.
“Yes, Your Honor.”
The three men were brought before the bench. Two of them stood with their heads bowed contritely. Cullimore stared defiantly at the judge while he passed sentence on Woods and Sisley, telling them both that they would die the next morning. Now it was Cullimore’s time, and the judge turned toward him.
“Get it over with, Judge, I ain’t got all day,” Cullimore said. He giggled at his own joke.
“Amos Mordecai Cullimore,” Judge Barnstall intoned, “in the morning, the sun will rise over these gentle Ozark hills and dispel the soft mist that has lain in these deep hollows all during the starry night. The air will become clean and fresh as the world awakens. The sun will turn the chill earth warm toward noon, but you won’t be sitting down to lunch.
“The fish will jump in the ponds, race up the silver streams after nymphs, and frogs will croak on the banks. The dew will burn off the grasses and the morning glories will open their petals to the afternoon sun, but you won’t be able to see any of this.
“The birds will sing from the treetops and the squirrels will scamper in the oaks and among the forest grasses. The honeybees will drink the sweet nectar of flowers and the hummingbirds sip the honeysuckle blossoms, but you will not be here to enjoy any of these things, Amos Mordecai Cullimore, because I hereby order the U.S. marshal to lead you to the gallows at ten of the clock tomorrow morning. There, the hangman will put a knotted noose around your neck and then pull the trapdoor lever, thereby dropping your filthy, raping, murdering, stealing carcass ten feet, where you will either break your neck or swing in the breeze. You will hang there as the townsfolk look at your miserable corpse, and then your worthless body will be cut down, placed in a crude pine box, and buried six feet underground in a potter’s field where the worms and maggots can have free rein over what is left of your mortal body, you son of a bitch.”
Chapter 2
The holding cell where the three condemned men were being detained was separated from the main jail. It was out in the side courtyard less than fifty feet from the gallows itself. No one was ever confined in the holding cells until the last few hours before execution. There, the condemned prisoners would be able to look through the barred windows and watch the crowd gather and the excitement grow as the time for their execution approached.
Lou Woods rolled his third quirly of the morning as Bill Sisley paced the eight feet of cell back and forth, dragging his irons, never looking at anything, just staring straight ahead as if the wall might melt away on his next turn and he could walk right through. Amos Cullimore lay on his back on the bunk, an arm thrown across his eyes. Outside, the sound of the pulley straining with the sand weight floated across the town square through the tiny barred window ten feet above where Woods squatted in the corner.
Sisley jumped and let out a little cry of alarm. Cullimore laughed, a dry, bitter laugh that could have come from hell.
“Don’t you fret none, Bill, my boy! They’re just greasin’ the door to hell for you.”
“Goddammit, Amos, you damned sure got us in a fix. I thought we killed that Injun boy what testified against us.”
Sisley stopped pacing as if he had been jerked up short on the end of an invisible rope.
“Yeah,” he growled, “we was supposed to be your alibi, not join you on the gallows.”
Cullimore didn’t move.
“You boys sit tight,” he said. “You tell Nickerson to come like I said?”
“Yair, but we was goin’ to help him after we done out witnessin’,” said Lou.
“Tell him to bring horses, guns, and them two sour faced cousins of his?”
“Yeah,” drawled Sisley, “but they neither one got a brain between ’em. Logue Nickerson ain’t much better.”
Logan Nickerson was married to Cullimore’s sister. His cousins, Elmo and Daryl Beale, were halfwits, but they did what Logue told them to do and they didn’t care what it was. Lou Woods was a short, nervous man with shifty feral eyes, who, like Bill Sisley, did what Amos Cullimore told him to do. They were hollow men, left over after the war, who had fought on both sides, deserted both, and now roamed the lawless territories like scavenger
s, picking up what they could, taking what they wanted. To their surprise, they had been arrested when they entered Barnstall’s courtroom, given a trial right along with Cullimore, and sentenced to hang this very morning.
“Logue knows what to do.”
“Sounds like you didn’t trust us much,” said Sisley.
“Always good to have some insurance,” Cullimore said. “Guess this here just proves my point.”
“Shit,” said Woods. “What’s Logue going to do for me?”
“You wait,” said Amos cryptically.
“Hell, I been waiting long enough,” said Lou. They all heard the trapdoor spring and the rope sing on the pulley before the sandbag hit the ground with a violent thud.
Lou threw his cigarette on the dirt floor of the cell and ground it to powder under his boot heel.
Ned Remington finished stalking the circumference of the town square and checked the deputies Sheriff Pat Cooper had placed in strategic places. Something was not quite right, but he couldn’t put a finger to it. There were a lot of strange faces in town, some here on the square. The gallows stood in the center, its grisly shadow stretching under a rising sun. It was not quite nine o’clock, and yet the crowd was already thick, jostling for position. Barnstall had ordered the hanging to commence at ten sharp “so the people can get back to their business, talk about it over lunch. I’ll recess at that time myself.” Remington carried the ’73 Winchester, his pistol loose in its holster. Several hundred people were gathered around the gallows now. There were men in suits, shirt sleeves, and overalls, women in long dresses and bonnets, children threading in and out of the groups as they chased one another around the square. A few enterprising vendors passed through the crowd selling lemonade, beer, pretzels, popcorn, and sweet rolls. In one corner of the yard a black-frocked preacher stood on an overturned box, taking advantage of the situation to deliver a fiery sermon. The man was of average height and build, with a full head of thick black hair. Standing on the box, he jabbed his finger repeatedly toward the gallows as he harangued the crowd.
“In a few moments three creatures are going to be hurtled to eternity; sent to meet their Maker with blood on their hands and sin in their hearts.”
He waggled his finger at the crowd. “And hear this now! Them three sinners is gonna be cast into hell, because not one of them, not a solitary one of them, has repented of their sins.
“It’s too late for them, brothers ’n sisters. They’s all doomed to the fiery furnaces of hell, doomed to writhe in agony forever!”
Some of those who were close enough to hear the preacher shivered involuntarily at his powerful imagery and looked toward the gallows. One or two of them touched their necks fearfully, and a few souls, perhaps weak on willpower, sneaked a drink from a bottle.
“It’s too late for them, but it’s not too late for you! Repent! Repent now, I say, for the wages of sin is death and eternal damnation!”
The preacher’s voice carried well and was certainly heard by the three men in the holding cell. At the window of the cell a face would sometimes appear, look nervously though the bars at the crowd, then withdraw to the gloomy shadows within. A couple of young boys approached the cell and tried to peer in through the window, but a woman called out to them and they returned to the crowd.
On the second floor of the courtroom, Judge Barnstall stood at the window of his chambers and looked down on the proceedings. He beckoned for the marshal to come up, and Ned touched a finger to the flat brim of his hat.
Logan Nickerson watched the tall marshal cross the square and enter the court building. He looked at the Beale brothers, who had the Springfield wagon backed up to the dry-goods store, around the corner. Under the cloth that was spread over the bed, there were five rifles, three scatterguns, and six pistols, all loaded. They wore no arms in sight. The dark-haired man looked like just another farmer in coveralls, a peaked hat on his head, a piece of straw between his teeth. His face was pockmarked, pinched around a pair of small, deep-sunk eyes. He had tagged every deputy’s position, had it all planned out. In the alley behind the store, six horses stood hipshot in the shade, saddled and ready to ride.
Remington knocked on the door of Barnstall's office. A voice told him to come in.
“Anything unusual?” the judge asked as Remington stepped inside.
“No, should there be?”
“Cullimore doesn’t want to hang, I think he’s got help. He did this once before. He wasn’t sentenced to hang, but he promised to give himself up to a sheriff over in Monett. Came in unarmed, as agreed. Sheriff had two deputies with him. One of them got away alive.”
“What happened?”
“Cullimore had some friends who waited for them in town, shot the sheriff down, brought Cullimore a horse. No one tried to stop them.”
“Know who they were? His friends?”
Barnstall shook his head.
“So what now, Sam? Cooper’s got deputies all over. We’ve got Dan Norling, the Swede, up on the courthouse roof, and Kurt Hammer is standing in the shade of the gallows.”
“Good, but I’ve got an idea. Bring them into the jail. I think they’re about the right size.”
“What?”
Barnstall arose from behind his cherry wood desk. “I’ll meet you at the jail, tell you the rest of it there.”
At the jail, Sisley and Woods were called out, told to strip down to their underwear. Hammer and Norling dressed in their clothes. Cullimore was kept in the dark. At nine forty-five, the men started the walk to the gallows, with Cullimore following behind the two disguised deputies. Remington was in the lead. Norling and Hammer kept their leads low, and the flanking deputies pretty much concealed them from Cullimore’s scrutiny.
Just as they reached the scaffold, Nickerson and the Beale brothers made their move. They took shotguns from the wagon and shot down the sheriff’s deputies. People screamed and ran for cover. There was a lot of smoke and confusion. After the scatter guns were empty, the three men turned their rifles onto the crowd and began firing.
Remington shoved Cullimore under the scaffold. Norling and Hammer broke away, enclosing the Nickerson bunch in a pincer movement. As the three men ran toward the gallows, the two marshals cut them down. Cullimore struggled to break free, but Remington rammed his .44 New Model Army pistol barrel halfway down his throat, cocking the hammer. He didn’t need to say a word.
Five minutes later, with Woods and Sisley rejoining Cullimore, the three men were led to the gallows. Their legs were no longer hobbled, but their hands were handcuffed behind their backs. Lou Woods, who had been smoking, spit out his quirly just as they reached the foot of the stairs with its thirteen steps.
Bill Sisley was leading the group, and he hesitated at the first step.
“Lou?” he said in a small, frightened voice.
“Go on up there,” Lou replied. “You done your killin’ like a man—take your punishment like one.”
“It just don’t seem right. We was supposed to help Cullimore, not get hung with him.”
The three men stepped onto the scaffold; then the hangman positioned them under the nooses that dangled from the crossbeam. From there the condemned prisoners had a good view of the crowd.
Bill couldn’t look into the faces of the spectators, and he closed his eyes. He trembled as he stood there. Lou and Cullimore stared ahead blankly, as if looking at something far beyond the crowd.
The preacher came up the steps then and approached each man.
“Do you want to repent?” he asked each in turn.
Lou and Cullimore made no answer at all. Bill tried to speak, but no words would come. Finally he nodded, and the preacher put his hand on Bill’s shoulder and said a few quiet words that only he could hear. Finally the preacher stopped praying and stepped to one side.
“Any last words, gentlemen?” the hangman asked.
Cullimore was the only one of the three to speak.
“You ladies out there,” he said, “I hope you enjoy t
his. I’ve always been one that tried to give the ladies their pleasure.”
There was a gasp of indignation from the crowd, and the hangman stepped up quickly.
“All right, you’ve had your say. It’s time.” He put a black hood over Cullimore’s head, then fit his noose. The hangman placed the hood and noose on each of the others in turn.
Bill was shaking visibly.
“When the trap opens, don’t hunch up your shoulders,” the hangman said. “Just relax and you’ll die quick. It’s better that way.”
“I’ll...I’ll try,” Bill mumbled through the hood.
“Get on with it,” Cullimore rasped through his hood. “Tell Barnstall I’ll be waitin’ in hell for him.”
When the hangman had them all ready, he stepped over to the handle that would open the trapdoor. He glanced up toward the window where Judge Barnstall stood looking down. Barnstall nodded his head, and the hangman pulled the handle.
The long trapdoor swung down on its hinges and the three bodies dropped about ten feet. There was a gasp from the crowd as the bodies fell.
Lou and Bill died instantly. They hit the end of their drop, then just swung and twirled. But Cullimore was still alive, and for almost four minutes he kept drawing his body up as if in that way he could relieve the weight on his neck. His stomach heaved, and those nearest the scaffold could hear rasping sounds from his throat. Finally his body, like the others, was still.
In the stores and around the supper tables of Galena that night, people spoke of the swift justice that had been dispensed by Judge Barnstall’s court. The saloon crawlers who moved from the bright lights of one saloon through the shadows of the dark streets and into the bright lights of another saloon took the stories and the gossip with them, so that the entire main street became a buzz of excitement. The town loafers, sitting on benches in front of the hotel or on the edges of the boardwalks near the corner lamps, whittled and speculated about the changes the new judge had already brought about. Everyone agreed that the triple hanging they had witnessed that day was more excitement than Galena had ever known.
Good Day For A Hangin' (Remington Book 2) Page 2
