“Could be they’re plannin’ to ambush us,” Jack warned.
“Naw. They only got one thing on their minds, an’ that’s to get their prisoners back to Missouri. Come on, we got us some ridin’ to do.”
Ned and the others rode on through the gray morning. The pouring rain turned to drizzle; then the drizzle stopped, and by noon the clouds rolled away. The sun beat down on them, and they had to strip out of their slickers because they were beginning to steam. By late afternoon their clothes were completely dry, and by nightfall, as they reached Murderer’s Rocks, the stars were shining brightly. It was a soft, clear night.
It was quiet. The first whippoorwill began its threnodic call; then the crickets vied with the bullfrogs for noisiness. A cock owl voiced a throaty hoot.
“Thet ain’t no owl,” observed Tom Beck.
“Nae.”
“Check your loads,” Ned said quietly.
In the dark, while they were riding, pistols and rifles were checked for loads.
“I’m ready, Marshal,” Beck said.
“Aye, me, too.”
“All right, I’ve got an idea,” Ned said.
“It ain’t gonna work,” Newsome scoffed.
“You better hope it works, Newsome,” Ned said. “’Cause if it don’t, you’re the one whose lamp goes out first.”
Ned had Beck and McKirk gag the prisoners. Then they switched horses with the prisoners. After that they got down and walked among them on foot, concealed by the animals. They came under the shadow of the rocks and it grew even darker.
It was quiet. Men and animals moved as softly as drifting smoke.
“That’s them,” Jack hissed. He and the others were in position on Murderer’s Rocks, lying with their weapons pointed in the direction from which the marshals would have to come. They had ridden their animals hard, no longer attempting to track but just counting on their feeling that they were going to the right place. Now it appeared that their hunch was right.
“Hold your fire till they get a little closer,” Athens warned.
“Don’t nobody shoot Remington,” Jack hissed.
“He’s mine. I owe him. I reckon after tonight there won’t be no more question ’bout him backin’ me down.”
“Not exactly like callin’ him out, though, is it, Jack?” Brewster said.
“After this is over, I’m callin’ you out,” Jack said.
“If you two don’t shut up, this ain’t gonna get over,” Athens warned. He stared down at the shadows. “Maybe we better call down there...see if Bill and the others are all right. Could be some kinda trick.”
“What kinda trick?”
“How the hell do I know? I just know I don’t trust those bastards, that’s all.”
“I’ll find out,” Jack said. He cupped his hand around his mouth. “Bill? Bill, it’s me, Jack! We’re comin’ to get you, Bill!..Jake? Jake, are you there? Can you hear us?”
“You got ’em marked?” Ned asked.
“Aye, laddie. I’m ready.”
“Me, too,” Beck said.
“You better be, ’cause I got a feeling this ball’s about to open,” Ned said.
Chapter 15
“Hell, I don’t see but four men,” Jack said. “They’s s’posed to be seven. Where are the others?”
“Ride in on ’em!” Athens shouted.
Ned, Tom, and John Angus pulled up their horses, dropped to their knees, and fired. A bushwhacker dropped from the saddle and skidded across hard ground. All hell broke loose as flashes of orange light exploded like fireballs on the rocks.
“It’s Remington!” Athens shouted. “They’re behind the horses!”
Athens’s men scattered, frightened and surprised by the marshals’ sudden and unexpected appearance. They tried to return fire, but in the darkness and confusion their aim was ragged. Flying lead whistled through the air, whined off stone, rattled on leaves like hail.
McKirk picked out a rider and with one shot tumbled him from his saddle.
“What the hell? Where are they?” Jack shouted in anger and frustration.
“Ever’body get under cover behind the rocks!” Athens called, pointing toward the boulders they had just come from. The bushwhackers started back, but Ned laid his sights on one and fired. Now there were only two bushwhackers on their feet.
“Son of a bitch! Let’s get outta here!” Athens shouted.
“No! I ain’t goin’! Remington! Remington, I’m goin’ to kill you, you son of a bitch!” Jack shouted. He started walking toward the little group of horses and men, firing his pistol with every step. “Come outta there, you bastard!”
“Here I am, Jack,” Ned said calmly, stepping out into the open.
Jack fired at Ned, but he was almost insane with rage and frustration, and his bullet hit the ground between Ned’s feet, then whined out over the valley behind him. Ned returned fire, and Jack crumpled with a bullet in his chest.
Athens tried to use the moment when Ned was busy with Jack to get in his own shot. Beck saw him and brought him down at about the same time Jack was hit. The entire episode took less than a minute, and now five men lay on the ground. Jack and Athens were dead; Curly, Poke, and Brewster were groaning in pain.
It was early morning, though the sun was full up and the town was washed in a clean, white light, when Ned and his deputies brought the prisoners in to Galena. As they rode through the street they saw the early risers. There were housewives in their backyards doing the wash, shopkeepers sweeping off their porches, and the blacksmith firing up his forge.
Ned found something reassuring about the town’s morning activity, as though it were a promise that the world didn’t consist entirely of such creatures as the men they had taken prisoner.
They stopped in front of the courthouse, and Jim Early came down to meet them.
“Have any trouble?” he asked.
“No,” Ned answered easily. He ran his hand through his hair, across his chin. “It’ll be good to get a bath, shave, haircut, hot breakfast, and about twelve hours of sleep, though.”
Jim laughed. “You look like you could use all of it,” he said. He looked at the prisoners, sullen and morose. “So, this is the scum you brought back?”
“This is it,” Ned said. “Where’s the judge?”
“Up in his office,” Jim said. “I’ll tell him you’re here.
“I want you to look out this window, Jedediah,” Judge Barnstall was saying. “Tell me if you see anyone you recognize.”
Jedediah looked through the window and smiled broadly. “Why, there’s Marshal Remington,” he said. “When did he get back? I thought—” The boy stopped in midsentence and the smile left his face. “Cousin,” he said, pointing with a small but unshaking finger. “That’s them. That’s the men who did the bad things to Ma and Pa and my sister.”
“Are you sure, Jedediah?” Barnstall asked. “I think that’s just some trackers Marshal Remington signed on.”
“No, you have to tell him, Cousin Sam,” Jedediah insisted. “You have to tell him not to sign those men on. Those are bad men. They are the ones who came to our house.”
“You’re sure enough about it to say so in court?” Barnstall asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, boy, this is very important. If you identify these men as the ones who killed your family, I’m going to hang them. So be very sure about what you’re saying.”
“I’m sure,” the boy said. “They’re the ones.”
Jim Early came into the office at that moment. “They’re here, Judge,” he said.
“Yes, I saw them,” Barnstall replied. “What’s more important, the boy saw them. He’ll be testifying in court.”
“When will that be?”
“I see no need to waste time,” Barnstall said. “About ten this morning, I reckon.”
“You want to come down and take a look up close?”
“No,” Barnstall said. “I’ll save all my thunder for the courtroom. Just lock them up ti
ght, make certain there’s no way they can get away.”
“I’ll do it,” Jim said, starting back down the stairs.
“Oh, Jim?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Tell Ned and the boys I said they did a good job. A damn good job.”
Jim smiled. “Glad to.” He trooped back down the stairs to where Ned and others waited.
“What’s the judge’s pleasure?” Ned asked.
“He’ll arraign them later this morning,” Jim said. “Ten o’clock.”
Ned ran his hand across his chin. “I reckon I can get my cleanin’ up done by then. I’ll put off the sleep ’til after it’s over.”
“What about us?” Gerner asked. “We’ns is jus’ as tired as you. We’d like to get a little sleep too.”
Early laughed. “I reckon you fellas will be gettin’ all the sleep you need soon. In fact, I don’t reckon you’ll ever wake up, except in hell.”
An hour and a half later, Ned stood at the convent gate. He was much more presentable now than he had been when he rode into town earlier this morning. He had cleaned up, though he passed up breakfast in order to come out here. Beck and McKirk were eating a huge breakfast, compliments of Barnstall’s court.
The nun who opened the gate recognized Ned and smiled sweetly. He was such a frequent visitor that they allowed him free run of the convent. As soon as she opened the door for him, she melted back into the shadows of the grounds to join the other sisters in their morning rituals.
Ned walked across the courtyard to his daughter’s room. He pushed the door open quietly, then slipped inside. Katy was sitting in a chair, looking through the window. Her attention was so drawn to something outside that she didn’t even look around. He peered over her shoulder and saw that she was watching a pair of cardinals, a bright red male and a pinkish-orange female, cavorting about on a flowering dogwood tree.
“That’s real pretty, darlin’,” he said.
Ned sat down and watched her for a few moments longer. He saw the joy in her eyes as she looked at the birds, and he thought of McKirk’s comment about Katy having “a peace that surpasseth all understanding.”
“Darlin’, I know you won’t know what I’m sayin’,” he began. “But I just brought in four men to Judge Barnstall. Four men to stand trial for a crime like that done against you and your ma. I know it isn’t the same four men, but, somehow, I feel the scales of justice are a little more in balance today.” One of the birds flew up to the windowsill, sat there for a moment, then flew back to the tree. Katy continued to watch with rapt attention.
“Nothin’ will ever bring back your ma, and nothin’ will ever ease the pain that’s still burnin’ down in my heart,” Ned said. “But ever’ time I’m able to right a wrong, I’m able to stand the pain just a little better. I just wish you had somethin’...some way to help you through this awful time.”
“Love,” Katy said quietly.
“What?” Ned gasped, unable to believe what he heard. “Darlin’...did you...did you say somethin’?” It was almost too much for him to hope for.
Katy continued to look out the window as if nothing had happened. Ned stared at her in silence. Maybe he hadn’t really heard it. Maybe it was just something he wanted so much that he thought he had heard it.
“Yes,” he finally said. He cleared his throat. “Well, darlin’, I have to go now. The judge wants to arraign the prisoners at ten o’clock. That’s about half an hour from now.” He started toward the door, then looked back toward the window at his daughter. She turned to him, and he looked into her eyes. For the first time since he had brought her here, he thought he could see something...a light, a question, something other than the flat, dull, unexpressive eyes he had looked into every time he came.
“Love…you,” she said, speaking the words with great effort.
“Oh, my God,” Ned barked. He ran to her and put his arms around her, sobbing as he held her tightly in his embrace.
Ned returned to the courthouse at about five minutes before ten. Beck and McKirk were just outside, standing in front of the scaffold. They looked up when Ned came over.
“Did ye see the lassie?” McKirk asked.
“Yes,” Ned answered.
“How was she?”
“Fine,” Ned replied. He couldn’t share what had happened with anyone yet. He hadn’t even told Mother Superior. This was something he would hold in his heart for a while longer before he started trying to find out what it meant.
“Here they come,” Beck said, noting the prisoners who were being moved from the holding cell to the courtroom. A man mounted the scaffold and began rigging the sandweight to the rope. The four prisoners looked up at him, and then at Ned and his two deputies.
“You reckon we might make a deal with that judge?” asked Kimmons.
“What do you think?” Ned replied.
The four outlaws looked up and saw Barnstall then. His face was a mask, his eyes narrowed to slits.
“He looks like a buzzard,” observed Flatt.
“Or a hawk,” said Newsome.
“Well, it ain’t over yet,” Gerner bragged.
McKirk cocked his pistol, put it next to Gerner’s temple.
“Step lively, laddies,” he burred. “Ye must nae keep a body waitin’.”
The trapdoor sprang and the sandbag smashed to the ground.
Four men jumped involuntarily as they headed toward the courtroom.
Epilogue
Barnstall watched the lamplight flicker on the windowpanes of his office. He sipped the brandy, swirled the amber liquid around in the graceful snifter, sighed deeply. It had been a long, weary day, but he was satisfied. Justice had been served once again.
The rap on his door came as no surprise.
“Come on in, Ned,” he said, his voice bereft of its timbre now that he was not sitting in judgment on his bench.
Ned Remington strode through the door. For a moment his tall frame blocked out the light from the lamp and Judge Barnstall sat at his cherrywood desk in shadow.
“Judge,” he said.
“Have some brandy, Ned.”
“I’ll have a cigar. The brandy might come back up.”
“You did well today. Switcher will swing.”
“I don’t feel much about it.”
“I know,” said Barnstall, pushing back in his chair. This was his haven after he left the court. This was where he got all his thoughts back in alignment. This was when he could taste his work, assess it from a comfortable distance. “He wasn’t the one, either.”
Remington knew what the judge meant. Every time he brought a man in, there was an emptiness in him. There would be until he found the man who had murdered his wife and brought him to the bar of justice. That hollow feeling that wouldn’t go away.
“Switcher is bad enough,” said Remington, taking a cigar from the judge’s humidor. He twirled it in his fingers, sniffed its musky tobacco aroma. He smelled Havana’s fields, its warehouses, the fingers of a woman who had rolled the cigar at a long table while a man read stories from a book. He smelled the St. Louis docks, the tang of the air on the banks of the Mississippi, and he smelled the scent of cedar wood and dried apples. “He’s scared enough after seeing those other boys walk to the gallows.”
“You did a good job there, too, Ned.”
“How’s little Jedediah?”
“He’s not little anymore. Not inside. I think he handled it well. Things have to come full circle.”
“What’s that?” Ned struck a sulphur match, bit off the tip of the cigar. He lit the tobacco, drew air through the flame.
“He saw justice in action. He saw the men who broke up his life go to perdition. He saw them perpetrate their vile deeds, and he saw them pay for their crimes.”
Remington strangled on the smoke, laughed dryly. “Hell, maybe he’ll grow up to be a lawyer,” he said.
“Maybe. It’s an honorable profession.” Barnstall rocked back in his chair, masked his face in chiaroscuro. “So
is yours.”
“I never thought of it that way.”
“Why do you do it, Ned? Why do you risk your life to bring in men who should be shot in their tracks for what they do?”
“The pay is good,” he said wryly.
Judge Barnstall laughed. Then he leaned forward, picked up his snifter, drank the rest of the brandy. His eyes remained steady, unwatered.
“I’ll draw up warrants in the morning,” he said. “You take Early, two others, go back to Tahlequah.”
“Tahlequah?”
“I want you to close down that saloon, bring those men in to my court.”
“Might take an army to bring those boys in, Judge.”
“That’s why I’m sending you and Jim.”
“All right.”
“Burn it down. Burn that goddamned saloon to the ground, Ned. You hear?”
“I hear you.”
But first, he would watch Leroy Switcher go to his Maker on the end of a rope. And he would think about Katy and the man who had ruined her, who was still out there somewhere, living on time borrowed, time that would be called in someday and paid back for an eternity when the trapdoor fell and the rope stretched taut, broke his neck six inches above the ground.
The two men sat there for a long time in silence, each within the shroud of his own thoughts.
They didn’t need words to express their respect for one another.
The silence said it all.
THE END
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Robert Vaughan
About the Author
Robert Vaughan sold his first book when he was 19. That was 57 years and nearly 500 books ago. He wrote the novelization for the miniseries Andersonville. Vaughan wrote, produced, and appeared in the History Channel documentary Vietnam Homecoming. His books have hit the NYT bestseller list seven times. He has won the Spur Award, the PORGIE Award (Best Paperback Original), the Western Fictioneers Lifetime Achievement Award, received the Readwest President’s Award for Excellence in Western Fiction, is a member of the American Writers Hall of Fame and is a Pulitzer Prize nominee. Vaughn is also a retired army officer, helicopter pilot with three tours in Vietnam. And received the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Purple Heart, The Bronze Star with three oak leaf clusters, the Air Medal for valor with 35 oak leaf clusters, the Army Commendation Medal, the Meritorious Service Medal, and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry.
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