by Lauran Paine
The others moved away obediently, leaving Duncan and Berryhill looking across the little fire at each other. “Parton,” said the lawman softly, “bad enough to be a stranger hereabouts, but if you think you can lie your way out of hanging in Leesville, you’re dead wrong.”
“Sheriff, if you’re so certain I’m Parton, why don’t you let ’em do it now. They want to, especially that youngest one.”
“Because there’s a right way and a wrong way.”
Duncan smiled frostily. “Not to a dying man there isn’t. If we ride back to your town, that’s only stretching it out a little. If there’s a trial, that only prolongs it some more.”
“You talk like a man that wants to die, Parton. I don’t have anything on you yet, but I will have in another day or two. Maybe one of those that’s got a conscience that won’t let him rest.”
“My conscience,” said Duncan, “doesn’t bother me in the least, Sheriff, but I’ll promise you this ... if you hang me, yours sure will, for as long as you live.”
Berryhill stood up. “I’ll say one thing for you, Parton, you’re as convincing a liar as I’ve ever run across.”
“And you, Sheriff, are as big a fool as I’ve ever met up with, if you don’t make damned sure who I am before you yank the slack out of that rope.”
Berryhill looked wry. “Sure,” he said very dryly. “Sure, Parton, only you’re forgetting something. We’ve got that old devil who claims he’s your pa in jail. Oh, he did a bang-up job at preaching the gospel, Parton. Getting everyone from town out there at the riverbank while he roared and banged his table ... but he didn’t move fast enough. When young Tom Black recognized Swindin and shot him, breaking up the express office robbery, half a dozen other people saw you, too. From the back, sure, as you two were racing out of town, but they saw you nevertheless, and like I said, Parton, circumstantial evidence has hung its share of killers in this country.”
Duncan stood there staring. Now, that sinking sensation behind his belt was very solid and very real. That scar-faced sheriff meant it. He meant to see Duncan hang. He was marshaling the facts in his mind that would indubitably tie Duncan to the killing of someone named Charley Dudley. He was remembering everything Duncan said and everything here at the cottonwood spring that would look damning to a jury.
The graying, big burly man walked up, his face slack-looking and solemn. “Matt, we got Swindin loaded and the others are waiting. You ready?”
“Sure, Jack, I’m ready. So is Mister Parton here, aren’t you, Mister Parton?”
Duncan said: “No, and if I lived to be a thousand, I doubt if I’d ever be ready for hanging, but I don’t have much choice, do I?”
“None,” said the burly man. “Not at all, Parton.”
They left the cottonwood spring with night down all around them. They rode for an hour with very little talk passed back and forth. Softly bumping along behind the graying, burly man, came the dead outlaw named Swindin. Duncan, considering the hard-eyed men around him, had an illusion that all this was a dream, the kind of a nightmare a man might have after eating half-cooked meat or drinking some of that fiery aguardiente they served down in Mexico.
It was too well acted out. Too perfectly planned and executed. Thinking back, he could see how everything he’d done since coming down out of the northward hills had worked toward this situation he was now in. He had avoided that town he’d seen. He’d deliberately done that, and yet with no valid reason really, except that he didn’t want to waste more time on the trail. But if he’d gone on into that town—he wouldn’t be where he now was. And how to explain to these men why he’d avoided their town? They wouldn’t believe him.
Later, at the spring, the two cups, two plates. Even the way he was leaning over the dead outlaw, as though to help him, when those posse men stole upon him in the dark.
The letters might help. Sheriff Berryhill had them. But the trouble was Cliff Bowman, the man who’d written them, was a drifter like Todd Duncan was. If Berryhill tried to get in touch with him, the odds were better than even that Cliff wouldn’t even still be in Wyoming.
But this preacher ... There was Duncan’s best hope. He could identify Duncan as not being his son, if indeed the other member of this outlaw gang was this man’s son at all.
“Smoke?”
Duncan looked around. Berryhill was offering the makings. Duncan shook his head. “Not in the mood now,” he said. “Tell me something, Sheriff, are you plumb certain I’m the other outlaw of that trio?”
Berryhill looped his reins, built his smoke, and lit up before he replied. “One of the hardest parts of my job ... of any lawman’s job, I expect ... is bein’ neutral, Parton. You see, no sheriff or deputy or marshal is ever supposed to do anything but make arrests ... dead or alive. He’s not supposed to take sides nor pass any judgments. But like I said, this is the hardest part. Sure I think you’re the other one ... what am I likely to think? There you were, rendezvousing with Swindin, plain as day.”
“Could it be possible, Sheriff, that my name really is Todd Duncan, and I’m just passing through your bailiwick on my way south to New Mexico, looking for work?”
“Sure it’s possible, Parton. It’s also possible your pa really is a preacher. One thing I’ll say for the old devil, he sure knows his Good Book. What isn’t possible is that Charley Dudley will come back. What else isn’t possible is that, if you were this Duncan fellow you stole those letters from, and were just passing through, that you’d not ride on into Leesville, because, you see, northward from here there’s not a damned town for a long week of riding ... now you tell me this mythical Duncan or any other cowboy this side of heaven for that matter ... after not being in a town for eight or nine days ... would avoid one.”
Duncan wagged his head back and forth saying nothing back to Sheriff Berryhill. It was uncanny, how this thing had wrapped him up, tossed him down, and left him there to be six-gun-branded, marked with the indelible brand of the outlaw.
He had friends. A man didn’t work the ranges from Montana to Mexico and not make friends. Some of them, like Cliff Bowman for instance, would ride the full distance down to Arizona to help him out of this mess, too. All he’d need to be cleared, he told himself, was some sworn identification. He turned to Berryhill again.
“Tell me, Sheriff, how long before this trial you talked of begins?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
Duncan’s eyes slowly widened. Berryhill saw this and shrugged. “What’s the point in delaying things, Parton? The feeling in town is pretty high. If I tried to postpone things, I just damned well might have a lynch mob to face and I sure don’t want that, not in Leesville where I know everyone.”
“Oh,” said Duncan, “sure not, Sheriff. Hell, a man wouldn’t want to jeopardize a few friendships over a little thing like maybe hanging the wrong man.”
Berryhill blew out a gray cloud and watched it disintegrate in the overhead gloom. “You stick to that story,” he said. “Maybe Jack Thorne didn’t like it, but I see it as your only way out. Not good enough, Parton, not good enough by a country mile, but, still, it’s all you’ve got. Tell me ... is that why you always stayed out at the riverside camp and away from town ... so if anything went wrong, no one could positively identify you as one of them?”
Duncan didn’t answer. He drew forth his own tobacco sack and went to work. This was incredible; it was absolutely unbelievable. If anyone had ever put into a novel what was happening to him right now, and if Duncan had read it, he would have flung the novel aside as being just too impossible for belief. How could circumstances dovetail so perfectly, so coincidentally and so totally believably, in a thousand years, to bring about what was now happening to him? The answer was they couldn’t. Just maybe once in a thousand years they might.
He lit up, broke the match, and dropped it.
Damned if he didn’t have to be the one they ganged up on, to
o, in that once-in-a-thousand-years interweaving.
Chapter Three
Leesville was that easterly town Duncan had seen in the late afternoon when he’d passed downcountry from the northward hills. It was a pretty little town, quite different from most cow towns. It didn’t look as though it had been hurriedly knocked together to serve a quick need by rough men. It even had trees along Main Street, a few genuine brick buildings, and an air of leisurely living that was foreign to every cow town Todd Duncan had ever been in.
But it had one thing the other cow towns had. It possessed its share of bitter-eyed men. Duncan saw them lining the boardwalks as Sheriff Berryhill and his four posse men slowly paced their way through the soft night, alternately passing through orange squares of spilling lamplight and sooty darkness. It also had an atmosphere of raw violence, obviously the aftermath of some very recent unpleasantness that had touched the lives of every one of those motionlessly standing, hard-eyed people gazing without a word at the returning posse.
Berryhill’s jailhouse was one of those sturdy brick buildings. It sat between a large mercantile establishment and a wagon works. Here, as Duncan stepped down, townsmen congregated, still saying nothing, still wearing their cruel masks.
Berryhill went ahead, opened the jailhouse door, and roughly called: “All right folks, all right! Step back, out there! We got him and for now that’ll be enough.”
“Yeah!” someone cried out. “Enough for tonight ... but not enough for tomorrow. I volunteer for jury duty, Matt.”
Duncan was prodded ungently from behind. He twisted, met the mirthless, cold grin of young Tom Black, and started ahead. The other posse men trooped along beside him, burly Jack Thorne on his immediate right. Thorne looked over, saw Duncan’s smoothed-out, tight expression, and murmured: “They got a right to feel this way ... what’d you expect?”
Inside the jailhouse, Berryhill motioned Duncan to a battered table. “Empty your pockets,” he ordered. While Duncan was doing this, Berryhill said to the others: “Much obliged for the help, boys. You can go now. I’ll put in for your pay with the town council. Jack, stay a minute, will you?”
The others departed and young Tom Black, last to pass over to the door, turned and smiled at Duncan. “Sleep good!” he called over. “Swindin’s sleepin’ good. He’s got me to thank for that.”
Thorne closed the street side door after young Black and stood there watching while Matt Berryhill rifled through Duncan’s belongings. “Anything?” he asked.
Berryhill shook his head. “Just the usual.” He lifted his head. “Want to see your pa?” he asked.
Duncan said dryly: “I’d sure like that, Sheriff.”
Berryhill moved across to a heavy oaken door, jerked his head, and waited. Duncan crossed the room with Jack Thorne’s massive bulk bearing down behind him. The three of them passed on into the cellblock where a lamp hung overhead smoking steadily from an untrimmed wick, its glass mantle gray enough to obscure nearly everything its light touched down upon.
Berryhill took Duncan’s arm, steered him southward to the farthest cell, half swung him around, and halted. Inside this cell was a great, gaunt old grizzled man with wild eyes and an unkempt beard. Even under different circumstances this character would have arrested Duncan’s attention.
“There he is,” Sheriff Berryhill said, leaving doubt in Duncan’s mind whether Berryhill was addressing him, or that rugged old individual behind the bars.
The gaunt old man stepped forth, put his big bony fists around the bars, and peered intently out at Duncan.
Thorne, his eyes fixed upon the old man, said: “Told you we’d get him, didn’t I, you old devil? Somethin’ else you might like to know, too ... Swindin is dead. That bullet Tom Black put in him from behind killed him. He was dead when we found him ... and your son here ... eight miles south of town.”
That fierce-eyed old man with his hawkish, high-bridged nose and his awry beard, listened, stared hard at Duncan for a moment, then gradually smiled, all without saying a word until Berryhill stepped away, tinkled some keys, and opened the adjoining cell.
Then the old man said, half chuckling: “I got to hand it to you boys, you’re better’n I figured you’d be. So Jerry’s dead is he ... well now, that’s too bad. But then Jerry always was impetuous, never could wait and do things right.”
“Like killin’ that express clerk,” growled big Jack Thorne. “You damned old reprobate, you. If I had my way, I’d take you out of there ... you and your boy ... and let the town have you both.”
“Well, now,” said the caged man, his raffish, seamed, and ugly old face lighting up with irony, “how was my boy to know that expressman wasn’t reachin’ for a weapon when he threw down on him?”
Thorne continued to stare at old Parton for a long time before he shifted his glance past Duncan to Sheriff Berryhill. “That answer enough for you,” he asked, “about which one shot Charley?”
Berryhill, standing beside the opened cell door, nodded. He was staring coldly at Duncan. “It’s all the answer I need, Jack. All the answer I wanted. You there, young Parton, get in here.”
Duncan’s insides felt like ice. He stared at that old man. “What are you doing?” he asked, fighting the panic in him. “What are you trying to do to me, old man? You know damned well we’ve never before set eyes on one another.”
The old man nodded, his face turned sad, turned believably sympathetic. He said: “All right, son, all right. Don’t fret now. They’re a long way from makin’ any of this stick on us.”
Berryhill jerked his head and Jack Thorne reached forth, caught Duncan fiercely by the arm, and propelled him inside the adjoining cage. Duncan stood there, looking incredulously out where Berryhill was fastening the lock into place. “Listen,” he said to Berryhill and Thorne. “Listen to me a minute, will you?”
“It’s late,” said the lawman, straightening up and turning, “and I’m dog-tired. Besides that though, I’m up to here with listening to you, Parton. Go to sleep.”
He and Jack Thorne moved off. Duncan watched them go out into the other room, close and bar that big oaken door, and he heard their faint footfalls yonder. He turned at a slight rustling sound and saw that evil, ugly old bearded face again, this time up close to their solitary barred wall.
“You damned old devil,” swore Duncan. “Why didn’t you tell them I wasn’t your son? Why did you let them ... ?”
“You think I want them to run my boy down?” broke in the older man. “Of course not. This way they’ll find out you ain’t him ... but by the time they do, my boy’ll be plumb out of the country.”
That bearded old raffish face split into a slow, fierce smile. “You’ll be out one night’s sleep under the stars is all, and that sure ain’t much to pay to save a fellow man’s life now, is it?”
Duncan moved across and the old man stepped gingerly clear of their mutually shared strap-steel wall. He put up a gnarled finger and wagged it back and forth. “No call to be mad now, boy, no cause at all. A little inconvenience ain’t much price to pay for your fellow men. Maybe you’d best do like the sheriff said ... get some sleep.”
Duncan stopped with both hands hooked savagely around that cold, unrelenting steel. “You don’t know!” he exclaimed. “This isn’t near as simple as you think it is, old man. They found me leaning over that Swindin fellow. I’d laid out two cups and two plates. They thought I was your boy. The evidence against me is as tall as a cussed mountain.”
The old man wouldn’t be convinced of this. He shook his head, went over to a pallet, and sank down there. “Now, how can they prove you were one of us? No way under the sun.”
“No? Dammit all, you old fool, I’m in this cell beside you, aren’t I?”
“Come daylight, they’ll work out the other set of tracks, cowboy. By that time my lad’ll be out of their reach and they’ll have to turn you loose.”
Duncan ran this through his mind. It made sense. In fact, the sheriff had said they’d considered following that other set of tracks but, because Swindin had been shot and couldn’t last, they decided to follow him instead. He released the cell straps, fished for his tobacco sack, and went to work manufacturing a smoke. In the morning he’d get Matt Berryhill to run out those other tracks like the old preacher said. He lit up, exhaled, and hadn’t felt so good since the day before when he’d had no idea a town such as Leesville even existed.
“Too bad,” muttered the old man from his propped-up position in the next cell. “Too bad that tomfool express clerk had to go and get heroic. Why, do you know, boy, there’s over sixty thousand dollars in that cussed office? Me and my lads been keepin’ even with that money ever since they shipped it south from Fargo. It’s been a real trial to us, too. Right up to the moment they unloaded here in Leesville, there’s been more shotgun guards standin’ over that money box than a man’d ever figure’d be guarding it.” The old man’s bent fingers went placidly upward and fell to combing his full and unkempt beard. “It’s been a real tribulation to us for a fact. Don’t y’know my boy even stopped one over at Sioux Pass tryin’ to waylay one of the southbound coaches.”
Something fell into place in Duncan’s mind. He swung to regard the old man. “He got shot?” he asked.
“Yep, smack dab through the right shoulder, neat as a whistle.”
“That’s why he stayed down at the riverbank,” Duncan said, making a statement of this. “That’s why these people never got a real close look at him, isn’t it?”
“Of course, boy, of course. How would it look for a preacher of salvation to be consortin’ with a fellow who’d went and got himself all shot up?”
“How tall was he?” asked Duncan.
“Tall as you are, boy.” Those sly old eyes turned, whipped upward over Duncan, slyly smiled through the sootily lighted cellblock, and looked away again. “You’re the spittin’ image of my boy except in the face ... and the minute I heard Berryhill and that Thorne fellow call you my boy, I knew they didn’t know the difference. Yes, sir ... except for the face, you could pass as my boy any day in the year.”
