The Hanging at Leadville / Firefall

by Cameron Judd

He didn’t. Instead, he glared at Gunnison, breathing louder and faster as if he were trying to inflate himself. “Think to scare me off with that, do you?” he growled. Then another blade glittered, this one eight inches long and in the one-armed man’s hand, not Gunnison’s. It was the attacker’s turn to chuckle. Gunnison’s knife suddenly felt like a toy.

  “Boy, you’d best find you a bucket to tote your bowels in!” The knife sliced toward Gunnison’s abdomen and made him draw back. With a shudder of horror, Gunnison realized that the man was seriously trying to disembowel him. The man laughed again, advanced, and Gunnison lunged out blindly with his small blade.

  The one-armed man yelped and drew back, his forearm bleeding, blood trickling to his elbow. Swearing, he came at Gunnison once more, his blade rising, then descending, flashing in reflected light as it speared toward Gunnison’s midsection like sharp-edged lightning.

  Gunnison was fully convinced he was about to die. There was no getting past this man and no avoiding his blade. Stiffening, he awaited the fatal thrust.

  It did not come.

  Instead there was a sudden flurry of motion and burst of noise. Before Gunnison could realize what had happened, his attacker was pinned against the wall, looking angrily into the face of a tall man with a mustache so thick it made his slender face look front-heavy. Balancing it somewhat was a brush of hair spilling down the back of his neck from beneath the brim of a Jefferson Davis hat that, like the man it was named after, had been beaten into submission long ago. The one-armed man’s knife was now in the newcomer’s hand.

  “Chop-off Johnson, you leave this one alone, hear? I got business with him.”

  That comment suggested to Gunnison that maybe he was not going to escape robbery after all but simply fall victim to a two-armed bandit instead of a one-armed one.

  The one-armed man scowled, then nodded reluctantly. “All right. For you, I’ll do it, Currell. But give me back my knife.”

  The other nimbly flipped the knife and gave it, handle first, to its owner, a move about which Gunnison had very negative feelings.

  “You had no call to jump me, Currell,” Chop-off Johnson said. “You could have just hollered at me.”

  “Why, you’d have cut the tenderloins off him by then, Chop-off.” Currell laughed and glanced at Gunnison, who didn’t find the thought so amusing.

  The one-armed man put away the knife and gave Gunnison the look of a hungry wolf deprived of a fresh kill. He turned and vanished into the dark.

  Gunnison faced the other man. “Well, should I thank you or get ready to defend myself?”

  “Don’t fret. I ain’t going to do nothing to you. Fact is, I been sent to find you, if you’re Alex Gunnison.”

  Gunnison asked, “Did Brady Kenton send you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then I am Alex Gunnison.”

  “I thought so. Kenton said to look for a baby-faced fellow dressed like a swell.”

  He could have presented Gunnison no more convincing credentials than that last statement to verify that he had in fact been sent by Kenton. Gunnison’s partner was a man of basics when it came to clothing. Though Gunnison’s clothes were cut rugged and were hardly the fancy dress-coat outfits he had worn back in St. Louis, Kenton always perceived him as a dandified dresser. Gunnison had always put that down as one of Kenton’s several blindnesses, but now he wasn’t sure, for obviously Currell had perceived him in the same way.

  Taking a deep breath, Gunnison let some of the tension of his encounter drain away. His muscles had petrified into a fist-sized knot between his shoulder blades. He nodded in the direction the one-armed man had run. “I appreciate the help. He had me a little worried.”

  “That was Maynard Johnson, Chop-off, we call him. He’s an alleyway robber, what your locals call a footpad. He used to drive an ore wagon, like I do, until it rolled over his arm one day and they had to whack it off with nothing to cut the pain. Been sort of crazy-mad ever since, especially when he’s drunk. But he barks more than he bites. Most days he’s pretty normal, even works with me from time to time.”

  Gunnison put away his knife, and Currell thrust out his hand for a shake. “George Currell. Them who call me anything call me just plain Currell.”

  Currell’s eyes were small, maybe brown, but black in this dim light. They flickered quickly up and down, and he smiled. “You’re lucky you ain’t been jumped before now, son. You got the look of the city about you. That don’t slide down the local gullets too smooth, if you know what I mean.”

  “So I gather. Where is Kenton?”

  “I’ll take you to him. You got bags and such?”

  “Yes, back at the hotel.”

  “Let’s go get them. You’ve got a new place to sleep tonight, courtesy of Mr. Squire Deverell.”

  Chapter 2

  They retrieved his bag and the remainder of Kenton’s baggage from the barnlike hotel Gunnison had slept in the previous night. Then Currell led him through town toward Kenton.

  Gunnison sized up the man who had rescued him. Currell was built for power. Slender in waist and hip, from there up he was as stout as the big evergreens that towered over the squatty cabins on this part of East Third Street.

  “What is it about driving an ore wagon that builds such muscle?” Gunnison asked.

  “It’s not the driving; it’s the shoveling. I load my own wagon half the time,” he said.

  “You drive for a particular mine?”

  “Any that will pay me, but mostly for Squire Deverell. Driving, building, general work—you know.”

  “Who is Squire Deverell?”

  “Mine speculator who struck it rich. Well, not full rich, maybe, but well enough to show.”

  “So how’d you get the job of finding me?”

  “Deverell heard Brady Kenton was in town and then happened to see him out his window. Recognized him from his picture in the Illustrated American. Deverell likes Kenton’s stories and pictures, and decided to help him out while he was in Leadville.” Currell grinned. “And I figure he’s hoping Kenton will do a story about him, but if you repeat that, I’ll deny it. Anyway, Deverell had me go fetch Kenton off to some quarters he’s got, and then they sent me to that hotel for you. You were gone, and I figured I wouldn’t find you, but then I saw Chop-off working you over and said to myself: ‘Currell, right there’s your boy.’ You’re danged lucky I found you when I did. Chop-off might have made hash out of you and put your name in the papers. Speaking of papers, are you kin to the Gunnison who runs the Illustrated American?”

  “My father.”

  “Well, how about that! I really like that paper. Especially them pictures. Does Kenton do all those?”

  “I do about half, and half the writing too. But I don’t get much of the credit.”

  “That’s the way it usually goes in this old life, I’ve found.”

  They continued. Gunnison shifted his carpetbag in his hand, grateful he still possessed it. Since the morning, it had been entrusted, for a fee, to the care of the hotel keeper, and if that had been an uncertain option, it had seemed preferable to lugging the bag about all day in a town with more than its share of thieves. Luckily the keeper had made up in honesty what he lacked in hostmanship, and everything Gunnison left with him was intact when he picked it up.

  Currell took lots of turns and shortcuts, and soon had Gunnison disoriented. In the end they came out on Harrison Avenue, a broad street, a finer-looking than most in Leadville and lined with restaurants, book and stationery shops, clothing shops, and liquor stores. They strode to a new building that was empty on the lower level but spilled orange light out of two upper windows.

  Currell unlocked the street-level door and handed Gunnison the key. Opening with a clean squeak of new hinges, it admitted them into a dark building filled with the scent of fresh lumber.

  “Deverell’s going to open a hardware store in here in a few weeks,” Currell said. “The upstairs is furnished out to live in. That’s where you’ll find
your partner.”

  Light spilled out at the top of the stairway as a door opened. In it Kenton’s familiar form was silhouetted. “Currell?” his voice boomed down. “Did you find my strayed pup?”

  “Got him right here, Mr. Kenton.”

  Kenton dug into his pocket, produced an envelope, tossed it down. Despite the darkness, Currell deftly caught it.

  “There’s a difference between a strayed pup and an abandoned one, Kenton,” Gunnison called up. “You deserted me, remember?”

  “I guess I did at that, Alex. Anyway, you’re back now, and I’ve got some drawings to show you. Currell, you come up and take a look too.”

  “Nope. Got to go.” Currell touched his hat and spread his mustache in a sociable smile. He walked out, whistling, and closed the door behind him.

  Kenton had already gone back inside the apartment. Gunnison plodded up the plank stairs, making a hollow echo in the empty store building.

  Kenton had left the door ajar, and when Gunnison walked in, he was surprised by the pleasant furnishings. By big-city standards, this was no fancy place; by Gunnison’s, after the previous night’s suffering, it was luxurious. The walls were crisp white, the floor varnished to a sheen. The furniture included overstuffed chairs, a sturdy table, a sofa, and a big iron stove for heat and cooking. At the end of the room, a door led into a kitchen, and another opened onto a short hallway, beyond which he saw the doors of what were probably two bedrooms.

  “Good to have you back safe and sound, Alex,” Kenton said without looking up. He had a pencil behind his ear and another in his hand, and was leaning over the collapsible drawing board that he had designed and custom-built. He was sketching a saloon scene.

  Gunnison slammed down the bags. “Don’t pretend you were worried about me, Kenton. You didn’t waste two thoughts on me, and you know it.”

  Kenton looked up, heavy brows lifting over green eyes framed with wrinkles. His frameless spectacles worn only when he was working, rode low on his long nose, their sidepieces losing themselves in his graying sideburns. Hair of the same hue shagged down on the sides, flattened above Kenton’s ears by a full day’s pressure from the band of the cattleman’s hat he always wore. His face was tanned and roughly whiskered, for Kenton generally lacked the patience for a careful shaving job. Snaking out of his left sideburn nearly to the tip of his wide mustache was a long slash scar—a memento of his wartime years. His intense eyes glittered in the light of the twin lamps poised on the flat upper edge of his drawing board.

  Kenton took a long breath and exhaled as if to signal that Gunnison’s aggravation was unwarranted. “I had some private business to see to,” he said in his sleepy drawl, “and I didn’t figure you for some runt who can’t get by on his own for a while. But I reckon I do make it hard for you to do a proper job of riding herd on me like your pap wants. Maybe you ought to abandon me. Go off and marry Glorietta Sweat, and rescue her from that last name of hers.”

  Gunnison didn’t like it when Kenton made fun of his fiancée’s name. So he shot back, “Yes, Pleasant. Perhaps I should do that.”

  Kenton’s brow rose, and his mustache twitched. He despised being called by his middle name, the maiden name of his mother. Gunnison gigged him with it only when Kenton made fun of Glorietta Sweat.

  Gunnison picked up his bag and went back to one of the bedrooms, which proved to be as nicely furnished as the main room.

  “Currell said this place has been loaned to us,” Gunnison called out to Kenton.

  “That’s right. We seem to have found ourselves a friend named Squire Deverell. We’re supposed to go meet him in the morning.” Kenton’s pencil scratched out the familiar rhythm of his signature, marking one more finished sketch. “Well, there’s another one branded and ready to turn loose. Come in here, Alex—tell me what you think.”

  Gunnison walked over and inspected the drawing. “Very good,” he said. “Wonderful detail.” And indeed it was. There in one corner was an image of Chop-off Johnson accurate enough to make Gunnison shudder.

  Kenton yawned, adjusted the lamps, and set to work on a new sketch, working from a small crude one on his pocket pad.

  Gunnison sighed quietly and decided to forget his irritation at Kenton. Pardoning the man’s ways was a skill Gunnison had mastered long ago, for Kenton had provided lots of opportunities for practice. Gunnison was getting so good at forgiving that sometimes he sardonically wondered if he should enter the priesthood.

  Returning to his room, Gunnison went to bed, rolled over, and closed his eyes. It felt marvelous, and the covers were warm, but the noise of Leadville seeped through the walls like water through paper, disturbing him. Besides that, he couldn’t get the image of Chop-off Johnson’s glittering knife out of his mind. Sleep would take a long while to come tonight.

  Chapter 3

  As he lay restlessly in his room in Leadville, nostrils filled with the fresh wood scent of the new walls and ears filled with the ruckus of the streets beyond them, Alex Gunnison found himself reliving the somewhat bewildering chain of events that had brought him and Brady Kenton to this remarkable town.

  The two journalists had been in the midst of a tour of Colorado’s cattle ranches, large and small, their goal a colorful description and depiction of that growing business for the readers of the Illustrated American. Alex found the work fascinating but tiring; at length even the unwearying Kenton seemed eager for a rest, and marked off a Saturday afternoon for a time of leisure.

  In the cool luxury of Colorado Springs’s El Paso Club they relaxed, letting their thoughts flow slowly and freely. Tall cool drinks chilled their hands, and the soft cushions of padded chairs made of finely crafted, scroll-topped wood rested their tired backs. The afternoon was waning slowly, lazy seconds ticking off one by one on a beautiful oaken clock replete with carved flamingoes and hung on a wall of sage-green paper. Kenton was reading a cheap novel, as he often did to relax; Gunnison was half dozing, glad to be away from the heat and dust of the cattle ranches. A fly buzzed about in the open window that he faced, making droning, lulling music. Through slowly drooping eyelids Gunnison was gazing through that window at a splendid view of Cheyenne Mountain when he was roused by the opening of the door. One of the El Paso Club employees entered and approached Kenton, letter in hand.

  “Delivered only moments ago, sir,” the letter bearer said in what sounded to Gunnison like a poorly faked British accent.

  Kenton twitched his broad mustache. “Thank you,” he said.

  Kenton began to open the letter. The deliverer remained at his side. When Kenton looked up at him inquiringly, the man smiled and gave a little waggle of his right hand in a none-too-subtle request for a gratuity. Kenton frowned, but the glare in his eyes was almost immediately replaced by a twinkle. Kenton placed his hand into the man’s and pumped vigorously. “Thank you again, sir, and God save the king,” he said.

  The letter bearer’s face went dark. “Good afternoon to you, sir,” he said, this time with more South Carolina than Yorkshire in his inflection. He turned on his heel and stalked out.

  Kenton finished opening the letter and read silently. When he was done, he gave his mouth a wry twist, raised one brow, and began folding the letter back into the envelope. Gunnison was surprised to see he looked a little pale.

  “Is something wrong, Kenton?”

  Kenton glanced at him. “No, no. It’s from Victor Starlin…I’ve often wondered whatever happened to him. Haven’t heard from him in years.”

  “Starlin? Sounds familiar.”

  “I’ve mentioned him to you sometime or other, probably. We served together back in the hostilities.”

  “So where is he now?”

  “Herding sheep right here in El Paso County. Sheep! It’s not something I would have figured him to ever do. It’s a surprise to hear from him.”

  “How did he know you were here?”

  “He tracked us down by telegraphing the St. Louis office. He wants very badly for me to come see him.”
<
br />   “Will I be going along?”

  “In this case, perhaps you better stay here and finish up some of those sketches you’ve started.

  “Oh.” Gunnison was not eager to work in dull isolation while Kenton was off seeing new and interesting things.

  His disappointment must have been detectable in his tone because Kenton looked closely at him. “Oh, hang it all,” he said resignedly, “Come along if you want.”

  Gunnison was pleased. “Thanks. I’ve always been interested in sheepherders. It’s an isolated life they live.”

  Kenton did not respond. He was staring solemnly at the envelope, deep in thought, his brow furrowed.

  “Kenton, are you sure everything is all right?”

  “Of course it is, Alex.”

  That night as he prepared to go to bed, Gunnison saw Kenton seated in the corner of his own room, the letter open again and lying on the foot of his bed as Kenton cleaned his pistol.

  The following morning, the two of them put on their stoutest riding clothes, rented horses at a stable, and set out for Austin’s Bluffs, five miles to the northwest. Their sketch pads and pencils were tucked into saddlebags; their pistols were stashed in their holsters.

  A more beautiful ride Gunnison had never experienced. The day was clear and slightly brisk despite the season, and their horses traveled well. Looming to the west were mountains that reached so far into the sky, it seemed they would pierce the floor of heaven. Sky and mountain, together with the wind sweeping across the wild land, created an aura of vastness that was both thrilling and humbling. This was an awesome place, a place where a man might hear distant rolls of thunder from the mountains and for a moment wonder if the rumbling booms were really the footfalls of God himself striding across his own spectacular creation just for the pleasure of it.

  So undiminished was today’s view that looking south, the riders could see not only the Sierra Mojada, but also the Spanish Peaks. Gunnison had always loved mountains, particularly the Rockies, and today he was so overcome with their stony beauty that he was all but oblivious to everything else around him. Even Kenton might have been forgotten had he not been singing in his rough but listenable baritone, his voice unfurling across the Colorado countryside. The song was some sort of Texas funeral dirge, but the bright sunlight and the vigor of Kenton’s singing took all the sorrow out of it and made it almost sprightly.