The Hanging at Leadville / Firefall

by Cameron Judd

  “So did I. Look, Perk, I can’t make any more sense of this than anyone else. I can’t believe that Garrett is really alive…but then, I can’t believe that Mickey Scarborough would be mistaken if he claimed to see him. If there’s a man who would know Briggs Garrett’s face, it was Mickey. And Garrett’s body never was recovered, so there’s no grave to dig up and check.”

  A broadly constructed saloon girl who smelled of too much saloon and too little soap walked by and smiled down at Perk. Perk smiled back and watched her with much more appreciation than Kenton thought she merited as she waddled back to the bar. Only when she went behind it did Perk shift his attention back to Kenton. “So how can I help you out?”

  “You’ve already helped me plenty by busting those heads outside.”

  “Aw, that was nothing. If they had fought, it might have been more fun. I’ve always enjoyed a good row. Come on, now—tell me what I can do. I’d like to help you find Garrett.”

  “Then the thing to do is keep your ears and eyes open, and ask a few questions when you can do it without drawing attention. Let me know what’s being said on the streets. You can find me above Squire Deverell’s new store, the one on Harrison that’s not open yet. I’ve got a partner named Alex Gunnison, a young fellow. Where can I find you, Perk?”

  “I’m a watchman from time to time over at the James Stables, north end of Spruce. Other than that I’m either just out and about town or at my cabin down the road toward Malta.” He gave brief instructions that Kenton mentally filed.

  The two men talked longer and drank one more beer each. The guitarist broke another string and quit. Kenton and Perk parted ways then, Perk heading for his job at the stables.

  Kenton had it in mind to head back to his rooms where he expected an angry Gunnison awaiting him. He dreaded the encounter. Kenton didn’t like running out and leaving his partner alone, but this search still seemed too vague—and too personal—to involve Gunnison. Soon, though, he would tell him what was going on—just as soon as he had something substantial enough to tell.

  Something jostled Alex Gunnison roughly, and a gruff voice growled out garbled words in an Irish brogue. He felt himself being rolled over, and the words this time became clear: “Give me your money—give me your money, damn your eyes…”

  Gunnison opened his eyes, strained them into focus. The jostling continued. “Leave me…alone,” he managed to say after he managed to dig his voice out of the clogged well of his throat.

  “Leave you alone I will, once you give me your money!” the man said. Gunnison groaned and looked at his troubler who was crouched beside him in a decidedly insectlike posture. He wore the tattered remnants of a seafarer’s outfit. A potent smell of whiskey hung about him like a heavy cloak. His reddish face, masked in a rind of dirt, glowered down at Gunnison.

  “Leave me alone!” This time Gunnison was able to speak with more force and at the same time swing up his arm. Almost randomly the side of his hand struck the man on the side of the face.

  He swore loudly and pulled back, then wobbled and fell on his back. Gunnison rolled over, away from him, and tried to get up. The drunken seaman stood, wobbled some more, then tried to kick Gunnison. The kick went ridiculously wild, its force on the upswing pulling the man’s other leg out from beneath him. He fell with a loud grunt on his back, groaned, then passed out.

  Gunnison finally managed to stand and staggered over to a hitchpost. Something was wrong here, unexplainable, impossible, but he could not clear his clouded mind enough to comprehend what it was. Looking blearily around, trying to keep on his feet, he wondered where he was and how he had come to be here. He was supposed to be somewhere else…somewhere else…but where?

  He staggered away, fearing the drunken man would rise again, and rounded a corner where he stopped and leaned, breathless, against a wall. Every muscle ached, and he was sure his entire left side was extensively bruised. He noticed that he had not left behind the strong smell of whiskey with the fallen man; it hung about his own clothing as strongly as if he had been soaked in it. Feeling his shirt, he found it damp. He had been soaked in whiskey.

  Nothing made sense. Surely it was a dream. He recognized now where he was: Stillborn Alley, a well-known Leadville alleyway where many a corpse had been found, including some of the stillborn offspring of diseased prostitutes. So he was in town, back from…where? He had left Leadville, that he recalled, and gone somewhere, seen something, fallen into a deep hole…

  The whiskey smell was about to make Gunnison sick. Like everything else in this situation, it seemed distorted and abnormal. Examining himself in the dim light that reflected from some gambling parlor, he saw that his clothing was incredibly foul. He was mud-streaked, tattered, and badly spotted with some unidentifiable substance that was not dirt, not blood, nor anything he could identify. The substance was exuding a putrid stench that mixed with and altered the smell of the whiskey on him. A more revolting stench he could not have had attached to him, short of having a burned cat cadaver hung about his neck.

  Burned…

  There was something significant in that, something that teased his mind.

  Images were beginning to come back. Not full memories, just fragments. Very unpleasant fragments.

  A black hole, his body falling into it…a young boy yelling in fear…a stench boring into his nostrils, making him sick…the feeling of having descended into a hell pit and meeting the devil at the bottom…

  “But how did I get back to town?” he asked aloud. There was no one there to answer. Got to get back home, he thought—if I can remember where home is. Kenton—got to find Kenton.

  Gunnison knew he was in bad shape. Something he had experienced had hurt him physically and also severely disoriented him mentally. He needed rest, a good wash, and maybe medical help.

  But mostly he needed to know what it was that was hammering at the back of his consciousness, wanting to get in. Something was wrong somewhere, badly wrong. Someone was in danger, but when Gunnison tried to remember who, and how, and why, it amounted to mining a dry hole. Have to find Kenton, he thought. Have to get home, and if my memory can’t guide me, maybe my instincts will.

  With that, he took a deep breath that hurt the left side of his rib cage badly, then set off into a street that teemed with a nation’s worth of people and seemed to run ten miles in both directions. Groaning aloud, he chose right over left and began limping down the boardwalk, drawing stares all along the way.

  Chapter 13

  When he first saw the policeman dragging along the drunk, Kenton found it humorous.

  The officer, a staunch-looking fellow in the standard Leadville blue uniform, was towing a young drunk roughly up the street, one hand gripping his elbow, the other twisting his ear to discourage any thought of running away. Strangely, the officer was holding the drunk as far away from him as he could and had his head turned away. On his face was the offended expression of a man carrying a sack of rotting fish.

  Kenton grinned, but his grin faded abruptly when something drew his attention away from the policeman to the drunk. Brady Kenton had lived too long to be surprised by much, but he was surprised now.

  The drunk was none other than Alex Gunnison.

  The journalist made sure his pistol was well hidden beneath his jacket and walked toward the officer, eyeing Gunnison all the way. The young man looked terrible; he was covered with muck, and his hair was so sodden and disheveled that he looked like a man just yanked out of a long-term sickbed.

  Gunnison’s bleary eyes fell on Kenton when he was about twenty feet away. “Kenton!” he said, sounding a little more vigorous than his looks would lead one to anticipate. “Thank God!”

  The smell of whiskey reached Kenton’s nostrils; Gunnison reeked as if he had bathed in a whiskey barrel. But the smell of liquor was mixed with a putrid dead stench.

  “Here now—who are you?” the officer asked Kenton suspiciously.

  “I’m Brady Kenton,” he replied. “And this, uh, dru
nk…he’s my partner.”

  “Brady Kenton? Of the Illustrated American?”

  “Yes.”

  “Aye, I heard you were in town.” He gave Gunnison a shake. “I must say, Mr. Brady Kenton, that you could stand keeping a tighter leash on your companion.”

  “So I can see. Alex, what’s happened to you?”

  “I don’t remember…there was a hole, something foul and dead, and trouble—trouble I can’t remember. I don’t know how I got here, Kenton. I was somewhere else, I can’t remember where, and then I woke up and I was lying in an alley.”

  Kenton’s surprise was turning to concern. Gunnison seemed distraught and disoriented, maybe injured. There was more to this than simple drunkenness…and Gunnison rarely drank at all.

  “Officer, may I ask you a favor? I’d like to ask that you show some mercy in this particular case and turn my partner over into my custody.”

  “Mercy? By the saints, I wish this lad would have considered showing mercy to poor old Clance Sullivan and not go wandering the streets in such a state. I found him staggering about, scaring the wits out of every decent soul he passed—and for that I can scarce blame them, smelling like he does.” The policeman had the strong accent of an Irish commoner.

  “Please, officer. I’ll see him to his bed and keep him there until he’s fit to get out.”

  The policeman seemed interested. On any particular night in Leadville there were plenty of other concerns besides one staggering young sot to keep him busy. “Aye…well, Mr. Kenton, I’m told you are a man of good standing, and I’m inclined to take you up on your kind offer. Lord knows I’m not eager to have this one stinking up the jail the rest of the night.”

  “I’ll see he gets a good washing-down in the bargain,” Kenton said.

  The officer let go of Gunnison’s arm and steered him by the ear over to Kenton. “Take him and be gone, then.”

  “Thank you, Officer Sullivan. You are a decent man.”

  “Just a tired old street plodder is what I am, and if ever you want to have a sad story for your Illustrated American, just come and let poor old Clance Sullivan tell you about his woes.”

  “I may do that, sir, if you are serious. Thank you again.”

  “Off with you both. Go on.”

  Gunnison leaned over the washbasin and scrubbed the filth from his hair. His clothing lay in a reeking heap in the corner, and the floor was damp from his splashing in the basin. It was ten minutes past midnight.

  The cleansing of his body was bringing refreshment and new strength to Gunnison, but his feeling of distress and a forgotten danger that cried out for remembering was only growing stronger. Kenton stood near his side, looking worried, questioning Gunnison closely.

  Gunnison hardly heard the questions, for the images that had flashed across his mind since his awakening were more frequent now, and more detailed, occupying his full attention. Memory was beginning to stir: A pit, darkness…a mine shaft. Climbing down a ladder…a burned rag of cloth on a nail…the death smell from below…

  “If I had to guess the smell of what was on you, Alex,” Kenton was saying, “I would say it was burnt flesh. Not only burnt, but decaying. Mighty strange thing.”

  Burned flesh…a body, at the bottom of the pit…a rope around the neck…a voice crying out above, a child’s voice…

  Lundy O’Donovan.

  Gunnison shuddered and leaned forward weakly against the washstand as full memory flooded back. The basin tilted and fell with a clatter to the floor, sending water flying.

  “Alex!”

  “Kenton, I remember now, I remember.” Gunnison turned to Kenton, grasped his shoulders. “Lundy O’Donovan is in danger, Kenton. We’ve got to find him before it’s too late—if it’s not too late already.”

  “In danger? Lundy O’Donovan? Are you addled, Alex?”

  “In the name of heaven, Kenton, don’t doubt me now! You have to listen: Lundy O’Donovan may have been taken…may have been killed!”

  “Killed? By whom?”

  Gunnison took a deep breath and forced himself to become calm. He ran his fingers through his wet hair. “I don’t know. But maybe by Briggs Garrett.”

  Kenton’s expression became as black as a thundercloud. He drew in a sharp breath and stiffened, his eyes growing fiery.

  “I remember it all now, Kenton. There’s a place we must go at once. An abandoned mine, with a dead man inside. I’ll explain along the way—and if we can, we need to take a police officer with us.”

  “Are you well enough to lead us there, Alex?”

  “Yes, yes! But we have to hurry—Lundy’s life may depend on it.”

  Kenton nodded. “Get on some fresh clothes, then. I’ll see to the pistols.

  Chapter 14

  Even before they reached the street, Gunnison had given Kenton a brief but sufficient explanation of his excursion with Lundy and the mystifying experiences at the mine and thereafter. Most mystifying of all was how Gunnison had traveled from the bottom of the mine all the way to Stillborn Alley and how he had come to be doused in liquor. Kenton had no more explanation for that than Gunnison.

  The conventional wisdom that policeman are easy to find when you don’t need one and impossible to find when you do proved to be as true in Leadville as it was anywhere else. On the street were enough drunks, soiled doves, and footpads to fill Hades’s quota, but a policeman was not to be seen.

  “We’ll have to go on alone,” Kenton said. “It’s likely we’d have a devil of a time convincing a policeman to believe us at any rate.”

  “Believe what, may I ask?” The voice was Clance Sullivan’s, spoken from a dark store-porch corner nearby. He stepped into the triangle of light cast by a window, looked at Gunnison. “You appear to have sobered peculiarly fast, my young friend.”

  “I wasn’t drunk in the first place,” Gunnison returned.

  “Sullivan, you’re a godsend,” Kenton said. “You’ve got to come with us. We’ve got a missing little boy by the name of Lundy O’Donovan on our hands, and he may be in danger.”

  “Lundy? Aye, I know the lad. He lives on Chicken Hill with his mother and that poor old grandfather of his.”

  “Maybe we should look there first,” Gunnison suggested. “He might be at home.”

  “I think not,” the policeman said. “I saw his mother come up this very street not ten minutes ago, calling for him. He wanders a lot, that lad, and I’ve seen her out looking for him often. And that’s a bad thing, for she has to leave the old grandfather alone to do it, and alone he doesn’t need to be.”

  “Lundy may still be at the mine, then,” Gunnison said. “We’d best hurry.”

  “Mine?” Sullivan asked. “What mine?”

  “Officer Sullivan,” Kenton said hurriedly, “I want you to listen to what Alex here has to say. It’s a strange story, one you may not be prone to believe, but I can vouch for his character. If he says a thing is true, then it is.”

  Sullivan sighed, obviously sensing that the rest of his night’s duty was to be busy.

  “All right,” he said to Gunnison. “Tell me your story.”

  Lantern light made the interior of the mine entrance shed eerie, casting inky shadows that crept around the walls as the lanterns moved. The lanterns had been in the back of a miner’s wagon Clance Sullivan had commandeered in the name of the Leadville Department of Police. Its owner had made the mistake of driving into town as Kenton’s party was going out of it, and despite the man’s protests, Sullivan had taken his rig, giving promises of its safe return and maybe even compensation, though warning the fellow shouldn’t count on the latter. Sullivan had then driven the wagon as if he were trying to break the axles. Gunnison did not know if he had believed his story or simply felt compelled to treat it as potentially true.

  Into the shaft they descended, Kenton first, Sullivan second, Gunnison last. The lanterns cast much more light in the hole than had Gunnison’s feeble candle on his descent, but that only heightened his sense of being swa
llowed by the earth itself. A lingering scent of death hung in the air but seemed much lessened for some reason.

  When they reached the bottom, Gunnison understood why: The body was gone. “I don’t understand,” he said. “It was right here—I fell on it, got up, got my candle lit again, and there it was. I swear it!”

  Two silent, dirty faces looked at him.

  “I swear it!” he repeated. Kneeling, he said, “There at least has to be ash left from where it lay.” But the lantern light revealed none. The ground was clean.

  “They must have swept it, or put fresh dirt on top of it,” Gunnison said feebly, knowing how unbelievable his story was beginning to sound.

  “There is a rotting smell remaining,” Kenton said, seeking to lessen his partner’s incredibility. “That at least shows something dead has been hereabouts.”

  “Many a dead critter can be found in these old holes,” Sullivan said. He was looking at Gunnison with disgust. “They crawl back into crevices and such, and die.” Then to Gunnison: “By the saints, young fellow, you’ve led this old Irishman on a fool’s errand!”

  “Somebody’s taken the body,” Gunnison protested. “I vow to you, it was right here.”

  “I think perhaps you’re not as sober as you look,” Sullivan said. “I should have taken you to a cell and saved myself all this trouble. And me all but stealing a wagon for the sake of it! I may catch some trouble over that, you know.”

  There was nothing to say. Gunnison turned to Kenton, hoping to find evidence he believed him, but he couldn’t tell if he did or not.

  “Perhaps we’d best leave now,” Kenton said quietly.

  “The body had a rope around its neck,” Gunnison said. “he’d been hanged and burned—just like those bridge burners Briggs Garrett killed, Kenton.”

  At the mention of Garrett, Sullivan looked at Gunnison intently. “What name did you call?”