The Hanging at Leadville / Firefall

by Cameron Judd

  If he found her again, in private circumstances, he’d make her regret embarrassing him.

  “Princess left because she didn’t really believe in you,” he said. “Forget her.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “I don’t know. Forget about her. And get dressed. Come downstairs and get some food, and then get started with today’s teaching.”

  “I don’t know what to tell her. I don’t have anything to say.”

  “Say what you’ve said to everybody.”

  “I’ve said those things already.”

  “Then say them again, damn it! Or make something up. It doesn’t matter—she’ll believe whatever you say. The most important thing is to tell her how important it is that she keep on supporting you with her money. Tell her…tell her that if she doesn’t, the fire will fall here, too.”

  “I’ll not say that. I’m not a prophet. Not really. I feel like I’m lying when I say I am.”

  Rankin stuck his finger right between Peabody’s eyes. “You are a prophet. Don’t you forget it, or stop saying it. Especially to her. You understand me?”

  Peabody looked away. “I understand you.”

  “Get dressed. And make it fast. She’s waiting.”

  Rankin walked out, slamming the door behind him.

  Chapter 29

  About an hour before Kenton and his partners left the Wilson house many miles away, Alex Gunnison had walked out the door of the Johansen Hotel, pulled in a lungful of fresh air, and stretched. Beautiful day. Perhaps he’d take advantage of the good weather to take a walk around town, and for a time, forget his frustrations.

  A pup came bounding around the corner of the hotel and up the steps to the porch. Gunnison grinned at the lively little creature and reached down to pet it. The pup, however, scampered on past, leaping into an empty rocking chair near the end of the porch, almost losing its balance when the chair tilted. Instantly it leaped out again and began nosing around under the chair and in the corners of the porch.

  Gunnison pulled a pocketwatch from his vest pocket and glanced at the time. As he closed the watch to put it away again, it slipped through his fingers and clattered to the porch at his feet, its fob being unattached.

  He stooped to retrieve it, but the pup was faster than he. It shot by, snatched the watch in its mouth, and ran down the steps to the street.

  “Hey!” Gunnison called. “Bring that back here!”

  He ran down the steps after the dog. A man standing nearby, whittling on a stick, laughed at him.

  The pup bounded on down the street and veered right into an alleyway. Gunnison turned in after it in time to catch sight of it making a left turn around the rear of the next building over. Gunnison did the same, and found himself in a narrow backlot filled with heaped refuse, including a big pile of dirty and discarded rags. The pup was trapped in the enclosed space.

  Or so Gunnison thought. The pup made for a hole near the bottom of the fence. The hole was barely enough to accommodate its body. The pup squeezed through and got away, but Gunnison was no longer concerned with it: his pocketwatch lay on the ground near the hole, dropped by the dog.

  Gunnison picked it up and made a face because of how wet he found it. Thick canine saliva covered the watch and also his fingers. He walked to the pile of discarded rags, picked one up, and began wiping the watchcase clean.

  He dropped the watch in surprise, however, when suddenly the entire pile moved, and a human form arose from its midst. Gunnison let out a little howl of fright.

  “Who the devil…”

  “I’m sorry,” the ragpile dweller said. A woman! Gunnison was surprised again. “I wasn’t trying to startle you. I felt the rags shift and thought someone was trying to find me.”

  Gunnison drew in a slow breath and relaxed. He stooped, retrieved his watch, and put it in his pocket. “All I was doing was trying to find a cloth to clean off my watch,” he said. “A dog carried it back here in its mouth.”

  The woman nodded. She had a very sad face, Gunnison noticed. A face that was nicely formed, but beginning to age. In her young days, she would have been a beautiful woman.

  Realizing that she must have spent the night here in this ragpile, he felt his heart go out to her. “Ma’am, are you all right?”

  “Yes, I’m fine.”

  “I mean…did you have to sleep back here last night?”

  She nodded and would not look at him; the question seemed to have embarrassed her.

  “Have you been out here long?”

  “Last night was the first night. I was somewhere else before that.”

  Gunnison, trying to tread lightly on the line between helpfulness and intrusiveness, asked, “Do you not have a home?”

  “No. Not of my own. Until last night, though, I’d been staying here, in this town, I mean, in someone else’s house.” Her eyes flicked in the direction of the street.

  In this part of town, there were no real houses except one. “You mean, you were in the Johansen house?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So why are your out here now?”

  “The people I traveled here with had begun to mistreat me. I left because I was afraid he would hurt me.”

  Gunnison was thinking hard. “Ma’am, by chance might any of the ones you traveled here with be named Rankin?”

  She looked at him in sharp surprise. “Yes…how did you know?”

  Gunnison felt a sense of awe. It had surely been written in his destiny for that pup to steal his pocketwatch at just this time, and lead him around to this particular back alley while this particular woman was here.

  He stepped closer and looked into her eyes. He could hardly find his voice.

  “Victoria Kenton? Is it really you?”

  Oliver Rush, father of trading post operator Joe Rush, was growing old, and he didn’t like it at all.

  He’d never much realized his advancing years, not until that recent humiliating episode in his son’s trading post. Forced to dance, like some dime-novel greenhorn, before the blasting pistols of two drunken ruffians! He’d never felt so degraded and helpless…so much an old man no longer able to stand up for himself.

  It had haunted him ever since it happened. But what haunted the most deeply wasn’t simply that he’d not been capable of taking care of himself, but had balked as well at trying to help out the young fellow who had stepped in to take the abuse in his place.

  Maybe I’m too old to be any good to anyone anymore, he’d taken to thinking. Too old to even be willing do what’s right. I should have resisted them. In my younger days, I would have.

  He was wandering alone along the cottonwood-lined creek that ran behind and beside the trading post over to the river near the ferry crossing. Here there was enough vegetation that a man could move about unseen, and think without being bothered. Oliver Rush had come here to mull over his advancing years, and his failure, and to grieve in his shame.

  He wished he could do it over again. Face those two devils and make them pay for making him feel this way. He’d not dance again for them, that much he knew! He’d let them kill him before he did that.

  Oliver Rush leaned up against a cottonwood and pulled his pipe from his pocket. Before he could fetch out his tobacco, though, he noticed that someone was moving in a surreptitious manner over in the thickets atop the rise overlooking the road before it curved around to head toward the trading post.

  Something inside warned him, and he knelt slowly, putting the pipe away. He peeped around the trunk of the cottonwood, squinting…

  It was them! His heart almost failed him. The very two scoundrels who had humiliated him, and with them, a third man, much older, and with half his face badly scarred. All of them were armed, and from their postures and placement, Oliver knew right away that they were planning to ambush someone. He himself had often thought about the fact that the area they were overlooking was a prime ambush spot, and had worried that thieves might take to the place.

  Who might they be planni
ng to ambush? Whoever happened to come down the road next? Not likely. Sometimes nobody came down that road for days. Whoever they were after was someone they expected. Someone they knew was coming.

  Joe. Maybe it was Joe. He’s the one who had run them off, after all, sent them scurrying like cowards. And he was away from the trading post today. Probably they knew that and were waiting for him to return.

  Oliver Rush felt a swell of dread combined with a sense of opportunity. There were three of them—who the older, disfigured one was he had no idea—and he was only one man, but by care and planning, and preserving the element of surprise, he just might be able to deal with them.

  He turned and crept back to the trading post and around to his cabin behind it. He went in and fetched his old but reliable shotgun off the pegs on the wall. He put shells in each barrel and extras in his pocket. He also strapped on the fine Colt pistol that he spent much more time cleaning than shooting, and made sure every chamber was loaded. Then he paused, heart thumping, and said a prayer in a whisper.

  “Lord, I may die today. I pray I won’t, but if I do, wash my soul clean and take me to Your glory. I thank You for this opportunity to make up for failing to do what I should have before. If I die, I die. Just let me take them with me. Amen.”

  He left the cabin and sneaked back toward the creek, planning to approach them from behind.

  He was more scared than he’d admit, and shaking badly. It was breezy and not very hot today, but sweat kept dripping in his eyes.

  He kept going anyway.

  Miles away, Parson Peabody was sitting in a straight-backed chair, looking across a table at the strangest woman he’d ever met.

  The worst part was she insisted on him holding her hands while he “taught” her. He didn’t want to hold her hands. He didn’t like touching her, and didn’t like the way she looked at him like he was some sort of great wise man, nodding that silver-haired head with long, foreign-looking decorative pins stuck all through her topknot. Long, dangling earrings that looked like little carved idols to Peabody hung from both her overstretched lobes. And her breath was bad, and had a long reach.

  He hated this. He wanted to pull free, tear away, run out the door and into the nearest saloon. But Rankin was there, standing by and watching him with that grin that really was just a cover for a threat. Thomas Shafter was near, too, seated somewhat behind Rankin and looking almost as unhappy as Peabody felt. Peabody had yet to figure out what part Shafter really played in all this. Mostly he just loitered around, looking increasingly dissatisfied, and made Peabody feel threatened. Come to think of it, maybe that was his function.

  “Tell me, Prophet, that there is a way I can share your gift,” Pearl Johansen said. Her voice was a raspy squeak that reminded Peabody of a bad hinge. “If I could know the will of the Most High Creator, if I could speak His words as you do…oh, it would be all I ever longed for!”

  “Well, generally, I just recommend reading the Bible,” Peabody said. “I don’t know that I have a way to actually share any power or nothing with somebody else…”

  He felt Rankin’s glare and glanced up at him. The smile was on the lips still, but gone from the eyes.

  Peabody cleared his throat. “Of course, I suppose it could be done…in the right circumstances…if, uh, well, if you were worthy…”

  Rankin cleared his throat. “What Prophet Peabody is too kind to say, ma’am, is that the gift can certainly be shared, but only to one who has demonstrated the full level of dedication and devotion. He and I discussed this only last night. If there were one who could make it possible for the prophet to fulfill his dream, the dream given to him by God himself…”

  “What is this dream?” she said, eyes wide.

  “A dream of a great church, a sanctuary, where the searching could come and find the truth.”

  “A church!”

  “Yes. It’s the prophet’s vision. Deeply personal, deeply private…hard for him to speak of.”

  She looked at Peabody and smiled, squeezing his hands. “Oh, if only you had let me know sooner! I am a woman blessed with means, you know. I can make this dream possible, Prophet. I can be the very answer to your prayer!”

  Rankin’s smile was quite sincere now. He foresaw a few prayers of his own about to be answered.

  “Tell me how much, Prophet Peabody. Tell me, and it is yours! And then, give the gift to me! I long for it! I wish to follow you, to be a prophetess just as you are a prophet!”

  “Well…I don’t really know how much,” Peabody said. “I reckon a hundred dollars could go a right smart way toward—”

  “Again,” Rankin cut in quickly, “he’s being too humble. It isn’t his way to seek wordly wealth—he cares so little for it.” Rankin reached into a pocket and pulled out a slip of paper and a pencil. He scribbled a figure, folded the paper, and handed it to Pearl Johansen. She removed her right hand from Peabody’s—he took advantage of this to yank that freed hand back under the table and out of reach—then let go of the other hand to open the note. The left hand shot under the table, too, where Peabody wiped his fingers on his trousers. The dang woman had the sweatiest hands he’d ever held.

  She read the figure, smiled up at Rankin, then beamed at Peabody. “Sir, it’s a great gift you ask…but it’s a great gift I ask from you in return.” She licked her lips, and with a hungry look said, “Will I be able to foresee the coming of judgment, the falling of fire, as you can?”

  Peabody opened his mouth and tried to find an answer. Rankin, meanwhile, was all but trembling in anticipation of the wealth he envisioned being just about to come to him. Shafter just looked angry, like always, a dark shadow in the background.

  Suddenly Parson Peabody could bear it no more. A sense of clarity overwhelmed him, and he saw the situation as it was—even himself as he really was. He stood abruptly, almost jarring the table over. He shoved his chair back so fast it tipped and fell.

  “No!” he boomed. “No!”

  Rankin’s eyes all but shot flame. Shafter looked puzzled, but interested for once. The woman almost fell out of her seat and looked up at Peabody as if she expected the fire from heaven to suddenly fall on her.

  “Parson…Prophet—what are you doing?”

  “You shut up, Rankin! Shut up! And don’t call me ‘Prophet’! Don’t even call me ‘Parson,’ for I’m neither one! I’m just Forrest Peabody, a drunk who wishes he wasn’t a drunk, but can’t seem to be nothing else! I ain’t no man of God! I don’t speak no divine truths, ma’am. I’m just a man, just a common old sinner, not fit even to call the name of God, much less pretend to speak for Him.”

  Rankin looked ready to explode, Pearl Johansen to faint.

  “This is all false. It has been from the start. I mouthed off some nonsense before Gomorrah fell, but that’s all it was—just nonsense. I’ve said the same kinds of things before, other times and other places. The only difference was, this time it happened. I can’t explain it, but it did. And it scared the holy fire out of me, ma’am. ’Cause I sure didn’t cause it, and I surely didn’t foresee it.”

  Rankin’s mouth was moving, but he was too furious to make words come out.

  “Rankin there pretended to think me a prophet and almost convinced me I was. He hauled me off like a monkey on a string and made me preach to people, threatening to burn up their towns and homes with God’s fire, too, if they didn’t give money. And they did give, but he kept it. He don’t want your money to build a church, ma’am. He just wants it to spend on gambling and whiskey and whores, if you’ll pardon my forthright speaking. That’s all.”

  The woman was white as death, Rankin as red as Gomorrah’s flames. Thomas Shafter, meanwhile, burst out laughing.

  “I wish you’d never heard of me, Mrs. Johansen. Then you’d never have sent for me, and I’d not feel so guilty for having sat here and lied to you and all like I have. I ain’t no prophet. Really I ain’t. The only thing I can teach you, ma’am, is that…well, you ought not be so gullible. You ought
not be so ready to believe any nonsense somebody throws at you, for people will lie, ma’am. People ain’t to be trusted.”

  “Damn you!” Rankin exploded. “Damn you, you sorry old drunk—do you realize what you’ve just thrown away!”

  “I’m leaving,” Peabody said. “I want a drink.”

  Rankin swore obscenely, and put his hand under his coat. When it came out, it carried a small pistol. He aimed it at Peabody.

  “I wouldn’t.”

  The voice was that of Livesay Johansen, who had burst through the door into the library just as Rankin had drawn out the pistol. The Colt in Johansen’s hand was much larger than the little gun in Rankin’s.

  “Drop the pistol, sir,” Johansen said to Rankin, and Rankin did, at once. “Leave it on the floor, and prepare yourself to face the consequences of the law. I’ve been standing behind that door there since this little session began this morning, for I had suspicions about you. God knows I’ve been lenient with Pearl’s eccentricities through the years, letting her call in her seers and sages and gypsies…but I’ll not be defrauded so blatantly as this. Pearl, give me that note.”

  Trembling, the woman handed the slip of paper to her husband. He glanced at the figure on it, and swore. “Pearl, you think I’d have let you give this much away to so obvious a fraud? Do you think you married a fool?”

  Pearl burst into tears and fled the room.

  “What about me?” Shafter said.

  “You may go. I’ve not seen you take any direct part in this fraud.”

  Shafter was out the room’s opposite door in a moment.

  “I’ll go to jail, if that’s what I should do, sir,” Peabody said to Johansen.

  “No, sir,” Johansen replied. “I saw what you’re made of, sir, when you spoke the truth just now. Consider yourself a free man.”

  Peabody grinned. “Thank you, sir. Thank you.”