by Bill Crider
He stood there for a few minutes, trying to remember what had happened. Then it all came back to him in a rush -- the dead woman, his sudden panic, his collision with the tree. He had no idea how long he had lain on the ground, or how late it might be, but he knew that he had to get out of there. The blow on his head had done one good thing for him: he was no longer afraid.
The full moon was high in the sky, and quite a bit of its mellow light filtered through the tree branches, shadowing the ground at Paco's feet. He looked around helplessly for the salt and sugar he had been holding at one time, but they were nowhere to be seen.
He felt his fear returning, but he controlled the urge to run. There was no need to hurry. He was alone, except for the woman, and the woman would not be bothering him. He would retrace his steps and try to find the sugar and salt. He must have dropped it in his headlong flight. If he was careful, he would be able to find them. He hoped they had not spilled.
He began walking back the way he had come, looking at the ground as carefully as he could in the dark. He had almost reached the trail when he heard voices.
He stepped back into the trees, pressing himself to the trunk of a large elm. The sharp point of a broken limb poked him through his thin shirt.
At first the voices were just a blur, but then he began to distinguish them. There were obviously a number of men, all of them talking loud.
"Dammit, Harl, watch out where you're goin'," someone said. "This trail's too narrow for more than one of us."
Harl, Paco thought. That would be Harl Case, the owner of the livery stable, the only man in town by that name. What was he doing there?
"All right, I'm a-movin'," Harl said. "We got to spread out anyway, if we're gonna find anybody around here. Myself, I think we're chasin' all over the territory for nothin'. That girl's got clear of this town and her daddy, and I don't blame her."
"Damn right," the first man said. "He's had her on such a tight rein, I expect she's hightailed it. Wouldn't be surprised to find out there's some young fella missin', too. Hell, if I was young enough, I'd've run with her myself."
"That'd be the day, Jack Simkins," a third voice said. "Even if you was young, you're so ugly a blind mule wouldn't run off with you."
There was the sound of laughter.
"On second thought, maybe I could be wrong about that. A blind mule might be 'xactly the kinda thing that'd catch your eye."
Paco knew Jack Simkins, or knew who he was. He was the sheriff's deputy, a big, lazy man with a glass eye and a scarred face. He was ugly, all right, but everybody liked him. He was easy-going and good-natured, but that didn't matter to Paco right then. He didn't want to be found by anybody, no matter how good-natured. It was easy-going men like Simkins who had stood by when his father was killed and let the gambler go free.
He heard the men crashing through the brush as they continued to call back and forth to one another. He thought that maybe he could make a run for it. They were making so much noise that they weren't likely to hear him.
He didn't know for sure how many of them there were, but he figured that there were about six. Five for sure. He moved stealthily from the shelter of the tree trunk, bending low to the ground and staying in the shadows.
He had not gotten far when he heard someone cry out.
"Jesus Christ a'mighty!"
"What is it, Len?" Harl yelled. "What's the matter?"
"I found her, fellas. God a'mighty, I found her! Get over here, quick!"
The sounds of the crashing around increased as the other men ran to where Len Hawkins was. Hawkins was the owner of a hardware store, a rail-thin man with no hair at all on his head. Paco had often wondered just how old Len Hawkins was. His wrinkled bald head made him look ancient, but his eyes were young, and the skin of his face was like that of a young girl.
Paco began moving faster. There was no way, in all their excitement, they could hear him now.
But suddenly everything grew quiet, and Paco had to halt. The men had come to the body, and Paco could hear them cursing under their breath.
Finally Len Hawkins spoke aloud. "I can't believe this, I just can't believe it," he said. "It's Lizzie Randall, sure as hell. Who'd do a thing like this, fellas? Who?"
No one answered him for a while. Paco knew what they were feeling, the same mixture of fear and awe that he himself had felt not so long ago.
It was not so much that the woman was dead. The men could have accepted that, as could Paco. Death was a fact of life that all of them had come to accept early on. Too many babies died, too many men got snake-bit, or thrown from bucking horses, or shot in saloons for death to be frightening in itself.
It was the way of this death that was shocking.
Women were, for the most part, respected and honored by all the men. Paco knew that there were exceptions, like the women that worked for Mr. Danton in the saloon, but the dead woman was not one of those. Even those women were treated with a kind of special deference by most men of the town.
So to find a woman like this, dead in the trees, obviously killed by someone strong, probably in a hard struggle, was shocking.
It was even more shocking to the men who gathered round her now than it had been to Paco, for they knew who she was.
"It's the preacher's daughter, all right," Jack Simkins said. "I'd know that red hair of hers anyplace."
"What the hell's she doin' out here, anyways?" Harl Case wondered. "Woman's got no business wanderin' off into a place like this."
"Well, she's been here before," Jack said. "That's why Sheriff Vincent sent us out here in the first place. He said somebody'd seen her walking this trail more'n once."
"What're we gonna do?" Len Hawkins asked. "Who's gonna tell her pa?"
"Seems to me that's the sheriff's job," said a voice Paco did not recognize. "I sure as hell ain't gonna be the one."
"We'll let him decide that," Jack said. "The rest of you men stand guard here. I'll go back to town and let the sheriff know about this."
"You better tell him to get a rope ready," Harl said. "Whoever done this is gonna swing for it, and that's the truth."
Paco didn't wait for Jack's reply to that. He started making his way through the trees again.
He might have made it to safety if he hadn't hooked his foot in a sharp-thorned vine that grew near a tree. He fell forward, trying to stifle the yell that escaped his lips as the fire raked his shins through the worn jeans.
"What the hell's that?" Jack Simkins said.
"Somebody's out there!"
"Let's get the sonofabitch!"
There was more crashing and thrashing of tree branches as the men began storming toward the spot where Paco lay.
He tore his way free of the vine and got to his feet. His head was throbbing again; he could feel the blood pounding in it. The fall had not done him any good.
He could hardly move, much less run. He put out his hands and stumbled blindly forward.
Shots rang out and he could hear the bullets clipping the branches nearby.
He stopped in his tracks and turned to face the charging men. "It is only me, Paco Morales," he called out, hoping that he could avert their fury by letting them know that he was harmless.
They did not care who he was. They were horrified by what they had seen, and they were not thinking rationally at all. They wanted to hurt someone, to make someone pay, and Paco was there.
He was going to pay.
They stopped shooting when they saw that he was not going to run, but when they caught up with him they began raining blows on him, smashing his face with their fists, mashing his lips and causing the blood to fly, breaking his teeth, hammering his chest and sides until he fell to the ground, and then kicking him repeatedly after he had fallen.
Fortunately for Paco, he did not know most of what was happening to him. He had screamed at first and tried to defined himself, which was futile, but after the first few fists had struck his head like blocks of wood he had lost consciousness.
<
br /> After a few minutes the men stopped beating him, tired and out of breath from the effort. They looked at one another, their heads hanging, somewhat ashamed of what they had done, but nevertheless sure that they had been right.
"He's the one that done it," Len Hawkins said, panting slightly as he massaged his left hand with his right. He thought he might have broken a knuckle. "You think we killed him?"
"Naw, he's alive," Harl Case said. "He won't last long, though, when folks find out what he's done."
"We don't know for sure he done anything," Jack Simkins reminded them, a little worried about the beating.
"Now wait a minute," Turley Ross said. His had been the voice Paco had not recognized. He was short and stocky, with broad shoulders and long arms. He had gotten in a number of good licks on Paco, and he knew the boy deserved them. "We know he done it. He killed that girl back there, and no tellin' what else he done to her."
They all thought about that for a minute.
"Well," Simkins said slowly, "he was here, all right. But that don't mean he done anything."
They looked down at the boy who lay at their feet. He was breathing, but that was all they could say for him. One of his arms looked funny, probably broken, and he had been kicked plenty hard. Maybe a few ribs broken, too.
And his face wasn't going to be pretty. Even in the dark, they could see that it looked like a side of raw beef.
"Hell, he done it. Why else would he be here, and then try to sneak off?" Len Harper asked. Harper was the fifth man in the group, a bartender in Danton's Saloon. He was a big man with a black mustache and thinning black hair that he combed in long strands across his balding skull.
Simkins tried to think, which was not his strong point. But he was the representative of the law here, and he wanted to do things right.
"He could've done it, that's for sure," he finally said.
"Could've, my ass," Harl said. "He's the one done it, and that's that. We practically caught him in the act, and we captured him. Hell, folks are gonna thank us for what we done when we bring him in."
"Paco Morales, is who he is," Harper said. "It was his daddy that got shot over that card game a few years back. A cheatin' greaser. Things like that run in the blood. Now his boy's turned killer."
The men remembered the card game. They also remembered that there had been some talk around town that Roberto Morales, Paco's father, had not been cheating at all. In fact, so the talk had gone, it was that tinhorn gambler -- Hank something or other -- who had done the cheating and Morales had called him on it. But it was Morales who ended up dead, and there wasn't much more said about it, Morales being a Mexican. And the men certainly weren't going to bring up the question of his innocence now. It was best that no one mention it.
Paco stirred.
"He's comin' around," Simkins said. "We got to do something with him."
"We got to take him to the damn jail, is what we'll do," Hawkins said. "Then he'll get a fair trial before we hang him. Least he might get a trial. There'll be some want to hang him sooner."
Simkins still didn't like it. He knew that there was the little matter of proof, of evidence, of which they had none except for Paco's presence there, but the others all seemed convinced that Paco had to be guilty of the girl's death.
If he wasn't guilty, would they have savagely beaten him the way they had done?
Of course not.
They had half killed him, so he must be guilty. That was the only way to justify their actions.
"All right, then," Simkins said. "A couple of you can stay here with him, and the other two can go stand by the body. Turley, you and Harl can do that. I'll go tell the sheriff what's happened and get a wagon so we can take 'em back to town."
"Maybe we oughta just hang him ourselves," Turley said.
"What?" Simkins said. "Hang him?"
"Why the hell not?" He done it." Turley was defensive and angry. "Goddamn meskin killin' a white woman like that. I say we get a rope and hang him right here on the spot."
"We can't do a thing like that," Simkins said.
"Sure we can," Turley said. "Save the judge some trouble."
"Turley's right," Harl said. "We can do it ourselves. Wouldn't nobody say anything against it. What do you say, Lane?"
Harper, like the others, was thinking about what had happened. They had viciously beaten the boy, who was practically dead already.
What if he got to be all right before the judge got him tried. What if he was able to convince a jury that he didn't have anything to do with the killing? What would that make the men who had beaten him? It could make them not much better than killers themselves, that's what.
On the other hand, if the boy was dead, he wouldn't be able to say anything at all.
"I say we hang him," Harper said.
"I'll go along with that," Hawkins added.
"Well, it ain't gonna be that way," Jack Simkins said. "I ain't much of a lawman, but I'm enough of a one to know better than to stand still for a lynchin', even if it is a meskin."
He drew his pistol. "So I guess I'm gonna have to be the one to stay here and watch this boy and let one of you go get the sheriff. Turley, that might's well be you. And you others can go and stand down there by the girl. I don't need no help here."
"You don't need to treat us like this, Jack," Lane Harper said. "We didn't mean no harm."
"You meant to hang this boy, here."
"It's just that he ought to hang," Harl said. "Look what he done to that girl."
"That's as may be. Right now we ain't entirely sure of that."
"I'm sure," Hawkins said.
"Me, too," Turley said.
"I'd hate to have to shoot you boys over something like this," Jack said. He had kept the barrel of his pistol pointed down. Now he raised it slightly. "Turley, you ride on back to town for the sheriff like I said. Lane, you might's well go with him and bring the doc."
"Goddamn, Jack --"
"That's enough of that, now. Go on."
Jack thought for a minute they might rush him. They stood there, looking at him, breathing hard, their fists opening and closing, but the moment passed. They turned and walked away, leaving him standing there, the boy at his feet.
Jack looked down at the motionless Paco. "I'll say one thing, boy. If you had any shoes on, I'd sure hate to be in 'em right now."
He holstered his pistol and leaned back against a tree to wait for the sheriff.
4.
Sheriff Ward Vincent had never wanted to be the law in Dry Springs. He had stood for election only because no one else would do it after the last sheriff, old Frank Rawlings, had been killed one night by a likkered-up young gunsharp who'd been hoorawin' the town, shootin' out windows and scarin' people half to death. The gunman had got clean away, and no one had ever seen him again. Five or six months went by before an election was held, because it took that long to get someone to say he'd run.
That had been seven years ago, and Vincent had been the sheriff ever since, doing the best job he could for fifty dollars a month. He didn't have a family to support, his wife having died of a fever so early in their marriage that they'd never had children, so the money was all right; and to tell the truth, the job wasn't as bad as it might have been. Just the usual drunks, an occasional fight at Danton's saloon, now and then a little robbery, but nothing to cause a man to lose his sleep.
So it wasn't the job itself that bothered Vincent. Instead, it was the constant though of what might happen that kept him in a sweat. He knew he wasn't a brave man, though after seven years people had started thinking of him that way.
You wear the badge long enough, and people begin to think you've got the guts to back it up. Break up a fight or two, run a couple of rowdies out of town, and people begin to believe you're a handy man with your fists or a gun.
Vincent wasn't any of those things. He was just an ordinary man who had to do his job as best he could. He'd never been tested in a really tough situation. The nearest he ever
came was the time Roberto Morales got shot, and the gambler had claimed self-defense. Said Morales was cheatin' and when the gambler called his hand, Morales came at him with a knife. So the gambler shot him.
A couple of folks backed the gambler up. Lane Harper, for one. Said he'd seen the whole thing, and sure enough, there was a knife lyin' there by Morales' body, a huge pigsticker that no one in town ever remembered seein' Morales carry.
Nobody could ever remember Morales bein' anything but honest, either, but the gambler went on his way without much question.
Vincent thought about it every now and then, as the thought about it now, sitting in the little hot-box of a jail, looking up at the round-faced clock on the wall.
Eleven o'clock. Not that late if it was a Saturday night, but nothing ever happened in Dry Springs on a Tuesday, which is what it was now. Vincent was only rarely awake this late during the middle of the week.
He opened the top drawer of the scarred old desk and rummaged around in it for the winding key, found it, and walked over to the clock. He opened the face, inserted the key, and gave it a couple of turns. The spring was already tight, so he put the key back in the desk.
He sat back down and thought about Lizzie Randall.
Her father had been all in a sweat, sayin' that his daughter had disappeared.
That had been two hours earlier.
"What do you mean, 'disappeared,' Preacher?" Vincent said.
"I mean she's gone," Randall said. "She left the house, and she hasn't come back for supper. My wife . . . . " He paused. "My wife's worried sick."
"She ever go off before?"
Randall straightened. He swallowed twice, his prominent Adam's apple bobbing up and down. "Never," he said, his mouth dry as he tried to swallow the lie.
That wasn't what Vincent had heard. As the sheriff, he kept a close eye on the town and knew a lot more about what went on than nearly anyone. He knew more about Lizzie Randall than he parents did, he suspected.
"Well, now," he said. "Where do you think he might be gone?"
