A Time For Hanging

by Bill Crider

  "That's right," Davis said. "The way I saw it, his mama came and let him out while the sheriff was busy calmin' Lucille down."

  "That's where he'll be, then," Benteen said. "At home with his mama. From what Ross says me, he was in pretty bad shape."

  "I guess so," Davis said. He had an idea what was coming.

  So did Willie. You could feel it in the room, like it was something in the air. Benteen's men had all had just about enough to drink to make them a little wild, and some of the others had been drinking too, earlier. It didn't matter that what they were about to decide to do was wrong. That wouldn't even enter into it, since they would convince themselves that they were right.

  And Willie knew he wasn't going to try to stop them, though he should. There were powerful reasons why he should, but he just couldn't get them clear in his mind.

  There were some in the room who had not been drinking and whose minds were not clouded that way, but they were mixed up in other ways, by their own reasoning, in fact.

  Hank Moran. He wanted to get the kid out of the way so he could get down to the business of relieving the town's citizens of their spare money. And if the kid were guilty, it would practically prove that Moran had been innocent in killing the father years before, or so it seemed to the gambler.

  Charley Davis didn't want word to get out about Liz's condition. If it did, his marriage to Lucille Benteen was over before it ever took place. Lucille, of course, would be devastated, and her father would probably kill him. But if the kid were dead, he would become the guilty party out of necessity. Even the sheriff would have to go along, and maybe no one would ever find out that Liz had been pregnant when she died.

  Benteen's case was different. He just wanted to catch the guilty party and show his daughter that Charley Davis had long ago broken any connection with a girl who met with greasers in the evening.

  And if you had asked Randall why he was there or what he was going to do, he probably couldn't have told you. His hand kept going to the butt of the pistol at his hip, caressing the smooth wood as if it were a woman's skin. He sat at the table and listened to the men talking, but he did not take part. His eyes were on them, but he wasn't seeing them. He seemed almost to be looking right through them, as if seeing something that no one else in the room was privileged to see.

  He did speak occasionally, but not in response to anything anyone else said. He wasn't talking to them. They didn't know who he was talking to, and they were afraid to ask.

  He said things like, "'For the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?'" It was clearly a question, but no one tried to answer it. For the most part, they simply looked away from him, as if he had done something slightly embarrassing.

  The talk in the big room grew in volume, rising like the growing rumble of thunder that signals a summer storm. Booted feet shuffled on the plank floor. Spurs jingled. Bottles clinked against glasses.

  Finally Turley Ross' voice cut through the noise. "Let's go get him. That's what we've gotta do."

  It might not have been what they had to do, but it was what they wanted to do, what they had been urging themselves to do all morning, whether they realized it or not.

  Willie had known it long before they had said it aloud, but he still groaned when he heard it.

  "That's a good idea," Benteen said. "We'll bring him in."

  Benteen's voice settled it for all of them. If Benteen was in it, they were all in it, and they all understood him to imply more than his words actually said.

  What they understood was that they were going after Paco Morales. Whether they actually brought him in or not was another thing.

  They might really do it. But if he tried to resist, well, they would just have to see what might happen in a case like that. If he tried to resist, the kid just might find himself getting killed.

  No one said it aloud, but it was in the air of the room like the stink of death, and Willie Turner could hardly breathe.

  21.

  After he left Bigby's office, Vincent decided he'd better go looking for Paco. He was worried about that bunch that had left the jail, but he thought they were likkered up and probably wouldn't do anything foolish. They might try to work themselves up to it, but in the end they were decent men who would do the right thing.

  He didn't take into account the possibility that they might meet up with another group of like-minded men. Had he done so, he would have gone by the saloon to check on them. He knew that while one or two men might think about doing something foolish, they would rarely act on the thought, whereas a bunch of men got braver in proportion to their numbers.

  He also didn't realize that Roger Benteen was in town and would be one of the group. Benteen was the kind of man who could easily sway men to one side or the other on an issue.

  So, not having any idea of what was going on in the saloon, Vincent went down to the stable and saddled up for his ride out to the Morales place without worrying too much about what might happen. What was worrying him was whether Paco was guilty or not.

  There was that business about Charley, for one thing. If there was anybody that had a reason to kill Liz Randall, it was him. Marryin' Benteen's daughter was the best thing that Charley could ever have hoped for from life, and considerin' how Lucille was takin' the news that Charley had just been seein' the girl, she wouldn't like it worth a damn if she found out the girl was pregnant.

  Vincent tightened the girth. By God, he thought. What if she did know? If she was shootin' at Charley, intendin' to miss, what might she have done to the woman?

  He swung up into the saddle, wondering if he should go by the hotel and ask her, but he thought better of it. If she did know, he'd find out sooner or later. If she didn't, he damn sure wasn't goin' to be the one who told her.

  He'd better ride by the jail, though, and let Jack know where he was goin'. That Jack was a case, now, standin' up to those men they way he had. As far as Vincent knew, that was the first time Jack had ever done anything like that. He was shy about his face, about his eye and all, and it made him hesitate to use his authority.

  And that gave Vincent another thought. Jesus God, could it be possible? Hell, in this mess, anything could be possible. He'd better get to the jail and talk to Jack about it, though he didn't see how he could bring the subject up.

  #

  It turned out to be easier than he thought it would. It took him a while to work up to the subject, but he got it done.

  "Jack," he said, "I been thinkin' about when that girl was killed."

  The two men were in the jail again, Vincent seated at the desk. He had tied his horse outside and gone in, making the excuse that he wanted to check something with Jack about the murder, which was true enough anyway.

  "Sure," Jack said. "What about it, Sheriff?"

  "Well, I know you told me somethin' about the girl last night, somethin' about how you saw her over at that grove not long before the killin'. Now, Jack, those trees, they just don't happen to be in your usual territory."

  Jack frowned, clearly puzzled by the turn of the conversation. He didn't seem to get the point.

  "What I mean is, you check around town and sometimes you check out a few of the houses, but you don't get out that way much. It's not very close to the area you're supposed to be patrollin'. So I was wonderin' . . . . "

  Jack got it then. He got up out of the chair where he'd been sitting and walked over to the cellblock door without saying anything.

  "You see where I'm goin' with this, Jack?" Vincent asked.

  "Yeah, I see," Jack said reluctantly.

  "And you see why I've gotta ask you?"

  Jack nodded. He could see that, too, but it didn't make things any easier for him.

  He wasn't making things any easier for Vincent by keeping his mouth shut, either. The sheriff gave him a few seconds to respond, but Jack still had nothing to say.

  "Well, Jack," Vincent said. "Looks like I'm gonna have to ask you straight out -- did you ever meet th
at Randall girl yourself?"

  At first he thought his deputy was not going to answer, but finally Jack said, "Yeah. Yeah I met her a time or two."

  Vincent was surprised. He had thought it might be possible, but he really didn't believe it. After all, Jack, with his face and all, didn't seem like the kind of man a romantically inclined young woman would be interested in, no matter how much her father tried to keep her penned up in the house.

  Besides, Vincent prided himself on the way he kept up with things in town, and he was finding out that there was a lot going on that he didn't know a thing about. He knew Liz Randall was roaming around, but he sure didn't know who she was meeting. His own deputy, too. It was hard to believe.

  Jack didn't seem to have anything else to offer, so Vincent said, "I'm waitin', Jack."

  Jack walked back to the chair and sat down. "It wasn't nothin' like you're thinkin'. I just met her to talk to a couple of times, that's all."

  "You weren't the only one, by a long shot."

  "That's the truth," Jack said. "There was me, and I guess there was Charley. She never mentioned him, though."

  "Anybody else?"

  "Willie Turner. She'd talk to him now and then."

  Willie Turner? Vincent thought. This was getting stranger by the minute. Was there anybody in town the girl hadn't seen while she was out walkin' after dark?

  "What about Willie?" he said.

  "Nothin' much. She just asked me about him. Asked me if it was true about the way his wife and kid died. I think he cried on her shoulder now and then."

  "You shoulda told me this sooner, Jack."

  "I know it, Sheriff. I just thought . . . I don't know what I thought. When I saw she was dead, I felt so bad, and then there was the Morales boy. Ever'body was yellin' that he done it, and it was all confusin'."

  "You stopped 'em from killin' him," Vincent said. "Why'd you do that, Jack?"

  Jack looked puzzled again. "What d'you mean?"

  "What I said. Why'd you stop 'em?"

  "'Cause it was wrong. He mighta done it, but there was no call for them to string him up. He oughta have a trial, just like anybody. You know that."

  "And that's the only reason?"

  "What other reason would there be?" Jack said.

  Vincent didn't answer him. He was wondering if Jack had stopped them because he knew Paco was innocent, knew it because maybe he'd been the one to kill the girl. Suppose he'd made advances to her and she'd laughed at him, said somethin' about his face. There were men who'd killed for less than that, though Jack didn't seem like the kind to do it.

  "No other reason," Vincent said, getting up from behind the desk. "You did the right thing, Jack. I'm proud of you."

  "Thanks, Sheriff," Jack said. He got up too, and walked to the door of the jail with Vincent.

  "I'm goin' to see about Paco," Vincent said. "You stay here, but don't tell anybody where I'm gone. Just say I'll be back soon."

  "Right," Jack said. "I got it, Sheriff."

  Vincent slipped the reins off the hitch rail and swung himself up into the saddle. The leather creaked as he settled himself, and he rode on out of town.

  When he looked back, he could still see Jack, standing in the doorway of the jail.

  #

  The sun was hot on Vincent's back as he rode and he could feel the sweat soaking into his shirt. It was one of the hottest days of the summer, so far, and getting hotter all the time.

  He was thinking about Jack Simkins, wondering if the deputy was telling the truth, and wondering at the same time why he was doubting him. Jack had never shown any inclination to lie. Why would he begin now?

  Of course, Vincent knew the answer to that one. Anybody who would kill would certainly lie, and Jack had never killed before, either, at least as far as Vincent knew.

  Vincent knew the story about Jack losing his eye and getting his face so messed up, though it wasn't told around town much any more. Folks had told it in the past to explain why Jack was a little hesitant when it came to fighting. Now they didn't think about that much; they just accepted Jack as being that way.

  It hadn't happened in Dry Springs. It had happened down close to the border somewhere, and according to the story Jack Simkins had been in a hell of a fight.

  Vincent jumped in the saddle a bit as he remembered that the fight had supposedly been over a woman. Jack hadn't killed anybody though. He'd come close to it, and he'd nearly gotten killed himself, but he hadn't killed anybody. That was Jack's version of the story, anyhow.

  There had been a woman named Estrella -- "Means Star," Jack had told him one time. "I don't think it was her real name, though. She was sure a pretty woman, and she was workin' in a little cantina down there. She talked to me mighty sweet, which a lot of women did in those days. I didn't look like I do now. Anyhow, I didn't know she was talkin' to two or three other fellas the same way when I wasn't around. I guess she thought they were pretty good lookin', too."

  He had found out about the other men the hard way. One night while he was sitting in the cantina with Estrella on his lap, the other three men had all come in. Seems they'd gotten together in some other bar, drinking and talking, and discovered that they were all in love with women who had the same name. It didn't take them too long to get from there to figuring out that it wasn't different women, that it was the same woman. They decided to confront her and make her choose among them.

  So they all came through the door, and there was Jack with the woman on his lap. They had figured three men for one woman was bad enough, and they sure hadn't figured on a fourth. Jack always smiled when he told that part, though it wasn't really very funny.

  "All of a sudden they musta decided that they weren't mad at each other any more, but they were mad as hell at Estrella. And they were damn sure mad at me."

  They pulled their guns and started to blaze away. Jack had the woman on his lap and couldn't get her off to get to his gun, but that problem was taken care of when one of the shots from the other men hit her in the side of the head.

  "It was an accident, I think," Jack said. "But it was awful bad, all the same. That beautiful face, all that black hair, well, there wasn't hardly anything left of it. Blood splattered all over me. I woulda been sick if I hadn't been so scared."

  Estrella fell sideways off his lap and he managed to get to his pistol. Except for the three men with pistols, everyone else in the place was long gone, out the door, out the windows, or hiding under the bar and the tables. Bullets were flying everywhere, but fortunately the men were so drunk that no one else was hit, not even by accident. They broke the mirror behind the bar, and blew a lot of bottles of whiskey all to hell, and even put a couple of holes in the piano, however.

  Jack winged one of the men, knocking him out of the fight, and the other two were out of bullets by then. The fight should have been over, but the men were so mad about having killed the woman that they charged Jack, who got off a couple of shots and missed with both of them.

  Then the two men were all over him, hitting him with everything they had, including their pistol barrels and butts. It was a pistol sight ripping down his face that had put the long scar there, and it was a pistol barrel that put his eye out.

  "I was doin' my best to keep 'em from killin' me," Jack said, "which they were bound and determined to do, I guess. I got the ear of one of 'em in my teeth and just about got it tore off when he stuck his gun barrel in my eye."

  As with the killing of the woman, the eye-gouging had apparently been an accident. The man was swinging wildly, trying to do anything to free his ear, and had stuck the pistol barrel in exactly the right spot.

  "That eye popped out like it was a grape, slick as you please," Jack said. "Hurt like hell, too, and it hurt even worse when I rolled over and saw it with my good eye. It was lyin' there on the table, lookin' back at me."

  The sight had given Jack a strength he didn't know he had. He had kept his teeth on the man's ear and thrown him halfway across the cantina.


  "The sound of that ear rippin' off was enough to stop me," he said, "not to mention the blood. You wouldn't think a ear could bleed that much. I spit it on the floor and cold-cocked the other fella with my own pistol. That was the end of it. Lookin' at that ear on the floor and my own eye on the table was enough to make me puke, and there was Estrella, lyin' there with the whole side of her head blowed off. I just wanted to get outta there."

  He was a little crazy by then, he admitted. "Took my eye off the table and put it in my pocket. Don't know what the hell good I thought it'd do me, but I took it just the same."

  He went out of the cantina, and there were men there, the sheriff of the little town and a few of the citizens he'd deputized for the occasion after someone had run to the jail with news of the gun battle that was raging down the street, but for some reason nobody tried to stop him.

  "I guess they were scared to," Jack said. "I musta looked like the wrath of God, covered with blood, blood runnin' down my face from where the gunsight raked me and pourin' outta my eye socket. Hell, there was plenty of Estrella's blood on me, too, and prob'ly part of her head. Anyhow, that bunch just split down the middle and I walked right through 'em. There wasn't a one of 'em that didn't stand aside. Nobody even made a move to stop me. Nobody put a hand out."

  Jack found his horse and rode away from there that very night, never even stopping for a doctor to see about his eye or the wound on his face.

  "Had a bottle of whiskey in my saddlebags," he said. "I used to drink a bit in those days, so I always had a bottle around with me somewhere, wrapped up in a saddle blanket so as not to break it."

  He stopped a few miles out of town, got out the whiskey, and tied up his horse. Then he lay down under a tree and poured the whiskey in his eye and on his face, after first cleaning himself up as best he could with his bandanna.

  "Burn?" he said. "I guess it did. Not for long, though, 'cause I flat just passed out from the hurtin'. Just as well. I don't never want to feel anything like that again. That's about as near to dyin' as I've ever been, and I don't want to get that near again for a long time. I was all right by the next day, but by the time I remembered that I had my eye in my pocket it was in bad shape. Didn't look anything like a eye, to tell the truth. I pitched it away in a patch of cactus."