“Judging by your kin, I reckon you’re gun slick, O’Brien. Strange thing in a man who doesn’t carry a pistol.”
“You should be in Yuma, Shel. But I don’t see you carrying chains.”
Shannon nodded. “You have a quick wit, O’Brien. Well, I don’t know how long you’ll live, but you call me Shel Shannon just one more time and your life ends right here.”
“So what do I call you, besides son-of-a—”
“You call me Brother Uzziah. Get it right next time, O’Brien, or I’ll kill you.”
“What do we do with them?” Brother Melchizedeck said.
His eyes still burning into Shawn’s face like branding irons, Shannon said, “Take O’Brien and the gambler to the prison. They’ll be put to the question later.”
“And the girl?”
“The hotel. Once the church service is over two holy and righteous women of the town will examine her for the witch’s mark.”
“Brother Uzziah, look!” one of the other men yelled. He pointed to a rock ridge above the town where a man sat a white horse in front of a stand of aspen.
Shannon scanned the ridge, then screamed, “Damn him! Damn him to hell!”
He threw his Winchester to his shoulder and levered off several shots at the rider on the ridge. The man didn’t flinch.
“Is it him?” Shannon yelled, lowering the rifle. “Is it the shifter?”
“It’s him all right,” Melchizedeck said, a strange, stricken fear in his eyes. “It’s Jasper Wolfden as ever was. He’s come back from the grave.” Then, “My God, Uzziah, look at that!”
The rider leaned from the saddle and hefted a long pole that seemed heavy for him because of the human head stuck on the axe-shaved point.
“Who is it?” Shannon shrieked. “Damn you, whose head is that?”
“It’s Mordecai,” a young, towheaded brother said.
“Are you sure?” Shannon said, his voice ragged with near hysteria. “Damn you, are you sure?”
“Yes, it’s Brother Mordecai. I can make out the black powder burn over his left eye.”
Shawn studied Shel Shannon. The gunman was a cold-blooded killer, lightning fast on the draw and shoot, but his hands trembled and he continually swallowed as though his mouth was filled with saliva.
“He’s a shifter,” Shannon said. “You can’t kill a shifter.”
His eyes keen, Shawn directed his attention to the horseman on the ridge.
The man held his macabre trophy high. By the look of the head, its late owner had died recently. Shawn guessed within the past couple of hours.
He had no idea who Jasper Wolfden was, but dead men don’t sweat. Dark arcs showed in the armpits of the man’s shirt and his hat had a salt-crusted stain around the crown.
Wolfden had not returned from the grave, but spook or not, shifter or not, he’d put the fear of God into Sheldon Shannon . . .
. . . a man who didn’t scare worth a damn.
CHAPTER THREE
The doors of the church swung open and the congregation of about a hundred men, women and children spilled onto the street. They had obviously turned out in their best, the men in go-to-prayer-meeting broadcloth, the women in silk afternoon dresses that boasted much lace.
All eyes turned to the wrecked stage and then to the passengers who stood under guard.
It seemed no one had noticed the dead men.
At least not yet.
Shawn watched a man stand in the church doorway for a few moments before he too stepped into the street.
He was very tall; at least five inches over six feet, and his shoulders under the monk’s robes were an axe handle wide. His black hair was cropped close and his clean-shaven face was long, lean and hard, the mouth thin, touched by a hint of cruelty.
The townspeople bowed their heads as the man walked through them, his stride purposeful, like a soldier crossing a parade ground.
“Why all the shooting, Brother Uzziah?” the big man said. “I had to cut my sermon short and a mere two hours isn’t nearly enough to drive mortal sin from these people.”
“Jasper Wolfden was on the ridge, Brother Matthias,” Shel said.
“He’s dead,” Matthias said. His face was like stone and his eyes slid from Shannon’s face to conceal his emotions.
“He’s back,” Melchizedeck said. “Look on the ridge, Brother Matthias.”
The man called Matthias shaded his eyes against the sun and studied the ridge. The rider was gone, but the pole with the head was stuck into the ground.
“Who is it?” he said. Then louder for the sake of the gathering crowd, “Who is the holy martyr?”
“Brother Mordecai,” Shannon said.
“But . . . he was good with a gun,” Matthias said.
“Yeah, but he wasn’t a patch on Wolfden, boss,” Melchizedeck said. “And Wolfden is a shifter. He may have killed Brother Mordecai as a wolf or a cougar.”
Matthias looked like a man who’d just been slapped. His nostrils flaring, he said, “I told you never to call me ‘boss.’ In this town I’m Brother Matthias.”
“Sorry, it just slipped out,” Melchizedeck said. He looked scared.
“Don’t let it slip out again or I’ll make you eat it, washed down with hot lead,” Matthias said. “Do you understand?”
Melchizedeck swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
“I won’t forget, Brother Matthias.”
The big man ignored him and said to Shannon, “Only the heathen Navajo believe in shifters. Wolfden is only a man, a washed-up actor for God’s sake, and like any man he can be killed. We must have shot and buried the wrong feller is all.”
Matthias’s eyes moved to the two dead men sprawled in the street.
Who are they?” he said.
“A nobody. A ladies’ corsets drummer,” Shannon said. “And the stage driver who broke his damned fool neck when the stage went over.”
“The drummer was shot. Why did you kill him?”
“He made demands,” Shannon said.
Matthias nodded, only half-interested. His eyes ranged over Shawn, the gambler and the girl, then back to Shawn.
“Do I know you?” he said to Shawn.
“Maybe. I’m Shawn O’Brien of Dromore in the New Mexico Territory.”
“Old Shamus’s son?”
“One of them.”
Matthias looked like a man who’d just gotten bad news. And the skin of his face stiffened tight to the skull when Shannon said, “He recognized me, Brother Matthias. He knows who I am.”
Shawn said, “As I recall, a couple of years back good ol’ Shel here took to running with a hard crowd ramrodded by a feller by the name of Hank Cobb. Seems this Cobb feller got his start in life as a small-time, dark alley crook who’d stick the shiv into any man, woman or child for fifty dollars. That’s what I heard, anyway.”
Matthias was silent for a long time, then he said, “Brother Uzziah, take these men to the prison. They will face the Grand Council tonight. The girl goes to the hotel. Have the women search her for the witch’s mark. If such is found, she’ll burn.”
Panic flashed in the girl’s face and she turned and ran toward the church.
She didn’t get far.
A couple of men stepped away from the rest of the congregation and grabbed her by the arms.
“Take her to the hotel, brethren,” Matthias said. “A couple of you righteous women go with her and put her to the test.”
Shawn O’Brien, made reckless by recent grief that continued to hurt like a knife blade twisting in his belly, said, “Damn you, you’re Hank Cobb all right. Only a lowlife like you would treat a woman that way.”
Cobb smiled. “Yeah, I’m Cobb, the man who’ll sign your death warrant, O’Brien. Your pa and your gunslinging brothers ain’t here to protect you now, pretty boy.”
It looked as though Cobb was prepared to say more, but Shawn’s hard fist crashing into his mouth discouraged any further attempt at speech.
Cobb hit th
e ground flat on his back, but the big man made no effort to rise again. He backhanded a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth, smearing red across his chin. His eyes were murderous.
“Want me to gun him, Matthias?” Shannon said.
“No. I want a different death for him.” Cobb got to his feet, helped by members of his congregation. “Take him to the prison, and the gambler with him.”
Cobb pushed his face close to Shawn’s.
“Before this day is done, you’ll regret the day you were spawned and you’ll curse the mother that bore you.”
Shawn spat in the man’s face . . . and paid the price.
Something hard crashed into the side of his head and suddenly he saw the ground cartwheeling up to meet him.
And then he saw nothing at all. . . .
CHAPTER FOUR
“How you feeling, pardner?”
Shawn O’Brien opened his eyes, saw the gambler’s face solidify from an angular, concerned blur. He groped for words through the fog of a headache.
“All right, I reckon.”
“You took a hard bump. Rifle butt.”
“Seems like.”
“Name’s Hamp Sedley. I know yours. Shawn O’Brien of Dromore. Hell, you sound like royalty.”
Shawn struggled to a sitting position and heard an iron cot creak under him. Late afternoon sunlight angled through a high window and bladed into his eyes. He smelled vomit, man sweat and ancient piss.
“Where are we, Hamp?” he said.
“In what them fellers in robes call a prison,” Sedley said. “They say we won’t be here much longer on account they plan to hang us.”
“Cut our heads off, you mean,” Shawn said.
“I was going to break that to you gently,” Sedley said. “You having a misery an’ all.”
Shawn looked around, studying the jail and Sedley said, “Don’t even think about it. This place is built like the National Bank of Texas.”
“No way out, huh?” Shawn said.
“Not that I can see. And I sure looked.”
Shawn rose from the cot’s filthy cornhusk mattress and waited for the expected wave of pain to crash through his head. He wasn’t disappointed.
“Take it easy, O’Brien,” Sedley said. “You ain’t hardly yourself yet. That was quite a bump you took.”
Unsteady on his feet though he was, Shawn ignored that and explored the room.
Rats rustled in the shadowed corners where the spiders lived and the walls felt dank, as though their coating of winter frost had just melted. The single window, barred with iron, was high on one wall and allowed a narrow beam of light to splash a pale rectangle onto the muddy floor.
There was an exit, a heavy iron gate, and behind that a heavy timber door that was shut and probably bolted from the other side.
The only furnishings in the room were a row of six cots and an overflowing bucket that stank to high heaven. The Holy Rood jail was an annex of hell.
“I don’t want to say I told you so, but I told you so,” Sedley said. “Unless you have the keys, there’s no way out of this place.”
Shawn nodded. “I’d say that’s a one-way door,” he said. “Prisoners who leave by that portal don’t ever come back.”
“I reckon that’s about the size of it,” Sedley said. He managed a bleak smile. “And me too young and good-looking to die.”
“Any age is too young to die,” Shawn said.
Sedley was quiet for a while, then said, “You’re hurting, O’Brien.”
“Yeah, I took some bruises when the stage tipped.”
“Not that kind of hurt.”
Sedley reached into his coat and produced a silver flask. “Here, take a swig. It’s good Kentucky bourbon.”
“Real lawmen would’ve taken that from you,” Shawn said, reaching for the flask.
The gambler nodded. “A natural fact as ever was. But we’re dealing with amateurs, not real lawmen.”
“They’re not amateurs when it comes to killing,” Shawn said. “Cobb and Shannon are experts at that.”
“Is the whiskey to your taste?” Sedley asked.
“Real good.” He passed the flask back to the gambler. “Here, take it, before I drink it all.”
“Man needs whiskey in a place like this,” Sedley said, looking around him. “Man needs whiskey when he’s hurting.”
Shawn smiled. “Hamp, you’re like a dog with a bone.”
“I make a living from reading other men’s eyes, and I see a world of hurt in yours. A woman, huh?”
“My wife. She died.”
“That’s the whole story?”
“She was murdered. Yes, and that’s where the story ends.”
Sedley shook his head. “Sorry to hear that, O’Brien. Was she a good woman?”
“The best that ever was.”
“I reckon we’re dead men and they say dead men don’t tell tales,” the gambler said. “But I’ve got a tale to tell if you’re willing to hear it. It’s short, bitter and to the point and now is a good time to get it off my chest.”
“I can read a man’s eyes too, Hamp,” Shawn said. “So talk away.”
Sedley thought for a while, and then said, “I had me a wife once. She was real pretty and I guess I loved her, but she never liked me. I made her pregnant, or so she said, and I did the decent thing.”
The gambler passed the flask to Shawn.
“For a spell it went all right, I guess, but we were never alone, even when it was just the two of us. Always in the background there was the shadow of another man. The man she really loved, but didn’t marry. You catch my drift?”
“I reckon,” Shawn said. “I guess it happens more often than people think.”
“I was working the riverboats back then and got back to my hotel one afternoon and found”—Sedley reached into the pocket of his frockcoat and pulled out an envelope—“this. It was lying on my pillow. I’ve kept it ever since.”
He took a piece of folded notepaper from the envelope and passed it to Shawn. “Read ’em and weep,” he said.
The note was indeed short and to the point.
I’VE LEFT YOU, HAMP.
YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND
WHAT LOVE MEANS AND I
FOUND A MAN WHO DOES.
DON’T COME AFTER ME.
And it was signed, Doris.
Shawn passed the paper back to Sedley.
“And after that you never saw her again?” he said.
“No, but a few years later I heard she’d been working the line up Ellsworth way and had died of the cholera, Doris and three hundred other people.”
“Bad way to go,” Shawn said.
“Will ours be any better?” Sedley said.
“Quicker, I reckon. Everything I’ve read about the guillotine said it’s real sudden.”
Sedley took a swig of whiskey and talked again.
“Going back to what I said, I didn’t shed a tear for Doris, but I felt bad, like I’d lost a small part of me. Funny that, ain’t it?”
“I can understand how you feel,” Shawn said.
“Yeah, of course you can,” Sedley said.
He was quiet for a few moments, then said, “I been thinking about what you were saying about a blade being sudden, an’ all. One time I read a book about them old-time English kings and the folks they chopped, and it said that if you cut off a man’s head his brain will keep working for a while afterward. He’ll know what’s happened to him and feel the pain.”
“You got any more good news, Hamp?” Shawn said.
“Gallows humor, O’Brien. I think that’s what it’s called.”
“I’m not laughing,” Shawn said.
The timber door creaked open and then a key clanked in an iron lock.
In the dim half-light, Shawn watched a man carrying a zinc bucket shuffle inside. He looked like a great, shortsighted mole as he glanced around, blinking through thick, round glasses.
Shel Shannon came in behind him, a Greener scattergun in
his hands. Beside Shannon stood a stocky, muscular blacksmith, his face sooty from the forge, shackles in both hands.
“Water,” Shannon said.
“Get him to take the other bucket out of here, Shannon,” Shawn said. “It stinks.”
“Your problem,” Shannon said. To the mole he said, “Leave the water bucket where you’re at and get the hell out of here. I can’t stand to look at you.”
The man seemed bewildered and Shannon said, “Put the bucket down, you idiot. Down, understand me? Down!”
The man did as he was told, water slopping over the bucket rim.
“Now beat it afore I take a stick to you,” Shannon said.
He looked at Shawn. “He’s tetched in the head. You have to tell him to do a thing at least two or three times. I don’t know why Cobb keeps him.”
The mole man looked terrified as he walked wide of Shannon and shuffled rapidly out the door.
The gunman watched the man leave, then said, “He knows I’ll beat him to death the day Cobb decides he don’t want him around no more.” He shook his head. “Seems like two retarded dimwits got together for a roll in the hay and that creature was the result.”
“What is Cobb going to do with us?” Sedley asked.
Shannon said, putting emphasis on the first two words out of his mouth, “Brother Matthias has extended, to both of you, an invitation to an execution.”
“Who’s getting executed? Us?” Shawn said.
If Shannon answered yes, Shawn had made up his mind to rush the man and take his chances with the shotgun.
But Shannon shook his head. “No, not you two, at least not yet. The condemned is a Texas cowboy who rode into Holy Rood with a lump in his pants looking for fancy women.”
“That’s all?” Shawn said. “Punchers look for women all the time.”
“It’s enough,” Shannon said. “Besides, he had a money belt around his waist that contained a thousand dollars in cash. The drover swore on the Bible that his employer gave it to him to buy a Hereford bull from a ranch down in the Sand Mountain country.”
Shannon stared at Shawn. “You know what that was? It was sacrilege to tell a lie with your hand on the Good Book. Yet another reason why the man was condemned.”
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