Trail of the Hanged Man (2 page)

After turning the grullo over to the hostler, Lawless got a room at the Parker Hotel. It was as clean and comfortable as the sheriff had described. Freshly ironed sheets covered the bed, prints of Audubon’s birds adorned the walls and as a special touch, there were pine cones in each drawer of the chest-of-drawers to add fragrance to the guests’ clothes.

Atop the chest-of-drawers was a porcelain pitcher of water, basin, towel and soap. Stripping down, Lawless washed away the trail grime and reached for the towel.

With his shirt off, a permanent scar showed all around the base of his neck. It was a grim ugly reminder of a distant day he never wanted to forget and yet, as of now, could only partially remember. As he toweled himself dry, Lawless studied his
reflection
in the gilt-framed mirror above the chest-of-drawers. He fingered the lumpy twisted flesh, trying as he did to recall the events that had happened during the five or six hours prior to and after the hanging. But as usual his mind remained blank.

For the life of him he could not remember who had hanged him, or why – or how he had escaped. Yet strangely, buried
somewhere
deep in his senses, he could still feel that single, awful moment when the rope jerked tight … the noose crushing against his jugular … choking him until all went black.

The next thing he was aware of, it was some time during the night and he was riding across the moonlit Mexican scrubland toward the US border. His neck hurt and the flesh was red and swollen with rope burns. And the following morning when he crossed the border at Columbus, New Mexico, and spoke to the gate-guard his voice was so hoarse he didn’t recognize it.

Those ten or twelve missing hours remained a mystery. And now, as always since the hanging, just thinking about it caused him to be gripped by an uncontrollable panic. He held on to the chest-of-drawers to steady himself and gulped in lungful after lungful of air until the panic went away and he could breathe normally again.

‘Damn you,’ he said through his teeth. ‘Damn you whoever you are!’

Calming, he opened his saddle-bags and took out an old but clean gray linen shirt. Slipping into it, he buttoned it up to the collar so that the scar was no longer visible. Then, buckling on his gun-belt, he went downstairs to the dining room.

The owner’s wife had once worked in a Harvey House. Like many Harvey girls she had married one of her customers, and then later persuaded him to buy the hotel. The waitresses were young, polite and attractive. They wore neat black uniforms with white cuffs. There were snowy linen table cloths and gleaming silverware from St Louis, red velvet drapes, a slow-twirling brass ceiling fan and windows clean enough to see folks walking past on the boardwalks.

Lawless ordered a steak, burned. It hung over the sides of the platter and came with peas and mashed potatoes smeared in gravy, biscuits and honey and a wedge of fresh-baked
cinnamon-spiced
apple pie. He emptied his plate and washed everything
down with several cups of rich black coffee. Stuffed, he paid his bill, then bought two Mexican cigars from the desk clerk and found a comfortable chair in the lobby to smoke one of them. It left him with just enough to pay the hostler. But he didn’t care. Besides his uncanny ability with a gun he was good with horses and from what he had heard there was plenty of work for a
wrangler
in Arizona and the border was no more than two days’ ride from where he sat. If he could reach there without encountering any trouble, maybe he could begin life all over again.

Maybe.

He was not taking anything for granted.

Presently a man approached holding a straw skimmer. ‘Excuse me.…’

Lawless looked up through his exhaled smoke and saw a small, slim, fastidiously tidy man of forty in a tailored brown suit and polka-dotted brown bowtie smiling at him.

‘Are you Mr Ben Lawless?’

‘Who wants to know?’

‘I’m Brian Edfors. I own the—’

‘—bank. Yeah, I know.’

‘May I join you for a moment?’

Lawless gave him a second, closer look. The banker had
rust-colored
hair, thinning at the temples, merry brown eyes and a deceptive, engaging smile under a bristly mustache. But despite his friendly demeanor, Lawless sensed an underlying arrogance lurking beneath the little man’s cultured charm.

‘Draw up a pew.’

‘Thank you.’ Edfors carefully set his straw hat on the table. Next he took out a lavender-scented white handkerchief, flicked cigar ash off the chair facing Lawless, hoisted his pants at the knees and sat. ‘I just finished talking to the sheriff and I want to thank you – for myself and for everyone else in Borega Springs – for saving his life.’

‘I just happened to be riding by.’

‘And lucky for us you were. You did us all a huge favor, Mr
Lawless. This town – indeed this whole county desperately needs good men like Buck Tishman. They’re all too rare these days, and we count ourselves blessed to have him as our guardian of the peace.’

Lawless felt his stomach turn. Until Edfors joined him, he had been enjoying the evening. Now, thanks to the banker’s gushing flattery, lavender toilet water and irritating meticulous ways, it was spoiled and all Lawless could hope for was that Edfors would leave and let him smoke his cigar in peaceful solitude.

As if reading his mind the banker stood up, shot his cuffs, checked his reflection in the window, adjusted his bowtie, turned to Lawless and smiled his well-mannered smile. ‘Well, sir, I’ll leave you to enjoy your cigar. Goodnight, Mr Lawless. It was a pleasure making your acquaintance. And again, thank you.’ Collecting his skimmer Edfors returned the waves of two elderly guests walking past, spoke briefly to the desk clerk and minced out.

Alone, Lawless leaned back in his chair and tried to recapture the feeling of serene contentment that always came after a full belly followed by a fine cigar. But despite trying not to, he kept thinking about Joey and his sister being evicted from their ranch. It brought back distant, bitter memories of the aftermath of the Civil War that he had thought were buried too deep to
remember
. Angry with himself for being soft-hearted, he dropped his half-smoked cigar in the spittoon and went to the front desk to collect his key.

Earlier, when he’d paid for the room, the clerk had taken one look at his grimy clothes and two-week stubble and had barely been civil; now, he beamed and greeted Lawless like he was a
visiting
senator.

‘May I say, sir, it is indeed a great pleasure to have you staying with us.’ He handed Lawless his key and a sealed envelope, adding, ‘If there’s anything you need, sir, anything at all, you be sure to let me know right away.’

Lawless, wary of the clerk’s turnaround, opened the envelope and saw there were bills inside. ‘What’s this?’

‘Your money, sir – for your room, dinner and cigars.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Mr Edfors feels the town owes you a great debt of gratitude. Said the least we could do was repay you by not charging you for anything.’

‘That a fact?’

‘Yessir. Now, is there anything else I can do for you?’

‘Just this: tell Mr Edfors that I appreciate his generosity but can’t accept it.’ He dropped the envelope in front of the
surprised
clerk and headed for the stairs.

‘But, sir.…’ Dismayed, the clerk grabbed the envelope, ducked under the desk flap and chased after Lawless. ‘W-Wait … please … Mr Lawless, I can’t do that, sir—’

‘Sure you can.’

‘No, sir, you don’t understand. Mr Edfors wouldn’t like it if—’

‘What Mr Edfors does or doesn’t like is of no interest to me,’ said Lawless. ‘So be a good fella and do like I say. Savvy?’ Without waiting for an answer, he started up the stairs.

His room was on the second floor at the end of a hallway that smelled of pine-scented disinfectant and stale cigars. As he approached the door he thought he heard a noise inside. His hand dropped to his six-gun and he listened intently. Silence – save for the muffled sounds of horses and wagons moving along Main Street.

He cautiously turned the doorknob. The door was still locked. He relaxed a little. Inserting the key, he opened the door and
entered the room, only to stop in mid-step as he saw a figure
silhouetted
against the open window – a figure aiming a rifle at him.

‘Shut the door,’ another voice said.

Lawless turned and by the moonlight coming in through the window, saw a second figure seated on the bed.

‘You heard her,’ the figure with the rifle said. ‘Shut the damn door!’

Recognizing the voice as Joey’s, Lawless obeyed.

‘Now, reach for the stars.’

‘Son, before you do something you’ll regret—’

‘I said – reach!’

Wryly amused by the boy’s dime-novel patter, Lawless obeyed.

‘Don’t try nothing funny, mister, else I’ll fill you full of lead.’

Before Lawless could say anything a match flared, the flame revealing a slender young woman lighting the kerosene lamp beside the bed. It was hard to tell her age, but he guessed she was between sixteen and eighteen. She was dressed like the boy and vaguely resembled him, her pretty oval face framed by long, coppery-gold hair.

‘You must be Violet,’ Lawless said.

She turned to him, gray-green eyes filled with disgust, at the same time telling her brother to, ‘Get his gun, Joey.’

Lawless stood there, tolerantly, as Joey snatched the Colt from its holster and stepped back.

‘First a hanging and now robbery – you’re having a busy day, son.’

‘Shut up,’ Joey said.

‘We’re not here to rob you,’ Violet said.

‘Then how come you broke into my room?’

‘We didn’t. The window was open.’

‘Wrong. I closed it before I left.’

‘Well, it wasn’t locked and—’

‘Quit wasting time, Sis,’ Joey blurted. ‘Tie him up while I keep him covered.’

‘Give me your hands,’ Violet said to Lawless.

‘And if I don’t, what’re you going to do – shoot me?’

‘If she won’t,’ Joey said, ‘I sure as hell will. I mean it,’ he warned, wagging the rifle at Lawless. ‘I mean it sure as I put a noose around Sheriff Tishman’s neck this afternoon.’

There was enough anger in his voice to convince Lawless that he might pull the trigger. Offering out his wrists, he let Violet tie them with sash cord.

‘What next?’ he said.

Violet opened the door and motioned with his gun for him to leave.

‘Now you can add kidnapping to your crimes,’ Lawless told Joey.

‘Button it,’ the boy said. Jamming the rifle in Lawless’s back, he pushed him out the door.

They descended the back stairs and left the hotel without anyone seeing them. Though it was dark Lawless could see a dun with three white stockings standing next to Joey’s piebald. Violet untied the horses and led the way along the unlighted alley past the rears of several stores until they came to the livery stable. There, she took a pencil stub and a piece of paper from her Levi’s. ‘Can you write, mister?’

‘What do you want me to say?’ Lawless said.

‘Tell Mr Grubbs that it’s OK for Joey to have your horse.’

‘Better think this through carefully,’ Lawless advised. ‘Stealing a man’s horse will buy you a rope.’

‘We’re not stealing it,’ Violet said. ‘We’re just making sure you ride on out of here – out of New Mexico, if we have to.’

‘Then we’re of one accord, miss. Come sunup I’m headed for Arizona. It’s true,’ he added as she looked dubious. ‘Just ask the sheriff. He’ll tell you.’

Too late he knew it was the wrong thing to say.

‘I wouldn’t believe anything that slimy snake said,’ Violet snapped, ‘if he swore on a wagonload of Bibles. Now’ – she pushed the pencil into his hand and held out the pad – ‘write
what I said.’

‘Only be a waste of time. Mr Grubbs won’t agree to it. I haven’t yet paid him.’

‘Joey will pay him for you.’

‘Wouldn’t it be simpler all around if I—’

‘It’s a far piece to our spread,’ Joey said. ‘But if you’d sooner wear your boots out walking, that’s fine with us.’

It wasn’t easy with his wrists bound, but Lawless managed to scribble the necessary words. Violet handed the note to her brother, who gave her Lawless’s six-gun.

‘Plug this coyote if he so much as blinks, Sis.’

Lawless couldn’t help grinning.

‘What’s so funny, mister?’

‘You, sonny. You’ve been reading too many
Wild West Weeklys
.’

Stung, Joey reversed his rifle, ready to slam Lawless with the butt.

Violet quickly stepped between them. ‘No, Joey! Stop it! Just get his horse.’ Then as her brother defied her, rifle still raised: ‘Don’t mess with me, Joey Morgan. I’m not in the mood.’

He knew better than to push her. Wilting, he lowered the rifle. Then not wanting Lawless to think he was intimidated, he swaggered off into the stable.

Violet gave a troubled, motherly sigh.

‘He’s a handful all right,’ Lawless agreed.

She immediately became defensive. ‘My brother’s really not like that, Mr Lawless. You can ask anybody. They’ll tell you. Before Pa was killed Joey was a sweet, happy, good-hearted boy. Polite and well-mannered, too.’

‘I doubt if the sheriff would agree with you.’

‘Buck Tishman,’ she said disgustedly. ‘Fine excuse for a lawman he is. He might wear a star but he’s nothing more than Bria— Mr Edfors’ puppet.’

‘Way he tells it, miss, he’s just trying to do his job.’

‘And of course you believed him! Well, I’m not surprised. How much is he paying you anyway – or did you get hired by Mr Edfors?’

‘Nobody’s paying me anything – least all that sugary,
lavender-scented
dude.’

‘Then why are you siding with them?’

‘I’m not. Not siding with anybody. I’m no shootist. I break broomtails for a living. You can believe that or not,’ Lawless said as Violet looked doubtful, ‘makes no difference to me. Like I told you, I’ll be gone come sunup and then you folks can go on feuding for as long you please.’

She studied him with the widest, most honest eyes he’d ever seen. ‘Just happened to be riding through – that what you’re saying?’

She took his silence to mean yes.

‘Then why’d you chase off my brother?’

‘I don’t like necktie parties.’

‘Joey never meant to hang the sheriff. He just meant to throw a scare into him so he’d think twice before siding with Mr Edfors. Said the sheriff’s horse got spooked when it saw you coming.’

‘Ah.’

‘You don’t believe that?’

‘I saw what I saw.’

She frowned, troubled by his sincerity. ‘What exactly did you see?’

‘Ask your brother.’

‘I did.’

‘Ask him again.’

‘Very well. But—’ She broke off as Joey returned, leading the leggy, saddled grullo.

‘Mount up,’ he told Lawless.

‘Well?’ Lawless said to Violet.

‘Well, what?’ Joey said.

‘Tell me again how it happened,’ Violet said, ‘the hanging, I mean?’

For an instant Lawless glimpsed uneasiness in Joey’s eyes. Then it vanished and he grinned, almost cocky. ‘I got the jump on that big toad and—’

‘No, no, later. Why his horse got spooked.’

Again, uneasiness narrowed Joey’s blue eyes. ‘On account of seeing him,’ he said, nodding at Lawless.

‘You mean, when I was riding along the ridge?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Not later, while I was sitting there, watching you from the saddle?’

‘No. I mean, maybe. I don’t remember.’

‘But you do remember me spooking the sheriff’s horse?’

‘Sure. I remember that, all right.’

‘Even though you didn’t see me until after I fired?’

‘I saw you,’ Joey lied. ‘Just didn’t pay you no mind.’

Lawless shot Joey a look that unsettled the boy.

‘That’s how it happened, Sis,’ he blurted to Violet. ‘And if he says different, then he’s lying.’

‘If I’m lying,’ Lawless said, ‘then the sheriff’s horse has got eyes in its rump.’

‘What do you mean?’ Violet said.

‘The ridge I was on, it’s to the south-east –
behind
the horse.’

‘Th-then it must’ve heard you,’ Joey stammered.

‘Would that be before or after you whipped him?’

‘I never whupped him.’

‘We can all ride back there,’ Lawless said to Violet. ‘I’ll show you the stick he used. When the sheriff and I rode off it was still on the ground under the cottonwood where your brother dropped it.’

Joey began to bluster.

Violet cut him off. ‘That’s enough—’

‘But it ain’t true, Sis! I never whupped no horse! I swear. ‘H-he’s lying.’

‘I said – that’s enough!’ Stepping close to Lawless, Violet untied the cord binding his wrists. ‘I’m sorry, mister. Reckon I made a mistake.’

‘Sorry doesn’t cut it.’

‘I don’t know what else to say.’

‘You can promise to keep your hothead brother, here, in tow. You don’t, he’ll grow up behind bars – maybe worse.’

‘Damn you,’ began Joey.

Lawless backhanded him, sending the boy sprawling. Stunned, he lay there, hand to his cheek, glaring at Lawless.

‘Be glad I’m not your pa, son. I’d teach you not to damn a man or call him a liar.’ He turned to Violet. ‘He does either one after he starts shaving and you’ll be burying him feet up.’ Mounting, he nudged the grullo in the direction of the hotel.

‘Damn him,’ Joey said. ‘I should’ve shot him when I had the chance.’

His sister angrily dragged him to his feet. ‘You little fool! You should be grateful to him for not shooting
you
when
he
had the chance.’

‘You throwing in with him now?’

‘This isn’t about taking sides. This is about right and wrong. And you’re wrong. Wrong for what you did to Sheriff Tishman, wrong for lying to me about it, wrong for calling this man a
gunfighter
, wrong for – for – well, just about everything. And I only wish Pa was alive so he could pound some sense into you. You need it. Now, get on your horse and let’s go home.’ She stepped into the saddle and waited until her brother grudgingly mounted. Then, together they rode out of the alley, out of town, into the cold, silent desert.