Blood on the Gallows

Chapter 8

As he picked bloody wood splinters from his face, John McBride embraced his anger like an old friend. He’d sought only a meal and a soft bed in the town, but was now locked up in a stinking jail and he had been unable to stop the lynching of a young boy. He was sure the kid had been hanged, but for what crime? Had he killed someone, or was he in some way connected to the death of the mastiff?

No doubt Harlan will tell me, McBride thought. Right before he hangs me.

The street was full of shadows. Men were drifting back from the cottonwoods, and the saloons were doing a roaring business. A dozen tin-panny pianos competed for space, their notes tangling in a jangling cacophony of sound, and the laughter of the saloon girls was loud and harsh, soaring above the bellow of drunken men.

It sounded to McBride like the town was holding a wake for the dead dog. No one was grieving for the Mexican boy, only the veiled women who were now lost in the moon-slanted darkness among the hanging trees by the creek.

An hour passed, then two. The kitten explored the cell and made soft, distressed mewing noises, liking the place no better than McBride. For his part, the big man stood, sleepless, by the window and watched the town ignore the arrival of midnight, hell-bent on sins of the flesh that came easy but never cheap.

He heard the lone horseman before he saw him, the hooves of his mount splashing slowly through the liquid mud of the street. The clouds were breaking apart and the man rode through shifting columns of moonlight. His chin was sunk on his chest and he looked neither to his left nor right. He wore a poncho and a wide-brimmed sombrero and his face was in shadow.

At first McBride thought the man would ride on, but at the last moment he drew rein, standing his big sorrel on the street a few yards from the jail.

Without lifting his head, he said quietly, ‘‘Lance Josephine wants you to hang.’’

McBride said: ‘‘I know. He made that pretty clear.’’

‘‘It is for what you did to his face, and for shaming him in front of his woman.’’

McBride made no reply and the man said, ‘‘My name is Madaleno Vargas Lopez, and I do not wish to see you hang.’’

‘‘Mister, that makes two of us,’’ McBride said.

‘‘Jared Josephine is a powerful man, mucho hombre. He is one of those who wants to see you dangle from a rope, I think.’’

‘‘I guess maybe he does at that.’’

The Mexican’s horse tossed its head, the bit chiming. In one of the saloons, accompanied by a banjo, a baritone was singing ‘‘Bonnie Jennie Lee,’’ and somewhere a dog barked, followed by a yelp, then silence.

‘‘There was a death tonight,’’ Lopez said. ‘‘Jared Josephine and Marshal Harlan think it was a small death, and maybe it was. What is the life of a poor Mexican boy to such important men?’’

McBride looked out at the street. There was no one on the boardwalks but for a bearded man who staggered out of one saloon and into another.

‘‘They hanged the boy,’’ McBride said. ‘‘I saw his mother down by the cottonwoods.’’

‘‘Yes, the marshal hanged him, for his offense was great in his eyes. The boy was with his sheep in a gully out by Lobo Creek. But one of Mr. Josephine’s big dogs escaped from his home and attacked the sheep. The boy shot the dog with his rifle.’’ Lopez raised his head and moonlight revealed the hard bones and furrowed skin of his narrow face. He could have been any age. ‘‘It was a good rifle, a single-shot Allan and Wheelock. I know, because I gave it to him for his fourteenth birthday.’’

‘‘How did Jared Josephine find out what had happened?’’

‘‘The boy told him. He rode his pony into town and stood in Mr. Josephine’s parlor with his sombrero in his hands and told him. He said he was sorry he had to shoot the dog, but it had already killed a ewe and her three lambs. He showed Mr. Josephine the Allan and Wheelock and said he should take it to make up for the loss of his dog.’’

‘‘But Josephine refused. He wanted the boy dead.’’

‘‘The dog was worth much money but the life of a Mexican boy is cheap. His mother, my sister, grieves for her son. Her husband died a year ago and now she has no man in the house. She will die soon, I think. From sorrow.’’

McBride’s uneasy eyes searched the street. ‘‘You better go now, Mr. Lopez. If Thad Harlan catches you talking to me, it could go badly for you.’’

‘‘You tried to save the boy tonight.’’

‘‘Yes, I tried. That was all. I tried and I failed.’’

‘‘Marshal Harlan will bring you food tomorrow morning. You will not be hanged until the day after because Lance Josephine wants time to build a gallows. There are many hard, lawless men in this town and he wishes them to see what happens to anyone who dares defy him.’’

‘‘Only a tinhorn thinks like that,’’ McBride said. His eyes reached out into the gloom. ‘‘But how do you know these things?’’

‘‘I have eyes in this town, and ears. No one notices the dark little Mexican people who swamp the saloons and clean the hotel rooms, but they see and hear everything.’’

Lopez was silent for a few moments, then said, ‘‘But you will not hang, John McBride. There are men of my people who hate Marshal Harlan and Mr. Josephine as much as I do. When the marshal comes to feed you at sunup, they will be here and they will set you free. You will go with them and hide in the hills.’’

Hope rose in McBride, but it was as fleeting as a cloud passing over the face of the sun. ‘‘I can’t ask you to do that. Many of your people could die.’’

‘‘Then they will lay down their lives willingly. What kind of lives do they have when Jared Josephine takes half of what they earn . . . half of the newborn lambs, half of the corn they grow, half of the few coins that jingle in their pockets? One day, when they told him they would pay him no longer, he and his riders shot many of the men, outraged many of the young women and burned many of the poor straw houses. My sister’s husband was among the dead, and after that the people rebelled no more. At that time I was riding herd for John Slaughter in Texas, but now I am back.’’

Fate leads the willing and drags along the unwilling, and though he was reluctant to risk the lives of men who did not even know him, McBride realized argument was useless. Lopez had his mind made up and he would not budge.

‘‘Then I’ll see you in the morning,’’ he said.

The man shook his head, a small, sad smile on his lips. ‘‘No, you will not. I will be dead by morning. Others will set you free.’’

McBride was silent, searching for the man’s meaning. Finally he gave up and said, ‘‘I don’t understand.’’

‘‘It is simple,’’ Lopez said. ‘‘Tonight I ride with my gun. The boy was one of my family, and since his father is dead, it falls to me to avenge his death. I will seek out Thad Harlan and draw down on him.’’ He had turned his head to the jail window and McBride could feel the man’s eyes on him, invisible in the shadow of his hat brim. ‘‘I am no pistolero and Harlan is a famous man of the gun. He will kill me, but I will die gladly, knowing that I have done my duty.’’

‘‘No, wait, go with me into the hills,’’ McBride said, alarmed, his hands on the bars of the jail window. ‘‘I don’t want to see a brave man ride to his death. Hell, later I’ll gladly help you kill Harlan.’’

Lopez smiled and touched his hat. ‘‘Adios, mi amigo. We will not meet again.’’

The man swung his horse away from the jail and McBride called out after him, pleading. But one by one his words fell into the muddy street, unheeded, as though he were tossing rocks.

Less than fifteen minutes later he heard a gunshot, then two more, close and fast.

McBride let his head sink to his hands, which were still clenched, white-knuckle tight, on the prison bars.

He knew with certainty that another day would come aborning with the dawn light . . . and he knew, with the same certainty, that Madaleno Vargas Lopez was dead.