Blood on the Gallows

Chapter 15

John McBride topped the ridge where he’d last seen Clare O’Neil, and his eyes reached into the vast, empty land around him. The wind was shifting, restless, driving the racketing rain in one direction, a moment later in another. The aspen on the downward slope of the rise tossed their branches in an abandoned, frantic dance as though worshipping the dark clouds that scudded across the gray sky.

McBride pulled the collar of his slicker closer around his neck and kicked the mustang into motion. The rise dropped gradually to a grassy flat, studded with rocks and stands of prickly pear. Ahead of him lay a narrow creek, bordered by cottonwood and willow, and through their heaving branches he made out the outline of a cabin and a few other buildings. In the distance, McBride estimated two or three miles away, but realized it could be farther, another volcanic malpais smeared across the horizon like a smudged black pencil line.

McBride stopped the mustang a few yards from the fast-rushing creek. He studied the cabin, almost lost behind tree foliage and rain, a strange wariness in him he could not explain. He sensed another human presence. Close by. Waiting. The reassuring weight of the Colt in his waistband brought him a measure of comfort, but he looked on the cabin without pleasure.

Was he about to walk into a carefully laid trap?

He shook his head. No. That was impossible. The only person who knew he was here was Luke Gravett and he would not have told anyone. Of course, there was always the possibility that Lance Josephine had returned to the scene of the crime. Even now the man could be riding the boundaries of a ranch he had gained by murder.

The old, answered question sprang into McBride’s head: why did Josephine want the place?

To the east rose the rugged escarpment of the Capitan Mountains, to the north and west lava beds that were of value to no one. Broken, hilly country rolled away for miles to the south, cut through by deep canyons and treacherous stretches of thin-crusted lava rock. The cabin itself was fairly large and well built. Four windows showed to the front and a brick chimney rose at each end of the steeply pitched roof.

But again, why had Lance Josephine, a creature of towns and what they represented, set his sights on this place? Why did he want it bad enough to kill for it?

McBride shook his head, the answer as elusive as ever.

He kneed the mustang across the creek, then rode through the trees. Only then did he see the spanking-new surrey outside the cabin, an expensive Morgan in the traces.

It was unlikely that either Josephine or Thad Harlan would drive a surrey to the ranch, but McBride was suddenly on edge. He stepped out of the saddle and pulled the Colt from his waistband. On silent feet he walked to the cabin. The door was ajar and he pushed it open with the muzzle of his revolver. He heard no sound inside but for the slow tick of a clock.

Then a woman’s voice, one he had heard before. ‘‘Step right in, Mr. McBride. I won’t bite you. Where’s your cat?’’

The door led into a long hallway, several rooms opening to it on each side. McBride stepped along the corridor, his feet silent on carpet, his gun up and ready, hammer thumbed back.

‘‘In here. Second door on the left.’’

McBride stood to the side of the door and glanced inside. Denver Dora Ryan was sitting in a rocker in what must have been the O’Neil parlor. She had a china cup and saucer in her hand as she looked at McBride and smiled, her perfume, warmed by her body, reaching out to him like the sweet breath of an angel.

McBride let down the hammer of the Colt and shoved the gun into his pants. ‘‘What are you doing here, Miss Ryan?’’

‘‘I could ask you the same thing, Mr. McBride.’’

The big man decided to give it to her straight. ‘‘I’m trying to find out what makes this ranch so important to Lance Josephine.’’

‘‘Nothing. This cabin, a few head of cattle, some grass, the rest sand and cactus.’’

‘‘Then why does he want it?’’

‘‘Does he want it? The word in town is that you shot old man O’Neil and abducted his daughter. Lance is telling everybody you want this place and the girl that goes with it.’’

‘‘Do you believe him?’’

‘‘I don’t know what to believe, Mr. McBride.’’ Her eyes lifted to his. ‘‘Can I get you some tea? I believe there’s another cup in the pot.’’

McBride nodded absently. He followed Dora to the kitchen and set Sammy down on the floor. ‘‘I had some trouble getting a fire started in the stove,’’ she said. ‘‘I’m not very good at it.’’

‘‘Neither am I,’’ McBride said. He took the cup the woman proffered to him. ‘‘You still haven’t told me why you’re here.’’

‘‘I don’t attend funerals. I came here to honor an old man I liked.’’

‘‘Rough drive from town.’’

‘‘Maybe. But I’ve driven worse.’’

McBride took a seat at the kitchen table and tried the tea. It was hot and good. Rain drummed on the slate roof of the cabin and the wind whispered around the eaves. The fire in the stove crackled with a scarlet flame, consuming the last few sticks of firewood. He was very conscious of the woman standing close to him, of the heat from her body and the arrogant upthrust of her full breasts under the tight bodice of her green travel dress. The swell of her hips . . .

Dora Ryan was, he decided, a beautiful, desirable woman.

With her female instinct for such things, Dora was aware of McBride’s thoughts and it showed in a slight tug at the corners of her lips. She teased him. ‘‘Right now, Mr. McBride, you look like a fallen god who remembers heaven.’’

‘‘It’s that obvious, huh?’’ He felt his cheeks color.

‘‘You’re a man. Men are always obvious.’’

McBride rose to his feet. ‘‘Thanks for the tea. I’m going to take a look around the ranch. That’s what I came here to do.’’

‘‘And I am leaving also,’’ Dora said. ‘‘I believe I’ve paid my respects to Hemp.’’

The woman got her cloak from the parlor and met McBride at the door. She stepped close to him and looked into his face. ‘‘You’ve made a lot of powerful enemies, John McBride, and I don’t know if you’ll even live out the week. But speak to me again. Maybe I’ll be the one to teach you how to reenter paradise.’’

The promise was there, plain to read in Dora’s face. But it was distant, a thing for the future, like a girl asking a boy she likes to a dance that’s still weeks away. McBride accepted it as such, and put it out of his mind.

‘‘Still raining,’’ he said. ‘‘You’ll have a rough ride home.’’

He helped Dora into the surrey and watched as she took up the ribbons. ‘‘John,’’ she said, ‘‘I don’t believe you killed Hemp O’Neil. I say that for what it’s worth.’’

McBride smiled and nodded. ‘‘It’s still good to hear.’’

‘‘Just don’t put yourself in danger searching for Clare. I think she’s already dead.’’

‘‘She saved my life, Dora. I owe her.’’

The woman’s eyes flecked with quick anger. ‘‘Then you’re a fool.’’

Only after Dora Ryan’s surrey vanished into distance and rain did McBride consider the strangeness of her being at the ranch. It was a long way from town and the weather was bad. It was an odd way to grieve for a reclusive old man she could rarely have met or gotten to know well. And she’d lit the stove, brewed tea and made herself comfortable in the parlor. Hell, she’d done more than that; she’d made herself right at home, as if she owned the place.

‘‘Denver Dora Ryan.’’ McBride said the woman’s name aloud. Then to himself: what exactly did the lady do in Denver?

That thought led to another, and a plan began to take form in McBride’s mind that pleased him greatly. But for now he was willing to let it go. Like Dora’s promise to him, it was something for the future.

McBride brushed rainwater off his saddle with the palm of his hand, then climbed into the leather. He swung past the cabin and headed for the O’Neil barn. The door was open and he rode inside. The place had been built well and the slanted roof had kept out most of the rain. There were stalls for eight horses, but all of them were empty. A few pieces of tack and some tools hung on the walls, and the hay-loft was stacked high with bales.

After one last look around, McBride left the barn, passed the smokehouse and other outbuildings, then rode into open country.

He found a fresh grave less than a quarter mile from the cabin. The site had been chosen with care, at the bottom of a stepped, sandstone bluff in the break between stands of aspen. There was no marker, but a bunch of wildflowers, now withered, lay on top of the wet, black dirt. The flowers suggested a woman, and McBride had no doubt he was looking at the last resting place of Hemp O’Neil.

Clare had been alive still after her father’s murder and had taken time to bury him. But where was she now? McBride’s gaze swept the bluff and the land around him, but nothing moved, only the wind-tossed rain and the trembling leaves of the aspen.

He swung the mustang away from the grave and rode on. Dora Ryan had told him Clare O’Neil was dead, and now he was reluctantly willing to believe her.

At first McBride had thought there were no cattle on the ranch, but now he began to see white-faced cows in the arroyos and along the numerous narrow creeks that scrawled across the flat. After an hour, he’d counted at least eighty head, including a good-looking bull and a number of what McBride described to himself as ‘‘baby cows.’’

He had no idea how many cattle a man needed to make a ranch a paying concern, but he guessed there had been enough on the O’Neil range to keep it afloat.

Was that the reason Lance Josephine wanted it? It seemed unlikely. On any given night the man probably dropped more money at the poker table than the entire place was worth.

Riding through a day dark with cloud and rain, McBride looped to the north, then swung west toward the foothills of the Capitan Mountains. So far he’d seen nothing on the O’Neil range that Josephine might covet. There was good grass and water along the creeks and in a few arroyos that weren’t clogged with prickly pear and brush. But most of the range consisted of sand and cactus, stands of juniper and piñon growing on the higher elevations.

McBride reached the foothills, seeing a few more O’Neil cattle. Then, as the heavens opened and the downpour grew heavier, he rode into a narrow arroyo, crouching low to avoid overhanging piñon limbs. He drew rein and sheltered under the trees until the rain lessened, then headed back into the open.

He’d covered a fair amount of country and had seen nothing that would explain Hemp O’Neil’s murder. A few cattle, some good grass and water and a well-built cabin and barn. It was a good enough spread, but not so valuable a man would kill for it.

Sitting his horse, McBride looked up at the mountains towering above him. The rocky inclines were green with ponderosa pine, wild oak and Douglas fir and their bare, windswept peaks were lost in the black mist of the sky where lightning flashed. Rain swept in torrents off craggy ridges of rock, violent cataracts that fell for a mile before exploding into cascades of water upon huge boulders lower on the slopes.

It was a magnificent sight, one that made McBride’s breath catch in his throat. In moments like this, as he witnessed the untamed beauty of the lonely land, he realized how far he’d traveled from the concrete canyons and teeming, fetid alleys of New York. In the city, he had been made aware of his insignificance and isolation, dwarfed by the buildings around him, hostile and menacing monuments to greed that bartered for his very soul.

But this land reached out and embraced him, made him part of it, one with mountains, the great rivers and the vast plains. It would nurture him for a while and when he was gone it would cover him gently, and soon he would nourish the earth and help the trees, the wildflowers and the grasses grow for those who would come after.

McBride was not by nature a philosophical man, but on this matter he had the beginnings of belief. It had only been a year, a little more, but already New York and all it stood for was receding into memory.

He would have vehemently denied it had anyone suggested such a thing, but Detective Sergeant John McBride, NYPD, was taking his first faltering steps on the way to becoming a man of the West.

As McBride turned away from the foothills, the dark day was shading into a darker evening. The rain had settled into a steady downpour, but the sage and dwarf juniper flats were white with lightning and the wind was rising.

It had been in McBride’s mind to head back for the O’Neil place and seek refuge in the barn for the night. To sleep, uninvited, in the cabin would have been a breach of etiquette he would not allow himself to consider.

But the rain and wind forced him back toward the hills, where there was at least a hope of shelter. The mountains were now lost in darkness, visible only briefly when lightning flickered wetly on their slopes.

McBride urged the tired mustang toward a break in the hills, where they might find a spot to hole up for the night. He never heard the bullet that sent his horse galloping into the gloom and hurled him tumbling, headlong, from the saddle.