Blood on the Gallows

Chapter 16

For a few moments John McBride lay stunned on the wet grass, fighting for breath. He had been shot. But where? Apart from the gnawing pain in his side he felt nothing. After a while he moved his arms, then his legs. Finally he sat up, his eyes on the shadowed hills. His Colt was still in his waistband and he drew the revolver. He was waiting for the impact of another bullet and it felt as if ants were crawling all over his skin.

‘‘Stay right where you are, mister. Even in the dark I can scatter your brains.’’

McBride knew that voice. It was Clare O’Neil.

‘‘Clare, it’s me! It’s John McBride!’’ He felt a sudden surge of joy and relief.

A silence followed, so intense McBride felt it drift out of the shadow-scarred hills and surround him. He was aware of the mustang grazing close by, its reins trailing.

Then, finally, ‘‘John, is it really you? I thought you were dead.’’

‘‘It’s me, and alive as ever was.’’ He hesitated. ‘‘Well, more or less.’’

‘‘Stand up. Let me get a good look at you.’’ Clare was taking no chance and McBride didn’t blame her for that. He rose to his feet, shoved the Colt back in his pants and said, ‘‘See, it’s really me.’’

‘‘Yes, I’d recognize that hat anywhere,’’ Clare said.

Then she shot him.

McBride felt a sledgehammer blow to his belly and for a moment he stood still, shocked, leaning into the wind. Then the pain hit him like a mailed fist and he collapsed and mercifully knew no more.

He dreamed of Bear Miller.

They were on top of a high mountain, on raw, blue granite swept by a soaring wind. McBride lay on his back, his belly on fire.

‘‘Snow’s coming,’’ Bear said. ‘‘Cool you down some, son.’’

The old man’s long hair shredded over his left shoulder and his blue eyes were like glass. ‘‘You’re shot through and through,’’ he said. ‘‘Didn’t I tell you to ride on?’’

McBride watched the scarlet sky where vultures glided like kites on the end of strings. ‘‘It was the woman shot me,’’ he said. ‘‘I didn’t expect it, not to be shot in the belly like that.’’

‘‘I told you to ride on,’’ Bear said.

‘‘You warned me about a woman,’’ McBride said. ‘‘Was Clare the woman?’’

‘‘You got woman problems and you’ve got men problems, boy. And you can’t step back from either one.’’

McBride raised his head. Someone was reeling in the black kites. ‘‘What do I do, Bear, huh? What do I do?’’

‘‘You live, that’s what you do.’’

Bear picked up his Henry rifle. ‘‘I got to be going now.’’

‘‘Don’t leave me here,’’ McBride said, panic slashing at him. ‘‘I’m gut shot and I don’t want to be alone on this mountain.’’

Bear had been walking away, but he stopped and said, ‘‘You climbed it, John. Now you have to get yourself back down to the valley where the grass is green and the air is clean.’’

The old man stood for a few moments looking down at McBride, smiling, the red sky at his back. Then widening pools of crimson rippled over his body and Bear Miller slowly faded until all that was left was the sky.

A vulture, flapping like a black blind in a high wind, landed on McBride’s chest, its cold, merciless eyes on his. It squawked; then its head moved, swift as a jackhammer, and the vicious, curved beak stabbed into his belly.

McBride raised his face to the sky and screamed.

McBride’s eyes fluttered open. The mustang’s hairy nose was nuzzling his chest, its natural curiosity overcoming its fear of blood’s smell. McBride patted the horse’s muzzle, then pushed its head away. He lay still for a while, wide awake, and let the rain fall on his face. The sky above him was laced with lightning, and thunder growled as it paced among the mountain peaks.

After a while McBride slid a hand under his slicker and laid it on his belly. The hand came out running with blood and rain. He’d been hit and hit hard and now he needed a place to hide out. Painfully, he struggled to a sitting position, determined to die like a civilized man with his boots off and a roof over his head.

The mustang was standing a few feet away, head down, its wet hide glistening white in the lightning flashes like a ghost horse. McBride struggled to his feet, and staggered, bent over, to the saddle. He clamped a hand on the horn to support himself and for a few moments clung there, his head on the seat of the saddle, fighting down his pain and exhaustion.

The pain in his belly didn’t seem so bad, but McBride was not fooled. He had heard what happened to gut-shot men, how they screamed in agony for hours, cursing God, man and the mother who bore them. He was determined that wouldn’t happen to him. When the pain got too bad, he vowed, he’d end it with a bullet.

After a few tries McBride got his foot in the stirrup. His jaw was tight, the muscles bunched and his labored breath hissed through clenched teeth. He climbed into the saddle, sat for a minute to regroup his failing strength, then swung the mustang toward the O’Neil cabin.

Clare might be waiting for him with her rifle, but that was a chance he’d have to take. She probably figured he was already dead anyway. She’d told him that most times she hit what she was aiming at. The woman had aimed for his guts, had seen him drop and must believe he was dead. If that was the case, she was right—she had killed him, only he was dying a little more slowly than she’d intended.

McBride rode into the violent night, bent over in the saddle. He had lost blood he could ill afford from his previous wound and his head spun like a child’s top. Around him the land flared stark white as lightning flashed and the rain threatened to beat him from the saddle. After an hour of painful, jolting misery, he saw the cabin. The place was in darkness, but he looped wide around it and came up on the barn from the north.

He rode inside, into a dry darkness that held the memory of horses. He climbed out of the leather and swayed dizzily when his feet touched the ground. It took a great deal of effort and most of his waning strength, but McBride unsaddled the mustang and led it to a stall. Staggering now, groping his way around, he threw the horse hay and a handful of oats he found in a burlap sack.

Luck is a fickle lady and recently it seemed she’d decided not to stand at McBride’s shoulder as he rolled the dice. But that night he threw a natural when he bumped against an oil lamp standing on the partition of the stall in which he’d chosen to die.

He tore off his slicker and slumped into a corner, the lamp in his hands. After several attempts he managed to light the wick and a thin orange glow spread around the barn but left the corners in darkness.

Preparing himself for the worst, McBride opened his coat, then unbuttoned his bloody shirt. He’d expected to see blue intestines looping out of his belly, but saw no such thing. A raw, furrowed scar about five inches long creased his stomach just above the navel. The bullet had not dug deep, but the wound had bled considerably. He reached down and eased the Colt out of his waistband. To his surprise, the back strap of the handle’s steel frame was slightly bent, the walnut grip splintered.

McBride’s addled brain was slow to put it together, but in the end he realized what had happened. The handle of the revolver had deflected Clare O’Neil’s bullet and it had then plowed across his belly. It was a painful wound, but not deadly, and he felt relief wash over him. But with that sense of elation came the realization that he must now continue along a much more difficult trail—to go on living.

The guttering lamp sent shadows chasing across McBride’s face, and the regular rattle of rain on the roof lulled him. He closed his eyes, blinked and tried to stay awake. He had thinking to do.

Why had Clare shot him when only a week before she had saved his life? Did she suspect that he’d killed her father? No, that was impossible. The girl had left him lying unconscious on the ground. She knew that he was not fit to ride, let alone bushwhack an old man at the door to his cabin.

Then why had she wanted to kill him?

McBride’s thoughts chased their tails around his head, going nowhere. Far-off thunder rumbled and water dripped from the top of the barn door and ticked into the mud. He closed his eyes again. And this time he slept.

A soaked coyote trotted toward the barn, attracted by the light. It looked inside but caught the man smell and backed away. Near the cabin the animal sat and yipped to its mate. It waited for the answering yip and then faded into the night.

McBride stirred in his sleep, his lips moving, tormented by phantoms as pain entered his subconscious and invaded a dream.

The little calico kitten, thin, bedraggled, walking on silent feet, made its tentative way into the stall where the big man slept. It sniffed his cheek, was stirred by a memory of a soft voice and gentle hands and curled up on his chest.

McBride slept on.

Sunlight bladed through the barn door and cast a rectangle of yellow light into the stall where McBride slept. He woke to see the kitten staring intently into his face.

‘‘Where have you been, Sammy?’’ he asked, smiling. He stroked the little cat’s matted fur and felt its ribs just under the skin. ‘‘Seems you haven’t been eating well lately. Well, that makes two of us.’’

It took McBride a considerable effort to get to his feet, a terrible weakness in him. The pain in his belly was much less, but it still gnawed like a bad tooth-ache and he felt light-headed and sick. He shoved the battered Colt into the hip pocket of his pants where it would be handy, then forked the mustang hay. His shirt was stiff with blood and he let it flap open as he stepped to the barn door, the kitten in his arms.

The black skies of the night were gone, replaced by an arch of deep violet where drifted a few puffy white clouds. The rising sun reached out to the mountains, deepening the shadows in the crevasses and ridges even as it splashed the flat rock faces with dazzling light. In homage to the newborn day the air smelled fresh, of pines and wildflowers, and came at McBride clean on the wind.

It was a day to make a man feel glad to be alive, and wounded, battered and bleeding though he was, McBride turned his face to the sun and let its warmth embrace him like a woman’s arms. He felt like a man just raised from the dead.

McBride had not liked the idea of sleeping in the cabin, but he had no such qualms about raiding the pantry.

He found eggs, bacon, butter and a round loaf of sourdough bread, dusted with flour, that showed patches of green mold in places. But these he scraped off with a knife and declared to the interested and unblinking Sammy that as far as he was concerned the bread was now edible.

There was firewood enough in the kitchen and some torn-up newspaper. Even in New York McBride could light a stove and he soon had a fire going. He filled the coffeepot at the sink pump and threw in a handful of Arbuckle. When the pot started to boil he scrambled eggs for the kitten, reserving the shells to settle the coffee grounds. As Sammy ate hungrily, McBride sliced a mound of bacon into the fry pan and beat up half a dozen eggs for himself.

Only after he’d eaten did the thought come to McBride that he should check Clare’s bedroom. Perhaps there he could find some clue to her behavior.

The girl’s room was what he expected, frilly, feminine, the scent of her perfume still lingering in the air. But the patchwork quilt on her bed was threadbare, the top of her dresser scarred with age. The furniture, a worn, overstuffed sofa, a couple of rickety chairs and a frayed rug, spoke to McBride of genteel poverty and a history of making do. He remembered Clare’s shabby dress in the restaurant the night he first saw her, in such stark contrast to Lance Josephine’s expensive gambler’s finery. He was not an expert on female fixings, but he had the feeling that the girl had been wearing a hand-me-down.

Clare’s closet was empty. She’d taken everything except for a pair of elastic-sided boots that seemed to be too down-at-heel and scuffed to be worth packing.

Much like my own, McBride thought, shaking his head.

The dresser was also empty, but for a few hairpins and a tortoiseshell comb with most of its teeth missing. Suddenly McBride was embarrassed. The woman had tried to kill him, yet he felt he was invading her privacy.

He went back to the kitchen and poured himself more coffee as the pure light of the aborning day flooded through the window as though it was trying to make everything that was wrong right again.

McBride slept in the barn again that night, and made his way to the cabin at sunup, Sammy running after him.

He fed the kitten and thirty minutes later, as he drank his fourth cup of coffee, a rifle bullet smashed a front window and rattled through the cabin . . . followed by another.