Blood on the Gallows

Chapter 19

‘‘Smelled your smoke and coffee,’’ the man said. ‘‘I figured it had to be coming from around this neck of the woods.’’

McBride could not quite place the accent, but it was from back East, a long ways back East.

An errant breeze lifted the rider’s white hair and above his head heat lightning flashed violet in the sky. The gray tossed its head, blowing through its nose, and the bit chimed.

A few moments of silence passed as McBride summed up the rider in his mind. Despite the white hair he was young, probably in his early thirties, dressed in black broadcloth pants, fine boots of soft black leather and a collarless white shirt. The coat that matched the pants was draped over his saddle horn.

‘‘I come up from Texas way,’’ the rider said, an amused smile on his lips under his clipped mustache. ‘‘I’ve traveled far this day and your coffee smelled good.’’

McBride roused himself, like a man waking from sleep. ‘‘Sorry, I’m forgetting my manners. Please, light and set. The coffee’s hot.’’

‘‘Obliged,’’ the rider said. He swung elegantly out of the saddle; then, the large-roweled spurs on his heels jingling, he stepped toward McBride and extended his hand. ‘‘Name’s the Reverend Saul Remorse.’’

‘‘John McBride.’’ He took Remorse’s hand and said, ‘‘I didn’t peg you for a preacher, not carrying those guns.’’ He pointed at the man’s throat. ‘‘And no . . .’’

‘‘Dog collar.’’ Remorse smiled. ‘‘It’s in my saddlebags. Just too dang hot to wear it.’’ The reverend’s eyes, the color of blade steel, lifted to McBride’s. ‘‘Heard your name before, down Laredo way and other places. They say you’re the man who killed Hack Burns.’’

‘‘He didn’t give me much choice. He had a gun in his hand.’’

Remorse nodded. ‘‘Hack wore the mark of Cain on his cheek. He was damned the moment he was born. If you hadn’t gunned him somebody else would. He needed killing, so maybe that somebody would have been me.’’

McBride was shocked. ‘‘That’s strange talk from a reverend.’’

‘‘Are you a reading man, John?’’

‘‘When I get the chance. I’m real fond of the dime novels about stalwart frontiersmen and blushing maidens.’’

‘‘Put those aside and read about the warrior monks of the Crusades and those of Japan and Cathay. Then maybe you will find my talk less strange.’’

McBride realized he was being gently chided and he deeply regretted mentioning the stupid dime novels. If he survived, he resolved to read better books, big fat ones with long words and hard covers. For a moment he thought of mentioning this to Remorse, but in the end settled for ‘‘I’ll get you a cup.’’ Then, ‘‘Are you hungry?’’

The reverend was not hungry, but wishful for coffee. ‘‘I’ll see to my horse first,’’ he said.

Later, as they sat by the fire, Remorse studied McBride over the rim of his cup and said, ‘‘Fair piece off your home range, aren’t you, John? I’d say New York or thereabouts.’’

‘‘New York,’’ McBride said, uncomfortably aware that Remorse had his rifle across his thighs. The reverend was a careful man.

‘‘Tell me about it, John. New York, I mean, and what brought you West.’’

‘‘I was running.’’

‘‘We’re all running from something. What are you running from, John?’’

The sky flamed with silent lightning that lit up the rocky slope of the mesa. McBride smelled ozone and rotting vegetation under the junipers. Remorse was rubbing the kitten’s little round head and was being rewarded with purrs.

‘‘I was exploring the mine back there,’’ McBride said. ‘‘You can’t see the entrance to the drift from here.’’

‘‘Nevertheless, I know it’s there,’’ Remorse said. ‘‘It’s a very old mine.’’ He poured himself more coffee, then surprised McBride again when he took out the makings and began to build a cigarette. Noting McBride’s expression, Remorse grinned. ‘‘A man can allow himself one vice. Smoking is mine.’’ He lit his smoke with a stick from the fire, then said, ‘‘You didn’t answer my question: what are you running from?’’

‘‘It’s a long story.’’

‘‘Ah, but then this night will also be long. God has sent it to us not for slumber, but for talk.’’

McBride looked into the carbon steel of the man’s eyes and felt himself drawn to him, like iron filings to a magnet. He pulled his knees up to his chin and told Reverend Saul Remorse his story. It had its beginnings in New York, moved to his time in Rest and Be Thankful and then to the events of recent days.

And when the story was over, he said, ‘‘If I live through this time, I plan to find work so I can keep my young Chinese wards in finishing school.’’

The fire had burned lower and Remorse threw on a few more sticks, sending a spray of scarlet sparks into the thunderclouds. He lit another smoke and said, ‘‘You wonder if Clare O’Neil and Dora Ryan are now allies and plan to keep this mine to themselves?’’

‘‘Clare sure changed pretty abruptly. One day she saves my life, the next she tries to put a slug in my belly. Also, she and Dora are as different as night and day. Denver Dora Ryan is a woman with a dark past and Clare is a simple, and very poor, ranch girl. How do you explain them ever getting together?’’

‘‘Perhaps I can. I make periodic trips to Boston, and two years ago a poet friend of mine—Walt Whit-man. Have you heard of him?’’

McBride shook his head.

‘‘Well, anyway, he invited me to hear another poet and playwright, a big, burly Irishman named Oscar Wilde, give some readings of his work at a private home. Have you heard of Mr. Wilde?’’

‘‘No. I’m not much on poetry and plays.’’

‘‘Too bad. Well, as I recall, the readings were delightful and afterward the port was passed around rather freely. Soon my friend Walt began a discussion about Mr. Wilde’s beautiful niece Dolly Wilde and her, shall we say—unnatural—affair with the equally beautiful writer Natalie Clifford Barney. As soon as the discussion began, Mr. Wilde smiled and said, ‘Ah yes, Dolly and Natalie . . . and the love that dare not speak its name.’ ’’

Remorse shook the pot, smiled his surprise and poured coffee into his cup. He looked at McBride. ‘‘Pretty Clare and lovely Dora together. Perhaps the reason, as Oscar says, is the love that dare not speak its name.’’ He set the pot on the coals. ‘‘That, and money of course.’’

McBride felt like a drowning man struggling to surface in a whirlpool. Nothing in his experience, even his years as a detective, had prepared him for what Remorse had just said. The very concept was alien to him and no matter how he tried he could not come to terms with it.

‘‘I don’t think . . . I mean . . . not Clare . . .’’

Remorse threw back his head and laughed with genuine humor. ‘‘You mean poor little Clare who tried to put a bullet in your belly would be incapable of such a thing. Or that Dora Ryan, the woman who owned the biggest cathouse in Denver until she had to skip town after she put three .44 slugs into a rowdy deputy marshal, would not even consider forbidden love?’’

McBride tried to still his whirling brain. He exhaled through his nose, then said, his inadequate words falling into the silence like rocks, ‘‘I . . . I guess I have to think about what you said.’’

‘‘It really doesn’t change a thing, you know. Right about now it seems that just about everybody in the New Mexico Territory wants you dead.’’ The reverend shrugged. ‘‘For one reason or another.’’

The fire cast trembling, orange light on the two men, but beyond them the crowding darkness was as black as ink, flaring white when lightning clawed at the sky. Night birds rustled in the junipers and a pair of coyotes were calling back and forth to one another among the foothills.

‘‘Fancy gun,’’ Remorse said. He was looking at the Colt in McBride’s waistband.

‘‘I took it from Boone, the man I shot at the O’Neil cabin.’’

‘‘Glad to hear it. Only a tinhorn cuts notches to remind him of the men he killed.’’

McBride felt he’d been on the losing end of his conversation with Remorse and now he tried to regain the initiative. ‘‘Like me, you’re from back East, huh?’’

The reverend nodded. ‘‘Yes, from Boston town.’’

‘‘Why did you come West?’’

‘‘A Chinese girl. But unlike yours, she wasn’t my ward. She was my wife.’’

McBride smiled. ‘‘It’s going to be a long night, Reverend. Want to tell me about it?’’

To his surprise, Remorse showed no sign of reluctance. His sensitive poet’s face looked transparent in the glow of the fire and his eyes softened, looking back into shades of another place and time.

‘‘What can I tell you about Chenguang? Her name means ‘morning light’ and that is what she did, bring her light into my darkness. And she was beautiful beyond imagining, more beautiful than my words can describe. Yet, was she beautiful only because I loved her? Her light has dimmed with the passing of time and I can no longer tell. Sometimes, in the night when I lie sleepless, I close my eyes and try to see her face again. Usually I fail. Chenguang has gone from me and only her shadow remains.’’

‘‘What happened to her?’’ McBride asked.

‘‘She killed herself.’’

A stick fell in the fire and a heart-shaped flame leaped into the darkness. The coyotes were yipping, hunting the small rodents that scurried and scuttled in the grass, and the eyes of the night looked on, missing nothing.

‘‘I was a successful railroad attorney then.’’ Remorse took up the story again. ‘‘And I often worked late at my office. Five college boys, the sons of rich and powerful men, were passing my house and saw that my wife was alone. They were drunk and decided they wanted her so they broke into my home and took her in turn.

‘‘I tried my best to console Chenguang, to tell her that my love for her had not changed, would never change, but she could not live with what she thought of as her shame. Three days after the attack, she hanged herself from the pear tree in our yard that she loved.

‘‘I brought those five men to trial for the crimes of rape and murder, but they were very quickly acquitted. They belonged to the cream of Boston high society and a jury of their peers declared that such fine young men had obviously been seduced by the cunning Celestial. In summing up, the judge said, ‘Everyone here present knows the Chinese are people of low morals, especially the females. They are animals really, not even remotely akin to humans.’

‘‘He got a hearty round of applause for that.’’

After a while McBride said, ‘‘So you came West. To get away from your hurtful memories.’’

‘‘Not at once. On the night of the trial the five men gathered in the rooms of one of their number to celebrate their acquittal. I followed them there and shot them down. All but one, the oldest and the ring-leader. Him I hanged from Chenguang’s pear tree.

‘‘A few days later my flaming red hair turned white.’’

McBride studied Remorse’s face, watching the fire-light reflect in the man’s eyes and gleam on the blue steel of the matched Remingtons. He asked, ‘‘When did you become a preacher, Saul?’’

‘‘After I left Boston and came West. I ordained myself.’’

‘‘As a warrior monk.’’

‘‘Something like that.’’ Remorse caught and held McBride’s eyes. ‘‘I’m here to help you, John. Your enemies are my enemies.’’

‘‘Have you ever been in Rest and Be Thankful? If you haven’t, you don’t know my enemies.’’

Remorse smiled. ‘‘Try Thad Harlan, for one. He’s been on my list for quite some time.’’

‘‘What list is that?’’ McBride asked.

‘‘The list of men I intend to kill.’’