Blood on the Gallows

Chapter 24

The Fort Stanton Road through Lincoln was a rutted, dusty track flanked by stores, adobe houses and corrals. Rolling, bronze-colored clouds touched with streaks of violet spanned the entire sky and the air smelled of rain. The red-hot coin of the sun was drifting lower in the west, and the slender arc of a children’s moon was already making its shy debut.

McBride turned in the saddle and said to Remorse, ‘‘This is where Billy the Kid, the carefree Prince of Bandits, escaped from jail. He killed half a dozen lawmen and then fought off a hundred bloodthirsty Apaches ere he made his gallant getaway into the prairie.’’

To his disappointment, McBride quickly realized he was telling the reverend something he already knew. Remorse nodded toward a substantial, two-story building. ‘‘Over there, that’s the courthouse. Billy was being held on the second floor and that’s where he murdered two deputies before he skedaddled. He ended up in Fort Sumner, where Pat Garrett found him and killed him.’’ Remorse grinned. ‘‘I never heard about those hundred bloodthirsty Apaches.’’

He drew rein and thumbed over his shoulder. ‘‘The building we just passed, the Wortley Hotel, is owned by Garrett, at least that’s what I’ve heard.’’ Remorse glanced at the fiery sky. ‘‘We may end up spending the night there.’’

His high opinion of the Kid considerably deflated, McBride now sought to restore it. Perhaps Remorse was only repeating slanders he’d heard. ‘‘Saul, did you know Billy?’’ he asked.

‘‘I knew him.’’

After a minute of silence, McBride prodded: ‘‘Well?’’

‘‘Well what?’’

‘‘How was he?’’

Remorse smiled. The steel of the Remingtons on his chest captured the crimson glow of the sky as though the metal were again molten. ‘‘Billy was all right. He was just a wild kid caught up in a trade battle between rich and powerful men.’’

‘‘Did you see the twenty-one notches on his guns?’’

‘‘John, Billy killed only men who need killing and those were few. And he didn’t notch his guns. That’s a tinhorn’s trick and it was something Billy would never do. For all his faults, he had style.’’

Remorse kneed his gray into motion and McBride fell in beside him. ‘‘John,’’ the reverend said, shaking his head, ‘‘promise me you won’t read any more of those Ned Buntline novels, huh?’’

McBride grinned. ‘‘I don’t read about the West any longer. I’m here. I’m living it.’’

‘‘So you’re fully awake now, and all you did in New York was only a dream.’’

‘‘It seems that way at times, maybe more recently than before.’’

Remorse nodded, but said nothing.

The two riders passed a steep-sided hill that looked like an ancient volcano cone, then the Stanton Saloon and the Torreon, a stone tower built as a refuge in the event of Indian attack.

The post office lay just beyond the tower, on the same side of the street, and McBride stepped inside and wrote out his wire. When the clerk read it, a raised eyebrow was his only comment.

‘‘Will it get there?’’ McBride asked.

‘‘Sure.’’ The clerk nodded, a middle-aged man wearing a green eyeshade. ‘‘If the Indians didn’t cut the wire and if the poles haven’t been swept away by flood or landslide and if there’s been no earthquakes, blizzards, wildfires or hailstorms at any point along the line.’’ He raised washed-out blue eyes to McBride. ‘‘If none of those things happened, it will get there.’’

‘‘Well, that’s reassuring,’’ McBride said, irritated.

The clerk shrugged. ‘‘I make that speech to everybody who sends a wire from Lincoln and dang me if they don’t always get a burr under their saddle, just like you.’’

When McBride stepped out of the post office, Remorse had dismounted and was holding the reins of both horses. A flurry of rain tossed in the wind and the sky was turning black.

‘‘Send your wire?’’ Remorse asked.

McBride nodded, his face bleak. ‘‘Yes, if there’s no fire or flood between here and its destination.’’

‘‘Think the wire will help?’’

‘‘I don’t know. Time is not on our side.’’

‘‘Then we go it alone, John,’’ Remorse said. ‘‘We stay alive and bring about a reckoning in Rest and Be Thankful.’’

A freight wagon drawn by four oxen and a lead pair of longhorn steers creaked past and McBride watched it stop outside the Tunstall Store. A bearded and solemn farmer and his thin wife rode past, both of them on the bare back of a huge gray Percheron. The couple ignored the two armed riders standing outside the post office and kept their eyes fixed on the road ahead. The Lincoln County War had not yet receded into memory, and people were still suspicious of hard-bitten men who carried revolvers.

McBride was completely unaware of it, but he had changed much since fleeing New York. He’d grown leaner, stronger, every ounce of fat burned off by harsh weather and long, arduous trails. His gaze was never still, reaching out around him, seeing everything, missing nothing. His face had planed down to hard angles and his mahogany skin stretched tight to the bone. Although he was a man who smiled often and took a childlike joy in many things, past events had made his capacity for sudden violence grow and at such times his rage was terrible to see. As he and Remorse walked their horses along the street, past the White Elephant Saloon to the Wortley Hotel, they looked exactly like what they were: lean, dangerous lobo wolves on the prowl.

The hotel clerk directed the two riders to put up their horses in the barn out back where there was a good supply of hay and oats. McBride and Remorse were the only guests and the steak and potatoes the clerk prepared for them were a rough and ready meal but tasty enough.

After they’d eaten, the clerk, impressed by Remorse’s clerical collar, sat at their table and soon engaged the reverend in a discussion on whether there is a conflict between faith and reason and demanded to know if faith without proof is mere superstition.

Remorse eagerly picked up the philosophical gauntlet and the two men went at it, arguing back and forth, their index fingers poking holes in the air. McBride listened for more than an hour, contributed nothing, then, bored into semiconsciousness, staggered to his room.

He dreamed of Bear Miller again.

McBride was standing in the middle of a vast, open prairie under a sky the color of tin. Old Bear sat his horse, a blanket roll behind his saddle. Behind him moved an immense herd of buffalo, flowing over the grass like a muddy brown river.

‘‘I got to be going, John,’’ Bear said. ‘‘I’m following the buffalo. Going to find me a new range for a spell.’’

A warm wind tugged at McBride, and the air smelled musky, of the buffalo herd.

‘‘You were right about the woman, Bear,’’ McBride said. ‘‘She tried to kill me. I thought I was gut-shot.’’

The old man smiled. ‘‘There’s just no accounting for female folks, is there, John?’’

McBride looked around him, his eyes reaching into the endless land. ‘‘I wanted you to meet someone. His name is Saul Remorse. He’s a reverend, but I don’t know where he is.’’

‘‘Don’t matter, John, I know him anyhow. He’s followed the buffalo, rode after them a long ways, eating their dust.’’

‘‘He’s a sorrowing man. His wife died, you know. She was Chinese and she hung herself from a pear tree.’’

‘‘I know,’’ Bear said. ‘‘But his suffering will not last forever. It had a beginning, and it will have an end.’’

McBride took a step closer to the old man. ‘‘Where will you go, Bear?’’

Bear made a chopping motion with his bladed hand. ‘‘That way, south. I have no way of knowing where the trail will end.’’

‘‘Will you come back?’’

‘‘I don’t know that either. Maybe where I’m going there’s no coming back.’’ The old man touched his hat. ‘‘I hope to see you around, John McBride.’’ He swung his horse away, then, grinning, yelled to McBride, ‘‘Here, John, catch!’’

A green apple soared through the air and McBride caught it with both hands. He watched as Bear rode into the buffalo herd, then vanished into dust, distance and wakefulness.

McBride opened his eyes to gray dawn light and loud pounding on his room’s door. It was Remorse, telling him that breakfast was on the table.

‘‘Don’t you ever sleep?’’ McBride asked, opening his door an inch.

Remorse stood there freshly shaved, bright-eyed and anxious to meet the day. ‘‘No, John, I seldom sleep. I sat up all night arguing with Bartholomew. That’s the clerk’s name, you know. He’s a bright enough lad, but much given to certain doctrines of popery that I cannot abide.’’

‘‘He didn’t think it strange, a reverend armed with Remingtons?’’

‘‘If he did, he didn’t say. Bartholomew is a very polite young man.’’

McBride scratched his chest and yawned. ‘‘All right, I’ll be there in a few minutes.’’

Remorse smiled. ‘‘Good. I’ll try to save you some bacon.’’ He hesitated. ‘‘Oh, here, this is for you.’’ He handed McBride a green apple.

‘‘Where did you get this?’’ McBride asked, shocked.

‘‘I found it in the kitchen. It’s good for a man to eat a green apple in the morning. I always do before I ride a long trail.’’

Both men wore slickers as they rode out of Lincoln under a broken sky that threatened rain. The morning was murky, night shadows still clinging to the ravines between the hills. The air was heavy and damp and hard to breathe.

After a mile of silence passed between them, Remorse smiled and asked, ‘‘John, you’re not still sore about the bacon, huh?’’

McBride shook his head. ‘‘No, the eggs were just fine.’’

‘‘Then why has the cat got your tongue?’’

‘‘I’m thinking. No, not really that. Maybe wondering is a better word.’’

‘‘Wondering about what?’’

‘‘Where we go from here. We ride into Rest and Be Thankful and then—’’

‘‘And then the trouble comes to us,’’ Remorse said. ‘‘You don’t need to worry about what happens next. Jared Josephine will dictate those terms.’’

‘‘And when he does?’’

‘‘Then we deal with whatever he throws at us.’’ Remorse nodded, more to himself than McBride. ‘‘No, we won’t have to force it. The war will come right at us like a cannonball express.’’

‘‘If the telegram does no good, can we win it? The war, I mean.’’

‘‘John, if only half, a quarter, of the outlaws in town side with Jared we’re done for. There’s only two of us and we can’t win that battle.’’

‘‘Then why are we riding toward a lost battle as though we couldn’t help it?’’

‘‘Because the outlaws are an ‘if.’ The telegram is an ‘if.’ And then there’s pride. We’re both named men and if—there’s that ‘if’ again—we turn tail and run, the news of our rank cowardice will spread far and wide. I can’t afford to let that happen. Can you?’’

McBride shook his head, thinking that turning tail had one big advantage—while all those people were talking about his rank cowardice he’d still be alive. But aloud he said, ‘‘I guess I’ll stick. Besides, I owe Thad Harlan for putting a bullet in me. I can’t just light a shuck and forget it happened.’’

‘‘Death or glory!’’ Remorse exclaimed. ‘‘We ride gallantly to our fate, John . . . whatever it may be.’’

‘‘Huzzah!’’ McBride said, the word coming out as flat and lifeless as he could make it.

McBride and Remorse followed a wagon road out of Lincoln that turned south after three miles and headed for Fort Stanton. The fort had been built to protect the Mexican farmers of the Rio Bonito Valley from Apache raids and was manned by buffalo soldiers of the Ninth Cavalry.

An old woman, dressed in black, stood at the side of the road and watched the riders come. Her head was covered by a woolen shawl, her face deeply wrinkled by long hours of toil in the sun. But her black eyes were bright, and though she looked to be in her eighties, she was probably no older than forty.

Remorse drew rein, smiled and doffed his hat. ‘‘Buenos dias, senora. Como esta usted?’’

The woman ignored Remorse, her eyes lifting to McBride. ‘‘It is not seemly or wise to speak with an angel of death. Therefore I will ask you: have you come to visit my son?’’

McBride was taken aback. ‘‘Senora, I don’t think I know your son.’’

‘‘You know him. His name is Alarico Garcia. He saved you from the rope of Harlan the hangman. Alarico told me you were a tall man with wide shoulders and that you wore a strange, round hat. Who else could you be but the man my son described to me?’’

‘‘My name is John McBride, senora. And yes, I remember your son. He saved my life and I would be happy to see him again.’’

‘‘It is not far,’’ the woman said. ‘‘Just down the trail to the fort a ways, then among the cottonwoods growing around a stream that runs off the Rio Bonito. We will find him there.’’

A flurry of rain spattered over McBride, and Remorse’s white hair was streaming across his face in a rising wind. The woman lifted a gnarled brown hand, held her shawl under her chin as her long skirt slapped against her legs. Her eyes were black and intent on Remorse.

She pointed a bony finger at him, and said to McBride, ‘‘He can’t come with us, that one.’’ To the big man’s surprise, the woman bowed her head to Remorse and said quietly, ‘‘Muerte Santo, usted puede visitarme pronto.’’

The reverend pushed the hair from his face with the fingers of his left hand. His face was pale and unsmiling, his good mood of the morning seemingly gone. ‘‘Como usted desea, senora,’’ he said. ‘‘Le vendre.’’

Again the woman bowed, this time from the waist. She reached into the pocket of her skirt and produced a string of black rosary beads. She held them in her hand as she said to McBride: ‘‘We will go now.’’

For his part McBride was baffled. He looked at Remorse and said, ‘‘Now, what was all that jabbering about?’’

Remorse smiled. ‘‘She called me Muerte Santo, Saint Death, and asked me to visit her soon.’’

‘‘And what did you say?’’ McBride’s eyes were wide, like those of a man groping his way through a thick fog.

‘‘I told her I would.’’

McBride shook his head. ‘‘Saul, you are one strange hombre.’’

Remorse grinned faintly. ‘‘Aren’t I, though? Now go with the woman. It is not far. I will wait for you here.’’

McBride, feeling it would be impolite to ride while the woman walked, climbed out of the saddle and fell into step beside her, leading the mustang.

The rain was heavier now, the wind stronger. To the north the Capitan Mountains were shrouded in cloud. On both sides of McBride and the woman a shifting mist coiled around the mesas and drifted into the arroyos like a gray ghost. The rutted wagon road was filmed with mud that spattered the bottom of the woman’s skirt. She neither noticed nor seemed to care as she fingered her beads, her lips moving.

After fifteen minutes the woman left the road and McBride followed. They walked across flat, sandy ground covered with purple prickly pear and cholla; then the land changed gradually into a greener stretch that slanted downward toward a mist-ribboned stand of cottonwoods.

A gray fox nosing around the base of the trees lifted its head as McBride and the woman got closer. It watched them for a few moments, then vanished silently into the grayer mantle of the rain.

‘‘My son lies there,’’ the woman said. She indicated a sunken rectangle covered thinly with small rocks and polished pebbles from the nearby stream in the shape of a cross. There was no marker and the grave of Alarico Garcia lay at a distance from the cottonwoods where the ground was less likely to flood during the spring snowmelt that would happen soon.

McBride took off his hat and stood by the grave. No words of comfort for the woman came to him and he was silent.

‘‘That is where my son sleeps,’’ the woman said. ‘‘He had just reached his eighteenth year when the hangman and the others came for him.’’ She shook her head. ‘‘So young. They killed five other men in our village, but I buried Alarico here. He and his wife used to visit this place often because they said it was so lovely and peaceful.’’

McBride now found himself on firmer ground. War talk came more easily to him. ‘‘Who was with Harlan? Do you know their names?’’

The woman nodded. ‘‘Sí, I know their names. With Harlan came the banker Jared Josephine and his son. I heard him called Lance. There were two others, men I’d never seen before.

‘‘Our village is a couple of miles from here, on the Rio Bonito, and Harlan came and asked for the men who had set you free from his jail. He told us if the guilty men didn’t step forward he would choose ten men from the village and hang them. My son and the men who had been with him at the jail stepped forward, wishing to save others from death. Then the hangman and the rest drew their guns and shot them all down.’’

‘‘Senora,’’ McBride said, ‘‘I don’t have the words to tell you how sorry I am. Alarico was a fine young man. I promise you, I will do my best to avenge his death.’’

‘‘Alarico talked about you often, the big, ugly gringo with the kitten and the funny hat. He made me laugh. That is why I wanted you to visit him. Now you must stand at his grave and tell him what you just told me, that you will avenge his death.’’

‘‘I will tell him that. But, senora, how did you know I would be on the wagon road?’’

‘‘One of the men from the village saw you in Lincoln. He told me you would probably return to Jared Josephine’s town. I walked to the road and I waited. I was willing to wait a long, long time.’’

McBride was oddly touched. ‘‘Senora, is there anything I can do for you?’’

The woman shook her head. ‘‘No, my life is over. But you will get justice for my son, and then I will lie down on my bed and turn my face to the wall. Soon your friend, Muerte Santo, with his white hair and eyes that never show mercy, will come for me.’’

The big man managed a smile, slight and strained under his ragged mustache. ‘‘Senora, my friend’s name is Saul Remorse. He was a railroad lawyer in . . . in a city far to the east of here. After his wife died he traveled west and became a preacher, a padre. He’s not what you think.’’

The woman’s drawn, prematurely aged face lifted to McBride, and rain rolled down her furrowed cheeks like tears. ‘‘You’ve told me what he was, senor. But I know what he is.’’