Hangman's Song, page 1
BRAWLIN’ BULL
Stunned by the sudden vise that had captured his wrist, Bull jerked his head around to confront the person who had dared to interfere.
With a little half smile on his face, Jordan spoke in low, even tones. “The man wants to sit in that place. It’s best to just leave him be and go sit somewhere else.”
Bull couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He tried to pull his wrist free, but Jordan’s grip was unyielding. He spun around to confront Jordan, at the same time taking a wild swing with his free hand. It was intended for Jordan’s nose, but Jordan anticipated it and easily ducked under. Before Bull could recover from his wide miss, Jordan hammered away at the bigger man’s gut with a series of lefts and rights, doubling him over in an effort to protect his midsection. Striking with the speed of a rattlesnake, Jordan delivered to Bull’s face a half dozen telling blows, which flattened his nose and left him staggering blindly backward, swinging his fists awkwardly, but finding nothing but air.
His rage tempered only slightly by the utter feeling of frustration, Bull hesitated a moment. His eyes gazed in disbelief as he peered out from under bloody brows. The eyes that returned his gaze were steady and cold. . . .
HANGMAN’S
SONG
Charles G. West
SIGNET
Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
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First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First Printing, July 2005
Copyright © Charles G. West, 2005
All rights reserved
ISBN: 9781101662823
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Version_1
For Ronda
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 1
She was a frail little woman in appearance, sad of eye with mousy-colored hair streaked with dingy gray. Like so many women who followed their husbands to little homesteads on the prairie, she had aged beyond her years. Hard work and hard weather took a toll on a woman’s life. Preacher almost felt justified that his happening upon the tiny homestead was in fact the woman’s salvation. After he and his two sons left this place, she would toil no longer. That thought caused him to smile graciously when she offered a dipper of water. “Thank you kindly, ma’am,” he said, taking the dipper from her bony hand. “The Lord’s blessings upon you,” he added.
Mary Weldon stepped back and stood watching the huge man as he turned the dipper up and gulped the water, ignoring the waste that splashed around the sides and soaked his heavy beard. When her husband had called out that someone was coming, she had hurried outside the cabin, hoping that it was Marci and John, her sister and brother-in-law. It was a foolish hope she at once realized. It was far too early in the spring for them to have made the journey. They would most likely arrive toward the middle of the summer. Life would improve a great deal when they got there. The lonely days that stretched end to end were the worst part of Mary’s existence. It would be so grand when Marci was there to talk to and help with the work. It would make life a whole lot easier for her husband as well. Franklin and John were close friends and had spent many a night over the past several years planning to start a new life in the west. She and Franklin had decided to go ahead and make the journey. Marci and John had promised they would not be far behind.
She glanced at her husband standing at the edge of the creek, watching the two younger men water their horses. Strange guests, she couldn’t help thinking. She had no doubt that the savage Indians needed the Word of God, but it seemed a foolish mission for one man and his two sons—especially when the cavalry patrol that passed through the week before had warned her husband that there had been Sioux raiding parties reported since the weather let up. I reckon they ain’t no crazier than we are for trying to make a home here, she thought. The Indians she had met could certainly use a little religion.
The huge man in the black hat and the heavy bearskin coat handed the dipper back. Guessing her thoughts, he grinned and commented, “Life’s kinda hard for a woman out here, ain’t it, ma’am?”
“I guess life’s hard for most folks,” she replied without emotion. “Don’t do no good to complain, though.”
“No, ma’am, it shore don’t, but if you’re a Christian woman, your reward will come in Heaven, though you toil here on earth.”
“I suppose so,” she said with little enthusiasm for the prospects. She hoped the self-proclaimed preacher wasn’t about to get wound up for an impromptu sermon. She was thinking about the little pot of stew she had left warming over the fire. It would hardly be enough to feed extra mouths, especially those on the likes of these three. “I guess we’re just thankful for the few crops that make it here.”
Preacher’s grin widened. “Have you accepted Jesus as your savior?” She nodded. “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. This here’s one of them times when the Lord taketh away.” With that, he pulled his pistol from the holster on his belt and held it up before her. Puzzled, she stared at it for just a moment before he turned the muzzle toward her and calmly pulled the trigger, sending a bullet through her brain. Mary Weldon’s toil on earth had ended.
Down by the creek, Franklin Weldon was startled by the sudden discharge of the pistol. Turning to see his wife crumple to the ground at Preacher’s feet, he was paralyzed with shock, unable to even cry out. When he saw the pistol in Preacher’s hand, his mind was impacted with the reality of what had taken place. He started to run to his wife, only to be felled by a blow to the back of his skull. Grinning at the fallen man’s helpless struggles to get up, Quincy Rix held his pistol to the back of Franklin’s head and dispatched him to join his wife.
“Goddamn!” Zeb cried out gleefully, excited by the flow of blood.
“Watch your mouth,” Preacher warned. He would not tolerate blasphemous language from his offspring. “Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain.” He paused then, watching his eldest son’s reaction. When Zeb appeared to be properly contrite, Preacher ordered the disposal of the bodies. “Let’s put these poor sinners in the ground, and give ’em a proper service.” He cocked an eye in Quincy’s direction. “And, Quincy, mind you handle the woman’s body respectfully. I don’t mind you fondling all over an Injun woman, but these was peaceful white folks.”
“We gonna scalp ’em, ain’t we, Pa,” Quincy asked hopefully, “so’s it looks like Injuns done it?” That was the usual routine whenever they struck a miner’s camp, a lone trapper, or an isolated homestead like this one.
Preacher Rix cast a patient glance in his son’s direction. “Now there ain’t hardly no need to scalp ’em if we’re fixin’ to bury ’em, is there?” Seeing the blank look on Quincy’s face, he glanced at Zeb, only to find a similar expression. “If they’re underground,” he explained, “nobody’s gonna know if they was scalped or not.” When he saw the light of comprehension finally appear in their faces, he went on. “Now find a shovel and bury these folks, and I’ll say a few words over ’em.”
While his sons followed his instructions, he turned his attention to the cabin and the possible spoils to be taken. He hadn’t expected much in the way of valuables, but he was disappointed to find nothing beyond a few
Zeb and Quincy made short work of what stew their father had left in the pot. Then they squatted on their haunches to watch the cabin go up. It didn’t take long before the pine walls collapsed and the sod of the roof smothered most of the flames. “All right, boys,” Preacher said, “finish up that grave, and I’ll pray over ’em.”
* * *
Jordan Gray sat motionless in the saddle, studying the lone plume of smoke snaking up from the distant hills to the south. It was too big to be smoke from a campfire, and too close to the settlements to be an Indian camp. Not being in a particularly curious mood, he was prone to avoid all signs of human contact. He had spent a long, hard winter—mostly in the rugged Big Horns—moving from camp to camp to avoid being discovered by roving Sioux and Cheyenne hunting parties. It had been a difficult winter, with little game to be found in the narrow passes, and a constant search for feed for his two horses. That kind of existence would be hard for most men, but he had adapted to it, moving his camps fast and often. Out of necessity, he had learned to quickly skin and butcher any game he had been fortunate enough to happen upon, packing the meat on his packhorse, and fading immediately into the hills before encountering any curious Indians who might have heard his rifle.
Turning his attention back to the smoke trailing up into the gray afternoon sky, he considered avoiding it, as had been his custom during the winter months just past. He thought about it for a moment before deciding. As best as he could guess, he could be no more than a long day’s ride from Fort Laramie. The smoke he was seeing was most likely from a settler’s cabin and might mean someone was in trouble. With that thought in mind, he nudged his horse gently, and the mottled gray mare moved forward again at a slow walk.
His mind alert to the prairie around him, he gave little thought to the reasons for his self-imposed exile to the cold harsh peaks of the mountains. The solitude of the windswept towers, where winter temperatures plunged unmercifully, could drive a lone man crazy if it didn’t kill him. To Jordan, the time spent alone in the frigid mountains had been a period of healing in his mind. It had been harder on his horses than it had been on him, and much of the time had been spent seeking shelter and food for them. The thought prompted him to reach down and pat Sweet Pea’s neck. Sweet Pea, he laughed to himself. A more unlikely name for the often belligerent horse, he could not imagine. She had belonged to his old partner and friend, Perley Gates. Perley had named her Sweet Pea in hopes it might help her disposition. It hadn’t. But though she might possibly be the rankest-looking horse west of the Missouri, Jordan would wager none could match her for strength and stamina—and she had accepted him. So looks be damned, he wouldn’t trade her for any two horses.
Like the heating of iron in the smithy’s fire, the winter had served to temper Jordan’s soul to a hardness that caused him to give little concern to what might lie ahead. He was even able to at last store the memory of his late wife and son away in a safe place in his mind, to be brought out whenever he chose to remember. It had taken a while for the scar tissue to form over the mental wound left by the violent slaughter of his young family, but in time it had healed. The men responsible for the death of his wife and child were in the ground, slain by his own hand. He no longer questioned the sense of the killings, having come to the conclusion that life itself made no sense. His senses sharpened, his mind attuned to the wilderness in which he rode, he would fight to survive—not for a concern for the future, but merely out of a natural reaction of his own instincts, like that of the wolf or the coyote.
When he reached the gentle line of hills, he discovered that they bordered a wide stream, still swollen with runoff from the melting snow. He paused to survey the column of smoke again. He was close. The fire appeared to be no more than a few hundred yards away, probably beyond the trees that hugged the stream ahead, where it made a sharp bend toward the west. It was then that he saw hoofprints. Coming from the east, they turned to follow the stream toward the foot of the hill, and they left a clear trail through a patch of snow—tracks of three shod horses, not likely belonging to Indians, and something peculiar caught his eye, so he dismounted to take a closer look at the tracks. One of the horses evidently had a slight spur on one shoe, an imperfection that should have been filed off. It was so slight that the owner of the horse probably wasn’t even aware of it. Jordan wouldn’t have noticed it had it not been for the clear imprint in the snow. In fact, most men would not have noticed even then. But Jordan Gray was not most men. Perley Gates had taught him well when it came to reading sign, and when a man chose to live alone in Sioux country, reading sign often meant the difference between living and dying.
After carefully scanning the way before him, he stepped up in the saddle again and nudged his horse forward, guiding the ungainly mare around the few patches of snow still remaining in the shade of the trees.
As he approached the bend, he heard voices. His immediate reaction was to quickly guide the mare away from the stream and up the slope that separated him from the fire. Pulling his rifle from the saddle sling, he dismounted. Leaving the horses standing in the trees, he made his way to the crest of the small hill.
It had been the cabin of settlers. The logs that had formed the framework for the sod walls and roof had collapsed and were still smoking with small flames burning the remains of a few wooden chairs that had been thrown together in a pile. Jordan cast no more than a glance at the burned-out cabin. His attention was claimed by the three men standing around a shallow grave near a small corral. White men, they appeared to have their heads bowed in prayer. At least, two of them did. The other was the one whose voice Jordan had heard when he approached the bend in the stream. Towering over his two companions, he appeared to be addressing his words toward the heavens. His deep voice boomed out from under the broad rim of a black flat-crowned hat as he delivered his eulogy, his arms outstretched as if besieging the Lord to accept the poor souls lying in the freshly dug grave. All three men wore heavy bearskin coats, so Jordan couldn’t help thinking that they presented a picture of a pack of wolves surrounding a kill. He was almost of a mind to withdraw, concluding that there was nothing to be done for whoever occupied the grave, but his suspicious nature dictated a need to know the circumstances of the tragedy.
Moving with the stealth of a man self-trained to survive in a hostile environment, Jordan made his way down the slope, almost to the bottom before the three men knew they had a visitor. Sensing his presence, the tall man jerked his head around to discover the sudden appearance of a stranger who seemed to pop out of thin air. His lead was followed by his two companions. All three stood gaping at the formidable figure dressed in animal skins and carrying a Winchester rifle at the ready. Recovering quickly, the man in the black hat spoke.
“Well, howdy, neighbor. You kinda startled us there. Where’d you come from?” Jordan didn’t answer, and the four men stood silently measuring one another for a few moments. Anticipating Jordan’s unspoken question, black hat offered an explanation. “Injuns.” He gestured with one hand toward the smoldering ruins of the cabin. With the other hand, he motioned for his companions to stay calm. He was smart enough to sense a lethal danger in the wild-looking stranger. “With spring a-comin’, the Injuns has been raidin’ between here and Fort Laramie.” He shook a sympathetic head toward the grave. “I only wish we coulda got here soon enough to help these poor souls. God’s will,” he added. “It ain’t for mortals to question His will. I’m sure these folks has found a better place.”
