The Shadow of a Noose Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  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 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY

  “Sheriff, we’re not looking for any trouble,” announced Tim. “We’re just passing through.”

  “Nope, not today you’re not,” said Barr, his right hand on his pistol butt. “We got a wire from Sheriff Connally in St. Joe, night before last. He said to take you two into custody till he gets here. Now ride in here slow-like, raise those pistols with two fingers, and let them fall.”

  But the twins only cast each other a glance. Then Tim spoke again. “What for, Sheriff? We haven’t broken any law that we know of.”

  “Then you’d better be advised that murder is breaking a law. Drop those pistols, right now. I’m not asking again.”

  “Murder?” Tim gave Jed a bewildered glance. “What’s he talking about?”

  Jed didn’t answer right away. When he did manage to speak, his voice sounded shaky. “These men are fixin’ to shoot us, Tim. What’re we going to do?”

  As he spoke, the first of the railroaders rose up from behind a stack of nail kegs, his rifle starting to hone down at them.

  “We’re going to shoot back . . .”

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of

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  First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library,

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  First Printing, March 2000

  Copyright © The Estate of Ralph Compton, 2000

  All rights reserved

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  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  Prologue

  St. Joseph, Missouri, June 15, 1871

  “Jed,” said Tim Strange to his twin brother, “now that Ma is in the ground, I don’t rightly know what to do next. I wish there was some way to get in touch with Danielle and let her know what happened here. But I don’t reckon anybody’s heard a word from her since she took out after the bastards that killed our pa. That’s been over a year ago.”

  For Jed, looking into his twin brother’s face was like looking into a mirror. “It’s going to plumb break her heart even hearing about Ma’s death from us, let alone if she had to hear about it from a stranger,” Jed replied, miserably.

  They both gazed across the barren, empty garden near their farmhouse. The house was in sore need of repair, and had been long since before their sister Danielle had left.

  “Look at this place.” Tim sighed. “It’s all worn down to dust and sorrow. We don’t even have the price of seeds. You and I have been left in sorry straits, brother. If we’re going to go hungry, we might just as well do it on the trail. We might even find work out there somewhere, if we kept our ages a secret. We won’t find any around here, not with Reconstruction going on. If not for that old double-barreled rabbit gun in the house, I reckon we’d starve.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Jed. “Everybody around here is having it as rough as we are. Never thought I’d say this, but I’m so sick of rabbit, I can’t stand it.”

  “Well, even rabbit is starting to get scarce,” Tim said.

  Tim and Jed Strange were only fourteen when their sister had left them one year ago on the hard-scrabble farm to take care of their grieving, ailing mother, Margaret Strange. Try as they did, the two boys had not been able to make ends meet for themselves and their mother.

  “Then we both know what we have to do, don’t we?” said Tim. “We’ll have to go find Danielle, and make sure she hears the bad news from us.”

  Jed looked at his brother, knowing that while neither of them wanted to admit it, they had both been a little bit envious of the fact that it was their sister Danielle who had taken up the vengeance trail, hunting for the murderers of their father, Dan Strange. Both boys shared the thought that hunting for cold-blooded killers was man’s work. They had been too young to go after the outlaws themselves at the time. While it was an indisputable fact that their sister Danielle was as good with a gun as any man, her going after the killers alone still didn’t set right with them.

  But Tim and Jed Strange were a whole year older now, and every spare minute they had was spent practicing their draw and their aim. The Colts they used had been custom-fitted by their father, who had been known as the best gunsmith in Missouri. Before his demise he had seen to it that his children knew how to use as well as repair a gun, starting when they were hardly more than babies.

  With their sweat-stained, beat-up Stetsons in their hands, the twins looked down at their mother’s grave, and at the wildflowers they had placed on the fresh-turned mound of earth. “Ma,” Jed said, his head hung down low, “I wish we could of buried you in the cemetery proper-like, the way you deserved. But this is the best we could do.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” Tim said. “You know as well as I do that Ma would as soon be here in the yard near this old house as she would in the finest cemetery in the world.”

  “You’re right,” Jed said to his brother, holding back the tears that were about to spill from his eyes. “I’ll tell you one thing—the men who killed Pa just as well had killed Ma too. She started dying the day Pa was put down. It just took her longer to do it. I want to find Danielle, and I want all three of us to find the bastards that caused all this.”

  They stood silently for a few minutes, each mulling over his own private thoughts. A small cool breeze cut through the hot air and made the petals of the wildflowers rustle over their mother’s grave. Finally, Tim said with a tightness in his chest, “We still have our Colts, and one tin of bullets between us.”

  Lifting his eyes from the grave, Jed said, “Yes, and we still have the two good bay horses, except that they’re run-down in their flanks from want of grai
n.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?” said Tim. “Talk ing ain’t going to get it done.” Tim stepped back from the grave with a last sorrowful look. He took down one of the gun belts that they had hung on a stubbed branch of a cottonwood tree a few feet away, rather than wearing them to their mother’s grave. Jed only watched his twin brother for a moment as Tim strapped the belt around his hips and began to tie the holster down to his thigh with a length of rawhide.

  Jed realized that what they both had dreamed of for the past year was about to come true. He hurried over to the cottonwood tree, took down his gun belt, and strapped it on in the same manner as Tim had done. “You’re right. What are we waiting for?” Jed Strange said, echoing his twin brother’s words.

  As Jed and Tim Strange stood inside the barn, saddling the two bay geldings, preparing the gaunt horses for what both boys knew would be a long and treacherous journey, the sound of a buggy rolling into the yard caused them both to turn from their tasks and step back out into the sunlight. At first they thought it might have been one of the many families who had come by earlier to pay their last respects, perhaps someone who was arriving late. But when they saw it was Orville Myers, the new land speculator who’d been plying his profession in the St. Joseph area of late, they knew the purpose of his visit before he stepped down from his buggy and walked toward them.

  “Damn,” said Jed to Tim, “you’d think he could wait till after the funeral dust settled.”

  “Men like Orville Myers don’t wait for nothing,” Tim said. “But he could have saved himself a trip in this case.”

  Orville Myers seemed to have an idea that they were talking about him, for he kept his eyes lowered, unable to face them head-on, something their father had taught them always to be leery of. Dan Strange always told his sons, “If a man can’t face you directly, most likely he’s hiding more than just his eyes.”

  Before Orville came to a complete stop, Tim Strange hooked his thumbs into his gun belt and said, “You weren’t here when our friends and neighbors were, so you just as well might have not come at all.”

  “Boys, I know you don’t like me. Nobody around here does. But I don’t let them stop me from doing my job. I know the fix you’re in, and I felt it only obligin’ of me to ride out and make you an offer on this old place before it ends up on the auction block.”

  “What’s he talking about, Tim?” Jed asked, keeping his eyes narrowed on Orville Myers’s weasely face.

  “I don’t know, Jed. What are you talking about, Myers? The taxes are paid up on this place. Ma sent Danielle into town to pay them before Danielle left last spring.”

  “Indeed. But that was for last year’s taxes.” Orville Myers adjusted the wire-rimmed glasses on the bridge of his long thin nose then took out a folded piece of paper from his black linen suit. “I reckon you boys are too young to realize that taxes ain’t a one-time thing. You owe the same amount now as you did then, except this year the government is upping the total by twenty-six dollars to get back some money it spent fighting that blamed war. I guess that’s the government’s way to make a bunch of yellow rebels think twice before they decide to kick up their heels again.”

  “Mr. Myers, I don’t mean no disrespect,” said Tim, “but you best be careful calling these men around here yellow. The feelings over the war haven’t cooled that much. There’s some who’d leave you swinging from a tree over talk like that.”

  Orville Myers looked startled and quickly said, “Boys, don’t get me wrong, I’m a businessman. I took no side in the war, and I take none now. I make my profit no matter who wins or loses. But back to the subject at hand. I’m making you an offer of two hundred dollars for this place just like she sits. It’s a fair offer, and I advise you to take it. It’ll put a little traveling money in your pockets.”

  “Why, you snake!” Tim Strange took an enraged step forward, but brother Jed grabbed his arm, stopping him. “We’d stand in one spot and starve to death before we’d sell you this place!”

  “Take it easy, Tim,” Jed said, holding his brother back. Jed shot Orville Myers a threatening look, saying, “And you best follow your heels back to that buggy and clear out of here!”

  Myers backed away, talking as he went, pointing a finger at them. “Boys, you best see the wisdom in taking my offer. If you let me walk away from here today, I might change my mind before morning. If I haven’t, you know where my office is. Don’t let pride keep you from doing what’s best for you.”

  The twins stood and watched the rise of dust drift away behind the buggy. Only when Orville Myers was out of sight did Tim Strange cool down a mite. Even so, his breath still rose and fell hard and hot. “It’s a good thing you were here,” he said to Jed, who stood beside him. “I saw red there for a minute. Funny, how the two of us are the same in every other way, yet when it comes to keeping a rein on our tempers, you’re always the calmer one.”

  “Yes, but not by much in this case,” Jed said. “It was awfully tempting to let you give that snake a sound thrashing. But let’s always remember who we are and how we were raised, especially once we get out there on the road. Try to always ask yourself what Ma and Pa would have us do before we go acting in haste. That’s what I try to do, anyhow.”

  “That’s good thinking, Jed,” said Tim, “and I’ll try remembering it. But there just might be things come up out there where we won’t have time to stop and think what Ma and Pa would expect of us. I reckon wherever Danielle is, she’s learned that by now. If she ain’t, she might already be dead herself.”

  “Let’s not think that way, brother,” said Jed, patting Tim on his shoulder. “Come on, let’s get the horses and get under way. We’ll go to town and see where we stand on these taxes before we ride on.”

  Afternoon shadows had begun to stretch long across the land by the time Tim and Jed Strange rode into St. Joseph, hitching their gaunt horses to the iron rings in front of the town hall. Elvin Bray, the tax assessor, had already pulled down the hood on his oaken roll-topped desk and closed up the wooden file cabinets along the back wall behind the counter. He followed the same routine every day before he left his office. His next step would have been to lock the front door, pull down the shade, then count the cash he had collected before locking it away in the small Mosler safe beside his desk. But just as he reached out to lock the door, Tim and Jed walked through it. Elvin Bray jumped back a step and spoke in a startled voice.

  “My goodness, young men, I wasn’t expecting anybody this late in the afternoon!” Elvin touched his thin, nervous fingertips to his chin, trying not to look too shaken. “Is this something that can wait till tomorrow?”

  “Pardon us, Mr. Bray,” Tim said, taking off his battered Stetson and, out of force of habit, batting it against his right leg. “Now that Ma’s dead, Jed and I are leaving the county for a while. We just wanted to see how much taxes is owed on our place before we head out.”

  “Head out?” Bray looked back and forth between them. “But your ma’s funeral was just this morning. Sorry I couldn’t make it out there. My wife Cheryl Kay and my boy Thomas was there though, right?”

  “Yes, sir, they was,” Tim Strange said, “and we appreciated the turn-out.”

  “I’ve been meaning to come out and talk to you boys anyway,” said Bray. “Come on in here, and let’s close this door a’fore somebody else shows up,” said Bray, ushering them farther into the office. He closed the door and locked it. “I always get a might anxious this time of evening when there’s money on hand.”

  “We understand,” said Jed as he and Tim moved closer to the counter. Elvin Bray stepped back behind the counter through a waist-high swinging door. He straightened the garters on his shirtsleeves, then spread his hands along the countertop.

  “All right now, young men. What can I do for you?”

  “Well, sir,” Tim said, “as you know, our sister Danielle has been gone this past year. We haven’t heard from her, nor she from us. We were fixin’ to head out searching for
her when Orville Myers come by the place. He’s talking like we owe some taxes, and if we don’t get them paid real quick, we could lose the farm. Can you give us an idea what we owe? We want to find a way to pay it.”

  Elvin Bray raised a thin hand, stopping Tim Strange from saying any more. He said, “Boys, let me ease your minds. As of right now, your taxes are paid in full for this year. They were paid by mail less than a month ago.”

  “Huh?” Tim and Jed looked at one another, puzzled.

  “That’s right,” said Bray. “I can tell you without looking it up. Neither of you have been to town lately or I would have told you sooner. My Cheryl Kay would have told you today at your ma’s funeral, but we didn’t think it was the time and place to mention it.” As he spoke, Bray pulled up the hood of his roll-top desk, then picked up a ledger book and turned back to them with it. The twins noticed the metal cash box sitting on the desk as Bray spread the ledger open and ran a thin finger down to the name Strange.

  “See here? You’re paid in full for the year.” He raised his eyes to them and smiled. “Maybe you haven’t heard from Danielle, but we sure have. She mailed a bank draft in a letter to us. In fact, she overpaid by fourteen dollars.”

  “Well, thank God for that.” Jed Strange sighed. “Not only for her paying the taxes, but also for letting somebody know she’s still alive.”

  “Was there a return address on the letter?” Tim asked.

  “Hold on, I’ll find it for you,” said Elvin Bray as he turned to his desk again and rummaged through a drawer full of opened envelopes.

  Tim and Jed looked at one another, waiting on Elvin Bray. “Why do you suppose Orville Myers tried pulling a stunt like that on us, Tim?” Jed asked.

  Before Tim could respond, Elvin Bray, hearing their conversation, said over his shoulder, “Because Orville Myers is a cuss. He most likely figured you boys being young, he’d get you scared of losing your home for taxes, then buy it on the spot before you even checked out his story.”