Death of a Hangman 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

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  STRIPPED CLEAN

  A bullet chipped the top of Pike’s sheltering boulder, then two more kicked up exclamation points of sand on either side of him.

  “Jes’ keepin’ you honest, boy,” Satin said. “Like maybe you was plannin’ on makin’ a run fer the rocks or some sich tomfoolery.”

  Pike spat dust. Whatever other talents Ephraim Satin possessed, one of them was obviously mind reader.

  Then he’d wait for Satin to come to him. An Apache, especially a half-Apache, can die like any other man.

  “Hey, sonny,” the bushwhacker said.

  “The name’s Charlie,” Pike said.

  “You got a good head of hair, Charlie?” the man said.

  “I got enough.”

  “Good,” the man said, “I aim to take that as well.”

  SIGNET

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

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  First Printing, April 2010

  Copyright © The Estate of Ralph Compton, 2010

  All rights reserved

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  THE IMMORTAL COWBOY

  This is respectfully dedicated to the “American Cowboy.” His was the saga sparked by the turmoil that followed the Civil War, and the passing of more than a century has by no means diminished the flame.

  True, the old days and the old ways are but treasured memories, and the old trails have grown dim with the ravages of time, but the spirit of the cowboy lives on.

  In my travels—to Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Arizona—I always find something that reminds me of the Old West. While I am walking these plains and mountains for the first time, there is this feeling that a part of me is eternal, that I have known these old trails before. I believe it is the undying spirit of the frontier calling, allowing me, through the mind’s eye, to step back into time. What is the appeal of the Old West of the American frontier?

  It has been epitomized by some as the dark and bloody period in American history. Its heroes—Crockett, Bowie, Hickok, Earp—have been reviled and criticized. Yet the Old West lives on, larger than life.

  It has become a symbol of freedom, when there was always another mountain to climb and another river to cross; when a dispute between two men was settled not with expensive lawyers, but with fists, knives, or guns. Barbaric? Maybe. But some things never change. When the cowboy rode into the pages of American history, he left behind a legacy that lives within the hearts of us all.

  —Ralph Compton

  Chapter 1

  “Well, hell, I didn’t need this.”

  Charlie Pike let his hand holding the letter drop to his side.

  “Bad news, boss?”

  “You could say that.” He balled up the single sheet of paper and tossed it to his foreman. “Read it your own self, Billy.”

  Standing in dust, Bill Childes let go of the smoking branding iron he was holding and bent his head to the crumpled paper.

  A hesitant forefinger slowly tracing the words, Childes read: “‘Major . . . come . . . quick. I need . . . you.’ ” He looked at Pike. “From Brig Gen Ret . . . d—”

  “Brigadier General, Retired,” Pike said.

  “Gives his name as Henry J. Dryden. Then it says, ‘Judge, Federal District Court, Breeze, northern New Mexico Territory.’ ”

  Recognition dawned in Childes’ eyes as he lifted them from the letter. “Wait a minute, I’ve heard tell of this man, boss. You recollect the black wrangler you hired one time; name was Small or something like that? He had a simple son?”

  “Yeah, I remember. It was a few years back.”

  “Well, Small, oncet he had three simple sons, until Judge Dryden hung two of
them for breaking a peace officer’s jaw and chicken stealing.”

  “Where the hell is Breeze, Billy?” Pike said.

  “As I recollect, it’s up on the San Juan River, close to the Old Spanish Trail,” Childes said. “Last time I was in New Mexico, I left in a hurry, so I wasn’t taking time to see the sights.”

  The foreman’s critical eye watched a couple of drovers bring in a bunch of yearlings; then he turned back to Pike.

  “From what I’ve heard, Dryden is a mean old snake and every time he rattles, a man ends up dangling. In the territory, they call him Hangin’ Hank. He’s strung up more’n his share, I can tell you.”

  Pike smiled. “Who told you this? The no-account outlaws I see loafing around the ranch all the time?”

  “They’re my friends, boss, an’ they don’t lie to me. Judge Dryden is a mean old buzzard and a hanging judge from way back. He’s got more enemies than the devil at a Baptist convention.”

  Childes waited for an answer, got none and said: “So?”

  “So what?” Pike said.

  “So you ain’t going, are you?”

  “I don’t have any choice, Billy,” Pike said. “During the war, the old man saved my life. I owe him.”

  “Boss, when a man like Hangin’ Hank calls in a favor, he’s in big trouble, an’ you can bet your bottom dollar that means gun trouble,” Childes said.

  “Maybe not,” Pike said. “It could be a legal problem.”

  “Right,” Childes said. “A federal judge has a legal problem, so he calls in a Texas cowman for help. That’s not the way of it, boss.”

  “Like I said, I owe him. I got it to do, Billy.”

  “Then for God’s sake take Sanchez,” Childes said. “He’s the best around with the iron.”

  “I need Sanchez here for the roundup, Billy and you too,” Pike said.

  “Then you’re going alone?”

  “Yup. I reckon so.”

  “When?”

  “Now,” Pike said. “As soon as I saddle a horse and pick up some grub from the cookhouse.”

  “What about Maxine?” Childes said.

  “What about her?” Pike said.

  “Will you tell her?”

  “Of course,” Pike said. “I’ll swing past the schoolhouse before I leave.” He smiled. “Take care of things while I’m gone, huh?”

  “Boss, I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Childes said. “Right here, in the pit of my stomach.”

  “Kind of like a cold emptiness?” Pike said.

  “Yeah, that’s right. Empty, like, and icy cold, deep down in my gut.”

  “I know,” Pike said. “I’ve got it too.”

  Maxine Holt stood outside the schoolhouse door. Inside, her dozen students had decided this was a perfect time to raise hell.

  “You’re wearing a gun, Charlie,” she said, looking up at Pike in the saddle. “I’ve never seen you wear one before.”

  “I hear the Apaches are out, Maxine,” Pike said. “A man can’t be too careful.” He smiled. “Though they’re probably in the Madres by now.”

  “The war ended fifteen years ago, Charlie,” Maxine said, returning to the subject they’d been discussing earlier. “It’s too late for any man to be calling in favors.”

  “A man’s obligation lasts a lifetime, Maxine,” Pike said. “I can’t turn my back on the general, not now.”

  “Then for God’s sake send Pete Sanchez,” Maxine said. “He’s a gunfighter and he can take care of himself.”

  “It’s not Pete’s responsibility, it’s mine.”

  “But you’re expecting gunplay,” Maxine said.

  “Not really,” Pike said. “But it’s a long way from here to the San Juan. Besides, I may have to shoot my own chuck along the trail.”

  “Charlie,” Maxine said, “you don’t need a Colt’s gun for that.”

  “I got to be going,” Pike said. “I want to cover ground before dark.”

  The sky was blue, the sun high and to the west the Pecos River was a saber blade of glittering steel.

  “I wasn’t going to tell you right away until I was sure, but I’m late, Charlie,” Maxine said. “Maybe two weeks.”

  Pike was silent; then he said: “Two weeks isn’t long.”

  “It’s not?” Maxine said. “So suddenly you’re a woman and you know these things?”

  “I don’t know much about women. What do you want me to do, Maxine?”

  “Stay here with me. I need you and we have to talk.”

  “I got to be going, Maxine. I won’t be gone long. Less than a month, maybe so.”

  “A month!” Maxine said. “And in the meantime what happens to me? I want a ring and the kid needs a name.”

  “We’ll get married when I get back,” Pike said. “I promise.”

  He swung his horse away and behind him Maxine yelled: “Charlie Pike, you rotten, no-good, son of a bitch! Get back here!”

  He didn’t think Maxine was really that mad. But the rock that whizzed past his head convinced him otherwise.

  Chapter 2

  At noon, eleven days later, Charlie Pike cut the Old Spanish Trail a couple of miles northwest of Santa Fe.

  He rode through the eroded Badland Hills standing more than seven thousand feet above the flat, spires and hoodoos of sandstone rock standing like silent sentinels, watching his progress.

  The day was hot, but though he’d refilled his canteen in Santa Fe, Pike used his water sparingly. He had no idea if there was any more to be had until he reached the San Juan.

  Around him stretched a vast, empty land where nothing moved and the only sounds were the footfalls of his sorrel and the creak of saddle leather. There was no breeze to curb the relentless sun and both he and the horse smelled rank of sweat.

  Pike cleared the hills, rode into a wilderness of cactus and broken rock, cut through by thick arrowheads of piñon and juniper.

  Behind him, ten miles to the east, the forested San Pedro Mountains looked cool as mint, their peaks framed against a julep-colored sky.

  He was thinking about Maxine.

  Two weeks late. That didn’t sound like much. But he reminded himself she was talking about a monthly event and then suddenly it did.

  When he got back, it would be six weeks, near enough and by then the fat would truly be in the fire.

  He wouldn’t be surprised if Maxine was pregnant.

  She left her schoolma’am demeanor at the bedroom door. In the sack she was a biting, scratching, dirty-talking whore and anything went and for as long as Pike wanted it, an hour, a day, a week . . .

  And Maxine was pretty, right pretty, all that yellow hair and cornflower blue eyes and a body that could keep a man awake at nights, remembering.

  Did he love her? Away from bed did he even know her?

  She never talked about her past, leaving it buried on a trail behind her. She’d just showed up in town one day, asked for the schoolteacher’s job and got it. Then Pike had met her in the general store and that had been that.

  He glanced at the sky, blue tinged with bands of pale red. But the sun was still high, scorching.

  All right, he asked it again: Did he love her?

  Pike began to build houses on a bridge he hadn’t crossed yet. He enjoyed having sex with her, no doubt about that. But was it enough to hold on to, especially after a kid arrived?

  And Maxine had a temper, flares of crimson-faced rage that usually ended up with her throwing at him whatever came to hand. Suppose one day she picked up a revolving gun and cut loose?

  Or suppose she got fat or lost her teeth or her hair all fell out? What then?

  Pike bowed his head, ashamed of his traitorous thoughts.

  And saved his life.

  The bullet blew his hat six feet into the air. He dived off the horse, hit the ground hard and rolled behind a rock.

  A cackle from somewhere ahead of him, then: “Did I git you, sonny?”

  “You sorry piece of shit!” Pike yelled. “Why did you try to kill
me?”

  “I want your sorrel, boy. My own pony is well nigh wore out, on account he warn’t much to begin with.”

  Another shot caromed viciously off the top of the rock.

  The man’s voice again. “Step into the open and take your medicine, sonny. I don’t have all day, now.”

  “You go to hell,” Pike said.

  “Well, I’ll kill you if’n you do step out, an’ I’ll kill you if’n you don’t. It’s all the same to me,” the man said. “Stepping out is quicker, is all.”

  Maxine forgotten, Pike drew his Colt and looked around him.

  To his left was wide-open ground, broken up by a few yuccas. To his right lay fifty yards of level sand, then a slanted stratum of yellow and tan rock that rose to a height of about twenty feet above the flat. It then stretched away into the distance, gradually gaining elevation.

  If there was a way to outflank the bushwhacker, that was the route to take. That is, if he could cover fifty yards of open ground and climb into the rocks without getting dropped in his tracks.

  Pike played for time.

  “You with the rifle, let’s talk about this,” he said.

  “Nothing to talk about, sonny,” the man said. “You got a hoss and I’m willing to kill you to get it.”

  The sorrel was grazing on bunchgrass about twenty yards away, seemingly unconcerned by the gunfire.

  “All right, I’m done,” Pike said. “I’m all shot to pieces here. Come and get the horse.”

  “I ain’t that green, boy,” the man said. He cackled again.

  Pike grimaced. Where the heck was the voice coming from?

  “Hey you, we got a standoff here,” Pike said. “You can’t get me and I can’t get you.”

  “Maybe so,” the man said. “But come dark I’ll get you all right. See, I’m half Apache, half wildcat an’ all son of a bitch an’ I can see like a cat in the dark.”

  “Yeah, you’re a son of a bitch all right,” Pike said.

  The bushwhacker cackled.

  Minutes passed, stretched into an hour. The shadows lengthened but the sun was still hot and Pike was tormented by thirst. His canteen was hanging from the horn of the sorrel’s saddle.