The Shadow of a Noose Read online

  “I will, Doc,” said Sheriff Connally, “and thanks for all your help.”

  “Oh, I’ll be back in a little while, Sheriff. I want one more look at that leg before you put this boy on a saddle.” Doc Eisenhower rolled down his shirtsleeves, gathered up his black bag, and headed for the front door. “What about me, Doc?” Perkins, who was still lying with the rope around his thick neck, pleaded from the floor, “I’m sicker than a dog. My guts ache something awful, the back of my neck too.”

  “Oh, really? I hate to hear that, Perkins,” Doc Eisenhower said. Then without another word to him, Doc turned and left.

  Sheriff Connally chuckled under his breath.

  “I’m afraid I must also leave for a while also, Sheriff,” said Willard Chapin. “I need to check for any incoming messages. But I’ll be back too.”

  “How about bringing us some more grub, Willard?” Sheriff Connally asked. “You’ve been so obliging, I hate to ask.”

  “Not at all, Sheriff, I’ll be happy to bring back some food from Gertie’s.” Willard put on his bowler hat and left. Watching first the doctor, then the telegraph clerk leaving, Jed Strange slipped another guarded look at his twin brother, then moved closer to the desk where Tim’s gun belt lay in a coiled pile, the butt of his Colt standing against it in its holster.

  When Sheriff Connally saw a road wagon full of sweaty workers roll past the window, he reached down, pulled Perkins to his feet, and shoved him toward one of the empty cells. “In you go,” he said to the groaning man. “Looks like some of the workers are headed for the tavern.” He locked the door to the cell, shoved the key down deep into his pocket, and took a rifle from the rack along the wall. As he loaded it, he said to Jed Strange, “Keep an eye on your brother for me. I’m going to sit on the porch with a rifle across my lap for a while, just to make a show of force for them.”

  Jed Strange only nodded without answering, but from his cell, Denton Perkins whined, “Sheriff, you’re not leaving me alone with these two, are you?”

  “Shut up, Perkins. I’ve heard enough of your mouth to last me a lifetime,” Connally hissed, swinging his hat onto his head and a rifle under his arm.

  As soon as Sheriff Connally was out on the porch and seated in a low wooden chair, Jed Strange stepped wordlessly into the open cell and handed Tim Strange the rabbit gun. “Hey, what are you fixin’ to do?” Perkins asked, his eyes going wide.

  Jed stepped over to Perkins’s cell. “Open your mouth again, and he’ll empty both barrels into your maw.”

  Perkins cowered back from the bars and watched Jed Strange slip out through the rear door, silently closing it behind him. After a few tense moments had passed, Perkins watched Jed Strange slip back inside and walk hurriedly to the open cell where Tim Strange was already struggling to get up from the bunk. Jed looped his twin brother’s arm across his shoulder and helped him toward the rear door, stopping at Perkins’s cell long enough to prop Tim against the bars and say to Perkins, “Come here, you.”

  Perkins came to the bars, ready to plead for his life, but before he got a word out, Jed reached through the bars, grabbed him by his hair, and yanked his head forward. Perkins’s forehead struck the iron bars with a dull thud, and as Jed turned him loose, the big railroader slumped to the floor, half conscious. “Come on, Tim,” Jed whispered, holding his brother’s arm over his shoulder, “the bays are right out back.”

  Chapter 4

  A few railroad workers had begun to gather out front of Copley’s Tavern. They stood with beer mugs in their hands and looked over at Sheriff Connally on the porch of the new jail, a block away. Willard Chapin had to hurry past a barrage of taunts and threats as he carried the large wooden tray of food and coffee from Gertie’s restaurant. He stepped up onto the porch of the jail and, looking a bit frightened, said to Sheriff Connally, “They’re getting started early on their drinking. I’ll get a shotgun and make a stand with you, Sheriff.”

  “No, but thanks anyway, Willard,” said Sheriff Connally, standing up and opening the door for him. “If it gets too bad, I don’t want your blood on my hands. This is the work I chose. If it ends here, then so be it.”

  “Oh no!” Willard exclaimed once he was inside, looking around for the twins and seeing they were gone.

  “Well, I’ll be,” Connally said in a hushed tone, “they’ve lit out on us.” He saw Perkins pulling himself up, another large ugly welt on his forehead. “How long have they been gone?” Connally demanded.

  Perkins shook his aching head. “I don’t know, Sheriff. The one with the arm wound cracked my head against these bars. I’ve been out cold ever since.”

  “Damn it!” said Sheriff Connally, walking to the rear door and throwing it open. He looked back and forth along the alley, noting the fresh hoofprints in the dirt. As he gazed off in the direction the twins had taken, he said almost to himself, “Those poor, dumb kids. They’ve no idea what their heading into out there.” He turned back to Willard Chapin, who’d sat the tray down on the desk and slumped down beside it.

  “Will you be going after them, Sheriff? They’ve proven they can take care of themselves with a gun, but I hate to think of them two wounded kids out there alone.”

  “I know,” said Connally. “I feel the same. But I can’t go no farther on this thing. My responsibility is to the folks in St. Joe. I had hoped to get the boys back there and get some sense talked into them before I try hunting down the men who killed Elvin Bray. Now there’s no telling what’ll happen to Jed and Tim Strange. Their pa sure taught them how to use a gun, but young boys being that quick with the trigger can be a dangerous thing.”

  “Where do you suppose they’ll go?” Willard Chapin asked.

  “Oh, there’s not a doubt in my mind, they’re headed down to Indian Territory,” Sheriff Connally replied. “If they don’t get themselves killed first.”

  West of Kansas City, June 18, 1871

  Jed and Tim Strange swung wide of the Missouri farm country and took to the open wild grasslands west of Kansas City. Their first night found them camped at a thin stream beneath the cut bank of a low rising knoll. Jed’s wounded arm was stiff and sore, but there was little swelling. He shed the cloth sling from around his shoulder and, soaking it in the clear stream water, used it to attend to Tim’s leg wound, which was healing over but still trickling blood. “Careful you don’t break it open,” Tim said in the gray evening light.

  “I wish Ma or Pa or somebody who knew what they were doing was here,” Jed replied, sounding worried.

  “Well, they’re not,” Tim said. “Give it here, I’ll clean it myself.” He reached down and started to take the wet rag from Jed’s hand, but Jed drew it back.

  “I’m doing it Tim,” Jed declared. “All’s I said was that I wish somebody knew more about what to do.” He carefully began dabbing the wet rag at the edge of his brother’s wound.

  “Wishing and wanting is a thing of the past,” Tim said in a milder tone. “We’ve both seen how easy it is to get into trouble out here. From now on we trust nobody, and we guard each other’s backs, the same way we did in that gunfight. That’s the only thing that’s going to keep us alive. I’ve never seen so many people anxious to hang somebody.”

  “I know,” said Jed. “I hated cutting out on Sheriff Connally. But it might have been the only way to save all our lives.”

  “He understands, Jed,” Tim said. “I’ll always be beholden to him for what he was trying to do. But we’re not letting anybody take us back to St. Joseph until we finish what we’ve started. Agreed?”

  Jed nodded firmly. “Agreed.” He finished cleaning Tim’s wound and rewrapped it in the same gory bandage. “I just hope wherever Danielle’s at, she’s doing better than we are.”

  Fort Smith, Arkansas, June 20, 1871

  Danielle Strange walked from the U.S. federal marshal’s office to the boardinghouse where she’d seen the vacancy sign on her way into town. In her run-down boots, she walked with the wide gait of a drover. She carried her d
usty saddlebags, chaps, and range spurs draped over her shoulder, her rifle in her left hand, her right hand always close to the tied-down holster on her hip. The palm of her hand brushed past the butt on her Colt with each step. She had wintered in Mobeetie, Texas, where a family by the name of Elerby had taken her in, helping to nurse a knife wound in her side and a deep cut on her cheek. Then Danielle joined the Elerby boys, Luke and Clinton, who along with their father, Lattimer Elerby, and a small crew of drovers had brought one of the first spring herds up to Abilene.

  “Damn the luck, Buck Jordan,” she said to herself, swear words coming more freely to her now than they had before spending the last year of her life as a man in a man’s world. “Why did you have to go get yourself killed?” Only moments before she’d learned of Jordan’s death, having heard it from some of the deputies and jail guards gathered outside the Hanging Judge’s2 court. Buck Jordan, like many of the Hanging Judge’s lawmen, had met his death out in the Indian Territory at the hand of killers whose whereabouts and identities were unknown.

  Amid the squeaking of passing wagons and the clop of hooves on the hard rutted street, she added in a whisper to herself, “You were my only contact with the law in Indian Territory. Damn it!” Along with the cussing, other things now came more easily to her, like the biting taste of whiskey, the clicking of a roulette wheel, and the ability to swing up her Colt with no hesitancy and watch a man fall to the dirt on an empty street in front of her. This was where the vengeance trail had led her, and this was where she lived.

  In her pocket she carried a wrinkled paper that listed the names of the men who had killed her father, Daniel Strange. Of the ten names she’d written down a year ago, only six remained. The other four she had crossed off one at a time after seeing to it they’d paid the price for leaving Daniel Strange hanging dead from a tree. Her quest for the killers had started with meeting U.S. Marshal Buck Jordan here in Fort Smith. Jordan was the man who’d found her father’s body, and he’d given her directions to her father’s grave.

  From the grave site, fate and circumstance had led her wandering from town to town on the killers’ trails. The first killer on her list had been Bart Scovill, who’d been wearing her father’s silver inlaid custom Colt when she caught up with him at a town dance. Dressed as a woman that night, Danielle had lured Bart Scovill on, then, with the fiddle ringing light and melodious in the background, she’d left him hanging dead from a barn rafter after retrieving her father’s pistol.

  From there, she’d traveled on and rooted out three more of the outlaws, killing them quick and without mercy. But now, she’d been off their trail for a while and hoped that Buck Jordan might give her some sort of a lead. When Danielle had taken the knife in her side last fall, it had shown her it was time to drop out of sight for a while and let her new name cool off. She’d started to develop quite a reputation as Daniel Strange, the young gunslinger with the cold green eyes, and an even colder heart.

  When the Elerby boys had found Danielle wounded along the trail outside of Mobeetie, she’d told them her name was Danny Duggin, and they had never questioned it. She had a feeling they knew she was really the young gunslinger who’d gotten shot two days before in town and had since vanished. But they never let on. All the people of Mobeetie knew was that the emerald-eyed gunslinger named Daniel Strange had ridden away lying low in his saddle and hadn’t been seen or heard from since, his bones lying bleached somewhere, no doubt.

  Well, she thought to herself, so much the better. If the killers had any idea that Daniel Strange was looking for them, they would have let their guard down by now. She would get back on their trail with a new identity. Stepping up onto the porch of the boardinghouse, she paused for a moment, touching her fingertips first to the scar on her cheek, then to the thin false mustache she’d purchased from a traveling theatrical company and taken to wearing. Once assured that her true identity was well concealed, Danielle raised the brass door knocker and tapped it soundly.

  When Danielle had paid the two dollars for a room to a jovial heavyset woman wearing a white full-length cooking apron, she’d introduced herself as Danny Duggin. She watched the woman pocket the money beneath her apron and run a hand across her moist brow as she spoke.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Norena Chapin, Mr. Duggin, but most of my regulars just call me Ma. Will you be staying with me for long? Because if you are, you can pay by the week or month and save yourself some money.”

  Danielle answered in the lowered, gruff voice she had become accustomed to using. “No, ma’am. I expect I’ll be headed out sometime tomorrow. I saw your sign out front and knew I’d rather stay here than in a hotel. For my money, nothing beats a good home-cooked boardinghouse meal.”

  Norena Chapin blushed, obviously flattered, and raised a hand to smooth a strand of loose hair. “Why, thank you, Mr. Duggin. My son Willard always says the same thing. He used to be on the road a lot until he settled down with a job operating a telegraph office in Tracy Sidings. I expect from your clothes that you’re a cattle drover?”

  “Yes, ma’am, of late anyway,” said Danielle. “Al though, having heard about the death of a friend of mine, Marshal Buck Jordan, I suppose I might just go hunting for his killers.”

  Norena Chapin touched her work-worn fingers to her cheek, saying, “Oh my, wasn’t that a terrible thing. And you were a friend of Buck Jordan?”

  “Yes, ma’am, so to speak,” said Danielle.

  “He used to live here, you know,” Norena Chapin added.

  “No, ma’am, I didn’t know that,” said Danielle.

  “Oh, yes. His room was the first one at the top of the stairs, the room you’ll be staying in. It used to be Willard’s room, too, when he lived at home. I still miss them both something awful. I’m always fearful for Willard, although he lives in a railroad siding town, and I’m sure the railroad keeps law and order there.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I’m sure they do,” Danielle said, already anticipating a bath and soft bed before supper.

  “But it’s getting terrible everywhere,” Norena Chapin offered, keeping Danielle waiting as she searched beneath her large apron for a room key. “Only day before yesterday, Willard wired me and told me there had been a shooting there.” She spoke as she searched one dress pocket, then the other. “The sheriff from St. Joseph arrived in the nick of time to keep some of the townsmen from lynching a couple of young boys for a murder they didn’t commit.”

  “Oh?” Hearing word of her hometown, St. Joseph, got Danielle’s attention. “Was that sheriff’s name Connally?”

  “Willard didn’t mention his name,” Norena said, still searching her pocket, “but the two teenaged boys were look-alikes. Willard said the boys were both wounded, and managed to slip away that evening. Said the sheriff was upset because he wanted to take them back to St. Joe for safekeeping.”

  Danielle stood stunned for a second at the news, her hand at first unable to reach out for the key when Norena Chapin finally found it and offered it to her. Could the two boys be her brothers, Tim and Jed? Of course they were, she thought. What other twin boys were around St. Joseph? None that she could think of, at least not around the age Norena mentioned. Then, taking the key, she asked, “How badly were the boys wounded?”

  “Well, they were able to get away, so I don’t suppose it must’ve been too bad,” Norena said. Then, seeing the look on Danielle’s face, she asked, “Why? Do you know anyone from St. Joseph?”

  “Uh, yes, ma’am. But it’s been a while since I’ve seen them.” Suddenly the foyer of the boardinghouse felt small and tight to Danielle. She had to get upstairs to her room, and do some thinking without Norena Chapin’s eyes on her.

  “Willard said two men killed the St. Joseph town tax assessor. That’s what started this whole incident, apparently. At first some of the people thought it was the young twins. That’s why the sheriff was following them. It turns out the boys were innocent, and the two murderers are still running loose. That’s somethi
ng you better be leery of if you’re going to be traveling.”

  “I certainly will do that, ma’am,” Danielle said, already heading for the stairs. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I better get myself a bath and some rest.”

  “Yes, Mr. Duggin, you do that,” Norena said as Danielle stepped upward. “I’ll come wake you for supper.”

  In the room, Danielle undressed, peeling off the fake mustache and taking off the binder she wore to flatten her breasts. She then threw a towel around herself and went to the bathroom for a soak in the tub. The water in the large iron tub was only tepid, but it had been changed that morning, and Danielle was thankful for that. Too often in the past year she’d had to bathe in water that had accommodated five or six other people before her. As she lathered and scrubbed, she thought about what Norena Chapin had told her, and came to the conclusion that it had to be her brothers Tim and Jed that Norena’s son Willard was talking about.

  “But why?” Danielle asked herself aloud, in the stillness of the bathroom. She pictured her brothers’ faces in her mind, wondering who was looking after her mother. She refused to consider that something might have happened to her mother that would free the twins up and allow them to leave the farm. She finished her bath, trying to guess where the twins might be after striking out from Tracy Sidings, wounded and on their own. “You’re headed this way, aren’t you?” she murmured. In silence, she went back to her room and stretched out naked on the bed, letting the slight breeze through the window dry her, offering her some comfort from the scorching heat of the day.

  That evening at supper, she took her seat at the boardinghouse table amid six male guests and partook of roast beef, gravy, potatoes, and corn bread. Being there for only one night, the other guests only made polite conversation with her in passing. But when one guest, a jail guard named Lee Tate, told the others about the telegram that had arrived from Arizona earlier in the week advising law officers of the release of felons who had served their time, Danielle took note. Danielle’s interest began to fade until Tate mentioned the name Duncan Grago. She jerked her attention toward Tate in such a quick manner that all conversation stopped, and all eyes turned to her as she spoke.