A Time For Hanging (13 page)

Vincent looked at her sharply, but she didn't look away.

"I know I oughtn't to say it, not about my own husband, but it's the truth," she said.
 
"He's gotten worse and worse over the years, the way he's treated Liz, the way he's treated me.
 
I guess I should've seen it comin', but I never did."
  
She paused.
 
"It's too late for Liz.
 
It's even too late for me.
 
But it might not be too late for the boy.
 
You got him locked up safe and sound?"

"No," Vincent said.
 
"I don't."

"Then you better find my husband, Sheriff, before he uses that gun he put on."

Vincent sighed.
 
"I'll try," he said.

#

The Reverend Randall could feel the gun riding on his hip.
 
It felt strange there, in a way, but in another way it felt as familiar as the burn of the sun through his black suit.

He had worn the gun constantly at one time, and even now he took it down once a week from the peg where it hung and gave it a good cleaning with an oiled rag.
 
He still believed in taking care of the things that could take care of him.

There had been a time when he had used the pistol often and accurately, gaining a reputation and a name -- Kid Reynolds.
 
It was a name he had long abandoned.
 
Kid Reynolds was dead, or that was what everyone believed, those who thought of him at all, and those were probably few indeed.

Even to Randall, at least until today, Kid Reynolds was dead, a person who was no more to him than a dim memory, more like someone he had once met than someone he had once been.

After all, it had been more than twenty-five years ago when he had been shot up by two men who laid for him one night when he was leaving the cribs behind some saloon in some town whose name he no longer recalled.
 
They were looking for him in the matter of their brother's death, the result of a gunfight that Reynolds had won only a few days before.

The young man -- they were both no more than eighteen -- had called him out, and Reynolds had gone, eager to build on his growing reputation with a pistol.
 
He shot the man in front of witnesses, all of whom were willing to swear that the fight had been provoked, and thought no more about it after he had accepted the congratulations and the drinks that went along with the victory.
 
It wasn't the first time he'd been involved in that kind of shoot-out.

The brothers had not bothered to call him out, however, had not given him a chance, not even so much as a warning.
 
They shot him in the back and left him for dead, which is very nearly what he had been, and what he certainly would have been had not a half-crazy old man who called himself Elijah and who thought of himself as a reincarnation of that Old Testament prophet happened upon him, taken him home, and nursed him back to health with a combination of frenzied prayer and a shrewd knowledge of how to care for gunshot wounds.

It had been touch and go for a while, and Reynolds had been delirious for much of two days with pain and fever, two days during which Elijah sat beside the bed and alternately read aloud from the scriptures and drank for a bottle of rotgut that he kept handy.
 
It was some of the same whiskey that he used to sterilize Reynolds's wounds.

Somehow the kid gunfighter had been touched by the old man's madness, had in his fever dreams become, like the old man, a fervent believer in the Word.
 
When his fever broke, he was filled with the desire to preach, to reach out to sinners and touch them the way that he had been touched, and he never put on his gun again, taking the name Randall and swearing to carry a Bible in his hand instead of a weapon.

Now a new kind of delirium had settled on him, a delirium that had been brought about in part by what he regarded as his daughter's betrayal of him, though it was a delirium that had been growing over the years without his even being aware of it.
  
His wife was right; it had expressed itself in his treatment of her and their daughter, the old wildness finding an outlet in words and more subtle actions than the firing of a gun.

He saw things now as through a glass, darkly, and he had become something different from either the wild young gunfighter that he had been so long ago and the preacher that he had been for the past twenty-five years.

He was neither one nor the other now, but rather some strange creature that even he did not understand and could not have explained if asked.

He knew only that his daughter was dead and that vengeance was demanded.
 
He had preached a gospel of love, and that had failed him.
 
That had brought him nothing more than a wife grown grossly fat and a daughter who was a scarlet whore.

It never occurred to him to wonder if it was possible that he had failed the gospel rather than the other way around.
 
He had been sure for so long that he was in the right that the idea he might be wrong had never disturbed his consciousness until very recently.

The daughter had paid for her sins.
 
Now it was someone else's turn.
 
These men he was with, Ross and the others, they seemed to know what they were about, and it seemed to fit in with his own desires, as much as he understood of them.
 
Everything was confused and spinning in his head, and he no longer had a clear destination in mind.
 
It had seemed simple at first:
 
go to the jail, kill the boy who was being held there, and then face down any man who called him out.
 
That was what he would have done in the old days.

But now they were telling him that the boy was no longer there, that he had escaped.
 
No one seemed to know where he was, but they were going to find him.

Randall would go with the men, then, and he would serve as an instrument of God's judgment.
 
It was all that there was left for him to do.

A thought flashed into his mind.
 
Perhaps that was what he had been before, in the days when he wore the gun.
 
And instrument of God's vengeance, smiting the unrighteous

He remembered what the men had said to Joshua, "'Whosoever he be that doth rebel against thy commandment, and will not hearken unto thy words in all that thou commandest him, he shall be put to death:
 
only be strong and of a good courage.'"

Perhaps that was right, and he was like Joshua, sent to be a right arm of God and meant to be obeyed by all, to punish by putting to death all those who did not listen to his words and obey his commandments.

People like his daughter, people like Paco Morales.

If that was true, then he had actually failed his calling when he put down his gun and took up the Bible.
 
He had wasted twenty-five years.

But he had returned to the calling now.

God would be merciful.

God would forgive him if he was strong and of good courage.

He let his hand stroke the smooth wooden handle of the pistol, and it felt good.
 
It felt right.

Randall smiled.

Paco had made it to his house, but he wasn't sure just how he had gotten there.
 
There had been more than once on the way that he had been pretty sure he would never make it, but he kept going.
 
His mother had told him the men would kill him if he stayed in the jail, and he had believed her.

They had killed his father, and they would kill him.

He did not enter his home when he got there, however.
 
He went first to the well and drew up a bucket of water, pulling the rope with one arm and thinking again of the times when he had gone there to wait get water for the mule when one of his mother's visitors was in the house.

He got the bucket up to the top of the well and looped the rope around a nail to hold it there.
 
He managed to lean out and get his hand on the bucket and pull it to him.
 
Then he bent his knees and tilted the bucket so the water spilled out, running into his mouth and down his chin, chilling him as it soaked into his shirt.

When he had drunk his fill, he hobbled over to the shade of a mesquite tree and awkwardly sat down.
 
HIs ribs hurt, and his arm, but it was nothing he could not bear.

He thought that his sisters might be watching him from the house, but he did not call out to them.
 
He leaned back against the tree and closed his eyes to wait on his mother, or whoever came to find him.

He might have slept, for it seemed like no time at all had passed before he looked up to see his mother standing over him, looking down into his face.

"You cannot stay here," she said.
 
"Not out in the open like this."

"It would not be safe for me to stay in the house," he pointed out.
 
"Maybe I should catch the mule and ride toward Mexico."
 
He had no idea how far away Mexico might be, but he knew he could never ride there, not even if it was only five miles.
 
However, he did not want to bring trouble to his home.

His mother smiled.
 
"You are a foolish boy, but I forgive you.
 
You must stay here."

"But where?"

They had no barn, but there was a small shed that his father had built to keep his tools in.
 
Paco had played in the shed when he was younger, and even then it had seemed cramped.

 
He struggled to his feet.
 
"They will find me there, as easily as if I were in the house."

"Perhaps not.
 
Come."

They walked to the shed, made of warped boards and lacking even a window for light.
 
There was no fastener on the door.

Consuela opened the door and the sunlight fell inside.
 
Dust motes swirled in the light.
 
There was a stack of wooden boxes, most of them empty, a rake, a hoe with a broken handle, a plowshare and plow lines, and a heap of something that looked like a dead animal.
 
It was an old buffalo robe that Paco's father had come by somehow, years before.

There was nothing else in the shed, but it was so small that even those few things that were there crowded it.
 
It was hot, and Paco could feel his breath being sucked away before he even got inside.

"Go ahead," Consuela said.
 
"Get in."

Paco obeyed her reluctantly.
 
The only place to sit was in the middle of the floor, on the robe.
 
He sat, trying to breathe the burning air.
 
When he did, the dust tickled the inside of his nose and he sneezed.
 
He brushed his sleeve across his nose.

"I will bring your father's rifle," Consuela said.
 
"I hope that you will not have to use it."

"They will come for me," Paco said.
 
"I hurt no one, but they will come.
 
If they come, I will use the rifle."

"We will try to trick them," Consuela said.
 
"I will take the mule away and tie it, but not well.
 
Just enough so that it will stay for a while before it gets free.
 
Perhaps they will see that the mule is gone and believe you are on it.
 
If we are lucky they will follow it."

"It will come home," Paco said.

"Not at once.
 
Time will pass.
 
Perhaps the sheriff will find the man who did the thing they accuse you of."

Paco did not have much faith in that possibility.
 
"What if they do come to the shed?" he asked.
 
"Then shall I use the rifle?"

"Then you should cover yourself with the robe.
 
Put the boxes in front of the door and make yourself small.
 
Pull the robe over you.
 
They will not see you."

Paco did not think that would work, but he would do as his mother said.
 
If they pulled the robe away, however, he would shoot.
 
He would not let them kill him and walk away smiling the way they had done when they killed his father.
 
This time, they would pay.