A Time For Hanging (17 page)

So why am I worried about him? Vincent wondered.
 
It was probably because of the old incident, that was all, and there wasn't really any similarity between the two.
 
If Jack hated violence so much, there wasn't any chance he would have killed Liz Randall, and his having no stomach for it probably did more than anything else to explain why he had stood up to the men.
 
He was ashamed of his own part, however small it had been, in what they had done to Paco.
 
Having experienced a similar fate himself, he would naturally want to stand up for the boy.

Wouldn't he?
 
Somehow, Vincent couldn't quite stop thinking about it.

And there was something else that was bothering him, something he couldn't quite pin down, that was squirming around in the back of his mind.
 
He thought it was important, but he figured that if it was, it would come clear sooner or later.

He had plenty of other things to worry about right now, more than he wanted, and the first one was how he was going to find Paco Morales.

Len Hawkins handed Harl Case a box of 12-gauge shotgun shells.

"If that don't do the job on him, nothin' will," Hawkins said.

Harl hefted the box in his right hand.
 
In his left he was holding the Whitney single-shot that Len had already given him.

"It won't shot but once, but if you hit him with it, once will be all you need," Len said.
 
"You can count on that, all right."

Len's store hadn't been opened that day, since Len did all the work himself, but he didn't mind taking a day off in a good cause, and catching up with Paco Morales seemed like a good enough cause to him.

Len was going to take his Winchester repeater, but Harl didn't have anything but a hand gun, and that hadn't been fired in years.

"Hell, you can't do this kinda work with some old hogleg that you don't even know'll shoot," Len said.
 
"We'll go over to the store and I'll fix you up right and proper."

Everyone else thought of himself as appropriately armed.
 
The cowboys all had pistols that they considered adequate.
 
Charley Davis and Benteen had rifles, as did Turley Ross.
 
Lane Harper was the only one who didn't carry a weapon as a matter of course, but he said he could take the sawed-off double barrel that was kept behind the bar at Danton's saloon.

"If I get close enough to use it, we won't have to worry about diggin' a grave," he said.
 
"There won't be enough of that meskin left to bury."
  
Everybody knew it was pretty much the truth.
 
You could blow off a barn door and kill a horse with the same shot from a sawed-off.

Harl looked around the store.
 
In the dim light he could see the barrels of nails, the bundles of ax handles and hoe handles, the plow shares, the pistols behind the glass of the counter where Len kept them.
 
It might have been his imagination, but he thought he could smell gun oil.

"Better put you a shell in the breech," Len told him.
 
"You don't want to get caught off guard."

Harl was wondering about that.
 
How was he going to get caught off guard by a kid?
 
How come they needed so many men to go after him?
 
It wasn't like they were goin' after Wes Hardin or Jesse James.

When it came right down to it, Harl was having second thoughts about the whole thing.
   
He wasn't a gunman by either inclination or practice.
 
He liked animals, and he liked taking care of them.
 
Did a good job of it, too, according to all his customers.

He had kept the livery stable for fifteen years in Dry Springs.
 
For the last couple of years, his boys had been old enough to do most of the work, and he'd more or less turned it over to them.
 
That was why he had time to have a few drinks now and then.
 
It was why he'd been in the saloon at least two different times when he wished to hell he'd been somewhere else.

The first time had been when the elder Morales had been killed.

The second was last night, when that Jack Simkins had come by, askin' if they could go lookin' for the preacher's girl.
 
How did he get into things like that, anyhow?
 
Maybe he ought to start spendin' more time at home and a lot less around places that sold liquor.

He slipped a 12-gauge shell into the breech of the Whitney and looked at Len.
 
"You reckon we're doin' the right thing?" he asked.

"What the hell does that mean?" Hawkins asked.
 
He was feeding shells into the Winchester.
 
"We're goin' after a killer.
 
That's the right thing, ain't it?"

Harl shrugged.
 
"Maybe not; it all depends."

Len laid the rifle down on the counter top.
 
"You beginnin' to turn yellow, Harl?
 
I wouldn't've thought it of you."

Harl shook his head.
 
"It ain't that.
 
I ain't afraid.
 
But the truth of the matter is, we ain't really got no business goin' after that boy.
 
We got us a sheriff in town for that kind of thing.
 
Maybe we oughta leave it to him.
 
It's his job to do, after all."

"You know Ward Vincent as well as I do," Len said.
 
"He's a good enough fella, steady, you can depend on him to be there when there's a drunk needs throwed out of the saloon on Saturday night or when somebody steals a cow -- which ain't happened in years, now that I think of it.
 
Comes to somethin' like this, though, well, he's a little skittish.
 
You remember when that gambler shot that meskin?"

"Paco's daddy," Harl said.
 
"Sure, I remember.
 
I wish I didn't."

"Well, that's the kinda thing I mean," Len said.
 
"You and me both know what happened that time, and if Vincent had pushed it, he would've found out.
 
He didn't, though."

"Nobody wanted him to," Harl pointed out.
 
He was thinking about the way it had happened that time.
 
He had figured that Moran was cheatin', just like Morales had, but he hadn't wanted to call him on it.
 
There was somethin' about the gambler's eyes that Harl didn't like, somethin' that said 'trouble' just as plain as if Moran had a sign hangin' around his neck.
 
Besides, he couldn't figure out just how the cheatin' was done.

Morales hadn't figured it out, either, but he'd finally had enough.
 
When he'd called Moran a cheater, the gambler hadn't hesitated.
 
He'd pulled his big pistol and shot Morales right in the chest.

"You all saw what happened, didn't you?" Moran said.

Most of them had hesitated to say they had, but Moran still had his gun in his hand, so finally somebody -- it was Turley Ross, Harl thought, or maybe Lane Harper -- said, "Yeah.
 
We saw it.
 
He made the first move."

After that, they all went along.
 
Morales was just a meskin, anyhow, and Moran had a right to shoot somebody that was callin' him a cheat, if the fella couldn't prove it.
 
Even Harl went along, though he hadn't really felt right about it.
 
He wondered what would've happened
 
if he'd been the one to say somethin' about the cheatin'.
 
If it had been him that got shot, how long would it've taken his buddies to say the same thing they were sayin' about Morales?

He even wondered how long it would've take him to say the same thing about them.

Moran had been icy calm about the shooting.
 
When he saw that things were goin' his way, he holstered the pistol and said, "These damn greasers ought never to gamble.
 
They don't know anything about how to play cards, and they always try to say an honest man is cheatin' when they don't win.
 
I reckon that's the reason he went for his knife.
 
We ought never to've let him get into the game."

He was right about lettin' Morales have a seat at the table, and Harl knew it as well as anybody.
 
They usually didn't let meskins in any of the games in the saloon.
 
It was all right for them to have a drink or two, but lettin' 'em in a game was just askin' for trouble.

Still, Morales seemed like a steady sort.
 
He'd lived around town for as long as anybody could remember, had a nice family, kept more or less to himself, and never bothered anybody.
 
He had a little money, and it there didn't seem to be any harm in lettin' him sit in for a few hands.
 
He'd done it before, but there hadn't been any outsiders playin' at the time.

And what was that business about a knife?
 
Morales didn't have any knife, not that Harl could remember ever seeing.

That is, he didn't have one the first time Harl looked at him, lyin' there on the floor with the blood soakin' into the front of his shirt.

He sure as hell did the next time Harl looked, though.
 
A real pig-sticker, lyin' right there by his right hand like he'd dropped it when he fell.

Now where did that come from? Harl thought.

Well, he knew where.
 
The gambler, when he'd put his gun up, had reached into his boot and come out with somethin' and put it by the body.
 
Harl hadn't really been lookin'.
 
But it was the knife that he'd put there, no question about it.

"These meskins really like knives," Moran said to no one in particular.
 
"Prob'ly had it in his boot.
 
That's where they carry 'em, mostly."

"That's the truth," somebody said.
 
"They all got one they carry there."

It didn't matter who said that.
 
Harl couldn't remember.
 
But he knew it was a lie, even at the time.
 
Nobody in that saloon could remember ever seein' Morales with a knife.

They all went along with the lie, though, and it seemed to Harl like a sorry coincidence that the same bunch had to be in the saloon to be called out to look for the Randall girl and to find Morales' boy there with her body.
 
Since they were the usual steady customers in Danton's, it wasn't much of a coincidence, really, but it was shame, anyhow.

Harl tried to think who else had been there at the card game, but he couldn't think of anybody except for Willie Turner and Turner had been to drunk to notice anything.
 
At least that's what ever'body thought.
 
Anyhow, he'd never said anything about what happened.

What happened was that they'd all taken the easiest way out, Harl thought.
 
They'd let a man get away with murder because they didn't have the gumption to stand up to him.
 
Maybe they were afraid of gettin' hurt, or maybe they were afraid to take the side of a dead meskin against another white man.
 
For whatever reason, they'd gone along.

And now Harl was afraid they were doing it again.
 
He was just a man who liked horses and had a livery stable.
 
He'd never hurt anybody on purpose, never even gotten into a fight in his life.
 
Now here he was, standing with a scattergun in his hands, about to go gunning for a boy -- just a kid.

What if they were wrong about it?
 
They'd had a little to drink last night, and when they saw Paco Morales, they'd gotten a little carried away.
 
Nothin' wrong with that.
 
They'd seen that girl, and Lordy she was cut up.
 
No wonder things got a little out of hand when they saw Paco.
 
Maybe they were wrong to do it, but nobody could blame them for that, and they could make up for it now.
 
It wasn't too late.

"Len," he said, "what if that boy didn't do it?"

"He did it," Len said, picking up his rifle. "We saw him."

"We saw him there in the grove.
 
We didn't see him lay a hand on that girl, anymore than we saw his daddy pull a knife on that gambler."