The Hangings Page 8

  "Yes. I'll check the tack room."

  He went ahead to the loft ladder and I turned toward the harness room on my right, breathing through my mouth now because the ammoniac stable smell seemed stronger than usual this morning. Or perhaps it was just that my senses had been sharpened by the fire, by the look and feel of the barn.

  I was just opening the harness room door when Boze shouted, "Linc! Christ Almighty—Linc!"

  He was over next to the loft ladder, staring at something I couldn't see because of the angle of the tack room wall. I ran to his side. And when I did see what he was looking at, the cold on my back deepened and sent out shivers.

  Jacob Pike was back there in the shadows. Suspended from a rafter beam, his head flopped over on one side, his eyes wide and bulging, his tongue poked out at one corner of his mouth.

  Hanged just like Jeremy Bodeen.

  Chapter 10

  WE STOOD LOOKING UP AT THE BODY FOR SEVERAL SECONDS, neither of us moving. But it seemed that Pike was swaying a little up there in the shadows, at the end of that stretched-taut rope—a draft, maybe, or just my fancy. I thought I could hear the rope creak, too, like a devil's whisper. I felt another shiver ripple my back, and when Boze turned away I did the same.

  He said thickly, "Kid like Pike . . . why would Bodeen do that to him?"

  "If it was Bodeen."

  "Who the hell else?"

  I shook my head.

  "Must have been Bodeen," Boze said. "Maybe he thought Pike had something to do with hangin' his brother."

  Shook my head again.

  "You want me to go fetch Doc Petersen?" he asked after a few seconds.

  "Yes. Tell him what happened here but don't tell anybody else. Town will find out soon enough and I don't want anyone blundering around and getting in the way."

  "Right."

  "Another thing," I said. "On your way, stop at the office and pick up my change of clothes and a handgun and rigging. That Bisley Colt of mine. And wrap it in the clothing so you're not seen toting it."

  "How come you want all that?"

  "Just get moving. We'll talk about it when you come back."

  I followed him to the rear doors, took the lantern there down from its wall peg, lighted it after Boze was gone, and then closed myself inside. The first thing I did was to have a look at the horses. My chalk-eye was still in his stall; Jeremy Bodeen's roan was definitely missing. Possible that it had run off, but more likely it had been ridden away by Emmett Bodeen. I could not tell which other animals might be gone, or whose they might be.

  I carried the lantern back to the overturned manure cart. It wasn't the only indication that there had been a struggle here. There were scuff marks in the hard sod of the runway— the kind made by boot heels and toes—and a board in one of the grain bins was cracked, as though somebody had been flung hard against it. I walked around there with the lantern down close to the ground. At the base of another bin, something glinted in the light. I sat on my heels and picked it up.

  A circlet of bronze, about three inches in diameter. When I held it close to the light I saw that it was one of those presidential medals the government issued a few years back at the Philadelphia Mint. On one side it bore a likeness of Benjamin Harrison, along with his name and the date of his inauguration, 1889; on the other were a tomahawk, a peace pipe, and a pair of clasped hands.

  There weren't many such medals in California; mostly they had been supplied to army officers in other parts of the West, who handed them out to Indians after peace treaties were signed. I had seen one on display in San Francisco once, but I had never seen one in Tule Bend until now.

  I put the medal into my pocket, hunted around a while longer without finding anything else, then climbed the ladder to the loft. Jacob Pike's living quarters were at the rear—an eight-foot square "room" formed by the front and side walls of the barn, with the other two walls being chest-high slabs of plywood nailed to two-by-four frames. Inside were a straw bunk, and ironbound trunk, a small homemade table, and a sheet-metal heating stove with a pipe running out through the side wall. The floor had been swept clean of straw, not so much because Pike was tidy, I thought, as a precaution against fire.

  The trunk contained Pike's meager possessions: a couple of changes of clothing, the two halves of a professional pool cue wrapped in chamois, a Merwin & Hulbert five-shot .38 single-action with the firing pin gone, a book called Snappy Jokes, a celluloid button that said "Oh Honey Give Me Some" on it, and half a dozen obscene French postcards that I would have liked, perversely, to have taken home and showed to Ivy just to hear her scream. That was all. Nothing there to tie Pike to the murder of Jeremy Bodeen, or to make him a likely candidate for a lynching. And it did not look as though the trunk had been searched by anyone before me, as though anything might be missing from it.

  I looked under the bunk and poked around the straw tick, even opened the door to the stove and used a stick propped nearby to stir among the ashes. Nothing. Finally I climbed back down to the runway and made myself take another look at Pike hanging up there in the gloom.

  What had happened here tonight? Pike must have been wakened by the fire bell, I thought, and put his clothes on— his corpse was fully dressed—and come down to see what was going on. When he unbarred the doors he was jumped, and there was a fight, and Pike lost it and then lost his life. That much seemed fairly clear. But what was not clear was who had killed him and why.

  Two possibilities, I thought, and neither of them seemed to make much sense. If it was Emmett Bodeen who had strung him up like that, it had to be because Bodeen thought Pike was mixed up in the killing of his brother. Only I couldn't see Pike committing a cold-blooded homicide by lynching. It took a certain kind of courage to kill a man, and a crazy, vicious, cunning streak to do it by hanging smack in the middle of town. Pike had been a coward, and a slow- witted one at that. Had he witnessed Jeremy Bodeen's murder, then, or known something about it? Maybe. But then why would Emmett Bodeen have killed him? I could picture Bodeen putting a rope around a man's neck to avenge his brother, but I could not see him doing it to anyone but the actual murderer.

  The other possibility was that the same man had done both killings. And that worried me the most, because likely it meant there was a madman on the loose in Tule Bend after all. Who else but a madman would want to hang a drifter and a stablehand? There was just no rational motive in either case. Pike had not been liked much but I couldn't imagine anyone having a killing grudge against him. Random victim, then, same as Jeremy Bodeen? Two men in the wrong place at the wrong time, victims of somebody's bloodlust?

  And yet . . .

  I kept remembering the prowler who had clubbed me on Saturday night. Two different prowlers at a livery barn on successive nights was a hell of a coincidence. What if the one last night hadn't been after a horse or a place to start a fire? What if he had been after Jacob Pike? And what if he had come back tonight to do the job he'd planned on his first visit?

  Well, that put me right back to my starting place. Who would want to kill Pike and why? Had the same person who did for him started the fire, maybe as a diversion? And if it was not Emmett Bodeen, then had Bodeen seen Pike's murderer before he lit a shuck for parts unknown?

  All the questions and confused possibilities were making my head hurt. I was having trouble keeping my thoughts straight anyway, as fatigued as I was from the fire fight. What I needed was sleep. But the way things were now, I was not likely to get any for some time to come.

  I set to work untying the end of the hangrope from where it had been looped around a stall post. It was knotted tight but I managed to work the knot loose without having to cut it. I was just lowering Pike's corpse to the ground when Boze returned with Doc Petersen.

  Doc was wearing his night shirt under his greatcoat and he looked as weary as I felt from his ministerings at the fire. He was grumpy, too. He said irascibly, "I was just getting ready for bed. Didn't even have time to close my eyes." Then he took a long look
at the body, and there was a different tone to his voice when he said, "What in hell's going on in this town, Linc?"

  "I wish I knew."

  "You had better find out soon, my boy. Once news of this gets out, there's liable to be a panic. You know what I'm talking about."

  I knew, all right. Folks arming themselves and carrying their weapons openly, mistrusting every stranger and before long friends and neighbors as well, maybe shooting at shadows, then maybe shooting at each other. The longer the fear and uncertainty were allowed to fester, the uglier things would get—to the point of martial law being declared. And if it did get to that point, more citizens would likely die . . . and not by the hand of a madman, either.

  Doc picked up the lantern I had set down, carried it over to where Pike lay. He went to one knee to peer at the body, his back to Boze and me. Boze touched my arm and motioned with his head that he wanted to talk in private. We went over by the grain bins, out of Doc's earshot.

  He had my Bisley Colt and its holster and cartridge belt wrapped in the change of clothes I keep in the office for emergencies; he handed the bundle to me as he spoke. "Just keeps gettin' worse, Linc. I didn't tell Doc because I didn't want to get him any more riled than he is, but I ran into Fred Horler on the way to Doc's house. He was lookin' for you and fit to be tied. Verne Gladstone was with him."

  "Now what?"

  "Somebody busted into Fred's office at Far West and made off with his cashbox. He had more in it than usual, on ac-count of today being payday. Six hundred dollars."

  "Christ!"

  "More of Bodeen's handiwork—the son of a bitch."

  "You didn't tell Fred and the mayor about Pike?"

  "No. They'd have been all over you by now if I had."

  "Good. You'll have to tell them eventually, though."

  "Why me?"

  "I won't be here, that's why. I'll be out hunting Bodeen."

  "You got an idea where he went?"

  "No, except he had to travel south. He wouldn't have ridden back through town with the fire rousing everybody. No through roads to the west, and no way to get east across the creek without swimming between here and the ferry at the railroad bridge. Might be I can pick up his trail. Or find somebody who saw him."

  "Slim chance, Linc."

  "I know it. But it's a hell of a sight better than hanging fire in town, listening to Gladstone fulminate and watching Joe Perkins charge around like a bull in a china shop."

  "I could come with you. Hell, we could organize a posse. . . ."

  "No. Somebody with sense has got to tend to things here. And a posse would take too long, create too much fuss. Bodeen could be in San Francisco by the time we got one together."

  Boze rubbed his bald spot, sniffing and blowing drip at the same time. "You want me to tell the mayor you're out hunting?"

  "No point in not telling him."

  "Anything else I should do?"

  "Nose around, find out if anybody saw or heard anything." I took the presidential medal out of my pocket and showed it to him. "You ever see one of these before?"

  He looked it over, shook his head. "Where'd you get it?"

  "Right about where you're standing. I'd say whoever killed Pike dropped it during the struggle. It isn't the kind of thing Pike would have carried around."

  "Don't seem like the kind of thing Bodeen would carry, either."

  "No," I agreed. "No, it doesn't at that."

  "You want me to show it around?"

  "To everybody you talk to."

  Doc had finished his preliminary examination of the body and was coming toward us. He said, "Killed the same way as Jeremy Bodeen, looks like. Beat up some first—bruises on his face, broken finger on one hand."

  "Skin off his knuckles?" I asked.

  "Some."

  "So maybe he did some damage in return."

  "Good chance of it, I'd say."

  I showed Doc the medal; it was unfamiliar to him, too. Then I turned it over to Boze and went into the harness room, where I stripped out of my fire-ruined clothing and put on the shirt and trousers and cutaway coat Boze had brought. I checked the Bisley Colt, to make sure it was fully loaded, before I strapped it on.

  My saddle and bridle were where they always were; I carried them out and asked Boze to outfit the chalk-eye. While he was doing that I made a quick search through Pike's clothing, on the chance that they contained something enlightening. But they didn't. Just a sack of Bull Durham, papers, matches, and three pennies.

  I rode out through the rear doors, leaving Boze and Doc to their own unpleasant tasks. When I came around to the front, Verne Gladstone and Fred Horler and two other men were fifty yards away and closing fast on the livery. The mayor hailed me in his bullfrog voice; Horler yelled something.

  Pretending not to hear, I kneed Rowdy and pounded away at a gallop.

  Chapter 11

  TULE BEND ROAD WAS DESERTED THIS TIME OF MORNING, and so was the country road that connected San Rafael and Petaluma. Oak-furred ridges and rolling, dry-brown pasture- land hemmed it on both sides, with the creek winding its tortuous way through the tule marshes over east. The sun was up now and already it had warmed the morning enough to melt some of the frost; steam rose off patches of grass, and thickly off the creek and its flanking mud flats.

  Out here I had to ride at a fast trot, rather than a gallop, because last winter's heavy rains, constant wagon travel through the mud, and the baking heat of this past summer had combined to badly rut the road in places. Fatigue put a grittiness in my eyes, a dull ache in my temples. But there was more anger in me than anything else. If I had been feeding on gall and wormwood yesterday morning, this morning I was gorged with them.

  It took me the better part of twenty minutes to reach the S.F. & N.P. swing bridge. There was a graveled wagon road that led in off the country road to the bridge, the Bridgeman’s shanty, and the old self-operated ferry. To the south, the right-of-way bulked up in a long gradual curve to the bridge; on the far side it made the same kind of curve northward, where it straightened out for the run past Tule Bend and on into Petaluma. The bridge itself was a bone of contention among some local citizens. They said it jutted too far into the stream and interfered with shipping, and there was talk of replacing it with a drawbridge that could also be used for pedestrian and wagon traffic. But nothing was likely to be done about that for a good long while, if ever, the railroad being what it was and the county politicians being what they were.

  The ferry landing was on the near side of the bridge, be-tween it and the Bridgeman’s shanty. It was not much as ferries go—just a small barge large enough for a wagon and horse or a handful of people, drawn back and forth by means of a pair of underwater cables that you had to work by hand. Ranchers and farmers over east used it enough to warrant its upkeep. The boatmen didn't like it, especially the steamer captains, because they were concerned about those under-water cables. There had never been any problem, though. The weight of the cables kept them sunk into the bottom mud except when they were being used. The steamers could not go upstream except at high tide anyhow, on account of the danger of their stern wheels foundering in the mud.

  When I neared the shanty I spied Pop Baker standing on the creekbank at the rear. I rode on up to the building and dismounted there and walked down to where he was. The mist was heavy here; it had an eerie look under the sun, like living things writhing in pain and clinging desperately to the bridge, dying in the day's gathering warmth. The tide was at flood and the salt and tule-grass smells were sharp.

  Pop had been bridgeman here from the day the first train crossed after the bridge was finished in 1880. He was tall and gangly, all arms and legs, with a nose like a beak and white hair that had the look of feather-down on a newborn chick; he reminded you of a big shorebird, the kind that poke around through the tules on their long, spindly legs. He was bundled in coat and gloves and cap, and he had a fishing pole in one hand and a second stuck in the mud nearby, both lines trailing out into the cree
k.

  "Morning, Pop. Catch breakfast yet?"

  "Not yet. What brings you out here so early?"

  He hadn't seen the smoke or fireglow last night, nor had anybody been by yet to bring him news of the fire; elsewise he would have started clamoring right away for a full report. Just as well, because I had no time to waste.

  I said, "Looking for somebody who might have ridden this way between three and four this morning. You hear anyone use the ferry around that time?"

  "Sure did. Not one man, though. Two."

  That took me aback. "Two men on horseback?"

  "You said it."

  "Together?"

  "Nope. Few minutes apart."

  "Both crossing from this side?"

  "Yep."

  "You happen to see either of them?"

  "First one woke me up but I didn't get out of bed," Pop said. "Did get up for a look when the second one showed; hardly anybody ever uses the ferry that late and I wondered what was goin' on. But it was too dark to get a clear squint at him. Just a fellow on horseback."

  "Thanks, Pop."

  I went and got Rowdy and led him down to the ferry landing. The barge was over on the far bank. I made sure there was no creek traffic in sight before I hauled the barge back across. Then I put the chalk-eye and myself on board, closed the gate, and pulled us the seventy-five yards to the east shore.

  The road that led away from the landing on this side was a narrow levee track though waist-high tangles of tules and cattails and salt grass. In the winter, when the rains were heavy, it was impassable. Even now it was so full of pocks and ruts that I had to let Rowdy pick his way along at not much more than a walk.

  As I rode I thought over what Pop had told me. Two men, a few minutes apart. One following the other? That seemed the likeliest explanation. One of them figured to be Emmett Bodeen; but then who was the other? Was Bodeen the follower or the one being followed? And if one of them had killed Jacob Pike, as also seemed likely, which one was it?

  I counted myself lucky that they had come this way, instead of continuing south on the main road. There were several towns and steamer landings in that direction—Bardells, Novato, Ignacio, Millers, San Rafael—and any number of escape routes by road, rail, or boat. Over east there were only a couple of hamlets, fewer roads and transportation points, a good deal of private and unsettled land, and the rugged Sonoma Mountains. By going that way, Bodeen or whoever was setting the course might be on his way to the Valley of the Moon or the Napa Valley or points east; or it could just be that he did not know his way around these parts very well and was traveling blind. In any case, I had at least a fair chance of tracking one or both men, and the knowledge took away some of my fatigue, gave me a fresh sense of purpose.