Shootout of the Mountain Man Page 12

  “I’d be interested in whether or not you believed him,” Smoke said.

  “Why? What difference does it make to you?”

  “No difference. I was just curious, is all.”

  “Well, I know what it’s like to be curious, so I’ll tell you.” The old man pulled out a pouch of tobacco and stuck a handful in his mouth. He chewed it a bit to get it to where he wanted it before he spoke again. “I believe him.”

  “Why?”

  “If for no other reason, it’s because I don’t believe the sheriff,” the old man said. “If you ask me, the sheriff is about as crooked as they come. And seein’ as Cabot said he was s’posed to be workin’ with the sheriff, and the sheriff is sayin’ something directly opposite, why, in my book, there ain’t no question as to which one of ‘em I believe.”

  As Smoke continued down toward the gallows, he thought of the old man’s condemnation of the sheriff. That mirrored the doubt that Sheriff Jacobs had expressed about Sheriff Wallace. And, of course, Smoke’s own interaction with Wallace tended to support that idea. From what Smoke could determine about the killing of the young cowboy, it would seem that the sheriff had little justification to shoot.

  When Smoke reached the gallows, he saw several people standing around, their attention drawn not only to the gallows, but to a huge, crudely painted sign. The sign had not been nailed to the gallows, but was on the ground leaning up against the platform.

  COME ONE COME ALL

  WATCH BOBBY LEE FALL

  ON FRIDAY THE HANGING WILL BE

  WE WELCOME ALL TO COME AND SEE

  The reaction to the sign was mixed. There were a few standing around who thought the doggerel funny, and they laughed about it, and pointed it out to others. But there were just as many who thought that writing such bad poetry about someone being hanged was insensitive.

  Smoke looked over toward the jail and considered going inside to see Bobby Lee, but decided not to do so yet. He had to figure out some way to help him, so that when he did see him, he would have a plan in place.

  A few doors down from the jail, Smoke saw a barbershop and bathhouse, so he decided to stop there before going to the hotel. A little bell attached to the door jingled as he pushed it open. Inside the barbershop, there was a man already in the chair.

  “Yes, sir, I’ll be right with you,” the barber said. “Shave and a haircut?”

  “No, I’d like a bath.”

  “You’ve come to the right place,” the barber responded. “I’ve got a big tub in the back, lots of hot water, soap, and towels.”

  He turned his head toward the back of the shop. “Lee!” he shouted, and a Chinese man stuck his head through the curtain that covered a door at the rear.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “This gentleman wants a bath. Get a tub ready for him.”

  Lee looked at Smoke, then holding his hand out palm-down, made a couple of downward moves with it. “You come,” he said.

  Smoke gathered up his saddlebags, then followed the man into the back. Lee pointed to the tub, which, at the moment, was empty. “I fill with warm water,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  Smoke sat down and waited as Lee tossed a few chunks of wood into the stove to build up the fire. Then the small, wiry man began pumping water directly into the tub. After the tub was about one-third full, he scooped out a bucket of water and put it on the stove to heat.

  “Soon water be hot enough to make bath good,” Lee said.

  Smoke nodded, then bent over and started to remove his boots.

  “Lee, you no-count Chinaman son of a bitch! Are you back here?” a man yelled, pushing through the curtain.

  “Here, Mr. Dawes, what are you doing?” the barber called out from the other side of the curtain. “You can’t go barging back there.”

  “You just stay the hell out of this, Bob. That damn Chinaman owes me five dollars and I aim to collect it.”

  “I no owe you fi’ dollar. You try sell me clock that not work. I give clock back to you.”

  “Huh-uh. You bought the clock and you’re goin’ to pay me for it.”

  “Sir, this gentleman is preparing my bath,” Smoke said. “If you have business with him, I would prefer you take care of it at another time.”

  “I’m about to take me five dollars out of this Chinaman’s flesh,” Dawes said. “But if you get in my way, it won’t bother me to take it out of yours first.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t like that,” Smoke said.

  “Ha. I wouldn’t think you would. Now you just stay the hell out of my way and let me take care of my business here.”

  Dawes grabbed a three-legged stool by one of its legs and lifted it over his head, then started toward Lee, who, with his arms folded across his face, was reacting in horror.

  Smoke tapped Dawes on the shoulder, and Dawes turned around with an angry sneer. “I told you to stay the—” That was as far as he got before Smoke took him down with a powerful blow to the chin. The punch knocked Dawes out and, grabbing his feet, Smoke pulled him toward the back door, then motioned for Lee to open it.

  “He be very angry when he wake up, I think,” Lee said.

  “Yes, I expect he will be,” Smoke said. With the door opened, Smoke dragged the unconscious man across the alley, then dumped him in the high weeds on the other side.

  Earlier, Bobby Lee had been napping on the cot in his jail cell when he heard the shooting, and he sat up, wondering what the shooting was about. Shortly after the shooting, he could hear some commotion out on the street, and though the conversations seemed to be intense, he wasn’t able to hear clearly enough to make out what was happening.

  “Deputy!” he called. “Deputy Beard! You out there?”

  Finally, after several calls, Beard came into the back of the jail.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “What was the shooting?”

  “You ain’t heard?”

  “I heard gunshots. I don’t know what it was all about.”

  “Sheriff Wallace just kilt your friend.”

  “My friend? Which friend? ”

  “Ha! Like somebody like you has got so many friends that you don’t know who I’m talking about. I’m talking about Andy Emerson, that’s who I’m talking about.”

  “What? Wallace killed him? Why? What did Andy do?”

  “You might know that the sheriff told him not to come into the Gold Strike and get drunk no more. So what Emerson done is, he went over into Chinatown and was playin’ that gamblin’ game them Chinamen like to play. The sheriff seen him there, then told him he was arrestin’ him for gamblin’ at a place that didn’t have no license. Only Emerson said he wasn’t goin’ to be arrested and he started walkin’ away. The sheriff yelled at him, give him a chance to stop, but he didn’t. So the sheriff shot up into the air to warn him. Well, when he done that, Emerson commended to runnin', so the sheriff shot him.” Deputy Beard laughed. “Hit him dead center.”

  “That doesn’t seem like much of a reason to be shootin’ anybody,” Bobby Lee said.

  “Ha, that’s funny,” the deputy replied.

  “Funny? What the hell is so funny about that?” Bobby Lee asked, the expression on his face reflecting his confusion over the remark.

  “I mean, here you are about to hang, and you’re worried about whether or not the sheriff had reason enough to shoot Andy Emerson. Most especial when you consider what kind of a fella Emerson was.”

  “Emerson was a good man at heart,” Bobby Lee said. “I never was able to understand why the sheriff disliked him so. And it surprises me to hear that it went so far as the sheriff actually shooting him.”

  “He was a damn drunk who didn’t know his place,” Beard said. “And the only thing that surprises me is that the sheriff didn’t shoot the son of a bitch any sooner.”

  Beard was still chuckling as he went back to the front of the building, closing the door behind him. Bobby Lee returned to his bunk, then lay back down. He thought about dying,
and wondered what was just on the other side. Would Emerson be there, waiting for him? Would his ma? Would his sister?

  Bobby Lee hadn’t been to church in a long time. He wished now that he had paid a little more attention when he had gone.

  Chapter Twelve

  Feeling much refreshed from his bath, Smoke went to the Depot Hotel.

  “Yes, sir, we have the finest rooms in the city,” the desk clerk said. “A gentleman of your stature will find nothing better.”

  “I would like a room overlooking the street,” Smoke said as he signed the register.

  “I can do that. I do have a drummer who is a regular and who will come in on tonight’s train. He normally gets the room overlooking the street, but I’ll be glad to let you have it.”

  “I wouldn’t want to put one of your regulars out.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that, sir. As I said, he is nothing but a traveling salesman. I will accommodate a gentleman over a common drummer any day.”

  The hotel clerk was a small, unctuous man whose obsequiousness was beginning to get on Smoke’s nerves.

  “Will you be staying through Friday, sir?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “You should make it a point to stay through Friday.”

  “Why? What is so important about Friday?”

  “Oh, sir, did you not see the gallows down at the end of the street? We are going to have a hanging here on Friday. It’s grisly business to be sure, but it should be a very exciting spectacle nevertheless, and something you will be able to tell your grandchildren about.”

  “Have you ever seen a hanging?” Smoke asked.

  “No, sir. I’ve never been present when an execution was conducted.”

  “Conducted?”

  “Yes, you know, as the legal extension of a court mandate.”

  “I see,” Smoke said. “Well, I have seen hangings, and it isn’t the kind of story you want to tell your grandchildren about.” Smoke stopped short of telling the desk clerk that he had not only seen hangings, he had conducted more than one in his mostly violent life.

  “Yes, sir, I suppose it could be gruesome, all right. But the man being hanged is a killer after all. And it isn’t as if they are lynching him. He was given a fair trial and found guilty by a jury of his peers. We had a judge and lawyers and everything. Besides, the man he killed was a husband and father. ”

  “I heard the man who actually did the killing was Frank Dodd.”

  “Yes, so they say. But Bobby Lee Cabot was present during the train robbery, and according to the law that makes him as guilty as if he had actually pulled the trigger.”

  “You have read for the law, have you?”

  “No, sir. But I have followed this case with some degree of interest, and I know that the judge instructed the jury to base their decision, not as to whether Cabot actually did the killing, but on the fact that he was there at the time of the killing. That makes him …” The desk clerk paused for a moment, looking for the word, then smiled when he thought of it. “That makes him compilicit in the murder. ”

  “I’m sure,” Smoke said. He gave the clerk a dollar. “This will cover my stay for tonight. If I decide to stay longer, I’ll give you more money.”

  “Very good, sir,” the clerk said. Reaching up beside him, he pulled down a key and gave it to Smoke. “Your room is two-oh-one. It is at the top of the stairs, the first door on the left. I’m sure you will find it quite satisfactory, but should you have any problems, please don’t hesitate to let me know. ”

  Nodding, Smoke picked up his saddlebags and, throwing them over his shoulder, climbed the steps.

  The room was typical of many hotel rooms that Smoke had occupied in his life. The bed was high, with a curving iron head and footboards. Sitting beside the bed was a table with a kerosene lantern. On the wall at the foot of the bed was a brown chifforobe upon which set an empty basin and pitcher of water. There was no carpeting on the wide plank floor, and the boards, which had once been painted a deep brown, were now faded in spots. The wallpaper was cream colored, and emblazoned with baskets of purple irises.

  Smoke walked over to the window and raised the green shade so he could look out onto Fremont Street. The window afforded him an excellent view of the gallows that stood in front of the jail, and as he stood at the window, he saw that an arriving stagecoach had to maneuver around the gallows because it took up so much of the street. Once clear of the gallows, the driver snapped his reins against the team, and they broke into a trot so that the coach was moving rather quickly as it passed beneath Smoke.

  Hooking his saddlebags over a rung in the chifforobe, Smoke left his room and ambled down the stairs. It was time for him to find the Gold Strike Saloon and talk to Miss Minnie Smith.

  Between the hotel and the saloon, he passed the Homestead Hardware Store, and he saw a little knot of people standing on the street just in front of the store, staring in through the window. Curious as to what could be drawing their attention, he made a point to walk close enough by the store to look in the window.

  There, lying on a table that was pitched up at about a thirty-degree angle, just high enough to elevate the head, was the body of Andy Emerson. Both of Emerson’s eyes were open, though on one, the eyelid was half shut. He had been shot in the back, so there were no visible wounds on the front of his body. His boots had been removed and his toes stuck through one of his socks. There was a hole in the bottom of the other sock. A hastily hand-lettered sign stood up alongside the body.

  Andy Emerson

  Shot by Sheriff Wallace

  In the Line of Duty

  The saloon was easy to find. The sign advertising it was a life-sized cut-out and painted figure of a smiling miner. The miner had a pickax slung over his right shoulder, while in his left hand was the reason for the smile. Holding the hand out in front of him, palm up, he was exhibiting a sparkling gold nugget. There was a somewhat smaller sign beside it of a mug of beer, gold at the bottom and white foam at the top.

  Smoke pushed his way through the batwing doors, then stepped quickly to one side so that his back was to the wall as he looked the place over. The bar ran perpendicular to the door from the front to the rear of the building along the right side of the room. There were several bottles of spirits sitting on glass shelves behind the bar, their numbers doubled by the mirror at their backs. Nearly a dozen customers stood at the bar, a few of them engaged in animated conversations, but most nursing their own drinks in privacy. Several of the tables had two or more customers, and at least one table had a card game in progress. A group of young women were standing next to the empty piano in the back. One of them was crying, and the others were trying to console her.

  “He never did nothin’ but get drunk a few times and get into fights. But he never really hurt nobody, he never stole nothin'. He was a good man, a hardworking cowboy,” the sobbing woman was saying. The others in the saloon looked toward the girls now and then, the expressions on their faces indicating some sympathy for the plight of the one who was crying.

  Smoke selected an empty table near the center of the room.

  Seeing him sit down alone, one of the girls who had been standing by the piano came over to talk to him.

  “Hi, cowboy,” she said. “Something I can get you?”

  Smoke nodded toward the weeping young woman. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “That’s Janet Ferrell. Her boyfriend was just killed,” the girl said.

  “Would her boyfriend be Andy Emerson?”

  The girl looked surprised. “Yes. Did you know him?”

  Smoke shook his head. “I didn’t know him, but I was an accidental witness to the shooting.”

  “What do you mean you were an accidental witness to the shooting?”

  “I had just arrived by train, was seeing to my horse being offloaded from the stock car when it happened. The man Emerson ran up onto the track just behind the train. That’s where he was shot.”

  “Oh, that’s right
. I heard that the train was still standing in the station when it happened,” the girl said. “Tell me this, mister. Was Andy shooting back at the sheriff?”

  “No. He didn’t have a gun.”

  “I knew it. Andy never carried a gun. But I know just as sure as God made little green apples that Sheriff Wallace is going to try and claim that he shot Andy in self-defense. Andy wouldn’t walk away from a fight. Fact is, he sometimes started them,” the girl said. “But not once, in all the time I knew him, did I ever see him with a gun.”

  “I got the idea from the sheriff that he was always in trouble.”

  “He was never in any real trouble, and anyone you ask will tell you that. It’s just that Sheriff Wallace is a man who likes to boss people around, and Andy didn’t take all that kindly to it. The sheriff hated him for that.” The girl looked back toward the weeping woman. “Janet is taking this really hard. She blames herself for it.”

  “Why does she blame herself?”

  “Janet was always trying to get Andy to be less belligerent around the sheriff, but Andy wouldn’t listen to her.”

  “She has no reason to blame herself,” Smoke said.

  “I know it. We all know it, and that’s what we’ve been telling her.” The girl looked toward the street. “And now they’ve got poor Andy trussed up in the window of the hardware store like he’s a side of beef or something. If you ask me, what that sheriff did by shooting him when he wasn’t even carrying a gun wasn’t much more than outright murder.”

  The girl dabbed her eyes, then added, quietly, so quietly that Smoke barely heard it, “And he is about to do the same thing again, come Friday.”

  “You are talking about the hanging?” Smoke asked.

  “Yes. Bobby Lee Cabot is innocent. And I could have proved it, if the court had let me testify.” She wiped her eyes again, then put on a smile for Smoke. “But I know you didn’t come in here to listen to me prattle on so,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m new in town,” Smoke replied. “And I need a friend.”