By the Neck Read online

  Rollie paid attention when Chauncey Wheeler cleared his throat and held up a worn leather Bible. A red silk ribbon swung from atop the spine and danced in a light breeze. The mayor’s wet eyes and quavering voice added weight to the passage he read. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . .”

  Not original, thought Rollie, but fitting. Rollie knew a crowd would soon be at his bar and it would be expected of him to splash out the first round of drinks for free, in honor of the departed. Especially so since it seemed everybody in town knew of his relationship to her. Or thought they did. He’d overheard enough of their blather to know the townsfolk were largely off the mark.

  They alternately thought Rollie had been a relative of hers once, or had been her estranged husband she’d finally tracked down, or that he was her father—that one stung when he’d heard it, and he’d almost said something. The closest to the truth the rumors came was that he was a disgraced lawman who’d had something to do with the downfall of her family.

  As he looked around at the faces of the people in the town, he realized he knew many of them enough to smile and greet them by name each day, others to nod to, some trying to avoid his gaze because they owed him money or because they were drunk the night before and may well have told him things they regretted sharing.

  Chauncey Wheeler’s voice clipped off with, “Now let us pray.” The fat little man closed his Bible and bowed his head, and everyone else did, too. Rollie was the last to do so, and once more he took in the assemblage and mused on the notion that Delia Holsapple was more responsible than he for him being there. The arrest of her father, then the alley attack, all led him in a clear, if crooked line to Boar Gulch.

  “You looked suitably bothered by the ceremony,” said Nosey some minutes later as they ascended the steps to The Last Drop.

  Rollie realized the journalist had been talking to him. He shrugged. “My heart’s not made of stone.”

  “Nope, only your face,” said Pops and winked.

  Because it came from Pops, Rollie decided he could let a crack like that slide. But nobody else. Now why was that? He’d only known the man a few short months but in that time Pops had become perhaps a closer friend than anybody he’d ever known. Not that he’d ever had close friends.

  Even as a kid in Providence he had been a lone wolf, roving the stacks of the Brown University library, keeping busy while his father arrived home and drank himself to sleep each night. His mother always held out warmed stew, dumplings, or biscuits for him. His father was not a mean drunkard, but he was dedicated to the task. It was something Rollie was thankful he’d not become.

  When Rollie was fifteen, his mother, a slight but formidable woman, and midwife to the neighborhood, had taken ill with what she called “chesty croup.” It grew worse and finally, two weeks before Christmas, she had taken to the bed far later than she should have. “The good neighbors needed me,” she’d argued. Within the week she was gone.

  Rollie tried to keep his father in good health, tried to replicate all the ministrations and quiet, dogged kindnesses his mother had bestowed on them both. He’d cooked and washed, and none of it mattered. By the last days of February, his father, too, had wasted away.

  He’d seen them both buried. His father’s service took place on a dank, wet afternoon in the churchyard with four people in attendance—himself, the priest, and two of his father’s pub chums Rollie had seen in the past. The priest droned his way through the requisite words, glancing at Rollie throughout. At the end, Rollie tossed wet soil down into the long, slump-edged trench onto his father’s coffin.

  As he walked away, the priest had touched his sleeve and suggested he come back to the rectory for tea. It had been a wet day, and the thought of a cup of hot tea before a warming fire sounded good to Rollie.

  He nodded yes and they trudged through the burial ground and up to the stone house beside the church. A plump woman Rollie did not recognize brought them tea and scones and the priest talked of the eternal nature of the human soul as the mantel clock’s gears ground away. The fire was warm and the day had been so long, Rollie was soon asleep in the chair.

  He woke some time later to see the priest seated across from him. A small oil lamp did its best to light the rest of the dark-paneled room that the open fire couldn’t reach. Someone had draped a quilt over his knees.

  The priest spoke again, his voice cracking the silence of the room. “Master Finnegan, it was your mother’s wish, and yes, your father’s as well, that you be taken in by the church. You are far too young to spend your time alone. You must have a family. You must dedicate yourself to something greater.

  “Therefore, I have, at no small cost to myself, undertaken to have you placed in care of the young men’s dormitories at St. Damian’s Monastery as an acolyte. There you will receive such training as suitable for a young man pursuing a life dedicated to his God. Perhaps, in time, you will become a priest. That is not for me to say, but for your Lord to determine. I have taken the liberty of having your things sent for. You will need little, save for good shoes, a willingness to work, and a heart open to the glories of God. You leave tonight.”

  Rollie stared at the priest for some long moments. The man’s words echoed, one on another, over and over in his head, as if shouted into a stone cavern, only to bounce back and wash over themselves, again and again. Finally he licked his lips and stood, grabbing the little blanket before it slipped to the floor. He laid it on the chair’s arm. “I am grateful to you for that, Father. If I may . . . I would like to visit my parents’ graves one last time before I leave.”

  The priest smiled.

  Like a cat, thought Rollie. He looks like a cat who has cornered a mouse and knows it will soon feed.

  “Of course, my son.” The priest plucked out a shiny gold pocket watch and clicked it open. “You have twenty minutes before the driver arrives. Don’t be late.”

  “Yes, Father.” Rollie bowed and shook the man’s hand and found his way outside, into the dark, rainy night. He did visit the graves of his mother and father long enough to pat the shared stone. “Thank you and good-bye.” Then he walked out of that city and never ventured back.

  He worked his way north, south, and west, never east, and after a year and a half of drifting from job to job, he joined the US Army. He wasn’t yet eighteen, but he suspected he had learned more on his own than he ever could have learned shut away in a forbidding rock pile of St. Damian’s as a slave to others, in the service of a God he had yet to discover for himself.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “Rollie?”

  He heard his name, or at least the name he’d gone by most of his life, Rollie, short for Roland The voice sounded far off, as if spoken through water.

  “Hey!”

  The voice sounded like it was shouted right into his ear. Because it was. It also didn’t hurt that somebody poked him in the arm.

  “You okay, Rollie?” It was Pops.

  “Why?”

  “Why?” Pops shrugged, and went back to sweeping the floor. “Because you’ve been acting odd since the funeral yesterday. Why don’t you take a walk and I can tidy up the place.”

  “Nah, I’m fine. Thinking, that’s all.” Rollie resumed wiping down the bar top and saw Chauncey Wheeler walk in. The mayor greeted the two men with a weak smile and a nod.

  “A little early for you, eh, Mayor?” said Rollie.

  “Yes, well”—he looked about the room as if there might be a dozen men hiding behind chairs—“there’s been an accident.”

  “Another one?” said Pops, glancing first the mayor, then at Rollie.

  “No, no, nothing like that.” The mayor sneered at Pops. “That is to say, poor Delia’s cabin, which as you know I owned, has burned to the ground. Bone and his son found it nearly gone. There was nothing they could do.” He shrugged and made certain each man saw his hound-dog eyes all but welling with tears.

  “Well now,” said Pops. “That is a shame. Yes, a conve
nient shame, but still a shame.”

  “Convenient?” said the mayor as if he’d been hit across the face with a ripe trout.

  Rollie nodded. “Now we’ll never know the cause of her demise. I expect any clues have been lost for good.”

  “Ah yes, well, that can happen in life, eh, gentlemen?” Chauncey tugged his vest down once more. “Which brings me to the real reason I am here.” From out of his coat he tugged a cream-colored envelope and set it on the bar top before him. “Some of Delia’s personal papers.”

  “How did you get those?” said Rollie, eyeing the man.

  “She . . . entrusted them to me some time ago.” He nodded as if agreeing with himself might lessen the feeling that what he said sounded like a lie.

  “Uh-huh,” said Pops.

  Chauncey frowned at him and looked back to Rollie.

  “Why tell us?”

  “Because there’s something here you may find of interest. I know I did.”

  Rollie leaned on the bar, resisting the urge to punch Wheeler in the face. Sometimes the man’s very presence was like having a sliver jammed beneath a fingernail. “What is it, Mayor? We’re busy here.”

  “You know,” said Chauncey, straightening. “I am bringing this to your attention out of the kindness of my heart. I don’t have to do this.”

  “You don’t do anything out of kindness, Chauncey. You always have an angle. That much I know about you. Now out with it and I’ll see if it’s worth paying you or not.”

  “Well! If that’s how you feel,” the pudgy man turned and made to put the papers back in his coat.

  “Bye,” said Rollie, resuming to wipe the bar top.

  “Oh, all right.” Chauncey slapped the envelope on the bar. “There are at least a dozen receipts in here, perhaps more, from newspapers. Big-city papers.”

  Rollie stopped once more. Receipts from newspapers in Delia Holsapple’s things. He didn’t like the direction this conversation was taking.

  Wheeler fanned them on the bar, angled so Rollie could read them. Pops leaned over and gave them a once-over. Among them was a copy of the initial large notice the Dickey twins had had with them. So that was her game.

  “If these dates are true, most of these haven’t run yet,” said Pops.

  Rollie sucked air through tight teeth.

  “And they’re spread out from now until next year.” Pops looked at his business partner.

  “All marked PAID IN FULL, too,” said Rollie, reading the receipts.

  “You could always write to them, ask them to cease and desist running the advertisements. Perhaps under threat of legal action.”

  Pops said, “That’s not a bad idea, Mr. Mayor.”

  “Nope,” said Rollie, looking at the ceiling. “I think I’ll let them come. Settle this foolishness one idiot at a time.”

  “But that’s . . . that’s suicide.”

  “Thank you for your vote of confidence, Mayor.”

  “I won’t permit it. You can’t allow society’s dregs to continue to descend on innocent Boar Gulch! I . . . as mayor won’t stand for it.” He crossed his arms and tried to maintain a gaze with Rollie. It didn’t work.

  As much as Rollie hated to admit it, the mayor had a point. It was selfish of him to ignore the rest of the Gulch’s citizens.

  “Yeah,” said Pops reading the receipts. “From these dates, some of these have already been published. She bought a whole lot of newspaper space.”

  “Which means we can expect fresh rounds of lawbreakers to wander on up to the Gulch.” Rollie sighed. “Okay, I’ll write to the papers. But I doubt they’ll do anything to change it.”

  The mayor sniffed and smoothed his lapels. “Good. And in the meantime, I suggest you . . . both”—he looked from one man to the other—“decide your pecking order.”

  “What’s that mean?” said Pops.

  “Why, who’s going to be town sheriff and who’s going to be deputy, of course.”

  Rollie disagreed. “We don’t need law up here, Mayor. What we need is justice. We’ve been doing a solid job of doling that out for some time now. At least I haven’t heard any complaints from the good citizens of Boar Gulch.”

  The mayor responded as if he hadn’t heard them. “And we’ll need a jail, too.”

  “Nope,” said Pops. “Haven’t yet.”

  “That’s because your tactics are thuggish and heavy-handed, the same as those of your visiting friends.”

  Rollie walked out from behind the bar, hands on his hips.

  The mayor backed up a step and gulped as he took in the Schofield in the polished leather holster. “I expect you both have things to discuss . . . a course of action. We can talk later at length about this.” He left the receipts on the bar top and all but ran for the open door.

  “That does leave me sort of trapped here,” said Rollie, almost smiling.

  “Nah,” said Pops, pulling his Greener out from under the bar. “We’re trapped . . . partner. Now, isn’t it your turn to wash the glasses?”

  Rollie stroked his chin. “Speaking of unwanted questions, you seen Nosey?”

  Pops shrugged. “He’ll turn up. We’re supposed to play a few hands.” He smiled. “Kid thinks he can win his trousers back.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “Who you?”

  Nosey turned to see a large, block-headed man, thick with muscles stressing the seams of a black wool suitcoat. He wore a full, trimmed beard, once brown but gone gray throughout. His bristled eyebrows looked like ravens taking flight.

  “I beg your pardon. May I help you?”

  “Only if you’re Finnegan.”

  The man’s voice reminded Nosey of stream gravel grinding between stones. He wished the man would clear his throat.

  “Me?” Nosey smiled and shook his head. “Not hardly. He and Pops are gone to—” He recalled too late the one thing above all others he really shouldn’t do. That was to let anyone know anything about Rollie. Not so easy these days, what with all the newcomers to town.

  “I know you ain’t him.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I know ol’ Stoneface.”

  “Ah,” said Nosey, unsure what to do next. Likely the man was in Boar Gulch because of Delia’s newspaper advertisements. It stood to reason that Nosey had to do whatever it would take to keep the man from attacking Rollie on his return.

  “Let’s go,” said the man, wagging a huge plate-nickel revolver. The gun had appeared in his hand unbidden, as if by magic.

  “What do you mean go? Go where?”

  The big man sighed. “Stands to reason that since you ain’t him, and you said he’s not here, that he truly is here. And it stands to more reason that you work for him or you know him, both or one, makes no never mind. Either way, you are of some value to him. Knowing what I do of Finnegan, he wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to anybody, let alone a person who works for him. You must be friends with Stoneface. I don’t know who Pops is, but if he’s chummy with Finn, I aim to include him in all this, too.”

  “What do you mean, all this?”

  “Exactly that. Want to see how much you’re worth to ol’ Stoneface. You ask too many questions.”

  Nosey stood straighter. “Surely you don’t intend to abscond with me. If the answer is yes, then I have the right to ask all manner of questions.”

  For the first time since he walked into The Last Drop, the big man smiled. His mouth was filled with gold teeth. “I like your spunk, boy. And yes, that’s exactly what I intend to do. Use you as bait.”

  “Oh.” Nosey ducked down behind the bar. “Not if I have a say in the matter.” He rose with the bar’s twelve-gauge shotgun and pointed the single-barrel at the stranger’s big face. The man leaned forward and stuck a sausage-shaped finger into the snout of Nosey’s shotgun and laughed his gravelly, wet laugh. “Now as I said, let’s go. I don’t like repeating myself.”

  Nosey considered his options. One, he could pull the trigger and blow this
man’s hand apart. But he didn’t like shooting guns, and didn’t particularly like hurting people. After all, what if the man was somehow a friend of Rollie’s and this was a joke?

  He could also shove the gun at the man and run for the door. He was slimmer and smaller than the stranger. Yes, Nosey thought maybe he could make the door well ahead of the man. Then what? He’d be outside, running away from the brute. With his back exposed. The man would shoot him deader than dead, as Wolfbait might say.

  And yelling wouldn’t do a thing to save him. Might only attract other folks who’d get themselves hurt in the process. Besides, people in Boar Gulch yelled all the time, and for little reason, it seemed. Sometimes just to yell. It was an odd place that he hadn’t much gotten used to.

  Nosey didn’t know the man in the least, but he suspected he was a hardcase. Otherwise how could he have known Rollie? Especially as he called him Stoneface. Not many options. “Why should I go with you?” Nosey couldn’t help himself. Asking questions was for him as natural as talking was to Wolfbait, silence was to Rollie, and cracking bad jokes was for Pops.

  “Because if you don’t, I’ll kill you where you stand. Got it?”

  Nosey gulped and nodded. He lowered the shotgun and set it on the bar top. “Okay, then. Where are we going? You don’t think you’ll get away with whatever it is you’re mulling over, do you? Where are you from, anyway? Rudeness is obviously something you’re accustomed to, so I am going to guess you’re from New York City. Am I correct?”

  “Wrong all the way. Now move.” He rammed his gun barrel hard into Nosey’s spine.

  “Hey! Enough of that rough play, mister. I am a student of the martial arts. At first opportunity I am contemplating rendering you incapacitated. The only question is with a spinning kick or with a series of deadly chopping blows about your neck and face.”

  “One more word from you and I will shoot you now and be done with it. I’d prefer not to as yet. I want Rollie to squirm. But not that bad.”

  Nosey pulled in a breath as if to speak.

  The man cranked back on the hammer. “One word.”