Carnage of Eagles Read online

  Doc Gunter applauded quietly. “Thirteen p’s, that’s a new record in alliteration for you, isn’t it?”

  “I do believe it is,” Denham said, smiling proudly.

  “Well, I don’t get it,” Travers said. “If the judge and the sheriff don’t want whorin’, why don’t they just stop it?”

  “Think about it, Travers. There are twenty-five whores in Sorrento. Each one of them pays a ten-dollar fine every month. Do you have any idea how much money that is?”

  “Two hundred and fifty dollars,” Travers replied.

  “That’s right. That’s the money that pays the deputies. There’s five deputies and they make fifty dollars apiece. Do you really think they are ready to walk away from that money?”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “That’s why they are fined, then turned loose. Dawes, Poindexter, and Gillespie aren’t going to shut them down. Arrests and fines for the petit crimes provide a most lucrative income for our devious officers of the court.”

  “But the real money is in taxes,” Doc Gunter said.

  “Yes, I was told when I bought the feed store that there was a business tax that I would have to pay. I think Mr. Matthews said it was fifty dollars, but I don’t figure fifty dollars a year is too much.”

  “A month,” Harold said.

  “What?”

  “Your tax will be fifty dollars a month.”

  “A month? I’m not sure I can handle that. I haven’t been here long enough yet to know what kind of business I’m going to have. I mean, it’s been pretty good so far, but fifty dollars a month?”

  “Don’t think you are all alone,” Smalley said.

  After he finished his drink, Denham left the saloon, then walked down the street toward the courthouse, going in right behind the gathering of women who had been summoned.

  “What are you doing here, Denham?” Deputy Sharp asked. “You got no business here.”

  “On the contrary, my good man. As a productive member of the Fourth Estate, I most assuredly do have business here.”

  “The fourth estate?”

  “Let the press in, Deputy,” Judge Dawes said.

  Sharp stepped to one side, then made a motion with his arm. “All right,” he said. “Come on in.”

  “Mr. Denham, you came dangerously close to slander with that article about the accidental death of Mr. Kyle,” Judge Dawes said.

  “Judge, I was just repeating what others said. I made no personal declaration as to the truth or fiction of those comments. I don’t make judgments, I just report news.”

  “So you say,” Dawes replied. “But some of your editorial observations have come very close to being judgments.”

  “It may appear so, Judge, but that is just the nature of the beast.”

  “My advice, Mr. Denham, would be to tone down the rhetoric of your articles, lest you get yourself into serious trouble.”

  “I will take your warning into consideration.”

  The women who were gathered varied in age from a few who were barely out of their teens and still pretty to those who had been so beaten down by their profession that their only saving grace was the idea that “all cats are gray in the dark.” The young women, the prettiest, were the pick of the crop, the most desirable, and as such, they worked for Miss Adele’s House of Pleasure. Next came the bar girls from the various saloons of the town, still relatively attractive but with a hard edge. Finally there were the older, homely ones at the end of their productive cycle who were now practicing their profession from small cribs in the back alleys of Sorrento.

  The prostitutes here gathered showed absolutely no concern over the fact that they were all, in essence, under arrest. On the contrary, they were talking and laughing with each other as if this were a social gathering.

  “Quiet!” Judge Dawes said, slapping his mallet down hard.

  The women grew quiet.

  “Mr. Bailiff, what have we here?”

  The bailiff, who was also the sheriff, looked out over the women. “Your Honor, there comes now before this honorable court these twenty-five women. They are all being charged with the practice of prostitution, said practice being illegal in this city.”

  “Is the prosecutor present?”

  “I am, Your Honor. Burt Gillespie.”

  “Very good, sir. And is there defense counsel present?” Judge Dawes asked.

  “No, Your Honor,” Gillespie answered.

  “Ladies, have you selected one of your number to speak for you?” Judge Dawes asked.

  “Yeah, I’ll do it,” one of the bar girls from the Hog Heaven said.

  “Your Honor,” Gillespie hissed.

  “Your Honor,” the woman said.

  “And you would be?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “What is your name?”

  The woman smiled. “Ask the sheriff, Your Honor. He sure knows who I am, why he . . .”

  Whatever she was about to say was stifled by the loud and incessant pounding of the gavel.

  “I asked you for your name, not a conversation,” the judge said, interrupting her response. “Now I will ask you again. What is your name?”

  “Lucy Smith.”

  “Smith?”

  “Yeah, Your Honor, there’s lots of Smiths,” Lucy said, and the other women giggled.

  “Very well, Miss Smith. Do you or any of the ladies desire a lawyer to speak for you?”

  “No, Your Honor. If we had a lawyer the result would be the same, and we would just have to pay him, plus the fine. We don’t want a lawyer.”

  “Very well. You have collectively, and separately, been charged with prostitution. How do you plead?”

  “Yes, sir, Your Honor, we’re whorin’ all right. That’s what we do. You know that, ’cause we come here ever’ month.”

  “How do you plead?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  One of the other women leaned over and whispered to Lucy, and she nodded.

  “Oh,” she said. “I thought saying that we was whorin’ was all that was needed. But if you need a plead, why, we’re guilty, Your Honor. Ever’one of us is.”

  “Thank you,” Judge Dawes said. He looked toward the prosecutor. “Mr. Gillespie, are there any additional charges?”

  “No, Your Honor. The only charge is the charge of prostitution.”

  “Thank you,” Judge Dawes said. “Ladies, you have been charged, and have pled guilty to the offense of prostitution. I therefore find you guilty and sentence you to thirty days in prison, or a fine of ten dollars each. If you choose to pay the fine and walk out of here free, then you must settle with the bailiff.”

  Again Dawes slapped his gavel hard on the desk before him, and as he did so the ladies hurried over to the sheriff to pay their fines.

  “Next case,” the judge said.

  “Your Honor, comes now A.J. O’Dell. O’Dell is charged with stealing a horse,” Sheriff Poindexter said.

  A.J. O’Dell had been sitting in the front row, without restraints of any kind, enjoying, as were others in the gallery, what everyone called “the whore show.”

  When his case was called, he held up his hand.

  “That’s me, Your Honor. I’m A.J. O’Dell.”

  “I am told you turned yourself in,” Judge Dawes said.

  “Yeah, I did. I figured this was the best way to get attention to my problem.”

  “How do you plead, O’Dell?”

  “Can’t we talk about the problem I’m havin’ with Clyde Dumey first?”

  “How do you plead, Mr. O’Dell?”

  “Well, I did take a horse from Clyde Dumey,” O’Dell said. “But you can’t really say I stoled it, ’cause that horse ain’t worth no more’n a hundred and fifty dollars, and the son of a bitch owes me five hundred dollars for a seed bull and six cows that he bought and never paid for.”

  “Then you confess to stealing Mr. Dumey’s horse?”

  “I tole’ you judge, I didn’t steal it. I took it.”
/>   “That is the same thing as stealing.”

  “All right, maybe it is. I stoled his horse, but like I told you, he owes me five hundred dollars. Besides which, soon as I got his attention, I give him his horse back, so you can’t really say I stoled it. Now, Judge, since we’re talkin’ about this, what I’d like you to do is order Dumey to give me the money he owes me.”

  “Mr. O’Dell, you have confessed to stealing Mr. Dumey’s horse. That makes you a horse thief. A horse is a man’s most personal possession, and by committing the crime of separating a man from his horse, you must pay the maximum penalty prescribed by law. But before I proceed, I want it well understood by everyone in this court that you are pleading guilty to horse thievery.”

  “Yeah, Your Honor, I done told you, I plead guilty to takin’ his horse,” O’Dell said with a rather disdainful expression. “But it’s like I said. I did it to get his attention. If you’ll look on your record book, Judge, you’ll see that I filed me a complaint against Dumey for not payin’ me for that seed bull and the six heifers. That’s two months ago now, it was. You ain’t done nothin’ about it yet, ’cause you said your docket, or somethin’ like that, is full. And like I also said, I’ve done give him his horse back. He’s got his horse, but I still ain’t got my money. So what I’m hopin’, now that this has all come to your attention, is that you’ll make Dumey give me the money he owes me.”

  “I’m afraid, Mr. O’Dell, that you will no longer have need for the money.”

  “I won’t have no need for the money? What are you talkin’ about? Of course I got need for the money. I got bills to pay just like ever’one else.”

  “You will have no need for the money, Mr. O’Dell, because I am going to make an example of you. It is the sentence of this court that you are to be taken to the public gallows, and there, you will hang by the neck until you are dead.”

  “What?” O’Dell gasped. “What are you talkin’ about? You’re hangin’ me? Look here, Judge! You can’t do that! That’s no more than murder!”

  “Execution will be carried out at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Return the prisoner to his cell.”

  “Wait!” O’Dell shouted, no longer angry and belligerent, but now frightened and pleading. “Wait, please! No, don’t do this! I told you, I just borrowed his horse to make a point! Judge, I didn’t steal it! I told you! He’s got his horse back! I’m sorry, please, I’m . . .”

  O’Dell’s voice faded into the distance as the deputies dragged him away back to his cell.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Durango

  “No charge for these boots,” Murchison said. “No, sir, no charge at all.”

  “I’m perfectly willing to pay for them, Tim,” Falcon said. “I hate the idea of you doing all that work for nothing.”

  Murchison smiled. “I’m not doing it for nothing. Half the town took up a collection to give you a reward. I told them that I might be able to talk you into taking the boots, but was sure you wouldn’t want anything more than that.”

  Falcon chuckled. “All right, tell the town thanks,” Falcon said. He looked at the repaired boots Murchison gave him. “And thank you. You did a fine job, but then, you always do. Otherwise I wouldn’t ride this far to get them done.”

  Just outside Murchison’s shoe shop, there was a gathering of at least forty or fifty people standing around in front of the leather store. When Falcon emerged, they began to applaud. Falcon was embarrassed by the applause, but he smiled, nodded, and accepted it as graciously as he could.

  Behind the crowd passed the undertaker’s wagon. Drew’s body was on the wagon. He wasn’t in a coffin, or even in a shroud. He was lying facedown in the back of the wagon with one of his arms hanging over the tail end, his fingers barely clearing the ground.

  “There goes the son of a bitch toward the graveyard,” someone said. He spit on the ground as the wagon passed by.

  “Ponder don’t even have him in a coffin,” another said.

  “No sense in wasting good wood. Ponder is just going to dump his dead ass in a hole and let the worms have him.”

  In contrast to Amos Drew’s body, young Johnny Pollard had been put in a highly polished, silver-splashed, ebony coffin, and his coffin, in the back of a glass-sided hearse, was being taken down to the railroad depot. A weeping young woman was walking behind the hearse. This was Belle, the woman who had been in the room with Drew when Falcon knocked on the door.

  “Mr. Forsythe owns Twin Peaks, and he paid for the coffin,” Tim Murchison said. “Turns out Johnny is from Denver, so they’re sending his body back to his family.”

  “That’s a heck of a way to have to come home,” Falcon said. He swung into the saddle, then, with a wave toward the grateful citizens of Durango, rode on out of town.

  Sorrento

  There were over a hundred people standing around the gallows the next morning, drawn there for various reasons from a sense of horror and pity, to curiosity, to those who experienced a morbid enjoyment over watching someone else die. A few minutes earlier, the preacher had climbed up onto the podium to try to take advantage of a larger congregation than any he ever saw on a Sunday, but he was shouted down after only a few sentences.

  One entrepreneur moved through the crowd selling recently rendered cracklings and keg beer; the latter he was dispensing from a bucket. Denham told himself that as a newspaper man, he had to watch this, though he felt a sense of anger and despair over what was happening.

  “Here they come!” someone shouted, and all conversation stopped as everyone turned their eyes toward the jail. There were five men walking toward the gallows: Sheriff Poindexter in front, Deputy Sharp in the back, the prisoner, O’Dell, in the middle, flanked on either side by deputies. O’Dell’s hands were bound behind his back.

  As the small procession came to within sight of the gallows, surrounded by well over one hundred people, those who were waiting turned and craned their necks to get a better view. Sheriff Poindexter moved back and stood closer to O’Dell. Behind them rumbled an open box wagon containing the plain wooden coffin into which O’Dell’s body would be placed immediately after the hanging. The procession came right up to the edge of the crowd, where the deputy sheriffs with revolvers in hand shouted, “Make way.”

  When the procession reached the gallows, Sheriff Poindexter went up the steps first, followed by O’Dell, who was prodded along by two of the sheriff’s deputies. The preacher followed the deputies up the steps. The hangman was already on the platform, standing calmly, unobtrusively, to one side.

  As O’Dell stood there next to the dangling noose, a hush descended over the crowd. Then, one voice called out over all others.

  “Clear the way, folks! Clear the way so I can get a good picture!” This was from Phillip Simmons, the photographer.

  There were various exclamations from the crowd, such as: “They say all he done was steal a horse.”

  And, “Yes, and didn’t he give it back?”

  “What they hanging him for?”

  “I hear it’s to make a point.”

  “What point would that be?”

  “Don’t go borrowing horses, is what I’d say.”

  Mixed up with all this hubbub of voices, too, there were the whinnying of horses, the barking of dogs, and, from somewhere down the street, the crying of a baby.

  Harold Denham thought about that, considering that the last memory to be impressed upon the brain of A.J. O’Dell would be the crying of a baby. He couldn’t help but make the analogy of an entire lifetime encapsulated in but a moment . . . from a baby’s cry to a man’s last breath.

  The Reverend Charles Landers stepped up beside the prisoner.

  “Would you like me to pray with you, my son?”

  “I’ll be sayin’ my own prayers, preacher,” O’Dell said.

  “Then I’ll be takin’ this opportunity to say a few words to the souls who are gathered here to watch your final departure from this earth.”

  “Yeah, you do that.”<
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  Opening his Bible, the Reverend Charles Landers read for fully ten minutes, no doubt making up for having been shouted off the gallows half an hour earlier. His reading was punctured by the shouts of Thomas Rafferty, the vendor selling the cracklings and beer.

  “Cracklin’s here! Cracklin’s here! Get your hot cracklin’s and cold beer here!”

  After Pastor Landers finished with his reading, he prayed for another ten minutes, often punctuating his prayer with the remark that, “O Lord, in another minute this poor sinner will be launched into eternity. This, O Lord, is a sad and mournful occasion. Thou art about to take one from our midst.”

  Then he shouted out to the crowd so all would hear him: “This man, convicted of a crime, is standing on the line of time and eternity, his immortal soul to face final judgment. You would do well to mark this moment, for it is a moment that we all must face. Every man, woman, and child here present will one day face that final judgment.”

  “Mama!” a young, frightened voice called out. “Does that mean we are all going to hang?”

  Nervous laughter greeted the boy’s question.

  Throughout the long, and seemingly interminable fifteen minutes, O’Dell maintained his composure, though once or twice during the prayer his knees were seen to shake.

  “Looks to me like O’Dell is holdin’ up pretty well.”

  “Yeah? Well, his knees is a wobblin’ some.”

  “Wouldn’t your knees wobble if you was about to be hung?”

  When the prayer was finally over, the sheriff stepped up to the condemned man and said, “Mr. O’Dell, do you have any last words you wish to say?”

  There were one or two shouts from the crowed, imploring O’Dell to make a speech. But there were many others who shouted, “Hang him and get it over with! Don’t keep us standing out here in the sun all day!”

  “Yeah, there’s a lot I’d like to say. About how this ain’t right, that there’s no way I should be standing here about to hang for no more than taking a man’s horse, which I give back to him.”