The Backstabbers Read online

  Red used his fork to toy with the beef on his plate and then said without looking up, “Did Leah plug him?”

  “Plug whom?” the woman said. Her beautiful face was defensive.

  “Palmer, that’s whom. He took a couple of barrels of buckshot in the back.”

  Luna Talbot fought a small battle with herself and then sighed. “Palmer tried to blackmail me. He planned to hold my uncle’s body for ransom and tried to recruit Leah in his plan. When she refused, he went for his gun and she shot him.”

  “And then she set Palmer and the whole damn town on fire,” Buttons said. “Why did she do that, I wonder?”

  Luna shrugged. “It was a ghost town. It won’t be missed, and neither will Solomon Palmer. Besides all that, some things are better kept from the law.”

  “Like evidence,” Red said

  Luna smiled. “Now you’re being picky, Mr. Shotgun Man. Leah was involved in a justified shooting, and I don’t think a jury would see it any other way.”

  “Why was the little gal there in the first place?” Buttons said. “Good beef, by the way.”

  “Thank you. My cook, her name is Bessie Foley, was once a top chef in New Orleans,” Luna said. “As for Leah, she was in Cottondale to make sure that Solomon Palmer did as he was paid to do—find a suitable coffin for Uncle Morgan and put him on the stage. But, as I already told you, he had other plans. Ah, here is Bessie with the pie. I guarantee that it’s the best you’ve ever tasted.”

  And it was. And after it was eaten, Luna Talbot went to hang a man.

  * * *

  Red and Buttons left the house and stood out front in the waning day. From horizon to horizon the sky was a uniform crimson, like a roof of fire over the world. Singly and in pairs, the women drifted toward the barn, walking in a strange, glowing light. No one talked. The only sound was the dry whisper of the desert wind.

  “Red, you think she’ll go through with it, her being such a nice lady an’ all?” Buttons said.

  “I don’t think Luna Talbot is such a nice lady. She said she’ll hang a man, and I reckon she will.” Red drew deep on his cigarette and slowly exhaled blue smoke. “What’s in the coffin, Buttons? A stiff . . . or something else?”

  “It was heavy,” Buttons said. “It can only be Uncle Morgan.”

  “Maybe he’s got pockets in his shroud.”

  “Holding what?” Buttons said.

  “Hell if I know,” Red said. “You want to go watch a hanging?”

  “Last one we saw put me off hangings forever. I never did get over it.”

  Red said. “That was Big Bill Yearly’s necktie party up Abilene way,” he said. “As I recollect, we were there for the free beer.”

  “And do you recollect that the damn noose took his head clean off? It was a sight no Christian man should see.”

  “I reckon Bill dressed out at around three hundred pounds, and there was the root of the trouble. They should’ve used a thicker rope or a shorter fall.”

  “Big Bill was a nuisance right up to the very end, wasn’t he?” Buttons said.

  Red nodded. “Yeah, that’s why they hung him, for being such a damned nuisance, getting drunk all the time.”

  “And for stealing chickens,” Buttons said. “He did a lot of that, as I recall.”

  “I wonder what this one is being stretched for.”

  Buttons took in a deep breath, let it out in a rush, and then said, “I guess we should go find out, huh? It’s kinda like a civic duty, ain’t it?”

  Red shrugged. “You could say that, but if you’d rather sit this one out, I’ll understand.”

  “Nah, I’ll go,” Buttons said. “Anyhow, I don’t think Mrs. Talbot will do it. Maybe she just wants to put the fear of God into the feller.”

  “Could be. I never saw a bunch of women hang a man before. Have you?”

  “No, I never have. But one time in a Fort Worth cathouse I seen four whores beat a pimp to a bloody pulp, but he was a pissant pimp and they was big, healthy whores.”

  “Not the same as a hanging, is it?” Red’s eyes were drawn to a small, flat-roofed outbuilding where Leah Leighton and two other women, all three with shotguns, prodded a man out of the doorway. “Buttons, let’s go see what’s happening.”

  Red’s plug hat sat square on his head, making dark shadows of his eyes, and his holstered Colt hung on his hip. A tall, significant man, he walked with the easy confidence gun skill brings.

  Leah greeted him with neither enthusiasm nor hostility. “This is no place for you, shotgun man.”

  “I came to see your prisoner,” Red said. “Nine times out often when I see a man who’s about to be hung, he’s a friend of mine.”

  “Well, is he?” Leah said.

  The condemned man was stocky, of medium height with the arrogant look of the bully about him. His hands and feet were shackled with clanking irons that forced him to walk with small, mincing steps. His face was bruised, one eye closed shut, his bottom lip split.

  Red shook his head. “No, I don’t know him.”

  “No surprise there,” Leah said. “This animal has no friends.”

  He managed a thin smile. “You know that for sure, huh?”

  “Damn right I do,” Leah said. “His name is Barnaby Leighton, and a nightmare ago he was my husband, or what passed for one. Now, give us the road.”

  Red’s face registered shocked surprise as the man said, “Help me, mister. These bitches are set on hanging me.”

  Leah and the others brushed past, and the man turned his head to Red and yelled, “Help me, damnit! Help me.”

  Red didn’t speak. Leah Leighton was about to hang her husband, and there was nothing to say and nothing he could do about it, short of drawing down on the woman and ordering her to stop.

  Button Muldoon’s thin whisper in his ear predicted the likely result of that play. “Red, back away or you’ll get your fool head blown off.”

  “He’s nothing to me, but she’s got to have a mighty good reason for hanging a man. Because he’s her husband ain’t one of them.”

  “I reckon many a woman would hang her husband if she could,” Buttons said. “Sometimes just being his wife is reason enough.”

  “Strange talk coming from a confirmed bachelor.” Red kept his eyes on the solemn procession making its way toward the barn where lamps glowed orange in the strange amber light.

  “Women confide in a stage driver,” Buttons said. “They tell him their darkest secrets. Why, I’ve given marriage advice to farm wives, army wives, miner wives, merchant wives, railroader wives . . . all kinds of wives. What I mean is, after hearing all that wife talk, you can bet that I believe Leah Leighton has a mighty good reason to hang her husband.”

  Red’s aborning smile faded instantly as a terrified shriek from the barn shattered the hush of the evening. “Seems like ol’ Barnaby didn’t think they’d really hang him. Now he knows different.”

  “We should stop right here where we’re at,” Buttons said. “We don’t need to watch it.”

  “That’s fine by me.” Red looked around and smiled. “Where’s the free beer?”

  Barnaby shrieked yet another plea for mercy. He choked a little, as though the rope was now around his neck.

  Buttons, the bloody decapitation of Bill Yearly vivid in his memory, scowled and yelled in the direction of the barn. “Goddamn it, if you’re gonna do it, then do it. Hang the sidewinder and get it over with.”

  “Steady, old fellow. We’ve got no hand in this.”

  All things considered, Barnaby Leighton did not die well.

  Between cursing threats directed at his wife, he screamed and begged and screamed again. A long minute ticked past. And then another. The man’s rants choked off, leaving a sudden silence as fragile as spun glass.

  A horse snorted and kicked in its stall,

  And Buttons Muldoon’s stored-up breath hissed out of him. “A helluva way to kill a man. Hanging from a barn rafter ain’t a quick death.”

  Red nod
ded. “Seems like.” His hands shook as he built and lit a cigarette. Around him the scarlet sky faded, and the day shaded into darkness and a lantern bobbed in the gloom like a firefly as a woman strode purposely toward him and Buttons.

  Luna Talbot stood directly in front of Buttons and said, “He’s dead. The world is rid of his vile shadow.”

  “We heard,” Buttons said.

  “Barnabas Leighton lived like a pig . . . and he died like a pig,” the woman said.

  “Bad luck to speak ill of the dead, Mrs. Talbot,” Buttons said.

  “There’s no other way to speak of him,” Luna said. “Come into the house. I need a drink. You too, shotgun man.”

  “I think me and Red should be on our way,” Buttons said. “Got a long road ahead of us to El Paso.”

  “In this country, in the dark, you’ll have a busted axle before you travel a mile. No, you can stay the night,” Luna said. “There’s a room in the bunkhouse we keep for male visitors that’s comfortable enough. It has a good roof. You can bed down there.”

  Buttons looked doubtful and turned to Red.

  “The lady has a point. Buttons, you know the country to the north of here. It’s a hard way and rocky. As she says, we could bust an axle or break a wheel or lame a horse. Best we leave at first light.”

  “Make up your minds, gentlemen,” Luna said. “I’ve invited you in for a drink. I won’t ask a second time.”

  “All right. I guess I could use a whiskey,” Buttons said. “Or two.”

  “Mr. Muldoon . . . that is your name, right?” Luna said.

  “Man and boy,” Buttons said.

  “Then believe me when I tell you that Barnabas Leighton needed hanging,” the woman said. “Some men don’t deserve to live, and he was one of them.”

  “Tell me about it,” Buttons said. “I heard him die . . . and I’d like to know the why of the thing.”

  “Come inside,” Luna said. “I’ll tell you about Barnabas. . . if you can handle it.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Luna Talbot sat in lamplight, and Red Ryan again wondered at her striking beauty, her abundant auburn hair, dark eyes and wide, expressive mouth. She was mysterious, a woman with a story to tell . . . and, as she’d so recently proved, quite ruthless. He imagined that it would be easy to fall in love with her, but difficult to keep her.

  And that night Luna did have a story to tell . . . but it was the story of Leah Leighton, not her own.

  “Barnabas Leighton swept Leah off her feet with his honeyed words and his free-spending ways,” she said. “She was an orphan and had lived with two foster families in Kansas, one that abused her and treated her as a slave, the other, a preacher and his constantly ailing wife. They had pretty much ignored her except to feed her a diet of prune juice and scripture. She saw Barnabas as her salvation and married him shortly after she turned fourteen.”

  “Young,” Button said, “for marriage and birthin’ babies.”

  “Yes, too young,” Luna said. “But Leah couldn’t give Barnabas a baby and he hated her for it. Made him feel less of a man, I guess. After they were married two years, he decided to try his hand at farming, grow wheat or corn or whatever, but when he failed at that, he started to drink heavily and began to beat her.” Whiskey glowed amber in the crystal glass in Luna’s hand. “Pretty soon it became a daily occurrence.”

  “I don’t hold with that, a man beating his wife,” Buttons said. “Red, you recollect Jim Poor that time?”

  “Buttons, you pounded Jim Poor because he beat a dog.”

  “Yeah, but a man who beats a dog will beat a woman,” Buttons said. “That’s a law of human nature and it’s wrote down somewhere.” He said to Luna, “So, what happened next?”

  “Luna ran away. I mean, she ran across the Kansas prairie for several days, saw Indians a time or two, she says, and then when she’d no run left in her, more dead than alive, she was rescued by a couple of punchers and was nursed back to health at their ranch. Leah says the spread was the Lazy-J and she’ll never forget their kindness.”

  “And then she came here,” Buttons said.

  “Not quite,” Luna said. “Barnabas was hunting her, and Leah wanted to stay a step ahead of him and ended up selling it at the Gentlemen’s Club cathouse in Austin. Yes, Mr. Muldoon, she became a whore. Does that offend you?”

  Buttons smiled. “The only thing that offends me is a wheeler hoss that won’t pull his weight. How about you Red?”

  “I’ve known a lot of whores and liked all of them just fine,” Red said. “Well, except maybe the El Paso whores. They’re a tough bunch, always on the prod, and they’re mighty fond of derringers.”

  “And it was then that Leah ended up here, huh?” Buttons said.

  “Bessie Foley brought her here,” Luna said.

  “Your cook?”

  “Yes. Bessie killed a Cajun man in New Orleans. Shot him six times with a pepperbox revolver for cheating on her. She was sentenced to twenty years of penal servitude at a female prison farm in a Louisiana swamp, served three years, and then escaped. She ended up in Austin, cooking for the gents that used the Gentlemen’s Club.”

  “How did Bessie hear about you?” Buttons said.

  “We had a girl here, a reformed soiled dove, who called herself Ora Blake. Ora tried hard but couldn’t take to ranch life and went back to her old ways. She met Bessie in Austin and told her about the Talbot ranch.”

  “And Bessie told Leah,” Buttons said. “Small world, ain’t it?”

  “Yes, small world. Leah and Bessie talked it over and made the decision to come here.”

  “And Barnabas Leighton found out and followed them to your spread, so you strung him up,” Red said.

  “Yes. He tried to force Leah to leave with him, and he could have talked, stated his case, told her he’d changed, but he didn’t. He made the mistake of pulling a gun,” Luna said. “I shot it out of his hand. I don’t know if you noticed, but Barnabas was missing his right thumb and trigger finger. A poorly aimed .45 bullet will do that.”

  “I didn’t notice, but I know what a bullet can do,” Red said.

  “The shooting was two weeks ago. Better for him if Barnabas had bled to death instead of dying yellow like the woman-beating coward he was.”

  Red picked up the decanter, poured himself more whiskey, and said, “Why do women like Leah and Bessie come to your ranch, Luna?” He smiled. “Is it for the grub, or do they just like cattle?”

  “I provide a refuge,” Luna said. “If a woman is in despair and has nowhere else to turn, I want her to turn to me and the Talbot ranch. Here she can learn the cattle business, earn her thirty a month, and once again hold her head high. The women who come here are broken and I help mend them. I said help, mind you. Each woman must do most of the mending herself.”

  “And you teach her how to use a gun,” Red said.

  “We live on the frontier, Mr. Ryan, where gun skills are a necessity. All the hands on the Talbot can shoot, and they ride for the brand.”

  Red didn’t know it then, but future violent events would prove that statement wrong. All but one of the Talbot women rode for the brand . . . her loyalties lay elsewhere.

  Buttons said, “How did you get started in the refuge business, Mrs. Talbot, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “I have things to do tonight, Mr. Muldoon, so I’ll make my answer short,” Luna said. “My husband was a deputy for Judge Isaac Parker’s court until he was murdered in the Indian Territory by a half-breed scoundrel called John Long. That was four years ago. Peter Talbot was a good man and a fine husband, and we had six wonderful years together before he died. I was suddenly a widow with few living relatives, forced to live on my husband’s meager savings. I can’t say I lived, but I survived, hungry most of the time, in Fort Smith for six months and then my uncle—”

  “Morgan Ford,” Buttons said.

  “Yes, he heard of my plight and loaned me enough money that I could buy this place.” Luna said. “Then, it was
a run-down spread held together by string and baling wire, and I got it cheap. The first two years were hard, but I made a go of it and then had the idea of hiring women who were in the same dire straits as I’d been.” The woman smiled and rose from her chair. “Now, I really must go. Please excuse me, gentlemen.”

  As he and Red got to their feet, Buttons said, “Whatever happened to that John Long ranny?”

  “One of Judge Parker’s deputies told me Long died of consumption six months after he killed my husband,” Luna said. “He’d been arrested and convicted but passed away the day before he was due to meet the hangman.”

  “Well, that’s just too bad,” Buttons said. “He cheated justice.”

  “Perhaps his consumption was God’s justice,” Luna said. “I like to think that was the case.”

  “Amen,” Buttons said with unusual piety.

  Red said nothing, his eyes fixed on the window.

  Outside, dozens of candles glowed in the darkness, their flames guttering in the wind.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  After Luna Talbot left, Red followed her outside. He walked onto the porch as the woman joined the dozen others who stood in the yard, candles in their hands. Morgan Ford’s coffin lay on the ground among them, then, at a motion from Luna, six of the women picked it up by the handles and walked slowly toward the barn. The others followed in slow and solemn procession. No one spoke.

  “Notice something, Buttons?” Red asked when the driver stepped beside him.

  “Yeah, it’s a burying.”

  “Look at the coffin lid.”

  Buttons peered into the gloom and shook his head. “Too dark. I can’t see it.”

  “They opened the coffin. And didn’t put the lid back on properly. It’s about an inch open on one side. Strange that, don’t you think?”

  “So, Luna Talbot wanted to take a last look at the face of her loved one,” Buttons said. “Some folks do that, but I don’t know why.’

  “Or besides Uncle Morgan, there was something in the coffin she wanted.”

  “Treasure? Money?” Buttons said.

  “Maybe both.”

  “The coffin was heavy.”