Whit sat on a crude chair in Wilferd Butterbean’s small front room. Wil was handling a large stout rope as if it were a snake, twirling it around and wrapping a length of it in tight spirals around the neck of the bitter end.
“Wil, you do that knot real good,” Whit said.
“It’s an art.”
“Gives me the willies,” Whit said.
“You got to make the loops strong enough and tight enough to hold as the knot under the criminal’s ear snaps the neck. Just like a twig.”
Whit shivered with a cold chill up his spine.
Butterbean, a burly, thick-necked man in his mid-forties, pulled the loops tight from end to end. He made sure the loop could be tightened around the neck of the man to be hanged. He wore a gray shirt with no collar and thin duck pants, a pair of lace-up work boots. He sweated profusely.
Whit, in his twenties, was a wan-faced youth with freckles on his face, towheaded, with sprigs of hair that stuck out form his scalp at all angles. He had small tight lips and a button nose that made him look like a boy in his teens.
Butterbean finished the hangman’s knot and dropped the rope to the floor. He patted the balding spot in the center of his skull, then fluffed the blond hair that grew long on both sides of his head.
“What you want anyways, Whit?”
“Oh, I darn near forgot, Wil,” Whit said. “Do you want me to feed the prisoner any grub before you hang him this afternoon?”
Butterbean thought about it for a second or two.
“No need,” he said. “But as long as you’re here, you can help me take down that one I hanged yesterday. He’s probably startin’ to get ripe.”
“Jesus,” Whit said. “What are you going to do with him?”
“We got to load his corpse in a cart and haul him outside of town.”
“Then what?” Whit asked.
“We’ll find a butte some distance and pile talus atop him. Ground’s too damned hard to dig him a hole.”
“I reckon I can help you since I don’t have to take any grub over to the jail for Hornaday.”
“They’s a cart out back, like one of them Japanese rickshaws. You step into the braces and pull it. I’ll push if need be.”
“You ready now, Wil?” Whit asked.
“Yep. I want to keep that rope I hung around Devlin’s neck yesterday. No use a-wastin’ it.”
“How come you don’t use that rope for Hornaday, Wil?”
“I like a fresh rope. I’ll wash that other one and retie it when the time comes.”
“You like this kind of work, Wil?” Whit stood up and brushed off his trousers, which were clotted with dust.
“I don’t mind it,” Butterbean said. “It’s a thrill when I hear them neck bones crack and know I tied a good knot.”
Whit shivered again.
The two walked out of the hut and around back, where there was a small two-wheeled cart with an enclosed square of handles. Whit stepped inside the square and lifted the front bar.
“It is a little old rickshaw,” Whit said.
“Easy to pull right now,” Butterbean said.
The two walked to the main street of Deadfall and to the gallows. The wood used to build it had seasoned, but there was the smell of death all around it.
Harlan Devlin hung there, his feet drooping about a foot and a half below the trapdoor.
“You just wait here by the corpse,” Butterbean said.
Whit pinched his nostrils to shut off the smell of decaying flesh.
Butterbean climbed the stairs and pulled on the rope around Devlin’s neck.
He grunted as he pulled the body up through the sprung trapdoor. Then he laid Devlin’s body out flat on the deck and began to loosen the knot. He slipped the noose over the dead man’s head and then reached up to untie the rope from the overhead rafter. It took him several minutes to loosen the three knots that held the loose end of the rope in place. He coiled up the rope and set it near the steps.
“I’m going to drop him over the side of the platform, Whit. Move that cart out of the way and step aside.”
Whit moved the cart and stood well away from the platform.
Butterbean leaned down and felt the back of Devlin’s neck. There was a decided crook in it where the spine had broken. Satisfied, he rolled the body over to the edge of the platform, then pushed it off the side.
The corpse landed with a thud, kicking up puffs of dust.
There was the sound of a crack as Devlin’s head hit the ground.
“Broke his neck again, by gosh,” Butterbean said.
Whit looked at the dead man’s face. There was a little blood at the corners of his lips. His face was colorless, bland as week-old bread dough, and his eyes stared into nothingness as flies clotted the moisture, feeding on fluids. Whit turned away and gagged.
Butterbean walked down the steps, holding on to the two-by-four railing for support.
“You grab his feet and I’ll lift his shoulders, Whit. Then, we’ll dump him into the cart.”
Whit did as he was told. He could no longer look at Devlin’s face, but held his gaze to his dusty boots.
“You don’t put a hood on the men you hang, do you, Wil?”
The two dropped the body into the cart. The cart creaked from the weight of its load.
“I’ll pick up my rope on the way back and reset that trapdoor. Maybe oil the mechanism before I drop Hornaday this afternoon.”
“Sure,” Whit said, and stepped into the square rig of the cart.
“Just head up Main Street and I’ll spell you if you get tired,” Butterbean said.
Whit pushed on the front bar and the cart started to roll. Butterbean walked beside him. People along the street stared at them and he saw faces in the windows. They passed Mrs. Hobbs’s boardinghouse, the Wild Horse Saloon, and the Deadfall Hotel, and cleared the town a few minutes later.
Wil avoided the ruts left by lumber and supply wagons that rolled in from Flagstaff every so often. They walked in drenching sunlight toward several buttes of varying sizes.
Butterbean kept looking back to gauge the distance from the edge of town.
They passed two buttes, rounded one of them, and headed for two smaller ones, Butterbean in the lead.
“They’s a good one yonder. I think they’s some bones under that talus from previous lynchings,” Butterbean said.
Whit puffed as the load became heavier and the strain on his back grew stronger.
“You tired, Whit?” Butterbean asked.
“Plumb,” Whit said.
“Set ’er down and I’ll pull the cart the rest of the way,” Butterbean said.
Whit halted and dropped the bar. He stepped out of the square. Butterbean stepped in and lifted the bar. He walked toward the small butte with piles of rocks along its bottom edge.
“A perfect burial place,” he said as they came close to the massive rock face of the butte.
“I’m glad we don’t have to dig him a grave,” Whit said.
They hefted Devlin’s body from the cart and carried it to the bottom of the butte. Butterbean kicked away a few stones and then stooped to pick up two loose ones nearby.
“Cover him up with rocks, Whit,” Butterbean said. “Completely.”
“Yes sir,” Whit said.
The two began to pile rocks over the stiff body.
“He sure stinks,” Whit said.
“When a man dies,” Butterbean said, “there’s a muscle in his asshole that loosens up. Devlin took a dump when his neck bone snapped.”
“Christ. Yeah, I can smell his shit.”
“Something you get used to when you’re a hangman,” Butterbean said.
“How do you stand it, Wil?” Whit asked.
“I ignore the smells,” Butterbean said. He began to throw more rocks on those already covering the body until it disappeared.
“Keep chunking rocks on this here grave,” Butterbean said. “Might keep the coyotes off, might not. But them rocks will turn hot in the sun and make the body decompose faster.”
“Horrible,” Whit said. “I mean Devlin should be alive, you ask me.”
“What do you mean?” Butterbean asked.
“I mean if you think he and Hornaday stole that broken-down old horse, you got to be stone blind,” Whit said.
“You better not say that in town,” Butterbean said. He was short of breath from the effort of tossing stones on the hanged man’s grave.
“Hell, everybody knows that was a put-up job, arresting those two men for stealing a horse.”
Butterbean stood up.
“Whit, you want some advice? Keep such thoughts to yourself. If Canby got word that you were saying those men weren’t guilty, you’d be dead meat.”
“Hell, I can’t help what I think,” Whit said.
“No, but you can sure as hell keep your mouth shut.”
“Somebody ought to do something about this,” Whit said. “It—it’s an injustice.”
Butterbean leaned down and threw another rock on top of the pile. It was now at least two feet high and there was no trace of Devlin’s corpse.
“If you’re lookin’ for justice in Deadfall, sonny, you’re in the wrong place. Canby’s the law there and you better not buck him if you want to stay alive and keep your skin.”
Whit threw another rock on the pile. Butterbean grabbed his arm.
“That’s enough,” he said. “Enough stones, enough talk. Let’s head back to town.”
The two walked away from the crude grave.
Then Butterbean looked up at the far buttes all shining in the sun, all flowing into the distance like stone ships on a sand sea.
He shaded his eyes with his hand and pushed the flap of his hat brim back away from his face.
Whit looked up, too.
He saw puffs of white smoke rising from one of the bluffs. When he turned his head, he saw other cloudlets of smoke. Puff, puff, puff.
“What’s that about?” Whit asked.
“’Paches,” Butterbean said under his breath. “They’re talkin’ to each other.”
“What does it mean?”
“I dunno. I don’t read smoke signals, but them Apaches are up to no good. You can bet on that.”
“Huh?” Whit said, bewildered. Some of the smoke puffs were close together and some were spaced out from different buttes.
“We’d better skedaddle,” Butterbean said. “I got to tell Canby about this.”
“What do you make of it, Wil?” Whit asked.
Butterbean picked up the handle of the cart and started walking at a brisk pace toward Deadfall.
“Them Apaches are sure as hell aimin’ to do something that ain’t good,” Butterbean said.
As Whit walked along beside Butterbean, he looked back at the smoke signals. There were several of them and they were far apart, rising from different bluffs.
Then fear struck him. The Apaches were invisible, but he knew they were out there. And they were planning something. He was sure of that. Even in the rising heat of morning, he felt a cold chill steal over his body.
He kept pace with Butterbean.
And they were both in a hurry to get back into the sheltered valley, where they could feel safe.