CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Doña Maria Ana complained about the smallness of her room, the view from the window or lack thereof, the firmness of her mattress, and the clumsiness of her lady’s maid, an unsmiling peasant girl named Yolanda.
Kate Kerrigan was not well known for her patience, but she made a valiant effort to placate the woman and even sent Nora to help prepare Maria Ana for bed. Nora was about to make the eighty-eighth stroke with a hairbrush of the hundred Maria Ana demanded, when the alarm was raised. Someone pounded on the front door and men’s voices were raised.
A shot.
Then silence.
Kate ignored the pain in her shoulder and hurried into her dressing gown and slippers.
As she took to the stairs Maria Ana leaned over the balcony and called out, “What’s amiss, Kate? Mon Dieu, que se passetil?”
Kate didn’t slow her pace. “I don’t know what’s happening, but I intend to find out.”
“Wait. I’ll come with you,” Maria Ana said.
Kate had reached the foyer and yelled, “No! Stay where you are.”
But Maria Ana had already run into her bedroom. Kate opened the door and stepped outside.
Shorty Hawkins greeted her with, “The barn!” and then he sprinted in that direction.
“Shorty, wait!” Kate said, but the puncher had already vanished inside the stable where lamps were being lit.
Kate hurried to the barn and walked inside . . . into the scene of a murder and a shooting, lit by tawny lamplight. She took it all in at a glance.
Dunk Jefferson lay on his belly near his horse’s stall, the silver and bone handle of a knife sticking out from between his shoulder blades. The man’s head was turned and the frothy blood that filled his mouth told Kate that he was dead. A few feet away, a young Mexican peon, dressed in a white shirt and pants, huarache sandals on his feet, moaned as he tried to stem the flow of blood from a wound in his right thigh.
Frank saw Kate and stepped beside her. “The Mexican’s name is Francisco Garcia and we found these on him.” He showed Kate what he held in his hands—Jefferson’s watch, a silver Masonic ring, and a leather wallet. “There’s thirty-six dollars in the wallet. Ain’t much to show for a man’s life.”
“Isn’t,” Kate said absently. “Did you shoot the Mexican, Frank?”
Frank shook his head. “No.” He nodded to the tall, elegant Rodolfo Aragon. “He did. Says he caught Garcia in the act, or almost. The thief was trying to make his escape when Aragon plugged him.”
“Why was Aragon here?” Kate said.
“He never gets very far from Doña Maria Ana and he was poking around, making sure she was safe.”
“I’ll talk with him,” Kate said.
“He ain’t much of a one for talking, Kate.”
“He’ll talk to me. He’d better.”
Aragon politely bowed his head when Kate approached him. “Señora.” The pistolero was tall and slender and distant, a handsome, cold-natured man with more than his share of Spanish hidalgo pride.
“Did you witness the murder?” Kate said.
“No. I saw what happened afterward,” Aragon said.
“Please explain.”
“When I walked into this”—he waved a hand, taking in the barn—“granero, the peon was trying to retrieve his knife from the dead man’s back, but the blade was stuck in the backbone and he couldn’t pull it free.”
“And then he tried to escape?”
“Yes, he tried to escape and I stopped him. I had no need to kill him. The peon was no threat to me.”
“Then he is guilty of murder and robbery,” Kate said.
“Clearly,” Aragon said.
Frank Cobb looked worried. “This is bad, real bad. How do we play it, Kate?”
“We play it according to the law.”
“What law?”
“On this ranch, my law, Frank.”
“So where does that take us?”
“The Mexican is guilty of coldblooded murder and robbery on my property. Frank, my course is clear. I must hang him.”
“Or keep him for the Rangers.”
Kate shook her head. “And when would a Ranger pass this way?”
“I don’t know. It could be quite a spell.”
“Then it falls on me to deal with him.”
“Kate, that won’t be necessary.”
Kate turned at the new voice. Around her the ranch hands stared open-mouthed at Maria Ana. Apart from a few errant strands that blew across her face in the breeze, her hair rippled over the shoulders of her black velvet robe and at that moment she looked as dark and beautiful and vengeful as a fallen angel.
“Kate, this pig is my servant, and it is I who will deal with him,” Maria Ana said. “I brought him here, and this outrage is my fault. He has disgraced the house of Villa de Villar del Aguilla, and I don’t want his blood on your hands. Let it be on mine.”
“Maria Ana, you’re not to blame for what happened,” Kate said.
“It was I who brought the murderer Francisco Garcia to your home. Yes, the blame is mine.” The doña said to Aragon, “Rodolfo, go find Padre Daniel and bring him to me. He will hear Garcia’s confession and give him absolution. I will not damn a man to hell with a mortal sin on his soul.”
After Aragon left, the condemned man dragged himself to Kate, clutched the hem of her robe, and with tears in his eyes sobbed, “Misericord, señora, misericord por Francisco.”
Kate looked at Frank, confused, her eyes asking a question. He begs for mercy. What do I tell him?
Frank said, “Doña Maria Ana is right, Kate. Allow the Mexicans to deal with their own.”
Maria Ana, her beautiful face expressionless, said, “Listen to your segundo, Kate. This man begs for mercy when there can be no mercy. What mercy did he show to the Americano?” She uttered something in rapid Spanish to Garcia and then explained to Kate. “I told him he sold his soul for a nickel watch and a few dollars and that he is a treacherous dog who has shamed me and the house of Aguilla. For that he must die.”
Kate thought she saw a way out of a hanging. “Take him back to Mexico, Maria Ana. Let Don Pedro deal with him.”
“Don Pedro? And isn’t he as much of a rogue as this one? How can I expect justice there? No, Francisco Garcia has disgraced me and he must pay the price. There is no more to be said.”
Aragon returned with a bent and ancient priest who had a black rosary in his hands and a haunted expression on his lined face. Behind the padre walked four sturdy peons, one of them with a noosed rope coiled around his shoulder. Outside in the darkness the wails of mourning women had already begun.
Now that he faced the inevitable, Garcia found courage and dragged himself to a dark corner of the barn, where he confessed his sins to the priest in a low, sobbing whisper. Adding to the tense atmosphere, a high wind picked up and sighed around the barn. Kate crossed herself, struck by the thought that Santa Muerte, the Angel of Death, was mourning Dunk Jefferson, her lethal protégé. Even Frank Cobb seemed uneasy. Half of the ranch hands had already returned to the bunkhouse; the rest were strangely quiet. Gabe Dancer had hurried to the barn when he heard the shot, but he hung back in the shadows and said nothing.
The priest said the words of absolution in the Latin tongue that nobody but him understood and made the sign of the cross over the trembling, sobbing killer.
“Kate,” Maria Ana said, “this man tries to evade justice and is not dying well. There’s no reason why you should remain.”
“This is my ranch. My guest was murdered. It’s my duty to see it through to the end,” Kate said.
“Very well.” Maria Ana turned to Aragon and said in Spanish, “Cuelgalo.”
Hang him.
The peon with the rope tossed the noose over a beam and a couple others went for Garcia, who had his back to the barn wall, terrified, saliva stringing from his chin. Outside, the lamenting of his women—wife, mother, sisters—grew in volume and the wailing wind kept up its death song.
“Misericord, mi señora,” Garcia whimpered, dragging himself across the barn floor to Maria Ana. Tears stained his face. “Misericord . . . misericord . . .”
As unmoving as a pillar, Maria Ana looked down at the man, her face hard. She said nothing.
“Damn it. Get it over with,” Frank Cobb said in almost a yell. “Do what you have to do!”
Blam! Blam! Blam!
The racketing roar of three shots fired very fast reverberated through the livery and .44-40 bullets tore great holes in Francisco Garcia’s skinny chest and belly. As scared horses whinnied and kicked at their stalls, the impact of the rounds bounced the man around, flopping him this way and that like a ragdoll. Then he rolled onto his back and lay unmoving.
For a moment time stood still, everyone in the barn frozen in place like so many statues.
Then Aragon’s hand dropped for his gun and Gabe Dancer yelled, “I wouldn’t try it, sonny.” The muzzle of his smoking Henry was pointed right at the shootist’s belly. “I swear, ol’ Cyclops, I can drill you square from here.”
Colt in his hand, Frank swung on Dancer. “Why the hell did you do that?”
“Is he dead?” the old man said.
“Hell, you shot him three times with a .44-40. Son of a bitch is as dead as he’s ever gonna be.”
“Then it’s well. I won’t see a man hang,” Dancer said. “Seen it once afore, a black feller lynched in a barn up Kansas way. By my watch, it took him twenty minutes to die, choking and kicking and soiling himself the whole time. As long as I live, I ain’t never gonna see it again or let it happen.”
Dancer’s eyes moved from Frank back to Aragon, racked the lever of his rifle, and said to the Mexican, “Well, sonny, is this thing over or do you want to open the ball and we’ll have us a hootenanny?”
Aragon seemed uncertain, but he might have gone for it had not Kate intervened. Her temper searing hot, she yelled, “Damn! Damn all of you! I’ll hang the next man who shoots a gun in my presence. Maria Ana, call off your dog.”
“Rodolfo, the murderer is dead and it’s finished. Kate, I am sorry I brought these terrible events down on you.”
Kate could not find the words to respond. Taking a deep breath, she finally said, “Frank, you and the hands remove the bodies. Get them out of my barn and out of my sight. We’ll bury them at first light.” Then to Gabe Dancer, “I’ll think about you and what you did here tonight, mister.”
“Hanging or shooting, the result is the same, Mrs. Kerrigan, except a bullet is cleaner,” Dancer said.
“That was for me to decide, Mr. Dancer. Not you,” Kate said.
“Did I do wrong, Your Excellency?” Dancer said to Maria Ana. “What’s your opinion on it?”
“If this had happened at my husband’s hacienda, he would have hanged you alongside Garcia, Mr. Dancer,” Maria Ana said. “On his own land, Don Pedro—he alone—is judge, jury, and executioner.”
“But you, Your Highness . . . what would you do if this was your own land?” Dancer said.
Maria Ana waited until Dunk Jefferson’s body was carried past her and then she said, “Dead or not, I would have hanged Francisco Garcia and you alongside of him.”
Dancer seemed shocked. “Well, that’s as plain as the ears on a Missouri mule, ain’t it?”
“You asked me and I told you,” Doña Maria said.
In the silence that followed, Frank Cobb’s words dropped like pebbles into a pond. “It’s a hard thing to see a man hang.”
“You seen it afore, sonny?” Dancer said.
“More times than I care to remember.”
“Then you know what I done was right.”
“I don’t know if what you done is right or wrong, Dancer,” Frank said. “And I don’t plan to study on it.”
“It’s not a question a decent man should ever have to ask himself, Mr. Cobb,” Maria Ana said. “I’m sorry I brought this to you.”
“I think it’s high time everyone went back to bed,” Kate said. “That includes you, Mr. Dancer.”
The old man nodded. “I would do it all over again, Mrs. Kerrigan. I wouldn’t hesitate.”
“Perhaps, but there won’t be a next time. Not on my land.”
* * *
The following morning in a drizzle of misty rain, two men—a murderer and a madman—were buried on the rise to the north of the house. The Mexican women wailed for their dead, as was their custom, and Padre Daniel spoke the words, but no one else had anything to say.
Doña Maria Ana, dressed in black, watched from afar, Rodolfo Aragon at her side.