CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
They came for Dan Caine at four-thirty in the morning on the day of the hanging.
Artemus, in black broadcloth and his top hat, carried his Sharps Big Fifty, and Dan thought the muzzle looked like the entrance to a railroad tunnel. Artemus, with a man to hang, looked solemn as an undertaker, all his good humor of the previous afternoon gone. With him was Lord Anthony Gray, the hanging judge, a short-barreled Webley .450 police model in his hand. He had cold blue, merciless eyes, the skin of his face so close to the skull he looked as though he wore a Mexican Day of the Dead mask.
Gray stepped to Dan, shoved the muzzle of the Webley against his forehead, and said, “Untie him, Artemus.” And then to Dan, “Don’t move a muscle, cowboy. Don’t even blink or I’ll blow your bloody brains out.”
“Easy to threaten an unarmed man,” Dan said. “Call yourself a lord? You, sir, have the manners of a coward and the speech of a drunken muleskinner.”
Gray snarled like an animal, his face twisted in rage. He slammed Dan with the Webley, a backhanded blow that opened a gaping cut on the helpless prisoner’s cheekbone and instantly jetted blood that ran down his face in a scarlet stream.
Punch-drunk and dizzy, Dan’s head reeled from the savage blow and he tasted blood in his mouth. But between clenched teeth he managed to grit out, “You sorry piece of trash.”
Gray raised his revolver again, his face demonic, but Artemus stepped beside him and grabbed his arm. “No, my lord,” he said, his voice quiet but formidable. “Let the man go to his death in peace.”
Dan thought the Englishman was angry enough to gun Artemus on the spot, but he thought the better of it and said, “Finish untying him, and get this damned thing over with. Use the rope to bind his hands behind his back.”
Artemus nodded and whispered to Dan, “No fancy moves, sonny, or I’ll shred you into a rag doll with my fifty.”
“Studying on it, getting shot to pieces sounds better than hanging,” Dan said.
“Any death is better than hanging,” Artemus said.
* * *
A couple of minutes later, Dan Caine was marched down the stairwell, a revolver muzzle at the back of his neck and a Sharps unkindly prodding into his spine.
A welcoming committee stood outside the house and a few of the whores smiled and applauded. Dan wondered if the warm reception was for him or his executioners. He decided it was not for him when one of the whores broke ranks and tried to brain him with a champagne bottle. She was stopped by Misty Maguire who snatched the bottle away from the young lady and reminded her that this was a solemn occasion and she should mind her manners. She then proceeded to box the ears of the unrepentant whore and sent her back into the house in disgrace.
Dan was uncomfortably aware of the Sharps muzzle digging into his lower back as he looked around. He didn’t like what he saw. In fact, it scared the hell out of him.
Lord Gray took his place among the seven distinguished members of the High Time sporting club who were lined up at the corner of the house to the left of the main door. Like Gray, most were dressed in tweeds, though a couple of the older men wore broadcloth. That all present wore black robes and grotesque face masks “like the KKK in mourning” is a myth made up by a scurrilous turn-of-the-century dime novelist. This man, who called himself Tiny Tim Scratcher, later succumbed to yellow fever in Panama . . . and most folks reckoned that it served him right.
Eleven whores, the kept women of the eight wealthy clients and three spares, were dressed in scarlet corsets and high boots and lined up next to the men. Violetta Bullen had been with Shadow Beck when, as Misty put it, “he was most cruelly murdered.” But, being of a lower class of whore, she was not invited to the hanging and was sent to help in the kitchen with the broke-neck breakfast.
As the whores sang “When the Swallows Homeward Fly,” ominous black clouds spread across the sky like sheets of curled lead and made gloomy the morning. Dan Caine figured that with better weather and under more convivial circumstances, he might have enjoyed the song.
Misty Maguire, with an eye on the weather and the demands of her rumbling stomach, kept her preamble short, sweet, and to the point. “The condemned will now meet his much-deserved fate. May God have mercy on his soul.”
“About bloody time!” Lord Gray yelled. “Now string him up.”
Dan felt the Sharps prod harder into his back, and Artemus said, “Get moving.” Then in a whisper into his ear, “Die game, sonny.”
Dan nodded. “I’ll do my best, but I ain’t making any promises.”
The men and women had been lined up, but now they broke ranks and followed Dan around the side of the house where his horse stood patiently under a projecting beam with a large iron hook holding a simple block and tackle designed to lift heavy beer barrels and flour sacks to the second-floor storeroom. A hemp rope was threaded through the pulley and a hangman’s noose dangled three or four feet above the horse’s bare back.
Lord Gray took charge. He turned to a pair of pasty-faced, frightened-looking men that Dan figured must be the house musicians and said, “You two, help Artemus lift him on the horse.” The men were taken aback, but Gray snapped, “Get it done.”
Artemus placed the noose around Dan’s neck, he was manhandled onto his mount, and the rope was pulled tight. “Artemus, tie it off,” Gray said. “Around the fence post there.”
“It’s an old post, and it’s rotten,” the old man said.
“I know,” Gray said, “but I examined it. It’s strong enough to support Caine’s weight for a few minutes while he dances his jig.”
A smell of frying bacon drifted from the kitchen window, and plates clattered.
A distinguished looking man with magnificent muttonchop whiskers sniffed, sniffed again, and then slapped his huge belly with both hands and said, “Hang the scoundrel and let us to breakfast.”
Lord Gray took a step back from the horse, raised a riding crop, and looked up at Dan. “Any last words?” he said.
Dan Caine obliged and said, “You go to hell.”
But Lord Anthony Gray was no longer interested in what Dan had to say.
His whole, horrified attention was fixed on the arrow sticking out of his throat, its strap iron point embedded under his chin. Gray stumbled toward the others, his arms outstretched, a stunned, terrified why me? expression on his face as blood spurted from his dreadful wound.
But now it was every man for himself and Gray was ignored. And so was Dan.
Misty Maguire screamed, “Indians!” and led a charge of whores and beaus toward the house, the men knocking women aside as they stampeded for the door. But a couple of the whores, notably Lucretia and Gwendolyn, showed more sand than the males and cut loose at the circling Apaches with the single-shot derringers they drew from their garters. They made no hits and both were cut down by rifle fire, glossy, golden, gorgeous women destroyed in an instant by lead.
Artemus, who’d fought both Apaches and Comanches in the past, backed toward the door, dropped to one knee, and threw the Sharps to his shoulder. He shot a paint pony that screamed and hit the ground hard in a cloud of dust, and then put a bullet into its staggering rider. The old man rose to his feet and retreated in the direction of the door again, working his rifle, standing wide legged with his face to the enemy, yelling defiance. He killed a second Indian charging with a raised lance and winged a third, forcing him out of the fight. By any measure, Artemus had acquitted himself well, and in future years Apaches who’d been at the High Time fight would remember him as a warrior. But the old timer had taken an arrow to the chest and his left thigh had been smashed by a rifle bullet and he collapsed several yards from the door. Artemus was quickly dispatched by a tomahawk blow to the head that unfortunately in his final moments he saw coming, and the young buck who’d cleaved his skull took his Sharps.
Two Apaches had been killed and one wounded out of a force of thirty, and the rest now came under fire from the house. Most dismounted and settled down to a siege, shooting at anything that moved behind the windows. An older warrior with some gray in his shoulder-length hair stayed mounted and left the fight to explore the side of the house where he’d earlier seen a white man on a horse.
That man was Dan Caine, a rope around his neck and a restive mustang between his legs that tossed its hammer head and tried to make up its mind whether to bolt or not and get away from all the shooting.
The Apache, his name was Taklishim, the Gray One, drew rein, and his black eyes glittered as he studied the white man who was in such big trouble. For a moment, a smile touched Taklishim’s lips as he considered shooting his rifle in the air and then watching the man dangle after his horse bolted.
But for an Apache, that was way too easy. Too quick. The rope could snap the fool white man’s neck like a twig and kill him instantly. Where was the fun in that?
Given his present circumstances Dan was prepared to be neighborly. “Howdy,” he said. Then he instantly regretted it as the mustang responded to his rider’s voice and made to walk forward. “Whoa . . . whoa . . .” Dan said. “Damn you hoss, you’re gonna kill me.”
The Mescalero Apache warrior was one of the most notional creatures on God’s green earth. Expect him to do one thing, and he’d be sure to do another, especially if it was a good joke that involved the follies of the white man.
Then it happened.
Dan was horrified as his horse walked right out from under him. He bumped over the animal’s hindquarters and dropped into space as the noose clamped tight on his throat, choking, strangling him. Searing lightning bolts flashed behind his eyes and he heard a roaring in his ears like the crash of surf on rocks.
BAAANG!
The slam of a rifle, very close, and the next thing Dan knew he was flat on his back, the rope around his neck suddenly loose, frayed, coiled on his chest like a gray serpent. He raised his head and saw the Apache sitting his pony, staring at him, grinning, smoke trickling from the muzzle of his Winchester. His courage shredded to the bone, Dan could only wait for the Indian to make the next move. He’d parted the rope with a bullet. Would his second part Dan’s hair?
For long, pulse-quickening moments two men, mortal enemies, whelps of war gods, were locked in a silence as though the noisy rattle of gunfire so close to them did not exist.
Taklishim, no wild young buck but a seasoned fighting man, waged a war with himself. Dan could see it in his eyes. The Apache had played a good joke on the white man and in doing so had saved his life. Would he now throw that small mercy back in the man’s teeth? The Mescalero reached a decision. He swung from his horse, stepped to Dan, and pulled him to his feet by the hair.
Dan broke free and lurched back. “Injun,” he said, “stay away from me or I’ll kick your ass so hard your squaw will feel it.”
The Apache grunted and pulled a Green River hunting knife with a seven-inch blade, a weapon as large as life and twice as real. Dan backed away, fearfully aware of the bound wrists that made him vulnerable.
“Media vuelta!” the Indian said.
“Go to hell,” Dan said.
“Turn around,” Taklishim said, using English after Spanish had failed. He held his rifle in his left hand pointed at Dan’s belly.
“Yeah, give it to me in the back, you damned yellow-bellied coward,” Dan said.
The flinty expression on the Apache’s face did not change. “Turn around,” he said.
Dan had escaped a hanging only to get his throat cut. If he saw any humor in that situation, it’s never been recorded. He turned his back on the Apache. A shuffle of hard-soled moccasins on gravel and then a slight tug on the rope around his wrists and the severed bonds fell to his feet.
Dan turned in time to see the Indian jump on his pony. The warrior’s red and black streaks of war paint across his wide cheekbones and nose were vivid against his coffee-colored skin. He pointed the rifle at the white man. “When we meet again, this day or some other day, I will kill you.”
Dan Caine rubbed his rope-burned wrists and studied the Apache, committing to memory the man’s paint, beaded buckskin vest, dark red headband, and leather revolver belt and holster decorated with silver Mexican conchos. A slim scar about three inches long ran down his left cheek.
“I will remember you,” Dan said. “You saved my life and I hope one day I will save yours.”
The Apache sat his pony for long moments, staring at Dan. Now the sound of gunfire, loud, ragged fusillades, fractured the silence that had held the two men in its freakish spell. There was also an ominous tang of woodsmoke in the air.
Taklishim ended the standoff. He raised his rifle above his head, let loose with the hair-raising, undulating Apache war cry, and swung his horse around. He turned at the corner of the house and vanished from sight.