CHAPTER SIX
The day had shaded into night and the cell was shadowed by darkness when the cell door opened and Shel Shannon and another robed man stepped inside.
Both carried shotguns, but Shannon held a cast-iron skillet in his right hand and the second man an oil lamp.
“Grub,” Shannon said.
“Get these chains off us, Shannon,” Shawn said.
“Sure, when Brother Matthias gives the word.”
The gunman handed the skillet to Shawn, two spoons crossed on top of the food.
“Share,” he said. “If you don’t want the grub, I’ll throw it to the hogs.”
To Shawn’s surprise, the skillet was almost filled to the brim with half a dozen fried eggs, bacon, chunks of sausage and cubed pieces of yellow cornbread.
“Cobb always feed his prisoners this good?” he said.
“Yeah, he does. Says it’s his Christian duty.”
“Pious of him,” Sedley said.
“So eat. When you’ve finished, Brother Bernard will take the skillet and eating irons away.” Then, almost as an afterthought, Shannon said, “He’ll also be on guard on t’other side of the door tonight, and he’s not a man to mess with. He won’t take sass, understand?”
Despite the events of the day, Shawn rediscovered his appetite. He and Sedley spooned food into their mouths, and the gambler said, egg yolk clinging to his mustache, “Who were you, Brother Bernard, before you got religion?”
“Ah, maybe it’s just as well you asked that, keep you honest, like,” Shannon said. “You recollect Crazy Clay Trevett an’ that hard crowd?”
“From the San Bernardino country down Arizona way,” Sedley said.
“As ever was,” Shannon said, “except when Brother Bernard ran with Crazy Clay he called himself Jack Fendy.” Shannon turned his head. “Didn’t you, Jackie, boy?”
“I’m not your boy, Shannon,” Fendy said. “And don’t call me Jackie.”
He was a man of medium height with cold, dead eyes and he wore two guns, butt forward in plain, black holsters.
Shawn dismissed Fendy as just another Bill Hickok wannabe, but Sedley seemed fascinated by the man.
“Here, were you in on the Silver Lode massacree, back in the summer of ’84, Jack, huh?” he asked.
Fendy spat and said nothing.
“You bet he was,” Shannon said. “He helped wipe out that whole town. Ol’ Crazy Clay offered a bonus of ten dollars for every ear his men brung in, and Jack laid ten pair at his feet. Ain’t that so, Jack?”
Fendy spat again, then said, his strange, high-pitched voice echoing in the barren cell, “They was all cut from men, not from women and children like some I could mention done.”
“Yeah, you done good, Jack,” Shannon said. “Only men it was, gambling man, you can lay to that.”
“Hank Cobb was there and he done more than his share o’ cuttin’,” Fendy said. “You know that, Shannon, without me needin’ to tell you. It was him that collected High Timber Tess McNeil’s ears, her that owned the Pink Pussy cathouse in Silver Lode.”
“I mind her fine,” Shannon said. “That gal must’ve stood six foot tall, if she stood an inch.”
“I heard eighty people died in that massacree, men, women and children,” Sedley said. “And all because Clay Trevett spent three days in the town jail for vagrancy the year before.”
“That’s a damned lie,” Fendy said. “And the man saying it is a damned liar.”
“It’s nothing personal, Jack,” Sedley said.
As though he hadn’t heard, Fendy said, “Clay hoorawed that town because them respectable citizens hung his brother on Christmas Eve the year afore. An’ we kilt five score, not eighty.”
“Sorry, Jack, my mistake,” Sedley said. “I guess I didn’t study up my ciphers enough.”
“An’ hung the mayor and his fat wife and then the town marshal,” Fendy said. “By God, we done it right, we did.”
“You’re a hard, unforgiving man, ain’t you, Brother Bernard?” Shannon said.
“Kiss my ass,” Fendy said.
Shannon grinned. “As you can tell, Brother Bernard is a mighty fierce man. You wouldn’t want him to step in here and see you doing anything but sleeping in your bunks.”
The gunman slapped his hands together. “Now for some good news, boys—your date with the Grand Council has been postponed for a couple of days. It means two extry days of life fer you fellers.”
“Thank Brother Matthias fer that,” Shannon said. “Tomorrow bein’ the Sabbath, we got the tithes to collect and it’s always a chore to wring money out of folks that don’t want to part with it.”
Shannon beamed as though a thought had just pleased him.
“On Monday we’re burning the witch, and the day after is when you’ll be questioned by the Council,” he said. “Brother Matthias penciled in your executions for Tuesday.”
“If you got any more good news, Cobb, keep it to yourself,” Sedley said.
“Why are you killing the girl?” Shawn said. “She didn’t do anything.”
“Didn’t I just tell you? She’s a witch. The women found a cat-shaped mole on her left shoulder an’ that’s a sure sign of witchcraft, they say. She’ll burn in the evening. Fire looks better in the dark, like.”
Shannon smiled. “Next week’s tithe will be increased threefold, since Brother Matthias, in addition to all his other parochial duties, must protect the town from the witches who’ll surely come seeking terrible revenge.”
Those last sounded like Cobb’s words and Shannon was obviously repeating them by rote.
Overcoming a feeling of utter helplessness, Shawn sought to give death a human face and a name he would remember. “What does the girl call herself?” he said.
“Name’s Sally Bailey, or so she claims. But she’s probably called fer a witch of some kind.”
“Like Hecate, maybe,” Shawn said.
“Huh?”
“Hecate was the Greek goddess of witchcraft, magic, the night and the moon,” Shawn said. “But an ignoramus like you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Shannon?”
Realizing that Shawn was making fun of him, Shannon’s face stiffened and he said, “Maybe I don’t have book learnin’ or a rich pa, but I know this, O’Brien. I’ll be standing in the crowd the day your head rolls. Now give me the skillet back. You two have eaten enough.”
He turned to Fendy. “Jack, these two get up to any fancy moves or give you back talk, shoot them in the belly.”
“Depend on it,” Fendy said.
In the lamp-streaked darkness the gunman looked like a grinning reptile.