HAWK AWOKE AT dawn. His back and shoulders stung and every muscle was strung tight. He realized immediately that he was wearing a different shirt, and wondered how long it had taken Kane and Rupe to hide the damage of their party the night before.
A platter of steak and eggs was brought to him an hour later. Elmdorf, owner of the A-1 Café, carried the tray.
“I always like to serve the last meal myself,” he said in a sepulchral voice. The platter was placed on a small table. With it were an enamel pot of coffee and a tin cup. “They won’t let you have a knife, Hawk. Can you manage the steak with a fork?”
“I’ve got teeth,” Hawk answered, sitting down, his chains clanking. “It’s all I need. I’m hungry.”
Kane entered the cell, keeping beyond Hawk’s reach. “This cup sure don’t look clean to me, Dave,” he said to Elmdorf and picked up the cup, spat into it, rubbed a grimy forefinger around the rim and said, “Ah, now that’s better.”
Elmdorf seemed embarrassed. “Want me to get you another cup, Hawk?”
“This one’s fine. Thank you.” Hawk poured coffee into the cup. He started to lift the cup to his lips, then suddenly dashed its contents in the direction of Kane’s groin. But Kane spun away, so that the hot coffee splashed only his thigh. He emitted a bellow of pain that should have jarred sleeping campers out on the flats and whirled about the cell, hunched over, yelling.
Rupe Concord was finally able to seize him by a wrist and drag him from the cell. Elmdorf followed, a half-smile on his thin face as he observed Kane.
Rupe slammed the door shut and locked it. Hawk sat calmly at the table, his chains making faint metallic sounds as he lifted a forkful of eggs to his mouth.
Rupe Concord shook a fist through the bars. “You got to show your meanness right up to the end, don’t you?”
Hawk said nothing. The steak was not easy to cut with the fork, so he had to use his teeth and fingers. Kane was still doubled over in the corridor, cursing wildly.
“You shouldn’t have got so close to him,” Rupe admonished.
“If I had me that whip now,” Kane gasped, “there wouldn’t be enough hide left on him to stuff in a tobacco sack.”
As the gray dawn began to brighten there came sudden sounds from the gallows area, a hammering on wood. Kane muttered something, then hurried away to change the trousers that had been soaked in spots from the coffee. He walked stiffly into the jail office as if his legs still pained him. When he returned, he was followed by Sheriff Tod Perkins, who was a head taller than Kane but lacked his heft by fifty pounds.
The sheriff was saying, “It’s your own damned fault for spitting in his cup. Elmdorf told me all about it. Can’t say as I blame Hawk.”
Kane grumbled something. Rupe Concord, who had remained on guard with the shotgun, mentioned the hammering outside which had increased. “The gallows are already built,” the hangman complained. “What’re they doing now, for God’s sake? I had everything fixed just like I wanted it.”
Sheriff Perkins looked grim as he stared in at Hawk, who was finishing his meal. “There’s women and kids out there.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of campgrounds under ancient cottonwoods. “It ain’t a thing for them to see.”
Rupe said, “What you mean, Sheriff?”
“We oughta have a courtyard next to the jail with a solid ten-foot fence. Do the hangin’ before a handful of witnesses and that’s all. I ain’t got time to build a fence. But I got time to have carpenters put up some framework at the top of the gallows and hang strips of canvas. I had Mrs. Taskins workin’ half the night sewin’ it together.”
“It’s good for women and kids to see a man hang,” Rupe Concord said, voice tinged with disappointment.
“I’ve made up my mind,” the sheriff said shortly. “Ain’t no use arguin’ with me, Rupe.”
Kane looked aggrieved. “I sure agree with Rupe.” Concord handed the shotgun back to Kane and went outside to look over the modifications the carpenters were making on his gallows. In a few moments he returned to continue his complaints. “Sure is gonna be a hell of a hangin’ if nobody gets to see it. An’ I’m proud of the work I do, Sheriff.”
“You get paid for your good work, Rupe. But it’s not up to you whether or not women an’ kids look on a hangin’. Now, I don’t want to hear no more about this.” Sheriff Perkins leveled his eyes on Concord. “Understand?” He turned to Hawk. “You got one hour left, Hawk.”
“I’ll be here when you want me,” Hawk responded with heavy irony.
Hawk spent his last hour in the cell without the spoken abuse of Concord and Kane. They sat in sullen silence, musing in their own ways over the curtained gallows, unaware of the prisoner’s pacing as he inspected his inviolable restraints a last time. Hawk had sought out every possibility of a flaw in the manacles and chains and steel bolts that had tied him to the wall for a week. Now, with only an hour left, he fought off the growing realization that there was utterly no way to escape. Only superhuman strength could break through the chain and steel that bound him to the cell like a captured animal.
Finally, they came for him. Sheriff Perkins stood at the door, rifle under an arm.
“We’re goin’ to do this easy, Hawk,” the sheriff said gravely. “I don’t want anybody to get hurt.”
“A noose hurts,” Hawk said with a twisted smile.
“Should have thought of that before you gunned down Mike Sentran,”
“I had a reason for gunning him down. And don’t all of a sudden sound so holy, Sheriff.”
Perkins flushed. “Now, see here—”
“Sentran and some of his friends have been running things around here. You let them get away with—yes, literally murder. Yet when I exterminate one of the rodents you make a big to-do about the law and sentence me to hang.”
“I never sentenced you, the judge did.” The sheriff calmed. “Kane, go in and unlock him from that bolt in the wall.”
“Just tell him to keep away from me.” Kane muttered. The sheriff whispered further instructions. Kane nodded, licked his lips and handed his shotgun to Rupe Concord. Kane, some lengths of rawhide dangling from a hip pocket, unlocked the cell door.
“If Hawk makes one move toward you,” the sheriff told Kane, “he’ll have a kneecap shot off. You hear me, Hawk?”
“Deafness was never one of my problems.”
“If you still got fight left in you,” the sheriff continued, “it’ll be the other kneecap. All right, Kane, go ahead. Do what I said.”
Kane entered the cell, skirted Hawk and the table with its dirty dish. Key in hand, he unlocked a heavy padlock that held the chain to the ring bolt.
“Bring the chain over to the door,” the sheriff instructed.
Holding the heavy chain in one hand, Kane moved gingerly toward the door. In his other hand he held the large padlock and looked as if he would welcome the chance to smash it against Hawk’s face.
“Don’t even shift your feet, Hawk,” Sheriff Perkins said, and aimed the rifle through the open door at Hawk’s left knee.
Hawk did not reply; his eyes were on Kane, who was sliding large feet across the stone floor to the cell door. Kane—last night the fearless whip man, now a hulking mass, cowed by a splash of hot coffee. There must be some way now, he told himself, that he could lunge at Kane, whip the chains linking manacles over his head and throttle him.
But the deterrent was the steady rifle in the calm sheriff’s hands. Before Hawk could take one step, the crippling shot would come. Perkins was not given to savagery and threats; he meant exactly what he said.
The idea of the pain didn’t dissuade Hawk, but the idea that he would be crippled did. Any last chance for freedom would be gone.
Kane closed the cell door at the sheriff’s order, but remained in the cell. The end of the chain was passed through the bars.
“You take over, Rupe,” said the sheriff. “You know what to do.”
Rupe Concord nodded, took the end of the chain and hauled back on it, a foot braced against one of the cell bars, until Hawk was drawn tight against the door.
Hawk felt cold metal against his face in the space between the bars. Making sure Hawk couldn’t move, Rupe made several turns of the chain around the bars and continued to hold the end of it in his two hands.
Kane drew one of the lengths of rawhide from his hip pocket and advanced cautiously on the prisoner. He wrapped the rawhide around Hawk’s arms, high above the elbows. He was pinned so tight against the cell door that he had no room to move.
Pain shot through his shoulders as Kane tightened his grip on the rawhide, drawing the elbows closer together and opening the whip wounds. Another loop captured the wrists. Kane, enjoying his work, looped another length of rawhide near the shoulders, drawing the arms even closer together.
“Why don’t you yell now,” Kane taunted.
“That’s enough,” the sheriff said thinly. “Get his ankles.”
“All set in a minute, Sheriff.” Kane stood up. He drew a forearm across his mouth, seemed to debate whether to let fly with a backhand. Something in Hawk’s eye chilled him. Removing keys from his pocket, Kane unlocked the manacles on the wrists, then those on the ankles. But because of the bindings of rawhide it meant no freedom for Hawk.
Sheriff Perkins eyed his prisoner. “You’ll be a heavy one to carry. But we’ll get you to the gallows.”