AS PERKINS AND Kane carried him to the side door of the jail, Hawk heard a murmur from the crowd. Sounds of disappointment? When he stepped out into the bright morning sun he could see why. Framework had been built above the gallows platform and canvas had been hung from a point above the dangling noose to the ground. In many places, Hawk noted, the lengths of canvas had been stitched together. Noose and hanging body would be well hidden from view of the spectators. Never before had he encountered a sheriff who wanted to shield his constituents from the grisly sight of public execution.
Before he could dwell on this, the sun struck his eyes. He had to close them for an instant. He took a deep breath, felt cold sweat on his back as the sheriff and Kane began to carry him across a weed-grown lot and to the enclosed machine of death.
As they paused for breath before the gallows, a bearded man standing with two dozen other would-be spectators shook his fist. “We come a long ways to see this, Sheriff!” he complained.
“Should have left your wife and kids home then, Sam,” Perkins grunted.
“If I promise they won’t look will you take down the canvas?”
“You ever see an eight-year-old boy who’d keep his eyes closed when there’s excitement in the air? No siree, Sam!” The sheriff was positive, despite the groans from the onlookers.
Still winded, both men thrust Hawk through a slit in the dangling canvas and to the gallows steps. “Let me get my breath,” the sheriff panted. He released Hawk’s elbow and pulled the two pieces of canvas together at his back. From the gallows platform Rupe Concord, looking disappointed, peered down at them.
In the canvas enclosure the sun’s intensity heated the air. Sweat ran into Hawk’s eyes, making them sting. But he refused to close them because above, through the walls of canvas, he could see the sky. Although it might well be his last glimpse of fleecy clouds against an azure background he refused to believe it. Something would happen, he vowed. Something had to happen. These bastards couldn’t kill him for his crime of finishing off a snake like Mike Sentran. No, it wasn’t right. He flexed his arms, or tried to. But there was no life in them; the lashings had cut off circulation.
He shifted his gaze from the sky to the noose that Rupe Concord held in his two hands. Almost lovingly, Hawk thought and felt a savage bitterness that such men could remain alive to roam the earth.
Sheriff Perkins grunted, “All right, let’s get him up to the platform.”
He and Kane again seized Hawk by the elbows and lifted him a step at a time, up thirteen steps, to the platform.
Rupe Concord stepped close and dropped the noose over Hawk’s head. He drew it tight, yanking hard, almost causing Hawk to lose his balance. “The whole country should be seein’ you hang, Hawk.”
“Enough of that, Rupe!”
Swearing under his breath, Rupe Concord jerked free of the sheriff and crossed the narrow platform to put a hand on the lever that would release the trap door.
“Get your hand off that,” Sheriff Perkins warned.
Some of the hangman’s anger was replaced by puzzlement. “Get my hand off? Why?”
“Because I told you to.” The sheriff seemed agitated and kept glancing down the gallows steps.
Then Hawk heard boots make scraping sounds on the rough plank steps. Adam Granfield, dressed in expensive whipcord, appeared. His face was grave as he looked at Hawk, lashed from biceps to ankles, noose around his neck, waiting to be hanged.
Granfield leaned toward the sheriff and said something in a low tone. Beads of perspiration dotted Granfield’s sun-darkened brow and soaked into the thick brown mustache. He licked his lips, glanced at Kane who stood with heavy arms folded, then at Rupe Concord who hovered above the lever that would drop Hawk to his death. Granfield put his attention on Hawk.
Hawk stood stiffly, matching Granfield’s gaze.
Granfield suddenly stepped close. “Remember our discussion of last night?”
Hawk nodded. “I remember.”
“Now do you believe me?”
Hawk looked deeply into hazel eyes that did not flinch under his own cold stare. He said, “I believe you.”
Granfield gestured to the sheriff who lifted the noose from Hawk’s head.
Rupe Concord looked furious. “What the hell’s the idea?”
Sheriff Perkins spun around. “Keep your mouth shut about what happens here today!”
From outside a man cried, “Get on with the hangin’. We want to see his dead body at least!”
“I want to see him hang!” shouted another.
Sheriff Perkins roared a warning. “I’ll shoot the man that pokes his head through this canvas!” That brought a muttering, but no further threats from those beyond the canvas walls.
Rupe was spluttering again, but the sheriff shut him up. “If you don’t figure to keep your mouth shut, Rupe, you better head for South America. But even that won’t be far enough, come to think of it.”
Kane also started to grumble, but the sheriff gave him the same warning he had given Rupe Concord.
“You keep shut about everything you see or hear, Kane,” Perkins snapped.
Then the sheriff reached out for the lever, pulled it. The heavy trap door crashed open, making the structure tremble. A sigh went up from those gathered in the clearing. The sound of the trap had reached them and they believed Hawk to be either dead or slowly choking to death at the end of the new yellow rope.
Sheriff Perkins opened the blade of a pocketknife and sank to his heels. He sawed through the lashings that bound Hawk’s ankles.
Kane stared, then said angrily, “I could stick my head out this canvas an’ yell what you’re doin’, Sheriff. And that’d be the end of you in this county!”
Perkins straightened up, still gripping the knife. “Before you yell, let me tell you something. There are a few things I remember about you, Kane.”
“You got nothin’ to remember about me!” Kane’s small eyes glittered.
“One thing, the unexplained death of a Mexican boy. And you’d better remember that you could very well stand on this same gallows.” Perkins let that sink in, then added, “So you do what I tell you. You and Rupe keep your mouths shut!”
Granfield drew a pistol from under his whipcord coat and cocked it. “The stakes in this game are high, boys,” he said in a tight whisper. “You two don’t count for a damn.”
Kane stared at the gun and nodded. The hangman was equally cowed and backed up to the gallows railing.
Sheriff Perkins pulled aside the noose that dangled through the trap, used his pocketknife and cut off the noose and three feet of rope. “In this county we always bury the hanged man with the rope around his neck,” the sheriff said grimly.
Then he dropped down into the opening in the platform, hung there a moment by his hands at the edge, then let go. He dropped to the ground beneath the platform. In a minute he raised a ladder through the opening.
He gestured for Hawk to descend. “Can you make it all right?” he whispered.
Hawk nodded, but even Granfield had to steady him on the ladder. Slowly he descended, careful of his balance because of the bound arms. His legs were shaky and paining him as circulation returned. When he was off the ladder he saw a cheap, hastily made pine board coffin on the ground near one of the canvas walls. At some places the planks, he noticed, were a quarter of an inch apart.
Perkins gestured at the open coffin. “Get in. If you don’t mind,” he added with a tight smile.
Hawk climbed in, stretched out on his bound arms. Had they not already been numbed, his full weight upon them would have been sheer agony.
He stared up at the bright sky visible above the trap door and the canvas enclosure. Then the coffin lid was lowered, shutting him off from the world. A few nails were hammered.
Hawk lay numbly in the cramped coffin and felt himself lifted and carried. He heard a shuffle of boots, then was aware of men surging up. Questions were shouted.
“How’d he die? Did he cuss and try to fight?”
“Damn it, Sheriff, I drove fifteen mile to see this!”
“You an’ your damn canvas!” There were other questions, but the sheriff only grunted his replies.
Hawk heard a team and wagon approach. Then he was aware that the coffin was being slid into the bed of the wagon.
“We’ll go along, Sheriff,” said a man.
“You’ll stay right here!” Sheriff Perkins said firmly. “I’ve deputized these men who’ll help me. The rest of you better not interfere.”
Hawk, sweating in his pine-board prison and from the jolting ride, almost smiled. Not much law, he thought, unless you happened to be on the right side in the late War. The Keegan gang, of which Mike Sentran had been a member, had so far avoided Sheriff Tod Perkins’ brand of law.
Finally the wagon halted, the punishing ride at an end. Hawk tensed in the stifling coffin as someone began to draw nails from the lid. Then the lid was raised. Sunlight was suddenly blinding. Hawk squeezed his eyes shut for an instant, then opened them to find the sheriff peering in at him.
“You survived the trip, I see,” the sheriff said with an attempt at humor.
“Barely.”
“Give me a hand with him, boys,” the sheriff ordered.
Rupe Concord and Kane, who had followed the wagon on saddle horses, reached in and pulled Hawk from the coffin and sat him on the wagon tail gate. Kane looked as if he would welcome a chance to slit his throat. Rupe Concord seemed puzzled and a little fearful by all that had happened. Adam Granfield spoke to the sheriff, who nodded.
“Kane, you and Rupe get back to town,” Sheriff Perkins ordered. “If there’s ever a word said about this … Rupe, you recollect what I told you about South America. If the two of you ever live to get there, that is.”
Kane mumbled something Hawk couldn’t make out, but Rupe Concord seemed impressed. “I don’t aim to say one word about it, Sheriff,” the hangman said. “Although for the life of me I can’t figure out why—”
“It’s the life of you if you do try and figure it,” Granfield reminded.
The pair got their horses and swung aboard. Granfield gestured at the trail they were to take back to town. They both scowled, but did as they were told. In a few moments they were raising dust to the north of the canyon, then west as they swung in the direction of Kingdom.
Only when they were completely out of sight did the sheriff sever the rest of the lashings that held Hawk’s arms to his sides. When the rawhide was cut, Hawk felt the brutal pain as blood rushed back into arms and shoulders. Helplessly, he watched his arms dangle at his sides, dead weights.
Granfield had stepped back from the tailgate of the wagon where Hawk was sitting. “My God, I never knew a man with such cold nerve.” Hawk said nothing; he tried to rub the circulation back into his blood-starved arms. He had a little feeling in his fingers, but not much.
“Maybe you had an inner fear when you stood on the gallows,” Granfield continued. “But if you did, you failed to show it.”
“No man wants to die,” said Hawk. “Especially not that way.” He grimaced as needles of pain shot through his arms, wondering what would happen next.
He didn’t have long to wait. Granfield walked away from the wagon and lifted an arm in a signal. Presently a portly man on a dun horse emerged from a rocky archway midway up the canyon and rode toward them.