I took out my clasp knife and cut Clete's rope close to where it was tied to the tree. DuShane hit the ground with a thump. I walked back up to my horse to get the folding shovel and saw my hat and clothes there beside the remains of our fire. I had forgot I was still in my union suit and put them on. Then I took the shovel and went back down to where DuShane lay in a heap.
I had the grave about half dug by the time Clete rode in. "I thought I told you–" but he didn't finish it. I didn't look up at him, either, just kept digging. After a minute he rode on up to the fire.
It was hard digging there, I recall. Weren't many stones, but the roots of them pines crisscrossed all over the place and I wisht I had an axe. When the hole was deep enough to suit me, I took the noose off his neck and pushed him in with my foot. He was a man and deserved burying, but I didn't straighten him out comfortable in his grave and I didn't do no praying over him either after I covered him up.
Clete had everything packed by the time I got up to the fire and all I needed to do was put up the shovel. I handed him his rope.
"Well, you feel better now?" Clete asked.
"No, I don't," I told him, mounting the bay.
Clete got up on his horse and we headed down the valley, him in front. We just rode quiet, the sun coming through the clouds every so often, angled over to the west. Going along, I saw a bird I had never saw before, up high in a big pine. Orangy yeller, he was, with some black on his wings and head. White on the wings, too. An oriole, I figgered, but not a kind that I'd ever saw. He chattered at us and then piped a pair of notes, so as to say goodbye, after we passed, and I thought of Mandy then.
Where the trail got wider, after the valley spread out some, Clete dropped back beside me. "Look, I'm sorry I punched you. There was no call for me to do that. You were right. Burying him was the right thing to do."
I didn't say nothing.
"If it will make you any happier," Clete said, smiling at me, "we can step down and you can punch me."
I shook my head. "No, it don't bother me that much being punched. I've been punched plenty before, harder than that."
"What the hell's eating you, then?" His face looked like he was tasting something not to his liking.
"Was it fun fooling me like that?" I ask him.
"Whadda you mean?"
"What do I mean? You know damn well what I mean! You knowed you were going to hang him the whole time, whether he answered you or not!"
"Of course I did," Clete said. "I told you I was going to hang him. Didn't you hear me say that?"
"Yes, I heard you. But the way you acted, I thought it was all just to make him talk. I didn't even know what you ask him. I figgered it was something important, something … I don't know what. Let's hear you say you didn't try to make me think you was just throwing a scare into him. Go on, let me hear you say it!"
"Ahh, this is bullshit. You're acting like a goddamned old woman." He spurred his horse ahead and we traveled another mile, saying nothing to each other, before he dropped back beside me again.
"You're right, Willie. I needed your help, at least I didn't want to fight you over doing it, not in front of him, and I knew you wouldn't go along with it." He looked at me square and offered his hand.
"No, thanks," I told him. "I don't shake hands with no murderers."
He dropped his hand and looked at me like I'd slapped him hard in the face. "Murderer? I think you're a little confused, aren't you? It was DuShane who killed Banty and those people back by the White and Nell Larson. Remember Nell, Willie? Remember that night she died, all burnt up?"
"Of course I do, and I'll remember this day just as long."
"Well, that's the law business, son. Executing horse thieves and killers is a part of it."
I pulled the bay up sharp and after a couple steps, Clete done the same with his horse and looked back at me.
"No," I told him, "Executing is what a judge and jury and a hangman does after a man's had his say, tells his side of it. What you done, stringing a man up for spite and vengeance and God-knows-what-all, that's lynchin'. And lynchin' is murder. Just the same as if you laid in wait for him in the dark and shot him off his horse when he rode by. Just the same as DuShane. No different."
Clete just sat and looked at me and after awhile he shook his head and then rode on. I waited and after a minute I followed him. It had clouded up pretty solid by then and before long the rain started. Nothin' heavy, just a steady drizzle that drenched everthing. I stopped and searched for my slicker, but then I remembered it was still back in Two Scalp. So I just got wet. I kept waiting for Clete to drop back beside me again, to say that he seen what I said was so, that about lynching and murder, but he didn't do it.
When we come down out of that valley to where the road forked, it was starting to get dark.
Clete got out his map and studied it. "This way should take us to Hay Camp," he said, tilting his head to the right. "I see no sense going back to Deadwood. I can wire Bullock to tell him what happened when we get to Two Scalp. Should save us half a day going this way, maybe more."
"I'm not going back to Two Scalp," I told him. "So I guess this here is where we part company."