1910, Craig, Colorado
Logan couldn’t help but stare at the empty gallows. Any minute now, even more people would gather. Heavy boots would bump up those wooden stairs. By then, he’d be blocks away, busy at work, inside the livery stable—where he could neither see nor hear what all those onlookers would. The thought of watching while his brother was hanged turned his stomach.
Logan pulled his gaze away from the wooden scaffolding and focused on the crowd. These were his friends, townsfolk who gave him purpose. That’s all he ever wanted, to live a quiet life amongst friends, helping them out, making them happy. But now his friends—men and women alike—gathered in groups of two or three, whispering behind their hands, their gazes skirting from the gallows to the jail as anticipation grew apparent in almost every set of eyes. A few caught sight of Logan and immediately looked away.
Did he begrudge them for being there?
No. He didn’t blame them. He, more than anyone in Craig, knew firsthand that the prisoner about to meet his Maker was no saint. Yet Logan hadn’t expected so many people to show up. His nose dripped, and he wiped his emotions away with the back of his sleeve.
It wasn’t like there had been a public announcement telling every resident of Craig about this event. Logan swore, however, that everyone he knew in the northwest corner of Colorado was here. Perhaps it was because of the novelty. There hadn’t been a hanging in town since 1889, nigh onto twenty years ago. They were now all done over in Canon City at the state penitentiary. Marshal Walker, however, had received special permission for this hanging, since he was fearful that his prisoner—with untold wealth to his name—could pay people off and get help to escape during transport to the opposite corner of the state. There would be a riot on the marshal’s hands if that were to happen.
A heaviness in Logan’s chest weighed him down. It seemed to hold his feet to the dusty road. He stared at his left leg, which was a full inch shorter than his right one, and his left foot, which constantly pointed inward no matter how hard he tried to straighten it. These were mere hiccups in his life compared to everything surrounding his brother. He needed to get out of here, but he couldn’t help but stare at the gallows a minute longer and cry inside. His brother was not only guilty of being the meanest, most ornery, and most unlikeable son of a gun who’d ever lived in or around Craig, Colorado, he’d also shot a beloved member of the community, the owner of the mercantile, and a dear friend of Logan’s—Sam Decker. In the back. In broad daylight. In front of multiple witnesses, including the victim’s wife, Lavender Decker, who’d looked on, helpless and in horror.
All because of money.
Logan felt a hand on his shoulder as he readied himself to leave the crowd behind.
“Oh, I wasn’t sure I’d see you come out to witness the hanging, Logan.”
Logan turned to see Ned Clark, from the telegraph office. “Uh, I’m not here for that,” Logan said, stating the truth, trying hard to come across as his usual friendly self. “I’m just heading down to the livery stable like I do every Tuesday about this time of day.” He paused and gave Ned a questioning stare. “Say, who’s tending the telegraph?”
Ned flicked his wrist over his shoulder in the direction of his office. “Pff! I closed up. I daresay Gus has already done the same with the livery stable too. He won’t expect you there. Not today. Besides, everyone’s here.” He swept his hand across the unobstructed view of the gallows in front of him and then winced. “Sorry. But as long as you’re here, you are welcome to join us.”
Ned’s wife, Constance, nodded at Logan. Both Joe the blacksmith and Stewart from the saddle shop tipped their hats at Logan while their wives waved. Then he spotted his good friend Ronald Smith half a block away. Ron stood next to Dorothy, his wife of twelve years now—oh, how time had flown. They waved at Logan too.
“Thanks, but I don’t intend to watch.” Logan lifted his hat momentarily. It was enough that he’d watched the men construct the gallows yesterday—and then adjust the trap door. They’d used only the best, freshly milled pine planks. Blasted all, it was an instrument of death; it didn’t need such attention to detail. No one cared that the hinges were the best money could buy. All that mattered was the noose, now swinging in the summer breeze, awaiting its victim.
He tore his eyes away from the noose and weaved through the crowd that clogged Yampa Avenue, wanting to make it to the livery stable before that rope saw any activity.
“Logan!”
He scanned the crowd, searching for who called him.
“Logan!” Gus called out again and waved his hands in the air, motioning for him to come his way.
Logan veered from his intended course and headed back into the crowd. “What do you need?” he hollered over the increasing noise of the crowd, hoping his boss did want him to open the livery stable. He hurried toward Gus as fast as his bum leg could walk, not caring to hide his limp. His leg had been crippled since birth, but he’d never let it stop him from doing what he’d wanted before—nor had he used it as an excuse to get out of anything. But at this moment, that might change if his boss wanted him to do something that would require he stay here in this crowd.
Gus latched onto Logan’s shoulder the moment he arrived. “Where ya headed, boy?”
“The livery stable,” Logan responded, expecting his boss to ask him something of more importance and thinking it’d been years since he was a boy. He did, however, smile inside at Gus’s constant use of the inaccurate term. Logan stood half a foot taller than his short-statured boss. And in three months, September twenty-seventh, he would turn twenty-seven. “I’m due at work in ten minutes. I’m taking it you just left things unattended until I got there?”
“No. Locked things up tight. I figured ya’d either be out to your sister’s place, you both consoling each other, or here watching, like ya are. Next to poor Sam Decker himself, yer probably the biggest victim of Stanley Jones’s cruelty.” Gus swatted the air in front of Logan. “So gracious be, don’t be feeling like ya got to head on into work today. You’ve nary taken a day off the thirteen years ya worked for me. Besides, I made sure the horses were all fine before I left.”
“Actually, I’d prefer going into work if that’s okay.” Logan thought about the affectionate animals he worked with. Yeah, he preferred being with horses right now. He didn’t care to talk to anyone about Stanley, not even to his sister, Susannah.
“Honest?” Gus, with his brow wrinkled, stared at Logan.
“Honest.” Logan sighed. “As tough as he’s made my life, he’s still my brother. And I don’t care much to watch him die.” That was the same reason he’d pulled his pa from their burning ranch house thirteen years earlier. His pa had died despite Logan’s effort, but the pain Pa had left him with still lived on, haunting him from time to time.
Gus put his arm around Logan. “I understand, boy.”
Logan doubted if Gus really understood, but for the portion that Gus did, he offered a sincere thank-you.
After a nod goodbye, Logan hurried on his way, wondering if anyone understood how he felt. He doubted it. His observations told him that most everyone thought the biggest crime inflicted upon him was the fact that Stanley got the entire Circle J Ranch and every dollar his pa had amassed. And since that awful day thirteen years ago when their pa died, Stanley had never given, loaned, or offered a red cent to Logan. Or his sister. But Susannah and her husband had discovered coal on their land, so they were set. The townspeople didn’t worry about her finances, but they seemed to fret about Logan’s.
He wished they wouldn’t. He was doing just fine without making lots of money.
That familiar pain swelled at the back of his throat. It grew intense. Reaching down into his chest, it pressed against his heart. By concentrating on the positive things in life, he’d try again to bury the pain. He thought about horses—the nuzzle of thanks he’d received yesterday as he’d rubbed down a particularly friendly mare. It didn’t help. The image wouldn’t stay. There were too many other things on his mind.
He glanced over his shoulder at the noose that hung, still empty, above the anxious crowd. Finally, he felt it: anger toward his brother. Not for the crimes for which Stanley was about to die, but for digging up feelings that Logan had worked so hard to keep buried.
No, Gus didn’t understand. Nor did anyone else. It wasn’t Pa’s or Stanley’s money that Logan had been cheated out of. It was their love. And feeling worthwhile. That was all he’d ever wanted from them.
He glanced at the gallows once again. Anger was not what he wanted to be feeling for his brother right now.
Jerking his head back around, he focused on the near-empty end of Yampa Avenue and grappled for positive things to think about.
His mind gravitated to his efforts to connect with his seemingly lonely brother, a confirmed bachelor—not by choice. No decent woman wanted anything to do with Stanley. Logan had managed to visit his brother a few times before Stanley turned way bad. They’d talked about the weather and the price of beef, but that was about it. That served to remind Logan that it looked as though he was headed for bachelorhood himself. Again, not by choice. No, these thoughts aren’t positive enough.
Yet there was a bright side to his bachelorhood. He was undesirable to the fairer sex because of a crippled leg, unrefined speech, and lack of money—not because he was manipulative, cruel, and egotistical like Stanley.
He sighed. There were other ways for him to stay happy besides the companionship of a wife and kids. One way would be to continue just being who he was. He enjoyed working at the livery stable part-time, and he enjoyed his new job as a postal carrier. Even though he’d been delivering the post for years, now he got paid for it. Not much, but that didn’t matter to him. He liked doing it. He made sure he went out of his way to say hello to everyone he delivered the mail to and to those he saw on the streets of Craig.
The crowd thinned as he reached its edge. He stepped onto the empty, covered sidewalk. The shade felt good on his back. He took off his hat and fanned the sweat gathering on his forehead. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a wagon approach from the south end of town. It looked to be carrying a man, a woman, and two kids. They didn’t appear to be in a hurry, so Logan doubted they were coming to see the hanging.
Keeping a brisk pace, he continued toward the livery stable. As the wagon moved toward him, he could see the horse more clearly and recognized it. The sable brown mare belonged to his friends, the McCurdys. Was Kate coming into town to do some doctoring? Or did Lucas need something for his sheep? Logan waved, glad to talk to someone about something other than the hanging. He broke into the lopsided run he’d worked hard to master. They met up just shy of the livery stable.
“Hey, Kate. Hey, Lucas, boys.” Logan tipped his hat at each of them. “What brings you all to town?”
Lucas tilted his hat back, revealing his red hair, and wiped his forehead. He wrapped the reigns around a foot peg of the wagon and hopped down. “We’re here to fetch Celeste.” He pulled Logan into a half hug and slapped him on the back. “’Tis good to see you, lad.”
Logan hugged him back. “Celeste?” he muttered, thinking back to when he’d first met Lucas’s daughter. He’d been thirteen, and she’d been five. Lucas had gotten upset with her for pointing to Logan’s legs and asking what was wrong with them. Logan smiled at the memory, having liked her pluck ever since the day he’d met her. He would take a child’s honest curiosity over a grown-up’s uncomfortable silence about his leg any day. “I thought she was away at some fancy boarding school or something.” Logan wondered how Celeste’s spunk had fared with her highfalutin education.
“She was.” Kate, dressed in a tailored, dark-blue traveling dress, climbed down from the wagon with her husband’s help.
“But she’s done. ’Tis time now for her to come home for good.” Lucas sported a wide grin. “She’ll be here in five or ten minutes, on the twelve o’clock stage.”
Little Lucas stood on the wagon seat, though he wasn’t so little any more. He was thirteen now and almost as tall as his ma and had her dark-brown hair. He wrestled with his younger brother, Patrick, who had a hint of his pa’s red hair, to get a good view of the crowd down the street. “Ma, can we get out?”
“Yes, you may,” Kate said to them.
“Let’s run down there and see what’s going on,” Patrick said mid-jump, landing on the ground, ready to take off.
Lucas stretched out an arm in front of both boys’ chests. “Hold on.” He glanced at Logan. “What is going on down there?”
“You mean you don’t know?” Logan raised his eyebrows. “I thought everyone in Colorado this side of Steamboat Springs knew.”
“Ah, ’tis the hangin’, isn’t it?” Lucas leaned and looked down the street.
“Stanley’s?” Kate gasped. “That’s dreadful. Oh, Logan, I am so sorry.”
“I’d think he’d be relieved,” Lucas said under his breath, and Kate elbowed him.
“When is the—” Kate cleared her throat “—hanging supposed to take place?”
“Noon.” Logan glanced at the sun directly overhead and then toward the crowd, which stirred with even more clamor now. Had Stanley been brought out of the jail? He couldn’t see, and that was good.
Kate grimaced. “What unfortunate timing.”
“Don’t fret, Kate.” Lucas wrapped his arm around her and turned her away from the busy end of Yampa Avenue. “’Tis too far away for Celeste to see anyway. Even if she were to catch a wee glimpse, she’s not all that frail—she won’t faint.”
“No, she will not.” Kate turned toward the south end of the street. The stagecoach approached. “Because here she comes now. Lucas, you grab her bags the minute the stage stops. We are going to be back on the road before she has a chance to notice that awful gallows.” She whipped her hand in the air. “Boys, back into the wagon. Now!”
“Well, I best be going. The horses are waiting for me,” Logan said as an excuse as he waved goodbye.
“So . . . you’re not going to watch?” Lucas asked.
“Nope. Don’t care to.”
Lucas nodded. “What’s going to happen to the Circle J now? Are you finally going to get a piece of it?”
“Nope. Don’t care to either. According to Pa’s will, it’s all going to my sister, Susannah.” Logan honestly didn’t want a cent of his pa’s money. It represented too many painful memories. And those were something he’d rather not talk about. He quickly tipped his hat. “Gotta go,” he said and hurried toward the livery stable.
A block to the south, the stagecoach kicked up a billow of dust in its wake. Two blocks to the north, the clamor of the crowd picked up. He would have liked to have waited for the stage with the McCurdys to say hello to Celeste. But under the circumstances . . . no.
As Logan turned the corner to head into the side door of the livery stable, he caught a glance of the gallows, the portion that rose above the crowd, which had now fallen deathly silent. Stanley was being led, and pushed, up the stairs. The handrail suddenly took on some purpose as it prevented his thrashing body from falling, or possibly leaping, over the side. From two blocks away, the string of curse words flying from Stanley’s mouth reached Logan’s ears with the same effect they always had. His skin crawled as his heart ached for his brother. That cursing had become worse as of late. As had all of his vices. Stanley had been spending money like it was as plentiful as horse manure, searching, Logan guessed, for ways to buy happiness.
Logan grabbed hold of the stable’s door, his eyes fixed on his brother, who continued to yell obscenities, along with pleadings for release, he imagined. Logan could tell Stanley held no remorse for gunning down dear old Sam Decker. Apparently, his only remorse was for meeting an early death. Oh, Stanley, how could you let money ruin you so?
A hood went over Stanley’s head, and he fell silent. Then went the noose.
Logan tore himself away. The click of the trap door opening and its thud as it hit the post below echoed down the street. Gasps, screams, and shouts immediately followed. Logan opened the stable door and ran inside. Backing up to a post, he hugged his arms to his chests and lowered himself onto the floor. Tears moistened his pinched-shut eyes. With each inch he sank, he muttered, “My brother, my brother, my brother.”