The trip to Rocky Point took longer than expected. The Maxwell had more trouble with the hills than advertised, but when Joab drove slower they were fine. While Joab maneuvered the car, the trio in the back talked as if they were at the Blind Pig, trading drinks and talk of business. All three men were armed with pistols but Joab felt sure he was the only one who’d shot anyone or anything. McNamara and Marlow both still carried those sacks in their laps. What was inside? Joab wondered.
“You don’t understand how bad it’s becoming,” McNamara shouted to Reed as they rode.
Marlow added, “The catalogs will kill us, I guarantee!”
Mr. Reed sat between the pair. It was the safest placement in the vehicle and he knew that. It wasn’t uncommon for autos to flip.
“What we need,” McNamara said, “is a campaign to keep the shoppers local.”
“Buy from people you trust,” Marlow tried. “Buy from people you know.”
“Exactly that,” McNamara said. “Support local business, not some scoundrel with a warehouse out in the state of Washington.”
“Washington!” Marlow shouted with disbelief.
“They charge so much less,” Mr. Reed said to the men. “And ship it right here into town. I see people lining up at the post to pick up their packages.”
“It’s vexing,” McNamara agreed.
Marlow said, “How damn far is this wolfer town?”
Joab bounced in the driver’s seat. He did not respond to the question because it wasn’t a question. Only a complaint. Better to stay silent around a wealthy man who feels put out. They weren’t too far now.
If Joab wished for anything, it was only that his brother Delmus were at his side. How much safer would he feel if his older brother had been beside him in the front? But Delmus must recover. Delmus must go back to work as a ranch hand. They could pool their money and buy a plot of their own. He could qualify for a loan if Mr. Reed were to swear by him at the bank. Delmus would soon be old enough to legally homestead. He thought this way—meaning like his mother; a planner to rival the best of them—as he drove, as the sun set.
To call Rocky Point a wolfer town might have been an exaggeration. Not the part about the wolfers, but the part about the town. Five derelict structures, and a well that only offered bad water. Nobody came here for the amenities. Seclusion sold the space. That’s why Mrs. Mudge picked it. Hidden in the mountains, and when the land turned wet it became nearly impassible, gumbo mud is what the wolfers called it. An army could be coming to get you and that mud would stop their horses dead.
Ah, but they’d never planned on a vehicle like the Maxwell, slow but stubborn as a tank.
Thirty years earlier Rocky Point had been home to legendary horse thieves like Red Mike and Brocky Gallagher, but by 1915 the quality of its bandits had declined. Joab, Mr. Reed, McNamara, and Marlow found three old men half-heartedly changing the brands on two horses. The job was taking a while because all three were drunk.
“Hello, gentlemen,” Mr. Reed said. “We are a community of concerned men from the nearby town of Big Sandy.”
The men didn’t even try to run.
There’s a kind of person who expects the worst to happen to him—has suffered the worst since birth—so when it appears he greets it without surprise. Joab had seen this when his family pulled their guns on others. Many fewer fought back than he would’ve imagined. That’s actually why he shot Grace Price. He’d been so surprised when she came at him; Mrs. Price came at him inside her cabin and he pulled the trigger. He hadn’t even realized he fired his gun until the woman went down. Then he stepped out and told the others he’d had to kill her. They were too busy breaking into the other cabin on the property to do more than offer casual nods.
“You men know how this is going to go,” Mr. Reed said to the old wolfers.
They weren’t putting up a fuss but McNamara and Marlow set down their sacks and pulled their pistols. They seemed whipped, but who could be sure?
Reed sent Joab to search the men for pistols, but they didn’t even have one among them. Maybe they’d left them in their cabins, maybe they couldn’t afford guns of their own. They hadn’t been expecting some posse to show up in the night and overtake them. They’d thought they were safe up here.
Nearby, not ten yards, lay the cabin where Joab and his family had stayed, shuttling back and forth with animals they’d pilfered from one homestead or another.
“I know you.”
These words were whispered, slurred. Something muttered as Joab stood close to the last wolfer in the row, checking him for a weapon. The man’s face hardly seemed to move when he spoke, his beard becoming a kind of camouflage. Not that much larger than Joab, but likely older by forty years.
“Your momma paid me one whole dollar to retrieve good water for her off the mountain.”
This, too, was spoken softly, practically whispered into Joab’s ear.
Joab stepped back and the man’s face remained alien to him. But why would he remember one wolfer from another?
The man grinned. “Where’s your blindfold?”
Joab nearly collapsed right there.
“Out here we call ourselves the Vigilance Committee,” Mr. Reed said, stepping closer to the trio, which meant he also stood beside Joab now.
“Look at these three,” Reed said to the young man. “Men like this been stealing their whole lives and won’t stop until the last of their days.”
Mr. Reed leaned even closer to Joab’s ear.
“Were these also the men?” he asked. “The ones who slaughtered your dear mother? Your brothers?”
The old man hadn’t heard, or wasn’t listening. He looked so defeated that it made Joab sick.
“Yes,” Joab said. “It was him and his friends.”
Marlow moved toward the horses, who appeared nearly as meek as the men. Old things, and poorly fed. Marlow looked close at the brand.
“These aren’t even your horses, Jack.” He laughed.
“Imagine that,” Mr. Reed said, laughing too, but neither sounded pleasant when they did. It was a bit like a hyena’s call; it seems like laughter until their jaws are on your throat.
“You want to know something?” the old wolfer said.
He spoke to Mr. Reed this time, not to Joab. But Mr. Reed wasn’t listening yet. He had things to say and men like him are not interrupted. He continued.
“I know you didn’t come up easy, but I didn’t make it here thanks to the help of others either.”
McNamara picked up the sack that lay at his feet. Now Joab saw what they’d brought with them. What they’d been intending to do right from the start. A length of rope fell from it, landing on the soil with a sound too soft for its purpose.
Mr. Reed handed his pistol to Joab. Marlow revealed a second length of rope from his sack.
“You want to know something?” the old wolfer said, louder now. He looked from Mr. Reed to Joab and back to Mr. Reed again.
Joab felt the pistol grow lighter in his hand. He would’ve thought it would be the opposite but desperation drained him of weakness. They’d brought two lengths of rope to deal with the wolfers of Rocky Point. How would these rich men react if they learned he, too, had been a horse thief? He lifted the revolver and pointed it at the old man’s head.
“This boy is a—”
And like that, louder than thunder, the third wolfer’s jaw seemed to fall off one of its hinges. It cracked rather than shattered and he actually hopped once, then staggered to his left and fell to the cold ground gasping; the last of him escaped in three short breaths.
“Joab!”
Mr. Reed shouted the name. This should’ve been enough to make the young man turn to face his employer, but it was the sight of blood leaking from the man’s wound that held Joab Mudge’s full attention.
“Joab.”
Mr. Reed’s hand firmly pushed the pistol down. His other hand went more gingerly to the boy’s shoulder.
“This is not the way,” Mr. Reed said, speaking in a tone that surprised Joab. Not angry, almost soothing.
Joab looked away from the wolfer’s body on the ground. Instead of peeking at Mr. Reed, he looked higher, toward the mountains.
“Are you going to fire me, sir?” Joab asked.
“No!” Mr. Reed said, laughing. He turned Joab around so he could see the rest of the scene.
The other two wolfers stood in much the same posture as before, except now each man had a rope noosed around his neck.
“We just have a way of doing this. Bullets cost money but hanging is free.”
McNamara and Marlow led the old wolfers to a pair of trees. The trees were as dead as the men were soon to be. They tossed the ropes over tree limbs. One end of each rope had been tied into a large knot. This would be the end they’d pull.
Mr. Reed held Joab close. “Back in Big Sandy we call ourselves the Vigilance Committee,” Reed said. “But thieves like this know us by another name as well. Don’t you?”
“The Stranglers.”
One of the two men said this, but Joab couldn’t tell which one.
McNamara and Marlow hooted.
Mr. Reed said, “That’s it.”
Marlow yanked on his rope and the man rose into the air, as if ascending to heaven. McNamara joined his partner, raising the body even higher.
But as the man lifted from the ground, Joab no longer saw him. Instead, it was his mother in the noose. It was his mother wriggling and writhing and choking. He felt the impulse to cut her down, save her life. But he’d missed that chance, hadn’t he?
Mr. Reed leaned close to Joab now and squeezed his arm. “Make no mistake, you’re not alone anymore. You survived a horror, lost the woman who raised you, but you’re with us, and, Joab, we are with you. You’re a Strangler now.”
McNamara and Marlow let go of the rope and the body fell. Dead.
“Amen,” they said.
The pair grabbed the second rope. They gestured for Joab to join them. Mr. Reed would, too. Joab stood with the men. He held the rope. With their hands so close to his, he could almost pretend these were his three brothers, the Mudge boys working together again. A team. A family.
You’re with us, and, Joab, we are with you.
They hung that man and left him up.
He would swing until the rope rotted through.