CHAPTER TEN
The cook was surly, but the meal was excellent, though Red found he didn’t have much of an appetite. Luna Talbot’s almost casual mention of a hanging was weighing on him. As far as eating was concerned, Buttons took up the slack, but even he seemed several tones quieter than usual.
During supper, between silences, Luna talked about range conditions, how she’d sold the last of her longhorns and invested in Herefords, and how cattle prices had been disastrously low for the past three out of four years.
Never the soul of tact, Buttons stopped chewing long enough to mention the dead Morgan Ford and asked the woman when she planned to bury him. Then, smiling, “Or do you aim to keep him in the toolshed?”
“Soon,” Luna said. “I’ll lay poor Uncle Morgan to rest soon.” After a pause for thought, she added, “Did you first meet my segundo in Cottondale?”
Red answered. “Leah Leighton, you mean? No, not in Cottondale. We met her later.”
“Ah, yes, that would be when she saved you from road agents,” Luna said.
Red said, bristling. “We could’ve handled that scrape ourselves. We were ready to open the ball.”
Luna smiled. “Open the ball, huh? How interesting. . . that’s not what Leah says.”
Irritated, Red continued, “And talking about Leah, a man named Solomon Palmer got shot in Cottondale while we were there. He was posing as a preacher and told us he’d cared for Morgan when the man lay dying.”
“Yes, I paid him for that and for making the arrangements to transport Uncle Morgan’s body,” Luna said.
Red used his fork to toy with the beef on his plate and then said without looking up, “Did Leah plug him?”
“Plug whom?” the woman said. Her beautiful face was defensive.
“Palmer, that’s whom. He took a couple of barrels of buckshot in the back.”
Luna Talbot fought a small battle with herself and then sighed. “Palmer tried to blackmail me. He planned to hold my uncle’s body for ransom and tried to recruit Leah in his plan. When she refused, he went for his gun and she shot him.”
“And then she set Palmer and the whole damn town on fire,” Buttons said. “Why did she do that, I wonder?”
Luna shrugged. “It was a ghost town. It won’t be missed, and neither will Solomon Palmer. Besides all that, some things are better kept from the law.”
“Like evidence,” Red said
Luna smiled. “Now you’re being picky, Mr. Shotgun Man. Leah was involved in a justified shooting, and I don’t think a jury would see it any other way.”
“Why was the little gal there in the first place?” Buttons said. “Good beef, by the way.”
“Thank you. My cook, her name is Bessie Foley, was once a top chef in New Orleans,” Luna said. “As for Leah, she was in Cottondale to make sure that Solomon Palmer did as he was paid to do—find a suitable coffin for Uncle Morgan and put him on the stage. But, as I already told you, he had other plans. Ah, here is Bessie with the pie. I guarantee that it’s the best you’ve ever tasted.”
And it was. And after it was eaten, Luna Talbot went to hang a man.
* * *
Red and Buttons left the house and stood out front in the waning day. From horizon to horizon the sky was a uniform crimson, like a roof of fire over the world. Singly and in pairs, the women drifted toward the barn, walking in a strange, glowing light. No one talked. The only sound was the dry whisper of the desert wind.
“Red, you think she’ll go through with it, her being such a nice lady an’ all?” Buttons said.
“I don’t think Luna Talbot is such a nice lady. She said she’ll hang a man, and I reckon she will.” Red drew deep on his cigarette and slowly exhaled blue smoke. “What’s in the coffin, Buttons? A stiff . . . or something else?”
“It was heavy,” Buttons said. “It can only be Uncle Morgan.”
“Maybe he’s got pockets in his shroud.”
“Holding what?” Buttons said.
“Hell if I know,” Red said. “You want to go watch a hanging?”
“Last one we saw put me off hangings forever. I never did get over it.”
Red said. “That was Big Bill Yearly’s necktie party up Abilene way,” he said. “As I recollect, we were there for the free beer.”
“And do you recollect that the damn noose took his head clean off? It was a sight no Christian man should see.”
“I reckon Bill dressed out at around three hundred pounds, and there was the root of the trouble. They should’ve used a thicker rope or a shorter fall.”
“Big Bill was a nuisance right up to the very end, wasn’t he?” Buttons said.
Red nodded. “Yeah, that’s why they hung him, for being such a damned nuisance, getting drunk all the time.”
“And for stealing chickens,” Buttons said. “He did a lot of that, as I recall.”
“I wonder what this one is being stretched for.”
Buttons took in a deep breath, let it out in a rush, and then said, “I guess we should go find out, huh? It’s kinda like a civic duty, ain’t it?”
Red shrugged. “You could say that, but if you’d rather sit this one out, I’ll understand.”
“Nah, I’ll go,” Buttons said. “Anyhow, I don’t think Mrs. Talbot will do it. Maybe she just wants to put the fear of God into the feller.”
“Could be. I never saw a bunch of women hang a man before. Have you?”
“No, I never have. But one time in a Fort Worth cathouse I seen four whores beat a pimp to a bloody pulp, but he was a pissant pimp and they was big, healthy whores.”
“Not the same as a hanging, is it?” Red’s eyes were drawn to a small, flat-roofed outbuilding where Leah Leighton and two other women, all three with shotguns, prodded a man out of the doorway. “Buttons, let’s go see what’s happening.”
Red’s plug hat sat square on his head, making dark shadows of his eyes, and his holstered Colt hung on his hip. A tall, significant man, he walked with the easy confidence gun skill brings.
Leah greeted him with neither enthusiasm nor hostility. “This is no place for you, shotgun man.”
“I came to see your prisoner,” Red said. “Nine times out often when I see a man who’s about to be hung, he’s a friend of mine.”
“Well, is he?” Leah said.
The condemned man was stocky, of medium height with the arrogant look of the bully about him. His hands and feet were shackled with clanking irons that forced him to walk with small, mincing steps. His face was bruised, one eye closed shut, his bottom lip split.
Red shook his head. “No, I don’t know him.”
“No surprise there,” Leah said. “This animal has no friends.”
He managed a thin smile. “You know that for sure, huh?”
“Damn right I do,” Leah said. “His name is Barnaby Leighton, and a nightmare ago he was my husband, or what passed for one. Now, give us the road.”
Red’s face registered shocked surprise as the man said, “Help me, mister. These bitches are set on hanging me.”
Leah and the others brushed past, and the man turned his head to Red and yelled, “Help me, damnit! Help me.”
Red didn’t speak. Leah Leighton was about to hang her husband, and there was nothing to say and nothing he could do about it, short of drawing down on the woman and ordering her to stop.
Button Muldoon’s thin whisper in his ear predicted the likely result of that play. “Red, back away or you’ll get your fool head blown off.”
“He’s nothing to me, but she’s got to have a mighty good reason for hanging a man. Because he’s her husband ain’t one of them.”
“I reckon many a woman would hang her husband if she could,” Buttons said. “Sometimes just being his wife is reason enough.”
“Strange talk coming from a confirmed bachelor.” Red kept his eyes on the solemn procession making its way toward the barn where lamps glowed orange in the strange amber light.
“Women confide in a stage driver,” Buttons said. “They tell him their darkest secrets. Why, I’ve given marriage advice to farm wives, army wives, miner wives, merchant wives, railroader wives . . . all kinds of wives. What I mean is, after hearing all that wife talk, you can bet that I believe Leah Leighton has a mighty good reason to hang her husband.”
Red’s aborning smile faded instantly as a terrified shriek from the barn shattered the hush of the evening. “Seems like ol’ Barnaby didn’t think they’d really hang him. Now he knows different.”
“We should stop right here where we’re at,” Buttons said. “We don’t need to watch it.”
“That’s fine by me.” Red looked around and smiled. “Where’s the free beer?”
Barnaby shrieked yet another plea for mercy. He choked a little, as though the rope was now around his neck.
Buttons, the bloody decapitation of Bill Yearly vivid in his memory, scowled and yelled in the direction of the barn. “Goddamn it, if you’re gonna do it, then do it. Hang the sidewinder and get it over with.”
“Steady, old fellow. We’ve got no hand in this.”
All things considered, Barnaby Leighton did not die well.
Between cursing threats directed at his wife, he screamed and begged and screamed again. A long minute ticked past. And then another. The man’s rants choked off, leaving a sudden silence as fragile as spun glass.
A horse snorted and kicked in its stall,
And Buttons Muldoon’s stored-up breath hissed out of him. “A helluva way to kill a man. Hanging from a barn rafter ain’t a quick death.”
Red nodded. “Seems like.” His hands shook as he built and lit a cigarette. Around him the scarlet sky faded, and the day shaded into darkness and a lantern bobbed in the gloom like a firefly as a woman strode purposely toward him and Buttons.
Luna Talbot stood directly in front of Buttons and said, “He’s dead. The world is rid of his vile shadow.”
“We heard,” Buttons said.
“Barnabas Leighton lived like a pig . . . and he died like a pig,” the woman said.
“Bad luck to speak ill of the dead, Mrs. Talbot,” Buttons said.
“There’s no other way to speak of him,” Luna said. “Come into the house. I need a drink. You too, shotgun man.”
“I think me and Red should be on our way,” Buttons said. “Got a long road ahead of us to El Paso.”
“In this country, in the dark, you’ll have a busted axle before you travel a mile. No, you can stay the night,” Luna said. “There’s a room in the bunkhouse we keep for male visitors that’s comfortable enough. It has a good roof. You can bed down there.”
Buttons looked doubtful and turned to Red.
“The lady has a point. Buttons, you know the country to the north of here. It’s a hard way and rocky. As she says, we could bust an axle or break a wheel or lame a horse. Best we leave at first light.”
“Make up your minds, gentlemen,” Luna said. “I’ve invited you in for a drink. I won’t ask a second time.”
“All right. I guess I could use a whiskey,” Buttons said. “Or two.”
“Mr. Muldoon . . . that is your name, right?” Luna said.
“Man and boy,” Buttons said.
“Then believe me when I tell you that Barnabas Leighton needed hanging,” the woman said. “Some men don’t deserve to live, and he was one of them.”
“Tell me about it,” Buttons said. “I heard him die . . . and I’d like to know the why of the thing.”
“Come inside,” Luna said. “I’ll tell you about Barnabas. . . if you can handle it.”