Evan Hunter is one of popular fiction’s modern masters. As Ed McBain, he created the 87th Precinct, one of the most popular mystery series of all time; and as Hunter he has written many novels that have captured wide public acclaim, including The Blackboard Jungle and Last Summer. His Westerns contain many elements of his mysteries, including ruthless criminals and hard-bitten lawmen. “The Killing at Triple Tree” is one of his best.
I saw the rider appear over the brow of the hill, coming at a fast gallop. He loomed black against the scrub oak lining the trail, dropped into a small gulley, and splashed across the narrow creek. I lost sight of him behind an outcropping of gray boulders, and when he appeared again it was right between the ears of the sorrel I was riding, like a target resting on the notched sight of a rifle.
The sorrel lifted her head, blocking the rider from view for a moment. She twitched her ears and snorted, and I laid my hand on her neck and said, “Easy, girl. Easy now.”
The rider kept coming, dust pluming up around him. He was mounted on a roan, and the lather on the horse’s flanks told me he’d been riding hard for a long time. He came closer, and then yelled, “Johnny! Hey, Johnny!”
I spurred the sorrel and galloped down the road to meet him. He’d reined in, and he stood in his stirrups now, the sweat beading his brow and running down his nose in a thin trickle.
“Johnny! Christ, I thought I’d never find you.”
The rider was Rafe Dooley, one of my deputies, a young kid of no more than nineteen. He’d been tickled to death to get the badge, and he wore it proudly, keeping it polished bright on his vest.
“What’s the matter, Rafe?”
He swallowed hard and passed the back of his hand over his forehead. He shook the sweat from his hand, then ran his tongue over the dryness of his lips. It took him a long time to start speaking.
“What the hell is it, Rafe?”
“Johnny, it’s … it’s …” He stopped again, a pained expression on his face.
“Trouble? Is it trouble?”
He nodded wordlessly.
“What kind of trouble? For God’s sake, Rafe, start …”
“It’s May, Johnny. She …”
“May?” My hands tightened on the reins. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“She’s … she’s dead, Johnny.”
For a second, it didn’t register. I was staring at the drop of sweat working its way down Rafe’s nose, and I kept staring at it, almost as if I hadn’t heard what he’d said. It began to seep in then, not with sudden shock, but a sort of slow comprehension, building inside me, the way thunderheads build over the mountains.
“What?” I asked. “What did you say, Rafe?”
“She’s dead,” he said, and he almost began crying. His face screwed up, and he began shaking his head from side to side. “I didn’t want to tell you. I wanted them to send someone else. Johnny, I didn’t want to be the one. She’s dead, Johnny. She’s dead.”
I nodded, and then I shook my head, and then I nodded again. “What … what happened? How …”
“You’ll see her, Johnny,” he said. “Please, don’t make me talk about it. Please, Johnny. Please.”
“Where?”
“In town. Johnny, I didn’t want to tell …”
“Come on, Rafe.”
DOC TALMADGE HAD pulled a sheet over her.
I stared at the white fabric outlining her body, and I almost knew it was her before I’d seen her face. Doc stood near the table and reached for the sheet.
“It’s May, Johnny,” he said. “You sure you want to see her?”
“I’m sure.”
“Johnny …”
“Pull back the sheet, Doc.”
Doc Talmadge shrugged, let out his breath, and pulled his brows together in a frown. He took the end of the sheet in careful fingers, gently pulled it back over her face.
Her hair lay beneath her head like a nest of black feathers, cushioning the softness of her face. Her eyes were closed, and her skin was like snow, white and cold. Her lips were pressed together into a narrow line, and a trickle of blood was drying at one corner of her mouth.
“I … I didn’t wash her off,” Doc said. “I wanted you to …”
Her shoulders were bare, and I saw the purple bruises just above the hollow of her throat. I took the sheet from Doc’s hands and pulled it all the way down. She was wearing a skirt, but it had been torn to tatters. She was barefoot, and there were scratches on the long curve of her legs. She wore no blouse. The bruises above her waist were ugly against the swell of her breasts.
I pulled the sheet over her and turned away.
“Where’d they find her?” I asked.
“The woods. Just outside of town. She had a basket with her, Johnny, and some flowers in it. I guess she was just …” —he took another deep breath—“picking flowers.”
“Who did it?” He turned to me.
“I don’t know, Johnny.”
“A posse out?”
“We were waiting for you. We figured …”
“Waiting? Why? Why in Christ’s name were you waiting?”
Doc seemed to pull his neck into his collar. “She … she’s your wife, Johnny. We thought …”
“Thought, hell! The sonovabitch who did this is roaming around loose, and you all sat around on your fat duffs! What the hell kind of thinking is that?”
“Johnny …”
“Johnny, Johnny, Johnny! Shut up! Shut up and get out in the street and get some riders for me. Get some riders for me, Doc. Get some riders …” I bunched my fists into balls, and I turned my face away from Doc because it had hit me all of a sudden and I didn’t want him to see his town marshal behaving like a baby. “Get me some riders,” I said, and then I choked and didn’t say anything else.
“Sure, Johnny. Sure.”
THEY SHOWED ME the spot where May had been attacked.
A few scattered flowers were strewn over the ground. Some of the flowers were stamped into the dirt, where the attacker’s boots had trod on them. May’s blouse was on the ground, too, the buttons gone from it, and some of the material torn when the blouse had been ripped.
We followed her tracks to where the attacker must have first spotted her. There was a patch of daisies on a green hillock near the edge of the woods. The trail ran past the hillock, and any rider on the trail would have had no difficulty in spotting a girl picking flowers there. Beyond the hillock, we found the rider’s sign. The sign was easy to read, with the horse’s right hind leg carrying a cracked shoe. We saw the spot some fifty feet from the hillock, where the rider had reined in and sat his saddle for a while, it seemed. The dead ashes of a cigarette lay in the dust of the trail, and it was easy to get the picture. The rider had come around the bend, seen May on the hillock, and pulled in his horse. He had watched her while he smoked a cigarette, and then started for the hillock. The tracks led around the daisy patch, with clods of earth and grass pulled out of the hill where the horse had started to climb. May must have broken away at about that time and started into the woods, with the rider after her. We found both her shoes a little ways from the hillock, and the rider’s tracks following across the floor of the forest. He’d jumped from his horse, it looked like, and grabbed her then, taking what he wanted, and then strangling her to death.
We followed the tracks to the edge of the forest, the sign of the cracked hind shoe standing out like an elephant’s print. When they reached the trail again, they blended with a hundred hoofprints to form a dusty, tangled puzzle.
I looked at the muddled trail.
“It don’t look good, Johnny,” Rafe said.
“No.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Split up. You come with me, Rafe. We’ll head away from town. The rest of you head back to town and on through toward Rock Falls. Stop anyone you meet on the trail. If you find a rider on a horse with a cracked shoe, bring him in.”
“Bring him in, Johnny?” one of the possemen asked.
“You heard me.”
“Sure. I just thought …”
“Bring him in. Let’s go, Rafe.”
We turned our mounts and started riding away from the woods, and away from the scene of May’s attack. There was an emptiness inside me, and a loneliness, as if someone had deliberately drained all feeling from me, as if someone had taken away my life and left only my body. We rode in silence because there was nothing to say. Rafe looked at me from time to time, uneasy in my company, the way a man would be in a funeral parlor when the corpse was someone he knew.
We’d been riding for an hour when Rafe said, “Up ahead, Johnny.”
We reined in, and I looked at the cloud of dust in the distance.
“A rider.”
“Going like hell afire,” Rafe said.
“I’ll take him, Rafe,” I said softly. “Get back to town.”
“Huh?”
“Get back to town. I’ll bring him in.”
“But, Johnny, I thought you wanted my …”
“I don’t want anything, Rafe. Just get the hell back to town and leave me alone. I’ll take care of this.”
“Sure. I’ll see you, Johnny.”
Rafe turned his mount, and I waited until he was out of sight before I started after the rider. I gave the sorrel the spurs, and I rode hard because the rider was out to break all records for speed. The distance between us closed, and when I was close enough, I fired a shot over my head. I saw the rider’s head turn, but he didn’t stop, so I poured on a little more, closing the gap until I was some thirty feet behind him.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Hey, you!”
The rider pulled up this time, and I brought my horse up close to his, wheeling around to get a good look at him.
“What’s your hurry, mister?” I asked.
He was tall and rangy, and he sat his saddle with the practiced ease of years of experience. He wore a gray hat pulled low over his eyes, and a shock of unruly brown hair spilled from under his hat onto his forehead. A blue bandana was knotted around his throat, and his shirt and trousers were covered with dust and lather.
“What’s it to you?” he asked. His voice was soft, mildly inquisitive, not in the least offensive.
“I’m the marshal of Triple Tree.”
“So?”
“You been through town lately?”
“Don’t even know where your town is,” he said.
“No?”
“Nope. Why? Somebody rob a bank or something?”
“Something,” I said. “Want to get off your mount?” He was riding a sorrel that could have been a twin to my own horse.
“Nope, can’t say that I do. Suppose you tell me what’s on your mind, marshal?”
“Suppose I don’t.”
The rider shrugged. He wasn’t a bad-looking fellow, and a half-smile lurked at the corners of his mouth and in the depths of his blue eyes. “Marshal,” he said, “this here’s a free country. You don’t want to tell me what you’re all het up about, that’s fine with me. Me, I’ll just mosey along and forget I ever …”
“Just a second, mister.”
“Yes, marshal?” He moved his hands to his saddle horn, crossed them there. He wore a single Colt .44 strapped to his waist, the holster tied to his thigh with a leather thong.
“Where are you bound?”
“Nowheres in particular. Down the road a piece, I suppose. Might be able to pick up some work there. If not, I’ll ride on a little more.”
“What kind of work?”
“Punching. Cattle drive. Shoveling horse manure or cow dung. I ain’t particular.”
“How come you didn’t ride through Triple Tree?”
“I crossed over the mountains yonder,” he said. “Spotted the trail and headed for it. Any law against that?”
“What’s your name?”
The rider smiled. “Jesse James. My brother Frank’s right behind that tree there.”
“Don’t get funny,” I told him. “I’m in no mood for jokes.”
“You are in a pretty sour mood, ain’t you, marshal?” He wagged his head sorrowfully. “Something you et, maybe?”
“What’s your name, mister?”
“Jack,” he said simply, drawling the word.
“Jack what?”
“Hawkins. Jack Hawkins.”
“Get off your horse, Hawkins.”
“Why?”
I was through playing games. I cleared leather and rested the barrel of my gun on my saddle horn. “Because I say so. Come on, swing down.”
Hawkins eyed the .44 with respect. “My, my,” he said. He swung his long legs over the saddle, and looked at the gun again. “My!”
“You better drop your gun belt, Hawkins.”
Hawkins’s eyes widened a bit. “I’ll bet a bank was robbed,” he said. “Hell, marshal, I ain’t a bank robber.” He loosened his belt and dropped the holstered .44 to the road.
“Back away a bit.”
“How far, marshal?”
“Listen …”
“I just asked …”
I fired two shots in quick succession, both plowing up dirt a few inches from his toe boots.
“Hey!”
“Do as I say, goddamnit!”
“Sure, sure.” A frown replaced the smile on his face, and he stood watching me tight-lipped.
I walked around the side of his horse and lifted the right hind hoof. I stared at it for a few seconds, and then dropped it to the dust again.
“Where’s her shoe?” I asked.
“On her hoof,” Hawkins replied. “Where the hell do you suppose it would be?”
“She’s carrying no shoe on that hoof, Hawkins.”
He seemed honestly surprised. “No? Must have lost it. I’ll be damned if everything doesn’t happen to me.”
“Was the shoe cracked? Is that why she lost it?”
“Hell, no. Not that I know of.”
I looked at him, trying to read meaning in the depths of his eyes. I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t be sure. A horse could lose a shoe anytime. That didn’t mean it was carrying a cracked shoe, before the shoe got lost.
“You better mount up,” I said.
“Why?”
“We’re taking a little ride back to Triple Tree.”
“You intent on pinning that bank job on me, ain’t you? Marshal, I ain’t been in a bank in five years.”
“How long is it since you’ve been in the woods?”
“What?”
“Mount up!”
Hawkins cursed under his breath and reached for his gun belt in the dust.
“I’ll take care of that,” I said. I hooked it with my toe and pulled it toward me, lifting it and looping it over my saddle horn.
Hawkins stared at me for a few seconds, then shook his head and swung into his saddle. “Here goes another day shot up the behind,” he said. “All right, marshal, let’s get this goddamned farce over with.”
THE TOWN WAS deserted.
The afternoon sun beat down on the dusty street with fierce intensity. The street was lonely, and we rode past the blacksmith shop in silence, past the saloon, past the post office, past my office, up the street with the sound of our horses’ hooves the only thing to break the silence.
“Busy little town you got here,” Hawkins said.
“Shut up, Hawkins.”
He shrugged. “Whatever you say, marshal.”
The silence was strange and forbidding. It was like walking in on someone who’d been talking about you. It magnified the heat, made the dust swirling up around us seem more intolerable.
When the voice came, it shattered the silence into a thousand brittle shards.
“Marshal! Hey, marshal!”
I wheeled the sorrel and spotted old Jake Trilby pushing open the batwings on the saloon. He waved and I walked the horse over to him, waiting while he put his crutch under his arm and stepped out onto the boardwalk.
“Where is everyone, Jake?”
“They got him, marshal,” he said. “The feller killed your wife.”
“What?”
“Yep, they got him. Caught him just outside of Rock Falls. Ridin’ a horse with a cracked right hind shoe. Had blood on his clothes, too. He’s the one, all right, marshal. He’s the one killed May, all right.”
“Where? Where is he?”
“They didn’t wait for you this time, marshal. They knowed you wanted action.”
“Where are they?”
“Out hangin’ him. If he ain’t hanged already by this time.” Old Jake chuckled. “They’re givin’ it to him, marshal. They’re showin’ him.”
“Where, Jake?”
“The oak down by the fork. You know where. Heck, marshal, he’s dancin’ on air by now.”
I turned the sorrel and raked my spurs over her belly. She gave a leap forward and as we rode past Hawkins, I tossed him his gun belt. A surprised look covered his face, and then I didn’t see him anymore because he was behind me, and I was heading for the man who killed her.
I SAW THE tree first, reaching for the sky with heavy branches. A rope had been thrown over one of those branches, and it hung limply now, its ends lost in the milling crowd beneath the tree. The crowd was silent, a tight knot of men and women forming the nucleus, a loose unraveling of kids on the edges. I couldn’t see the man the crowd surrounded until I got a little closer. I pushed the sorrel right into the crowd and it broke apart like a rotten apple, and then I saw the man sitting on the bay under the tree, his hands tied behind him, the rope knotted around his neck.
“Here’s Johnny,” someone shouted, and then the cry seemed to sweep over the crowd like a small brush fire. “Here’s Johnny.”
“Hey, Johnny!”
“We got him, Johnny!”
“Just in time, Johnny!”
I swung off the horse and walked over to where Doc Talmadge was pulling rope taut.
“Hello, Johnny,” he said, greeting me affably. “We got the bastard, and this time we didn’t wait for you. Another few minutes and you’d have missed it all.”
“Put that rope down, Doc,” I said.
Doc’s eyes widened and then blinked. “Huh? What, Johnny?”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I was just fixin’ to tie the rope around the trunk here. After that, we going to take that horse from underneath this sonova …”
“What’s the matter, Johnny?” someone called.
“Come on, Johnny,” another voice prodded. “Let’s get on with this.”
The sky overhead was a bright blue, and the sun gleamed in it like a fiery eye. It was a beautiful day, with a few clouds trailing wisps of cotton close to the horizon. I glanced up at the sky and then back to the man sitting the bay.
He was narrow faced, with slitted brown eyes and jaws that hadn’t been razor-scraped in days. His mouth was expressionless. Only his eyes spoke, and they told of silent hatred. His clothes were dirty, and his shirt was spattered with blood.
I walked away from Doc, leaving him to knot the rope around the tree trunk. The crowd fell silent as I approached the man on the bay.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Dodd,” he said.
“This your horse?”
“Yep.”
I walked around behind the horse and checked the right hind hoof. The shoe was cracked down the center. I dropped the hoof and walked back to face Dodd.
I stared at him for a few minutes, our eyes locked. Then I turned to the crowd and said, “Go on home. Go on. There’ll be no hanging here today.”
Rafe stepped out of the crowd and put his hands on his hips. “You nuts, Johnny? This is the guy who killed May. He killed your wife!”
“We don’t know that,” I said.
“We don’t know it? Jesus, you just saw the broken shoe. What the hell more do you want?”
“He’s got blood all over his shirt, Johnny,” Doc put in. “Hell, he’s our man.”
“Even if he is, he doesn’t hang,” I said tightly.
An excited murmur went up from the crowd and then Jason Bragg shouldered his way through and stood in front of me, one hand looped in his gun belt. He was a big man, with corn yellow hair and pale blue eyes. He was a farmer with a wife and three grown daughters. When he spoke now, it was in slow and measured tones.
“Johnny, you are not doing right.”
“No, Jason?”
Jason shook his massive head, and pointed up to Dodd. “This man is a killer. We know he’s a killer. You’re the marshal here. It’s your job to …”
“It’s my job to do justice.”
“Yes, it’s your job to do justice. It’s your job to see that this man is hanged!” He looked at me as if he thought I was some incredible kind of insect. “Johnny, he killed your own wife!”
“That doesn’t mean we take the law into our own hands.”
“Johnny …”
“It doesn’t mean that this town will get blood on its hands, either. If you hang this man, you’ll all be guilty of murder. You’ll be just as much a killer as he is. Every last one of you! You’ll be murdering in a group, but you’ll still be murdering. You’ve got no right to do that.”
“The hell we ain’t!” someone shouted.
“Come on, Johnny, quit the goddamned stalling!”
“What is this, a tea party?”
“We got our man, now string him up!”
“That’s the man killed your wife, Johnny.”
Jason Bragg cleared his throat. “Johnny, I got a wife and three girls. You remember my daughters when they were buttons. They’re young ladies now. We let this one get away with what he’s done, and this town won’t be safe for anyone anymore. My daughters …”
“He won’t get away with anything,” I said. “But you’re not going to hang him.”
“He killed your wife!” someone else shouted.
“He’s ridin’ the horse that made the tracks.”
“Shut up!” I yelled. “Shut up, all of you!”
There was an immediate silence, and then, cutting through the silence like a sharp-edged knife, a voice asked, “You backin’ out, marshal?”
The heads in the crowd turned, and I looked past them to see Hawkins sitting his saddle on the fringe of the crowd.
“Keep out of this, stranger,” I called. “Just ride on to wherever the hell you were going.”
“Killed your wife, did he?” Hawkins said. He looked over to Dodd, and then slowly began rolling a cigarette. “No wonder you were all het up back there on the trail.”
“Listen, Hawkins …”
“You seemed all ready to raise six kinds of hell a little while ago. What’s the matter, a hangin’ turn your stomach?”
The crowd began to murmur again, and Hawkins grinned.
“Hawkins,” I started, but he raised his voice above mine and shouted, “Are you sure this is the man?”
“Yes!” the crowd yelled. “Yes!”
“Ain’t no two ways about it. He’s the one! Even got scratches on his neck where May grabbed at him.”
I glanced quickly at Dodd, saw his face pale, and saw the deep fresh scratches on the side of his neck at the same time.
“Then string him up!” Hawkins shouted. “String him higher ’n the sun! String him up so your wives and your daughters can walk in safety. String him up even if you’ve got a yellow-livered marshal who …”
“String him up!” the cry rose.
The crowd surged forward and Doc Talmadge brought his hand back to slap at the bay’s rump. I took a step backward and pulled my .44 at the same time. Without turning my back to the crowd, I swung the gun down, chopping the barrel onto Doc’s wrist. He pulled back his hand and let out a yelp.
“First man moves a step,” I said, “gets a hole in his gut!”
Jason Bragg took a deep breath. “Johnny, don’t try to stop us. You should be ashamed of yourself. You should …”
“I like you, Jason,” I said. “Don’t let it be you.” I cocked the gun, and the click was loud in the silence.
“Johnny,” Rafe said, “you don’t know what you’re doing. You’re upset, you’re …”
“Stay where you are, Rafe. Don’t move an inch.”
“You going to let him stop you?” Hawkins called.
No one answered him.
“You going to let him stop justice?” he shouted.
I waited for an answer, and when there was none, I said, “Go home. Go back to your homes. Go back to your shops. Go on, now. Go on.”
The crowd began to mumble, and then a few kids broke away and began running back to town. Slowly, the women followed, and then Jason Bragg turned his back to me and stumped away silently. Rafe looked at me sneeringly and followed the rest. Doc Talmadge was the last to go, holding his wrist against his chest.
Hawkins sat on his sorrel and watched the crowd walking back to town. When he turned, there was a smile on his face.
“Thought we were going to have a little excitement,” he said.
“You’d better get out of town, Hawkins. You’d better get out damned fast.”
“I was just leavin’, marshal.” He raised his hand in a salute, wheeled his horse, and said, “So long, chum.”
I watched while the horse rode up the dusty trail, parting the walkers before it. Then the horse was gone, and I kept watching until the crowd turned the bend in the road and was gone, too.
I walked over to Dodd.
He sat on the bay with his hands tied behind him, his face noncommittal.
“Did you kill her?” I asked
He didn’t answer.
“Come on,” I said. “You’ll go before a court anyway, and there’s no one here but me to hear a confession. Did you?”
He hesitated for a moment, and then he nodded briefly.
“Why?” I asked.
He shrugged his thin shoulders.
I looked into his eyes, but there was no answer there, either.
“I appreciate what you done, marshal,” he said suddenly, his lips pulling back to expose narrow teeth. “Considering everything … well, I just appreciate it.”
“Sure,” I said. “I’m paid to see that justice is done.”
“Well, I appreciate it.”
I stepped behind him and untied his hands, and then I loosened the noose around his neck.
“That feels good,” he said, massaging his neck.
“I’ll bet it does.” I reached into my pocket for the makings. “Here,” I said, “roll yourself a cigarette.”
“Thanks. Say, thanks.”
His manner grew more relaxed. He sat in the saddle and sprinkled tobacco into the paper. He knew better than to try a break, because I was still holding my .44 in my hand. He worked on the cigarette, and he asked, “Do you think … do you think it’ll go bad for me?”
I watched him wet the paper and put the cigarette into his mouth.
“Not too bad,” I said.
He nodded, and the cigarette bobbed, and he reached into his pocket for a match.
I brought the .44 up quickly and fired five fast shots, watching his face explode in soggy red chunks.
He dropped out of the saddle.
The cigarette falling to the dust beside him.
Then I mounted up and rode back to town.