“You’re too doggoned quick with your mouth,” the scar-faced, short man growled at the youngest of those four. “Have another cup of coffee and shut up.”
Duncan thought he sensed indecision in the scar-faced man. “Mind telling me what this is all about?” he asked mildly.
“Don’t mind at all,” answered up the heaviest of those three tall ones, gazing steadily over into Duncan’s eyes. “That’s your friend Jerry Swindin over there. Right after the pair of you tried robbin’ the express office up in Leesville he got shot. He got this far before he died. We figured the pair of you split up to throw us off your trail. Well, it worked until we figured if we stayed after Swindin he’d eventually lead us to you. And he did.”
“I guess,” said Duncan, “if I told you I’ve never been in this place you call Leesville in my whole cussed life, you wouldn’t believe me, would you?”
The big man shook his head. In the same even tone he said: “No, mister, I wouldn’t believe you. And maybe, except for the killin’ of Charley Dudley, I wouldn’t give a damn either. But you see, old Charley was a good friend of mine.”
“Who was Charley Dudley?”
“The express clerk, mister. I don’t know whether you or Swindin killed him, but I aim to find out, for, like I said ... Charley was a good friend of mine. We grew up together.”
“I see,” Duncan murmured, catching the youngest man steadily staring at him from farther back. He added: “One more question ... who is the preacher your friend back there spoke of?”
“He’s your pa. Now, if you’re through actin’ stupid, suppose we start back.”
“Back,” snarled the youngest man. “Jack, I say string him up right here. There ain’t another decent tree for the job until we get plumb back to town.”
Two of the others, although they did not openly agree with this suggestion, looked at Duncan as though they certainly would lend a hand at yanking on the rope. Neither the scar-faced man nor the big, burly, older man who was standing in front of Duncan looked willing to lynch him or let others do it. He decided he’d be wise to make some kind of overture to these two.
“Listen,” he said to the big, powerful man across from him. “My pa’s no preacher, my name is Todd Duncan, not something-or-other Parton. I never saw that dead man over there before in my life, and I’ve never been in your town.”
The scar-faced man spoke from over by the little fire where he was squatting. “You’ll get a chance to see our town, Parton. You’ll get a chance to be identified by that doggoned Bible-banger, too. You see, he didn’t get away. We got him locked up in my jailhouse.”
Duncan squinted. “Your jailhouse, mister?” he said.
The scar-faced man fished in a shirt pocket, brought forth a well-worn nickel badge, held it palmed so Duncan could see it before returning it to his pocket. “Sheriff Matt Berryhill,” he said. “If I’d been in town when you and Swindin tried that express job, neither of you’d have gotten this far, believe me.”
Something here troubled Duncan. If these men knew Swindin so well, knew this Preacher Parton, too, then how was it that they mistook him for the third member of that outlaw crew? He asked Sheriff Berryhill about this and his answer was curt.
“Cut it out, Parton. You’re stalling and you’re wasting time. Sure we knew Swindin. He came to town with the preacher and we saw him around the saloons. We also saw you ... some of us anyway ... but never up close ... never in town, but always out at the preacher’s camp at the riverbank.” Sheriff Berryhill looked up, his gaze hard. “If you think that’s going to save you, you’re dead wrong. Circumstantial evidence says you were in on it with Swindin and the preacher, and in this country, Parton, circumstantial evidence has hung its share of men where murder’s been done.”
Duncan stepped around to the fire. He squatted there and reached for the coffee pot. He had a sick feeling in his guts, and yet, for some reason, he couldn’t altogether absorb what was happening to him. It was too unreal, too smoothly condemning. Sure, he’d laid out two cups and two tin plates when he’d started his cooking fire, but, hell, range etiquette said you always offered folks a meal at mealtime.
Maybe it did look like he’d purposefully rendezvoused here with Swindin, but he hadn’t at all. That was purest coincidence. The trouble with his reasoning, he knew, was that only he was influenced by it. All he had to do was cast one look around him at those four bitter faces, and he knew just how futile anything he might say would be.
He finished his coffee, put the cup aside, and went to work fashioning a smoke. As he lit up, blew outward, he considered that lawman sitting over there. Duncan was lucky. If this sheriff hadn’t been with these men—if that youngest rider had been the influencing factor here—a cowboy named Todd Duncan would right this minute be kicking out his last moments at the end of someone’s hard-twist lariat, suspended from a cottonwood limb.
This kind of thinking made Duncan’s cigarette taste acid. He killed it and looked up to find Berryhill’s level gray gaze upon him.
“Doesn’t taste so good, does it?” said the lawman. He looked away. “Tom, you and Jack saddle Swindin’s horse and tie him across it. The rest of you bring in our horses from out where we left ’em, and let’s be heading back.”
The others moved away obediently, leaving Duncan and Berryhill looking across the little fire at each other. “Parton,” said the lawman softly, “bad enough to be a stranger hereabouts, but if you think you can lie your way out of hanging in Leesville, you’re dead wrong.”
“Sheriff, if you’re so certain I’m Parton, why don’t you let ’em do it now. They want to, especially that youngest one.”
“Because there’s a right way and a wrong way.”
Duncan smiled frostily. “Not to a dying man there isn’t. If we ride back to your town, that’s only stretching it out a little. If there’s a trial, that only prolongs it some more.”
“You talk like a man that wants to die, Parton. I don’t have anything on you yet, but I will have in another day or two. Maybe one of those that’s got a conscience that won’t let him rest.”
“My conscience,” said Duncan, “doesn’t bother me in the least, Sheriff, but I’ll promise you this ... if you hang me, yours sure will, for as long as you live.”
Berryhill stood up. “I’ll say one thing for you, Parton, you’re as convincing a liar as I’ve ever run across.”
“And you, Sheriff, are as big a fool as I’ve ever met up with, if you don’t make damned sure who I am before you yank the slack out of that rope.”
Berryhill looked wry. “Sure,” he said very dryly. “Sure, Parton, only you’re forgetting something. We’ve got that old devil who claims he’s your pa in jail. Oh, he did a bang-up job at preaching the gospel, Parton. Getting everyone from town out there at the riverbank while he roared and banged his table ... but he didn’t move fast enough. When young Tom Black recognized Swindin and shot him, breaking up the express office robbery, half a dozen other people saw you, too. From the back, sure, as you two were racing out of town, but they saw you nevertheless, and like I said, Parton, circumstantial evidence has hung its share of killers in this country.”
Duncan stood there staring. Now, that sinking sensation behind his belt was very solid and very real. That scar-faced sheriff meant it. He meant to see Duncan hang. He was marshaling the facts in his mind that would indubitably tie Duncan to the killing of someone named Charley Dudley. He was remembering everything Duncan said and everything here at the cottonwood spring that would look damning to a jury.
The graying, big burly man walked up, his face slack-looking and solemn. “Matt, we got Swindin loaded and the others are waiting. You ready?”
“Sure, Jack, I’m ready. So is Mister Parton here, aren’t you, Mister Parton?”
Duncan said: “No, and if I lived to be a thousand, I doubt if I’d ever be ready for hanging, but I don’t have much choice, do I?”
“None,” said the burly man. “Not at all, Parton.”
They left the cottonwood spring with night down all around them. They rode for an hour with very little talk passed back and forth. Softly bumping along behind the graying, burly man, came the dead outlaw named Swindin. Duncan, considering the hard-eyed men around him, had an illusion that all this was a dream, the kind of a nightmare a man might have after eating half-cooked meat or drinking some of that fiery aguardiente they served down in Mexico.
It was too well acted out. Too perfectly planned and executed. Thinking back, he could see how everything he’d done since coming down out of the northward hills had worked toward this situation he was now in. He had avoided that town he’d seen. He’d deliberately done that, and yet with no valid reason really, except that he didn’t want to waste more time on the trail. But if he’d gone on into that town—he wouldn’t be where he now was. And how to explain to these men why he’d avoided their town? They wouldn’t believe him.
Later, at the spring, the two cups, two plates. Even the way he was leaning over the dead outlaw, as though to help him, when those posse men stole upon him in the dark.
The letters might help. Sheriff Berryhill had them. But the trouble was Cliff Bowman, the man who’d written them, was a drifter like Todd Duncan was. If Berryhill tried to get in touch with him, the odds were better than even that Cliff wouldn’t even still be in Wyoming.
But this preacher ... There was Duncan’s best hope. He could identify Duncan as not being his son, if indeed the other member of this outlaw gang was this man’s son at all.
“Smoke?”
Duncan looked around. Berryhill was offering the makings. Duncan shook his head. “Not in the mood now,” he said. “Tell me something, Sheriff, are you plumb certain I’m the other outlaw of that trio?”
Berryhill looped his reins, built his smoke, and lit up before he replied. “One of the hardest parts of my job ... of any lawman’s job, I expect ... is bein’ neutral, Parton. You see, no sheriff or deputy or marshal is ever supposed to do anything but make arrests ... dead or alive. He’s not supposed to take sides nor pass any judgments. But like I said, this is the hardest part. Sure I think you’re the other one ... what am I likely to think? There you were, rendezvousing with Swindin, plain as day.”
“Could it be possible, Sheriff, that my name really is Todd Duncan, and I’m just passing through your bailiwick on my way south to New Mexico, looking for work?”
“Sure it’s possible, Parton. It’s also possible your pa really is a preacher. One thing I’ll say for the old devil, he sure knows his Good Book. What isn’t possible is that Charley Dudley will come back. What else isn’t possible is that, if you were this Duncan fellow you stole those letters from, and were just passing through, that you’d not ride on into Leesville, because, you see, northward from here there’s not a damned town for a long week of riding ... now you tell me this mythical Duncan or any other cowboy this side of heaven for that matter ... after not being in a town for eight or nine days ... would avoid one.”
Duncan wagged his head back and forth saying nothing back to Sheriff Berryhill. It was uncanny, how this thing had wrapped him up, tossed him down, and left him there to be six-gun-branded, marked with the indelible brand of the outlaw.
He had friends. A man didn’t work the ranges from Montana to Mexico and not make friends. Some of them, like Cliff Bowman for instance, would ride the full distance down to Arizona to help him out of this mess, too. All he’d need to be cleared, he told himself, was some sworn identification. He turned to Berryhill again.
“Tell me, Sheriff, how long before this trial you talked of begins?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
Duncan’s eyes slowly widened. Berryhill saw this and shrugged. “What’s the point in delaying things, Parton? The feeling in town is pretty high. If I tried to postpone things, I just damned well might have a lynch mob to face and I sure don’t want that, not in Leesville where I know everyone.”
“Oh,” said Duncan, “sure not, Sheriff. Hell, a man wouldn’t want to jeopardize a few friendships over a little thing like maybe hanging the wrong man.”
Berryhill blew out a gray cloud and watched it disintegrate in the overhead gloom. “You stick to that story,” he said. “Maybe Jack Thorne didn’t like it, but I see it as your only way out. Not good enough, Parton, not good enough by a country mile, but, still, it’s all you’ve got. Tell me ... is that why you always stayed out at the riverside camp and away from town ... so if anything went wrong, no one could positively identify you as one of them?”
Duncan didn’t answer. He drew forth his own tobacco sack and went to work. This was incredible; it was absolutely unbelievable. If anyone had ever put into a novel what was happening to him right now, and if Duncan had read it, he would have flung the novel aside as being just too impossible for belief. How could circumstances dovetail so perfectly, so coincidentally and so totally believably, in a thousand years, to bring about what was now happening to him? The answer was they couldn’t. Just maybe once in a thousand years they might.
He lit up, broke the match, and dropped it.
Damned if he didn’t have to be the one they ganged up on, too, in that once-in-a-thousand-years interweaving.