SADDLED FOR VENGEANCE
CHAPTER ONE: HANGMAN'S HOLIDAY
An icy sliver of air cut through the desert town of Arango, curling past the false fronts, kicking up a tiny dust devil.
Morning had not yet broken, the sun only a blood red hint in the eastern sky. Soon it would come, angry and hot, a malevolent force to be endured but never conquered.
People had yet to stir from their beds. Cool sleep was something to be savored in Arango behind the weather beaten false-fronted buildings and in the tiny houses that sat lopsidedly on the cracked desert earth. Blissful peace enveloped the morning with no hint of what was to come. There was excitement to be had this day. Bread and Circuses had been a name given it by the ancients; though blood lust was a name that came easier to the tongues of more modern men.
The good people of Arango would leave their cool beds and the brief respite of night to brave the blistering sun that would soon rise. Blood sport was to be had and few would miss it. They would come into the center of town and stare with mad eyes, half afraid and half grateful not to be the object of attention.
The sun rose, a piercing arrow of light shooting over the far gray hills. The yellow beam cut into town, slicing a sharp path to the top the newest structure in Arango. It was made of wood, this creation, and smelled still of fresh-cut cedar. A simple frame, really, with a crossbeam and a flimsy railing and thirteen solid steps.
And a spring-loaded trap.
There was a man atop this construct, the only living thing about so early. He smiled beneath his black hood, smiled as he fingered the lever beside the spring-loaded trap. Savagely, he pulled at the lever and the trap door fell open into space with a vicious thud.
The sound echoed through Arango, followed by the cold cruelty of the man's laughter.
*
Rough hemp tore at the throat of Link Hardmun. Strong arms pinioned his own, vice-like, unrelenting.
He fought to keep calm. The noose placed over his neck had a long tail, and though he knew it was tied to nothing, he couldn’t help but hate the thing. Still, deep down he knew he would not hang ... not yet, not today.
Sheriff Capstin pulled the noose tight, pinching the skin of Hardmun's raw neck. He laughed, that sweating, fat-bellied mule. Laughed because death was thick in the air and the sport of blood was soon to be had.
Capstin rested the neck of the noose on Hardmun's shoulder. The thirteen knots had been made with great care by the lawman. He wouldn’t let the hangman make the noose, preferring that pleasure for himself. The knots weighed heavily on Hardmun's shoulder, much heavier than the sheriff or his two cackling deputies could know.
Hardmun turned, his muscular arms still pinioned. He glanced at each of the deputies holding him. Bill Glasser with his long, stringy yellow hair and dusty bowler hat; and young Arch Tobler with a face full of red pimply blotches. Their broken-toothed grins stared at him like the faces of death.
Hardmun wanted to remember these men, all of them, as he drove straight into hell.
Capstin yanked viciously at Hardmun's chin, pulling his face forward.
"Feel good, does it?" he laughed. "Looks all natural, it does. Like you was made for it."
"Gonna hang," Glasser cackled. "Gonna hang."
Hardmun felt a trickle of warm liquid down his neck, thick and heavy. Capstin's eyes lit up like a child with a new toy. He wiped his fat, pig-like hand across Hardmun's neck and pulled away to show a streak of blood. For a moment Hardmun feared the sheriff would taste it. Instead, he simply wiped his paw clean across Hardmun’s face.
"Gotta be careful, boys," the fat sheriff bleated. His deputies giggled like little girls. "Don't want our boy to die afore he dies."
They all laughed now and Hardmun could stand no more. He spat into the eye of Sheriff Capstin.
Capstin yelled, "You dog!" as he clawed at his eye. Hardmun wished he still chewed tobacco. Perhaps then he might have put out the sheriff's eye.
The deputies froze, uncertain, terrified. In the deadly silence that followed it was Hardmun's turn to laugh.
"You're a pig, Capstin. Always have been. Our roads may be different, but there's more honor in one of my kind than in any ten of yours."
Holding a dusty bandanna to his eye Capstin threw his heavy fist squarely into Hardmun's belly. Hardmun had been expecting it, had stiffened for the impact. Yet the big sheriff had a lot of weight. He threw one hell of a punch.
Hardmun's knees buckled and with his collapse came more laughter from the deputies. He fought to control his stomach, afraid the tight noose would make him choke on his own vomit. He breathed tightly, willing air into his constricted chest.
"You're a highwayman, Hardmun, and don't you forget it! You rob people and that's agin the law. I'm the law, Hardmun, so it's you agin me. You see how it is."
Hardmun looked up from the floor of his jail cell. Morning light was just now pushing through the barred adobe window. Another day in this sweatbox, he said to himself. One more day in this hell. Maybe it would be better if they just beat me to death.
"I see how you terrorize this little town, hiding behind a bought star," Hardmun groaned.
Capstin's boot slugged into Hardmun's groin. The prisoner cried out sharply and tried to roll over. His body tensed from the pain so violently he felt a leg muscle pop. His stomach threatened again to void itself. Capstin’s attack seemed to be a signal because the deputies joined in and began pounding hell out of Hardmun.
After the first few blows, Hardmun felt little. His mind sank into a numbing gray mist, cold at first but then warmer and comforting. He had no thought other than a desire to embrace death. Then darkness enveloped him.
When the blackness cleared, Hardmun found he was on the dirty floor and that the noose gone from around his neck. He hauled himself up onto a rat-chewed cot, struggling just for breath. The sun had come up full and he was sweltering in the tight, airless cell.
Thinking at first that it was a rattlesnake, Hardmun was startled to find the hangman’s noose in the cot. A rattlesnake of a sheriff had left it there to torment him.
And why not? Didn't he deserve it? This time, perhaps he did.
So many years on the loose, living life the way he wanted, not giving a damn about man, woman, or child. Only for his own flesh, his own belly.
He had lived well, so he thought. The sky for his roof, no time clocks to watch. Hell, he had almost forgotten how to tell time by means other than the sun or the stars.
Punching cattle meant slaving for forty dollars a month and grub. Town jobs paid even less and kept you out of the sun, burying you in some dusty room. Either way, you were working for another and not much of a man.
The highwayman's trail made life exciting and rewarding. You lived by rules, of course. Not the ones found in the Bible or even in the halls of the Capitol. But they were just as immutable. There was a code and Hardmun gladly stuck to it.
He would die for it soon. Sticking to the code would see that his gang remained free, for he had told nothing to Capstin, nothing to the judge and jury that had sealed his fate.
He deserved death, he told himself. You should have stopped Amos Turk, ended his life before he had had a chance to wreak his terrible, drunken retribution. You knew Turk was a mad dog and that he would bring about your death, he told himself. And now it has come true.
Yet the code remained. The murders committed by Turk, as the gang's leader, would go unavenged because Hardmun would say nothing to the law. If there were one thing Hardmun regretted it was that he would not be around to punish Turk for his evil.
Those words echoed in his mind as he dozed through the day. His thoughts quiet again he was amazed at the depth of his hatred, and of his desire to kill. He had not always been like this, and as he drifted to into a fitful sleep, he thought about the stages of his life and the circumstances that brought him to the hangman’s noose.
*
It had been a sudden spark, a bit of inspiration that had prompted Hardmun to lift his gun and carefully place the bore over the tip of the whiskey drummer’s nose.
“Shut up,” he had told the portly, sweating man who had gone cross-eyed with fear staring at the large gun.
The two men had spent most of a day inside a hot, bouncing stagecoach. The hard wooden benches had numbed Hardmun’s back and the whiskey drummer, who had announced himself as William G. Portis, had numbed his mind. Portis had wasted no time in bringing out a sample case and offering a taste to Hardmun, who refused. But as the grinding trip wore on and pain settled deep into his bones Hardmun knew he needed relief. Relief, too, from the incessant, mindless chatter of the drummer. Portis, by his own accounts, had traveled the depth and breadth of the “Wild West” and had made the acquaintance of many fine personages, as well as those of lesser refinement. He preferred, he told Hardmun with a wink, the saltier among the species. With a knowing eye he saw Hardmun’s discomfort and again offered a sample. Reluctantly, Hardmun drank. The brew was vile and he spat it out without swallowing.
Looking back on it, that might have been the moment when he had thought to seek revenge on the fat salesman. The mindless drivel the man spouted was stupefying, but the taste of that whiskey would stay with him to his dying day.
“That, of course, is among our finest,” the drummer said with a grin. “Meant for the stout of heart and stomach. Excellent medicinal uses, too.”
The stage suddenly lurched and the two men slid to the floor with a crash. When the coach came to a stop moments later they were yanked out and thrown to the dusty road. The driver was dead, the echo of a shotgun blast still hanging in the dry air. Two men with bandanas covering their faces were up in the driver’s box working free a small tin chest that had been bolted there. On horseback were two other men, their faces also covered. They held guns on Hardmun and the drummer, but their attention was focused on the job of freeing the tin box.
One of the riders cast an appraising eye over the captives and lowered his rifle so the barrel pointed directly at Hardmun’s head.
“You ain’ta gonna be no hero, air ya?” he asked.
Hardmun shook his head slowly, watching the man with an intent glare. “Not me.”
Eventually the tin box was freed and the bandits rode away, but not before driving off the coach team. For a long minute after the riders left, Hardmun did not move.
Already on his feet, the drummer went to his sample case and drank from a bottle of his own wares. His face puckered and he shivered involuntarily, but he drained the bottle.
“Sir, that is the closest I wish to come to death for a very long time. Why those brigands treated us foully. Well, of course,” Portis said with a catch in his throat, “these aren’t the worst men I’ve ever run up against. Did I tell you the time when I met Flag Wardrup?”
Ignoring Portis, Hardmun went to the coach boot, found a shovel, then turned and paced off about twenty feet from the road to dig a shallow grave. Portis spoke the entire time, sitting on a large rock to better observe the work. When he had interred the dead driver, Hardmun got his satchel from the coach and began walking down the road.
“Surely, sir, you do not intend for us to walk to our destination. Why, we must be twenty miles or more from ….”
And that’s when Hardmun put his gun to Portis’ nose.
“I don’t intend for us to do anything, mister. I’m heading out after those horses. What you do is your business. But if you say another word to me, or trail me, you’ll get right close to death, real quick.”
Almost as an afterthought, Hardmun reached into the man’s coat and removed his wallet. Portis wasn’t as flush as he had intimated but he had a small sheaf of folding money. Hardmun took one hundred dollars and left the rest. The drummer started to protest but a twitch of Hardmun’s gun silenced him.
“Payment,” Hardmun said, “For not killing you, drummer.”
“Is it a crime to be neighborly?” Portis squeaked, trembling.
“It is if you’re a lousy neighbor.”
Down the road a mile he found two of the stage horses grazing. They were docile, easy to catch up. Hardmun fashioned reins from the rigging that had not been removed by the bandits, chose the sturdier looking of the two horses, and hopped aboard.
He rode for several days not seeing anyone. He ate what he could trap and drank from cool streams. Eventually he came to a small town where he traded his horse for another. He bathed and ate well and slept well, all at the expense of the whiskey drummer. He drank little, gambled hardly at all, so the money stretched.
It wasn’t until several days later that he had caught a glimpse of himself in the window glass of a bank. The years had not treated him particularly well. He had spent so much time out of doors that the elements had chiseled away at him and scoured his face and hair. He looked older than his twenty-four years.
The most shocking part of the image was the look in his eyes. He seemed haunted. His eyes were black and empty and never seemed to be looking at anything in particular.
A wry grin played momentarily on his face. Now he understood why women had pulled their children close when he walked by; and why men either turned away, or lowered their hands to their guns.
He looked mean and he looked deadly.
Hardmun suddenly noticed a man inside the bank staring at him with panic in his eyes. The man waved toward someone. A woman screamed and dropped to the floor. Hardmun watched, fascinated by the strange ballet taking place in front of him, all of it surreal. A quiver ran through him and he felt a momentary thrill of fear.
A muffled shot from within the bank made a thumping sound and the window glass shattered. Hardmun threw his arms up to protect his eyes, turned, and tried to jump off the shaded boardwalk. He felt a tug at his sleeve, never having heard the second shot. Dropping to the street he stumbled and fell behind a watering trough. There was blood on his hands and his face was tender.
“Bank robber!” someone cried.
Instinctively, Hardmun drew his pistol and fired toward the voice. He heard a cry of terror and then the voice screamed for the sheriff.
“You idiot!” Hardmun yelled, scrambling to get clear of the bank.
Around him a murmur had gone up. His vision was blurry and he squinted to look about. He could see men and women standing tentatively in doorways and at hitching rails. Some of the men were inching their hands toward their guns.
“I’m no bank robber,” Hardmun said. He got to his feet, using a post to protect him from the man with the gun. Slapping his dusty hat back on he said, “I was just taking a look at myself in the glass.”
From within the bank a trembling voice said, “I’ve been robbed and I know what you bandits look like.”
“That ain’t me, mister.”
The tension in the street had eased now that the gunfire had stopped. People began pressing forward. Hardmun looked around and the closeness of people made him uncomfortable.
“I’m leaving, friend,” Hardmun said, as he backed toward his horse tied at a hitching rail. “And I won’t be back.”
Down the street a tall man was working his way toward the bank. He had the look of a fellow ready for action, a man able to deal with trouble. The sheriff, probably. Hardmun wanted to be gone before the man arrived.
“Don’t you listen to him, folks,” another voice called out. “He’s a thief, all right. He stole five hundred dollars from me and left me to die in the desert.”
Lifting into the saddle, Hardmun glanced around and immediately saw the speaker. It was the whiskey drummer.
“Hold it, you!” the sheriff commanded.
Gun still in his hand, Hardmun fired a shot into the dusty street. The sheriff and the other men froze. Women screamed and rushed through doorways.
With a tug of the reins, Hardmun spun his horse then kicked it into a sudden gallop. Shots trailed him as he raced out of town.
His horse had no bottom and Hardmun knew a posse would quickly gain on him. He rode hard for two days, using the land to hide his trail, cutting back through ravines and canyons until he was sure he had lost any pursuit.
The animal was nearly spent when he spotted a small farm with two fine looking stallions prancing around a corral. He waited for night before slipping in and trading his tired nag for a strong, fresh horse. Leading the animal toward the gate he noticed a well used saddle hanging on a post in the barn. He looked long and hard at the saddle, wanting it but not wanting to steal it. But he had ridden bareback for too many weeks since he had roped up the stage coach horses, and he was tired of it. He took the saddle and left twenty dollars on the post. It wasn’t a fair trade, but it was all he could do.
He rode for three more days, running a cold camp, ever searching his backtrail. He had seen the sheriff and two or three others in those first few days, far back and obviously not sure of the trail. But since he had taken the stallion he had seen no one pursuing him.
Eventually he risked a fire and the occasional gunshot as he hunted meat. He had ridden up into the high country where the air was thin and cold. Bull pines stood like sentries all around him, silent yet somehow disapproving. The crackling fire offered him no comfort. He chewed the meat he had roasted but tasted none of it. He stared off into the darkness and saw no ghosts. He saw nothing.
This wasn’t the life he had planned for himself. But as a boy, burned out of his home, running ahead of the screams of his mother as she fought off Union soldiers, he had never had the opportunity to choose his own life. His family dead, his home gone, and terrified beyond all thinking, he could only run.
Here he was, years later, still running. And he still didn’t know why.
© 2004 Steve Kaye. All rights reserved. Published by Robert Hale Ltd., Black Horse Westerns. Copying, reproducing or redistributing the materials on this site to any other server or location for further copying, reproduction or redistribution is expressly prohibited.