A Congregation of Jackals Page 24

  Lingham stepped onto the ladder and leaned forward, his purple hands still tied behind his back. He climbed the rungs, his footsteps sounding like the machinations of a very large and slow clock. Godfrey and Dicky turned away from the scene; Oswell continued to watch. He heard his brother sniffle once.

  The giant reached the third highest rung; the top of the ladder was at his knees; the noose was level with his head. Beatrice was sobbing. Alphonse put the rope around his neck and cinched it tight.

  The little Frenchman descended the stepladder. Lingham shut his eyes. Oswell’s heart hammered in his chest and his vision grew blurry. Alphonse walked beside his boss.

  The giant said, “I’m sorry.”

  With his bronze gauntlet, Quinlan yanked the cord attached to the bottom rung. The stepladder jerked and clattered upon the dais. Lingham fell into the rope around his neck. Beatrice shrieked; members of the congregation shouted.

  The giant kicked twice at the air as he swung on the strangulating rope. His face glowed bright red. He kicked three more times. The crotch of his pants darkened with urine. His visage became as purple as his numb hands. A paroxysm bent his spine. His body relaxed.

  Lingham, dead, spun on the cord that squeezed his bent neck.

  Oswell looked over at Quinlan: the Irishman stared up at the twisting corpse, satisfaction—though no joy—upon his misshapen face.

  Alphonse walked over to the fallen ladder and folded it up. He dragged it two yards to the left, opened the legs and erected it beneath another noose. Beatrice’s sobs were long ugly moans.

  The Taylors and a few other people who lived nearby entered the church, bearing suitcases, sacks and bundles that they promptly dumped into the empty trunk. Each person glanced at the hanged man for a brief moment.

  The talker asked Quinlan, “Which do we string up next?”

  “Godfrey.”

  A terrible chill crawled down the rancher’s spine; he knew that he could not watch his brother climb that ladder. A small sound escaped Godfrey’s mouth, but nothing more.

  “I hope that the beam don’t break,” the talker said.

  In a low voice that only the remainder of the Tall Boxer Gang could hear, Dicky said, “Stall.”

  In a similarly quiet whisper, Godfrey said, “How?”

  “Stumble.”

  “Why?” Oswell asked.

  Dicky did not proffer a reason, but merely repeated the word “stall.”

  “Okay,” Godfrey said.

  To Arthur, Quinlan said, “Walk him forward.”

  The silent twin strode over to Godfrey, grabbed his tie and pulled him from beside his brother. The plump Danford walked three steps and then spilled onto the ground.

  “That’s why they give elephants four legs,” the talker said. Minister Orton laughed explosively.

  Oswell looked at his brother, facedown upon the dais, embarrassing himself in his final moments.

  The rancher looked angrily at Dicky.

  “Why is he doing this?” Oswell whispered, hotly.

  “Be quiet,” Dicky said. He looked up at Oswell; he no longer looked weak and beaten. In that instant, the rancher knew that the New Yorker had been playing possum since the moment of his capture.

  Arthur grabbed Godfrey’s collar and yanked him to his feet; they walked toward the stepladder.

  Oswell noticed that Dicky’s arms were moving.

  The rancher whispered, “What are you doing?”

  He received no reply.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Razors and Blood

  If Dicky’s wrists had been tied as tightly as Lingham’s and the Danfords’, he would not have had enough circulating blood or maneuverability to extract the hoe-guard razor from the rear waistband of his pants. Fortunately, the Indian Shagawa was not as cruel as the twins. He had bound the New Yorker’s wrists in the normal manner—tight, but allowing circulation.

  During the last thirty minutes, Dicky had fished for, positioned and repositioned the razor in his fingers, acutely aware that if he dropped it he would die. Three times when he had the blade in between his right index and middle fingers (the desired location), that brutish minister had looked at him, as if sensing that he was not as beaten as he pretended to be. He had just begun to cut when Lingham was hanged. During the lynching, his pulse had raced too quickly for his fingers to remain steady or reliable; he had halted his clandestine machinations, trying to calm himself while he heard the pendulous swinging of the long corpse.

  Dicky intended to cut his bonds before Godfrey was hanged.

  Behind him, the plump, elder Danford walked toward the stepladder, led by Arthur. The walking captive thudded to the ground again.

  For the second time, Oswell whispered, “What are you doing?”

  If Dicky explained his plan, the rancher would call him out. Lingham and the Danfords might have accepted the noose, but Dicky sure as hell had not. He ignored Oswell’s inquiry.

  Quinlan said to Arthur, “If Godfrey falls again, strip off all of his clothes and hang him naked.”

  With the razor, Dicky sawed through the twines of the burlap rope; his wrists jerked apart the moment his bonds were cut.

  “What are you doing?” Oswell demanded, louder.

  Dicky dropped the razor, knelt down, raised Oswell’s left pant leg, pulled the gun from the rancher’s boot, pointed it at the back of Arthur’s head, thumbed the hammer, squeezed the trigger, blinked as the big-caliber revolver boomed and flashed and recoiled, watched the silent twin’s head jerk forward, spun on the talker, caught a bullet in his left shoulder, thumbed the hammer, squeezed off a second shot that knocked the talker onto his back, spun on Quinlan to see that he had ducked behind the lectern, pointed his pistol at the minister and fired into the holy man’s head, splattering his thoughts in gray and pink clumps upon the piano.

  Oswell yelled, “No, no, no! Damn you, goddam you!”

  The New Yorker ran to Arthur, snatched one of his six-shooters and looked at Quinlan hobbling away from the lectern.

  Dicky ran at the deformed man; he squeezed off two rounds with the six-shooter in his left hand. The rounds cracked into Quinlan’s wooden leg; the appendage flew out from beneath the Irishman and spun into the pews, smacking the wooden bench between the two marshals from Arkansas.

  The New Yorker pounced atop the fallen Irishman and pressed one of his guns to the slit on the right side of his mottled face, within which sat a milky green eye.

  “Let us go or you boss gets uglier,” Dicky said to the gunmen in the aisle. The New Yorker fired a threat into Quinlan’s gauntlet; the bullet clanged against the bronze.

  “Slaughter everyone in this place if he doesn’t release me in five seconds,” Quinlan said.

  The brigands at the front—the two with the sawed-off shotguns—pointed their weapons at the crowd. The men at the doors trained four ten-shot double-action revolvers upon the congregation.

  Dicky knew this was not a bluff, but still he yelled desperately, “I will kill him!”

  “Five,” Quinlan said.

  Dicky struck the Irishman’s scar-covered scalp with the butt of his gun. The rugose skin bruised.

  “Four.”

  The brigands in the aisles aimed their weapons at the heads of the hostages and thumbed their hammers; people in the pews ducked and crowded away from the barrels, yet there was no place for them to go.

  “Three.”

  “You selfish bastard,” Oswell yelled as he careened into Dicky and knocked him off of Quinlan. The New Yorker slammed upon his back, the rancher, arms still bound behind his back, atop him; Alphonse’s left shoe kicked the gun from Dicky’s right hand and then the gun from his left; the weapons spun across the light blue carpet like senseless birds.

  Dicky looked at the enraged, gasping face of Oswell Danford directly above him.

  “You selfish bastard,” Oswell repeated.

  “I came here to fight!”

  “We’ve got enough blood on us!”

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p; “You were just going to let them hang your own brother? You are okay with that?”

  Oswell kneed Dicky in the side; a rib buckled and cracked. The New Yorker punched Oswell across the jaw; the rancher’s head snapped sideways, but the tough man did not seem to feel it; pain flared in Dicky’s knuckles from the blow.

  “Stop them,” Quinlan said.

  Oswell kneed Dicky in the side again; another rib cracked; the New Yorker put his hands to Oswell’s throat and began to choke him. Oswell twisted his head and bit into Dicky’s arm.

  Shagawa pulled the rancher off of the New Yorker and to his feet. Oswell kicked Dicky’s broken ribs; the New Yorker could not contain the yell that ran up his throat.

  Nearby, Alphonse handed Quinlan his crutch; the Irishman stood upright.

  A boot slammed into Dicky’s neck; he looked up and saw the talker’s prickly face. The man’s bronzed brow was dripping with sweat; he breathed heavily, wheezing from the bullet the New Yorker had sent him. His tangled black hair looked like leaking oil; his obsidian eyes were unblinking and reptilian.

  The pressure upon Dicky’s neck grew; he clamped his hands to the talker’s boot, but this man had a bestial strength with which he could not contend. A constellation blinked into existence before the New Yorker’s eyes; he tried to inhale but could only slap at the growing weight that patiently crushed his windpipe. The edges of his vision grew gray; he stomped the heels of his boots upon the floor in agony.

  “That’s enough,” Quinlan said.

  The talker lifted his boot from Dicky’s neck; the New Yorker inhaled deeply, but coughed the air out as soon as he had captured it. His broken ribs screamed; his lungs burned.

  Dicky, gasping, noticed something that looked like a child’s toy in the talker’s left hand. The item was a wooden fish about two inches long adorned with shiny iridescent beads and sixteen metal hooks. The talker dropped the fishing lure into Dicky’s open mouth and kicked his jaw shut.

  The captor yanked the fishing line taut. Hooks bit into Dicky’s tongue, gums, soft palate and cheeks; his mouth felt as if it were filled with burning coals; he tasted copper and honey. He gagged upon his own blood.

  The twin pulled on the line; Dicky stood up from the ground, his face wet with tears, his body trembling as if he had been thrust naked into winter. His broken ribs doubled him forward, but his captor yanked him upright by the lure in his mouth. Blood drizzled down his chin onto the floor and into the hair on his chest.

  He was led beside Oswell; the rancher smoldered and stared at the ground.

  The twin yanked Dicky’s arms behind his back; one of his broken ribs buckled out of alignment, poking his skin; he tried to yell, but just gurgled blood. The captor wrapped the fishing line around the New Yorker’s wrists and hands.

  The twin searched him thoroughly for weapons and then checked Oswell; he found nothing, because they had nothing left.

  Dicky saw that the right side of the church was nearly full with returned guests, including the sheriff and the deputy. The second trunk was brimming with money and jewels. Pivoting around on his feet (he could not turn his head without pulling the hooks), he looked back and saw Shagawa walk Godfrey to the stepladder, atop which Alphonse awaited him. Dicky turned away from the scene.

  He saw the talker lay his dead brother beside his dead uncle on the far side of the pew. Behind the bodies, Beatrice was sprawled out on the piano bench, though she was still breathing. Gore, flecks of bone, and clayish lumps that were the minister’s brains stained her shoulder and the piano.

  Oswell looked balefully at Dicky; he surveyed the New Yorker’s injuries and decided to withhold his black condemnation.

  Dicky heard Godfrey’s boots ascend the stepladder, ponderous and morbid, like the heart of a sick old man. The sound stopped.

  Oswell glanced at his brother and then back down at the ground.

  Dicky heard rope rub against rope: the friction of the noose being cinched. The quick footsteps of the little Frenchman descending the stepladder followed immediately after.

  “See you Oswell,” Godfrey said.

  “See you” was all his brother could say without breaking.

  Quinlan yanked the cord; the stepladder clattered to the dais; Godfrey gasped; his neck snapped; Dicky heard the creaking of wood; a few people in the congregation muttered. A wet cough was the last sound the hanged man ever made.

  Quinlan, missing a leg but using his crutch in its place, ambled over to Dicky and Oswell. The Irishman stood in front of them.

  “My intention was to do this setup and hang you men for betraying me back at Rope’s End. That was it. I endured more than a decade of pain and take no pleasure in giving it, or in revenge. I just wanted to settle things even with us and make a profit.

  “But you just killed two of my associates.” Quinlan pointed his right index finger at Arthur and Minister Orton’s bodies; the talker was cleaning their faces with a towel he dipped into an urn of holy water.

  Quinlan looked back at Dicky and Oswell and said, “I got your names and addresses from the telegraph operator who wired you those wedding invitations. After we string you up, I’m going to send some men back east to find and kill all of your loved ones.”

  Dicky thought of his sisters in Connecticut he had just doomed; it would not be hard for Quinlan to find them now that he knew the name Richard Sterling.

  For the first time since the massacre at Rope’s End, the New Yorker saw Oswell Danford’s face drained of color . . . pale with terror.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  To Have, To Hold and To Hurt

  The moment T.W. and Goodstead had stepped from the church to retrieve their valuables, they matched strides; Kenneth John walked alongside them and had a more serious look on his face than the sheriff had ever seen there before. T.W. limped into the carriage and his deputies rode beside him as he made a plan. At one point, Kenneth had asked if it was not wiser to do what these men said rather than attempt to thwart them. The sheriff explained why they could not remain passive.

  From the first moment of violence, one fact heightened the terrible dread T.W. felt: these brigands had not bothered to conceal their identities. The sheriff knew that there were three reasons why they would not wear scarves over their faces. The first possible explanation was that they intended to leave the country after this setup was completed. This hypothesis had some merit (the leader and the little man were clearly from overseas) but for T.W. that idea did not seem sound—it was unlikely that they would all vacate America. The second possible explanation was that men this deep in darkness did not fear being apprehended; they welcomed the challenge of lawmen, courted violence and relished their own infamy. This was more likely than his first guess, but still did not fit alongside the rest of Quinlan’s meticulous machinations. The third possible explanation—the one that had made T.W. unswerving in his desire to act—was that these foul men did not intend to leave any witnesses alive. Considering the violence and psychosis he had observed thus far, he thought it was entirely possible that these morally decayed men intended to massacre the entire congregation once they had their take.

  The lawmen of Trailspur could not draw straws or flip coins to determine the safety of their charge—they had to act. Deputies Goodstead and Kenneth John understood and agreed with the sheriff.

  T.W. had returned to the church with his valuables after a twenty-one minute absence. He was brutishly searched for weapons at the door (as were Goodstead and Kenneth John) and his suitcase was taken from him. The vessel’s contents—two necklaces and a brooch that had belonged to Lucinda, his wedding band, the contents of Beatrice’s jewelry box, three hundred dollars, three timepieces (all gifts from his daughter), the golden star he had received in Arkansas and a silver letter opener with seven sapphires in it (a gift from the mayor)—were emptied into the trunk by a brigand.

  When he looked at the dais and saw his daughter keeled over on the piano bench, her gown spattered with gore, his stomach sank. Smiler t
old T.W. that his girl was okay—there had been a shooting and she had fainted.

  The sheriff returned to his seat, saw Lingham’s long corpse (a sight that elicited equal amounts of anger and pity), and watched Godfrey Danford hang. T.W. summarily noticed a twin and the minister laid dead on the dais, near his daughter. The sheriff did not know precisely what had happened during his absence, but there were two fewer dangerous men in the church, and he surmised that his chances had just got a little better.

  He watched the deformed man promise to kill the families of Oswell Danford and Richard Sterling. Horror penetrated the remainder of the Tall Boxer Gang as their misdeeds spread like spilled ink to far-off loved ones they thought safe . . . more innocents who would be imperiled if T.W. did nothing to stop Quinlan and his crew in Trailspur.

  The misshapen boss turned to the small Frenchman and said, “Set it up for Dicky.”

  “Oui.”

  The New Yorker did not at all react to the declaration of his death sentence—his mind was on whatever relatives his gambit had just inadvertently killed.

  T.W., seated in the front pew, brought the heels of his boots together until they touched either side of the box beneath his bench. He slid the package forward.

  The diminutive Frenchman dragged the stepladder three yards to the right, to the empty noose that dangled beside the second sagging corpse. The urine that had pooled within Godfrey’s boots found holes in the toes and dripped to the rug below.

  T.W. furtively glanced at the aisle: two men with shotguns stood one row behind him, each pointing their dual-barreled weapons at opposite sides of the church. The sheriff glanced at the door and saw two sentries standing there with revolvers in all four of their hands, muzzles pointed down. The surviving twin (who had not spoken since T.W.’s return, but seemed like the one who used to talk) stood behind the open trunk, monitoring the deposits the last few stragglers made.

  Upon the dais, the misshapen boss leaned against the lectern and watched the little Frenchman erect the stepladder for the third time. Standing between the boss and the two captives was the Indian who wore a vest made out of wolf skins; he held a lever-action rifle in his left hand and seemed oddly peaceful.