“Now where in the wide, wide world would any judge find a jury of your peers? You're the man responsible for the brutal murders of your own brother, his wife, and three of their innocent children. Members of your own family for the love of God. Kind of murders branded on your soul tend to negate any constitutional rights, or privileges, as far as I'm concerned anyway.”
“Ain't right. Just ain't right. Can't just go and hang a man without a trial.”
“Wouldn't go bettin' the ranch on that one if I was you.”
Webb threw his head back and bounced the chair up and down several times while he made strange and indecipherable noises. “Yep, far as I can see, you're guilty of all those sorry killings as surely as if you'd pulled the trigger yourself. Might not have been out on Devils River in person, when the bloody act occurred, but, far as I'm concerned, you're as guilty as branded Cain.”
“Sweet Jesus, ain't right.”
“And that's not to mention the associated, kind of ricochet deaths, of those rank-assed bastards who escaped from prison with you and who you somehow persuaded to do the dirty deed.”
Webb jerked at his bonds and howled like a caged wolf. “Lemme go, you bastard. Lemme go. You cain't do this. Cain't just go and hang a man 'thout seein' to the legalities.”
I leaned toward the man, blew smoke his direction, then added, “Almost as bad as all that, you handed your brother's only living child over to an animal like Eagle Cutner. Lord God, man, what in the hell were you thinkin'? From what I saw of her, I'm not sure the girl will ever recover from whatever it was that snake did to her. Do you really, for a single moment, think that I'm gonna walk away from here and let you live after
all
that.”
For a moment Axel Webb stared at me as though he'd found some new form of poisonous scorpion crawling on his pants' leg. Then, the man's eyes got as big as dinner plates when he hissed, “Y-You really intend on setting me to kicking and pissing myself, don't you?”
“Absolutely. Little more'n twenty paces from where we're sittin' right this moment.”
“No appeal.”
“None.”
“No mercy in your heart?”
Almost laughed when I said, “Not a single shred. Lost it all when I found Mad Dog Cutner and saw the consequences of what he'd done to your beautiful niece, Clementine.”
Webb went to struggling against the rope again. He bucked up in the chair and bounced it across the floor. Seat's wooden feet skittered and squawked against the tiles. The thing almost toppled over a time or two. Panicked wretch was near out of breath when he huffed and puffed, “Goddammit, you can't do this. Can't just string a man up like a side of beef. Can't just hang me like a common criminal.”
In spite of myself I grinned. “Oh, but I can. 'Cause, you see, Ax, that's all you areâa run-of-the-mill, common murderer. And once you're knockin' on Hell's front gate, I'll sleep like a baby tomorrow, tonight, and for the rest of my natural life. You see, I'll know beyond any doubt that I've rid the world, and Texas, of a lethal, boot-wearin' pestilence.”
Then, with no further ado, I stood and started around behind him. A look of stunned horror flashed across the heartless bastard's face. All the color in his bulging countenance drained into his shirt collar. His head swiveled around on its bony stalk as he tried to follow my movements.
“Wait. Wait. Wait,” he squealed. “I've got money, Dodge. Lots of money. Hidden money. I'll give all of it to you. Every red cent. You can retire, live like a south Texas cattle baron till the day you die.”
I grabbed the back of the chair and leaned it onto the two rear-most legs. The heavy, wooden seat made angry, piggish, squealing sounds against the stone floor as I dragged it out onto the hacienda's shadowy patio, and then to the live oak that spread out over one corner of the terrace like a living umbrella. As I remember it, Axel Webb howled like a tortured wolf till I got him situated under the limb I'd chosen.
Icy shafts of cold, silvery moonlight knifed through that tree's rustling leaves overhead. The ghostly glow flickered across Webb's upturned, panic-stricken face. He continued to struggle against his bonds as he eyeballed me and said, “Please. Please. Don't do this, Dodge. I'll admit I made a mistake. Made a terrible mistake.”
“Well, that's putting it lightly.”
“Oh, God. Oh, God. Please. Listen. Please, listen to me. I know I shouldn't have done what I done. Regret the whole mess. Honest. Honest to God. I-I've had a religious epiphany. Swear it. God's done come into my heart and made me realize what terrible things I've done. Have mercy, man. Have mercy.”
“A religious epiphany?”
“Yeah. Oh, yes. You've gotta believe me, Dodge. You turn me loose, and I'll walk the straight and narrow for as long as I live. You'll never hear the name Axel Webb and criminal activity of any sort mentioned in the same breath again. Swear it on my dear ole mother's sweet brow.”
“Swear it on your mother?”
“Oh, yes. Sweet merciful Jesus, yes. Just cut me loose. Let me out of this chair. I'll live the rest of my life like a saint. Swear I will.”
I'd heard all I wanted to hear. And what I'd heard was enough to make a man sick. Stuffed my bandanna into his mouth and left him sitting there stewing in his own juices. Retrieved Grizz and led the animal into the courtyard. The big gelding's iron-shod feet made loud clopping sounds against the patio's stone floor.
Then I threw my second lariat over the tree limb. I draped it around Webb's neck and pulled the noose up tight. Man's head was about to explode. His eyes had gone wild. He bucked and snorted in the chair. Yelled, screamed, and whined into the bandanna, but it was a complete waste of effort.
I patted him on the shoulder and said, “Sure you have plenty you'd like to say right about now. Tell the righteous truth, I don't care to hear any of it. Sure God doesn't want to hear it, either. So, only thing I want, at this particular moment, is to watch you die.”
I moved to Grizz's side and urged the big animal back a step or two. Webb's squealing grunts became louder, more pronounced, more panicked. Kept the horse moving backward. Got the chair four or five feet off the ground before I stopped and patted the animal on the neck. Ole Ax struggled with all the might he possessed. The terrified son of a bitch even ripped one thick, wooden arm completely off that chair. For about thirty seconds, I thought he was on the verge of getting himself loose. But a decided lack of air soon robbed him of his remaining strength.
Still and all, it did surprise me some at how long it took that murdering skunk to give up the ghost. Have to admit, the man damn sure loved his life and put up one hell of a fight before death finally came and wrenched it away from his grasp. Guess he must have grunted and thrashed around in that heavy chair for every bit of five minutes. Maybe longer. In the final analysis, though, he didn't do himself any good. You squeeze off a man's ability to breathe and sooner or later, he's gonna die. And that's all there is to it.
When the wicked slaughterer finally stopped flopping, I led Grizz around the tree several times, just to tighten the rope's hold and make sure the load wouldn't slip and end up on the ground. Lashed everything off good, so the dead man dangled amongst all those dolls, just like I'd promised he would. Tell the gospel truth, it was a freakish scene I left in that place. Damned freakish. Right eerie. Kind of sight that had the power to make even the boldest man shudder. Knew when folks finally found him, the stories and legends would start coming fast and furious. But I didn't care.
I climbed on Grizz and gave Webb one last look. True to form, his neck was a good bit longer than when I started his last dance with horned Satan. Have to admit something about the sight suddenly sent an icy chill down my spine and made my blood run cold.
I kicked for Devils River. Didn't bother to look back after I got past the hacienda's front gate. Not once. Tell you for true my friends, a boatload of years have passed since that fateful night, and I've not lost a single second's sleep over what I did. Truth is, given the exact same set of bloody circumstances and the opportunity, I'd do it all over again the exact same way quicker than a hummingbird's heart can beat.
27
“I'VE COME FOR MY NIECE.”
THE DAYS CAME, and the days went. Me and Boz and Glo looked after Clementine as best we could for almost two months. We stayed out on the Devils River place a good bit past the time we'd promised Cap'n Culpepper we'd be back in Fort Worth. And while the girl's physical recovery took place over the short matter of a few weeks, I'm not to this very instant sure she ever really came back to us.
During most of that gloomy, silent period, the stone-faced child took up space in a chair out on the front porch and impassively stared at the river. 'Bout the only time she appeared to perk up occurred every evening when flocks of doves made their way to the water to quench their thirst and bathe. Clouds of the birds swirled and darted over the willows and created an endless, eddy-like, ever-shifting painting against the backdrop of a blazing, color-saturated sunset. Would bet all the money I'll ever have, Clem didn't speak a dozen words during that entire time. Seemed to the three of us as though Eagle “Mad Dog” Cutner had damaged her spirt beyond any living human's poor ability to repair it. He'd robbed her of all the spunk, enthusiasm, and drive we'd so admired when she first came into our lives.
'Course someone managed to discover Axel Webb's worm-riddled corpse just a few days after I strung his sorry ass up. And while I did mangage to keep under wraps most of our direct involvement in the various events surrounding all those murderous doin'sâespecially the part about how ole Ax ended up dangling from a tree limb in his dead brother's front yardâa goodly bit of the Webb family's tragic tale of mindless slaughter and madness did manage to spool out like an unwinding ball of twine and go public.
The tragic clan's saga of jealously, anger, and fratricide eventually hit the front page of damn near every newspaper from the Red River to the Rio Grande. Hell, the heartrending tale was just the kind of thing people still love to read about and spend time gloating over.
Before you could spit we found ourselves knee-deep in a troop of investigating rangers who worked out of Austin, self-righteous committee members of the Texas senate and house, and nigh on every stripe of morbid, inquisitive jackass a body could imagine in his most fevered nightmares.
I was about at the end of my string with those idiots, and had loudly threatened bodily harm to several of the intrusive skunks, when a most singular event occurred. Me and Boz were sitting on our rickety front stoop late one afternoon, locked in heated discussion over the prospects for Clementine's future, when a fine-looking spring wagon rolled up. Painted a bright yellow, with red wheels, the conveyance was pulled by a matched pair of shiny-coated mules.
A right handsome woman, sportin' a brace of bone-gripped Colts, occupied the driver's seat. She removed her broad-brimmed, sweat-stained, palm-leaf sombrero and dropped it on the seat beside her. Ran the fingers of one hand through wheat-colored hair that had begun to go gray on her.
Striking blue eyes twinkled when she offered us a friendly, tooth-filled smile and said, “Which one of you boys is Marshal Lucius Dodge?”
I propped myself against the higher step at my back, waved one hand, and said, “That'd be me, ma'am.”
The lady nodded, tied the wagon's reins to the brake lever, then climbed down. She sagged against the front wheel, set to jerking at her leather gloves, then flicked a dangling lock of sweat-dripping hair out of one eye.
“ 'Pears you've had a long trip, ma'am?” I said.
“Yes. Yes, indeed. Has been a right long haul. You boys ain't the easiest folks in Texas to find, bein' as how you're way'n the hell and gone out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“What can we do for you, ma'am?” Boz said.
She pushed away from the wagon and came several steps closer. She stopped and, with fists clenched on her hips, said, “Name's Linda McKinley, Marshal Dodge. You can call me Annie, if'n you like. Have a livestock and wagon selling operation up near Tyler way. I've come for my niece.”
Well, that got us on our feet, hats in hand, pretty quick. While surprised right down to the soles of my boots, I must admit I was, at the same time, greatly relieved. I glanced over at Boz and could see he shared my feelings.
We invited our visitor up on the porch. Something we'd not done with any of the other invaders who'd recently made our lives a shade more difficult. I offered her a chair. One with the best pillow on it. And dragged up ladder-backed seats of our own.
When everyone got settled, I said, “Can I offer you a dipper of cold water, ma'am? Or perhaps a cup of Arbuckles? Maybe something to eat? Our man Paco sets a fine table.”
“No, thank you, Marshal Dodge,” she replied. “Just like to rest my weary bones a bit.” She bent over at the waist, rubbed her lower back, then scrunched down into the seat's thick cushion. “ 'S right comfortable. Bet you boys fight over this chair every afternoon 'bout dark, don't you?”
“Not so much recently,” Boz offered, “Clem tends to like that spot, so we're more'n happy to let her have it.”
The McKinley woman nodded. “I see,” she said. “And how is Clem?”
Arms laid across my knees, I said, “God's truth, we're not sure. Just not sure. Perhaps she'll do better with you. Us ole bachelors have come to think that, while we've walked on eggshells during this entire ordeal, maybe we're just not at all suited for the task of seeing to certain parts of a young lady's healing. Woman's touch might be just what she needs, Mrs. McKinley.”