Chapter Thirty-six
Hanging Day would be hot and sunny, I thought, eyeing the cloudless sky. That’s fine; better to hang twenty-one in sunshine rather than rain or overcast. Everybody would see well if there was plenty of sun.
The first hanging was scheduled for ten in the morning. After lunch, and the first match race, the second hanging would be held at two, followed by another match race, and the third hanging would be at four, and any leftovers would be hanged at six.
There wasn’t much shade at the gallows, but some nice cottonwoods lined the square and people could collect there in good shade, for the big events.
Rusty and I were all set. I’d tie the wrists of the hangee, put a noose over his head, and pull the lever whenever we got one bunch ready. Rusty, he would cut the noose free and cart the corpse to Maxwell’s wagon. Then Rusty would build another noose and we’d dangle it from the crossbar. We didn’t know how many would show up for their croaking, but we’d be prepared. I’d gotten plenty of rope from the Mercantile, and some thong to tie up wrists. Enough to hang all twenty-one, if need be.
There were a couple of preachers around, just in case the condemned wanted a last rite, and these fellows lounged in canvas chairs, waiting to be called upon.
Hanging Judge Earwig would be on hand to conduct the ceremonies.
By the time I got to the town square, crowds were already collecting. Many brought blankets to sit on, and wicker baskets filled with chilled sandwiches and iced tea. The ladies were all in summery white gauze, and their daughters wore white pinafores or cream-colored little dresses. The town’s gents tended to stand, and waited solemnly for the day’s events to roll.
It was a noisy crowd, with little boys and dogs circling in packs through the mob, and a few horses shying from all the ruckus. But finally ten o’clock did roll around, chimed by the courthouse clock, and Judge Earwig, wearing his judicial robes and a silk stovepipe hat, promptly emerged from his chambers, stepped up on the gallows with a borrowed megaphone, and began the show.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we will now hang the malefactors who trashed Sammy Upward’s Last Chance Saloon a few days ago, a crime unspeakable, and unequaled in the history of Wyoming. Will the following criminals please step forward to meet your moment of destiny with the noose.
“Silvan Boot, Max Dell, Parson McCullough, Wagner Wick, Delbert Battles, and Jocko Mortensen.”
I waited for the culprits, but no one emerged from the crowd.
“I repeat, yonder villains, step forward and take your medicine like men.”
But blamed if anyone stepped up.
Earwig pulled his giant timepiece from somewhere in the interior of his cloth tent, eyed the hands, and stuffed it under his robes again.
“All right. Since no one among them is man enough to take his medicine, I will require that they be hanged in absentia. The sheriff will drop the trap, in token of which the criminals will be dispatched in absentia, and the first lot of criminals will be carted off to the undertaker, in absentia.”
It sure was entertaining. I had the attention of the mob, all right. I climbed the little wooden stair, stood at the lever until Earwig dropped his arm, and I pulled the lever. The floor underneath the row of nooses suddenly swung down, and the crowd stared, and then cheered.
“A shameful lot,” Earwig said. “Not a real man among them. But they can restore their tarnished reputations by contributing to the Charity Jar, the proceeds to go to Sammy Upward.”
Maxwell drove the bodies, removed in absentia, to the funeral parlor, where they would be on display, in absentia.
“All right,” Judge Earwig said. “Eat your lunches. The next recreation is at two. And there is a match race scheduled at one.”
The Charity Jar rested prominently on the gallows, and pretty soon I saw some of those miscreants slide up and drop some greenery into it. They were all ruined men, marked forever by their cowardice. They sure were smiling a lot. Max Dell, he had pulled a cheroot and was firing up. Lots of fellas were patting his back.
A few wandered off to the funeral parlor, where Maxwell had arranged for the absentees to lie in state, a block-printed name at the head of each bier. A few folks studied the list of the shamed, and a few tossed pennies onto the bier, which Maxwell snapped up as his rightful fee.
By the time lunch rolled around, some youthful entrepreneurs had set up a lemonade stand, and I debated arresting them because they didn’t have a city business license. But my ma used to say, there’s a proper time and place, and maybe I’d arrest them late in the afternoon, so I could confiscate their profits and put the cash in the Charity Jar.
“Hey, sheriff,” Reggie Thimble said. “This sure is fine.”
“Maybe I should hang you,” I said. “You want to volunteer? Confess to countless crimes in office first?”
“I’ll see you fired one of these days,” he said.
It sure was a fine August day, even if hot. A mess of people were digging into their box lunches. Children were playing hangman on the gallows, and I had to chase off a little squirt who got his neck into a noose. Then a mess of ten-year-old boys tried to hang a red-haired girl, and I got to roaring, and for the moment, I scared them off. Trouble was, the girl was egging them on, and I finally had to take her by the hand and lead her back to her ma. But her ma got mad at me for being a bully.
A little after noon, the crowd drifted along Wyoming Street to the improvised race course that Limp had setup there. The horsemen in town had all drifted that way earlier, and were standing around, gauging the nags, making sage comments about how one or another was built for racing, and muscled up in the chest and flanks, and had a wild look in the eye, and all that. I’d heard it all before, mostly from a lot of males who thought they knew more about horses than anyone else. These sages had all acquired their followers out there as they preached their message one way or another.
There were a mess of them who thought that Limp’s quarter gelding, Booth, would triumph. But there were plenty of others who’d gathered around Bark’s ranch horse, named Sherman, and eyeing his hooves and flanks and the look in his eye.
Limp knew what he was doing, naming his nag after Lincoln’s assassin, just to stir up some passions, and some heavy betting. Wyoming was northern turf, even if most of those cowboys on the ranches had drifted up from the old Confederacy. Limp, he just stood quietly, letting nature take its course, but his bookmaker had a little blackboard and chalk that he was using to take bets. Every time he made a bet, he put the bills in a little black bag that he tucked into his pocket.
He wasn’t bleating, either. Limp’s outfit was simply standing around, taking money from bettors, while shrewd observers studied the two nags. Limp’s other horses were on display, but in rope corrals a bit away. There was his bay half-miler Robert E. Lee, and his black one-mile thoroughbred, Jefferson Davis, both of them prime horseflesh, lean, nervous, wild of eye, and restless. There were plenty of cowboys studying those two, professing to know their bloodlines, plumbing their ancestry, citing hoary records and victories to make their case.
Limp had run a chalk starting line along the path, and a quarter mile down a chalk finish line. The match race would begin when the starter fired a shot. If either horse broke early, the judge would blow a whistle and the horses would return to start once again. Bark had got a crazy ranch kid to jockey for him, but Limp had put his mad Swede in purple silks, so that the Limp horse looked like a serious racer and the ranch horse, Sherman, and his jean-clad rider, looked like something cobbled up locally.
I watched the good citizens of Doubtful lay bets with the bookie. I watched Mayor Waller squander three dollars on Bark’s horse, Sherman. But then I watched Turk, the liveryman, who knew a thing or two about nags, push a ten-spot to Boston Bill, that bought him an additional eleven if Booth won.
“You like the looks of that palomino, do you?” I asked.
“It’s no contest,” Turk said. “That quarter gelding’s got heat in him, and I’d guess he’ll cop it by a length and a half.”
“You’re the man who should know,” I said.
For once, he didn’t take it as an insult.
Hubert Sanders, our banker, was hesitating, and finally came to me. “You got any idea how this’ll play out?”
“Nope, I hardly know a horse’s molars from his incisors.”
“Well, I’m leaning slightly toward Limp’s fine steed, but his name puts me off. I am a devotee of Abraham Lincoln, and naming a horse after Booth is scurrilous. Which is why I’m inclined to bet on him.”
I wasn’t quite following the logic, but I let her lay.
I sure as the dickens didn’t know which nag would win, so I focused on keeping the peace. With all them nooses dangling back there, some loser might take the notion to hang a winner, or maybe hang Limp or his bookie or Swede jockey. I hoped Rusty was keeping an eye on the nooses back on the square, so a bunch of bratty boys wouldn’t hang a dog or something like that.
Denver Sally, my favorite madam, slid up. She was wearing gauzy scarlet, as befitted her station.
“You got one picked?” I asked her.
“It won’t be Booth,” she said. “He’s rank. I can tell. He’ll throw his jockey and lose. A horse needs to be ridden hard.”
“I guess you know a thing or two about that,” I said.
She laughed and patted me on the thigh. I’ve been thinking about marrying her ever since she came to town, but I keep getting diverted. One of these days I’ll get around to trying it out. My ma, she always said we should try the fit before we buy.
It was getting along toward one, time to run the match race on the Hanging Day, and the rest of Doubtful drifted out. I wondered who was manning the stores. Some unlucky clerk, I supposed. Even Maxwell was out, maybe hoping a horse would drop dead or break a leg, and he could offer a horse funeral for its bereaved master.
Well, that crowd knew where to go. Pretty near everyone in town kept going past the starting line, and began collecting around the finish, where the finish-line judges were eyeing the chalk, and studying the course. The judges for this race were King Glad, off his ranch, and Cronk, the faro dealer at Mrs. Gladstone’s Sampling Room. Doc Harrison was appointed tie-breaker in case the two judges couldn’t agree. And now the three were making learned examinations of the track, the noon light, the wind, the sun, and the condition of the heavens.
The calmest man around was Limp, who seemed a little bored by it all, He stood around, wearing his morning coat, silk stovepipe hat, and white gloves. He carried a small riding crop, and I thought that was to beat off angry people if their bets failed.
“Who you betting on?” I asked, shrewdly. There were always some owners who bet against their own nag.
“I don’t bet,” he said. “If I win, my profit’s the purse.”
He pulled out his turnip watch, eyed it, and sighed.
“Race time,” he said.
Just about then, a shot fired a quarter mile distant echoed, and a hoarse cry lifted into the blue sky. The horses were running.