army doc who’d make sure of the results were stationed at ground level, to step under the gallows once Costello hit the end of the rope.
Longarm knew it was more usual to have the warden topside, so he could read the death warrant to the condemned man without having to shout, and surmised the worried warden’s reasons for posting himself where he had. He told Guilfoyle, “You’d best go back the warden and the doc, just in case Costello tries to escape on the way down.”
Guilfoyle grimaced and said, “He won’t.” But he dropped out and headed that way to leave Longarm the job of watching the prisoner’s cuffed wrists.
The Great Costello didn’t seem to be trying to slip either small hand free. Father Packer went up the steep steps ahead of him, head down as if in prayer, or to make sure he didn’t bust his own neck in the process. The Great Costello hesitated for a moment at the foot of the fatal flight, then a guard had him by either arm and he was going up, gamely or otherwise.
That left it Longarm’s turn to mount the gallows. He was glad he’d get to come back down the same way. There were fourteen risers. He smiled thinly as that reminded him of the room number Guilfoyle had chosen as a good place to catch the trots. Longarm wondered if he’d given them to that gal he’d met or if she’d given them to him.
Longarm had watched Topkick Thompson work before. That was another reason he didn’t like the literally dirty old man. But there was something to be said for old Thompson’s crude manners. If one had to hang a man at all, it was likely best to get it over with as sudden as possible. Longarm was still on the steps with the pine planking of the platform at waist level when he saw that sure enough they had the black hood over the Great Costello’s head already—Thompson and his boys weren’t paid by the hour. Longarm saw no need to go any higher.
As the warden stepped out into the sunlight between the shadow of death and the expectant crowd, Longarm heard a high pitched voice call his name. He turned to wave back at the distant redhead waving her kerchief at him. He wondered if she’d changed her mind, and if his back would be able to take it.
Then things got confusing as hell for a time.
The warden had no sooner commenced a shouted death sentence when the Great Costello began to throw a temper tantrum. Like a mean little kid who just plain didn’t care if it was bedtime, the cuffed and hooded runt dropped to the pine planks and began to kick and thrash. He kicked Father Packer’s legs Out from under him, and by the time the priest was down, old Topkick and at least two others were the same way. It looked like most of the others were diving on the pile-up of their own accord. Longarm decided he’d only get in the way, or get kicked in the head if he pitched in, so he stayed put as the scene became a chaos of flailing limbs and obscene remarks about someone’s mother. Then two guards were rising from the writhing mass with the doomed and hooded wiggle-worm between them; one punched him where his jaw had to be under the black poplin and the other slipped the noose over his head. Then someone else had made it to the trip lever and, whether on purpose or in panic, the trap was sprung and the victim plummeted to his doom with Father Packer and two others to keep him company.
Longarm gasped, “Thunderation!” above the horrified roar of the crowd. Then he drew his .44 and moved most of the way back down by jumping.
As he ducked under the gallows he could see at a glance the execution had indeed taken place, if not as sedately as it might have. Father Packer was sitting up, dusty and confused but not badly hurt. The two men who’d fallen through the trap with him were in about the same dust-spitting condition. Above them, the gent who hadn’t made it all the way down twisted slowly at the end of the rope, the piss from one boot tip tracing a dotted circle of mud in the dust below.
Longarm holstered his pistol with a sigh as he stared morosely at the slowly rotating boots. Then he gasped and shouted, “Oh, shit, cut him down!” before he drew his gun again and lit out for parts unknown, cussing fit to bust.
Deputy Guilfoyle shouted the order up through the trap above them. The army surgeon protested, “Wait, we want to be sure.”
Guilfoyle insisted, “Cut him down, damn it! Longarm never gives an order just to see if there might be an echo!”
So someone topside cut the rope. The body fell limply to the dust with a sickening thud. As Father Packer crawled over to begin the last rights, the surgeon put his stethoscope to the hanged man’s chest and declared, “I pronounce this poor son of a bitch dead and will someone please tell me what’s going on?”
Deputy Guilfoyle said he didn’t know, either, as he hunkered near the head to haul off the black hood. He’d just gotten it off when someone shouted down through the trap, “Hey, is old Topkick Thompson down there with you boys?”
Guilfoyle ignored the collective gasp from the others around him as he shouted back, “He surely is. I don’t know how in thunder you done it, but you boys just hung the hangman!”
Chapter 6
Longarm had of course known they’d hung the wrong man the moment he’d noticed those matching boots. So even before the others had it figured, he’d bulled his way through the crowd to the only gateway leading anywhere but back through the lockup. He told the guards stationed there not to let anyone else out just yet. Beyond the gate lay a lot that usually was vacant, but at the moment was occupied by parked carriages and tethered mounts the crowd had arrived aboard. He ran on, gun in hand, to the side street beyond. The far side was blocked by brick warehousing. To his left the street led back to downtown Denver. To his right the street dead-ended against an eight-foot wall of planking. He headed that way, knowing the railroad Yards lay just beyond the fence. He had reason to assume, before he got there, that he was guessing right. A knothole in the barrier blossomed gunsmoke, and a hornet-humming slug whipped past his left ear too close for comfort. He fired his own sidearm into the planking just below the other marksman’s smoke signals and kept going, pumping more lead in the general direction he was charging.
By the time he made it to the fence he was hammering dry. So he had to pause and reload before he holstered his .44, took a running jump, and caught the splintery top of the barrier with both hands. He hauled himself up with no trouble, but as he risked a cautious peek over the top someone shot his hat off. So, knowing what came next, Longarm let go and dropped flat in the love grass and sheep shit on his side of the Planking. Sure enough, a whole mess of bullets tore hell out of the dry planking his belly might have been pressed to if he hadn’t been so smart. There had to be a better way.
As his unseen enemy paused to reload, or run like hell, Longarm rolled back on his boot heels and moved over to where the fencing ended against a brick warehouse wall. As he’d hoped, he found a narrow gap occasioned by the simple fact that boards and bricks didn’t come in the same dimensions. By pressing his cheek to the bricks he was able to peer into the Burlington yards. But after that it was all down-grade. He could see acres of empty rail sidings and even some parked boxcars in the dusty distance, but the only thing moving out there now was a tumbleweed, and it wasn’t moving enough to matter. Somewhere a locomotive was releasing steam. He couldn’t
