“But I don’t understand. What about the other thing?” Matt asked.
“What other thing?” Kyle replied. Then, suddenly, he smiled broadly and reached into his shirt pocket. “Oh, you must be talking about this.” He walked over to hand the paper to Matt.
“What is this?”
“Read it,” Kyle said. “If you have any questions, I’ll explain it. Though, how difficult is it to understand a full governor’s pardon?”
Chapter Twenty-two
“Damn,” Kyle said.
“Yeah,” Matt replied. “I see them.”
The two were looking at vultures, wings outstretched as they rode the thermal waves.
“Coyote?” Kyle suggested.
“No. Too many for a coyote. It’s bigger than that.”
“Deer? Horse?”
“Look how they are staying away,” Matt said. “If it was a deer or a horse, they’d be on it. No, whatever it is, they are afraid of it.”
“There’s only one thing they are afraid of,” Kyle said.
“Yes,” Matt replied. He didn’t have to say it aloud. He knew, and he knew that Kyle knew, that what the buzzards were circling was a man.
It took at least half an hour before they reached the body. It was hanging from the branch of a cottonwood tree, twisting slowly at the end of the rope. Some of the vultures had gotten brave enough to descend to the upper branches of the tree, but none had actually reached the body yet, because it showed no signs of vulture feeding.
“It’s Dempster,” Kyle said.
“He was just a drunk. Who could a drunk make angry enough to do something like this?”
“He had stopped drinking,” Kyle said. “And he is the biggest reason the governor granted you a pardon.”
“I’ll be damn,” Matt said as he sat on his horse and looked at Dempster’s body. “He tried to defend me in the trial. I guess he never gave up.”
“And my guess is, that’s what got him killed,” Kyle said. “He made an enemy of Cummins and his deputies.”
“We can’t leave him just hanging like this,” Matt said.
“Want to bury him?” Kyle asked.
“No. I have a better idea.”
Matt and Kyle arrived in Purgatory at just about supper time, and along with the spicy aromas of Mexican cooking, they could smell coffee, pork chops, fried potatoes, and baking bread.
Matt was pulling a hastily constructed travois. Dempster’s body was in plain sight, tied onto the travois.
“Frederica?” a woman called.
“Take the clothes down from the line, will you?” the woman ordered.
The servant girl, startled by sight of the dead man on the travois, gasped, and took a step backward. Matt touched the brim of his hat in greeting, then urged his horse on.
A game of checkers was being played by two gray-bearded men in front of the feed store, watched over by half-a-dozen spectators. A couple of them looked up at Matt and Kyle rode by, their horses’ hooves clumping hollowly on the hard-packed earth of the street.
“Son of a bitch!” one of them said. “That’s Dempster. That’s Bob Dempster’s body he’s a’pullin.”
Amon Goff came through the front door of his shop and began vigorously sweeping the wooden porch. His broom did little but raise the dust to swirl about, then fall back down again. He brushed a sleeping dog off the porch, but the dog quickly reclaimed his position, curled around comfortably, and within a minute was asleep again.
Goff watched the two men ride by, then, nervously, went back into his shop and started pulling down window shades.
“What are you doing that for, Amon?” he wife asked. “It ain’t time to be a’closin’ yet.”
“Hush, woman, and get into the back,” Goff said.
“What?”
“Do like I say, woman!” Goff said. “There’s about to be some killin’ and we’d best be out of the way.”
Matt and Kyle stopped in front of the city mortuary, and Matt dismounted, then cut the travois loose. A tall, cadaverous-looking man, dressed all in black, stepped out of the building.
“You the undertaker?” Matt asked.
“Yes, sir, Prufrock is the name.”
