The Hanging at Leadville / Firefall Page 8

  “Briggs Garrett.”

  “Why? You know aught of him?”

  “We’ve heard stories, rumors” Kenton said. “Have you?”

  “Aye. But it’s foolish and idle talk, dangerous to be spread. You forget all about Briggs Garrett and burnt dead men in mine shafts.” He barked it out with fervor. Suddenly he stopped, as if realizing something. His anger rose as if a bellows had been put to it. “Ah, now I see it! The famed Brady Kenton and his partner come to Leadville and stir the latest gossip a bit, then make up tales to make the local law look foolish for the sake of a good story! That’s your game, is it? I should jail the both of you!”

  “You’re wrong,” Kenton said calmly. “We don’t work that way.” He paused, then committed himself. “If Alex says there was a body here, then there was a body here.”

  “Is that right? You know what Clance Sullivan says? I say you’re either liars or drunkards or both! And I also say you’ll not ride by my side back to Leadville! Walk until you’re more honest men the both of you!” He turned and began climbing up the rungs, taking one of the lanterns with him. Part of the way up, he stiffened and grunted, almost dropping the lantern.

  “Sullivan?” Kenton said in concern.

  “Leave it be, leave it be,” he responded angrily. “My arm again—hurts from time to time—particularly so after giving aid to fools.” After that last jab, he resumed climbing until he was up and out.

  Kenton and Gunnison looked at each other. “You really do believe me?” Gunnison asked.

  “I do,” Kenton said. “I might be inclined to blame it all on that blow to your noggin, but I saw the filth on you. I smelled it, and I know the smell of burnt flesh.” He paused. “Know it far too well.”

  “But where’s the body now?”

  “Even more important—where’s Lundy O’Donovan?”

  Lundy—Gunnison had all but forgotten him. “We’d best begin looking, and fast,” he said.

  They climbed up the ladder. Sullivan was above, no less angry for the passage of a few moments. “I’ll take that lantern, too,” he said.

  “We need at least one lantern to look for the missing boy,” Kenton replied.

  “There’s no missing boy any more than there is a missing body,” Sullivan replied. “I’ll not be held guilty for the theft of a lantern—give it to me.” He stalked off to the wagon with a lantern in each hand, extinguished them, and drove off.

  Kenton and Gunnison were left in the dark. They called for Lundy and tried to search, but the night was too black to see, and no one answered. Kenton at last declared they should return to Leadville and try to find Lundy’s house; perhaps the boy had returned on his own during the last hour.

  The walk back to Leadville was difficult because of their weariness, the darkness, and in Gunnison’s case, extensive soreness and bruises. Still, he was pleased to be able to move about at all. His fall, which could have been fatal, had done him no significant injury, thanks to the cushioning corpse at the bottom of the shaft.

  “The most loco thing about all this, when you think about it,” said Kenton, “is why whatever scoundrel who did all this took such pains to spare your life. To haul you out of the shaft, take you back to town, soak you in whiskey—that’s a lot more troublesome than simply bashing in your skull and leaving you to rot.”

  “That’s a pleasant thought,” Gunnison said ironically. But Kenton had raised a good point. “If he was that merciful to me, maybe he was to Lundy, too.”

  “So we may hope. But the question remains why someone who would hang and burn one man would have a streak of mercy at all. It’s not very logical. Especially if it really is Garrett. Garrett never knew the meaning of mercy.” He touched the scar on his cheek.

  Gunnison paused, then asked, “Kenton, am I right that you brought us to Leadville to find Briggs Garrett?”

  Kenton did not answer for a couple of moments. “Yes,” he said finally in a low voice.

  “For the sake of getting the story?”

  “For much more than that,” Kenton replied.

  Gunnison had developed an instinctive feeling for when Kenton could be safely pressed and when he could not. This was one of the latter times. They fell silent, concentrating on their walking. Leadville lay ahead, twinkling in the blackness.

  Chapter 15

  By the time Mark Straker finished cursing, he was out of both expletives and breath. George Currell stood before him with an expression that combined worry and anger, watching Straker pace back and forth. The night sky spread above, and the wind whipped through the surrounding trees. It was here, at Currell’s hut near Poverty Flat, that Straker awaited the return of his accomplices from the mine where Jimmy Rhoder’s body had been hidden. They should have returned with news of a mission accomplished. Instead they had brought a most distressing story.

  Straker could not believe such a simple job as removing a corpse from an abandoned mine shaft could have taken such a devastating turn. Currell had told him in a shaking voice that when they arrived at the mine, two people were already there. One was the little O’Donovan boy from Chicken Hill, a fatherless ragamuffin whom most of Leadville’s longer-term residents knew from his nearly continuous presence on the streets. The other was Alex Gunnison, partner of Brady Kenton.

  That was as far as the story had gotten before Straker began cursing and pacing. Now he stopped, took a deep breath, and faced Currell again.

  “They saw you, I suppose.”

  “The boy did. Gunnison didn’t. He was in the shaft when we came in, and I kicked him in the head when he stuck it up out of the hole. He fell back in on top of Rhoder and got knocked out cold. Never saw a thing.”

  “So what did you do with the boy?”

  “Chop-off grabbed him, and he let out a yell and pulled loose. I went for him, but he got out the door. I couldn’t catch him.”

  “So he saw your faces, and now he’s out running loose?” Straker swore some more as he lifted his hands skyward in exasperation. “You know what this means, don’t you? This means that once he talks, it won’t be Briggs Garrett people associate with that corpse, but you and Chop-off! But wait—where’s this Gunnison now?”

  Currell swallowed nervously. “Chop-off wanted to kill him. I said no—I’m not going to get involved in another murder. So we drug him out of the hole. Chop-off had about half a bottle of whiskey with him, and we soaked Gunnison with it, hauled him back to town, and dumped him in Stillborn Alley. We were careful—nobody saw us.”

  “But why in the name of—”

  “Don’t you see, Straker? Ain’t nobody going to believe anything he says now. They’ll say he was drunk and dreamed it all up.”

  Straker thought about it and grudgingly had to admire Currell’s cleverness. The admiration faded with a new realization, however. “But Rhoder’s body—somebody is bound to check the mine and find it.”

  “Rhoder’s not in the mine anymore,” Currell said. “We knew we couldn’t leave him, but we couldn’t string him up somewhere like you said to do, either, not with that kid likely to squall out that he had seen us at the mine. We threw Rhoder’s body into a little cave-hole on past the mine. We heard it splash into water a long way down. He won’t be found by nobody now.”

  “That’s good at least. Ruins my plan about uncle Squire though. And there’s still the boy to deal with.”

  “What do you mean, ‘deal with’?”

  “Hell, Currell, he’s got to be killed! You ought to be able to see that if anybody can—it’s your neck, and Chop—off’s, on the line now!”

  “I ain’t going to kill no little boy, no matter what,” Currell replied forcefully.

  More pacing followed. Straker was in turmoil. He couldn’t escape the ironic realization that Jimmy Rhoder, who had caused him such trouble in his life, now was about to cause him much more in his death. Rhoder had been murdered by lynching, at gunpoint, many days before in his own billiard hall by Straker. Straker had never been able to control his rage past
a certain point, and Rhoder had unwisely pushed Straker far past the limit.

  Straker’s livelihood, beyond the generous allowance given him by his uncle Squire, depended upon the crime network he led. Small-time crime it was for the most part—foot-pad robberies, burglaries, prostitution, and some extortion—but it had proven profitable for Straker, who kept his little band of criminals in his grasp through gifts of money, women, and opium. Rhoder’s mistake had been to believe he could compete with Straker and be allowed to get away with it. For a time Straker had put up with the growing competition, but when Rhoder tried to lure Straker’s most effective footpads into his own fold, Straker decided matters had gone too far.

  Straker had not really planned to kill Rhoder at first, just to scare him enough to persuade him to stick to the billiard-parlor business and leave crime to others. But matters got out of hand the night he paid his call on Rhoder’s place, which had been temporarily closed because of damage from a fire. Rhoder was there alone that night, repainting a blackened wall, and before the night was over, he was hanging dead from a ceiling beam. Straker set the pool hall on fire again to destroy the incriminating corpse.

  The fire, however, was doused before the job could be finished. Only through the help of Currell and Chop-off was Straker able to recover Rhoder’s body and spirit it away before the murder was detected. Ample handfuls of cash had persuaded Currell and Chop-off to dispose of the body in the defunct mine belonging to Deverell.

  The people of Leadville still wondered what had become of Jimmy Rhoder; most had finally concluded that he had fled town. At that point Straker ceased worrying much about the killing, but Chop-off and Currell continued to fret, fearing somehow the killing would be detected and their part in the cover-up exposed.

  Then had come the much-talked-of death of Mickey Scarborough and the subsequent rumors about Briggs Garrett, and Straker had developed the plan that he hoped would be set in motion this very night.

  Chop-off Johnson spoke up in his growly voice. “I’ll be glad to kill the boy, Straker. I was for hunting him down and killing him before we come back here, but Currell wouldn’t have anything to do with it.”

  Currell snapped, “Like I said, I won’t be part of killing no boy. Ain’t nobody going to believe his story anyway, now that Rhoder’s body is gone.”

  Straker wheeled to face Currell, cursed him soundly again, then took a deep breath and forced himself to grow calm. He had always been proud of being able to work even accidental circumstances to his own advantage, to play whatever cards he was dealt. This was such a situation. Maybe he could salvage this situation yet…he had to, or his own neck might be on the line. “Both of you keep your mouths shut and let me think,” he said to his underlings. “There’s got to be a way out of this. Got to be.”

  He paced more, for a full five minutes, thinking over the situation. Finally he stopped. “If we’re lucky,” he said, “the boy will be too scared to talk. If he doesn’t talk, this whole business will go no further, because nobody will believe Gunnison under the circumstances, and he never saw your faces in any case. You at least did one thing clever, Currell, when you pulled that whiskey trick. I’ll give you credit for that.

  “But if the O’Donovan boy talks, the law is bound to question you about it. If that happens, you’re going to have to tell enough of the truth to be believable, but deny everything, absolutely everything, about there being any corpse in the mine. Your story will be that you were out near the mine, drinking together, and you saw Gunnison there, drunk and trying to hurt the boy. You went in to stop him, and Lundy got scared and ran. Gunnison fought you, fell down the shaft, and knocked himself cold. You got scared then, took him to town, and dumped him out in Stillborn Alley. That’s that. Worst you’d get would be a lecture from a judge.”

  Currell said, “But what if they believe there was a body, no matter what we say?”

  “They can’t get anywhere on a murder case without the corpse on hand. You could say that this Gunnison was so raving drunk, he was seeing things. You could say he had the little boy so scared that he believed everything he said. The key will be to keep on denying, denying, denying. Like I said, there’s nothing they could really prove without having the corpse. And likely it won’t even go that far. With any luck, the boy will keep quiet out of fear.”

  “I don’t like it,” Currell muttered.

  Straker grew angry again. “You don’t like it? Then you should have run down the boy and killed him, and Gunnison too. Hell, if it came to it, you could have strung them up and burnt them and made them look like Garrett’s victims too! But you didn’t do that, and it’s too late to change it. You put your foot in this one, Currell—put it in deep. You picked the wrong time to develop a high moral code!”

  Straker turned and stalked to his horse. He mounted, looked at the others. “The worst part of it is that you’ve ruined my plan. But I’ll fix it—there’s always a way. I’ll still make this town believe that Squire Deverell and Briggs Garrett are one and the same. I’ll even still give you a cut of my inheritance, because I’m a generous man and because you did take a risk for me. But if you ever botch anything like this again, you’re out. Understand? Cut out!”

  Now it was Currell who grew angry. “Don’t talk high and mighty to us, Straker! If me and Chop-off go down, you go with us! All we got to do is tell what you did to Jimmy Rhoder.”

  Straker shot a cold laugh back at Currell. “You think a jury would believe you above me? There’s not a shred of evidence that would link me to any of this except your say-so, and that’s not worth a handful of spit.” With that, he clicked his tongue and rode off on a gallop toward town.

  Chop-off Johnson watched Straker until he was gone in the darkness. “I ain’t going to just sit still, whatever Straker says. You heard him just now—he ain’t going to let this come back against him, no matter what. He’ll leave us swinging in the wind, Currell.” The one-armed man looked south toward Chicken Hill. “That boy’s got to be shut up, if it ain’t too late.”

  Currell said, “No, Chop-off! He’s just a boy, a kid…”

  But Chop-off was already stalking away.

  “Chop-off, don’t do it!” Currell called.

  Chop-off Johnson kept walking. Currell swiped a hand over his sweating brow. His throat was tight and dry. He lurched forward as if to go after Chop-off but pulled back, swallowed, and lunged back into his hut, locking the door behind him.

  Chapter 16

  Chicken Hill was a well-populated extension of the larger Carbonate Hill, where several of Leadville’s important mines were located. Primarily the domain of Swedes and Irishmen, Chicken Hill had been named for its first resident, William “Chicken Bill” Lovell, who had gained his nickname by trying to herd a flock of chickens across Mosquito Pass. The chickens froze to death on the mountain, but Chicken Bill delivered them down and sold them frozen to Leadville’s winter-bound miners, most of whom hadn’t tasted chicken in months. The unusual feat only added to a colorful reputation he had started developing when he supposedly salted his Crysolite Mine over on Fryer Hill and sold it to the prominent H.A.W. Tabor. Tabor managed to turn the joke around by finding in it a high-yielding ore vein Bill had not known about.

  Chicken Hill, like a homely woman, looked best in darkness. Cabins stood at all angles about the hill, and for every towering evergreen there were ten stumps, which created a hazard to Kenton and Gunnison as they wound their way through the farrago, wondering which cabin housed the O’Donovan family. Kenton ran into a stump hidden in the shadow of a cabin and swore. Immediately a shutter flew open and a long rifle barrel protruded out at them, held by a bearded miner whose features were shadowed against the interior light of his cabin. They froze.

  “And what do we be doing poking round out there?” said a very Swedish voice.

  Kenton said, “Easy, my friend—I’m trying to find a particular residence to make a call.”

  “In the middle of the night? What kind of call would this be?
”

  “The circumstances are unusual,” Kenton said.

  “Yah, that I’d say they are,” the man rejoined. There came a draining silence during which, Gunnison suspected, the man was considering whether to continue talking or just shoot the trespassers down and avoid the delay in getting back to bed. To Gunnison’s relief, he kept talking. “Who yah be lookin’ for?”

  “The O’Donovan family,” Kenton replied.

  “Then why you botherin’ us Swedes? The Irish live yonder.” He waved with the rifle barrel.

  “Which house?”

  “That with the light still burnin’,” the man said. “If you do them harm, my friends, all of Chicken Hill will be callin’ in your debt.”

  “We mean them no harm,” Kenton said. “Thank you, my friend. May I pay you for your guidance?”

  “Indeed you may, thank you, sir.” The rifle went, and an upturned hand came out in its place.

  Kenton fished out a bill and handed it over. Then he and Gunnison turned and walked toward the O’Donovan house. The sound of the Swede’s closing window drew a sigh of relief from Gunnison.

  “I don’t relish another gunpoint encounter like that,” Kenton said as they rounded the front of the O’Donovan cabin. No sooner had he said it than the front door flew open and a woman with an older, feminine version of Lundy’s face and the wildest eyes Gunnison had ever beheld leveled a rifle at Kenton’s nose.

  “One twitch and you’ll join the saints,” she said.

  Kenton and Gunnison lifted their hands toward the black sky.

  “Ma’am, please be careful with that weapon,” Kenton said. “We’ve come looking for Lundy O’Donovan.”

  At that, the woman gave a horrid screech and raised the rifle higher. “What do you want with him?” she demanded, almost in tears. “I’ll see no harm done my boy!”

  “We don’t want to harm him—we want to find him, protect him if need be,” Kenton said. “We are concerned about him, afraid he’s in trouble.”