Shawn O'Brien Manslaughter (15 page)

“They're all dead, Sheriff,” Bobby Miller said. “They shot every one of them.”

“Who, Bobby, who shot them?” Purdy said.

“Didn't you hear it?” the boy said, a frantic light in his pale eyes.

“I heard the shooting, but I saw nothing,” Purdy said. He felt sick to his stomach.

“Riders came out of the hills and bushwhacked us. Everybody's dead. Lou McPhee was killed with an ax and I reckon so was Mr. Janacek. They slaughtered us, Sheriff. They shot into the wagon and . . . and Lou tried to surrender and a man on a tall horse came and split his head open with an ax.”

Purdy was in shock, beyond thinking logically. Now he tried to get it together. “Bobby, how do you know this?” he said.

“I escaped and hid in the brush. I saw it all. Then a man pissed on my head. I need your canteen, Sheriff. I smell real bad.”

“But how did—”

“He didn't know I was there.”

Young as he was, Bobby saw that the sheriff was numb from the impact of what he'd told him. He stepped around Purdy and removed the canteen from his horse. The bay favored its right foreleg, holding the hoof off the ground.

The boy lifted the canteen over his head and let the water tumble over his hair and face. Purdy watched him, a detached expression on his ashen face.

“I'm not going back there, Sheriff,” Bobby said, strands of wet hair falling over his forehead. “Nothing on earth could make me go back.”

“But what about the town?” Purdy said. “What's to become of Broken Bridle? So many men . . .”

Bobby realized the young sheriff was talking to himself, not to him, and he didn't answer.

Purdy stared into the darkness, at the moon-silvered peaks of the Rattlesnake Hills. Now the racketing roars of the guns were silent, the land was hushed, and the whispering wind sounded like the voices of the dead.

Bobby drank from the canteen, wiped off his mouth, then said, “We'd better go back to town and get help, Sheriff.”

Purdy roused like a man awaking from a deep sleep. “Help? There is no help. All the men are dead.” He gathered the reins of his horse and handed them to the boy. “Take him back to town.”

“Where are you headed, Sheriff?” Bobby said.

Purdy nodded in the direction of the hills. “There.”

“Why?”

“To make some arrests.”

“You're crazy,” the boy said. He grabbed Purdy's arm. “You'll get your head split open like the others.”

“I plan to arrest Thomas Clouston and see him hang for murder,” the sheriff said, wrenching himself away from Bobby's grasp.

Bobby Miller had been raised hard in a succession of vile foster homes where he'd been beaten and worked like a slave. He'd run away from such a home six months before and now worked odd jobs around town, bedding down where he could and eating when someone felt inclined to pay him. As a result of years of hardscrabble survival he was wise beyond his age, and he revealed that now.

“After you're dead, Sheriff, and you will be, what about the people left in Broken Bridle?” he asked. “What about the women and children with no menfolk to protect them?”

Purdy stared at the small, thin teenager as if seeing him for the first time. Bobby Miller's eyes stared back at him, as big and round as silver dollars. Whatever he'd seen had thrust him into adulthood in the course of a single night. He'd been forced to grow up too fast too soon, just another casualty of Thomas Clouston's mad ambition.

The sheriff made up his mind, the reality of his situation hitting him like a bucket of cold water.

“You're right, we'll go back,” he said. Purdy struggled for words to justify his action but couldn't find any. Finally he settled on, “We'll . . . regroup.”

Bobby could have said, “Regroup what?” but he bit his tongue and said nothing.

The haloed moon had dropped, leaving room for the stars, and the breeze rustled from the south, scented with sage and pine.

Purdy let his hobbling horse set the pace, Bobby Miller walking close beside him, as though for protection.

The sheriff walked with his head lowered, deep in thought, but he had lost his way and could think only of problems that had no solutions.

At dawn Shawn O'Brien stood at his open hotel room window and watched women gather in the street. There were no wails, not yet, just worry and concern for husbands and sons.

During his time in England, Shawn remembered seeing an illustration in the
London Review
of grim, shawled women standing vigil at a Welsh coal mine as they waited for news of the two hundred and fifty men and boys trapped below after an explosion. All the miners died and their once-thriving village, unable to sustain such a loss, died with them.

Oskar Janacek and his men had not yet returned. Had they suffered a similar fate?

Shawn dressed hurriedly and pounded on Hamp Sedley's door. “Get up!” he yelled. “Meet me in the street!”

Without waiting for an answer, Shawn ran downstairs and onto the hotel porch. Pete Caradas already lounged against a post on the opposite boardwalk outside the Streetcar Saloon. He wore a red robe with a velveteen black collar, Turkish carpet slippers, and smoked a cigar. A cautious man, his gun belt was slung over his left shoulder.

Shawn was halfway across the street when Caradas answered the question he had not yet asked. “Dead or alive, they're still out there,” he said.

Shawn glanced at the score of women gathered in the street. Most stared fixedly in the direction of the Rattlesnake Hills, but a few pale faces turned to him and Caradas, anguished wives and mothers looking for someone, anyone, to blame for what they sensed was now an impending disaster.

Hamp Sedley stepped out of the hotel and crossed the street, an irritated scowl on his face, a nocturnal creature forced to face the searing light of dawn.

“What the hell?” was his surly greeting.

“The wagon hasn't come back yet,” Shawn said.

Hamp looked at the women. “Seems like the ladies have buried them already,” he said. He opened his mouth to say further, then snapped it shut.

The drums started again. The beat was the same, slow, monotonous, intimidating, designed by the warped genius of a malevolent psychiatrist to drive people mad.

Judging by the reaction of the women of Broken Bridle, he'd succeeded. They held to each other, sobbing. Older women who could find no comfort of their own desperately tried to bring it to the young and the vulnerable. But hope hadn't yet died. There was always a possibility their men had triumphed and had lingered in the hills to bury the dead and deal with prisoners.

Shawn decided it was time to end the uncertainty.

“Hamp, I'm riding out to take a look,” he said. “You want to come?”

“You don't need to ask me that,” Sedley said. He seemed offended.

“Pete, will you join us?” Shawn said. “We could use your gun.”

Caradas shook his head. “Like I said before, my job is to stick right here.”

“How is Becker this morning?” Shawn said.

“Still the same. If he improves you'll be the first to know.”

Shawn nodded. “I'd appreciate it.”

Caradas's voice dropped to a whisper. “They're all dead, you know.”

“Maybe. But I reckon I'll settle it one way or the other.”

“O'Brien, don't ride into those hills. Not today,” Caradas said.

“I'll study on that, Pete,” Shawn said.

Caradas tossed his cigar butt into the street. “Then you ride careful,” he said. He turned and walked into the saloon.

“Hell, does ol' Pete know something we don't?” Sedley said.

“I reckon not. He just doesn't like the odds.”

“That makes two of us,” Sedley said.

Shawn smiled. “No it doesn't. It makes all three of us.”

Petsha and Milos D'eth stood outside the livery and watched the women gather in the street. They'd been very aware of the presence of Pete Caradas and Shawn O'Brien, guns to step around until their work here was done.

Milos broke his morning silence. “He will come to us,” he said.

“Perhaps,” Petsha said.

“We should be ready.”

Petsha nodded. “The clock will soon strike midnight.”

 

 

The promise of a bright morning was stillborn as purple thunderheads piled high above the Granite Mountains to the south and threatened to drive north on the prevailing wind. The air was thick with the scent of sage and the breeze was cool, but the growing gloom of the day boded ill, like a black-cloaked figure stalking a dark alley.

“Ahead of us,” Shawn said.

“I see them,” Sedley said.

Shawn slid the Winchester from the boot under his knee. His eyes searched into distance. “Two of them, leading a horse.”

“Clouston's men?” Sedley said.

“Could be, but I don't think so. One of them looks like a half-grown boy.”

The drums were silent and the brushy slopes of the Rattlesnake Hills seemed deserted. Apart from a few white clouds, the sky above the peaks was still a flawless blue, like an upturned Wedgewood bowl. But thunder to the south growled threats and the wind picked up.

Shawn drew rein and Sedley put a couple of yards of separation between them, then did the same. They waited.

When the man leading the horse drew closer, Sedley said, “Hell, it's the college boy and he's got some kid protecting him.”

Shawn said nothing. By the slump of Purdy's shoulders and his lame horse, Shawn figured Purdy had met with little success. But where had the boy come from?

When the young sheriff was within talking distance, Sedley said, “Howdy, Sheriff, out for a morning stroll?”

Purdy ignored that. His gray features were hollow and shadowed, like the face of a dead man, and his eyes behind his glasses peered, blinking, at Shawn O'Brien without really seeing him.

“We took you for the mad doctor's men,” the boy said. “I thought we were done for.”

Shawn swung out of the saddle, fetched his canteen, and handed it to the boy. “Take a drink,” he said. He waited until the kid drank about a pint of water, then said, “What's your name, son?”

“Bobby Miller. I—”

“They're all dead, O'Brien,” Purdy said. He looked like a sleepwalker.

“Did you see them, Sheriff ?” Shawn said.

Purdy didn't hear. “Thirteen men of the town, a banker, lawyer, brewer, merchants . . . husbands, fathers, sons . . . all dead.”

“I escaped,” Bobby Miller said. “That's how come I'm here.”

“Tell me how it happened,” Shawn said.

The boy told the same story as Purdy had heard. He used words sparingly, but his expressive brown eyes revealed by turns horror, disbelief, wonder, and primitive terror.

When Bobby stopped talking there were tears on his sallow cheeks. Shawn patted the boy on his shoulder and told him he'd done good.

“I don't feel so good,” Bobby said.

Suddenly Jeremiah Purdy woke from his lethargy.

“O'Brien, I'm commandeering your horse,” he said. “I have arrests to make. I have people to bring to justice. I have murderers to hang. I have . . .” The young sheriff stopped, blinked a few times, then buried his face in his hands and sobbed.

Hamp Sedley, much embarrassed by this emotional display, turned away and suddenly saw something of great interest on the far horizon. For his part, Shawn, born to the volatile Irish temperament and its heart-scalding moments of grief, understood what Purdy was going through. The sheriff wasn't much more than a boy himself and ill-suited to handle the monumental tragedy that had befallen him.

“Bobby, escort Sheriff Purdy home,” he said. “Let the horse set the pace. He's real sore-footed.”

“What will you do, mister?” Bobby said.

“I don't rightly know. See if there's anybody left alive, I guess, and hope I run into Thomas Clouston.”

“I hope you don't,” the boy said. He turned away and took Purdy by the arm. “You ready to go, Sheriff ?” he said.

The young lawman nodded, never lifting his eyes from the ground. Every man has a limit on what he can endure and still function, and Purdy had reached his.

Shawn thought it sad. Sedley thought it weak. And Jeremiah Purdy didn't think about it at all.

 

 

The evidence of the massacre remained, though the bloody-beaked crows had been busy and elegant buzzards glided against an iron-gray sky. Thunder rolled and lightning flickered over the landscape like limelight illuminating a darkened stage.

The horse team was gone and the sprawled, ashen dead had been stripped of their weapons. Two of the men, Oskar Janacek and one other whom Shawn didn't know, had massive head wounds.

Like a nervous tic, Hamp Sedley's gun hand kept dropping to the butt of his holstered Colt. “I don't see anything, do you?” he said.

“Not a damn thing,” Shawn said.

“Rain's coming,” Sedley said.

“Seems like,” Shawn said. Then, “We'll ride into the hills, see if there's any sign of Clouston and his men.”

“And if there is?” Sedley said. “What do we do then?”

“Hightail it,” Shawn said. “Maybe we'll get a chance to count numbers before they spot us.” He shrugged into his slicker. “I'm not too confident about what I just said.”

“I'm not too confident about what you just said, either,” Sedley said.

He proceeded to button into a gigantic black oilskin with
SS SPINDRIFT
painted on the back. Answering Shawn's unanswered question, Sedley said, “Won it from a sailorman and I've been lugging it around ever since.”

“It becomes you,” Shawn said.

“No it doesn't, but it keeps me dry, well, mostly dry.”

Shawn smiled. “Let's ride, thou apparition.”

 

 

“Nothing,” Hamp Sedley said, rain dripping off the brim of his hat. “Miles and miles of nothing.”

Shawn O'Brien scanned barren hills misted by the downpour and low cloud. “They must have a camp nearby,” he said. A flash of lightning illuminated the clean-cut planes of his face and added electric blue to his eyes. “Damn it all, Hamp, they must be close.”

“We could search if we had a regiment of cavalry,” Sedley said. “But since we don't have one of them, I say we head back to town and arrange for the bodies to be collected.”

“Yes, I guess so,” Shawn said. “But who would want to be in Broken Bridle tonight?”

“Nobody. But we got it to do,” Sedley said.

Shawn nodded. “All right, then let's get it done.”

Rain drummed on Sedley's oilskin. His face was drawn, dark, without humor. “How long do you give the town?” he asked.

“Who knows?” Then, “Not long.”

“And us?”

Shawn reached into his slicker and brought out a black and silver rosary. He removed his hat and slid the beads over his head and let the cross hang on his chest.

“Bury me with it, Hamp,” he said.