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Short Stories & Tall Tales
The Hangmen
By Tom Sheehan
Floyd Prescott, hardly able to sit the saddle, yelled out to his middle son Jasper, “Damn it, boy, is that your brother Joshua up there hanging by his neck?”
The world of Utah, life itself, had come to a standstill in the middle of the road passing through the center of Pembroke, a growing town that felt too frequently all kinds of muscle, mayhem and mischief. A man was hanging from the loading arm of the town livery stable, and the lynch mob was still gathered beneath its victim. The silence came upon them all intolerably slow, like a hammer hanging over them in the hand of a weakened arm. A whole day, seeming to repeat itself within that silence, came back in a sudden rush to Prescott sitting a horse so magnificent that at another time it might swell his chest with pride.
Wealthy rancher Floyd Prescott had not been into town in more than a year. It was his choice; his ranch of over 80,000 acres along the Price River, a family of five children, and his string of a special breed of horses kept him busy enough. He had just been on a significant cattle drive and there was not a more interesting thing in town to bring him in, not until he heard about the posse catching the killer of a friend’s foreman. That was interest enough. Posses, whose tendencies kept him alert, were not always in control of their best intentions; some weak and easily lead men, wearing tin, can do some horribly cruel things, and supposedly legal. It unnerved him enough to make a decision.
“Margaret,” he had said the night before to his wife and mother of their five children, all of them about the house except Josh, the oldest, who was back east in Chicago at school for the fourth year, “I’m going into town in the morning. To see that killer the posse caught, the one they say killed Merced’s foreman for no apparent reason.” He put his arm around her shoulder. “I’ll be back day after tomorrow. Jasper’s going with me. We’ll stay at the hotel tomorrow night.”
“It’s been a while for you, Floyd. Enjoy your stay.” She tapped him on the shoulder, her good luck pat for all of their thirty years of marriage. “Be careful of the distractions when you get there.” She smiled and they both laughed as he nuzzled her with appreciation.
Prescott and his second oldest son, Jasper, headed toward Pembroke as the sun broke over the low Utah hills and started its run across his ranch and the rich grass, the wide pasturage, and fences only his fancy horses could leap. The Diamond Bar Ranch went as far as they could see, and then some, the range of hills to the north setting one edge of the ranch. Soon, in late September or early October, the tops of the hills would turn white with the first snow and they would begin to hunker down for the winter. Twenty cords of wood had been hauled out of the hills for winter at the ranch house, Jasper’s summer job since Josh had gone on to school, now for his fourth year. The bunkhouse also had six cords of fire wood split and piled, and a couple of line cabins, far to the northwest, had a fair supply laid in also.
Jasper, it looked, had grown with each wagonload. Prescott stared at his son’s arms and chest as they rode along the long trail to town, admiring the benefits that four years of hard work had brought to the youngster. Josh, too, had grown the same way, and even his reading had not interfered with his summer hauling, splitting and stacking of wood, until school called for him.
Prescott suspected that Jasper soon would get the call, would leave the window open; he remembered how Jasper had devoured Josh’s letters, sneaking them into his room at night, studying them, trying to see what lay beyond the ranch, Price River, Utah. Their mother had fed their curiosity with her demands that they all read every day, do their numbers, and then do their appointed tasks at the ranch. Jeremy, the youngest of three boys, was still playing at early work most of the day, learning the lariat, how to cinch a horse, seeing how and why a brand was put in place. But his turn at real work, they all knew, sat on the horizon. The two girls, meanwhile, were positive assets in the kitchen, about the house, and would someday run such a house of their own.
Jasper said, “Where’d they catch him, Pa, the killer?”
“Outside of Pembroke, the other side, like he had no worries in the world. Said he was riding toward town, not away from it, whistling all the while. They heard him whistling and singing as he was headed into town on the river road. Strange, that part of it. I’d of been long gone if it was me.”
“Me, too, Pa. No sense getting mixed up with a posse. Some of those gents scare me, the way they run loose at the mouth, loose with a rope, their dander up, their manliness crowding them like it doesn’t really matter a whole hog at such a juncture in a man’s life. It’s happened before.” His mind shot back a few years when he saw his first hanging outside the law; he had not forgotten the man jerking on the rope, then going slack.
Prescott smiled an appreciation of Jasper’s word choice, and said to himself, as he pictured his wife setting the table for their education, “God, hasn’t she been something for me and them, always able to say what she meant to say, one way or another.” He felt again her good luck tap on his shoulder; it made him smile once more.
They rode for several hours, promising each other that they would become no part of a lynch mob, for there had been talk of such action coming with the news of the killer’s apprehension. Pembroke, they had been told, was explosive. And liquor was running the field. They further promised they’d do what they could to prevent a bad scene if it promised to come about.
The sun was fully ignited overhead when they reached town, and a strange buzz almost flew off the sides of buildings as they rode in. The sun was beginning to bathe everything and the unique buzz-like silence, a hive perhaps just stirred awake, had settled on the road and in the alleys.
“I think we’re too late, Jasper,” Prescott said to his son. “I have a real bad feeling coming on me right now, like we just opened the gates for a stranger.”
“Me, too, Pa,” Jasper Prescott said, almost as if he hoped he hadn’t said anything truthful.
They turned the corner onto the single main road through the center of Pembroke, swinging around the doctor’s little house at the edge of town, and saw the activity that must have taken place minutes before they got there. A man was hanging from the loading arm of the livery, his feet dangling in a slight breeze, his shirt sleeves puffed by the same airy motion. A dozen men stood on the side, chattering and gabbing like old ladies at a quilting session. Prescott knew some of them, some having worked for a time for him at the ranch; some of the men hard workers, some not so dedicated and some let go in a hurry. With all that being measured, Prescott saw different messages being delivered, as if a town council had encountered a split vote; how a man held his head, shoulder slouch full of babble, a face turned away in self revile, sudden shame in the face of men generally known as righteous.
Distaste flooded Prescott and his son. They believed in law, but controllable law; this sight before them was not controllable law; it was murder to them as plain as day. A body swaying at the end of a rope is not like a flag or a standard limp in the breeze; a man dead has more impact than an idea at odds in any cause.
Prescott marked again a few of the men as former ranch hands who did not or could not cut their way while on his payroll. He could not have expected anything else from them. The well-known laggard and loudmouth, Jessie Braxlin, fired on the spot by Prescott a whole year earlier, was doing most of the talking, at least the hard talking, as the two Prescotts rode up.
“Hey, Floyd,” Braxlin yelled when he saw the Prescotts, “what the hell brings you into town today of all days. If you come to see the excitement, you done missed it, Mister Rancher. Late as usual for the big doings. We got the town’s business done already, me and the boys here.” He swung his arm about as half the men smiled at the accolades and half looked as skittish as they must have been a bit earlier.
The body language Prescott kept reading was easy to detect by the eyes of the big rancher, a long-time employer of men dependent on such signs. For all his years as a ranch owner, he set his account on men who had stood ready for the job: hat and boots on, guns in place, horse saddled and cinched, eyes down the trail. He saw none of that now.
“Cowed might be a better word for them,” Prescott thought, “cow men who had been cowed by a loudmouth braggart and bully.”
“What if he isn’t the guilty party, Braxlin? Won’t that send you and a few of your pards here scampering to find shelter from the law?”
Braxlin, out front of his crowd, belligerent as ever, said, “We’re the law here, Prescott. You can see that, can’t you? Lookee yonder at the murderer we done took care of.” He pointed up at the dead man hanging from the hay load beam jutting over the front doors of the livery. The beam was at least 5 inches square and had been utilized for other hangings in a town in too much of a hurry to grow up.
As his father was fronting up with Braxlin, Jasper Prescott was drawn to a horse that might have been used during the hanging. The animal, a big red stallion, was tied off mere yards from the hung man. Jasper approached the animal with sincere curiosity, but his attention was drawn more to the saddle on stallion than to the big horse, for the saddle was somewhat askew on the horse’s back, as if it had been thrown on in haste, or never taken off properly, or wrenched out of position. But something else had drawn his attention. Obviously bothered or intrigued by something he had noticed, Jasper Prescott, slowly, without looking up at the lynched man, dismounted his horse and walked hesitantly to the big red stallion. He patted him on the rump, spoke softly a few old and trustworthy words long in his rancher’s lexicon, and then put his hand out to touch the letters burned into the saddle.
The young man shook visibly, the tremors could be seen by all the men around him, by the big-mouthed instigator Braxlin, by his father sitting straight up in his saddle with no idea of what was about to come his way. Jasper Prescott dared not look up at the lynched man but blurted out a cry of terror.
That cry of terror was enough to freeze every man standing there on the dusty road, or sitting a saddle, as if the town itself had been clasped by doom itself. Every man present, every man within hearing range, turned to look at young Prescott, his hand still on the saddle of the horse.
“Pa! Pa! It’s Josh’s saddle. It’s Josh’s saddle! It is! It is!”
He threw his hat on the dusty ground and kicked it away, dust rising from his boots, his legs jerking and spasmodic. It appeared he might draw his revolver and start shooting anything or anybody in sight. Yet he did not look up at the man hanging above his head.
Prescott’s voice was quick and demanding. “Damn it, son, is it Joshua?” He looked down at Braxlin, suddenly edging away from the group.
“You hold your place, Braxlin. You got some explaining to do, and you damned well better say your prayers this minute that the hung man there isn’t my son Joshua, for that’s his saddle, like his brother has declared.”
Jasper Prescott walked slowly to a spot directly below the hanging victim. He was still shaking about what he might have to say to his father, his hands fluttering at his sides, his breath caught in a deep place in his chest and afraid to come out. In a far part of his brain he barely saw his brother the last day before he had left for school, almost four years ago, but he saw as plain as the sun overhead his mother at a kitchen task ignorant of what might be coming her way. The terror hit him anew. He felt again the pain the day he had punched his brother in a stupid dispute. Shame and sorrow shot him full of holes.
He was afraid to look up.
Prescott uttered the terrible words again, this time louder than before. “Damn it, boy,” he said, “is that your brother?” The horse he was on reared on his hind legs, as though spurs had been driven home, Prescott all the while thinking his horse had enough horse sense to know that something frightful was afoot. If the man hanging there in the main road of town was his eldest son, there would be all kinds of hell to pay. He’d probably be at the hind end of it, and suffer most from what he’d inflict. The balances weighed in his head, and the pistol was available, loosed from his holster, statements to be made.
The pistol was already in Prescott’s hand and it was leveled at Braxlin, immobile, standing in the middle of the road, afraid to move, his hat awry on his head, the bandana slack at his neck as if he had just used it or was about to hide his face in a murderous crime. His shirt hung loose over his bulging gut, and malevolence and hate shot out from his eyes. It appeared to Prescott as if the whole town had gone silent, and the gang of lynch men, down to a man, were as quiet as the rest of the town, the hush of anticipation sitting like a tight finger squeezing a hair trigger.
There was no doubt about it, vengeance and justice were about on the land, in this very road they stood on, where they were trapped in place, the big ranch owner, and a power in his own right, sighting down on them. The aura of silence and perhaps the awareness of undue death cut through the air. And the promise of vengeance and reparation, had, of course, reared its ugly head continually from the solemn silence.
A lot of the lynching gang wished at that moment that they were someplace else, and in a hurry. The elder Prescott had won the territorial turkey shoot in 7 out of 10 years, and two of the losses were to his own sons , some of the onlookers suspecting he had let the boys win. So, whatever had happened here, in front of the livery, whatever was about to happen, there were two Prescott shooters surely standing against them; dead shots with pistols or rifles.
Prescott knew if thought were verbal, there’d be a whole lot of praying and hoping being heard. He knew that before anybody in the crowd knew it, while he trained his pistol directly on Braxlin, not the slightest bit of wavering in his hand.
Someone yelled out, “Where’s the sheriff?” Another said, “Someone get the sheriff!”
Someone answered, “Where the hell do you think he’s been? Gone off on some fool errand that Braxlin made up, and him knowing what was goin’ on all the time, not wantin’ to be here in the first place.”
“He ain’t no sheriff ‘cause he let this whole stinkin’ mess get loose. Maybe we ought to strip the badge off his shirt.”
Prescott, caught up in the moment, caught up by the commotion, his eyes locked on Braxlin lest he get away with something because of his inattention, yelled again. “Dammit, Jasper, speak up. Is that your brother hanging up there?”
Forces and powers were loose in his chest, squeezing on his mind. What weight was coming at him, like a ball ready to roll over him and crush the life out of his limbs? He swore something was going to happen. His finger tightened on the trigger of his pistol. He could hear Margaret saying, “Please don’t do anything stupid, Floyd. I’d be lost without you.” But his finger kept squeezing. He was still aiming at Braxlin, but now at his feet, in case that “anything stupid” happened. The awful sense of foreboding was moving through him, in all his channels and veins, popping in his nerves, like ignition at force.
The middle son of Floyd Prescott, his breath finally free of his chest, cried back, almost in glee, the way he’d sound if he was caught up in a celebration: “Pa, It’s not Joshua. It’s not Joshua, Pa,” he shouted in revelation, “but it’s his best pal, Neil Colvin, from over Tosca way.”
Prescott’s finger squeezed all the way on the trigger. Damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. The gun jolted in his hands, slammed back against his hand as it fired. The horse jumped under him. The round flashed into the dust of the road at Braxlin’s feet, the loudmouth jumping in the air.
Margaret’s hand was touching at Prescott’s shoulder; he could feel it. “Be damned glad it’s not my son, Braxlin, else you’d be dust onto dust about now.”
He swung about to celebrate with his son. “I’m damned glad it’s not your brother, Jasper, but you best get going over to Tosca right now and tell Jed Colvin that some boys here in town have hung his son Neil for something he most likely didn’t do.” He dropped his significant condemning eye on the crowd of hangmen, many of them ready to break and run but afraid of being shot.
Jasper Prescott swung his horse about and dashed out of Pembroke with dust flying behind him. He had a long ride ahead of him.
His father swung his pistol away from Braxlin, aimed it at the still-gathered mob, and said, “You boys best get Jed Colvin’s boy cut down and brought to Ned Farthing for proper duties. I wouldn’t, any of you, leave town afore Jed gets here. And he’s not as patient and as kindly a man as I am. You can bet your next drink on that account.” His pause brought along a follow-up warning; “And I caution you, he was the best scout and tracker this side of the Nations, and you can ask the army if that is true, if you have time, and if you’re so disposed.”
As Prescott scanned the faces of the crowd, he saw one face of a man that he readily might trust to do an errand. He pointed at him and called him by name. “Winslow, come over here and listen to what I have to say.”
The two of them retreated to the other side of the road. Prescott said, “You have a horse to ride, Winslow? If you do, I have a job for you to do.” Prescott kept the stern look of his eyes on the man.
“I sure do. I got a good horse. He’s up the street.”
“Well, Winslow, you light out for my place and tell my wife what’s happened here and tell her I won’t be back for a few more days. Tell her I want her to send Curly Blaise back here with five men. You got that?”
“Yes, I have. I’m on my way.” He started to leave, but Prescott had a hand on his arm.
“That’s good, Winslow. It might be damn good if you’re not here when Colvin shows up to bury his son.” That statement, he knew, would keep Winslow on the move, and well past the ranch after the errand was done. He laid a gold coin in Winslow’s hand, knowing Winslow would think about coming back, but wouldn’t bet on it. “You up on any of Braxlin’s activities before the lynching? Either earlier today or last night?”
“He was ranting and raving all night at the saloon,” Winslow said, “and had himself treated to a few good drinks by the sheriff. They was locked up for a long time at a corner table, but you could hear Braxlin all over the place saying things like, ‘This town should not stand for feeding killers even for a night. There’s one place for out and out murderers and bushwhackers and that’s like a bird, high on a limb.’ He laughed like crazy at that. Kept saying, ‘High on a limb. High on a limb.’”
“He say bushwhacker right out like that?”
“Oh, yeah, said it a dozen times I bet.”
“Well, you get on your way. Do what I said, and tell my wife to tell Curly to keep his eyes open while he’s on the way here.”
Prescott released his hold on Winslow who soon was rushing out of town to deliver the message.
Braxlin and the rest of the crowd, after Neil Colvin was cut down, began to wander away. Prescott registered for three rooms in the hotel, two for him and Jasper and one for Jed Colvin. After a noon meal at the hotel, he went to the sheriff’s office and got there just as the sheriff rode up. His name was Harry Mitchum and Prescott had never liked the man or his outlook on life, or his sense of duty.
Mitchum was long in the face, and long on excuses, and ought to have been long gone as a sheriff, but had managed to hang on for some reason. One ear lobe had been pierced by a bullet years earlier and by the set of his mouth it looked as if he still felt the pain from that incident.
Mitchum said, “Hear we had some excitement in town while I was off checking on something. You see it, Floyd? You a witness to the hanging?” Dust flew off his clothes as he brushed at them, and a barely visible sneer came set again in one corner of his mouth as if he had breathed in some stink in the air.
“No, but I would have stopped it if I had been a little bit earlier. Probably would have shot Braxlin if he was to keep at it. He the one who sent you off on some important business? Give you a hot lead on a cold problem?”
“If you’d a shot him I’d have to arrest you, Floyd.”
“You’d arrest me and not stop a hanging of an innocent boy.”
“Hell, Floyd, they caught the guilty one and did the town a favor. Had him right where it hurts, him riding that horse of his. Witness said it was the horse the killer rode.”
“That saddle he was on was my son’s saddle, Mitchum. Know how it got to him? He’s my son’s best friend and Josh must have loaned it to him when he went east to school a few years ago.”
“Well, he’s the guilty one.”
“You tell that to Jed Colvin when he shows up to get his son buried. He won’t be too pleased you were out of town and not tending to business, with a suspect in jail and Braxlin drinking and hot under the collar.”
“Like I said, we had the guilty one. Shot Merced’s man long range with a rifle, and in the back. That’s a real bushwhacker for you, I don’ care whose kid he is.”
“That kid you call a bushwhacker, Mitchum, was stone blind in one eye, and only had partial vision in the other. Didn’t you notice that? Couldn’t you tell that, or did Braxlin get you out of town in a hurry, so he could take care of things his way?”
“Blind in one eye? Why Braxlin never….” He didn’t finish his sentence, and stood open-mouthed, the small sneer gone.
Prescott put his hand on Mitchum’s shoulder. “You and Braxlin got a heap of explaining to do. I won’t be the one to stop Colvin when he gets here, not on a bet I wouldn’t.” But he was actually saying to himself, “I’ve got to stay here and keep Jed Colvin from getting himself killed over all this.” He envisioned a younger Colvin, irate, wild-eyed, in the middle of an old fight, knowing he was a strong man fighting for the truth in a matter of contention; there had been no one to stop him in the old days.
A few hours later, well announced, Jed Colvin was a full-size tornado coming into Pembroke. Down the road into town he came, horse thundering, shouting out as he rode in, “Where’s the sheriff of this god-forsaken town? Where’s the sheriff? Get his sorry butt out here. Hear me, sheriff! Get your sorry butt out here.” His voice bounced down the street as if it was heading down into a rocky canyon.
Colvin, a big man across the shoulders and chest, looking as if he could still throw a steer in flat-out seconds, leaped off the saddle as if he was a teen-ager. He was over-estimating his real prowess and agility and stumbled on landing. Prescott, old friend that he was, was the first one to his side as Colvin had reined to a stop at the hitch rail at the hotel. Prescott put out both hands to help Colvin.
“Dammit, Jed, don’t get yourself hurt now.” His hands were steeled talons on the other man, afraid of the initial energy busting loose, wondering or imagining what Colvin would do in his state of mind.
“Don’t dammit me, Floyd. I lost my son,” Colvin yelled. “Them rat asses hung him like a criminal and they’re going to pay for it.”
Prescott hit him with another hard bit of news. “I lost track of my son, too, Jed. I don’t know where Joshua is. Neil was riding on Joshua’s saddle when they brought him in. I know who was pushing all this and I’ll let you know in time, but now I’m wondering about Joshua. How did Neil get his saddle?”
“Joshua came to the ranch more than a month ago with a doctor, an eye doctor that he brought from back from Chicago, Illinois, a real specialist on eyes, to see Neil, figuring he could fix some of the problem. But I tell you, that man was scared hell of Indians and robbers out this way. Wouldn’t go a foot on horseback if Joshua wasn’t with him.”
“What about the saddle, Jed? Why was Neil using Joshua’s saddle?”
“The doc said he could do something for Neil, but would take some planning. Maybe in a couple of months or so. But he was real anxious to get back to Chicago, really anxious to get out of here, so Joshua and him got a wagon-lift to the railroad in Pomfret with some of my boys along for safety and Joshua asked Neil to take care of his saddle, as he’d be back in a month to take Neil to Chicago. The doc was sure he could do something, like fixing a muscle in the eye, or some such thing I didn’t understand. But Neil turned happy as a bedded grouse, like in one night. I think he was coming to see you and Margaret, he was feeling so good.”
Prescott, looking around, not seeing Mitchum making himself available, said to his old pal, “Come on into the hotel, Jed, and I’ll tell you everything I know. Everything I heard or saw or came to me by one fashion or another, some of it being guess work I’ll admit.”
The two old pals walked into the hotel, Colvin looking back over his shoulder, looking for the sheriff or trying to decide which of the men on the street were hangmen, those who lingered and looked curiously on them or gawked at the father of the hung man … the word having spread as quickly as a dry pine fire. They talked for over an hour at a corner table, having a couple of beers, melding again as the old friends they had been for many years, one man somehow trying to slow down his incredible hatred and enmity about his son’s hanging, the other man wondering about his son’s decision to loan out his saddle, even to a friend; a man’s saddle being what it is, the great tie to his horse, the horse one of the main reasons his life’s probably been saved in incident after incident, at least sustained for the animal’s last run, and always a gallant run at that. To loan out a saddle had to be done with great consideration. And trust. It all pointed out Joshua’s hopes for Neil and his concern for the safety and well-being of the doctor who had offered Neil a bit of hope.
A waitress, knowing both men for long years, approached them and said, “I don’t know what you guys are planning, but if that rat Mitchum is in it, he’s long gone. I heard in the kitchen that he and his big-mouth pal have beat it out of town. They left about an hour ago, on their way, as I heard it, to Nevada.”
Colvin leaped up from the table, flailing his arms, waving his hat in the air, yelling at Prescott, “Let’s go get them bastards, Floyd. They’ll be gone forever and we’ll never get them.”
Prescott, not visibly upset at the news, said, “Don’t worry about them, Jed. If they’re headed for Nevada, they have to go right by my place and to get there, they have to pass by my boys on the way here, and my boys know not to let them get too far out of town. I sent word on that matter. Braxlin is never to get away from here on the loose, and if Mitchum is with him, it will be all too apparent to my foreman Curly to not let him loose either. There’s only one way west from here, so we got them. We don’t have to run around like chickens with our heads cut off; we got to take care of things for Neil, and see what’s going on with Joshua.”
The tolerance set in for both men, Colvin deeply in sorrow’s grip, his pal with him, even as he wondered about his own son.
“Floyd,” Colvin said, “we best get over to Ned Farthing and get things done up proper. I have to bring Neil home.”
“My boys’ll take care of getting him home for you, Jed, soon as we hear they took care of Braxlin and the sheriff.”
Colvin nodded his thanks, and added, “I’m glad his mother’s not here to see all this. Would wring the hell out of her.”
He instantly changed directions, and emotions. “What do we do about them rats that did this, Floyd? I can’t sit on my butt and do nothing. You got to know how bad I’m feeling now. It eats the soul right out of me. The poor kid was behind the door since he was born, blind like he was in that one eye, the other doing poorly on its own. And that rat ass said he was sighting down the barrel of a rifle and taking aim on someone he didn’t even know. What’s behind all that? I’d give a leg to know.”
It was the waitress again, alert to any spoken word, who broke things open for them. “I understand you boys are wondering what’s really going on in this town, with the sheriff and all. Well, here’s what I know, courtesy of the room upstairs, if you know what I mean: Merced’s new foreman, Hoyt Danber, was a man with a jail past, and Braxlin, it seems, spent some time with him in the penitentiary and didn’t want it known and he set the whole thing up, to keep the man’s mouth shut. But he didn’t want to do the job himself. I’d guess, though, he did it himself and somehow blamed the kid for it, the kid on the right spot at the right time to get set up. I think Braxlin’s got something else really bad hidden in his past and he doesn’t want it to come out, though the sheriff sure knew it, the way they act, like they got a new business going, or are planning one. You gents best ought to follow up on that.”
The two old pals sent wires to a marshal who dug up information on Merced’s dead foreman and Braxlin in a matter of hours. Braxlin was still a main suspect in an on-going murder investigation in Mayville, and Danber was newly released from jail, “but both of them,” he said, “have little of the soft cloth in their make-up. Watch them two. They don’t even like each other any at all, either.”
When Curly and the rest of Prescott’s men came into town, they had two men rolled over on their horses, their arms hanging loose, no threat to anybody, stilled forever. Braxlin and Mitchum were bent and stiff, and bloodied.
Curly said, “Boss, we cut across their trail some ways out. They saw us and started shootin’ like we was a posse on their trail, so we had no choice but shoot back. Didn’t know it was the sheriff till we got them dead and down. I knowed Braxlin was comin’ because that gent Winslow told us he was probably gonna make a break out of town, after what happened here. But they had a hoot of money in their saddlebags, like they had robbed the bank or someplace. I mean a lot of money. You better count it, cause it’s getting awful heavy in my bag.”
The bank had been robbed during the night. No breaks were apparent, the doors were locked and in place, but the money had been taken. The sheriff, as it developed, had a key to the bank in his possession and it was an easy mark for him and his cohort to gain entrance during the night, with all the commotion, noise and doings in town after the lynching. Possibly a timely distraction. The criminal loan they arranged was a short-term loan, but the interest was high. As high as it can get.
Curly and two men brought Neil Colvin back home in a wagon. Prescott‘s son Joshua was notified of Neil Colvin’s death and promised to be home as soon as his schooling was finished. Jasper Prescott took his brother’s saddle back home to the Diamond Bar Ranch.
Floyd Prescott, tired of the big town doings, didn’t go into town again for another whole year.
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