Lynch (3 page)

Drake's scowl deepened. “That's some accent you've got there. You're not from around here, are you?”

“Funny. I was gonna say th' same about y'all,” Pearl grunted.

Drake leaned back in his saddle, his pale irises seeming to disappear against the whites of his eye. “You wouldn't be lyin' to me about them Injuns just to make up for Stonewall Jackson, would you, Reb?”

Johnny Pearl's cheeks burned, but he would be damned if he let this Union-suited son of a bitch get his goat. Still, he could not keep a waver of anger from entering his voice when he spoke. “How can I lie if I ain't tole y'all nothin'! Now, get off my land! I got better things to do than to spend my day jawin' with Yankees!”

One minute the cavalry officer's hand was empty, the next the muzzle of his Colt was pressed against Pearl's temple. There was no way Pearl could bring the carbine up in time to squeeze off a shot without Drake putting his brains on the ground, and both men knew it.

“Who's in the cabin?” Drake growled.

Johnny struggled to speak around what felt like a rock wedged in his throat. “J-just my wife.”

Drake's eyes narrowed into ice-blue slits. “I thought you said you was alone, Reb.”

“I didn't say
nothin
' about bein' alone!” Johnny protested. “Y'all are just twistin' everything I say!”

“We'll just see about that,” Drake replied. He motioned with his free hand for a couple of his men to come forward. “Take his weapon, and see that he stays out from underfoot.”

With Drake's service revolver cocked and aimed just above his right ear, Pearl was helpless to prevent the troopers from confiscating his rifle then roughly binding his hands behind his back. Satisfied Pearl was no longer a hindrance; Drake holstered his weapon and turned to speak to his junior officer.

“Lieutenant Barnes! I want that cabin searched!”

“Yes, sir!” Barnes barked, saluting Drake. He promptly dismounted and motioned several troopers to do the same. Guns drawn, they advanced on the cabin.

Johnny Pearl was no stranger to terror. Sometimes it seemed he was born knowing it. But before now, the fear he had experienced on the battlefield and in shootouts had always been for his own life. None of what he had undergone before had come close to preparing him for the sick dread that overcame him when he heard his wife scream.

“
Katie!
” Pearl shouted, struggling to break free of the troopers holding him. He wanted to scream, explode, turn himself inside out if need be—anything but let the bastards see his fear. “Don't you
dare
touch her, you stinkin' Yankee bastards!”

“Mind your mouth, Reb!” snarled one of the troopers as he smashed Pearl in the face with his gun butt. Through the stars exploding behind his eyes, Pearl saw his wife being dragged out of the cabin.

“Here y'go, Captain,” the scout said. “Weren't no one but her in the house.”

Drake took in Katie's long dark braid, high cheekbones, dusky skin and almond-shaped eyes, then turned to glower at his captive disapprovingly. “I thought you said there were no Injuns around here.”

“I ain't said no such thing!” Pearl snarled, spitting out a mouthful of blood. “Besides, Katie ain't full Cheyenne.”

“Even a
drop
of heathen blood is enough to mark her as theirs!” Drake sniffed. “She'll have go on the reservation—the brat, too.”

“No! She's my
wife
, damn it! That's my baby she's carryin'!”

Drake fixed him with a look of utter contempt. “Which makes you a squaw man—and as such, no better than a dog!”

Pearl lunged forward, his teeth bared in pure, murder-hot rage. If the troopers had not been holding him back, he would have leapt onto Drake and taken him off his saddle like a mountain cat bringing down an antelope. Instead, all he got for his trouble was his own rifle butt slammed across the back of his head, dropping him to the ground.

As he lay writhing in the dirt, clutching his skull, he heard a shriek of pain and surprise from the scout; “
Jesus H. Christ!
That Injun bitch damn near bit off my finger!”

Pearl raised his head in time to see Katie running as fast as she could away from the soldiers, but her belly was getting in her way. Within seconds the mounted troopers had surrounded her. They were laughing and making whooping noises, waving their hats at her as if she were no more than an errant cow they were trying to return to the herd. Katie dashed frantically to and fro, clutching her belly. She tried to find an opening in the tightening ring of champing horses.

It all happened so fast, so horribly, horribly fast. One moment Katie was calling out her husband's name amid the chaos and the churning dust—the next she was under the horses' hooves. Pearl wasn't aware he was screaming until Lieutenant Barnes put a fist in his gut to shut him up.

Barnes massaged his knuckles as he watched Pearl gasp and choke for air. “What do we do with him, Captain?”

Drake's eyes were as cold and unyielding as sapphires. “Make him an example for all those who would pollute the white race. Lynch him. Burn the cabin, while you're at it.”

“Yes, sir!” Barnes responded, saluting sharply.

As his captors dragged him toward the nearest tree, Pearl felt as hollow as a dry gourd. It was as if they had reached down his gullet and yanked his soul out by the roots. Death, no matter how violent or unjust, was preferable to life in a world without his Katie.

The last thing Johnny Pearl saw before they chased the horse out from under him was the sight of his world in ruins: his house ablaze, his wife's body sprawled in the bloody dust, and the scout bending over her, knife in hand.

Chapter Four

As the covered wagon made its way across the high plains, each jounce of its wheels made the utensils hanging in the back rattle like cowbells. If the old man perched on the driver's box noticed the incessant clatter, he did not show it. Instead, his eye was fixed on the plume of smoke on the horizon. On the side of the canvas canopy was painted in bold, somewhat faded script:

Dr. Mirablis Wondrous Elixir Re-Vitae $1

(50 cents to Veterans & Widows).

“Pompey!” Dr. Mirablis croaked. “Come front!”

The head of a middle-aged Negro, the hair liberally laced with gray, popped out from behind the canvas flap separating the driver's seat from the interior of the wagon.

“Take the reins on Alastor,” Mirablis wheezed. “We're getting close. I must check on the elixir.”

Pompey nodded his understanding and moved aside, holding back the canvas so the old man could climb back into the wagon's bed. He then seated himself on the driver's box and took up the coal black horse's reins. The beast flared its nostrils and rolled its eyes. It could smell death mixed with the smoke wafted their way by the wind. As could they all.

Pompey flicked the reins across the horse's flanks, forcing it to move faster.

“Would you look at that,” Dr. Mirablis sighed, shaking his head in amazement as he viewed what was left of the homestead. “They even shot the nanny goat.”

Twenty-four hours ago, this had been a place where people lived, worked and planned for the future. Now it was a scene of carnage. The cabin still smoldered. Although the roof had fallen in, the stone chimney still stood, but little else remained. The modest garden had been trampled into the dirt, and the livestock slaughtered and left to rot. Such barbarity was nothing new to a man who had survived the chaos of the Napoleonic Wars, but it still grieved him all the same.

Pompey grunted as he helped the old man down off the driver's box. Mirablis was bent with age and walked with a cane.

His hair was white and thin as cobwebs. His scalp was dappled with the same spots that covered his wrinkled hands. Despite his advanced years, there was an intensity in his eyes—the kind found only in those of fierce intellect and even fiercer determination.

“Bloodthirsty savages,” Mirablis muttered under his breath as he shuffled through a litter of trampled chickens. The old man paused and pointed with his cane at something lying in the dirt nearby. “What's that?” As they drew closer, Mirablis's eyes widened and he began hobbling faster, despite Pompey's attempts to keep him balanced. With a snarl of impatience, the old man yanked his arm free of his servant's grasp and knelt beside the body of Katie Pearl. He grimaced in disgust and clucked his tongue. “This one is of no use to me—her skull has been smashed, as you can plainly tell, since some barbarian saw fit to take the poor thing's scalp! Such a waste! And in the later stages of pregnancy as well.” Mirablis's eyes dimmed, as the fire held within them was turned inward. A moment later he gestured for Pompey to help him back on his feet. “Still, if there was a mother,” he said. “There has to be a father.…”

His companion gently touched Mirablis's shoulder and pointed to a flock of carrion crows circling a copse of trees that lined the nearby river.

“Ah, trusty Pompey!” Mirablis smiled, flashing his wooden and ivory dentures. “Ever my eyes and ears, old friend! Come, let us hurry! I can only pray those damnable birds haven't had their way with our new friend!”

They found the body of Johnny Pearl hanging from the stout limb of a cottonwood tree. The tree was within sight of the homestead's front yard. Though the dead man was not visible from the cabin, the lynched man's final view from his unenviable vantage had been of his home ablaze and his wife's mutilated carcass. However, what made Mirablis cry out in outrage was the sight of a large crow perched atop the hanged man's head, its inky claws buried deep in his scalp.

“Pompey! Get that wretched thing
off
him!”

Producing a slingshot from his back pocket, the mute quickly snatched up a small rock from the ground and sent the missile flying at the bird. The crow abandoned its grisly perch with an angry caw. Mirablis positioned himself directly under the hanged man's feet, peering up into his distorted face.

“We're in luck, Pompey! The scavengers didn't get too much of a head start. It's a good thing winter's on its way—the flies should be mostly inactive by now, so there won't be much in the way of infestation to worry about.” The old man laughed and held up a shaking hand. “Look at me, Pompey! I'm trembling like a school girl!” Mirablis's giddy smile was quickly replaced by a grimmer manner. “Go fetch Sasquatch! We'll need him to transport our new friend here into the pouch. I'll stay here and play scarecrow until your return.”

Pompey nodded and hurried back to the wagon. He rapped his knuckles loudly on its wooden side. After a moment, the tailgate dropped open and the canvas flaps that covered the rear were thrown back, and something that once was a man emerged into the cold light of a September afternoon on the high plains.

The thing was tall and not exactly put together the way a human is supposed to look. Its left arm was shorter than the right—or was it that the right arm was longer than the left? The legs seemed to be equally mismatched, with one foot severely pigeon-toed while the other pointed straight. Scars of various lengths and widths crisscrossed the creature's exposed flesh, giving it the appearance of a walking crazy quilt.

Though it was naked save for a leather loincloth, and was lean as a winter wolf, the creature did not seem to notice the chill wind blowing from the mountains. Besides its one garment and the color of its skin, the only other telltale sign that the creature called Sasquatch had once been an American Indian was its long black hair, which hung loose down its back.

Sasquatch watched Pompey's hands as the Negro spoke in the sign language of the plains people, then nodded. He then turned and reached into the wagon, pulling out a seven-foot-long homemade ladder as if it weighed no more than a child's toy.

Mirablis rubbed his hands together anxiously as he paced back and forth beneath the swaying body of the hanged man. He brightened immediately upon spotting Pompey approaching with the ladder. A few steps behind the mute shambled the figure of

Sasquatch, the leather pouch folded under his shorter left arm, the cask of elixir under the longer right arm.

“We must hurry!” Mirablis said breathily. Though the weather was somewhat brisk, he mopped his brow with a silk handkerchief. “We were exceptionally fortunate this time, as I believe our friend here has been inconvenienced less than twelve hours. But time is still of the essence!”

Pompey placed the ladder against the cottonwood and began to climb, while Mirablis supervised Sasquatch as he unrolled the pouch. It was made of oiled cloth and resembled nothing so much as a wineskin, except that it was six feet long and three feet wide. At one end was a huge stopper fashioned from wood wrapped in treated leather.

Pompey made a grunting noise, signaling the others that he was ready. Sasquatch moved to position himself directly under the swaying feet of the hanged man. After a few slices from Pompey's buck knife, the body dropped from the tree like strange fruit, directly into Sasquatch's waiting arms. With surprising grace and gentleness for a creature of such ungainly appearance, Sasquatch laid the corpse on the ground at Mirablis's feet and proceeded to undress it.

The old man studied the body with a critical eye, then nodded his head and smiled. “This is even better than I hoped!” he said, pointing to the corpse's livid but otherwise unmarked flesh. “From all outward appearances, our friend here was in exemplary physical condition before he was so rudely inconvenienced.” Mirablis waved his cane in warning as Pompey began to pry off the noose cinched into the dead man's neck. “Leave that for later! It is too deeply embedded in the flesh to be removed on the scene.”

Having finished his inspection, Mirablis stepped back and motioned for his servants to proceed with their duties. While Pompey held the neck of the giant flask upright, Sasquatch slid the body through the man-sized opening as easily as a mother might put a sleepy child to bed.