got worse. That old goat driving the buckboard headed straight to that noose, and when it was plain dangling in my face, he whoaed the nag and there it was, that big hemp noose right there in front of me. None of them slicks was saying a word, and none of them had put away their artillery neither. I knew a few of them. There was Big Nose George, and Alvin Ream, and Smiley Thistlethwaite, and Spitting Sam. They didn’t think twice about putting a little lead into anything alive. You had to wonder why Bragg kept those gunmen around. Times were peaceful enough, at least until now.
“Admiral, this ain’t a good idea,” I said.
He laughed softly. You ever hear a man laugh like that, like he was enjoying my fate? Well, it’s not something a person forgets.
“I’m the law, Admiral, and you’d better think twice.”
I was thinkin’ maybe I’d go down fighting, but before I could think longer, that old boy beside me wrapped his knobby old arm around me, and one of them slicks grabbed my hands, yanked them behind me, and wrapped them in thong until my arms were trussed up tighter than a fat lady’s corset. Me, I’m not even thirty and had a lot of juice in me still, and I wrestled with them fellers, but it was like kicking a cast-iron stove. They knew what they was up to, and had me cold.
I began thinking that them spring leaves coming out on the cottonwood would be about the last pretty thing I’d ever see. I don’t rightly know why I kept that sheriff job, but I had. I sorta liked the fun of it, and I was never one to dodge a little trouble. I kinda thought one of my deputies might be hunting for me now, but I was just being foolish. Them fellers slept late and played cribbage or euchre half the night in the jailhouse.
I didn’t need any explanations. Admiral Bragg, he was getting even with me. Hang that boy, hang me. There wasn’t no point in asking a bunch of questions, and no point in trying to talk him out of it. The hard, belly-grabbing truth was that this thing was gonna happen and there wasn’t no way I could jabber and slobber my way out of it.
But I wasn’t dwelling on it. I was eying the bright blue sky, and hearing some red-winged blackbirds making a racket down on the creek, and feeling good mountain air filling my lungs, and thinkin’ of my ma and pa, and how they brought me into the world and raised me up.
I writhed some, but there was a passel of them around me in the buckboard, and strong hands pinning me while one of them slicks pulled off my five-X gray beaver hat and dropped that big, scratchy noose right over my neck. It was the first time I ever felt a noose and it wasn’t a very good feeling. It was just a big, cold, scratchy twisted rope, and now it rested on my shoulders, and one of them slicks tugged it pretty tight, and tipped it off to the side a little so as to break my neck.
So I was standin’ there in that buckboard with a noose drawn tight on my young neck, and all trussed up, and they all backed off and left me standing there, my knees knockin’ and waiting for the final, entire, no-return end. I wondered if Admiral Bragg was gonna preach at me some, tell me this was his brand of justice, or whatnot, but he didn’t. He just nodded.
That old knobby-armed geezer, he settled down in the wooden seat of the buckboard, me standing in the bed, and then he let loose with his whip, smacked the dray right across the croup, and away it went, jerking me plumb off my pins as the wagon got yanked out from under me. Then I tumbled past the wagon and started down, feelin’ that hemp yank hard at my neck and jerk my head back, and then I felt myself topple to the ground, and couldn’t figure what happened. I wasn’t dead yet. Maybe this was just the last gasp. I bunged myself up some, hitting that dirt so hard, and landing on a cottonwood root too, so that I was really hurtin’ and that noose was as tight as a necktie at a funeral, and pretty quick I was starin’ up at the sky and seein’ lots of blue, and the pale green of them cottonwood leaves.
“Now you know what a hanging is,” Admiral said.
That was the dumbest thing ever got said to me.
They rolled me over and cut that thong that had me tied up like some beef basting on a spit. I felt some blood return to my wrists and hands, and I flexed my fingers, discovering they was alive, all ten or eleven, or whatever I got. And they loosened that scratchy hemp and pulled that thing loose and tossed it aside. One of them slicks even slapped my gray beaver Stetson down on my head. And then they let me stand up, even if my legs was trembling like a virgin in a cathouse.
I couldn’t think of nothing to do, so I slugged Admiral, one gut-punch and a roundhouse to his jaw, and he staggered back as my boot landed on his shin.
That might not have been too smart, but it sure was satisfying. He let out a yelp and in about two seconds half of them slicks was pulling me off and holding me down. I figured they’d just string me up for certain, and make no mistakes this time, but Admiral, he got up, dusted off his hat, wiped some blood off his lip, and smiled.
This sure was getting strange.
All them slicks let go of me, and I was of a mind to arrest the bunch for manhandling a lawman, but the odds weren’t good. I never got a handle on arithmetic, and took long division over a few times, but I know bad odds when I see them.
Admiral Bragg, he spat a little more blood and nodded.
That old knobby-armed geezer, he fetched that hemp rope and brought her over to me, but he wasn’t showing me the noose end. I was more familiar with that end than I even wanted to be. No, he showed me the other end, which had been razored across, clean as can be, save for one little strand that sort of wobbled in the morning breeze. I hated that strand; it pretty near did me.
They’d cut that rope for this event, and I sure wondered why. This whole deal was to scare the bejabbers out of me, and it sure as hell did.
“King won’t be so lucky,” Admiral Bragg said.
“No, but neither was them three he killed.”
“He didn’t kill them.”
“I saw them three lying in the sawdust. Every last one a cowboy with the T-Bar Ranch.”
“And you jumped to conclusions.”
“There was the barkeep and two others saying King Bragg done it, and they testified in court to it.”
“You’ve got two weeks to prove that he didn’t do it. Next time, the rope won’t be cut.”
“You tellin’ me to undo justice?”
“I’m telling you, my boy didn’t do it, and you’re going to spring him.”
“That boy’s guilty as hell, and he’s gonna pay for it.”
Admiral Bragg, he sort of scowled. “I’m not going to argue with you. If you’re too dumb to see it, then you’ll hang.”
Me, I just stared at the man. There was no talkin’ to him.
“Get in the wagon or walk,” Bragg said. “I’m done talking.”
I favored the ride. I still was a little weak on my pins. So I got aboard, next to the geezer, and the buckboard rattled back to town, surrounded by Bragg and his gunslicks and cowboys. They took me straight to Belle’s rooming house and I got out, and they rode off.
The morning was still young, and I’d already been hanged and told I’d be hanged again.
It
