Copyright © 1992 Christopher Keegan.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0-8439-4488-9
Excerpt
In the morning, Stephen Payne rode out there, half-afraid to go, yet knowing he had to go out to see the barn where his younger brother had supposedly hanged himself.
In this part of the west, spring was early this year. Even though it was not yet May, silver water splashed down from the mountains and overran the creeks, tillable land was already under plow and harrow, and jackpines were full green and ripe with sweet scent.
The desk clerk back at his hotel had drawn a map for Payne, who followed it carefully, taking the wide stage road due west until he saw a dusty, pathlike trail veer east toward foothills and a farm nestled just beneath them.
* * *
A girl of perhaps six or seven, blonde braids flying, played with a golden collie in the front yard of the farm. A woman in a blue gingham dress pumped water from a well near the back door of the small white farmhouse, and out near the red barn a thickset man was harnessing a mule to a plow, talking to the animal and trying to get it to hold still. In the sweet sunny morning light, the whole scene reminded Payne of a sentimental painting.
Payne ground-tied his horse and started walking toward the back of the farm, to the man.
But he hadn't gone far before the collie, still pretty much a pup, started running in circles around Payne's feet.
‘You're gonna make the man mad, Laddie!’ the sweet-faced little girl said, trying to tug her puppy away, gaping up fearfully at Payne as she did so.
‘He's a nice dog,’ Payne said. ‘When did you get him?’
‘For my birthday last month.’
‘You're a lucky little girl,’ Payne said and smiled.
‘He don't obey very good, though,’ the girl said, finally diving for and tackling the dog. She was only able to hold him briefly; he spurted from her grasp and took off running, fat little backside waggling left and right, toward the barn where the man was still patiently working with the mule.
‘Help you?’ the woman asked.
She had stopped her business at the well and stepped up to Payne. He got the vague impression that she was putting herself between her husband and him. She wasn't a pretty woman by any means, but even in her stoutness there was a soft feminine appeal that Payne saw at once.
She wiped wide, competent hands on a soiled apron.
The girl had gone back to chasing her pup. The man had stopped his business with the mule and was watching his wife and Payne.
This close to the house, Payne could smell the morning's breakfast still on the air, bacon and eggs and bread.
‘My name is Stephen Payne.’
Only after a long moment did recognition show in the woman's eyes. A frown stretched her full mouth. ‘You're his brother. The boy's.’
‘Yes.’
She shook her head. ‘It never ends.’
Before he had a chance to ask what she meant, he saw her husband approaching. The man looked to be ten years older than his wife. He also looked strong and showed just a hint of meanness in his brown eyes. He didn't offer a hand.
‘Help you?’ he asked in a voice that nobody would consider friendly.
‘He's Payne's brother,’ his wife said.
The husband looked him over more carefully now.
What he saw was a man of thirty-five, maybe six feet tall, and about a hundred and fifty pounds, with an intelligent if not handsome face; dressed in a black flat-brimmed Stetson, a red cotton shirt, black cord trousers, and Texas boots. A lone.44 hung from Payne's right hip. The worn leather of the holster suggested that the gun had probably seen some use.
‘What is it you want, Mr Payne?’
Payne shrugged. ‘He was my brother. I guess I'm curious about what happened.’
‘That was six months ago.’
‘I just found out about it five weeks ago. I came as soon as I could.’
The husband sighed and shook his head. ‘I'm Clete Winnow. This is my wife Serena.’
Payne tipped his hat.
‘You two talk,’ the wife said. ‘I'm gonna get back to my water.’
After she had returned to the well, Clete Winnow said, ‘We didn't even know he was in the barn that night.’
‘That's what I hear.’
‘But I don't think nobody believes us.’
‘Oh?’
‘They keep comin' out here.’
‘For what?’
‘Guess they think he buried the money somewhere on our farm.’ For the first time he smiled. ‘I've had men offer me a hundred dollars just to let them bring a shovel out here and start diggin'. Believe me, the way crops was last year, it's temptin'.’
‘I didn't know the money wasn't found.’
‘Not a trace of it anywhere,’ Winnow said, ‘and sixty thousand dollars is a fair amount of greenbacks.’ Then he turned and looked back at the barn. ‘You want to see it?’
‘I'd appreciate it.’
‘Sure. Come on, I'll show you.’
‘I'd appreciate it.’
‘Sure can't be a very pleasant experience for you. You positive you want to see where it happened?’
Payne wasn't positive, of course. A part of him wanted to bolt, to get on his horse and ride away and just accept the fact that Art had robbed the stage and then, in apparent remorse, had hanged himself in the barn where he'd been hiding out. ‘Why don't we take a look?’ Payne said.
He followed Clete Winnow down to the barn, chickens brilliant white in the sunlight, following the men as they went down the sloping hill, their boots crunching through dry chicken droppings and grain that had been tossed out for the animals to eat.
The barn had two stories, a hayloft, and smelled of oil from the farm wagon Winnow had apparently been working on earlier.
Inside, in the deep shadows, the temperature seemed to drop ten degrees.
Payne raised his head and stared up at the two-by-four stretching from one side of the loft to the other. If a man wanted to hang himself, the two-by-four would be ideal: just attach the rope to the beam, set the noose around your neck and jump. With any luck, you'd be dead in very short order.
Winnow saw Payne staring at the two-by-four. ‘That's where I found him in the morning. Hanging down from there.’ Winnow made a clucking sound. When he glanced at Payne, real sorrow could be seen in his eyes. ‘Twenty-three years old. Poor kid.’
Which is just what Payne had been thinking: poor kid.
‘Like I said earlier, Payne, we didn't know he was hiding out in the loft. Sheriff Reeves reckons that after your brother stuck up the stage, he got scared and hid out in the woods south of town, then swung wide over here at nightfall and hid out in my barn.’
‘No evidence it was anything except suicide?’ Payne said it fast, trying to say it simply, without any flourish, but even so, he saw Winnow's eyes narrow, and a hint of the meanness return to his gaze.
‘Meaning what, exactly?’
‘Meaning nothing especially. Just a question.’
‘You mean you think he might not have killed himself?’
‘Something like this, you can't always be sure.’
‘Well, I'm sure.’ Winnow was angry. ‘I wouldn't have no part of any killing, Payne, and that's just what you're accusing me of. If there'd been more than one man in this barn that night and your brother had put up a protest about being hanged, I sure as hell would have heard it. And I sure as hell would have got my Sharps and come down here and stopped it. But I didn't hear a thing that night, and it was a quiet night, northerly wind and not blowing fast at that.’ He spat into a hay-filled horse stall where some noisy flies were busy with a mound of fresh dung. ‘We understand each other?’ He was still angry.
‘I wasn't accusing you of anything.’
‘Wife's a Lutheran and so am I, pretty much. Martin Luther didn't hold with killing and neither do we.’
Payne raised his head and made a final assessment of the beam. No doubt a man could easily hang himself from there. Especially a man who really wanted to do the job — a man feeling crazy scared and guilty over a terrible mistake he'd made.
As an image of his brother dangling from the beam started to form, Payne lowered his head and said, ‘Guess we may as well go back outside.’
Mrs Winnow was waiting for them, two glasses of water filling her outstretched hands.
‘We're sorry about your brother, Mr Payne,’ she said.
‘No need to be nice to him, Serena. Sonofabitch practically accused me of killing his brother.’
‘Clete, you watch that tongue of yours. Mr Payne here's probably just upset. You'd be, too, if it was your little brother.’
She handed Payne a glass of water.
He took it and swallowed. The water was good. The day was going to be brutally hot. He looked at Winnow. ‘I didn't mean any offence, Mr Winnow.’
‘That right?’ Winnow said, still sounding belligerent.
‘Clete, you behave,’ his wife said.
‘That's right,’ Payne said, and put out his hand.
‘Shake it,’ Serena Winnow said. ‘Clete?’
Looking like a sullen little kid, Clete clamped his thick rough hand onto Payne's.
‘Thanks for your time, folks,’ Payne said, already drifting back up toward the farmhouse and his horse.
‘We're glad you came,’ Serena Winnow said, taking the glasses back from the men. ‘We just wish it could have been on a happier occasion. Isn't that right, Clete?’
Clete grunted something unintelligible. He was apparently one of those men who could hold a grudge until the day the universe started going dark.
As he threw his foot up into a stirrup, Payne said, ‘I appreciate your help, folks.’
Mrs Winnow smiled. Mr Winnow sulked.
Payne nodded good-bye, eased his horse toward the trail again, and started out of the yard.
He had company for a quarter mile, the pup Laddie barking tirelessly and nipping at the horse's shank for most of the time.
Finally the dog fell away, his bark receding gradually in the hot, dusty day.
* * *
He had been following Payne ever since sunup when Payne got scrubbed up at his hotel and walked down the street for breakfast.
As Payne made his way to the Winnow farm, the man had dropped back, finding a good place to hide so that he could cover Payne's eventual return. The man had a Winchester; he was good with it.
While he waited, the man rolled and smoked four cigarettes, the last one setting him to coughing. His father had always held that tobacco wasn't good for you. But then his father had some strange ideas about a lot of things.
He saw rolling dust, and somewhere inside that tan dust was Payne coming fast from the Winnow farm.
He set his elbow just so on the rough slope of boulder and waited for Payne to draw into range. Payne was riding too fast to notice anything off the trail.
Payne came closer, closer.
The man sighted, steadied himself again. Closer, closer, the dust thicker than ever, not exactly making it easy for him.
He fired once, twice, three times, the Winchester kicking satisfactorily with each shot.
He saw Payne's horse, apparently wounded, pitch scared to the left and saw Payne, silhouetted inside the dust, pitch to the right. The way he tumbled, there was no doubt he was hit, and hit bad.
The man waited a few minutes, considering another smoke as he did so, then raised his head and scouted the trail.
No sign of Payne whatsoever. Well, he was hurt too bad to get far.
He decided to hold the smoke till he got back to Favor where he could have some whiskey to go along with the cigarette.
He'd done a good day's work.
Excerpted from Ride into Yesterday by Ed Gorman. Copyright © 1992 by Christopher Keegan. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.