A Long Walk Up and a Short Drop Down by M. Armstrong

A Long Walk Up and a Short Drop Down by M. Armstrong

Billy Vanderveer lay his head upon the stone floor of his cell and sighed. The rough granite felt refreshingly cool against his sweaty forehead. He had taken off his shirt and stripped down to his britches and sweat dripped off of his body onto the stone floor. The cell was steaming hot, dank and cramped. If he fully stretched his arms, he could touch the wall with one hand and the iron bars with the other. He had just enough room to lay down on the splintery wooden plank that served as his bed. A rusty bucket in the corner served as his commode. Through the iron bars next to Billy, in the only other cell, an old man of about fifty-five years whistled and hummed. The heat didn’t seem to bother him. He was perched on his own plank, chipper and upright, whistling Oh Susannah over and over again.

“Would you stop that?” Billy murmured without looking up. “You’re driving me bugshit, old-timer.”

The whistling stopped.

“Well, excuuuuuse me!” The old man said, crossing his arms. He cackled, a high and creaking laugh that sounded like the rusty hinges of a barn door. “Just tryin’ to bring ye a bit a relief from the music of them there gallows up yonder.” The old man pointed to the barred window that they shared. A wicked grin came across the old fellow’s face, splitting it wide open and revealing a set of woebegone teeth as black as pitch. The old man’s wild beard was stained with tobacco juice.

Sounds drifted in from the town square outside the window. The staccato tap-tap-tap of hammers and nails, the low whoosh-whoosh of a cross-cut saw, mingled voices of men at work: right there, that’s the spot. Hammer it in, Johnny. Harder! Now bring that there crossbar. Thirteen steps, that’s the ticket. Got to get at least eight feet for the drop, otherwise his neck won’t snap.

Billy knew what they were building. He shivered. The old man watched him and frowned.

“Don’t fret, son,” the old man said, his voice suddenly kindly and sympathetic. “Be over quickly, it will. Nothin’ more than a long walk up and a short drop down. And shit, it ain’t always kill ya, neither. Looky here!”

Billy glanced up from his spot on the floor. The old man pulled his filthy beard up to reveal a skinny neck with an angry red scar completely traversing from one side of his throat to the other. It looked like the belly of a dead snake. The old man, whose wide green eyes shined brightly behind a tangled and unkempt beard and mane of matted uncombed hair, reminded Billy of an organ-grinder’s monkey he had once seen on the sidewalk outside of Union Station in Denver. The monkey had a wild puff of mangy gray hair extending from all sides of his face and had a penchant for greedily digging through the pockets of passersby until he found a morsel to eat. It’s not just the beard, Billy thought. He’s got the same wild monkey eyes, big as billiard balls. The old man’s shifty eyes darted around the room, seemingly trying to see and examine everything at once.

“Been hanged twice myself, have I!” The old man said proudly, pointing at his scarred neck. He held up two fingers. “First time down in Chihuahua” – he dropped one finger – “just a lad was I, barely with any hair on my nuts, some Mexicans caught me red-handed in bed with a caballero’s senorita. Not too long after the Mexican war, ‘twas, and they didn’ think too kindly of whitefaces. Bad decision on my part, I’m not ashamed to admit it. But! In this life, we all make mistakes, yes sir, I jus’ try to make sure I learn from ‘em, anyhow.”

The old man shrugged, as if to say what can you do? Billy said nothing, and after waiting a minute for a response that didn’t come, the old man continued his rambling as he paced around his cell, nervously picking things up and immediately putting them back down – a water pitcher, a spoon, a roll of tobacco.

“Anywho, luckily, them Mexicans just wanted to put the fear of god in me and strangled me for a bit, danglin’ me like a pinata, they did, jeerin’ and carryin’ on. Then they run me outta town covered in tar and feathers. Ha! Looked like a half plucked turkey, I did! Now, the second time I got hanged, that was a real gasser, let me tell you. Eighteen-hundred and fiftynine, it was. Cimarron, New Mexico Territory. Ye ever been to Cimarron, fella? Name’s Otis, by the way, pleased to meetcher.” He reached his wrinkled and dirt-encrusted hand through the bars towards Billy.

Billy ignored him and said nothing. Otis waved his hand as if to say, whatever, keep your secrets.

“Just a wee little town on the Sante Fe Trail, it is. Foot of the mountains at the end of the plains, just as purty as can be with girlies every bit as nice as them mountains. Anywho, there I was, havin’ me a beer at the St. James Hotel – shit, two beers, three, maybe ten – when a feller come up to me. Irishman, methinks. Buys me another drink, and who am I to say no? We get to talkin’, we do. He tells me he gotta plan to make some serious money, an easy job rippin’ off cattle from some rich bastard name of Lucien Maxwell to sell to the soldiers at Fort Union. I ain’ never been one to stare a gift horse in the mouth, so I says yes. Smooth as silk, it goes, and I find myself with a sackful of silver bonds, every bit as good as federal greenbacks. Shoulda run, I knew it, but I wanted more. Greedy Otis! Got dammit!”         

Otis clapped his hands over his forehead in an expression of utter woe and bewilderment, shocked that he could have ever been so stupid.

“Anywho, we do it again, and again, and one thing leads to another and the Irishman gets himself nabbed by some bounty hunters outta Sante Fe hired by Maxwell. I coulda been halfway to Denver by then, but, fool that I am, I just had to get back to the St. James and cut a rug with the bargirl I was sweet on. And what does that goddamned paddy do while I’m droolin’ on the bar? Points his mackerel-gobbling finger at ol’ Otis here, tellin’ the law that it was all my idea!” He shook his head in righteous indignation. His tangle of grey hair and beard, seemingly one solid unit, bounced and swayed to and fro.

Otis talked so quickly that it seemed as if he had given his entire speech in one frantic breath.  Billy, finally curious – and perhaps thinking of his own upcoming trial –  sat up on the floor and looked at Otis. “What did you do?”

Otis, pleased that he at last had a receptive audience, puffed his chest out importantly. “Let me tell you sonnyjim, I defended m’self as good as any Philadelphia lawyer could do. I pulled as much constitutional law as I could and pointed my own finger right back at conniving Irish, hopin’ I could get off with a few years in the iron pen. I spoke as eloquently and as beautifully as one of them college boys. Shit, I had the jury cryin’ real tears.”

Billy cocked his head, slightly taken aback. “Really?”

Otis laughed, a harsh donkey’s bray. “Fuck no! I was pissin’ in the wind and they laughed in my face while they sentenced me to hang. Ha! And hang I did, right next to Irish. But I got the last laugh. I’m up there, shittin’ in my britches, standin’ on the trapdoor next to Irish, lookin’ up at the sky for the last time in my life, the sheriff reads the death sentence, and next thing I know, there’s a big SNAP and I’m lyin’ in the dirt, neck achin’ somethin’ awful, starin’ up at Irish’s feet dancing the hangman’s jig above me. My rope had snapped. Ha! Thanks, Irish! Ya papist fool!”

Otis made the sign of the cross on himself and cackled again.

“Judge and sheriff both were real religious fellas – Methodists or Mormons or somethin’ like that, I gather, the kinda folks who would rather eat a raw porcupine than say a word like “shit” or “fuck” aloud, you know the type – and – what was I sayin’? Ah, right. They didn’ know what to do with me. Judge thought God wanted me to be free. Ha! So they took me out in a wagon and dumped me in the desert outside of Raton and told me if they ever saw me again, I’d be as deader than Judas. Say, kid, you want some tobaccy?” Otis pulled out a leather pouch from his bunk.

Billy thought for a moment, and nodded. Otis smiled. As Otis passed a pinch of tobacco and a paper through the iron bars to his neighbor, he thought to himself, he’s just a damned kid. Crying shame, it is. Otis flicked a match and passed it to Billy, whose eyes followed the smoke trail with the greedy stare of a man dying of thirst who’s just sighted a cool river off in the distance.

“Well,” Otis said as Billy lit his cigarette, “Toldya my own handle, did I? Otis Black at yer service. And ye are?”

“Vanderveer. Billy.” the young man murmured. His voice was tight and anxious.

“Ah! A dutchman! Ha! Once knew a dutchy, I did. Ol’ Cornelius Van Dijk. Got himself run outta seven or eight homesteads out Nebraska way for diddlin’ the cows. Ye ain’t a stump-humper, is ya?”

“A what, now? Stump – what?” Billy stopped in the middle of taking a drag and turned to stare at Otis.

“Ah, nothin’. Just teasin’ that’s all. Enjoy yer smoke, kid.”

Billy eyed Otis suspiciously for a minute, trying to determine if he was being insulted. The old man was strange, alright, and Billy couldn’t quite figure him out. Just a crazy old fool, he thought, and leaned back against the wall to enjoy his smoke.

Billy had met crazy folks before. Out in Omaha, there was an old drunk who lived in an alleyway behind a bar Billy frequented. The fellow would do all sorts of things for a nickel to buy a shot of whiskey: eat horse droppings, sing all sorts of filthy songs, anything you asked. All the while, the old drunk would jabber and blather on about nonsense, not caring if anyone was talking to him or not. Billy always watched with a mixture of revulsion and pity.

Otis leaned back on his bunk against the stone wall and watched Billy. The kid sat up on his own bunk, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply. He was a small man with long sandy hair that curled at the edges. Bet the girlies like him, Otis thought. If he’s seen 20 winters, I’ll shit in my hat. Just a babe. The kid had a ragged scar the size of a silver dollar near his collarbone. That piqued Otis’s curiosity. There were yellowing bruises – newer wounds, Otis thought – across his ribcage, probably where the marshalls had tied him up once they caught him. 

“Hey, kid,” Otis said. Billy opened his eyes.

“Who gave ye that there bullet, eh? Some lass’s daddy didn’ take kindly to ya?” Otis pointed to Billy’s collarbone.

Billy glanced down at himself and chuckled softly. “Injuns. I joined up with General Crook after I left home, ‘bout five years ago.” His voice was cool and soft and effeminate. He fingered the scar above on his collarbone – gently, as if he didn’t realize what he was doing.

Otis began to frown, and then caught himself. He forced a smile. “Hot damn! Ha! An injun fighter! Boy, what the hellar you doin’ in here? I thought ye was a damned stump-humper!”

Billy furrowed his brow and appeared to think for a minute. Otis watched him as the smoke trailed around his head, forming a hazy halo. Finally, Billy stood up from his bunk – my god, he’s only five feet three in bootheels, I’d say, Otis thought – and leaned toward the cell door. He peered around at the other side of the jail, looking for someone or something. Seeing no one – jailers, Otis thought, he’s peeping for the law, methinks – he returned to his bunk. The kid took a deep breath and in a wavering voice, said:

“These ignoramuses think I killed Ruthanne Grisham, I reckon. But I didn’t do nothing. They got the wrong man.”

& & &

Sheriff Russell Jorgensen poured the Judge a tumbler of scotch. Jorgensen knew from experience that it was a delicate balance with Judge Fridley. A single stout drink – or two weaker ones – would work wonders in comfortably greasing the wheels of justice, but if you got him too deep in his cups, it was best to run and hide and wait for the old judge to sleep it off. Judge Fridley was the meanest drunk in eastern Colorado, and Jorgensen thought there were more than a handful of men moldering beneath the prairie dirt just because they had the misfortune to be judged on one of his bad days. As far as Jorgensen could tell, the Judge had ridden in grumpy and sober that morning. Jorgensen heard the Judge before he saw him. The sheriff had been sitting at his desk, head in hands, trying to make sense of the foulest murder he had ever dealt with in his ten years of duty when he heard a commotion outside. A wagon pulled up, and someone was hollering at the top of their voice to get those goddamned horses some water, right fucking now.

The Judge had burst into the Sheriff’s Office next to the jail, angrily bitching about the heat, the dust, his idiot driver, the drought, the Chinese, the Cheyenne, his wife, his good-for-nothing brother, his ornery cows, and his unflappable hatred of the sun. Judge Fridley collapsed into the upholstered chair opposite Jorgensen’s desk.

“Christ! This fucking place! Goddamned Julesburg! Haven’t you heard of a goddamned cloud, for fuck’s sake? Or trees? A little shade?! My god! If I wasn’t about to die of heat stroke, I’d have half a mind to turn back around for the Rockies and just let you hang this bastard right here and now! Gimme that drink and open the goddamned windows, Russ!”

“Got an icehouse out back,” Jorgensen said. He dropped a handful of ice chips into the drink. “Get this in you, sir. Clear your head.” As the Judge sipped, sighing with pleasure, Jorgensen opened the windows, letting the light and breeze into the small sheriff’s office.          

The Julesburg Sheriff’s Department was a two-room cabin directly adjacent to the jail. The back room was half a kitchen and a sitting area for Jorgensen and his two deputies, and the front half was the office in which the two men currently sat. The office was dominated by an imposing and scarred wooden desk that was scattered with various crumpled warrants, deed papers, loose bullets, and bounty notices. Behind Jorgensen’s wooden swivel chair stood a gunsafe, a massive iron idol which held the entirety of the town’s armory – five or six Winchester repeaters, a couple of shotguns, a dozen revolvers, and an ancient Civil War 1861 Springfield that Jorgensen couldn’t quite bring himself to get rid of. The walls were decorated with the skins of animals Jorgensen had hunted – a wolfskin here, a bighorn there – and various Indian trinkets he had picked up from his Indian acquaintances up north on the Reservations. The fireplace had been empty for months – in the dog days of summer on the high plains, it was just too damned hot to light.

Opposite of the desk, where the Judge sat, there were normally two wooden chairs where townsfolk would petition their various grievances, things Jorgensen had heard a million times already: things like “Lionel Burnam stole my best saddle” and “that Hansen boy’s beating up the working girls” and “goddamn Otis is fiddling around with my sheep again.” Jorgensen had pulled up the good chair for the Judge – all he needed right now was to aggravate the man’s hemorrhoids and risk upsetting him any further.

“That hits the spot, my boy,” the Judge said, leaning back in his chair with eyes closed, his countenance noticeably soothed. “Much obliged. Now, tell me about your murder.”

Jorgensen cleared his throat and began to speak.

It was her father who had found her. Jorgensen could still see the animalistic pain and rage in his eyes as he recalled the tale, as if Mr. Grisham was standing right before him. His daughter, Ruthanne, hadn’t returned from their neighbor’s homestead after she had been sent to fetch some udder balm earlier in the day. Her father remembered her singing “Oh Susanna” as she left, excited and in good spirits about something. When her father had asked her – smiling as well, as her good cheer was infectious to everyone around her – what she was so jovial about, she gave him a wink and said “I’ll tell you in a few days. I love you, daddy.” And then she left.

 An hour passed. Then two. Three. Mr. Grisham had grown concerned, as it wasn’t like her to dawdle or not return home, and after a few hours impatiently pacing around the farmhouse, he went off on his horse to the Ericksen homestead four miles distant. About two miles out, Grisham stopped. He got off his horse and squatted down low to the ground. There was a patch on the side of the road where the roaddust had all been kicked up and scattered, as if someone were wrestling in it. Despite the crushing waves of heat which sent ripples of shimmering distortion around the outlines of the corn, Grisham felt a chill.

His heart fell into his stomach when he noticed the small spattering of blood at the foot of the adjacent cornfield. There was a path where the corn had been broken, like someone had been dragged through it.

Grisham had run into the corn, stopping only when he found a small satin bow that Ruthanne had been fond of. There was more blood here. He began to scream. He ran down the path of trodden corn and came to an abandoned barn. Ruthanne’s horse was standing dumbly beside the barn, pawing at a brush of sage. Gasping for breath, gun drawn, Grisham had yanked open the barn door to a scene from hell itself.

The girl was hanging, naked and impossibly pale, from a crossbeam. She was covered in blood from countless wounds. Her torn clothes were askew upon the straw. Her neck had been stretched to twice its normal length and she swayed slowly in the gentle crossbreeze. After the discovery of the body, the timeline is hazy. All Jorgensen knew was the landowner – a corn-man named McKenna – had stumbled onto the ghastly scene a few hours later, seeing two horses that weren’t his on his land, entering the barn to find his neighbor, mute and completely lost, cradling a young girl’s body as a cut rope dangled above them. Grisham had been softly singing lullabies to his daughter’s body.

“That you, George?” McKenna asked softly. “What happened?”

George Grisham’s head turned slowly around. Their eyes met, and McKenna had said his neighbor’s face had been difficult to describe. The girl’s father’s eyes were wide as silver dollars, and he had an awful tight grin, half-open, stuck in a silent scream, but with a wretched emptiness in his eyes. “Like there was nothing there at all,” McKenna had said to the Sheriff, shaking his head. Grisham turned back to his daughter. McKenna ran to his horse and high-tailed it back to Julesburg, four miles distant, and an hour later Jorgensen and his deputies had arrived. As one of them led the nearly comatose father away, Jorgensen surveyed the scene.

“Such a thing I ain’t never seen before,” the Sheriff said to the Judge, who was shaking his head. The Sheriff’s voice was wavering – something the Judge had never witnessed before. “You know, ‘bout a decade back, I saw Jules Beni’s corpse after Jack Slade shot him and cut his ears off. Remember that? Well, this was sorrier. Somebody had taken the time to string up this poor girl after thrashing her to within an inch of her life. Although it was an old and dilapidated barn, there were several rusty old tools that McKenna had been meaning to fix up. Someone used the tools on the girl, Judge… shears, a smith’s hammer – hell, one of her hands was missing all her fingers and the other was crushed completely. Looked like a rotten tomato or a… a lobster claw.”

“Jumping Jesus Christ,” the Judge said mildly.

“Yep.” The Sheriff agreed. For a moment, neither of them said anything.  The Judge poured another drink, and the Sheriff didn’t stop him.

“And the killer? How’d you finger him?”

“Well, I knew it couldn’t have been McKenna since he was in town all day, seen him myself that morning, and as soon as he got back to his stead, that’s when he saw her. And he’s a good man, doesn’t have a mean bone in him, and certainly not stupid enough to kill someone in his own barn and leave her there. The killer spent some time with the girl there… took his sweet time. The girl couldn’t have been dead more than two hours before we got to her. Christ, McKenna probably missed the bastard by half an hour, if that. He had the luck of Old Scratch, the killer did. And probably done something like this before, I’d reckon.”

“I assume you interviewed the father?” The Judge said, leaning forward.

“Yes sir, I did. So I asked Grisham if Ruthanne had any suitors, or anyone he thought might have done it. After he calmed down – and after a shot of opium from Dr. Warner to calm the nerves –  he said she had two paramours. One, an 18-year-old cowhand named Wilbur Bert, had been going steady with her for almost a year until late spring. Ugly split, so I’ve heard. The other, a William Vanderveer, had been working as a hired hand for Adam Sherman up the road from the Grishams since June, but he was real sweet on her. I started with Bert, he of the ugly split. Turns out he’s out in Laramie, got a telegraph back from the law up there. Been there since May. Dead end.”

“And the other?” said the Judge.

Jorgensen smiled, a rueful and angry grin that radiated hot fury, a smile which did not quite reach his eyes. The Judge privately thought that he never wanted to be on the receiving end of that anger. He’s a hell of a sheriff, he thought to himself. That man was born for the law.

“Got him in a cell right now, your Honor. Caught up with him about 30 miles up the Platte. He won’t get to hurt anyone else, and I’m going to make damned sure of that.”

& & &

Billy Vanderveer’s life was that of the road.

Chicago, St. Louis, Omaha, Denver, Sante Fe, San Antonio, a thousand others. The cities blended together in his mind in a haze of dusty roads and filthy fly-filled outhouses. If he didn’t find a roof to put over his head, he slept under the stars and that was a-okay as far as he was concerned. A few times, he’d find himself tossing and turning all night in some inn’s featherbed, unable to slumber, only to make his way out back to the dungheap and find his forty winks on the ground among the broken beer bottles in the light of the moon. He didn’t really remember much of his mother or father save for a few unwelcome thoughts that came to the front of his mind if he forced them: drunken screams, the burning imprint of a heavy hand, a shaking woman wiping away Billy’s tears in a huddled corner. But he put those thoughts out of his mind. Best not to dwell on them. As soon as he hit his growth, he took to the road.

Wrangling cattle up the Chisholm trail in Texas with a warm older Mexican cowboy, the closest thing Billy had to a real father until someone took offense to the vaquero’s straight flush and plugged him right there at the card table in Austin. Hunting elk out in Taos. Harvesting wheat in Nebraska. Shining shoes for a nickel apiece on the shit-filled streets of Denver. This and a thousand other jobs, until a one-legged man in a tailored blue coat coaxed Billy off the street, got his signature (the only thing he knew to write), and gave him a gun.

In the cavalry, Billy – the mascot of his company, being the only beardless boy in this group of rough-riding men – rode on the Apache trail. The soldiers burnt every Indian village they could find from El Paso down to Chihuahua. Somewhere in the sprawling western desert, amidst the saguaros and cholla cactus and sand-scattered bones bleached white in the sun, they came across a village of peaceful Maricopa Indians. The chief brought the soldiers a leg of mountain sheep and the soldiers killed the Maricopa and burnt them as well, down to the last woman and child. Billy hid in the rear, his weapons holstered. That night, as the soldiers were celebrating with the agave wine they had plundered from the Maricopa, when Billy asked why they killed the peaceful Indians, the captain said, “because they’re here.”

After a while, the bloodshed began to blend together in his mind, and Billy thought this ain’t no right way to live. An Apache bullet knocked him out of his saddle out on Cibecue Creek – 1881, this was, shortly after his 16th birthday – and, while recovering in the hospital at Fort Bowie, Billy took his back pay and mustered himself out of the service, stealing a horse and fleeing in the dead of night.

The road, again.

Billy fled northward out of the desert. He panned for gold in the piney mountains of New Mexico, finding nothing but fool’s gold in one wasteful spring but loving every minute spent laying on his back in the ponderosa pines, staring up at an impossibly blue sky. Back on the plains, somewhere out near Pueblo, the old man whose land Billy was overnighting in had crawled into Billy’s bedroll, hands furiously grabbing what they could as Billy squirmed and resisted. Eventually, Billy had been forced to strike the old-timer in the jaw, knocking him out cold, and as Billy stood, nauseous and shaken, over the man’s unconscious body, he vowed to never raise a hand in anger again in his life. He vomited on the ground, wiped away his tears, mounted his horse, and left.

After some months, he found himself in a tiny shithole farming town up near the Colorado-Nebraska border called Julesburg.

& & &

In the jail, the two men sat in their cells. Otis had his face pressed up against the bars while Billy sat upon his cot, head in his hands.

“Spill it, then,” Otis whispered through the bars, his voice dripping sweetly with barely concealed glee. “Come on, Billy-boy. Tell your Uncle Otis. We been neighbors for days now. What did that pretty lassie do to you?”

Billy turned away from the old man, his jaw furiously set.

Otis grinned again. “Stepping out on you, eh? Tell ya she preferred the company of long, tall and handsome down the road? Or was she one of them lady sodomites who’d rather romp in the corn with a lassie from down the road?”

Otis stood up and began to prance around his cell, screeching in a shrill and high mimicking voice: “Oh, Billy, it’s not you, it’s me. You’re a pretty boy and all, but all I really want is to shove my face down into Sarah Up-The-Road’s titties. Can’t we be friends, just?”

“SHUT UP!” Billy roared. He grabbed his tin water pitcher and heaved it as hard as it could against the bars with a resounding crash. Otis fell backwards onto the floor, unharmed but soaked in water.

Otis, sputtering furiously, howled out, “Jesus, kid! Learn to take a goddamned joke! For Christ’s sake, who are you, John the Baptist? God damn!” Otis squeezed water from his impossibly thick beard.

“It weren’t like that,” Billy murmured, his voice shaking and his hands wrenching at his shirt. “We were sweet on each other. I’d never hurt her, not in a million years. It weren’t me.”

“Alrighty, Jesus. I’m just teasin’ you, son, don’t have an apoplexy. Didn’t ask for no free bath, me. I sure as shit ain’ givin’ you my water!”

The kid’s face was red with anger. “It’s not funny, you miserable old goat!”

Otis shrugged. “Ah, I’m sorry, kid. Uncle Otis has a queer sense of humor, you ain’t the first to tell me that. Tell me this, then,” Otis said, hand on his chin. “You say you didn’t kill her. Okay. I believe ye. But how come three days after she dies, you jump ship and the law finds you up the Platte halfway to Dakota?”

Billy put his head in his hands again and said nothing. Otis, sensing that his hand was near the kid’s jugular, softened his tone.

“You can tell Uncle Otis anything,” the old man murmured, gently coaxing, his voice dripping like honey. He raised his right hand. “Right hand to god, it’s safe with me. We’ll probably hang together anyway, best we go together in peace and honesty and all that shit.” 

Billy looked up at Otis, who was still leering at him through the cell’s bars. Billy’s eyebrows were raised and his blue eyes widened slightly as if a light had gone off inside of his head. He sat up straighter upon his wooden plank and chuckled. The shadows cast from the barred window divided him almost perfectly in half – the left side hidden in darkness, the right peering curiously at Otis.

“Say,” Billy said, “I just realized I’ve been in the cell next to you for four days now, listening to you snore and sing and prattle on and shit in that bucket and you never even told me what you’re here for.”

“Well – that’s not – you see –” Otis stammered, caught off guard. He stopped and took a breath while Billy watched him, suddenly interested. “Look, kid, that ain’t none of your business. Let’s talk about your problem.”

“Tell you what,” Billy said matter-of-factly. “I’ll tell you everything about Ruthanne if you explain to me why you’re gonna hang beside me.”

Just out of the cell window’s sightline around the corner by the Sheriff’s Office, Deputy Holmes started to giggle. He closed the book he had been reading, got up out of his chair, and turned his ear towards the jail’s window. Moby Dick was alright, he thought, but he didn’t understand much of it or why this Captain cared so much about a damned whale. And the ocean – god damn, what a nightmare. Deputy Holmes thought land was a-okay and that was god’s honest truth. You won’t ever find Missus Holmes’ baby boy floating in a pine coffin 1,000 miles away from shore, no sir. And as far as Holmes was concerned, eavesdropping on the two degenerates was far more preferable to reading about getting gobbled up by a whale.

Sheriff Jorgensen had posted him there the previous morning to see if the boy would confess to his cellmate. The kid was quiet, alright, a cold fish, quiet as a damned church mouse, but Otis had hardly closed his mouth since they tossed him in there beside the boy. The old charlatan jabbered on and on about women he’d bedded, men he’d dueled and shotdown, money had he made. All of it nonsense, of course. Holmes knew there had never been such a lying bullshit artist as Otis west of the Mississippi. But it appeared that Otis was caught unprepared as the boy finally started to open up. Holmes laughed. How the hell is he gonna explain this one, Holmes thought to himself, stifling his laughter by holding his handkerchief over his mouth. Caught with his pants down behind his boss’s prized nannie goat, committing the most unnatural crime a man can commit. Better come up with a good one, Otis! 

Inside the cell, Otis stiffened up. His jaw jutted out defiantly. “Fine,” he said. “Have it your way. Wild accusations, that’s all they was. Just some accusations that I fu–  uh… took – I mean, there were accusations that I… took a goat.”

Billy stared at him, expecting more. Otis averted his eyes to the floor.

“That’s it?” Billy said. A string of blonde hair fell over his eye as he sat up, and he absentmindedly brushed it away.

“Uh-huh,” Otis replied, still staring at the ground.

“They’re gonna hang you for stealing one goat? Why?” Billy eyed him suspiciously.

 Otis threw his hands up. “How the Christ should I know? These farming towns, they act like this place is still Indian territory. You know how it is. In a civilized country, I’d get a year tops.”

“They hang horse thieves, and cattle thieves, but… a goat?”

Otis shrugged. “What can I say? It is what it is.”

Billy started to laugh, a pleasant adolescent chuckle that seemed to lower his age and brighten his face. “Why did you steal a goat? At least steal a horse, then you can ride away on it!”

“That ain’t got nothing to do with it! Alright, for god’s sake, I told you mine, now you tell me yours, you insolent whelp!” Otis began to curse and swear at the kid, who only laughed harder and harder.

Outside the jail, Deputy Holmes was laughing so hard into his handkerchief that his face was red and tears were streaming out of his eyes. He was still laughing as he stood up and went down the street to tell his brother Charlie, the bartender at the Lucky Mexican. Probably won’t miss anything, he thought as he ambled up the wooden boardwalk that crossed the storefronts, passing parked wagons and hitched horses gulping greedily from water troughs. Those two’ll argue like an old married couple like they’ve been doing for the past week and that’s that. Ain’t no way Otis is gonna worm a confession out of that cold fish. Besides, it’s hotter than hell’s pepper patch out here, and I need a cold beer. Just a few minutes and I’ll go back.

While Deputy Holmes was sucking down foamy lagers with his brother, the two of them laughing fit to burst and performing various pantomimes of a man fucking a goat, Billy Vanderveer told his tale.

& & &

Billy had met her only two months earlier.

Adam Sherman was one of the largest landholders in eastern Colorado. He had thousands upon thousands of acres of corn, beans, wheat, and sorghum. He was where Billy had been pointed to upon asking for work in Julesburg, and he hired Billy on the spot to tend to the sorghum plot on the eastern edge of the holding for June and July. It wasn’t glorious work, but Adam was a fair man with fair wages and let Billy sleep in a guest cabin. On the other side of the sorghum plot was the Grisham homestead. As Billy weeded, watered, and spread manure, wondering where he was to go next, he noticed a young woman sitting on horseback across the field on the other side of the neighbor’s fence, watching him work. Her hair was golden – the same color as cornsilk. He raised his hand and she waved back at him.

The next morning when Billy rode out to the eastern field, the girl was standing directly on her side of the fence, feeding cows out of a bucket. His heart fluttered as she glanced up, noticed him, and smiled. She told him her name was Ruthanne. The rest of that morning, Billy made every excuse to stay as close to the fence as possible as the two of them talked about everything under the sun. Finally, their chores finished, Ruthanne asked him tentatively if he’d be out there again tomorrow. He smiled and nodded.

The morning after that, she brought him a pie. He gave her a small wooden horse he had whittled and sanded out of sandlewood. And for the rest of the month, they both worked their chores as quickly and efficiently as possible so they could return to the fence, sit down on their respective sides, and talk through the wires. He told her about his travels, the strange things he had seen and the strange people he had met. She told him about the man who had broken her heart and left her for a milkmaid in Laramie a few months before. Finally, after a few weeks (and after looking carefully around to make sure Mr. Grisham wasn’t watching them), they exchanged a kiss over the fence. Soon afterwards, Ruthanne began to cross the fence onto his side of the field.

At the end of July, Billy asked her to marry him. Her face lit up like one of Edison’s electric lights as she cried and told him yes. They agreed that Billy should take his earnings to a cheap jeweler he knew in North Platte, get a ring, and return to Julesburg to ask her father for her hand. He remembered how happy she was as he saddled up to leave, how the last kiss they shared in the corn seemed to linger on his lips. He rode out to North Platte feeling like he was floating on his own saddle. After a three day’s ride, he bought the ring for $15, grinning like a fool the entire time.

At his camp that night, as he prodded the fire and fingered the ring, he whispered the name Ruthanne Vanderveer over and over in his mouth, enjoying its cadence, tasting the name and relishing in the warmth it brought him. He couldn’t wait for morning to come so he could high-tail it back to Julesburg and sweep his love off of her feet. And if Grisham said no? He’d cross that bridge when he came to it. Billy didn’t think he’d say no. Billy had a good reputation as a worker and thought that if he stayed, Adam Sherman would make him foreman. He felt good, like it was all going to be fine. For the first time in his life, he felt luck was on his side.

Right before dawn, he was awakened by a heavy kick to his side. As he rolled over, gasping for breath and clutching for his gun, someone yelled out “IT’S HIM, SHERIFF!” Billy felt the cold pressure of a pistol pressed against his temple and he held his hands up.

“William Vanderveer, I presume?” said the man holding the gun. He stepped into Billy’s view. Billy recognized him immediately. Billy had seen him several times around town, dragging drunks out of the saloons by their collars and smoking cigars on the jail’s front porch.  He was a broad-shouldered, heavily-muscled man of about 40 years. His handlebar mustache was black as tar and he wore a sheriff’s star on his vest. In Sheriff Jorgensen’s squinted eyes, Billy could see a dreadful combination of hate, anger, and triumph.

“I’m taking you under arrest for the murder of Ruthanne Grisham. Now get up, you’re coming back to Julesburg.” Jorgensen wrenched Billy to his knees, kneed him in the ribs, and tied his hands. Billy neither felt nor noticed any of it. He stared into the distance, dazed, a high-pitched ringing in his ears as his breath whistled shrilly. Murder? Ruthanne? Murder? Ruthanne? He was numb, unable to process anything as heavy hands hogtied him and tossed him in the back of a wagon. The men tried to talk to him as they rode, the wagon’s driver occasionally turning around and striking Billy with the horsewhip. Billy couldn’t talk. He couldn’t think. All he could do was stare at the sky above him as the rough road rattled his teeth and he thought about Ruthanne in the corn, her yellow hair silhouetted by green cornstalks, grinning and reaching out to pull him in for one last kiss before he left.

When they got back to Julesburg, Billy was pelted with rotten fruits in the back of the wagon. As the deputies tried in vain to disperse the furious crowd, all Billy could think was dead, dead, she’s dead.

Then they tossed him into the cell, and a few hours later they dumped a filthy old man in the cell next door. And that, he told Otis, was how he ended up here.

“No shit?” Otis said, trying to keep his voice casual. “You was gonna marry her?”

Billy said nothing. He slowly dug his hand into his filthy pocket and held up a golden ring. He put it wordlessly back into his pocket and sat down, head in hands once again.

Otis kept his mouth shut. It took all of his best efforts, as he was a loquacious sort of man, but he knew that Billy had just given him his ace in the hole. So he sat, biding his time, and watched as the boy curled up on his wooden bed, clutching the ring like a child would a teddy bear. A few hours later, when Deputy Holmes stumbled in – drunk, Otis thought to himself – to give them their suppers through the slats in the door, Otis gave him the code-word.

“Say, Deputy, beans again? Would it kill ya to give a poor condemned man some… salted pork?” Otis glanced again at Billy, who hadn’t moved on his cot.

“Salted pork?” Holmes replied, slurring his words.  He laughed as he fumbled with the cells’ keys. “Who the hell do you think you are, John Rockefeller?”

Otis pointed frantically at Billy, who still had his back turned. The deputy furrowed his brow. Otis cried out,“Yes! Salted pork! Please, for christ’s sake!”

The deputy’s eyes widened as he finally understood. He nodded.

For a moment, nothing was said. Then, the deputy removed a key from his vest and inserted it into Otis’s cell door.

“Ah. Tell you what, Otis,” the deputy said, raising his eyebrows. “Why don’t you come out and complain to the sheriff himself? I’m sure he’ll get a good laugh out of it.”

Otis grinned. “Yes sir-ee! What kinda prison are you running here, you ignorant swine? Let me talk to the man! I’ll have your job by midnight, you dirty bastard!”

As Holmes unlocked the door and Otis stepped out, Billy remained where he lay, fingering his beloved’s ring and thinking about her hair, her hair in the corn and the soft touch of her body against the rough edges of his calloused hands.

& & &

“Alright,” Jorgensen said.  His hands were clasped upon the edge of his desk, hard enough that his knuckles were white. His deputy, Holmes, stood nervously beside him. “You got 30 seconds, you wretched stain of a man. Tell me what he said.”

“He did it!” Otis cawed triumphantly. “Killed her dead, he did! You was right!”

“He confessed to you?” Jorgensen glanced up at Holmes, who stood frozen.

“Damned right! He proposed to her, Sheriff! Marriage! She said no! He lost it! Strangled her dead! Beat her up somethin’ awful, too, even chopped and crushed her hands to smithereens. Strung her up! Then… he was tryin’ to flee north to Canada. Got the wedding ring in his goddamned pocket as we speak!” Otis grinned smugly at the lawmen, and then, realizing that a smile was perhaps not the best option to win over the Sheriff, tried in vain to put a disgusted and horrified look on his face as if greatly disturbed by what Vanderveer had “confessed.” The result was a grotesque half-smile half-frown. But the Sheriff wasn’t looking at Otis – he had turned towards his deputy.

“You heard the boy say this? The confession?” Jorgensen asked Holmes, his voice tight with excitement. Holmes’ face fell.

“Well –” he stammered, his face pale. “Sir, it was a long day, and – a hot one too, sir, and I – uhhh – I may have, erm –”

“You fucking left your post?” The sheriff bellowed furiously, standing up. His fists were clenched. “Sucking down beers with your no-good-brother and missing the most important confession in Sedgwick County for the past decade?!  God fucking dammit!”

Jorgensen threw a drinking glass into the fireplace, where it shattered into a thousand pieces. Otis could almost feel steam blowing out of the Sheriff’s nose and mouth, and did his best to make himself small and unnoticeable. Deputy Holmes stared at the floor, his face burning red.

“Now I’m supposed to take the word of a degenerate goat-fucking stool pigeon to send a man to the gallows?”

“I got proof,” Otis said, doing his best to keep his voice mellow and even. “It’s in the kid’s pocket as we speak, sir. He’s got the wedding ring. Showed it to me and everything!”

Sheriff Jorgensen glared at Holmes, who was still frozen in fear. “You better hope this piece of shit is telling the truth,” he hissed, pointing at Otis, who did his best to show a winning smile. “Otherwise, this is your last day as a Sedgwick County Deputy, you mark my words.”

“Otis is a good stoolie, he ain’t never lied to us before, sir,” Holmes burst out. “Please! Otis knew about the girl’s hands, how could he know that unless the kid told him? Let’s just search Vanderveer’s cell! You know he’s hidin’ something! Please, Sheriff!”

They found the ring.

& & &

The trial was quick. It lasted about two hours. The only witnesses called were Patrick McKenna, who found the body, George Grisham, the father of the victim, and Otis Black, the recipient of Billy Vanderveer’s jailhouse confession. When Otis revealed to the court that Billy Vanderveer had admitted in jail that he strangled the life out of the poor girl after she had spurned his wedding proposal, the court gasped. Most of the town was in the audience. Even Judge Fridley – who was sipping from a hip flask the entire trial – looked aghast. Billy sat numbly in the defendant’s box, showing no reaction other than stunned silence as Otis took the stand. As Sheriff Jorgensen held up the wedding ring they had found in Billy’s pocket, George Grisham fainted. That was enough for the jury.

The jury deliberated for less than 30 minutes. Sheriff Jorgensen read the verdict after they shuffled back into the courtroom, sweating heavily and fanning themselves in a feeble attempt to ward off the summer heat. In a clear and vindictive voice, he read:

“We, the jury, in the above action of the State of Colorado versus William Ian Vanderveer, find the defendant guilty of the crime of murder in the first degree as charged in count one of the indictment.”

The Grishman family began to cheer and howl, and the Judge made no attempt to silence them.

The Judge raised his voice. “Jury, do you have a sentence?” He held his hand up to quiet the crowd, who had begun to fidget and murmur. The jury foreman rose and stood, straight-backed and erect:

“We, the jury, recommend that the defendant, William Ian Vanderveer, be punished by death by hanging.”

Judge Fridley’s gavel fell once and was silent. In the defendant’s box, Billy Vanderveer heard none of it. He was thinking about Ruthanne’s hair, the blonde flaxen hair like golden thread, and her mischievous grin as they laid down together in the corn for the first and only time.

& & &

They hanged Billy on a Monday.

Otis was released after the trial, immediately, as per the  arrangement he had made with the Sheriff. The Sheriff had provided him with an old donkey and a week’s worth of provisions. Otis stuck out his hand for the Sheriff to shake. Jorgensen ignored him.

“Listen, Otis,” Jorgensen said quietly. His voice was ice cold. Behind them, a murmuring crowd had formed, ready to watch the murderer Billy Vanderveer do the hangman’s jig. “I don’t ever want to see you on this side of the Rockies again, you hear? I’ve telegraphed every town within fifty miles to warn them – especially the cattle ranchers –  about you and your unnatural proclivities. Best get moving on, somewhere far away from here.”

“Heard! By the time you lay that despicable murderer into the ground” – he pointed at Billy, who stood numbly and shackled at the gallows steps – “I’ll be halfway to San Francisco, you mark my words!”

“Then begone.”

Otis nodded and trundled down the road, a rucksack on his back and head held high, not looking back.

Jorgensen once again read the death sentence. At the foot of the gallows stairs stood Billy Vanderveer, looking every bit like a lost lamb. As the sheriff read the details of the crime, the crowd jeered and moaned.

As he mounted the gallows stairs, Billy thought to himself, it ain’t nothing. Just a long walk up and short drop down, that’s all. Easy does it. Images rushed wildly through his mind. He thought about his mother huddling with him as a man drunkenly screamed obscenities at them. The time he found ten dollars in the tumbleweeds outside of Lubbock and used it to buy drinks for the entire roadhouse. The Navajo child who had shown him how to bead up a pair of moccasins – snapshots of a life that played out upon dusty roads and forgotten trails. These and a thousand other thoughts rushed through his mind in a manner of seconds. The last image that came before they fastened the noose around his neck: Ruthanne Grisham climbing carefully in between the strings of barbed wire to his side of the corn with the sun illuminating her hair like a scarlet-yellow halo, pulling him down with that grin, that wily come hither grin that she gave him, the grin that Billy fell in love with the moment he saw her.

& & &

As Otis fled Julesburg upon the donkey the sheriff had given him – the wind howling at his back and dust swirling up and around him as he trudged towards the setting sun hanging low in the west –  he thought about the girl. How Otis had watched her from the corn day after day. How she had sung Oh Susannah over and over in that husky sensual voice as Otis peered out from behind the brushes. How she had screamed when Otis dragged her into the cornfield, how she had howled as he had his way with her, how she had shrieked as he crushed her pale hands with the rusty tools he had found in the barn. God, what a pleasure! What a siren this lassie was! How she fought! How she howled and squirmed! How Otis’s prick had stood up like a flagpole as she dangled from the crossbeam, frantically kicking her feet and swaying to and fro!

As Otis trotted down the dusty road towards California upon his donkey under a full moon  – and as he began to think of all the other girls that this wide and bountiful country had to offer him –  he grinned. He had never met a girl he didn’t enjoy taking, but this girl, he thought, was among the best. Even better than the Mexican whore he had buried alive in Chihuahua. He began to whistle Oh Susannah. Otis pet his donkey with a gentle and loving hand. It was a good mount, and there were miles and miles to go before he slept. Somewhere behind him across an barren ocean of prairie, a man was hanged, and Otis laughed and laughed and laughed. He was still cackling as he approached Cheyenne with a wicked smile, the moon gleaming and glittering in the midnight hour.

* * * * THE END  * * * *
Copyright M. Armstrong 2024