Harlan made a motion that signaled he was about to move to the door, but McBride’s voice stopped him. ‘‘When are you going to let me out of here?’’ He was probing, but already knew the answer.
‘‘Day after tomorrow,’’ the lawman answered. ‘‘That’s when I take you out and hang you.’’ He grinned again. ‘‘No breakfast that morning, McBride. I don’t want you spoiling a perfectly good hanging.’’
‘‘What’s the charge against me that calls for the rope?’’
‘‘You mean you don’t know? Breaking Lance Josephine’s nose was an act of lawless violence. That’s a hanging offense in this town.’’
‘‘You’re the law, Harlan. You could stand up for me.’’
The man shook his head. ‘‘Josephine wants you dead and so does his father, the mayor. I’m not about to get in their way.’’
‘‘Harlan, you’re just like Lance Josephine,’’ McBride said, trying to punish the man. ‘‘A two-bit tinhorn and low-down back shooter. When did you last shuck the iron on a named man? I’d guess never.’’
The marshal looked as if he’d been slapped. The skin of his face tightened and his eyes looked like blue steel. ‘‘Hard talk coming from a saddle tramp and a no-good Yankee at that. Boy, I’m going to enjoy hanging you. I plan to draw it out, just for your benefit.’’
‘‘If I don’t kill you first,’’ McBride said, meaning every cold word.
For a fleeting moment it looked like Harlan would forgo the pleasure of a hanging and shoot. But the man fought a battle with himself and visibly relaxed. He lifted the cloth from the tray and threw the food into the street, plates and coffee cup clinking into the mud. ‘‘No breakfast for you, McBride. And if you give me any more sass, there will be no supper either.’’
Bitterly remembering Lopez, McBride said, ‘‘Harlan, you go to hell.’’
The lawman smiled. ‘‘Come the day I hang you, you’re going to be a mighty hungry man.’’
Harlan turned on his heel. Then, his honed gunman’s instinct warning him, he started to swing around again, his face alarmed. He never made it. The butt of a rifle, wielded by a young Mexican man, crashed into the back of his head. Harlan did not make a sound. He fell facedown into the mud and lay still. Another Mexican bent over the unconscious marshal and quickly searched his pockets. He came up with the key to the jail door. As McBride watched from the window, a Mexican came into view, leading his saddled mustang.
These men were not flashy vaqueros in tight, embroidered finery, but simple peasants in homespun white cotton pants and shirts, leather sandals on their feet. They were small men, very dark, but they looked lean and tough as rawhide.
The key scraped in the lock, and one of the Mexicans stuck his head inside. ‘‘Rapidamente, mi amigo,’’ he yelled. ‘‘Vayamos!’’
McBride needed no second invitation. He held the kitten against his chest and stepped outside. The Mexican who had downed Harlan said to him urgently, ‘‘Mount up. I will take care of this one.’’ The man held a knife in his hand. He rolled the lawman on his back, and readied himself for a killing slash across Harlan’s throat.
‘‘No,’’ McBride said. ‘‘Let him be. We’ll get him another time.’’
The young Mexican looked puzzled. ‘‘But this is the man who killed Senor Lopez and hanged the sheepherder boy from my village.’’
‘‘I know, but let him live for now,’’ McBride said, wondering if he was doing the right thing. But he knew he could not bring himself to slaughter a helpless man, even a sorry piece of trash like Thad Harlan. ‘‘His time will come,’’ he said.
It looked like the young Mexican was about to argue, but finally he shrugged and sheathed his knife. ‘‘A man has a right to be killed at his best moment,’’ he said. He bent over Harlan again and yelled, ‘‘Listen well! My name is Alarico Garcia and I will wait. Then I will kill you.’’
The marshal muttered a curse, tried to rise but groaned and sank into the mud again.
McBride fought an inward battle, hating himself for hating the man at his feet and for not destroying him.
Garcia straightened and motioned toward McBride’s horse. ‘‘Mount. We had better go.’’
McBride climbed into the saddle and put the calico kitten on the saddle in front of him. ‘‘Sammy,’’ he said, ‘‘I hope you’re a better rider than I am.’’
The Mexicans had disappeared but Garcia emerged from behind the jail, mounted bareback on a bony dun. ‘‘We will go now,’’ he said.
The young Mexican led the way out of town, heading east where the rising sun spread a fan of golden light above the peaks of the Capitan Mountains.
After an hour, as a cool, fresh wind carried the scent of spruce, aspen and high-growing pines, Garcia motioned McBride to follow and rode up the slope of a shallow bench. He drew rein when he reached the ridge. Ahead lay mile after mile of flat plateau country that would eventually lose itself in the vastness of the Llano Estacado. Rabbitbrush, scarlet Apache plume, cholla and prickly pear grew everywhere, along with mountain mahogany and gray oak.
McBride stopped beside the other rider, a covey of startled scaled quail scattering away from his mustang’s hooves. The sun had completed its climb over the mountains, but the bright promise of the day was already fading as ash-colored clouds gathered in the denim blue sky.
Garcia pointed. ‘‘Deadman Canyon is ten miles to the southeast. You can hide out there until it’s safe.’’
The young man read the reluctance in McBride’s face and the sudden stiffness in his back. ‘‘Thad Harlan is already hunting you and he will be close,’’ Garcia said. ‘‘With him he will have many men, all of them famous outlaws, fast with a gun and good trackers. If he catches you out in the open you’re a dead man.’’
McBride made no response, considering.
He was still on the payroll of the New York Police Department’s bureau of detectives, and still a duly sworn officer of the law. The town of Rest and Be Thankful meant nothing to him, but cold-blooded and cruel murder had been committed there. As he’d been told often since his arrival in the West, he was way off his home range, but if he did not try to bring Thad Harlan and Jared and Lance Josephine to justice, who would? He admitted to himself that it would make sense to turn his back on the problem, let it go and simply ride on without any choices to make at all.
It was a way, maybe the sensible way. But at that moment in time, in this place, Detective Sergeant John McBride decided it would not be his way.
‘‘I don’t want to hide out,’’ he said finally. ‘‘I want to strike at Harlan, Josephine and the rest of them.’’
‘‘Then hide first and fight later. Right now you are angry, as I am, but anger is never a good counselor. It urges you to stand and fight, but can a dead man harm the men you mention?’’ Garcia smiled, more to make his point than display humor. ‘‘Besides, you have no weapons. What will you do when Harlan catches up with you? Throw rocks at him?’’
McBride nodded his uncertainty. ‘‘You make a good point. Without a gun I wouldn’t last long.’’