“You don’t plan for me to ride like this, do you? With a rope around my neck? Don’t you understand? Anythin’ could happen. My horse could step into a gopher hole, I could fall off, my horse might even decide to take off runnin’. If anythin’ like that was to happen, why, my neck would get broke.”
“Yeah, it would, wouldn’t it?” Matt replied.
“This ain’t right!” Clem called as Matt gave Clem’s horse a slap on the rear to send him on.
“If I were you, I’d do less talking and pay more attention to your riding,” Matt said easily. “You don’t want to fall off, do you?”
“No!” Clem said, his answer reflecting his concern.
It took Matt and Clem better than an hour to ride back to Frewen Castle. For the entire time back to the ranch, Clem kept clucking soothingly to his horse.
When Matt returned with one man belly-down across a horse and another with his hands tied to the saddlehorn and a rope around his neck, the arrival generated a lot of attention among the Frewen cowboys. They were especially interested in the fact that the dead man and Matt’s prisoner were both wearing yellow kerchiefs.
“I’ll be damn if Jensen ain’t caught hisself a couple of Yellow Kerchiefs,” one of the cowboys said.
“That’s them!” young Jeff said, pointing to the two men. “That’s the two men that jumped us, and kilt Burt!”
“What the hell did Jensen bring one of ’em back alive for?” one of the other cowboys said. “Hell, let’s just shoot the son of a bitch now!”
“Shootin’ is too good for him. Let’s string ’im up. Hell, it won’t be hard to do. He’s done got the rope around his neck.”
Several gathered around then as Matt rode straight to the barn. Once there, he threw his end of the rope over a beam that extended out over the top of the barn door, then pulled it just tight enough to put pressure on Clem’s neck. After that, he tied his end of the rope off then started toward the big house.
“What? What are you going to do? You can’t leave me like this! I could hang!” Clem called out in fear.
Clem was sitting on his horse right in front of the barn door. The rope around his neck went up and over the protruding beam, then was tied off at the other end, so that it formed an inverted “V.”
“You won’t hang, as long as you can keep your horse still,” Matt called back over his shoulder.
“You can’t do this! You can’t leave me here like this!” Clem called out to him. “It ain’t right!”
“Mister, I would quit yelling if I was you,” one of the cowboys said. “You’re liable to spook your horse. Besides which, if you don’t shut up your cat-erwaulin’ I’ll slap your horse on his ass myself.”
The other cowboys laughed.
“Ahh,” Clem said, realizing then that what the cowboys said was true. “Stay here, horse,” he said as calmly as he could. “Don’t you be tryin’ to go nowhere.”
When Matt came back out a few minutes later, Moreton Frewen and his wife Clara, as well as Jennie Churchill and her son Winnie, followed him out of the house and across the yard toward the barn. There, they saw one horse with a body draped across it and another horse, in the saddle of which sat a man with a rope not only around his neck, but looped over a protruding brace, as if he were about to be hanged.
“What do you want to do with him?” Matt asked.
“This is the feller that kilt Burt! I say hang the son of a bitch!” one of the cowboys shouted, then seeing the reaction of the two ladies, he took off his hat. “Sorry ladies,” he said. “I didn’t mean to go cussin’ in front of you.”
“I think we should take him into town, give him a trial, and then hang him,” Frewen said.
“Do we have a judge in this town?” Matt asked.
“I’m a judge,” Frewen offered.
“All right,” Matt said. “I’ll take him into town and turn him over to Marshal Drew.”
As Jennie watched Matt ride off, she felt a strange mix of emotions. She had never met anyone quite like Matt Jensen. He was the perfect gentleman, kind and sensitive, gentle and patient with her son. But he was also, without doubt, the most dangerous man she had ever met. Despite that, or maybe even because of it, she still found him handsome and exciting and would have enjoyed an innocent dalliance with him. Except that she knew, instinctively, that a dalliance with Matt Jensen would be anything but innocent.
When Matt took his macabre procession into town it generated as much attention as it had when he had arrived back at Frewen Castle. Men and women came out of houses, stores, and saloons to stand on the side of the street and watch as he passed by.
“Them’s Yellow Kerchiefs,” someone said.
“Who’s that leadin’ ’em?”
“Don’t you know? That’s Matt Jensen. He’s the one that kilt Kyle Houston.”
Not content to just watch Matt ride by, most of the town moved out into the street then began walking along behind him, following him to Sikes’ Hardware Store, which was also the location of the Welsh Undertaking Parlor. By the time he got there, Sikes and Welsh were both outside, drawn by curiosity as to what had caught the attention of the whole town.
“Get this one buried,” Matt said, nodding toward Zeke’s body.
“What’s his name?”
Matt looked toward Clem. “I heard you call him Zeke. What’s his last name?”
“I don’t know,” Clem said. “He never told me.”
“It’s Holloway,” a woman’s voice said.
The woman who spoke was wearing the revealing attire of a bargirl. Several looked at her, the expressions on their faces reflecting their curiosity.
“Tell me, Lucy, how come it is you know his last name?” Welsh asked.
“He told me once that his last name was Holloway.”
“You’re doin’ business with one of the Yellow Kerchief men?” someone said accusingly.
“How was I supposed to know he was a Yellow Scarfer?” Lucy replied. “He didn’t have his yellow kerchief on when I seen him. Fact is, he didn’t have nothin’ on a-tall, last time I seen him.”
The entire town laughed.
Chapter Sixteen
The next morning in Sussex, a crowd had gathered around Sikes’ Hardware Store to stare at a gruesome display. The object of their attention was Zeke Holloway’s body. He was tied to a board with his arms folded across his chest and a gun in his right hand. His yellow scarf was still in place around his neck, but he wasn’t wearing a hat. His eyes were open and sightless. His face was bluish white, all the blood having drained down from his head; and because of the paleness of his skin, the contrast between the black of his beard, and the white of his face was even more striking. The bullethole between his eyes was black and bloodless. Above the door was a sign.
Zeke Holloway
Yellow Kerchief Rustler
Killed by Matt Jensen
For the moment, Welsh was busily constructing two coffins, one for Zeke and one for Clem, who was about to stand trial. A few pointed out to Welsh that Clem had not been found guilty yet, but Welsh said he was confident that he would be.
“And even if they don’t find him guilty, it ain’t like the coffin is goin’ to go to waste. There is bound to be someone that’s goin’ to be needin’ one sooner or later.”
Zeke Holloway would be buried just as he was now, without embalming, his skin pale and the blood still on his shirt. But it was different for Burt Rawlings, who had already been brought to Welsh to be prepared for burial. He had been embalmed, and cosmetics applied to his face and hands in order to restore some color to the body. He was also dressed in a suit and tie, though no one who knew him had ever actually seen Burt in a suit.