Portlandtown: A Tale of the Oregon Wyldes (10 page)

The marshal opened the closet and was shocked to see the wooden box open, its hidden compartment exposed. The main space was empty.

The marshal was not surprised to see the Hanged Man’s gun already in his hand.

6

The first thing Henry saw was the dead man’s journal in his hand. It was open to a slightly torn page covered with dense scribbling. He tried to read the words, but few made sense in the morning light.

Henry raised his face to the sun, trying to remember how he’d come to be standing alone in the middle of a small forest clearing. He shouldn’t be. He’d ridden out of Astoria with three men … and something else.

Had the dead man led him here?

Henry scanned the page again, sensing that the words had made sense at another time, perhaps to another person. Could that have been him? He searched for meaning in the black swirls and found nothing.

“Chicken scratches,” he said to no one.

Henry surveyed his surroundings. He was on a long, sloping hill covered by white and yellow wildflowers. He heard waves crashing behind him, suggesting the ocean was near enough that he should see it through the trees. He couldn’t, but closer inspection revealed a path worn through the flowers that ended at his feet.

Henry snapped the book closed and walked into the forest, following the trail he must have made in the night. That he couldn’t remember such misadventure suggested he’d been asleep at the time, which was troubling, but an improvement over the nightmares of earlier in the week.

The path was clear enough, though the forest itself was denser than any Henry had previously encountered. The trees grew unnaturally close, blocking more and more of the light the farther he progressed. He still heard the ocean, though it grew fainter with each step.

Shouldn’t he be moving toward it?

When the woods abruptly ended, Henry was shocked to find himself standing on the beach, ten feet from the crashing surf. He spun to see the forest’s edge a hundred feet behind him. The book was again open in his hand.

Henry stared at the page, at words just out of focus, which was how he saw footprints in the sand—his and another’s, side by side, walking from the woods to the water’s edge.

He was not alone.

Henry felt the dead man beside him but refused to turn. To look upon the man would make him real, something Henry desperately did not want to be true. A hand fell on his shoulder, and a cold whisper brought a single word:

“Read.”

Henry ran.

Halfway to the trees, he saw a thin line of gray smoke rising behind a pile of driftwood. Henry stumbled into the campsite to find his companions dead, their corpses piled on top of one another beside a smoldering fire. Gnawing at the remains were three monsters Henry recognized immediately. Buried with the Hanged Man, they were now damned to follow him, feeding on the unlucky souls that crossed his path.

Only that wasn’t true. They hadn’t been buried with the man but had clawed their way to him through mud and death—had been commanded to do so. When they raised their heads in unison, the gore in their mouths hanging slack, Henry knew they would follow him, too.

He was their master, now.

*   *   *

“Where you been?”

Henry blinked and Mason materialized before him, looking much more alive than he had moments before.

Henry blinked once more and saw the burlap-wrapped body propped up against a log, a poorly tied noose fastened around the neck.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Henry said, tucking the book into his coat pocket. He recognized the nightmare for what it was, but saw no reason to share.

“Miss your bed, do yeh?”

“Been a while since I slept out of doors is all.”

Mason grinned. “Wait ’til it rains,” he said, and walked away, carefully stepping over the Hanged Man’s body.

Henry glanced at the dead man but refused to linger, forcing himself to look elsewhere. Just offshore, a huge, haystack-shaped rock sprouted from the Pacific, a monument he knew to be less than thirty miles south of Astoria. Henry had assumed they’d ridden a hundred miles the night before, but they weren’t even out of the county.

Was that far enough?

Henry considered his crimes: assisting in a holdup, horse thievery, grave robbing. Technically, he hadn’t participated in the holdup. If anything, he’d minimized Asa’s losses to a few shovels and one employee. The owner of the horses he’d liberated from the livery might have a legitimate complaint, but Henry thought they’d done the deed without witnesses. He’d even protested stealing the second horse until Mason made clear who would be riding in the extra saddle.

As for the body, Henry didn’t think it was a crime to dig it up if no one knew it was there.

Henry finally allowed his gaze to fall on the Hanged Man’s corpse. Twenty feet of rope kept the burlap in place, which to Henry look like a caterpillar’s cocoon. Hugh had fashioned the noose, which his brother found quite amusing. Henry had not.

Henry took a step toward the body, intending to remove the false collar, but the pain between his legs stopped him cold.

“Not used to the saddle, huh?” said Charlie.

Henry staggered to a nearby log but found little comfort in sitting.

“Just wait. Another day and you’ll be slung over the horn like your buddy there.”

“I’ll be fine,” Henry said.

Charlie frowned. “Can’t figure why he brought you along. Don’t see the worth in it.”

Henry looked at Charlie. He couldn’t remember anything he’d said or done to earn the animosity in the man’s tone.

“I’ll try to prove my worth.”

“You do that.”

Henry stared for a moment longer, then put a hand in his pocket and immediately felt the hair on the back of his neck go down. Soon the throb in his groin subsided as well.

*   *   *

Henry gathered his bedroll and tied it to the back of a saddle they’d stolen along with the horses. Besides the clothes he wore, Henry hadn’t brought much from Astoria. Mason had allowed him to retrieve his hat, coat, and anything else that would fit in a saddle bag, which was very little. Henry didn’t care. Standing in his room in Asa’s house, he couldn’t find a single item worth taking. The only thing that seemed important was that which he’d dug out of the ground earlier in the day. It was only on his way out of the house that he thought to pilfer one of the fat man’s rifles. The gun, which Henry had never fired and didn’t even know how to load, was now secured to the saddle beneath his bedroll.

“You know how to use that?” Mason asked, eyeing the rifle.

“Yes.”

Mason tugged on the stock, pulling the Winchester partly from its slot.

“Hardly been used.”

“Asa wasn’t much of a shootist.”

Mason slid the rifle back into place and motioned for Henry to follow him.

“Grab a shoulder,” he said, leaning over the Hanged Man’s cocoon.

Henry grabbed a handful of burlap and together they dragged the corpse to the extra gelding. Mason then took the loose rope attached to the body’s center mass and threw it over the saddle.

“After he’s up, go around and pull him over.”

Henry hadn’t been involved in mounting the Hanged Man’s body the night before and was shocked by the weight of it. Lifting the corpse to a standing position was difficult, even for the two of them, and had it been Henry left to hold it up right he’d have crumpled to the ground. He raced around the horse, grabbed the rope, and pulled as Mason lifted. Slowly, the body rolled over the saddle until it hung freely, more or less balanced. The horse shuffled its feet, obviously not pleased at the rider forced upon him.

“Doesn’t seem too happy, does he?” Mason said, as he secured the ropes underneath the saddle. “Can’t hardly blame him. Son of a bitch is heavy for a dead man.”

“Yes,” Henry said, though he was doubtful weight had anything to do with the animal’s discomfort. “How far do we have to ride today?”

“Far enough. Why? You tired from all that late-night reading?”

Henry blinked.

“What?”

“I saw you. Had your nose in that book all night. You must have some mighty good vision to see so well in the dark. You part Indian, or something?”

Henry searched his memory but found nothing to support Mason’s claim outside of his early-morning jaunt. He’d been dead tired when they’d stopped the night before, and after forcing a hunk of jerky down his throat he had gone to sleep.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“He’s right,” Charlie said. “I saw you when I got up to take a leak. Heard you, too, mumbling a bunch of nonsense words.”

“Find me a curse in there that keeps my gun loaded, and you can mutter all you want,” Mason said, as he pulled himself onto his horse.

Henry forced a smile and then climbed onto his own mount.

“You didn’t answer my question,” he said. “How far are we riding?”

“Well, that all depends on how popular the circus is in Tillamook,” Mason said, urging his horse forward.

“The circus?”

“Garibaldi’s Traveling Wild Western Caravan, Museum and Menagerie,” said Hugh, as he directed his horse around Henry’s. “We passed ’em a week ago headin’ the other way. Said they was going to set up in Tillamook for a time.”

Henry’s horse stepped sideways as the horse trailing Hugh’s moved past, giving it as wide a birth as possible. Henry, not being the most accomplished rider, did his best to turn the animal around.

“Why do we care about some traveling circus?”

“They got a tent full of human curiosities,” Charlie said. “Freaks and such.”

Henry turned the information over in his head, finally coming to the only conclusion that made any sense. He urged his horse forward until he was alongside Mason’s.

“We’re selling him to a freak show?”

“‘Weird Wild West Prodigies and Oddities’ is what they call it,” Mason said. “Got a Fiji mermaid, couple of Borneo midgets, Siamese twins, pig with one eye—that sort of thing. Seems to me they ain’t got enough West in their Wild, so maybe the remains of a famous outlaw might fill out the quota.”

“But he’s dead.”

“Don’t matter. They got shrunken heads and Indian scalps, too. If they don’t want to display the whole body they can put the head on a pedestal and be done with it. Of course, they gotta buy the whole man. I ain’t sellin’ him by the pound.”

At the top of the hill, Mason turned his mount south, sticking to a ridge that ran along the coastline. Henry tried to keep pace.

“I would think there’d be laws against displaying the dead in such a manner.”

Mason sniffed. “Where you been livin’, kid?”

“Astoria. All my life.”

“It shows. Ever seen a hanging?”

“No.”

“I seen a couple. Saw one last year, in Butte.”

“Dawson brothers,” offered Hugh.

“That’s right,” Mason said. “Got themselves caught trying to ambush a stage. Killed a little girl in the process. Gut shot. Took her three days to die. Time they got around to the hanging, they’re must have been a thousand folks showed up looking for a piece. After the hanging, the townsfolk pulled down the bodies, lit a fire, and watched the pair burn to bone. They left the blackened bodies to rot in the street for a month before someone cleaned ’em up.

“Now, this Hanged Dude here, he’s a piece of history. He’s famous, like Jesse James or old Wild Bill, maybe more so. But unlike them, this one’s an evil bastard. Nobody shed a tear over his passing or made up adventures he never had just to sell penny stories. He’s just like them fools in Butte. Folks hated him. I don’t imagine anyone will mind his remains up on display.”

“But they’ll actually want to see him? They’ll pay?”

“Hell yes. A famous name, outlaw or otherwise, still draws a crowd. Always has, always will.”

Henry tried to imagine such a display but found the idea of a public viewing repulsive.

“He doesn’t have one,” he said.

Mason eyed Henry. “Doesn’t have what?”

“A name. Not a Christian one, at least.”

Charlie frowned. “A man with no name? That’s bull. Every man has a name.”

“Apparently not,” Hugh said.

“Well, how’d he get the one he got?”

“What do you think that scar on his neck come from?” Mason said. “Figure he did that himself?”

“Pa told us he was hung twice,” Hugh said. “And he come back from the gallows both times.”

“Pa said he was rescued,” Charlie added.

“No, Charlie, what he said was ‘resurrected,’ but I wouldn’t put much stock in that, ’less you think the dead can rise from the grave.”

“I don’t, which is why I said ‘rescued.’”

Hugh gave his brother a stern look, but Charlie didn’t notice. He was waiting for Henry to jump back into the conversation. He planned to trip him up when he did.

“It was supposed to scare folks,” Henry said. “He invented it himself to make people believe he could cheat death.”

The sureness in his voice gave Charlie pause. Mason noticed it, as well.

“You don’t think the scar on his neck is proof enough he fell off the hanging tree?” Mason asked.

A memory that was not his own opened into Henry’s mind, that of a man—the Hanged Man—strung up and swaying from a gallows pole in the center of an unknown mountain town. A dozen men stood by, some holding torches that threw just enough light to illuminate the scene. A stiff wind cut through the gathering, scattering the light momentarily. When it returned, the noose was empty.

And then he was on them.

Henry removed his hand from his pocket and the sharpness of the memory faded.

“It’s proof of something,” he said. “Maybe that some folks don’t know a noose from a necktie.”

Mason laughed. Charlie saw Hugh crack a smile and felt his place in the gang slip a little further beyond his grip.

7

Joseph’s daily journey from the heights to the family bookstore on Alder Street included walking and streetcar riding, the amount of each dependent on the route and how well he timed his hop-ons. On a good day, the trip might take twenty minutes. Because the floods had grounded so many of the streetcars, today’s excursion would require walking, wading, jumping, precarious sidewalk balancing, and, if he was lucky, a ride up Third Avenue on the fire brigade’s floating water-cannon apparatus. His best time since the big melt: forty-eight minutes. Since he had the twins with him, Joseph figured it would take an hour to navigate Portland’s downtown waterworks.