The Bone Orchard (10 page)

“He can never hurt another person,” Ezra added, his voice hushed.

Ambrose took his hand and squeezed it tightly. He had been torn up inside ever since the night Ezra’s life had ended. He’d played it over and over in his mind’s eye, wondering if he could have stopped it, if he could have saved Ezra’s life if he’d behaved differently, if he’d been more aware. If he’d not been so taken with Ezra that he’d missed their quarry right behind him. Had he reacted too slowly because on some level he’d wanted Ezra dead, to be with him in this gray afterlife? Was he the reason Ezra had died? And if he was, did he deserve to be as happy as he was with Ezra here beside him?

“He should never have been able to hurt you.”

Ezra tapped his palm. “I see you doubting yourself, and I think you’re a damn fool to do it.”

Ambrose snorted in annoyance.

“I was there,” Ezra reminded him. “I saw what happened. I saw you move faster than a snake striking, and it still didn’t save me. It wouldn’t have saved me. What happened was neither your doing nor your fault. So stop wondering if you deserve to be happy.”

“How do you know that’s what I was doing?”

“Because I know you, Marshal Shaw, and your mind is far too simple and your face is far too easy to read.”

“You callin’ me simple?”

“I’m also calling you a bad poker player.”

Ambrose sputtered, unable to come up with an appropriate response before Ezra could laugh at him. He lurched out of his chair instead and dragged Ezra toward him for a kiss. “Stuck with you for all eternity,” Ambrose grumbled against his lips. “How’m I going to handle that?”

“Roughly, I do hope.”

They shared one more kiss before retaking their seats. They had to be careful when the saloon got overfull, or people would sit on them, and that was slightly less than pleasant no matter how many times it happened. They only had another hour or so to plan before they’d have to vacate their table for safer pastures.

“Okay. We shackle him, tie him, and attach him to the gallows,” Ezra said, counting off the points on his long fingers. “How do we go about doing the latter?”

“No idea.”

“And we’ve both seen gallows like that one come and go within the course of a year. Hell, I’ve seen them go up and come down in a week’s span. What happens when the gallows are torn down? Will he be set free?”

Ambrose was nodding as he listened, his eyes narrowing. “What about under the gallows? We stake him to the ground.”

“But with what? We have to use what’s on him.”

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s got more on him than we suspect.”

“I’m sure he’ll politely let you search him for implements. This plan needs a little work.”

Ambrose nodded and sighed. “Good thing we got time on our side.”

“Sure, he’s only killing one person a week now,” Ezra countered. “All the time in the world.”

“What do you want me to do, Ezra? I can’t even open a door.”

Ezra offered him a fond smile. “We’ll sort it out. Like you said, we’ve all the time in the world. We’ll try every night. Trial and error. We’ll keep trying until we get it right.”

“So this is us,” Ambrose said, the realization hitting him so hard it was akin to being thrown from a horse. “This is our . . . hereafter.”

Ezra’s smile faded. “I can think of worse assignments to purgatory than to spend it with you, watching you do the things that made you a legend back east.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ambrose, your name is spoken with great reverence at home. People know you. They know you as a lawman who never lost his quarry, one who gave his life to make the west a safer, more civil place.”

“But I didn’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yeah, I do. I’m dead, not blind. I been watching people die left and right.”

Ezra snorted. “You’re missing my point. Ambrose, your life was dedicated to tracking down outlaws and putting them where they couldn’t hurt anyone, be it behind bars or in the ground. Your afterlife . . . Your death shall be spent in the same endeavors. And by some stroke of fate, I get to spend my own hereafter with you, watching you do it.”

“What about moving on? It’s looking more and more like we never will. We’re stuck in a desert of the living who can’t see us and don’t care that we’re here.”

“Is that really so different from life?” Ezra posed, and Ambrose sat back to contemplate.

Camped in a saloon with Ezra, plotting how to rid the world of a murderer, was a much more fitting fate than any other he could think of for himself. The only difference between his life—a life he had very much loved—and now was that he had someone he trusted, someone he loved, to share it with him.

This was his reward for a life spent doing good. This was his golden end.

“You’re right,” he said, leaning forward to reach for Ezra’s hand. “If this is our prize, then let’s make the most of it, huh?”

Ezra raised both eyebrows in question.

“Let’s go put our ghost boots up that ghost’s ass.”

Once the sun began to set out over the Pacific Ocean, someone opened the door of the Continental, and Ezra and Ambrose made their way toward the gallows. Ezra found it less tiring to move the closer he got to the spot on the street where he’d been stabbed.

“This might work to our advantage,” Ezra said after he told Ambrose.

“Only thing that means is Jennings is strongest at the very spot we need to attack,” Ambrose pointed out. He’d unholstered his gun, and was loading it even though they both knew it would do him little good.

Any buoyancy the discovery had given to Ezra’s hopes was snuffed out like a candle. “A valid point. We need a plan.”

“My plan is to do what I’ve always done.” Ambrose shoved the gun into its holster, leaving it unfastened for a faster draw.

“And what have you always done?”

“Wing it.”

Ezra choked on a laugh. “That is the very definition of not having a plan.”

“We got us a plan, we just don’t know how to go about it.”

“Comforting.”

They approached the gallows, which threw grotesque dancing shadows from the light of the oil lamps along the street. The square was empty, save for a stray dog asleep on the stoop of the jail.

Ambrose shifted next to Ezra, his elbow brushing Ezra’s hip as he palmed his gun. Nerves fluttered through Ezra’s belly. It was difficult to remember they were playing by a new set of rules now. They couldn’t be hurt, could they? They’d already lost their lives, what more was there to lose? Was there a way to be sent on to the next step, wherever that may be? If there was, perhaps they could send Jennings on to his reward. But if that was possible, then it was also possible for Jennings to send one or both of them to the great beyond as well.

Ezra supposed the rules weren’t so different after all.

“It’s okay to be scared,” Ambrose said solemnly. “I know I am. As long as you let the fear drive you, rather than hold you down.”

Ezra straightened to his full height, taking a deep breath to calm his mind. “We subdue him. We shackle him. We attach him to the gallows.”

Ambrose nodded. “But how?”

Ezra stared at the gallows, struggling against exhaustion and fear. “Fear,” he whispered. “Don’t let it hold you down.”

“Uh-huh,” Ambrose responded.

“Hold you down! We’ve been trying to figure out how to hold him down at the gallows. But a gallows doesn’t press. It drops.”

Ambrose finally tore his eyes from the structure and turned to face Ezra. “What?”

“We need to use the gallows in our favor. Its design. Use the drop.”

Ambrose frowned, obviously still confused. “Drop him.”

“Instead of holding him down with something, we drop him
onto
something.”

Ambrose pushed at the corner of his mouth with his tongue, looking off toward the gallows once more. “All right.”

Without another word, they moved toward the gallows, splitting off to approach it from either side. They were both seasoned lawmen, and though their experience was vastly different because of where they were from, when it was time for them to work together, they seemed to do it well.

A brief reconnoiter assured them that Jennings wasn’t present, and they hastily went to work. It was exhausting and frustrating because both of them were still trying to get a handle on how to grasp objects. They managed, though, and then took up positions on either side of the gallows to wait.

Ezra wasn’t certain how long they crouched in the shadows. His joints no longer told him of time’s passing, and he hadn’t died with his pocket watch on him. He was gazing at the stars, pondering whether Ambrose could teach him how to tell the time by the sky like the dime novels claimed all Westerners could, when he felt the air change. It was like the thrill of a lightning strike before it hit, and the hairs on his arms rose.

He heard a thump from the gallows.

He rose in time to see Boone Jennings wobbling across the platform, fighting the shackles on his wrists as he tried to get the black hood off his head. Ambrose darted up the wooden steps, his boots loud in the silence of the night. Jennings turned, crouching and yanking his hood off.

Ambrose had his gun drawn, and though Jennings seemed to have embraced the rules of being a spirit faster than Ezra or Ambrose had, the instinct to fear a firearm was obviously still rooted deep in him. He froze as Ambrose faced him down.

“Well, if it ain’t the good Marshal Shaw,” Jennings growled. His voice had an echo to it, as if the noose still around his neck had forever warped his ability to speak. “How many times I got to beat you at something before you give up?”

“I reckon we’ll find out,” Ambrose said, and fired without further pleasantries.

Jennings stumbled back a few steps, cursing and digging at his shoulder. Ezra scampered toward the gallows, ducking beneath them. He could hear the sounds of the battle above, the pounding of fists, the cursing, the stomping of Ambrose’s boots on the fresh planks. Ezra positioned himself beside the stakes of wood they had buried and reinforced in a shallow pit beneath the platform.

He saw flashes of the fight through the cracks in the platform. Fists landed as if on living flesh. Jennings utilized the shackles around his hands to his advantage, blocking punches and using the heft of his combined fists to knock Ambrose right on his ass a few times. Ambrose fired his gun into Jennings’s belly a few times, forcing him to stumble back with each shot. Did it even hurt Jennings now? If it did, he didn’t show it. It only seemed to enrage him further. He charged Ambrose, and they both went rolling, dangerously close to the edge.

If they fell off, the entire plan would be lost.

Ezra stood, indecisive. Ambrose needed help, but Ezra was loath to abandon his post. If Ambrose did manage to get the upper hand and Ezra wasn’t in position, the plan would fail as surely as if Ambrose had lost the fight.

The gun sounded again, and one of the men rolled across the platform.

“You son of a cow-sucking whore!” Ambrose shouted. There was another thump. “Shoot me with my own gun, will you? We’re gonna bury you so fucking deep you’ll wake up a Chinaman!”

The entire gallows rattled as Jennings hit the platform, and Ambrose kicked him in the side, sending him toward the trap door. Jennings was crawling away, ever closer to the square, and once he was over it, Ezra called out, “Now!”

Ambrose lunged for the lever, dropping his shoulder and throwing all his weight into it. It threw the latch and the door opened, releasing Jennings just like the hangman had on the day he’d died.

He landed with a thud in the hole Ezra and Ambrose had dug, his body impaled on wooden spikes made from the gallows itself. He roared, either in anguish or rage, Ezra couldn’t tell. And he didn’t care. He shoved the heavy anvil used to anchor the hanging rope onto Jennings’s chest, almost blacking out from the effort of moving the thing. Once he recovered, he threw dirt over Jennings’s struggling form, pulling every bit of emotion he could from the very core of his being in order to hold the shovel he’d found propped against the base of the gallows. Jennings cursed him, taunting and railing at him, but it only served to help Ezra muster more strength from his emotions.

Ambrose hustled to join him from above, using his hands to pile more dirt into the hole. Once they’d refilled Jennings’s impromptu grave, they hopped on the fresh dirt to stomp it down.

When they both came to a stop, Ambrose bent with his hands on his knees, gasping. Then he started to laugh.

“What’s funny?” Ezra asked. “This is the most horrible thing I’ve ever done!”

Ambrose continued to laugh, though. “I’m dancing on his grave,” he said, grinning. “Always promised him I would.”

He gave the dirt one more stomp for good measure.

Jennings was still screaming from below. Ezra was both horrified by the thought of being buried like that, and pleased that Jennings was finally getting what he deserved. “What now?” he asked.

“We make sure he stays there,” Ambrose said, voice grim. “That’s our job until . . . well, until we’ve served our purpose, I guess.”

Ezra ran his fingers down Ambrose’s dusty cheek. “I’ll have you know, as a man who admired your legend, you don’t disappoint.”