Portlandtown: A Tale of the Oregon Wyldes (38 page)

“For so very little…”

Joseph raises his head, defiant.

“My life for theirs.”

The Hanged Man stares at Joseph, searching for the man he once knew. A stranger glares back at him.

“Made your choice then?”

“I made it a long time ago.”

The Hanged Man frowns. “Won’t be a rifle in the trees, not this time. We end it like men.”

The Hanged Man draws a pistol from his belt—not his, but a smaller revolver, one he’s never used. He flips it to Joseph, thinking nothing of the man catching what he should not see.

“Recognize it? You carried that pistol once, drew it beside me.”

Joseph turns the weapon over in his hands, testing its weight.

“Feels light.”

“One round each. All we’ll need.”

Joseph nods slowly, then fixes his attention on the Hanged Man.

“Let her go.”

The Hanged Man glances at the child in his arms. It would be so easy. He could set Joseph free, though his friend would not understand. He must be made to.

“Cross me again and I will kill them … beginning with this one, I promise.”

“I believe you.”

The Hanged Man hesitates before holding the child out at arm’s length.

The woman comes forward, snatching the child away quickly. Brought together at their mother’s breast, both infants cease their wails almost immediately. She turns to escape, but the Hanged Man’s hand is already on her shoulder.

“No, my dear,” he says, drawing the woman back. “You stand with me.”

*   *   *

“I made a promise to our boy, Marshal,” called the Hanged Man, raising his voice above the storm. “I’ll have my gun back.”

The marshal felt the pistol grow warm in his hand. Soon it was red hot. He didn’t care. It could blister his fingers until they bled. He would never let go.

“Have it, then!”

The marshal raised and fired the Hanged Man’s weapon. It felt good. He cocked the hammer and pulled the trigger five more times in rapid succession, each shot finding its intended target.

The Hanged Man never raised his gun.

The last bullet snapped the dead man’s head backward and then he went down, flat on his back in the water.

*   *   *

Henry was ten feet from the Hanged Man when the last bullet dropped the dead man into the shallow water. From his position at the edge of the alley, he couldn’t see who’d done the shooting and had no desire to step into view lest he become a target as well. What he wanted to do was run, in the opposite direction, as fast as he could.

(
not yet
)

Henry did as he was told.

*   *   *

The marshal cocked the hammer but did not depress the trigger. He waited, arm raised, site aligned on the dead man. Slowly, his hand began to shake. His breath became ragged. His vision blurred. The fire that had burned so brightly in his heart and in his mind since unleashing the weapon was doused, leaving him cold and exhausted and standing ankle deep in a flooded alleyway drenched in orange light.

A hand touched his shoulder. “Marshal?”

The marshal caught Joseph’s eye, felt it stare right through him, and knew his son-in-law was blind and had been for more than a decade. And still the man could see him, clearly, as he always did.

“I’m sorry,” the marshal said, lowering the dead man’s weapon.

Joseph opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out.

He was still alive.

There was no heart to begin beating, no breath to start breathing, but Joseph sensed the Hanged Man return to life moments before the dead man rose from the water.

“Oh my god,” Kate whispered. “Joseph…”

“I see him.”

The marshal swung his gaze forward again to see the Hanged Man striding toward them. He wanted desperately to raise the red-handled pistol and fire again, but suddenly it felt so heavy in his hand the marshal couldn’t begin to lift it. He stumbled forward, laboring to raise the pistol above his waist.

“Damn you!”

Kate reached for her father. “Dad, no!”

“Kate!”

Joseph made several decisions at once, the first being that they would not escape the way they had come before the Hanged Man opened fire. That left two options: stand and fight or hope that the door immediately to his left was as poorly secured as the back-alley entrance to the bookstore.

Joseph raised his foot and kicked the door, popping it open on the first try. Water poured through the opening and down a flight of stairs into the basement of the building.

“Kate, come on!” Joseph said, snatching up Kick.

Kate saw Maddie disappear through the open doorway, quickly followed by Joseph and Kick. She turned back to her father and grabbed his free hand.

“Dad, let’s go!”

The marshal pulled away from his daughter. “Leave me, Katie!” For a moment, the pistol was light enough for the marshal to raise it to chest height and take aim.

“You will not touch my family, you son of a—”

A gunshot rang out in the alley, although it was not the marshal who had fired his weapon. To his surprise, neither was it the Hanged Man. There was, however, no mystery as to the intended target.

“No!” Kate screamed as her father stumbled backward, gripping his right shoulder. She steadied him before he could fall into the water.

The Hanged Man halted. He didn’t raise his gun to finish the job but rather turned on the spot and yelled into the darkness behind him.

“They’re mine!”

When the dead man turned back, the world exploded in fire as the lantern struck his chest and shattered.

By the time the alley came back into focus it was empty.

*   *   *

Kate touched only the edge of the last step as she and the marshal pitched forward into the darkness. She let go of her father just before they both hit the floor with a wet thump.

The water was already several inches deep, with more continuing to pour in through the open doorway. Kate sat up and reached for her father, finding nothing. The room was dark, but the marshal had to be close. She blinked hard, trying to will her pupils wider.

She heard movement.

“Marshal?”

“I got him,” Joseph whispered.

Kate got to her feet. “Where are the kids?”

Joseph led Kate and her father past a series of shelves stocked with boxes and equipment. After several more twists and turns they came to a second stairwell, which climbed to a landing and a door. There was no one there. And then there was.

“Mom?”

Kate closed her eyes and put her arms around Maddie. Kick said nothing but found room in his mother’s embrace alongside his sister. When she finally opened her eyes, Kate was surprised by how well she could see in the dark. The pain on her father’s face was easy to see.

“How bad is it?”

The marshal coughed. “Stings is all.”

Joseph pressed lightly on the front of the marshal’s shoulder and the old man hissed.

“Bullet’s lodged in the muscle near his clavicle. Needs to come out, but I think he’s okay for the moment.”

“I’m fine,” the marshal said, gritting his teeth as he stood up. “I can walk. Where are we?”

“Jenner Hardware and Electric,” Joseph said. “Basement, by the looks of it.”

“There’s a front entrance on Washington Street,” Kate said. “We can cut back to Third and then the store is just—”

“No,” the marshal said. “You can’t hide from him. He’s not like the others. He’ll find me … he’ll find you.”

“He won’t find me,” Kate said. “If he’s not like the others, he’ll have the same blind spots as anyone else. I can hide in plain sight and he won’t see me.”

“Or us,” added Maddie. Kick nodded.

“Then we’ll split up,” Joseph said. “I’ll lead him away.”

The marshal shook his head. “Bastard doesn’t want you, he wants…”

The marshal reached to his belt and closed his hand on nothing.

“Oh, no…”

It was gone. The bullet had been a distraction, but now the pain in his shoulder was nothing compared to the empty feeling in his hand. How could he have lost it?

“Marshal?”

“I dropped it!”

“Dropped what?”

“The pistol! When I fell it must have slipped, somewhere in the water, by the door, I couldn’t … I have to go back!”

“Leave it,” Kate said.

The marshal didn’t understand. “We can’t let him have it.”

“It didn’t even slow him down, Dad. What good is it?”

Joseph knew.

“It’s not what it does to him, but what he can do with it.”

Kate stared at her husband and saw he believed this to be true.

“I never reloaded, not once,” said the marshal. “If he … if he has it—”

“Marshal!” called the dead man’s voice from inside the basement.

Joseph pulled the kids behind him. He motioned for Kate to do the same, but she held her ground. It was the marshal who moved first.

“Don’t wait for me,” he said, and tried to move past his son-in-law. Joseph cut him off.

“I’ll go,” he whispered. “I’m better in the dark.”

The marshal shook his head. “My fault. I go.”

“You’re shot.”

The marshal didn’t care. He would take another bullet if he had to. It was his mistake, thus it was his mistake to fix.
It
was his.

“I don’t care,” he said, then realized Joseph was no longer paying attention to him. “Don’t turn your back on me, Joseph. You can’t take this on by yourself.”

When Joseph turned back, the marshal could see the man’s fear, even in the dark.

“Your daughter already did.”

*   *   *

The Hanged Man listened for the telltale hum of the red-handled revolver, but it was gone. He’d lost it after the woman had thrown the lantern in his face, but now that his head was clear he should have been able to pick it up again. The marshal couldn’t have put enough distance between them to quiet its call. Something had changed.

He peered down a row of shelves filled with boxes. Nothing. They were close, he was sure of it, but without the pistol’s voice to guide him, the Hanged Man moved more cautiously.

He wasn’t afraid—they couldn’t kill him, no one could—but the dead man was beginning to sense he might not be as indestructible as he’d once believed. The wounds he’d suffered at the carnival, while causing little damage, had refused to heal. He had no doubt the marshal’s assault would prove equally insignificant, but one of the bullets had struck his hip and now he could feel the bones grinding together unnaturally. If such a wound did not heal, would it ultimately render him lame? He couldn’t die, but could he be broken? That might be worse.

The Hanged Man didn’t know. Perhaps Henry could find an answer in the book. If not, there was always …

No.

Not yet. Not without his weapon. Not without blood.

Something splashed behind him and he spun to see Henry kneeling in the water at the foot of the stairs.

“Dammit,” Henry said. He started to stand but was grabbed around the neck and hoisted completely off his feet by the Hanged Man.

“Stay out of my way.”

Henry managed to choke out a sound that might have been agreement and then was dropped onto the wet floor.

The Hanged Man turned away from the young man, half expecting to be shot in the back. The bullet never came.

“I’m waiting, Marshal.”

The Hanged Man listened. He heard water falling, and the fool breathing behind him, but there was nothing else, no hum, no call. He peered down another aisle and then moved on. Only he didn’t move. Something wasn’t right. He couldn’t see it, he couldn’t hear it, but something in this particular aisle felt wrong, something right in front of his face.

*   *   *

The Hanged Man’s eyes fell on Kate. He didn’t see her, but it required every ounce of concentration Kate could muster not to scream. The basement storeroom offered little in the way of camouflage save for shadow and boxes, which meant even a shallow breath might give her away. The dead man’s eyes crossed Kate’s and she was sure he had her.

But the eyes moved on, and soon so did the man, down the center aisle, deeper into the basement.

Toward her family.

Kate moved forward silently. At the end of the aisle, she waited as long as she dared and then peered around the corner. The Hanged Man was gone. Looking the other way, she saw the door ajar, water still flowing down the stairs, but nothing else.

He has a partner,
Kate thought. She’d heard the Hanged Man speaking to someone moments earlier, but whoever it had been was gone.

Or hiding.

Staying low, Kate slipped around the corner and began searching the water for the Hanged Man’s pistol. It was too dark to see beneath the surface, which meant feeling her way along the floor until she found the thing that until recently she’d wanted desperately to be lost. The irony was not lost on Kate.

Something moved in the dark beside her.

Kate froze, searching the darkness for trouble. There was nothing to be found. She listened for a moment longer, then returned to the search. It had to be close. Both hands slipped across the basement floor and then her fingers touched metal—she’d found it.

Kate lifted the dead man’s gun from the water. It was heavy, enough so that it required both hands to hold it comfortably by the handle. And it did feel comfortable. Kate wondered why she’d been reluctant to hold it in the marshal’s presence.

Somewhere, in the distance, she thought she heard a faint hum.

*   *   *

The Hanged Man smiled.

*   *   *

Kate stood up, her attention still consumed by the weapon in her hand, which was why she failed to notice Henry until he was standing right beside her.

“Don’t move, lady.”

Kate moved.

Henry didn’t have time to react as Kate spun and knocked the weapon from his hand. Had his finger been on the trigger, Kate would have been shot. Instead, she was able to level the Hanged Man’s gun at Henry’s head before he could recover. It never occurred to Henry that a wet pistol would never fire.