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  THE GUNSMITH 424: THE HANGING WOMAN

  By J. R. Roberts

  Copyright © 2017 by Robert J. Randisi

  First Smashwords Edition: April 2017

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  Cover image © 2017 by Tony Masero

  Visit Tony here

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with the Author.

  It all started when Clint Adams found a naked woman hanging from a tree, apparently the victim of a lynching. But his decision to cut her down and take her to the nearest town, Winslow, Arizona, put him at odds with Albert Stoll, a religious cult leader who had taken over the town, closed down all the saloons and whorehouses, and enforced his rules with a team of armed disciples.

  At the risk of his own life, Clint vowed to free the town from Stoll’s grip, and prove that he was complicit in the lynching of an innocent woman.

  Chapter One

  The body was swaying gently.

  It was naked.

  It was a woman.

  Clint Adams was riding through Wyoming, not on his way from anywhere in particular, nor on his way to anywhere. Just riding, enjoying the day, letting Eclipse, his Darley Arabian, set his own comfortable pace. He saw the buzzards first, circling, then spotted the tree from a long way off, with something hanging from it. He knew what it was, and was tempted to ride the other way, but in the end he headed for it.

  As he got closer he could see the body swaying gently in the fall breeze. Then, closer still, he saw that the body was naked, and female.

  When he reached her he reined in and sat his horse, just staring. She was young, pretty in life, with a trim body that was now just a bag of bones. Who could have hated her enough to not only string her up, but to do it to her naked?

  He had a few options:

  He could leave her there, ride to the nearest town and report it.

  He could cut her down. But if he did that he’d have to bury her so scavengers wouldn’t get to the body. Or he’d have to toss it over his horse and walk to the nearest town. Or, at least, the nearest occupied ranch or settlement.

  If he left her there, the buzzards were sure to get to her. The fact that they hadn’t, yet, indicated that she hadn’t been hanging there all that long.

  He dismounted, walked to the tree she was hanging from, and checked the ground. It was a mass of tracks, made by men and horses. The rope was tied in such a way to indicate someone knew what they were doing.

  A lynching, for sure.

  “What did you do?” he asked, looking up at her.

  From what he could see, in life she would have been under thirty, about five foot five, slender, well built, maybe a saloon girl or prostitute? She could have worked in a store as a clerk, or been married, but then what reason would anyone have to lynch her? It was more likely something happened in a saloon or a whorehouse.

  He decided he had to cut her down. He couldn’t just leave her there. He went to his saddlebags for a knife he rarely carried on him, and used it to cut the rope. He wasn’t able to catch her, so she fell unceremoniously to the ground with a dull thud.

  He got his blanket from his horse and wrapped her in it, lifted her, slung her over his saddle and then tied her to it. Taking up the reins, he started walking. He hoped the next town wasn’t too far. There had to be one fairly close, for whoever lynched her to have ridden out here. With that in mind, he started to follow the tracks, which led him to a road ...

  ~*~

  He walked a few miles when he suddenly saw a buckboard coming toward him. As it drew closer he could see it carried a man, a woman and a small girl. He stopped walking and waited for them to reach him. The man reined in his team, while the woman put her arm around the girl.

  “Havin’ some trouble?” the man asked.

  “Not me,” Clint said, “but I found somebody who did.”

  “What happened?” the woman asked.

  “Well ... ” Clint said, looking at the little girl, “ ... I found someone a few miles back, dead, and I was hoping there was a town nearby.”

  “We just came from Winslow,” the man said. “We get our supplies there. It’s a good sized town with an undertaker and a sheriff.”

  “Is it far?”

  “A few miles,” the man said. “Can we help?”

  “Well ... why don’t you step down so we can talk about it?” Clint suggested, giving a pointed look toward the girl, again.

  “All right,” the man said.

  “Now, Henry—” the woman started, as he handed her the reins.

  “It’s all right, Margaret. The man just wants to talk.”

  He stepped down from the buckboard, approached Clint and extended his hand.

  “I’m Henry Fitch,” he said, “this is my wife Margaret and our little girl, Letty.”

  “Hello,” Margaret said. Letty just stared.

  “My name’s Clint Adams,” Clint said. “Happy to meet you, Ma’am.” He looked at Henry. “Could we, uh, turn ... ”

  “Oh, sure.”

  The men turned their backs so the two females couldn’t hear them.

  “The body I found is a woman,” he told Henry. “I found her hanging from a tree, naked. It looks like she’s been lynched.”

  “A woman?” Henry asked. “Lynched?”

  “Maybe you know her?” Clint asked.

  He moved the blanket aside just long enough for the man to see her face. Henry blanched, stepped back and suddenly his whole demeanor changed. He hurried back to his wagon and climbed aboard.

  “I was hoping you could give me a ride with her—” Clint started.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Adams,” Henry said, taking the reins from his wife. “We can’t help you.”

  “What’s wrong?” Clint asked. “Did you know her?”

  “And if I was you,” Henry said, “I’d put that body right back where I found it. Nobody in Winslow is gonna thank you for bringin’ it there.”

  “But Mr. Fitch—” Clint started.

  Henry Fitch cut him off by shaking his reins at his horses, directing them around Clint and the body. And then galloping them off.

  Strange.

  Chapter Two

  Clint was sure that Henry Fitch had recognized the woman. For some reason that changed the man’s mind about helping. But he couldn’t heed the advice about staying away from Winslow. What else was he supposed to do with the body? Put it back? Just bury it and move on? He wished he was that kind of man. It probably would have been easier.

  Fitch had said the walk was a few miles. It seemed longer than that, and Clint took a break for some water. Eclipse didn’t need the rest, not considering the slow pace and the fact that he was carrying less weight than he usually did.

  He looked to the sky and saw that some of the buzzards had decided to follow them. They were going to have a long wait if he had anything to say about it.

  Picking up the reins he started walking again. It was no surprise that he once again ran into some people on the road. This time there were two riders, coming from behind him. He stopped, waited to see if they’d stop, or ride past.

  It was two men—ranch hands from the look of them. They wore guns, but just for show. They weren’t weapons that were well cared
for, or often used. He could tell that at first glance.

  The two men stopped alongside him.

  “Who ya got there?” one of them asked.

  “A woman,” Clint said. “I found her hanging from a tree. Would you know anything about that?”

  “Hey,” the other man said, “we stopped to see if you needed help and you’re accusin’ us of lynchin’ a woman?”

  “Not accusing,” Clint said. “Sorry if it came out that way. I just thought maybe, if you were from around here, you might’ve heard something about it.”

  “I’ll tell ya what we heard, friend,” the first man said. “We heard nobody better cut that tramp down and bring her body back to town. That’s what we stopped to tell you.”

  “That’s what you call stopping to help me?”

  “It’s the best we can do,” the second man said. ”Nobody in town is gonna like you bringin’ her in.”

  “Does the whole town know she was lynched? Naked?”

  “We told you all we can tell you without gettin’ into trouble ourselves,” the first man said. “We gotta move on.”

  “Wait, wait,” Clint said, as they started to ride away. “Who was behind the lynching? Who are you gonna get into trouble with?”

  “Talk to the sheriff,” the first man shouted back. “He’ll set ya straight.”

  “Wait,” Clint said, “the sheriff knew about this?” But the men had ridden out of earshot.

  So, taking this body into town was going to cause a lot of people some discomfort, and was probably going to cause him trouble. Great. Stop to do the right thing, and this was what happened.

  He looked up at the buzzards again. Leave her for them, or take her into town? He started walking.

  ~*~

  Winslow was a decent sized town, as Henry Fitch had told him. He passed a couple of streets lined with homes before he reached the main street, where the day’s business was underway. There was a lot of foot traffic, as well as horses, wagons and buckboards. As he walked with the body over his saddle, he started to attract attention. Along the way he passed several saloons that had been closed and boarded up. Odd. Saloons were usually the going concerns in any town.

  There was a man with a white apron in front of the mercantile, sweeping the boardwalk. As Clint got closer he saw that it was more a boy than a man, who stopped and leaned on his broom.

  “I’m looking for the sheriff’s office,” Clint said. “Can you direct me?”

  “Sure thing, mister,” the boy said, pointing. “It’s down the street about two blocks, on the right. It ain’t one of the newer buildings in town.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  “What ya got there, mister? A body?”

  “That’s right,” Clint said. “A body.”

  As Clint walked away the boy yelled, “You kill ‘im?”

  Clint ignored the question and kept walking.

  As the boy said, after two blocks he came within sight of the sheriff’s office, located in an old, faded looking building. Around it, newer structures had been raised, probably within the past year or two.

  Still under the gaze of the citizens he passed, he walked the horse to the front of the office and stopped. For the sake of the people watching, he looped the reins, although loosely, around the hitching rail. He then mounted the boardwalk and entered the sheriff’s office without knocking first.

  Two men were in the middle of an argument, and stopped talking as Clint entered. He did not catch any of their words, didn’t know what the argument was about. But from their demeanor, and the expressions on their faces, it was an intense one.

  One man was in his forties, with sandy-hair sticking up in all directions, as if he had been running his hands through it. There was a badge on his chest that read SHERIFF. His clothes were frayed, and dusty.

  The other man was in his fifties, was dressed better, with a close haircut. Clint was sure he would turn out to be a man of influence in Winslow.

  “What do you want?” the older man demanded.

  “Hey!” the sheriff snapped. “This is my office. We don’t treat people who need help that way, here.”

  The men put the hat he had been holding in his hand on his head, pointed at the sheriff and said, “We’re not done.”

  “I’m sure of that, Deacon.”

  The man stormed past Clint and out the door, slamming it behind him.

  “The Deacon?” Clint asked.

  “Not the Deacon,” the lawman said. “That’s actually his name. Todd Deacon. He’s a rancher around here—owns a big spread.”

  “How big?” Clint asked.

  “Not as big as he wants it to be,” the sheriff said. He ran his hands over his hair, trying to smooth it down, but it wasn’t cooperating. Then he looked at Clint.

  “I’m Sheriff Gaines. What can I do for you, mister?”

  “You can tell me who in this town would want to lynch a young woman,” Clint said. “Naked.”

  The sheriff stared at him, then said, “Oh, boy.”

  Chapter Three

  The sheriff poured a couple of drinks from a bottle he kept in a bottom drawer, and they sat on either side of the desk, facing each other.

  “Her name was Agnes Kimball—everybody called her Aggie.”

  “Everybody knew her?”

  “A lot of people did,” Sheriff Gaines said. “She was a saloon girl and a whore. Men liked her, women hated her.”

  “So it was the women who lynched her?”

  “No,” Gaines said, “it was a group of men who took her out there.”

  “Why?”

  “I said she was a saloon girl,” Gaines said. “That was back when we had saloons.”

  “Yeah, I noticed some boarded up as I came into town,” Clint said. “What’s that about?”

  “Feller came to town last year, started preachin’.”

  “But not Deacon.”

  “No,” Gaines said, “this feller’s name was Stoll, Albert Stoll. It took him eight months to get this town under his thumb. He had all the saloons closed.”

  “How could he do that?” Clint asked. “What about the saloon owners? The mayor? The town council?”

  Gaines raised his right thumb and said, “All under his spell.”

  “Spell?”

  “I don’t know what else to call it,” Gaines said. “They all believe everythin’ he says.”

  “And what about you?”

  “I wanna keep my job,” Gaines said, with a shrug. “It’s all I’ve got.”

  “So what about Aggie?”

  “Aggie,” Gaines said, with the ghost of a smile. “She didn’t buy into what Stoll was sellin’. Never did. She was always talkin’ against him.”

  “That’s why he had her lynched?”

  “That was pretty much the reason,” Gaines said, “but not exactly. See, a feller named Bob Adelson got himself killed. Stoll said Aggie did it, and that was all the town needed.”

  “and they dragged her out there and lynched her?”

  Gaines nodded.

  “Why didn’t you stop them?”

  “I tried. I rode out there to do just that, but I was too late.”

  “Not too late to cut her down, though.”

  Gaines sat back in his chair and took a deep breath.

  “I’m not a brave man, mister—say, I never got your name.”

  “Adams, Clint Adams.”

  “The Gunsmith?”

  “That’s right. What’s this about not being brave?”

  “Stoll has men workin’ for him,” Gaines said. “They enforce his word.”

  “Gunmen?”

  “Some of them.”

  “What’s he supposed to be, this Stoll?” Clint asked.

  “Some sort of religious leader,” Gaines said.

  “Don’t you have a preacher, or priest, in town?”

  “We did,” Gaines said. “but Stoll had the church boarded up, just like the saloons.”

  “I don’t like the way this sounds,�
�� Clint said.

  “Me, neither, but there ain’t much I can do about it,” Gaines said.

  “What about Aggie’s body?” Clint asked. “Can we take it to the undertaker?”

  “You can try,” Gaines said. “I don’t know about gettin’ her buried, here. That’ll be up to Mr. Stoll.”

  Clint studied the sheriff for a few moments, wondering if the man was also completely under the mysterious Mr. Stoll’s thumb?

  “Well,” Clint said, getting to his feet, “I’m going to give it a try.”

  “The undertaker is one street North,” Gaines said, “then turn left. You’ll see it.”

  “Thanks. And the nearest livery?”

  “Two streets North, and to the right, at the end of Oak Street.”

  “All right,” Clint said. “I hope Mr. Stoll hasn’t had all the hotels boarded up, as well.”

  “You gonna stay?” Gaines asked.

  “For a while.”

  “Are you gonna go up against Mr. Stoll?”

  “I guess that’ll be up to Mr. Stoll,” Clint said.

  Chapter Four

  Clint located the undertaker’s office, and attracted a lot of attention while walking there. Once again, he left the horse with the body in front while he stepped up onto the boardwalk and entered.

  A short gentleman dressed in a black suit, who looked about thirty, turned to face him as he came in.

  “Can I help you, sir?” he asked.

  “Are you the undertaker?”

  “I am,” the man said. “The name’s Lewis Tully. What can I do for you?”

  “You look a little young for this job,” Clint observed.

  The man smiled. “It was my grandfather’s business. He just died recently and I’ve taken over.”

  “Well,” Clint said, “I’ve got a body outside.”

  “Fine,” the man said, “I’ll help you tote it inside.”

  “Before you do,” Clint said, “you should know who it is. I just found out her name’s Agnes Kimball.”

  “Aggie?” Tully asked. “You found her? Where?”

  “Hanging from a tree a few miles outside of town.”

  “Barbarians!” Tully said. “Come on, let’s get her inside.”