Hogans bluff, p.3
Hogan's Bluff, page 3
The half-dozen hands who had been commissioned to menace the homesteader had been paid a bonus only to scare the man, not commit murder. They had been instructed to dress up something like the Ku Klux and to fire a few wild shots about, just as an indication of how things might end if Hogan didn’t see sense and take the easy path. One of those in the party though was a worthless, sodden wretch by the name of Dave Jackson. This young man was seldom sober after sundown and on this night had taken more drink than was good for him. It was Jackson who had fired the shot directly at the wall of the soddie, the one that had showered Melanie Hogan in dried earth after she had awoken that fearful night.
Something about Caleb Hogan’s demeanour had put Jackson out of countenance when he walked out of his mud hut. For one thing, he was carrying a gun and did not look as though he would scruple to use it if need arose. For another, there was not the slightest trace of fear in the man’s face and that irked Dave Jackson for some reason. Here they all were, seated on their mounts wearing masks and carrying flaming brands, and this sod-busting oaf just stood there eyeing them coldly, like he would be happy to set to with them should this be needful. So irritated was Jackson by this that he decided to give Hogan a scare, nothing more than that. Raising his rifle, Jackson fired towards a spot some five or six feet from the farmer’s feet.
Some of the flatter stones that had been dug up from the earth when ploughing the land had been carried to the house and some attempt made at providing a dry area there, less muddy than the rest of the ground. By unlucky chance, the ball that Jackson fired ricocheted off one of these rocks and flew straight between two of Caleb Hogan’s ribs, inflicting a mortal wound on the man’s lung. It was all the merest ill fortune, which nobody had planned for or desired.
Scripture says that ‘Morning brings counsel’, which is perhaps merely another way of saying that what perplexes us greatly during the hours of darkness can sometimes seem much simpler when the sun rises. For Melanie Hogan, broken up by grief though she was, two things became apparent with the dawn. First off was where there was something exceedingly peculiar about this whole, tragic sequence of events. Why should a man offer five hundred dollars one minute and then organize a murder the next? It wasn’t in reason. The second point that stood out with crystal clarity was that her husband’s death must be avenged. One way or another, somebody would have to pay for having a hand in ending the life of Caleb Hogan. If the law would take on the job, then all well and good. If not, then she herself might be compelled to serve as the instrument of justice. Of one thing, she was quite certain; payment would have to be made for this terrible crime. In the meantime, she was more concerned about her children and how they were to be able to cope with the death of their father.
In the usual way of things, so far in Zachariah and Elizabeth’s lives, death had come only to those who were aged or ill. Explaining the death of a grandfather to a child, or that of a person who has been stricken with the bloody flux or something similar, is not a pleasant duty, but can at least be represented as somehow being the natural order of things. The sudden and violent death of a parent though, is altogether different. It strikes at the very heart of a child’s existence and comes like a bolt of lightning from a clear, blue sky.
The only remedy that Melanie Hogan could see for the case was to approach it all in a matter-of-fact and practical fashion. There had been tears and lamentations during the night, with her little daughter drowsing off fitfully and then awakening sobbing and heartbroken. Zachariah was more stoical, at least on the surface, but it was plain that he too was shaken to the core by what had happened. As the sun rose and shed its light through the window of their little home, Melanie said briskly, ‘Now you two, we need to think on what’s to be done this day.’
‘What would you have me do, Ma?’ asked her son, which made his mother’s heart swell with pride. He was little more than a child, but had already decided that he had to play the part of a man now.
‘Your father was killed unjustly,’ Melanie said bluntly, feeling that rough words might discourage any renewed outbreak of sobbing from Betty, ‘And I must go to town to make enquiries about the best way to proceed.’
‘You mean the police?’ asked Zachariah, who remembered how law and order had been kept back in Independence.
‘It may be so. I don’t rightly know. I believe that the nearest sheriff is some thirty miles from here. It will need to be looked into.’
‘Are we going to stay here?’ Betty enquired.
‘I can’t say, darling. Not until I’ve spoke with people in town. I won’t leave you here though, you can both come along of me, if you will.’
In the ordinary way of things, the offer of a trip to town was sure to raise a smile from both the children, but the sombre nature of the projected expedition on this occasion was sufficient to leave them both looking serious and subdued about the idea. After preparing a little porridge for their breakfast, washed down with coffee, Melanie went out to the wagon and covered her husband’s corpse with a tarpaulin. She could not allow the children to see such a dreadful sight as the dead body of their own father.
Andrew McDonald did not learn until that morning that one of his men had shot Caleb Hogan, and when he did find out he was furiously angry. One of the men who had consented to join the party sent to put fear into the owner of the bluff had come to him before breakfast that day and said that it was a terrible thing and that he was minded to lay an information against the perpetrator of the shooting.
‘Don’t be hasty now,’ said McDonald soothingly, ‘There’s no percentage in rushing forward to such a course of action as that.’
‘It ain’t right,’ said Seth Williams, who was that rare specimen – a devout and God-fearing cowboy. ‘Shooting of a man for naught. You asked for us to go and give him a scare, which weren’t precisely a sin, leastways not by my reckoning. But shooting a man, that’s something else again. I want no part of it.’
It occurred to Andrew McDonald that this righteousness on the part of Williams might have a strong business end to it. It could be that the fellow was afeared of being caught up in a murder and wished publicly to exculpate himself in advance, should any charges be laid against him for being part of the gang. Aloud, McDonald said, ‘Who fired the shot?’
‘Who d’ye think? It was that drunkard Jackson of course. Don’t it say in scripture, “Wine is a mocker and strong drink is raging”?’
‘Happen so. Was Hogan hurt bad?’
‘I couldn’t say. He dropped like stone, so I’d guess so.’
McDonald thought matters over for a spell and then said, ‘You’ve my word that I will deal with this. There’ll be something extra in your wages too, to make up for the upset, you know.’
After getting rid of Seth Williams, McDonald went in search of his wife, who was bullying some of the men down by the barn. When he had drawn her aside for a private word and given her to understand what was what, she said, ‘I’ll get one of the boys to harness up the buggy and take me into town. If it’s serious, then I should think that his wife is like to be raising Cain there. She ain’t one to hold back when she’s aggrieved, from all that I am able to collect.’
Benton’s Crossing, towards which both Josephine McDonald and Melanie Hogan were bound that morning, was little more than a hamlet. It boasted a saloon, general store, church and four dozen houses. The total population did not exceed three hundred souls, including those of tender years. Those were the permanent inhabitants, but there were frequently half as many folk again who were just passing through. The little place was on a cattle trail and often men camped out with their herds on the edge of the town and came to buy provisions in Benton’s Crossing or to get drunk, just as the mood took them. The one sign of civilization that the little town lacked was anybody to enforce law and order. There was a Notary Public, who was useful for drawing up the documents required for sales of livestock or land, but nobody competent to act over violations of criminal law. The notary actually held the post of Justice of the Peace, but in that capacity he was able only to try cases brought before him. He had no authority to investigate misdemeanours and felonies, still less to arrest anybody or bring them to justice.
The journey to town was not an easy one. Zac guessed that the bundle in back of the wagon was his deceased father, but little Betty was apparently oblivious. Melanie walked alongside, all the way to town, to save the ox from having to over-exert his self. Oxen were the slowest of God’s beasts at the best of times and she didn’t much fancy being stuck in Benton’s Crossing with an exhausted ox that could go no further that day. When first they arrived to take up their claim, Melanie had gone with her husband to visit Thomas Canning, the notary, and she recalled where his office was. It was not really an office at all, but a neat little white-painted, clapboard house. Outside hung a shingle, which announced that Thomas Canning, Attorney at Law, carried out his business at this address. Inside the house, one room on the ground floor was given over to bookshelves, cabinets and boxes of papers.
‘Report an unlawful killing, hey?’ said Canning, when the nature of the business had been revealed to him, ‘Well, that’s a rare enough occurrence hereabouts, I will say.’
Melanie had left the children with the wagon, as she did not wish them to hear their father’s death being discussed in this way. Canning continued, ‘I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs Hogan, sorry for your loss. What do you seek of me?’
‘I want the murderer brought to justice.’
‘Wait a moment, now. When you say murderer, you’re jumping the gun a little. Could be murder, might be manslaughter, maybe an accident, even suicide. Impossible to say without an inquest.’
‘You can conduct an inquest?’
‘You need a sheriff to look into the case first.’
‘The nearest being?’
‘Fort Worth. Thirty miles as the crow flies.’
Melanie Hogan stared coldly at the fussy little man seated in front of her. She said, ‘What do you suggest, I take my husband’s body away over to Fort Worth?’
There was an uncomfortable moment, while Thomas Canning seemingly considered this proposal seriously. At last, he said, ‘You want my advice, Mrs Hogan? You can’t bring back your husband and you won’t be able to stay on that land now, not without a man to work it. Were I you, I’d be inclined to return to the city or wherever it was you came from. Even if we can get the sheriff to come here, have you any evidence of who killed your husband? Witnesses? Anything other than your suspicions?’
The bereaved widow got to her feet and said quietly, ‘All of which means that you don’t want any trouble or upset and you’d rather I just vanished quietly. Well, you needn’t think it for a moment.’ Then she turned on her heel and left.
The angry departure of Melanie Hogan from the notary’s house was seen by Josephine McDonald, who had been lingering nearby for some little while, having suspected that if Hogan had been badly injured or, which God forbid, even killed, then the first thing would be somebody coming to town and trying to get the law in on the game. After the ox-cart had left, Mrs McDonald rapped smartly on Canning’s door and, because her husband was a man of such consequence hereabouts, soon learned all she needed to know. She returned home immediately and spoke to her husband, and so started a chain of events that was to lead to not a few deaths over the course of the next sennight or so.
When he learned that the man whose land he had been so desirous of acquiring for his own benefit was dead, Andrew McDonald had at least the grace to feel a little ashamed. He had not sought the man’s death, but it might certainly smooth the path a little to getting his hands on the gold that was up on the bluff. Because he felt guilty about the death, McDonald reacted by blaming somebody else for it. The perfect scapegoat was Dave Jackson; the man who had actually fired the fatal shot. No matter that Jackson had only been up at Hogan’s place any way because of orders from McDonald himself. When the man came to see his boss, McDonald was brutally direct. He said, ‘What do you mean by this? I asked you to go and put the fear of God into a man and you kill him. That won’t answer for me, you know.’
Jackson looked at him in bewilderment and said, ‘Well, there ain’t a whole lot I can do about it now. Less’n you want me to try and bring him back to life again?’
‘Don’t bother with smart talk like that. You can take your things and clear out, you hear what I tell you?’
‘You mean you’re throwing me out? For an accident like that?’
‘Accident be damned! A man’s dead, you lumbering oaf. You’ve put your own neck at hazard and maybe mine too. Best thing you can do is get clear of this district and hope that nobody was fond enough of Hogan to want to avenge him. Here’s your money up to yesterday.’ He pushed across the desk a pile of silver dollars. In a daze, Jackson picked them up and left the room.
The agricultural recession that gripped the whole nation at that time was making it harder and harder for men like Dave Jackson to obtain work. When they could find a job, wages were being driven down by the glut of unskilled labourers who flooded the market. Jackson had been nicely off here, with accommodation provided and a good wage into the bargain. He had too a particular reason of his own for not wanting to leave the ranch right then, something connected with his reasons for turning up there in search of work in the first place. As he wandered over to the cabins to collect his few belongings, he was seized by a killing rage and decided that he would be revenged upon Andrew McDonald for casting him aside in this way, even though he had been following the instructions he had been given.
The trip to Benton’s Crossing had been a fruitless one for Melanie Hogan, as she had suspected it would be before even setting out. The visit to the minister at the church was even less productive than going to the Justice of the Peace had been. She had not really thought it over, but assumed that because he was a Christian, the Reverend Edwards would simply provide a grave for her husband and read the service at his funeral. Caleb had, after all, attended church pretty regular. It turned out though that this was by no means sufficient to gain a place in Heaven, nor even in the little church’s burying ground. The minister had asked what provision Caleb had made in life for the disposal of his body, when once he was dead. ‘In short, did he belong to a burial club, insurance scheme or any such?’ asked Reverend Edwards sympathetically.
‘Nothing o’ the sort,’ said Melanie Hogan. ‘We never had a cent to spare, but what it went on vittles for the little’uns. You know us settlers ain’t exactly rolling in money, Reverend.’
‘Quite so, quite so. The thing is, Mrs Hogan, that I’m not really running a charitable concern here. There’s bills to pay, all manner of expenses. That’s the only reason I charge for burial plots and the holding of services for the dead and similar.’
‘You mean,’ said Melanie slowly, as the full import of the clergyman’s words sank in, ‘That if I don’t shell out for a grave and your services to conduct the funeral, then my husband won’t be buried in your ground.’
‘I’m sorry. If I made an exception for one deserving case, then nobody would bother to save up at all and then without the various fees and so on, the church might fold up.’
She stared in disgust at this reptile, who had the effrontery to represent himself as a man of God, and said, ‘I reckon as we can do the job by our own selves. You ever read that passage in the Book of Amos, the one as touches upon those who are hard-hearted towards the widow and orphan? You’ll be judged by that text, mister, once you enter the afterlife.’
Despite the fact that her journey to town had yielded no good, Melanie Hogan nevertheless had felt it was a thing that had needed to be done. She should at least try and settle matters according to the law, it was what Caleb would have wanted. Caleb had been fond of quoting the Bible to illustrate the fruitlessness of an individual seeking to execute justice by his own self. ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord; I will repay’, had been one of the verses that he used to bring out when anybody talked of getting their own back. Well, she had done her best to do the thing legally and there was nothing doing. If there was to be any vengeance for her husband, then she would have to undertake the job herself.
Chapter 3
In the old wooden chest that Melanie had brought with her from her home when she got married fifteen years earlier, at the age of sixteen, were various relics of her childhood. Caleb had not been at all keen on being reminded of his wife’s antecedents and background and so she did not bring out the contents of the trunk when either he or the children were near at hand. Once in a while though, when she was alone or everybody was sleeping, she opened the lid and held various items in her hands and remembered the past. Now, in the presence of her children, she lifted the lid and reached inside.
First out was a long, irregularly shaped rod, which was something over three feet in length and only fitted in the chest by being carefully positioned at a diagonal from one lower corner of the box, up towards the lid. Her bow! She had such happy memories of learning to use it when she was a little younger than Elizabeth was now. ‘What is it, Ma?’ asked Zac. She passed the length of buffalo horn, with strips of sinew attached to it, to her son.
‘What do you think it is?’
The boy took it in his hands and examined it carefully, turning it round so that he could look at it from all different angles. Then his face lit up and he said, ‘Hey, it’s a bow, ain’t it?’
