A Right and Proper Hanging

Prompt: A mysterious stranger watches from a distance

“A Right and Proper Hanging”

Old Tom Morgan was a southern gentleman by birth, a romantic by nature and a solider by profession. Right then, though, he didn't look like any of those. Stripped bare to the waist, his arms were tied behind his torso like a denuded nobleman headed for the guillotine. In truth, he resembled a cowardly horse thief from west Texas. And that's what they said he was, too. A no-good-for-nothing danged horse thief. A lynch mob was fixing to hang him, right then and there. That is, once they crossed the fast running Rio Grande and a found a suitable tree on the sunny side of the border.

This was it for old Tom. All the good things, all the bad things, everything came down to this day and this place. And it stunk, he must have thought. The river, that is. The water reeked of rotten eggs, actually. Streaks of rusty and mustard-colored minerals rushed by, an emanation from the rich sulfur and iron deposits found in the surrounding low-lying hills.

All around them, growing like blooming yuccas, fast gathering emerald clouds – the kind of fluffy monsters that frighten young children and throw down hailstones as big as your fist -- filled the afternoon sky. The dozen or so range rovers didn't seem to care. Being a little drunk didn't hurt their attitudes none.

Morgan’s horse stumbled on the shifting rocky bottom as he tried steering with his knees through the thigh-deep water. The men hooted and cajoled; all but Morgan, he wasn't laughing.

Abraham Hall - the honcho of these wranglers from Abilene - reached out and grabbed the loose reins from Morgan's horse. He led them the final 100 feet to the relative safety of the Republic de Mexico, hopefully away from the unseen eyes he’d been feeling burning holes in the back of his head for days.

And then, there it was – the biggest danged cottonwood south of the Rio Grande. It must have been five feet in diameter, as tall as a bell tower, with branches thicker than railroad ties.

“Shorty, throw me a rope,” Hall called out to one of the riders. Shorty, who stood about six-foot-three in his bare feet, tossed a line to Hall who flung one end over a sturdy limb and tied off the other end around the massive trunk. Another rider, the one they called Billy, or Bill for short, rode up to the dangling free end of the rope and knotted it good and true. This was Bill’s first hanging and he wanted to do it right.

Before they could complete the job, though, the sky darkened and a hard rain fell. The early fall warmth turned like a traitor into a mid-winter chill. Under the tree, drops the size of double-ought shot ricocheted through the branches, landing on the rider's hats and raincoats in an irregular cadence of soft, feathery thuds. Bill led Morgan's horse beneath the noose and slipped the wet hemp rope around his Georgia-born neck. Rain ran down his sniffling, aristocratic face making it hard to tell if the yahoo was crying or just catching his death of cold.

Without warning, a thousand frogs began croaking, accompanied by the sizzle sound a hard rain makes as hits the parched ground. Jacob, the youngest, and maybe the only cowboy in Texas who still believed in God, silently prayed and hoped this wasn’t a bad omen.

The first lightning bolt grounded itself less than a mile away. A couple seconds later, the thunder of Zeus himself collided with the rarefied electric air, stinging the senses and jostling the horses.

That's when they saw him - a lone horseman atop a slight ridge overlooking the U.S. side of the river only a couple hundred yards upstream. A second flash silhouetted both horse and rider with a bright blue glow like St. Elmo's Fire. He was a large man, wearing a long-riders coat and the tell-tale, flat-brimmed Stetson of a lawman. He was just sitting there.

Between thunderclaps, Hall shouted over the raging rainstorm. “Eli! Jacob! Go see what he wants. And remind him where we are.”

Through the rain dripping off his hat, Captain George W. Baylor -- hero of the Indian Wars of 1881 and former commander of the old Company A, Texas Rangers -- watched the affair and waited with patience for the gang's next move. He'd been trailing the group for three days and now it seemed things were finally coming to head. A little tired today, the balding and gray-bearded Baylor was in his mid-fifties, semi-retired and considering a run for the statehouse. Nevertheless, he still had a job to do and this time it was personal.

Through the downpour, Baylor could make out two riders as they splashed across the river back into Texas. The duo rode up on him at a full gallop -- all eight wild nostrils breathing in hellfire and rainwater and exuding a hot fleshy steam that trailed behind them and hung in the air like vaporous ghosts. Baylor didn't flinch a muscle as the riders reined in their mounts at the last possible moment to avoid a collision.

“Howdy, boys,” the Ranger offered. “Having any fun today?”

“Howdy,” said the one called Eli, noticing the round badge with a five-pointed star . “You’re a long way from the barracks, ain't you Ranger?”

“It's a fer piece.”

“Well, we was all wondering what you want, seeing how we got some business to finish across the river there in Mexico.”

“Yeah, in Mex-ee-co,” Jacob added for emphasis.

“I see that, boys. Is that fellah with the rope around his neck the horse thief I been hearing about from up north ways?”

“One in the same, I reckon,” Eli said.

The rain turned to hail and the desert took on a bizarre appearance like a boiling sea of white corn kernels bubbling up against a blackening October sky.

“I see,” Baylor replied. “Damn strange weather, don't you think?”

“Uh, yeah, damn strange,” Eli said. “You gonna try and stop us from miscarrying justice?”

“No concern of mine, since you're in Mexico.”

“I thought not. Let's go, Jake.”

The riders turned their mounts back toward the river and almost raced off before Baylor called after them.

“By the by, gents, you do know that while I don't have jurisdiction in Mexico, you are both here and present in Texas.”

“Yeah, so what?”

“Well, in Texas, where I am the law, conspiracy is a criminal act.”

“Conspiracy? What the hell? I don't hold with no damn churches and I don't see no damn spirits around here,” Eli proclaimed.

“Conspiracy is an agreement between two or more persons to break the law. It don't matter, son, where the object of the conspiracy is or will be committed,” lectured the aging captain. “From where I sit, you boys are looking at three, maybe five years, in the stockade at Fort Sam Houston, this being a federal matter and all.”

“Federal matter? Hells bells, Ranger I don't see no damn blue bellies around here, neither. Do you, Jake?”

“Nope. No dang Yankee cavalry, Uncle Eli,” Jacob replied, wearing a sickly smile that revealed a gap where several teeth should be. “Just some old, slow, fancy-talking lawman who can't figure his numbers no good.”

Looking back toward the river, Baylor counted all but one member of the lynching party riding back across the shallows, most likely curious to find out what the hold up is.

“Sorry, boys,” the lawman drawled, “But you're both under arrest in the name of law. Now don't try -- ”

Before he could finish his admonition, both Jacob and Uncle Eli grabbed for their holsters. Beneath his cavernous greatcoat, Baylor held a double-barreled, 12-gauge, lupara short gun, cocked and ready. He quickly dispatched both men to the infernal regions of Hades in a black smoky haze that arrived with a deafening blast even Satan himself couldn't distinguish from God's own thunder.

Baylor then drew his Winchester carbine and opened up on the charging cattlemen. When he took out Shorty from one hundred yards out, the others thought better of the situation and turned back south, galloping right past by Billy the Executioner who galloped off himself after the Ranger rode into the water.

Poor old Tom was left half frozen and perched precariously on a jittery steed that seemed intent on running off. Morgan was literally hanging on by his toes in the stirrups.

Captain Baylor took his own sweet time coming to Morgan's rescue, if you can call it that. He gingerly approached, holding his Winchester at the ready, surveying the impromptu gallows.

“Your name Morgan?” asked Baylor, pulling a plug of tobacco out of a dry leather pouch and biting off a chew.

“Morgan? Yeah, right, that me.”

“Thomas Morgan, of San Anton?”

“Yes! Please cut me down, Ranger.”

“I don't rightly know if I can do that, Mister Morgan. You see, I've been deputized a U.S. Marshal and I have in my possession a properly prepared and duly signed United States warrant for your arrest. It says here for desertion under fire, Corporal Morgan, and assorted other minor offenses. And I have been advised to deliver you into the waiting arms of one Colonel Matthew Marsh Blunt, commanding officer of the 16th U.S. Infantry, at Fort Bliss, post haste and most pronto...”

The Ranger turned his head and spat a load of tobacco juice on an encroaching scorpion that was floating by on a leaf in a rivulet. The hail and rain subsided and the sky began to clear as fast as it clouded up.

“That way you can get a fair trial, you see, and after that, a right and proper hanging,” the captain said. “That's a fine looking saddle -- where'd you steal that?”

“I don't know what you are talking about. I was a confederate officer, like you were, I would think. I am not no solider now. I am a farmer. Ask my wife. Ask my kids.”

“Well, it's probably all a mix up with another Thomas Morgan of San Antonio. They'll figure it out in El Paso, I would think.” And he spat at another creeper.

“I am not a deserter, I'm telling you. Now, please, cut me off this horse before he goes loco,” Morgan pleaded.

“Or if you prefer,” Baylor continued. “I can kick the son-of-a-bitch horse out from under you right now and save the good people of the State of Texas five hundred dollars -- ”

“You can't just hang me…”

“That's the cost of trying, hanging and burying your sorry dead body. For horse thievery, that is. If the army doesn't hang you first. What will it be, son?”

“You got no right.”

“Wrong answer, soldier boy. I may have forgotten to mention I get paid a special bounty on you because I had to come all the way into Mexico -- as a private citizen, of course -- and recover the corpus delecti, that's you, being all dead and murdered. And I get some additional expense money to boot, and that horse you’re on."
“But it’s not my horse.”

“I know. It’s mine.”

Baylor dismounted and walked up to the other horse. He examined the saddle, and then he reached beneath and unhitched it. Once satisfied, he slapped the horse on its hindquarter, calling him by name - “Git on, Bowie. Git.”

The horse jerked, pulled and then scampered away, dragging Morgan off its back, along with the saddle, letting him fall with his feet still hung up in stirrups. The weight of the saddle, suspended upside down, pulled down hard on Morgan's already snapped neck.

On his way back across the river, leading his recovered horse with Morgan's body lashed sideways across its back, Baylor wondered where the thief had stolen the fine Mexican saddle, such saddles being so hard to trace. It could take months to find the rightful owner. Maybe years.

(Word Count: 2000)