CHAPTER ONE
They were waiting for Casey Angelo on the platform. The four of them standing there just the way they had been ten years earlier when Casey's father had taken his family east. They had been laughing then, and they were laughing now. Casey could almost read their minds: 'It's good to have you back, Yellow. We've missed all that fun we used to have.'
Casey stepped down from the train and stared at them. Hudson Rainier, the tallest of the four. He had long black hair, a thin hawk-like nose, mean beady eyes and a hot temper. He'd grown a little, but other than that and the fact his hair was longer he looked pretty much the way he had when he was younger. Next to him Campbell James with his red hair bearding his face now. He'd broadened out, his shoulders were wider and his chest deeper than Casey remembered. Milton Craig was the smallest. But ever since Casey had known him Milton had possessed a mean streak deep enough to compensate for his lack of inches. Milton's face had always reminded Casey of a rat. His skin was pock marked and Casey remembered him once cutting another boy's cheeks with a knife just because the boy had laughed at Milton's complexion. Finally at the far left, John Stark, standing very still and upright. The only one of the four who had ever appeared to consider the consequences of what they were doing. The fact that he always carried on regardless seemed to Casey to make him the most dangerous of all.
'We heard you were coming home, Yellow,' Hudson said, looking even taller with the wide expanse of cold sky and the mountains behind him. 'Figured we'd be here to meet you. Make you welcome, like.'
Casey nodded slowly, giving nothing away, not scared, but at the same time aware that the impression of fear might be worth giving. It might keep them off guard.
'Cat got your tongue?' Milton said, and giggled.
'It's good to see you again, Casey,' John Stark said, and nodded.
'His name's Yellow,' Milton said. 'Always was. Always will be.'
They had tied a noose around Casey's neck one time, thrown and tied the loose end over a cottonwood down by Jagged Creek, and at gunpoint had forced him to climb onto Hudson's pony. Then they had threatened to stampede the pony by firing the gun right by its ear. Casey had never been so scared in his entire life. The pony had stood there grazing on the lush grass oblivious to the fact that just a few meandering steps forward and Casey would have been swinging in the breeze like an outlaw with no luck left. They told him later that it had been a false knot. That even if the pony had bolted Casey would have just wound up in a heap on the floor. Casey hadn't believed them then, and now seeing them standing with their hats cocked forwards, their coats open — despite the freezing temperature and the snow that lay on the ground — and their guns hanging off their hips, he had no reason to change his mind. They had always wanted to be dangerous and feared. And maybe if a man believes something long and hard enough then it becomes real.
They were five years older than Casey. And whilst such a gap makes a big difference when you're ten and your tormentors are fifteen, it doesn't mean so much ten years later.
'Sorry to hear about your pa,' Campbell said, stifling his grin. 'Commiserations and all that.'
Finally Casey spoke. 'I'm sorry, too.'
It was why he was back in Tyburn Ridge. He'd come to collect his father. Robert Angelo was lying in a sealed coffin in the undertaker's yard.
Murdered.
The undertaker's name was Hap Smith. He was a bald fellow with round spectacles that gave him an air of intelligence and who always dressed in black. When Casey and the others had been kids they'd nicknamed him Happy. It was Hap who had sent the telegram to Casey and his mother in Omaha.
'I don't know as I'd have bothered if it was anyone else,' he said. 'But Robert was a fine man. It was the least I could do.'
'I'm grateful to you.'
He shook his head. 'No, it's us who should be grateful. We could do with a lawman like Robert round these parts again.'
'What's up? Have things changed?'
The walk from the station into town had seemed peaceful enough. Though Hudson and his gang had trailed Casey like a pack of hopeful coyotes, keeping their distance and laughing all the way, their heels crunching on the frozen ground and their mocking voices reminding Casey of all the humiliating things they'd done to him before his father had taken them away from Tyburn Ridge. Casey had ignored them, raised his collar against the cruel wind and headed as quickly as he could — given the ice underfoot — for the shelter of town. It was February and although the sky was cloudless all the way to the mountains the air was cold enough to freeze eyebrows and crack lips. The coyotes gave up as soon as he passed Sloppy's Saloon and he was alone by the time he reached Hap's.
The town had changed a lot since Casey had last been there. The station was the most obvious addition. The railroad had passed about a mile north of Tyburn Ridge and now the town was slowly reaching out towards it. Adobes, whitewashed with jaspe dotted the surrounding landscape and were almost invisible against the drifting snow, and the town itself had expanded in all directions. On his way to Hap's he passed numerous false fronted businesses including two saloons, of which Sloppy's was the first. Looking further towards the centre of town, beyond the well, he could see a Church that hadn't been there ten years back.
'Maybe I shouldn't moan,' Hap said now. 'Business has rarely been so good.'
'And who's doing all this killing?'
'No one in particular. There's just a general feeling of … lawlessness.'
'And my father?' Casey asked. 'Who killed him?'
He had travelled three hundred miles, not just to bring his father's body home, but to ask that very question.
Hap shook his head. 'Nobody knows.'
It wasn't the answer Casey had wanted.
'Nobody?'
'Let me pour you a drink,' Hap said. 'You look freezing. Sit down and I'll tell you what little I know.'
'Can I see him first?'
Hap sighed. The look in Casey's eyes told him there was little point in arguing. 'You're lucky it's winter. If this was August I'd have buried him the day they brought him in.'
Lucky was the last thing Casey felt: his father rode out one day and a few days later a telegram arrived from Tyburn Ridge saying his body is at the undertaker's and would someone care to come and collect it?
Hap led him out into the yard where several empty pine coffins were laid upon each other in a precarious looking pile. Their lids were stacked up next to a black four wheeled wagon. It looked as if Hap was well prepared for the next round of unlawfulness.
Against the building itself there was a tarpaulin covering another coffin. This one had its lid screwed down. Hap started to pull the tarp back. It crackled where it had frozen. Casey felt water welling in his eyes. Before the water could become tears it froze on his eyelids and he had to brush the tiny icicles away.
His father had been his one and only hero. His teacher, too. A fearless lawman; a man with a sense of right and wrong as clear as day and night; a man who commanded respect and love in equal measures. He had been tall and had walked straight. He had been the most handsome man Casey had ever seen. The strongest, too. And the gentlest. He had never shot a man without first giving that man the opportunity to walk himself straight into the cell and throw himself at the mercy of a circuit judge. Some had done just that. Some had elected to stand and fight. And die.
'Maybe I should have a look first,' Hap said. 'On my own, you know. Just to make sure that — '
'It's okay, Hap,' Casey said. 'Just open the coffin.'
It seemed an eternity before Hap had undone all of the screws. Slowly, he eased the lid off the coffin and stepped away. Casey swallowed and looked down at his father.
Casey had heard it said that some people didn't recognise their own kin in death, that once the blood had stopped pulsing and the muscles relaxed and the cheeks and eyes sank into the skull that someone you once saw every day can look like a stranger. He wasn't sure he believed such things. Maybe it was just wishful thinking on the part of people asked to identify a loved one and hoping against hope that it wasn't going to be their kin. His father looked, in death, just as he looked in life. Paler and a little thinner maybe. But his chiselled features and thick hair and strong bones were instantly recognisable.
'Where did they —'
'In the chest,' Hap said. 'Twice.' He stepped forwards and gently pulled Robert Angelo's coat open. Like the tarp, it crackled as he moved it. Beneath the coat Robert Angelo had been wearing a suit and his favourite yellow shirt that now had a small hole and a large stain over the heart. 'The second shot was further across,' Hap said, opening up the other side of the jacket. 'I'd say that they were fired in quick succession. The first went right through the heart and maybe spun him round a little. The second could only have been a moment later.'
Casey wiped more icicles from his eyes. The last time they'd spoken his father had been saddling up a grey mare with the intention of heading out towards Fort Kearney, or at least the remains of the fort — the Cheyenne had burned it down twelve years before. Word was there were two dozen fine horses – maybe more - that he could have for a good price. That was the story he'd told Casey the night before he'd left anyway. But what was he doing taking his only suit and his favourite shirt on a horse drive?
'Look after your ma,' his father had said that morning. His mother had been standing in the doorway and his father had looked at her for a long time. They had both been smiling deep in their eyes. Then his father had tipped his hat, turned that grey mare on a penny, and had ridden into the cold sun. He'd done the same thing a hundred times since the family had moved east.
Casey swallowed again and tried to compose himself. 'His gun?' he asked.
'It's locked away in my office,' Hap said. 'I didn't know whether you'd want it buried with him or not.'
Casey nodded, not knowing yet either. 'Had it been fired?'
'No. Leastways not unless someone cleaned it and loaded it again.'
Casey tried to picture the scene. His father wouldn't have been taken in a gunfight. Not so easily. Not without loosing off at least one shot. So he'd been ambushed. Walked right into it.
'You think they were rifle bullets that killed him?' Casey asked.
'I'm not sure,' Hap said. Then vociferated Casey's own thoughts almost to the letter: 'But if I know Robert then I'd guess so. I don't think he'd have been taken so easily in a fair fight.'
Casey stood there a while longer. It didn't seem right that he ask for his father to be covered up again. Once that coffin lid was closed again that would be Robert Angelo gone forever. Hap came to his rescue. 'Come on, son,' he said. 'Let's pour you that drink.'
Back in the office, a glass of whisky clenched in one trembling hand, a cigarette in the other, Casey asked Hap if there had been anything in his father's pockets. He still didn't know why Robert had been back here in Tyburn Ridge.
'Nothing,' he said.
'Nothing? Not even money?'
'Nothing.'
'Then it could have been a straight robbery?'
'Casey, your father was a good man. A good lawman. He put a lot of people in jail and more than a few hung because of him. He made a lot of friends but just as many enemies. This wasn't a straight robbery.'
Casey downed the rest of his whisky in one hit. 'I'm going to find out, Hap. I swear I shan't rest until I've found out who killed him.'
'And then what?'
Casey looked into Hap's eyes, seeing his own reflection in the man's spectacles. 'Then I'll do the right thing,' he said.