Ryan Rides Back Read online

  Ryan Rides Back

  By Bill Crider

  Crossroad Press & Macabre Ink Digital Edition

  Copyright 2010 by Bill Crider & Macabre Ink Digital Publications

  Recreated from scans by David Dodd

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  Chapter One

  Three-finger Johnny McGee was sitting on the plank sidewalk in front of Wilson's Cafe the day that Ryan rode back to Tularosa for the hanging. Wilson's was right at the edge of town, the day was clear, and McGee could see Ryan coming for a long time.

  Of course, at first he didn't know it was Ryan, and might not have believed it if you told him it was.

  It was hot, and McGee was sitting on the walk with his back to the false front of the cafe, trying to find a little shade in the middle of the morning. He sat with his legs spread into a V in front of him, throwing a jackknife at the planking, listening to the thunk, thunk, thunk that it made as its blade bit into the wood. His boots and part of the legs of his jeans were in the sun, the heat soaking into them, but he didn't seem to mind.

  When he happened to look up and see the rider coming, he thought nothing of it. The figures of the man and the horse looked tiny and insignificant, being so far away and so distorted by the heat waves rising off the hard-packed ground. It hadn't rained in Tularosa in a long time.

  When the rider got closer, almost to the pile of tin cans that lay rusting outside the town, McGee pushed back his hat and looked out from under the greasy brim trying to get a better look. His hat was worn thin in front from thousands of similar adjustments over the years.

  He saw a tall man on a bay mare, but the man's hat shaded his face and McGee didn't expect to recognize him anyway. Besides, a tin can somewhere in the pile caught a beam of the sunlight and shined it straight back at McGee's face, causing him to blink and turn away.

  McGee kept right on throwing his knife—thunk—chewing up a good piece of the board in front of him and not caring very much. Enough people would walk on it to wear it smooth again fairly soon.

  Then the man rode in front of him and McGee looked up again.

  It was Ryan, no doubt about it, even though he was changed. He was wearing a linen duster, and he held his left arm crooked and stiff, with the reins from his horse's bridle held loosely in his left hand. There was a glove on that hand, but not on the right, which swung at his side. His face was still hidden by the hat, but McGee could see part of a jagged scar now, running down the side of Ryan's face out of the shadow of the hat brim.

  Ryan held himself tall in the saddle, looking straight down the street, not turning his head an inch to either side, as if he might be looking for something or someone right in front of him.

  McGee turned his head slowly, very slowly, like a man reluctant to move at all, as if he were afraid that the least motion might attract unwanted attention to himself. He looked down the street in the direction of Ryan's gaze, but he saw nothing unusual: a woman going into the mercantile store, a man throwing a heavy feed sack in a wagon, a boy throwing a stick for a dog to fetch from the middle of the dusty street, two men entering Colby's Saloon.

  Ryan rode right on by, and McGee watched the rider's stiff, straight back for another few seconds before he became aware of a terrible pain in the little finger of his right hand. He had reached over with his left hand to massage the finger before he realized that he didn't have it anymore, that there was nothing there except a stump beginning right below where the second joint had been.

  It wasn't the first time the finger had hurt, even though it wasn't there to hurt at all, but it was the first time in a long time. He remembered the day that Ryan had shot the finger off, and how much it had hurt then. He remembered the blood spurting from the stump. Up until then, he'd been just plain Johnny McGee. But after that day he'd had a new name, a new name that would never let him forget Ryan.

  The man on the horse looked older than Ryan should look, and he held himself funny, but he was Ryan, all right.

  Three-finger Johnny McGee would bet money on that.

  The throbbing in his missing finger got worse, and he held his right wrist and wrung his hand. It didn't help. When Ryan was well past him, McGee slipped off the sidewalk, walked between the cafe and the hotel next door, and rode out to tell Kane that Ryan was back.

  "It can't be him," Kane said calmly. "Ryan's dead. You know that, McGee."

  McGee always felt uncomfortable in Kane's "office," which was really just another room of the huge house. The thick adobe walls made the room quite cool, which was pleasant, but it was dark in there. Kane didn't like the light much. McGee wondered when the last time Kane had been outside. He thought he knew. His missing finger started to throb again.

  "I know he's dead," McGee said. "And I guess you know he's dead, too. But Ryan don't know it. I saw him, plain as I see you, ridin' up the main street."

  Kane stood up behind his desk, the only piece of office furniture in the room. He was an impressive sight, no more than five and a half feet tall, but weighing well over two hundred pounds. His face was a pasty white, doughy, with drooping jowls. Dark eyes peered out from two flabby caverns of flesh. Puffy hands hung from the sleeves of the custom-made suit, white fingers writhing like thick white grubs turned over with the clods of a spring garden. Thin strands of black hair lay across the white skin on top of his head.

  "He's dead," Kane said, his voice rising. "He's dead, goddammit!" The last word thundered out, and McGee backed up a pace. "You saw someone else, someone who might have looked like Ryan. But you did not see Ryan!"

  McGee swallowed, feeling a dry lump move in his throat. "It was him, all right." He held up his right hand. "Ain't this finger that I ain't even got anymore hurtin' like the blazes? It's him!"

  Kane said nothing, simply looked at McGee's hand as if the missing finger might magically appear.

  "I guess I know why he's here, too," McGee said, lowering his hand. "I guess I know that, all right."

  Kane placed his bloated hands with their palms down on the top of his desk and rested his weight on them. "And why is that?" he said, his voice calm again, almost soothing.

  McGee tried to swallow again, but couldn't. "You know," he said. "You know as well as I do."

  Kane pushed himself back and eased down into his chair very slowly, as if afraid that he might fall if he weren't careful. "You think he's here for the hanging, do you?" He stared at McGee, who tried to see his eyes in the folds of flesh and then looked away. "I've told you, McGee, there will be no hanging."

  "But the judge said—"

  "I don't care what the judge said!" Kane's voice rose again, and McGee took another step back. "My brother never touched that whore!"

  "She wasn't—"


  "She was what I say she was, and I don't care what the judge, the town, or anyone else says. And Billy never touched her!"

  "Yessir, but the sheriff—"

  "I don't care about him, either. He's getting old, and he's a fool. Billy will not hang for the death of that whore."

  "But they're buildin' the—"

  "Let them build," Kane said, his voice very quiet now. "Let them build. They can hang themselves on it, for all I care."

  "But Ryan's here," McGee said, and his own voice had taken on a note of desperation. "Ryan's here now."

  "I don't believe that," Kane said. "I believe you saw someone else, someone who looks like Ryan, or someone you might think looks like him. Now isn't that right?"

  McGee stared at Kane, who sat there in his chair looking like a dimpled albino spider, fat and white, his eyes so hidden in shadow that he might have had only two holes in his face. McGee wanted to agree with Kane, to say that Kane must be right, that sure enough he'd just seen somebody who looked like Ryan since Ryan was dead and certainly couldn't have been riding a bay mare down the main street of Tularosa.

  McGee wanted to say that, but he couldn't. He'd seen Ryan, and he knew it. So he didn't say anything at all.

  Kane leaned forward slightly in his chair, and McGee could see drops of sweat on his head despite the coolness of the room. "I think you had better check with the sheriff," Kane said. "See if he knows about any strangers in town. Even if the man wasn't Ryan, I don't like the idea of someone I don't know showing up here right now."

  "Yessir,'' McGee said, turning to leave.

  "And McGee," Kane said.

  McGee turned back. "Yessir?"

  "Be here Friday night along with everyone else."

  "I'll be here," McGee said, though he didn't like the idea.

  "I wouldn't tell anyone else about this man you think you saw, either. Just mention it to the sheriff. That's all.”

  “I'll do that," McGee said.

  "Fine. It might even work to our advantage. It will show the sheriff that our hearts are in the right place, if you know what I mean."

  "Yessir."

  "Fine. Go do it, then."

  McGee left the room as if he were eager to get back to the sun and the heat. Kane watched him go. He was worried, true, but not unduly so. McGee was definitely not the smartest of men, though he did have a certain amount of stubborn courage. There was no doubt that he had seen someone, but it could not have been Ryan.

  Ryan had been dead for three years.

  He had to be dead, Kane thought. After all, we killed him.

  Three-finger Johnny McGee knew better. "We thought we killed him," he said, half aloud, as he walked toward the jail, which stood at the opposite end of town from Wilson's Cafe, a good fifty yards from any other building on the street. It was made of sun-dried brick, and Jim Meadows, the deputy, was sitting in front of the door in a rickety wooden chair, a double-barreled shotgun across his lap.

  When he saw McGee coming, Meadows angled the shotgun his way. "That's about far enough," he said. "You know Sheriff Bass says none of you Kane men can come to the jail."

  McGee stopped. "Look," he said. "I ain't even carryin'. I got to talk to the sheriff."

  Meadows peered at him from behind his wire-rimmed spectacles. "Sure enough, no gun. You got that knife in your pocket, though, I bet."

  McGee pulled it out. "I'll hand it to you," he said. "I got an urgent message for Sheriff Bass."

  "Won't do you no good," Meadows said. "Sheriff won't let you in to see Billy Kane nohow."

  "Don't want to see 'im," McGee said. "Just talk to the sheriff."

  Meadows thought about it. "Well, all right," he said. "Pitch me that knife first, though."

  McGee tossed the knife, and Meadows plucked it out of the air. "You can go on in," he said, "but if I was you I'd knock first. Sheriff don't like surprises."

  McGee stepped up on the plank porch and knocked on the door, then opened it and went in without waiting for anyone to ask him. Sheriff Bass was sitting at his desk, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette and looking through a stack of posters. He glanced up at McGee. "Your picture on any of these?" he said.

  "Nosir, not mine," McGee said.

  "How come Meadows let you in here, then?" Bass said from behind a swirl of smoke from the tip of his smoke. He was short, only a little taller than Kane, but not nearly as fat. He wasn't wearing his hat, and the beginning of a bald spot showed on the top of his head, though the thick hair on the sides and back of his head showed no signs of thinning.

  "I got to tell you something," McGee said.

  Bass tossed his cigarette to the floor and crushed it with his boot sole. "Tell me then, but make it quick. And I'm not going to let you see the prisoner."

  "I don't want to see 'im," McGee said. "I told Meadows that. It's just that I seen a suspicious stranger in town and thought you ought to know about it."

  "What did he do that was suspicious?" Bass said. He didn't like the idea of strangers at this time any more than Kane did.

  "It wasn't so much what he did," McGee said. "It was what he looked like."

  "Well, then, what did he look like?"

  The little finger on McGee's right hand, the finger that wasn't even there, twitched. "He looked a lot like . . . like Ryan."

  Bass laughed aloud, slammed his boots on the floor, and stood up. "You think Ryan's come back, do you? After three years? After your boss ran him out of the country like a whipped dog?"

  McGee looked down at the dusty floor. He didn't want to say anything, since he knew that Kane hadn't run anybody anywhere. He'd killed him instead.

  Bass laughed again, but it wasn't a pleasant sound. "Well, I got to say this: If he's ever comin' back, now's the time. Billy Kane about to be hung for killin'—"

  "—a whore. Mr. Kane said she was a whore," McGee said.

  Bass came out from behind his desk, stood right in front of McGee, and looked up at him. "You think he'd say that to Ryan?"

  McGee, a head taller than the sheriff, looked down at him.

  "Maybe not," he said.

  "Not on the best day he ever had," Bass said. "Not even then."

  "Maybe she wasn't a whore," McGee said. "But she lived in that little shack all by herself. Who's to say what kind of visitors she had and when she had 'em?"

  "I'm to say," Bass told him. "I'm the sheriff here, and I'm to say. I knew that girl when she was a baby. I knew her parents when they were alive. I know what kind of a woman she was."

  The sheriff walked back over to his chair, sat down, and slowly and deliberately rolled a smoke. He looked in a drawer for a match and struck it on the underside of the desk. He lit his cigarette and inhaled, then blew out a thin stream of smoke.

  "She was a fine woman," he said. "She lived alone in that shack because that's all Kane left her when he took the land. And then somebody killed her. Billy Kane. Saturday mornin' we'll hang him." He took another draw on his cigarette. "I'm surprised Ryan has the nerve to show his face back here, runnin' off and leavin' her the way he did, but I guess he heard about the murder. I guess it'd be hard to miss the hangin' of the man who killed your sister."

  Chapter Two

  Ryan saw McGee out of the corner of his eye as he passed, and thought: He was one of them. He knew that McGee would run to Kane, which was just fine with Ryan. Somebody had to tell Kane sooner or later.

  Ryan kept on riding, straight through town, looking neither to the right nor to the left, his left arm still held in that crooked, stiff way. He rode right past the jail, but Meadows paid him no mind. Meadows hadn't been in town three years ago, and to him Ryan was just another man riding a horse, no one to bother about as long as he didn't try stopping at the jail.

  About a quarter of a mile outside of town, Ryan turned off the road at a faint trail and followed it over a rocky stretch where nothing but cacti grew, the thick green stems pushing up out of the hard ground. Then he entered some scrubby oak trees, not very thick and no problem for th
e horse, hardly tall enough to offer any shade from the burning sun. When he came to the shack, he stopped the horse, threw his right leg over the saddle, and slid awkwardly to the ground. He flipped the reins over the horse's head, and she stood quietly.

  He walked over to the shack, looked around, stepped up on the small porch. The door was open, and he went inside. No one had cleaned anything up after the killing of his sister. The cot lay on its side, the blankets on the floor. The woodstove sat at an angle, one leg broken off. There were broken plates, but only a few. Sally had put up a fight, he thought.

  He straightened up the cot, picked up the broken crockery, and went back outside to see if there was still good water in the well in back. He was thirsty, and he knew the horse was, too.

  He had already decided to stay in the shack. He would be safe here, and if they came for him he would be ready. He'd made one mistake the last time, and it had almost killed him.

  He didn't plan to let that happen again.

  Late in the afternoon they started work on the gallows again. They didn't like to work in the heat of the day, and nobody blamed them. It didn't matter when they worked, anyway, as long as things were ready by Saturday.

  Two more days. People were already beginning to drift in from other places. Nobody wanted to miss a hanging.

  Billy Kane could hear the hammering and sawing from his cell. It almost made him shiver, in spite of the heat. Billy was a coward.

  He had always hated pain, even the littlest ones. He could remember when he was a boy, getting a splinter in his finger up under the nail. He couldn't remember what he'd been doing—building something, putting a roof on the chicken house, something like that. He'd reached for a board and felt the sudden, sharp pain as the splinter rammed up hard under the fingernail. He screamed and tears spurted from his eyes. He didn't want to cry, but he couldn't help it, and trying to stop just made it worse.