The Hanging at Stinking Creek

Gaylon Barrow


Chapter One

The wiry old man was about to commit an unjustified murder. He lifted his rope off his saddle and walked over to the cottonwood tree where he tossed it over one of the sturdier limbs.

High overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees. The hillside sloped gently down through a heavy stand of cottonwoods and aspen toward water gleaming in the summer sunlight from a winding creek. Beyond, was cattle country, beautiful, fertile rangeland with its vast spreading hills, rolling and grassy. The dewed grass of the hills glistened emerald green in the early morning sun and there was a redness in the east from the sunrise. Somewhere to the northeast lay the Sulphur River Bottoms.

The grove of cottonwoods was a place of color and beauty. Mockingbirds were singing off somewhere in the distance; blackbirds soared overhead; a jackrabbit could be glimpsed as he darted by.

This was a restful, beautiful, strength-giving place. A tranquil place.

And on this unspoilt land four riders had gathered under a great spreading cottonwood. Three of them were in the act of grasping a young man, a boy of about eighteen, who was lanky and stout, and bore the mark of a woodsman.

A long sigh came from the fourth, the wiry old man, as he took out his handkerchief and wiped his face. His visage twisted in an evil sneer. "I'm going to hang you now, Boy," he began in a perfectly serious tone. "I'm going to hang you an' then I'm going to leave you strung up here in this old tree so the next coyote thinking he can ride onto my range an' slaughter one of my cows will think twice. You hear?"

The boy looked puzzled, then his eyes opened wide. His homely face--ordinarily red--was now tense and pale. "I tell you, I nev'r shot that cow!" he cried, struggling against the grip of the old man's men. "I was just ridin' through. I ain't nev'r shot no cow in my life. Nev'r!"

The old man, medium height, lean, square-shouldered, with brown wrinkled skin, had black, beady eyes. His face was arresting, with its leanness, and he had a kind of dangerous elegance to his stance. He spit and shook his head. He pushed his high-crowned black hat to the back of his head. White hair sprouted from under this, and his brows and mustaches were of the same color.

"Hell," he said softly. "Go on, Spence, you an' the boys get his hands tied on up behind his back and get his sorry rear back up onto his horse."

Without a word, the tallest of the three men reached for the boy's hands and jerked them back behind his back.

The boy, his eyes neither dark nor light, had an expression of disbelief on his face. "I didn't do it!" he continued to protest as Spence knotted his hands.

"Quit your yapping an' take it like a man," Spence muttered, as he struggled with the boy's hands.

The boy watched the old man with intent eyes. "You can't hang me like this! You got to take me to the law. You got to take me to the law. They'll check it out. They'll find the man who shot this cow."

The old man squinted at the boy and spat onto the hard dry dirt. "Boy, out here, I'm the law." He swelled his chest like a gamecock and stuck his thumb to an ebony button on his vest for emphasis. "On my land, what I say goes." He looked at the men around the boy. "Well? Come on, let's get on with it. We don't have all day to coddle no cow murderer."

"But...."

The men jerked him angrily, allowing Spence to finish tying his hands. They lifted him up onto the saddle of his horse.

"Come on then," the old man said, as he formed a loop in the rope hanging from the tree. "Bring that horse on over here."

The horse, seeming to sense his master's distress, resisted. The men pulled him. Soon he was lined up by the cottonwood tree. The old man gave the noose a little careless toss and it fell perfectly over the boy's head.

"Anything else you got to say, Boy?" the old man asked, as he made sure that the rope was secure around the trunk of the tree.

The boy flinched in the saddle, his mouth opened, but no sound came out.

"I said, you got anything else to say before we hang you, Boy?" the old man asked louder.

"Look Mister," he said. His eyes darted from the tree to the old man's face and back.

"You got to believe me. I nev'r done nothin' wrong to you or yours. I nev'r shot that cow, an' what's more I don't know who did. Please take me to the law."

The old man held his head high and his eyes flashed with a fierce fire.

The boy could see the devil looking out of his eyes.

"I told you," the old man said, his impatience growing by the second. "Out here, I'm the law. Now, if you don't have anything to say, you can quietly prepare to meet your maker." The old man took off his hat and slowly raised his arm.

"No wait!" screamed the boy.

The old man stopped the upward motion of his arm. He glared at the boy. "What is it?" He asked impatiently.

"If you-all going to hang me, would one of you please write to my mama? Tell her what happened to me. Would you do that?"

The four men looked at each other, troubled by the request. They were rugged men, hardened by the brutality of frontier life. To them, living the life they did, the taking of a man's life was not thought to be a matter of importance.