On a Gut Feeling

“You burn your dead here?”

“Yeah,” the deputy said, his attention quickly drawing away.

Georgia Lasko looked to where the deputy and the few hundred gathered townsfolk were staring. A cart was rolling up with a cage in the back. It came to a stop and a couple rough-skinned deputies unlocked the cage and yanked a man out of it. He was sobbing, wearing a beat up brown suit and tied at the wrists with a length of rope. Georgia noticed it was rope, not metal handcuffs. Odd, like most things out this side of the country.

“Yeah, I saw there wasn’t any graveyard,” Georgia said just to finish the conversation. “Back home you can hardly walk around without tripping over a headstone.” The deputy wasn’t listening anymore, was watching his fellow officers manhandle their prisoner at the front of the crowd.

An older man started reading from a tome, might have been a priest though he looked like anybody else in pants and a vest, no robes or beads. She couldn’t hear the scripture with the crowd getting worked up now, yelling and jeering about sins and good riddance. Typical things you hear before an execution.

Georgia scanned this hub nestled on the north side of Tanbark where the dirt road split off in both directions, the crowd gathered in the center. To one side was some kind of pyre monument, the other was where the cart had come, towards the saloon she’d left once the commotion started. She hadn’t thought much about there not being a gallows, took it as another regional peculiarity. A moment ago she assumed they would shoot the man, drop him in a box and burn it.

But what she had taken as a pyre for ceremony or celebration was in fact an instrument of punishment. A massive stake was drove into the ground that rose through the hollow of a small platform built around it. There were steps going up to it with the wooden shaft climbing up some twenty feet. A bunch of men were hauling over logs now, chunks thrown at the base and long strips of wood being lined up around the stake.

Georgia watching them work said, “You don’t always wait until they’re dead?”

“He’s been sentenced,” the deputy responded.

“What’d he do?”

“He helped to kill a woman.”

Georgia watched the stringy-built man plead to the priest. He was blinking something fierce through his tears.

“Doesn’t exactly seem the type, does he,” Georgia said.

“It was Niall Carlin he helped,” the deputy told her.

This stopped her. “Niall Carlin was here?”

The deputy nodded once. “Two nights ago. Killed her in her hotel room. Hunter’s hotel.”

“Is that Hunter?” Georgia asked, pointing ahead to the condemned, sniveling man.

“Yep.”

“And you know it was Carlin? There was a matchstick in the mouth? And her…” she trailed, unable to bring herself to describe the gruesome ritual.

“Yeah,” he said, peering around her to keep an eye on all the rabble. This was a horrible revelation.

“What did this Hunter do?” Georgia asked.

“Had his ledger out plain to see, and left the desk unattended.”

Georgia stared at the deputy. “That’s it?”

“Got keys to every room behind his desk,” the deputy said. “He leaves the book out and the keys unwatched, and in those few minutes Niall Carlin happens by?” He tossed a glance at Georgia. “Weren’t no accident. Must’ve had some deal going, the snake. Either way, his fault any of it happened.”

“Man goes to take a piss and you burn him to death?” Georgia said, crossing her arms. “Because of what another man did after?”

“He didn’t take no damn piss,” the deputy snapped. “Besides, he goes anywhere he’s supposed to lock the front door before, that’s the law. He didn’t. Got that girl killed ‘cause of it.”

Hunter fell to his knees, looking around wildly and begging to anyone who would hear him. They threw handfuls of dirt and sand at him. The priest closed the book as two deputies on either side of Hunter snatched him up and forced him forward.

Georgia took stock of the scene. The town was incensed, the ones not shouting were glowering. Only one stood out–a little girl in a bright yellow dress watching everything, not understanding why her mother was hollering, about to witness a man be set on fire and burned alive.

All this over a woman–a traveler who’d been in Tanbark barely a month–and an innkeeper they needed to be guilty. But this was more about Sweet Niall Carlin, the Heart Taker. Anything connected to him might as well have been touched by the devil. Georgia’s pulse was already starting to quicken.

Those two deputies led Hunter up the steps, him going slow and stumbling a few times. There were eight more deputies standing up front, their rank marked by their open wearing of gun belts, each holstering a six-gun.

Georgia fidgeted with her seagrass hat; a thing from back home for the sun, wide-brimmed with a dent down the center. She’d learned you needed it out here more than anywhere, the weather less merciful on this side of the divide. Georgia dragged her nails across its brim, licked her lips, her mind racing. Her gut feeling was taking over and it wasn’t going away no matter how much she tried to think past it.

These folks wanted blood–ashes, really. Better to have some ‘justice’ now than accept they couldn’t do anything to the man actually responsible.

Hunter and the deputies got to the top of the platform. The ones below were putting straw and kindling at the base of the stake. The priest took up a torch, fixing to douse it with oil. Much longer and it’d be too late to do anything about it. Her heart was hammering deep beneath the letter tucked into her jacket’s breast pocket.

Thinking and rationalizing wasn’t getting her anywhere else, so she just did it.

With the deputy on her left, she snatched his gun and darted forward. She had the little girl in her arms screaming before he had finished shouting at her. Georgia barreled to the front, the deputies whirling and fighting for their guns. One arm held the girl up and the other slung out the revolver, the barrel snapping to each deputy, threatening them all.

She got to the stairs and stopped. “You two,” Georgia called up, “join the rest of your boys down here. Hop off.” The little girl was screaming for her mommy, and her mother was crying her name, “Anna.” It took a moment for Georgia to understand why she was shouting that name. The deputies resentfully climbed down as Georgia made her way up the steps.

Atop the platform, with hundreds of eyes and nearly a dozen pistols pointed at her, it was like she walked on stage to a bad theatre show. She was about to put on a hell of a performance.

Her eye caught some movement. “I know you ain’t going to take a shot back there,” Georgia said as a deputy tried to slink around, tightening her grip on the girl. “You’d put lead through both of us. So come on, everyone in front. Move.” The man obeyed.

From behind her Hunter stammered, “Who are you? Wh-what’s happening?”

Before Georgia could come up with an answer, the deputy she robbed strode up the middle of the pack and said, “What the hell is it you think you’re doing?”

She trained the gun on him. It was only now, him among the others, she noticed he was the only one with a badge. He wasn’t another deputy–he was the sheriff.

“That’s my gun so you mind it now,” the young sheriff said, looking up the barrel with the sun in his eyes.

“It’s you needs to mind,” Georgia said. “This man’s innocent, or right next to it.”

“That ain’t what the judge said.”

“Sometimes men are wrong.”

“What about women?”

Georgia was about to chuckle when a deputy shouted, “She’s with Niall Carlin! They’re all working together!”

“You’d think you’d hear how stupid that sounds without having to say it out loud,” Georgia said. “No one works with Carlin means to. Not if they like living for very long.”

“Case in point, eh?” the sheriff said, gesturing to Hunter and the stake.

Georgia drifted the pistol over the lot of them, thinking, planning.

“You fixing to kill all of us with six shots?” the sheriff scoffed. “You want us to line up for you?”

She said, “I’m fixing to leave, that’s all.”

Georgia held the girl’s collar and gun in one hand and drew a knife from her belt, reached it back towards Hunter while keeping her eyes forward.

“Here, cut yourself loose.” She waited for him to take it, heard him shuffling around but he never did. “Grab the damn thing!” she barked.

“Sorry,” Hunter gasped. “I can’t hardly see without my glasses.”

She twisted and saw his pale blue eyes squinting and flexing to see what was plain in front of him.

Georgia couldn’t help but laugh. “When I dive in shit I dive headfirst, huh.”

She laid eyes back on the guns, leaned back and put the knife into Hunter’s fumbling hands. Once he took it he went to work on sawing through the binds.

The sheriff said, “You ain’t just riding out of here, that I promise you.”

“Oh, that’s exactly what I’m doing,” Georgia said. “Anna here is coming with us too. Going to be a nice, calm walk up the road, and then a gentle ride by our lonesome. Out of town I’ll hook left up toward that hill way out yonder,” she said, pointing with her chin. “Thinking I can see a lo-o-o-ng ways from up there.” Most everyone looked to the hill except the sheriff and weeping mother.

“Now you can see it from here same as me,” Georgia went on, “so you’ll watch me set little Anna right at the top. Then the two of us ride on. But don’t get excited after because I’ll have one eye on her the whole way, my rifle in hand. Once she can’t see us no more, she’ll wave you down and tell it’s all clear. You can do that, can’t you, darlin’?” Little Anna was whimpering.

“You’d shoot that girl for him?” the sheriff said, practically snarling.

“That’s right,” she said, lying. “I sure wouldn’t want to, but some things get out of our hands.” Her eyes danced between them all. “Don’t make me test my scope, boys.”

With Hunter placing a freed hand on her back and the girl still in her arms, Georgia led their trio down the steps and up the road. They walked backwards to the saloon, the sheriff’s gun keeping the law and townsfolk still. Her stallion, Beau, was hitched outside it. Once her knife and new gun were in her belt, she got Hunter up first, then made him take Anna. Georgia swung up in front of them and took the reins. She gave a last look back towards the sheriff before spurring Beau into a steady gallop.

They rode out of Tanbark, Georgia glancing back every few moments, then hooked left off the road for the hill.

“Who are you?” Hunter asked, awed.

“Right now?” Georgia said. “A bleeding-heart loon.”

They slowed once they started going up, the way steep and rocky. Finally, they stopped at the top by a patch of wildflowers, the small town looking tiny in the distance. Georgia slid off and helped Anna down gingerly.

“I want my mommy,” Anna sobbed.

“I know, you’ll be back home soon, sunshine. Mama’s looking up at you right now, I’m sure.”

Georgia got down on a knee, still taller than the girl. “Now, me and Hunter here are going to ride on. We’ll go…” Georgia looked at her options. “Over that mound there. Once we get there I’ll turn around and give you a big wave, like this. Then you can turn around and run home to mama, good?”

She was crying quietly, but she nodded.

“Remember, watch me, and don’t move until I wave at you, understand? Say it back to me.”

With some help Anna said she wouldn’t move until she was waved at.

“You got a pretty name, Anna,” Georgia said, forcing a smile. “My cousin’s name was Anna, but she said it different, Ah-nuh instead of Ann-uh.” The girl didn’t say anything, her lip quivering.

“Here, little thing,” Georgia said, and plucked up one of the yellow wildflowers. “Hold onto this.” Anna took it, her little shaking fingers holding it tight. “You can tell your mommy I said I was sorry about all this. She won’t want to hear it, but I do mean it.”

Georgia climbed back up and they were off, steadily winding down the hill leaving Anna to watch. Then they were across the long stretch of flatter land until they rose up and reached the far mound she’d pointed out.

And didn’t stop. Didn’t turn around and wave, just kept on over the mound and down the other side. Once they were level again, Georgia clucked her tongue and propelled into a hard gallop.

After a good while, Hunter nervously spoke up. “Did…did we pass it yet?”

Georgia didn’t answer.

By the time the sun was low they’d cleared the gully running for miles west. Georgia pulled them to stop off at a little stream. A brief break, then they’d go on until dusk; by then they would get to the side of the mountain where they could make a decent camp. Hadn’t thought much beyond that yet.

Georgia had given Hunter a filled canteen and he was sitting on the ground, knees drawn in. She checked the saddle while Beau lapped up, and examined the sheriff’s revolver before stowing it with her rifle. Him being sheriff still seemed impossible, the man too young and handsome for that position.

Then she heard Hunter getting worked up again, nearly hysterical. She considered consoling him when he said, “I didn’t know who he was.”

Georgia stood still. Over her shoulder said, “What?”

It all flooded out of him. “He told me she was his betrothed, said her name and that she was waiting for him. And she’d told me she was expecting someone to come for her. I must’ve said as much because he told some story about getting in early to surprise her. I didn’t think nothing of it, he was…nice. Mannered and clean. I gave him the–” He choked up. “I gave him the key and he slipped me a dollar, big tip for the trouble, insisted I take it. Never saw him again. When she didn’t come down for breakfast, I knew right then…”

Georgia had sucked her lips in, chewing on them as she listened to another revelation, the truth from the only other man who could tell it.

“What did you know?” she growled. “That you got Anna Lasko killed?”

Hunter flinched at the name.

“Way I heard it,” she pressed, “you left the desk and keys with the ledger laying there, and he just happened to come in about that time.”

Hunter’s head drooped. “I tried telling ‘em something where they wouldn’t burn me like I knew they would. It didn’t matter though, it was Carlin. All that blood…they just let me talk on principle.”

Georgia swallowed. “Anna was running,” she said. “Sent me a letter about getting mixed up with a bad man. That she knew a little ol’ town she could stay in until I got there. Now she’s a stack of ashes.”

Hunter looked up at her and eked out, “I didn’t know it was him.”

“Neither did I,” she said and stared back toward the ridge they’d come down, imagining how far from town you could see smoke climb off the stake, and wondering how far you could hear a revolver send a bullet through a skull.

Presently, Georgia said, “You saw him?”

“Huh?” Hunter sighed, still half in a stupor.

“You saw him,” she said, coming to loom over him. “Had glasses then, didn’t you? Talked to him and everything?”

“Ye-yeah,” Hunter said. “But I didn’t know.”

“‘Course not, he can’t use his name anymore. But leaves his mark so folks’ll know he’s been through. Likes leaving a wake, building up his infamous bounty.”

“He’s pure evil,” Hunter murmured.

She grabbed him by the lapel. “Up,” she said, pulling Hunter to his feet.

“Who are you?” he asked for the third time.

Georgia observed this man she had saved. Around her age of late-twenties, gaunt features, short strawberry-blonde hair with days-old pomade in it, and a smooth face slick with tears.

“Georgia Lasko,” she told him.

He sucked in air, then slowly stuck his hand out, still a tremor in it. “Hunter Isaac.”

She took his hand firmly, shook it and said, “Looks like we're going after him, Hunter.”

Hunter blinked. “We’re what?”

“You’re the only asshole I know ever seen Carlin and knows they did. You want I can leave you here though,” she said, walking away and taking Beau by the reins. “You stroll one of these ways long enough you might find a tree, get yourself a seeing stick.”

“No, please, don’t leave!” Hunter said, marching toward her voice with his hands out.

“C’mere,” Georgia sighed. “We’ll figure out where he'll be soon enough.”

Hunter was stuttering, “But, but, but…” and looking side to side, blinking, thinking, panicking.

“Yeah, yeah,” she said, pushing him forward. “After we get you some damn glasses.”

Hunter looked over his shoulder. “You think they’re coming after us?”

Getting him in the saddle, Georgia said, “You lived there, maybe you know better than me, but that town seemed keen to get their man.”

She mounted up. “So, we’ll get them their man to burn.”