John D. MacDonald

Hang the Man High!

Chub, who had set himself up as carpenter and wheelwright in town after a big sorrel out at the Lazy Anchor had crushed him against the corral fence, looked up from the pins he was whittling for the cracked tree when the shadow darkened his doorway. He saw that it was the white-faced man who had come in on the stage two days before with more trunks than any man should carry around with himself.

“Somethin’?” Chub asked, politely enough. He had heard that this new one had an accent like nothing ever heard in Chambers before.

“You are carpenter?” the man said in a thick foreign accent. His face was broad and white, with heavy bones, and he had a straight, humorless mouth. Chub noticed that the pale hands were thick and that the man carried himself very straight.

“They keep telling me I’m a carpenter, friend. What would you want?”

“I want wooden woman.”

That was when Chub dropped the pin he was working on and gave himself a shallow cut across the back of the thumb.

“You want a what?” he asked loudly.

“Wooden womans. For to put on dresses in the window my store.”

Chub got up and limped over to the windowsill and got his pipe. He said, “Now let me get this straight, friend. You have a store?”

“Today I get it. With window. I paint my sign. Want womans in the window. For cloths.”

Chub grinned as the great light dawned. “You want a dress dummy! And that’s what all those trunks are for. You’re opening a store.” The man nodded stolidly. Chub asked, “What kind of woman? You want a face on her? Don’t think I’d be so good making a face out of wood.”

“No face. Can you do?”

“I’ll try it, friend. What’s your name?”

“Wadic. I am from Boston. I work in store there, save money, buy cloths, come here where there is no store.”

“Yep. The womenfolk take the stage to Larabee when they need dress goods.”

“When is wooden womans done?”

“Say a week. You rented Hartell’s place?”

“From his widow.”

“Yep. Charlie wasn’t making enough out of feed and he tried palming an ace to help out. When Dee caught him at it, old Charlie lost his head and grabbed for his knife.”

“I do not understand.”

“Forget it. When she’s done, I’ll bring her around. Fifteen dollars be okay?”

“If wooden womans is good, is not too much.”

A week later, the hands coming in from the nearby outfits varied the routine of years standing. Saturday night they usually spent as little time as possible getting from the saddle to the bar, but word had gone around, and they went from the saddle in a grinning group outside the window of Charlie Hartell’s place and gawk at the wooden woman.

Wadic had decently draped her in a sheet, but under the bottom edge of the sheet they could see the pine ankles that Chub had carved. Chub, with sturdy ideas of womanhood, had made the ankles staunch enough to match the rather ripe outlines of the rest of her. Wadic had asked for a little extra planing here and there.

It was at that unfortunate hour, just before sunset on a Saturday night, that Wadic climbed into the window from the dark interior of the store. Most of the Lazy Anchor bunch were there, all the way from Redneck George, the slab-handed foreman, to little Tad Morgan, a hundred and ten pounds of cured leather.

Wadic gave them one incurious glance through the glass. His compressed lips held a glittering array of pins. He carried a thick fold of material over his arm. He slung it over the shoulder of the wooden woman, shaking out the folds of it. The hands nudged each other and cackled in glee.

“Seems downright indecent,” Tad said firmly.

With the material covering her charms, Wadic snatched out the sheet, began busily draping and pinning the material.

“Full grown man, too,” Redneck George said. “Or, on the other hand, is he? Look how he keeps that little finger bent.”

Wadic pinned and adjusted and gathered folds in the material. He wore a shiny blue serge suit. After each few pins he stepped back one pace, cocked his head on the side and examined the dummy.

The last sunlight had faded when he was through. The wooden woman stood, resplendent in the dress of rich material. Only when he stepped out of the window did the group move off to the Ace High to talk it over at the bar.

John Cowl, lean young half-owner of the Diamond C spread, stood at the end of the bar and listened glumly to the general conversation. Cowl was a silent young man with a local reputation for stepping in on the side of the underdog.

The bar echoed with a chorus of resentment about the “furriner,” this Wadic who had dared invade Chambers with his foreign ways, his wooden woman, his mouth full of pins and his bent little finger.

Loomis, the fat-chested hand from the Running Moon, slapped a heavy paw against the bar and said, “Like as not our womenfolk’ll be going there and then he’ll be draping them up with his fancy cloth the same way he draped up that dummy.” Nobody remarked that not only did Loomis have no womenfolk, but that he didn’t have a chance of having any unless some girls with pretty strong stomachs floated into town.

His words brought a low roar of disapproval. Jake, behind the bar, said mildly, “My old lady bought some cloth off of him yesterday. Took her two hours to make up her mind. Cost me eleven dollars before she got through.”

Redneck roared, “There’s no place in Chambers for that one.”

After the per-capita average of drinks consumed had reached the neighborhood of five, the crowd had gotten away from the angry, muttering phase and were entering into the planning phase.

“We ought to be able to show him somehow,” Loomis bellowed. “Damn furriner, coming in to mess up our town, gettin’ the women all gaga over his fancy cloth. Like as not he stole the stuff in the first place.”

Dee came wandering over from the poker table. Loomis turned on him and said, “You started this by shooting Charlie. If you’d just winged him a little instead of blowing half his head off, this Wadic wouldn’t have found an empty store in town.”

“Shut up, Loomis,” Dee said mildly.

Loomis was about to make an angry retort when sudden silence filled the room. Wadic pushed through the swinging doors, an uncertain smile on his face.

“Good evening,” he said.

Nobody answered except John Cowl. The others glared at John. Wadic, with timid haste, made his way to Cowl’s side, made a fluttery gesture at Jake behind the bar and asked softly, “Wine have you?”

Jake gave him a long, cool look, reached under the backbar, pulled out a dusty bottle, yanked the cork, set the bottle and a shot glass in front of Wadic.

Wadic smelled it, frowned slightly and said, “It is bad.” Jake said nothing. The men at the bar said nothing. Wadic gave them a shy smile, poured wine in the shot glass and sipped it.

Redneck nudged Tad. Every man at the bar picked up his drink and sipped it delicately, little finger extended. Wadic did not seem to notice. He turned to John Cowl and said, “I am new here, you know. I want to be friends with the men in this city. My store is here. I live here maybe the rest of my life.”

“Maybe short life,” Loomis said wryly. The roar of laughter startled Wadic so that a bit of wine splashed onto his sleeve. He took out a pure white handkerchief and dabbed at the spot.

“Hey, let me do that for you,” Loomis said. He unknotted his bandanna, walked spraddle-legged over to Wadic, dabbed vigorously at the spot.

“Thank you very much,” Wadic said politely.

Loomis mopped the sleeve and up the arm and across the shoulder. The bandanna masked his fist. Almost delicately he mopped at Wadic’s mouth. Wadic bounced back against the bar, stumbled and sat down, blood running from the corner of his mouth.

He had a confused, pained expression on his face. He got up slowly and said, “But I do not understand...”

Loomis, encouraged by the roar of approval behind him, put a little more weight in the next blow. This time Wadic did not fall. He clung to the bar, his eyes faintly glazed.

A hard, sunbaked fist slanted over Wadic’s shoulder and hit Loomis in the mouth with the sound of a wet hand slapping saddle leather. Loomis’ well-filled jeans bounced smartly off the wooden floor.

In the sudden silence John Cowl said, “You want to fight a man, say so. Don’t play with him.”

They all wanted to fight Wadic. John Cowl glanced down the bar and singled out a hand from the Running Moon named Jester.

Cowl said, “Only one man fights him. That’s you, Jester.”

Wadic gave Cowl a look of bewilderment. He had stopped the flow of blood. His eyes were no longer glazed. “Why is fighting?” Wadic asked.

“It’s the custom for strangers here,” Cowl said dryly.

“With fists, yes? American way?” Wadic asked.

“That’s right.”

“Is necessary?”

Cowl nodded. “I’m afraid so, Mr. Wadic.”

“Get out there and fight,” Redneck said, pushing Wadic roughly. Loomis sat over in a far corner, fingering his teeth.

Wadic held both clenched fists out in front of him and shut his eyes. Jester walked in and knocked him down. Wadic got up quickly and assumed the same pose. Jester brought one up from the floor and knocked him down again. Wadic got up, a bit more slowly and painfully. He tried to keep his eyes open. He hit weakly at Jester, missed him, caught a rock-hard fist in the eye and went flat.

After they had thrown water on him, Wadic stirred feebly, opened his eyes and said, “Is over?”

“Is over, boy,” John Cowl said. He helped him to his feet. Wadic’s face was a crumpled mask.

“And get out of town, you damn furriner!” Redneck yelled into his face.

“Shut up,” John Cowl said wearily. Wadic walked like a drunken man, his weight on Cowl. Cowl left with him, came back ten minutes later.

“What did you do with him, Sir Lancelot?” Tad asked nastily.

“Showed him how to find his bed. He’s no coward, that one.”

“You’re always the one for feeding homeless dogs,” Jake said.

John Cowl had no more stomach for liquor. He had stabled his horse and had taken a room at the Chambers House.

His room looked out over the wide night street, deserted except for the horses tied at the rail in front of the Ace High.

The loud crash and the whooping awakened him. He walked in his underwear to the window and saw immediately what had happened. Redneck and the boys, fired by liquor, had broken the window of Wadic’s place. Redneck had dropped a loop over the wooden woman. The drunken hands were hooting with laughter as Redneck raced his pony up and down the street.

Behind the galloping horse, the wooden woman was quickly becoming a useless lump of wood.

John Cowl gasped as he saw, diagonally across the street, the figure of Wadic standing with a nightgown flapping around his ankles, on top of the store front, silently watching Redneck ride.

Redneck turned for the second time to come galloping down the road. John Cowl saw Wadic crouch and balance on the balls of his feet.

The white figure flashed down and then the riderless horse was galloping down the street, the wooden woman bounding along at the end of the riata. The two figures struggled in the dust. John Cowl cursed, struggled into his pants, shoved his arms in his shirt and, snatching his gunbelt from the back of the wooden chair, ran barefoot down through the narrow lobby and out into the street.

They had gathered around the two. As John Cowl shouldered his way through the mob, he heard the thin scream of pain, the bitter crack of a breaking bone.

Both men bounded up. Redneck’s beefy arm hung limp and useless. He cursed deep in his throat and threw his fist at Wadic’s face. Wadic’s face didn’t stay put. It moved down under the blow, with one of the thick, white hands clamping Redneck’s big wrist, the other hand grasping Redneck’s elbow. Wadic reversed his hands violently and the bone snapped like a dry twig.

John Cowl saw Tad snatch at his gun. John rammed his own gunbarrel into the small of Tad’s back and said, “Bad idea, Tad.” Tad stiffened.

Redneck was roaring with futile rage and pain. Loomis launched himself at Wadic, striking a tremendous blow. Wadic moved back with the blow, grabbed Loomis’ fist with both hands, turned, wedged his shoulder in Loomis’ armpit and levered the big arm down. Loomis flew completely through the broken window and crashed heavily somewhere inside the shop.

There was a sudden, awed silence. Wadic, his bruised lips barely moving, said, “This time fight my way. You make Stanislau Wadic angry.”

One of his eyes was swollen shut He swung his head back and forth, peering at the rest of them with his good eye. Then he said, “Man in my store has big mouth. I got needle. Go in now and sew up that big mouth. Surprise to him when he wakes up.”

He turned and walked with odd dignity to his doorway. John Cowl caught him at the door. He said, “Hey, you can’t do that to Loomis! No, Stanislau.”

Wadic shrugged. “Ho! Maybe is not good idea.”

Tad had moved out to the side. The light from across the street glittered on gunbarrel steel. Tad said in a husky, dangerous whisper, “Okay, furriner. Let’s see you dance.”

The gun slammed a lance of flame at Wadic’s bare feet. The slug hit, whined back against the store front, raising a puff of dust.

Wadic sighed as though very tired. “Dance? You want to kill Stanislau Wadic, you kill him. No dance. Is not dignity.”

He stood with his hands at his sides. Tad slowly raised his sights. John Cowl stopped breathing.

It was at the point that Loomis came walking heavily out of the store. The whole side of his face was scraped.

He peered at Wadic. He said mildly, “Mister, put on your pants and come across the street. I’m buying you a drink.”

The tension broke. They shouldered around Wadic and slapped his shoulders, and somebody sent for the doc to set Redneck’s arms.

By the time Wadic arrived in the Ace High he was already becoming a minor legend. He stood next to John Cowl at the bar. He raised the shotglass of whiskey, his little finger crooked. He sipped it and shuddered.

He smiled shyly at John Cowl. He said, “Is funny city here. I think I like.”

John grinned at him. “I suspect the feeling is mutual,” he said.

Content

John D. MacDonald
Hang the Man High!