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  THE MAN FROM MISERY

  THE MAN FROM MISERY

  DAVID C. NOONAN

  FIVE STAR

  A part of Gale, a Cengage Learning

  Copyright © 2019 by David C. Noonan

  All scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are taken from the King James Bible.

  Five Star Publishing, a part of Gale, a Cengage Company

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

  No part of this work covered by the copyright herein may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  The publisher bears no responsibility for the quality of information provided through author or third-party Web sites and does not have any control over, nor assume any responsibility for, information contained in these sites. Providing these sites should not be construed as an endorsement or approval by the publisher of these organizations or of the positions they may take on various issues.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Noonan, David C.

  Title: The man from Misery / David C. Noonan.

  Description: First edition. | Farmington Hills, Mich. : Five Star Publishing, 2019.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018032067 (print) | LCCN 2018043855 (ebook) | ISBN 9781432851903 (ebook) | ISBN 9781432851897 (ebook) | ISBN 9781432851880 (hardcover)

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4328-5190-3

  Subjects: | GSAFD: Western stories | Historical fiction

  Classification: LCC PS3614.O655 (ebook) | LCC PS3614.O655 M36 2019 (print) | DDC 813.6/—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018032067

  First Edition. First Printing: March 2019

  This title is available as an e-book.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4328-5190-3

  Find us on Facebook—https://www.facebook.com/FiveStarCengage

  Visit our website—http://www.gale.cengage.com/fivestar/

  Contact Five Star Publishing at [email protected]

  Printed in the United States of America

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 23 22 21 20 19

  For all my “children”

  John, Mark, Kristin, Cody, and Shane

  Thanks to Sr. Paschala Noonan, Louisa Clerici, and Debbie Denney for sharing their love of writing with me, and special thanks to my editor, Gordon Aalborg.

  “Who will rise up for me against the wicked? Who will stand by me against the evildoers?”

  —Psalm 94:16

  CHAPTER 1 DIXVILLE, TEXAS SEPTEMBER 1870

  The tall man in the brown slouch hat raced towards the Dixville Hotel as fast as his lean legs would allow, but it was too late. His first thought at the sound of the alarm had conjured up some sort of outlaw or Indian raid, so he’d paused long enough to grab his rifle. By the time he arrived at the town center, flames were shooting up the three-story wooden structure with unimpeded speed. Great billows of black smoke rose into the sky, blotting out the stars. Long ribbons of flame danced around the roof, shoving the heated air upwards, reddening the rim of the sky.

  A bucket brigade threw pail after pail of water onto the inferno, but the intensifying broil kept pushing them farther back until they realized the futility of their efforts. Just as they dropped their buckets, a girl appeared on the third-floor balcony, screeching for help.

  “Somebody do something!” a man yelled.

  “We can’t get near her,” another man shouted back. “The flames are too hot.”

  Two women dropped to their knees and began to pray.

  A long finger of fire caught the girl’s dress. She smothered it with frantic slaps and continued to scream. The roar of the fire grew louder, and her voice became harder to hear.

  “Jump!” people pleaded, but flames forced the girl away from the railing and back towards the doorway of her room. The crowd gasped when the tips of her long hair caught fire.

  “For the love of God, somebody do something!” a man cried out.

  The man in the slouch hat raised his rifle, aimed, fired. The shot pitched the girl backwards, and she disappeared into the smoke and flames. Moments later, the porch she’d been standing on trembled, twisted, and tumbled down on the two floors below in an avalanche of sparks and burning wood.

  Speechless and glaring, the spectators turned to the man in the slouch hat. He returned their stares. A man emerged from the crowd, his tin star gleaming orange with reflected flame. He held out his hand for the rifle, and the man in the slouch hat passed it to him.

  “I’m sorry, Emmet,” the sheriff said, “but you’re going to have to come with me.”

  “I know,” was his soft reply.

  CHAPTER 2 DIABLO CANYON, TEXAS SIX MONTHS LATER

  “Faith, stay inside!”

  The girl scrubbing dishes in the cabin’s small kitchen rushed to the window. Never had she heard such barbed urgency in her father’s voice, even after all the sermons she’d heard him preach. He stood outside a wooden shed in black hat, shirt, and pants, his hand cleaved against his spectacles to shield his eyes from the noontime sun, and watched four approaching horsemen. A dust devil swirled a dark shroud of grit around the riders.

  “Destruction cometh as a whirlwind,” she whispered to herself.

  Her mother was hanging wash on a makeshift clothesline. She eyed the men and raced to her husband, leaving the white sheets snapping in the wind behind her. The foursome pulled up ten feet in front of her parents. The leader wore a bloodred sombrero encrusted with embroidered golden circles. He tilted his hat back, revealing a sun-baked face pocked with black stubble, and deepset eyes, which glowed like coals. He had handsome features save for a brown, pea-sized wart nestled in the corner of his mouth.

  Faith recognized him—a recent visitor to one of her father’s revivals. The stranger had sat at the end of a bench under the ramada, staring at her with those same vexing eyes. He had never spoken a word to her or her parents—until now.

  “Know why we’re here, Preacher?” the stranger asked.

  Two crows on a saltbush squawked. The wind chimes Faith had fashioned from a broken cowbell clanged on the porch. Her blonde hair was twisted into a long braid. She pulled it to the side and stroked it with quick, strong motions.

  “Food?” her father asked.

  The stranger laughed as he dismounted, shuffled over to her father, and squeezed his cheeks together with a hairy hand. “We’re not here for food,” he said. “We’re here for your daughter.”

  “No!” The word burst from her mother’s mouth like a gunshot, and she bolted for the cabin. But the stranger snatched her arm with his free hand and yanked her back.

  “Don’t hurt her,” her mother begged.

  The stranger glanced back at the riders, nodded towards the cabin. Faith shivered as a tall, lank man with a yellow sash around his waist slid off his horse and lurched towards the door. He flung it open and grabbed her with bony hands, his sour breath reeking of tobacco and whiskey. As he dragged her outside, she unleashed a shrill scream. “Poppa!”

  “I beseech you, by everything that is holy,” her father said. “Leave her alone. She’s only sixteen.”

  With a powerful backhand, the stranger knocked her father to the ground. Her mother struggled to break free, but another blow sent her sprawling next to her husband. While her parents scrabbled on the ground, Faith shrieked and sobbed in spasms, her eyes two glassy streams.

  “Shut her up,” the stranger said. “I’ll catch up with you.”

  The man with the yellow sash jammed his sweat-soaked bandana into Faith’s mout
h. Her breathing became fierce and frantic as she struggled for air. He hoisted her on to the back of his horse, and the group rode toward the foothills. Faith kept glancing back at her parents, straining to hear their words.

  “Here’s twenty pesos, Preacher,” the stranger said, thrusting out the bills. “We’re even.”

  “I don’t want your money!” her father yelled, scratching at the air in front of him.

  The stranger jammed the money into his pocket. “Well, there’s always another choice,” he said, removing the Peacemaker from its holster.

  Faith’s last image of her parents was of them kneeling, their hands raddled, their heads bowed. Now she was too far away to hear their words, but she could still hear their voices, distant but strangely rhythmic. She knew they were praying.

  She looked at the stark beauty of the sun-seared landscape that had been her home for seven years, the steep rock cliffs that rose above the brown valley stippled with catclaw and greasewood. Two gunshots thundered through the canyon. Faith did not look back. Instead, trembling, she kept her eyes fixed on the horizon. For the first time in her life, as she sat on that black horse amid those menacing men, riding out under that vast sky, she knew she was utterly alone.

  CHAPTER 3 DIXVILLE, TEXAS FOUR DAYS LATER

  Emmet T. Honeycut’s gangly frame straddled a wooden chair as he listened to Wade Coleman across the table. A shaft of late morning sunlight slanted across the saloon floor. Emmet’s leg cramped, and he needed to shift but didn’t. Fidgeting, he believed, suggested desperation, and the last thing he wanted was for Wade to think he was desperate.

  “I’m sorry, Emmet, I truly am, but business in the saloon is off, and we can’t afford to keep you behind the bar any longer.”

  “If it’s just a matter of me taking some time off until business . . .”

  “No. It’s over. This comes straight from Charley. He didn’t have the guts to tell you. Made me do it.”

  “Level with me, Wade. I work here just three days a week. What’s the real reason?”

  “You know as well as I do.”

  “I’d like to hear it from your mouth.”

  Wade was stout as a horse and pushed himself back in the chair using the table for leverage. “You want me to spell it out for you? Business is off. Folks seem to prefer going to the Shady Lady these days—and you know why.”

  Emmet adjusted his body, and the cramp in his leg dissipated. “The trial ended a month ago, and I was found not guilty,” he said in a low voice.

  “Not guilty of murder. But you did shoot that little girl.”

  Emmet put his hands flat on the table and leaned forward. “Straight and true, Wade. I shot her straight and true. And if I found myself in the same situation tomorrow, I’d do exactly the same thing.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “I almost always tell the truth.”

  Wade looked at the floorboards, shook his head. “I know you thought you were doing right, but a lot of folks around here think you were slapped out wrong.”

  Now it was Emmet’s turn to lean back. “Since the trial, I’ve gradually lost every odd job I’ve had,” he said. “And the verdict was in my favor. Shane Foster decided his fences didn’t need no more mending. The Widow Riley said she found another fellow to take care of her chickens, and Stubby told me he found a cheaper source of firewood.”

  “I’m sure it was hard for them to tell you.”

  “Oh, folks have been polite enough when they tell me, but in truth they’re digging me a hole I can’t get out of. This saloon job is the last rope tying things together. You cut me loose, I got no other way to pay my debts here in Dixville.”

  “You should have thought of that before you pulled the trigger.”

  The comment sliced Emmet like a blade, but he didn’t respond.

  Wade slapped the table. “I’m sorry, that was uncalled for. I know living here hasn’t been easy for you. Anyway, like I said, Charlie’s mind is made up, and I was hand picked to give you the regrettable news.”

  The sunshine pouring through the window warmed the inside air, intensifying the sour smell of beer, sweat, and sawdust. Emmet knew the smell well, and it had never bothered him, until now. A small wave of nausea pushed up, but he swallowed hard several times, and the feeling passed.

  “What about another job where I ain’t so visible,” Emmet asked. “Washing dishes? Maybe working in the kitchen?”

  Wade exhaled with such force that two cowboys sitting at a table in the back glanced over. “Charlie decided he doesn’t want you anywhere in, around, or near the Dusty Rose, given what you did.”

  “What I did?” Emmet tensed and relaxed his right fist several times. “I put a girl who was about to burn to death out of her misery. She was headed for the same fiery end as the other victims in that hotel. I ended her suffering.”

  “That’s your way of looking at it.” Wade took out several dollar bills from his shirt pocket and pushed them across the table. “Here’s last week’s pay. All I can say is I wish you luck.”

  Emmet palmed the singles, untied his greasy apron, tossed it on the table. “You agree with what Charlie’s doing?”

  “Don’t matter if I agree. It’s business, Emmet. You got an albatross around your neck, and that ain’t good for business. That’s the nut of it.”

  “Well, thanks for the work while it lasted.”

  “You know, Emmet, some people believe when everything in a person’s life is going wretchedly wrong all at once—love, family, work—it’s because something new and exciting and transforming is trying to be born.”

  “I ain’t one of those people, Wade.” Emmet donned his brown slouch hat and pivoted towards the door.

  “Wait,” Wade called out. “One more thing. I almost forgot. Johnny Raincloud stopped by earlier. Says there’s a telegram waiting for you at the station. Now, who’d be sending you a telegram?”

  Emmet dropped his head a few inches and pondered the question. “I have absolutely no idea.”

  “Maybe it’s good news,” Wade suggested.

  Emmet puffed out a small laugh of disgust. “How often does a telegram bring good news?” Then he pushed the batwing doors open and headed for the general store.

  Three days of heavy rain had turned the main street into brown gravy. Emmet’s boots, heavily caked with mud, squished as he crossed the street. He stomped them sideways against the wooden walkway outside the general store before he entered.

  Cody Clarkson, the tall, thin proprietor, was sweeping the floor and looked up when he heard the tiny bell on the door ting. Rheumatism had rendered his body as stiff as a coat rack. He gave Emmet a quick nod and resumed sweeping. The general store was much darker than the saloon, having only two windows compared to the saloon’s six, but it smelled much better. The aromas of fresh coffee and tobacco mixed with those of spices and perfumed soaps. Emmet inhaled the scents as he studied the store. Two women examined bolts of calico and gingham on a large table. A young girl lingered in front of the hard candy display, her eyes sweeping over the multicolored sweets.

  Emmet approached Cody. “A word?”

  Cody stopped sweeping and leaned both arms on the broomstick. “What?”

  “In private?”

  Cody leaned the broom against a crate and motioned Emmet into a small side room. “I think I know what this is about,” he said.

  In a tone as businesslike as he could muster, Emmet said, “I just lost my job at the Dusty Rose, and I’m gonna need more time to pay off what I owe you.”

  The storeowner turned his head and scratched his ear. “How much time?”

  “Not sure. I’m totally skint. The trial cost me all my savings. I’ve got no job right now, but you know I ain’t afraid of hard work. I’ll find something.”

  “Emmet, Emmet, Emmet . . .” Cody said, his voice trailing off. “What are we going to do? I’ve extended you as much credit as I can. Now that you’re idle, it’ll be quite some time before you can pay back what
you owe.”

  “You know I’m good for it,” Emmet said.

  “No, I don’t know you’re good for it. Listen, I appreciate that you’re a war veteran, and I appreciate the sacrifices you made for the southern cause. But I don’t see any way you can pay me back.”

  Clarkson walked over to a small desk and stacked a couple of ledgers on top of each other, rubbed his eyes, turned around. “I’ll make a deal. I’m willing to forgive all the money you owe me.”

  “That’s quite an offer,” Emmet said. “If?”

  “You leave Dixville.”

  “And?”

  “Never come back.”

  Emmet stroked two fingers over his moustache. “So all I have to do is turn tail and run?”

  “That’s not how I see it.”

  “And then you and Charlie and Wade and Smiggy and all the other fine citizens of Dixville can rest comfortable knowing you successfully ran me out of town.”

  “It’s no good for you here.”

  “Yeah, folks are making me feel as welcome as a rattlesnake at a square dance.”

  Clarkson didn’t laugh.

  “Truth is, Cody, all I ever wanted was a place to settle down.

  I was just beginning to feel I had a home.”

  “Not here.”

  “So where should I go?”

  “Some folks say you should go to the devil.” The harshness of his own words seemed to surprise Clarkson, and he glanced down at his belt. Emmet walked over to the proprietor until they stood face to face, eyes inches apart.

  “Well, I’d rather hear curses than be pitied, so I thank you for that. Now, where do you suggest I go?” Emmet’s voice was not quite a whisper, not quite a hiss.

  Clarkson gulped hard like he had swallowed a penny, shrugged his shoulders. “The world’s a big place. You’ve got abilities as a long-range shooter. Might be time to think about getting back to it.”

  Emmet held his gaze a few seconds longer, then tapped the bottom of Clarkson’s right arm. “I was hoping to shed that kind of life,” he said, “but, to be honest, yours is the best offer I’ve had today, so let me think about it.” Clarkson exhaled, relieved. Emmet left the side room, returned to the main store and stood next to the girl eyeing the sweets. He smiled at her, grabbed a handful of candy sticks from a large-mouthed jar, handed them to her. Then he plucked one out for himself.