The Angel and the Outlaw Read Free

the resident blacksmith in Cedar Ridge for over twenty years, catching up on the latest gossip with Myrna Ballantine, who owned the beauty shop.
    Finally, it was time for the hanging.
    Brant Wilkins led Paul Jackson down the center of Main Street toward the gallows, which had been built at the far end of town.
    The townspeople fell in behind the condemned man, spreading out in front of the gallows while Paul Jackson, in his guise as J.T. Cutter, climbed the thirteen steps to the gallows.
    Brant Wilkins asked J.T. if he had any last words. With a sneer, Paul Jackson glared at the crowd, then shook his head.
    Father Dominic, clad in long black robes, said a prayer for the condemned man, then Cecil Mallory, who was playing the part of the hangman, slipped a black hood over J.T.’s head.
    For a few moments, Wilkins, Mallory, and the priest blocked the crowd’s view of J.T., and Brandy knew that an incredibly lifelike dummy was being substituted for Paul Jackson. Later, Paul would come back and haul the dummy away.
    Father Dominic and Wilkins stepped back, their expressions somber. And then Cecil Mallory’s hand closed over the lever that would spring the trap.
    Even though almost everyone in the crowd knew that it was a dummy about to be hanged, there was a tense moment when Mallory’s hand tightened on the lever. Brandy heard several of the people around her draw in a sharp breath and hold it.
    And then Cecil Mallory pulled the lever and the dummy, which was stuffed with cotton and weighted with sand and rocks, dropped through the trap door.
    Amid sporadic cheers and applause, the crowd turned away from the gallows and headed for the high school where the town band was tuning up. For those so inclined, there would be dancing until midnight and then Wild West Days would be officially over until next year.
    Brandy started to turn away and then, with a frown, she took a step forward and stared at the dummy, which was spinning slowly. It was amazing, how lifelike it looked.
    And then she heard a groan.
    Brandy glanced around, wondering if someone was playing a macabre joke on her, but there was no one there. And then it came again, a low groan filled with pain and despair.
    “No,” she said, taking a step backward. “It’s not possible.”
    It couldn’t be alive. It was only a dummy. She knew it was. She had helped sew the thing together.
    Another groan sent her running forward, her mind conjuring all sorts of scenarios: one of the teenagers had decided to play a trick that had backfired, Paul Jackson had decided to commit suicide…
    Feeling slightly foolish, because she knew in her heart it was just a dummy, she lifted the thing’s legs, legs that should have been stuffed with cotton, but instead felt firm. And warm. And alive.
    She gasped as a jolt of electricity ran up her arms. For a moment, everything went black and she had the fleeting impression that she was plunging into a dark tunnel, spinning out of control.
    When she opened her eyes again, the rope had snapped and the effigy was lying on the ground.
    Feeling lightheaded, she stared at the form lying at her feet, felt her heart begin to pound and her blood run cold as the thing groaned again, then tried to sit up.
    Brandy took a step backward, refusing to believe what she was hearing, what she was seeing. Someone was playing a horrible, twisted joke, and when she found out who it was, she was going to tell him exactly what she thought of such a cruel hoax.
    The dummy moved again, writhing on the ground, a muffled oath coming from beneath the hood.
    Brandy took a wary step forward. Whoever had perpetrated this farce had apparently hurt himself when he fell, she thought, and it served him right. He was lucky he hadn’t broken his fool neck.
    Kneeling beside the fallen man, she untied the ropes that bound his hands and feet, removed the noose from his neck, then lifted the hood from his face.
    She had expected to see one of the local teenage boys grinning up at