The Hangings Read Free Page B

couldn't have taken his own life."
    "Why not?"
    "Pshaw. A man doesn't ride into a strange town, a place where he doesn't know a soul, and hang himself on the creekbank."
    She had a point and I admitted it.' 'But on the other hand,'' I said, "a man doesn't ride into a strange town where he doesn't know a soul and get himself hung by somebody else, either. Shot or knifed, possibly, if he had money or valuables worth stealing. But not hanged."
    "Mightn't he have had money or valuables? You said you didn't find a wallet or purse."
    "He might have, yes. But then why was he wearing shabby cloths and riding an old swaybacked horse?"
    "It hardly makes sense any other way."
    "Maybe it will when I hear from Emmett Bodeen."
    "Why haven't you heard? My land, you sent that wire this morning ..."
    "Ivy," I said with more patience than I felt, because these were the same sort of questions Mayor Gladstone had bombarded me with earlier, "Emmett Bodeen may be working long hours at his job, or he may have left Stockton on business, or he may have left Stockton for good. How the devil do I know, one way or another?"
    Her mouth and nose got pinched up together in the middle of her face, as usually happens when she is annoyed or offended or outraged (or all three at once). It makes her look like one of the witches in Macbeth . "I'll thank you not to curse at the dinner table, Lincoln," she said in her school-marmish voice.
    "Devil isn't a curse word."
    "It is as far as I am concerned."
    "Ivy . . ."
    "Eat your stew, if you please."
    I sighed and went on eating my stew. It was good stew; tasty cooking is one of Ivy's virtues. One of the few. She is my sister and I love her, but living with her can be a godawful chore sometimes. I don't know why I don't move out, take a room at the Union Hotel or one of the lodging houses-except that this is as much my home as it is hers. No room I could rent would be half as comfortable.
    Still, the prospect of spending the rest of my life under this roof with Ivy is not one I care to dwell on. If I don't move out sooner or later, that is what will happen. Ivy surely isn't going to leave. She has lived here all her life, except for the time ten years ago when she married Herman Edwards and moved to San Francisco to set up housekeeping with him. The marriage lasted three and a half months. When she came back she told everyone poor Herman had died of the grippe; but I found out later that he was not only alive and kicking but still selling drug sundries for his livelihood, and that he had been the one to have the marriage annulled.
    Ivy wasn't bad looking when she dressed properly and smiled rather than scowled down her pinched nose, and she had had a couple of other suitors in the past ten years. But they had all gone away before long. She was not interested in men; she was interested in gossip and giving orders and finding fault with people and being offended by some of the most natural and inoffensive things you can imagine. She was an old maid at heart, with an outlook on life that would have stood her in good stead with John Calvin and the other Puritans. It was a hell of a thing for a brother to think, but I had always suspected poor Herman Edwards had the marriage annulled out of sheer frustration, because he had been unable to convince Ivy to consummate their union.
    We finished dinner in silence, which was fine with me. I helped Ivy clear the table. She asked me if I wanted to have coffee in the parlor and I said no. Instead I went and got one of my pipes and my tobacco pouch—Ivy doesn't allow smoking in the house—and put them into the pocket of my sheepskin coat. I was shrugging into the coat when Ivy came into the front hall.
    "Lincoln, where are you going?"
    "Out to make my rounds."
    "No, you're not," she said. "You're off to see that woman again."
    "Ivy, don't start on me."
    "Well, you are. Why don't you admit it?"
    "What I do is my business."
    "Not when it comes home to roost with me. Don't you think