Jeremiah Tucker and the Angel of Death

  JEREMIAH TUCKER

  AND

  THE ANGEL OF DEATH

  James Butler

  (This is a work of fiction. Even though some of the places and people named in this book did or do exist, they are used in a fictitious manner as are all of the dates, events and characters which are the product of the author’s imagination. Any character resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.)

  Chapter 1

  Jeremiah sat outside the courtroom. It was a big day for him. As usual, he was surrounded by reporters wanting to hear more stories of his gunfighter days. Some of the same reporters were there when he’d left for Alaska and again when he was sentenced to hang. It was thirty years later, but they were all there today for a different occasion.

  Mr. Tucker, said Francis, one of the oldest reporters there, it’s been quite a spell since you were in this courtroom. You’ve led a very dangerous, but interesting life. While we have you here, why not tell us another story?

  Call me Jeremiah. I never liked being called mister. I ain’t nobody’s master. It was in this very courtroom all right. Maybe I was sitting in this same chair, but the story I got to tell didn’t start out here. It started in Sheriff Hunter’s jail. I was sitting in my jail cell waiting for the hangman to send for me.

  ***

  “There’s a man wants to see you, Jeremiah,” said the sheriff. He sat at his desk where he could hear everything that was said. His deputy sat across the room with his rifle laid across his lap.

  “My name’s Willard Foster, Mr. Tucker. I’m a writer for several different papers up North. I asked the sheriff if I could come in here for a few minutes and maybe you could tell me what happened.”

  “The sheriff shoved him a chair,” said Jeremiah, “and Mr. Foster sat back away from the bars of the cell like he was afraid I might grab him. I looked at him through the bars. He was much too old and frail to be traveling down from the North just to get a story. I doubted he was even a writer, but I didn’t say anything.

  “I never heard of you,” I said. “Why won’t you just let me die in peace? Besides, I ain’t that famous.”

  “I been following your endeavors for as long as I can remember, Mr. Tucker. Why I even remember when you kilt that cowboy who did in your father. You were only six years old.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve told that story a million times. You could of heard it from anyone.”

  “As far as I can tell, you never kilt nobody what didn’t need killing, but you kilt a judge this time, Mr. Tucker. I don’t see no way out for you on this one. Unless a miracle occurs, they’re going to put that noose around your neck and stretch you out.”

  “Funny you’d say that on the day I’m supposed to hang. And stop calling me Mr. Tucker. My name’s Jeremiah. I keep thinking you’re talking to my pa.” I stood and looked through the bars at Foster. “You sure you’re a writer? You sure don’t talk like no writer.”

  “I’ve been asking around town and nobody that I’ve talked to wants to see you hang. Maybe if you told me your side of the story, who knows what might happen? I’ve been to hangings before where they were stopped right before the door dropped out from under their feet. I’ve been to some where you could hear their neck crack when they hit the end of the rope.”

  “Did someone send you in here to cheer me up? What the hell do you want to know?”

  “Just tell me what happened.”

  “Well, what the hell. I’m gonna hang anyway. They won’t even let me see my Lilly. If you could arrange that, I’d be much obliged.” I pushed my chair over beside the bars and put my feet up on the bunk. I pulled two cigars out of my shirt pocket and handed one through the bars to Foster. “You gotta match? They won’t let me have a match in here.”

  ***

  Willard lit his cigar, coughed, and then handed it to Jeremiah. “I never smoke a cigar on the day of a good man’s hangin’.”

  Jeremiah leaned back in his chair and took a long drag off his cigar. “The problems all started when me and Lilly came back to town.”

  “Who’s Lilly?” said Mr. Foster.

  “She’s the woman I was hopin’ to marry.”

  “Is she pretty?”

  “Oh, she’s pretty all right. She’d turn any man’s head. We met under really strange circumstances. Her and her brother were trying to rob me.” He pulled a drag on his cigar and then hung his head and was silent for a moment. “She’s from Arkansas. A really beautiful part of Arkansas. I was planning on taking her back there to live after we got married and sold the old place.”

  “Don’t give up hope,” said Foster, “you ain’t hung yet.”

  “That sounds like something Lilly would say.” Jeremiah smiled. It was the first time he’d smiled since he was locked up.

  “Anyway, when we came back to town, I found a sale sign nailed to the door of my house. I came in and talked to the judge and he said there was something wrong with me and Alma’s wedding. Alma was the woman I was married to back then. We were only married a few hours before she died. Even though there were witnesses there, Alma never signed the papers. She couldn’t, she was cut up so bad. She didn’t have a will leaving everything to me and since she legally owned the ranch and she never signed no wedding papers, the ranch was to go back to the county. At least that’s what the judge said. It sounded like a crooked deal to me. I heard from a friend that the judge had already made a bid and put up money as collateral. Everybody in town was afraid to bid against him. Afraid they’d wind up on the gallows.”

  “Is that why you kilt him?”

  “No, he called Lilly a whore and a criminal. He said if I tried to interfere, he’d have her locked up for life. That was the funny part ’cause I was the one who Lilly and her brother tried to rob and then I killed her brother in his jail cell and broke Lilly out. It was this very cell that I’m in right now. That’s funny, don’t you think? It should have been me he was after, not Lilly.”

  “What about the judge?”

  “Well, we were in his courtroom at the time, although there was nothing legal about it. Nothing was going on, he just happened to be in there when I found him. When he first saw me come through the door, I thought he was going to shit himself. He was so scared, he was shaking. I asked him what was going on with my ranch going up for sale and then he pulled a gun out from under his bench.”

  “You shoulda stayed gone,” he said. “You and your little whore, she’s nothing but a tramp and a criminal, but I guess that makes her just right for you.”

  “Everybody who knows me knows I carry my guns under my coat. It was a reaction more that anything else. I was mad with him talking about Lilly that way. I shot him dead before he got off a shot. I didn’t know at the time why he pulled that smoker. I hadn’t threatened him in any way. All I did was ask about my ranch. He had no call to talk about Lilly that way. Before I knew it, the sheriff was there and had a hold of me. He had to hold me until a circuit judge came. It didn’t make no nevermind that the judge had pulled first and said all that trash about Lilly. He was a judge and that was all that mattered. The circuit judge said “I’m going to hang your sorry ass boy, for killing that Judge.”

  “I guess being a judge gives you the right to pull a gun in your own courtroom,” said Willard.

  “I reckon so. He also owned a goodly share of the bank where I have the money from my gold deposited. I guess he thought I was just gonna walk away and let him have that, too.”

  “Sounds to me like he wanted to make sure you couldn’t walk away.” Mr. Foster stood. ”Well, I guess that about does it, Mr. Tucker.”

  The sheriff asked his deputy to step out to the gallows and see what the hold up wa
s.

  “Are we gonna hang him today or not?”

  “Thank you for your time, Jeremiah,” said Mr. Foster. He walked over to the sheriff who was bent over his desk reading over what he was going to say when they hung Jeremiah. Mr. Foster pulled an iron bar from under his coat and clubbed the sheriff over the head. He took the keys off a hook behind the sheriff’s desk and threw them to Jeremiah. Jeremiah unlocked the cell door and watched as Mr. foster took off the gray wig and beard. It was Lilly.

  “Lilly, is that really you?”

  “Help me, Jeremiah.” They drug the sheriff into the cell and dumped him on the bed, then covered him like he was asleep. They locked the door and went out the back way where Lilly’s brother held their horses.

  “I told you we should’ve stayed in Arkansas,” said Lilly.

  “I knew you weren’t no writer,” said Jeremiah.

  Lilly laughed and leaned over and kissed him. “You really think I’m pretty?”

  “Hell, yes, I think you’re beautiful. Now, let’s get the hell out of here.”

  They were all the way out of Coffeyville and halfway to the ranch before the deputy came back. He found the sheriff locked in the cell.

  “Are you okay? What happened?” He helped him sit up on the bunk.

  “Did they get away?” asked the sheriff.

  “They’re gone.”

  “It was that reporter. He was the one who broke Jeremiah out. Round up a posse and we’ll get after ’em.” The sheriff sat in his chair holding his head like he was afraid it was going to split in half. “Where the hell were you, anyway?”

  “I got hung up talking to some lady. I didn’t know we were in no hurry to hang Jeremiah anyway.”

  He took his rifle and walked out onto the street. “Jeremiah’s been broke out of jail,” he screamed. “I need some volunteers for a posse.” Nobody moved.

  The deputy was gone for over an hour when he finally came back. “No one’ll join up. They all hated the judge and was glad Jeremiah kilt him.”

  “Well, we’ll wait until daylight and then we’ll try again.”

  It was almost midnight when the sheriff showed up at Jeremiah’s ranch. It was pitch dark. He pulled his gun and looked around for horses. There was no sign that anyone was around. He walked up on the porch and knocked on the door

  It opened slowly. “It’s me,” he said. “You gonna make me stand out here all night?” Lilly opened the door. “You know, you didn’t have to hit me so hard.” He took his hat off and showed her the knot on his head.

  “You said to make it look real. Did your deputy buy it?”

  “Hook, line and sinker.” They went to the center of the house where there was a room without windows. Jeremiah and Lilly’s brother, Dick, were sitting there with a lantern.

  “I won’t be forming a posse until tomorrow. I’ll be lucky to find anyone who’ll go. You have a lot of friends in this town, Jeremiah.”

  “You sure had me fooled. You two had this planned all along.” He pulled Lilly over and sat her on his lap.

  “You’ll have to get out of here for a while. You’ve got a lot of friends, but the law’s still the law. That circuit judge is going to be asking what happened to you. I thought about putting up a headstone in the graveyard with your name on it. Just tell him that you were hung.”

  Lilly laughed, “That’d be the day.”

  “But if he ever found out the truth,” said the sheriff, “he’d put the whole town in jail. You won’t have to stay gone forever. We’ll keep looking until we find a way for you and Lilly to come back.”

  “We’ll be leaving for Arkansas as soon as it’s daylight,” said Jeremiah. “Which way will you be taking the posse?”

  “Well, assuming I can get one together, I’ll take them off in the opposite direction. I always wanted to see Colorado this time of year.” Lilly poured him a cup of coffee and apologized for hitting him so hard.

  “I’ll get word to you somehow when it’s safe to come back. If I have to, I’ll put it in the papers. You keep an eye out for it, Jeremiah. This place has always been rightfully yours and everybody knows it. We want you to come back, but we’ll just have to find a way.”

  “Once I get him back to Arkansas, he may never want to come back,” said Lilly. The sheriff stayed for a while, then said goodbye.

  “We’ll be heading out as soon as I can gather up a posse. It may just be me and my deputy. You take good care of him, Lilly.”

  Chapter 2

  It had only been a year since Jeremiah picked Lilly up off her mother’s porch and sat her in his wagon. It was a long, but beautiful ride back to Coffeyville. Lilly used it all in her favor to help win his love. She was a little afraid that the sheriff would lock them both up due to Jeremiah killing her brother and then breaking her out of jail, but Jeremiah convinced her that the sheriff was trying to help them. “Otherwise,” he said, “he wouldn’t have deputized me the way he did.”

  “Why are we going back? We’ve got everything we need right here in Arkansas.”

  “I’ve got to get the title to the ranch for one thing and we don’t have the money. When I came back from Alaska, I deposited my gold money in the Coffeyville bank. There’s enough there for us to live off of for the rest of our lives. We can sell the old place and come back here to live. There’s nothing to hold me there anymore. Just bad memories.”

  ***

  “We’ll leave in the morning,” said Jeremiah. “We can take our time. The bank won’t be open till noon and the sheriff and his posse will be on their way to Colorado.”

  “I never robbed no bank before,” said Dick, Lilly’s brother.

  “It’s going to be a new experience for all of us,” said Jeremiah. “We’ll have to leave everything but my gold money. I’m not doing this to hurt the people of Coffeyville. I just want what’s mine. I want you to stay here, Lilly. I don’t want to take any chances with you getting shot. You can load up the wagon and be ready to leave when we get back.”

  “Everybody will know you did it anyway,” said Lilly. “They know you have your money in their bank and they know you didn’t hang. “Who else would they suspect?”

  “If we don’t touch their money, they won’t come after us.”

  Jeremiah and Dick showed up at the bank when the doors opened, all decked out with gray wigs and beards. The president of the bank opened the door for them, laughing. “Hell, Jeremiah, you didn’t have to go to all this trouble. All you had to do was ask me.” He motioned to a teller and the teller brought two satchels full of Jeremiah’s money and handed it to him. “We wish you all the luck in the world, Jeremiah. You can count it if you want, but it’s all there, interest and all.”

  Jeremiah thanked him, took his money and got out of there.

  “That was easy,” said Dick. “I may get into this bank robbing business.”

  They mounted their horses and walked them out of town, throwing the wigs and beards on the ground as Jeremiah waved goodbye to his friends.

  “I never thought the bank would be willing to give up the money so easy,” said Jeremiah.

  “Well, they all like you,” said Dick. “You heard what the sheriff said. That banker was laughing, but he was scared shitless. You just kilt a judge. He knew you wouldn’t think twice about killing a banker.”

  When they got to the ranch, Lilly was waiting with the wagon loaded and the team hitched up.

  “We never had to fire a shot,” said Dick. “They had his money all ready and waiting for him.”

  “I think the sheriff had something to do with that,” said Jeremiah. “He knew I wouldn’t leave without my money. No need in someone else getting kilt.”

  Lilly had enough food and water packed in the wagon to last until they got to Arkansas. Jeremiah tied his horse to the wagon and climbed up next to Lilly. He checked his rifle and set it close at hand. Then he took his shotgun and handed it to Lilly. “It’s a long way to Arkansas. A lot can happen between here and there.” He put the satchels of m
oney on the floorboard behind their feet and covered them with a blanket, then slipped his hand up under Lilly’s dress and squeezed her knee.

  She jumped and laughed. “Not here in front of Dick.”

  “I heard you laugh when the sheriff was talking about me being hung. What is it about me being hung that’s so funny?”

  Chapter 3

  They had to cut through Indian territory to do it, but it only took them three days to make it to the mountains of Arkansas. Lilly was nervous the whole way. She kept looking around for Indians.

  “They’ve all been rounded up,” said Jeremiah. “They’re all on reservations now.”

  “We saw a few of them the first time we went to Coffeyville. I guess they were just stragglers. I don’t want to get scalped, but after what our government did to them, I wouldn’t blame them for anything.”

  They found a nice, shady spot next to a river and made camp for the night. Jeremiah and Dick gathered firewood and Lilly cooked them a hot meal.

  “This has got to be one of the most beautiful places on earth,” said Lilly.

  “If you like it that much, maybe I’ll buy it for you.” Jeremiah turned to Dick. “You didn’t have to take part in any of this. When we finally get where were going, I’ll see to it that you’re set up.”

  “I didn’t have to do nothin,” said Dick. “The bank just handed you the money.”

  “I know, but you didn’t know that out front and you helped Lilly break me out of jail. They could have come out shooting and killed us all. You deserve your share.”

  “Take it, you idiot,” said Lilly. “It’s probably the only chance your dumb ass will ever have to make something of yourself.”

  Dick laughed and threw his bedroll down by his saddle. “I’m gonna be a landowner. Imagine that.”

  Jeremiah and Lilly stayed up a little later and walked down the river bank carrying a blanket. Dick could hear her laughing as he tried to go to sleep. I’m going to be a landowner, he thought as he dozed off.

  ***