Chapter Eleven
Belle
“Maybe I should pick on someone my own size,” Beau conceded to Linda, whose sense of fair play had been outraged. “But maybe you shouldn’t sneak up on people.”
“I wasn’t being sneaky,” Linda protested, hotly indignant.
Belle squeezed the child’s fingers. “We know you weren’t being sneaky. And we understand that you were trying to help. What’s not okay is you being in the woods without your parents’ permission.”
The little girl had heard the gunshots and decided to see what the fuss was about.
Stray bullets were the least of the things that could have gone wrong.
Many little trails led in and out of Burning Scrub.
Some followed the natural slope of the mountain and led to the pasturelands used by the Ride No More Ranch miles below.
Others, like the one Belle, Beau, and Linda now traipsed, were deer paths that required a level of knowledge and skill that a six-year-old did not possess.
Once the gunshots stopped, Linda would have had nothing to guide her, and children lost in the woods were notoriously hard to find.
Their first instinct was to hide and searchers calling their names became big, scary monsters.
Linda’s sullen expression turned tragic. “Are you going to tattle on me?”
“You bet we are,” Beau stated grimly.
“Then I’m telling on you, too, and Jayce will beat you up for hurting Belle.” Linda said it with a great deal of smug satisfaction.
“Does she look hurt to you?” Beau retorted.
“Children,” Belle said, invoking her doctor voice.
While she wasn’t thrilled that Linda would spread the word that she and Beau had been wrestling—since no one was going to believe that was what they’d been doing—she saw no other option.
“We have to tell your parents where you were. You aren’t allowed in the woods by yourself.”
“I’m not by myself. I’m with you.”
“She’s going to be either a lawyer or a felon when she grows up,” Beau said to Belle. “I know which option my money’s on.”
Linda scrunched her nose up with suspicion. She was aware she’d been insulted, but uncertain how. “What’s a felon?”
“A six-year-old trapped in a grown-up’s body,” Beau replied.
Keeping her face straight was hard, but laughing would send the wrong message. They enjoyed arguing with each other, even if they weren’t aware. But Linda should not have left town on her own. She knew better than that. And Beau? He was arguing with a six-year-old. He should know better, too.
The return walk to town wasn’t as long as their squabbling made it seem.
Adam and Grady had been busy while they were gone.
They were hammering the final nails into a boxed-in scaffolding that supported two upright posts and a thick wooden crossbeam with two coils of rope looped around it.
Grady, the historian, insisted the gallows be built in the center of the street because hangings were public events and a big source of entertainment.
The result was a morbid town square where, already, a few people were gathering.
Oliver Nance, the town’s portly butcher, sipped coffee from a mug while watching the construction with interest. The stained white apron he wore added a grisly effect.
Pearl oversaw her husband’s work from nearby.
She had a background in theater and had helped design the gallows, but Belle’s doubts about safety remained.
It wasn’t as if gallows were built to some sort of code.
She kept hoping Beau would rethink things on his own, but so far, he hadn’t.
She should have known he’d never back down.
Beau, whose sense of self-preservation ran low, jogged up to the gallows.
“Hey, guys. Hey, Pearl,” he said, full of cheer, and Belle sighed because his cheerfulness always plucked at Adam’s last nerve.
Adam set down the hammer and slowly rose to his feet.
His trousers were covered in sawdust and tiny black metal shavings.
His face wore a dark cloud. Linda shook free of Belle’s hand and made a mad charge for her mother, who’d wisely positioned herself between Adam and Beau.
Belle followed, knowing that no good could come from what happened next.
“Mommy! Beau was wrestling with Belle, but I saved her,” the little girl announced loudly.
Pearl looked confused.
Not Adam. His eyes went to Belle. He reached over and pulled a twig from her hair, then looked at Beau. Beau looked back. Adam smiled, and Belle got a bad feeling.
“I picked up the safety harness this morning,” Adam said to him. “What do you say we take Gertie here for a test drive?”
The onlookers now numbered about twenty, which, by Burning Scrub standards, constituted a mob.
“C’mon, Beau,” someone called out to him.
Belle watched Beau’s confidence dim a notch and her hope revived.
“You named the gallows?” Beau said to Adam.
“That was me.” Grady, who’d never been quick to read a room, spoke up. “It makes it seem a little less … I don’t know. Evil.”
“It’s only a prop,” Pearl said to her husband. “No one’s going to die.”
“Not while we have Satan.” Adam pulled a tangled mess of buckles and straps out of a twenty-first-century cardboard box. His widening smile did not instill confidence in Belle. “I named it.”
“Maybe we should think about this for a bit,” Belle said.
By now, though, Beau’d had enough time to regroup. “No worries. I’m game.”
And because he hadn’t annoyed Adam enough, he sidled closer to Belle, then made a show of brushing dirt off the back of her dress. Adam’s gaze sharpened and took on a hard edge.
“I’d rather we try hanging a dummy first,” Pearl said. “We want to make sure the trap door releases.”
Grady hopped up on the scaffolding. He threw a lever fixed to the base and the bottom dropped out of the platform floor. He peered into the hole. “Works fine,” he said.
At that point, both women gave up and allowed Darwinism to come into effect. Pearl explained to Beau how his hanging would work.
“The harness will go under your clothes. We tie a second rope to the harness to support your weight. That’s anchored to the crossbeam.
The noose around your neck isn’t fastened to anything.
When the lever is thrown to drop the trap door, Adam will tug on the end of the noose to make it look as if it’s gone tight.
There’s an airbag inside the scaffolding.
You’ll hit that and bounce a bit, making it look as if your body is jerking at the end of the rope, but your weight is supported by the second rope that’s attached to the crossbeam and your harness. ”
“This is how they do it in the movies?” Belle asked, because it sounded so simple.
Too simple.
“Close enough. It’s impossible to re-create it exactly, and we won’t have film editing to help clean it up.”
Pearl’s thoughtful expression and tone hyped Belle’s alarm. Adam looked skeptical, too, which was worrisome, considering he was also the safety officer in charge of the noose.
“Won’t everyone be able to see the second rope?” Belle persisted.
“We’ll hide it as best we can.”
Belle grabbed Beau’s arm. “Wait until it’s been properly tested. Better yet, don’t do it at all.”
Beau kissed her cheek and whispered into her ear. “He needs me alive, remember?”
Belle thought he was placing too much faith in that assumption. “Is this something that children should be watching?” she asked, because Linda wasn’t the only child present, although she was the youngest.
“It’s not real,” Grady said, pointing out what in his mind was obvious.
Adam helped Beau step into the harness, adjusted the straps for him, then fastened the buckles. Meanwhile, Grady slammed the trap door into place.
Beau mounted the steps and walked onto the platform.
Adam hitched the end of one coil of rope to the harness.
Belle didn’t think it looked nearly strong enough to support Beau’s full weight.
Adam fashioned a noose from the second coil, slipped the noose over Beau’s head, then adjusted the knot so that it sat to the left of his chin.
The second rope looked plenty sturdy enough to support him.
Belle’s misgivings soared.
“The noose isn’t fastened down,” Adam assured her, correctly interpreting the look on her face.
“That rope will unwind as he drops. The rope attached to the harness does all the work. And if the harness rope malfunctions, then the airbag will catch him.” He clapped his hands.
“Okay, everybody. Let’s get this show on the road. ”
Beau tested it with his weight. “Feels solid enough.”
“Hold that thought.” Adam signaled to Grady, who threw the lever that released the trap door, and the door dropped away.
Beau dropped with it.
His fall ended abruptly. Then, his fingers clawed at the noose around his neck. His body jerked twice and began to spin slowly.
Belle gasped. The onlookers fell silent. Pearl clapped her hands over her daughter’s eyes. Other than that, no one moved. Grady’s hand appeared stuck to the lever. Adam frowned. He studied the crossbeam with the ropes coiled around it and tugged on the line attached to the harness.
Belle shifted to full doctor mode, with a large dose of panic thrown in to distort her perspective.
In her head, she knew Beau couldn’t be dead.
Unless dropped from enough height to snap the neck and the spine—and the gallows was nowhere near high enough—it took a good five minutes for a person to suffocate.
His color, although reddened, was well within normal.
But what her head knew and her heart felt were two different things.
And right now, her heart was pounding as if she’d mainlined cocaine.
“Get him down. Now!” she shouted, startling Adam, who seemed far more concerned about the harness malfunction than the possibility that he’d just murdered a man.
He mounted the platform to where Beau’s body was dangling and touched him on the shoulder. Beau opened his eyes. Adam staggered. His hand flew to his chest. Beau started to laugh, and Adam started to swear.