He was already planning to not keep his side of the bargain, because if Ned could lie to his face, then he didn’t need to be a paragon of honesty either.
“What will it change, huh? You will still hate me. Does it matter why I shot the girl? She’s still dead. You’re better off with your fond memories of Tom. Such a good guy after all. Adopted you when no one else took notice,” Ned said through clenched teeth and turned around. “But who am I to judge? I’ve got no moral fiber left.”
Cole saw red, then threw himself at the bars over and over, until he could barely feel his arm and spun around to rest his hands on the cool bricks. “Tell me, goddamn it! We’re both gonna die anyway, so why the hell not? Don’t I deserve a final wish?”
Ned sat down on the bench with a level stare. “Lars left, and I don’t see you complaining.”
It stung, but Cole didn’t flinch. “Lars and I never promised each other anything, and he did exactly what I expect of people. Everyone says pretty words, and then stabs you in the back. You taught me that.”
“He must be a real bad fuck.” Ned wrapped his arms on his chest, watching Cole’s every move.
“He’s a good fuck. And it’s been good to work with him. So what?”
“So give me the plank. You might be able to get back to him.”
Cole swallowed, annoyed that Ned wasn’t jealous after all. But what did he expect? “No. We’ll both die, and that’ll be the end of it. End of us,” he finished with lead in his heart and sat on the broken cot, which was fortunately sturdy enough to keep his weight despite the missing piece in the middle.
The silence echoed off the walls until Ned spoke.
“I worked for the Pinkertons. But I wanted to shield you,” he said, hunched forward, with eyes pinned to the floor between his feet.
“Since when?”
“Since the day after we met.”
Cole’s fingers twitched so rapidly he barely held them still by entwining all of them into a tight ball. He’d expected this, but hearing Ned confirm what Cole had believed all along was so painful he rested both elbows on his thighs and hunched over the floor as the words stabbed their way through his skull and then down his body, punching a bleeding hole in his heart.
No pain had ever been this severe. Not the branding. Not even losing his mother.
The happiest days of his life had been a lie.
Ned swallowed loudly enough for Cole to hear. “May I get the plank?”
“No,” Cole managed to rasp out.
Chapter 6
Cole hadn’t slept. And unless he was mistaken, neither did Ned. By the time the sun came up to illuminate Rory’s snoring form on a narrow bed behind the sheriff’s desk, his eyes were strained, eyelids heavy, and his chest filled with dullness that weighed on him like a lead blanket. Perhaps he wasn’t at peace with what was about to happen, but the possibility of an early death had been a part of his lifestyle for longer than he could remember. He was afraid that the hanging might not go as planned, that he’d suffer, but death? The end of his existence didn’t frighten him anymore.
He was ready.
The matted beard and unevenly cut hair obscured Ned’s features, and therefore also his feelings. He didn’t speak either, not to any other person at least, because while he’d mutter to himself about ‘Nugget’ and having to discuss something with Rory throughout the night, nothing ever came of it.
They didn’t break their fast with food, since no one wanted to embarrass themselves by expelling the contents of their stomach on the gallows, but the growing noise outside would have stifled Cole’s appetite either way. The sheriff himself came in around eleven and shared a simple meal with Rory, who no longer asked them any questions and just sat there, as if being the hand of justice didn’t bring him much satisfaction when his cousin was involved.
Close to noon, a couple of men outside demanded for the execution to start. They had work to return to after all and wanted to have a nice meal once their thirst for vengeance had been satisfied. Ned and Cole were offered half a tumbler of whisky each, and that was that. With their hands bound behind their backs, they were walked out of the jail and onto a cart so that every citizen could witness what happened to those who did not abide society’s rules.
Ned wouldn’t look at Cole, his gaze a blank wall that nothing and no one could breach. Despite fatigue, Cole’s reflexes were sharp as ever, so he managed to dodge when a rotting cabbage flew his way, and the projectile ended up hitting Ned on the shoulder instead.
“Monster!” a woman yelled from the growing crowd.
Granted, it was less than two hundred people, but in a place as small and humble as Beaver Springs, such a number constituted a mob. Cole bit the inside of his cheek when a stone punched him in the back, but the sheriff was an honest enough man to stop the youths already picking up more rocks.
Cole was disappointed that the weather had deteriorated since yesterday, and now heavy clouds hung over the town in a promise of imminent rain. A poetically inclined man would have said the world was about to mourn his passing, but Cole hated rain, and was suddenly upset that he hadn’t gotten the chance to bask in the sun one last time.
He tried to keep his gaze high to avoid provoking the folk of Beaver Springs into hurling yet more items his way, but they were also of no interest to him. They were simple people—hard-working and blinded by their belief in community and the innate goodness everyone had in them before their heart went to rot. It was easier to point fingers and judge than consider the simple fact that Christian duty ended where hunger began. But Cole wouldn’t try to whiten his name. What was the point? By this time tomorrow, it would be as if he’d never existed.
The good folk of Beaver Springs followed the cart, shouting insults, but many already waited at the gallows, close to the entryway into town, their cheeks rosy from the excitement of violence they could so easily wash their hands of. In fifteen minutes, they’d leave with their precious consciences pristine as ever.
Most weren’t even here for him, since to them he was a new face, ‘some murderer’, as he heard one man tell another. Their anger and curiosity focused on the Wolfman, Ned O’Leary, who had once been a local.
“Heard his mother hung herself once she found out he was a criminal,” said one woman in a high-pitched voice.
“No, she died years ago, when he was still a boy. They came back from the mountains changed. Heard his father kept wolves as pets and hunted with them.”
Cole snorted at the ridiculousness of all the gossip, but once Rory aligned the cart with the gallows, his stomach dropped as if he were about to fall into the abyss.
Which he was.
When the sheriff stood on the wooden platform, and his gaze settled on his two prisoners, Cole needed to follow his lead with his chin raised.
But he found himself struggling to do so, as if every movement he made pumped his stomach full of rancid oil that was about to rise in his throat. Fear he’d so far denied, climbed from the depths of his body and calcified his muscles. In the past few years, death had occupied his mind so frequently he’d made himself believe that he’d become indifferent to it. But now that he was about to face it for real, the things he hadn’t yet done flashed through his mind like moving pictures. He still enjoyed seeing new places, taking photographs, and the simple pleasures of good food and sunshine. The fact that he’d survived what Ned had done to him made him want to live against the odds.