Free Shadow of the Hangman by J. A. Johnstone

to the bed’s brass spindles.
    â€œAre you trying to leave, and us just getting acquainted?” he said. Lum leaned on one elbow. “Did I ever tell you about Tom Scratcher of San Francisco town? No? Well, he was a rum one was old Tom. He’d always give you a fair go, no fears about that, but in the end he always came up trumps. Aye, many a lively lad rode Tom’s bullet to the grave, and many a woman and child as well, if the truth be told.”
    The whore’s eyes were as round as coins, damp with fear and dread.
    â€œSee, Tom took me under his wing, like,” Lum said. “He taught me his ways, how to rob and kill and sleep sound o’ nights after the deeds were done.” Lum stabbed a stiff finger into the whore’s chest. “Do you know what they were, the ways of Tom Scratcher?”
    The girl shook her head.
    â€œThey were the ways of hell,” Lum said. “Wherever he went, ol’ Tom brought hell with him.” He sighed deep and long. “ ’Course, they done for him in the end. He was strung up by vigilantes and me alongside o’ him. Damned hicks, they set fires under us, and Tom died in the flames, bold as brass to the end, a-cursing the hicks, seed, breed, and generation of them. As for me, I was burned, as ye can tell, but I fooled them. I was still alive when they cut me down and left me lying there for the buzzards.”
    Lum’s wolf teeth gleamed in the darkness. “Oh, no, he didn’t die, not ol’ Lum. Leastways, his body didn’t die. You know what died, missy?” He jabbed a thumb into his chest. “In here? No? Well, my soul died. It burned up in the fire, and I hauled it out as a cinder.”
    Lum laughed, as though he’d said the funniest thing that ever was.
    â€œPlease let me go,” the whore said. “I have to make money to send to me mother.”
    â€œShe won’t get any money,” he said. He shook his head. “Oh, no, no, no, not ever again.”
    â€œPlease mister—”
    â€œBe quiet!” He slapped the girl so hard her blond head rocked on the stained pillow. His hands, the skin scraped raw by flame, circled the whore’s slim throat and he squeezed.

    He called himself Lum because, the discarded son of a two-dollar-a-bang whore, he had no other name. Without sparing a glance for the dead girl on the bed, he hurriedly dressed and buckled on his gunbelt. As was his habit, he drew his Remington from the holster and checked the loads. The revolver’s balance was excellent, as he knew it would be. An English gunsmith in Boston had fine-tuned the weapon’s action and closely fitted its ivory grips until the Remington was in itself a work of art.
    Lum had killed the man to make sure he’d never make another like it.
    He reholstered the gun, then settled a gray plug hat on his bald, fire-scalded head and studied himself in the small dresser mirror. In the guttering lamplight, half his face in shadow, he looked almost human. He scowled. What a pity.
    A fist pounded on the door, and Lum said, “What do you want?”
    A woman’s voice said, “Trippy is needed downstairs.”
    â€œGo away, she’s busy,” Lum said.
    The fist pounded again. “Open up, mister,” the woman said. “You’ve had your five dollars’ worth of Irish ass.”
    Lum cursed and stepped to the door, his huge six-foot-four-inch, former prizefighter’s frame filling the doorway.
    The woman saw him and took a step back, her face frozen in shock.
    â€œTrippy will be down in a minute,” Lum said, enjoying the effect his features and size had on people.
    The woman, plump, blowsy, showing six inches of sweating cleavage, couldn’t take her eyes off the burned mask that was Lum’s face. She thought his hairless skin looked like melting candle wax, and she wanted to cross herself and run away.
    But she’d been a madam with her own stable of