Free The Hangings by Bill Pronzini

the squeezing movement caused the corded sinews along his arm to writhe and ripple, like snakes under a blanket.
    He said, "How did you know where to find me?"
    "I just spoke to your wife."
    "I see."
    "Fine woman,'' I said. "She gave me one of her bayberry Christmas candles."
    "For what reason?"
    "No reason. Neighborly gesture, that's all."
    He made a grunting sound, as if he did not approve of neighborly gestures. "What is it you want of me, Mr. Evans?"
    "Some questions about Jeremy Bodeen."
    "I know no one named Jeremy Bodeen."
    "The man who was found hanged in Tule Bend last week," I said. "Name Bodeen isn't familiar to you?"
    "No."
    "His brother's in town. Emmett Bodeen."
    "That is no business of mine."
    Disagreeable cuss, I thought. I told him about Gus Peppermill seeing Jeremy Bodeen on Willow Creek Road, and about Mrs. Parsons being there at the same time. For all the expression on his face, I might have been telling him a dull story he had heard a dozen times before.
    When I was done talking, he said, "My wife said nothing about it to me."
    "Wasn't worth mentioning, I guess. She didn't connect the rider she saw with Bodeen. Didn't speak to him, she said."
    "My wife is not in the habit of speaking to passing strangers."
    "I didn't suppose she was. You didn't happen to see the man yourself, did you?"
    "I did not."
    "Nor at any other time last Tuesday?"
    "I was here all of last Tuesday.''
    "Didn't leave the farm all day?"
    "I did not," Parsons said.
    "Well, then."
    "Is that the last of your questions, Mr. Evans?"
    "It is. I'll leave you to your work."
    He dipped his chin at me, then turned and bent in one motion and snipped off the trailing length of barbed wire from the spool. As far as he was concerned, I was already gone.
    I put Rowdy under me again and rode up to the brow of the hill. When I looked back from there, Parsons was hammering a staple into one of the new fence posts to secure the length of wire. Putting muscle into the job, too; the whacks of his hammer were like pistol shots in the still air.
    Strange man, as well as a disagreeable one. I found myself wondering, as I rode on past the farm buildings, why a woman like Greta Parsons had married him; what she had seen in him that had attracted her. Whatever it was, it was beyond my powers of reckoning. And none of my concern, either. For all they seemed oddly mated, they might be happy and content together. You can't tell about a married couple. You would have to be one of a particular pair to understand the way things were between them, and even then you might not be too certain on some counts.
    Still and all, I could not help thinking that she didn't look happy and content. And that maybe she deserved better than this tenant farm and better than Jubal Parsons.

Chapter 8
    SEEING GRETA PARSONS THAT AFTERNOON MADE ME WANT to see Hannah that night, I suppose partly because of the similarities between them. I thought about Hannah all the way back to town, and off and on during the afternoon, and while I endured Ivy's pry-and-prattle over supper. Soon after we finished eating I got my coat and went out and walked around on the east side of town for a while, letting enough time pass so that I would not interrupt Hannah's supper and any evening chores she might have. It was near nine when I finally walked back across the bridge and through town and climbed the rise to the Dalton house.
    Hannah was on the porch, as usual, and again I had the notion she was pleased to see me. I also thought I detected a measure of concern in her voice when she asked, "How are you feeling, Lincoln?" right after she let me in.
    "Feeling?"
    "Your head. The prowler last night."
    "You know about that?" I asked, surprised.
    "Oh yes. All about it."
    "How? I didn't see you in town today. . . ."
    "I wasn't in town today."
    "But I thought that—"
    "That I didn't have callers? I don't, usually." She smiled. It was difficult to tell in the lamplight, but there did not seem to be any humor in