I found my eyes were locked onto the slim shadow of the noose. In the dying sun, it cast its darkness down the empty main street, a thin, faint line leading toward the scaffold. I could almost hear the ghosts of the townsfolk, memories of grocers and gamblers, miners and killers, devils and the devils’ prey, bustling, shoving, arguing—the sounds as faint as the thin line leading from the circle of the noose to the place of death.
I could almost remember how they killed the sheriff. They tied his body, his bloody corpse, to the scaffold, his bullet wounds dripping his red life into the dirt. A reign of terror followed, so much killing, and my pa took us away, got us on a train.
I was following it now, walking in the slim shadow. The scaffold’s sun-bleached timber leaned, looking like a wind might knock the deadly contraption down. Old, worn out, but not—I shivered. The rope hanging from its arm, whose shadow had drawn me, was new.
Tale Told 