Page 56 of Death on Gallows Path

“Go. And we’ll think about how to explore other angles of Damon the elephant.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

It wasn’t hard to find Urban Parhem.

He was at the tiny white-painted brick building that started life as the first courtroom for North Bend County, now called the Old Old Courthouse. It served as home to the historic society, which was basically Urban and a few people he quietly bossed around.

He looked up when I entered, started to smile, then went neutral.

After a variety of blows late last year, our friendship hadn’t fully repaired itself. We talked, but we didn’t commune.

“Hi, Urban. I came by hoping for anything you know about the background of Damon Swindell—”

“I heard you and Clara are looking into the circumstances of his being found dead yesterday morning. Shocking.”

Despite the bruise on our friendship, I knew he meant the death was shocking, not that Clara and I were looking into it. He knew us well enough to expect it and I believed he approved.

“—and any information on the area around Gallows Path that might help.”

“Ah, Gallows Path. It has quite the history.”

Figured he’d latch onto the history of a place before the death of a man.

It might end up being of interest to our case or it might be the toll he extracted for whatever else he told me.

“Does it?” I dutifully asked.

“Perhaps the best-known current iteration of Gallows Path is as part of a ghost tour in Williamsburg, Virginia, which presents information on pirates, among others, hanged in colonial days. Similarly, in Salem, Massachusetts, the Gallows Hill, long associated with the witch trials, was reached by what was known, at least informally, as Gallows Path.”

Surreptitiously, I squeezed the bridge of my nose between my thumb and index finger.

“Virginia and Massachusetts in the Colonial period. What about gallows here? And more recent?”

“As you might be aware, the last public hanging in the United States was in Owensboro in 1936.”

Somehow, I had not been aware of that.

I was confident he was aware of my unawareness.

“Owensboro,” I repeated. “That’s not far from here, right? On the way to Louisville?”

“You’re thinking of Owenton. The historical event I mentioned occurred in Owensboro, which is southwest of Louisville, on the Ohio River.”

So much for my knowledge of Kentucky. But I knew how to play this game.

“Owen must have been quite the guy to have two towns named after him.”

“Owenton and its county, as well as Owensboro were named for Colonel Abraham Owen, who was an early surveyor in Kentucky, and a member of the state constitutional convention in 1792. He died at the battle of Tippecanoe in 1811.”

I piped up with, “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too.” That was the extent of my knowledge of John Tyler’s presidency, other than placing it between Andrew Jackson and the Civil War.

“That was the campaign song for William Henry Harrison.”

Not John Tyler? I knew less than I’d thought.

Before I revealed that ignorance by asking why people backing Harrison sang about Tyler, Urban said, “They capitalized on Harrison’s image as the victor in the Battle of Tippecanoe against the Shawnee tribe in Indiana. That became his nickname.”

The light bulb went on. Tippecanoe referred to Harrison’s service, while Tyler was his vice-presidential candidate — the afterthought, too.