Power in the Blood

by Greg Matthews

  Drew was almost envious, and had to make himself turn away from the gate. He began walking west, down the road to a place without a name. He wished he had a gun, but acknowledged you couldn’t have everything.

  Smart Crow stood in the square and watched his own shadow, consulting with it. He would find his son’s sons with the help of his shadow self, which would lead the way, but first he must open his mind to the many presences in so confined a space. He wished to know where the blackrobes slept. These men, the tall thin one and the short fat one, had corrupted his grandsons, continuing the damage already done to them by their fool of a father, whom Smart Crow suspected of having secretly become a woman himself when his wife died giving birth. Only a woman would have surrendered sons that way.

  Smart Crow was able to tell from his distant glimpses of the boys over the years that the blackrobes were turning them to women too. They would grow breasts, and their penises would fall off. It was a shameful fate, but it could be avoided if only they were taken from this place of unnatural magic. There was a sickness here, the sickness of the Dead Man Flying on Wood, which had plagued Smart Crow’s people for many generations; only recently had some of them begun to yield, his own son-who-became-a-woman being among the first. Smart Crow wept at the memory of such perversion. It had been necessary to kill his son in order to save him from the blackrobes, and then he had made himself suffer the pain of nails growing through his hands, since no man could kill his own son without himself suffering, even if the killing had been just.

  All the suffering and perversion would be undone this night. His shadow told him in which direction the boys lay sleeping, and the blackrobes too. Smart Crow felt the spirit of his son stirring in the new hand held before him, the hand that would turn the world right side up again. It was Smart Crow’s luck to have as his destiny this righting of a great wrong. The sun tomorrow would shine upon a different world.

  Smart Crow lifted his knife, a white man’s knife, admittedly superior. It would spill blood from the opened throats of the blackrobes without even waking them.

  10

  Bryce and Zoe reached Pueblo, Colorado. Bryce spent a day ascertaining the availability of stone from a local quarry, then set up a store in the back of his wagon at the edge of town. On his first day of business he took in three orders: headstones for an infant death from unknown causes, a victim of heart failure, and the unfortunate loser in a drunken gunfight. It was clear the area needed Bryce Aspinall’s professional services.

  He would journey no further, he said, then he asked Zoe to be his wife, adding, “You don’t have to answer right this minute, you can think about it awhile. I’ll wait.”

  Think about it she did. Zoe’s capacity for honesty with herself obliged her to draw up a mental list of her suitor’s strengths and weaknesses. She felt no guilt over this; a decision of such magnitude required hardheaded calculation, plus and minus.

  First, the good things: Bryce had never attempted to touch her, unlike Hassenplug, unlike Tully. He appeared to care for her baby, had never expressed a disparaging remark over the blue birthmark, even took the time to cradle Omie in his arms when Zoe’s attentions were elsewhere. He did not drink. He seemed intent on working hard in a respectable field of employment, with every likelihood of success. He promised he would build her a real home when this became possible. He seemed genuinely to care for her and Omie both. She was indebted to him for the way he buried Tully without condemnation and carried Zoe away from the scene of that incident. And he was the first man ever to ask for her hand.

  Against this powerful current drawing her to him stood two mighty rocks. The first was her need to find Clay and Drew. If she settled in Pueblo, what chance did she have of ever finding them? She could only trust to fate and hope the nation’s westering winds sooner or later would bring her brothers to her. The second obstacle to acceptance was, if anything, even larger: she did not love him. Zoe didn’t know why this was so; if ever a man was deserving of love, it was Bryce Aspinall. She set aside his homeliness (Zoe would never again trust a handsome man such as Tully) and tried instead to isolate that aspect of Bryce which told her this was not a man she could love. Zoe devoted considerable thought to it, but could arrive at no specific answer. She simply did not love him, or see how love might develop between them. She felt affection, and no more than that.

  To arrive at a decision, therefore, Zoe ignored her own needs. Her choice would be made for the sake of Omie; whatever was best for Omie would bring with it the resolution to Zoe’s dilemma. Viewed from this perspective, her options were reduced to just one. Seven hours after hearing Bryce’s proposal, Zoe accepted. She did so without any sense of compromise too large to deny her a measure of happiness. There was no reason, in Zoe’s opinion, why the marriage should not be bearable. She resigned herself to it not with regret, but with a feeling of relief at having made a decision. Once and for all, she would sever ties with an unsatisfactory past, without binding herself to some risky or unpredictable future. Bryce was a good man, and Zoe didn’t doubt she was a good girl. Despite everything, it would work.

  After the wedding, Bryce located a small house for them to rent not far from the wagon-workshop. Zoe found herself happy enough with life, but she had formed the habit of mentally checking over her shoulder for approaching calamity. None came, and she wondered if maybe she was free to enjoy the new life that was hers, because she had earned it with pain. It seemed an appropriate attitude, so she embraced it, and became happier still for most of her waking hours.

  Bryce worked hard and gave every cent to Zoe. “You go ahead and hold the purse strings and apron strings both,” he told her, “and leave the hammer and chisel work to me.” She often watched him marking with chalk the names and dates and floral edging that every headstone, even the simplest, required. Zoe admired the way Bryce tapped lightly but confidently at the flat surfaces with his tools, flawlessly executing the commonplace inscriptions of death and remembrance. Bryce had no time to set up fake stones as examples of his skill; business was so brisk his works-in-progress were the best recommendation he could have placed before the public.

  In the evening he walked the hundred yards or so to their home, and was served the plain fare he preferred, a fortunate circumstance, since Zoe’s culinary talent was limited, even for that time and place. When darkness came, Bryce read to her from the tales of Sir Walter Scott, or Zoe read to Bryce, alternating chapters of this rip-roaring stuff. Ivanhoe was far and away Zoe’s favorite of the several volumes they had shared since marrying. Her own affection for Bryce in no way compared with the love between Ivanhoe and Rowena, but she was content; Zoe would not let niggling doubt mar her first enjoyment of living since she was very small.

  When Bryce approached her in the marriage bed she allowed him the one simple thing he wanted satisfaction in. The act was over with soon enough not to interfere with her overall peace of mind. He always fell asleep before her, and it was during the hiatus between Bryce’s first gentle snore and the final closing of Zoe’s eyes that those doubts, the few and formless kind that still bedeviled her, came and stood about the bed to express misgiving.

  The marshal of Keyhoe, Kansas, was Grover Stunce, and he oftentimes felt himself inadequate for the task. He was forty-one years old, and did not like running up against drunken cowboys. He found the work repetitive and pointless, since the same fools always showed up, drunk again, after a night in the cells. Once, a cowhand on a spree had resisted arrest and blown a hole in Grover’s calf with his .45 before being cut down by the marshal’s own gun. The killing bothered Grover for many weeks afterward. He was neither a brave man nor a coward, but he saw the need for civil order, and in Keyhoe there were few men seeking after his job.

  Grover had a powerful sense of communal obligation, but he also had a wife. Mrs. Stunce had refused to let him touch her since the day of the shooting that brought him home with bloodied pants. “Why should it be you that does this filthy work!” she wished to know, and Grov
er could only repeat that no one else seemed to have the stomach for such a calling. “Then share it!” she instructed him. Grover was prepared to admit she had a good point, so he hung in the window of his office a hand-lettered sign offering gainful employment to anyone prepared to wear the badge of a deputy marshal. The sign remained in his window for eighteen days, then was brought inside late one evening by a tall individual cradling a sawed-off shotgun.

  “This offer still good?” he asked.

  “It is.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  “That depends. It’s not a job for just anyone.”

  The light in Grover’s office was poor; only after close scrutiny of the face before him did it become apparent there were badly-healed-over holes through both cheeks. It was not a pleasant face, the jaw hanging like a bucket, the eyes like pistol bores, cheekbones like a hungry Indian’s, and all of this framed, as it were, by the dark halo of a wide-brimmed preacher’s hat supported on two jugged ears. Grover reminded himself that handsomeness was not a requisite for the position.

  “I’ll take it anyway,” the applicant said, and Grover didn’t argue.

  “That your only piece?” he asked, nodding at the sawed-off.

  “Yes.”

  “Revolver’s the standard sidearm in law work.”

  “I’ll stick with this. My name’s Dugan.”

  “Been on the right side of the law at all times, Dugan?”

  “Yes.”

  “I like to set an example. I won’t take on a man who’s been convicted of any felonious activity. A clean slate is what I ask for, and honest ways, also I can’t use a man looking to make a pile of cash from doing what we do here. It won’t be a stepping-stone to riches, this office.”

  “Didn’t think it was,” said Clay. “Am I hired?”

  Grover let him wait a moment longer. He was not altogether happy with the situation. “Got your own horse?”

  “Got a good one, and a spare.”

  “Go on over to Merton’s Livery, just across the street. Tell them you’re working for me and he’ll put up your mounts, care of the county. The same doesn’t apply to room and board. There’s a number of rooming houses that charge a reasonable rate and are clean. You take your pick.”

  “What’s wrong with here?”

  “Here?”

  “That’s a bed, isn’t it?”

  Clay aimed his eyes at the rawhide-sprung frame and mattress in the office corner, under a locked rifle rack.

  “That’s just for when we have to guard a prisoner overnight if there’s a lynch party wants him out and hung. You can’t live here full time, it’s an office. There’s no amenities.”

  “Where do the prisoners shit?”

  “In a pan, generally, and you empty it in the outhouse next door; they don’t mind.”

  “Then I’ll just skip the pan.”

  Grover felt that matters had been settled far too quickly, but was not inclined to delay official approval of the would-be deputy. He outlined briefly the responsibilities of the office, then added, “You a drinking man, Dugan?”

  “No.”

  “That’s one thing I won’t tolerate, especially on duty. A position of authority in a fair-sized town like this one, you need to watch out for public opinion and stay on the good side of it, hear me?”

  “I said I didn’t drink.”

  “Well, all right. There’s just certain things have to be spelled out clear so there’s no misunderstanding.”

  “I didn’t misunderstand.”

  “All right, then. Now, there’s supposed to be a piece of paper you sign after I swear you in, but I don’t believe I can lay my hand on it right this minute, so we’ll take care of that another day and go ahead with the swearing in. Raise your right hand.”

  Clay repeated the oath Grover spouted, and lowered his hand. Both men looked at each other. Clay raised an eyebrow.

  “Badge?”

  Grover went home with something approaching a spring in his step. This was the second-best news he could possibly have conveyed to Mrs. Stunce; first best would be a declaration that he intended returning to his original line of work, as a wheelwright. That was the work he had done when he married Sophie. She was his second wife, quite a bit younger than himself. His first, and their two children, had been taken by cholera.

  “Deputy?” said Mrs. Stunce with some disbelief.

  “A real deputy, looks mean enough for two.”

  “You’re sure now.”

  “Of course I’m sure. I hired the man. You can walk down and meet him tomorrow if you like.”

  “You should have invited him home for supper. That would have been the decent thing.” Mrs. Stunce was becoming quite excited. “I could have dished up something extra for a real deputy!”

  “He might not be the inviting-to-supper type, Sophie.”

  “What type is he?”

  “Well, he’s … standoffish. Not one for socializing is my guess, but I’m sure he’ll be just fine for the job. Dedicated, by God. Wants to sleep right there in the office. I think I got us a good one, Sophie, I do.”

  She permitted extensive intimate fondling that night, but would not allow full coitus until such time as she had seen for herself the caliber of this new deputy.

  Clay took himself to the Ambrosia Eatery for a meal, and attracted considerable attention by placing his shotgun among the bowls and cutlery. A waiter asked him to remove the offending item, but Clay declined. “No, I’ll just leave it there, thank you,” he said, and proceeded to order from the menu. The waiter decided not to press his complaint; the man with the holes in his face had an intimidating air, and besides, he wore a deputy’s badge.

  His belly full, Clay strolled up and down Keyhoe’s main street, inspecting his beat. There were fourteen saloons, so he would earn his pay. He visited each one in turn with his truncated shotgun, and introduced himself to the bartenders, most of whom tried to curry favor with the new deputy by offering drinks on the house. Clay refused politely.

  He found his reaction to these establishments interesting. Clay’s own intermittent encounters with alcohol since burning down Hassenplug’s barn in Indiana had shown him liquor’s appeal. The fact that scores of men chose to congregate in rooms reeking of tobacco and sweat and beer struck him as sad. He learned also that the whores who encouraged men to spend money on drink and themselves made him angry. Clay was a virgin still, and intended remaining that way until some virtuous woman who could ignore his appearance should cross his path.

  His opinion of saloons and their floating populations was judgmental, puritanical in its overall condemnation. The trick to his playing a representative of the law lay in Clay’s conviction that he was superior, in the moral sense, to every person inhabiting such places as were found along the street. If any one of them gave him the least amount of trouble, Clay felt fully capable of arresting that person, and in the case of armed resistance, would shoot dead the offending party without a qualm.

  It was not to happen that first night. When the bars finally closed, he marched himself up and down the street one last time before returning to the marshal’s office to divest himself of coat and hat and lie down on the prepared mattress, not the most comfortable he’d ever slept on, nor the least. He set his weapon beside him, both barrels loaded as always, and turned out the lamp. In the ceiling above him, Clay saw projected no future, no past, no hope or joy. He was, in his way, content.

  Mrs. Stunce came to evaluate her husband’s choice. She chose subterfuge over directness to accomplish this, arriving at the office around noon with a basket of food for both men. Grover happened to be absent at the time, and Mrs. Stunce took this as good fortune. She wished to run her eye over this new associate, with a long-term view to encouraging him in notions of replacing her husband rather than continuing as his deputy.

  She introduced herself with a smile, and the smile broadened as she began to appreciate how unusual Dugan’s appearance was; the holes in his cheeks were posi
tively mesmerizing in their ugliness and the questions they raised concerning their origin. Dugan’s face registered neither pleasure nor annoyance at her presence. He nodded as she gave her name, and thanked her quietly for the lunch.

  Mrs. Stunce shook her gaze free of his pierced face and settled on his weapon, lying before Dugan on the desktop. His shotgun had the uncompromising bluntness of an implement of slaughter. It was made for cutting men in half, nothing else, and caused her a moment of extreme discomfort. Guns of any kind made her nervous; those without the adornment of scrollwork or ivory handles to soften their look of deadliness were the ugliest of all. A tall ugly man with a short ugly gun was her firm impression. She could not have guessed his age, but sensed he was far younger than his face and manner suggested.

  “May I ask where you’re from, Mr. Dugan?”

  “Schenectady.”

  “That is in the east?”

  “New York.”

  “A fascinating city, I’m told.”

  “New York State.”

  “Oh. And you have chosen law enforcement for your career in the west.”

  “You might say, or it chose me. One or the other.”

  “I see,” said Mrs. Stunce, but she did not see at all. Grover had become marshal only because two highly skilled brothers had set up a wheelwright’s shop in competition with him a year ago and quickly stolen his business away. She could not understand why any man would willingly choose such work, if there were alternatives to so dangerous a field. The marshal before Grover had been killed while trying to arrest a thief, who seconds later was gunned down by a bystander anxious for justice and a reputation for man-killing. This person then left town without a hand being raised against him, since he had justifiably avenged the shooting of a lawman.