Power in the Blood

by Greg Matthews

  Clay returned to the center of town and found the only restaurant. He ate slowly, making plans. The waiter watched him closely, with suspicion, and Clay was obliged to set his mind at ease by opening a conversation about the weather, until the waiter accepted that the stranger with a face like a bad dream was simply an ugly nonentity. Clay had coffee, paid and left.

  He led his horses to the frame house, noting with satisfaction the distance between it and the nearest dwelling; if he could get the fool outside without too much squawking, he could be on his way to a town larger than Walsenburg, where the deserter could be handed over to federal authorities. The woman would probably be a problem, though. Clay didn’t want to tie and gag her to ensure cooperation. He would meet the situation as it developed.

  Before knocking on the door, he stepped through the stableyard fence and caught the mule by its halter, then saddled and bridled it, ready for use by the man who soon would be his prisoner. At least the young man had seen fit to dispose of his army saddle and use the regular type. Clay tied the mule to the stable door, then led his horses around to the front of the house. He hitched them to the rail, and knocked on the door.

  The young man opened it. “Evening,” he said, still drunk. Behind him, Clay could see the woman sulking at a table.

  “Evening. Interested in selling your mule?”

  “Mule? No; I like him plenty.”

  “I could make you a more than fair offer. I need a good mule.”

  “There’s a horseyard in town that’ll sell you one.”

  “Well, I was more partial to yours. How much you want for him?”

  “Mister, I wouldn’t sell that animal for twenty new dollars.”

  “How about twenty-five?”

  “Take it,” said the woman, approaching the door. “Let him in and don’t be so rude.”

  “You mind your mouth,” the young man advised her, but stepped aside for Clay to enter the house.

  “Get you something?” the woman asked.

  “Thank you, ma’am; I just now ate.”

  “Well, sit yourself down anyway,” she said.

  Clay took a chair at the table, and the young man sat opposite him. The woman busied herself by the stove, pretending not to listen.

  “Bill Adams,” said Clay.

  “Euen Christy. Twenty-five dollars, you said.”

  “I did.”

  “That’s a lot more’n he’s worth, but I expect you already know that, am I right? What kind of work are you in, mister?”

  “All kinds. I move around. I need a reliable mule.”

  “Well, that one ain’t reliable at all. You wouldn’t want him, I can tell you that right now.”

  “How about we go take a look at him.”

  “I already looked at him today. He’s not for you.”

  Clay knew he had not convinced Christy. It was his scarred face that had done it. One look, and the woman was all sympathy and politeness, the man openly suspicious.

  “You’re the one was in the saloon today.”

  “I was. Interesting brand on it, your mule.”

  “If you say so.”

  Clay saw the guarded look that came into Christy’s eyes.

  “Rafter circle eight. I’m not familiar with that.”

  “Well, you wouldn’t be, without you’re from around here.”

  “Your spread, this rafter circle eight?”

  “You might say. You don’t want that mule, do you?”

  “I’d settle for you instead, Christy. That your real name? Would that be Corporal Christy? I just don’t see you ranked any higher than that.”

  “What …?”

  “You can come along easy if you want, or hard, if that’s your preferment; I don’t care.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.…”

  “I do, and you do too. Get a jacket on; it’s cool outside.”

  “To hell with you, mister.”

  Christy stood and moved toward a gun belt hanging on the wall. Clay stood and swung open his coat. The sawed-off shotgun on its shoulder lanyard was up and cocked in a second. Christy’s mouth gaped, and his woman began to moan, “Don’t hurt him, mister, don’t hurt him, he never done a thing, he’s all I got, mister.…”

  “I ain’t a deserter! You got the wrong man here.… See, I got the mule off of a feller come through here one night, army feller he was, all wore out and needing help, so I give him some old clothes and a ten-dollar horse for the mule and his pants and his boots … I’m not him, mister, ask anyone hereabouts, I lived here a year and more.”

  “He’s not the one, not the one you want, mister, please don’t hurt him.…”

  “How long since you did the trade?” Clay demanded.

  “Eight, nine days … He was all wore out, and with a wounded hand, so I done what the Samaritan done, mister, you can’t fault me for that, I reckon.”

  “Put the gun down, mister,” the woman begged. “He went on north of here, if you want to take out after him.”

  Clay felt cheated. He could not doubt the genuine terror of the couple, and his annoyance at having misjudged the circumstances made him angry. Christy and his woman were not deserving of any explanation. He told them to sit down at the table and stay there without moving while they slowly counted to one hundred. They sat immediately. Clay lowered his shotgun as he went to the door. He unhitched his horses, mounted and became a part of the night.

  Pursuit of the deserter was pointless. Instead, Clay drifted west toward Alamosa. What he needed was a job. His duties back in Keyhoe had been tedious for the most part, but the money was steady. It had been Sophie who drove him away from that line of work, not the work itself. Maybe the time had come, after his wandering for more than a year, to try again in some small town, or even a big one, and put behind him his saddle tramp days. His dentures distracted him from this fresh line of thought, and he extracted them to concentrate on what he realized was nothing less than a genuine and urgent change of heart. He could live in a house again, and not be looked down upon by law-enforcement officers, who saw him as a professional bounty killer. Clay suspected they were envious, in some ways, of his free-ranging approach to the elimination of badmen, but he acknowledged that, if given the chance to stand again in the boots of a sheriff or marshal, he would view such types as himself with a less than favorable eye. It was a moral contradiction, but Clay could live with it, for the sake of regular wages and a roof to keep the sky from his shoulders.

  Alamosa seemed a likely place to begin searching out a place for himself in the standard order of things. He entered the office of the town marshal and inquired if there was any opening for a deputy marshal in a town that size. The man behind the desk looked him up and down, then asked his name.

  “Clay Dugan.”

  “Out of Kansas?”

  “That’s right.”

  The man nodded his head several times, then said, “Don’t believe I could find a place for a man that kills his own blood.”

  Clay was taken aback by this. “You’re misinformed.”

  “Nope.”

  “My boy … my boy was suffering.”

  “So you’re saying you did it?”

  “No … I’m saying if I did what … what my wife says I did, it would’ve been the right thing to do, end his suffering.… Wouldn’t any man do that for his son? Wouldn’t you?”

  “I’d leave it up to the Lord, is what I’d do, mister.”

  Clay turned and left. He stayed in Alamosa only for the time required to replenish his supplies, then aimed himself west again. The incident had shaken him. He had not expected news of Silan’s death to pass beyond the boundaries of Keyhoe County, yet here was the proof it had done just that. He supposed the story had gone even further. There had often been strange glances given him in the past year, when he stated his name in order to collect reward money for his services, but he attributed these to his unusual appearance and the reviled nature of his profession. Had the looks been on accoun
t of Sophie and Silan? He supposed it would be this way wherever he went, unless he outran the story by journeying as far as California or Oregon.

  But that would be cowardice, he told himself. He was not ashamed of what he had done for poor Silan (but was, he admitted, ashamed for having denied it in front of the Alamosa marshal) and could not see any life for himself that involved flight from the consequences of his act, whether by distance or by changing his name. He was Clay Dugan, and he had done what he did, and if the world made him an outcast because of it, then that was the lot he would accept. His vision of a return to the ordinary society of townsfolk had been a mirage, an insubstantial haze distorting reality, softening the facts. Clay knew now what those facts were, and he would never again deny or ignore them. If a bed of nails was to be his fate, then he would toughen his spine to accommodate it, and the world could go hang itself by its righteous neck.

  Westering still toward Durango, Clay encountered an uncommon traveler. The canvas-covered wagon was not an incongruous feature in land without trails, but its smallness was emphasized by the expanse of broad grassland around it and the massiveness of the San Juan Mountains beyond. He approached out of curiosity, rather than any need for conversation, and saw a thin man dressed in black asleep on the wagon seat while his team cropped grass. Their nickerings as Clay’s horses came closer woke the man, and he reached hastily for something on the seat beside him. Clay thought at first it might have been a gun, which struck him as a sensible precaution, but it was a Bible. The man clutched it to his chest like armor as Clay drew near.

  “Morning,” Clay said.

  “Blessings be upon you,” the man responded.

  Clay saw lettering along the side of the wagon: A FALSE BALANCE IS ABOMINATION TO THE LORD: BUT A JUST WEIGHT IS HIS DELIGHT. PROVERBS 11:1.

  He had come upon such men as this before, wilderness preachers who shunned the comforts of civilization, the better to proselytize among the more remote regions of the west. Although he had no use for religion, Clay felt such men were kindred spirits to himself, in that they pursued their calling without regard for its inconveniences and loneliness. The man looked half starved to Clay’s eyes, and was probably one of the most committed of the breed, the type Clay dubbed “wild-eyed and woolly,” for the deliberate neglect of their bodies in favor of their souls. For these men, spreading the gospel through inhospitable territory was not enough; they must suffer in the doing of it, for the purging of their souls. It was wasted effort, so far as Clay was concerned, but he had respect for any man who would risk himself for an ideal, no matter how foolish the quest.

  “Clay Dugan,” he said.

  “Dugan?”

  “Heard the name before?”

  Clay presumed even this wanderer of mountain meadows had heard of his mercy killing back in Kansas. He doubted that a preacher would understand or condone what he had done. He was prepared to ride on in an instant if the man on the wagon began lecturing him on the folly and evil of his chosen ways.

  But the preacher shook his head. “No,” he said, then added, as if remembering himself only now, “Reverend Francis Wixson, sir.”

  Wixson’s eyes were pale, the skin stretched tightly over his face. The tendons in his hands stood out like wires, and his nails were gray and broken. Clay saw an unsocked toe peeping from a hole in the preacher’s left boot.

  “Reverend, I’m about to make myself some grub, and it won’t bother me to make double portions, if you’d be kind enough to eat with me.”

  “Mr. Dugan, you will find I am kindness personified.”

  Clay dismounted and began unpacking flour and jerked meat. Wixson climbed weakly down from his wagon and began gathering such wood as could be found among the knee-high grasses. Clay watched from the corner of his eye as the preacher stumbled excitedly about his task. He would have to make a big meal for this starving man. He would even open the can of peach preserves he had been saving.

  While the sourdough was mixed and poured into a frying pan, Wixson gnawed without shame at several strips of beef. Clay envied the man his natural teeth; he could no longer tug at his own food with such determination, had instead to cut off a portion and use his porcelain molars to grind it into a digestible state before he swallowed.

  “You see before you a man without means, Mr. Dugan.”

  “Been that way myself from time to time.”

  “I must rely on charity for my bread, but there are so few souls hereabouts to practice their charity upon me.”

  Clay heard the undertone of pride as Wixson stated his dilemma; this one was wild-eyed and woolly for sure, probably more inclined to pass through heaven’s gate than resort to easier pastures for his preaching.

  “It’s lonely country all right.”

  “May I ask what takes you across it?”

  “I’m looking for someone, Reverend, several someones, as a matter of fact.”

  “It may be that I’ve seen them.”

  Clay fetched a handful of reward fliers from his packhorse and set them down before his guest. Wixson stared at the names and faces and their lists of wrongdoing.

  “Are you a federal officer, Mr. Dugan?”

  “I’m an independent. Federals tend to push paper around rather than go after a man that needs going after.”

  “I see. You … hunt these fellows down for the posted reward moneys?”

  “That’s what I do. Outlaws, they like to hole up in lonely places generally, so they can see any man that’s coming, and make plans to ambush him if they figure him to be a federal.”

  “And how do you avoid being shot at, Mr. Dugan?”

  “By not looking like a federal, and not carrying a badge.”

  “This is lucrative work?”

  “I get by. There are more sinners on earth than there are outlaws, Reverend, but there’s plenty of outlaws and not enough lawmen, so I step right into the breach and bring them to justice.”

  “And if they do not come willingly?”

  “I hand them a slice of justice right there, twelve gauge.”

  “Sir, I have eaten your food, and will eat more, but I cannot do so without confessing to you that I find your area of employment vile. I apologize for my tongue.”

  “Say what you like, I don’t mind. There’s plenty think like you do, town people mostly. Folks further out, they know what it is to be a hundred miles from the law when scum like these come riding up to their door.”

  He swept up the fliers and returned them to his pack animal. When he returned to the fire, Clay kept his eyes on the frying pan. Wixson waited some minutes before asking, “Do you believe in the existence of the soul, Mr. Dugan?”

  “If I’ve got one, Reverend, it isn’t hurting from the job I do.”

  “You misunderstand me. I ask the question from a purely speculative or philosophical point of view.”

  “Then I can’t answer, because I don’t know. Near as I can tell, no one does, not even preachers, pardon me.”

  “My own particular interest, Mr. Dugan, lies in proving the existence, the actual and scientifically verifiable existence, of this shadowy thing we all have heard of, and none of us seen, even though it resides in every living human, good or bad, heathen or Christian. I am engaged in a personal search for the invisible.”

  “Seems like a fair amount to bite off.”

  “My work requires more than faith alone, and I am prepared. Allow me to show you.”

  Wixson levered himself up from the fire and led Clay to his wagon. He threw open the canvas flap at the rear, then stepped aside to allow Clay a clear view of the apparatus within. Clay saw an arrangement of solid brass rods and levers and platforms.

  “What is it?”

  “A beam balance, Mr. Dugan, and an expensive one. Its original purpose was to weigh cotton bales, but I have had its mechanism refined by an instrument maker from Massachusetts to render it capable of measuring the most minute fraction of an ounce. This device is capable of registering the weight of a feather,
and is unique in all the world. I have beggared myself in its perfection. It is an instrument without peer, Mr. Dugan, and is the reason you find me in dire straits.”

  “What exactly does it do, besides weigh feathers?”

  “The two panniers receive, on one side, whatever object is to be weighed, and, on the other, the requisite brass weights of certified standard measure. I have augmented the original set, whose lowest piece was just one pound, with additional weights down to one one-hundredth of an ounce. You see there the weights arranged according to size along the walls. My vehicle is perfectly balanced. ‘A false balance is abomination to the Lord: but a just weight is his delight.’”

  Clay asked, “But what exactly is it that you weigh on this contraption, Reverend?”

  “Please, sir, do not refer to the balance as a contraption. This is a scientific instrument, the fruit of man’s best endeavor, and engaged in holy work. What work, you ask, and I reply: the work that transcends all others!”

  “What work is that, Reverend?”

  “I have not made myself clear. The work of proving to the misled and unconvinced and doubting Thomases of the world that there exists within each and every one of them an immortal soul, a real and actual thing of physical substance which coincides in shape and proportion with the gross body of flesh and blood we all are heir to as mortal men.”

  “You weigh people?”

  “Dying people, Mr. Dugan, to the very breath in their lungs. In your line of work you will doubtless have heard the death rattle as that final breath is expelled, and my device is so finely balanced it registers the expiration of that breath. I know that a man has breathed his last when the weights tell me so.”