The Cunning Man

by D. J. Butler

  Teancum Kimball’s children had mostly died at birth. She couldn’t get to anything like a comprehensive count, digging through papers and jotting down notes in a dogeared memorabilia book, but north of twelve deaths, at least.

  She found no suggestion, though, that Teancum had killed the children, or that he was insane.

  Letters made it clear that, in the decades when Teancum had begun building his family and his ranch, he was loved by many, and hated by many more. He gave employment, and he acted as a local spiritual leader—Mary read more than one letter expressing some parent’s gratitude for the healing of their child by Teancum Kimball, with his famous gift of the laying on of hands. She also found handwritten records of prophetic blessings Teancum pronounced on others, promising long life, wisdom, a good marriage. or success in business.

  Odd. Not Mary’s culture. Still not madness.

  On the other hand, she found letters of complaint. Teancum had come into a valley that was already occupied by various kinds of settlers. On the basis that he was acting under the direction of Salt Lake City and its Mormon leadership, Teancum ran many of those others out of town. For immorality, or violating local custom, or criminal allegations—Teancum as local patriarch seemed consistently to end up as prosecutor and judge both, and no accused person came out vindicated. Without access to the land records, Mary couldn’t see the details, but it seemed clear that Teancum at least sometimes ended up with their land, all clustered around what would eventually become his mine in Spring Canyon.

  Mary generally didn’t side with the landed classes in her heart, but in this case, the landed victims were prospectors, small farmers, or local businessmen. For instance, there was a Lohengrim Zoller, who had run a general store in the 1860s and 1870s, right where Teancum had eventually built his house.

  And then in 1881, Lohengrim Zoller simply disappeared, and Teancum Kimball scooped up his land and added it to his holdings.

  She found an old daguerreotype that seemed to show Teancum Kimball and Lohengrim Zoller together. They stood at the center of a line of women and men at a barn-raising. She knew the men were Kimball and Zoller because the surname of each person in the image was penciled in a neat script below them. Kimball had the fierce, sunken eyes of a vulture and stepped toward the photographer with one foot, as if he were about to attack. Lohengrim had hair that stood straight up, as if a micro-tornado were sucking it toward the heaven at the moment the plate was exposed, and two eyes that didn’t point in the same direction.

  Two eyes that didn’t point in the same direction.

  Mary McGill checked the date of the photo on the back. Penciled in ink that had faded to a dull tan color was the year 1881.

  She looked at the image of the two men again.

  What had Hiram Woolley said about Gus Dollar having a connection with ancient things?

  “No. It couldn’t be.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Rattlesnakes lay coiled in the snow every fifteen feet, all the way to the store. Hiram looked them in the eye, repeated his chants, moved slowly, and was very, very careful not to step on a snake.

  They were coiled in even greater number in the flat gravel around Dollar’s, and Hiram found himself trying to look two or three snakes in the eye at the same time. His legs shook and sweat poured down between his shoulder blades.

  “You there!” Asael Fox called, behind him.

  Hiram kept walking.

  “In the poncho!”

  He was only a few steps from the store. Snakes slithered back and forth atop each other underneath the porch. Snakes sat coiled on the rocking chairs, gently shaking their rattles back and forth and waiting for Hiram.

  Bang!

  There was no way the police were shooting at him. They didn’t know for sure who he was, and even if they did, he was walking slowly up the canyon, not resisting arrest. They must be firing at the sky to get his attention.

  Unless Gus had somehow bent their minds.

  He turned his shoulders slowly, curious to see what the policemen were doing. The two men were running his way, jogging across the grass-speckled white field. The flurry of falling snow was thick enough that their Model B appeared only as a dim and distant glow behind a crystalline curtain.

  Asael Fox was closer, but Shanks had longer legs and was catching up.

  “Stop!” Hiram yelled. “Snakes! Stop!”

  And then Fox shrieked and staggered backward. He screamed again, and then began firing his pistol over and over.

  At the ground.

  He’d been bitten. Sergeant Dixon was coming to help him, and the colored man might be the next victim, but Hiram couldn’t do anything for them.

  He stepped up onto the porch, conscious of the snakes tangled up with each other beneath him. A fat rattler shook its tail languidly in the space immediately in front of the door. Hiram tried to lock eyes with the creature as he slowly shrugged out of the serape. Folding the wool to double thickness and meeting the snake’s gaze, he tossed the serape forward, covering the snake.

  Hissing angrily, the snake uncoiled to slither out from under the blanket, but it didn’t attack Hiram—it just crept a few feet to one side and coiled up again.

  The lights were out in the store, but now that he was on the porch, Hiram could tell that the door was cracked slightly open. Also, he could see that a coiled rattler hung on the doorknob.

  Gus Dollar was expecting him. Hiram threw aside the sombrero.

  With the toe of one Harvester and the end of his toolbox, he pressed at the door, very close to the hinges. It swung inward. The snake hanging from the knob hissed but didn’t so much as shake its rattle as Hiram Woolley slunk past it and into Gus Dollar’s shop, mayhem on his mind.

  He stopped, letting his eyes adjust the darkness. Outside, the shooting had stopped, but he was afraid to devote any more of his attention to Fox and Shanks. Crisp wind blew in through the door, throwing wet flakes in all directions.

  Hiram had come to wound Gus Dollar.

  He held the bullwhip coiled in his right hand. With a whip, he could strike from fifteen feet away. Also, he could cut a man’s skin open with it and make him bleed, with almost no risk of accidentally severing an artery.

  He didn’t want to kill Gus.

  “You’ve come thinking I will give you back your child.” The voice in the darkness was Gus’s, and Hiram realized with a start that the shopkeeper was standing behind his counter.

  “That’s part of it,” Hiram agreed.

  “I pissed blood, you bastard,” Gus said. “You made a witch bottle.”

  “You hexed my car. I had no choice.” Hiram set his toolbox on the floor.

  “So I did.” Gus chuckled. “You know, in England they didn’t burn witches. They hanged them, like they hanged other criminals. And mostly they didn’t punish them for the act of magic, they executed them for the crimes they committed using magic. A witch would be hanged for murder or theft, not for witchcraft as such.”

  “Are you threatening to hang me, Gus?”

  “On the contrary, I’m trying to understand your intent. Have you brought that rope to hang me, or merely to tie me up and force me to talk?”

  “What rope?”

  “I saw you in vision before you arrived, farmer. You can conceal nothing from me.”

  “I don’t want to kill you, Gus. I do want my son back, among other things.”

  “I don’t have him. But maybe there’s something else that you want.”

  “If you don’t have my son,” Hiram asked, “why have you summoned a field of snakes?”

  “Because I knew you were coming. And I knew you hated me. You burgled my shop. You vandalized my property. You terrified my innocent grandchildren. You are getting in my way, Hiram Woolley.”

  “If I hated you, I’d have done something to those grandkids of yours.”

  “No, you wouldn’t have. Never.” Even in the darkness, Hiram could see that Gus was shaking his head. “You’re not that kind of man, Hira
m. You would rather die than hurt an innocent. I admire that.”

  Hiram felt sick. Had his scruples doomed Michael? If he had been willing to kidnap Gus’s strange grandchildren, would Michael be with him now? “You’re going to tell me now that your grandchildren are there behind the counter, all hexed up again, and I shouldn’t shoot because I might hit them.”

  “No. I sent my family away. I only…used my grandchildren in that fashion because I was desperate. I don’t want them hurt, just like I don’t want your son hurt. Besides…” A note crept into Gus’s voice that sounded like delight. “Besides, I know that you don’t have a gun.”

  “You killed Sorenson.” Hiram’s voice shook like his hands.

  “No.”

  “What about Callista Markopoulos? What about Teancum Kimball two years prior?”

  “No. I killed none of them. Shall we try the sieve and shears?” Gus sounded much calmer than Hiram felt. “Book and key? Clay balls? I dislike the Kimballs. They drive business away from my store. But I like the miners.”

  “And you hated Teancum. I don’t know quite why, but it has something to do with what happened when the mine ran into the natural caves under the ridge, and they boarded the cave openings up, years ago.”

  “That was a long time ago, and before my time,” Gus said. “I’ve only been here about fifteen years.”

  Hiram felt a pinch in his thigh.

  He hadn’t been thinking about his heliotropius, assuming that every word Gus Dollar said was a lie or at least misdirection, so the stone’s warning twinge caught him by surprise. He’d meant to wound Gus first and then ask him questions, but the snakes had distracted him.

  But the bloodstone seemed to be working.

  And of all the things Gus had said, he’d lied about the caves being discovered before his time.

  “Did you hate Teancum Kimball?” Hiram asked.

  “No. I barely knew the man. I didn’t hate him.”

  Another pinch.

  Hiram shook his head. He was sleep-deprived, anxious, and jittery. Had he misunderstood?

  “When did you first move to this area?” he asked Gus.

  “Nineteen twenty.”

  The stone pinched Hiram a third time.

  Gus’s lies were clear. But that also meant that he’d been telling the truth when he’d said he hadn’t killed Sorenson, the little girl, or Teancum.

  “Do you know where my son is?”

  “I don’t. I believe he lives.”

  The stone didn’t pinch him. Hiram asked, “Why did you build your store over the cave opening?”

  “What have you got in your pocket?” Gus shot back. “Hyacinthus? Chalcedony?”

  “Heliotropius.”

  “Ah, the rain-bringer. So your beet farm prospers, no doubt. And are you famous?”

  “What’s your involvement with the mine closure, Gus?”

  “You never answered my question, Hiram. Are you going to hang me? This is the west, after all. It seems appropriate. The beams in my shop might not do very well, but you can find tall cottonwoods down by the creek that will serve as fine gallows.”

  Gus had something bulky in his hands. Was it a rifle? Hiram shifted slowly to his left, trying to get a better look. As Gus turned to follow him, more light struck Gus in the face.

  His eye was missing.

  Hiram shuddered. He imagined Gus hiding the glass eye under the seat of the Double-A, and then following all Hiram’s movements without effort. Hiram didn’t know a charm that would do that. Might Gus?

  “What do you call that thing?” Hiram asked.

  “The angel? Do you not have lists of angels’ names to consult? Ah, perhaps not. You did, after all, steal my list. And apparently you couldn’t read it.”

  “I returned it. I’m a farmer, not a magician.”

  “I call it the Beast, mostly,” Gus said. “Some names are not meant to be spoken too often out loud.”

  “And if I spoke its name?”

  “It might come. Like it came to the camp last night.”

  “But you’re not ready, are you?” Hiram asked. “You’re not in league with that thing, you’re in thrall to it. And you’re trying to break out. That’s what the Book of the Spirits was for. You want to summon and bind it.”

  “I was in thrall once. I’m a stronger magician, now,” Gus said. “I know two of the Beast’s names, and I have the knowledge to bind it. To bury it deep under the ground.”

  “Mahoun,” Hiram whispered. “Samael. Your Book of the Spirits was meant to crush…the Beast…underground.” He thought for a moment. “So that you could take its power forever?”

  A cold wind blew in through the open doorway, slamming the door against the wall. Hiram felt a fly creep across his face, a huge insect the size of a marble. He brushed it away with his left hand.

  Feeling was returning to his feet.

  “Don’t be a fool.” Gus raised his arms slightly. Hiram saw that the object the shopkeeper held was his ceremonial sword. “Find your son and leave. I don’t wish to harm you, and you can do nothing to stop the Beast. You would be mere food to it. Food that it might eat very, very slowly.”

  “You gave it your eye,” Hiram said. “That’s why you have a false one. Long ago, when you first encountered it, you made a bargain with that thing and the bargain cost you an eye. What does the demon give you in return?”

  Gus shrugged. “What do you bargain for? Wealth, power, the adulation of men, the satisfaction of the lusts of the flesh. But the demon only gives its blessings for thirty years.”

  “What did old man Teancum give it? When you were younger and first knew him? I know you knew him.”

  “His children.”

  Hiram frowned. “Ammon, Samuel, and Eliza? They live.”

  “The others died the day they were born. These three live on borrowed time, concessions to their mothers. The bill is due now, and the Beast is coming.”

  The bloodstone lay inert in Hiram’s pocket, and his heart was heavy with dread.

  “And my appearance worried you,” Hiram said, “because you feared that I might make a bargain with the demon, and upset your plans.”

  Gus said nothing.

  Hiram heard a car engine outside. Headlights blazed in through the shop windows, and then the car pulled to a halt. He heard the soft, scaly sound of a hundred snakes sliding out of the way and the crunching of heavy feet in snow.

  “Last chance,” Hiram said. “I’m not here to hang you, but I will hurt you. How do I stop the Beast?”

  “You know enough.”

  Hiram shook out the whip.

  Gus frowned. “That’s not a rope.”

  Hiram whipped the shopkeeper in the face.

  Gus shouted, incomprehensible words that might be German. He raised his sword defensively.

  “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!” Hiram whipped him again, crack! And again. In the headlights’ glow, he saw a curl of blood across Gus’s forehead, and something…something else that was off about the shopkeeper’s face, though Hiram couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

  Gus dropped the sword with a loud clatter.

  “You should have left the beets and gone home, farmer!”

  Gus fumbled under the counter. A gun, no doubt. Thank heaven he was having trouble putting his hands on it in the darkness.

  Hiram heard steps on the porch. He grabbed his toolbox and melted back against the wall, trying to make himself invisible in the shadow of three mannequins in Sunday dresses.

  The shadow that loomed through the door and across Gus was misshapen. It was tall, but also unnaturally broad in the shoulders, and its head seemed to be a giant, neckless mass. The wood of the porch bowed down and protested against the weight.

  Hiram grabbed the chi-rho talisman.

  Gus hissed. In his hands, he held a sawed-off, double-barreled shotgun.

  “Helper City Police!” Hiram recognized the voice of Sergeant Dixon. His shadow was distorted because he held the unconsciou
s police chief in his arms. “Put down that gun, unless you want to spend the rest of your life in prison!”

  Gus eased down the weapon. Shanks hoisted Asael Fox onto the countertop. “Whisky, right now!” he shouted. “The chief here’s been bit at least three times, but maybe more. I gotta find all the bites and get the poison out.”

  Gus grabbed a bottle and opened it. Pressed against the wall in shadow, Hiram heard the sound of cloth being torn, and then the slosh of liquor poured over snakebites and a blade to sterilize them.

  He wanted to help, but he couldn’t go to jail now. As Shanks bent over his chief’s leg and began sucking venom out of the first of the wounds, Hiram slipped out the front door.

  At the side of the police Ford, he hesitated. He couldn’t do nothing at all. Taking the heliotropius from his pocket, he tucked it behind the cushion of the back seat. Surely, that was where Chief Fox would ride down into Helper. The stone purged poison, so it must might against snake venom, too.

  Hiram trod carefully, but the snakes were gone. Maybe in biting Chief Fox, they had dissipated their force.

  He found the donkey easily; it was braying from discomfort from the snow and pulling at its picket. Hiram realized that he knew a charm to cure the bite of a scorpion, a charm that involved a donkey.

  He reflected briefly on the words he knew and how they would have to be adjusted. Leaning close to the ass and cupping his hand over his mouth as if sharing a secret, he whispered into its ear: “God enacted everything, and everything was good, but thou alone, snake, art accursed, thou and all thy brood.” He thought of Police Chief Fox, wished recovery for the man, and crossed himself three times. “Tzing, tzing, tzing.”

  What to do now?

  He would have to deal with the demon and the mine, but Hiram’s first obligation was to his son. Michael was alive, at least as far as Gus knew. If Michael was alive, the boy would probably try to find his way to Helper.

  Hiram climbed onto the donkey.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Hiram crept into the bushes along the river behind Buford’s Boarding House. Underneath the bare willow branches, the air was cold and wet. The Price River was nearly invisible in the blast of snow crashing out of the canyon; twice, Hiram found rocks and crossed the icy water without getting wet.