The Shotgun Arcana

by R. S. Belcher

  The author of this macabre and inhuman tableau, one Mme. Delilah LaTour, was the mistress of the house and widow of a well-respected Spanish ship captain. She was skinny to the point of looking unwell, with coal-black locks that fell well to her waist. The surviving servants told stories of the Madame pleasuring herself while either torturing the servants or simply watching the maimed and the mutilated struggle to survive. A collection of amputated and taxidermied phalluses in her bedroom had been well used. All told, with the bodies found in her “garden,” she had ended forty-two lives and tortured and ruined another fifty that they knew of.

  LaTour had fled the property when she was given a warning only moments before the firemen arrived. The warning came from the mouth of a crow, which lighted upon her gatepost and told her what was to come. It was the same crow that gave it to her as a gift long ago. The crow told her to flee west and to meet her god, the Lord of Torture, Pain and Suffering. It told her that her good works were not yet at an end. She grabbed a small bag with a few precious possessions, trophies of her victims and, of course, it. Mme. LaTour’s was the eighteenth.

  The Devil

  It was early morning the day after Highfather and Kate had survived their violent showdown on Argent with the late Nikos Vellas. They had made it back to Highfather’s house just off Absalom Road, in the dark of night.

  To call it a “house” was being very generous. It was a one-room shack that the sheriff had built a few months after coming to Golgotha, figuring he’d build something better later on. He never seemed to find the time for that, though. There were still stakes in his yard, marking the places for a large addition—a master bedroom, a nursery—a home for more than one. The stakes were old and rotted now.

  Highfather had helped Kate, with her injured leg, off his horse, Bright, and the two had stumbled to the door in the freezing cold and the stygian darkness. He found his key while Kate helped keep him from falling over. She had bound his bullet wound on the mountain as well as she could, but it was hard for Jon to stay conscious. Once the door was opened he had managed to light the lantern hanging on a nail next to the door. The room was filled with warm yellow light. Jon sat the lantern on the kitchen table.

  There was a wrought-iron bed with a small side table, the kitchen table with a few chairs, some sparsely filled shelves and bookcases, cupboards, a wood stove, a wash basin and mirror and an old, frayed George III wingback chair by the window. Sitting above the hearth that had no fireplace yet was a bouquet of dried flowers in a crystal vase. They were the only real decoration. They had been a bridal bouquet. Highfather began to make a fire in the stove.

  “You take the bed,” he muttered. “There’s fresh water in the pitcher here if you’d care for any. Privy is out back, if you need it.”

  “We need to get you to a doctor,” Kate said with a groan as she sat on the edge of the bed.

  “If you knew the doctor we had hereabouts, you wouldn’t be so eager to get to him,” Highfather said. “I’ll keep.”

  “This looks like every policeman’s house I’ve ever seen,” Kate said as she wrestled off her boots, hissing as she began to work the boot off her tender leg. “How often are you here a week? Two, three nights?”

  The fire caught in the stove and Highfather shut the stove’s small door. “Bunks at the jail are just fine most nights,” he said. He slowly limped to the corner chair and eased into it. Every part of him ached. Kate got both boots off. The red and black stockings she was wearing were in tatters.

  “I usually don’t wear my inexpressibles out to a shoot-out,” Highfather said, “but that’s just me.”

  “I could either change clothes or run save your hide,” Kate said, pouring sand from her shoes. “Please don’t make me regret my choice.”

  Highfather leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “No, ma’am,” he said. “Just thankful for the assist, Kate … Kate?”

  He opened his eyes with great effort. Kate was asleep, her stocking feet dangling over the side of the bed. Highfather grunted as he stood. He lifted the Pinkerton agent’s strong, well-shaped legs and shifted them over on his bed. Then he pulled a quilt up over her. He dimmed the lantern on the table, locked the door and sat back down in his chair. He was asleep before he even got his boots off.

  There was a persistent banging at his door shortly after dawn. Highfather blinked and tried to stand. His whole body felt as if it were made of fused bones and broken glass. He snapped open the door and saw Mutt and Jim looking at him. They started to open their mouths to speak, but he cut them off.

  “Yes, I’m alive,” Jon said. “Yes, I am hurt. Yes, Agent Warne saved me. Yes, I want the doc over here after you fellas collect whatever bodies are up on the ridge. Pay special attention to Vellas. He’s liable to jump back up. Anything else?”

  Mutt looked past him and saw Kate stretch lithely in the sheriff’s bed, like a cat sunning herself. The Indian’s eyebrows raised like a drawbridge.

  “Whoa,” Jim said as he saw Kate sit up and blink, still wearing the skimpy attire he saw her in at the Dove’s Roost.

  The evil smile spread across Mutt’s face and he opened his mouth to speak.

  “No, we didn’t,” Highfather said to his deputies and shut the door in Mutt’s grinning face.

  * * *

  When the deputies returned from asking Tumblety to come check on the sheriff, Jim told Highfather about the dead public girl at the church and his pursuit of the killer. The victim had been identified by the Scholar as a young German immigrant known only as Rica. She had been at the Roost for a little less than a year. She had no family here but sent money home to her sisters and mother in Chicago.

  “I would have made it to the scrap to help,” Mutt said to Highfather and Kate. “But I decided it would be quicker to cut through the mining camp than circle all around the mountain to hit Backtrail Road. I ran smack into the middle of a little disagreement between Wynn’s boys and the Nail’s crew. By the time I gentled them all down, you and Agent Warne here had headed on down the mountain and left a lot of dead bodies behind you.”

  “Well, you didn’t miss much,” Highfather said. “He threw a wagon wheel at me. That was new.”

  “Flaming wagon wheel,” Kate corrected.

  “The mining camp is getting too crowded for all them desperados, Jonathan,” Mutt said. “Sooner, later, it’s gonna blow and we’re gonna have us a war.”

  “A bunch of normal criminals trying to kill each other, for good old-fashioned greed,” Highfather said to Mutt. “Let’s hope we live long enough to see that in this town.”

  “Clay’s looking over the wagon the killer was driving out into the desert,” Jim said. “I’m sorry I let him get away,”

  The sheriff shrugged. “Hell, Jim, you got a damn sight closer to bagging him than anyone else has. You did real good, Deputy. I’m proud of you.”

  Jim beamed like the sun.

  “Thanks, sir,” he said. “I’m gonna get before Doc Tumblety shows up. He’s always trying to touch me as he asks me a lot of questions about, um, stuff I rather not discuss in front of Miss. Warne.”

  “Come on,” Mutt said to Jim. “Let’s scare up some grub. Tumblety makes me want to punch him till he stops jawin’.”

  “Go on, “Highfather said. “Truth be told, Jim, I don’t care much for the doc laying hands on me either.”

  * * *

  “Well done, Jonathan,” Dr. Francis Tumblety said upon arriving at the sheriff’s home. He spoke in his usual gruff bellow. “You not only managed to undo that swarthy, degenerate Greek goat-banger, Vellas, you also received mere minor injuries in the exchange. A true testament to your superior bloodline and moral and national character.”

  Highfather winced as Tumblety poked and prodded the raw gunshot wound in his left arm with stained, dirty fingers thick as sausages.

  “Here,” Highfather said through gritted teeth. “That’s … great … Doc.”

  Kate, dressed now in a narrow skirt that fell to her ank
le boots, a simple white blouse and a dark bolero jacket and hat she had fetched from her bags at the Roost, leaned against the wall in the corner by the window with her arms crossed, watching the exchange with slight amusement. “See,” Tumblety said, taking his hands away. “Hornet claimed a hunk of meat, but nothing else. The blood loss made you weak, but you stanched that well enough.”

  Highfather’s bare chest was covered front and back in scars, bullet and knife wounds, claw and fang marks and, of course, the three sets of rope scars about his neck.

  “Miss Warne was gracious enough to help me keep from bleeding out,” Highfather said to the doctor, “till I could get ahold of you, Doc, and get you over to give the hit a look-see.”

  “Hmm.” Tumblety looked to Kate with narrowed eyes, then back to Highfather. “Well, you are dashed lucky then, to trust your ephemeral soul to the Asclepian ministering of some water-kneed quean.”

  “Pardon me?” Kate said. Tumblety turned back to her.

  “Hush now,” he said. “Men are talking.”

  Kate started to say something, but Highfather gestured for her to wait.

  “The burns are also minor,” the doctor continued. “Some singed hair, a bit of redness and swelling on that Olympian body of yours, Jonathan. Dashed lucky, like you danced between the flames. Certainly adds to the legend of the sheriff who cannot die, eh? Good bit of balderdash for the superstitious, what? We know better, don’t we, eh? You bleed as well as the next man. I’d hazard to say your preternatural reputation is due, in large part, to my care.”

  “Yeah, Doc,” Highfather said. “Don’t know what we’d do without you.”

  Tumblety handed Highfather an envelope out of his physician’s bag. “This is all that remains of the possessions of that ram-headed gobbler, Vellas, as you requested. I had to set Turlough in his place. The man was insistent on examining the remains, but I set him straight to his station. Not much on Vellas, I’m sorry to say, but these items seemed to endure the fire with great fortitude.”

  “Well, thanks for coming by, Doc,” Highfather said, hopping off the wooden dinner table he had been sitting on while Tumblety took a look at his arm. He winced a bit when he did.

  “Of course,” Tumblety said. “When that cherubic lad, Jim, came to me like a vision of beauty and mercy, I knew I must make haste to your domicile.” He glanced again at Kate. “A pity a strapping male specimen such as yourself feels the need to keep such company. I’d preferred to examine you away from unscholared eyes.” He extended his hand while Highfather retied the cloth bandage around his bicep. “Always happy to be of service to an agency of lex loci.”

  “Oh,” Highfather said. He fished in his trousers and handed the doctor a silver dollar. “Much obliged, Doc.”

  Tumblety pocketed the coin and gathered up his bag and medal-festooned coat. “A word to the wise, Jonathan,” he said as he went about his task. “A man in your position must show great care in trucking with adventuresses. Their horrid female sex is replete with disease that can lay a man low faster than any bullet. Beware, I caution you as a physician, beware!”

  “I’ve seen better sawbones in a Chinese brothel,” Kate said. Tumblety’s face grew ruddy with rage and he strode toward Kate with hatred glazing his eyes. “Shut your mouth, you haughty bitch! I’m going to beat the sass out of your whore gob!”

  Highfather moved to stop Tumblety, but by the time he rested a restraining hand on the blustering doctor’s shoulder, Tumblety was staring into the short barrels of two .36 Colt revolvers Kate had cross-drawn from under her short jacket. Tumblety stopped abruptly and gasped.

  “Are you just?” she said coolly, cocking both guns. “Tell me, you pompous gasbag, who’s going to reattach your ugly face when I blow it all over the walls?”

  “Jon … Jonathan! You are the law here! You’re not going to allow this … this … to…”

  Highfather dropped the doctor’s coat and bag in his hands as he led Tumblety to the door. “Naw, Doc. I’m not going to let the mean lady shoot you in the face this time, but you may want to consider trying to talk nicer to folks in the future. Thanks again.”

  Tumblety stood outside the door, his face purple.

  “Filthy slut,” he snarled.

  “I’m a damn fine shot,” Kate said. “I can shoot that little amusement you call a pecker off you from over here quicker than you can kill a patient from incompetence.”

  “Thanks again, Doc,” Jon said, and slammed the door in Tumblety’s face before the angry doctor could summon a retort. He turned to Kate. “And that’s our first-rate medical care here in sunny Golgotha. He may seem pretty horrible at first, but after a while, you come to realize that deep down inside, he’s much worse than that.”

  “Why don’t you people get a real doctor out here?” Kate asked. She decocked her guns, carefully, and holstered them in the curious shoulder rigs she wore under her jacket.

  “Well, he’s what we were able to attract in the bust years,” Highfather said. “That and our last doctor turned out to be some kind of … thing … that turned people into stone … and drank their memories, or something like that. One ’fore that, I had to stake him through the liver and bury his head on an eastern-bound railroad track … or was it westbound? Anyway, he was all monstery too. At least Tumblety is human, a creepy jackass, but human.”

  “Monsters…,” Kate murmured. “How long have you been sheriff here, Jon?”

  “I’d cypher it seems like … about a thousand years, give or take,” Highfather said. He slid on his shirt and began to button it. “Have a seat, coffee should be ready.”

  He pulled Kate’s chair out for her and she sat. “Thank you,” she said. Highfather took down two porcelain mugs from a cabinet and then fetched the coffeepot from the top of the small wood stove he used to heat his house and for cooking. He poured her a cup, then himself, returned the pot, and sat down across from her.

  “Can you tell me why the U.S. government sent you to my town and why you didn’t tell me?”

  Kate sipped her coffee. “Like I said before, your town in in terrible danger, Jon. However, from the reports I’ve read, what you’ve told me and what I’ve seen since I’ve been here, that really isn’t anything new, is it?”

  “Reports?” Highfather said. “What do you mean reports? About Golgotha? Kate, tell me what’s going on here?”

  “Well,” she said, “you saved me up there, too, and I’ve seen and heard enough to trust you, Jon, but here’s the thing. My presence here and my work and even who I am have to stay as quiet as possible.”

  “My deputies know about you, and you can trust both of them with your life,” Highfather said. “And no one listens to anything Doc Tumblety says anyway. We’ll hold our peace. That’s kind of how we do things around here anyway.”

  Kate nodded. “Your younger deputy, Jim, is a sucker for a pretty leg, but he seemed trustworthy enough. If you vouch for your men, that is good enough for me. Golgotha is part of why I’m here, Jon. Let me give you this from the start. Fourteen years ago, I walked into Allan Pinkerton’s office in New York City and applied for a job.”

  “The Allan Pinkerton,” Highfather said. “Scottish fella, hobnobs with presidents, has the detective agency with that big eye symbol, ‘we never sleep,’ and all that? That Pinkerton?”

  “Yes,” Kate said with a strange smile. “The legend himself. Apparently he was hiring for office help and for detectives that day, and he asked me what I was there to apply for. I told him I was a month late on my rent and would take any job he might have. We began to talk. He’s a fascinating man, remarkable mind. He hired me as a detective on the spot.”

  “Never heard of a female Pinkerton man before,” Highfather said. “Did you enjoy the work?”

  She smiled. “I’m impressed. I usually get a lecture about how that’s no work for a lady and all that claptrap. It’s refreshing to not hear it.”

  “I’ve seen you in action,” Highfather said. “You can handle yourself just fine.�
��

  “You actually live up to your reputation, Jon Highfather,” she said, then continued. “Yes, I loved my work. It was exciting, challenging and I discovered why Allan had hired a woman. Men will tell things to a woman in confidence they would never spill to a man. I had adventures, Jon. I got to help keep President Lincoln safe from an assassination attempt on him before the war, during the inauguration. I met Lincoln, Jon,” she said, her eyes brightening. “A little dirt-poor Five Points girl from Cross Street got to meet the President of the United States and help keep him alive. How could I do anything but love a job like that?”

  “What was he like? Lincoln?” Highfather asked, as he sipped his coffee.

  “Sad,” Kate said. “He hid it behind humor but if you spent any real time with him, you could feel it leaking out of him. He seemed a good man.

  “Allan worked for the president during the war as head of the Union Intelligence Service. That was when the odd reports and accounts began to filter in to him. Tales of cultists trying to summon some nameless ancient god in the swamps outside New Orleans; some giant winged creature with eyes like glowing dinner plates terrorizing the people of West Virginia; a man claiming to be the devil’s son performing miracles and inciting riots in Chicago; murderous frog men in Loveland, Ohio; headless Confederate soldiers with flaming sabers overrunning Union positions and slaughtering every man before falling over dead. The list goes on and on.

  “Allan Pinkerton has a very precise and detail-oriented mind, but it’s fluid as well. He took to investigating these claims, as much to debunk them as to verify them. When he began to see more and more of these fantastic stories that could not be rationally explained, he brought the matter to the president’s attention. President Lincoln was receptive to these fantastic tales since he had nearly died in an assassination attempt by an assailant that could only be described as a Confederate sorcerer, earlier in the year.