The Shotgun Arcana

by R. S. Belcher

  “You,” Harry said, “are under arrest. You know, I always wanted to say that!”

  “You did that real fine, Mr. Mayor,” Mutt said as he loaded the shotgun in his hands. He walked over and tapped the ornate breastplate that Harry had strapped on over his shirt and vest and under his coat. The jewel-encrusted armor didn’t show the slightest sign of wear from the two solid 12-gauge slugs it had stopped. “Interesting evening apparel for a ride,” Mutt said. “I’m sure you got a story for why you got all your getup on.”

  Harry didn’t answer. Instead he looked out across the field in the direction the lone escaping rider.

  “And don’t worry none about old Conn getting away, there.” Mutt smiled as he pulled Macomber to his feet. “Even a genius like him is bound to slip up sooner or later.”

  * * *

  By the time Mutt and Harry returned their prisoners to the jail, word was out about the girl murdered in Johnny Town tonight. Mutt decided he’d head over to the crime scene once he wrapped things up at the jail.

  Macomber’s hand was patched up by Doc Tumblety, who seemed damned put out to be having to make a late call to the clink, especially for Mutt.

  “I just came from performing surgery, damn your half-breed hide!” Tumblety growled.

  “Francis,” Pratt said to the doctor with a sigh. “Just do it, please.”

  Tumblety mended the stub of an index finger the best he could and staunched the blood. The gunman whose horse had thrown him and broken his collarbone was in another cell, feeling little pain thanks to Tumblety’s laudanum. The doctor said he’d be by tomorrow to see about a cast for the man’s arm and shoulder. The dead in the field had been collected by one of Clay Turlough’s men and were on their way to Clay and then to Boot Hill. Their kin would be notified in the morning, if they had any.

  Mutt and Harry walked out onto the porch of the jail. The deputy closed the iron door behind them.

  “So you were coming back from practicing your sword work with Professor Mephisto over at the theatre?” Mutt said. “I thought you were already pretty good with that big, shiny pig-sticker?”

  “I am,” Harry said. “Very. I need to be better.”

  “And the Prof is better?” Mutt said. “On top of all the other stuff he knows and all the things he’s studied? Damn.”

  “The man has studied with Domenico Angelo in London and Thomas Hoyer Monstery as well,” Harry said. “He’s as quick with a blade as he is with his wit.”

  “Why the armor?” Mutt asked, leaning against the rail.

  “I need to be used to the weight of it while fighting,” Harry said. “Not that it has much weight, thing is as light as a feather, but I still need to know how I can move in it and can’t move. It’s lucky for both of us I was headed back from practice tonight and was too tired to take it off.”

  The two men sat in the still of the dark, their faces hidden by deep shadow. A distant gas streetlight puffed, then its flame brightened.

  “Why?” Mutt said finally. “You hate me. You always have. And to acknowledge the corn, I hate you too. Why risk your own skin for me?”

  Harry was quiet for a time, then finally spoke. “You were out with Maude Stapleton, right?”

  “Yes,” Mutt said.

  “You love her?” Harry asked.

  “That’s none of your damn business.”

  “I thought so,” Harry said. “I’ve seen how you two look at each other, how sometimes you want to touch each other so bad and you just … can’t because then the sky would fall and a whole world of stupid narrow-minded little men like Max Macomber and his idiots would rain down on you and her, and you’d rather cut your own skin off than have her be hurt by you.”

  Mutt said nothing; his shadow looked out past the porch. “The reason I hate you is because you’re free, Mutt. You say what you damn well want, to whoever you damn well please, and you don’t care what people think of you, don’t care what names they call you. I hate you because I wish to God I could do that, be that. But I can’t.”

  “Why not?” Mutt asked. “It’s your damn life, Harry. Don’t belong to anyone else.”

  “Actually it does,” Pratt said. “I have so many eyes on me, all the time, expecting me to act a certain way, do a certain thing. More eyes now, a lot more. Even my father’s dead eyes looking at me, all the time, judging me. If I fail, if I don’t live up to those expectations, I let a lot of people down, and it’s just not in me to say, ‘To hell with all of you, I’m doing what I want.’ I tried that, I ran away from here, but I had to come back. Some days I still want to run—hell, most days. But I wasn’t raised that way. I wish I had been.

  “I stopped tonight because it burns like hell to know we live in a world where you can’t just love who you love, be who you are, where someone who is free, like you, can be hung up in a tree for loving, for being free. To know you have to hide your love, like it’s a dirty secret. It’s unfair and it made me angry. For all his faults, my father taught me that, too, that something wrong’s got to be made right.”

  Harry stepped off the porch, falling into the moonlight and out of shadow. He climbed onto his horse. “’Night, Deputy. See you tomorrow.”

  “Night, Mr. Mayor,” Mutt said.

  Mutt watched Harry ride off and finally disappear in the darkness beyond the few working streetlights on Dry Well Road.

  Mutt rubbed his face and let the tension of the last few hours slide out of him with a sigh. He walked off the porch and began the walk over to Johnny Town.

  Two shadows detached from the darkness and blocked his path. Mutt cursed himself for thinking too much like a man and ignoring his senses—this was twice in one night. He now picked up that there were four of them, all around him, and they moved quiet, easy, fluid, not huffing and puffing like most white men did.

  One of the shadows stepped forward and his face fell into light. He was an Indian, dressed in white man’s clothing: work pants, boots, a collarless shirt and an unbuttoned vest. He also had on a gun belt and wore it like he knew how to use it. His long hair was pulled back and he wore a headband with a single black feather in it.

  “We need you to come with us,” the Indian said in Paiute. “He needs to talk with you.”

  “Fellas, my plate’s been kinda overflowing today, so let’s skip the mysterious bit, okay? Who? Who wants to see me?”

  “Wodziwob,” The Indian said.

  “Let me git my horse,” Mutt said.

  The Three of Swords

  The Galveston, Texas, newspaper called him the Annihilator. A clever and ambitious reporter there coined the term after his third victim and the killer rather liked it, finding it appropriately menacing and powerful. He wandered the streets of this booming, industrious, modern city and chose his victims with leisure and discretion. No one suspected him, no one was clever enough, or thought as he did enough, to begin to winnow out his process.

  He wore a wooden African Dogon tribal mask when he killed. It had been a trophy from his first victim, a ship’s captain. The empty face of the mask spoke to him, it was more his true face than this capricious mockery of emotive skin he was cursed with at birth.

  He dragged his victims—male, female, black and white—out of their beds. He slid an ice pick into their tear ducts while they slept, damaging their brains and making them docile, but still aware, as he dragged them out under the merciless stars and unleashed his fury upon them. He had claimed sixteen victims in Galveston when he felt it give him an inescapable pull west, toward his god, toward the face on the mask—toward even greater power and glory. Toward annihilation. His was number six.

  The Page of Wands

  Dawn brought with it the news that another horrific murder had occurred in Johnny Town last night. There were rumors that the mayor and the sheriff were considering a curfew until the killer was brought to ground. Many citizens disliked the idea of a curfew with Thanksgiving only a few days away. Already, Harry Pratt’s political opponents were making hay about the fact tha
t women were no longer safe on the streets of Golgotha under the Pratt administration.

  But politics were far from Jim’s mind.

  The morning was still cool and quiet when he rode up to Mrs. Stapleton’s laundry. He tethered Promise to the hitching post beside the sidewalk, knocked and stepped inside, hat in hand. Constance was waiting for him, dressed in a very practical, and slightly oversized, man’s collarless shirt, tucked into denim work pants and boots. Her hat hung on her back, held by a stampede cord. Her long brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail and she smiled as Jim entered.

  “You look beautiful,” Jim said.

  Constance laughed.

  “I look like a cow-puncher,” she said. “But thank you.”

  Jim turned and waved to Maude. “Mrs. Stapleton.”

  Maude looked up from the laundry pile in front of her.

  “I understand it is your intention to ride off with my fourteen-year-old daughter, unchaperoned?” Maude said, locking eyes with the young deputy.

  Constance looked away, trying to not laugh out loud, as Jim’s eyes grew wide with a mixture of fear and confusion. “Uh, well, yes, ma’am, but I wouldn’t exactly put it like that.…”

  “Oh, I’m sure you wouldn’t,” Maude said. “Now, I understand from Deputy Mutt that you fancy yourself quite the dandy, Master Negrey? Is that so? Quite the thief of hearts, are you?”

  “I … I ain’t no dude, ma’am, no sir!” Jim stammered. “I ain’t stole no hearts or nothing else, ma’am! Mutt … he … My ma raised me right, I swear it.”

  Maude smiled at Jim and nodded to Constance, who was now outright laughing at the boy’s discomfort. “Yes, I think she did, Jim,” Maude said. “Just a little ways up Argent? Correct? Nowhere near the mining camp?”

  “That’s right, yes, ma’am,” Jim said.

  “You two be back by noon, and be careful,” Maude said.

  “I’ll keep her safe, Mrs. Stapleton,” Jim said. “I promise.”

  “Yes,” Maude said. “I’m sure you will, Jim.” She looked at Constance. “And you keep him safe as well.”

  “I will, Mother,” Constance said. The girl slapped the still off-kilter Jim on the shoulder. “C’mon, you desperado, you. I packed us some food. Let’s ride!”

  “Oh, Deputy,” Maude said to Jim’s back as he followed Constance outside.

  Jim turned. “Ma’am?”

  “Anything untoward happens to my little girl, my treasure, and you will learn whole new definitions of pain and suffering for the rest of your infinitesimally short life,” Maude said sternly, and then she smiled. “Enjoy your ride.”

  * * *

  Jim helped Constance up onto Promise and she slipped her arms around his waist. It felt good, Jim had to admit, and it also felt comfortable, like this was where he was supposed to be.

  “She’s a beautiful horse,” Constance said.

  “The best you could ever ask for,” Jim said. “I’ve had her since she was a foal. Me and Promise have been through pretty much everything together.”

  “I like her,” Constance said, stroking the horse’s flank.

  “You ready?” he asked her.

  Constance nodded. “Let’s go.”

  Jim snapped the reins and Promise took off at a gentle, easy trot, headed up Argent Mountain by way of Prosperity Road.

  The road began to ascend toward the peak of Argent Mountain. Jim urged Promise on and the brown mustang began a smooth gallop up the winding road, rising higher and higher, Golgotha behind them. Constance’s arms encircled him. Jim couldn’t help but smile. Promise took the two young people higher into the savage beauty of the wilderness, their hearts thudding in time to the horse’s hooves. She tapped his shoulder and he turned his head slightly to hear her over the powerful drumming of Promise’s hooves.

  “I know a place we can ride to,” she said. “It’s got shade and some food for Promise. We can eat breakfast out there, if you want?”

  “Sounds good,” Jim said.

  “Okay,” Constance said. “Bear right here at Backtrail Road.”

  * * *

  Constance took them to one of the places where she and her mother trained. The site was marked by a huge boulder that both Constance and Maude called “the giant’s fist” since it bore a certain resemblance to that. Off about fifty yards from the boulder was a wide rock shelf jutting out from the side of Argent. There was shade and low, flat rocks, big as tables, to sit or lay on, under the cool shadow.

  They let Promise wander in the tall grasses off to the west of the stone tables, and the mare contentedly munched her breakfast. Jim stretched out a blanket on one of the wide flat rocks, while Constance gave Promise water from a canteens they had brought.

  “She’s so good!” Constance said as she walked back under the cool shade. “And smart too!”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure she’s a sight brighter than me,” Jim said. “She’s kept me alive a lot of times. I owe her.”

  “I’m pretty sure you’ve done the same for her,” Constance said, handing Jim an apple from her sack. “She loves you.”

  “You have a horse?” Jim asked.

  “My father promised me a pony, just mine, when I was twelve, but he got busy with work at the bank,” Constance said. “We have two horses my father bought. They’re carriage horses, but I’ve been riding one of them quite a bit lately,” Constance said. “She’s beautiful. Her name is Sheba. She’s a grulla.”

  “A smoke,” Jim said, nodding and taking a bite of his apple. “Pretty horses, stout, gotta good heart. My pa always said they don’t give up.”

  “Whereabout is your family?” Constance said. “If you don’t mind me asking. Harriet Rees says your father was some kind of hero, passed in the war, and the rest of your family was taken from you by Indian raiders on the western trail?”

  “You believe all that?” Jim asked, smiling.

  “No, it sounded very dime novel to me,” Constance said. “So, tell me the real story.”

  Jim started to wind up the lie, the one he’d practiced till he was perfect at telling it: Dad passed away, mother and little sister back in Kansas; he came out west looking for a job to make some money to send home. Hoped they would come out here one day, to be with him once he made it big. It was a good lie, with plenty of truth and little stories sprinkled in. A fine lie. A safe lie.

  He looked at Constance’s wide brown eyes and fell into them.

  “I have this lie I usually tell most folks,” Jim said. “I don’t want to lie to you. Ever. It’s a bum way to start anything. Especially anything important.”

  “I’m important?” Constance said. There was no teasing in her voice. A dry wind off the 40-Mile fluttered the edges of the blanket and her hair.

  “You feel … very important,” Jim said, lost in her eyes. “The truth is I killed some men in West Virginia a few years back. They were … bad men. One of them killed my pa, hurt my ma and sister. The other … he didn’t do anything worth dying for … he just caught me when I was mad, out of control.

  “I ran. My mother told me to run and never come back. My little sister, she … got hurt at the end of it. No, that’s a lie too—the hardest lie. When me and this other fella were shootin’, Lottie got hit … most likely by me. The last time I saw her she was bleedin’, dying. I honestly don’t know if she is alive or dead, if I killed my baby sister.”

  Jim felt Constance’s hand slide into his, clutch it tight and squeeze.

  “So that’s my family,” Jim said, his voice croaking a little. “And that’s the truth. I like Harriet Rees’ version better, I must say.”

  Constance smiled. “I’m so sorry, Jim. You can’t go home, ever?”

  Jim shook his head. “I guess I could if I’m looking to dance on a rope, and that’s fair, Constance. I did kill that man in cold blood and he didn’t have it coming. He just got between me and my pa’s eye.”

  “Eye?” Constance said.

  “Yeah, that’s another story,” Jim said.
/>
  “You’re full of stories, aren’t you, Jim Negrey?”

  “I got a question for you,” Jim said, smiling. “How’d you come to know about this place up here?”

  Constance sighed. “The lie is, this is a spot my mother and I found to come picnic. The truth is … the truth is it’s my favorite spot to hide away from the world. I’ve been coming here for years. When my father was angry, or mother was sad. Only my mother knows about it, and now you.”

  “Thank you. I’m honored you trust me,” Jim said. “I understand. I got a place like that, too, over by Clay’s. It’s my secret spot to go to when I’m kind of fed up with everyone. It’s real beautiful, ’specially when the sun is coming up or sinking. Only Promise, and now you, know about it.”

  “Well,” Constance said. “I am honored to be in such sterling company.”

  They both laughed and ate and talked about books and songs they enjoyed, people their age in town and places they longed to visit. Constance was both proud and very ashamed. She had lied to Jim, lied expertly, using all the tools and tricks her mother was teaching her: the use of eye contact, the posture and body language, even her tone and inflection had masterfully concealed her lie. She told herself it was only a lie of omission. What she had told Jim was true; it just wasn’t all of the truth. Only a fool would be completely honest with someone they just met, she could hear her mother’s voice saying in her head. But Jim Negrey had trusted her with a secret that could get him killed and he certainly didn’t seem like a fool, far from it.

  They ate all the food and drank a good deal of water. The sun was higher in the sky now and the heat of the day was settling in. “I hate to say it,” Jim said, hopping off the stone table and petting his full stomach, “but I reckon we need to get you home ’fore your ma puts a few extra holes in me.”