Snake-Man crossed his arms across his chest, his finger blades flashing in the guttering torchlight. “Let us dance as our fathers did, Coyote-son,” he said.
And sprung out to strike.
Mutt twisted to the left, avoiding one hook blade, as his knife caught the other and blue sparks erupted from the force and speed of the blow. Mutt shuffled, still squatting, and drove a hard right hook toward Snake-Man’s exposed jaw. The gaunt man seemed to fold in half, bending his knees backward to avoid the punch and then snapped back, lashing out with a sharp kick that connected with Mutt’s face and drove the deputy backward into the wall and the searing pain of the glyphs.
Pressing his advantage, Snake-Man righted himself and lunged again at the off-balance Mutt, both finger blades arcing in and down to tear Mutt’s throat. Mutt braced his charring hands against the wall, ignoring the pain and the nausea, bent a knee and snap-kicked Snake-Man full in the face with his boot. The force of the kick knocked the renegade Black Feather back into the walls as well and he gasped at the pain of the burning glyphs through a bloody and pulped nose and lips.
Both men gasped and righted themselves as best they could in the cramped, low cave, moving away from the walls and slowly circling each other.
“Stings a bit,” Mutt said, grinning though crimson teeth. He spit blood. “Don’t it?”
Snake-Man’s hand dropped like the hammer of a gun to his belt and a tomahawk flashed across the narrow space, sinking into Mutt’s left shoulder—his knife arm—with a hollow thunk. Snake-Man was already moving before the hatchet even struck home. He scrambled forward, using one hand to balance and support his weight, the other hand flashed out, the gutting hook aimed at Mutt’s left eye.
“You tell me,” Snake-Man said coolly as he struck.
Mutt lowered his face and turned it, so the hook missed his eye, but tore the skin above it and ripped an ugly crescent of crimson down his face from his forehead almost to his mouth. Mutt drove his knife with all the force his injured arm could muster into the hand that Snake-Man was using to balance himself on. The blood knife sunk through the flesh and bones of Snake-Man’s bracing left hand and flashed sparks against the stone of the cave floor, chipping the rock. Snake-Man roared in pain and fell face forward onto the floor. Mutt kicked him savagely again in the side of the head, but Snake–Man was ready for this and drove his right-hand gutting knife deep into the deputy’s right calf. Mutt howled in pain and both men staggered back to opposite corners again. The cave was beginning to fill with the coppery scent of blood.
Neither man spoke. They both stared, unblinking, into the other’s eyes, waiting for the next pass, the next response. Mutt wanted to pull the tomahawk out of his shoulder, but he knew Snake-Man would take advantage of the distraction. An idea flashed in Mutt’s mind and he performed the calculations as best he could as his lifeblood seeped out of him. If the deception didn’t work, he would be a dead man. For a moment, Maude was in his mind: her dress from the other night; her soft, beautiful face; her strong eyes. Her lips. He pushed Maude out, pushed her away. She couldn’t help him in this, only get him killed. He kissed her memory quickly and then chased it away, replacing it with madness and bravado and blood: the crazy urgency of the now. No future, no tomorrow. All that slowed you down.
No more thinking. He chuckled dryly and just did it. This should be fun.
It happened fast: Mutt reached up with his right arm and pulled the hatchet out of his shoulder. As he began to do it, Snake-Man launched himself again, leading with his uninjured right hand, as Mutt had expected, going for Mutt’s right hand. Mutt slid straight down to the floor, putting himself in a completely vulnerable position, on his back, his belly exposed. As he slid down he used the extra distance the maneuver gave him to stomp out the light of the torch on the cave floor, so that the whole chamber fell into complete darkness.
Snake-Man missed his target but fell on top of the prone Mutt. He began to respond with a series of terrible blows to the helpless deputy when he felt the cold, hard barrel of Mutt’s revolver jammed against his heart and heard the pistol’s hammer cock. His own hatchet rested against the thudding artery in his throat. Instinctively, Snake-Man froze.
“You move, you twitch, I blow a hole through your chest,” Mutt said through swelling lips. “I want to hear the hooks hit the floor. I’ll know if it’s a trick and I’ll kill you.”
There was a faint tinkling sound of metal hitting stone. It was repeated.
“The trickster,” Snake-Man muttered. “Very good. You are worthy. We will have many glorious, bloody battles across eternity, Mutt, before I kill you. I will initiate you in true pain, true hatred.”
“Yeah, right,” Mutt said as he dropped the tomahawk and found Snake-Man’s gun belt. He removed the revolver and the remaining tomahawk and tossed them into the darkness. “Now you are going to slowly get up and I am going to keep this gun on you. Any sudden movement, any movement I am unsure of, and I will initiate you into a .44 bullet, and trust me—that is true enough pain. Now, move.”
Mutt fumbled about until he found the skull in the alcove. He gathered it up and dropped it in his battered hat and held it close to his chest. Using the alcove as a landmark he and Snake-Man made it across the chamber and struggled and groaned back up onto the ledge. They began the staggering shuffling trek back to the daylight, Mutt’s gun resting at the base of Snake-Man’s skull.
* * *
The sun was a ribbon of burning ochre light at the edge of the world when the two injured men climbed out of the cave. Mutt prodded Snake-Man up the ridge to where Muha waited for him.
“He’s coming,” Snake-Man said. “Can’t you feel it? Like a fever burning hotter across the world. He is sickness and delirium-dream madness. He’s coming for it and he will set it free.”
“Zeal,” Mutt said. As much as he hated to admit it, he could feel it. His instincts screamed to run, to hide, get away from Golgotha. But he couldn’t do that.
“Soon,” Snake-Man said, turning to smile at the deputy through torn and bloodied lips. “He arrives soon and you were kind enough to carry the skull out of the cave for him and for me. Thank you, Deputy.”
Mutt struck Snake-Man hard with the barrel of the gun at the temple. The bleeding, injured renegade tumbled to the ground and lay still, unconscious.
The skull, cradled in his arm, was singing. Singing, but not in a voice any but the monsters of the night could hear. Mutt heard it clearly. It yearned to be free and to drag this world, all the worlds, into blood-soaked chaos.
Mutt saw the last dying threads of the sun slip away. The darkness waiting to claim the sky, to claim the world.
“Soon,” Mutt said.
The Devil (Reversed)
Maude drifted through the raucous mining camp, on the eastern side of Argent Mountain, like a half-remembered dream. Her training granted her the ability to walk past others and leave only the faintest memory in their mind, and she did not want to be noticed.
It was pitch black beyond the warm glow of torches whipping in the mountain wind, beyond lanterns and campfires. The darkest soul of the night.
Word of Malachi Bick’s thrashing today on Main Street at the hands of Ray Zeal had made its way up to the camp. Many here were celebrating, drinking and singing songs as if Zeal’s promised return in a few days to finish Bick off was a greater holiday than the rapidly approaching Thanksgiving. It was clear there was no love lost for Bick anywhere in Golgotha.
Maude had to admit, she loved the miners’ camp—it was a little universe of its own, looking down on Golgotha, full of laughter and shouting and music composed of voices, squeezeboxes, jaw harps, spoons, harmonicas and guitars; the soft murmurs and boisterous calls of love making, gossip and arguments. Random gunfire in anger or joy, the smells of cooking meats, stews and fresh-baked ashcakes, unwashed miners, and whores wearing too much scent. The laughter and cries of children, the coughs of the sick and the dying. The camp was life, in all its beauty and horror—alive,
vital and uncontained.
The camp had grown nearly fourfold since the new boom began, going from about fifty miners and prospectors to over two hundred. It was now a small city all its own, with less order but fewer rules than Golgotha. It was cheaper to build a home out of canvas and a few planks of wood up here, than down below or across the gulf to the ivory homes on the green slopes of Rose Hill. Some who came to the camp came west to seek out a dream, a new life, a fortune. Others were here to take advantage of the dreamers and tenderfoots. And some were hiding from the law or working hard to make a dishonest living at the edges of civilization. There was danger here as well as joy. Life dancing side by side with death. This was the human soul laid out, living under the bright stars, in the mud.
Numerous new businesses had sprung up here. New saloons challenged the filthy dirt-floored tent that was the Mother Lode. Quacks and old army sawbones with shaky hands and rheumy eyes offered to remove bullets and babies for a little coin. A few ramshackle churches had sprung up to minister to the weary souls here.
Malachi Bick had opened the Argent Company Store in the camp, offering credit and advances on miners’ wages. Part of the hatred for Bick here among the miners was the fact that once you began to buy from the store on credit, it was virtually impossible to ever get out from under your obligation. Bick owned you. News that a man was coming to shoot Bick dead for thievery, to make him suffer first, seemed poetic justice to most.
And of course there were the crime lords of the camp, including the man Maude was seeking out now.
Maude had used the skills she had been taught to alter her appearance—not just makeup and clothing, but posture, voice, even facial expression. It was doubtful Mutt or even Constance would recognize her if they passed her now. She was dressed for work—dark collarless man’s shirt, pants and boots. Her hair was tied back and up to conceal its length. A bandana was about her neck, ready to be pulled up to cover her face. At a casual glance, Maude would appear to be a man and given her training, a casual glance is all anyone would give her.
All three of the dead girls had been moonlighting up here in the camp; all three were working away from the Dove’s Roost for the man known as the Nail. Maude found herself outside a semicircle of large canvas- and wood-framed buildings that were the base of Niall Devlin’s dirty little kingdom. One such tent was the Halla Damhsa, Devlin’s dance hall, saloon and brothel. A crowd of men, mostly miners and prospectors, were jostling to get in. A pair of armed toughs stood at the entrance, rifles in hand. Maude had melted into a deep shadow off to the far side of the compound, waiting for some sign of the Nail. After about twenty minutes the crowd parted at the barking insistence of the two toughs on the door, and Devlin exited the tent, accompanied by a woman. He was a tall man with reddish-brown hair, sharp features and hazel eyes, armed with at least three pistols, a knife and a hand axe on his belt. His companion was a small, lithe woman with a mane of raven black hair, dressed in a vest of black and green. The pair passed through the crowd and walked toward the smaller tent on the opposite side of the semicircle from where Maude was hiding. She moved quickly behind the tents, using the deep shadows to cross the gulf in a few seconds. She used her sharpened nail and precise technique to silently tear a small hole in the thick canvas, and peered within.
The tent was Devlin’s office. A crude wooden table served as a desk and there were numerous crates and barrels, most likely of stolen goods, in small islands about the room. A large lamp rested on the edge of Devlin’s desk and one of Devlin’s men, a lanky boy in simple clothes and a vest, sat on a crate, sharpening a knife, his rifle leaning next to him.
“So this is the beauty that has all the big bad men in Golgotha atremble,” Devlin said. “Black Rowan, Hellcat of the Barbary Coast. It’s a pleasure, darlin’. Care for a touch of the creature to chase away the night’s chill?”
Devlin poured a drink from a bottle on his desk. He offered it to Rowan and she accepted it. Devlin poured himself one and raised the glass.
“To the future of Golgotha,” he said. They both drank. Devlin offered Rowan a chair and he sat after she did. Rowan paused and looked toward where Maude was watching.
“Problem?” Devlin said.
Rowan shook her head.
“No,” she said. “Mr. Devlin, you know why I’m here. You seem an intelligent man, so I’ll do you the courtesy of not wasting either of our time. Your days of poaching from the Dove’s Roost are over. Malachi Bick may not have been giving the matter its appropriate attention, but I assure you I am. You want to contract public girls in this town, you talk to me now.”
“Is that so?” Devlin said, smiling and leaning back in his chair.
“It is,” Rowan said. “I have already had conversations with the other gentlemen in Golgotha who make money off public girls, and so far they are all in agreement—that is my business now and you will subcontract through me. You will get a handsome percentage, I assure you, Mr. Devlin.”
“And what, love, do you consider handsome?” Devlin asked.
“Forty-five percent,” Rowan said.
“I get one hundred percent now,” Devlin said.
“Those days are past,” she said. “Welcome to the future. Mr. Devlin, no offense, but you are a parasite. You were making a living in this line by existing in the margin and hoping Bick thought you were too small a flea to scratch off. While he may be well-off enough to afford the occasional flea,I can’t and will not. You lured girls away from the Dove’s Roost and then sent them out into this tent jungle of yours with no protection, no escort, nothing. They were butchered.”
“The cost of doing business, love,” Devlin said. “I didn’t force those girls to work for me, I gave them plenty of extra work, just like they asked for.”
“Then you have the sand to get one of them killed right outside the Dove’s Roost,” Rowan said. “You honestly thought that you would get away with that? You are a brave one, Nail, I’ll give you that.”
“Do you know how I got that name?” Devlin said. Rowan shook her head. “My da was a carpenter in Galway. Taught me and my younger brother the craft. ‘Measure twice, cut once,’ he always said. He died on the boat ride to New York. I got his tools, his chest. Well, some lads on the boat, they figured they had a better claim to my da’s tools, so they took them from me.
“When I healed up and could walk again, see again, I went looking for them in Kingsbridge, and I found them. I asked them nice as you please for my da’s tools and they laughed and told me they had sold most of them already and they were going to sell the rest and for me to piss the hell off. So I did some dirty work, did some favors for some culchies I knew and when it came time for payment for what I done for them, they held those gobshites down while I nailed their kneecaps and their hands to the floor with my dear old da’s hammer and the last few of his nails.”
Devlin reached under the table and placed a battered old hammer down on the table with a thump. “This hammer,” he said. “I keep a single nail that belonged to my da with me all the time—a good luck charm and a reminder. I’m a patient man, Lady Rowan, and I assure you I always measure twice before I cut. So now, you were telling me about how I should run my business here?”
Rowan nodded. “You were spoiling for a fight with Bick, were you?”
“Testing the waters,” he said. “You want the whore trade up here on the mountain and you’ll give me forty-five percent of it. Make it fifty-fifty and I’ll purr like a kitten for you.”
“Forty-eight,” she said. “But I’ll tell everyone it’s fifty-fifty … and perhaps I’ll do the purring.”
Devlin laughed and stood. “Fair shake, love. From one parasite to another, eh? We’re both living off Malachi Bick’s table scraps and good graces, right?”
“For now,” Rowan said. “Like I said, welcome to the future. Bick’s slipping. This Zeal character may be the death of him.”
“And if that happens,” Devlin said, leaning against his desk, “then the race is on, b
eauty.”
Rowan nodded and smiled. She glanced over again to the spot where Maude’s rip was, then back to Devlin. “Until then, I intend to call my girls in. No need to give this maniac any more grist for his mill, yes? How many girls are running tonight and where are they?”
Devlin sighed with a whoosh. “Umm … three, I think. Little Gold Dollar, Lady Jane Gray and Gold Tooth Betty. All three were working the Tanner Row.”
“And where did the dead girls work?” Rowan asked, standing now.
“Tanner Row…,” Devlin said.
Maude didn’t wait to hear any more. She launched herself skyward, her fingers lightly gripping the wooden frame and the tarp as she cleared the six-foot roof of Devlin’s tent with less sound than the wind. She kept heading up, a shadow that tore itself loose from the silhouette of the camp’s darkness, sailing another ten feet into the air. She spun as gravity once again tugged at her and dove, feetfirst, curling toward another tent. She landed on the flat edge of a central tent pole for less than a second, on the balls of her feet, and then snapped upward and launched again. Hopping like a ballet dancer, jetéing between the tent poles, swaying as they did, alighting for balance and a solid point only for an instant before hurling herself again and again across the canvas city: invisible, silent, hunting.
Her heart was calm and her breath even. Her soul sang. This was life; this was the gift of freedom Gran had helped her to unlock so long ago. The power to defy gravity, to kiss the night like a lover; the power to right a wrong. Maude paused for a heartbeat on a pole, pivoted as it swayed as if in a gentle breeze, got her bearings and then launched herself again toward the wide, winding thoroughfare that was Tanner Row.
She dropped into a deep cold shadow and with a few quick changes to her attire, hair and posture, assumed the face and gait of a public girl. Stepping out into the light, she swaggered slowly down the row.
The Shotgun Arcana Page 32