by Curran, Tim
And now they were in Redemption.
A village elder was pacing before the bodies, openly weeping. “Only through the Holy Scriptures may we know of God’s plan, the beauty of God’s mind and will,” he was saying. “For we are all God’s children, are we not? Man, woman, and child? And are we not promised salvation for our toil and trouble and earthly torment?”
There was a chorus of “Amens”.
“Yes, brothers and sisters, we have been charged by the Lord Almighty to go amongst the nations and spread His word. We are empowered by Him to baptize the heathen into His Church. And this, oh yes, this is our task, nay, our divine right! Yet, there are those who would visit foul deeds upon us! Foul deeds perpetrated by foul minds and foul hearts! They spurn the word and the teachings of the Lord God of Hosts! Not only do they refuse to be saved, but they refuse the way of salvation and eternal life! They spit in the face of His Son Jesus Christ! And worse, yea, possibly worse, brothers, they would burn and murder us from the very lands promised to us by the Prophet Joseph Smith! And when they molest our children, are we not angered? When they spill the blood of our kin, are we not enraged? And when they murder our brethren, are we not moved to revenge?”
The “Amens” of those gathered in the barn were loud and resounding now. The elder was openly plagiarizing both the Book of Mormon and the works of William Shakespeare, but no one seemed to notice. The elder was known for his fiery sermons and no one was disappointed this morning as they looked upon the burned and bullet-ridden corpses before them.
“The Lord has told us to love Him, to love all His Children…but what of they who do not love us? That do not chose the way of salvation and peace? What then, you may well ask? Well, brothers, I will tell you! For as the Lord has said that vengeance is mine, so is it ours! Our blood-right to avenge the murder of our kin! And, brothers, so shall it be…”
The Danites stood there, neither smiling nor frowning, but knowing that a task had been handed them and that they would accomplish that task even at the cost of their own lives.
So it was.
13
Charles Graybrow tracked Orville DuChien down to a shack on the edge of the lake itself. It sat on a little hill crowded by trees that were all dead from the filth pouring down from the nearby refinery stacks. The air stank sharply of chemicals and industrial waste. The water washed in a slick of black foam. Orv was sitting on a rock, staring over the misty waters, mumbling something.
Graybrow came up behind him, making sure he made a lot of noise so Orv would know he was coming.
“They told me about it, yes sir, all about it,” Orv was saying. “Said this injun’s gonna come and gonna want to know things. Gonna have questions for you, they say, and when they say…sure, they’s always right, ain’t they? Well, ain’t they?” Orv rubbed his temples. “Sometimes…sometimes I talk crazy on account m’ head, it hurts, just plain hurts, what with them voices, blah, blah, blah!”
Graybrow nodded, figured it probably wasn’t easy. “Mind if I sit here by you?”
Orv scratched at his beard. “Injun, ain’t you? Don’t matter you being an injun, just saying it is all. I knew injuns back home, yessum, lots of injuns. Cherokee. Cherokee Nation, sure. Yes, you sit down there, Charlie…see, I remember you from way back.”
Graybrow had brought a bottle of whiskey with him. He took a slug and passed it to Orv.
“Right neighborly of you, Charlie. Yessum.” Orv took his drink and passed it back. “I try…I try to keep m’ head, but it don’t always work. I start talkin’ in circles and what not. But you…you understand me, don’t you? Some don’t, but you do…”
“Yes, I think I understand.”
Orv was gnashing his teeth. “Deliverance…the town the Devil built. Oh, think about it, Charlie! Them that don’t like the light, but the dark places! Them that lives in cellars and attics, them that don’t come out by daylight! Them that likes the meat and blood of men! Them with the Skin Medicine…oh, yessum, tattooed on their flesh!”
“Who are they?”
But Orv refused to answer. He just held himself until whatever it was drained out of him. “You…you remember Johnny Hollix?” Orv wanted to know. “He…he was the Indian Agent back home, gave them Cherokees a real bad time. Course, some of m’ kin did, too. Like Cousin Stookey…but he weren’t never worth a shit to no one. But I recall Johnny Hollix…he used to fish river cats with Grandpappy Jeremiah down on the south fork of the Suck River. Sometimes I went with ‘em and sometimes that Cherokee medicine man…you recall his name, Charlie?”
Graybrow just pulled off the bottle. “Afraid it escapes me.”
Orv began slapping his hands against his legs, shaking his head. “Yes, yes, yes, I remember! You don’t have to shout! Charlie! Tell ‘em not to shout!”
Graybrow went up behind him, feeling a great deal of pity for the man. He laid his hands on his shoulders, massaged the bunched muscles there the way his mother had once done for him. Gradually, gradually, Orv stopped trembling.
“You got them hands, good hands,” Orv said. His head tipped forward until his chin touched his chest. “Yessum, I hear, I hear. That Cherokee medicine man, Charlie, his name was Spoonfeather or something like that, but everyone called him King Paint. King Paint. Him and Grandpappy Jeremiah had a love of the roots and herbs, power doctors, eh? King Paint’s wife—that pretty young one that was all legs and tits and big eyes, yessum, that one—she got herself mixed up with Johnny Hollix. One day, old Johnny just disappeared and that squaw? Hee, hee, hee! The most horrible thing, the most horrible!”
Though Graybrow had come there to learn certain specific things, he knew he would have to let Orv talk in circles. Let him do his bit and, sooner or later, he would get to more pressing matters. So Orv told him about King Paint’s squaw and the awful punishment visited upon her for laying with Johnny Hollix on a regular basis. There was a horse that was lying in a ditch, ridden to death. Using ropes, they strung it up six feet in the air between two trees and sewed-up the squaw alive in the hide so only her head was poking out its flanks. The carcass was full of flies and ants and beetles. Pretty soon, it was full of maggots, too. That carcass was all soft and putrid and wormy. Orv said after a week, it was so filled with maggots that it looked like it was dancing up there, rolling and pulsating. And the squaw, of course, sewn up in that putrescence with millions of worms crawling on her, went insane. Laughing and cackling, spitting and screaming. She bit her tongue off, shredded her lips. The crows and vultures were picking at her face and inside that hide…well, you just didn’t want to think of what that was like, just boiling away with grave worms.
“Terrible, Charlie, that’s what it was,” Orv said, shivering now. “And it was two weeks, two weeks before that horse rotted and fell to ground. And the squaw? Dead, eyes picked out and skin stripped clean off her face…oh, and you don’t want to mention the rest, do you? No, sir! No, sir!”
Graybrow had to admit that he’d heard of some positively obscene punishments for adultery, but this one surely took the cake. The icing, too. Orv went quiet, alternately giggling and whimpering, whispering to his brothers Roy and Jesse who were apparently both dead.
“Orv?” Graybrow finally said. “Tell me about Deliverance.”
Orv actually let out a scream and began to cross himself. “I cain’t! I cain’t! Oh, that’s him, that’s that devil James Lee Cobb! He…he…he was born out of darkness, yessum, I know it. Something that crawls and slithers in them dark places where folks ain’t got no bodies, that was his father! Oh, oh, oh…his mother! Jesus help her! Help her! And Cobb, Charlie, hee, hee, Cobb he went up into those mountains and found that other one what had been waiting for him all them years! That which waited in them caves for the Macabro…oh, don’t ask me no more, no more! Because it was in Cobb and then Cobb came down…he ate ‘em, ate them men…came down and wasn’t long, wasn’t long before he heard tell of Spirit Moon…”
Orv went into hysterics after that. Crying and shrieki
ng. Graybrow had to keep feeding him whiskey until the man was beyond pain and then he brought him into the shack so he could rest.
He wasn’t sure what it was all about, but there was no doubt anymore that James Lee Cobb was the catalyst for something. If Orv could be believed, then something sinister had taken control of Cobb up in the mountains, something that had touched him at birth.
And that something had brought him to Spirit Moon, who was a very powerful Snake medicine man.
Things were beginning to come together and Graybrow didn’t care for what they hinted at.
14
It was the next morning that Janice Dirker told Tyler Cabe about the giant who had come gunning for him the night before. As she spoke, she practically went white with fear. And Cabe had a pretty good idea that she was no shrinking violet.
“Elijah Clay,” was all Cabe could say, shaking his head. His breakfast of cakes and fried taters suddenly forgotten. “Jesus H. Christ, that sumbitch is really hunting me down. I’ll be goddamned.”
Janice looked more than a little concerned. “Who is he, Mr. Cabe?”
So he told her, told her everything about shooting down Virgil Clay and Charles Graybrow telling him about the animal old Virgil’s father was…half-grizzly bear and half-ogre and one-hundred percent ass-kicking, life-taking, intolerant hellbilly. Those dark, wonderful eyes of hers were on him the whole time and there was real concern in them, real fear.
And Cabe thought: I’ll be damned, this lady actually cares about me.
“I don’t like one bit of this. Mr. Cabe,” she said and her voice was deep and sensual and it made the bounty hunter’s insides bubble like sweet molasses. “I fully realize this is none of my affair, but I think it would be wise for you to hide out for a time. Let my husband deal with this human pig. He’ll know what to do.”
Cabe found himself smiling like a little boy.
Smiling, mind you.
Here he had just about the meanest bastard imaginable wanting to make a tobacco pouch out of his privates and he was grinning like a little boy with a peppermint stick all his own. And it was because of Janice Dirker. Though he wasn’t much prettier than your average wild boar (and would be the first to admit the same), Cabe had had his fill of women over the years. He had been desired and lusted after. But no one had ever really cared if he lived or died...and now someone did. He felt a lot of things right then: confusion, bewilderment, and, yes, even fear.
But he liked it all, God yes.
“Ma’am, y’all very kind to me. Very caring to some worn-out saddletramp like me and I can’t tell you how I appreciate it,” he told her, feeling his voice squeak with emotion. “But, really, I can take care of my own affairs. Always have, always will. And Jackson…the Sheriff, that is…well, I think he’s got enough problems without worryin’ over me.”
Janice was breathing hard and Cabe was, too.
What was it all about? Lust? Passion? Yes, surely those things were evident, but something more too. Something that went deeper. Something that he could feel burning deep inside of him like hot coals and blue ice. There was a word for it, but he didn’t dare think it.
“Please, Mr. Cabe. You are, without a doubt, a man who can handle his own affairs, but…”
“But what?”
She averted her eyes. Cabe reached out and pressed his hand over hers. It was like an electric shock passed through him. She started as well. She made to pull her hand away as color touched her cheeks, but didn’t. And under his rough, callused paw, her hand was petal-soft and fine-boned. It felt so very good.
She licked her lips. “I don’t…oh what in God’s name am I doing?”
“Say it,” he told her.
She sighed. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“If that’s what you want, then I’ll make sure nothing will.”
They stared into each other’s eyes for a time and then Janice pulled away, rushing from the dining room as fast as she could. And Cabe just sat there a time, feeling like a man flattened by some tremendous wave.
It was some time before he could so much as stand.
15
“Well, I see you’re still alive,” Charles Graybrow greeted Cabe later that morning. “I was planning on buying a nice whiteman’s sort of suit for your funeral. Maybe I was rushing things.”
Cabe dragged off his cigarette. “Maybe just a bit.”
After his talk with Janice Dirker, he finally found his guts again, tucked ‘em back in, and took to the streets. Started walking. Checking Whisper Lake out saloon by saloon. And not for drinks, but for Elijah Clay. At the far end, near the Union Pacific railroad depot, he spotted Charles Graybrow having a taste at a lumber yard, chatting it up with another Indian who was cutting barrel staves.
Graybrow stood there, studying the sky which was leaden and turbulent. A chill breeze ruffled his long iron-gray hair which was tucked under a campaign hat. One eye was squinting, the other open in that solemn brown face.
“Hey, Tyler Cabe,” he suddenly said. “You figure I wear a fancy whiteman’s suit and hang around the depot, folks might think I’m some rich banker from back east?”
“Doubt it.”
“Because I’m an injun?”
Cabe shrugged. “That might tip ‘em off.”
“Damn, it’s hell to be an injun some days. Maybe I’ll get the suit, though. Way I hear it, Elijah Clay’s in town. They say he’s looking for you.” Graybrow just shook his head. “So I might get some use out of the suit after all.”
Cabe just chuckled. He crushed his cigarette in the dirt and pulled off his hat. Not looking up, he fumbled with the rattlesnake band above the brim. “Already got me dead and buried, have you?”
Graybrow nodded. “Me and a bunch of my red brothers are taking bets. I’m saying your dead before tomorrow morning. But maybe I’m just a pessimist. Folks say that about me. Go figure.”
Cabe put his hat back on. “You’re gonna lose some money, I think.”
“Maybe.” Graybrow looked over to his Indian friend. “Hey, Raymond? You think you can fix up my amigo here?” Then he turned to Cabe. “I call him Raymond because his name is Raymond Proud.”
“No shit?”
Raymond Proud stood up and he was a big man dressed in wool pants, suspenders, and a lumberjack shirt. “Is this the Arkansas bounty hunter?”
“Yes. Calls himself Tyler Cabe.”
Proud nodded, scratched at his chin. “Yeah, I’m thinking I could fit him. I got some spare scrap lumber out back.”
“Yeah, that would work. He don’t want no fancy nameplate. Just the box.”
“Well, I’d need a little money up front.”
“That could be arranged.”
Cabe just stood there, not getting it at all. “What the hell are you two talking about?”
Graybrow patted him on the shoulder. “Just stay out of this, okay?” he said in a whisper. “I’m getting you a good deal.”
“On what?”
“A casket. You’ll need one soon enough.”
Cabe felt his mouth drop open. “Well, you two just got all sorts of faith in me, don’t you?”
“Nothing personal, is it, Raymond? We just know Elijah Clay is all.”
Cabe let out a sigh and walked away, deciding to take a look around the depot. Somewhere, that hellbilly was hiding out and he planned on getting the draw on the sonofabitch come hell or high water. Because, honestly, for the first time in a long while he felt that he had a damn good reason to go on living.
“Hey, Tyler Cabe,” Graybrow said. “Slow down, I need to talk to you.”
But Cabe didn’t slow down. “If you found me a nice plot of earth, I ain’t interested.”
Graybrow caught up with him, put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. “No, nothing like that. Just stop now.” He was panting. “It’s not that I’m old, but I don’t want to show off and run you down.”
“Course not. Wouldn’t be your way.”
Graybrow smiled thinl
y. “You didn’t like my little joke back there?”
“Not much.”
“It’s my injun sense of humor, it’s kind of strange, I reckon. White folks never seem to get it.” He followed Cabe to a bench by the telegraph office. “All us injuns got it. Take Custer at the Big Horn, for instance. He would’ve just waited for the punchline, things would have turned out different.”
“You’re crazy, that’s what.”
Graybrow offered him a drink. “It’ll settle your nerves.”
“My nerves are fine. Besides, it’s a little early.”
“You white folks…boy, I’ll never understand you. You bring the whiskey out here, get my people hooked, then you act like it’s not good enough for you.”
Cabe smiled. “That’s our little joke.”
Graybrow took a good pull off his bottle. “Since you already know about Clay being in town, I won’t warn you about that. But I hear them miners hired you to sort out all these killings. That true?”
“Word travels fast, don’t it?” Cabe said. “But, sure, it’s true enough.”
“Good. Because you’re gonna need my help. I know lots about those killings. If you wanna stop them, then you’re gonna have to stop James Lee Cobb.”
“Who in Christ is that?”
“You don’t know?” Graybrow said. “Well, sit back, because I have a story to tell you. And before you ask, yes, it does have to do with coffins and graves and the like. Just not in the way you think…”
16
The day turned progressively colder as Cabe and Graybrow rode out to Deliverance. They followed the dirt road up out of Whisper Lake and past the Southview Mine, taking the road where it forked at the blasted oak.
Cabe found himself studying that oak.
It was tall and craggy and black, looked something like a huge trapdoor spider climbing from the ditch alongside the road. Cabe could not put a finger on it, but that tree bothered him immensely. He was not one given to omens and portents…but somehow, somehow that tree was a signpost warning him off.