The Six-Gun Tarot

by R. S. Belcher

  “Oh, Harry, you didn’t?”

  Pratt rubbed his face. His eyes were red and sore. He was fighting to control the quiver in his voice.

  “I know, I know. If anything happens to her, Sarah, if she actually listened to my damn fool pride and gone off and hurt herself…”

  He let the words hang in the morning air, which was becoming staler and hotter by the minute. Sarah took his hand, patted it. She leaned in close to his face, resting her head against his.

  “My poor boy,” she whispered. “She’s in a cage, Harry, just as much as you are, love.”

  “I know that. I tried; I really tried to be what she wanted, what everyone wanted me to be—good son, good husband, loyal servant of the temple, defender of the damned faith. But I’m none of those things, Sarah.”

  “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, Harry. And a good husband, to boot. Your whole life you’ve fought against the people who have tried to define you, pin you down. But at the same time you’ve always carried whatever load they dumped on their shoulders. You are a good man, Harry—you’ve just never really met yourself, is all.”

  Harry held her in the cool shade of the porch as the sky brightened, the air warmed. Finally, he sniffed and wiped his eyes with a handkerchief from his pocket.

  “What did she say to you, Sarah?”

  “She wasn’t planning on leaving, that was for sure. She loves you, Harry, and she figured in the end you would love her too. I didn’t know if she knew about you and Ringo, so I was kind of vague. I told her the same things I’m telling you now, that you were both trapped in cages of your own making. I told her to leave you. I even offered her money and as much help as I could. She wouldn’t have it.

  “She was so lonely, Harry. I told her what it was like for me when Gabe died. That was a scary, lonely time for me, till you came riding in to save the day. Everyone in this town thought what you did for me was a kindness—except for your father, of course, and that was because you got one up on him and the elders. To everybody else, Harry Pratt was a regular Sir Galahad!”

  “Hell I am. You’re the one that did me the kindness, Sarah. You kept my secret. Made me feel like it wasn’t sick to feel … the way I do. If I hadn’t had you to talk with, I’d have blown my head off a long time ago.”

  There was a cloud of dust on the main road coming from the direction of the desert.

  “If she’s gone, it wasn’t of her doing,” Sarah said. “Maybe someone who wants to hurt you, Harry, or blackmail you—you are mayor, you know. Maybe it’s got to do with Arthur Stapleton’s murder.”

  “Sarah, you’ve been reading too many of those dime romances they churn out back east. This is Golgotha: people tend to end up dead in these here parts; it’s kind of a town tradition. Besides, if anyone wanted to blackmail me, there are damn easier ways to do it than snatch Holly, and if someone were gunning for me, why wouldn’t they have come after you too?”

  Sarah laughed. She patted Harry on the knee. “That’s very flattering, dear, but everyone knows you took me in as a mercy, nothing more. I hate to disappoint you, but you’re not fooling anyone.”

  “They’re the fools,” he said, standing and regarding the small smear of color that preceded the cloud of dust. “You’re my treasure, Sarah, more valuable than any wealth, any secret.”

  “I already voted for you, Harry. Save it.”

  The smudge had taken shape. It was a lone rider, moving fast toward town. As the rider reached the bend in the road where Sarah’s ranch was, they recognized it was Jon Highfather. Harry ran out to the road and waved for him to stop.

  “I was looking for you,” the sheriff said, pulling the dusty kerchief from his face. “Mutt found Holly’s carriage. It’s out at the edge of the Forty-Mile. Come on!”

  “I have to go,” Harry said to Sarah as he unhooked his horse.

  “I’ll pray for her, and for you, Harry. Please let me know if I can do anything to help.”

  “If you see her, fetch me, Sarah. Tell her I’m sorry. Tell her to come home.”

  He climbed onto the palomino. He and Highfather raced back out into the desert, gone in a clatter of hooves and dust.

  She watched them diminish into the burgeoning curtain of heat.

  The Chariot

  Horses screaming. They heard the sound before they saw the search party. Highfather had led Harry about an hour outside of Golgotha. The 40-Mile did not fully claim this land. There were patches of strawberry cactus, stick leaf and sagebrush, like defiant sentinels urging on the lost souls who might have found themselves consigned to this corner of Hell—hold on; keep going! There is life here; don’t stop and die.

  “What the hell is that?” Harry said, slowing down.

  Highfather slowed as well and turned to the mayor. “Your horses, Harry. When we found Holly’s carriage, the horses were going out of their minds. The carriage had crashed into a deep ditch and the horses and their yoke were a mess. They won’t calm down, not for nothing.”

  “Maybe it’s Mutt—”

  “Nope. I sent him away to backtrack the carriage’s trail. Didn’t do a lick of good.”

  The two cleared the shelf of rock that had had blocked their view. There was a search party of a dozen townies Highfather had rounded up. Harry knew all of them well. He felt a disturbing amalgam of appreciation and shame gel in him, as well as a hot stab of anger at Holly for causing this whole mess with her damn fool drinking and her tantrum. But when he saw the overturned carriage, looking like the desert had tried to swallow it whole and had choked on it, and the frantic, frothing state of his two most gentle and well-trained saddlebreds the anger was quickly quenched in fear.

  Besides the posse, crazy old Clay Turlough was out here with his wagon and a pair of brown drafts, trying to pull the carriage out of the deep gap it had been wedged into. That boy who was working for Highfather, Jim something or other, was here too, trying to help Clay attach a thick coil of rope to the axle of the carriage.

  “Mr. Mayor,” the boy said as Harry dismounted, handed the reins of his horse to one of the towns folk and approached. Clay grunted and nodded as he wiped his already-sunburned head.

  “Harry.”

  “What happened here, Jon?” Pratt asked the sheriff, who had also dismounted and tied his horse a good distance away from the shrieking animals. It was taking four men with strong ropes to hold the two animals in place. “What’s wrong with my horses and where is my wife?”

  “Mutt found it. Holly wasn’t here and there are no tracks or signs that she ever was. No indications she jumped out before the crash or climbed out after. No signs anyone came along and helped her or abducted her. Nothing. It looks like the horses were just running crazy out into the Forty-Mile and the wagon hit the ditch, flipped and trapped them here.”

  “If they were spooked about the crash, they should have calmed down by now. They’re acting like there’s a rattler in their saddle blanket.”

  Harry eased his way toward one of the horses. It was the older of the two, a mare named Dolly. She had always been Holly’s favorite. He stroked Dolly’s nose as she continued to struggle and shriek. Her teeth snapped at him and flecks of foam flew as she shook her head.

  “Easy, girl,” he whispered. “You’re safe, now. Easy.”

  Dolly’s massive brown eye rolled, until only the white, veined with bloody, spidery lines, was visible. The pupil and iris slid back into view from the interior of the horse’s skull. Harry noticed how glassy, how wide and black, the horse’s eye was. Dead eyes still moving. There was no frame of reference, no common shore, no lexicon of experience between what this poor animal had gone through and the world Harry was walking through. He patted Dolly and lowered his head, dizzy with the notion of where Holly was, of what was happening to her.

  “They’re both gone.” It was Mutt’s voice, tight like a drum skin, so close it startled Harry. The half-breed was next to him, alongside Highfather, Clay and Jim.

  “They got the spirit-sickness
,” Mutt said. “Worse than anything that can be done to their bodies. Their hearts, their minds are broken, full of black bugs and dirty water. No coming back from that, ever.”

  “Where the hell is my wife?” Harry said, looking back to the dry ground.

  “She was never here,” Mutt said. “The carriage was driven out of town, and then the horses had … whatever was done to them done. They ran wild until they got tangled up here. I’d say your wife is still in town somewhere, Harry, probably sleeping it off.”

  Pratt’s eyes flicked from the dust to Mutt; they shimmered with hatred.

  “Jon, rein in your animal or so help me, I’m taking his badge. I’m mayor of this town and I won’t have my wife spoken about in that manner by this … trash.”

  Mutt chuckled. Highfather shook his head to the deputy, curtly. Mutt shrugged, but shut up.

  “None of this is going to get Holly back any faster,” the sheriff said. “So let’s all settle down and review. Arthur Stapleton was murdered by poisoning, but it’s not any kind of normal poison, right, Clay?”

  “Yes,” Turlough said, nodding. “It shares properties with numerous organic compounds, including insect venom, mammalian milk and some kind of blood. In some properties, it bears striking similarities to the vital fluids of the cestoda.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mutt said. “Could you speak a little less crazy, white man?”

  “Worms,” Clay said. “Specifically, parasitic worms.”

  “Did I mention lately how much I hate parasites?” Highfather muttered. “All right, so, someone poisoned our banker with this … wormy gunk. Now I don’t know why, but I’m pretty sure the new owners of the silver mine, Deerfield and Moore, do, and I don’t need a crystal ball to know Malachi Bick is mixed up in this, some way or other.

  “Harry, you and Arthur had been in bed with Malachi over the years in quite a few business deals. Could he have had Arthur killed and Holly snatched? Fess up; if there’s something going on that we don’t know about, it could mean the difference in finding her and getting her home safe.”

  Harry kept his head down. He was trying to focus, trying to concentrate over the jabbering of crazy old Clay, over his desire to smash Mutt’s sharp, smug face, trying to focus over the terrified, mad sounds Holly’s horses were making. She had loved old Dolly. When he saw Holly brushing her in the stables, singing “Lorena” softly to her, it had made him fall in love with Holly again, made him wish he wasn’t who he was, for her sake. She was a good woman, Holly Pratt. Sweet, passionate and beautiful. Strong and stubborn and so very, very sad after he had been unable to love her the way she loved him.

  “I … I don’t think it’s anything like that,” he muttered. “I’ve no current business with Malachi that would benefit in any way from such blackguard behavior, even if I thought him capable of it. Malachi Bick is a true son of a bitch, gentlemen; he cheats, he lies, he steals and I’m told he has even murdered in his time, but I do not believe he would ever hurt someone he truly considered innocent. No, I don’t think he’s behind any of this.”

  “How’s ’bout the Injuns?” one of the posse members, a cowboy named Dyer, suggested as he struggled with the other horse. “They could have snuck in here at night and taken her, maybe to sell. They could do some of that hexing stuff they do on the horses, y’know, with all that dancing and grunting and groaning that passes for church for ’em? A fine-looking lady like Mrs. Pratt would fetch…” He let the implication hang when Harry glared at him from under the shade of his bowler.

  Mutt spit at a scorpion and let out a single dry snort of amusement, then turned to Highfather, ignoring Dyer.

  “Jonathan, you remember that stuff old Earl Gibson wrote up in his Bible? It said something about worms in it.… The Greate Olde Wurm, or some-such. Think it could have anything to do with the stuff that killed Stapleton?”

  The horses went berserk. More men hurried over to try to control them, but to no avail. Harry rubbed the bridge of his nose. The noise was like a hot wire, jammed into his forehead.

  “Hadn’t had a chance to look at the Bible, or talk to Earl about it, since Arthur got killed,” Highfather said. “You told me Earl was mixed up with some preacher?”

  Mutt nodded. “All the folks who went loco in the last few weeks were attending his services.”

  “What does that crazy old drunk have to do with Holly?” Harry asked. “I’m of a mind to follow up on the notion the Indians may have had something to do with this.” He stared coldly at Mutt, who was not smiling for a change.

  “Oh, come on, Harry,” Highfather said. “You’re too smart to have us waste time on that. The Shoshoni, the Paiute, they set up a raiding party, snuck into our town in the dead of night and took one person—Holly?”

  “Sound any crazier to you than wasting time on damn fool Earl Gibson’s ravings and worm juice?” Harry said. He turned to the men holding the horses. “Can’t you people shut them up?” The men tried, but both animals seemed newly agitated, shot through with fresh fear.

  “Uh, Sheriff, Mr. Mayor?” Jim said “Earl, that is, Mr. Gibson, he spoke to me the other day when I was cleaning up the cells. He said a lot of queer stuff, but he also mentioned … worms a couple of times, said they were eating him up.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us this when it happened, Jim?” Highfather said. Jim locked his jaw but made no reply. Old Earl had known his real name, had known about his father’s eye. Jim wondered if it had been foolish to break his silence. He wanted to help, but too many lies, too many hidden truths, all led him back to the hangman.

  “You should have said something,” Highfather chided.

  “Venom,” Clay announced. Everyone stopped and looked at him. Clay pointed to Harry. “He said ‘worm juice’ and the sheriff said ‘wormy gunk’; it’s really more like a blood-based venom.…”

  They all stared mutely.

  “There’s no, you know, no juice actually involved, at all. And I don’t think ‘gunk’ is even a scientific term.”

  Clay nodded sagely and shuffled off to retrieve something from his wagon.

  “Well,” Highfather said. “That was helpful.”

  “Jon, wasn’t Earl going on about worms or somethin’ when he tried to shoot up Auggie’s?” Mutt said, snapping his fingers.

  “He did.” Highfather nodded. “We need to have a long talk with Earl Gibson.”

  “No, Sheriff!” Harry shouted over the horses’ screams. Clay was near Dolly, on the side opposite him. He seemed to be trying to calm her down, along with the other men, and having no more luck. “If you want to waste time listening to some old drunk fool’s ranting, do that on your own time. I’m ordering you to investigate the possible Indian abduction connection and to notify the Army. Then continue to search the town, including the squatters’ camp—burn the damn place down if you have to, but find her!”

  Harry knew he was overreacting, knew he was telling a good, methodical man how to do his job, but none of that mattered. The horses were shrieking. He had to find her, had to get the chance to say he was sorry, had to try to explain to her where it had gone wrong, where he had gone wrong, not her. The horses kept screaming and thrashing, lost in madness.

  “Put them down,” Harry said, turning his back on Highfather and the others as he began to walk to his horse. “Both of them.”

  “Man ought to take care of his own business, don’t you think, Mr. Mayor?”

  It was Mutt’s voice. Harry turned and the deputy was standing there, no smile on his face, just cruel judgment behind flint eyes. His rifle was held out in his hand as an offering.

  “Mutt…,” Highfather whispered.

  Harry snatched the rifle, a Winchester ’66 carbine, out of the half-breed’s hand, cocked it, carefully. His eyes drilled blue fire into the void of Mutt’s gaze.

  For a second, Highfather thought Mutt was in danger of being shot, but Golgotha’s mayor turned and walked to Dolly instead.

  The gunshot echoed across the desert, sharp and t
hen rolling like man-made thunder. A pause, then another.

  The screaming stopped.

  Strength

  Two things came down Argent Mountain: miners and rumors. Both of them tended to pile up at the Paradise Falls. It was the end of the week and a mob of dirty, thirsty, rowdy miners poured into the saloon just after sundown, money burning a hole in their pockets.

  The latest story floating around the room, along with milky streams of smoke and the jangling raucous piano strains of “You Naughty, Naughty Men,” was that that a new vein had been opened. The bosses, Deerfield and Moore, had ordered blasting this week. The always-dangerous gamble had paid off. Their dynamite man apparently had the nerves and eye of a surgeon and there had been no accidents, injuries or deaths. A new vein meant happy bosses, happy bosses meant bonus pay and a day off tomorrow and that meant the Paradise was full to busting.

  The faro tables were packed. A crowd, two deep, was watching with amusement to see how much money the young tenderfoot miners were going to lose to the Paradise’s resident dealer, Henry Rorer. Rorer, his hair meticulously center-parted, every strand plastered down, sported a pencil thin mustache. He slid the cards out of the dealer’s box oil smooth. The ever-present smoldering Turkish Oriental dangled from the corner of his mouth.

  Up on the stage, the ebullient Miss Sherry Haines led the girls of the Paradise Falls Burlesque and Review through her own production of the songs from the popular musical The Black Crook. Sherry and her dancers frolicked in a most provocative manner, all stockings and wigs, legs and grins, while the standing-room-only crowd of cowpunchers, muleskinners, rustlers, gamblers, miners and businessmen hooted and howled. A few of the local Mormon men sat in the shadows, guiltily enjoying the view and sipping cold beer that sweated as much as they did. If anyone had a little too much tarantula juice and decided to climb onstage to join the act, Kerry Duell with the big muscles and small bowler was there to pull them off, escort them outside and enlighten them to the error of their ways.