Skin Medicine

by Tim Curran

  Dirker’s lips had formed into a tight line now like a saber slash. “You boys…yes, I remember you boys. I remember what you did to those soldiers we found. Their corpses were mutilated, Cabe. It was disgusting. I should’ve killed you and the rest of that gutless Southern trash then and there. But I didn’t.”

  Cabe was on his feet now. “You bastard! You goddamn fucking Yankee bastard! I told you then and I tell you know, we didn’t touch them bluebellies! When we came upon them, they were already like that…guts hanging out and faces hacked-off…we just wanted their guns, their food! We were starving for the love of Christ!”

  Dirker listened to Cabe’s dramatics, did not believe a word of it. “We can discuss this until we’re blue in the face, Cabe, but it won’t bear flower. I don’t believe you. I never have.” He folded his hands on the desktop. “Now, did you come here to debate the war or was there something else on your mind?”

  Cabe shrank down into his chair, very much feeling the weight of the gun at his hip. But once a man had made up his mind, you couldn’t change it. You had to let it lay, like it or not. “All right, Dirker. All right. I been tracking a fellow. Hunted him through Nevada and he went to ground, I think, around here somewhere. I don’t know his name and I have only the vaguest description of this animal. But I know what he did-”

  “ You’re a bounty hunter?”

  “ A man’s got to make a living.”

  “ I wasn’t judging you, merely establishing the fact. Go on.”

  Cabe found it easier if he didn’t look at Dirker, so he looked at the wall, pretended he couldn’t hear the sound of that whip in his ears. “This fellow, newspapers call him the Sin City Strangler. He jumps from one mining town to the next, losing himself in the influx of strangers.”

  Dirker nodded. “I’ve heard of this one.”

  “ Be hard not to. This sumbitch likes himself prostitutes, Dirker. Has what you might call a special taste for them,” Cabe said grimly. “He likes to get ‘em off somewheres alone where he can get a scarf around their throats, you know? Likes to fuck ‘em whilst they’s dying. And then he takes a big knife-skinning knife maybe-and cuts ‘em open, spreads their goodies all over the place.”

  Dirker was unmoved. “Disgusting,” he said, but it was hard to tell if he really meant it or not.

  Cabe agreed with him on that. It was disgusting. The Sin City Strangler had murdered six prostitutes in the past five months. First one was at the Barbary Hotel out in San Fran, followed by two more at hell-for-leather mining camps in Churchill County, Nevada. Then Eureka, Osceola, and finally Pinoche-all sprawling mining towns, all veritable “dens of iniquity”, as the preachers and reformers said. For once money started coming out of the ground, it attracted the parasites and bottom-feeders like blowflies to a carcass.

  A pissed-off miner had first put the bounty on the Strangler.

  A thousand dollars…even though no one had truly ever seen him or had any real idea what he looked like. Eyewitness descriptions ranged from tall and fair to short and swarthy and everywhere in-between. Some said the Strangler was a Mexican who’d slipped from some insane asylum and others were certain it was some European immigrant. Regardless, sickened by the severity of the crimes-and it took a lot to sicken folks in mining towns-more money was thrown at the Strangler and now the bounty was up near five-thousand. The governor of the Utah Territory had thrown another thousand on top of it for information leading to the identity and/or whereabouts of the Sin City Strangler.

  “ I been tracking this bastard since Eureka,” Cabe said. “That’s where I started after him. In Osceola I got a good long look at his handiwork…it was bad, Dirker. You and me…we both seen things in the war…but this, Jesus, I ain’t never seen nothing like this.”

  “ And you think this animal is here?” Dirker said.

  “ I think he’s in Beaver County. Whisper Lake is exactly the sort of place he’d come to hunt…I just have to wait and see. Sooner or later, he’s gonna fall into my lap.”

  Dirker sighed, shook his head. “Cabe, ten years ago Whisper Lake was a placer camp with one store, a saloon, and a scattering of shacks. Then they struck a large silver ore deposit and pretty soon we had mining companies in here buying up everything-the Arcadian, Southview, Horn Silver. We have nearly five-thousand people in and around this town, another eight-thousand over in Frisco. Point being, we got hundreds of people tramping through here in a month…to find one man in that human stew, it’ll be a hell of a job.”

  Cabe said, “I’ll get him, dead or alive.”

  “ Just make sure you get the right one.”

  Cabe stood up, stretched, pulled on his slicker. “One of these days, Crazy Jack, we gotta have ourselves a chat about the war. Just you and me.”

  “ Get out of here, Cabe,” Dirker told him. “And don’t make any trouble. I already have my hands full.”

  Cabe went out into the storm, grinning. Maybe if things worked out right, Dirker’s hands would be even fuller.

  3

  The hellbilly’s name was Orville DuChien.

  His cell in the Whisper Lake lock-up was eight feet long and four wide. The walls were brick and the floor was covered with straw. It was cold and damp and water dripped from the ceiling. In the summer the cells were filled with bugs; in the winter, just as cold as an icehouse. The cot Orv sat on was barely wide enough to hold a man and the single army blanket issued was little protection against the frosty night.

  So Orv sat there in his own commingled stench, scratching at his beard, thinking and remembering and becoming generally confused as always. For he was certain there was something he was supposed to remember, but for the life of him, he just drew a blank. But sometimes his mind was like that. Like some blackboard scribbled full of interesting and pertinent information, but if you didn’t run up there quick and read it, all those words and ideas just sort of faded away.

  So Orv sat there and was glad it was cold because when it was cold it killed off the nits in his beard and hair. And those damn things, why, they could just about drive a sane man crazy with all the itching.

  Orv thought: Quit thinking about yer livestock, you damn idiot, you ain’t here on account of that. Yer her because…because…

  Dammit, there went the old memory again. Like a chip of lake ice caught in July sunshine, it just plumb melted away. Made Orv wonder sometimes if he was crazy and maybe he was, but just because his brain had gone to grass, didn’t mean he was raving. Though, sometimes, sure, he raved and maybe got a little out of control. And when that happened, Dirker had Henry Wilcox or Pete Slade or one of them other deputies lock him up like a pea in a poke and that was okay.

  Beaver County jail?

  Hell, it was damn comfortable compared to that Yankee military prison at Camp Douglas. Food was better, too. You didn’t get beaten or used for target practice. You didn’t have to drink out of the cesspool or watch all them good boys with empty bellies wander about like living, breathing skeletons just this side of the grave. And that had been just pitiful, when you thought about it, because the bluebellies had food. Had plenty of it, but they liked to watch their enemies starve.

  Starvation.

  Now that was a hell of a plot to hoe. Used to be a sergeant at Douglas from Alabama had just gone mad. Was so thin you could’ve slipped him in an envelope. Orv only heard him say one sane thing whole time he was there. Boy, he said, way I’m a-figuring it, I’m about six-hundred miles from home and six-inches from hell.” Orv never forgot that. Most of the time that sergeant was trying to dig bugs up from the dirt or hiding rat corpses under the shacks for a sweet midnight snack or telling the guards he wanted to speak with President Lincoln and that Andrew Davis could kiss his white Alabammy ass for leaving him rot in that hole. And if old Andy Davis wanted to bang his sister Nell, why just go right on ahead, because she’d laid with everything from injuns to wild boars and a lying politician ought to slide in just about right.

  Orv tried to pull his head back out of the
war and it was no easy feat.

  Sometimes all he could see were Yankees. Dead ones and living ones. Dirker was a Yankee, so was Henry Wilcox. Peter Slade, too…no, that wasn’t right. Slade was from Mississippi. But he smelled like one. Orv hated that Northerner smell they had about ‘em. Like that one time over in the Oasis, that Yankee sumbitch said he was with the 2 ^ nd Arkansas. Said he was at Pea Ridge, but it was a lie. Sumbitch carried a Starr revolver and had that red-blonde hair to his shoulders and them scars on his face. Probably some Kansas redleg out murdering honest folk. Yeah, goddamn Yankee, lying like that. Who’d he think he was?

  Orv told himself to pay it no mind for that was years back.

  No, no, that wasn’t right either. Yesterday or maybe today. Sure, because Dirker had taken away his 1851 Colt Navy, same gun he’d carried since the Bloody Tenth where he’d taken it off an officer. Taken if off him when he hid under them bodies…and, damn, where were Roy and Jesse?

  Oh, dead and dead. Sure, for years now. Died in the war.

  Orv clasped his head in his hands and tried to make his brain work, but it just didn’t want to and how was that for a bag of beans?

  Listen.

  Sure, Orv’s mind was clearing some now.

  He could hear things up in the hills, bad things. Things riding horseback that looked like men maybe, but weren’t really men. Oh, it was bad, bad, bad. His people were from the Smokey Mountains in Tennessee. His mother’s kin were all conjure folk and they had the second sight and sometimes Orv did, too. Sometimes he’d see things in his head before they happened…only it didn’t do him much good because he always forgot by the time they came around. Mother’s people were like that. Grandpappy Jeremiah Hill was like that, too. Time them farmers from up in Hawkins County had cheated him out of his prize hogs, but did it legal-like so Jeremiah couldn’t do much about it but curse and dance a jig. Only, Jeremiah went into a black mood and hexed them boys and crows came in the dead of night and pecked their eyes out which wasn’t a bad thing really, because Jeremiah’s witching had shown ‘em things they didn’t want to look on no more.

  Orv went to the tiny barred window.

  Damp wind blew in his face and it felt good and he looked up into the shadowy hills climbing above the town, knowing that was where the evil was, where the bad things roosted. He could see faces and forms in his mind, but they were indistinct and the voices were only a little clearer. And it all made something black and toxic twist in Orv’s belly because he could smell death, death circling the town. Just like he’d smelled it in Camp Douglas and heard it there at nights, picking through the piles of bones and rags and unburied corpses. Now death was here and his mind showed him that and he knew, as always, that death was always hungry and its belly always empty.

  Knowing this, Orville DuChien slid down the wall like a teardrop and began to whimper, praying for dawn.

  4

  Tyler Cabe came into the St. James Hostelry out of the storm, rain dripping from the brim of his Stetson. He wiped the mud from his boots, crossed to the fire in the hearth and warmed himself. A slim woman in a blue denim bustle dress was polishing the banister with a rag.

  “ Good evening,” she said.

  “ Ma’am,” Cabe said. “I need me a room. Maybe for a week, maybe more. Possibly less.”

  The woman walked over to the desk, opened the ledger. “I’m sure we can set you up, Mister-”

  “ Cabe. Tyler Cabe.”

  He got a good look at her and saw she was quite pretty. Her hair was just this side of midnight, her cheekbones high, her eyes like melting chocolates. And her voice was nice, too. Velvety, sweet. It had a fine Southern twang to it…but one softened by an upper class upbringing. Cabe figured she was from a fine family.

  “ And your business?” she asked.

  Cabe just looked at her. Most hotels and rooming houses did not ask such questions. But Whisper Lake was a wild town by all appearances, so you couldn’t blame the lady for being particular.

  “ I’m a bounty hunter, ma’am,” he said, neither proud nor ashamed. “I hunt down folks for a living. Sometimes animals. That bothers some people. Does it bother you, ma’am?”

  “ Not in the least.” She wrote these things in the ledger. “Just let’s understand ourselves right off, Mr. Cabe. What you do is your own business, just don’t drag it back here. This is a respectable place for respectable people. You want to drink, whore, and gamble, that’s your affair, but keep it out there. I won’t have it under my roof. Is that understood, Mister Cabe?”

  He walked over from the fire, rubbing his hands together. “Yes, ma’am. It is. I’m not here to hell around, I’m here on business.”

  “ Very good. The rooms are five dollars a day. Breakfast is at eight and supper at five, promptly. Lunch is your own affair.”

  “ Five dollars…that’s pretty steep, ma’am.”

  She nodded. “Yes, it is. But this is a mining town, Mr. Cabe. There are other hotels that charge fifty dollars a night. But if you prefer something more economical, there are many bunkhouses you can get a bed at. A straw-filled mattress for two bits a day, still warm from its previous occupant. But here, the rooms are clean. There are no bugs. And the food is good.”

  Cabe paid her for two days. “Guess you talked me into it.”

  Grabbing his bag, he followed her up the stairs. His room was small, but comfortable. Bed, bureau, wash basin, tiny closet. A window looked out over the rainy/snowy streets.

  She lit an oil lamp with a stick match. “So you’re a bounty hunter. Hmm. Never met a bounty hunter before. You hunt down men and collect the bounties. How does that make you feel, Mr. Cabe? Does it make you feel important? Like a big man?”

  “ No, ma’am. More like a small man with a full belly.”

  She smiled at that. “An impertinent answer to an impertinent question.”

  Cabe sat on the bed. “I could use a bath, ma’am, if you could arrange it. By the way…I didn’t catch your name?”

  “ Oh…yes, how rude of me. Janice Dirker,” she said.

  5

  Well, this was really gonna be something, wasn’t it?

  Cabe soaked in the hot water and thought about the war and Jackson Dirker-his wife and the hotel he owned. More he thought about it, more he started thinking how funny it all was. How everything comes back to a man sooner or later. His past was like some ghost he’d stuck away in a box, trying to forget about it, and now it had gotten loose, was coming right back at him.

  And Dirker? Jackson Dirker?

  How did he honestly feel about him? That was a good question. He did not like the man, not really… yet, he didn’t exactly hate him anymore. Time had dulled his anger. He felt neutral, if anything. It would have been much easier to hate him if Dirker was more offensive, was inclined to brag about what he’d done. But that’s not the sort of man he was. Sure, Dirker was still a dirty son of a whore, but he was hardly the demon that had plagued Cabe’s memories all these years.

  And that only made things tougher.

  Cabe thought: You ain’t here to address past wrongs. Keep that in mind. Giving Dirker trouble won’t fill your poke. You’re here to find that Strangler, to run that mad bastard to ground. That’s it. You start trying to crowd Dirker, there’s gonna be trouble. He’s the county sheriff. He could make life real unpleasant for you.

  But…Sammy, Pete, Little Willy Gibson. What of them?

  Gibson had died in the woods that day, Sammy at Camp Douglas. Pete had been exchanged with Cabe, mustered out to another unit. Was it justifiable to hate twenty years after the fact? The bible preached forgiveness, but Cabe had never been a real forgiving sort and wasn’t much on scripture. But on the other hand, he was not a hateful nor violent man, despite his occupation. Whenever possible he tried to get by on his wits, to outsmart his adversaries.

  But Jackson Dirker…dammit, the man knew how to yank his chain. Cabe had gone into his office, planning on staying in control and that sonofabitch had worked him into a lathe
r without never once raising his voice.

  The South had lost the war. It was a fact. Like any good son of the Confederacy, that still hurt some, still burned in a secret place. But Cabe couldn’t sit around stewing that the Yankees had trampled the family holdings like others. His people were dirt poor sharecroppers from Yell County, Arkansas…they never had shit to begin with. If the Yankees had burned the farm, it would have been a distinct improvement.

  So he couldn’t cling to that.

  Sometimes, he wondered just what there was to cling to.

  Running callused fingers over the scars threading his face, he decided to hell with Dirker. He’d sort that out later, if and when the time came. Now there was business and money to be made.

  6

  Sometimes Caleb Callister thought about his life and the building blocks that it was erected from. But not often. Now that Hiram was dead and buried some seven months, Caleb was the sole owner of the Callister Brothers Mortuary which would soon be renamed Callister Funeral Parlor. Occasionally, Caleb missed his brother, but not too often. They’d always had a pretty good arrangement-Caleb made the coffins and Hiram embalmed the bodies. Handling corpses was nothing Caleb cared for. After Hiram died, he’d tried his hand at it for a time, but it made him sick touching that cold clay so he’d hired an embalmer named Moss out from Stockton, California.

  Moss was capable and he minded his own business, which was a plus. Caleb didn’t have that much to hide-not since Hiram’s passing that was-but last thing he needed was some young snip fresh out of mortuary school nosing into his affairs. Caleb was a gambler and a womanizer and most knew it, but he liked to keep such things quiet. For by day he was a respectable business owner. And he didn’t need Moss spreading stories about the teenage girls Caleb had brought to the mortuary or what he did with them in the rooms above.