Skin Medicine

by Tim Curran

  Without haste then, they started shooting.

  The Mormons knew they would show, but had hoped it would not be for some time for they were ill-prepared to fend off such a bold attack. Men carrying muskets and bolt-action rifles ran out to oppose the riders and were cut down in lethal rains of well-directed gunfire. Women screamed and children cried and shotguns boomed and pistols barked. Lead was flying like hail, peppering doors and shattering windows and killing livestock that had not been carefully stabled.

  One of the town elders stomped out onto the porch of his house, his three sons at his heels. A rider passed by, giving the elder both barrels at close range. The buckshot blew a hole the size of a dinner plate in his chest and splattered gore over his sons. And the sons had little more time than to shriek as gunfire from Winchester and Sharps rifles raked them, killing them on the spot. An old woman ran out amongst the vigilantes, waving a prayerbook at them and they rode her down, crushing her beneath the hooves of their horses. The same fate met three young children who’d seen their mother and father put down by pistol fire.

  The wise townsfolk stayed behind locked doors or returned fire from gunports cut into shutters. But they were not seasoned fighters, and very few of their rounds came within spitting distance of the vigilantes. Though a single bullet-whether directed or ricocheted? ripped through the throat of a vigilante and he collapsed in his saddle.

  But that didn’t even slow the killers down.

  They reigned and fired, tossing flaming kerosene torches into bales of hay and piles of lumber and very often right through the windows of stores and homes. And in the midst of that, they kept riding and shooting and killing and scattering horses and mules, using cattle and sheep for target practice.

  Within twenty minutes of their arrival, Redemption was blazing like the nether regions of Hell. Flames engulfed barns and livery stables. Licked up the walls of houses. Vomited from exploded windows. The town became an inferno of fire and smoke and screaming. Bucket brigades worked to douse the conflagration even as the vigilantes shot them dead.

  In the noise and confusion and shouting, a lone figure clutching the Book of Mormon stumbled into the streets, already bleeding from a stray bullet that had creased his temple. He made quite a sight out there on foot, shouting prayers and oaths, trails of blood streaking down his face.

  “… the Antichrist will come among the people, commanding his legions…and ye shall know him by his name! Nation shall make war, horrendous and godless war upon nation, man will kill his brothers in a rapture of evil! Evil! And…and…the unclean shall make unclean laws to enslave the righteous and the fornicator will be smitten by the hand of the Almighty…”

  He never got much farther than that, for a lasso of horsehair rope swung down and over him, locking his arms tight against his body. The rope was tied off to the saddlehorn of a vigilante’s horse and then lastly, finally, the riders rode out of the purgatory they had created.

  Rode out, dragging the preacher behind them.

  ***

  They dragged him for maybe a mile.

  Over rocks and stones and stumps, through dry ravines and up craggy hillsides. When the vigilantes did finally stop, atop a low flat-topped hill fringed by rabbit brush, the preacher was barely alive. He looked, if anything, like a threadbare scarecrow. His rag and straw stuffing was hanging out and sticks were protruding from his legs and arms…except it wasn’t rags and straw and what stuck out weren’t sticks. The flesh had been worn from his face and the backs of his hands. He had numerous compound fractures and broken bones. His jaw was dislocated and still he tried to speak, a bloody gurgling sound bubbling forth.

  One of the vigilantes pulled off his hood. It was Caleb Callister. Squinting his eyes in the darkness, he watched the glowing, flickering bonfire in the distance. Redemption.

  “ If your people are smart, preacher-man,” he said, slipping a thin cigar between his lips, “they’ll heed our warning this time. Because next time, next time-”

  “ Next time there won’t be anybody left when we ride out,” another vigilante finished for him.

  This got a few chuckles from the others.

  The preacher, though broken and peeled, tried to crawl, straining at his leash like a fool dog testing his boundaries. The vigilantes watched him, just expecting him to curl up and expire…but it wasn’t happening. He coughed out loops of blood, legs pistoning him forward, arms still fixed to his sides. Slinking and inching along like some human worm. And just as freedom, maybe, seemed to beckon…the rope snapped taut.

  “ Best accept the fix you’re in, preacher,” one the vigilantes said to him. “It ain’t like rain…it won’t go away.”

  “ Much as you might like that,” said another.

  They sat on their mounts, smoked, passed a bottle of whiskey, and watched Redemption burn like a torch in the distance. Gradually, slowly, the blaze became separate fires that were brought under control one after the other.

  Then they drew straws on who got the preacher.

  Luke Windows was the lucky man. He decided to drag the preacher around for awhile. And he did. After another twenty minutes or so, he got tired of it and the preacher still wasn’t dead, so he emptied his Colt Navy. 44 into the man.

  Then he joined the others to celebrate.

  7

  After a somewhat exhausting day spent making the rounds of Horizontal Hill’s varied brothels, Tyler Cabe walked back to the St. James Hostelry. His belly was empty and his temples were pounding like jungle drums from all the free liquor he’d swallowed. He walked into the dining room and Jackson Dirker was there, along with his wife and five or six other guests. Dinner consisted of roast chicken and potatoes with an apple crumb for dessert. It was damn good and Cabe’s respect for Janice Dirker went up a notch.

  Jackson Dirker was surely a lucky man.

  Cabe and Dirker made small talk, but mostly just listened. One of the tenants was a medical supply drummer from Wichita named Stewart. He spoke at some length-and in unsavory clinical detail-about his products which ranged from liver pills to trusses, hygienic whiskey to colonics. Particularly the latter…which, of course, didn’t do much for the digestion of the apple crumb.

  After he excused himself and the other tenants slipped off, it was just Cabe and Dirker together, with Janice flitting back and forth collecting dishes.

  “ Mr. Cabe tells me that the two of you are acquainted,” she said to her husband.

  He barely looked up from his newspaper. “In a manner of speaking.”

  Same old Dirker, Cabe found himself thinking. Cool as ice. If he had any emotions buried in that thick hide, it would have taken twenty men with shovels to unearth them. Maybe if Dirker had simply said, yes, yes, we know each other. We fought against each other…but that was years ago. Maybe had he said something like that, Cabe would have been satisfied to let it go. But now he felt surly.

  “ Yes,” he said, “once upon a time, your husband and I were brothers in arms. We fought on opposite sides, but spiritually we were one. Ain’t that so, Jack?”

  The newspaper lowered an inch. A set of crystal blue eyes found Cabe, did not blink. The newspaper slid back up. “I wouldn’t go that far,” was all he would say.

  “ Nonsense. Maybe your recollections of me are vague, Jack, and rightly so…but mine of you? Hell, sharp as a whip. How I remember you at Pea Ridge! What a fine and striking figure you were!”

  “ That’s enough, Cabe.”

  Cabe smiled now, fingers brushing the webbing of scars that ran across the bridge of his nose, cut into the cheeks. “Your husband is modest, Madam. I would say that Jackson Dirker was an officer and a gentleman. Fair and sympathetic in all matters.”

  Dirker was staring holes through him now.

  Cabe was staring right back.

  Janice, sensing something was terribly amiss here, just cleared her throat and picked at imaginary lint on her velveteen dress. “If I may be so rude and impertinent, Mr. Cabe…did you, did you get those scar
s in the war?”

  But if she was rude or impertinent, it only made Cabe’s grin widen. His fingers explored the familiar slash-and burn-geography of those old scars. “Yes, I received them in the war. I carry them with a certain amount of honor. Battle wounds. You remember when I got these, Jack?”

  Dirker set the newspaper down. “Yes, I do. But, tell me, Cabe, how did you find our brothels? Word has it you spent most of the day there. Did you find our red light district to your liking?”

  Whatever Cabe was going to say evaporated on his tongue. Dirker. That wily sonofabitch. “I…um…”

  Janice smiled thinly. “Our Mr. Cabe certainly is a saucy one.”

  “ Isn’t he, though?” Dirker said, enjoying himself now.

  Cabe swallowed and swallowed again. “It was purely business, Madam. The man I’m hunting preys upon prostitutes, so what choice do I have but to befriend them? To know them and the places they work.”

  “ The things a man must do to make a living,” she said, shaking her head. “Tsk. Tsk. And all day you spent among them? How tired you must be…after such an exhausting enterprise.”

  “ Madam-”

  Dirker was smiling now. “You are a most determined man, Cabe. If any man can root out this killer it will be you.”

  Now here Dirker thought he was being funny and it made Cabe smile, too. If the man was more like that on a regular basis and not so damnably stiff and formal…he almost would have liked him. Cabe figured he was being baited, so he did what came natural to him: he rose up and bit down. “Yes, Madam, it was tiring, but I kept at it until most men would have been spent with fatigue.”

  Janice blushed…blushed, but did not turn away. There was something smoldering behind her eyes and she made sure Cabe saw it.

  Dirker raised an eyebrow. “Did you now? Gave them the what-for?”

  “ Oh yes.”

  “ I’ll leave you gentlemen to it,” Janice said, leaving the room.

  Cabe figured he’d either offended her…or excited her. In his experience, Southern women could be like that. Excited at what they found most offensive. It was the breeding, that’s what. Antebellum society said a lady had to repress her basal instincts. That such things as lust and desire had no place in the higher scheme of things…but like any beast, the more you starved it the hungrier it became.

  And there was hunger in that girl. A barely-concealed need to cast-off her upbringing and get down and dirty.

  Dirker said, “Is it going to be this way every time we meet, Cabe?”

  Cabe looked away from him. So many things he wanted to say, but to what end? What true end? He’d already violated two rules of his upbringing-that a man did not bring his business or personal affairs to the dinner table and that he did not hash out problems with another man in the presence of a lady. Maybe now was the time…if he wanted a fight, then it was high time to quit beating around the bush.

  But he did not want that, not anymore. “No,” he said, surprising even himself, “I would prefer we could put all that aside. I reckon it would be the proper thing to do. At least for the time.”

  “ Agreed. But just so you understand, Cabe. What happened at Pea Ridge is not something I am proud of. A day does not go by that I don’t think about it, wish things had been different.”

  “ You willing to admit that all we were doing was scavenging some essentials off them dead boys?”

  Dirker nodded. “I know that, yes. Maybe I knew it then, too, but I lost my head. What I did was wrong.”

  Damn. Now if that didn’t suck the wind right out of a man. Dirker admitting he was wrong. Cabe felt suddenly very loose, boneless. He almost felt embarrassed that he’d even brought it up. “All right, all right. Fair enough. We were all young and hot-headed, I guess.”

  “ What did you do after the war, Cabe?”

  Cabe told him about his years riding steer and nightherding, being a railroad detective and shotgunner on the bullion stages. How it all led to bounty hunting. “Yourself?”

  Dirker sighed. “I stayed in the army. Was sent west to fight Indians.” His eyes narrowed. “I thought what I had seen in the Civil War was bad. But it didn’t prepare me for what I saw out there. The atrocities, the wanton murder of innocents.”

  Cabe didn’t press it. He knew plenty of what had happened out there, the indignities and cruelties pressed upon the tribes. And generally, unwarranted. Treaties were made between whites and Indians. And the ink was barely dry before the whites had again violated them.

  “ But you left the army?”

  Dirker was smiling now. “No, I was relieved of my command. A band of Arapahos had raided a settlement and I was told to hunt them down and massacre them. Well, we couldn’t find the perpetrators, so my commander decided that any Arapahos would do. There was a village of maybe fifty on Cripple Creek. They had nothing to do with the raid and that fact was well known…yet I was ordered to go in there with my men. And when we came out, I was instructed, there was to be nothing left alive.”

  “ You refused?”

  “ Yes, I did. And I am proud of that fact. I was a soldier, not a hired killer.” Dirker sighed, licked his lips. “I was relieved of my command, court-martialed and discharged. Honorably, much to the dismay of some.”

  “ And after that?”

  “ I was a lawman. One town after another. Eventually Janice and I bought this hotel. Of course, there was trouble between the miners and the Mormons, the Indians and the settlers…I was approached and given the job of county sheriff on the spot.”

  Cabe took it all in. His story was no different from that of many a veteran-trained as a soldier, they invariably became either lawmen or outlaws, sometimes both. Cabe rolled a cigarette, lit it up. “Tell me something, Sheriff. This business I’ve been hearing about a little camp called Sunrise…anything to it?”

  Dirker nodded after a time. “Horrible, horrible.”

  “ What are you going to do about it?”

  “ I’m going to hunt down who’s responsible, of course.”

  “ Of course. And while you’re at it…there’s this fellow named Freeman. Says he’s a Texas Ranger. Think you could look into that for me? Maybe wire the Rangers?”

  “ You think he’s lying?”

  Cabe told him he wasn’t sure what he was thinking. “All I know, Dirker, is that he’s giving me a real bad feeling in my guts. And I can’t figure out exactly why…”

  8

  Later, at the Oasis Saloon, a knot of men gathered around Cabe as he tried to drink his beer. Tried to relax a bit and put all this business with Dirker into some sort of perspective. Were they friends now or enemies? And what about his wife? Cabe had been around, he knew very well the way she was looking at him and what such a look entailed. She had gotten down right excited as he joked about the whores and what he’d done with them. He had not imagined it.

  “ So, this killer, this Sin City Strangler,” one of the men said, a miner with a shaggy gray beard and no upper teeth. “They say he slits ‘em clean open. That true?”

  “ It is,” Cabe told him.

  He had been casually discussing a few particulars of that business with Carny, the bartender, and it had drawn the others like a rope. They wanted to know everything, everything.

  Another said, “Why in Christ he rape ‘em? Whores? You don’t have to rape ‘em…they give it up for two bits, some of ‘em.”

  “ Yeah, why did he rape ‘em?” another wanted to know.

  “ He never says.”

  A tall man in a gray wool suit and polished black boots was shaking his head. “Seems to me, sir, that this is no fit conversation in the presence of ladies.”

  The miners were looking around, trying to find the ladies. All they saw were a few whores mulling about. They didn’t figure that sort counted as being ladies.

  “They ain’t no ladies here, chief,” a miner said. “In case you haven’t noticed.”

  “I find it objectionable all the same.”

  The miners la
ughed at that to a man. Looked like maybe they were going to start trouble over it…but then they saw the pistols hanging from the man’s belt. Fine and sleek they were, Colt Peacemakers with ivory handles. The weapons of a shootist.

  The miners filtered away, figuring today wasn’t the day to die.

  “And you, sir,” the tall man said to Cabe. “If you are a bounty hunter as you claim, if you are indeed hunting this man, then I seriously doubt you will find him in the bottom of a glass of beer.”

  Cabe looked at Carny, just shook his head. “Listen, mister. I came in for a drink, not to listen you run that silver-plated mouth of yours.”

  The tall man took a step forward. “All the manners of a rutting hog. How wonderful that is.”

  “Like I said, I just want to drink my beer. So will you kindly go fuck yourself?”

  The tall man’s face drained of color. “That, sir, is no way for a gentleman to talk. Profanity is the product of a weak mind.”

  “Well, that’s me-weak-minded Arkansas trash. I claim to be nothing else.”

  An easterner. A dandy. That’s what this fellow was. These days, didn’t seem you could spit without hitting one. Cabe generally just left them alone, regardless of how he felt about that sort. Most of ‘em didn’t bother no one. Then there were this kind.

  “No, sir, you are certainly no gentleman, surely. You are rude, coarse, and obnoxious.”

  “Yes, sir, as you said.” Cabe set his glass on the bar, put his hat on. “Now please kindly step out of my sight before the doc has to pull my spurs out of your fine white ass.”

  But he wasn’t moving and Cabe was starting to wonder if he’d have to bury this sumbitch, too.

  “If your mother had any sense, bounty hunter, she would’ve drowned you in a sack before you grew to stink up this country.”

  Cabe felt the hairs along the back of his neck bristle. No, no, he wasn’t going to let this bastard push him into something he would regret. Just wasn’t going to happen. He was walking away from this one.