Power in the Blood (55 page)

By midmorning the next day, Clay had still not been allowed so much as a drink of water. Beecher had tied his ankles beneath his horse’s belly, and was not about to make any effort to release his prisoner for matters of small consequence to Beecher. Clay had already been obliged to piss into his pants, and was hoping he would not feel the urge to move his bowels before they reached whatever place Beecher was taking him to. Clay’s packhorse and Hoyt’s animal, bearing Hoyt, trailed behind.

Beecher was talkative, confident, at ease with a man so completely cowed and under his control. “Lee Hoyt and me, I don’t mind telling you, we were drug through the mud on account of those red killers down there. There was talk we’d be showed the door, then Lee got this idea to follow up on something we heard down Magdalena way about Arch Powell, and after the mess down there we needed to show ourselves in a better light, as they say, so we followed that rumor about Powell, and found out he’s on his way home to Killdeer, which we told about to certain sons of bitches in high office who wanted to show us the door, and these particular sons of bitches sent some other officers to wait for old Arch, and they’re the ones that got him, instead of me and Lee, like it was supposed to happen and shine that better light on us. Well, after that we weren’t about to trust any son of a bitch again, so we decided we’d come up here and round up the rest of the Powell outfit ourselves, and we were set up pretty good with old Mort the barkeep willing to pocket some dollars and be on the lookout for us. We figured you’d be the first one in the net, but you had to go mess things up for us, Adams, and I don’t like how you did it, nossir, I don’t.”

“If you were half as smart as you think you are, you’d throw in with me and get the whole bunch. You and Hoyt aren’t great planners, Beecher. You want to impress your boss, you’d better set me loose so we can talk about a way to do it. We both want the same thing, to get the rest of Powell’s boys under lock and key.”

“You’d just as soon shoot them, Adams. That’s how bounty hunters work. Alive or dead, it never did make any difference to the likes of you.”

“All the same, you’d do well to consider it.”

“I’m not about to consider any such thing.”

“Where are we going? Killdeer’s back the other way.”

“Cortez. They’ve got a lockup there that’ll hold you just fine. I take you back to Killdeer, too many people are going to know there’s something going on, and I don’t want to scare off the rest of Arch’s boys. They were all on their way there to join up with him for another go-round on the owlhoot trail, that’s the word we got down Magdalena, and chances are they’re still coming, even if Arch is dead.”

“You can get them all, with me.”

“No deal, Adams. I don’t do business with the man that shot my partner. You can sit awhile in Cortez till someone comes for you.”

“You’ll never take Arch Powell’s boys on your own.”

“Not all at one time, I’ll admit, but that won’t be how they come, Adams. They’ll come alone, and I can handle snakes like that all by myself. You can …”

Clay saw the left half of Beecher’s hat suddenly compress at the same instant the right half was carried away by an exiting bullet that carried with it bone and brain. Strangely, the hat remained on Beecher’s head even as he fell from his saddle and hit the ground, one boot still lodged in a twisted stirrup. Clay was about to spur his horse away, then remembered his handcuffs; the key was in Beecher’s pocket. He was unable to make up his mind before a lanky boy sprang from the trees and grabbed the bridle of his horse. A man carrying a Winchester then appeared and stepped over to the body of Beecher. When he turned, Clay recognized Mort.

“That feller,” said Mort, “was a fool.”

“I’m in agreement,” said Clay.

“Fools don’t live long in this world. What me and my friend need to know, mister, is if you’re a fool too.”

“That would depend, now, wouldn’t it?”

“Depend on who the hell you are and what exactly you want around here, and you better make more sense than you done yesterday, because you sure aren’t who you said. That boy there, he’s kin to Ham Deidsheimer, so you just trot out the truth right now.”

Clay looked down at the boy. “Son,” he said, “I hate to be the one that tells you, but Ham’s dead, killed by a bounty hunter, they say. I only met him but once, and that was just for a short while, and he trusted me and told me about Arch Powell and how there was a rendezvous set up for Killdeer for him and the boys from Montana to meet again. Well, I wanted to be in on that, so I came here under false pretenses, just to get heard by Arch Powell, and I judged those two federal men wrong, and almost paid for it large. I apologize to you for taking your kinsman’s name. No harm or insult was intended, and that’s my story to you both.”

The boy said nothing. Mort stepped closer. “Mister, I don’t believe a word of it, but you killed the other one, so you’re no friend of the law, and you can go, but don’t you be seen hereabouts again. Arch is gone, and now Ham, you say. That’s two good men and two fool laws dead, and that’s enough dying for now.”

“Thank you. There’s a key in his pants.”

Clay’s wrists were released, the rawhide thongs binding his boots cut.

“You remember what I told you,” Mort warned.

Clay’s shotgun was passed to him, and the lead rein of his packhorse. “Get,” he was ordered.

During the first hour of his freedom, Clay wondered if another shot might come from the woods either side of the trail to Cortez, but in the second hour he began to worry less. Mort and the boy would dispose of Beecher and Hoyt, and the incident would be buried along with them. Their horses would be traded to thieves who would take them across miles of territory, beyond the reach of any investigation that might or might not arise as a result of Beecher’s and Hoyt’s unofficial enterprise. Clay had come to the Killdeer region with a view to accomplishing exactly what the dead men had come for, and found himself leaving with nothing more valuable than his life.

PART TWO

THE WINE OF VIOLENCE

25

He had hired several lawyers, but not one of them had been able to accomplish anything beyond lightening his wallet. Nevis Dunnigan should have been a famous man, but was not, and he had at last become aware of the reason—no one really cared if he was the originator of
Venus Revealed
or not. His masterly depiction of an unclothed Lovey Doll Pines had become so popular an attraction at its home in a Kansas City saloon, the owner had allowed copies to be made, many, many copies, and unauthorized copies were made from those copies, until it seemed that Lovey Doll was everywhere seen in her glorious nakedness. But the name of the artist, that precious scrawl at the lower-right-hand corner of the original canvas, was a frustrating blank, insulting by its absence the artistic temperament of Nevis, and doing him no earthly good in the world of commerce either.

The lawyers had listened to his cry for redress, and in the end been unable to help him. He doubted now that they had even believed he was in fact the artist. Lovey Doll was not only present on barroom walls across the west, she was to be found in collections of erotica, in both pasteboard and sophisticated stereopticon versions; her fleshy charms were displayed inside the lids of cigar boxes, even rendered in miniature on snuffboxes. It was outrageous that a single work should have provided the model for so many applications of Lovey Doll’s likeness, when not a cent in royalties trickled down to the creator. Nevis felt that if the manufacturers of canned goods could have braved public opinion and pasted Lovey Doll across all their products, they would have, so enticing was the goddess of love. Art, the sublime stuff of Nevis’s soul, had been prostituted in the service of Mammon, and no one cared about or rewarded the man whose talent had been so abused.

An occasional drunkard, Nevis had drifted west in search of justice and financial restitution without finding either. His aim had been to reach San Francisco, where the cosmopolitan air of so great a city would surely revive his spirits, but he had progressed no further than Denver. He told himself the invigorating air of a town one full mile above sea level would be an acceptable substitute for San Francisco; he would breathe alpine clouds rather than salty fog, and be spiritually refurbished as a result of such Olympian ingestions. That had been three years before, in 1881, and Nevis was still awaiting the arrival of the muse, or recognition of his talents. He made a living for himself as assistant to an inferior painter much sought after by the newly rich mining potentates of the Rockies, and was able to keep his tongue and his envy in check only by way of liberal amounts of alcohol. The hack he worked for was without even a shred of ability, in Nevis’s opinion, yet the fool was becoming rich himself through the patrons he monopolized.

One night, particularly enraged by criticism from his employer for having mixed a combination of colors not precisely to his exacting standards, Nevis began sketching caricatures of the man in various positions of abuse, subjecting him to the amorous attentions of jackasses, policemen with large batons, brutish sailors and inventive eunuchs, a bevy of vengeful furies engaged on Nevis’s behalf to right the wrongs perpetrated against him by the world in general and the hack in particular. He wielded his charcoals in a bar that in recent months had become his favorite retreat, and soon attracted a host of admiring critics, some of whom were able to recognize the butt of his ill humor. Nevis sold all of his sketches to pay off his bar bill, which had become a subject of dispute between himself and the proprietor. Feeling much better for having vented his spleen for actual profit, Nevis passed out on the floor.

Two days later, Nevis was unemployed. Choice selections of his barroom artistry had been forwarded to Denver’s most prominent social portrait painter, and the hack was neither impressed nor amused by his apprentice’s betrayal. When he learned that the sheets in his hand represented only a fraction of Nevis’s work in a similar vein, his rage had been a terrible thing, and Nevis was glad to quit his position as the hack’s helper. It was liberation of a kind, and he celebrated by establishing a new bar bill at the scene of his creative crime. The celebration lasted until the following afternoon, at which time Nevis collapsed from an excess of liquor. He was put to bed by the proprietor’s wife, for whom, while still relatively sober, he had executed a quick portrait emphasizing what little beauty she retained at the age of fifty-one.

Nevis returned to cruel sobriety the next day, and found an unknown man by his bed. The man was handsome, middle-aged, and had about him the aroma of wealth Nevis had grown accustomed to during his former employer’s dealings with the elite of Denver. Nevis told himself not to be intimidated, even under such circumstances as this.

“Good day, Mr. Dunnigan.”

“Yes …” said Nevis, aware that his response was not appropriate, aware also of the tremendous thuddings within his head.

“Are you unwell, Mr. Dunnigan?”

“No …”

“That is good news, sir, because I have an unprecedented offer to make you.”

“Offer …?”

“An offer, Mr. Dunnigan, of work.”

“Work?”

“On a scale hitherto unknown in our fair city, sir. Work of an altogether historic character. A first, as they say. Would you be interested in embracing such a project?”

“I … I would.”

“I have overstepped myself. One moment, please.” His guest took from his creaseless jacket a sheet of paper and unfolded it for Nevis’s inspection. “This is your artistic handiwork, sir?” The hack, in this particular instance, was being sodomized by a gleeful centaur.

“Uh … yes.”

“I realize this is merely a quick study, but I must ask you, Mr. Dunnigan, if you are acquainted with the broader canvas, the more, how shall I say, heroically proportioned type of thing.”

“Sir, I am. Sir, are you familiar with a study entitled
Venus Revealed,
which can be found in abundance throughout the drinking establishments of the land, and elsewhere?”

“Ah, yes, the delightful lady among the pillows. You are the author of that work?”

“Of the original, which was superior in every way to the copies that abound without my permission.”

“An unfortunate situation, to be sure. I have heard it voiced that art is its own reward, but I’m a practical man, Mr. Dunnigan, and I expect most painters are also. That is why you may be assured that your work for me, should you accept the task, will be rewarded according to my satisfaction with the finished result. A businessman’s agreement is what I require, on paper, and signed by an attorney. Are you averse to such an arrangement?”

“No indeed, sir, so long as rights to reproduction are retained by myself. Once bitten, twice shy, as the anonymous wise man said.”

“Mr. Dunnigan, I cannot agree to that stipulation, nor need you, when the nature of the work is made clear.”

“I listen with open ears, sir.”

“It may be best if I take you directly to the site you’ll be required to work in.”

“Site? You mean a studio will be provided?”

“Not exactly. Can you rise, Mr. Dunnigan? I’m able to provide lunch before we view the room.”

“Room?”

“Sir, just as Michelangelo was commissioned by the Pope to cover the walls and ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, so have I commissioned you for a task of similarly epic proportions. Well, it may be that I exaggerate a little.”

“A church?”

“No, Mr. Dunnigan, not a church.”

Her visits from the tall man were becoming less frequent now that Omie was ten. He had flown through her dreams like a black eagle, with his long flapping coat and the broad hat that threw his face into shadow so deep she could see only his eyes, bright with a will to mete out death, and the iron bar that ran between his teeth. She had wondered, during his first visitations, why he kept it there, that iron bar spearing his cheeks like some bizarre tribal ornament, but it became clear, as she saw him again and again during the hours of night, that he kept the bar in place simply because it was so very ugly; the tall man wanted the world to see his punishment, but Omie could never determine its cause. Sometimes he saw her, as she saw him, but never for very long. She knew from his ugly, penetrated face that he was scared of her, just as she was of him, and decided it must be on account of her blue mark. Both of them were being punished, and neither knew the reason why.