Skin Medicine (35 page)

Clay swung his hatchet and swung it fast, so fast in fact Cabe just barely got out of the way. The blade struck the bar and gouged out a four-inch strip of pine. Cabe swung at the big man and their hatchets met in mid-air in a clanging shower of sparks. The impact threw Cabe back against the bar, his arm thrumming right up to the elbow. He got under Clay’s next blow and swung at his face. Clay dodged it, laughed, and brought his own hatchet at Cabe’s head. It knocked his hat off and before he could react, Clay brought it around backhanded. Cabe brought his up to block the blow which would have been lethal given that the axe was double-edged.

The hatchets met again and the impact ripped Cabe’s from his hand and sent him spinning like a top, putting him easily on his ass.

“That’s that, I reckon,” Clay said and came in for the kill.

Cabe tried to go for his pistol, but his hand was numb right up to the shoulder and the limb reacted like rubber. Clay took hold of his hair, pulled him six-inches up into the air and brought up the hatchet for the deathblow.

And then a voice just as cool and calm as January river ice said, “Drop that hatchet or I’ll shoot you where you stand.”

Clay froze, hatchet up over his head.

Dirker was standing there with his sawed-off shotgun in his hands. Both barrels were leveled at the center of Clay’s back.

“Drop it,” he said.

Clay turned and lowered the hatchet, let it fall from his fingers. Let Cabe fall, too. “Goddammit, Dirker, ye always manage to spoil m’ fun.”

“You all right?” he said to Cabe.

Cabe, with assistance, found his feet.

Dirker marched Clay out the door at gunpoint, Cabe close at his heels. And all Cabe could think of was Dirker and his whip and now Dirker saving his hash and wasn’t it just goddamn funny how things had a way of coming around in the end?

20

After Clay was deposited in a jail cell, Cabe made his way back to the St. James Hostelry where Janice Dirker fawned over him, though nothing was really injured but his pride.

“You’re lucky to be alive, Mr. Cabe,” she kept saying as she drew him a bath. “Just darn lucky.”

“Well, the fact that I am…well, it’s your husband’s doing.”

“Jackson is a very dutiful man,” was all she would say on the matter.

Cabe had his bath and when he went back to his room, planning on taking a nice long nap while he had the chance, Janice was waiting for him there. She had changed his sheets and bedclothes, had built a little fire in the corner stove. It felt nice in there, warm and comfortable.

“Earlier this evening,” she said, “a man came to see you.”

Cabe laid on the bed. “Not another one of the Clays?”

“No. Nothing like that. This one was a very polished gentleman, said his name was Freeman.”

Cabe sat up.
“Freeman?”

“Yes. Is that a problem?”

Cabe wanted to lie, but he couldn’t bring himself to. He told her who and what Freeman was, how he and Dirker had almost got him.

Janice looked decidedly pale, but recovered herself nicely as only a Southern lady could. “Well, yes, but I’m no prostitute.”

“He could’ve killed you nonetheless.”

And Cabe was figuring that was exactly what he’d had in mind. Freeman knew Cabe was after him and what better way to rub defeat in Cabe’s face than to not only slip away, but to slaughter the only woman in town he’d truly befriended.

Janice said, “He told me, told me to tell you…”

But it was getting to her now. Even all that breeding couldn’t fight the fear of what could have happened. Of what her death might have become. There was no getting around that. She allowed herself to be held and Cabe held her, liking the feel of her and smelling the wonderful musk of her flesh that no perfume could hope to mask.

“Tell me,” he said after a time.

She breathed deeply. “He said to tell you that he’s off for parts unknown. That you should not follow him…but, but to watch for signs of his work in other places in the years to come.”

“Did he say anywhere particular?”

“London. He said, in the coming years he would be busy in London.”

But then none of it seemed to matter and all those months of hunting seemed trivial. Freeman had spared Janice and Cabe didn’t know why and could never truly guess, but it was enough. Enough then as she flowed into his arms and they melted together into a delicious pool of something seething and moist that was made of flesh and limbs and hot, seeking mouths. And then it was done and they lay naked in one another’s arms, each speechless in the warm afterglow.

And each wondering, wondering, where it could possibly take them.

21

The morning after his wife made love to Tyler Cabe, Jackson Dirker was rooting through the remains of Redemption. The town was nearly destroyed. Even many, many hours after the initial attack that left no less than thirty dead (including Danites and vigilantes), the place was still smoldering. Though some homes were undamaged, most had been blasted or burned and there was stray livestock everywhere.

An icy rain was falling and Dirker stood amongst the wreckage in his yellow slicker, feeling something coil in his belly.

He was standing with a man named Eustice Harmony. Harmony had a farm well outside Redemption like many other Mormons. His family had taken in survivors from Redemption as had many others. But Harmony was more than just another Mormon squatter, he was a former resident of Deliverance.

And the half brother of James Lee Cobb…more or less.

More or less for nobody really knew who (or what) Cobb’s father was. His grandfather, the Minister Hope of Procton village, Connecticut, adopted him, packed him and his lunatic mother off to live with Arlen and Maretta Cobb in Missouri. And he himself left Procton shortly thereafter, for no one wanted anything to do with him or his church. They decided there was an evil taint on both. So the Minster moved to Illinois, remarried and, though he was well into his fifties, sired another family. One night, unable to resist the voices that tormented him, the Minister put a shotgun in his mouth and ended it. Eustice’s distraught mother christened all the children then with her family name, which was Harmony.

In 1853, Eustice Harmony joined the Church of Latter Day Saints in Nauvoo, Illinois, and shortly thereafter set off for the promised land along the Mormon Pioneer Trail which began in Nauvoo and ended far west near the Great Salt Lake.

Dirker was disgusted by what he saw. And truth be told, he was disgusted by just about everything in his job these days. For most of his life he’d been either a soldier or a lawman, had carried the respect and derision those offices inspire. But not once had he thought of being anything else.

Until now.

For, much as it pained him, he figured he’d had his fill.

He took Harmony aside out of the rain and into an old millinery that was still standing, had been dusted out and was being used by the volunteers as a dry-out shack. There was no one in there.

Dirker stood there, water dripping from him. “You know me, Eustice, you know the kind of man I am. I bear no prejudice against any. I’ve been good to you and your people. Have I not?”

Harmony nodded. “Yes, you have been that. We could not have hoped for a finer lawman than you. You have been fair to us.” Harmony took his hat off, studied the brim. “I know…we know…you have tried to break up these vigilantes, but sometimes, sometimes there are far worse things.”

“Such as?”

“The vigilantes raided Redemption the past two nights running. But last night—”

“Last night the Destroying Angels were waiting for them?”

Harmony would not verbally admit to that, but he nodded silently. “But there was more here than just these two groups. From what I have been told, another group of riders came in…and attacked both parties.”

Dirker swallowed. “This would be the same group responsible for what occurred in Sunset?”

“Yes.”

“And,” Dirker said, “would this group just happen to be riding out of Deliverance?”

“Yes,” Harmony sighed.

“Tell me about it, Eustice. I need to know now.”

Harmony nodded. “It began with James Lee Cobb. You have, no doubt, heard rumors concerning him. Well, they are true, God help us all, they are true…”

Harmony had never met his half-brother in person, not before he showed in Deliverance. And what brought that about was a letter. While safely confined in the Wyoming Territorial Prison, Cobb somehow, through some outside agency, discovered he had a half-brother in Utah Territory. Cobb wrote to Harmony and they began to exchange letters.

“I believe, as our Lord Jesus Christ taught, that there is good in all men, Sheriff. I believed the same of James Lee Cobb. I wrote to him, telling him he must now turn from his life of vice and iniquity, that through Jesus Christ there could be forgiveness and salvation if he were to walk the path of righteousness and confess to his sins,” Harmony explained wearily. “And Cobb wrote back that, yes, he now sought only goodness and purity in his life. I wanted to believe this, Sheriff, but I could not. For there was an undercurrent to this man, something black and vile…but as a soldier of Christ, I could not turn away from him.”

“But you wanted to,” Dirker suggested.

“Yes, God, yes, I surely did.” Harmony was lost in thought for a moment. “Sheriff, although I did not personally know Cobb, I knew
of
him. Even before those letters began to arrive. There were things my father wrote down in a letter before he took his own life…things about his life in Procton, Connecticut and what horrors occurred there. My mother told me of them. Of the taint on our bloodline. Well, it is of no matter, I will not discuss these things. They are skeletons that shall remained locked in the family closet.”

After he was released from prison, Cobb did not visit his half-brother in the newly-reclaimed village of Deliverance. Harmony had written to him that he must do this, must be baptized into the Church. The next he heard of Cobb was a telegram from up in Toole County telling Harmony he had died. No details were given. Only that he had died while in the company of the Goshute and that his casket would be shipped to Whisper Lake. It apparently was his last request to be buried near kin.

“Well, I’m sure you know what transpired. The casket indeed arrived and it was that night, while alone with it, that Hiram Callister died. The coroner ruled it suicide. I’m sure you recall this…”

“I was not in town at the time,” Dirker told him. “Doc West ruled it suicide, though he was not at all convinced it was so. He did this to spare Caleb Callister the unpleasantries of an investigation. For it was widely-known by that point that his brother…well, that he was not exactly a wholesome sort.”

Harmony just shook his head. “I know of Hiram Callister’s
peculiarities.
The rumors of which, at any rate. But Hiram’s death was not suicide. His throat was crushed and although he did indeed slit his own wrists, there are many who believe he was compelled to do it. Or did so rather than face what was in that casket…”

“What
was
in there, Eustice? Was it Cobb?”

Harmony told him pretty much what Cabe had. What was in there nearly scared the life from the men who’d brought it down from Skull Valley. Whatever was in there…no man could look upon it and retain his sanity.

Harmony walked to the doorway, opened it a crack and stared out into the cold, misting rain which was rapidly turning Redemption into a sea of mud. “It was, perhaps, a week or two later when Cobb showed in Deliverance on a dark night of blowing wind. He wore a black velvet hood, claimed to be horribly scarred. He wore leather gloves on his hands. He came in the company of a group of, well, despicable characters. They were outlaws, soldiers of fortune, blooded killers—Crow and Hood, Greer and Cook, Bascombe and Wise…”

They set up in a ruined hotel, Harmony said. The Mormons, being a charitable sort, did not run them off. Maybe they didn’t dare to. There was something very wrong about them all. They were invited to service, but declined. They sequestered themselves up in the old hotel, only coming out by night. They brought something with them in a wagon, something they would let no one look upon. Whatever it was, they locked it in a room in the hotel.

“Did you ask what it was?” Dirker inquired.

But Harmony just shook his head. “I did not. But I am certain it was a living thing…or nearly. For at night it howled and screeched and pounded on the walls. In the dead of night you could hear it up there, making the most depraved and blasphemous sounds. Whatever it was…it’s probably still there. I only know that Cobb’s men were overheard saying that it had come from Missouri…”

Harmony’ face had gone bloodless at the memory of it. It took him a moment or two to gather himself. Then he continued.

“There is a draw, a strange seduction to sin, to evil, Sheriff. It is the Devil’s primary tool: people will give themselves to Him in order to experience wicked gluttony.” Through the open door, Harmony watched men loading bodies in a wagon for burial. “Before long, women were spending time in that hotel. There was an unhealthy influence that Cobb and the others possessed. The young were drawn. By the time we realized that they were being taken over, body and soul, it was far too late. Our breathern had given themselves to the Evil One. Cobb had become their messiah. Those of us as yet uncorrupted, came here to Redemption to start again.”