The Six-Gun Tarot (21 page)

He tried to think of something fancy to say, like what Jonathan might say to a girl, but there was nothing. “If it helps any, I swear to you, I’ll do my damnedest for it to be the last lie I ever tell you,” he said. “G’night, Maude.”

He shut the door and tried to reorient himself to a world without her in it. This was crazy, guilty, wrong. He was turned all about by her. The senses he lived by, that kept him alive, were his enemies when it came to this woman. He breathed in cold air and tried to ignore them.

He almost didn’t hear the intruder until he was almost on top of him. Mutt spun, drawing his gun fluidly and brandishing it at the dark street.

“Put that silly thing away,” the coyote said. “You know it can’t hurt any of us.”

“What the hell do you want?” Mutt said, holstering the gun as he began to walk toward the jailhouse.

“Well, that’s a fine way to greet your brother,” the coyote said. “Especially after all those pretty manners you spread all over the widow back there.”

“You stay away from her!”

“I’ll try, but it sure will be hard. You already know that, don’t you? I swear, Mutt, I can smell the stink of her want all the way down the street. She’s been abused, neglected and ignored. Even reeking of grief, she still wanted you to comfort her. She’s ripe, Bro. Why didn’t you close the deal?”

“Shut up. Don’t talk about her like that. Did Dad send you?”

“As a matter of fact, he did. He said to tell you it was time to stop poutin’ and playing at being a man and get the blazes out of this town, now.”

Mutt stopped walking. He turned and regarded the animal.

“What do you know?”

“What do I know? Blazes, Mutt, you‘ve been wearing that skin too damn long! I don’t need to
know
anything. Any fool with good instincts and a decent set of senses can feel it coming. Like a rattler, shaking the air to tell you to back the hell off. Dad says it’s got to do with their God, the white men’s. That and something … something old, older than the shining people, older than Dad, which made even him tuck his tail.”

Mutt picked up his pace, heading across Main Street, toward the old stone well.

“Git,” he said. “I ain’t going nowhere. I’ve got friends in this town and I don’t intend to up and leave ’em.”

“Friends?” The coyote laughed. “I saw what you got here, Brother. This is epic! You’ve done gone and took a shine to her, just like a real, honest-to-goodness, stupid human being! Wait till Dad hears this one; he’ll bust a gut!”

“Git,” Mutt’s diminishing back said. “Last time I tell you nice.”

“Suit yourself, but Dad says this town, your friends, all of it, ain’t going to be here in a few days! Only safe place to be is in the desert with us, with him.”

The coyote laughed and loped down the side street, back toward the open desert.

“You see that, floating there? It is part of her ear, yes?” Auggie said to Clay Turlough. The two men were in Auggie’s storeroom examining Gerta’s condition in her tank.

“Earlobe,” Clay said. “I think.”

“Well, gosh-darn-it-all, Clayton,” Auggie sputtered, “it is supposed to be on her ear, yes! Not floating at the top of the tank, like a dead goldfish.”

They were cleaning her tank. Auggie had been concerned about how quickly the chemicals were becoming discolored this time and how many small pieces of Gerta’s flesh were falling off. Clay, who had devised the method of resurrecting Gerta in the first place, would come by whenever Auggie had a problem or concern about the arrangement, as they discreetly called it.

“It may be time to increase the vivazine content in the solution,” the taxidermist muttered as he oiled the gears at the base of Gerta’s home. “The decay process is trying to reassert itself. I’m sure I can fight it back, Auggie, don’t worry. I’ll take care of her.”

“Thank you, Clayton. You are a good friend. I am sorry I snapped at you.”

“Did you?” Clay grinned and pushed one of his few remaining greasy forelocks out of his eyes. “I ain’t that good at telling sometimes what people say and do, Auggie, you know that.” He picked up the jeweler’s loupe and the special screwdrivers he had devised and began to adjust the timing springs on the motors and that sent current to Gerta’s brain.

“I like things you can figure out, that make sense. Things that always perform the same way.”

“Well, thank you.”

The bell on the store’s door jingled. Both men jumped. Clay placed an oily cloth over the tank and Auggie stepped out through the curtain to greet his customer.

It was Gillian Proctor.

“Augustus, are you all right? You look flushed!”

“
Nein, nein,
I am well, Gillian. How are you today?”

“I didn’t sleep too well with all the stomping and shouting last night,” she said, resting her basket on the counter. “The deputy, that Jim boy, some of the other men were back and forth all night. You heard what happened?”

“
Ja,
Arthur Stapleton was killed. That is horrible that such things happen in such a peaceful town. Horrible.”

“Augustus,” the widow said, “I was hoping that I could ask a big favor of you.”

Auggie frowned and crossed his arms.

Gillian smiled and continued. “The church assembly asked me to help out with the food and the refreshments for the big church social on Saturday night and I … Well, I kind of volunteered you to help me.”

“Gillian!”

“Please,” she said, taking his forearm. “It will only be for a while and when was the last time you went to a social event, Auggie?”

The shopkeeper stammered. He liked the feel of her hands on his arm, the playful argument. It all felt good. It wasn’t like they were courting; it was helping out the Protestant assembly and they were good customers to him. He sighed and made a big deal of it to her. Her dark eyes were shining and her cheeks were pink.

“Please?”

“Very well,” he said.

Gillian hugged him and kissed him on the cheek.

“Oh thank you, Auggie. I’ll come by tomorrow and we can plan the refreshments. And don’t think you are going to get out of giving me at least one dance Saturday night!”

In the storeroom Clay listened to them laugh and chat casually. He slipped off the jeweler’s loupe and carefully turned one of the small cogs twice. Gerta’s eyes snapped open. They were beautiful. Just as beautiful as they had been when he had first met her all those years ago. And though he loved Auggie, and was his best and dearest friend, it was nothing compared to the fire that burned in his cold heart for Gerta.

When Auggie had been ready to let her slip into the blackness, due to his own despair, it had been Clay who had sworn to defy the gods themselves to save her, to bring her back. For love. The only love he had ever known.

“Don’t worry,” he whispered to Gerta’s unseeing eyes. “I’ll take care of you.”

He pressed his lips to the cold glass of the tank and dreamed of the lips on the other side.

The Seven of Pentacles

“Poison,” Dr. Tumblety said, his florid face jutting across the table. “I’d stake my letters upon it. Stapleton was done in by some insidious yellow toxin from the inscrutable Orient.”

“The Chinamen poisoned him?” Highfather said.

“Scoff if you care to, Jonathan,” Tumblety said, his dark eyes blazing. “But I am a man of science and I have made an intensive study of the inferior breeds. I assure you that the substance I uncovered in that man’s blood is obviously the residue of their damn lotus plants. I mean what else could it be? It’s classic Chinese subterfuge, you see. Obviously Stapleton came upon some nefarious plan of that old coolie who runs Johnny Town—Wang, isn’t it? He was poisoned by those yellow bastards and left in that alleyway like trash.”

Harry Pratt gave Highfather a sideways look across his desk. The sheriff and doctor were here in the mayor’s office this morning so they could both learn of the findings of Tumblety’s examination of Arthur Stapleton’s body. So far the doctor had been long on wind and short on hard facts.

“Doc, you’re sure opium poisoning was the cause of his death?” Highfather said. “’Cause we had those two Chinamen that died a year back from that; you remember, Harry, it was right before that trouble with that giant bat thing swooping in and carrying people off?”

“How could I forget that? We lost the best barber this town ever had.”

“But this doesn’t seem the same. Stapleton’s teeth, his complexion, they all seemed different—they’d been injecting the stuff, but I sure didn’t find needle marks on Stapleton’s arms.”

“That is of course because the site of injection was at the base of his neck, Jonathan,” Tumblety said. “It was beneath his collar and very fine, even for a hypodermic, almost like an insect sting.”

“Obviously, he didn’t do that to himself,” Pratt offered. “Could he have been injected at the Celestial Palace, overdosed and then dropped in the alley?”

“Doubt it,” Highfather said. “Huang is too clever for any of that. He only allows pipes since those two fellas died and there is no way he’d leave a dead, overdosed white businessman a few doors down from his place of business.”

“I think you give old Mr. Charley far too much credit, Jonathan,” Tumblety said. “The yellow mind is often difficult to understand for the uneducated, but I assure you, they do not value human life as we do. I’m surprised they didn’t dispose of the deceased in a stew pot, to be honest with you.”

“You, ah … You don’t care much for the Chinese, Doctor?” Pratt said.

Tumblety gestured dismissively with one hand while he nonchalantly picked his nose with the other.

“The little yellow devils can all take a slow boat back to Hell for all I care. As a man of medicine, I am simply concerned with the non-hygienic nature of them, you see. Their communities are like rat nests. Cannibalism and all manner of unnatural rites are carried on behind closed doors. They are a public health concern.”

“Look, Doc,” Highfather said with a sigh. “I got no love in my heart for Ch’eng Huang or his hatchet boys , but there are a lot of decent folk in Johnny Town, just trying to make their way in the—”

“Yes, yes, yes, Jonathan. Spare me your progressive claptrap. The scientific facts are clear. The white man is obviously superior to the other mongrel races—physically, mentally and morally!”

“I think my deputy and a few other folks in this town might dispute your opinion there, Doc.”

“It’s been proven by all the sciences, m’boy—biology, alienism, phrenology. One must simply face facts.”

“This is all very enlightening,” Pratt said, rubbing the bridge of his nose, “but getting back to one of our town’s most prominent businessmen being murdered, are you sure this was opium poisoning, Dr. Tumblety?”

“Well, what else could it be?”

“Were you able to positively identify this … substance as opium?”

“No,” Tumblety said, slouching back in his chair. “It eludes chemical description in both the few experiments I could do upon it and in my texts. Since mine are the only medical books in this hamlet, I had to use my extensive training plus my own powerful gift of deduction to reach my finding.”

“And the fact you aren’t too fond of Chinamen has nothing to do with all this,” Harry added. “Right?”

Tumblety grew purple almost immediately. He rose from his chair, fists clenched.

“By my oath, sir, I am outraged you would dare impugn my honor and my word as a physician!”

Highfather stood and placed his hands on the smaller man’s shoulders.

“Easy now, Doc, easy.”

Tumblety shook himself loose. His whole body vibrated with rage. He jabbed a dirty finger at the mayor.

“I stand by my assessment, Mr. Mayor. Mark my words, those celestial devils are up to skullduggery! Weak-hearted fools like you will wish you had heeded me when your throats are slit by those devils in the night!”

He pulled a folded sheet of parchment from his jacket and slammed it down on Harry’s desk.

“An accounting of my time and a receipt for recompense, sir. Good day to you!”

He pushed past Highfather and slammed the door on his way out.

“Well, he certainly gets huffed in a hurry,” Harry said, examining the doctor’s bill. “He overcharges too. I’m surprised he’s never had anything pop, as red as he gets.”

“He’s a mite ornery, I’d allow,” Highfather said. “But he’s also the closest thing we got to a doctor in these here parts. Even if he is as crazy as a rattlesnake in the sun.”

“Whatever happened with that giant bat-thing, Jon?”

There was a knock at the door. Harry’s secretary, Martha Poole, a tall, slender woman with a stern face and steel-gray hair worn up in a tight, no-nonsense chignon, poked her head inside

“Mr. Mayor, Mr. Deerfield and Mr. Moore are here to see you.”

“Thank you, please send them in.”

They both looked the way Mutt had described them, Highfather thought. Oscar Deerfield was tall and redheaded, with buck teeth. Highfather put him at around twenty-five years old, give or take a year. Jacob Moore was older, about thirty or so. He was squat, dark and fat. His hair ran in black curls around his face.

“Thank you, gentlemen, for coming,” Harry said, meeting them at the door and glad-handing them.

“Your Injun deputy didn’t make it out to sound like we had much choice in the matter,” Deerfield said.

Harry chuckled. “Yes, well, he’s very enthusiastic about his job. This is Jon Highfather, our local sheriff.”

Highfather shook their hands. The two men looked rumpled, dusty and tired. They groaned as they slid into the seats Pratt offered them.

“I understand you gentlemen knew Arthur Stapleton,” Highfather began.

“What is this?” Moore said. “Are we being considered as suspects in whatever went on last night?”

“How do you know about that?” Harry asked.

“This is a small town, Mr. Pratt,” Deerfield said. “You can’t walk from the coach station to the mayor’s office without someone blurting out the news. We know Arthur was killed last night. We heard that it was coolies that did him in.”

“We’re looking into that,” Highfather said. “We’re looking into every possibility right now, including the possibility of a business scam that went wrong.”