The Six-Gun Tarot (35 page)

“Elder,” Harry said, “the sheriff and I have been formulating a plan.…”

Harry explained in detail what he and Jon Highfather had been about for the last day or so and what was needed of the elders and the congregation.

The table murmured its agreement. Bevalier frowned but nodded, in tacit agreement.

“Very good, Harry,” Slaughter said. “We’ll do it.”

Slaughter rose and placed his hand on Harry’s shoulder.

“I also give you command, Harold Pratt, son of Josiah Pratt, to gird yourself to battle this evil that would devour our loved ones, our home and our world. Wrap yourself in the garment of the temple, so that it may protect you from evil, and take up the legendary Sword of Laban, that you might strike down the enemies of righteousness and good. I commission you, with all the authority and power granted to me by the church, as a defender of the faith—One Mighty and Strong.”

Bevalier grimaced, and shook his head in obvious disgust.

“Let’s go,” Slaughter said, bidding the other to rise. “We’ve got a lot to do and not much time. We’ll meet again tomorrow afternoon. May our endeavors be blessed, thus speaks the Lord.”

“Antrim, I’m no … defender of the faith,” Harry whispered as the others shuffled out of the room. “Bevalier is right about me. I am—”

“Harry,” the old priest interrupted, “I know. I know you’ve had a wild life and I know you and your father, and you and the church, have butted heads many times. But Harry, we’re a young faith, and we have so many people who fear us and hate us. You could have gone off any time you wanted, before or after Josiah passed, but you didn’t. You care about people, Harry. You struggle to do the right things, even when you could take the easier path. And right now, that is the kind of person who this town, and this congregation, needs on their side in a fight.”

“So I need you to leave,” he said to Ringo, “before tomorrow night. Go to Frisco. I’ll meet you there as soon as I can.”

“We’ve been through this before, Harry. I’m not going without you.”

“I don’t want to see you die, or worse.”

“Neither do I, but I ain’t leaving you.”

“Why?” Pratt said. “You’re a survivor, Jim; you’ve been one your whole life. Run. Get the hell away from here, before it’s too late. I would, if I could—you know that.”

Ringo turned and stared at the ceiling. Dawn was filling the edges of the room with gray light. They could see each other now. “There’s surviving and there’s living, Harry. I’ve done plenty of surviving before I met you. Now I don’t want to do either without you.”

Pratt pulled him closer, falling into his eyes.

“’Sides,” Ringo continued, “this is my home too. Closest damn thing I’ve ever had to one, anyway, and I intend to fight for it.”

“I don’t have long,” Harry whispered. “I’ve got to prepare: I have to find Holly and save her. I have to go soon.”

“Then let’s not waste the time we got left, okay?” Ringo said. “I love you.”

“Yeah,” Harry said, amazed at the words. “I love you too.”

The Hierophant

The banging on the door began just after sundown. Maude Stapleton, her hidden derringer at the ready, moved down the hall and reached for the door’s iron bolt.

The pounding paused, then began again, louder.

“Who’s there?” Maude asked through the door.

“It’s me: Mutt!” the muffled voice called.

Maude snapped the bolt back and turned the door key; the light of the living room spilled out onto the porch. The deputy stood there, looking tired and dusty from the trail.

“Hello,” she said. “You look bushed. Please come in.”

He started to, and then paused. “Maybe it’s best if I stay out here,” he said. “I don’t want to … make you uncomfortable.”

She smiled. He noticed she looked weary too. She was dressed for the day still, in black, except she had freed her long brown hair. It was falling down her shoulders.

“What?” she said, with a half smile.

“Nothin’. You just look … real pretty is all. Beautiful.”

He shook the thoughts out of his head as best he could with her standing there looking the way she did and smelling so good. “You and Constance, you have to get on out of town, now—tonight, if you can.”

“What? No, I’ll do no such thing. What’s going on, Mutt?”

“Look, I just got back a few hours ago and things might be getting real bad, real soon,” he said. “Please just do this, for your daughter, for me.”

Maude sighed. “Mutt, I know that something strange is going on in town—you’d have to be a fool to not notice that if you lived here for more than a few months. But I have friends here, roots. Constance does too, and I don’t have anywhere else to go. I’m too old to try starting over again. Besides, I have a husband that still needs to be laid to rest. Thank you for your concern, but Golgotha is my home, and I’m staying, come what may.”

He shook his head. “You’re a damn stubborn woman. Why you still up? I was worried I’d be waking you and Constance.”

“Constance went to the church social with some of her friends. I didn’t want her to be cooped up in here with me any longer. She really wanted to go. There’s a boy there she fancies. I’m waiting up for her. She was getting walked home by her friends and this boy.”

Maude saw the frown settle on Mutt’s face.

“I’ll go fetch her,” she said. “Presently.”

“I’ll go,” he said. “Stay put and I’ll get her home safe.”

“No,” she said. “She’s my responsibility, not yours. You have a town to protect, and from the look on your face you have a long night ahead of you.”

Maude turned and grabbed her coat from the peg next to the door. Mutt opened his mouth to protest and then thought better of it. He looked out into the darkness and down Rose Hill toward the lights of the town. There was a cluster of lights and a bonfire about where Dale McKinnon’s homestead was—the site of most of the dos like tonight’s social. Swarms of tiny lights clustered together against the dark.

“Why, in tarnation, with all that’s been going on around here lately, didn’t they just cancel the damn social?” Mutt said, shaking his head.

Maude closed the door behind her, but did not lock it. She left the lantern inside burning as well. “Because people need to be people,” she said. “They need to remember that all the sadness, hard work, loss and suffering are only part of what life is about. Especially in a town like this. I’m glad the mayor decided to not cancel it.”

Mutt snorted. “Harry decided.… Well, that explains everything then.”

Maude walked down the stairs. Mutt followed. His horse, a beautiful paint dappled in dark colors, stood patiently at the hitching post. Mutt took the reins as Maude began to walk down the path toward town. He and his horse walked beside her.

“Let me give you a ride down there,” he said, offering his hand.

“Will you get going?” she said. “I have walked this path a thousand times and I am perfectly safe. Go be a hero. Go save the town!”

“Here, take this.” He drew his pistol and handed it to her, butt first. “It’ll work a damn sight better than a kind word.”

When he looked up, he was staring into the short, ugly snout of a small derringer. Maude’s gun was inches from his face.

“No thank you,” she said. With a flick the gun vanished from her hand, like magic. He thought it slid up her sleeve, but he wouldn’t put hard money on it. “I’ll manage.”

“Yeah,” Mutt said, “I’d hazard a guess you will.”

She looked at his offered gun, frowning. “Guns are like men—only useful for a little while. They can go off at a moment’s notice when you don’t want them to and they make a lot of foolish noise doing it. They tend to fail on you when you need them most. I do not rely on them,” she said.

Mutt’s face split into a wide grin. He laughed.

“But you, Deputy, you I think I will trust.”

“Thank you. I won’t disappoint.”

He holstered the revolver. “I’ll just hang on to her then. ’Spect I’ll need her here presently.”

“Why is it a ‘she’?” Maude asked. “The gun? All guns? Why a female?”

He grinned. “They always are; you know why.”

They stood silent in the darkness. The purple curtain, dusted with a million stars, silhouetted them. Finally he spoke. “I got to go. The sheriff and the posse will be getting ready to ride. Looks like you got finding Constance and getting home well enough in hand.”

“You knew what I was going to say, knew I wasn’t going to leave. Why did you come here, Mutt, really?”

He pushed his hat back on his head and rubbed his rough chin. “Everyone else I really care about in this town is riding out with me tonight. From what Jon is telling me, we might all die. I wanted to see you one more time. In the little time I’ve known you, you’ve treated me good, more like a man and less like an animal than most folk. That means a lot in my book, and it’s a pretty short book. Besides, I kinda like you, if you haven’t noticed.”

She laughed. It was a beautiful sound to his ears. “Those friends I was talking about here, Mutt, you’re one of them. You just assume I can handle this, take me at my word. That means a lot in the book I have too. Thank you.”

He climbed onto his horse. Maude released his arm. She only then realized she had been clutching it. She paused. “Be careful.”

“You git home quick with your girl, lock that door up tight and keep a fire going,” he said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Yes,” she said. “You will.”

The horse turned and he disappeared down the path toward the glow of the town. Maude took a sip of air, centered herself as best she could remember and disappeared into the darkness, following the same rutted path, but traveling it her own way.

Highfather tossed another rifle out of the cabinet to Dickey Welton, and followed it up with a box of shells. Then he handed Dickey a badge and a few loose cartridges.

“All right, you are hereby officially deputized; get on out front with the others.”

“What the blazes are these, Jon?”

“Silver bullets. I’ve only got a few, and I don’t know if they will work anyway, but just in case.”

Dickey had lived in Golgotha long enough to know better than to ask too many questions. He muscled his way past the crowd of men, and out of the office. Including the dozen already armed, deputized and getting their horses ready outside, Highfather had managed to draw on every able-bodied man in town he could trust and who hadn’t already disappeared. All told, the posse was twenty strong.

All day he had seen wagons of frightened folks riding out of Golgotha, taking their chances in the 40-Mile. Highfather’s best estimate was that of the over 600 inhabitants of the town, about 150 were missing and another 100 or so, many of them Mormon families, had up and left already. It was hard to figure, though, how many had skedaddled and how many had been lost like Holly and Earl.

The dawn had brought another mystery. The Paradise Falls was a shambles. Someone had wrecked it pretty damn good. There was broken furniture, overturned tables, smashed walls, blood and broken glass everywhere. The body of Malachi Bick’s son, Caleb, was in a bloody pulp on the floor of Bick’s demolished office. There was no sign of Bick, or the perpetrators of the destruction. Jon had ordered the place sealed until further investigation. Clay had boarded up the windows and doors for him.

Highfather wondered for the hundredth time today how much of all this misery in his town belonged to Malachi Bick’s scheming. If Highfather managed to live through the next few days and had the time, he intended to track Bick down and ask him to his face.

Jim slipped between the rumbling mass of the posse to make his way to Highfather.

“I can go fetch Promise and be ready to ride, lickety-split,” the boy said.

“Nope, I can’t spare you, Jim. I need you here, in town.”

“Oh, come on, Sheriff! Don’t treat me like some dumb short-britches! I can handle myself!”

“I know; that’s why I need you here.”

There was commotion near the door to the jail. Most of the men in the office moved aside for Mayor Harry Pratt. A few grumbled and rolled their eyes at Pratt’s finery. Harry didn’t seem to notice.

“What’s going on here? Rory Means said you found Holly. Is that true, Jon?”

Highfather hated lying. He wasn’t very good at it. But in his days as Golgotha’s sheriff he had learned that sometimes the truth could be too awful, too damaging and, to put it bluntly, too much a damn waste of time. The sheriff sighed and gave the mayor the same raggedy lie he had fed to his posse.

“Yes, Harry. We know where she is. A bunch of crazy Holy Rollers have her somewhere up on Argent. We’re going to go get her and I promise you I will do everything in my power to bring her back to you, safe and sound.”

Harry Pratt was an excellent liar. He had made a life out of lies. He knew an amateur when he saw one. Jon was just too damn earnest to be any kind of liar except bad. Harry decided to let it sit for now and suss out the truth himself.

“I’m going,” Pratt said. “Give me a gun.”

“Mr. Mayor, no. I’m in charge of who gets a gun and a star in this town and I need you here doing what you do best—keeping the townsfolk calm, making sure the church social goes off tonight without a hitch, being all slick and politician-like.”

Mutt was suddenly next to Pratt, up in his face, sneering with jagged yellow teeth.

“Jonathan’s trying to give you a man’s out here, Harry,” Mutt whispered in a voice only the mayor, the sheriff and Jim could hear. “You ain’t no damn good in a fight; you ain’t no damn good at anything ’cept being a snake. He’s givin’ you a chance to kiss ass and suck up. Take it.”

“When the hell did you get back?” Highfather asked the deputy.

“Just did,” Mutt said, still staring into Harry’s reddening face. “We need to talk, Jonathan. Real bad.”

Pratt’s color returned and his eyes became flints. Mutt had to hand it to the Fancy Dan, he recovered his cool quick. The words slipped out of the mayor’s mouth in as quiet a tone as Mutt’s incrimination had.

“What the hell would you know about worth, you half-breed piece of garbage? You’ve never had a wife. No one loves you. Your own damn people spit on you. What the hell good are you, exactly?”