The Six-Gun Tarot (5 page)

Mutt reemerged from the darkness of the jail. He had a Winchester rifle in his hand. He looked at Jim and then crossed over to the public board. He ripped a wanted poster off the board, crumpled it into a wad and jammed it in his pocket.

“What the hell is that old thing still doing up there? Oh, him? He’s my sister’s boy: Jim. Jim, say hello to Harry Pratt. He thinks he’s a huckleberry above a persimmon.”

Pratt looked at Jim like he had the plague, then snapped his gaze back to Mutt. “I told Jon it was damn foolishness to put his faith in a drunken half-breed like you. You don’t have a sister; you don’t have anything, Mutt, including a job, once the town fathers hear how you’ve handled this situation.”

Mutt came off the porch toward Pratt. He cocked the Winchester’s lever and let it fall to his side. He seemed taller than the white man, even though he wasn’t. He stopped a few inches from Harry’s face.

“Let’s acknowledge the damn corn, Mr. Mayor,” Mutt growled. “I don’t work for you; I don’t work for the damn town fathers. I work for Jon and if you’ll excuse me I’ve got some work to do right now.”

He strode down the street in the direction Harry had appeared from.

Jim nodded to the red-faced mayor. “Uh, pleased to meet you, sir,” he stammered, and then sprinted off to catch up with the deputy. When he did, Mutt was turning the corner at Sprang’s Rooms for Rent, a rather questionable-looking boardinghouse, given the drunken and disheveled group of men gathered on its porch. Jim saw the crumbling stone well they had passed coming into town out past where the street ended. It seemed lonely, like a solitary, forgotten watchman welcoming newcomers to the town.

“What was that all about?” Jim asked when he finally caught his breath.

“That’s the mayor. Thinks his shi— Thinks he don’t make a mess when he goes to the outhouse. Just ’cause his family rolled out of the Forty-Mile twenty years ago and decided this was the Promised Land or some-such thinks he can do or say whatever he wants to whoever he wants. Pretty standard for white folk round these parts, really.”

“If you hate white people so much, why do you live with them?”

Mutt started to answer, then frowned.

“I may be killing a pretty decent fella in a few minutes, or getting a pretty decent fella killed. I don’t have time to babysit anymore. Get your ass back to the jail and wait for me, boy.”

“What if you get killed? And I ain’t no boy!” Jim said with heat blooming in his eyes.

Mutt grinned at the reaction. Mutt seemed to grin at most things that bothered other folk.

“Didn’t think about that. You better tag along. Can’t have you out on that porch like a stray. But I mean it, Jim; this ain’t no game. You hang back and keep quiet or I’ll do to you what I’d do to any other damn fool who was getting in my way—we square?”

Jim nodded. He fell into step beside the Indian. They slipped down an alleyway between the theatre and the general store.

“Who’d you kill in West Virginia that they want to string you up for?”

Jim stopped.

Mutt turned to the boy. “Your poster got here about three months before you did. Who did you kill?”

“A sonofabitch,” Jim said, walking again.

Mutt fell into step beside the boy. “Plenty of those still walking around,” the deputy said as they stepped out onto Main Street. A crowd was gathered in front of the general store. “Why’d you kill this particular one?’

“Got my reasons,” Jim said, happy to be on the other side of the sardonic grin for a change.

The Hanged Man

“All right, folks, everyone get back a ways!” Mutt shouted to the crowd. He gestured to a couple of the men who were in with the throng of onlookers. “Louis, Larry, you get these people back for me. Other side of the street, everybody!”

Jim moved behind the water trough and hitching post to the left of the general store. He watched as Mutt gestured to a woman and a girl in bonnets clutching heavy wicker baskets. Mutt knew Maude Stapleton, the bank president’s wife, and her thirteen-year-old daughter, Constance.

“You ladies were shopping in Auggie’s, right?”

The women obviously seemed uncomfortable in such close proximity to the half-breed. They nodded to the affirmative.

“Tell me what happened in there.”

Maude Stapleton cleared her throat and addressed him behind startling eyes of honeyed brown, almost gold. Mutt had never actually been this close to her before. Her hair was auburn, shot with hints of red-gold and silver, pulled from her face in a severe bun and held under her bonnet. Her skin was alabaster, like fancy china; her wrists and hands were pale too and fragile and perfect. Her features were strong; some men would have called her mannish in her demeanor. Those men would be fools, Mutt concluded. She was beautiful, strikingly beautiful, just not in the same old way. It took more than a lazy glance to see it in her. Her frame and figure were slight as well, but there was a wiry strength to her and she carried herself with a grace and an almost shrouded power that was very feminine to him right this moment. It was like standing next to a mountain lion pretending to be a desert hare. He shifted a little uncomfortably.

“Constance and I were just settling our account with Mr. Shultz when a ghastly spectacle of a man barged in.” She had a faint southern accent.

“Earl? Was it old Earl Gibson from up on Argent Ridge?” he asked.

“I have no idea who that is, Deputy, I’m sorry. He had a pistol in his hand and was shouting out absolute nonsense peppered with obscenity. He pointed the gun at us and I nearly fainted. He told us to get out and we did. He told poor Mr. Shultz to stay and to bring him … What was it he wanted, Constance?”

“Paraffin,” the girl said. She was her mother’s daughter, same eyes, wisps of lighter hair falling out of her bonnet. “Paraffin wax, all Mr. Shultz had. He said something about stopping something up.”

“It didn’t make much sense,” Mrs. Stapleton said. “The man was a mad as a hatter.”

“Could you tell if he had been drinking?” Mutt asked while he kept glancing at the store’s front door.

“Well, obviously he must have,” Mrs. Stapleton said. “How else would you explain such horrid behavior?”

“I mean, Mrs. Stapleton, did you smell it on him?”

She wrinkled up her face as if Mutt had just propositioned her daughter.

“I certainly would never approach a man like that and get close enough to actually smell—”

She was drowned out by the thunder of gunfire. Screams erupted from the crowd as onlookers scattered like roaches caught in a light. Mutt spun and shoved both women onto the ground, diving on top of them to cover them from the fire. Mrs. Stapleton’s bonnet was lost in the fall; her hair tumbled out everywhere in a tangled mess. She gasped when she realized she was only inches from Mutt’s face. Their eyes met and held. Her eyes reminded him of a deer for a second, moist, dark and wide; then something passed through her and suddenly he was looking into a mirror, at a hunter’s eyes, a predator’s eyes. It was his turn to suddenly draw breath. Her body shifted slightly beneath him, but their eyes remained locked. He raised himself up out of the muck and off Mrs. Stapleton. He crouched, covering them with the rifle.

“Thank you for your civic support, ladies,” Mutt said after a space of awkward seconds. “You just hurry on over to the over side of the street now, and I’ll go have a word with old Earl. Stay low. Oh, and Mrs. Stapleton…”

“Y-yes,” she said, turning her head back to look at the deputy as she was crawling away. The timid hare again, the banker’s wife.

“Sorry about the smell.”

The faintest ghost of a smile crossed her eyes. She took her daughter’s hand and they hurried out of harm’s way.

Mutt crouched as he moved out of the middle of the street and took up a position next to Jim’s water trough.

“That,” he said to the hiding boy, “was a shotgun. Auggie’s got one under the counter. I guess old Earl’s got it now. I hate shotguns.”

“What you planning to do?” Jim asked.

“Something stupid, I reckon.”

He wiped some of the street’s dirt off the Winchester, looked around to see if any townsfolk had moved up to help. They hadn’t. No one was going to stick their neck out for him.

“Let me help, Mutt,” Jim said.

The Indian smiled. Not funny, not cruel mixed with funny. Warm and full of surprise and appreciation. “What do you know about that?” the deputy muttered.

He passed Jim his pistol. The six-gun was heavy in the boy’s hand, but he’d handled the weight well enough before.

“Don’t move from this spot,” Mutt said. “Don’t shoot unless you got to. Earl’s a good man, just down on his luck. And for God’s sake, don’t shoot me. Ready?”

Jim nodded and steadied the gun on the post. Mutt cradled the rifle close to his chest and prepared to charge through the front door of the store.

It was silent all along Main Street. The thunder of the gun blasts had faded into the dry wind. The townsfolk watched mutely from the safety of cover, hidden behind rain barrels and wagons. Most expected the Indian to burst through the door and be knocked back out onto the street in a cloud of gun smoke and blood. Truth be told, so did Mutt. The town held its breath.

There was a sound, like a heartbeat, drumming fast and growing louder. It came from out past the edge of town, past the dry well, out by the cattle ranch. It echoed along the street, becoming more distinct as it rapidly grew closer and closer. Galloping, a horse’s hooves clattering in a wild, powerful run.

The horse appeared at the edge of Main Street in a cloud of desert dust. He was a bay stallion. The rider was crouched low, his gray, wide-brimmed Stetson held tight on his head by the stampede string under his chin. The rider’s face was half-covered by a tied kerchief to keep the dust and sand out of his nose and mouth. His gray barn coat fluttered like a moth’s wings as he spurred his mount on; faster, faster.

A shout went up from the crowd and then a cheer.

“It’s the sheriff! The sheriff is here!”

“About damn time,” Mutt said to Jim.

The rider reined his mount up beside the hitching post next to Jim and Mutt. Jim took the reins when they were tossed to him and looped them about the post. The rider climbed off the saddle with the smooth grace of someone who had lived most of his life on horseback. He pulled the bandana down around his neck and pushed the hat back off his forehead, shaking the trail dust off him as best he could.

He was a tall man, a good half foot taller than Mutt, and he had hair the color of desert sand. It was longish, slicked back from his face. He was handsome, in a simple kind of way—nothing fancy like the mayor. He had a week’s trail beard shadowing his jaw and it made him seem older than he really was. A gleaming silver star hung on the lapel of his dusty barn coat and a .44 was strapped to his right hip. He wiped his face with a gloved hand and looked around. Gray eyes flashed silver in the late morning sun.

“Jon,” Mutt said with a nod. “Nice entrance.”

“Thanks, Mutt. What is it this time? I heard the shots riding in.”

“Somebody’s in the general store, shooting off Auggie’s shotgun,” Mutt said. “Harry seems to think it’s Earl Gibson.”

“That don’t sound like Earl, even on a tear; that don’t sound like Earl at all.”

“I know. I was just about to go in there and have a discussion with him about that.”

“All by yourself?”

“Well, not too much help was forthcoming from our fellow citizens—”

“It’s a comfort to know some things never change. Who’s this?”

Jim turned to regard the sheriff. “I’m Jim. I’m a friend of Mutt’s.”

The sheriff frowned and turned to Mutt, who said nothing, only shrugged, then back to Jim. He pulled off a glove and extended a dirty, calloused hand to the boy.

“Jon Highfather. I’m sheriff in these parts. Not too many claim Mutt as a friend and he don’t cotton to most that do. So, it’s always nice to meet someone who makes the cut.”

Jim shook hands. Highfather looked at the pistol in Jim’s other hand, then to Mutt.

“He’s my deputy,” Mutt said. “I found him out in the desert.”

“Your what?” Highfather said.

“Well, I needed someone watching my back and I couldn’t wait around anymore for you to come riding in making fancy entrances.”

“Picking up strays again, Mutt?”

“Look who’s talking.”

Highfather untied the leather thong around his leg and then unbuckled his gun belt. He turned back to his horse and rummaged in his saddlebags. He took out a large metal key ring with dozens of keys. He selected one and offered it to Mutt, keeping his back to the store’s windows.

“This is the key to Auggie’s back door. I want you to wait until I get inside and then get back there and open it as quiet as you can. It sticks a bit.”

“Will do, boss. What if Earl is crazy as a jumping bean and just blasts you?”

Highfather stared at his deputy incredulously.

“Oh yeah, right. ‘Not your time.’ … I forgot.… Sorry.”

“Just give me a minute to get the medicine show rolling, okay? And you, Deputy Jim, I want you to stay right there and cover us, okay?”

Jim nodded, knelt and adjusted the gun against the post again. Highfather laid his gun belt over the hitching post and walked up onto the sidewalk. He rapped loudly on the store’s door.

“Earl? Earl, you in there? It’s Jon Highfather. I need to talk to you.”

“You go on now, Jon!” a shaky voice called out from inside. “You don’t know what they been pourin’ in my ears, down my throat, Jon! You ain’t seen—”

A disheveled old man with wild gray hair and whiskers, dressed in filthy clothes, appeared in the window. He was holding a squat sawed-off double-barreled scattergun to the chest of the portly walrus-looking man Jim had seen sweeping up when they had entered town. The old man’s eyes were glazed over with fear.

“Go on now, Jon! I don’t want to hurt anyone, but I got to plug up my ears, sew up my mouth. I can’t stand it anymore!”

“Now Earl, you know I can’t just walk away here. Why don’t you put the gun down?”

Auggie Shultz, the walrus shopkeeper, looked scared too, but was doing a good job of controlling it.