Oh, dead and dead. Sure, for years now. Died in the war.
Orv clasped his head in his hands and tried to make his brain work, but it just didn’t want to and how was that for a bag of beans?
Listen.
Sure, Orv’s mind was clearing some now.
He could hear things up in the hills, bad things. Things riding horseback that looked like men maybe, but weren’t really men. Oh, it was bad, bad, bad. His people were from the Smokey Mountains in Tennessee. His mother’s kin were all conjure folk and they had the second sight and sometimes Orv did, too. Sometimes he’d see things in his head before they happened… only it didn’t do him much good because he always forgot by the time they came around. Mother’s people were like that. Grandpappy Jeremiah Hill was like that, too. Time them farmers from up in Hawkins County had cheated him out of his prize hogs, but did it legal-like so Jeremiah couldn’t do much about it but curse and dance a jig. Only, Jeremiah went into a black mood and hexed them boys and crows came in the dead of night and pecked their eyes out which wasn’t a bad thing really, because Jeremiah’s witching had shown ’em things they didn’t want to look on no more.
Orv went to the tiny barred window.
Damp wind blew in his face and it felt good and he looked up into the shadowy hills climbing above the town, knowing that was where the evil was, where the bad things roosted. He could see faces and forms in his mind, but they were indistinct and the voices were only a little clearer. And it all made something black and toxic twist in Orv’s belly because he could smell death, death circling the town. Just like he’d smelled it in Camp Douglas and heard it there at nights, picking through the piles of bones and rags and unburied corpses. Now death was here and his mind showed him that and he knew, as always, that death was always hungry and its belly always empty.
Knowing this, Orville DuChien slid down the wall like a teardrop and began to whimper, praying for dawn.
4
Tyler Cabe came into the St. James Hostelry out of the storm, rain dripping from the brim of his Stetson. He wiped the mud from his boots, crossed to the fire in the hearth and warmed himself. A slim woman in a blue denim bustle dress was polishing the banister with a rag.
“Good evening,” she said.
“Ma’am,” Cabe said. “I need me a room. Maybe for a week, maybe more. Possibly less.”
The woman walked over to the desk, opened the ledger. “I’m sure we can set you up, Mister—”
“Cabe. Tyler Cabe.”
He got a good look at her and saw she was quite pretty. Her hair was just this side of midnight, her cheekbones high, her eyes like melting chocolates. And her voice was nice, too. Velvety, sweet. It had a fine Southern twang to it… but one softened by an upper class upbringing. Cabe figured she was from a fine family.
“And your business?” she asked.
Cabe just looked at her. Most hotels and rooming houses did not ask such questions. But Whisper Lake was a wild town by all appearances, so you couldn’t blame the lady for being particular.
“I’m a bounty hunter, ma’am,” he said, neither proud nor ashamed. “I hunt down folks for a living. Sometimes animals. That bothers some people. Does it bother you, ma’am?”
“Not in the least.” She wrote these things in the ledger. “Just let’s understand ourselves right off, Mr. Cabe. What you do is your own business, just don’t drag it back here. This is a respectable place for respectable people. You want to drink, whore, and gamble, that’s your affair, but keep it out there. I won’t have it under my roof. Is that understood, Mister Cabe?”
He walked over from the fire, rubbing his hands together. “Yes, ma’am. It is. I’m not here to hell around, I’m here on business.”
“Very good. The rooms are five dollars a day. Breakfast is at eight and supper at five, promptly. Lunch is your own affair.”
“Five dollars… that’s pretty steep, ma’am.”
She nodded. “Yes, it is. But this is a mining town, Mr. Cabe. There are other hotels that charge fifty dollars a night. But if you prefer something more economical, there are many bunkhouses you can get a bed at. A straw-filled mattress for two bits a day, still warm from its previous occupant. But here, the rooms are clean. There are no bugs. And the food is good.”
Cabe paid her for two days. “Guess you talked me into it.”
Grabbing his bag, he followed her up the stairs. His room was small, but comfortable. Bed, bureau, wash basin, tiny closet. A window looked out over the rainy/snowy streets.
She lit an oil lamp with a stick match. “So you’re a bounty hunter. Hmm. Never met a bounty hunter before. You hunt down men and collect the bounties. How does that make you feel, Mr. Cabe? Does it make you feel important? Like a big man?”
“No, ma’am. More like a small man with a full belly.”
She smiled at that. “An impertinent answer to an impertinent question.”
Cabe sat on the bed. “I could use a bath, ma’am, if you could arrange it. By the way… I didn’t catch your name?”
“Oh… yes, how rude of me. Janice Dirker,” she said.
5
Well, this was really gonna be something, wasn’t it?
Cabe soaked in the hot water and thought about the war and Jackson Dirker-his wife and the hotel he owned. More he thought about it, more he started thinking how funny it all was. How everything comes back to a man sooner or later. His past was like some ghost he’d stuck away in a box, trying to forget about it, and now it had gotten loose, was coming right back at him.
And Dirker? Jackson Dirker?
How did he honestly feel about him? That was a good question. He did not like the man, not really… yet, he didn’t exactly hate him anymore. Time had dulled his anger. He felt neutral, if anything. It would have been much easier to hate him if Dirker was more offensive, was inclined to brag about what he’d done. But that’s not the sort of man he was. Sure, Dirker was still a dirty son of a whore, but he was hardly the demon that had plagued Cabe’s memories all these years.
And that only made things tougher.
Cabe thought: You ain’t here to address past wrongs. Keep that in mind. Giving Dirker trouble won’t fill your poke. You’re here to find that Strangler, to run that mad bastard to ground. That’s it. You start trying to crowd Dirker, there’s gonna be trouble. He’s the county sheriff. He could make life real unpleasant for you.
But… Sammy, Pete, Little Willy Gibson. What of them?
Gibson had died in the woods that day, Sammy at Camp Douglas. Pete had been exchanged with Cabe, mustered out to another unit. Was it justifiable to hate twenty years after the fact? The bible preached forgiveness, but Cabe had never been a real forgiving sort and wasn’t much on scripture. But on the other hand, he was not a hateful nor violent man, despite his occupation. Whenever possible he tried to get by on his wits, to outsmart his adversaries.
But Jackson Dirker… dammit, the man knew how to yank his chain. Cabe had gone into his office, planning on staying in control and that sonofabitch had worked him into a lather without never once raising his voice.
The South had lost the war. It was a fact. Like any good son of the Confederacy, that still hurt some, still burned in a secret place. But Cabe couldn’t sit around stewing that the Yankees had trampled the family holdings like others. His people were dirt poor sharecroppers from Yell County, Arkansas… they never had shit to begin with. If the Yankees had burned the farm, it would have been a distinct improvement.
So he couldn’t cling to that.
Sometimes, he wondered just what there was to cling to.
Running callused fingers over the scars threading his face, he decided to hell with Dirker. He’d sort that out later, if and when the time came. Now there was business and money to be made.