Cabe cleared his throat. “Your husband… he is a good man?”
“Yes, I think so,” Janice said. “He always tries his best, always tries to do right by people… sometimes he fails as we all do, but he never stops trying. In his job, well, let’s just say he is unappreciated when things go smoothly and vilified if they do not.”
Cabe listened and heard, but was not sure if any of it registered. His thought processes were garbled and he wasn’t sure what day it was. He kept seeing the hacked prostitute, Virgil Clay, the old Indian at the jail, Henry Freeman, Jackson Dirker… a parade of faces and incidents that flowed together and lost solidity.
Sipping his coffee, but not tasting it, he thought: Everyone but me seems to think Dirker is a good man… maybe I’m wrong and maybe they don’t know him and maybe he’s changed and I have, too.
“Do you know my husband?” Janice asked of him.
“The sheriff,” Cabe said, nodding. “I’ve met him.”
“Do you know him well?”
Cabe swallowed. “No, ma’am, I guess I don’t know him well at all.”
18
The next morning, Henry Wilcox released Charles Graybrow from his cell, told him to keep away from the booze and he’d keep out of trouble. Graybrow told him that he had a powerful taste for the whiteman’s devil-brew and that him keeping away from it was like a cloud trying to stay away from the sky.
Wilcox just shook his head. “On your way, Charlie.”
At the door, Graybrow stopped. “What did I do, anyway?”
Wilcox sighed. “You don’t remember? You honestly don’t remember? Or are you playing me again? No, I guess you don’t recall. Well, Charlie, you gotta take a shit, we’d appreciate it you don’t do it on someone’s porch. People are touchy about things like that.”
Graybrow scratched his head. “I’m just an ignorant savage, what do I know of your ways?”
“Oh, get the hell out of here.”
Although outwardly somber, inside Graybrow was grinning like a kid that had written dirty words on the blackboard. Maybe whites didn’t find him amusing, but he enjoyed himself immensely at their expense.
He stepped out and although the sun was shining and drying up the mud, there was a chill in the air.
Another deputy, Pete Slade, tied his horse to the hitch post and nodded to Graybrow. “She’s a cold one today, eh, Charlie?”
Graybrow shrugged. “I’m an injun… we don’t feel the cold.”
Slade just shook his head and went inside.
Graybrow pulled his blanket coat tighter to him, shivering. He was about to start down the street when another man came out behind him. He nearly stumbled off the plank sidewalk, then gathered himself. He was thin, lanky, face bruised-up, his dirty sheepskin jacket smelling like he’d just pulled it off the sheep itself. He scratched at his shaggy, knotted beard.
“They got m’gun in there,” he said, not seeming to address Graybrow, but someone standing behind him. “1851 Colt Navy. Big .44, that’s what. Killed them bluebelly sumbitches with it in the war, didn’t I? They got it, say I can’t have it back. Not until, until… what did they say? Y’all remember?”
Graybrow told him that he had forgotten.
He knew who the man was: Orville DuChien. Some mixed-up white-eye thought he was still in the war. He talked crazy and people crossed the street when they saw him coming. He was not only disturbed, but dangerous if pushed. A couple miners had decided to have fun once by knocking him around and DuChien had sliced them up pretty with a deer knife.
Like a rabid dog, it was wise to keep your distance from the man.
Graybrow had only seen DuChien from a distance, had never been this close to him before. And now that he was… he was struck by something. He could not put a name to it. Not the smell or the uneasiness he inspired, but something deeper, something peculiar.
Orv started to shake and his eyes seemed to lose focus. “Yessum, Daddy, I remember all about that, yessum. Grandpappy say I got to go down into the holler tonight, yessum tonight. Them roots and what… only show by moonlight, he say. Yes sir. I dig ’em and Grandpappy brew ’em up, make them warts just fade right away. Like that time… remember, daddy? Old Wiley, he had that tumor. Grandpappy… he calls them names from the hilltop, them ones Preacher Evrin say is bad, bad, bad, make the stars shake and the dead a-tremble in their graves. Them ones? Yessum. Then he… Grandpappy, yes sir… he say them words and push his hands into the innards of that slaughtered hog… lays ’em on Wiley’s tumor. That old tumor, Mister Tumor, he pack his bags and be gone. Yessum. Grandpappy say I got the gift, too… but daddy, I don’t like it. Scairt me bad…”
Graybrow knew and did not know. He stepped back from Orv, something in him finding revelation in that crazy, moonstruck hillbilly.
Orv said, “Yessum, ain’t nothin’ good gonna come of this here town. Not what with them… them other ones all touched by his hand.”
“Whose hand?”
That made Orv laugh. “The old hand… the old hand from the mountain…”
Graybrow told him to relax, that everything would be fine, fine, but he knew and knew damn well that whatever had Orville DuChien was not something that would ever let go. It was bone deep. It was special.
Orv broke into a coughing fit, then seemed to find himself. “I… I was talkin’ to that what ain’t there, weren’t I? I keep doin’ that, don’t I?” One filthy paw was clasped on Graybrow’s shoulder, squeezing, squeezing. “I talk to them no one else sees and hear them voices. They tell me… tell me what’s gonna happen and to who. Tell me things, secret things, about other folks. Things I shouldn’t know.”
“How long you had it?” Graybrow inquired.
“Always. Told Jesse and Roy they was gonna die, gonna die, gonna die! Didn’t believe me, but they died! Yankees killed ’em like I say! Hear? Like I say…”
Graybrow knew what it was. Sure, he was crazy. Crazy because of what was inside of him. Whites would have said he was just plain touched or maybe bewitched and they would be right on both counts… but there was more to it than that. Much more. For Orville DuChien had the talent, he was “sighted”. He had the gift. Just like that grandfather he spoke of. It ran in families sometimes. The tribal shaman had it… ability to see sprits and know what would happen before it did. Yes, this hillbilly was a prophet. Undirected, but a prophet no less.
Orv pointed at something, something Graybrow could not see, started jabbering, then shook his head. “You tell yer daddy, you tell him it ain’t right takin’ the strop to you. Weren’t yer fault that pony ran off… weren’t yer fault…”
Graybrow was shaking himself now. That pony. He remembered. He had forgotten, but now he remembered. The pony that ran off into the hills and how very angry his father was. The hillbilly had plucked it from his mind.
Orv walked out into the street, stopped, nearly got run down by a lumber wagon. He stumbled back, fell against the hitching post. “Injun… you hear me… you… you tell him the bad man, the bad man is real close… the bad man will kill a fine lady what ain’t no whore!”
“Yes, I’ll tell him, I—”
But Orv was already gone, running away down the street, clutching his head in both hands, as if trying not to hear something. And people fell out of his way like dominoes, because everyone in Whisper Lake knew Orville DuChien was just plain touched.
Everyone except an old Ute Indian.
19
And each in his or her own way, greeted the new day.
At the Union Hotel, Sir Tom Ian strapped on a customized leather cartridge belt and slid a British .44 Bisley pistol into the holster. As he did so, he thought of what he had witnessed at the Cider House Saloon the night before. He was impressed that Tyler Cabe, though well into his cups, had managed to survive an encounter with Virgil Clay. It was sheer luck that Clay had missed his target at such close range… but there was no luck involved with a man who could dive out of the way and shoot with such accuracy as he fell. Impressive. Sir Tom had no love for Virgil Clay. He had put up with the man following him around like a stray, amused by his lack of social graces. That he was dead now, meant little to Sir Tom. He had a job waiting for him down in Sedona, Arizona Territory… a wild town in need of a crack pistolman with a reputation. But he was in no hurry. And particularly now that Tyler Cabe would have to deal with the likes of Elijah Clay…