A Congregation of Jackals

THE UNINVITED GUEST

Godfrey scratched the coydog on the top of its head and it rolled out its long pink tongue. Lingham looked at his house, which was now more than fifty yards away, and reached into the back left pocket of his denims. He withdrew a folded note and handed it to Oswell.

The rancher unfolded the paper as he walked, read its contents, and handed it to Dicky. The New Yorker read the handwritten script.

I’m coming to your wedding. I will be settling accounts with you and those you rode with, and will take innocent lives if they are not present or if you cancel the ceremony. I will see you all in church on 12 August
.

Quinlan

S. Craig Zahler

A
C
ONGREGATION
OF
J
ACKALS

Dedicated to my pals:
Jeff Herriott, William M. Miller,
Fred Raskin, Julien Thuan,
& Graham Winick

DORCHESTER PUBLISHING

December 2010

Published by

Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
200 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10016

Copyright © 2010 by S. Craig Zahler

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

ISBN 13: 978-1-4285-1110-1
E-ISBN: 978-1-4285-0927-6

The “DP” logo is the property of Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

Printed in the United States of America.

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.

1888

Otis Boulder had what some people in the San Fortunado area referred to as a rumble gut, a stirring in the juices of his stomach that warned him of impending danger, akin to the nerves in the tip of a dog’s nose that warned it of bad weather. This was a helpful sense in the sprawling Southwest.

When the two swarthy, sun-bronzed strangers entered the largely empty saloon, Otis’s gastric fluids intimated with a low growl that he should leave. Without even finishing the watered-down drink for which he had been overcharged, the thirty-nine-year-old blacksmith stood, grabbed his hat and walked toward the exit. The final thought he had before he passed through the open door and entered the San Fortunado dusk outside was that these two fellows smelled not like men, but like vultures.

The denizens of the saloon glanced furtively at the sun-bronzed arrivals and then returned their gazes to the collections of diamonds and royal personages that they would only ever know in card games. The beeves had been ridden northeast that morning and for the next two months the saloon would be peopled by drunken tradesmen with little to do, and sour fellows too old to ride and too ornery to marry.

Amongst these disenfranchised locals sat an anomalous pair, a young handsome couple from Arizona, married not more than three weeks prior: Charles and Jessica Lowell. When the two sun-bronzed strangers entered the saloon, the newlyweds did not glance furtively as did the others—they openly looked. The couple from Arizona gazed upon the weathered arrivals, surveying the guns in their holsters, the spurs that were long and unnecessarily cruel, the yellow gloves that were stained brown with what might have been dried blood, the dark coats ragged with wear, the cracked faces submerged beneath prickly beards and the long black hair that twined and trailed from beneath their broad brown hats and dripped like candle wax in oily tangles about their shoulders. Their striking resemblance was beyond coincidence: they were identical twins.

Charles squeezed his wife’s hand and, a moment too late, whispered to her, “Do not stare.” The newlyweds had looked; the twins looked back. The one on the left pointed at the couple with his prickly chin and the other nodded while removing his hat. Their heavy boots elicited groans from the floorboards as they strode toward the Arizonians.

Charles felt his muscles tighten with apprehension; his wife sidled close for protection. The twins, limned by the dusty blue light of the gloaming, closed the distance between the door and the newlyweds. Charles was reminded of standing beside train tracks when a locomotive arrived, though he was not exactly sure why.

He said, “Might I offer you fine gentlemen a drink?”

The twins did not acknowledge the inquiry; they pulled weary wooden seats from the table, legs scraping
upon the planks of the saloon floor, and sat themselves. The smell of these men reminded Charles of butcher’s offal left a day too long in the bins.

The Arizonian inquired amenably, “Which particular drink is your preference?”

The twins looked at Charles and then over at Jessica. Their obsidian eyes coolly fixed upon the finely dressed blonde woman.

Charles cleared his throat and asked, “What would you gentlemen care to drink?”

“Ain’t gentlemen,” the one across from Charles said. The man pointed to his own dingy brown hat. “I still got it on. You want my hat off, you just try and take it off.”

“I am not overly concerned with hats,” Charles replied. Jessica giggled, perhaps too loudly because of her agitated state.

The talker, the one with the hat, looked at his brother and then back to Charles. “You havin’ fun at us?”

“I can assure you, Mister . . .” Charles waited for a name. Receiving none, he continued. “I can assure you, I am not having anything remotely resembling any form of fun at this present time.”

“You talk smart. That’s how you got her, I s’pose?” The talker looked over at Jessica, upon whom the eyes of the silent brother remained fixed like black moons too stubborn to rise or set.

“I was lucky.” Charles turned in his seat and faced the bartender, a nervous bald man of thirty who could pass for fifty, and said, “Three bourbons and a glass of wine.”

“Get us whiskey instead.”

Charles turned back to the bartender. “Make two of the bourbons glasses of whiskey.”

“We’ll take a bottle,” the talker amended. The bartender looked at Charles; the Arizonian nodded in assent; the rapidly aging drink slinger disappeared to fetch the liquids of his trade.

Charles, his fear allayed by being able to involve some of his considerable inheritance in his current predicament, leaned back comfortably in his chair and asked, “Where are you fellows from?”

“Ain’t none of your mind,” said the talker. He then looked over at Jessica. “She’s got good breeding. You can tell she ain’t done much in the way of work with those hands she got. And all that softness.”

The bartender appeared beside the table, set down a glass of wine, a glass of bourbon and a bottle of whiskey.

He reached for the two empty cups upon his tray, but the talker shooed him off and said, “You ain’t get-tin’ this bottle back.”

The swarthy man uncorked the whiskey, put the neck to his chapped lips, swallowed a cupful and handed the bottle to his sibling. The silent brother opened his mouth. His gums were wholly bereft of teeth and grossly swollen. At the sight, Charles’s stomach dropped and Jessica shuddered; the couple averted their eyes.

“Now that ain’t polite—lookin’ away from a man while drinkin’ with him.”

Charles and Jessica raised their gazes and watched the silent brother tip the bottle neck. The Arizonians ineffectually tried to hide their repulsion.

“Since you’re buyin’, I’ll tell you what happened to Arthur, why he can’t talk none.”

“I am sure it is a fascinating tale,” Charles said, disguising his sarcasm enough so that it went unnoticed.

“We was captured by some Indians. Don’t at all matter how it happened, but it did. And so there we was,
hidden in some cave in some gulch in Indian country, bound up, our backs tied to a damn boulder that weighed more than a fat elephant. Them savages left to go do some scalping or whatever they had a mind to do that day, but only they never did come back. And there we was, tied up expertlike, ’cause if there’s one thing those Indians know, it’s how to tie a knot that won’t never give. Dig up some thousand-year-old Comanche and I bet his moccasins is still tied smart.”

A third of the bottle already ingested, Arthur returned the vessel to his brother. The talker drank, smacked his mouth, exhaled gruffly, handed the bottle back to his brother and, properly lubricated, continued the tale.

“A day passed. And then another. And then a third and a fourth day. And there we was, in that cave, starvin’ to death ’cause those Indians left us. If it hadn’t of rained, we would’ve gone thirsty, but it did rain and some water dripped from the cave ceiling right there onto our heads and we drunk all of it that ran from our scalps down onto our faces, every little bit, even though it tasted like sweat and lichens. But we drank it all.

“And then the fifth day come and we’re both crazy with hunger, delirious, starving, only I’m a little better off than Arthur, ’cause the day we got took by the Indians I had a giant breakfast and dinner, but Arthur overslept and missed his breakfast and he missed his dinner too. So I’m a day behind him in starving to death, if you follow.”

“Indeed. Please continue.”

Arthur handed his brother the bottle. Again the talker drank, smacked his mouth and cleared his throat. Jessica, calmed by the warming influence of her wine, leaned on her husband’s shoulder. Charles looked around and did not think overly upon the fact that
most of the saloon denizens had vacated the establishment.

“So we get to arguing. ‘I ain’t gonna die,’ ‘It’s your fault,’ ‘Mom said you was gonna get me kilt,’ ‘It’s your fault Dad got kilt’—that sort of stuff that brothers argue ’bout. So Arthur says, ‘We was born at the same time and I ain’t gonna let you outlive me. I’m gonna last as long as you. Longer even!’ ” The talker looked over at Arthur. The silent man’s eyes were glazed in either recollection or inebriation, Charles could not decide which. “That was the last thing Arthur ever said.”