Skin Medicine (13 page)

Freeman turned to him. “You know who that is, Cabe?”

“
Sir Tom Ian, I’m thinking.”

“
Then you’re thinking is right,” Freeman said. “That gruffy-looking saddletramp with him is Virgil Clay. He’s a maniac.”

Cabe had heard of him, too.

He was no Sir Tom, but what he lacked in skill and professionalism, he more than made up for in pure rage. He was a blooded killer and not exactly picky about whether he gave it to you in the belly or the back.

Sir Tom raised his shot of rye, nodded to Cabe and Freeman. “To your health, gentlemen.”

They reciprocated.

Clay swallowed down two shots of whiskey in rapid succession, burped, and wiped his mouth. That mean stray-cat look in his eyes, he sauntered over, a Navy .36 in a cross-draw scabbard at his left hip. He spat tobacco juice about an inch from the tip of Cabe’s boot.

“
What’s all this talk about whores I’m hearing?” he said. His words were slightly slurred, but sharp as tacks.

Before Cabe could open his mouth, Freeman said, “Name’s Freeman, from Texas. My friend here is Tyler Cabe out of Arkansas. He’s a bounty hunter. He’s hunting the Sin City Strangler.”

Brown juice ran down Clay’s chin. “What the fuck is a Sin City Stranger?”

“
Strangler,”
Cabe corrected him, wondering maybe if that was such a good idea.

“
I know what I said. Don’t you think I know what I said?”

Freeman stepped in-between them. “The Sin City Strangler is the fellow who’s been murdering those prostitutes, carving ‘em up.”
Clay nodded. “I heard about that.” He laughed. “Fucking whores anyhow…who gives a fuck?”

Freeman grinned at that. A compatriot. “Well, Mr. Cabe is inclined to disagree with you. Thinks this fellow out to be run to ground, strung up.”

Clay pushed past Freeman now. “That so? Well, Mr. Fucking-Bounty-Hunter-From-Arkansas…what if I was that fellow? What you gonna do about it? Take me in? You’d die trying. Maybe I like carving me whores and you ain’t got nothing to say about it. Maybe I wish you’d try.”

Cabe made a show of looking him up and down. “Son,” he said. “I shit bigger than you.”

“
Never did see a man so anxious to die,” Clay told him.

Freeman said, “Our Mr. Cabe…he don’t back down from no one.”

Cabe just leaned there against the bar. He could hear all the men in the bar shouting and arguing and telling off-color stories and wild tales—it was a steady, monotonous hum in his ears. A constant like the stink in his nose. But all that faded into the background and he saw only Virgil Clay looking for a fight and Henry Freeman egging it on. Because that’s what it was really about here. Freeman didn’t like him much, didn’t like how he dressed or talked or that he called him “Texas” even when he was told not to…so, he was going to make trouble for him.

That’s the sort of bastard he was.

Clay’s eyes were like ball bearings. They did not blink, they did not emote…they glared. “Oh, you don’t fucking back down from no one, eh? Is that the fact of the matter, you goddamn motherfucking shit-worthless scab? Is that the truth?”

Cabe stood up now. “Yeah, you heard right, you fucking moron. Wipe the drool off your lips and clean the dogshit out of your ears.”

Clay was breathing real hard. “You got some kind of sand, Cabe. I’ll give you that.” He nodded, seemed to relax…but not much. Intimidation wasn’t working on this Arkansas boy and reputation didn’t seem to count for a squirt of pig shit. This was indeed a quandary. Question was…how to work Cabe into a situation where Clay himself was sure to be victorious? Because, truth be told, most of his victims had been killed with the odds very much on Clay’s side. A shot in the back. A bullet from a hidden location. Pistols pulled and fired before his adversary had a chance to even think of such a thing.

Surprise was always Clay’s element. He liked it that way. An even fight like this…man to man…he didn’t care for it so much. Time to try a little verbal humiliation.

“
What happened to yer face, boy?” he said. “Supposed to ride that horse, not get drug behind it on yer nose.”

There were a few laughs over that.

Cabe smiled. “It was your mama…she done scratched me up while I was putting the meat to her.”

Clay looked like hot iron had been shoved up his ass. He came forward, stopped, turned around, danced a crazy little jig. Sir Tom smiled at him and more than one man stepped away from the bar.

Clay looked Cabe up and down, licked his lips, knew there was a fight brewing here, but couldn’t make up his mind how to start it. How to start it and be sure he’d win it, that was. His hand drifted towards his gun.

“
You pull down on me,” Cabe told him, “and they’ll be burying your ass come morning. Think about it, peckerwood.”

“
Oh, I done thought about it, shithole,” Clay said, bits of foamy spit collected up in the corners of his lips like a mad dog. “Done thought about it and decided I’m gonna have to kill your ass dead.” He stood there, ready to pull iron, knowing there was no other way to save his reputation. He didn’t kill this sonofabitch, every wanna-be in the Territory would ride his ass hard on a daily basis. “Slap leather, Cabe. I’m ready anytime you are.”

Cabe chuckled. “C’mon, now. What your
really
saying is could I kindly turn my back so you can drill me from behind like you did all those others. Ain’t that so? Well, Clay, I’m afraid I can’t oblige.”

It was all driving Clay nuts. He was shaking and trembling and sputtering. “Maybe you don’t know who the fuck I am. Maybe that’s it, Cabe. Maybe I’ll give you one chance to get down on your knees and beg for fucking life. And if you don’t…boy, time I’m done with you, you’ll be sucking my willy and calling me daddy.”

“
Won’t happen, Clay. Just won’t happen. I don’t back down from no man what squats to piss…”

That sort of insult couldn’t go unanswered and Cabe knew it. Something in him was telling him he was falling into his old habits here, getting into drunken fights. Was telling him that this was probably a big mistake, but—what with the whiskey filling his veins—he didn’t honestly give a shit.

Clay stood there, visibly shaking.

Somebody told them to take it outside.

Miners and drifters fell out of the way.

Freeman looked smug; Sir Tom grinned.

Cabe felt a tenseness at his groin, felt his guts tighten into coils tight as bedsprings. He was tight and hard and ready to pounce.

Clay said, “Ah, fuck you…” He turned away, made it maybe two, three feet, then came around fast and lethal, the Navy .36 filling his hand. He got off a shot as Cabe brought out his Starr double-action .44 in a smooth, practiced motion. The round just missed Cabe, ripping into the bar. Cabe threw himself to the side as Clay fired again and, falling to the floor, he got off a single shot. The bullet punched a hole in Clay’s chest, deflected off a rib, and bounced through his torso, macerating organ and tissue before erupting from a hole just beneath his left armpit.

Clay made a weird gagging/wheezing sound and hit the floor, vomiting out a tangle of blood. He shuddered and went still. The blood that bubbled from his mouth was very dark.

“
Dead,” someone said. “That sonofabitch is dead.”

Hands pulled Cabe to his feet and he shook them off, surprised as he always was at moments like this that he had survived yet again. Some were patting him on the back and saying what a crack shot he was and what a set of balls to get into it with someone like Virgil Clay. Others were calling him a killer and still others were saying something about Clay’s father, how he was the real nasty one.

Cabe found he could barely stand. It always got like that. Going into a fight he was all balls and hot blood, coming out of it…just shaky and disoriented. Felt like his legs had no bones, were packed with wet straw.

Sir Tom nudged Clay’s body with the tip of his boot. His right thumb hooked into his gunbelt, just above the .44 Bisley hanging there.

Cabe was thinking,
Oh, boy, here it comes…me and Sir Tom…I hope they bury me under a nice tree so I get some shade…

Sir Tom just smiled. His face was pleasant and easy. “That’s one fine piece of shooting, Mr. Cabe. My hat’s off to you.”

Crazy thing was, he seemed to mean it. Like maybe Clay had been no friend, but just some stray dog that had been following him around and sometimes dogs get run down by horses. Life goes on.

Cabe was going to say something, but then Henry Wilcox—Dirker’s massive deputy sheriff—was plowing his way through, men falling out of his way like cut trees.

Everyone seemed to be talking at once and Wilcox listened, understanding perfectly that Virgil Clay wasn’t nothing but trash and that this was bound to happen. He told Cabe as much, told him it would go down as self-defense…but, there was such a thing as due process. And until a coroner’s inquest, he’d have to be held.

“
So, give me your gun,” he said, “and we’ll take a walk.”

Cabe took a step backwards…but knew he really had no choice. So, sighing, handed his weapon to Wilcox. “I want that back,” he said. “I carried it since the war, had it converted to cartridge at no little expense—”

“
You’ll get it back,” Wilcox promised him. “Let’s go.”

“
To the jail?”

Wilcox nodded.

As he led him away, Cabe said, “Tell me one thing…does Dirker still have that whip?”

14

So, two cells down from Orville DuChien, Cabe was deposited like so much refuse. He was given an army blanket, a piss pot, a jug of water, and told not to dirty the straw if he could help it. He said he’d do his best.

Wilcox told him he was honestly sorry about having to lock him up, but the sheriff had set down specific rules concerning such things. A man was gunned down or knifed, his assailant had to be locked up until the facts were sorted out. No exceptions.

So Cabe was a prisoner.

He was not truly angry about it, knew and knew damn well it was his own fault, dancing with that inbred shithound Clay…least he was the one locked-up and not toes-up in the mortuary. That was something. His cell was big enough for a cot and a little slip of floor upon which to pace. To either side were the bars separating his from the other holding cells. He tried pacing for a bit, but his head was pounding from the cheap whiskey and excitement. He sat down then, massaging his temples.

He remembered then the farm back in Yell County, up in the foothills of the Ouachitas. It wasn’t much of a place—just a plot of land with some hogs and chicken, corn and barley. Cabe’s old man rented it from some rich bastard name of Connelly from Little Rock who owned just about everything and everyone in the county. It was but one miserable step up from being a sharecropper. Connelly’s monthly rent was so high, that even when things went good—which was seldom—the elder Cabe barely had enough to feed his family.

Tyler lost two sisters to a diphtheria outbreak. His old man had a fatal heart attack in the fields one afternoon. And his mother had a stroke and died while Tyler was off fighting the War Between the States. The land and Connelly’s greed had wiped out his kin. The Yankees had burned and looted Connelly into the poorhouse during the war. And that was the only time Tyler Cabe ever cheered for the North.

But thinking of the farm…he could see his old man sitting on a willow stump one morning, dirty and sweaty and beaten from trying to wring a living from the thin soil. “Tyler,” he said. “Yer my only boy. Ye ain’t the smartest I’ve ever done seen, but damn if ye ain’t the most determined. I figure ye’ll do okay. At least, I shore hope so. But whatever ye do…don’t ever let another man own ye…”

And Tyler Cabe never had and never would.

He figured if he had nothing else, he always had his self-respect.

Wilcox let him keep his Bull Durham, papers, and matches, so he rolled himself a cigarette and felt sorry for himself.

Damn, he thought, old Crazy Jack was going to love this one.

Locked-up, eh, Cabe? Killed a man, did you? Still the same hotheaded old Southern boy you was back when, ain’t you? Figured it would come to this, boy. You ain’t got the brains God gave a piss-drunk rooster.

Damn.

Water was dripping down on him, just a few droplets, but he figured he’d be soaked by morning. Soaked and freezing and didn’t he just have that coming?

“
Cot’s not bolted down,” a voice from the next cell said. “Slide it over to the other wall or your blanket’ll be frozen stiff come morning.”

Cabe struck another match, held it up to the bars off to his left. He saw an old Indian sitting cross-legged on his own cot. He was dressed in a blanket coat and campaign hat, his hair long and steel-gray. His eyes were black dots set in a worn face with more wrinkles in it than an unmade bed.

“
Just a suggestion,” the Indian said. “I’m good with suggestions, but not much with following them.”

Cabe smiled despite the pounding in his head. “Name’s Tyler Cabe…you?”

In the gray darkness, Cabe saw that the old man just stared dead forward like he was seeing something no one else could. “You want my injun name or my white name?”