Blood of the Lamb

by Stephen Cote

  Part 3: High Noon

 

  Why did Genevieve leave? Cain awoke one morning to discover she no longer slept by his side. He had vague recollections of spending time with her in Liberty, and recalled they lived together for some months or years with a nearby tribe. Savannah Kline, and now Genevieve Rauessou, ceased to be a part of his life.

  Liberty. It had been a young mining town. From a distance, nary a soul stirred in town. As he led Mescaline along the main street, he heard whispers of prosperity and the bustle of growth echo from the past. Walking through the center of town, he wondered why he returned.

  Dry snow fell from scattered clouds, lending pristine countenance to the entire town and surrounding valley. The fleeting wisps textured blue sky, and sunlight rained pleasant warmth on his shorn head. Liberty itself was small, rebuilt within the last few years. The porch steps didn’t creak and Cain smelled fresh-cut lumber.

  Cain tethered Mescaline to a hitching post at the end of town, and walked along the porch of a familiar building. A specter of Genevieve waved to him from a picture window on the second floor. He strung together memories of intimate and clear-minded moments, of being in that room with her. A sound rose and the memories left his mind.

  A spinning spur wheel echoed. Cain turned and looked for the source. Across the street, a man stood holding a spur.

  Cain walked across the street. He tried to gauge intent and expected the worst.

  “Hell of a thing you did with those spurs,” the man said.

  Cain recalled no memory or dream involving spurs.

  “Half of a twenty-strong company clubbed before they even saw your face, thinking you were a ghost haunting their camp.” The man spun the spur and whistled. “You can pull your pistol if you think -”

  Cain’s torso palsied, his senses became acute and taut. He drew his pistol, cocked the hammer, and stopped with the trigger-halfway pulled. As John Bear described, like a wind forcing him to avert his gaze, so was it with his pistol hand. His finger, held at the apex of motion, yielded to an unseen wind. A spirit, as John Bear said, held his finger fast. The man dropped the spur.

  “Go ahead. Shoot.” He held out his arms, offering a larger target.

  Cain held his aim at the man’s torso, but found himself unable to continue. His finger curled around the trigger, frozen. After trying for some seconds to pull the trigger, he lowered the pistol.

  “Who are you?” Cain asked.

  The man walked closer and stopped when he was within an arm’s length. “The Marshall.”

  “Marshall of what?” Cain asked. “The town is deserted.”

  The man shook his head and offered a crooked smile, “Not of this or any town.” He looked around, playing coy his discovery of the missing residents. “Yes, I suppose that is one way to describe it.” Then he said, “Folks were a little edgy when they heard a murderous devil rode their way.”

  “I ‘spect you’re Colonel Wright? Come to clear out the town ahead of me? I’m here to make due for what you did to those natives.” Cain returned his pistol to his belt, under his shirt. Although nervous from being unable to fire the pistol, he kept fear at bay since the man had not yet drawn his pistol.

  “I’m no soldier.” He chuckled. “Your woman was right. Genevieve, the French whore? This is a misguided effort at justice, Cain, and no good can come from it.”

  Cain held his breath. The man seemed privy to his conversations and knew his name, intimating he either spied on him or somehow enticed Genevieve to talk. He didn’t want to believe it, but he considered Genevieve volunteered the information. “You know my name. And, who are you to say someone like her is whore?” The concept of Genevieve in that line of work unnerved him, but it did not feel entirely false.

  “We’ve met before, you and I.” The man paused for his words to settle. “What business does a fair-looking lass have in the wilderness? Without you, this is neither the time or place for the likes of her to act with the requisite independence.”

  Cain took a step to the left. “I don’t recall meeting you. I don’t recollect your name. I don’t believe Genevieve told you any of this. And I don’t remember killing any soldiers as you described. Who are you? What kind of hand are you trying to play?”

  The man nodded to either side of him, and only then did Cain see the other men. Twelve of them; six men lined up on either side of the street. They wore heavy black coats and wide-brimmed hats, were clean-shaven, and met Cain with haunted expressions. Each held a rifle and had opened their coats to expose pistol belts. None wore a badge, nor for that matter did the self-described Marshall.

  “A trap!” He had both pistols in his hands before anyone could react, aimed at the Marshall. With sheer will he curled his fingers around both triggers and unloaded three rounds from each pistol. As the cartridge-smoke cleared, he could see nothing changed. No one moved or returned fire.

  Cain expected the men to draw and gun him down. Their rifles remained in their arms and though some had looked to see a reaction from the Marshall, the others remained still. Although Cain fired a total of six shots directly at the Marshall’s chest, the bullets never struck the target.

  Standing four paces away, the Marshall called out as though Cain stood across the street. “You can’t kill me, Cain!” He took one step closer and lowered his head so that one of Cain’s pistols aimed at his forehead. In a quieter voice, he said, “Not even like this.”

  Anger surged and he fired the pistol against the Marshall’s head. Nothing. A bullet left the muzzle and struck the wall behind him. His arms and hands continued to palsy as they always had in a gunfight, but the tremors became so bad he could no longer hold the pistols. He dropped them to the ground. Uncertainty and fear bore down, personifying a specter of Death in the man standing before him.

  The Marshall straightened and touched his forehead, finding no wound with his fingertips. He showed no sign of feeling pain, nor did he appear surprised. “A paradox.”

  “A what?” Vertigo accompanied fatigue in his arms and torso.

  “You can’t kill me. And, I can’t kill you.” The Marshall gestured to the other men and they dispersed into nearby buildings. “Given neither of us may die, a string of deputies is a wasted effect.”

  “Are you,” Cain started to ask, searching for some explanation. Only one concept entered into mind. “The Devil?”

  “An interesting question, and, in a way, ironic.”

  Cain’s weakness drove him to his knees. He pressed his fists into the snowy ground. “Who are you?”

  The Marshall asked, “The question isn’t who or what I am, Cain, but who are you?” Standing over Cain, he looked down and asked, “Do you believe in the Bible, Cain? In God and in Christ?”

  Cain offer no response, having given little consideration to such nonsense apart from drawing comparisons between his dreams and the few Biblical stories he knew.

  “How about Buddha, or Mohammed?” The Marshall waited for an answer, and when none was offered said, “Even if you don’t, there is an interesting correlation between all religious traditions. Do you know what it is?”

  “God is all of them?”

  The Marshall shook his head. “No. Each culture has it’s own interpretation of a god, or multiple gods, or lack of a god, or a messiah. What they have in common is a beginning, and a general concept that some group’s or some individual’s actions originated and preceded the need for the dictates of the belief.”

  He extended his hand to Cain. Cain studied it carefully before accepting it, and the man helped him to his feet.

  “I’m a Holy Trinity fellow myself,” The Marshall said with some pride. “In that context, consider the Ten Commandments, and particularly the sixth. Thou shalt not kill. Any reasonable man would consider this commandment unnecessary unless indiscriminate killing, murder, was a problem. Someone, somewhere in time, set the precedent. By my set of beliefs -”

&
nbsp; “You’re talking about Cain and Abel,” Cain said.

  The Marshall nodded. “Are you beginning to understand?”

  “You’re suggesting I’m like Cain?”

  “Not like,” The Marshall said.

  “Then what?” he demanded.

  “By my codex, you are the palpable and pungent sin of man, and the resolute proof that redemption is possible. The essence of your blood poured from Christ’s Grail, for as it was his blood imparted unto man, so was it your blood, in part, his was deemed to cleanse. You are the crucible in which redemption is forged.”

  “I don’t believe such stories,” Cain said. He raised his hands from the ground, feeling his strength return.

  Moving so quick Cain did not recall seeing him move at all, the Marshall drew his pistol and aimed it at Cain’s forehead. He cocked the pistol hammer and held his finger firm against the half-pulled trigger. The slightest nervous twitch would send the hammer falling onto the primer, in turn igniting the cartridge, and send the bullet through Cain’s head. Perhaps this was the payment he expected to make. The moment he anticipated all of his life. He was not afraid or even surprised, and could see the literal threshold between life and death. Inches away. And it wasn’t so terrible as he had imagined.

  “It is not a question of belief, Cain,” The Marshall said. “Not on your part. You are too much of a part of this world’s beliefs for your doubts to matter. No, it isn’t what you believe, but what others