"Perhaps they’ve come for us," Creed said. "They do say that the crows reap the souls of the living and carry them back to the land of the dead. Maybe that’s what this is. Maybe the birds have come to carry us all away," he reached out quickly and caught the crow's soft body in his hands. With a quick, deadly twist he wrung its neck.
He looked up at Silas, tossed the crow aside, and laughed.
"Or maybe not. Now, what were you saying about bad business?"
Silas wasn't listening. He was standing very still, staring past the rail and down the street. Creed followed the direction of Silas Boone’s gaze. The tavern keeper had locked onto the small black form nested on his own roof.
"I could kill that one as well, if it would help you concentrate?"
Silas shook his head. "No, no. What was I saying? Bad business. Yes. Messengers rode through town this morning. They said they’d witnessed some mighty peculiar goings on out toward Scar Crag."
"How so?"
"They came across a trapper's enclave, only there was no sign of the trappers. Neither hide nor hair of them to be found. The camp appeared to be abandoned, and they left everything behind. They didn't stop to investigate, but they kept their eyes open. No sign of anyone on or around the road."
"You thinking Indians? Coyotes?"
"I ain’t thinking a thing," Silas Boone said. "That the camp was empty was just one strange thing, and it wasn't the strangest."
"No?"
"No."
"Then what was?"
Silas Boone told him.
Chapter Three
Ma Kutter heard scratching on the roof.
It was a small insistent sound, like rats picking away at the shingles.
"Get away!" she shouted, pushing herself out of her chair. The fire was warm, the light from the oil lamp low, casting shadows across the gable. She grunted. Her back ached when she straightened up. It was always worse at night. Her joints froze as the burden of dragging her old bag of bones around wore them down. She sank back into the chair, exhausted from even that small exertion.
Such were the joys of age. She was getting shorter by the year and sprouting ugly grey whiskers from her chin like a crone in stories told to frighten children. There had been a time when she'd turned heads, but all that remained was a shriveled up hag barely able to stand for a minute or more without someone to lean on.
A hock of wild pig boiled on the fire. The water hissed and sizzled as it spilled over the brim of the tin pan.
The scratching on the roof grew steadily louder.
Without it she might have heard the other sounds, the slight susurrus and the death rattle as the viper slid from the darkness to coil slowly around the leg of her chair. Ma Kutter felt its scaled skin brush her ankle but by then it was already too late. She barely felt the pin-prick of the snake’s fangs sinking into her soft fatty flesh. It was the sudden flush of warmth as the venom entered her blood that gave it away. By then she was already dead.
As she slumped in her chair, her hands clutching weakly at the arms, the scratching on the roof stopped. The serpent wound its way past her, out through a crack in the door and into the shadows beyond.
Chapter Four
Creed was up before the sun. His head had the empty, hollow ache of lingering whiskey, and his belly crawled with hot, thick coffee. It ate at his gut like acid, but his eyes were focused and bright. He wasn't sure what he expected to find, but he saddled his horse and rode out of Rookwood just as the red-orange fingers of dawn stretched over the horizon. A blood red sun slid sluggishly from behind the ends of the Earth, and he squinted into it, using one hand to shade his eyes from the glare.
The crows were gone. They could call them rooks all they wanted, but the damned things were crows, and in any case, neither crows nor rooks fly at night. Not unless they're spooked. Something, or someone was out there, and Creed was thinking about the trappers Silas had mentioned the night before. He was also thinking about the story the crusty old barman had tacked on at the end. The Messengers had said they saw something flying over the trees -- something too big to be a bird -- something dark. Creed didn't have much patience for ghost stories, but he scanned the treetops all the same.
He wanted to find that camp. Wouldn't hurt to be first on the scene and give it a look before every tramp in town got out and rifled through it. Also wouldn't hurt to be in and gone before the Sheriff caught wind. Creed had no particular feud with "Moonshine" Brady, but he avoided the man when possible. Besides the fact they were often on opposite sides of the law, there was something about Moonshine that gave him the creeps.
The Sheriff stood six and a half feet if he was an inch. He did nothing without careful thought and consideration, but once he made up his mind, he was fast as lightning. There was something in Rookwood that stuck the right word to a thing, and Moonshine, the way it made a man see things others didn't see, and move slower than normal – was a perfect name for the Sheriff. It would be better to be back in Rookwood before Brady found the camp.
Creed topped the first rise outside town and stopped. He knew the trapper's camp should be off to the north, but something else had caught his eye. Something had glinted over by Dead Man's Gulch. Even as he thought about riding on toward the camp, Creed turned his mount and headed toward the gulch. The camp wasn't going anywhere, and he still had time before anyone else was likely to show.
As he turned, the silence was shattered by the loud, mournful peeling of a bell. Creed glanced over his shoulder toward town. It was the bell at the old chapel. There hadn't been a preacher in Rookwood for more than a year. They rang the bell for weddings, and deaths. No one in town was engaged.
Creed frowned, tossed a moment's thought at the question of who had passed, and then turned away. He kicked the horse’s flanks and took off at a trot. Whoever it was would still be dead when he got back. Of that much, he was certain.
Chapter Five
Creed rode down into the valley of shadows that led toward the gulch. The land he crossed was cracked and withered, much like his skin. The wind blew hard along the gullies, whipping up sand and scrub. There were no miracles in this place, least of all miracles of life. Dust and bones, sand and souls; that was the way of it. How much blood had soaked into the earth over the decade since the first wagons rolled out West? Enough that a man could stab the crust and it would bubble back up viscous and red? Creed rode the familiar trail lost in thought and watching the shadows. Even in that sun-baked hell, there were shadows.
The ground before him rippled with heat haze. The bullying wind stirred tumbleweeds into constant motion. The effect was disconcerting, and Creed closed his eyes now and again to break its spell.
He pulled the brim of his hat down, shading his eyes from the rising sun and the stinging sand carried by the breeze. Whatever it was he'd seen glinting in the sun from the ridge was nearly in sight, but his eyes were dust-blind, and despite the early hour, they stung with sweat.
As he rode closer things took on substance and form: canvas, like distant rolling hills. The land beyond Dead Man’s Gulch had been transformed into a city of tents and wagons. In the center, one huge patched structure rose toward the sun, and affixed to the top-most point on the center pole stood a rough-hewn cross of dark wood.
Creed stopped his horse and pulled out his canteen. He rinsed his mouth and spat into the brush, then took a longer drink.
"I'll be damned," he muttered.
He stowed the canteen and spurred his horse into a trot, not slowing until he'd reached the edge of the camp. He continued at a walk, stirring a cloud of dust into the unfamiliar hive of activity. The first thing that hit him was the smell; the reek of sweat and bodies too long estranged from water and soap. It clung to the canvas as much as to the laborers working around the tents. There was no breeze; scent didn't carry in the gulch under normal circumstances, but once you were caught in it it clung to the skin and stuck in the nostrils.
Disinterested heads turned his way as he rode pas
t. He'd expected to cause something of a stir, but it was as though each forgot him before he'd even left their field of vision. He'd never seen a place so deserving of the word grim.
He drew up beside a squat, thickly muscled man driving stakes into the hard ground. No blood bubbled back out of the wounds in the earth. Creed smiled wryly to himself at the thought. The man glanced up and met his gaze but not his smile.
"What's going on here?" Creed asked.
"The Deacon’s arrived," the man replied, as if that explained everything.
Maybe it did.
The country was full of charlatans and snake oil peddlers offering universal cure-alls and spiritual guidance for a pocketful of silver. Whatever your ailment, someone was out there looking to profit from it. Provender Creed eyed the man intently, expecting him to say more. Instead, the hammer rose and fell again, driving the peg all the way home. The man didn't glance up again. Creed watched him a moment longer. The stranger favored his left side. A closer look showed that the arm on that side was withered, the hand shrunken like a bird’s claw.
Creed rode on without a word.
After a few moments he began to wonder if he'd actually come up on a circus freak show. He saw a pretty young girl sitting outside a ratty tent, wringing murky water from her wet laundry. Close beside her an equally pretty twin scrubbed away with lye. The girls looked up and smiled at him. It took Creed the silence between heartbeats to realize what was wrong with this image of domestic bliss: they weren't sitting close beside one another at all. They were co-joined at hip and ribs, and only had three arms between them. It did not make their smiles any less beautiful. Creed tipped his hat slowly, and turned away.
A young boy with a twisted gait shuffled across his path, dragging a clubbed foot.
"Boy," he called down, "which tent belongs to the Deacon?"
The boy glanced up at him with a half-toothed grin and pointed toward the rocky outcropping at the rear of the camp. Creed saw a wagon with a canvas extension that looked cleaner than the rest of the camp. It was set out in back of the great cross-topped tent in the center.
He nodded his thanks. He was about to say something, then fell silent. It wasn't a boy's face staring up at him, as he'd thought. It was a midget. The small twisted figure turned and shuffled off into the camp.
‡‡‡
Creed dismounted outside the revival tent. He figured it was better to check out The Deacon's place of business than to just bust in on the man in his 'home'.
A single black feather lay in the dirt at his feet. Creed bent down to pick it up and slipped it into his pocket. It was a curious thing to do; he knew that even as he did it but something felt right about claiming the crow’s feather for his own. Boone’s superstitions were wearing off on him. He chuckled at that and pushed back the tent flaps.
Strategically placed oil lamps lit the interior. Four lines of two dozen wooden benches formed an arc around the central stage. There was little in the way of ostentation about the set up, no painted banners or racks of medicinal compounds lined up to be purchased. There was an upright piano off to one side and a central podium. The sides of the stage were curtained off with thick drapes, the cloth backdrop adorned with a single simple cross dyed into it.
He heard the bustle of movement behind the curtain.
"Hello?" Creed walked down the central aisle toward the stage. Shadow shapes flickered and danced along the cloth walls, matching pace with him. For a moment the shadows seemed to form the silhouette of a vast black winged bird, then the light guttered and the illusion was broken. Creed shivered, as though someone had walked across his grave.
"Hello back there!" he called again. "I’m looking for the Deacon?"
"And you've found him."
The voice was soft and sibilant. It was so close to his ear that he thought he felt the touch of hot, moist air on his skin. Creed flinched, and then stiffened to mask his shock. He reached up to tilt back the brim of his hat as he turned.
"How can I help you?"
The man Creed faced was tall and gaunt. His suit was black and too heavy for the heat. His white shirt was buttoned to the neck, and he wore a plain black bow tie that drooped beneath his collar like a dark, wilted flower. His hair was long and dark, brushed back over his collar. His eyes glittered like chips of grey glass.
"I'm not sure you can," Creed answered slowly. "I dropped in out of curiosity."
"About the state of your soul?" The Deacon asked.
"About whether or not you've been in to see the sheriff about a permit to pitch camp here," Creed replied. "You can’t just set up on any bit of land that strikes your fancy. That’s not how we do things in Rookwood. There’s order. Structure. It’s how we survive. If you’d come into town the mayor and the sheriff could have apportioned you and your people a pitch and worked out a fair rent for the land."
"Ah, so it's about the money then?"
Creed turned instinctively as another midget scurried out from behind the curtain. "Give us a moment, Longman," the Deacon said. The midget nodded and scuttled off. It was all Creed could do not to chuckle at the irony of the name.
"It ain't up to me to say one way or the other what you do," he said. "I'm just tellin' you what they're likely to say in town."
"How can I make amends for this rather inauspicious beginning to our – friendship?"
"Suppose you start by telling me why you're here? If I knew that, I'd know what to tell you."
"Blunt and to the point; I admire clarity in a man," the Deacon said. "We travel, reaching out to communities in need of the Lord’s Word, and the Lord’s Touch." The Deacon's hand moved instinctively, as though to form the cruciform across his chest, but lingered in the center, over his heart.
"Tell me, I heard the tolling of a bell? It is a sound to place a chill in the heart for it seldom augers good when it is rung in the middle of the morning. This is no hour for a service."
"We have no services. Our preacher passed on over a year back."
"There is no one to spread the Word? To tend to the spiritual well being of the flock? That is a tragedy in its own right. And yet, still the bell tolled. Has someone passed on?"
"So it would seem." Creed replied. "I rode out early this morning; if they found someone dead, it happened since then."
"Tragic," The Deacon said, lowering his eyes and shaking his head. Creed couldn't tell if he'd lowered that gaze in deference to a higher power, or to hide his expression.
"I think it must be a sign," The Deacon continued, raising his gaze to meet Creed's once more. "Last night, the rooks arose, and I should have seen it then. Someone has been taken on to the next world. There must be a service. God's word must be heard."
"We’ve survived just fine without a preacher," Creed said flatly.
"It was not chance that found me at your door, Provender Creed," the Deacon said, laying a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. "It was divine provenance."
It wasn’t until they were halfway back to town that Creed realized he had not told the man his name.
Chapter Six
The church had been closed since the death of Goodman James, the stunted barrel of a preacher who'd tended the spiritual needs of Rookwood for decades. James had fallen to the croup a year back, and after that, attendance on Sunday fell to nothing. Services had been sketchy, at best, and James' propensity toward drunkenness and cursing often failed to convince his 'flock' that he had their eternal well-being in mind. His sermons turned far too often to the collection plate, and his messages were aimed directly at those who he found particularly sinful, while ignoring those who dropped by the rectory with a bottle, or a fresh pie. The red vines on his ruddy cheeks declared his preference for all to see.
No one had taken up residence in either rectory or church. They were afraid, at first, that they'd catch whatever the preacher died of. After that, they were afraid whoever moved in would be expected to preach. For whatever reason, the only time the doors of the church were open and the floor
s swept was for a funeral.
When Creed rode back into town, The Deacon and two of his followers trailing slowly behind, he headed straight for Boone's. As they passed a young barefoot boy in clothing so ragged it looked ready to rot off his flesh, Creed called out to him.
"Go fetch Sheriff Brady. Tell him to meet us over at the saloon."
The boy stared past Creed at the strangers. He seemed rooted in place, and it wasn't until Creed dug his heels into his horse’s sides and charged that the youth reacted. He leaped up onto the wooden boardwalk, took a last glance at The Deacon, then turned and raced off down the street. Creed led the way to Boone's, dismounted, and tied off his horse.
The Deacon remained in the saddle a few moments longer. He raised his eyes to the heavens, and Creed was sure he saw the man sniffing, like some kind of animal on a scent. When The Deacon lowered his gaze, it settled on Ma Kutter's place, and he frowned. Creed followed that gaze, but he saw nothing. Ma's door was wide open, but that wasn't strange during the day. No one in Rookwood bothered to lock their doors, other than Boone and the sheriff. None of them had anything worth stealing – at least not worth stealing and dying over.
The Deacon dismounted and stood beside Creed. Folks had started to gather up and down the street, staring. They didn't get much traffic through Rookwood, and they weren't fond of strangers. There was only so much of anything to be had – if someone new came along, they were likely to want a share. Creed turned and entered the saloon, and The Deacon followed, his two companions falling in behind him like a couple of puppies. The two hadn't said a word since they'd left The Deacon's camp, and it grated on Creed's nerves.
It didn't take long for the Sherriff to show. Very little happened in Rookwood that Brady wasn’t elbow deep and muddy in. He probably knew Creed was bringing in strangers before they crested the ridge. Moonshine never hurried. He didn't think fast, talk fast, or act fast. In fact, the only time Creed had seen the man challenge a snail was with his gun. In that one thing Brady was gifted. He could make lightning look like molasses if the moment called for it. It was a mighty fine skill for a lawman to have, for sure.
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