Yea Though I Walk

by J. P. Sloan

  I glare at Folger as hard as I can, but he’s on a tear. I doubt I’ll be able to suck the wind out of his prodigious sails, particularly when he’s grabbed the ass end of a tiger-striped notion. “Can’t say I was.”

  “So the ritual cannibalism of the Eucharist wasn’t a part of your upbringing?”

  “The Hell is a You-Chris?”

  “Ah. Certainly not a Catholic then. Sorry, an early life spent in Maryland lends a certain paradigm.”

  “I’m not crazy, if you’re getting at that.”

  He lifts a hip and shoves his hands in his pockets. “You’re punishing yourself, Lin. There is no Gil McWhatever.”

  “McQuarrie.”

  “That’s important to you, isn’t it?”

  I take in a long breath. “What’s important?”

  “That I get his name straight. One might say I would be taking his name in vain.”

  I snicker. “Now you’re just being stupid.”

  “I’m looking for the explanation that requires the least amount of blind faith. One has me helping a man who was brutalized during a long, terrible war, and has found a way to earn his right to forgive himself for running away. The other has me hunting down undead blood-drinking cannibal nightmares in my own town.”

  I let the silence hang in the room for a good while before I stand.

  I reach into my pocket.

  And I produce the hip flask.

  “You forget about this?”

  He squints at the flask, then turns away.

  I press, “You saw the badge in Holcomb’s loft. You see this flask here. I didn’t just conjure the damn thing out of the air, Denton. Richterman sent it to me as a warning. Or an invitation. I’m not really sure what his game is, and that’s what’s got me worried. He’s not like any other kind of Strigoi I’ve come up against. He’s smarter. He’s patient. He’s always―”

  “Listening?” Denton whispers.

  A chill rushes over my arms. “Right.”

  “That’s what Kate says.”

  He stands with his back to me for a good while.

  I pocket the flask again, searching for something useful to say. “She’s a good woman” is the best I can manage.

  “I know.”

  “I’m causing the two of you grief.”

  Denton turns slow, his eyes red and rimming with tears. “It’s my fault, really.”

  “No, I’m the one bringing my strangeness into your world. I’m the one keeping the two of you from your… peculiar company.”

  “It is very difficult being with a woman like Kate.”

  This time I’m the one who turns away. “How so?”

  “Her condition.”

  “You don’t spend a lot of time together, but you make it work somehow. The way she talks about you―”

  “I’m never there for her.” I hear a tiny sob before he continues, “I always thought if I’d just get rid of Richterman, I could spend more time with her like we used to. Me sleeping most of the day, then up at nights with her. Reading together. Discussing her childhood in the Old World. Learning new languages. It was Eden.”

  I face Folger, whose face is twisted in pleasant memory and regret. “You chose to take up this fight, Denton. You can choose to end it.”

  “Can you, Lin? Can you just give up on the Godpistols?”

  My gut twists.

  He nods. “There are things that are more important than happiness.” He turns a quick circle, then kicks the side of the wall.

  I jump at the quick stab of violence.

  “But you don’t have to choose,” I mutter. “I can make it easier for you both.”

  “No, Lin. I’m done,” he mutters.

  “Now, listen. You don’t have to lay down arms because you’re having a moment.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” he grunts, waving at a stack of paper-wrapped pages. “I finished the run of print.”

  I exhale. “Oh. That was fast.”

  “I’m not a man to linger when there’s work to be done. Now it’s just for us to deliver the pages.”

  “No.”

  Denton spins on me, his eyes wide. “I… thought we had an understanding.”

  “We do, but you aren’t coming with me.”

  “You said we were riding together to Broad Creek.”

  I step to the papers, laying a flat hand on the knot of twine at the top of the bundle. “I’m taking these myself. You’re staying at home with your wife. And you’re going to sleep early, and you’re going to spend some time with her before the sunrise. It’s important, dammit. And I don’t need you there to sell these damned pages.”

  Folger opens his mouth to speak, failing three times before I add, “She needs you.”

  He approaches to my side, lifts the bundle, and drops it into my arms. “Broad Creek, then. You shouldn’t travel alone. Richterman will be watching you, and I worry he’ll try to take advantage of your ignorance.”

  I grin. “Don’t worry. I’m bringing someone shotgun.”

  “Do I want to know who?”

  I shake my head.

  We gather up the pressroom and lock up the door with enough sunlight left in the day to make it back to Folger’s homestead. I fetch Ripper and hitch him up. As Denton climbs up into the cart, I hold up a hand.

  “I’m not making this up, Denton. My whole life. It’s real. Every monster. And I’m not crazy, at least not for that reason. If that don’t satisfy your rules of logic, then I’m very sorry about that. The truth can cock itself good and sideways when it wants to.”

  He blinks down at me.

  I add, “Pull him around the north side of the old church. I need to check on something.”

  I hustle up the lane back toward the jailhouse. Most of Scarlow’s thugs have settled inside, a deck of cards out and dealt between them. Scarlow looms near the iron bars, his gaze set hard on his companion dying on the cot.

  “Any change?” I ask softly.

  He shakes his head once.

  “I changed my mind, regarding that silver.”

  He turns his head to me with a cocked brow. “Oh, yeah?”

  I pull my gun and knock the chambers empty into my palm, rustling six of Holcomb’s silver-tipped cartridges for Scarlow to see.

  I nod to the fellow I’d spotted before with the Remington. “Forty-five, right?”

  He nods, and I toss him three of the bullets. He catches two, but the third rattles on the floor.

  The blond fellow with no sense of purpose steps forward, lifting a dog-eared Colt Peacemaker.

  I toss him the rest.

  Scarlow mumbles, “Well, that’s magnanimous of you.”

  “Two conditions, Scarlow.”

  He sighs and turns his shoulders to face me full. “All right, then.”

  “First, you leave direct orders for these men to put the man down the second he gets aggressive. And he will. When the Hunger takes, he’ll come for their flesh. When he does, they must shoot. I don’t care what Richterman says. This man dies.”

  Scarlow lingers on my words for a moment, then grumbles, “And your second condition?”

  “You’re taking a trip with me to Broad Creek.”

  His face freezes, and then he drops into a throaty laugh. “You must be jokin’.”

  “Not a joke. I’m not even asking, truthfully. This is more of a ‘you’re doing this if I have to drag your pistol-whipped ass with me’ kind of situation.”

  Scarlow shakes his head with upturned eyes. “Do stop, Odell. You’re getting my pecker hard, talkin’ like that.”

  I stare him down, moving neither muscle nor eyeball.

  His mirth melts, finally, into a sneer. “Now what in fuck-jumped Hell would I be doin’ with you in Broad Creek, Odell?”

  “Selling papers.”

  He gives a look over his shoulder, then grabs my arm and pulls me outside.

  His gaze skims over the nearby rooftops.

  “It’s daylight,” I mutter. “No one’s listening.�
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  “Richterman is―”

  “Always listening. I know, you people keep reminding me.”

  Scarlow steps into my face and grunts, “I ain’t sellin’ Folger’s rags. And you’re stupid to ask.”

  “Again, not asking.”

  “Richterman won’t allow it. Y’all know that. I don’t understand―”

  “You’re going to go snatch the papers, anyway. The second Richterman hears I’m riding north with Folger’s papers, he’s going to send you. That right?”

  Scarlow searches my face. “Why? Why do you want me there?”

  “Well, first off, I figure there’s more safety in numbers when trying to escape this goddamn valley, and you’re about the only shot I trust in this town. Second, I can’t stop you from stealing Folger’s papers if I’m not there to watch you do it. And third, well… this is the part where I tell you what an opportunity this is for you.”

  “What kind of opportunity you talkin’?”

  “You’re a smart man, Scarlow. You don’t glide underneath a man like Richterman for this long without a powerful command of mental faculty.”

  He looks away with a thin smirk.

  “Listen, Scarlow. Richterman’s got these things, these ‘orphans’ Katherina calls them. He’s got them bowing and scraping to him because that’s how tyrants get the steel in their shorts. And I talked to Cheevey today. He’s told me about the newcomers.”

  Scarlow’s eyebrows rise. “Cheevey talked to you? Shit. Hadn’t figured he had the balls for that.”

  “He said more of these newcomers should arrive soon. That’s Richterman’s plan? Some kind of ranch? Feeding stock for the Strigoi?”

  “Why you askin’ me? Do I look like Richterman to you?”

  I wave the question off. “Point is, Richterman’s pulling together a fair number of barely upright Strigoi. They’re feral, closer to animal than human. When Richterman finally goes down, these things are likely enough to lose their thin grip on self-restraint and drain every living thing in this valley dry before they starve to death. Hell, they may even tear apart Magner and his gruesome following.” I lean toward Scarlow’s ear and whisper, “Where will you stand, then? Where’s the money going to come from when Richterman’s staked and dusted?”

  “That’s a stretch, Odell.”

  “Not such a stretch. You have to think about your future. I suspect you already have. You know you’ll have to claw Richterman down eventually, at least before he loses patience with you.”

  He pulls away, keeping his eyes on the ground. Yep. He’s put thought into it.

  “You come with me, Scarlow. You do this quiet like. You let these papers circulate. And then you just hang back and wait for the noose to drop around Richterman’s neck. You do that, and then we can concentrate on those cannibals in the hills.”

  Scarlow turns to the west and crosses his arms. “When you ridin’ out?”

  I hear Ripper huff somewhere a few alleys over. Folger’s waiting.

  “Today. Try to clear the north ridge by sunset.”

  He shakes his head. “You’ll never make it. And you don’t wanna try those hills after dark. Even at the northern pass.”

  “Then ride up to the homestead just before sunrise. We’ll make the ridge in time for the sun to clear the eastern tree line and haul ass. Just try to keep Richterman none the wiser.”

  Scarlow kicks a circle in the dirt of the road, then clears his throat. “I’ll ride with you. But the papers? That’ll be up to me in the moment. Ain’t decided if your particular kind of doom is any better than Richterman’s.”

  “Good enough.” I pause and consider the man. “You fight in the War, Scarlow?”

  He nods.

  “Union?”

  He gives me the barest shake of his head.

  “Well, then. That’s just about perfect, ain’t it?” I tip my hat and step around him.

  When I reach the cart, Folger looks ready to climb out of his skin. “What was that all about?”

  “Nothing you need to worry about.”

  “You were conferring with Scarlow, weren’t you?”

  I take the reins from Folger and get Ripper to moving.

  “Lin? You’re not taking him with you. He’s dangerous.”

  I give Folger a good, long, steady glare. “So am I.”

  manage to sleep that night. Folger, it seems, has heeded my urgings and spends the night down in the cellar with his wife. I fade away into my cot, ears buried in that scratchy wool blanket, occupying my mind with the details of my excursion to Broad Creek.

  I’m finally escaping this valley. The ride out may prove fatal in its own right, but that’s a fight I’m better equipped to wage. Better than this domestic drama, to be sure. I’m not a pure man by any stretch. No, it’s the sins of my past that I’m trying to correct, and I’ve felt for a while that Gil has paid a very close heed to those sins. I’ve seen men with shakier faith come into the fold of the Godpistols. Men with murder in their past. Theft. Rape. These men have been absolved and drawn into the service of God.

  A deserter, though? If there’s a sin that counts as a virtue in this line of work, murder and violence would serve just fine. But when a man up and runs, when he lays down arms and leaves his brothers to die, that’s an unforgivable sin in the eyes of the Godpistols. To my credit, I ain’t never run when throwing paws with devils. With any luck, and more than my fair share of earning it, Gil will stop assuming that a man, once a coward, is always a coward.

  The sun feels slow to rise. I can’t find a comfortable inch on this cot. And the blanket, though suitable enough to keep the damned chilly northern breeze from aching into my bones, feels like a nest of ants against my skin.

  That constant smell of jasmine don’t help none, either.

  I pull myself off the cot and reach underneath to gather my saddlebags. I run an inventory over the whole kit, not that there’s much left to count. My hemlock stakes are broken and gone. The rest of Gil’s silver cartridges are safe and sound, now six rounds lighter than I’d prefer. Holcomb’s Godpistol badge sits near the bottom, peeking out at me like Gil’s own disembodied eyeball, watching and passing judgment.

  Finally, I stuff the most important cargo into the bag. The papers.

  I sling the bag over my shoulder, snatch my hat, and step out into the night wind. Christ, it’s cold. I move to the shelter and lean on Ripper’s leeward flank. He gives me a sleepy grunt before drooping his head back to his dreams. Another day of long walking for Ripper is coming up on us. I’ve put more miles on him since we landed in Gold Vein than I feel comfortable with, owing entirely to the distance Folger keeps from Richterman.

  I’ll be settling that soon.

  I step out toward the grass, hiking up my collar a little to keep the wind off my neck. The sky is cloud-veiled and dark. No stars. No moon. No sounds save for the rushing of air through the grass, and the odd clack of a loose shingle. I can’t imagine living alone in a place so desolate.

  My feet pace a long circle around the homestead, leading me on until I stumble over freshly overturned soil. I back away to squint at what I’d just rammed my toe into.

  I find the graves I’d dug after dropping the Hitchens boy and the Parson’s young’uns. Suppose the Parson’s resting in some grave of his own, by this point. Possibly not. Richterman doesn’t strike me as the kind to lend credence to spiritual propriety.

  Hands slide over my shoulders.

  I nearly jump out of my skin, sucking in a breath heavy with jasmine.

  “Shh,” Katherina hushes as she drapes a heavy coat onto my frame.

  I turn and give her a look. “Scared the shit outta me.”

  With a smirk, she answers, “It is cold. You could use this.”

  I regard the coat as I shove my arms through the sleeves. “This Denton’s coat?”

  She nods.

  I button it up and take a couple steps back. “He all right?”

  “He seems so. For now.”

&n
bsp; “His powers of denial are a mite impressive.”

  “You have no idea.”

  I clear my throat and look over to the homestead. “You know this is about to be over. Our arrangement?”

  Her smirk drops. “How so?”

  “Well, the papers. I’m running them up to Broad Creek myself. I won’t let them out of sight until they get sold. Then Folger will finally have fired his first shot against Richterman.”

  She nods slowly.

  “I’m moving into town.”

  Katherina crosses her arms. “You are moving?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Where?”

  “Holcomb’s smithy. He’s got a stable behind his shop I can keep Ripper at. Ain’t right running him in and out like I’ve been.”

  “Do not blame the horse for this.”

  I wince and look away. “No, I shouldn’t. Fact is, I’m a mite uncomfortable here.”

  “What have I done to make you feel uncomfortable?” she asks, a lilt of reproach hanging on her words.

  “Nothing you did. Nothing he did. You just need to have your space, and I’m not helping anything.”

  Katherina stomps forward through the grass, and I move away out of reflex. “It is not safe in the town.”

  “You figure it’s safe here?”

  “Lars and I have an agreement. He has abided by it thus far, and I see no reason you would force him to do otherwise. Not as long as you are here with me.”

  I lean in a little. “What kind of agreement would that be?”

  With a sneer, she replies, “I stay away from town, and he does not show his face here on my property.”

  “So all those orphan Strigoi left bleeding in town… you couldn’t save them if you wanted to?”

  “Not unless I want to deal with Lars.”

  “Well, he’s going to deal with you soon enough, once those papers get out of this valley. The Law’s going to come eventually. Either man’s law, or our law.”

  She runs a hand over her forehead and looks to the west. “The Godpistols? You think they care about this tiny piece of land?”