Deadlands--Thunder Moon Rising

by Jeffrey Mariotte

  As he followed McKenna out, he reflected on the brief conversation. He had learned two things from it. First, there was trouble between Cuttrell and his wife, and McKenna might figure into that trouble. And second, he knew what he had seen, and so did the colonel. For reasons of his own, Cuttrell wanted to be the one to deal with it. She was his wife, so Tuck couldn’t object.

  He guessed there was a third thing he’d learned: Cuttrell considered Fort Huachuca his own personal fiefdom, and he didn’t want anybody around who might remotely threaten his authority. During his hard-drinking days, Tuck had been thrown out of plenty of places. He knew when he was unwelcome, and Cuttrell had made it very clear that he wasn’t wanted on the fort.

  He would make every effort to oblige the man.

  * * *

  Jasper Montclair’s ranch house was like no place Sadie had ever seen.

  On the way in, she thought she had seen strange things. At one point, she was certain she’d seen a big mesquite with impossibly long thorns, its branches moving of their own accord, picking apart a coyote that had somehow been caught up in it. Closer to the house, at the front gate and in the yard, there had been bones, stacks of them. In one spot a pile of skulls—human ones, she believed—formed a small pyramid. All of it was a little frightening, or would have been without the lingering effects of the laudanum. And something else, something about the way Jasper talked. His voice was soothing, and even when she couldn’t understand his words, the tone of it put her at ease. Now that she was inside, everything she had seen out there was already fading in her memory, like something she might have witnessed as a child.

  The house, though. That she could see and touch, though even here, her vision seemed somehow cloudy around the edges. Jasper abandoned her for a few minutes when they first arrived. Left on her own, she fairly floated from room to room, her feet seeming to barely touch the floor. That, too, was the laudanum at work, at least in part. Part of it was the air inside the house, scented with something sharp but not unpleasant. Part of it was everything else, the weight of everything arrayed around her. Every inch of the place seemed to contain something.

  In the front room had been more books than she had seen in the rest of her life put together. Books were everywhere, stuffed onto shelves, stacked hip-deep on the floor, spilling off tables. They were bound in leather of various hues, and although she had never been a good reader and her vision was more than a little blurred at the moment, many appeared to be written in languages other than English. She flipped through the pages of one that looked like some kind of a science thing, a handwritten journal rather than a printed book. She couldn’t even make out the title, which she thought was in Latin, though she could read the name Dr. Darius Hellstromme written underneath it in a cramped, unsteady hand. Three other books, massively thick ones, rested on their own stands, open to the air. She saw other names she didn’t recognize on two of those: Mina Devlin, Herbert Whately, and the third had no name at all.

  “What are those ones?” she had asked.

  Jasper smiled. “Those? My grimoires. The volumes I live by.”

  She hadn’t known what he’d meant by that. The unfamiliar word had no resonance for her, but she didn’t ask. Instead, her attention was snagged by the skeleton of a small animal, perched atop an ungainly stack of books. “Won’t it fall?” she asked. “What is it?”

  “It’s a tiger,” he said. “A baby; they grow much larger than that.”

  “I’ve never seen one.”

  “Most people haven’t. And no, it won’t fall; it holds up the books.”

  “From on top?”

  “Don’t question, my dear. Just accept.”

  Something about his voice. She did accept.

  That was when he excused himself, and she drifted from that room into the next. It was illuminated by candles on iron stands. They were bigger around than her thighs, and greasy smoke rose from the flames.

  In this one, there were more skeletons, dozens of them. Some might have been from bears or apes, some full-grown tigers or other big cats. She saw birds and what must have been rodents, rats, or mice. The skeletons appeared to all be intact, at least as far as she could tell. Some were protected by glass domes, others sat on tables or racks, and some just stood there, as tall as she was.

  Besides the skeletons, books were scattered about in this room, though not nearly as many as before. Hanging on the walls, in heavy frames, were photographs of people. Looking closer, Sadie saw that every photograph was of somebody dead. Some showed children in caskets, looking as if they might awaken from a refreshing nap at any moment. In one of those, so many flowers surrounded the casket that it might have been a jungle scene, and the dead boy was hard to find. Others were of adults, often sitting up in chairs, a few with their eyes open and others with coins over them. Three of the images were of bare-chested or naked men with bullet holes pocking their flesh, including one in which a wound of some kind had split open the man’s cheek, showing bone underneath the ravaged flesh.

  In most of the frames, Sadie found, there was something else besides the photograph. One held a dried flower, its petals fallen, its stem looking brittle and dead. Several contained hair of various colors, tied with ribbons or braided into shapes, or just loose at the bottom of the frame. The one of the man with the ruined face held what appeared to be chips of bone.

  Ordinarily, being here with these bizarre objects would terrify her. But the laudanum and the aroma and Jasper’s presence—although it had been several minutes now since she had seen him—together served to comfort her.

  “Jasper?” she called, having remembered who brought her here. “Jasper, where are you?”

  He appeared in the doorway a moment later. Something was different about his face, but she couldn’t put her finger on just what. Had he had those red streaks on it before? Three of them cut across his forehead, one ran down the center of his nose, and three marked each cheek, running from his nose back toward his jaw.

  “I’m here, my queen,” he said. “I’m getting ready.”

  “Ready for what?”

  “You needn’t worry about that. I’ll take care of everything.”

  “I—” Sadie started to disagree. No man ever took care of everything, though they all said they would. But before the words were out of her mouth, they slipped from her mind.

  “Yes, my queen?”

  “I … I don’t know. Nothing.” She looked at him. Those marks on his face. She meant to ask him something about those, but couldn’t remember what. “Nothing,” she said again. “Nothing at all.”

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Cale thought his lungs would split right down the middle.

  He had run until he could run no longer, then had sat under the uneven shade of a spindly ocotillo until he thought he could go on. This time, he couldn’t run for as long, but he found that if he alternated walking and running he could keep moving, even if that progress was slower than running full out would have been.

  Still, he was beginning to think he would never reach town.

  Clouds were starting to form to the southeast, but there was no certainty that they would reach the mountains, and even if they did, they might be too sparse to cool the baking heat of day. Rain might or might not come, and too much rain could make travel harder than none at all.

  So when he saw a horse-drawn wagon in the distance, heading toward him, he broke into a sprint, waving his hands above his head and shouting to make sure he was seen.

  The wagon’s driver turned out to be the banker, Mr. Harrell. Cale knew Mr. Tibbetts was angry with the man, because he had refused a loan, then sold the note he already held to Montclair. But Cale had no choice. He would be lucky to ever make it to Carmichael on foot, and Harrell had a wagon and horses. Cale explained what had happened at the J Cross T, and the banker seemed sympathetic.

  “I’ll give you a ride, son,” he said. “Into town, if that’s where you want to go. But first, I’ll want to see the ranch for mys
elf. Make sure the Tibbettses are safe.”

  Cale nearly refused the offer. Mr. Tibbetts was probably unhappy with him for running off. Even if he explained why he had left, that might not help. With the rest of the hands dead and the animals slaughtered, Tibbetts might have needed him at the ranch. All Cale had been able to think of was letting the townsfolk know, in case they could raise a posse or the army. Something. He hadn’t yet accomplished that, and he didn’t want to face Mr. Tibbetts, who would see him and think he had just been scared, running to save his own life.

  In the end, Cale agreed to go with Harrell. He would explain when they reached the ranch. Mr. Tibbetts would believe him. He had never lied to the man before. On the way, Harrell barely spoke a word.

  When they arrived, Cale found out why.

  Mr. and Mrs. Tibbetts heard the wagon coming, and came out of the house. When they saw Harrell and Cale, Mrs. Tibbetts broke down weeping. Mr. Tibbetts left her by the house and walked up to meet the buckboard. His face was impassive, hard to read. “Wilson,” he said when the horses came to a halt. “Cale.”

  “Mr. Tibbetts,” Cale said rapidly. “I tried to make it to town. I figured people needed to know what happened. But I couldn’t make it. I was running and running, and finally, I saw—”

  “It’s all right, Cale. We’ll handle things here, like we always do.”

  “But, Mr. Tibbetts, without the boys, I thought—”

  The rancher interrupted him again. “I said, we’ll handle it. Thanks for bringin’ him back, Wilson.”

  “I was headed here anyway,” Harrell said. Cale stared in stunned surprise—the banker had not mentioned that on the way. Cale climbed down from the wagon and went to stand with his employers.

  “What for?” Tibbetts asked.

  “Why don’t we go inside, Jed?”

  “Let’s stay right here.”

  “Jed—”

  “I said here, sir. I’m not about to invite you into my house. It is still my house, isn’t it?”

  Harrell pulled up the leather case he’d had down by his feet. “That’s what I’m here about, in fact.”

  “I figgered.”

  “I’d like you to sign some papers. To make the transfer official.”

  “You mean to give Montclair my land.”

  “It isn’t yours any longer, Jed. He owns it, by rights.”

  “There’s nothing right about it, Wilson Harrell!” Mrs. Tibbetts shouted. She had dropped her hands from her face, bunched them into fists, and advanced toward the wagon as if she intended to deliver a whipping. “Nothing right at all!”

  “Mrs. Tibbetts, the law is the law.”

  “The law is what men make it to be,” she argued. “It’s not as if the good Lord caused it to be that way. Where is it written in the sky, on the wind, in indelible letters on the sides of mountains? It is only what men who want to be able to take from other men have decided to make it, in order to make the taking easier.”

  Harrell chuckled, a sound so unnatural that it might have been a rattlesnake singing “Come, Come, Ye Saints.” “Now, Mrs. Tibbetts, I didn’t write the laws. I’m a banker, not a politician. All I’m doing is what the law requires of me.”

  “You could have fought for us,” she said. “You know my husband is as honest a man as was ever born. You know we’re good for our obligations. We always have been.”

  “In the past, yes. This time, I’m sorry to say, I could not be certain of that. From what young Mr. Ceniceros tells me, I have to say that sadly, it looks like I made the right decision. Mr. Montclair thought he was acquiring a going concern, if a troubled one. But now it appears that all he owns is a disaster.”

  “Give me the papers,” Tibbetts said, his voice tight. Cale could tell he was furious, by the way he held his hands, and the vein that popped out on the side of his head when he was mad. It looked as if it might burst.

  “Jed, no,” Mrs. Tibbetts said. “Don’t sign those.”

  “I have to, Edith. He’s right. The law says we got to give the place up.”

  Tears brimmed from her eyes again, rolling unimpeded down her cheeks and thumping softly into the earth at her feet. Harrell fished around in his case, and came up with some papers.

  “I’ll sign those,” Tibbetts said. “But first I want to show you somethin’.”

  “What?”

  “Get down off that wagon and come with me,” the rancher said. Harrell looked like he wanted to decline, but Mr. Tibbetts’s tone didn’t offer room for argument. Harrell climbed down. Cale started to follow Mr. Tibbetts and Harrell, but Mrs. Tibbetts caught his shoulder and held him back. She held on to him the whole time the men were gone, her grip like iron, as if he were the only thing mooring her to the world.

  When the men returned, Harrell was pale and wiping his mouth. Vomit flecked his black frock coat. “We’re gettin’ out of here,” Mr. Tibbetts said.

  “What do you mean, Jed?” his wife asked.

  “I mean, get anything you need together.”

  “What, right now?”

  “We’re trespassin’. Wilson’s got a wagon and horses to pull it. We’ve got wagons, but no draft animals. Fetch whatever things you need. You too, Cale.”

  Cale thought about what little he owned outright. A couple of shirts, a change of jeans. A few other small odds and ends. All of it was inside that bunkhouse, along with Mrs. Tibbetts’s book. Except for his saddle, which was in the tack room at the end of the barn. “I won’t need but a minute.”

  Mr. Tibbetts eyed him suspiciously, then nodded once. “What about you, Edith? Better get your necessaries packed up. Cale can help if you want. Wilson, how long we got?”

  Harrell looked at the sky. “An hour, no more.”

  “You heard the man,” Tibbetts said.

  “I’m sorry I ever got mixed—” He stopped, midsentence, cleared his throat and spat on the ground.

  “Sorry, Mr. Harrell?” Tibbetts said. “What was that?”

  “Nothing, Jed. I’m sorry it all came out this way, that’s all.”

  Cale didn’t know what the banker had intended to say, but he was certain his last word had been “mixed.” The way he saw it, the only word that could have followed was “up.” Harrell was mixed up in something that he regretted. At least, he did now that he’d seen the results, since presumably Mr. Tibbetts had shown him the corral and the bunkhouse.

  “Come on, Cale,” Mrs. Tibbetts said. “Help me out, won’t you?”

  “’Course, Mrs. Tibbetts,” Cale said. He hoped she would stop crying while they worked inside, though he doubted it. Her tears were calling to his, about to fetch them from him despite everything he was doing to hold them back.

  One hour, to get everything from the house she would ever need. Then they would get into Harrell’s wagon and ride into town, toward an uncertain future. And every hope and dream and wish that the Tibbettses had ever known—and most of Cale’s, too—would be left behind them.

  Cale was young. He felt the disappointment like a crushing weight, but at the same time, he knew other adventures awaited him, once he was past this. But for the rancher and his wife, this had been everything. Their life.

  How did anyone come back from losing that?

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  “I ran into Mo Kanouse earlier,” Alf Maier said. He was in Mayor Chaffee’s office, joined this time by the mayor and Colonel Cuttrell. Wilson Harrell wasn’t back from the J Cross T, and Jasper Montclair hadn’t been invited to this emergency meeting of the town council. “Bringloe fired him.”

  “On what grounds?” Chaffee asked.

  “In Kanouse’s words, if I remember correctly,” Maier replied, “on the grounds that Marshal Bringloe is a ‘useless, self-righteous, pitiful bag of drunken dog shit.’ Or something to that effect. There might have been a few more curse words mixed in.”

  Cuttrell barked a laugh. “He’s right on that score.”

  “You don’t like him, either?” Chaffee asked him.

 
; “I only just met him today,” Cuttrell said. “I invited him to get off my fort and never come back.”

  “It is as I told you,” Maier said. “He is dangerous to our plans. What Kanouse told me makes that all the more plain.”

  The mayor was on his feet, leaning back against his desk, while the other two sat in visitor’s chairs. At Maier’s statement, Chaffee scratched his ribs and angled his head toward the grocer. “What’d he tell you?”

  “After he left, that girl went to see him. The one from the mule train.”

  “The one who’s going to be a laundress?” Cuttrell offered.

  “I suppose, yes. Her. And that Indian scout who goes around with her.”

  “Kuruk.”

  “If you say so. Kanouse told me that he stayed close by, so he could listen in.”

  “I don’t like Bringloe,” the colonel said. “But that Kanouse is a lout.”

  “That may be,” Maier answered. “But he told me that Little Wing warned Bringloe of something coming. Something bad. She told him that she would help as much as she could.”

  “What can she possibly know?” Chaffee demanded.

  “Who can say? The fact that she seems to know anything at all disturbs me.”

  “The girl is mad as a wet hen,” Cuttrell said. “Nothing she says makes a lick of sense. I only hope she’s capable of washing uniforms and blankets.”

  “According to Kanouse, she sounded like she made sense. Like she really did know something.”

  “Kanouse is an idiot,” Cuttrell said. “Worrying about anything he says is a fool’s game.”

  “Just the same,” Maier said, “he was our man. Hank Turville was our man—”

  “Until he let a bunch of whores shame him into chasing someone he should have left well enough alone,” Cuttrell interrupted.

  “Yes, until that,” Maier agreed. “I went along to try to keep him out of trouble. I failed, and I am sorry for that. My point is that Tucker Bringloe is not our man, and he never will be.”