Outlaw Train
Page 13
“What name is she using?”
“Haus. Prophetess Katrina Haus.”
“Well, yes…we could get rich off this Katrina Haus if she proves out to really be who you say she is, not just some other soiled dove pulling the same kind of spirit-talking confidence game that Bender did. And, of course, she’ll do us no good, whoever she is, unless she conveniently drops dead and we get lucky enough to get her corpse for display.”
“Sometimes that can happen, Percival. People just conveniently dropping dead and all.”
“We don’t murder folks to stock our corpse displays, Nick. You know that.”
“Tennessee here might be inclined to disagree about that.” He tilted his head toward the corpse propped up on the seat beside him.
“Our man here didn’t meet his fate so we could display his body, Nick. I’ve told you that. He died because he refused to be reasonable. The use of his corpse as the Tennessee Kid was just a later inspiration. A way of adding value to an earlier difficult transaction.”
“I’m going on now, Percival. Too antsy to hang around here. But I’ll stretch it out, take my time. I don’t want to roll into town until after dark. This kind of thing always works best when folks see it when it’s dark.”
Dewitt was unsure what drew him back again and again to the place Bailey had died, because it was to him the most hated place he knew. He would never forget the soul sickness he had felt when he saw Bailey’s corpse, and the empty cell where the murdering Nolan had been.
“Dear Lord, let me forget,” Dewitt prayed aloud, pacing in the narrow passage between cells. He was back to simple, basic duty again—minding the nowempty jail—but since the murder of Bailey and the escape of Nolan, the jail was no longer an easy place for Dewitt to be. “Let that picture of poor Bailey lying there go out of my mind,” he said to the empty human cages around him.
He couldn’t help but ponder the fact that it used to be easy to forget whatever needed forgetting. All that had been necessary was to pull a cork and press glass to lips. It was easy to forget in the days his mind was cloudy. Now, the farther he got from his last drink, the clearer his mind grew. And a clear mind was a remembering mind.
“I’m sorry, Bailey,” he said softly. “I’m sorry you got killed. I hope you went to heaven.”
Ten more minutes passed and Dewitt’s funk remained strong. At last he shook himself, went up to the front office and there dashed a little water on his face from the wash bucket in the corner, and decided that fresh air was called for. He left the office and told himself he was doing so in order to make rounds while Luke was out manhunting. Never mind that rounds were not part of his assigned duty just now. There was certainly nothing to do at the jail except dwell on the fact that a murder had occurred there.
He had to break this morbid sense of gloom hanging around him. Daylight was what he needed. Daylight and fresh air and a bit of exercise.
Closing the jail, he paused on the porch and wondered if he was doing the right thing. Luke and his posse would return at some point, most likely, probably with a recaptured Scar Nolan in tow. Luke might be angered to find the jail closed down.
Dewitt promised himself he wouldn’t stay away from the jail for long. A good walk, a brightening of the mood, and then he’d come back. Odds were he would be back in the front office before Luke even returned.
Gypsy Nick Anubis, who in the earlier days of his far-from-exotic life had been not a mysterious “Egyptian-born” showman but merely a young assistant to an Alabama embalmer who made his living giving cursory undertaking service to battlefield dead so their corpses could be shipped home for burial in family plots rather than interred in anonymous mass graves, settled himself more comfortably on the seat of the wagon and rode through the pleasant day with a dead man at his side. He was glad to leave behind for a while the Outlaw Train that provided a living for himself and his employer, Percival Raintree, a man he’d met four years earlier in an alley behind a billiard hall in Chicago, where both of them were emptying bladders filled earlier in the saloon next door. It was inside the saloon that Nick had first noticed Raintree…noticed his tattooed ears, actually.
The back-alley meeting had led to a surprise: Raintree already knew who he was. “I’m pleased to speak with you at last, Mr. Akers,” Raintree had said while hitching shut his fly. “You’ll pardon me if I don’t offer to shake hands under the circumstances.”
“It wouldn’t much bother me to shake your hand, sir,” Nick had said. “In my line of work I’m accustomed to touching that which most would shun.”
“Embalming?”
“A good guess. You are correct.”
“No guesswork involved, Mr. Akers,” Raintree had replied. “I came to the saloon this evening because I saw you enter there. It was you I hoped to meet!”
“You followed me?”
“I’ve been following you for some days now.”
“I don’t like being followed.”
“I think you’ll be pleased, under these circumstances,” Raintree had replied. “I’m here to offer you a marvelous opportunity. Shall we go have another drink and talk a while?”
“I’m always thirsty.”
“Then let’s go.”
Jakey Wills had just fed Ben Keely’s cats once again when he saw the wagon come rolling over the rise against the backdrop of a darkening, cloud-filled sky. He paused in the yard of Keely’s empty house and squinted at the approaching vehicle. The driver was oddly dressed, in loose, flowing clothing that reminded Jakey of the garb of the man he’d seen outside the Outlaw Train the day he’d hidden on the hillside and watched the place with Luke and Dewitt. But he didn’t think this was the same man.
He couldn’t be so sure about the man riding shotgun. The fellow had a sign of some sort leaned up against his chest. A mask, like a flour sack, but with no eye holes, so that his entire head was hidden.
When the wagon was close enough, Jakey was able to read the sign. He drew in his breath in surprise and awe, and stared freely at the figures on the wagon, particularly the masked one, who did not move at all.
“Hello, young man,” Nick said. “What are you up to today?”
“Feeding cats.”
“Cats?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How many you got?”
“Three. But they ain’t mine. They belong to Ben Keely.”
Nick squinted in thought. “Keely. Why does that name sound familiar?”
“You’ve probably heard of him, sir, if you’ve been around these parts. He’s the town marshal of Wiles, the town over that way.” Jakey thumbed eastward. “Except he ain’t in Wiles. He went off weeks and weeks ago to Kentucky to see kinfolk, and he ain’t come back.”
“That so?”
“Yeah. Hey, mister, is that honest-to-goodness the Tennessee Kid there in the seat beside you?”
“That’s what the sign says, ain’t it?”
“Yes, sir, but I just wondered if it’s real.”
“It’s real. And that’s him.”
Jakey’s face was the image of awe. He walked around the wagon and stood near the dead outlaw, looking up. “He got shot down in Colorado, right? About two years ago?”
“That’s right.”
“Shot in the face with a shotgun, wasn’t he?”
“That’s why we keep that bag over his head. Folks couldn’t bear to see what’s under there.”
“Can I look?”
“It ain’t part of our show, son. And believe me, you’d not really want to see it.”
Jakey paced around, still studying the corpse. “You with the Outlaw Train, mister?”
“I am. You can call me Anubis. Nicholas Anubis.”
“What kind of name is that…Anubis? Never heard that before.”
“Neither had I, until Raintree gave it to me.”
“Who is Raintree?”
“He owns the Outlaw Train. He’s a smart man, Raintree.”
“Why did he name you Anubis?”
“Are you the one who embalmed the Tennessee Kid here?”
“I am. And the others we’ve got inside the train.”
“The Outlaw Train is full of dead people?”
“There’s a few. And parts of others. Bones and preserved hands and feet and such. And relics of other kinds…guns, knives, clothes, hats, boots. Folks like to see such things, you know, if they have something to do with a famous outlaw. We got the pitchfork that was used to stab the life out of Curly Drake, the gunfighter who killed that bounty hunter and his whole family. And we’ve got a flattened bullet that was dug out of the wall of the Blood Bucket Saloon over in Denver after it had passed through the skull and brain of Barrett Hampton, the famous hangman from Judge Shriver’s court down in Texas.”
“I’d like to see those things.”
“Then you come see the Outlaw Train. I’ll look for you there.” Anubis reached beneath into a pocket on the side of his flowing, baggy shirt and produced a small card he handed to the boy. It was a pass for free admittance. On its back was, in small type, a listing of several of the associated featured attractions.
Jakey read it closely for a moment. “It says here that you have the jar with the head of Big Harpe the murderer. But that can’t be right.”
Anubis immediately looked nervous. “Why not?”
“Because I know the man whose family has that jar. It’s the man who lives in this house here, the man who owns them cats. Our town marshal, Ben Keely.”
“He went to Kentucky, you said?”
“Yep. Some time after his father died. Went back to see his kinfolk.”
“Well, Percival—that’s Raintree, Percival Raintree—he went to Kentucky a while back for the very purpose of finding the family who owned that relic. And he did find them. And became the new owner of Harpe’s head. Or what little remains of it.”
“They sold it to him?”
“We’ve got it, so I reckon they did. Hey, son, is your family at home?”
“Yes. Why you ask?”
“I was hoping maybe your father might have some whiskey about the place and you might share a little of it with a passing stranger.”
“My pa wouldn’t let me share his whiskey. But I know where somebody else’s whiskey is.” Jakey pointed at Ben Keely’s house just beside the unmoving wagon. “There’s a bottle on Ben’s shelf. Only a little left in the bottom of it. But with Ben being gone I don’t figure there’s any reason you couldn’t have it.”
“You got a key to the place?”
“Ben left me one when he asked me to tend to his cats.”
“Well, I don’t think the Tennessee Kid here will mind sitting out here alone for a little while.”
Jakey eyed the seated corpse while Anubis climbed down. “So it’s true that the Tennessee Kid lost one of his legs, I see.” Until just then the boy had failed to notice that the propped-up corpse indeed was one-legged, the trouser leg on the left side cut off just below the hip area and stitched shut.
“Yeah, it’s true,” Anubis said. “He died a hard death, that boy did. Holed up in an old farmer’s house, shooting it out through an upstairs window with some law in Texas, and never did see the farmer’s half-wit boy creeping up on him with the stove-wood axe. The half-wit took that leg off at the hip with one swipe. Axe was keen as a razor, so goes the story. Well, when the Kid got chopped he reared up in pain right there at the window. What he didn’t know was that a Texas Ranger had managed to climb up on the roof of the porch that that window looked out onto. The Ranger jammed that shotgun through the window and blowed off the face of the Kid.” Anubis paused and smiled. “Then, the story goes, the half-wit fussed at the Ranger for having made such a mess. Said his mama would holler at him for letting his room get all bloodied up.”
“Huh. How’d you end up with his corpse, if that’s really the Tennessee Kid?”
“I didn’t. It was my partner, Raintree. He has a touch for getting hold of what he wants to find. And a knack for tracking down those who have it. I mean, he tracked me down, and he managed to track down your marshal’s family in Kentucky, and get that Harpe’s head jug from them. Just a skill he’s got.”
“How do you know this corpse is really the Tennessee Kid? Or that the jug of bone ain’t just full of animal bones or such?”
“I…I just know.”
“You’re taking your partner’s word for it, you mean.”
“You have an impudent tongue in your head, son.”
“I know I do. Sorry. But I can’t help wondering how you know what you are showing is real. My pa always says that showmen are mostly storytellers, by which he means liars. No offense. It’s why he ain’t allowed me to go see the Outlaw Train. He says nobody should hand over money to see a bunch of fake corpses and doodads and such.”
“Well, now that you’ve got that pass, you can come to the train without your father being out so much as a nickel. So I’ll expect to see you there. Now, can we go in and find that whiskey?”
“Yeah. But I’ll warn you, there ain’t much left in the bottle, as I recall it.”
“A little is better than none. Come on, son.”
They walked to the house of Ben Keely, and Jakey Wills turned the key in the lock. No more than a minute later, Gypsy Nicholas Anubis was seated in the corner of Keely’s front room with a glass of whiskey in hand, enjoying it along with the prospect of finishing off what still remained in the bottle.
Jakey, a little nervous because he’d let a stranger, without permission, into the home of a man who had trusted him, fidgeted in his seat a few minutes while Anubis drank, then began pacing around the small living room, looking at the handful of books on Ben Keely’s shelves.
“Here’s one called Well-Known Bad Men of the Frontier,” he announced as he pulled it down from the shelf. “Let me see here…” Jakey thumbed through it, found the index, and scanned. “Yep. There’s something here about the Harpes. ‘Big and Little Harpe,’ it says. Which one’s skull bone do you have? I forgot.”
“Big Harpe. He got killed and beheaded in Kentucky. His brother died later. Somewhere down in the lower Mississippi River country, I think.” Anubis took another sip of whiskey and smacked his lips. “Not bad whiskey for a backwater lawman to have on his shelf. I’m going to finish off this bottle, son, and thank you for it.”
“Well, you’re welcome, because I don’t figure Ben is coming back. He’d have come by now if he was going to.”
“So how’s your town fixed for law, with your marshal gone?”
“We got a substitute. One of Ben’s deputies, name of Luke Cable. Does a right fair job, but lately he’s had some trouble. The county sheriff got gunned down in one of the saloons, and after they locked up the shooter, the man got the jump on one of the jailers when nobody else was there, and killed him right through the bars. Snapped his neck clean as a hangman, with his hands. Know who it was?”
“How would I know your local jailers, son?”
“I’m talking about the prisoner, not the jailer. It was one of the Nolan brothers. Scar Nolan. Or that’s what everybody believes. He claimed some other name. But that’s what you’d expect a wanted outlaw like Nolan to do, claim a false name.”
“You’re telling me Scar Nolan is locked up in your local jail?”
“No. He broke out. He took the key off the jailer’s corpse and let himself out. Got a horse and fled. The marshal has a posse out looking for him right now.”
Anubis rubbed his chin thoughtfully while thunder rumbled through the clouded sky outside. “Intriguing, boy. Absolutely intriguing! And a little worrisome.”
“Why worrisome?”
“I’d as soon not say. Suffice it to say he might have cause to be a bit unhappy with me and my assoc
iate. I have to wonder if he followed us here. I’ve had a feeling somebody’s been following us for a while now.”
“None of my business, I reckon, but why would Scar Nolan have something against two showmen?”
“Because we got something on the train that he most likely wouldn’t like us having.”
The man drank some more and the boy continued to restlessly pace about. As Anubis poured the last of Ben Keely’s whiskey into his glass, he eyed Jakey with one brow slightly raised. “Son, let me ask you a question. Have you heard any talk about a woman, kind of a fortune-teller or something, who is in your town right now?”
“There is a woman who’s held a meeting, talking to the dead kin of folks who came to it.”
“Hmm. What’s her name?”
“House, or Hoss, or something like that.”
“Heard any talk about her?”
“Joe Farner, who lives over yonder way a few miles, rode by yesterday and said something about her. Said she’s a real pretty woman.”
“Did he say she was a fallen woman? A whore?”
“No. But we didn’t talk for long. He was just riding through to visit some of his people further to the west.”
“We’ve run across that same woman before, Percival and me, while we travel. And she is indeed a fallen woman. Makes part of her money that way, part by pretending to get messages from the dead. And there’s a chance she’s not really named Haus. There’s a good chance her real name is Kate Bender. You’ve heard of her, I suppose?”
“I’ve heard of the Bender family who had that inn where they killed folks.”
“That’s who I’m talking about.”