by Cameron Judd
She had apparently moved quickly, because when he reached the back end of the alley and looked left and right, she was not to be seen. He stopped, slumped in disappointment, and muttered a few foul words softly.
“Oh well,” he finally said, a little louder. “I guess my luck’s bad tonight.”
Just then he saw, farther down, a movement at ground level. A cat, probably, or maybe a squirrel or dog…but when he looked hard, squinting, he saw the movement again. It was the bottom edge of a woman’s dress, extending out from around the corner of the rear of a building.
He chuckled, blessed his improving fortunes, and headed in that direction.
Oliver Wicks studied the sky and knew that what was coming was going to be worth seeing. He had an instinct for such things, and this, he was certain, would be no ordinary storm.
His eyes moved from the clouds to the familiar skyline of Wiles. If he was going to watch a storm, then he intended to do it from the best and highest vantage point he could find. Some danger from lightning, maybe, in doing that, but Oliver had defied lightning before, with no ill result.
He looked around a minute more, then with a curt nod made his decision. From the platform area of the Methodist church steeple, he could see the sky all around, and the far horizons, and still escape the worst of the rain.
Oliver trotted down the street, hoping no one would notice him, figure out what he was doing, and stop him. Grown people were funny like that, stopping boys from doing what they wanted to do, for no reason other than perceived danger.
Oliver reached the church without incident, and cast his eye on the strongly made trellis that ran up the east side of the white building. He went to it and began to climb, wincing against the new-falling raindrops that spattered his face.
Belle Hart had lived in Wiles for nearly a decade, and made her living in the same profession her late mother had followed in younger years. The old woman had hoped for something better for her daughter, but fate had not been kind. Belle, raised without a father by a woman who probably could not have identified the father anyway, had fallen into her mother’s line of work naturally, perhaps inevitably, and had made only two attempts to find a more acceptable line of work, once as a seamstress, once as a librarian. Both efforts had failed. Back to the street Belle had gone.
She’d traveled around some. Wiles lived up to its reputation as one of the state’s more sedate towns, the earthy lifestyles of Dodge, Abilene, and other cattle towns not being as prevalent. Even so, Belle usually found business enough in Wiles to maintain her living, but when times grew hard she’d never hesitated to move around to climes where sin was more welcomed. But in the end, it was always back to Wiles that she came. Back to home.
Standing at the rear of Hilbert’s Alley, she was startled to feel a touch on her elbow. Wheeling, she came face-to-face with Wilton Brand, who looked back at her in a state of surprise equaling her own.
“Mr. Brand, sir!” she said, giving him a big smile. Belle had mastered the art of the insincere smile years ago.
“Belle…I’ll be!”
“You were expecting someone else?” She chuckled in a friendly way as she said it.
“Well…I, uh…”
The smile faded as a realization came to Belle. Wilton Brand read it all in her face and knew he had to proceed diplomatically. A man didn’t want to turn the town harlot against him. Women who knew a man’s secret sins could do serious damage to that man’s reputation, especially in a town that prided itself on its high moral tone.
“Cat got your tongue, Mr. Brand?” She lifted one brow. “Or maybe it’s that Dutch outsider who’s run away with it!”
“ ‘Dutch outsider’…who do you mean, Belle?”
“You know who I mean, sir.” Belle’s mother had taught her to always maintain a certain formality with her clients, no matter how intimate she might be with them in the midst of conducting “business.” “I’m talking about that Haus woman. The new, young whore who is here to run old whores like me out of business.”
“I…I think I might have heard of her.”
“Heard of her! The hell! She’s the talk of this town, that strutting Jezebel is! Her name is everywhere, and God above knows she’s all but ruined my business!” Belle paused, breathing oddly, and Brand was surprised to see her chin tremble. She was growing truly upset.
“Belle, are you all right?”
“You were looking for her, weren’t you!”
“Of course not, Belle. I wouldn’t know her if I saw her. You know it’s you who I’ve always come to over the years. You and you alone.”
She smiled again, with effort this time. She had to wonder how any man who practiced paid-for fornication could profess any kind of faithfulness. At the same time, though, she sensed that in Wilton Brand she might at least have a sympathetic listening ear, someone she could talk to about her increasing unhappiness with the current situation in this town.
“She’s going to ruin me, Mr. Brand. Nobody wants the same old bag of bones when there’s something young and fresh around.”
“Pshaw! I came looking for you, didn’t I?”
“Did you? Or was you really looking for her?”
Brand scratched at his jaw and paced around the end of the alley. “Well, Belle? You going to see to a needful man or not?”
“Lord have mercy, I’ve about lost the humor for it,” Belle said.
“That won’t go in your line of trade, woman!”
“I know it. Just talking honest, that’s all.” Belle paused and studied Brand closely. He was looking past her, toward the front end of the alley, staring hard. “What are you looking at, Mr. Brand?”
“There was a wagon just rolled past, out on the street. Two men in the seat. One of them looked to be…I swear…he had a sign held in front of him, like he was gripping it, but he had a bag covering his whole head. And also, I’ve seen a lot of dead folk through my coroner work, and I swear, I believe this fellow was dead as stone…”
Belle put on a smile and stepped toward Brand. “Let me see what I can do to put your mind onto something different. How much have you had to drink, anyway, seeing images of dead men with sacks over their heads riding down the middle of a street with a storm coming on?”
Brand looked past her again, and shook his head. “No. I believe I’ve changed my mind. Here…I’ll give you some money anyway, for your time. I got to go see what that was. I’m sorry.” He dug a small bit of cash from a pocket and tossed it toward her, then headed at a near run up the alley toward the street.
Brand reached the street just as lightning filled it with light. A few drops of rain pattered down, big, thick drops that hit the earth with a dull splat.
There it was, down the street a short distance…the wagon with the two men aboard. As he trotted in that direction, Brand kept his eye on the man on the rider’s side of the wagon bench. No sign of movement he could see, even when the rain heightened a bit.
As the rain picked up, the wagon’s driver steered toward a space beneath an expansive overhanging balcony where he and his silent companion could escape the rain. Brand hesitated, loath to intrude himself with a stranger, but his curiosity was so strong as to drive him on. He approached the wagon from the rear, then deliberately coughed to alert the driver of his presence.
Nick Anubis looked across his shoulder and saw Brand. “Good evening, sir,” Anubis said. “Is this your dry space we’ve intruded into?”
“No, sir, not at all. Devilish bad weather, eh?” Brand replied, coming forward and putting out his hand for Anubis to shake. As he shook the Gypsy’s hand, Brand found himself able to get a clearer view of the figure at his side, and to read the sign in the figure’s lap.
“Good Lord, sir, is that in fact the infamous Tennessee Kid?”
Anubis grinned. “Well, sir, that is what the sign says. And indeed it is.”
“How would you come to be riding down the street in Wiles, Kansas, in the dark with a storm building, with a dead outlaw
by your side? And why is that cloth over his head?”
“Well, sir,” replied Anubis, “I am riding with my friend Tennessee here for the very purpose of attracting attention just like what you are giving us. The weather is just an unplanned interference. I am part of a traveling exhibition…I should say, me and my dead outlaw friend here are both part of a traveling exhibition…one that is parked at the side track back yonder way, outside of town. The Outlaw Train, we call it.”
“‘We,’ you say…I have to doubt, sir, that your dead friend there calls your ‘Outlaw Train’ by any name at all.” Brand chuckled at his own joke.
“You are right about that. The ‘we’ I referred to is me and my professional associate, the founder of the exhibition. The principal in our business is the man who conceived the whole idea in the first place and collected the first exhibits…Percival Raintree. Quite a planner, quite a natural showman. He ran the show by himself until he brought me in to provide my special expertise toward the cause.”
“What is that expertise, sir, if I might ask? Stirring up attention by hauling a corpse through town?”
“Much more than that, Mr…”
“Brand. Wilton Brand. Wiles County coroner.”
“Nicholas Anubis. Good to meet you,” the other said, putting out his hand for another shake. “Did you say county coroner?”
“I did.”
“An embalmer as well, maybe?”
“I’m not, though I had a little training in it. Never practiced it, though. Why do you ask?”
“That’s my line of work. That’s what I do for the Outlaw Train. I embalm dead outlaws. Embalm them to last. Forever, pretty much.”
Brand frowned, suddenly thoughtful. “I just noticed something there, Mr. Anubis—the Tennessee Kid here has only one leg.”
“That’s right. Chopped off by a half-wit while Tennessee was holed up in a house having his final standoff.”
“What about his face? Why is it covered? I asked you already and you didn’t say.”
“Mr. Brand, you should learn your outlaw lore a little better. You need to pay a visit to the Outlaw Train and let us educate you. The Tennessee Kid’s head is covered up because his face isn’t there anymore. It was shot off by a Texas Ranger with a shotgun. You, being a coroner, can stand to see such as that, just like I can. The public, though, they don’t take well to such gruesomeness.”
“May I…”
Anubis glanced around. Rain was falling harder now and the wind was still rising. No one on the street he could see. “Come on around to the other side.”
“Good Lord!” Brand exclaimed when Anubis lifted the mask. “I’ve seen damaged flesh before, but that’s the worst of it!”
Anubis nodded. “Yes, sir. Tennessee here took quite a bit of damage when that Ranger gave him the old lead shot. Quite a bit of damage.” He lowered the cloth.
“Wait…there’s something I want to see closer,” said Brand.
“Suit yourself.” Again the cloth went up.
Brand put a foot on the wagon and hefted himself up, drawing close to the ruin that was the Tennessee Kid’s shotgunned face. Anubis was surprised; typically, on the rare occasions members of the public had seen what was under the cloth mask, the impulse had been to flee in horror, not draw closer. Anubis was further surprised when he saw Brand’s nostrils flaring. The man was sniffing the embalmed flesh. And then, Brand reached up and touched it, pushing against the exposed meat.
“Mr. Brand, what are you doing?” Anubis asked.
“Mr. Anubis, sir, this is remarkable,” Brand said. “I’ve seen embalming of this sort, firsthand, only once before.”
“You’ve seen it before?”
“Yes.”
“Mummy in a museum?”
“Well, yes, but one other time, much more recently. There was a human leg, severed, found lying beside the railroad tracks east of town. That leg was mummified, and bore precisely the same chemical odor I detect in the flesh of this similarly embalmed figure here. A figure that, I must note, has only one leg.”
Anubis was at a loss for words. He looked fearful for a few moments. Brand read his expression.
“How recently did you come by the corpse of the Tennessee Kid, sir?” Brand asked.
“Er…quite recently, sir. Quite recently.”
“Then how did he come to be embalmed? The Tennessee Kid died upwards of two years ago, as I recall it. But clearly this corpse shows almost no sign of pre-embalming decay. If you obtained the body ‘quite recently,’ who did this remarkable job of preservation?”
“It was…I…Sir, why are you questioning me so closely? I feel like a witness in a court of law.”
“Mr. Anubis, may I ask you a question straight out?”
“Go ahead. Shoot.” While he spoke, Anubis put the hood back in place on the Tennessee Kid’s head.
“I have a theory, and I wish to ask you if this is correct. And I ask you in advance to take no offense, despite the fact my theory, if true, falsifies the story you have already presented.”
“It won’t be the first time I’ve been called a liar, sir. When you work in a showman’s trade, there are plenty who question every word out of your mouth.”
“Well, sir, here, then, is my theory. I believe that you did embalm this corpse, as you said. And I believe you have done so with a level of skill and technique that is perhaps otherwise unknown in the embalming profession.”
“Thank you.”
“But I also believe, sir, that this is not in fact the corpse of the Tennessee Kid. If it is the Tennessee Kid, it cannot be true that you preserved his remains ‘quite recently.’ It simply cannot be, given the date of the Tennessee Kid’s death.”
“What are you saying, sir?”
“I’m saying that I believe you are involved in a typical showman’s deception. I believe you obtained a body of some individual, embalmed that body ‘quite recently,’ to use your own phrase, and after that process was complete, decided—in consultation with your partner, no doubt—to transform the body into that of the infamous Tennessee Kid, so you could display it as such, for profit. So you shotgunned the face and amputated the leg, and disposed of the latter by throwing it off your ‘Outlaw Train’ while it was en route to Wiles.”
Anubis looked like a cornered rabbit. But he cleared his throat and quickly gained composure. “You are an imaginative man, Mr. Brand. After only minutes of conversation you have constructed an elaborate scenario explaining my involvement in a situation about which I know nothing. I’m not in the habit of dumping severed legs off moving trains, sir.”
“Well, it’s a mighty big coincidence, that leg turning up, preserved just like that body sitting beside you there, and you and your train in the county just at that same time.”
“Well, there’s some other explanation, my friend. I may not know that explanation, but I am sure there is one. Because I know nothing about that leg.”
But Brand was not listening. His attention had been caught by the sight of the beautiful Katrina Haus walking hurriedly down the boardwalk on the far side of the street. She was taking the full brunt of the rain, hair stringing down across her shoulders and the fabric of her tight-fitting dress clinging to her shapely torso.
Suddenly Anubis and the Tennessee Kid were no longer of interest. Without another word Brand left the sheltered area and splashed across the muddy street toward Katrina’s swift-moving form.
Just then the wind buffeted him, sweeping down the street from west to east. This was no ordinary wind, though; it was so strong as to nearly knock Brand off his feet. He lost his hat and saw it sail down the street, ten feet off the ground, until out of sight. When he turned again, Katrina Haus was climbing to her feet, holding to a nearby hitch post to keep her balance in the wind. She had been knocked off her feet by the powerful gust.
“Are you all right, Miss Haus?” Brand called over the howl of the wind.
Katrina seemed disoriented. Brand wondered if she’d struck her head on th
e hitch post when she fell.
“I’m…I’m fine, sir,” she said. Just then another, weaker, gust struck, and Brand saw what appeared to be an envelope blow out of her hand and dance down the wind as his hat had done.
“Shall I chase that down for you, ma’am?” Brand offered.
“No need, sir. But thank you. I doubt it can be found now. This wind is remarkably strong!”
“I’ve lived here long enough to know that such weather as this can lead to—” Lightning flared, a long flash that filled the roiling sky with brilliance like a bright noon.
Bess Keely marveled at the scarcity of saloons in this town. Not at all typical for a Western town. But at length she located the Redskin Princess, from whence Sheriff Crowe had been blasted off the mortal coil, and there purchased a cheap bottle of whiskey. She could not know, of course, that she was procuring for Dewitt Stamps a life-ruining poison up until his reformation…a poison of which he was now ready to partake again, despite years of stubborn resistance and sacred vows to the contrary.
Bess was a woman of the outdoors by habit, and had trained herself to be attuned to the weather without much overt concentration upon it. Her instinct told her that the storm coming this night would be significant, perhaps unusually so.
She pulled her hat low against the rain and wind and pushed on up the street, back toward the jail with Dewitt’s bottle tucked under her arm. She noticed a few other people moving about despite the storm—a very pretty young woman in a pale blue dress, who happened to fall when a strong burst of wind threw her off balance and at the same time yanked something out of her hand and blew it down the street.
Then Bess noticed something else: a wagon parked under a sheltering cover on the opposite side of the street. Two men sat on the seat bench, one moving around restlessly, the other still as a statue and holding a sign. And wearing a hood that covered his entire head. Very strange.
Stranger yet was the inner disturbance that the unmoving figure caused when she looked at him. Even though she could see nothing beneath the hood, she had an uncanny feeling of somehow knowing this man. It was unaccountable.
