A Congregation of Jackals

by S. Craig Zahler

  Beatrice turned away, her hands shaking; beads of sweat chilled her forehead and upper lip. She walked toward the house.

  “Run off, you two—scat,” he said to Joseph and Jesus; they barked and then ran past Beatrice toward the eastern wolds.

  When her left foot hit the second step, she heard Jim say, “Good-bye girl.” The moment Beatrice put her hand on the doorknob, a gunshot cracked across the night. Mary was silent.

  Jim escorted Beatrice home to her father’s house, the repeating rifle clutched in the hand with which he usually held her. He neither spoke nor wanted to be spoken to, but there were too many questions in Beatrice’s mind for her to remain silent for the duration of the entire twenty-minute walk.

  Once they were upon the central avenue of Trailspur and the sounds of civilization were audible, she asked, “What happened to her? How did she get like that?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “If a bear or some other animal did that to her, she would have bled to death.”

  Jim did not respond.

  “A person must have done that to her. It looked as if her legs had been amputated, like the way a doctor removes gangrenous limbs.”

  Very quietly he said, “I saw.”

  “Do you believe that it might have been Indians?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

  Beatrice, though nervous and agitated, realized the insensitivity of her inquiries and closed her mouth; she hooked her arm through his and walked the rest of the way in silence, allowing him to grieve.

  He deposited her on the front step of her father’s house; despite her ascension, he still towered over her.

  “Get in and bolt it,” he said. “And lock the windows. And open the door to your pa’s room so he can hear if something happens.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Have a look round.”

  Chapter Nine

  No Time for Eggs

  Theodore William Jeffries would certainly miss the breakfasts his daughter fixed for him, but as a widower of twenty-nine years, he knew how to scramble an egg and blacken some toast and fry up some sausages. Moreover, it was long past time for that bookish woman to devote herself to something other than reading, writing and the old man who had raised her up.

  He walked out of his bedroom rubbing his bad hip, briefly wondering why his door was ajar. He slid his feet into his leather slippers and proceeded down the hall, scratching his side through his blue pajamas.

  T.W. inhaled the odiferous emanations that wafted up from the kitchen and was instantly famished. Leaning on the banister far more than he had a decade ago, he descended the stairs. His slippers scuffed across the worn wood of the bottom landing, and hearing his approach, Beatrice turned to him. Her curly blonde hair, blue eyes, chin dimple and shape were so very much like her mother’s, he thought. What a tragedy the two of them never knew each other, except in that horrible moment of her birth.

  He castigated himself for his morbid ruminations and said, “Good morning.”

  “Good morning,” she replied.

  “Smells tasty.”

  “I shall have it ready in a moment.”

  “Thank you. Was there any particular reason that you opened my door last night?”

  A loud knock precluded her reply.

  T.W. recognized the familiar tattoo, turned from the face that might have been a window through three decades and called out loudly, “Is that you, Deputy?”

  “It is.”

  “Do we have an issue?”

  “We do.”

  “Does it trump eggs?”

  “Likely.”

  “Come on in and eat something while I get dressed.” He looked at his daughter and said, “Don’t let him eat all of it.”

  “I shan’t.”

  Sheriff T. W. Jeffries, a hand pressed to his aching left hip, hastened up the stairs toward his clothes, boots, badge and gun.

  Deputy Goodstead, a twenty-six-year-old Texan in blue with shiny boots and the blank face of a simpleton (though he was not one), chewed the crackling remainder of a piece of toast as he walked up the central avenue of Trailspur beside the sheriff.

  “What exactly has this fellow done?” T.W. asked as he slid the tongue of his belt through the brass buckle, wincing as the leather bit into his bad hip.

  “Unsettled some folks.”

  “How so? Has he said anything offensive? Threatened somebody?”

  “I don’t think so. He draws pictures.”

  T.W. pulled out his single-action six-shooter, swung the cylinder wide and saw that it was full. He closed it and slid the pistol back into the holster on his right hip.

  Straightening his hat, T.W. said, “He draws pictures?”

  “That’s what Rita said.”

  “Is this a prank?”

  “She wants us to talk to him. He makes her uneasy.”

  “An illustrator? This doesn’t trump eggs.”

  The two lawmen strode past Delicious Meats, Steinman’s Hats, Halcyon Hotel, Fine Tailoring for Ladies (and Men Too), the unnamed blacksmith alley run by a different fellow each month, Ed’s Barbershop, Big Abe’s Dancehall of Trailspur, Quality Chandler and the Trailspur Apothecary. They neared the raised wooden edifice that sat at the end of the avenue; beneath the overhang, depending from three ropes, was a sign engraved in elaborate script. It read,

  JUDGE HIGGINS’S MIGHTY FINE SALOON, OR SIMPLY—THE GAVEL.

  The sheriff’s eyes narrowed as he gazed upon the beast tied up to the front banister; he glanced at Goodstead, whose blank face had become blanker, and then back toward the creature.

  “Deputy. What am I looking at?”

  “Could it be a horse?”

  “I’m not putting any money on that.”

  T.W. had seen dead horses in far, far better shape than this sorry steed; the smell of it—a pungent combination of mulch and feces—chased away his morning appetite. On his right, Goodstead closed his slack mouth, which was a rarity, and swallowed dryly.

  The lawmen strode up to the horse, cautiously and slowly. Every bone of the beast’s body showed through its dirty white coat, the color of which only completed the illusion that this was not a horse, but an erect, living horse skeleton. Flies inched over its ribs and vertebrae; the hairs of its tail and mane were clumped together; its sides were brown and black with scabs from the spurs that had been relentlessly applied; a yellow crust of dried tears ringed its cloudy eyes.

  T.W. and Goodstead appraised the awful creature, their left hands clamped over their mouths and noses. The deputy pressed his right palm to the beast’s flank.

  “Don’t,” the sheriff yelled.

  The beast whipped its head around; Goodstead jumped back; the reins tied to the banister twanged taut; the mare’s mouth snapped shut inches from the deputy’s nose. The horse pulled on its tether, its cracked brown teeth revealed.

  The Texan stepped back from the beast. The cloud of flies startled into flight by the activity settled back to continue their survey of the horse’s crenulated hide.

  T.W. looked at Goodstead’s blank visage and said, “Don’t touch a mistreated horse unless it’s got its ears down and comes to you willing.”

  “I’m a fool.”

  Goodstead’s lack of inflection always made such comments inscrutable, though T.W. would not have deputized the man if he thought he was at all a fool. The Texan was just ignorant of certain things because he was young.

  “Let’s introduce ourselves to this illustrator,” T.W. said. He circumnavigated the maltreated and malefic mare, ascended the five steps that led to the swinging doors of Judge Higgins’s Mighty Fine Saloon, or simply—The Gavel, and was joined there by his deputy.

  T.W. said quietly, “From the looks of that animal, we’re dealing with a mean one.” The blank face opposite him nodded.

  The deputy put his right palm to his revolver and pulled down the brim of his blue hat with his left, an affectation T.W. did not begrudge
the young man. The sheriff threw the doors wide and entered; the doors swung outward and when they returned the deputy came with them.

  T.W. looked past the mahogany bar James Lingham had built (behind which Rita stood), past the bagatelle tables that entitled the establishment to the adjective “fine” on the sign outside, past the spittoons (which seemed less fine) at which Jeremiah, Frederick and Isaac sat gestating expectorations and to the general seating area in the back that could support ninety customers, but now held only one small man in a burgundy suit and matching bowler hat. The fellow was hunched forward, drawing on a wide piece vellum with a fountain pen.

  “He’s little,” Goodstead said.

  “Men aren’t happy about being small. That horse can tell you.”

  The lawmen strode past the oldsters (each of whom spit a salutation and nodded politely) and entered the general seating area. The little illustrator in burgundy rolled up the sheet of vellum. T.W. sniffed the air and smelled flowers and wine.

  “He’s wearing perfume,” Goodstead said as they closed the remaining yards.

  “Good afternoon,” T.W. opened.

  The diminutive man looked up from under the rim of his burgundy bowler hat. His eyes were small pebbles; his mouth was a tiny slit beneath the big nose that dominated his face. T.W. was not sure if it was a line of ink or a mustache that paralleled the mouth slit. The sheriff guessed that the man was thirty, but could have been off by a decade either way.

  “You have question,” the man asked with a thickly accented voice; the inflection made it seem more like a statement than an inquiry.

  “Are you a Frenchman?” the sheriff asked.

  “Oui.”

  “Is that your horse outside?”

  “She is mine.”

  “That mare needs a bath and some food.”

  “Thank you for advice.” The little Frenchman stared at T.W., scrutinizing his face. He said nothing more; he just sat there looking up, blinking far less regularly than the lawman did.

  “Go take care of that now,” T.W. said. “Your mare almost bit the deputy and is mighty unpleasant to look upon. She needs some oats and a bath. And perhaps a new owner.”

  “And maybe a rifle,” Goodstead added.

  “Go tend to her,” the sheriff ordered.

  “She was bad. I teach her lesson.”

  “How long have you been teaching it to her?”

  “Three years.”

  T.W. wanted to slap the man, but perhaps in his culture there was no consideration for the feelings of animals.

  “Go take care of that horse. Now.”

  “I am busy,” the fragrant Frenchman said.

  “You don’t look busy.”

  “You have interrupted me.”

  Goodstead looked at T.W. and said, “Is he telling us to scat?”

  “Show us that drawing you rolled up when you saw us coming. I’d like to see what requires your precious time.”

  “You will not appreciate.”

  “We don’t appreciate your perfume, but we’re smelling it just the same.”

  “Eau de Cologne.”

  “Was that a threat? Did you just threaten me?” To Goodstead he said, “You heard him threaten me.”

  “That is untrue,” the little man said, coolly.

  “Are you saying that I’m not fluent in French?”

  “I did not threaten.”

  “Show us the drawing,” T.W. said, putting the palms of his hands upon the table; Goodstead set his left boot upon the chair next to the diminutive Frenchman and leaned forward like a bird of prey.

  “You will not appreciate.” The little man was not at all rattled by the experience. He unrolled the paper; his little ink-stained fingers clambered across the vellum like the legs of a crab. The lawmen leaned in.

  T.W. looked at the drawing, and at first he did not understand what he was looking at—the thousands upon thousands of lines swirled with such density and fluidity that the confluence confused his eyes. Then he realized what he was looking at, snatched it from the table and handed it to Goodstead.

  “Have Rita burn that.” The deputy nodded, took the vellum from him and carried it toward the bar. “Roll it up before you give it to her. She doesn’t need to see it.” Goodstead rolled up the illustration as he walked.

  T.W. leaned in close to the Frenchman and said, “You ever do anything like that yourself?”

  “Burn other man’s possessions?”

  T.W. wanted to put his fist through the little man, but he stayed his temper.

  “What is wrong with you? Why would you draw something like that?”

  “I draw many things.”

  T.W. swept his left leg beneath the chair the little Frenchman sat on, dumping the man to the floor. The toppled foreigner stood up and straightened his jacket.

  “Don’t bother sitting. Ride out of Trailspur. If I see you again, I’ll throw you in jail for being a public nuisance and I’ll put down that pitiful horse of yours myself.”

  “The door is that way,” Goodstead said, pointing his left index finger toward the exit, his right palm pressed firmly to the butt of his holstered six-shooter.

  The Frenchman put his bowler hat back on his head and, without another word, left the saloon.

  “I can still smell him,” Goodstead remarked. T.W. nodded.

  When T.W. returned to have the late breakfast he had earlier missed, he looked at the biscuits and gravy and the pork chops but saw only the thick black lines of an illustration that detailed a young girl buried up to her neck in the sand, scalp bereft of hair, nails driven into the top of her bald screaming head.

  He did not eat.

  Chapter Ten

  Pickles and Ribbons

  Pickles yawned. He was usually asleep by eight o’clock (not much happened at night in Billings, Montana Territory), but tonight his errands had kept him out until ten. He scratched his bushy hair, contemplated what he was going to say before he said it (that helped him talk to white folks), raised his left hand and gently rapped upon the hotel door.

  “Who’s knockin’?”

  Pickles immediately forgot what he had intended to say. He looked at his old boots as though they might have the answers, but they did not. He then thought about how old these boots were (seven years—a third his own age) and how he would like some new ones with rattlesnake skin and pointy toes like the cowboys wore.

  “Is that you, you dumb nigger?”

  “It’s Pickles,” he said. “I ain’t dumb.”

  “You get what we sent you for?”

  “I got them, yes, though it took a while to find them and I got lost twice.”

  Pickles heard footsteps within the apartment; the tumblers in the lock squeaked as the key was turned within it.

  “I gots to oil that,” he reminded himself as he had the last time he came to this apartment (and the time before that).

  The door opened. Before the errand boy stood one of the sun-bronzed twins who tenanted this room: a tall man with oily black hair that fell to his shoulders, a prickly beard, mean eyes and a gun in his right hand more often than not.

  The errand boy asked, “You the one that can talk?”

  “Come in.”

  Pickles walked in; the man shut the door and twisted the key in the lock. Seated on the bed was the talker’s duplicate, Arthur, a small mandolin without any strings resting in his lap.

  Laid out on the three cots Pickles had brought up on Tuesday were the mule skinners who also tenanted this room; beside the youngest one laid a fat woman who had her face pressed down into a pillow and another pillow atop her head (presumably put there to muffle her snoring).

  The errand boy did not like a single person that stayed in this suite, but he was polite regardless. Money from a rude man spends just as well as the stuff from nice folks. Pickles glanced furtively at the slumbering woman, hoping to glimpse something pink, but was frustrated by the dingy blanket and dingier fellow that clung to her as if beached on an island.
/>   The talker said, “Don’t get any ideas. She ain’t goin’ with no nigger. Not for any money.”

  “I was just lookin’. She just layin’ there.”

  “Don’t talk back.”

  “I ’pologize.”

  There was a gentle knock. The twins pointed their guns at the door; they were quicker than mosquitoes when they aimed their weapons.

  “Who’s out there?” the talker asked.

  “Alphonse.”

  To Pickles, the talker said, “Let him in,” though neither he nor his sibling lowered the barrels of the guns they had pointed at the door.

  “Don’t shoot me none by accident,” Pickles admonished.

  The errand boy turned to the door, twisted the key in the lock and opened it wide. The small foreigner in the burgundy suit and bowler cap was back. He walked past Pickles, a roll of papers wedged in his right armpit.

  “Shut the door and lock it,” the talker said to Pickles. He obeyed. The twins holstered their guns.

  To the foreigner, the talker said, “You get a good look at ’em?”

  “Oui.”

  “You drawed ’em all like Quinlan tol’ you? James and his fiancée and the sheriff?”

  “Oui. And deputy. And minister and church.”

  “They accurate?”

  “Very much,” Alphonse replied. He handed the bundle of vellum to the talker.

  The man unrolled the parchment and looked at an illustration of a pretty white woman with curly blonde hair and an adorable dimple on her chin. The talker showed the illustration to his mute brother.

  “James did well for himself, that big oaf,” the talker said. Arthur stared at the illustration, his face inscrutable. To Alphonse, the talker said, “She’s real beautiful.”

  “Today,” the foreigner replied.

  Pickles did not understand the foreigner’s answer, but the talker did and nodded.

  “Why is nigger here?” Alphonse asked, pointing to—but not looking at—Pickles.

  The talker said, “I was goin’ to settle him when you come up. Arthur’s concerned ’bout him and how he’s always lurkin’.”

  “Oui.” Alphonse turned and looked at Pickles.