The Devil's Breath

by R. R. Irvine

  Nodding, Graham stroked the shepherd’s muzzle. “How about calling him Shotgun?”

  Doctor Epperson laughed. “That ought to stick in Del Timmons’s craw.”

  ******

  Del Timmons ran both hands through his hair before pushing a callused forefinger against one nostril. He blew his nose viciously.

  Then he took out a grimy handkerchief and mopped his hands. Through it all, his sense of smell kept working, telling him that gun oil pervaded the air. It was a reminder that he had cleaned the shotgun twice already.

  “It doesn’t help,” he muttered, reaching out to touch the weapon. “It feels unclean.”

  Timmons pushed the gun away. For him, Jack Graham’s corrosive touch had forever tainted the steel. He could never use it again.

  Timmons’s hands clenched together. “Damn that man. He should never have come here. Outsiders ruin everything they touch. It was the same with my wife. An outsider touched her.”

  Timmons looked around the empty living room. “Frances,” he called. The name echoed in the house. “You’re with him now, aren’t you, Frances? Opening your legs for him in hell.”

  With a groan, he snatched up the shotgun and hurled it across the room. There was a snapping sound as it smashed into the bookcase that held his wife’s set of encyclopedias.

  “Serves you right,” he said. “It’s broken. I’ll leave it like that as a reminder of your broken promises.”

  Then he strode into the kitchen where he began searching for his work gloves. He fumed; he couldn’t find them in their usual drawer.

  “That neighbor woman,” he grumbled. “She’s come in here again and cleaned things up. The fool should know better. Ten years older than me if she’s a day, and she thinks she can move right into your bed, Frances.” Timmons laughed. “OK. If she’s hidden my gloves I’ll do what has to be done barehanded.”

  It was then he remembered one of the woman’s hiding places, the broom closet. And there he found Frances’s gloves hanging on a hook. They looked brand-new, although he knew for certain that she had used them for several months.

  “Women are mysterious that way. Soil doesn’t stick to them like it does us men. All except the dirt between their legs.”

  Tentatively, he inserted a hand into one of her gloves. It was a tight fit. His fingers moved slowly back and forth, testing, feeling for any residue she might have left behind. The leather was soft, as if her oils had kept it pliant. The second glove felt exactly the same.

  “There is justice in this world, Frances. Wearing your gloves will prove it. The blood will be on your hands, not mine.”

  Hands thrust out before him, Timmons pushed through the screen door at the back of the house. On the step he paused to raise the gloves to his nose. There was no memory of her perfume, or her sweat even. Gun oil pervaded.

  His lips turned up in a parody of a smile as he began moving across the vast yard. He paused beside the stake where he’d kept the dog tied. Frayed rope showed where the animal chewed it through to make an escape.

  Timmons stomped on the ground. “How do you like it, Frances? That damn dog wouldn’t even guard your grave.”

  Timmons stared down at the worn lawn. The area of the grave had settled an inch or so over the winter. Dog droppings were everywhere. So were flies.

  “How do you like it down there? Not much screwing going on now, not unless it’s the worms.” Timmons chuckled grotesquely. “I buried your lover on top, Frances, just the way I found you.”

  Timmons kicked at the sod and repressed the urge to dig them both up again.

  After a while, he glanced up at the mountains, but he didn’t see them. “That dog of yours, Frances. I took care of him today. He’s probably dead by now. God, I hope so. It would serve him right for nosing around my chickens, trying to snatch one for himself.”

  He stopped speaking to stare down at his. hands. His fists opened and closed. “That dog was dumb. He should have known I was on my way out to pick a plump bird for dinner. There’s only one possible explanation. He was deliberately trying to cheat me.”

  Timmons shook his head and continued walking. “I know what he was up to. He wanted to get back at me, Frances. He whined for days after I buried you. Tried to dig you up at first, but I beat that out of him. I told him you were nothing more than a bitch in heat.”

  A rough, grating sound spilled from his throat. “It felt good to shoot him. I blew the smirk off his face. A cockeyed face at that, one eye never knowing what the other was doing. Even at night, one of those eyes was always watching me.”

  Draining sinuses started Timmons coughing. He spat into the dirt. “What I should have done was shoot out those eyes, one after the other.”

  Inside the too-tight gloves, his fists writhed. Leather creaked as it stretched across his knuckles. His hands felt invulnerable, as if they were capable even of smashing through concrete.

  From deep in his throat came a noise, half growl, half whine. “Frances, what am I going to do without that dog?”

  His head swung from side to side as if seeking someone to answer him. “I was a fool. I should never have taken Graham’s money. Fifty dollars. But it’s a lot, a fortune for a mutt that never did anything but cause trouble. With fifty dollars, I can buy two dogs, three even.”

  His head shook slowly; his lips formed a silent no. “Another dog wouldn’t be the same. It wouldn’t be your dog, Frances.”

  “Frances!” The word boomed across the yard. “Your dog, Frances, after my chickens. He was doing it to spite me.”

  Timmons felt as if he were wading through heavy oil as he moved toward the coop. At his approach, the chickens intensified their clucking. It was near their feeding time.

  The coop was nothing more than a low shed, about five feet high and ten feet square, but more than big enough for the dozen birds he kept. Timmons unlatched the wire-mesh gate and then quickly ducked inside. He made sure the gate was closed and locked behind him before he began counting.

  Six chickens. He bellowed with rage. “That damn dog stole me blind.”

  Moving along the roost, Timmons caught the first bird easily. After that, the others flapped and scrambled in their mad attempt to escape him. But he pursued them doggedly, wringing their necks one after the other.

  9

  UP AHEAD, Graham spotted the two-headed pine he’d been told to watch for. It marked the beginning of his land. From now on these trees—spruce, fir, scrub oak, others he couldn’t identify—would be part of his regular world. They would, if need be, screen him from prying eyes, eyes in which he saw too much pity.

  He turned off the highway and onto a dirt road. After a good half-mile drive, he saw the glint of glass through the trees. Then he saw the house. Sight of it made him wonder if he hadn’t taken the wrong road. Because what he saw wasn’t the rustic cabin from his childhood memory. It wasn’t really a cabin at all, but more like a two-story chalet. Two stories in front with the back of the house sloping down to a single story, probably the original pioneer structure. The house would have been right at home in the more rural suburbs of Los Angeles.

  He shook his head. He’d been expecting something Lincolnesque, something made of crude logs with mud between the chinks. True, the chalet in front of him was built of timbers, but with the finesse of an architect who wanted to achieve a rustic grace.

  Graham pulled up as close to the front door as he could get in order to shorten the distance he’d have to carry the dog. When the Jeep’s engine died, he suddenly became aware of the wind in the pines surrounding the house. Apparently, Shotgun did, too, because his ears perked.

  A bird called, got an answer, and called again.

  Shotgun’s nose wiggled. He struggled to a sitting position on the seat next to Graham.

  “You must be feeling better.” Graham gestured with his hook. “That goes for me too.”

  Sight of the house had given him new hope. Maybe here his left hand would come around. Maybe he could paint again. May
be . . .

  The moment he stepped out of the Jeep the hairs on the back of his neck prickled to attention. A shiver wilted his newfound enthusiasm, replacing it immediately with a sense of foreboding. He sensed that he was being watched.

  He jerked around. To Graham’s surprise, Shotgun eased out of the Jeep. But in the shepherd’s condition, the hairs standing up along its back looked more like a cowlick than a sign of menace.

  Slowly, as nonchalantly as possible, Graham made a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree pivot, a full circle of reconnaissance. Nothing. No movement except for the wind. Yet the hairs on the back of his neck—and on Shotgun’s, too—the sensors that had kept both their prehistoric ancestors alive, kept telling him to be careful.

  But there was nothing to do but square his shoulders and cross the flagstones that served as a ground-level porch. Shotgun managed to limp alongside. Graham’s hand was already raised to knock before he caught himself: Why knock on his own door? Because it could always be the wrong house. A knock would be the safe way to go, even though there was no sign of life, no response to the Jeep’s noisy engine. Except, of course, the nagging feeling that he was being watched.

  His hook, which had been poised like a weapon, dropped to his side. He scowled. If old Lew was haunting the house, a good loud knock would warn him off, let him know that it was all right to leave now that someone was there to take good care of the place.

  He tapped on the door. The sound seemed to echo forever.

  The key fit perfectly. The door was already swinging inward when he noticed the leather bag nailed above the frame. About the size of a marble pouch he’d once had as a child, it was decorated in blue and white, Indian by the look of it. As he reached out to touch it, the feeling that he was under observation became stronger than ever. He whirled around, bumping into Shotgun. The dog yelped.

  “Sorry, boy.” He reached down to comfort the shepherd. In that instant, he saw movement, there beyond the first line of pines that ringed the house. He had to be suffering from fatigue, altitude, maybe even delayed shock from the dog’s operation. There could be no other explanation, because he wasn’t about to start believing in ghosts, although the bag over the doorway—an Indian medicine bag, he guessed—seemed to indicate that his uncle had been a man of strange beliefs.

  No doubt the bag was filled with peyote. Graham sighed, knowing he’d better get rid of the thing before Sheriff Fisk dropped by to arrest him as a dope addict.

  But first things first. He herded the dog across the threshold. Once inside, the animal seemed to relax and staggered over to a rug in front of the fireplace and curled up, its tail wrapped around its nose as if to shield its eyes from the light filtering through the cheerful yellow curtains over the windows.

  The lights, when Graham tried them, came on to make the room even brighter, not at all what he’d expected from his puritan uncle. The fact that the electricity was on came as a surprise, since he’d forgotten to contact the utility company. But then, maybe the current had never been turned off.

  He ignored the tenacious hairs on his neck and forced himself to study his new home.

  The main room rose the full height of the house to reveal open beams of rough-hewn pine. With no attic to contend with, a skylight could be easily installed. In fact, just about the entire rear slope of the roof, which faced east, could be glassed without much worry of a solar-oven effect. Only the morning sun would be direct and that would be pure light, certain to remain reasonably cool all year around at this altitude.

  The room itself was a good thirty feet square with small windows on three sides. Yet as inadequate as they were, the light they allowed was magnified by the lemony curtains.

  The room’s overall effect was spacious yet cozy, a feeling enhanced by warm furnishings, the largest of which was a massive leather couch, a worn mahogany-brown but with plenty of life left in it. The couch faced a rock fireplace large enough to hold a witch’s caldron.

  A pair of maroon leather chairs, mottled with age, flanked the couch. Together the three pieces of furniture formed a nook around the massive hearth.

  Even without a fire, the rest of the room seemed colder and less inviting. Shotgun, by placing himself in front of the fireplace, must have sensed that even before Graham.

  Beneath a window next to the front door was a plain, no-nonsense desk, old enough to have survived from pioneer days. The wood could have been oak, but Graham wasn’t certain because of its dark patina, obviously the result of years of careful polishing. The desk had been placed so that his uncle could sit there and see the road. The accompanying chair didn’t make such a prospect inviting, however. It looked like an instrument of torture.

  Graham tried the chair for himself. Surprisingly, it fit him perfectly. Even the rock-hard ladder-back gave his spine good support. He sighed, imagining his uncle sitting there, an old man alone, with few friends. Had he waited there for his nephew, hoping to see his last close relative before the end came?

  Graham jerked his head to shake free of the image. Instead, he saw something real, something moving in the trees outside. Then, as before, it was gone, with the only movement that of the thunder-heads piling up against the west face of the Uintas.

  He stood up. This time he was certain that he hadn’t been imagining things. He locked the front door. Maybe Timmons had followed him. Maybe the man wanted another shot at the dog.

  Phantom pains from his long-gone fingers told him that he was tense, too tense. It could have been an animal he’d seen, perhaps a deer in search of fresh grazing.

  He glanced over at Shotgun. The dog looked like he was asleep. Surely he’d bark if there was something out there, something that shouldn’t be.

  “Are you a watchdog?”

  Shotgun opened one eye, the blue one, and blinked.

  Graham, feeling a bit sheepish because of his continued nervousness, turned his attention back to the room. The plank floor, a dark brown similar to that of the couch, was spotted by two bright Indian rugs, both with red and blue thunderbird designs woven into unbleached wool.

  The walls were bare except for two pictures. The one over the fireplace Graham knew well. It was his, an eagle that had originally appeared in the national Audubon magazine. The painting itself had been his first big-money sale. At the time Graham had interpreted the purchase as a sign the public was finally coming to appreciate his work. Had he known Lew was responsible, the sale would have seemed like an act of charity.

  At the moment, however, the eagle did nothing to improve Graham’s mood. The opposite in fact, because the bird reminded him of just how good he had once been.

  The other picture, on the wall opposite the fireplace, was of Joseph Smith. To hang in the same room with the prophet of the Mormon Church was the highest honor Lew Graham had been able to bestow.

  More than ever Jack Graham felt ashamed of himself. He should have written; he should have been there when his uncle died.

  To escape the prophet’s condemning gaze, Graham stepped into the kitchen, which was dominated by an unfashionable white stove and refrigerator. The stainless-steel sink reminded him of KP days in the army. Even his phantom hand recalled the puckered feel of all-day immersion in soapy water.

  The plank flooring continued into the kitchen, where the walls were a contrasting white. More exuberant yellow curtains hung over the window above the sink. A woman’s touch, Graham thought. Probably Harriet’s, since Lew had asked her to marry him once, or so she said. Yet Graham’s father had always said his brother would never marry, because he was already married to the church.

  The bathroom came next, another pleasant surprise. Though small, it was modern, with tub and shower, a far cry from the aromatic privy Graham remembered from his boyhood visit.

  The bedroom was spartan, a bed and nightstand. Obviously Harriet hadn’t made it that far.

  His inspection complete, Graham decided it was time to unload the groceries. He was about to leave the bedroom when he heard Shotgun bark.
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  In the living room, the dog was up and alert. Somebody was poking around outside, Graham was certain of that now.

  Come to think of it, he hadn’t heard a car. That meant whoever it was had to be on foot, hardly a rational mode of transportation in the wilderness. Rational, of course, was the key word. Maniac came to mind, especially when applied to Del Timmons.

  Graham tiptoed over to the window. What he saw was an Indian, muscular, with a leathery face and long gray-streaked hair that hung down to his shoulders. A colorful headband surrounded his forehead. He stood at the edge of the clearing, maybe thirty yards away, calmly returning Graham’s stare.

  Graham lunged for the front door and pulled it open.

  “Who are you?” he shouted, but even as the words were out, the Indian moved off into the surrounding trees and disappeared.

  10

  GRAHAM WAS just beginning to relax when he heard an alien noise. At first he attributed it to the wind, but then, as it grew, he realized a car was coming down his road.

  He was in no mood for more unannounced company when he opened the door and saw the mayor’s car pull up outside. Harriet was sitting beside Benyon in the front seat.

  They got out and stood staring at Graham until he invited them inside. He seated them next to each other on the couch facing the fireplace, then took the hearth for himself, all the while wondering why the unexpected visit.

  Maybe now he’d get an explanation of what was going on. Maybe they’d tell him why everybody was so uptight. Then again, maybe he didn’t want to know. Why should he get involved? Still, he was willing to listen. It was better than worrying about Indians.

  But the mayor seemed in no hurry to come to the point. And judging from the look on Harriet’s face, the point was probably sharp enough to draw blood.

  Benyon, however, appeared content to reminisce about the old days when Moondance was booming.

  “How long ago was that?” Graham asked politely. He had to say something because Harriet wasn’t about to. All she did was sit there, staring at her lap.