The Six-Gun Tarot

by R. S. Belcher

  The Hierophant

  The banging on the door began just after sundown. Maude Stapleton, her hidden derringer at the ready, moved down the hall and reached for the door’s iron bolt.

  The pounding paused, then began again, louder.

  “Who’s there?” Maude asked through the door.

  “It’s me: Mutt!” the muffled voice called.

  Maude snapped the bolt back and turned the door key; the light of the living room spilled out onto the porch. The deputy stood there, looking tired and dusty from the trail.

  “Hello,” she said. “You look bushed. Please come in.”

  He started to, and then paused. “Maybe it’s best if I stay out here,” he said. “I don’t want to … make you uncomfortable.”

  She smiled. He noticed she looked weary too. She was dressed for the day still, in black, except she had freed her long brown hair. It was falling down her shoulders.

  “What?” she said, with a half smile.

  “Nothin’. You just look … real pretty is all. Beautiful.”

  He shook the thoughts out of his head as best he could with her standing there looking the way she did and smelling so good. “You and Constance, you have to get on out of town, now—tonight, if you can.”

  “What? No, I’ll do no such thing. What’s going on, Mutt?”

  “Look, I just got back a few hours ago and things might be getting real bad, real soon,” he said. “Please just do this, for your daughter, for me.”

  Maude sighed. “Mutt, I know that something strange is going on in town—you’d have to be a fool to not notice that if you lived here for more than a few months. But I have friends here, roots. Constance does too, and I don’t have anywhere else to go. I’m too old to try starting over again. Besides, I have a husband that still needs to be laid to rest. Thank you for your concern, but Golgotha is my home, and I’m staying, come what may.”

  He shook his head. “You’re a damn stubborn woman. Why you still up? I was worried I’d be waking you and Constance.”

  “Constance went to the church social with some of her friends. I didn’t want her to be cooped up in here with me any longer. She really wanted to go. There’s a boy there she fancies. I’m waiting up for her. She was getting walked home by her friends and this boy.”

  Maude saw the frown settle on Mutt’s face.

  “I’ll go fetch her,” she said. “Presently.”

  “I’ll go,” he said. “Stay put and I’ll get her home safe.”

  “No,” she said. “She’s my responsibility, not yours. You have a town to protect, and from the look on your face you have a long night ahead of you.”

  Maude turned and grabbed her coat from the peg next to the door. Mutt opened his mouth to protest and then thought better of it. He looked out into the darkness and down Rose Hill toward the lights of the town. There was a cluster of lights and a bonfire about where Dale McKinnon’s homestead was—the site of most of the dos like tonight’s social. Swarms of tiny lights clustered together against the dark.

  “Why, in tarnation, with all that’s been going on around here lately, didn’t they just cancel the damn social?” Mutt said, shaking his head.

  Maude closed the door behind her, but did not lock it. She left the lantern inside burning as well. “Because people need to be people,” she said. “They need to remember that all the sadness, hard work, loss and suffering are only part of what life is about. Especially in a town like this. I’m glad the mayor decided to not cancel it.”

  Mutt snorted. “Harry decided.… Well, that explains everything then.”

  Maude walked down the stairs. Mutt followed. His horse, a beautiful paint dappled in dark colors, stood patiently at the hitching post. Mutt took the reins as Maude began to walk down the path toward town. He and his horse walked beside her.

  “Let me give you a ride down there,” he said, offering his hand.

  “Will you get going?” she said. “I have walked this path a thousand times and I am perfectly safe. Go be a hero. Go save the town!”

  “Here, take this.” He drew his pistol and handed it to her, butt first. “It’ll work a damn sight better than a kind word.”

  When he looked up, he was staring into the short, ugly snout of a small derringer. Maude’s gun was inches from his face.

  “No thank you,” she said. With a flick the gun vanished from her hand, like magic. He thought it slid up her sleeve, but he wouldn’t put hard money on it. “I’ll manage.”

  “Yeah,” Mutt said, “I’d hazard a guess you will.”

  She looked at his offered gun, frowning. “Guns are like men—only useful for a little while. They can go off at a moment’s notice when you don’t want them to and they make a lot of foolish noise doing it. They tend to fail on you when you need them most. I do not rely on them,” she said.

  Mutt’s face split into a wide grin. He laughed.

  “But you, Deputy, you I think I will trust.”

  “Thank you. I won’t disappoint.”

  He holstered the revolver. “I’ll just hang on to her then. ’Spect I’ll need her here presently.”

  “Why is it a ‘she’?” Maude asked. “The gun? All guns? Why a female?”

  He grinned. “They always are; you know why.”

  They stood silent in the darkness. The purple curtain, dusted with a million stars, silhouetted them. Finally he spoke. “I got to go. The sheriff and the posse will be getting ready to ride. Looks like you got finding Constance and getting home well enough in hand.”

  “You knew what I was going to say, knew I wasn’t going to leave. Why did you come here, Mutt, really?”

  He pushed his hat back on his head and rubbed his rough chin. “Everyone else I really care about in this town is riding out with me tonight. From what Jon is telling me, we might all die. I wanted to see you one more time. In the little time I’ve known you, you’ve treated me good, more like a man and less like an animal than most folk. That means a lot in my book, and it’s a pretty short book. Besides, I kinda like you, if you haven’t noticed.”

  She laughed. It was a beautiful sound to his ears. “Those friends I was talking about here, Mutt, you’re one of them. You just assume I can handle this, take me at my word. That means a lot in the book I have too. Thank you.”

  He climbed onto his horse. Maude released his arm. She only then realized she had been clutching it. She paused. “Be careful.”

  “You git home quick with your girl, lock that door up tight and keep a fire going,” he said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Yes,” she said. “You will.”

  The horse turned and he disappeared down the path toward the glow of the town. Maude took a sip of air, centered herself as best she could remember and disappeared into the darkness, following the same rutted path, but traveling it her own way.

  Highfather tossed another rifle out of the cabinet to Dickey Welton, and followed it up with a box of shells. Then he handed Dickey a badge and a few loose cartridges.

  “All right, you are hereby officially deputized; get on out front with the others.”

  “What the blazes are these, Jon?”

  “Silver bullets. I’ve only got a few, and I don’t know if they will work anyway, but just in case.”

  Dickey had lived in Golgotha long enough to know better than to ask too many questions. He muscled his way past the crowd of men, and out of the office. Including the dozen already armed, deputized and getting their horses ready outside, Highfather had managed to draw on every able-bodied man in town he could trust and who hadn’t already disappeared. All told, the posse was twenty strong.

  All day he had seen wagons of frightened folks riding out of Golgotha, taking their chances in the 40-Mile. Highfather’s best estimate was that of the over 600 inhabitants of the town, about 150 were missing and another 100 or so, many of them Mormon families, had up and left already. It was hard to figure, though, how many had skedaddled and how many had been lost like Holly and Ear
l.

  The dawn had brought another mystery. The Paradise Falls was a shambles. Someone had wrecked it pretty damn good. There was broken furniture, overturned tables, smashed walls, blood and broken glass everywhere. The body of Malachi Bick’s son, Caleb, was in a bloody pulp on the floor of Bick’s demolished office. There was no sign of Bick, or the perpetrators of the destruction. Jon had ordered the place sealed until further investigation. Clay had boarded up the windows and doors for him.

  Highfather wondered for the hundredth time today how much of all this misery in his town belonged to Malachi Bick’s scheming. If Highfather managed to live through the next few days and had the time, he intended to track Bick down and ask him to his face.

  Jim slipped between the rumbling mass of the posse to make his way to Highfather.

  “I can go fetch Promise and be ready to ride, lickety-split,” the boy said.

  “Nope, I can’t spare you, Jim. I need you here, in town.”

  “Oh, come on, Sheriff! Don’t treat me like some dumb short-britches! I can handle myself!”

  “I know; that’s why I need you here.”

  There was commotion near the door to the jail. Most of the men in the office moved aside for Mayor Harry Pratt. A few grumbled and rolled their eyes at Pratt’s finery. Harry didn’t seem to notice.

  “What’s going on here? Rory Means said you found Holly. Is that true, Jon?”

  Highfather hated lying. He wasn’t very good at it. But in his days as Golgotha’s sheriff he had learned that sometimes the truth could be too awful, too damaging and, to put it bluntly, too much a damn waste of time. The sheriff sighed and gave the mayor the same raggedy lie he had fed to his posse.

  “Yes, Harry. We know where she is. A bunch of crazy Holy Rollers have her somewhere up on Argent. We’re going to go get her and I promise you I will do everything in my power to bring her back to you, safe and sound.”

  Harry Pratt was an excellent liar. He had made a life out of lies. He knew an amateur when he saw one. Jon was just too damn earnest to be any kind of liar except bad. Harry decided to let it sit for now and suss out the truth himself.

  “I’m going,” Pratt said. “Give me a gun.”

  “Mr. Mayor, no. I’m in charge of who gets a gun and a star in this town and I need you here doing what you do best—keeping the townsfolk calm, making sure the church social goes off tonight without a hitch, being all slick and politician-like.”

  Mutt was suddenly next to Pratt, up in his face, sneering with jagged yellow teeth.

  “Jonathan’s trying to give you a man’s out here, Harry,” Mutt whispered in a voice only the mayor, the sheriff and Jim could hear. “You ain’t no damn good in a fight; you ain’t no damn good at anything ’cept being a snake. He’s givin’ you a chance to kiss ass and suck up. Take it.”

  “When the hell did you get back?” Highfather asked the deputy.

  “Just did,” Mutt said, still staring into Harry’s reddening face. “We need to talk, Jonathan. Real bad.”

  Pratt’s color returned and his eyes became flints. Mutt had to hand it to the Fancy Dan, he recovered his cool quick. The words slipped out of the mayor’s mouth in as quiet a tone as Mutt’s incrimination had.

  “What the hell would you know about worth, you half-breed piece of garbage? You’ve never had a wife. No one loves you. Your own damn people spit on you. What the hell good are you, exactly?”

  “All right, that’s enough, both of you,” Highfather said, separating the two men. “We’ve got work to do. Harry, I need you and Jim at the social, just like we planned.”

  “Plan?” Mutt said.

  “Harry and I figured, since whatever this thing we’re dealing with is seems to be grabbing people when they are alone, having the social and getting as much of the town there as we can makes good sense. We can take a head count and see exactly how many and who have gone missing and who hasn’t and we can get everyone out of town a lot quicker if they are all in one place, in case any of these fools are looking to start hurting people tonight.”

  “The elders are on board,” Harry said. “We’ve got most of the Mormon population at the social and plenty of wagons, carts, buggies, horses and even mules to get folks away if we need to. But I still think I should go with you to get Holly.”

  Highfather shook his head. “This was your idea, Harry, and it’s a damn good one. But more than just an escape plan, we need to show the townsfolk that haven’t run off that everything is going to be fine.”

  “Is it?” Jim asked earnestly.

  Highfather scowled at the boy, and then continued. “Mutt and I will take the boys up to the squatters’ camp and roust ’em. I’m only taking a small group up the mountain with us. I want you and my acting deputy to coordinate the rest of the posse down here in town.”

  “Acting deputy?” Pratt said.

  Highfather handed a silver badge to Jim. The boy’s face lit up and for a moment the ghosts in his eyes were banished and he was a young man again.

  Pratt sighed and shook his head. “Just remember who you work for, ‘Deputy,’” the mayor said.

  Jim smiled and winked at Highfather. “I do, sir. I do.”

  “Anything goes wrong, anywhere, we meet back here, agreed?” the sheriff said. “Jim, you and Harry grab a rifle and some shells. Here, take these silver ones too.”

  “Silver?” Jim said, frowning as the sheriff dropped the rounds into his open palm.

  “Just do what the sheriff says, boy,” Pratt said as he, too, accepted the bullets. “Jon, you had damn well better explain all this to me and soon. The last time I saw silver bullets it was—”

  “I know, Harry,” Highfather said. “I remember too, but better safe than sorry with this crew we’re dealing with.”

  “You don’t know the half of it, Jon,” Mutt said.

  “Tell me on the way,” Highfather said, reaching for his hat. “Let’s ride!”

  A bloated, pockmarked moon leered over the cold shadows of the desert rocks as the posse ascended Argent Mountain along the narrow road. The desert heat of the rocks escaped into the purple night sky, like a soul slipping free of a corpse in the death rattle. The stars hid and the coyotes were silent.

  Highfather and Mutt exchanged tales in low voices while the six men accompanying them rode a few dozen yards behind them.

  “So this thing,” Highfather said, “this Ucktenner—”

  “Uktena,” Mutt corrected.

  “Sorry, this Uktena, this great serpent, is older than death. It can’t be killed and it’s mad at God for bringing life into the universe, and it’s going to destroy the world and this all starts here in Golgotha, now? Is that it?”

  “Close enough for a white fella, yeah.”

  “I miss rousting drunken cowboys. Holly was … not Holly. Maybe this Uktena is what got ahold of her. She changed Earl, turned him into something like her. You said Wynn told you Earl had been keeping company with a preacher staying over at the Reid place on the northwest slope?”

  “Yep,” Mutt said. “Earl and all the others who went crazy. You figure this preacher is behind what’s happened to Holly and the other folks in town who’ve been getting sick?”

  “It’s what we’ve got right now. You still got Earl’s Bible?”

  “Yeah. It’s in my bag. I was going to give it to you to look over, but then that jackass Pratt sent me off on a damn fool’s errand.”

  “Things have been kind of hectic around here,” Highfather said.

  “When ain’t they?” Mutt said with a smile.

  “How do you kill something that’s older than death?” Highfather asked.

  “With a power that’s more than mortal,” Mutt said. “Least that’s what I heard. Simple.”

  “Thanks, that really cleared things up.”

  The squatter camp was silent and dark. No cook fires burned, no songs, no sounds of banjos or mouth harps, no drunken brawls or squeals of pleasure. No laughter, no life.

  The lawmen rode slo
wly through the camp, past empty shacks and shanties. The only sounds were the night howl of the mountain wind running wild between the dwellings, the eerie rattle of pots and pans hung up on lines and the snap of fluttering canvas from vacant tents.

  “Where in blazes is everybody?” Highfather muttered.

  Mutt sniffed the air. “Not here. Not for a while. Let’s check the Mother Lode,” the deputy said.

  The two men entered Wynn’s bar with guns drawn. Highfather carried a lantern since the place was as dark as the grave. The Mother Lode was a shambles—tables overturned, chairs broken—but there were no bodies, no blood.

  “All right,” Highfather said, holstering his pistol. “Let’s get to the Reid homestead. I guess that’s where the party is.”

  Edward Gabriel Reid was another one of Golgotha’s mysteries. A prospector with a shady past, Reid arrived in town in 1856. He was the man who discovered silver up on the mountain they renamed Argent, and it made the drifter a gentleman of means. Reid’s partner, Malachi Bick, helped finance the opening of the Argent Mine and it made Bick’s family even wealthier than they already were.

  Reid, as the manager of the mine as well as owner, built a large, fine house on the southeastern slope of Argent, close to the mine if there was anything that demanded his attention. He married a beautiful Chinese woman, which caused quite the scandal at the time. He bragged that Argent had enough silver in its bosom to make every man in Nevada rich, sparking the boom that grew Golgotha virtually overnight. Reid was even eyeing the possibility of taking the mayor’s office away from the Pratt machine.

  There were other stories about Reid too, stories about things that had happened in his mansion—odd rituals and rites, lavish parties with bizarre, almost satanic excesses. The place was said to be haunted with the spirits of the men who had died in the mine due to Reid’s greed and impatience.

  In 1859, Reid vanished without a trace. His wife sold Argent Mountain to the Bick family a few months later, took her wealth and moved to San Francisco. The rumors said Bick had tried to buy Reid out and he wouldn’t budge. It was no secret that Malachi Bick’s enemies had a habit of disappearing.