The Shotgun Arcana (57 page)

The exact casualties of Black Rowan’s pirates and the Green Ribbon Tong was unknown, since these mysterious criminal fraternities recovered their own dead and kept their own councils as to their losses. Both groups were no more than whispered legend by the time the federal troops arrived.

The ladies of the Dove’s Roost lost their home in what was finally described as a series of bomb blasts set off by Zeal’s crew. Fortunately, the majority of the fine families of Rose Hill and the respective church denominations were happy to put the girls up, as they did the boarders and proprietors of Scutty’s boardinghouse. Malachi Bick and his bank put up the money to rebuild the ruined blocks of the road that bore his family’s name. There was no talk of loans, or repayment. Many suggested that after what had happened to Bick’s daughter and to poor old Auggie Shultz, the infamous businessman was changed.

Black Rowan also began to channel her considerable resources into rebuilding the town as well, making sure everyone in Golgotha knew she intended to stay for a spell.

*   *   *

Harry Pratt stood at the window of the mayor’s office, looking over the massive construction and rebuilding going on over on Main Street. It was late morning and he was waiting for his next appointment to arrive. He turned back to his desk and found Black Rowan standing there, alone.

“Rowan, this is an unexpected surprise,” Harry said. “How may I be of service to you? Please understand I do have an appointment in just a few moments. I hope you understand but…”

Rowan smiled and waved a dismissive hand. “No, no trouble, Harry. I know you’re a busy man. I just needed to speak to you about something. It won’t take but a moment.”

Harry gestured to a chair. Rowan sat and then he did as well. “Go on, please.”

Rowan looked Harry squarely in the eye. “I know, Harry. I know about you and James Ringo. I know you two are lovers.”

Harry laughed. “Really, Rowan, where did you hear such a scandalous rumor?” His guts were full of ice, and he began to taste the copper of fear in his mouth, but all of his political instincts took over.

Rowan crossed her legs and smiled. “Harry, you are an excellent liar, but I have more than accusation. I have proof. Enough proof to ensure that you lose the election next year, are banished from the church and most likely run out of Golgotha forever.”

“And what do you intended to do with this so-called proof?”

“Why nothing, yet,” Rowan said. “Nothing until I need to. I just want you to understand, Mayor Pratt: You work for me, now. And you and I are going to have a very long and very profitable association, which will be of mutual benefit and benefit Golgotha as well.”

There was a knock at the door. Colton Higbee and Harry’s eleven o’clock appointment opened the door.

“Mr. Mayor?” Higbee said, looking at Rowan as she rose from the chair.

“I was just leaving.” Rowan walked to the door. “Think on it, Harry. I’m sure we’ll talk again soon.”

Harry nodded sternly. “Yes,” he said. “We will. Count on it.”

*   *   *

Outside town hall, two men waited for Rowan. As she stepped out onto the stairs, the Scholar walked to her. “Did it go as planned, madam?”

Rowan nodded. “It did. I assume that Rony Bevalier and his son’s political machine were equally amenable to our implication that we had dirt on Harry Pratt that could hand them the election?”

The Scholar nodded. “Bevalier wants to negotiate, very eagerly I might add.”

“Then all our bets are covered and whoever wins the election, we win,” Rowan said, walking down Main Street. Her companions followed her.

“I don’t want to do this to Harry,” James Ringo said, keeping up with Rowan. He grabbed her by the shoulders, stopped her and spun her to face him. “Do you hear me, Rowan? I don’t want this!”

The Scholar began to reach for Ringo’s hand, but Rowan dismissed him with a shake of her head. “I understand, Jimmy,” she said, placing her hands on Ringo’s shoulder. “But trust me, this will all work out for the best, I promise you.”

“It better,” Ringo said.

Rowan kissed Ringo on the cheek. “Has your big sister ever let you down before?”

“No,” Ringo said sullenly. “But don’t hurt him, Rowan. I swear if you hurt him…”

“No, trust me,” Black Rowan said. “As long as we stick together, like family, Jimmy, there’s no way we can lose.”

*   *   *

Auggie awoke in his bed a few days after the riots to the stern and weary faces of Clay and Gillian looking over him. Gerta, her face still veiled, sat stiffly in her old rocking chair.

Gillian looked at Clay and then smiled. “Welcome back,” she said, kissing and hugging her husband. Auggie groaned at the squeezing but also chuckled. “Sorry,” Gillian said, tears welling up in her eyes.

“Aw, you ain’t gonna hurt that big German moose none squeezing on him,” Clay said. “You,” he said, nodding to Auggie, “are a lucky man. Looks like that fat you’ve been haulin’ about slowed the bullet down enough for me to cut it out and keep you alive. You’ll be right as rain.”

Auggie’s throat was very dry and he coughed as he tried to speak. “You cut it out?” he said. “Where is the doctor?”

“You’re looking at him,” Gillian said. “After all the mess with Tumblety, the town elders decided we needed a new doctor pronto, and once they found out Clay’s background they asked him to hang up a shingle.”

“Dr. Turlough?” Auggie tried to laugh, but he coughed and groaned instead.

“Serves you right,” Clay said. “Welcome back, Auggie. Don’t try any damn fool stunts like that ever again, you hear me?”

Gillian sat on the edge of the bed, next to her husband. He took her hand and held it tightly. “Please,” Gillian said. Auggie nodded, and managed to raise himself enough to kiss her. He looked over to Gerta in her chair.

“Hello, Gerta,” Auggie said. “Are you all right?”

Gerta pulled back her veil. Her face was pale and perfect, her scars faded to mere shadows. “I am glad you are back, Augustus,” she said, her accent an odd mixture of German and some other unknown quality. She looked at Auggie with bright eyes, but they welled with tears. “I’m glad Clay could save you.”

Auggie looked into the rejuvenated face of his dead wife. He knew Gerta well enough to know, even now, in this body, that she was keeping something from him, but for right now he was happy to be alive and holding Gillian. Whatever Gerta was holding back, it could keep.

*   *   *

The majority of Zeal’s cult was dead or in federal custody. About a dozen members of the thirty-two Teeth of Cain had managed to escape Golgotha. The prisoners, including Snake-Man, Professor Zenith and Batra, were taken away in chains with special instructions by Secret Service Agent Warne to keep them under heavy guard until they reached San Francisco by train. Zeal himself vanished and was believed to be dead, but his final fate remained a mystery.

*   *   *

“Well, I’d imagine that this will be a big damn feather in your cap now, won’t it, Agent Warne?” Highfather said to Kate. The two of them were on horseback overseeing the federal troops loading up the prisoners onto locked wagons for the short ride to the train depot over at Hazen. “Bet they’ll give you a raise and a steak diner to boot for all this.”

“I’d settle for a decent bathtub and about three days of sleep,” Kate said, smiling.

“I’m losing a hell of a deputy,” Highfather said. “Damn good shot too. And good company to boot.”

Kate looked at Highfather. He was a mess, still busted up from the torture at Zeal’s hands, and exhausted, having not slept a wink since the riot a few days ago. She didn’t want to look away from him, but was afraid not to. Her breath caught in her throat, but she had trained herself to hide that.

“Please stay, Kate,” Highfather said. “I got nothing to offer you but more of the same. This job will kill you, or drive you crazy, but for the first time, in a long time…” He stopped himself and sat still.

She smiled. “When you tossed me that star, without a lick of hesitation … Only one other man has ever put that much faith in me, Jon. I’m riding these prisoners over to Hazen, then I got a few days in San Francisco, giving some reports no one is likely to believe, then I’m off to my new post.”

Highfather set his jaw, blinked and then nodded. “Well, they are damn lucky to have you, is all I can say.”

“You should know,” Kate said, grinning. “It’s here.”

“What?” Highfather said.

Kate nodded.

“I convinced my bosses in Washington that we need someone here in Golgotha. This place is worth keeping an eye on. And I’m going to need a cover. I figure deputy will do. Unless you want that star of yours back, in which case you’re going to have to wrestle me for it.”

Highfather laughed. “No, thank you,” he said. “You earned it.” He offered her his hand in a handshake. They both held it a second too long.

“Let’s get these bastards on the road, Deputy,” Highfather said, pulling his hand away. Kate nodded and gestured.

“After you, Sheriff,” she said.

*   *   *

Malachi Bick, bruised, bloody and exhausted, found Mutt on Main Street the night the U.S. troops rode in. Mutt was working with a crew of volunteers to search the debris of several burned-down buildings looking for survivors or bodies. The deputy, his face a rainbow of old and new bruises, glanced at Bick and then turned back to his work of moving aside broken wooden beams.

“What the hell you want?” Mutt said.

“I need to talk to you about the skull,” Bick said.

“Talk,” Mutt said. “It ain’t none of your nevermind. I pulled it out of that cave so Zeal and Snake-Man couldn’t git it and I don’t intend to hand it over to you jist because your family owns every damn thing in sight, Bick. I don’t trust you any more than I trust them with it.”

Bick nodded. “You’re right.…”

“And if we have to scrap about it … What?” Mutt said. “I hear you right?”

“I … My family was given a duty to guard these lands, to protect the terrible secrets buried here. Along the way I lost my trust in people. Started using them, like pawns. A means to an end. If anything good came out of this, it was my daughter. I need to learn to trust again. So, I’m trusting you with the skull. You kept it out of the hands of people who wanted to use its power and I’m going to trust you to keep it safe.”

“Well,” Mutt said, dropping the beam he had been wrestling with, and turned to face the saloon owner. “Ain’t that just pretty as a picture. How goddamned magnanimous of you, Bick. You look around here. Look at all this. This is as much your doin’ as it was Zeal’s.

“Man like you, with all your money and power to shield, you might not know this, but us folks not quite so blessed have a little experience with this—hatred is like a shotgun. It’s powerful and it rips apart everything in its path—good, bad or indifferent.

“You gave these people plenty of damn good reasons to hate you, to pull the trigger on the shotgun, and once they tend to their dying and bury their dead, they will have a few more reasons. So I’m all-overish that you decided to trust me, and I know you think you’re doing good here, but from one despised son of a bitch to another, don’t expect any sympathy to be coming your way. I’ll keep the skull safe and I’ll keep my own company on who knows about it.”

Bick was silent. He and Mutt locked eyes for a long time. “See that you do, Deputy,” Bick said, and walked away.

*   *   *

Sunday morning, two days after the riot, the survivors of Golgotha’s brush with Ray Zeal’s madness were mostly in their churches giving thanks for sons and daughters returned, leaders freed safely and an end to the carnage and destruction. Many mourned the passing of loved ones and friends. Songs and hymns, carried by voices raised to the clear, bright skies above, drifted across the damaged town. Songs of praise and celebration, songs of hope rising up from loss.

Jim found Constance sitting on a pile of lumber behind the ruins of the Paradise Falls. He limped over toward her, smiling.

“I heard you got back,” Jim said. “Sorry I couldn’t find you last night.”

“Get off that leg,” Constance said. She patted the plank she was sitting on. Jim joined her.

“How you feeling?” he asked. “You must be bushed after that ride?”

“I slept some,” she said. “Had a bad dream, and then I didn’t want to sleep anymore.”

“Oh,” Jim said. “One of those dreams?”

Constance nodded. She looked at the ground, and then to Jim.

“I’m sorry I lied to you when we had the picnic,” she said. “You’re right, it’s an awful way to begin anything, and I do want to begin something with you, Jim. I didn’t share with you about my mother and my training, because … well, because every person in my life has let me down, except my mother. My father was a selfish man; he only cared about himself and what people thought of him, of us. He tried a few times to be a good father, but he just wasn’t that good a person, in general.

“My mother taught me to keep our secrets well; she said to think of the truth as a weapon that could be used to hurt us. And I know why she said that, why Gran Bonny told her that, but I don’t want to keep anything between us. I like you, Jim, and I’m sorry I lied.”

“It’s okay.” Jim put his arm around her. “Your mom is right, what you two can do, your dreams and all, it’s dangerous for you. Anyway, you came clean and told me all that stuff when you were trying to keep me from dying in that tent by the side of the road. Thank you. I promise you I’ll never tell a soul, ever.”

“How did you know I was lying to you?” she said. “You said it right after you got stabbed.”

Jim grinned. “Oh, well, y’see, my second uncle twice removed was really Blackbeard the Pirate, and he trained me in all these witchy ways, including how to tell when pretty girls are lyin’ to me and how to kill folks with my earlobe.…”

Constance laughed and swatted him. “Stop it! How?”

“Your eyes look left for just a second when you’re fibbin’,” he said.

“That’s a tell,” Constance said. “My mother is teaching me how to not have those and how to give off false tells. How did you notice that?”

“’CauseI like paying attention to you,” he said. “Every look, every little bit of you. It’s all special to me.”