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  “The man can’t be blamed for what his lawyer says or what a reporter writes. Unless he said it to ‘em first.” He looked at me, and his look was plain as dry bread. “As for me, I got no way of knowin’ if that law dog got the idea from Skoll or not. All I know is somebody shot a man on my land and skinned out.”

  This got the Professor’s attention, and he asked who had been killed. I advised him to read yesterday’s paper, but somehow through the night the old man had grown on Cole, ‘cause he said;

  “You’ll be hard pressed to find yesterday’s edition, Professor. I hear tell Sheriff Turlough hoards every stack he can find. Half go to patching the holes in his boots.”

  “And the other half?” I demanded.

  Cole smiled.

  “The other half I see go with him into the shithouse. I can’t say what happens to ‘em then. He never carries ‘em back out.”

  The old Dutchman got a good bellyache out of that one. I think from the way he let loose he must’ve been holdin’ back a good long time.

  “Oh my friends!” he said in between snorts. “Old King Laugh, I have thought him long gone from his throne, but you have called him back, and it is good to see his face again!”

  He went on for a quite awhile in this light, and in a way that got me wanting to check his teaching credentials if I could. King Laugh?

  To bring him back to some kind of state we could relate to, I told him about the troubles that had started when old man Judson passed on and the county auctioned off his land. Sig Skoll and his bunch of blonde behemoths had appeared right out of nowhere and put up a helluva sum of money to beat down all the bidders. They’d got that land, sure. Not soon after, trouble had started between them and their nearest neighbor, being Cole’s outfit.

  The Norgies had been caught once or twice on the wrong side of Busted Elbow Creek, bringing cattle to water that was by law Cole’s own. Cole didn’t see much of a problem with sharing the water seeing as how it nearly runs between their property, but his cowboys started complaining to him that the blondes were turning up on their side with less and less cattle each time. Nobody can quite figure out what they were up to, cause it seems none of them can speak a word of American. This has rubbed a lot of the Q&M boys wrong, and Early Searls has had to break up a lot of fights between them and the Norgies. More and more of them keep showing up among the Morris cattle.

  Speculation as to just what the Skoll bunch is up to on Morris land has run the gamut from rustling to sexual deviance. The Q&M boys started a rumor that the big blondes were always being found among the cows (and sometimes on foot, no less) because they had not seen females so much like the ones they’d left back home since they’d got off the boat in New York City.

  Add to all that the fact that the high speaking redheaded Lawyer Vulmere (the only one among those Norgies that can talk a lick of King’s English, it seems) has been seen rooting around in the county land records office in Albany, and then drop a handful of cartridges into the mix, and you’ve got a pretty good recipe for a range war.

  To my relief the Professor listened to all this quietly and didn’t bring up King Laugh or the murdered man again. He did, however, ask several questions about the location of the Skoll spread, and then, whether or not Sig Skoll was married.

  “Why, Professor?” I asked. “You got a daughter you wanna marry off?”

  “No,” he muttered. “Never mind. It is nothing.”

  You didn’t need field glasses to see something was the matter when we got to Sorefoot. There were a whole lot people in the streets for so early in the morning. In my head I actually thought they were crowded around my office wondering where their papers were.

  It turned out they were across the street at the jailhouse. When we rode up, that ghoul of an undertaker, Cashman, was standing on the porch of the jail with his long bony arm around Deputy Shetland. It looked like some sort of picture of death consoling a departing soul, with Cashman’s pasty face passing easily for the grim reaper’s, and Shetland’s expression being just the sort you’d expect to see on a man faced with his own mortality. Shetland looked scared. His eyes were wide, and he was talking low to Cashman. His fleshy lips were quivering and his hand was trembling in the Irish way I knew too well, needing a bottle to weight it down.

  Doc Ravell was there too, standing in the doorway of the jailhouse with his hands in his pockets, looking in.

  “Whatever is the matter here?” asked Van Helsing, as though we would know.

  Cole didn’t answer, and I just shrugged. Whatever it was, it was news.

  We reined in at the paper office and then ambled across the street to see just what was the matter. I led the way, smelling gossip and wanting bad to ink up my palms with whatever was going on.

  It’s a silly sort of thing, now that I think about it, being so damned anxious about the news when Sorefoot is small enough for word of mouth to pass it on faster than some two-penny copy of cheap, smudged paper. It’s not as though I do it for posterity. Like Cole mentioned, people find all sorts of uses for my paper after I’m through pressing it. Nobody outside of Sorefoot gets a look at it, if they ever cared to in the first place.

  Well, I pushed my way through the crowd like I was going to take charge of whatever the situation was. I demanded of Shetland and Cashman to know just what was going on. Where was Sheriff Turlough? Had Crenshaw escaped or something?

  Shetland shook his head, and his lips were wet.

  “I...I...don’t know.”

  Well, I pushed past Doc Ravell and went right inside, hollering for Turlough. I don’t remember just what I said. Something about the right of the people’s free press, the usual noise I spout when I want attention. But that noise took one look at what my eyes saw and curled up at the back of my throat and cowered, begging for me to shut my slack jaw and hide the sight.

  The thing that keeps coming back to me is the blood. How much of it there was. How it was everywhere. On everything. Dripping, like from a leaky pump. Dripping from where? I don’t even know. All I remember was hearing the sound, and seeing it. Dripping in the center of the stone floor, making little concentric circles like a bull’s eye being endlessly repeated. Hypnotic.

  “Watch it, you fool!” Ravell snarled behind me.

  I’d stepped in it. When I’d seen what it was I was stepping in, I’d jumped back, back on the shore of a lake of blood. Then I saw the bodies. Or rather, just bits of them. More than I’d ever wanted to see. More than I hope I will ever see of such a thing again.

  The smell hit me harder than Harley Crenshaw’s bullet ever could. It was like a punch between my eyes from a necrotic fist that exploded wet and heavy across my whole face, drenching me in its reek. I swam out of the room, clawed for daylight and fresh air, desperate to be out of that slaughterhouse. And when the fresh air hit me, I popped the remains of yesterday’s steak dinner at Ravell’s feet.

  Ever the humanitarian, he shoved me aside with disgust.

  I found myself grabbing the lapels of Van Helsing’s coat, wiping the bile from my lips with the back of my good hand and staring up at him.

  But he was looking past me – and his eyes! Lord, his eyes! They were cold as a whore’s heart. That funny little Dutchman with the broken accent and the spectacles was gone, and I could see for certain what I’d missed from my vantage point yesterday, what Harley Crenshaw had seen head on when the Professor had blasted him in the nose. I don’t know what it was, but it was as different as what I’d pegged him to be as night was from day. This man had shed blood in his day.

  He reached into his vest pocket and took out something that sparkled when the morning light hit it. It was a little cross. He kissed it once, then passed it over his face and chest like a Catholic, never taking his eyes from the doorway.

  He muttered something in his own language.

  “Well that’s a fine thing!” Ravell said, mopping at his shoes with a handkerchief. “A fine thing!”

  I looked at him, and when I could summon
my voice, I asked him what had happened.

  “What’s it look like?” Ravell said testily. He’d been a field surgeon in the War, and I guess he’d seen so much gore that it only annoyed him now. “Crenshaw’s busted out. He killed Turlough, and Early too.”

  Behind me, a boot scraped on the walk. I didn’t need to turn around to know it was Cole. He and Early had been friends since they were both kids.

  “What’re you tellin’ me?” he hissed.

  * * *

  From Dr. Riley Ravell’s Diary:

  August the 22nd

  Cole Morris, Deputy Shetland, and Alvin Crooker (who vomited nicely over my shoes, cuss him) rounded up a posse to head out after Harley Crenshaw, so I expect soon his brother Two-Step will have company in the dirt. Good business for Bill Cashman. Three corpses, soon to be four, in almost as many days. He won’t have much trouble planting them; what was left of Early Searls could be ladled into his grave.

  Of course I had to wade into that mess and declare them both dead, just to make it official. Not that I couldn’t have done that from the door. Haven’t seen such a slaughter since that little stone canyon near Gettysburg. Devil’s something or other, I think it was called. I remember how the balls would come in there and just bounce around; grind the boys to meat, and blast their eardrums if they survived. Blood all over the rocks.

  Jailhouse was just as bad. If it were up to me, I would’ve let Cashman do his job straight off, but that uppity Dutch Professor had other plans. He is the same one that shot Harley Crenshaw in the nose in front of Gridley’s yesterday. Van Halsing. I had to clean up that mess too. Somewhere that crazy killer is running around with my stitches in him. I should’ve let him bleed to death. Maybe Early and Turlough would still be alive. Funny to think that they’re not.

  I didn’t want to argue with the old Dutchman, even though he looked about as dangerous as a bottle of sarsaparilla. I guess the really mean ones never look the part. This one thought he was Allan Pinkerton, though.

  He insisted we go in and have a look at the place, and do an autopsy, of all things.

  “What in hell for?” I said. “We know who killed ‘em, do we gotta know how?”

  “I think, sir,” he said, all proper like, “that in this case we do. For what sort of man is it that can murder two able men and affect his escape from an iron cage all without alerting anyone?”

  ‘Harley Crenshaw, I guess,’ is what I wanted to say, but I just mumbled and went and got my bag.

  When I came back Van Halsing had his coat off and his sleeves rolled up.

  Poor Turlough was face down on his desk with his throat cut, and the blood had pooled and run all down the front of the desk onto the floor. But it was Early got it worse. He was gutted and mangled with a knife so bad you could hardly recognize him. It was as though a wild Comanche had been at him.

  I had been thinking about what the Dutchman said about not alerting anybody.

  When I came back he was standing in Crenshaw’s empty cell. It was the only place that looked the same as it had yesterday when I’d sewn up Harley’s nose.

  I told him how it wasn’t hard to see how Harley had killed them without anybody hearing. The walls in the jail are necessarily pretty thick, and besides the Picayune office, there are no other buildings situated here on the edge of town. The only person who would’ve had a chance of hearing anything was Alvin, and he wasn’t in last night.

  “But how could Mr. Crenshaw have gotten out of his cell to do this much damage?” the Dutchman said.

  “Well his brother sure didn’t come and get him,” I said.

  “Ah but you see, my good man, someone must have.”

  “The Crenshaws haven’t got any friends in Sorefoot, or anywhere else. Look. However Harley got out, he cut Turlough’s throat and carved up Early.”

  “Why?”

  “Early must’ve tried to stop him.”

  “Then he must have been out of his cell also.”

  “Aw, Turlough probably didn’t lock Early’s cell. He knew Early wasn’t a criminal.”

  “Yes, but look at the manner in which Early died, as compared to the Sheriff. Surely even you must see the difference.”

  I wasn’t sure how to take that, but I just shrugged and said what I’d been thinking – that for whatever reason, Early had gotten the worst of it.

  “Precisely! The hand which killed Early was driven by a most malicious, wrathful will. That which slew the Sheriff, merely...efficient.”

  “So what? You think somebody sprung Harley? I’m telling you, he’s got no friends in these parts. Bill Cashman was the only man at his brother’s funeral, and he was only there ‘cause he’s paid to be.”

  Van Halsing just paced around, tapping his teeth.

  “And yet...” was all he would say.

  We got Turlough’s body down on the floor, and laid it beside what was left of Early Searls. It was stuffy in the jailhouse, as we had the door and the shutters closed for decency’s sake. We got out clothespins to keep out the smell, and then, like a couple of kids, knelt down on the floor and opened up our bags.

  I must admit, this Professor had a good deal of fine instruments in his kit. Nicer than any I had seen even back in school. I asked him if he was really a professor.

  “I have taught university for seventeen years.”

  “What kind of schooling have you got?” I asked.

  Well, that old Dutchman rattled off such a row of letters, I knew he had to be a fraud. A man would have to be in school from the time he was four years old to have gotten so many degrees and doctorates. Yet he held his instruments like he knew what they were for.

  As he set to work clearing Early’s clothes from his wounds, and I, Turlough’s from his, he asked me what my own credentials were.

  To humor him, I admitted they weren’t nearly as impressive. I told him I was only a country doctor.

  “But you are not a Texas man?”

  “No, I’m from Maryland, originally.”

  He nodded to himself, then a little later looked over and asked me if I had found anything. By the dimensions of the gash in the Sheriff’s neck, and considering he had been sitting at his desk, so the cut had come from behind, it looked like a left handed cut. That made sense, as Harley was known to be a left hander. I told the Professor.

  “Look at the angle of the cut. Are you certain it was made from the back?”

  I probed the jagged rip in Turlough’s throat some more. It was true that on closer inspection it looked more like it had come from the front. At that angle, it also looked like it could have been a right handed cut, crosswise, like a backhand. I asked how that could be, seeing as the Sheriff was seated with his back to the cell.

  “But if there was another man, would he not have come in by the only door, the front? And wouldn’t the Sheriff have been the first obstacle to remove? Look. What sort of weapon would you say?”

  I looked. Something sharp, but not a razor. The wound was too big. Plus, it had scored the vertebrae. Nearly knocked his head off. I suggested a Bowie knife.

  “Ah...the weapon of choice for Americans, is it not? Such a knife could have mutilated Mr. Searls. But where is it?”

  I knew Turlough carried a knife like that on his hip, but when I checked, it was still there in the scabbard. His pistol was gone, though. I bet that pistol has been naked about as many times as my old Auntie Delia. Turlough was known to have a certain dread of guns, having blown his own little toe off once. I heard he kept the wheel entirely empty for safety. Crenshaw better have checked the loads before he took it, or he’ll be cussing himself later. I made the suggestion that Crenshaw had stowed a knife in his boot, or hung it between his shoulder blades where it could be missed, as I have heard some cardsharps do.

  “Or his accomplice provided him with it, after killing Sheriff Turlough.”

  I shook my head. He couldn’t convince me somebody had sprung Harley Crenshaw from jail. Who would do that? Turlough probably just left the cell unl
ocked when he gave Harley his supper. Early was asleep in his bunk, and Crenshaw snuck out with his own contraband knife and got the Sheriff. Then he went back and finished Early.

  “But why would the Sheriff open the cell?” Van Helsing asked. “Would he not slide the food through the space in the bottom of the prison door? Is that not its purpose?”

  I looked. I’d never noticed the serving slot in the cell before. The Professor was starting to irk me. As the only physician for miles around, I’m not used to being wrong.

  “Look here,” he said then, wiping the blood from Early’s face. “See? Beside these terrible cuts, his head is smashed. His cheeks are crushed. There are bruises all about him. He has been badly beaten.”

  I remarked only that he was indeed an eyesore.

  “So!”

  He clapped his hands together, and I’ll admit I was startled. He was staring at me strangely all of a sudden.

  “Lunch,” he said.

  I was flabbergasted. He said he was hungry. That we ought to go to Gridley’s and come back after lunch.

  He ordered his steak extra rare.

  CHAPTER 5

  From Buckner Tyree’s Papers

  Aug 22, 1891

  Lord, I am scared.

  I ain’t seen Picker for days. I don’t know how many...let me check. Four days. Picker ain’t never been gone so long, not even when he’s gone to visit his uncle. I think they have got him. I think Picker has got kilt. I wish I had his gun.

  Lord, I am so scared I don’t even leave my shack. Especially not at night. At night they move around. I hear them.

  Last night was the worst. They were all out last night.

  It was like a fandango. I seen it from the rim, down in the arroyo. They lit a fire, and I seen ‘em pretty good. They had a couple of cows and somethin’ else, but I don’t know what. I think maybe it might could have been Picker. If it was Picker, than Picker is sure dead.

  They played music, and they danced, and there were drums. They weren’t like Tonk drums. They weren’t like no Injun drums I ever heard, in fact. But they was dancin’ to it like Injuns.