Graybrow stood there, studying the sky which was leaden and turbulent. A chill breeze ruffled his long iron- gray hair which was tucked under a campaign hat. One eye was squinting, the other open in that solemn brown face.
“Hey, Tyler Cabe,” he suddenly said. “You figure I wear a fancy whiteman’s suit and hang around the depot, folks might think I’m some rich banker from back east?”
“Doubt it.”
“Because I’m an injun?”
Cabe shrugged. “That might tip ‘em off.”
“Damn, it’s hell to be an injun some days. Maybe I’ll get the suit, though. Way I hear it, Elijah Clay’s in town. They say he’s looking for you.” Graybrow just shook his head. “So I might get some use out of the suit after all.”
Cabe just chuckled. He crushed his cigarette in the dirt and pulled off his hat. Not looking up, he fumbled with the rattlesnake band above the brim. “Already got me dead and buried, have you?”
Graybrow nodded. “Me and a bunch of my red brothers are taking bets. I’m saying your dead before tomorrow morning. But maybe I’m just a pessimist. Folks say that about me. Go figure.”
Cabe put his hat back on. “You’re gonna lose some money, I think.”
“Maybe.” Graybrow looked over to his Indian friend. “Hey, Raymond? You think you can fix up my amigo here?” Then he turned to Cabe. “I call him Raymond because his name is Raymond Proud.”
“No shit?”
Raymond Proud stood up and he was a big man dressed in wool pants, suspenders, and a lumberjack shirt. “Is this the Arkansas bounty hunter?”
“Yes. Calls himself Tyler Cabe.”
Proud nodded, scratched at his chin. “Yeah, I’m thinking I could fit him. I got some spare scrap lumber out back.”
“Yeah, that would work. He don’t want no fancy nameplate. Just the box.”
“Well, I’d need a little money up front.”
“That could be arranged.”
Cabe just stood there, not getting it at all. “What the hell are you two talking about?”
Graybrow patted him on the shoulder. “Just stay out of this, okay?” he said in a whisper. “I’m getting you a good deal.”
“On what?”
“A casket. You’ll need one soon enough.”
Cabe felt his mouth drop open. “Well, you two just got all sorts of faith in me, don’t you?”
“Nothing personal, is it, Raymond? We just know Elijah Clay is all.”
Cabe let out a sigh and walked away, deciding to take a look around the depot. Somewhere, that hellbilly was hiding out and he planned on getting the draw on the sonofabitch come hell or high water. Because, honestly, for the first time in a long while he felt that he had a damn good reason to go on living.
“Hey, Tyler Cabe,” Graybrow said. “Slow down, I need to talk to you.”
But Cabe didn’t slow down. “If you found me a nice plot of earth, I ain’t interested.”
Graybrow caught up with him, put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. “No, nothing like that. Just stop now.” He was panting. “It’s not that I’m old, but I don’t want to show off and run you down.”
“Course not. Wouldn’t be your way.”
Graybrow smiled thinly. “You didn’t like my little joke back there?”
“Not much.”
“It’s my injun sense of humor, it’s kind of strange, I reckon. White folks never seem to get it.” He followed Cabe to a bench by the telegraph office. “All us injuns got it. Take Custer at the Big Horn, for instance. He would’ve just waited for the punchline, things would have turned out different.”
“You’re crazy, that’s what.”
Graybrow offered him a drink. “It’ll settle your nerves.”
“My nerves are fine. Besides, it’s a little early.”
“You white folks…boy, I’ll never understand you. You bring the whiskey out here, get my people hooked, then you act like it’s not good enough for you.”
Cabe smiled. “That’s our little joke.”
Graybrow took a good pull off his bottle. “Since you already know about Clay being in town, I won’t warn you about that. But I hear them miners hired you to sort out all these killings. That true?”
“Word travels fast, don’t it?” Cabe said. “But, sure, it’s true enough.”
“Good. Because you’re gonna need my help. I know lots about those killings. If you wanna stop them, then you’re gonna have to stop James Lee Cobb.”
“Who in Christ is that?”
“You don’t know?” Graybrow said. “Well, sit back, because I have a story to tell you. And before you ask, yes, it does have to do with coffins and graves and the like. Just not in the way you think…”
16
The day turned progressively colder as Cabe and Graybrow rode out to Deliverance. They followed the dirt road up out of Whisper Lake and past the Southview Mine, taking the road where it forked at the blasted oak.
Cabe found himself studying that oak.
It was tall and craggy and black, looked something like a huge trapdoor spider climbing from the ditch alongside the road. Cabe could not put a finger on it, but that tree bothered him immensely. He was not one given to omens and portents…but somehow, somehow that tree was a signpost warning him off.
He found himself studying the landscape as it swept past him-the exposed vermilion rock bursting from the heavy bracken and scrub, the clumps of saltbush and horsebrush giving away to grassy meadow and dense stands of aspen. Streams flanked by drooping dogwood trees and leafless willows.
He took it all in, making a mental note of the barren cliffs and thick forests, as if he might never see them again.
But as he rode his sleek-muscled strawberry roan up that narrow, winding road that was carpeted in autumn leaves and pine needles, he knew it was just the wild stories getting to him. Superstitious bullshit that had no place in his line of work. All that business about James Lee Cobb. His life and his culinary habits. Then that bit about him being shipped to Whisper Lake in a casket…except maybe he wasn’t dead. Seemed likely what with that Callister fellow being killed (for no one really bought the suicide theory) and the body vanishing. But there was more to it than that. Because Goode-the old saddletramp Graybrow said had brought the casket in-was pretty firmly convinced that what was in that box was not exactly human. You added that to the fact that Deliverance had gone bad shortly afterwards, had sold its soul to the Devil (as the locals claimed) and, well, even the sanest of men started thinking things.
Beside him on his calico gelding, Graybrow said, “Ever tell you, Tyler Cabe, about the two fools that rode into the town of devils?”
“Nope. What happened?”
“They got killed. Way I heard it, anyway.”
Cabe licked his lips, felt the cool wind at his mouth. “You scared, Charles? Scared of what we might find?”
Graybrow said, “Hell no. I’m an injun, we don’t know fear.” He rode in silence a moment, navigated a dip. “Still…I was thinking there might be something I’m supposed to be doing right now, somewhere I have to be. I told the Widow Lucas that I’d stop by and fix that barn of hers. It leaks. Maybe I should be doing that.”
“When does she need it done?”
“Oh, about two years past,” Graybrow admitted. “But still I think of it. Wonder at times like these if I should get over there. Think so?”
“Nope. Not unless you need my help.”
