And Callister didn’t either. There was something very wrong about all it all. And what was that high, hot gassy smell in the air like rancid meat? Seven or eight of the riders trotted over to the Mormon positions. The others, led by the man with the white flag galloped over to the vigilantes’ fortification.
The man with the white flag dismounted, said, “I am unarmed.”
Windows told him to keep his fucking distance, but the man waltzed right over and…funny thing, half way there something started to happen to him and he started to walk funny, a real weird odor coming off him. Callister sucked in a sharp gasp of cool air.
For he could see wan moonlight reflected off bone as if the man had no face on the left side. And what he saw confirmed that: a grotesque, inhuman skull knitted with raw quilts of muscle.
“Evening,” the man said and that voice was more animal than human. “Name’s Cobb. And I figure I got business with ye…”
19
An hour after the revelation of Freeman and the heart in the jar, Cabe found himself again at the Cider House Saloon in need of a drink. He put back two whiskeys and a like number of beers, thinking it all over. About Dirker, who might just have been his friend now (of all crazy things) and Freeman and, of course, Janice Dirker. That was one thing that kept circulating through his brain.
But in all the furor he’d forgotten a few things.
He’d actually forgotten that it was here that he’d put down Virgil Clay only a few nights before. His brain was simply too full with everything else. So when the door opened and a blast of wet wind blew through the bar, the last thing he was thinking of was Elijah Clay.
He didn’t even bother turning.
Maybe if he had, he would’ve seen men falling out of their way to get out of the path of the behemoth in the buffalo coat and gray beard.
As it was, he leaned up against the wall, lost in himself, and that’s when the blade of a knife imbedded itself in said wall scant inches from the tip of his nose.
Cabe dropped his drink and whirled around, his hand going for the Starr double-action at his hip. It almost made it, too, but the man he saw moving through the bar room stopped him dead.
Cabe stood there and stared.
He knew who he was; there could not be two men that matched this description in Utah Territory.
All Cabe could do was think: Oh Jesus and Mary, lookit the size of him…
The guy had to be seven feet tall if he was an inch. He was bearded and fierce and built like something that wrestled bears for a living. He carried a double-barrel scattergun in his hand and his chest was crisscrossed with cartridge belts. Lots of them. And that was a necessary thing when you factored in all the pistols hanging from the homemade belts at his waist. He carried more firepower than most cavalry platoons. And that didn’t even take into account the hatchets, skinning blades, and bowie knives that hung off him.
As folks in Whisper Lake wisely said, when Elijah Clay comes, even the Devil his ownself wisely crosses the street.
Cabe grabbed the hilt of the knife in the wall-a Buffalo skinner with an eight-inch blade-and tried to pull it from the wall. He had to use both hands.
“Ya’ll excuse me please,” the giant said, tossing men aside like they were stuffed with feathers. “My apologies, gents, my apologies.”
He had an odd sort of gallantry and charm about him. Those that didn’t get out of his path, he swatted aside like pesky gnats. And some of them were real big men. Big men who found themselves suddenly airborne.
The giant’s right cheek bulged with chew. He spat a stream of it at the faro table, soiling the cards. “Name’s Elijah Clay,” he announced. “And I’m pleased to know ye, one and all.” He came right up to a table about four feet from Cabe, just stood there. “Evenin’, gents. I’m a-here lookin’ fer some worm-brained, sheep-humpin’ slice of Arkansas dogfuck name of Tyler Cabe. Any of ye know this mother-raper?” He looked around, those eyes like boring bits. “Speak up now, hear? Way I’m a-thinkin’, gents, yer either fer me or agin me. And if it be the latter, than God help yer poor grievin’ mothers after I have m’ way with ye.”
And it occurred to Cabe that Clay did not know who he was. Not yet. Now, any sane man would have bolted and run at the very least. Tyler Cabe out of Arkansas? No sir, no sir, you must be mistaken. I’m Joe J. Crow out of Gary, Indiana, so if you’ll excuse me, I got a sick wife to attend to and I think I just pissed myself and all.
Sure, that’s what a sane man would have done.
But Cabe?
Nope. Not Tyler Cabe who rode hard through more shit in a year than most men rode through in a lifetime. Not Tyler Cabe who was just as fast and sure with his pistols as any man in the Territory and was no stranger to knife and fists. And not Tyler Cabe who knew an inbred hellbilly when he saw one because he was one himself and was not about to back down no how, no way from trash like that.
But, of course, Cabe had never waded in against something like Elijah Clay. The sort of lifetaker that could and would use his bones to pick his long yellow teeth with.
Regardless, Cabe said, “I’m Tyler Cabe. I’m the one you’re looking for, mister.”
Clay just nodded, but seemed pleasantly surprised. Maybe he wasn’t used to men admitting who they were when he hunted them. And being from a hill-clan, he put a lot of stock in bravery and courage. Even when it was foolishly placed.
“Well, Mr. Cabe, yer the snake what shot down m’ boy, so lets we two get straight down to it, what say? You fancy shootin’ irons?” Clay considered it, shook his head. “Naw, not yer thing, is it? Too wily. Yer the sort that fancies knives and the like. If’n that’s yer game, I surely can oblige.” He set his shotgun and assorted gunbelts on the table, pulling two hatchets from his belt and stabbing them into the tabletop where they quivered menacingly. “Well, boy, let’s get to it. Got me plans fer yer hide, yessum, figure on making yer life last till well past cockcrow.”
Men were murmuring amongst themselves, maybe mentally recording the entire thing for future yarning. Possibly making note of that impressive set of balls old Tyler Cabe had, but more likely wondering if he had enough money in his poke to bury him with proper.
Cabe grabbed the handle of one of the hatchets, yanked the blade from wood. “All right,” he said. “If it’s gotta be done this way, you big smelly piece of shit, then let’s get to it.”
Clay laughed, pulled up his own hatchet.
Cabe did not waste any time, he lunged in quick, swinging his ax and nearly taking out Clay’s throat, but the big man stepped back, grinning with all those piss-yellow teeth. Here Cabe was, figuring this was a matter of survival, a fight to the death…but to Clay it was just an amusement. Something that beat the shit out of watching the corn grow or violating your own sister.
Clay swung his hatchet and swung it fast, so fast in fact Cabe just barely got out of the way. The blade struck the bar and gouged out a four-inch strip of pine. Cabe swung at the big man and their hatchets met in mid-air in a clanging shower of sparks. The impact threw Cabe back against the bar, his arm thrumming right up to the elbow. He got under Clay’s next blow and swung at his face. Clay dodged it, laughed, and brought his own hatchet at Cabe’s head. It knocked his hat off and before he could react, Clay brought it around backhanded. Cabe brought his up to block the blow which would have been lethal given that the axe was double-edged.
The hatchets met again and the impact ripped Cabe’s from his hand and sent him spinning like a top, putting him easily on his ass.
“That’s that, I reckon,” Clay said and came in for the kill.
Cabe tried to go for his pistol, but his hand was numb right up to the shoulder and the limb reacted like rubber. Clay took hold of his hair, pulled him six-inches up into the air and brought up the hatchet for the deathblow.
And then a voice just as cool and calm as January river ice said, “Drop that hatchet or I’ll shoot you where you stand.”
Clay froze, hatchet up over his head.