the parts you keep, aren't you? That interests me: One
Dante whimpered and moaned.
'Relax; isn't that what you always tell your girls in the beginning?'
He nicked him lightly with the blade; Dante felt a trickle of blood run down and pool between his thighs. Frederick leaned over next to his ear and spoke to him seductively, almost in a whisper. 'Every pleasure has its price; every sin its reward. The rites of initiation are ancient and mysterious, as unknowable to us as the face of God. And yet we still obey them, because that is how the entrance into our brotherhood has always been achieved. You are baptized and reborn in the water of your own blood and fear. In no other way can you become useful to us; in only this way can you become more useful than you ever imagined. Be aware that death can always reach you; disobedience is not tolerated. Violence can be visited upon you with the speed of an idea. Your thoughts are no longer your own. Your mind and spirit belong to a higher power. Servitude has always been your goal, and now it becomes your reality. Trust that your life has brought you to this place in time, because that is what you wished for and all that it requires of you now is recognition and absolute surrender.'
Frederick slammed the knife down into the table between Dante's legs, nicking his flesh again and starting a stronger flow of blood. 'Be one of us and live forever.'
Now a blinding pain seared into his left arm; Dante's eyes moved there, half-blinded with tears; smoke curled up from where the branding iron had left its mark on the bicep; as it lifted, he saw the burn; the burning circle broken by three jagged lines.
Dante fainted.
chapter 11
A half-assed collection of huts and shacks thrown up around the mouth of a failed silver mine comprised the city limits of Skull Canyon, Arizona. Population had boomed to a peak of 350 before the vein gave out and the railroad decided not to build a spur line station; these days permanent residents numbered exactly two: loco prospectors, sixty-five-year-old fraternal twins from Philadelphia, the Barboglio brothers, still working the shaft every day, living off the dust they could coax from its walls. The other ten were short-term residents, workers who cycled in and out of town, servicing the stagecoach stop and the fleabag Skull Canyon Hotel that provided sole lodging for travelers.
The population had swelled to thirty-one with the arrival the night before of the Penultimate Players—the hotel could only accommodate fifteen, so the stagehands and junior males spent the night sleeping in their wagons. Actually the number was thirty-two, if you included Frank McQuethy, who showed up just before dawn and found himself a notch in the high rocks that looked down on the canyon and hotel. Frank settled in as the darkness slipped away, close enough to see faces in the street through the scope of his buffalo gun, unhitched the safety, and waited for the Chinaman to show.
Five wagons parked behind the hotel; one carrying cargo. Horses stabled around the side. People started to stir as first light licked the top of the boulders on the rim; workers tossing out slops, carrying in wood, firing up the kitchen; smoke rose from the stovepipe chimney. Buckskin Frank pulled his saddle blanket tight around his shoulders and tried to stop his teeth from chattering, wishing he was huddled in front of that fire down below with a hot cup of java in his hands. He was hungry, too, his stomach eating at him when he caught a phantom whiff of bacon on the breeze.
The desert had turned bitter cold on his ride. He couldn't shake it off the way he used to as a kid; this kind of cold lived in your bones. During the night, about halfway from Wickenburg, Frank had decided he was too old for this shit; maybe he should have headed for Sonora, after all. Despair swamped him; he couldn't count how many fine, clear mornings of his life he'd wasted in exactly this way, on the high ground, waiting for some unsuspecting fuckup to come out of a house or a cave or a teepee so Frank could pump a bullet through him; this sort of waiting led to the same morbid self-examination he'd just experienced five years of in the joint. No sir, this dry-gulching work did not fit him anymore; all he wanted at this time of the morning was a firm mattress and a warm pair of tits, and he kept himself awake with the thought that they might only be one shot away.
The first actors stumbled out of their wagons when the hotel rang the triangle for breakfast; the younger ones stretched and strutted and swaggered in that self-conscious, catlike way of people who were used to being noticed; even out here in the middle of East Jesus, hung over and pissing in the bushes, not even aware that Frank was watching, they acted like they were in front of an audience.
No Chinaman.
Half an hour passed; breakfast over, the stable hands walked out the horses, hitched them to the wagons, and the rest of the actors came out of the hotel. Frank studied each face carefully through the scope; four women, twelve men—all white— climbed into three of the wagons; one tall, fat, long-haired dude who acted like he was in charge took the reins of the one carrying what Frank guessed must be their scenery. The caravan seemed ready to roll but held up: the fifth wagon, smallest of the bunch, little more than a covered buckboard, remained empty.
Three last people walked out of the hotel; Frank inched forward, laid a finger on the trigger and glued his eye to the scope. A dark-haired woman—Christ, a real bright-eyed beauty—and a tall gangly man in a dark formal suit and between them a stooped figure with a long white beard in the queerest get up; a round furry hat, black suit, and heavy black coat. The two walked this old geezer between them to the last wagon and helped him climb into the back.
Something not right about this; Frank looked hard for details. Between the beard and the hat, Frank never got a clear look at the old man's face—there, as he stepped up into the back of the wagon and the coat moved, a dark stain on the side of his white shirt. Was that blood?
Should he take the chance? His finger tightened down on the trigger.
Think it through, Frank, said Molly's voice: You're still a convict and it ain't gonna help your case one iota to blow a hole through the wrong man in front of twenty witnesses. He eased back.
Raised voices. Frank swung the scope over; the long-haired blowhard jumped off the cargo wagon, waving his arms and screeching at the darkhaired woman; she gave him the business right back in his face. Frank couldn't hear the words this far away, but the tone of their voices reached him on the wind and Mr. Longhair was taking the worst of it. He finally tucked his tail between his legs and stomped back to his wagon, and the woman climbed into the back of the one where they'd stashed the old man. She had some spunk, this one.
The wagons began to roll out of the canyon and up the incline to the road leading west. The stable owner in Wick-enburg who'd rented them the wagons had told Frank the actors were headed to a religious settlement out in the desert, a place called The New City, twenty-five miles north-northwest of Skull Canyon. Place just went up in the last few years, wasn't even on the maps yet, but growing fast. Folks out there weren't Mormons and seemed to be Christian; beyond that the man wasn't exactly sure what they were: good customers anyway, paid on time. Seemed harmless enough, a little eccentric maybe; building some kind of castle out of stone quarried in the hills.
If they followed his instructions and didn't get themselves hopelessly lost in the desert—a big if—the posse wouldn't arrive in Skull Canyon until late afternoon; Frank couldn't wait that long. Maybe the Chinaman wasn't with this bunch, but instinct told Frank he should get a closer look at the old man in the back of that last wagon; these were actors, after all, and actors could do things with makeup.
He had another reason to trail after them that he wouldn't admit to himself; he wanted a closer look at the other person in the back of that wagon. That dark-haired gal had set his fool's heart tripping like a snare drum. And she looked enough like Molly to be her sister.
