Deadman's Crossing (18 page)

The man studied the Reverend carefully. The only thing he
could move was his head, his eyes and his mouth.

“Things don’t smell right,” the man said. “And there’s shadows
moving all about.”

“Those are the shades of hell, my friend. They are waiting for
you on the other side, trying to grab you before you are completely
ready. What you smell is what you done in your pants.”

“Hell? Those are the shadows of hell?”

“That would be my guess. I do not take you for a Sunday
school attendee. Being a preacher, I can usually tell about a man.
It is a gift.”

“You’re a preacher. You can’t be no preacher.”

“I am.”

“God wouldn’t like you to do what you done.”

“You do not know God as well as I do. Under certain circumstances he can be surprisingly flexible.”

“Pray for me, Reverend.”

“What is this about goblins?”

“Will you help me go, I tell you?”

“It is a possibility.”

“In the mines, up a ways. Down deep inside. They done near
ran everybody out. There’s a few men still digging, but most of
them have gone off. We wouldn’t have done what we was trying to
do to you had we not needed the money to eat.”

The Reverend’s face crunched up. “Then I guess that makes it
all right.”

“It makes it what it was. The shadows are starting to get really
dark. I can hardly see you.”

“I still say you will last a long time. The shadows will come
and the shadows will go. A lot can happen before they take you
into Hell.”

“Please pray for me.”

“Well, I have to be going, friend. I have a horse to catch.”

“Don’t leave me like this. For God’s sake, please say a prayer.”

The Reverend nodded, recited the Lord’s Prayer. “You feel any
better?” he said when he finished.

“I do.”

“Good, ’cause it will not do you one ounce of good. You are
going to die my friend. God plays dirty dice. And he does not
really forgive. Jesus was a liar.”

“Then send me over, Reverend. Least wise I’ll have company.”

“That you will.”

The Reverend lifted his revolver and shot the miner in the
right eye, giving him the final jump into the shadows and worse.

It took the Reverend about an hour to locate his horse, which had found some berries on a bush and was busily chomping on them when the Reverend came up and took the reins and stroked the horse’s nose. He noted there was a cut on the horse’s withers where the shovel strike had caught the animal. It wasn’t bad,
but it wasn’t a wound he wanted to worsen by riding. He led the
horse for a while, finally stopped just before nightfall where the
rocks dipped out and formed a cave large enough for him and his
mount. The Reverend found some dry brush and piled it in front
of the cave, lit up a fire and made it high. It crackled and popped
like someone snapping a whip. He reloaded his .36 Navy. He took
the saddle and bridle off the horse, got a currycomb from his
saddlebags and gave the animal a good brushing. He hobbled the
horse in the cave with rope and sat down by the fire and ate some
jerky, chewing slowly, drinking a bit of water from his canteen.

Out in the dark he heard something, listened to see if he could
identify the source. He didn’t like building such a big fire because
of the possibility that more desperate miners were in the brush,
but it really wasn’t the miners that concerned him most. It was
what the dying miner had said about goblins. Goblins of all kinds
seemed to dislike fire. He piled more brush on the blaze and sat
back down. He saw eyes out beyond the fire. He counted twenty
sets of eyes. They appeared to be stuck to the dark, like flaming
yellow darts against black wool.

He pulled his old Henry rifle from its sheath on his saddle,
cocked it, sat back in his spot and watched the eyes. They moved
a little closer. He lifted the rifle, aimed between a set of peepers,
and fired. The eyes dropped from sight and the other eyes tumbled
about like thrown coals, and then they were gone.

The Reverend sat and watched, and about an hour later, the
eyes reappeared. He sighted with the rifle, but before he could
shoot, the eyes tumbled away again. The horse made a noise
behind him, and the Reverend, without looking, called soothingly
to the hobbled animal. The horse seemed happy enough where it
was; it could sense what was out there and it didn’t want to be
near it.

The Reverend sat up all night, and when morning came, it came
in a swathe of purple that fluttered down through the canyon like
an unfurling robe and gradually reddened, then turned the color
of Inca gold. Gradually, the air grew warm.

The Reverend fed the horse from the grain he kept in a bag,
then fed himself a bit of jerky. The fire had gone out just before
morning, right before the wood he had gathered played out and
left him cold and vulnerable. It had worked perfectly.

The Reverend went to where he had seen the eyes fall, and
there was some stirred dirt and something dark and dried, some
footprints that went off into the rocks and were visible no more.
The footprints were wide and not too long and there were drag
lines between them, like a heavy tail had followed suit.

“Goblins indeed,” the Reverend said aloud. He went back to the
cave and stretched out on his horse blanket and slept with his hat
over his eyes for about two hours, then he was up. He dug one of his
volumes of lore from his saddlebag, and read from it. He nodded as
he read, familiarizing himself with things he already knew.

He decided his horse could bear him now, so he saddled it
and rode along the canyon road that wound up higher into the
mountains.

The mining camp smelled like miners, only stronger. It was an
odor of dried and re-dried sweat, bean farts and un-wiped assholes.
It made the Reverend wrinkle his nose. The main mine could be
seen up the mountain, a big black mouth open in the rock. No
one was up there. The goblins, the Reverend presumed, had run
everyone out.

As he rode into the camp he could see the stained tents of miners
and there were a few shacks with open fronts where jugs of liquor
were sold. There were also sheets hung up around some trees and
they were designed to cover the bodies of the whores behind them.
But from his position on horseback, the Reverend could see the
tops of their heads and the tops of the heads of the miners behind
them; the women, dresses hiked, leaned against trees with their
hands, and the miners took them from the rear.

Not too much farther into the camp, the Reverend saw a naked
woman lying in the mud with some pigs nosing around her. As
he rode by and looked down, he noted that she was long dead.
Someone had cut her throat from ear to ear, perhaps preferring that
to paying the price for a ride. A hog sniffed the woman’s bloated
face. The Reverend took his rifle from its scabbard and poked the
hog with it, running it off. He let the dead woman lie.

There was a big clapboard building on up the muddy path, and
beside it were other clapboard buildings, only smaller. The big
building wasn’t really all that big, just big compared to what else
was around. The Reverend stopped in front of it, got off his horse,
tied the reins to a post outside with some nails driven into it for
tie spots.

He looked around. There were miners coming out of the rocks,
out from behind trees, moving in his direction, or rather the
direction of his horse. He had a feeling that if he left the animal
outside, by the time he got through the door of the building, his
horse would be gone. Ridden away or chopped up and eaten.

He undid the tying, and led the horse up on the little porch in
front of the building, opened the door, and led the animal inside,
throwing a backward glance at the grouping miners. They turned
away sadly and made their way back to where they had come from,
their shoulders hunched with disappointment.

Inside the building the stench outside seemed like perfume. It
was awful in there. There were cots from wall to wall, and there
were miners on them, and in some cases, women, and in some cases
men mounting women. There was a plank set over two barrels, and
behind it, sitting on another barrel, was a man with a hat that had
so many holes in it, one more and it wouldn’t have been a hat. The
face that poked out from under it looked as if it had been carved
with a hatchet.

The Reverend led his horse over to the plank. The man behind
it, he said, “You can’t bring that horse in here.”

“Of course I can, there he is,” the Reverend said.

“Well, you can’t bring him in here.”

“If I say I can, I can. If you do not want my horse in here, all
you have to do is throw me out and my horse with me.”

“That can be arranged.”

“Not by you.”

“Naw, by them.”

The Reverend looked where the man was pointing. Two guys
with enough fat between them, that, if rendered, would provide
lard for the city of New York, moved toward him. One of them
didn’t have enough shirt to cover his belly, and the other one
didn’t have enough pants to cover his ankles.

“They make sure nobody gets smart in here,” the man behind
the plank said.

“With the exception of myself, I doubt a rise in intelligence is a
great worry around these parts,” the Reverend said.

“What the hell does that mean?” the man behind the plank said.

“Sleep on it,” the Reverend said.

The Reverend turned, looked at the big fellows, let go of his
horse’s reins, said, “I would hold myself right there. I do not warn
twice.”

The man with the too small shirt grinned and showed the
Reverend where some teeth used to be. “You ain’t worrying us.”

“I ought to be,” the Reverend said.

The man popped a snap-blade knife out of his pocket and
opened it with a flip of the wrist.

The Reverend pulled the .36 Navy and shot the man in the
stomach where it poked out from under his shirt. It was a good
shot, caught him dead center of his navel. He dropped and rolled
in the sawdust and human waste on the floor. As he did, he bumped
one of the cots, turning it over, dumping its occupant on his butt.
The former cot’s occupant jumped up and kicked the screaming
gut-shot fellow twice in the head.

“Can’t a man sleep around here?” Then the man saw the Reverend, standing there, holding a smoking revolver. He stopped
cussing and stopped moving. The other big man had halted in his
tracks, one high water pants leg propped in front of the other, his
knee bent where he had stopped in mid-step.

“I hope my gunfire did not disturb your slumber,” the Reverend
said to the man from the cot, and glanced about the room. Others
were moving, having been awakened by the snap of the shot and
the screams of the dying miner.

“He is gut-shot by the way,” the Reverend said, waving the
revolver at the man writhing on the floor, “and he has a long way
to go before the trap door opens and he drops through. Somebody
ought to help him out.”

“Damn,” said the man in the high water pants, finally lowering
his leg. “That there was my brother.”

“Do you have other brothers and sisters?” the Reverend asked.

The man watched his brother roll about on the floor. He looked
at the Reverend. “What?”

“You heard me.” The Reverend was looking around as he spoke,
in case anyone wanted to test him.

“He’s my only kin.”

“Now,” said the Reverend, “you are an only child, and an
orphan. Or soon will be.”

“Damn,” High Water Pants said.

“Have we finished our business?” the Reverend asked.