Skin Medicine

“Yes, sir, as you said.” Cabe set his glass on the bar, put his hat on. “Now please kindly step out of my sight before the doc has to pull my spurs out of your fine white ass.”

But he wasn’t moving and Cabe was starting to wonder if he’d have to bury this sumbitch, too.

“If your mother had any sense, bounty hunter, she would’ve drowned you in a sack before you grew to stink up this country.”

Cabe felt the hairs along the back of his neck bristle. No, no, he wasn’t going to let this bastard push him into something he would regret. Just wasn’t going to happen. He was walking away from this one.

The tall man had positioned himself between Cabe and the door now.

Which meant that Cabe had two choices: go around him or right through. It wasn’t much of a decision for Cabe, being that he went around no man. It wasn’t his way. It had cost him in blood and bruises through the years, but he backed down from no one.

He thought: I will not pull my pistol, not if there’s any other way.

The dandy stood his ground and Cabe came right at him, not slowing, not so much as breaking stride. When he was precious feet away, the tall man pulled his Colts. Pulled ‘em pretty fast, too. But not fast enough. By the time he cleared leather, Cabe was close enough to smell. A few quick steps and he had hammered the dandy in the face with two quick, straight jabs that put him to his knees. Cabe kicked him in the belly to keep him down. Somewhere during the process, the tall man lost his pistols. Cabe saw them and kicked them away.

“Now,” he said, just plain sick of bullshit like this, “y’all go home to Boston or Charlottesville or where ever in the fuck you came from. You go back home to daddy’s money and his title. Because out here, you’re gonna get your fool self killed.”

Cabe went right past him, left him coughing and gasping, blood bubbling from his dislocated nose. He had almost made the front door when the dandy screamed out obscenities and pulled a little five-shot Remington Elliot. 32.

Cabe just stood there, knowing he couldn’t move quick enough.

The gun was on him.

The tall man was filled with rage and hate.

Just then two men carrying shotguns burst through the door. They were dressed in dusty trail clothes and plainsman-style hats.

“You there,” the first said. “Drop that pistol or I’ll cut you in half.”

The dandy lowered it, let it slide from his fingers.

The second one turned to Cabe, looked him up and down. “You Cabe? Tyler Cabe? The Arkansas bounty hunter?”

“I would be.”

The shotguns came around in his direction now. “Then you better come with us.”

9

For some time after Tyler Cabe left, Janice Dirker found herself thinking about him. About how he carried himself, the way he spoke, that unflappable honesty that was the earmark, it seemed, of who and what he was. She found herself thinking about these things and knowing that he excited her. Excited some part of her that had lain long dormant like a volcano just biding its time until it would erupt.

Tyler Cabe was a free-spirit.

He seemed to be entirely unconventional. Had no true respect for money or position, for authority or cultural values. He lived as he chose, said what he pleased to whom he pleased. He was a rogue element. Seemed to have more in common with the red man than the white. Maybe this is what excited her. He was so different than the other men she’d known. Now, her husband Jackson, was completely the opposite. He had bearing, had station, had unshakable confidence. But he was stiff and unyielding and emotions seemed to be a foreign thing to him. Mere malfunctions of character, rather than compliments to it. For though Jackson was a good man who invariably did the right thing at the right time, he was cold. Terribly cold and methodical.

And Tyler Cabe?

Anything but. He was tough and trail-weary, had ridden the backside of society for far too long. He was surely lacking in refinement or social graces, but what he lacked there he surely made up in warmth and humanity. He was warm and friendly and wore his emotions proudly. He had depth and sincerity and compassion. He was everything Jackson wasn’t and was not afraid to be so. Her father would have despised him. And although Jackson was a Yankee, he was exactly the sort of man her father would have paired her with-a man of dignity, resolve, and bearing. His idea of what a man should be. And Cabe? Her father would have instantly dismissed him as “hill-trash”.

Cabe, however, was not the most outwardly handsome of men.

He was tall and lanky, powerful without being manifestly muscular. His face was weathered from hard-living and hard riding, set with draws and hollows, lined by experience. Then there were those scars across his face. He would have been a menacing character had it not been for those beautifully sad green eyes that offset the rest and gave him a pained, melancholy look.

There was no doubt in Janice’s mind that she was attracted to him.