Skin Medicine

The hellbilly didn’t seem to hear or want to. “You was on our side? Hell you were. Probably some goddamn guerilla out killing babies and robbing farmers. Probably rode with Bloody Bill and his murdering, raping cowards, didn’t you? Not like me. No sir, not like me. Not a real soldier.”

The miner tapped a finger to his skull, indicating that the hellbilly was crazier than dancing cats. But Cabe had already deduced as much. Didn’t take a tree full of owls to figure that.

“ Now, Orv,” Carny said and said very calmly like he was talking to his pet beagle that had just shit on the carpet. “This fellow’s just having himself a drink. He don’t want no trouble. He ain’t a Yankee like me or Bob here. He’s a Southern boy like you and he was a real soldier. So just let him be, hear?”

The hellbilly hawked up a gob of phlegm and spit it at his feet. “Fuck you know, you sumbitch.”

Cabe figured old Orv was making a mistake. By the looks of Carny, he could hammer cold steel into tent pegs with those fists of his. And you just didn’t want to think about how many faces he’d disfigured or skulls he’d fractured. You didn’t get on the bad side of a man like that. It was damn dangerous. That’s what Cabe was thinking…until the hellbilly’s sheepskin coat drifted open and he saw that big, mean-looking 1851 Colt Navy. 44 hanging at his side.

Cabe stopped worrying about old Orv’s face and started wondering how quick the blood would run from a. 44 hole in his own belly. He figured it would run pretty damn fast.

Licking his lips with a tongue drier than desert canvas, he let the fingers of his right hand casually drift down towards the butt of his Starr double-action. 44 conversion. It was a smaller weapon than Orv’s Colt. He had no doubt he could pull it faster…but, hell, last thing he wanted was any killing. That’s not why he was here.

The hellbilly was still advancing, but coming on slow like a mad dog deciding where to sink its foamy teeth.

Cabe said, “Let me buy you a drink, friend. We’ll drink to the old CSA and all the good boys we lost. What say?”

Orv’s hand slid down to his belt, brushed the butt of the mankiller waiting in the holster…and proceeded to his crotch where it began to do some scratching.

Cabe relaxed slightly.

A couple of miners sitting at tables quietly excused themselves, slipping out the door in a blast of wet, black night. Those that remained kept their distance, staying well away. Cabe didn’t like any of that. Way he was figuring things, if people were getting out, then this wasn’t just some crazy drunk. He was a crazy drunk that liked to kill.

Carny made a move for something behind the bar and the hellbilly, maybe not quite as drunk as he looked, pivoted and brought out his Colt smooth and easy.

But Cabe was already on his feet, Starr in hand.

There was a moment of pained, tormented silence, the tension so thick you could’ve speared it with a stick.

The hellbilly was laughing, but there were tears in his eyes. “Got yerself a Starr, boy? I seen ‘em in the war. Cap and ball pistol, ain’t it?”

“ Converted,” Cabe heard himself say, struck by the absurdity of two men about to kill each other discussing weapons. “Had it converted to metal cartridge. Easier that way.”

The hellbilly laughed, giggled really. Saliva ran from the corners of his trembling lips. “I like my 1851, yes sir. Cap and ball, roll yer own, eh? I killed me a score of Yankees with it at Fort Donelson, didn’t I? Bluebellies begged fer their lives and I scattered their brains, didn’t I?” He cackled madly now, that gun just shaking in his fist, hungry for flesh. “Tenth Tennessee, yes sir. Bloody Tenth, they called us. Know why? Because we killed so many and took so many casualties. Blood…hee, hee…all that blood. Just a-running everywhere. You couldn’t get away from all that blood, could you? Still can’t get it off m’hands. Yankees captured us, that it? M’brothers were all dead, all dead, you say? Yes sir, I believe they was. They sent me to Camp Douglas, the POW camp up near Chee-cago. Oh m’Lord, but them Yankees had fun with us! At night they’d shoot through the barracks walls, make bets on how many Johnny Rebs they could kill with a single ball? Hee, you remember that?”

Cabe cleared his throat of dust. “I was captured, too, Orv. After Pea Ridge. I was at Douglas. Later they exchanged us…we mustered back in, went to the fighting again-“

“ Liar! Liar! Liar! Goddamn bluebelly liar!” the hellbilly stammered, drool flying from his mouth, his brown and yellow teeth snapping open and shut like a beartrap. “Yer a Yankee! I can smell yer stink! Dirty murdering bastards killing Roy and Jesse! Fucking bluebellies! I kill ‘em on sight, I kill ‘em on sight!”

He brought the gun up.

Cabe began to apply pressure to the trigger of the Starr.

“ If you kill ‘em on sight,” Carny said. “Then you better ready yourself, because here comes one now.”

The door had swung open and a tall man had stepped in.