Skin Medicine

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.”