Skin Medicine

Clay just nodded, but seemed pleasantly surprised. Maybe he wasn’t used to men admitting who they were when he hunted them. And being from a hill-clan, he put a lot of stock in bravery and courage. Even when it was foolishly placed.

“Well, Mr. Cabe, yer the snake what shot down m’ boy, so lets we two get straight down to it, what say? You fancy shootin’ irons?” Clay considered it, shook his head. “Naw, not yer thing, is it? Too wily. Yer the sort that fancies knives and the like. If’n that’s yer game, I surely can oblige.” He set his shotgun and assorted gunbelts on the table, pulling two hatchets from his belt and stabbing them into the tabletop where they quivered menacingly. “Well, boy, let’s get to it. Got me plans fer yer hide, yessum, figure on making yer life last till well past cockcrow.”

Men were murmuring amongst themselves, maybe mentally recording the entire thing for future yarning. Possibly making note of that impressive set of balls old Tyler Cabe had, but more likely wondering if he had enough money in his poke to bury him with proper.

Cabe grabbed the handle of one of the hatchets, yanked the blade from wood. “All right,” he said. “If it’s gotta be done this way, you big smelly piece of shit, then let’s get to it.”

Clay laughed, pulled up his own hatchet.

Cabe did not waste any time, he lunged in quick, swinging his ax and nearly taking out Clay’s throat, but the big man stepped back, grinning with all those piss-yellow teeth. Here Cabe was, figuring this was a matter of survival, a fight to the death…but to Clay it was just an amusement. Something that beat the shit out of watching the corn grow or violating your own sister.

Clay swung his hatchet and swung it fast, so fast in fact Cabe just barely got out of the way. The blade struck the bar and gouged out a four-inch strip of pine. Cabe swung at the big man and their hatchets met in mid-air in a clanging shower of sparks. The impact threw Cabe back against the bar, his arm thrumming right up to the elbow. He got under Clay’s next blow and swung at his face. Clay dodged it, laughed, and brought his own hatchet at Cabe’s head. It knocked his hat off and before he could react, Clay brought it around backhanded. Cabe brought his up to block the blow which would have been lethal given that the axe was double-edged.

The hatchets met again and the impact ripped Cabe’s from his hand and sent him spinning like a top, putting him easily on his ass.

“That’s that, I reckon,” Clay said and came in for the kill.

Cabe tried to go for his pistol, but his hand was numb right up to the shoulder and the limb reacted like rubber. Clay took hold of his hair, pulled him six-inches up into the air and brought up the hatchet for the deathblow.

And then a voice just as cool and calm as January river ice said, “Drop that hatchet or I’ll shoot you where you stand.”

Clay froze, hatchet up over his head.

Dirker was standing there with his sawed-off shotgun in his hands. Both barrels were leveled at the center of Clay’s back.

“Drop it,” he said.

Clay turned and lowered the hatchet, let it fall from his fingers. Let Cabe fall, too. “Goddammit, Dirker, ye always manage to spoil m’ fun.”

“You all right?” he said to Cabe.

Cabe, with assistance, found his feet.

Dirker marched Clay out the door at gunpoint, Cabe close at his heels. And all Cabe could think of was Dirker and his whip and now Dirker saving his hash and wasn’t it just goddamn funny how things had a way of coming around in the end?

20

After Clay was deposited in a jail cell, Cabe made his way back to the St. James Hostelry where Janice Dirker fawned over him, though nothing was really injured but his pride.

“You’re lucky to be alive, Mr. Cabe,” she kept saying as she drew him a bath. “Just darn lucky.”

“Well, the fact that I am…well, it’s your husband’s doing.”

“Jackson is a very dutiful man,” was all she would say on the matter.

Cabe had his bath and when he went back to his room, planning on taking a nice long nap while he had the chance, Janice was waiting for him there. She had changed his sheets and bedclothes, had built a little fire in the corner stove. It felt nice in there, warm and comfortable.

“Earlier this evening,” she said, “a man came to see you.”

Cabe laid on the bed. “Not another one of the Clays?”

“No. Nothing like that. This one was a very polished gentleman, said his name was Freeman.”

Cabe sat up. “Freeman?”

“Yes. Is that a problem?”

Cabe wanted to lie, but he couldn’t bring himself to. He told her who and what Freeman was, how he and Dirker had almost got him.

Janice looked decidedly pale, but recovered herself nicely as only a Southern lady could. “Well, yes, but I’m no prostitute.”

“He could’ve killed you nonetheless.”

And Cabe was figuring that was exactly what he’d had in mind. Freeman knew Cabe was after him and what better way to rub defeat in Cabe’s face than to not only slip away, but to slaughter the only woman in town he’d truly befriended.

Janice said, “He told me, told me to tell you…”