Skin Medicine

“A system of black magic, I suppose. Very ancient and forbidden. Instead of a formula written in a book or scratched on a rock, it is tattooed into the flesh. The Skin Medicine allows the beast that lives in all of us to come to the surface, to make itself known in blood and flesh…”

“And that’s what’s killing people? These Skin Mediciners, these beasts?”

Graybrow nodded.

Back home in Yell County there had been another name for men who changed into beasts. Werewolf. Cabe recalled a story he had heard as a youngster about a village of them that were supposed to live high in the Ozarks. Just a story…or was it?

There was a knock on the door and it swung open.

Jackson Dirker was standing there, looking gallant and handsome in his fur-trimmed overcoat and round buffalo hat. His eyes blazed like blue fire. “Charles,” he said, “I need to have a word with Mr. Cabe.”

The Indian nodded. “Sure, sure. There’s things white men can’t discuss before injuns. I was just here to see if I could be of service. You know, shining shoes or emptying chamber pots.”

If he found himself amusing, it wasn’t working on Dirker. He left the room and Dirker closed the door.

And Cabe was thinking: He looks pissed-off. Looks like he wants to kick the shit outta me. Maybe he knows, maybe-

Dirker sat next to him.

Close like that, he could see that Dirker wasn’t really angry. Something was broiling in him, but it had nothing to do with the man he’d come to see.

“Cabe,” he said, staring down at the floor now. “Tyler. May I call you that?”

“Of course.”

Dirker patted him on the leg. “We’ve surely had our differences, haven’t we? You’ve spent years hating me and I don’t blame you, for I think I’ve spent years hating myself over that business at Pea Ridge. But it is over. The war is long gone and we are one people again. I like to think since you’ve come here, things have changed between us. If we are not friends, then surely we are allies now. Would that be a correct assumption?”

Cabe swallowed. “It would be.”

“Once we fought on opposite sides and I honestly don’t know any longer who was in the right…sometimes, sometimes I can’t remember what it was I was fighting for.” Dirker smiled, then looked embarrassed. “The time has come when we must fight side-by-side. So I’ve come to you with an open heart to ask you, to beg you even, to ride with me on Deliverance…”

“You want me at your side?” Cabe said, overwhelmed by emotions he couldn’t even begin to guess on.

“Yes. I would trust you at my side more than any man now living. I would like to deputize you, have you lead a posse with me on that hellish place. Am I out of order asking this of you?”

Cabe cleared his throat. “No, you are not.” He felt something warm spreading in his chest. He stood and looked out the window at the streets below. He turned back to Dirker. “I would be honored to ride at your side.”

And then they shook hands and everything for them, finally, ultimately came full circle.

23

Two hours later, the posse assembled outside of the Sheriff’s Office.

The freezing rain had become snow now that drifted through the frigid air like ash blown from some huge funeral pyre. And that seemed pretty fitting given where the men were going and what they were going to do.

There were some fifteen men there when Cabe rode in on his strawberry roan. Most of them were miners that Cabe did not know. But Pete Slade and Henry Wilcox were there, the office left to another deputy. Sir Tom Ian, the English-born pistol fighter was there. As was Charles Graybrow and Raymond Proud, the big Indian carpenter. The one that really surprised Cabe was Elijah Clay astride a chestnut mare.

“Afternoon, Mr. Cabe,” he said, quite cordially. “The sheriff here has let me join this huntin’ party. He says I have to behave m’self. As far as ye killin’ Virgil, well, I knowed he weren’t nothin’ but trash. So I don’t hold no grudge no more.”

Cabe relaxed a little at hearing that. He pulled his Stetson with the rattlesnake band off the saddle horn and place it on his head. “I’m ready, then,” he said.

“Okay,” Dirker said. “You know where we’re going and what we’re going to do. So let’s get it done. And we don’t come back until Cobb is put down.”

“Yessum, Sheriff,” Clay said. “I’ll tell ye boys one thing and I’ll tell ye just the once. If’n I get that peckerwood devil in m’ sights, I’ll shoot that trash just deader’n Jesus on the cross. Yes, sir.”

And that, it seemed, was a good parting remark.

They rode.

***

It was at the fork in the road, at that old lightening-blasted dead oak, that they found more riders waiting for them. Mormons. Eustice Harmony was there. As were four surviving Danites-Crombley, Fitch, Sellers, and Archambeau. All of whom were anxious to destroy what lived in Deliverance once and for all.

So, then, twenty men rode on that town.

Twenty men who were willing to give their lives to stop the killing and what lived in Deliverance was more than happy to take them.

One by one.

***