West of Hell
By Gregory Purvis
© 2014
“The west is the best. The west is the best. Get here, and we’ll do the rest.”
Jim Morrison
It was full dark, and a pack of wild dogs sang hymns to a half-moon in the spangled sky; their song reached up into the hot, motionless air until, finally, a gust of wind blew it away—off to some distant land beyond the horizon. To the west.
A skinny man in split-stitched brown britches, the ragged remains of a shirt, blood-stained duster, and a dust-covered top hat passed the entrance to the sleeping town on a broken-down old nag. He squinted, slumped over his saddle, to read the sign:
HELL
Pop. 77 Souls
No Niggers – No Sue
The second seven had been turned into a six with fresh paint, now nearly dry.
Somebody always dies. The only trick is making sure it ain’t you. A nugget of wisdom he had picked up in the Territories. More like a hard lesson of life, in a way—but whatever you called it, those “nuggets” were the only things besides hard luck he had taken away from that place. Nuggets of the gold sort had remained ever-elusive during his tour.
The man wore a thick crust of white clay a root woman in the last town had covered his once-handsome face in, before bruises and a deep cut had deformed him. The clay had dried and some had crumbled away, but it masked his face well-enough. Even so, white clay would not turn him into a white man—not to people who made their prejudices so clear, if clearly misspelled.
Ironically, the clay drew attention to the shade of his skin instead of away from it. He had never been subject to the racial hatred his uncle told him had whipped the nation into a fury of angry riots and public lynching’s right before the war that tore the nation as a whole apart like Roman bread at a circus for the starving.
He studied the sign, letting the nag rest.
Who is Sue and what crimes did she commit? The man’s fever was beginning to worsen, again. Maybe she was a whore. In Deadwood, he had seen whores beaten when they didn’t go about their business with willing smiles. Some ran away—into the Dakota badlands, or into a bottle of laudanum. No matter where they ran, none of them ever returned. A few fought back, usually with a whiskey bottle they emptied in long swallows for courage then smashed it over a roughneck’s head, keeping a jagged piece to hold against the dazed and bleeding man’s throat. The man got a trip to the local doctor and another whore, on the house. The woman got a nice scar with a piece of the bottle to remind her to be a good girl. Sometimes they tired of the constant abuse, and shot someone with a Derringer, often following it up with a second shot to their own head. It was the only real way out of that life.
No whore named Sue, fool—they’re probably talking about the Sioux. About Indians. Some of them must still be alive out here…surely. A few Sioux, Chippewa, or Cheyenne. When he’d come west—searching for gold like all the other damn fools—he had left a comfortable life in New Orleans. The only Indians he had ever seen lived in the deep swamp; hunting alligator for their hides and meat in shallow-bottomed pole boats. Some had intermarried with French trappers or freemen, and their sons marched in the parades down in the Quarter, before the start of Lent.
He had been born Alexander Jean-Paul de la Mer Savoux, the son of a wealthy doctor, in the complex castes of freemen with mixed French and African ancestry. Even before the war, no one in his family had been called Negroes, even respectfully. Though they did not openly interact socially with the wealthy white families, they often did business together. And at debutante balls, cotillions, and the more private affairs in the better-class brothels, there were faces of many colors in attendance: as a show of respect, or from the common desires of any man. Still, for the most part they married their own, lived in large homes in their own neighborhoods, spoke English, French, and Creole, and had black servants (who had sometimes been slaves, before Mr. Lincoln had ended all of that with his Emancipation).
Alexander did not look like a Negro; his features were European, his eyes bright green. His hair was a dark brown, and he had worn it short in the back and on top, with long, curled bangs slicked back with pomade and a thin moustache. He had grown up privileged, and paid little attention to his Oncle Julius’s stories of joining the Union army after the fall of New Orleans, and serving as both a well-respected sharpshooter and the regimental surgeon. Those stories had been dark and bloody, and had little to do with him.
His own life had revolved around a lust for rich foods, sweet wines, games of chance, the occasional duel—usually just to first blood—and beautiful women. There were opium dens, glasses of absinthe and young girls reading Baudelaire, Lord Byron, and the rest of his favorite poets.
But he had grown bored with the pleasures and sins of New Orleans. When the first golden stories had filtered down from the Territories, he had sold his antique dueling pistols (settling a gentleman’s honor with pistols or rapiers was illegal and prosecuted now, anyway) and a ring set with a large ruby and constellation of diamonds. He outfitted himself with a pair of splendid Le Mat pistols, a tooled leather gun belt with loops for the ammunition, a fine stallion with clear eyes and well-muscled legs, a heavy lantern, and a good black duster to cover his fine clothes. He figured he would supply himself further when he got to the steadily growing town of Deadwood, where gold was said to be there for any man to simply bend down and pick it up from the ground.
Looking back on the whole folly, he figured he had sold, spent or gambled away far more gold than he had ever pulled from the dark earth around Deadwood. No one who was remotely trustworthy had ever known anyone that had picked a nugget up off the ground, he had quickly learned. Some purchased claims from others that had been good producers, only to have the claim run dry of luck inexplicably. Others filed a claim in some place no one thought even remotely viable, and it made a mint. Most people worked hard, panning or with sluice boxes, for very little. Alexander had been robbed (twice), accused of cheating at poker (by the drunkest loser at the table, naturally), and his fine clothes had been fouled by mud, horse shit, blood, and sweat. But not once had anyone called him out as a Negro. The drunken gambler had called him a “shifty-eyed Spaniard”, and until he cut his hair and shaved his moustache he had been laughed at in saloons and stores for a “dude”—apparently the western word for dandy.
Then, when he had almost decided to pack it in and return to New Orleans to study under his father and Oncle Julius, he had heard of a silver strike to the southwest. You have to go south to go home, anyway, he had told himself. And so he had.
But in a town—this one with the charming name of Pigkiller—he had run afoul of two pieces of bad luck: his notoriety in New Orleans, and the town’s boss. The first piece of ill-fortune met him coming into town, still on his stalwart stallion, close enough to midday. A gallows had been recently erected across from a stand of tall pines just the other side of a wooden sign with “Pigkiller” painted on it in what looked like dried blood. A badly sunburned man, naked except for a scrap of canvas tied around his privates, was balanced on a rickety wooden stool with one short leg, a noose tightly fixed around his neck. His skin was blistered and peeling, as it seemed the pines were too far to one side of the gallows to offer any shade, but under the raw, red flesh Alex could see this was no white man.
His horse shied away from the gallows, kicking up dust and shooing away a cloud of flies that rested like a black crown along a cut around the man’s brow. He opened his eyes and they stared at each other a moment. Alex recognized the man just an instant before he croaked:
“Alexander…! Help…me! Cut me…down!”
It was a young man from New Orleans, the brother to one of Alex’s best friends. He was younger, but only by four years or so. Alexander knew him well enough.
“Claude! What are you..?” Alex looked around, warily. He spotted two bearded men sitting on camp stools under the pine trees. They were both armed: one with a rifle and the other with a short, double-barreled shotgun. One of them pushed his hat back from his eyes, pointing.
Alex lowered his voice. “Claude, why are you hanging here in this place? Mon Dieu! What are you doing here? What have you done?”
“I tipped…my hat. To a lady…is all,” Claude said hoarsely, trying to swallow enough spit to speak. “I saw her, later…in…saloon…tried to speak to…her, but then…this big man…the boss man…he says I’m a nigger, that I…I am not allowed…to speak… to white women, or even…to come into their saloon!”
Claude was darker than Alexander, darker than his own brothers. And, unlike them, he had dark eyes as well. He had kept his hair cut very short, slicked back with some scented hair tonic. But he did not have what Alex’s mother sometimes called “a passing complexion.” In New Orleans—in the Deep South—it hadn’t mattered much; you were either accepted to the extent that you were in New Orleans, which largely depended on how wealthy your family was and how much white blood they had, or you were considered property. Until Lincoln’s Emancipation, that was. Afterwards, you were just a sharecropper: property in all but name working for next to nothing on someone else’s land. It was ironic that here—almost as far north as the United States went on the maps, your color apparently meant death. And the war had been long over.
The two guards were approaching, guns pointed, while not exactly at Alex, certainly too close for his comfort. One of them spit a long stream of tobacco juice in the dirt, pointing at Claude with his rifle.
“Who are you and what business do you have with this here prisoner?” the man demanded.
Alex thought fast.
“I’m…his attorney,” he tipped his hat a bit, politely. “Alexander Savoux, Esquire. A member of the Louisiana Bar in good standing, and registered with the federal district court of the United States of America.” It was as big a lie as he had ever tried on for size, and as soon as it was out of his mouth he could see it didn’t fit.
It wasn’t the lie itself, but simply because he didn’t look the part. His good clothes were ruined, except for the duster (which was dusty) and his top hat (which was covered in more of the same). Underneath, he wore a pair of brown britches that had seen much better days, and a blue cotton work shirt tucked into them, held up by suspenders.
“Alex!” Claude croaked. “Help me!”
“You ain’t no attorney!” the rifleman said, nodding, sure of himself.
“I say I am, sir. And I demand to know what crime this man has committed. If you mean to hang him for simply tipping his hat to a white woman, I mean to bring suit on you, your companion, and your entire town. When the Judge is through hanging you two, maybe I’ll have the pleasure of collecting my fee from the taxes I’m sure you have all been very timely in collecting.”
The man with the rifle grinned, and spit out another mouthful of brown tobacco juice. This time some of it landed on Alexander’s boots. Not that they could claim kinship to cleanliness, before.
“Well, there’s your problem, your Esquireship,” he raised his rifle. “This ain’t the Territories. This ain’t a state, and it sure to hell ain’t New Orleans. This here is Pigkiller. It’s my cousin’s town, and we own a thousand head a hogs. And we own his black ass, as he has been found guilty already. As to your fee…we ain’t paid a cent of tax on a slice of bacon in the three years we been here, and we ain’t gonna start now just because some so-called lawyer appears out of the bush and sees his nigger friend has done got hisself on the wrong side of things.”
The man with the shotgun stepped up.
“The only law in this town is our law, mister. So you can put heels to that horse and ride on out of here now…or you can explain your lawyerin to the Man his ownself.”
Alex wanted to ride on, and leave Claude to slip off his stool and strangle in the hot sun. God forgive him, but he did. But what his mother would have called the “better angels of our consciousness” held him, hands stiff on the reins.
“I suppose you give me no choice, gentlemen. I suppose I must ask to speak with your Sheriff…uh…Pigkiller.”
“Pig killin is what we do. And Willis Hogg ain’t a sheriff. We don’t need a sheriff, or a judge, or lawyers in cheap pants with mouths fulla big words, neither. But it’s your funeral, fancypants.”
So Alexander rode into the little town with a bearded man on either side, sniggering the way they had in Deadwood at his nice clothes, curled hair and skinny mustache. Except this time they were laughing because of their absence.
In the end, Claude had been unceremoniously kicked off his rickety perch by the man with the shotgun. When he returned, Alex had run out of steam—his words pointless now. Mr. Willis Hogg, Mayor, had listened politely with a small smile on his fat face. Then, with the hangman returned, he told some of his cronies to hold Alexander down across one of the splintery tables in the saloon. They had removed his shirt and then carved “Pig Killer” across his back with the largest Bowie knife Alex had ever seen. He had screamed a great deal, and bled—as Hogg had reminded him considerately—“just like a stuck pig.”
When they were through with his back, Hogg had given him a deep cut across the bridge of his nose and down each cheek. Like war paint, the fat man said.
“Now ever’body’ll see what a mighty war you been in, talking your laws instead of shooting them fancy pistols you got there,” the bearded man that killed Claude told him.
One of the whores that practiced their trade on the second floor of the saloon had wrapped his back in strips of bandage and gave him a teaspoon of laudanum in a little glass of whiskey. The cuts on his back weren’t as deep, she said—though the scars would still be readable. They tied another bandage across his face, but it soaked through immediately with dark blood. She took it off, rinsed it out with whiskey, and retied it. He gritted his teeth against the deep burn of the alcohol. It soaked through again. So she’d had to stitch him up, using needle and thread—but by then the opium-laced whiskey had done its work and he did not mind hers so much. When she was done, she retied the bandage.
“Now, that there will remind you where you was at, if you should ever forget and need you some good pork belly,” Hogg told him.
And they took what little gold he had left, except the four $20 coins hidden in the heels of his boots. It was a trick he had picked up from a gambler in Deadwood.
“Tax,” Hogg told him, when he asked why they were taking his purse.
“I suppose you are going to take my horse, too?” he had asked, slightly brave from the laudanum.
Hogg looked at him in mock horror.
“Mister Esquire, I would have figgered a man of the law would know this his own self,” Hogg shook his great, neckless head, jowls pulling his face down in a hang-dog expression that made him look almost sad. “Horse thievin’ is against the law, under penalty of death. Here, same as everywhere civilized. The dirt-worshipping redskin savages might take your fine stallion, but that’s between you and them. I’d head west if’n I was you. They say somebody struck silver near Cripple Pony Creek.”
The sound of laughter followed him out, along with the bearded man with his shotgun.
He found his stallion tied up outside the saloon, where he had left him. The bearded man handed over his gun belt with his Le Mat pistols resting inside their holsters, the one on the left turned around backwards, so he could draw it with his right hand faster. Another trick his gambler friend had showed him. He had been a famous gunfighter who had come to Deadwood to die. He had gotten his wish, Alex had heard, a day or two after he left Deadwood headed south with silver in mind. The bearded man looked longingly at the pistols.
“Might be I’d give you…say, $100 in gold dust for your belt and guns,” he said. “And I’ll personally see your nigger friend gets a decent Christian burial. The next town over has a church with a bone yard.”
“You murdered him,” Alexander said softly. “His mother’s not like to care if you bury him in the dirt here or the dirt a few miles down the road. And Hogg said something about Indians. I might need my pistols before I get home.”
“Murdered?” the man asked in surprise. “Now, see, that’s just the sort of language that made Mister Hogg angry with you in the first place. Your smiling, hat-tipping friend, he broke the law—our law—and justice were served. You was judged to be in contempt of court, and so you was marked. As for the Injuns, there ain’t near as many left around here as there was.” The man grinned as if he had personally hunted them all to extinction.
Alex got on his horse carefully, trying not to reopen the drying bloody cuts across his back.
“So I guess you don’t want us to see to his buryin, then?”
“Let’s go see if the pigs and crows have eaten him already,” Alex said. He felt the first stirrings of a cold, quiet rage building inside. The bearded man shoved the shortened shotgun into a leather holster beneath his own duster and grinned.
When they got to the gallows, three big crows had settled on Claude already. The bearded man shooed them away. The pigs were nowhere in sight. The man took out a small bag and showed Alex the contents. It looked like gold dust mixed with finely-crushed rock. It was probably laced with fool’s gold or something similar. He saw a gambler horsewhipped for paying for his losses with fool’s gold once. The bearded man bounced it on his palm.
“Feels about right,” the man allowed, looking at Alex’s pistols.
Before the bearded man had a chance to look surprised, Alex pulled, cocked, and fired the lower barrel with its smoothbore packed full of grapeshot into his face. The shot had enough distance to spread a bit, but the range was close enough so the lead took the top of his head off, spinning him around half a turn before he fell on the rough-hewn planks of the gallows.
“Feels about right to me,” Alexander agreed hoarsely. He crossed himself and began a prayer for Claude…but kicked his horse into a gallop first.
Alex rode west, though he didn’t know where Cripple Pony Creek was, and he didn’t care. He made for the next town, hoping a church might mean a more civil welcome. The town was two days away, and he used up his water by the end of the first day. But he knew it was foolish to stop and look for a stream. He knew—eventually—that men from Pigkiller would come for him.
By the time he made it to the town—named Silverwell—he had the beginnings of a fever. When he moved wrong, the scabs on his back broke open, leaking blood and pus into his stained shirt through the fouled, crusted bandages. The long cut over his nose and cheeks still felt like a line of fire across his face—and the blistering sun hadn’t helped.
The well was filled with cold, clear water—not silver—but water was more precious than all the silver in the world by the time he got to it. The church was there—but deserted, along with most of the homes and businesses. The doctor’s office had been taken over by a barber-surgeon, who was too drunk to do more than point at one of the clapboard houses.
“Mother Maryann,” the man slurred. “She’s the herb-woman—a witch, you ask me. She’ll fix you right on up. I can pulla tooth if you help me get some coffee goin…”
“I’m sure you could, but I don’t need any teeth pulled.”
In New Orleans, witches were paid like anyone else. But Mother Maryann didn’t ask for anything. She stirred some tincture into a glass of the same cold well water he had swallowed until he vomited much of it back up, added a spoon of something mixed with honey, and crumbled a handful of other herbs into a mortar. She had him drink the tincture first, which dulled his senses enough so that the old woman could pull off his bandages, muttering when she took a whiff of the pus.
“Another day and you’d have been in some serious trouble. I see Hogg is still marking those who displease him. You’d be surprised at how many of these little signatures I see.”
He whimpered some as she started to clean the cuts, and passed out on her feather mattress.
When he woke, she was just finishing mixing white clay with herbs from her stone mortar.
“There’s silver in this here mud,” she confided. “It’ll help the healing. But you need to ride at night, under the moonlight, that’s what will help the silver do it’s healing. Besides, this willow bark and poppy seed took your fever down, but you stay in the sun with these wounds and it’ll come right back. Need to drink plenty of water. And, just so you don’t get any fool notions in your head, there ain’t no silver in the well, or over to Cripple Pony Creek neither. That’s just hogwash the Marshall started to get everyone moving out from the Territories. Cleans the fools and drunks out of one town after another; you just start a rumor that gold or silver has been found in some creek or in some hills, point in some direction away from where you are, and people will go.
“There’s silver here, but it’s just in the white clay, and not enough to make your fortune with, unless you figure out how to sell clay. Go home, mister. If you can, go back where there’s still some sane people left. Go south—or northeast, around Pigkiller. Any direction at all is fine, but west. Ain’t anything to the west but Hell.”
But Alex thought she had just meant hard country.
It turned out that Silverwell had an assayers office connected to a bank, next to the Marshall’s office, which was currently staffed by two young deputies. He bought some supplies from a little store in town, and took two silver dollars of the change back to Mother Maryann, but she refused. He tried to insist, but she pushed him away from her door, gently.
“My gifts are gifts of the Lord. I don’t charge for helping those in need.”
So he had spent the money buying shots of whiskey for one of the deputies and his father, who owned the bank and served as assayer. He didn’t want to linger long, but Mother Maryann assured him that folks from Pigkiller didn’t come into Silverwell, because it had real law. Apparently it had once had real silver, too, he learned. But it was played out, like everywhere else. Except to the west.
“Mother Maryann says there’s nothing but hell to the west,” he told them.
They laughed, the older man almost clapping him on the shoulder, before he recalled Alexander’s wounds.
“Hell is a town,” the deputy told him. “And there ain’t anything there but misery. Plague came through and killed most everyone. Then a twister took off near every roof in town and made off with the church and general store entirely. Ten years later, when they had rebuilt, their wells started drying up, one after another. But some stayed, stubborn as mules those people, and dug themselves new wells. They scratched a living out of the dirt. Then there was a storm of locusts come through two years ago, and they ate every blade of grass, every cabbage and turnip and green growing thing there was. When we had us a preacher, he’d run a circuit between here and Hell—which was called Hell’s Creek back then, because of the sulphur in that water, afore it dried up, too. Preacher said God was punishing them for their sins. I heard they hung him up on a big thorn bush.”
“So why would I want to go to a place like that?” Alex asked, taking another shot of the whiskey.
“Because,” said the old man, following his lead and pouring him and his son a shot. “Hell has one thing that is of value—and that’s silver. You just got to know where to look.”
And, like the fool he had cursed himself for a hundred times before, he had spent his last gold coins for a hand-scrawled map showing the way up the dry creek bed, avoiding a sinkhole and a patch of quicksand where the foul water had been at work, leading around several large boulders to a small pile of rock not quite big enough to be called a hill. Can’t miss it, he was assured.
Of course, by this time, Alex was not as ignorant as he had once been of treasure maps and secret mines. He asked the old man why him and his strong young son didn’t go out there themselves and pull the silver out of the hills, if there was any to be pulled.
The old man looked down at Alexander’s Le Mat pistols. His son looked away.
“Even the Marshall doesn’t go over there any more. Same as Pigkiller. Town ain’t got any law. Ain’t on a map, either. Maybe one day, when this is all part of one state or another, things will change. For now, Silverwell is as close to sane as you find people out here. Over in Hell, they are damned. Their new preacher is said to be an idol-worshipper, and the people are worse. It’s where everyone running from somewhere better washes up—because nobody ever goes there.
“The silver is there, mister. I’ll swear that on a stack of bibles. But you’re going to have to take it. And I don’t mean pan for it in that trickle of stink water, neither. You’re gonna have to put you some dynamite in those old gray stones and blow it up. The places to put the explosives are marked on the map. That’s how to get the silver that’s inside there. Because even though the people know it’s there, they don’t go near that place. Where that foul water comes out of those rocks—just a trickle now—there’s a large cave. It’s said by many an honest man that that place is well named.”
So Alexander headed out with plenty of water, jerky, coffee, flour, a little sugar and some cheese wrapped in waxed paper. In his saddlebags he still had a small rock hammer, a shallow pan, and a box of ammunition for his pistol. He had had to give his stallion and the rest of his money for the explosives. They were wrapped in a bundle of cloth and tied with twine. There were seven of them in all, each with a twelve-inch fuse. In return for his stallion, he got an old broken down thing that was nearly lame. His wounds were still weeping, and Mother Maryann gave him some willow bark and dried poppy to make tea, and a bottle of some tincture to help with the healing and the pain. She also gave him a small stone jar full of white clay, and told him to keep his face covered in it. When it all flaked off, he was to wash the cuts gently and put more on.
“That cut on your face is deep,” she told him. “There will be a scar, but if you wear this clay it won’t be as bad as it could be.”
Alex tried again to give her some of the money he had left to him from the first $20 gold coin, but she refused yet again. “You want to give me a gift, young man? Go home, to where people still love you. Where there are people who still know how to love.”
But instead, Alex turned his horse west, where he knew no one at all, but suspected trouble. Some stubborn streak in him would not let him return home with nothing but a handful of change, a bent-backed old horse, and his pistols. He’d rather shoot himself in the head and let them make up some wild story about where he had ended up—San Francisco, maybe. Maybe they would say he struck it big and had gone east, to live among the gently-born where his wealth would soothe any hard questions of where he had come from and how he had won his fortune. He couldn’t return to see that look in his Oncle Julius’s eyes: I told you. The world is too hard for you. You are nothing but a fool, boy!
And even the servants would know him for a failure, coming back scarred with empty pockets. “To our brave golden master,” they would grin, holding up glasses of his father’s wine.
No, he would go west—just a little farther. He travelled by night, as the old root woman had advised. If you run into the Pacific, you’ve gone too far, the old gambler had told him once, joking, when he asked about the western wasteland, and beyond them: California! Like a dream, out beyond the Rocky Mountains and the Great Salt Lake and the endless grass bone yard where the 49’ers and the trailblazers and pioneers had come in their wagons, before he was born.
Just a little farther, he promised himself, and kissed the little silver and gold crucifix. He had almost forgotten he still had it. Lucky I haven’t had to pawn or sell it as well, he told himself. Just a little bit farther. And then, if the old man and his son had been lying, he would turn around. If that Marshall was still gone he’d shoot the deputies and the old banker, and take his money back, take the whole town for whatever it had. Maybe that’s the story I’ll write for them to tell. But he knew he’d never do it. Even killing that bastard who let Claude strangle had given him a sick feeling he still couldn’t shake off.
And then he’d come up on the sign: Hell. There was something scrawled after that, but it had been scrubbed away. A town of sinners: so what? Deadwood had been a thousand times worse than this little speck of dust, he reckoned. He had seen things in Deadwood that could haunt a ghost.
The first little cabin he came to was abandoned; an intricate symbol had been drawn across the door in white paint. It looked familiar—something he had seen in New Orleans, maybe. Almost like the vodou markings his Auntie Jo used to draw on the ground in flour to call the spirits…but that was ridiculous, wasn’t it? Way out here in the middle of nowhere….
The second structure was a much larger house, and had lights burning inside. A closed carriage with glass windows, black curtains and polished black wood sat out front. A hearse: its horses stabled for the night. He got off his own horse, letting it nose around in the scrub for something sweet, if something sweet could be found. He raised his hand to knock, but the door opened. An old man stood there, dressed in a black suit and vest with a string tie, a stiff white shirt with small black buttons, and a tall hat, like his own. Beyond the old man he saw a small foyer leading into a formal parlor, with papered walls and small oil lamps in wooden holders. A coffin sat on a long table covered with some dark fabric.
“You look in need of an open door, my friend,” the old man said in a gravelly voice. He pulled out a gold pocket watch and consulted it. “It is past mid-night, so Baron Saturday comes to us on his favored day. Come out of the dark wild and rest for a while. Surely the dead do not bother a man like you…?”
The old man was skinny and frail, and Alex had his pistols.
“There’s no Hotel hereabouts?” Alex asked cautiously.
“Nothing of the sort remains to us. He is cruel, yes he is,” the old man nodded.
Guess he means God, Alex thought. He didn’t like the idea of exploring the town at night, anyway. The local constabulary was likely to be more like those at Pigkiller and less like a Marshall or Sheriff, and with his face covered in its white mask he didn’t know what they might make of him. They might shoot him, thinking he was some highwayman in disguise.
According to the tattered penny dreadful he had folded up along with a small copy of Prayers for the Traveler in his shaving kit, some robbers wore bandanas or hoods around their faces, to make it harder for the law to identify them. He had himself been robbed by a man who held a pistol in one hand, and a scrap of cotton stained with blood up to his face with the other. The hand with the pistol also held an open sack, where he had been commanded to drop his money and his pocket watch. Then the robber coughed violently, spraying more blood on the scrap of cotton.
“I got the consumption,” the man had explained, almost apologetic. “I got to get the medicine or I’ll never make it home. It’s expensive, but the Professor swears he has the right formula, using those Injun roots and all. I seen it work on a man in the tent, just last night! What’s your name, mister?” After another round of coughing, Alexander had told the thief his name. The man swore if he made it home, he’d send him what he’d taken back, in currency…or gold, if he got lucky before he left. If I get home…the man said.
Go home! A voice ordered, suddenly. This is a mortuary, a house of the dead. Remember your mother’s teachings! Go home! It was his father’s voice, and Alexander shrugged it off. For his entire father’s “proper” scientific education—in France, and Canada, and even Harvard—he had never objected to his wife’s more spiritual beliefs. His grandmother and Aunt Josephine were witches, of a sort that were common amongst their class and racial heritage. They went to mass as good Catholics did—but the saints represented older spirits that could be called with gifts, and on certain days, and those spirits would sometimes grant a gift of sorts, in return: a boon. They knew roots and herbs, mostly from the Indians but some things grew in the swamps just as well as by a river in West Africa.
Though he had not paid much attention to it, his sister’s grew up knowing one plant from another. His mother had run the pharmacy behind her husband’s practice. His Oncle Julius had an almost supernatural aversion to it—strange for a man of science, Alexander had thought. He had used his nephews to carry the ‘medicines of science’ into the pharmacy: calomel, raw opium and tinctures in various strengths, morphine, mercury, aconitine, digitalis, quinine, and a plethora of popular patent medicines.
“Come in, out of the night,” the old man invited.
“Well, if I wouldn’t be putting you out, sir, I’d appreciate that. I seem to find myself in much-reduced circumstances, and I can’t pay you much for a bed.”
“Your way had already been prepared. The door stands open.” The old man pointed down a hallway, where a door to the right was, indeed, standing wide open.
The voice—his father or his Oncle Julius—tried to tell him something, but he brushed it away like a pesky mosquito.
“I’m grateful for the hospitality,” he told the old man.
“We are humbled by your patronage,” the old man replied, making a stiff, formal bow. Like you would to a king, Alexander thought. Who does he think I am? I must look half a fright Maybe he thinks I’m a Highwayman not a ghost and he’ll go for whatever they call the law as soon as he was safely secured in a bedroom…
The man swept his skinny arm down the hall. “If you are in need, we are here.”
Alex took a cautious step, fearing some trap. But no one sprang from the closed doors. And when he got to the open one, the room beyond was nicely furnished…and empty. Staring back at the skinny man in his tall hat, Alexander finally turned and pulled the door shut. There was a key in the lock on his side, and he turned it until he heard a sharp metal click. Alex put the key in the pocket of his britches.
He wondered if the men from Pigkiller would ride wide of Silverwell and keep pushing until they found him here.
Even if they do, you have a different horse; your scars are covered by your shirt and the clay mask. And if your luck fails altogether, your pistols will give them pause…for a time.
The room was lit with candles as well as a single oil lamp on the little table by the canopied bed. The bed itself was a big mahogany piece with a feather mattress. A wardrobe sat on the far side of the bed, next to a square dark wooden table with lion’s feet grasping wooden balls for legs. On it was a silver platter on top of which sat a crystal decanter with four glass stoppers, made so four different wines—or liquors—could be poured from the same vessel. There was white wine in one, red in another, the bright green of absinthe in the third, and some clear liqueur—perhaps just water—in the fourth. Four wine glasses sat next to the bottle, and a small silver bowl full of sugar cubes, with a pierced strainer that fit the glasses. He sniffed the plain liquid, but couldn’t tell if it was water or not. He decided on some jerky and water from one of his canteens instead. Afterwards he laid down on the large mattress, intending only to rest a bit, his right hand resting on a pistol.
Pump-organ and harp music woke him; the sun was shining in around heavy curtains that had hidden the window from him the night before. He used a pitcher of water and matching bowl sitting on a dry sink in one corner to wash his face free of the dry, crumbling clay. Then he dabbed on more from the little jar Mother Maryann had given him.
He rinsed out the bandages on his back, soaked them in absinthe, which he judged to be the strongest of the four liquids, and tied them back around his chest. To his surprise, he found new, clean clothes in the wardrobe: almost exactly of the style, cut, and fabrics that he had taken to Deadwood. Shrugging, he left the blood and pus-stained blue work shirt on the floor, taking a white silk shirt with buttons carved from ebony in little grinning skulls, and exchanged his britches for a new pair of formal black pants in summer-weight wool. He found a silk bow tie with black and white stripes, and tied it using a small stand mirror. He could see how skinny he had gotten. He found a silver brush in one of the wardrobes drawers, and brushed his top hat and duster clean. He felt slightly odd buckling his gun belt on over the finely-made clothes, but just what he’d experienced of this town so far made him think he’d have a use for them before he left.
Unlocking the door, he saw that someone had left an altar in the hallway, facing his door, in the middle of the night. There was a large brass crucifix, with sugar skulls lining the crossbar. A bottle, half-empty, of dark Rum stood by the cross, and several cigars were scattered around the carpet. Alexander hadn’t seen tobacco since his own supply ran out three days outside of Deadwood. It had been a luxury by that time, and one he couldn’t afford. He pocketed several cigars, holding one to remind him to ask the old man if he had any matches he could spare. He wasn’t bothered by the altar—only that someone would make it in the middle of the night and leave it in front of his door. He had seen plenty like it, and this one…
Of course! You idiot, Alexander! ‘Remember your mother’s teachings’. He had arrived on Saturday, wearing a top hat and his face painted all in white, almost like a skull. The old man thought he was—or had been sent by—Baron Samedi. Though why a white mortician in the middle of this scrubland full of drought and plague—if the assayer and his son had told it true—would know anything of the Mystères of his mother’s “other” faith was passing strange.
Before he made it to the foyer, the old man was there, and offered him breakfast, though he said it would be in truth more of a brunch. Alex’s stomach rumbled, but then he caught the perfume of flowers coming from the parlor. Underneath the floral smells, he caught a whiff of the corpse in the coffin he had seen last night. Apparently the old man wasn’t much of an embalmer…either that, or the person’s family hadn’t seen fit to have a viewing yet. If they wait much longer, the view won’t be too pleasant, Alexander thought.
The smell turned his hunger into queasiness, and he told the old man he must be going.
“Of course you do, my good man! Saturday is a long day in this bad country! You’ll dig a grave for poor Miss Odom, surely? She was shot by one suitor as the other tried to slip a ring on her pretty finger.”
Alex nodded in puzzlement, and then remembered the map. The stream ran by the graveyard up to the rocky hill.
“Where is your graveyard, my good man?”
The old mortician smiled. “Why, it’s just behind the…ah…church. But you might not want to go that way. You can follow the path behind my stable, and it will save you a little time.”
“Well, thank you, sir, for these clothes, and your impeccable hospitality.” The smell was starting to get to him, and he had a fairly strong stomach, growing up in a house with a noted doctor, a Civil War surgeon, and his mother and grandmother’s root potions.
“The door is opened for you, anytime at all.”
So Alex went into the stable to retrieve his horse. It was nowhere in sight, but a midnight-black garron was tied to a post, with a note pinned to the bridle.
To my Dear Guest:
Unfortunately, the white horse you rode into town on died. I think he may have eaten from the wrong plants. There are many poisonous things in Hell, as you must surely know. I will check its stomach contents, and if it is clean, we shall butcher it, for pure meat is not always easily found hereabouts. In return, please accept this beautiful young garron—small but sure-footed. And where you go, that must be a good thing I would imagine.
Yours, Cordially,
Dr. K. Davis Tarbones
P.S. Here, also, is a box of good matches—as I know how you enjoy your cigars, and saw that you did not possess any of your own, earlier.
Alexander pocketed the matches. Dr. Tarbones was certainly an odd fellow. He would make a wonderful story—if he ever got back to New Orleans to tell it. He found an apple in a small bag, and fed it to the garron while slowly stroking her long mane. It was a short, stocky animal, more of a pony than a horse, but Alexander wasn’t terribly tall, and she looked to be in excellent condition. He wouldn’t have been surprised if the old white nag had simply fallen over from exhaustion.
Mounting the black garron, he grimaced as his bandages shifted, but turned her out of the barn and around it, finding the rocky path the old man spoke of. It matched his map perfectly. He followed it until he saw the ruins of a large clap-board church on a hill to his left. The cross had fallen from the steeple, and the steeple itself had partially collapsed. Dirt seemed to ride up at the two corners he could see, and the windows were blacked out, making the structure look as if it had risen from the ground instead of been built on it. A path led down from the church to the narrow valley he rode through. Twenty yards ahead he saw the first few crosses. There were some stone markers, but they seemed to be older—from a more prosperous time. The names were mostly eroded, but here and there he caught a few, and the dates as well, which all seemed to be in the early years of this century or the waning years of the last. He hadn’t known there was white settlers this far west, before Lewis and Clark made their famous expedition and pioneers began to gather up their wagon trains.
Perhaps they were Spaniards, Alex thought.
He finally caught sight of the little creek, near his path. Apparently it had never been too wide as to bother the gravediggers or worry the townsfolk that a flood would disinter their loved ones. It was now barely more than a dry creek bed with the occasional puddle. The standing water stunk of sulphur, and he kept the garron on the path and out of the water, though he didn’t think she would try to drink from it or stray near the marked sinkhole.
He had followed the creek for almost an hour when he caught sight of the rocks, like the playthings of giants, piled up to make a small hill. It was two miles further, he guessed—too far to notice any opening at the base.
It turned out to be more like five miles, and when he got there, he saw a small pool of stinking, yellow water where it came up from deep inside the cave. The creek ran strong here, for a short distance at least. A pile of strange flat rocks, like you would imagine the Ten Commandments to be inscribed on, had fallen from the hill, washed a ways down the creek, and then stuck together in a pile during a drought. Since then, only a trickle made it past the pile of flat rocks to continue on.
When Alex looked up, he realized the entire hill seemed to be made of these flat rectangular rocks. More than likely, that was the source of those older gravestones—though why the townsfolk would switch to wooden crosses when the perfectly-shaped stones were in such abundance he didn’t know.
He was tempted to light his lantern and check the inside of the cave for silver deposits. But something held him back. Stick to the plan: place the charges where the little marks are on the map.
The assayer had said an engineer had marked out the best places to plant explosives to bring a hill like the one described to him (maybe by the assayer, second-hand, or maybe by someone who had decided they would rather live in a nicer-named town) down.
It only took an hour to set the charges, and another half-hour to wire all the fuses together with the roll of cord that had come with the explosives. The hill was quite easy to climb around on. He ran the fuse back a hundred yards. If the engineer had it right, the hill would collapse into itself, where the silver lode was supposed to lie. If he was wrong…those flat rocks might fly off there like flat cannonballs. He recalled one of Oncle Julius’s more gruesome tales of seeing a line of Union soldiers cut to pieces by two cannons firing simultaneous blasts of canister shot.
Imagine a giant shotgun, Oncle Julius had said, splaying out his skinny fingers to demonstrate the spread. Only these aren’t what we use to hunt duck. Each ball is about as big around as a silver dollar, sometimes bigger. Sometimes they fill them with heavy chain instead. There’s nothing left after the artillery uses canister to effect but a red smear on the grass, maybe some bone lying around like kindling.
He ran the fuse out as far as it would go, angling into the woods on the right side of the trail. He went back and cleared out the debris that might interfere with the fuse. He found an especially big oak to hide behind for extra cover, and then lit the cigar he had carried down the hallway, forgetting to ask for matches. As he puffed on it, he tried to imagine what the likely response from the townsfolk would be. If they were as superstitious of this place as he had been led to believe—and all of them as strange as Dr. Tarbones—then they might not come to investigate at all. Then he could do his work in peace. But if they came to see what had caused that noise…if even a few of the seventy-odd souls came…
Alexander decided to blow the hill, and then sit behind the oak with his pistols ready. He wished he would have bought a single Colt and a good repeating rifle instead of the Le Mat’s. They were deadly in a close fight, but took time to reload, and the smooth-bore shot wouldn’t help much at longer ranges.
Still, this was what he had.
He puffed on the cigar until the tip was cherry-red, then touched it to the fuse and held it until it caught. The spark ran up the cord faster than he would have thought, hit something ten yards outside the woods and went out. Cursing under his breath, Alex went out to examine the fuse. He couldn’t find anything but a damp stone that could have done anything. If that was going to put his fuse out, he was going to be jumping from rock to rock and running for cover before this was over.
He held the cigar to the fuse, and it sparked and ran off again. This time, he followed it as it went up and started the first line running down to the first charge. He held his breath, waiting to see if the fuse would burn on past, and it did. He saw it hit the second line, and the third, before the first blew early. By the time they had all gone off, more or less the way he had wanted them to, the hill had collapsed into a crater. None of the rocks had blocked up the entrance to the cave—which might be good, if he had to get to the lode from the inside.
He waited for an hour and a half, spying the hillside and the trail. No one came.
So he climbed up the significantly loosened rocks and looked down into the crater. He saw the bright glint of silver. Grinning, he let out a loud “HUZZAH!” before forgetting it was probably best not to sound excited, in case someone was spying him out. And then he noticed the names.
All around Alexander the seemingly natural, rectangular rocks—that were nevertheless almost perfectly-made grave markers—had been loosened in the explosion, revealing the interior of part of the cave underneath. But the grayish-black rectangular rocks hadn’t cracked, or been blown to pieces. Not a single one. There were smaller rocks that had rained down around the hill like hail, and they slipped under Alex’s boots as he stopped. In front of him two of the dark stones lay face up. On the first was engraved:
ROBERT ELLISON PADGETT IV
Born Feb. 17, 1782 Died April 27, 1864
Be Not In Peace – Deceiver
Wait For Them That Sleep To Awaken
The other was more worn, and the writing was harder to make out. Something kept him from reaching out and brushing off the debris and, underneath, a thin layer of what looked like gray mold. It was that same feeling that made you recoil from maggots or a nest of something foul or feral:
ELLISON NOAH PADGETT JR.
Born Nov. 6, 1711 Died March 11, 1742
Be Not In Peace – Fornicator
Wait For Them That Sleep To Awaken
As he looked around, Alexander noticed that all of the stones that had been moved in the explosion were laying face up: each one engraved with names, dates, and an odd epitaph. He had never seen anything like it—except…maybe…once. There had been a man, when he was a small boy. He was called the Beast of the Bayou, and the whites and freemen claimed he was a crazed Frenchman, while the French claimed he was a heathen Indian, and the Indians claimed it wasn’t a man at all, but an evil spirit that could steal the skins—and the souls—of anyone it caught. Whatever the truth, the Beast stole infants from their cribs at night, and their partially devoured little bodies were found the next morning, floating in the canal. Sometimes the Beast would take to particular families, and it would eat them, one by one, until there was nothing left but the ancient family patriarch, who invariably hung himself or went mad with grief.
He recalled that they had always been careful to bury the remains of the victims under silver: coins, raw silver like the blast had uncovered, or sometimes finely made silver jewelry. “The silver purifies them,” he recalled his grandmother telling him when he had asked why a small girl would be buried with all of that silver laid on her torn pale flesh. “The silver and the moon, they work as one.”
As he made his way down, he began noticing the splintered edges of coffins, and old bones.
He took hold of a large chunk of rock, but did not pick it up.
The cicadas deep in the murky woods began to sing their high-pitched song.
Alexander released the rock, and the cicada-song stopped, abruptly.
He climbed up out of the collapsed top of the cave.
And saw that he was not alone.
On the ridge opposite the path he had been following were men and women: farmers, to judge by their dress. The women wore deep, hooded bonnets that obscured their faces, and the men wore wide, flat-brimmed hats that accomplished the same thing. One of them called down at him: “By whose Words give you the rights to disturb those marked by the Sleepers?”
Some cult…crazy folk.
“I did not mean to disturb your loved ones…ah…at rest,” Alexander called out clearly. One hand drifted down to the butt of one of his pistols. His other hand, he opened, showing them that he had not picked up any of the silver. “I was sold a map…by an assayer. He assured me no one had a claim hereabouts.”
Alexander saw that one of the men was not dressed the same as the others: he wore a priest’s vestments, except instead of a white collar, the priest’s was blood-red. His head was shaved bald, but he did not wear any hat to give him shade. His skin was as pale as a worm you would find beneath some overturned rock.
“You were told wrong, heathen from heaven.”
“Pardon me, father, but I’m Catholic, as is my whole family.” He pulled the little crucifix out and showed it to the priest. “I’m no heathen.”
“You are mistaken, and I am not your father. I know the faces of my sons, and my daughters. You are from heaven, and a heathen. So says the Father!”
“The Father of Lies!” then men and women responded.
“Well, as you can see, I’ve taken no silver, and I will be going on, now,” Alexander said.
He pulled one of the pistols from its holster, and held it up in the air so they could all get a good look at it.
“I’m leaving now, with none of your property!” he shouted, following the path. Some of the people followed hidden paths on the opposite hill, and began to carefully wind down into the little dry creek bed. “If you come close to my person, I will take that as an act of aggression, and I’ll blow your damn heads off!”
Alexander could not keep some of the panic out of his voice. He found the garron, and mounted up, but dared not ride her too fast, for all the rocks and holes along the path, and on into the creek bed.
“But you are leaving with some of our property!” the priest shouted down at him, pointing back at the collapsed cave.
“I’ve already told you, the assayer in the town directly to the east, who is also the banker, and whose son is a sworn deputy to the Marshall that patrols this territory, he sold me a map, and swore no one had a legal claim to the property marked on the map. If he was wrong, I will file a complaint at the Claims office. If he’s done this before, and you’ll swear it before an officer of the court, might be he will find himself without a job and owing you good people some restitution.”
The priest laughed. “You think you can buy your way free of us, colored boy?”
Alexander felt a chill at those words. No one, not even in Pigkiller, had guessed his race.
The priest saw the fear in his face, and smiled.
“I see through your mask. You come to us dressed like Baron Saturday, but you are not Saturday and you are no Baron, boy. We don’t practice those arts here. Our master is a much more powerful Lord, who commands one-third of all the angels from heaven.”
One of the farmers had pulled a Bowie knife not much smaller than the one Alexander had been marked with in Pigkiller. He was winding around rocks and still-wet mud holes in the creek bed, coming for him.
“Last warning! I will fire on you!”
“He fears no lead, boy. Only silver can lay him quiet for more than a few short hours. And when he gets up again, he will not be best pleased.”
The man was ten yards away, and his knife was raised. Alexander watched him come on, and when he was twenty feet away he pointed, took aim, and shot him, first with the .40 caliber bullet, hitting him squarely in the center of the chest. The bullet stopped him, and a thick, dark flow of blood began running down the ragged hole in his shirt. After a moment, the man grinned and came on, breathing raggedly. Alexander cocked, and shot the man again with the 20-gauge smooth-bore. There was not much left of the top of his head when Alexander raised the gun to the sky again. The man stopped, a thin stream of blood ran from one nostril; after a moment, he fell into the dry creek bed.
“No more! I warn you, man or woman! I will cut you down!” Alexander was breathing heavily.
One of the women was sobbing, and cursing at him at the same time, throwing clods of dirt and small rocks from the hillside at him. He had never heard such foul language from a woman, not even the whores in Deadwood said some of the things she said. An immensely fat woman in a black dress and black bonnet came to her side. She looked more like a pig than a woman, Alexander thought. Her eyes were deep and set close together, black in color. Her nose was short and upturned, and she was…snorting. It took a minute for Alexander to realize she was laughing. Maybe it was her relation laid out in the mortuary. She is wearing all black. She spoke softly to the woman crying, and in a moment they were both laughing, the piggish woman snuffling as she laughed, as if she had something caught in her throat.
She spoke some language that Alexander thought sounded a little like Latin to the crying woman, most likely the wife or sister of the man he had shot.
“Do you know what they say about you, colored boy?” the priest asked.
“I don’t care!” Alexander yelled back. “You keep your flock of wicked folks to yourself, and I will be gone soon enough! You try coming after me, and I will shoot you down! And don’t think that collar you wear will protect you, none. I know what Lord you speak of!”
“They are talking about which parts of you will taste the best, once they have cooked you and carved you up like a roast. We’ll let you lie in peace for a few days. Meat is always better when it sits a spell.”
“You are sick, wicked things! And I will make damn sure the Marshall knows what it is you do here!” Alexander had the other pistol out, and was walking the large pony as fast as he could. Soon, he would be past their hill, and if they came after him he would kick the garron into a trot. If he had to use the gun, he’d need to make every shot count. He holstered one pistol and began reloading the other, keeping a sharp watch all the while.
“What makes you so sure the Marshall isn’t part of my flock, boy? That’s the second time you’ve mentioned him, but you don’t even know what he looks like, do you?”
By the time he had reloaded the gun, they were near the sloping hill. None of the people made any attempt to follow the path down to the creek bed.
When he reached the mortuary, he saw that the hearse was gone. He sat his saddle, cursing. A fortune in silver, and guarded by crazy folk! He was broke, and had nothing to show for himself but this small horse. He started to turn back east, and stopped. He could not—would not—admit defeat. He had been robbed and cut, his features ruined by the orders of that fat pig farming mayor.
He had been sold a map that had proved true, but he dared not retrieve his treasure, so it was worthless. He had simply done the work—and taken the risk—for other men, who would no doubt hear of the silver and come in during the night, or with more guns than he had.
So he turned west. A hot wind was blowing, and the afternoon was turning quickly to evening. He needed to get gone from this town before night fell. There had to be something west of here for him. Something he could claim. Some door he could open that would lead to a palace rather than a ruin. He kicked the little garron, and started west. He knew there was something out there. Something west of Hell.
SOMEWHAT TRUE LIES 