Incident at Twenty-Mile Read online

  "Mr. Delanny?"

  "That's the one. A lunger, from the look of him. And there's his peg-leg helper. And the three holes he keeps for the miners. That's all I've met. Is that the whole town, son?"

  "Just about. Except for Professor Murphy. He sells hot baths and shaves to the miners when they come down."

  "Professor Murphy! Well, now! You figure the good Professor keeps any guns?"

  Matthew shrugged. "Beats my two pair. You can ask him yourself when he comes to the hotel for his dinner. He always eats at the hotel."

  "Is that so? You know, I'll bet anything that the Professor is going to insist on turning over his weapons in the cause of peace and public order. And, who knows, he might also insist on heating me up a nice deep bath. Oh my, do you wonder if a long hot soak will feel good? It will feel good. Hey, you know something, kid? I like you. You're smart and you got grit. I took a shine to you right from the first. This sorry excuse for a town ain't no place for a smart kid with grit. You play your cards right, and maybe I'll take you on as one of my apostles. What do you say to that?"

  "Well… I don't rightly know…"

  "I ain't promising anything, y'hear? But if you keep your eyes and ears open and let me know anything that might interest me and… well, who knows? You just might get a chance to kick the dust of this one-dog town from your heels and follow me into the glittering world of frolic, adventure, and sin! How do you keep yourself, boy?"

  "Sir?"

  "How do you earn your bed and beans?"

  "I help Mr. Kane up to the Mercantile. And do chores for Mr. Stone over to the Livery. And I clean up Professor Murphy's place. And I make breakfast for the folks over at the hotel, and sweep up and stuff."

  "Lord bless and console us, it sounds like you do all the work in this town!"

  "You can say that again," Matthew said with bitterness.

  "Well, tomorrow morning you can make three extra breakfasts. Big 'uns! But not too early. It's been a long, long time since my followers had any woman-meat, and do you wonder if we're going to indulge ourselves tonight? We are going to indulge! In-dulge and out-dulge and over-dulge! That's one reason why I'm collecting all the town's hardware. A man ain't his most alert when he's indulging, and I would be sorely embarrassed to have someone kick open a door and catch me in mid-indulge, if you see what I mean. Picture me! Butt-naked and nothing in my hand but my hose! I'd have to point it at the intruder and say, 'Bang-bang, you're dead!' Oh hey, here's a hoot! What if this intruder shot the gun out of my hand!? Whoo-ee! Now wouldn't that sting!" He spluttered with laughter. "Sting! Sting! Sting! Oooo!" After he caught his breath and wiped tears from his eyes, they continued to sit side by side on the steps, looking across the street toward the mountains without talking. Almost like two friends.

  "You know, Mr. Lieder, you're a real scary man."

  "That's true," he admitted, pressing the last tear out of his eyes with the heel of his hand.

  "I'm surprised Mr. Delanny let you stay at the hotel."

  "Oh, he wasn't exactly tickled pink. But his druthers don't matter, because I have chosen him to be my Example Nigger."

  "Sir?"

  "I read this article in a Harper's Monthly Magazine called 'Arab Slave Traders of the Congo'? The screws had been passing it around 'cause there were pictures of a nigger woman naked from the waist up. A young woman she was, with pert little titties. A high-quality magazine like Harper's would never offend its readers by offering them peeks at a white woman's titties, but somehow black titties are understood to be educational and uplifting things. Well, this article described how Arab slave-traders used to control a whole village of niggers by collecting all the weapons before anyone knew what was happening, then they'd choose one person from the village to be an example of what would happen to anyone who gave them trouble. They'd take this Example Nigger out in full view of the village and they'd give him a taste of what the writer called 'most excruciating and humiliating tortures.' After that, they didn't have any trouble. I read that article over and over till I'd memorized it. Those Arabs knew their business! That's the way to control a town. So Mr. Delanny's going to be my Example Nigger. I'll bet that sounds sort of cruel to you."

  "It does, and that's a fact."

  "Uh-huh, well, actually it's just the opposite of cruel, because in the end it saves a lot of unnecessary pain and punishment. Making decisions like this is not pleasant, but it's part of being a leader. And it's necessary… for the greater good. The same kind of thinking made me choose Tiny and Bobby-My-Boy to bring along when I busted out. They're not very smart-hell, let's face it, they ain't even normal! — and they don't give a damn about my Sacred Mission, but they're the sort of mean, ugly bad-asses that gets the local yokels' attention. You follow me?"

  Matthew didn't answer.

  "Of course, scum like them could never be leaders in my Army of Liberation. For that, I need bright young men with grit and brains and bone-deep patriotism. I need someone to be my sword and my shield! My eyes and my ears! Someone to take over, if I fall a martyr to the cause… as I am likely to do. A prince regent is what I need! And you know what, son? You just might be that prince regent." He moved his hand across the space before him, as though envisioning the print on a big poster. "Wanted: Prince Regent! Reasonable hours! Opportunities for travel and advancement! Dummies and yellow-bellies and foreigners need not apply!" His voice dropped to an earnest register. "You know why I chose you?"

  "No, sir." Matthew inched his bottom over, making more space between them on the step.

  "I chose you because we're the same sort, you and me. I saw it in your eyes. You know what we are, kid? We're damaged boys. Damaged boys! And if you damage a boy before his spirit has set strong, you end up with one of two things, either a spineless slave that lets the world trample him and smear his face in the mud, or a dangerous Force of Nature with an unquenchable rage boiling inside him! And when that rage is harnessed to a noble cause… well, then you've got something awe-inspiring and dreadful!" He turned and looked into Matthew's eyes with searching solicitude. "Who damaged you, son? Me, I was damaged by my pa, then by a man teacher, then by a warden in a home for boys. But I can't be damaged no more. From now on, it'll be me who does the damaging. So tell me, boy. Who damaged you? Was it your pa?"

  "I wasn't never damaged."

  "Now that's just pure bullshit, boy. You got damage writ deep in your eyes! You're either going to end up nothing at all in this world, or something awe-inspiring bad! That's the way it is with us damaged boys. It's what they call our Karma!" He grinned and winked.

  Matthew was glad for the chance to change the subject that came when he looked past Lieder and saw the Reverend Hibbard step off the tracks down at the end of town, having walked back from the Surprise Lode after preaching at the miners. Matthew snapped his fingers. "Oh, there's one other person living in town. I plum forgot about him."

  "Who's that?"

  "A preacher name of Leroy Hibbard. He goes up to the Lode every Sunday to give the miners a dose of brimstone. But he usually gets back before sundown on Monday."

  "A preacher, eh?"

  "Well… not much of a preacher. He drinks whiskey, then he reels down the street late at night, yammering on about how he's a sinner and vile and worthless and all. Mr. Stone agrees with him about his being worthless. He says Reverend Hibbard ain't worth the powder to blow him to-Hey, talk of the devil."

  Lieder grunted up from the step and stood awaiting the approach of the preacher, the cup of his right hand resting on the butt of the pistol stuffed into his belt. "What'd you say his name was?" he muttered out of the side of his mouth.

  "Hibbard."

  "Well now, if it ain't Reverend Hibbard!" Lieder greeted. "As I live and breathe! Welcome home, Reverend! I've been keeping your flock safe for you!" He thrust out his hand, which the confused clergyman took tentatively, only to have the bones of his clammy fingers crushed in Lieder's strong grip. "Now, here's what we're going to do, you and me, Reverend.
We're going to your place and have a chin-wag, in the course of which you can give me any guns you might have lying around. Who knows? I might even suddenly feel a great urge to testify."

  Throughout the dusty six-hour walk back down from the mine, Hibbard had been tormented by visions of the back door of the Traveller's Welcome, where he habitually bought his bottle from Jeff Calder, so he was reluctant to turn back and accompany the stranger up the street to the old depot. But Lieder's handclasp tightened painfully as he smiled into the Reverend's eyes and told him that if he didn't take him to his house-right now! — he'd likely get his kneecaps shot off and have to hobble around for the rest of his life, a useless cripple, and it would be on his own head"… for he who tempts a man to violence is himself guilty of that violence… Paul to the Chippewas: 7, 13. I'm sure you're familiar with the passage."

  Matthew sat on the steps, watching the two men go back up the rutted street toward the last embers of the sunset, Reverend Hibbard's thin, black-clad body followed by a snake of a shadow that slithered after him.

  Matthew returned to the marshal's office and sat heavily on the edge of his bed, his eyes fixed on a crack in the floorboards as the gloom deepened around him. Some time later… an hour, maybe more… he emerged from the Other Place, blinked, and slowly stood up to take the shotgun down from above the door. Then he fished the canvas sack out from under his bed and spilled his treasures over his blanket, including the marshal's badge and the homemade shells. He broke the gun open and pushed in a shell. The tight fit scraped off a thin curl of the candle wax that sealed the shell. Argh! He shuddered with disgust as he snapped the curl of wax off his fingernail! He clawed the shell back out of the gun and threw it into the sack, as though it were something organic and loathsome, then he wiped his hands on his shirt to scrub off the feeling of the waxy shell.

  When his heartbeat returned to normal, he tried to sort out his thoughts. In about an hour, he had to go to the Mercantile to meet with B. J. Stone and Mr. Kane. But first he'd better slip over to the boardinghouse to see if the Bjorkvist men were game to join them in fighting against these… What the hell were they?

  As he turned back from hanging the shotgun above the door, his eyes fell on the book Lieder had tossed aside.

  He really hated the thought of a man like that reading the Ringo Kid books!

  STANDING IN THE DEEP shadows close to the Bjorkvists' woodshed, Matthew could see through the screen door into the kitchen of the boardinghouse, where Kersti was working by lamplight, ladling stew out of a big iron pot on the stove into the bucket that she would carry over to the Traveller's Welcome to feed the usual residents and those three strangers. Mrs. Bjorkvist had prepared enough for her own family as well, but at the last minute she decided to send it all over to the hotel, so the strangers couldn't complain that there wasn't enough. And as for her son and husband? Well, they'd pretty much lost their appetites anyway, after what those men did to them.

  Matthew crept up the back steps. "Kersti?" he whispered, his lips almost touching the screen.

  She let out a half-stifled yelp of surprise. "What is wrong with you?! Scaring a body like that!"

  "Sorry, but I-"

  "I almost spilt the stew! There'd a been hell to pay!"

  "Sh-h-h, keep your voice down, please. Come over to the door. I got to talk to you, but I don't want to step into the light, just in case one of them's wandering around."

  Sniffing with annoyance, the girl carried three large tins of Beechnut brand peaches (extra-thick syrup) to the stone drain board and began opening them, working the can opener up and down with angry energy, her lips compressed in stubborn refusal to talk to him. He could see her clearly because she was on the lamp side of the screen; she could barely make him out because he was on the dark side. "Well?" she hiss-whispered, after he had stood there in silence for fully a minute. "What do you want?"

  "The men that came here? Mr. Kane said he saw them leave carrying guns."

  "That's right. They took all Pa's guns. Even Oskar's squirrel rifle."

  "Did they get every last one? Wasn't your pa able to hide something from them?"

  "Hide something! Are you crazy?"

  "Sh-h-h."

  She lowered her voice, but there remained a tense squeak of irritation in it as she hissed, "There wasn't no way my pa could of hid anything! Not hurt like he was."

  "They hurt him?"

  "The boss one, he said they had come to collect weapons to distribute to the heathen Chinee. Pa told him to get the hell out of here. And Oskar stood up beside Pa, like he was ready to fight. But the big one with the long arms and the puckered-up lips-you know the one I mean?"

  "They call him Bobby-My-Boy."

  "Well, he goes over to my pa and punches him in the stomach. Hard. Then he grabs both him and Oskar by their hair and he smashes their faces together. Three-four times! Then he lets go of them and they slump down and sit there on the floor with their noses bloody and their eyebrows cut. Then the boss tells my ma in a real sad voice how sorry he is that her menfolk needed to be done thataway, but she better give them all the guns in the house, because if he finds out that we've kept one back, then he'll get real mad. Well, you can bet Ma gave him every single gun. You can't blame her, can you?"

  "No, but we sure could use a couple of guns."

  "Who's we?"

  "Well there's… " He almost named B. J. Stone and Mr. Kane, but he thought better of it. "… you know, the folks that are getting together to fight these men."

  "Fight them! Are you crazy?"

  "Sh-h-h-h."

  "Sh-h-h-h your own self! You can't stand up to men like that! You'll get us all killed! Ma says they only want the silver from the mine, and the smartest thing to do is just let them take it. It ain't our silver! It ain't no skin off'n our butts."

  "But they're not just robbers. They're crazy. I got this terrible feeling, Kersti, that if we don't-"

  "You're the one that's crazy! And there's no use you trying to talk Pa and Oskar into any crazy plan. They're busted up too bad. And Ma wouldn't let 'em anyway." She poured the last can into a tin pail, the slippery peach halves making clumpy splashes. "Now you get away from here, y'hear me? I don't want them men thinking any of us Bjorkvists are trying to do something against them, especially now that they've took Pa and Oskar up to the hotel."

  "What?"

  "They came and got them just a while ago."

  Matthew was surprised that he hadn't seen them come out of the hotel and go down the street. Then he realized that it must have happened while he was sitting on the edge of his bed, off in the Other Place.

  "If my ma knew what you was up to, you know what she'd do?" Kersti said. "She'd tell on you, hoping to get on the good side of those men, so's they wouldn't hurt Pa and Oskar no more."

  "But Kersti, there ain't no good side to those men. They like hurting people. It's fun to them."

  "Just so long as they don't hurt us Bjorkvists! So you just stay away from here! And stay away from me!"

  Matthew closed his eyes and pressed his lips against the screen. "All right. I'll go." He moistened his lips, and he could taste the dirty-screen-door taste that sent him for an instant back to his childhood. "Kersti? You wouldn't tell those men that I been here trying to find guns, would you?"

  "I don't have no reason to do you any favors, Matthew Dubchek. Not after the way you treated me."

  "I know that, Kersti. And I'm real sorry if I hurt your feelings. But you won't tell I was here, will you?"

  She threw the empty peach tins into the trash barrel, intentionally making a clatter that caused Matthew to wince and look around into the darkness. She stared hard at him. Then she sighed. "No, I won't tell. Now you just… just get out of here!"

  "WAIT A MINUTE, MR. Stone. Let's take it one step at a time. We can't afford to make mistakes." Mr. Kane's voice was hushed but urgent: urgent because they had to make a decision soon; hushed because they had not dared to light a lamp, and the only people who speak loudly i
nto the darkness are drunks and those who are afraid of being thought afraid.

  "You're right," B. J. Stone said. "I was getting ahead of myself. It's just that we don't have much time."

  A few minutes earlier, Matthew had slipped silently through the back door of the Mercantile and sat at one end of Mr. Kane's worktable with B. J. Stone and Mr. Kane to his left and right, facing one another. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he could make out their profiles, lacquered at the edges by moonglow that came in the store windows, making greasy highlights along their brows and down their noses, and causing one eye of each to glow against the black shadows of the store's interior. Ruth Lillian sat opposite him, her back to the window. Her face was in shadow, but myriad minute granules of moonglow were captured in her copper hair. Dim reflected light made faint smears in her eyes when she glanced from her father to Mr. Stone.

  His sudden plunge from full moonlight to the absorbent darkness of the store, the hushed tension in the voices of these two one-eyed men discussing the menace brewing down in the hotel, Ruth Lillian sitting across from him, faceless, her hair aglow-it all felt to Matthew like some daydream place, some nightmare place. He had to remind himself that this was really happening… was really happening… really hap- "I realize we haven't much time, Mr. Stone. But we must consider our options carefully," Mr. Kane said. "You may think I'm too plodding and cautious, but…" He lifted his shoulders in a tight shrug, a gesture that revealed his origins as much as did his slight accent.

  Although these two men had been residents of Twenty-Mile almost from the town's chaotic beginnings, they had never exchanged more than the utterances of commerce and rote politenesses, but each had always recognized discernment and compassion in the other, and at moments of intellectual loneliness, each had vaguely wished that they had become friends.

  "All right," Mr. Kane continued, his repressed voice making his slightly dental final t's more pronounced. "Let's begin with what we know for sure. These men have come to steal the silver shipment. Right?"