The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

THE BARS ON SATAN’S JAILHOUSE

Don’t marry your daughter to a Gold Mountain Boy,

He will not be in bed one full year out of ten

Spiders spin webs on top of her bed

While dust covers fully one side.

— Anonymous

By the ghost of the fifth moon, five coyotes raced toward a wagon. Huge paws ripped divots in barren soil, sleek pelts shone in the amber glow of the coming morning, feral hearts pumped the blood of the beast while hungry eyes studied an Asian woman who held an iron fan and a black driver who steadied the horses.

The black man felt hunger in the pit of his own empty stomach as he watched the beasts advance. But he made no move after tugging the reins, for he had seen something else.

Another coyote, waiting on a low ridge to the north.

A coyote that held a rifle.

The pack continued its charge. Still, the black man didn’t move. Neither did his young companion, who by now had noticed the predators. Gunshots broke the silence, like nothing more than a sharp series of barks. The lead coyote crashed to the ground midleap, tumbled squealing against a pole planted at the side of the dirt road not ten feet from the wagon, and did not get up.

The horses screamed, and the driver jerked the reins and quieted them. Another bark from the rifle and a second beast was literally slapped muzzle to roadbed as if by the hand of God. With that the remaining coyotes veered away from the wagon, away from the coyote with the rifle, darting toward the south.

But not fast enough. A final bullet found the slowest predator — nipping tailbone and shaving asshole, separating the beast from its tail — and the anguished howl that rattled across the wounded predator’s teeth was enough to goose the sun over the mountains that lay to the east. At least, that was how it seemed to the black man who held the reins. Cause, and effect.

But having no great love of philosophy of rumination, the man’s attention turned to the coyote with the rifle. The creature loped across the rutted road, collected the amputated tail, and advanced on the wagon, rifle held over its head in the universal signal of peace.

The creature’s muzzle did not move as it said, “They’ll spread the word, y’know. They’ll run back to their hellhole and howl and whimper, and they’ll tell every damn pup ’bout how one of their own shot hell out of ’em and kept ‘em from their dinner.”

Her back stiff, her brown eyes unblinking, the woman in the wagon slapped closed her fan, transforming it into an iron cudgel to which she held tight. Likewise, her companion held tight to the reins. He did not reach for the pistol secreted beneath his worn duster. His hands did not become fists.

He smiled.

The coyote chuckled, scratching its chin. Then it pushed its entire muzzle up and back, revealing a face the color of oatmeal and blue eyes that squinted against the dull morning light. Unmasked, the coyoteman trained an ear toward the south, even though the driver and the woman heard nothing. “Hear ’em howl?” the coyoteman asked. “They’re talkin’ about me. Tellin’ stories. I’m their devil. I’m their hell.”

The coyoteman showed a healthy set of teeth — not a smile, but an animal trying to smile. “Most folks think I’m crazy, sayin’ somethin’ like that,” he continued. “But I ain’t crazy. I got the devil in my blood. My own mama told me so. See, my daddy was a coyote. Like I said, like my mama said — it’s in my blood. Mr. Gerlach — that’s my boss — he reads all kinds of books. He knows about such things. He says what I am is what you call a liecanthrowup.”

“That’s a mouthful,” the black man said, and he didn’t so much as grin.

“That’s me, all right.” The coyoteman nodded, brushing his chin with his escaped brother’s amputated tail. “And believe you me, it ain’t easy bein’ part ky-ote. Hard to find work when your blood’s got the fever like mine. Folks think you’re peculiar, just ’cause you want to live in a hole in the ground and take your food raw, which is the way God served it up, ain’t it? But Mr. Gerlach, he saw a use for me right off. Coyotes ain’t thinnin’ the newborn calves from Mr. Gerlach’s herd like they once did, not with yours truly around. Pretty soon I’ll have the whole pack headin’ for greener… uh, I should say redder pastures.”

With the last comment, the coyoteman flipped the bloody tail at his audience as if it were an obscene exclamation point. He howled laughter, and it took a long time for him to stop, because he was waiting for the people in the wagon to join in the joke. But they managed to abstain. The black man was busy staring down the road, and his companion had slapped open her iron fan and was pumping it in the coyoteman’s direction.

The black man asked, “Where is Midas Gerlach’s ranch?”

The coyoteman raised the pelt that covered his thin belly and expertly pinched a flea into eternity. “You’re standin’ on it, pilgrim. You look around, and on a clear day you can see until tomorrow. And it’s Midas Gerlach owns every inch of what you’re seeing.”

“And where exactly does Mr. Gerlach hang his hat?”

“Five miles down this road. Can’t see his place from here, but it’s there. But a man like you don’t want to go down this road.” The coyoteman wrinkled his nose and sniffed the stranger’s boots, which bristled with wiry hairs and sharp white ridges that looked like pure misery — bones or teeth, the coyoteman couldn’t rightly decide which, and he didn’t really want to move close enough to make a thorough investigation. “I can smell you, pilgrim,” he said by way of conclusion. “And whatever scent I’m readin’, it ain’t rabbit.”

The black man didn’t reply. He stared at the road, at the dead coyote wrapped around the base of the nearby pole. Scant minutes ago the creature had been leading the hunt. But now…

The coyoteman said, “You’re lookin’ at the wrong end of that pole, friend.”

The stranger looked up and saw for the first time the thing the night had hidden, the thing that was more than plain in the morning light — a severed head leering down at him from the crown of the pole.

“Pinkerton men came through a week ago,” the coyoteman explained, pointing to another pole a quarter-mile or so distant. “Five of ’em. They didn’t smell like rabbits either. Not until Mr. Gerlach got done with ’em, that is. Skinned rabbits was what they smelled like at the end. And believe you me, they was ready for the stew-pot.” He giggled. “You ever hear a rabbit scream? Well, have yuh?”

If he had known what the coming hours would bring, the stranger might have searched his memory for an answer to that question. But though he knew many things that other men did not, he did not know the future, so he tugged the reins.

The horses moved forward. The coyoteman walked beside the wagon, his hand raised against the rising sun. “You listen to me,” he said. “You pay attention! Mr. Gerlach, he treated them Pinkerton men just like I treat the coyotes.” The black man slapped the ribbons, the team broke into a trot, and so did the coyoteman. “Mr. Gerlach’s got a fever in his blood, even worse than mine. But his misery ain’t from a coyote… it’s from his family.” The wagon passed another pole crowned with a severed head — generous golden tresses in imitation of George Armstrong Custer, bullet hole three inches behind the left ear in imitation of Abraham Lincoln. “People tell stories just like coyotes, but these stories are true! The whole Gerlach family done been blood crazy for years… cousin marryin’ cousin… brother and… it just ain’t what’s meant to be.” The coyoteman was sprinting now, nearly breathless. “Why, you just look in the family plot and you’ll see… Mr. Gerlach’s granddaddy buried right next to his own daughter… and… ”

The driver hollered at the team, cracking the ribbons with real authority now. The horses raced forward, and the coyoteman tried to keep the pace. There were many things he wanted to say. He wanted to tell the driver about Midas Gerlach’s granddaddy, how Midas’ grandma had taken after him with a butcher knife. Cut off the old reprobate’s willie and tossed it right down the shit shaft one cold winter’s night, shortly after the old fool had threatened to bless his daughter with a baby brother for thirteen-year-old Midas. The coyoteman wanted to say all these things, just as he wanted to keep on running, but his lungs were working like a bellows with a couple of holes in it, and his legs were like those of a sickly kitten, and all he could say was, “Midas is… Midas is… he’s crazy with the blood… ”

The coyoteman stumbled to a stop and doubled over, dropping the rifle and the coyote-head helmet, hands locking over his knees as he gasped for breath. The coyote was hiding in his blood, and he couldn’t keep up with the wagon, which was gone with the shadows, with the last cool breath of morning.

The sun beat down and there was nowhere to hide. “You got to understand,” the man said, because he had to finish even if no one could hear him. “How it is… with Mr. Gerlach and folks around these parts. It’s like me and the coyotes… it’s like… ”

But he was bone-tired now, like he always was after a hunt. Ready for the cool hollow of his burrow. He mopped his forehead with the coyote tail. Then he shed his furry shirt, wrapped the coyote headpiece around it, and tucked the bundle under one arm. Rifle in hand, he trudged up the road.

And though he panted, he kept his tongue in his mouth.

Late afternoon. The unrelenting sun beat through the window, warming the young woman’s nakedness like the fires of heaven.

Her tits were truly the color of alabaster. That the Chinaman had promised, though Midas Gerlach hadn’t believed him until now. Midas had bought the woman through the mail — bargaining, waiting as each offer and counter offer traveled by stage and train from Fiddler to San Francisco or vice versa. He had committed the Chinaman’s descriptive poetry to heart, but he hadn’t dared believe it. He’d read plenty of yellowback novels and he knew that, numero uno, Chinamen were given to poetic excess and, numero dos, Chi-nee women were as yellow as the first corn of the season.

But it wasn’t like that with the woman who lay on Midas’ bed. If you judged by her, the Chinamans promises were as bankable as cash on the barrelhead. Lie’s tits were the color of alabaster, and they were round and perfect and as hard as any rock God had put on His green earth. Better still, Lie went on from there, her body pure poetry that Midas hadn’t found in any letter. Her nipples were as meaty as jerky, and she complained not at all as he took each in turn between his tobacco-stained teeth, stretching those tiny mounds of Chi-nee jerky into a ten-course meal, which was an image that had never crossed the poetic Chinaman’s mind.

Quick corner-of-the-eye glances filled Midas’ mind with other images. Lie’s fingers digging into the feather bed, knuckles bleached bone white, nails chewed to the quick. Her fan lying open on the floor in a puddle of sunshine, a heavy iron thing that only an inscrutable Chi-nee would invent. His gun belt hanging from the bedpost just above her left hand, but she wasn’t the kind to go reaching for it even though she carried an iron fan that could probably bust bones as efficiently as a railroad brakeman’s club. No. She was hiding. Eyelids closed, brow straining for high cheekbones like fingers strain for palms when a desperate man makes a fist. Lips drawn back, lavender tongue clamped between her teeth with the same studied effort Midas trained on her nipples.

Thin tangle of brush between her legs like an undertaker’s dark thread, like the crimped legs of a dozen dead black widow spiders.

Nipple between his teeth, Midas grinned. Hell and damnation and dreams that come true. A woman who’d take her man without question or complaint. A woman who wasn’t capable of such nonsense. A woman who had been as mute as the day was long since she’d slipped from between her mama’s legs below decks on a ship bound for the land of gold mountains.

The beauty and voice of a flower. That was the Chinaman’s poetry, as haunting as the work of Mr. Edgar Allan Poe.

A ten-course jerky meal and the music of smacking lips. That was Midas Gerlach’s poetry. A barroom limerick.

Yessiree. The Chinaman had taken the ass-end of the deal, all right. And the best waited below. Midas’ tongue traveled the length of Lie’s belly. Through the tangle of undertaker’s thread, down one firm alabaster thigh. He threw back the sheet — a clean one, catalog-bought and saved expressly for this occasion. Two teeny little stumps waited at the base of Lie’s ankles, both of them just as white as white could be, each one dotted with five little nubbins twisting this way and that, wriggling this little piggy went to market, this little piggy went to town…

Midas took one toe between his lips, then another. This little piggy had roast beef… this little piggy had none. Suckled like a contented baby. Wee wee wee… all the way home.

Home. China was a world away, but in his heart of hearts Midas knew that he belonged there. With his face buried in yellowback adventure novels he’d loved since he was just a sprout, he often dreamed of foreign shores even though his dead granddaddy’s voice still rang in his head. Those books ain’t manly things. Maybe that’s the way it was in the San Joaquin Valley shitsplat called Fiddler, California, but it wasn’t that way everywhere. Midas liked to read about Chinamen and their ways. He understood them — them with their dungeons and concubines and silk robes heavy with the perfume of opium. Even though he was a white man and a Christian, he understood the things those yellow men liked to do.

Wonderful things. Outre oriental practices that the book writers barely dared relate. Veiled descriptions which trapped Midas’ breath in his throat. Wicked scimitars that could split a man dandruff to dingleberry with one stroke. Opium dreams that taught a man the truth of his heart. Wives by the dozen, each one familiar with the taste of the whip. And best of all, feet sculpted like those at the base of Lie’s alabaster legs, tender young feet wrapped with long strips of silk. Ribbons circling tighter, tighter, tight as a Merry Christmas that never comes.

Bound feet. Saving part of a little girl for ever and ever in a grown woman’s body.

Midas closed his eyes. Suddenly he wasn’t the biggest fish in the little pond called Fiddler, California. He wasn’t a man who ate flapjacks for breakfast and broke horses with a brakeman’s club and drank cheap tequila out of a whore’s high-button shoe and shot down drummers in the local saloons if they so much as cracked a smile when he got to studying their assortments of ladies’ footwear.

For in his mind’s eye Midas was a man who eschewed denim, preferring garments fashioned from the finest oriental silk. His hair was oiled with strange perfumes instead of barber’s tonic. His bed chamber was heavy with the spicy tang of incense. Not one whiff of tequila or horseshit or lonely man’s sweat assaulted his refined olfactory senses.

But, even in the pit of his reverie, it was still Lie’s toe that was trapped between his lips. The toe of a Chi-nee princess raised expressly for his pleasure.

Because, in the pit of his reverie, Midas Gerlach was the Emperor of China, and he suckled on that toe as if it were the tit of the Empress Dowager herself.

Eyes open now.

The coyote’s words had been wise, for this was not the way it was supposed to be.

Breasts raw and red. Thin line of blood weeping from tongue.

She could not speak, but she could hear. Too well. Each little sound was amplified a hundredfold. Father said that evil spirits had stolen her voice when she was still in her mother’s belly, so the Gods had given her the hearing of a dragon in return.

White man sucking. A hungry man slurping noodles. Skin of a ghost hanging loosely from his bones like clean laundry flapping on a hot August breeze. Blue veins. Cold hands. Ghost hands. But his teeth were sharp. The teeth of the hungry goblin from her mother’s midnight stories.

The goblin with brown hair curling over his chest and shoulders.

Hair the color of the herbalist’s bitter roots.

Herbs that made her retch but didn’t give her a voice.

Father said the herbalist was a cheat.

Father took the herbalist’s tongue with a hatchet.

Father’s justice.

But Father was not here to protect her. Father was in San Francisco with the white goblin’s money. Using it to take another’s money by now. That was the way of it. Sure as she’d never touch the hard earth of Father’s homeland. Sure as the white goblin was sucking her twisted toes.

His clothes on the floor. The shed hide of a goblin.

Her clothes in the fire, flame and ash.

And in the corner — towering over the palace of the Empress Dowager, a giant in the Empress’ own private courtyard — the pine woman stood waiting, not daring to shrink from the flames.

Waiting, pine body straining against a white dress of silk and lace. Dancing flames casting her pine shadow over the curving roof of the palace. White veil a bleached shadow over slivered lips.

In China, white was the color of mourning.

The goblin stopped his sucking. Opened his eyes. Nudged Lie’s raw, red breasts with his evil chin, licking his horrid pink lips.

Lie made the pine woman’s face her own. She traveled to a place deep inside herself, a secret place far from the white goblin’s house. A place where he could not reach her.

And from that place, for the first time, the young daughter of the Mysterious East caught the bitter scent of the white goblin’s hidden gold.

Midas knew his limit, and he’d done reached it.

Hurriedly, he rose and christened his bride-to-be. She just lay there and took it like a dream. He had to pick her up before she’d even move. He set her in front of the dresser mirror, and she stood there as still and stiff as the pine dressmaker’s dummy in the corner of the room. Midas had to pour water into the bowl for her, wet the cloth. But damned if he was going to wipe her down, and she seemed to know it. Cool cloth in her tiny hand, she got the idea and busied herself.

Midas watched her from behind, but she was perfect and demure and didn’t dare catch his eye in the mirror. Her eyes were downcast, staring into the depths of the reflection, studying the fire that burned in the fireplace behind her and the model of the Empress Dowager’s palace that dominated the floor of Midas’ bedroom.

Midas had lovingly assembled the model, recreating every detail from vivid descriptions found in one of his yellowback novels. He wanted to tell Lie about it — what the model meant to him, the dreams it held — but all that would have to wait. Right now he didn’t want to talk. He only wanted to drink in her beauty, which jerked him around like a stiff shot of tequila.

Sweat on her tight little buttocks, twin globes that were as slick and shiny as a couple of perfect pearls. From behind, she looked like an innocent little girl. And maybe she was. Haired over, but just barely. Spider-leg hairs. Hairs like undertaker’s thread.

No. Midas licked at the salty-sweet, faintly leatherish taste in his mouth. He closed his eyes and concentrated on a flavor that had no equal.

A sweet blossom’s flavor. The Chinaman’s own daughter. Or so the Chinaman said. But the Chinaman was a man who owned a gambling hall, and a man like that wasn’t exactly on intimate terms with the truth. That’s what a lawman up in San Francisco had told one of Midas’ gun-dogs.

But the Chinaman had been straight about the girl. Maybe not about the daughter part — maybe that part was supposed to make the deal more appealing in an outre oriental way, like the things described in those yellowback novels — but he’d been straight about the rest of it. He’d delivered. He’d sent the girl down from San Francisco in a wagon so there wouldn’t be any fuss or gossip at the train station, just like he’d promised.

Midas stepped past the dressmaker’s dummy, his hairy shoulder brushing the bridal gown he’d had made special for Lie. He stood next to it, tall and proud in the courtyard of the Empress Dowager’s palace, dwarfing the structure. Sunlight glinted off the sloping angles of a dozen golden roofs, warming Midas’ naked skin.

Midas was a man who could never get warm enough.

He stood in the sunlight, staring at the same scene that had greeted him every day for thirty-three years. The Gerlach family plot was a hundred feet from his window. His granddaddy’s headstone dwarfed those surrounding it, his mama’s headstone on one side and his grandma’s on the other. Only one thing was different about the scene today. There was a nigger out there on Midas’ property, about fifty feet this side of the family plot and another twenty paces or so to the west, pretty near the old outhouse where the best part of Midas’ granddaddy had been so shamefully interred lo those many years ago. This nigger had a shovel lashed to his shot-up hand with a length of barbed wire, and he was busy digging a new shit shaft in the hard, hot earth of Fiddler, California.

Midas scratched his head. Still all pixilated from his frolic with Lie, but Jesus, he needed to calm down and think this through.

The Chinaman had sent Lie, sure. But he’d also sent the nigger. Nigger had been the one driving the wagon.

But he wasn’t a wagon-driving kind of buck. Not hardly. He was a buck gunfighter. Buck bounty man, actually, to put the right name to it. A gunman with a Navy Colt secreted beneath his canvas duster. Imagine that. A wagon-driving buck with the stink of sweat and horseshit and trail dust about him trying to draw down on Midas Gerlach on the very ranch where three generations of Gerlachs had been born and bred.

That didn’t go down too good, not in this county. Midas was a wanted man, sure. Everyone knew that. But the Gerlachs ruled the town of Fiddler, the whole damn county. A network of cousins and uncles and assorted bastards kept things going the way they’d always gone. No one was going to collect the bounty on Midas Gerlach. Especially not some nigger with a Navy Colt.

The price on Midas’ head was a doozy, though. Truth be told, he was mighty proud of it. The larger the dollar sign, the larger the man. That’s what his granddaddy had always said. And Midas had earned it, too. Not in any pedestrian manner, mind you. Nothing so simple as the murder of man, woman, or child.

People up in Sacramento City still talked about it. How some rich rancher staying at a ritzy hotel by the river carved up a whore with the French chef’s best cutlery. Paiute Injun whore who had a real taste for brandy with a slice of summer peach, and the law still held him accountable, even though anyone who knew the Gerlach clan from Midas’ granddaddy on down damn well knew that the whole bunch of them couldn’t control their passions when the brandy had them by the balls. Peached or straight it did not matter.

But it wasn’t the cutting up part that had bothered the good citizens of Sacramento City. It was the simple fact that Midas (in the pixilated afterglow of a frolic similar to the one he’d just enjoyed with Lie) had sautéed the slut’s feet in the French chef’s best skillet, cooking her little toesies to a golden brown in a rich sauce of champagne and wild mushrooms and plenty of butter. When the hotel staff found him after the deed was done, sixty-two bones lay stripped clean on the hotel’s finest Staffordshire Blue china, and Midas was working his bicuspids with a toothpick. His disposition was later described as more than agreeable by the concierge, certainly polite despite a few discreet belches. In fact, everything seemed just fine and dandy until the hotel doorman peeked into the kitchen and confronted the untended remains of Midas’ gustatory extravaganza, at which point the hale and hearty Irishman promptly lost the half-pint of whiskey that had insulated him against the surprisingly intemperate June weather.

The Sacramento City papers played it up big. Said that Midas was worse than that Alferd Packer fellow out Colorado way, worse than the miserable wretches who called themselves the Donner Party. And then the gentlemen of the press got to embellishing the story, and pretty soon Midas found that he had consumed not only the whore’s feet but also the French chef’s privates — cooked up with a big mess of oysters was how the story went — and that little tale put the noblest son of the house of Gerlach off his feed for a full week. Such embellishments continued, each revelation helping to jack the bounty on Midas’ head to Tower of Babel proportions, until it got to the point where Diamond Jim Brady himself might get all wet in the mouth and strap on a gun, let alone some buck with a scarred Colt that had most-likely seen its last duty at Gettysburg.

Such memories aroused a man’s thirst. Midas stepped across the courtyard of the Empress Dowager’s palace, bent low and removed the roof of a building that had housed the Empress’ eunuchs. He snatched up a bottle of tequila, taking dim satisfaction, as always, in his choice of hiding place.

He washed the taste of Lie’s toes from his mouth, one pleasure eclipsing the other, while he watched the nigger work.

Hell and damnation. Diamond Jim was going to have to get in line. Discounting the Pinkerton men, the buck was the third gunman to come looking for Midas just this month. He was the only one to get as far as the ranch. Or maybe he was just the first one to get to the ranch. And him with shaggy boots that looked to be made from dead rats and tattered clothes that maybe fit him when thirty or forty pounds of extra meat hung on his bones.

Midas drank. This buck wasn’t scarecrow skinny, though. He was what you’d call rangy. Tough — all hungry-eyed and Sunday-serious. He made those Pinkerton men look like weepy choir boys. Took his beating like one of Midas’ prize horses, all proudlike. Even the ranch hands — trigger-happy desperados, every one — had to admit that this buck had a different stripe to him, and they were the kind of men who hated niggers more than any other creatures that walked on two legs.

The buck could shoot, too. Clipped Midas’ ear, but that wasn’t anything to get excited about. Hell, it was Midas who shot the gun out of the buck’s hand just as slick and cool as Deadwood Dick.

But all Midas had to do was take one look at the buck to know that the bastard was as good as finished. Buck out there digging a hole. Digging his own grave.

Well that wasn’t rightly true. Not quite.

Midas took a final swig of tequila, crunching the worm between his teeth as he glanced at Lie. She’d dried her buttocks with a towel. They didn’t shine like pearls anymore. No, now her sweetcheeks had the look of cool marble monuments that might have been carved by Michelangelo himself.

Midas swallowed the worm. Such unsullied beauty as that of his bride-to-be couldn’t be forced to sit upon the outdoor privy Midas and his boys had employed lo these many years. That wasn’t to be. By God, the bride of Midas Gerlach would not suffer a splinter in her behind. Neither would she breathe the unseemly combustulations of a dozen sworn profligates.

So the buck bounty man wasn’t digging his own grave. He was digging a new shit shaft for Midas Gerlach’s bride-to-be. The old shit shaft would be the buck’s grave, though Midas worried that it was slightly sacrilegious to bury a nigger in the same spot where lay Granddaddy Gerlach’s pecker, be it shit shaft or no.

But he also figured that the buck could go to his final reward knowing that his last task on God’s green earth had been a noble one, for there was no nobler effort than shielding true beauty from the undeniable vulgarity which thrived within this vale of tears. At least, that was the opinion of a certain poet from the Mysterious East.

Midas figured that the stranger wouldn’t understand that, though. It didn’t really matter, because the stranger didn’t have a whole lot more understanding to do.

All he had to do was dig a hole.

Then he had to take enough bullets so that he’d fall into another one.

Then he had to die.

Maybe not in that precise order. Midas chuckled. If the stranger was really smart, he’d stomach as much lead as he could, just to be sure he was dead through before he plummeted into the fetid abyss.

The barbed wire had gouged a raw trench through the flesh of his wrist just as thoroughly as a crown — or more properly, a bracelet — of thorns might have done, and the bullet hole through his hand had the angry look of a cheap steak dredged in pepper and Louisiana Tabasco, but the stranger didn’t feel any pain. After hours of digging in the hot sun without water or a single minute’s rest, he barely felt anything. He only felt himself and the shovel, the hard earth, and the heat.

He didn’t know who or where or even what he was. Not anymore. Not in this hellish furnace of a place. Not with slow trickles of blood weeping from his hand. Hand a part of the shovel handle. Booted feet stomping shovel blade. Left, then right. Biting the earth. His boots, each one bristling with the razor teeth of a dozen midnight horrors, biting the earth and making it whimper.

No. Not the earth. That whimper came from his throat.

It wasn’t a whimper of pain. The digging man was lost. Utterly. Completely. He knew that for sure and for certain, and that was what made him whimper. He’d been somebody when he came to this place. Somebody strong. And before that, he’d been somebody else. Somebody who wasn’t strong. But the Chinaman had changed him. The Chinaman had given him a pair of boots with teeth that could bite the earth and make it whimper. And it was the hell of losing that strength that made the stranger whimper like a motherless child.

He scooped a shovelful of dirt out of the hole. The Chinaman. He seemed a real memory. White hair and coffee-colored eyes that were as pretty as a woman’s. The Chinaman didn’t seem like someone the black man would imagine. Down South, he’d never seen a Chinaman at all. Down South, there were white folks and colored folks, and he’d seen plenty of both in his time.

That was another piece of it. He punched the shovel into the earth and the crown of thorns bit his wrist.

Not a crown, a bracelet.

No matter. Down South, he’d seen a crown of thorns. Down South, there was a church, and in that church was a preacher named Stackhouse, and that preacher named Stackhouse had carved himself a black Jesus with a crown of thorns that made you ache with pure misery could bring Satan’s own bitch to her knees like a gentle lamb. And that preacher named Stackhouse had had himself a son, a boy who didn’t want to have any lamb in him at all. A good-for-nothing lay-about who would do, but not do right. A boy who’d read, but wouldn’t read the good book. He’d read books stolen from the homes of indecent white folks. He’d work his fingers, but he’d work them around a deck of cards or a bottle, not around a shovel or a hoe.

But the black man held a shovel now, so that preacher’s boy couldn’t be him. Still, the memory seemed so real. And the name was so familiar. Stack…

What was it, now? Just there on his tongue a second ago, and now it was gone.

Stack —

“Stackalee… ”

The Chinaman’s voice echoed against the walls of the hole, and the black man glanced at the four dirt walls surrounding him before he realized that the word had spilled from his own lips.

And then he remembered other words. Words heard out the backside of that church Down South, linked up so that they made stories. Stories about an eternal bad man who wore an oxblood Stetson, a man who made church-going women slick between the legs with a sharp glance, a man who shook up the earth with his feet, a man who scared a preacher’s youngest son but scared him with a fear that made his blood surge with all the power of a river come springtime.

“Stackalee.” The name was on the digging man’s lips, and it seemed to fit there, just the way a man fits a woman.

He sucked a deep breath. His blood surged. Suddenly, he knew why he was here in this hole with a shovel wired to his hand. He’d made a little mistake, and now he was paying for it with his sweat and blood. The men who’d put him here figured that he could never do what they’d asked of him.

The men? No, that wasn’t right. The man. That fiery Southern preacher, him so high and mighty, speachifyin’ and preachifyin’. “Dig your hole deep, sonny boy. Gonna take a deep deep hole to hold all your shameless sins.”

Oh, he could dig a hole deep, all right. Man name of Stackalee, he once dug a hole straight down to hell just so he could kick the devil’s brimstone ass. A man with fanged boots stitched by a Chinaman, he could put the bite to a shovel with those boots, make that shovel work a damn sight harder. Especially if his name was Stackalee.

“That’s my name,” the man said, no whimper left in him. “Yes, that’s who I am.”

He punched the shovel into the ground, again and again, and each time he brought it away he expected to see the white face of Satan beaming up at him from below.

Things didn’t work out that way, though.

Because, the first time he looked up, expecting to see the unforgiving sun wearing its implacable mask of indifference, there was old Satan, above him, waiting.

Staring into the pit.

Smiling.

The white goblin was gone now.

Lie was alone.

She wasn’t supposed to be alone. But neither should she have lain naked in the white goblin’s bed, nor bear the marks of his teeth and lips upon her body. Father’s dark man was to have protected her from all of that. Him, with his six-gun and his magic boots.

But Father’s dark man was outside, digging in the earth like a mole.

Father had made the magic boots. Stitched them from the bodies of living bats that jerked and screamed when the dark man pulled the boots onto his feet for the first time. Father had promised that the boots would give the man the strength he had long wanted, and the man saw soon enough that Father’s words were true, because soon enough the dark man’s six-gun thundered and his enemies fell.

With his fist the dark man crushed a deputy’s skull — not surprised to find that he could do such a thing, but certainly astonished to find that the simpering idiot actually had a brain inside his head. With nothing more than a sharp glance he severed a hangman’s rope, and the thunder in his boots turned the stone walls of a jail to powder and pebble.

Father took the dark man’s money. Not only for the boots — there was the high price of a fugitive’s room and board, the higher price of silence. But Father told the man how he could get his money back. The man agreed with nothing more than a nod, and in that moment Lie had felt the power of the stranger’s razor-edged glance cut straight to the secret depths of her heart. She had felt, just for an instant, that a man who looked into her soul with such eyes could deal with a goblin who wrote letters that stank of lust and misery. Maybe Father could outsmart that monster, after all. Lie hoped so. For that monster, Father said, dined on human flesh, calculating the riches of a hundred men on an abacus of human bone. That monster, Father said, would fall before no ordinary man.

But what would Father say now? His terror in fanged boots was digging in the ground like a railroad coolie. What would Father do if he saw that? Cut off the dark man’s feet with his ceremonial axe, the way he had taken the herbalist’s tongue?

Would Father leave her here with the goblin who ate the flesh of humans?

No. That could not happen. The very idea of being trapped in this furnace of a place chilled her, like a hot breeze sliced cold as it gusted through a forest of stone cemetery monuments.

Lie had no faith in her father, a man who had used her as a poker chip. But her faith, somehow, swelled with the power of a razor-edged glance that could never be held.

Until she looked through the window.

And saw the pale goblin holding a gun in each hand.

And her dark man.

And his blood.

The men had split the buck’s face into a dozen pieces — at least, that was the way it looked to Midas — but damned if the hardcase couldn’t still manage an uppity little grin.

“That’s enough, boys.” Something about the buck had suddenly made Midas all twitchy, and he wanted to conclude this matter and get on with the business at hand. “Now, do like I told you.”

“Damn thing’s gonna fall apart if’n we try to move it,” said one of the men.

“Bullshit,” said another. “Didn’t fall apart last week when you pushed it over. And that was with me in it.”

“You mebbe got a point there.”

Everyone laughed. Even the buck. But when Midas’ men stopped laughing, the buck didn’t. His belly heaved until his eyes filled with tears. Midas waved his men to work with his six-guns, but that only made the buck laugh harder.

The deadliest gunmen within a hundred miles heaved and struggled like a bunch of field hands, easing the old outhouse from above its horrid well. Midas planned to relocate the communal privy nearer the men’s quarters, and it looked like it was going to be rough going. One of the pistoleros slipped and nearly fell into the brimming shit shaft, grabbing the teetering structure for dear life, his gun-hand suddenly the home of a half-dozen splinters. Rivulets of blood wept from the buck’s split lip but still he smiled full and wide, tittering like a schoolgirl as Midas’ gun-dogs pulled their compadre from danger. “Smells like the gate of hell itself,” one of the men said, and the buck whispered, “Oh, you don’t know, you just don’t know.” And then the buck glanced at Midas, who stood in front of a brand new outdoor privy with a quarter moon cut in the door and

MRS. MIDAS GERLACH

PRIVATE

inscribed just below it, and he looked at the hole he’d dug in the hard earth of Fiddler and he laughed and laughed.

The gunmen moved the pristine outhouse over the freshly excavated hole. The buck was nearly busting a gut now, tears spilling from his brown eyes. The entire display was an affront to Midas’ sensibilities. He had to make the buck understand, because he didn’t want this kind of thing happening in front of his men. “Death isn’t a laughing matter,” he intoned. “You should go to your grave with dignity. Your last action, digging this hole, has been a noble one. After all, the poets of the Mysterious East tell us that there is no nobler effort then the shielding of true beauty from the undeniable vulgarity which thrives within this vale of — ”

The buck howled and hooted.

Midas’ guts were as tight as fiddle strings. He knew his men had noticed his distress, and that wasn’t good. But there was something about the stranger’s roaring laughter that burrowed under his skin like a ravenous tick. And the stranger’s eyes were just as bad, all proud and haughty, cutting at Midas with little razor glances.

Midas resolved to hold firm. “Now you hush up,” he ordered. “You’re acting like a scared woman. Act like a man.”

Again a razor glance slashed him, and then the buck shook his head. “Oh, I won’t do that, boss, ’cause I ain’t no man. You’re about to find that out.”

Now it was Midas’ turn to laugh. “Hear that boys? He ain’t a man, huh? Well… hell… I guess that is pretty plain to see after all.” The men chortled and guffawed, taking his meaning. “So, boy… why don’t you tell us just what you are?”

The buck spit a red glob into the dust. “I’m a goblin killer,” he said, kicking up a swirl of bloody dust with his shaggy boots.

The men went at him again, a whirlwind of fists and feet. But the buck refused to fall, and they backed off instinctively — tired, hot and confused — and when they had backed off the buck was still there under the hot sun, just as before, dust swirling around him, the look on his face all grit and sand and vinegar.

For a moment, it was quiet.

A low cloud of red dust hung between Midas and the stranger. Neither man blinked. There was no question who the stranger was looking at, no doubt about what he saw.

Midas waved his guns.

The men pulled the buck to the edge of the brimming pit, the heels of his scruffy boots not more than an inch from the precipice.

Midas took aim.

Two sharp clicks sounded as he cocked his pistols.

For a long moment, everything was very quiet. Midas smiled, letting the ominous silence hang there between him and the buck.

And then the buck’s shaggy boots started to scream.

Lie turned away from the window just as the white goblin cocked his pistols. She could not bear to watch her dark man die.

She wanted to weep, but this was no time for tears. There was no time for anything now. No time for sadness, no time for dreams. Only time to take what Father wanted. Take as much of it as she could carry.

Find a horse.

Escape before the white goblin came for her.

She moved on her tiny feet as always — slowly, carefully. Even the smallest steps were excruciatingly painful, each one a sharpened shard of bamboo piercing her foot. She was as unsteady as a babe, but she did not stop, did not allow herself to fall.

Across the room she moved. Slowly, carefully. She reached the palace of the Empress Dowager and removed the structure’s roof.

Inside was the stink of the white goblin’s gold.

Gold coins. Paper money, too.

And on top of it all, an abacus made of human bone.

Lie’s breath caught in her throat. She snatched up the horrid thing and threw it against the wall. The abacus shattered. Pieces fell, scattering across the floor. Only when the last sliver of bone rolled to a stop did she breathe again.

Slowly, carefully, she moved to the closet. Opened the door. Rummaged around.

The carpetbag she found in one corner stank of the white goblin, but it was empty. Soon she had filled it. Some gold, but mostly paper money. Riches as light as foolish laughter.

The goblin had burned her clothes, but it took no time at all to slip into one of his shirts, which on her was almost as long as a dress.

Fistfuls of gold coins had rolled into one low corner of the room, a magical pond shimmering there. Paper money was scattered on the floor like the leaves of autumn.

She knew that she should find a match. Burn some of the paper money. An offering to the Gods, for luck… But what she needed most of all was time. Only time could make her luck.

Lie knew no God of time, so she hurried onward.

Midas prodded the stranger’s shaggy boots with the barrel of his pistol. Stitched wings flapped madly. Beady red-black eyes glared up at Midas and his gun-dogs. Angry shrieks spilled from midnight lips. Razor teeth chattered like castanets as two-dozen tiny mouths snapped open and closed, longing for the taste of human flesh.

“Jesus!” one of the gun-dogs said. “His boots are made outta bats!”

Midas whispered, “I’ll be damned.”

“That’s a fact,” the stranger said.

Midas sneered at the black gunman. Four of the gun-dogs had ahold of the boy, pinning him to the ground. He wasn’t going anywhere, him and his smart mouth.

Midas grinned. Suddenly, he was real disinterested in the gunslinging buck.

The buck’s boots, though… now they were another story.

Again Midas poked at the fanged horrors, running the pistol barrel through a wave of bristly black hair, over a ridge of dangerous teeth. One of the hideous little mouths snapped closed, taking hold of the gun, chewing, razor teeth squealing over polished metal.

A held breath escaped Midas’ lips. Hell and damnation. He couldn’t believe it. Down in his drawers, his beaver rifle was getting real stiff, just the way it did when he got to studying one of those mail-order catalogs from the fancy ladies’ footwear emporiums back East.

Squinting, Midas studied the sin-black soles of the stranger’s boots from heel to toe. The rancher’s eye was well-trained when it came to such matters, and these gunboats appeared to be just about his size.

Such magnificent footwear could not be consigned to the bottom of a shit shaft, that was for damn sure.

“Get them things off his feet,” Midas ordered.

The gun-dogs regarded the writhing horrors — leathery wings flapping against tight stitches, teeth whipsawing this way and that in all those awful little mouths, nasty little screams slicing the evening air.

In a couple of eyeblinks, almost every hand had found a pocket in which to hide.

Midas spit in the dirt. “Damn your yella hides, boys.”

Red Bailey was the only gun-dog to be cowed by the insult. He snatched a bowie from his boot and offered, “Maybe I’ll just take ’em off at the nigger’s ankles.”

“We’d still have to get his feet out of ’em.”

“Then how about I just slice the damn things apart,” Red said. “We can sew ’em back together later.”

“No.” Midas scratched his chin. He needed some answers. Maybe there was a trick to getting the damn boots off of the buck’s feet. But if there was, the buck wasn’t going to tell him about it. And the threat of another beating was useless, because the buck had already stood up to the best they could offer. Besides, the poor boy had to know by now that he was bound to die, any way you figured it.

A grin creased Midas’ face. He should have thought of it before.

“Don’t do a thing ’til I get back,” he said, starting toward the house.

Lie slipped into the hallway, one hand on the wall, one hand holding the carpetbag. Swaying on her tiny feet, but moving forward. Gritting her teeth against pain that sliced and stabbed. Searching for a way out of the house other than the front door.

There were many rooms in the white goblin’s house. Too many. Like a Chinese palace where the rooms connected in almost impossible ways, designed by crafty architects who hoped to trap an eternity of luck.

Somewhere far behind her, she heard the front door opening. Then she heard the white goblin’s voice. “Those boots your nigger is wearing,” he said, and Lie heard his footsteps whispering over the Indian carpet in the main room, his boot heels ringing on the hardwood hallway that led to the bedroom. “I like the goddamn things. I really like ’em.” She listened as the bedroom door squealed open on dry hinges. “I want you to come outside with me, show me how he takes ’em off without getting his fingers chewed down to the nub — ”

The white goblin’s footfalls stopped suddenly. Lie could imagine the twisted expression on his face, his anger boiling as he realized that she was not in the bedroom.

His voice was like thunder. “WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU!”

She stumbled down the hallway, searching for an exit, each step agony. Behind her, heavy footsteps shook the house. Still, she did not slow her pace. Not until the white goblin himself turned a sharp corner. Not until his great shadow covered her like a shroud.

He made a grab for the carpetbag, but Lie refused to surrender easily. She forced him to fight for it. He had to pry it from her hand, finger by finger.

His free hand closed around her neck. “I paid for you!” he shouted. “You’re my property! Lock, stock, and barrel! That’s the deal!”

He raised his hand, almost slapped her.

She could not decide why he did not.

A great sigh escaped him. “Goddamn me for giving you my heart,” he said. His eyes filled with poison as he spoke, and she wished that he would have slapped her instead.

“Get back to the bedroom,” he ordered. “Our bedroom. Get into that white dress. The one I had made special. Under the bed, in a pink box, you’ll find some little white booties to go with it. They’ve got pearls on ’em. I ordered ’em special from Chicago, from an outfit makes baby booties and such for rich folks. Get into those, too.”

She only stared at him.

“I know you understand me,” he said, marching down the hallway, tossing the carpetbag into a room with a doorway so small it might as well not have been there at all.

The white goblin turned a corner.

All that remained was the sound of his footsteps.

The creak of the front door.

A door he did not have to slam.

Midas stood on the porch, staring up at the sky

The heavens had gone all angry with the sunset, violet sky warring with black-fisted clouds that hooked and uppercutted against the wind, the sun sinking down slow and easy and kind of timid, like it was plumb worn out and didn’t have much of a notion to do anything about it.

At his feet were buckets of beer and whiskey bottles by the dozen. To his side stood a player piano from a whorehouse in Fiddler proper, borrowed especially for the grand occasion. Overhead, paper lanterns swayed from the eaves of the Gerlach homestead. The lanterns glowed just as red as red could be, painted with Chi-nee characters that symbolized happiness and love, and not just your everyday garden-variety happiness and love, but happiness and love of the eternal variety.

Midas spit over the rail, into the dust.

Fifty feet straight on waited several rows of long tables covered over with red-and-white checkerboard tableclothes, each one set with china plates and real silver utensils, each one ready with more buckets of beer and whiskey bottles by the dozen. Beyond the tables was a cooking pit, dug down but not too deep, heaped with good oak that had long since burned down to a serious bed of coals. Midas’ men had borrowed a couple of jailhouse doors from the sheriff’s lockup in Fiddler, and with these they had covered over the pit. Several dead hogs kept company with a couple dead cows and a few dead lambs there on the bars, each carcass roasting to black perfection. The smell was all blood and iron, and it made Midas’ head swim.

“Boss? You okay? Can you hear me, boss?”

Midas blinked several times, glancing down. The buck bounty man stood at the foot of the porch steps, still smiling as proud as proud could be even though a half-dozen guns were aimed at his nappy head.

Midas grinned himself, figuring that this stranger must have had one hell of a smoke wagon hanging between his legs to be kicking up the sand at this late date.

“What you want us to do with this here nigger, Mr. Gerlach?”

The grin went soft on Midas’ face. He actually started to shake, because somehow he knew that this uppity grinnin’ buck was responsible for ruining everything.

Sure. That was the way it was. The buck had been the burr under his saddle, all along. It was the buck’s fault that the Chinaman’s daughter had been disobedient. That had to be it… there was nothing in the Chinaman’s letters to explain it otherwise. The buck must have put ideas into her poor little head, convincing her to steal from her husband-to-be.

Yeah. The buck had hatched the whole scheme.

And that wasn’t the only damage he’d done. It was the stranger’s fault that Midas’ own men were now staring at him with snickering little grins branded on their faces, just as it was the stranger’s fault that Midas Gerlach was standing before them, shaking like a sissified gent. Standing there on his own front porch, on his wedding day, his big ol’ puppy-dog of a heart breaking with the knowledge that the bloom was off the fucking rose.

Forever more. Amen.

Without warning, Midas erupted. A torrent of words gushed over his lips. He shouted about blood and honor and true love and outre oriental practices, and he couldn’t seem to put a cork in it. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t rein in a single syllable. He took great solace in the fact that a gun was in his hand, for he was certain that he was going to use it in just a minute or maybe less, and then he would surely shut up. But there were some things that needed saying before he sent this buck straight to hell.

Innumerable things. And Midas was saying each and every one of them, though his brain didn’t have one damn thing to do with it. The words were bubbling up direct from his guts, and he couldn’t control them any more than a holy roller can control himself when he’s caught up in the spirit and chattering in tongues. The words were jumping and leapfrogging and somersaulting right on out of Midas’ mouth — each and every one of them racing hellbent for the ears of his audience — but at the same time they were filling him up, too, filling him so full that he was sure to bust if he didn’t pretty quickly cock the hammer and let fly with an avalanche of lead.

Midas looked away, just for a second, just to catch his breath.

And there she was. A real vision. Standing in the doorway, all white like the pearly gates of God’s own heaven. The Chinaman’s daughter was wearing the wedding gown Midas had bought for her, waiting there beneath the red paper lanterns that glowed with promised happiness and love of the eternal variety.

She wore pearl booties on her pretty little feet — those delicate booties that had come all the way from Chicago — the booties Midas had hidden under his stinking bed like a well-kept promise.

The Chinaman’s daughter held out one dainty hand to him, her beautiful fingers painted red by glowing lantern-light. There was no way around it. Midas’ cursed heart sang with joy. His anger melted at the sight of her, for he’d been imagining this moment just this way since the arrival of the Chinaman’s first letter.

Midas stumbled toward her like some big stupid kid, and suddenly it was as if he were floating on air, as if his big clumsy Monitor and Merrimac gunboat feet weren’t touching the ground at all.

Red Bailey called out, “What about the nigger’s boots?”

“Forget ’em,” Midas said, taking the hand of his Chi-nee princess.

“What about the nigger proper, then? You want us to kill what’s left of him? Or you want us to save him for you?”

Midas didn’t give one good goddamn what his gun-dogs did, and he told them so.

For a time he imagined that he was back in that church Down South, the one with the black Jesus. It seemed in his reverie that Jesus lay on the pew next to his, and it was a hot day, August hot —

No. Worse than that. Brimstone hot. Hell hot. That’s what it was.

Jesus wasn’t holding up too well. He’d been born in a land of deserts, but He couldn’t take this. Whimpering like a babe in arms, He was. Why, Stack was pure embarrassed for the old boy. He wanted to tell Him to muscle up and bear it, the way He’d borne that crown of thorns while nailed up there on the church wall through the long years of Stack’s childhood, but he was so dry he figured he’d have to be primed before he could spit, let alone talk.

So Stack just lay there in the heat, taking it himself.

Just like Daddy had promised he’d do one day, and the fact that his daddy was long dead and buried didn’t keep the old man from reminding him. “See,” he said, whispering in his son’s ear, “told you how you’d end up, didn’t I? Told you it’d be the pit for you, you with your evil ways. You at the gate now, ain’t cha, boy? Take a look, see what’s on the other side.”

Stack wanted a look, a good long one. He’d heard about this place for a long, long time. He’d had the fear of it beat into him ever since he could remember. And now that he was here he wanted to see if all the fear had been worth it, if the short time he’d stood on two legs like a man was indeed cause for eternal punishment. He wanted to find out if the stark reality of his final destination would have made it easier to bow and scrape. He wanted to know if such knowledge would have made it easier to spend his life in lame servitude of one kind or another, in shame, apologizing for his very birth.

“Go ahead, boy,” his daddy said. “Look through the gate.”

He got one eye open. Sweet Jesus, he could see the fires. Feel them, too. One cheek pressed against the very bars that formed the gate, and that cheek was sizzling like bacon on a hot griddle.

“I warned you, boy. Didn’t I warn you? But you wouldn’t listen. Not one word did you hear. If you’d led the right life. If you’d been meek, like a lamb, you’d have been right, and the Lord would be forgivin’ you about right now, and you’d be enterin’ His Kingdom on your knees, the way He intended.”

“Easy on him, preacher,” Jesus said. “We forgive, Me and Mine. Your boy wasn’t a bad one. He wasn’t evil. He just never wanted to crawl, is all. And now that he’s done… Well, when you’re done, you’re done straight through. And then there’s no turning back.”

Even the preacher knew better than to talk back to Jesus. The preacher’s son was thankful for that little miracle, especially seeing as how Jesus had been kind enough to accompany him to the gates of hell.

Stack figured he should thank the Good Lord’s boy for that. He pushed away from the bars, turned toward the place His voice had come from.

A pig stared back at him with blind eyes, head charred, a well-cooked apple sizzling in its mouth. The pig did not utter a single word, and Stack had the strong suspicion that it wasn’t just the apple that kept the dead hog from talking.

The porker was ready for the knife and fork. Lying above coals that were a long way from brimstone but burned hell-hot nonetheless. Lying there on a scorcher of a grill with a few lambs which had no doubt come to the fire real meek and mild, a bunch of other hogs, a couple cows, and one really stupid bastard for company.

And then came the laughter. “Stick a fork in the nigger and see if he’s done.”

The gun-dog who held the fork obliged. He jabbed Stack’s shoulder, giving the big fork a generous twist. There were only two tines, each one just short of two inches in length, but they bit and sliced like the devil’s own pitchfork. Stack nearly passed out as pain stampeded his senses.

“It’s like they say, bucko,” the holder of the fork opined. “When you’re done, you’re done straight through. And it appears that you still got mucho momentos to go ’fore you’re cooked up good and proper, amigo.”

The men’s laughter mixed right in there with the pain. Stack grimaced. He’d stared through the gates of hell, lain on those gates with the other dead animals, the stupid creatures that went through life meek and mild, but nothing burned him quite the way the hyena laughter of these two fools did.

That was when he knew, for sure and for certain, with no questions at all. He was done, all right. Done, once and for all.

He was done crawling. And for damn sure he was done suffering the grief of bastards like these.

The man with the fork knelt over him, grinning, still giving it the twist. Bobcat-quick, Stack reached up and snatched a fistful of the man’s shirt, surprising him and tumbling him forward across Stack’s own chest, so that the man landed on the grill between half a cow and a generous hunk of lamb.

The other gun-dog might have pulled his Colt in that short instant, but he had to drop the half-empty whiskey bottle he was holding before he could go for the weapon. Stack was off the grill just that fast. An instant later the big fork was buried in the pistolero’s guts.

And then Stack had a pistol.

In the time it would take an exceptionally thirsty man to down a shot of whiskey, Stack had emptied the weapon.

That left him with a choice of six more just like the first.

He jammed a couple into his belt, snatched up another, and moved into the night.

Lead flew hot and heavy.

When it was over, Stackalee stood alone.

Midas hid, all alone in the dark.

He’d seen it all through the bedroom window. Seen his gun-dogs mowed down like they were an army of bovine retards. Blind bovine retards. And then he’d turned to the Chinaman’s daughter, and she’d looked at him with that little bitty bit of a smile on her face, her eyes seeming to say, Now he’ll come for you, and hearing a gal talk through her eyes, and realizing that the words those eyes had spoken were without a doubt the God’s honest truth, well, that had scared Midas worse than anything.

It was quiet now. Finally. That was good, because it meant things were most likely over. But it could be bad, too, because if things weren’t over he would have to stay hidden awhile longer.

And that meant Midas had to stay very quiet. That was a hard thing to do, especially since there was something down in his gut that was busy tickling him. He tried to ignore it, but every minute or two he just naturally had to let a little giggle bubble over his lips.

Like now. He giggled and spit like a babe in arms. Had to bite his lip real hard to cut it off.

The tickling thing didn’t satisfy easy, though. It scrabbled around in Midas’ belly, rippling over his ribs, but he couldn’t allow himself to give in to it. He closed his eyes and covered his mouth with his hands. He had to stop giggling, because if the gunslinger was still out there…

God. Midas knew that he had to steer clear of that man if he wanted to live. The bastard had more lives that a cat. And the things that man had done, the things he’d lived through. He wasn’t like any man Midas had ever heard about. Not outside of a yellowback novel, anyhow.

Just wait it out, Midas thought. It’s not so bad, waiting in the darkness. It’s almost peaceful. Not cowardly at all. Just biding your time — which is only the smart thing to do, after all. Waiting. All alone. In the darkness. In —

The door swung open on squeaky hinges. From above, a sliver of moonlight slashed Midas’ face.

Quickly, he ducked out of sight.

Above, floorboards groaned as the stranger positioned himself.

Midas wanted to move, but he couldn’t.

The bounty man coughed a couple times. Sniffed once, then settled down to business.

A hot yellow stream washed Midas Gerlach’s face, but Midas did not squirm or cry out from his hiding place in the virgin shit shaft. He did not make a move or a sound until he heard the stranger step away, until the outhouse door slammed closed above him and the echoes of the stranger’s horrible boot heels rang in the distance. Then and only then did torrents of laughter spill from Midas Gerlach’s lips.

Midas hushed up soon enough, suddenly afraid that he’d laughed prematurely. But the stranger didn’t return, so he couldn’t have heard…

Midas nodded vigorously. That had to be the way it was. He was safe now. Still, Midas kept his eyes closed. He listened intently, and it wasn’t long before he heard music coming from the player piano he’d borrowed from that Fiddler whorehouse.

It stood all alone out there in the night, beneath red lanterns that glowed with promises of happiness and love of the eternal variety, playing to an audience of dead men.

Midas shivered.

It’s not so bad down here in the ground, waiting in the darkness. It’s almost peaceful. Not cowardly at all. It’s only the smart thing to do, after all.

Waiting… all alone… in the darkness.

Midas lay down on the floor of the new shit shaft and curled himself into a ball. He thought of his grandpa and his grandma, of the night so long ago when Grandma had sliced off Grandpa’s willie and tossed it down the old shit shaft. He thought of that little hunk of meat nestled down there under all that crap, just waiting, year after year, without a single complaint.

Midas Gerlach fell asleep in the hard earth of Fiddler, California, knowing for sure and for certain that patience, indeed, was a virtue.

When it was over, music came. Lie could not imagine where it came from, for Father’s terror in fanged boots had entered the goblin’s house shortly after the music began, and most everyone else was dead.

Lie had been waiting for the dark man to come. Her eyes took him in, head to toe. The blood, the burns, all of him. Still, he looked good, better than before. The spark that she had glimpsed in his razor-edged glance now seemed to have settled into his eyes for good, and he seemed strangely content.

This pleased her.

She knew that he could not understand what had happened this night, or how he had survived it. Many questions were locked behind his eyes. It seemed obvious that he thought the answers to his questions were locked behind her unspeaking lips.

But this was not so. And even if it were so, Lie could no more answer his questions than ask her own. As her father often said, she had the voice of a flower. And a flower could speak not a single word.

She picked up the carpetbag. He collected fistfuls of gold coins. He dropped them into the toy palace and hoisted it onto his good shoulder. Together, they left the white goblin’s house.

She knew he would not understand what she had to do. On the porch, she stopped and opened the carpetbag, removing a wad of paper money and a box of lucifers.

She lit a match and set the wad of bills aflame. She did this for luck — a custom learned in Father’s gambling hall. She did not expect her dark man to understand such things.

But some things did not require an explanation. The dark man seemed to understand all too well. He turned to a strange wooden box which stood on the front porch. A row of black and white teeth danced on a lone shelf on this box, teeth pressed by invisible fingers. Sprightly music spilled from the box’s heart. Strange magic Lie could not understand.

The dark man smashed several whiskey bottles over the box, then collected the burning bills from the place Lie had dropped them. He fed the dying flames with a larger wad of money, and with these he set the magic box aflame.

Lie took off the white dress the goblin had forced upon her, shed too the horrible little booties with their dangling pearls. These she tossed into the fire.

The dark man draped his scorched duster over her shoulders. She slipped her arms into the big sleeves — one was little more than an ashy flap of material — and buttoned the front. Then she snatched up the carpetbag and started toward the wagon, charred coattails whispering against her ankles.

The dark man walked at her side, the toy palace filled with gold tucked under one arm. Behind them the flames grew hotter, roaring now, and the sprightly music died away.

Lie tossed the carpetbag in the back of the wagon.

Gunfire exploded in the distance.

Lie shivered, and the dark man laughed. “Don’t worry,” he said, pointing at the moon above. “It’s only that damn coyote fella. His blood must be on the boil tonight.”

Lie did not laugh, but she smiled.

There was nothing left to do but take her dark man’s hand.

And lead him from that place.

(For Woody Strode and Robert Ryan)