CHAPTER FOUR
The sun was an hour past its peak when Joe saw his first
living human beings of the day. He was still In Iowa, but
close to the Kansas state line and he was hungry. He had
been riding through open country all morning, only
occasionally crossing a trail to indicate that the whole
nation was not wilderness. But he had chosen to cross them
rather than follow them because none of them took the
southwestern direction he was headed: and he had no wish
to court trouble in a uniform. For although the war was
over, the grievances that had caused it would continue to
divide Americans for some time to come and state lines
were no guarantee of allegiance to the beliefs of either
north or south.
He would meet trouble as it came and deal with it, but
there was only one brand he was seeking and that was not
due yet. It was certainly not represented by the covered
wagon drawn up at the side of a trail that cut a path in a
north-west direction, paralleling the course of a stream
which rushed clear and cool over a run of rocks close to the
campsite. Two bays had been freed from the wagon shafts
and were tethered close to the edge of the stream. A fire,
recently started, blazed under a large pot of something,
which smelled appetizingly good a few yards from the
horses. The wagon was old and decrepit, with sagging
timber, wheels that had been repaired too often and patched
canvas. Upon the canvas side was the faded lettering, in
shaky capitals: GOD HAS COME TO YOUR TOWN.
Beneath this was a badly painted representation of the
Bible and below this, in smaller letters: HEAR
REVEREND ELIAS SPEED PREACH THE WORD OF
THE LORD.
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Joe dismounted twenty yards short of the wagon and,
taking the Henry, moved silently forward. He was wary
only of the wagon, for there was no other cover in rifle shot
of the campsite. He trod carefully, avoiding loose rocks that
would rattle across the ground if dislodged. Then, just as he
was about to spring to the rear, bringing his rifle up to
cover the inside of the wagon, a voice froze him.
“Don"t move, my darling. I want to look at you just
like that.”
It was a man"s voice, laden with passion and Joe"s
breath came out in a rasp as a woman laughed.
“Now you want to look...” she whispered, and the
sentence was lopped in half as Joe moved forward and
spoke a single word: “Freeze.”
A bed was set crosswise at the front of the wagon and
upon it, stretched full length was an apparently almost
naked man. A filthy blanket covered his legs and lower
stomach and above his black hair sprouted, growing thicker
as it reached his chest. At his throat was a stiff, once white
cleric"s collar. His head was raised, elbows bent for
support, jaw resting on his palm. He was about fifty with a
round, almost cherubic face with eyes that were too small
and were now filled with shock as he looked at the wrong
end of a Henry repeater. His face was drained of color and
the wanness extended over his completely bald head.
The woman squatted on a low stool in front of a
miniature rococo dressing table, complete with cracked
mirror in a hinged frame. She was a half-breed, with
perhaps Sioux blood mixing with Caucasian. Her nose was
too broad, with flaring nostrils, to give her beauty but her
dark eyes, even though afraid, held a deep sensuousness.
Her body, completely naked, was firmly voluptuous with
the muscle control of perhaps twenty-five years. She was
brushing her thick, dark hair that reached to the middle of
her back, posing with thrusting breasts and sucked in
stomach for the man who had obviously just possessed her.
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It was she who recovered first, slamming down the brush
and folding her arms across the breasts.
“What"s cooking?” Joe asked.
The woman said one word, the sound of which meant
nothing to Joe, but her tone and the fury which leapt into
her eyes made the meaning clear. But he refused to be
provoked by the obvious insult.
“It"s not what you think,” the man said, jerking into
movement, pulling the blanket higher as he wriggled into a
sitting position.
“What isn"t?”
“Virtue is my sister.” His voice was high, reedy.
“Virtue?”
The man nodded to the woman at the dressing table.
“The young lady is my sister, Virtue. We...we are
somewhat late risers, as you can see.”
Joe made a clucking sound of impatience. “I don"t
care if she"s your great-grandmother, reverend,” he said
dryly. “I"m talking about the pot. What"s in it?”
The man grinned, suddenly anxious to be of help.
“Stew, young man. Beef stew. Our last from the store, but
the Good Lord will provide. You are most welcome to
share it with us. I see from your uniform you fought on
behalf of a just cause. God was on your side.”
The man"s tone placed him south enough to have root
beside the Gulf of Mexico, but Joe would not have trusted
him even if he could prove himself to be a dyed-in-the-
wool Yankee. He motioned to the woman with his rifle.
“Tell her to fix the food.”
“I talk English good as you, soldier boy,” the woman
said. “I"m not going to get dressed in front of your leering
eyes.”
Her voice, too, told of a Southern upbringing.
Joe squeezed the trigger and the rifle barked, the
woman screamed and the man yelled with fear as the bullet
shattered the mirror, tore through the canvas of the wagon
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and whined to the end of its trajectory somewhere in the
wilds.
“Then you"ll have to be careful you don"t spill any of
that hot stew on your pure, soft body, honey child,” he said
evenly, mimicking a Deep South drawl.
The woman reached hurriedly for her dress, which
hung from a peg near the man"s cassock. She pulled it on
without haste, unmindful of her nakedness as she stood in
the center of the wagon.
“Can I get dressed too?” the man wanted to know,
smiling nervously.
Joe was about to nod his assent, but then he looked at
the build of the man and at the cassock, his mouth forming
a slight smile.
“Take off your dog collar, Elias,” he ordered.
The man blinked, as if unsure that he had heard
correctly, then took a long time removing the collar, his
trembling fingers fumbling with the fastening. The woman
watched, the sneer on her face conveying contempt for her
lover and hatred for the man with the gun.
“I"m naked,” the man said unnecessarily as he
finished the task.
“Your sister won"t mind,” Joe said but made no
complaint when the man draped the blanket around himself
as he stood.
He motioned with the rifle. “Both outside.”
The woman came first, proud and defiant, the man
behind, smiling ingratiatingly, stumbling over the tailgate
and almost falling headlong. He recovered and handed the
cleric"s collar to Joe. In the strong sunlight, despite his
bulk, the man looked even more spineless and Joe found it
hard to visualize him as a hot-gospeller preaching fire and
damnation to the one-horse towns in this part of the
country.
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“Over there and get the food ready,” he ordered them.
“I"ll be watching and I see anything I don"t like you get to
have a personal interview with the man upstairs.”
“When my time comes, I"ll be ready,” the man said,
but scuttled across to the fire with a haste that erased the
confidence from his words.
Joe watched the pair for a moment, then hoisted
himself aboard the wagon, drew his knife and made a slit in
the canvas side facing the fire. As he peered through he saw
the woman called Virtue edging towards his horse while
the man made a frantic beckoning mime to call her back.
Joe sighed and rested the rifle barrel in the slit, loosed off a
shot that glanced off the rounded side of the cooking pot,
then ricocheted at a tangent to kick up dust inches from the
woman"s feet.
“I think you"ve got less reason to want to see the Lord
than your brother,” Joe called and grinned as she threw the
profanity at him again, but turned and went to the pot,
began to stir it with the speed of vengeance in turmoil.
With quick movements, interrupted for an occasional
look out through the torn canvas, Joe stripped off his
uniform and dressed in the cassock and reverse collar,
wearing his knife belt and army issue leather belt with
holstered Remington .44 below the engulfing garment. He
had to make a large slit in the seams at each side to make
for easy access to his weapons. But it was merely a matter
of leaving the cassock unfastened at the top to give him
ease of movement to the neck pouch. He found the wide
brimmed, low crowned hat that matched his attire and
placed it on his head, picked up a large piece of looking
glass from the smashed mirror and examined his
appearance. He looked the most unlikely priest he had ever
seen, but he was well enough satisfied with the results to
grin.
When he jumped clear of the wagon he saw the man
and woman whispering together with conspiratorial
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motioning of their head towards the wagon as she ladled
stew into bowls he held. They came guiltily upright at the
sound of his approach. She looked at Joe with petulance,
the man shook his head in mute disapproval.
“I don"t aim to steal your show, reverend,” Joe said.
“Just your clothes.”
“It is a grave sin to impersonate a man of the cloth,
sir,” came the reply. “The Lord will surely punish you for
it.”
“I"ve got a feeling screwing your sister is a worse
sin,” Joe came back, taking a bowl of stew from the man"s
hand, relishing the great hunks of meat in the thick brown
gravy.
“I ain"t his sister,” the woman snapped, squatting
down with her plate, snatching a spoon from the ground
and wiping it on her dress.
“Nor his wife either,” Joe put in, getting the only
other spoon, Retreating a few yards before he began to eat,
discovering the food tasted as good as it smelled and
looked. “And I"m betting he ain"t even an ordained minister
of the church.”
Without a spoon, the man was squatting and picking
up the meat with his fingers, raising the bowl to his lips to
suck at the gravy.
“You are condemning yourself with every word you
mutter, sir,” the man said and now his tone was truly that of
an evangelical Bible-puncher. “The Lord is taking note of
all you do and all you say and I, His humble servant, am
prepared to allow Him to act on my behalf when the time is
nigh. I will not...”
“Shut your damn mouth, you old fake,” the woman
slung at him with deep-seated anger. “You are not
impressing him and I know you are the biggest sinner east
of California.”
Her words froze the man into shock, his mouth
hanging open, eyes staring in disbelief. The woman,
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unconcerned with the reaction she had produced, stood and
moved to the pot, began to ladle a second helping of stew
on to her bowl.
“More?” she asked of Joe.
He nodded and stood, moved towards the fire,
experiencing a stirring in his loins at the sight of the
woman bent over the pot, the thin material of her dress
clung by sweat to the lines of her body. Then she made her
play, in a blur of lightening movement, throwing forward
the bowl of scalding stew, its steaming contents streaming
towards Joe"s face.
He went sideways, falling, hurling his own bowl clear
as his hand snaked under the cassock to the knife at his
back. It came out with a fluid movement and streaked from
his hand, all as part of one continuous reflex action. But the
woman dived low, under it, in a desperate attempt to reach
the Henry on the ground. The man screamed in terror and
pain and it could have been this sound, or the sight of the
Remington in Joe"s other hand that turned the woman to
stone.
Joe backed up quickly, snatched his rifle from the
ground and looked at the man, saw him still squatting in
front of the fire, clutching his bowl, the handle of the knife
protruding beneath his left cheek, the point and an inch of
blade gleaming out from the right, a trickle of blood
running down on each side.
“Holy Mother of God,” the woman said hoarsely as
the man"s eyes grew wide, then snapped closed before he
toppled forward, the fire sending up a shower of wood as
his head fell into the seat of the flames.
He screamed once as the intense heat brought him out
of the faint and made one feeble attempt to drag himself
clear before he died, and the sweet stench of burning flesh
filled the air. The woman started to scream, writhing her
body across the ground, her dress riding up over her thighs
and stomach as she went into convulsions of hysteria, the
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power of her horror causing the veins to stand out starkly in
her throat, her eyes widening to an incredible degree, foam
bubbling in her mouth and then spilling over to run down
her jaw.
Joe ignored her and bent to the man, drew him clear
of the flames just as the blanket caught. He glanced
momentarily and without emotion at the darkened,
mutilated flesh which moments ago had been a face, then
pulled his knife clear, wiping it clean of blood and soot on
the blanket.
“I guess your time came, Reverend,” he muttered to
the corpse against the backdrop of the woman"s screams.
“And hell can"t be hotter than that.”
He moved to where the woman was reaching the
climax of her fit of apoplexy and watched idly for a
moment to see if it would end. When it didn"t he reversed
rifle and swung it in a short arc. The stock caught her
squarely on the jaw and her final scream ended in a
whimper, as her body was suddenly limp. He did not even
look to see if he had killed her, but moved back to the fire,
retrieved his bowl and spoon and helped himself to more
stew. He went to sit on the wagon tailgate to eat it, then
rolled a cigarette and smoked it leisurely, all out of sight of
the Reverend Elias Speed and the woman called Virtue.
Not until he had finished, and strode across the
campsite to reach his horse, drinking from the rushing
stream, did he glance at the woman, now visibly breathing,
and realize it was the first time he had ever so much as
raised a hand in anger to a woman. And that now, as he
mounted, returning the Henry to its boot, he felt not a shred
of remorse. The killing of his kid brother had drained
Josiah Hedges of everything that is good and decent in the
human spirit.
He was now a killer of the worse kind.
A man alone.
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