Soul Catcher (18 page)

"That your dog, mister?" the operator asked him as he came through the door. The man was standing at the window looking out. He had orange-red hair and big scablike freckles all over his face, and the dull, satiated grin of someone either feebleminded or just having eaten too much.

"No."

"Ought not to let that dog just walk around like that," the man persisted.

"I'd like to send a telegraph," Cain said.

"Where to?"

"Richmond, Virginia."

"You're a long way from home, mister."

When Cain didn't offer any explanation, the man walked over and sat at a high stool behind the counter. He gave Cain some paper, a quill pen, an inkwell. Cain wrote out a message for Eberly, disguising it in case the telegraph operator was an abolitionist sympathizer:

Have bagged the buck. Presently on trail of the doe. Should return within a fortnight. Cain.

The operator looked at him curiously before he sent it, but whatever he was thinking, he didn't let on.

Cain paid the man. Before he left, though, he took another piece of paper, dipped his pen in the inkwell, and gave some consideration to composing a letter.

"You got something else for me to send?" the man asked.

"Maybe."

"I'm going home for lunch soon."

"I won't be but a moment."

"I shut down from noon to one. My wife don't like my lunch getting cold."

Cain ignored him. The operator raised his eyebrows and got up and came around from behind his counter, and walked back over to the window. Looking out, he removed a handkerchief from his back pocket and blew his nose, his whole body convulsing with the effort, as if he were trying to hurt himself.

"Don't like the looks of that animal," he said.

Not bothering to respond, Cain dipped his pen in the ink.

"Folks shouldn't let their dogs just wander around like that."

Cain started to get that feeling he did right before he needed a drink. His leg ached and a kind of tightness coalesced in his chest, followed by a small rapping in the back of his head, as if a shoemaker's hammer were driving tiny nails into his skull. If he'd been back in Richmond, he'd have gone over to Spivey's Saloon and bought himself a bottle and gotten himself good and corned. Then he'd have gone over to Antoinette's and bought somebody for the night so he wouldn't have to wake up alone the next morning.

He thought of writing to his brother, asking how the old man was doing. The last letter he'd received from TJ, over two years ago, had mentioned that their father's health had been in decline. His brother had pleaded with him to come home, said it was time he and their father put aside their differences. For all Cain knew, the old man could've died by now, though he figured TJ would have informed him if he had.

"Somebody ought to take and shoot that thing," the red-haired man said.

Cain glanced out the window. He saw the dog staggering as it moved down the street. The animal was panting heavily, his scrawny ribs moving in and out like a ripped bellows, while around his mouth a white foam had gathered. He heard a noise somewhere outside, the shriek of a woman's voice.

Cain turned his attention back to the piece of paper in front of him. He remembered a time when he was eleven. Their father had taken them to church in the wagon. On the ride home they were passing the cemetery where their mother was buried, and Cain had asked if they could stop and visit her grave. Other people he knew went to the graves of loved ones. Their mother, in fact, used to visit that of his own dead brother, sometimes bringing him and TJ along with her. Because her husband refused to go, she would have Handy Joe or even Cain hitch up the wagon and he'd drive her there. She'd kneel in the grass and say a few prayers, her eyes turning misty as morning fog. To his knowledge, his father had never gone, not to visit his son's grave nor his wife's either. Each time they passed the cemetery, Cain imagined going there with some flowers he'd picked and kneeling by his mother's grave and saying something to her.

"No," Mr. Cain had said to him, his face turning ashen, in his dark eyes anger and sadness warring for supremacy. For a moment,

Cain thought that he'd strike him, that he would take off his belt as he sometimes did when he'd done something wrong, cursed or lied or broke a piece of farm equipment, and "put the strap to him," as he called it. But instead, he pulled the wagon to a stop, set the brake, got down from the seat.

"Go on home, son," he told him, handing the reins to Cain.

"Did I do something wrong, sir?" Cain asked.

"No. Just do as I say. Make sure you unhitch the horses and brush them real good. Have Lila go ahead and start dinner without me." That was all he said, all he'd ever said about their mother's death. Cain never brought the subject up again, nor had he ever gone to see his mother's grave even when he was old enough to go by himself. Now when he thought about returning home, it wasn't so much to see his father, for whom he didn't feel much of anything, as it was to visit his mother's grave.

The small hammering sound in his head had increased to a dull pounding.

"If I had a gun, I'd do it myself," the red-haired man said.

Cain turned around. "What?"

"That dog. He's fixing to bite some child. Could I borrow your gun?"

Cain never let anyone borrow his gun. Instead, he got up and walked over to the window. The dog was emitting a low growl. It was crouched, its brown shoulders hunched and the muscles in its hindquarters knotted as if it was about to lunge. Standing not ten feet in front of it was the object of its interest--the boy who'd been carrying the milk pails. The animal had pinned him against the wall of a building. The boy was frozen in his tracks, leaning back into the wood, afraid to cut and run with the heavy yoke over his neck. Some of the milk had already sloshed over the lip of the pail, staining the packed dirt of the street. Several people had stopped and were viewing the scene with trepidation. One woman was crying out. "Help! Somebody help!" she kept saying.

Cain stepped out into the street. The harsh sunlight exploded into his field of vision, his head pounding harder now. It glinted off the tin roof of the saloon across the way, off the bright fear in the boy's ashen face. He could see the surface of the milk in the pails quivering, as if keeping time to the boy's heartbeat. The dog had gathered what remained of its strength and was crouched low, its legs tense, about to rush the boy. That's when Cain called out.

"Hey," he cried, whistling. "Over here."

The dog half turned on Cain and let out a low, deep-bellied growl, baring its yellow fangs. Its eyes were glazed and empty, lost things, already seeing objects from a world other than this one. Cain pulled back the flap of his greatcoat and removed the leather loop holding the hammer of his gun down. In one smooth, unbroken motion he drew, cocked, and aimed his Colt, all without the dog's moving. He would have dispatched the animal on the spot, but the boy happened to be directly in line with the dog, and he worried about a bullet ricocheting off bone or gristle or even passing through soft tissue and causing problems on the other end. Cain hoped the dog would come toward him a little more before he fired. Which is exactly what he did, the animal turning slowly and taking a step in his direction.

"Atta, boy," he called to the thing. "Come on." Cain also took two sideways steps so that the dog was no longer in line with the boy. He laid the dog's skinny chest on the rear notch of the hammer and took a breath, held it as he prepared to put the animal out of its misery.

But it was at that moment that the boy decided to make a break for it. He took several steps, stumbled and fell, the milk splashing over the ground and himself, too. Immediately the dog turned its attention back to the boy and rushed for him, his opened jaws level with the boy's face. Cain didn't have much of a chance to be pretty about his gunplay. He jerked his first shot and the .44 caliber ball slammed into the dog's hindquarters, spinning the animal around and taking its back legs out from under it. For a moment, the dog just sat there, momentarily dazed, its head turned toward its hindquarters, almost as if he were going to scratch himself, but then he seemed to remember the boy again. The bullet must not have hit bone, for the animal stood and started to hobble toward him. Cain took a little more time with the second shot and caught the dog in the back just behind the shoulder blades. This time the thing went down, straight down, its legs splayed out to either side, a high-pitched yelp shivering the air. The second bullet had shattered its spine, for the animal lay there in the dirt, motionless save for its jaws, which snapped savagely at something only the dog saw, the froth at its mouth now turning a bright pink and dribbling down onto the muddy road. After a while, it stopped, stiffened, and finally lay still. Cain went over and nudged the thing with his boot just to be certain.

Then he walked over and squatted down near the boy, who lay on the ground too afraid to cry or to move.

"You all right, son?" he asked.

The boy nodded. Cain helped him up and the boy stood, looking from the dog to the empty milk pails.

"My father's going to tan my hide," he said, looking at the spilled milk on the ground.

Cain thought how that was something his own father might do.

* * *

Before he left town, he stopped at the apothecary and bought another bottle of laudanum. Then he rode over to the saloon. One, he thought. Maybe two. He sat at the bar and bought a whiskey. The barkeep was a heavyset man with bushy side-whiskers and a labored breathing, as if he had just come running up a flight of stairs. The man poured him a frugal shot, and Cain threw it back in one draft and asked for a second, this one with some liberality to it. The barkeep seemed to take some offense at this, but this time he gave Cain a bigger glass and filled it up three fingers' worth. Cain took out the bottle of laudanum and poured some in his glass. He drank this one a bit more slowly, savoring it. He felt the tightness in his chest loosen a little, felt the pounding in his skull not leave so much as move off to a comfortable distance. Even his leg didn't hurt as much.

Down the bar a little ways sat a man about his own age wearing a felt bowler and a tailcoat well worn and threadbare. The left coat sleeve, Cain noticed, was empty and pinned at the shoulder.

"That was some pretty fair shooting, mister," the man said to him.

Cain looked at him, nodded, then went back to his drink. He didn't feel like talking. He wanted to invite the whiskey and laudanum to enter him, to shush the noise in him, to lull him the way a roaring fire did on a frigid winter day. He wanted to have a couple of drinks and be alone for a while, without the Strofes and Preacher. He recalled with unease the blind man. How he'd touched his face, the warning he'd given him. How he'd have to make a choice. And if he made the wrong one, how things would go hard for him. What the hell did that mean? He didn't usually set much store on such things, signs and omens and prophecies. Just a bunch of superstitious nonsense. People made their own destinies, he felt. But as he sat there he couldn't get the blind man out of his thoughts. How did he know there was a second runaway? And that it was a woman? He finished his second drink, hoping to forget all this business, and had the barkeep refill his glass again. He went to pay for it, but the barkeep said the fellow in the bowler hat had already taken care of it.

Cain turned toward him again and saluted with his glass.

"Where'd you learn to shoot like that?" the man asked.

"Here and there."

The man looked down at Cain's gun. "That there looks like a Walker Colt."

Cain nodded.

"Ain't seen one of them in a goodly while. Here's to Captain Walker."

The man raised what he was drinking and made a toast. Cain smiled at the man, raised his own glass, and repeated, "To Captain Walker." Then he went back to sipping his drink.

"Used to have one myself," the one-armed man said. "Not the big one. A thirty-six caliber. Damn nice gun. Sold it a few years back when I was in need to whet my whistle and was short on funds," he said, chuckling. "You fight down in Mejico?" he asked, pronouncing it in Spanish.