Unbury Carol(35)

“How’d he do that?”

“Charged him,” Quint said. “Ran straight at him and tore the towels off his face.”

“But James Moxie,” Franklin said. “Would he have to use his hands to do such a thing?”

Smoke laughed.

“I wouldn’t laugh at a man like James Moxie,” Quint said. “Might be able to hear you still.”

“He still here, you mean?”

“No,” Quint said. “Only, he’s able to do things us ordinary folk aren’t.”

Then the two barbers and the man getting a wash in the back began the inevitable exchange of myths.

“Man has to use his hands.”

“Didn’t in Abberstown.”

“Stage show.”

“Magic.”

“Mind power, huh?”

“Something like it, yes.”

“Sure would hate to face him on Nero Street.”

“You seen the fire in his eyes? Enough to burn this place down.”

Smoke, his hair only half cut, gripped the sides of the chair and pulled himself up to standing.

“You know my name, too?” he said.

Quint and Franklin exchanged glances across the shop. It had been a lively afternoon, indeed.

“Well, I might,” Quint said, “but what I do know is that we’re not quite finished here. If you’ll sit back—”

“You know why they call me Smoke?”

Quint tried not to look down to those legs again.

“I don’t know any Smoke,” Franklin said.

Smoke stared at Quint, saw the fear in his eyes. Held it.

“You do, though, don’t you, heavyset?”

Quint stepped back and nodded. “I’ve heard of a man named Smoke. Yes. A bad man, indeed.”

Smoke smiled. His hair, half done, made the look in his eyes even more unbalanced than when he’d walked in. “Did the magic outlaw say what made him so mad?”

“No, sir. He didn’t.”

“Did he say anything at all?”

Quint shook his head. Smoke took the razor from the counter.

“Hey now,” Franklin said.

Smoke held out an open palm. “Let me tell you why they call me Smoke.”

Then Smoke stepped toward the barber, razor neck-high. Franklin and the customer in back sat still. Smoke brought the razor to Quint’s neck.

“It’s because I got a trick of my own.”

“Okay, son.”

“I can vanish.”

“Okay. Watch it now.”

“Without…” Smoke suddenly turned the razor around, gave it handle-first to the trembling barber. “Without paying for a haircut.”

Then Smoke smiled. He limped past the heavy bald barber and stepped back out onto the Nero Street boardwalk. He looked up and down the road once, as if some evidence of the man he followed might remain.

He saw potential information in the eyes of everyone who passed, and decided, finally, that when you were chasing someone, not stopping was always better than stopping.

Moxie was no more magic than a mouse.

“An old one,” Smoke said. “Who will, sooner than later, need to stop.”

Then Smoke limped across the uneven planks on his way to the castrated gelding, hitched to a sun-bleached post.

Behind him, the barbers watched him through the glass of their front door. Both held tight to the images of the crazed James Moxie and the curt triggerman Smoke.

Without talking about it, they both imagined the two of them vanishing farther up the Trail where, eventually, their respective bedlams must meet.





Griggsville wasn’t easily seen from deeper south on the Trail, but one had to pass through it to continue. The town was surrounded by pine-and-spruce-covered hills, a natural barrier, a great wooden barrel from which poured forth the sounds of human lust and vice, violence and ecstasy, fear, hatred, and joy. For those arriving after dark, whether from north or south, the lantern lights and great bonfires would give the town away, if the sound of the carousal hadn’t already. But during the day, as Moxie rode now, it wasn’t until the last breadth of hills that he could see the very height of Hog’s Hotel. Its fabled plaster snout pointed up to hell’s heaven. The town gates, two tall wood posts wrapped tight with ivy, supported giant wire letters spelling GRIGGSVILLE, and Moxie passed under, the shadow of the letters upon his face, then his back, then the back of the mare.

There were more taverns in Griggsville than in any other town on the Trail. It was a place to celebrate, a place to drink and to dance, a place to be young. But as wild as Griggsville was, most men did not remove their guns at cards, the house madams ran clean homes, and the streets were free of debris. Big shows were scheduled at the theaters; people from as far as Harrows and Mackatoon came to experience the mammoth curtains dividing. The friendly lawmen made sure it all ran well, and that the money the tourists brought in was not wasted.

James Moxie looked the part that he was: a man passing through on a mare.

No lawman stopped him upon entering, and he felt no eyes upon him.

But he should have.

A small man carrying lumber absently dropped a loose board when he saw the outlaw and did not apologize to the lady who had to step over the wood on her way. James Moxie missed him, distracted by the town’s good cheer, the sun high in the sky, the bright signs and polished steel hitching posts, the fabulous dresses the ladies wore, the hats, too, floating above the streets, seemingly independent of the heads they shadowed.