Portlandtown: A Tale of the Oregon Wyldes (23 page)

“One man?”

“Yup,” said the sheriff, not bothering to mask his skepticism. “Shot up the place all by hisself, started a couple fires, even won a few lead souvenirs on the midway.”

“They shot him?”

“Half-dozen times, or so say the eyewitnesses. Didn’t slow him down, though. No, sir. They tell me he just kept right on shootin’.” The sheriff gestured for Andre to come closer. “What it tells me is that carnival folk can’t shoot worth a lick.”

Andre straightened up. He could make the sheriff understand, make him see the people around him, feel their suffering. Naira had such an easy time leading the man in the direction they wanted to go that it was obvious his was a simple mind. But what good would come from it?

Andre looked at the young man in the bed before him. He opened his eyes, smiled weakly, and then closed them again.

“Take me to the carnival boss,” Andre said.

The sheriff led them to a cot near the back of the tent. A handful of people were already standing around it, including a tiny one-armed woman sitting on a stool, an average-looking man with two small bumps on either side of his forehead, and twin Asian men who shared a single pair of legs. Seated upright in the bed with a wide bandage triple wrapped around his bare chest was John Garibaldi. Several spots of blood dotted the dressing, but otherwise he appeared in good condition for someone with a bullet in his chest.

The assembled carnival folk regarded the sheriff with obvious disdain, but when their eyes fell to Andre they found their spirits raised for the first time that day.

“Mr. Garibaldi, this is, um, this is…” The sheriff knew the man’s name, tried to spit it out, but found he couldn’t get his tongue around the word. He stared at Andre for help.

Andre nodded. “Thank you, Sheriff, I can handle it from here.”

Sheriff Taylor looked from Andre to Naira and then realized he was needed elsewhere. He must be. He left without another word.

Andre turned back to the injured man to find him grinning. Garibaldi nodded to his own people, who left without protest. Only the one-armed woman, who Andre saw was legless as well, remained at her boss’s side. She smiled broadly at Andre, a gesture he gladly returned.

“Careful, Mary,” said Garibaldi. “There might be a hoodoo curse behind that smile. He’ll have you clucking like a chicken in no time.”

Andre shook his head, but kept the smile. “Hello, John.”

“Andre, my friend, nice of you to come all this way just to catch the show. I’m afraid we’re between performances at the moment.”

Andre nodded. “You seem in good spirits for a man so recently shot.”

Garibaldi rolled up the wrapping on his chest, revealing a small, circular wound with what appeared to be a bullet still lodged at its center.

“Half shot,” he said. “Bullet never got through the heart bone. Damn thing’s stuck there, if you believe that. They tried pulling it out, but it’s worked its way in good. I think the doctor’s just afraid to give a good yank, figures I’ll spring a leak.”

“I might be able to do something,” Andre offered.

Garibaldi shook his head. “Thanks, but I’ll be fine.”

Andre wasn’t so sure. John had brushed away the offer a little too easily. He knew what Andre could do, had seen his hands in action during a smallpox outbreak in Eureka five years earlier. Something had him spooked, something unnatural.

“Besides,” Garibaldi said, “I finally get to fit in with my freaks.”

The small woman gasped. “John!”

“I’m one of you now. Don’t pretend you don’t call yourselves freaks when I’m not around. I hear things, Mary. I’m the boss, remember?”

“We don’t use that word. Not in polite company.”

Garibaldi rolled his eyes. “My apologies if I have offended your finer sensibilities, Andre,” he said and carefully slipped the bandage back into place.

“That is an unusual wound,” Andre said. “Remarkable that the bullet penetrated no further.”

“Not really. Gun was only loaded with half powder, probably less.”

“How do you know?” Naira asked.

“I loaded it,” Garibaldi said. He paused, as if just realizing what he’d said was true, and then chuckled to himself. “Don’t know why, actually. It was a prop. As it turns out, I was lucky to be one of the first ones shot, ’fore he picked up another pistol.”

The carnival master’s grin faltered.

Andre waited for his friend to take another breath before asking his question. “Who shot you, John?”

Garibaldi looked away from Andre. His eyes flitted from bed to bed, each time hurting a little more by what he saw.

“There were four of ’em,” he said. “Three idiots and some kid who didn’t know what he was doing. And they had a body for sale.”

Andre felt the truth hit him before he understood it, but both came quickly. The fear would come next.

“John…”

“Yeah, I bought the damn thing. Thought I was doing ’em a favor.”

“You put him on display.”

“I put
it
on display,” said Garibaldi. “There was no
him,
it was just a body.”

“It was evil, John, how could you not see that?”

“We don’t all see as clearly as you, Andre. Sometimes we have to walk in the shadows to get where we’re going.”

“Is that true? And did you make back your dime before your god reached down and slapped you in the face?”

Garibaldi stared at Andre. For a moment, neither man gave an inch. Finally, the carnival man lowered his gaze. Mary reached out with her tiny hand to find her boss’s. She gripped it tightly.

Andre bent his tall frame to kneel at the edge of the carnival man’s bed.

“This was not your doing, John, I know that. And I trust you will take care of these souls.”

“Whatever they need,” Garibaldi said without hesitation. “We’re a family.”

“I know,” said Andre.

“What about the book?” Naira asked.

“What?”

“Was there a book, small and black?” Andre asked. “One of the men might have carried it with him.”

Garibaldi thought for a moment and then nodded. “One of the shooters tried to sell me a notebook, said it was full of spells. Looked like a bunch of scribbles. I offered two bits, but the kid wouldn’t part with it. Got pretty angry about it.”

“What happened to him?”

“I don’t know. He was there when it happened, when whatever it was woke up. I told him to run and he did.”

Andre knew the young man would never be able to run far enough or fast enough, but at least he’d run. That was something.

The carnival boss took a deep breath and slowly let it out. He glanced at the small woman by his side before turning back to Andre.

“You’ll want to talk to them, I expect.”

“Who?”

“The idiots,” Garibaldi said. “Though I don’t know how much help they’ll be.”

Andre suspected they might be more useful than his friend, but never got the chance to say. Something had Naira spooked.

“What is it?”

Naira shook her head. “Trouble.”

Garibaldi sat up a little straighter despite the pain. “Where? I don’t—” he said, and then his words were cut off by the sound of a single gunshot echoing across the camp.

*   *   *

The body of the brute lay in the dirt, face up to the sun. A small black hole in the dead man’s forehead and the pistol in the sheriff’s still-shaking hand told much of the tale.

“He attacked me,” he said, as Andre and Naira arrived. “I told him to stop, but he just kept comin’.”

Andre slipped through the crowd gathered around the body and knelt beside it. Several recent injuries, including a scalp laceration and numerous stab wounds to the chest, were still caked with dried blood. There was no fluid, dried or otherwise, on the forehead.

Andre looked at the sheriff. “He attacked you?”

“Came barrelin’ outta the tent chasing some girl. Saw me and changed his mind … I told him to stop.”

An older woman wearing a long black dress stepped forward, her arm around a younger, similarly dressed woman who hid her face at the sight of the body.

“It’s true,” said the older woman. “We were to prepare him.”

“For burial,” Andre said.

The woman nodded. “The medical man tried his best. He was surely dead.”

“Seemed awful lively to me,” said the sheriff.

Andre laid a hand on the dead man’s chest, finding no life to it.

“He is gone now, Sheriff.”

The sheriff said nothing but did finally holster his pistol.

The silence stretched out, broken only by the sobs of a few carnival folk. In time, Andre nodded to Naira, who gently took the hand of the young woman in black, waiting for her to raise her head before she spoke.

“Tell us what happened, dear.”

The woman wiped away a tear but answered right away. “Big Tom weren’t much for cleanliness, but I came to wash him. He deserved that. I only touched his coat and he grabbed me around the wrist and pulled me down. He tried … he tried to bite me.”

Andre felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. She was speaking the truth and it was worse than he’d imagined.

“How was he killed?” he asked, slowly rising to his feet. “The first time.”

“Tom died saving my life,” Garibaldi said, leaning on another man for support. “Stabbed … by the bastard that shot me.”

The crowd parted, allowing their boss room to stand beside the fallen man. Mary, the one-armed girl, pushed in beside him on a small rolling cart. At the sight of her friend she silently began to cry.

Garibaldi looked to Andre. There was hate in his eyes.

“Find him, Andre. And kill him when you do.”

“I will find him, John.”

Garibaldi nodded. “Talk to Mason. He might be able to help.”

“Who is he?” Naira asked.

“One of the idiots.”

*   *   *

The Tillamook County Jail was small and out of the way, perfect for a population that rarely had a use for it. Two twelve-foot-square cells were more than enough to hold the occasional card cheat or inebriant incapable of stumbling home. Should an actual criminal be in residence, the jail was equipped with two sets of wrist-to-ankle shackles. After the carnival shootout, the jail’s population had soared to three, none of whom was deemed to be in any condition to cause trouble. The shackles remained on the wall.

“This one’s got a fractured scapula, four broken ribs, and a bullet lodged in his lower back that’s going to have to come out eventually,” said the doctor, pointing over his shoulder at a bloodied and bandaged young man curled up on the cot at the back of the first cell. A second man, a relation by the looks of him, sat nearby, leaning against the bars. “The other one’s got a load of buckshot in his thigh, which I’d call very fortunate, all things considered.”

Andre looked at the two men. Hugh raised his head long enough for Andre to read the truth on his face. The man was just as broken as his brother. Neither would follow the path that had brought them to this place. Their days on the wrong side of the law were over.

Andre motioned to the adjacent cell. “What about him?”

The doctor ran a hand through the few hairs remaining on his head. It had taken him nearly two days to get to the men in jail, and despite a mighty headache and almost no sleep, he’d treated them fairly and honestly. This one, however, had pushed his limits.

“Mr. Mason has a broken shoulder,” he said. “And a broken arm, just above the elbow. He also took a round in the face that punched through the cheek and tore off most of that ear.”

“Will he survive?”

“Oh, yes. Won’t be much to look at, but he’ll live.”

Andre took a step toward the cell, but the doctor held him back.

“This one’s a bit feisty. Deputy had to hold him down while I attended his wounds. Didn’t give him anything for the pain, either. Not trying to be cruel, but I’ve got more-deserving folks up on the hill.”

Andre nodded.

The doctor picked up his coat and bag. “When the deputy returns, please inform him that I’ve gone back to the carnival.”

“Of course. Thank you.”

The doctor nodded. He paused, giving Andre and Naira a final consideration, and then walked out the front door, leaving them alone with the injured outlaws.

Mason didn’t wait for a proper introduction.

“You come to collect me, big boy, is that it?”

Andre turned to see Mason standing, his right hand gripping one of the bars to keep himself from falling. Blood oozed from beneath the bandage wrapped around his head. His speech was slurred, almost wet as he spoke.

“You one of the government’s pet slaves, boy?”

Mason made a guttural slurping sound and tried to smile. He couldn’t hold it without a great deal of pain, however, and returned to his grimace.

Andre stepped forward and closed his much larger hand over Mason’s, pinching it firmly against the bar. Mason hissed in pain. He tilted his head down to the man, showing the criminal exactly how big he was.

“Mr. Mason, it would be wise to adopt an air of respect in my presence, honest or otherwise,” Andre said in a voice half an octave deeper than that he’d used when talking to the doctor. It wasn’t a trick or a push, but the effect was just as powerful. Mason tried to slip deeper into his cell but his hand wasn’t going anywhere.

“I have some questions for you,” Andre said, tightening his grip on the outlaw’s hand. “If you answer them to my satisfaction, I will see that the good doctor finds he has enough medicine to soothe the pains of
all
the wounded.”

Mason felt a fresh wave of pain sting what remained of his left cheek. He bit into the right, trying to balance the misery, but managed only to make the wound flare up even more. He did his best to ignore it.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“There were four of you—”

Mason’s eyes lit up. “Is he dead?”

“Who?”

“That traitorous son of a bitch, Henry! Tell me them freaks shot him.”

“They did not,” Andre said. “He escaped, as did his accomplice.”

Andre felt Mason’s heart rate spike as the man tried to pull away again, forgetting he had nowhere to go.

“Tell me about Henry,” Andre said. “Do you know his last name?”

Mason stopped squirming. “Why would I know that?”