The Six Messiahs - Mark Frost [117]
"Your secret's safe with me," she said.
Jacob ran a hand over his smoothly shaven face, looking fifteen years younger shorn of the Old Testament whiskers Eileen had then diligently pasted onto Kanazuchi. "I haven't been without a beard since I was a boy. Sixteen years old; part of my religious requirements, you know. We're not supposed to touch a razor to our skin; they say it's too reminiscent of pagan bloodletting rituals."
"Thank heaven you didn't cut yourself shaving."
"Thank heaven I didn't try shaving while bumping around in these feckukteh wagons; I'd look like one of those revolving poles outside a barber shop."
"You look very handsome, Jacob. You'll probably have women chasing you all over the desert."
"Really?" he said, stopping to consider the idea. "What a strange experience that would be. Tell me, how is our patient?"
"Resting comfortably."
"Good. What a marvelous sensation: to feel the air on my skin again. I feel as naked as a newborn baby. To be honest, if I were to look in a mirror I would hardly know whose face this is."
Yours, she thought. Only yours, you dear sweet man.
The mules slackened their pace, looking for guidance from the reins.
"Oy there, giddyup, I think that's tjie appropriate expression, isn't it? Giddyup, meine schene kleine chamers. Oy there!"
The special express train carrying Buckskin Frank and his volunteer avengers did not reach Wickenburg until just after sunset. Procedural details of commandeering a train after Frank found blood on the tracks had delayed them in Phoenix for four precious hours. Drawn by the announcement of a five-thousand-dollar reward, the posse had snowballed to include nearly forty men by now, picking up self-righteous crusaders like dog hair on a dust mop as they rolled through Arizona, and a plague of journalists had attached themselves as well. The result: A simple task like questioning the Wickenburg Station personnel turned into a Tower of Babel; every volunteer and reporter taking it upon himself to conduct his own investigation until Frank had to fire his Henry semiautomatic carbine into the air to shut them up.
As it turned out, no one at the station had seen a Chinaman get off the noon mail run with the Penultimate Players, but the train was still standing in the yard and, even though somebody had tried to clean up the traces, Frank found a fair amount of blood had spilled out onto the floor of the cargo car. Enough evidence to move on; and more than enough to fire up this pack of amateur headhunters into wanting to make a night ride to Skull Canyon, where the troupe of actors was scheduled to bunk in.
Following Frank's advice, the posse did not wire ahead to the Skull Canyon telegraph office for fear of tipping anyone off: Easy enough to convince his fellow pursuers that was the prudent move; if Chop-Chop—a Phoenix newspaper had hung that headline-grabbing nickname on the marauding Chinaman and it was catching on fast—was this close at hand, the posse naturally wanted the glory of his capture to rain down only on themselves. After posing for a flurry of self-aggrandizing photographs, weighed down with so many weapons and bandoliers they might be mistaken for Pancho Villa's army, the posse repaired to Wickenburg's only saloon for some serious drinking.
Figured these actors would be the ones to harbor a murdering fugitive, the talk in McKinney's Cantina soon developed. Two peas in a pod. Can't trust theatrical people—that much was common knowledge, if not sense—ever since John Wilkes Booth shot the President, an event nearly every one of these armchair lawmen was old enough to remember. Actors were liars by profession, 'specially the traveling kind: whorin', thievin' rascals. Lock up your daughters and hide the silverware. Ought to be a law, and so on.
In plenty of places out west there were such laws, Sheriff Tommy Butterfield pointed out in his bland, pedantic, meandering