Skin Medicine Read Online Free PDF

I?” He cackled madly now, that gun just shaking in his fist, hungry for flesh. “Tenth Tennessee, yes sir. Bloody Tenth, they called us. Know why? Because we killed so many and took so many casualties. Blood…hee, hee…all that blood. Just a-running everywhere. You couldn’t get away from all that blood, could you? Still can’t get it off m’hands. Yankees captured us, that it? M’brothers were all dead, all dead, you say? Yes sir, I believe they was. They sent me to Camp Douglas, the POW camp up near Chee-cago. Oh m’Lord, but them Yankees had fun with us! At night they’d shoot through the barracks walls, make bets on how many Johnny Rebs they could kill with a single ball? Hee, you remember that?”
    Cabe cleared his throat of dust. “I was captured, too, Orv. After Pea Ridge. I was at Douglas. Later they exchanged us…we mustered back in, went to the fighting again—“
    “ Liar! Liar! Liar! Goddamn bluebelly liar!” the hellbilly stammered, drool flying from his mouth, his brown and yellow teeth snapping open and shut like a beartrap. “Yer a Yankee! I can smell yer stink! Dirty murdering bastards killing Roy and Jesse! Fucking bluebellies! I kill ‘em on sight, I kill ‘em on sight!”
    He brought the gun up.
    Cabe began to apply pressure to the trigger of the Starr.
    “ If you kill ‘em on sight,” Carny said. “Then you better ready yourself, because here comes one now.”
    The door had swung open and a tall man had stepped in.
    He wore a knee-length overcoat, the cuffs and collar trimmed in fur. Atop his head was a round buffalo fur cap. His face was narrow, angular, the mustache riding beneath the sharp nose trimmed immaculately. He was a handsome man and his pale blue eyes simmered with authority and bearing. There was a badge pinned to his breast. It read: SHERIFF BEAVER COUNTY UTAH.
    The hellbilly was staring at him, but so was Cabe.
    Cabe was speechless. Something hot and wet had spilled inside of him and it made him shake, made him angry, made him boil inside. But he said nothing, not yet.
    “ Orv,” the sheriff said in a flat tone. “Give me your gun. You don’t and I swear to God I’ll kill you where you stand.”
    The sheriff hadn’t even opened his coat to show his guns…if he even had any. But those eyes…Cabe remembered those eyes…they were merciless. And when they looked at you and into you, your insides melted like butter on a stove lid.
    The hellbilly looked to Cabe almost desperately. His head shook slightly from side to side.
    The sheriff walked over. “The gun,” he said. “Right now.”
    Old Orv looked fit to shit himself, except by the stink, he probably already had. His fingers tightened on that big life-eating 1851 Colt. His knuckles were strained white as pearl buttons. He looked from Cabe to Carny, cast a glance at the miners. He looked oddly helpless.
    The sheriff unbuttoned his coat, made damn sure the hellbilly saw how slowly and calmly he did it. And made sure he got a good look at the butt of the short-barreled .45 Peacemaker waiting in the hip scabbard.
    He held his left hand out. “The gun,” he said and those words were sharp enough to cut steel.
    Old Orv made to hand the gun over…then maybe the tension of the moment or just plain machismo got to him, because he started to bring it back, his eyes gone ebon and savage. But the sheriff was too quick, too sure. He took hold of the hellbilly’s wrist with his right hand, gave it a nasty twist, and that big revolver dropped into his left. He took it by the barrel and, with no more thought than swatting a fly, smashed old Orv across the face five, six times with the butt until he sank to his knees. Orv clasped his bleeding face with those soiled fingers, moaning and gobbling.
    A big man wearing a tin star on his Fish slicker came through the door, looked at the ‘billy, then at the sheriff.
    “ Lock this trash up,” the sheriff said. Then he turned to Cabe. “Sir, if you would please, leather that