Skin Medicine Read Online Free PDF Page B

pistol.”
    Cabe found himself doing so without even thinking. That voice, those eyes…they were almost hypnotic somehow. But then he came to himself as the deputy hauled the hellbilly non-too gently out the door. That cocky, crooked grin opened up in his face. “Well, well, well, Jackson Dirker,” he said. “As I live and breathe.”
    The sheriff raised an eyebrow, showed no sign of recognition. “Do I know you, sir?”
    Cabe smiled and that smile burned with hate. “You should.” He touched the old scars running from one cheek, across the bridge of his nose, and to the next cheek. “These marks I bear…”
    “ What about them?”
    “ You gave ‘em to me,” Cabe said.
     
    2
    The Beaver County Sheriff’s Office.
    A dirty single-story brick edifice stuck in-between the county courthouse and a mine broker’s office, looking straight out at the town square and the taverns lined-up beyond like prostitutes offering an easy time.
    Cabe stood outside in the blowing, wet wind, his boots caked with mud like wet cement.
    He wasn’t sure what he was feeling just then, but it wasn’t good. Part of him wanted to kick though the door and gun down that arrogant sonofabitch of a county sheriff. But that wouldn’t do and he knew it. That was not how things were done in real life. He had thought of Jackson Dirker for years, playing out revenge fantasies in his mind for the time when they met up again—if ever—and now it all fell to his feet. Like the shed skin of a snake, these fantasies were simply dead.
    He came through the door and saw the big deputy sipping from a tin cup of coffee. He was a large man, heavy in the middle, but broad in the shoulders and powerful-looking. He wore no gun. He hadn’t at the saloon either. Cabe figured he was like old “Bear River” Tom Smith down in Abilene years back, enforcing law and order with his bare fists.
    “ What can I do for you?” he asked. “I’m Henry Wilcox, deputy.”
    “ Tyler Cabe. I have business with Sheriff Dirker. He about?”
    “ In the back,” Wilcox said. “I’ll get him.”
    Cabe found a straight-backed chair and pulled it up to what he assumed was Dirker’s desk—a big oaken antique outfit, papers and the like organized very neatly. Yeah, that would be Dirker. Officious, stern, militaristic.
    Sure as shit.
    Cabe had been in lawmen’s offices in dozens and dozens of towns, if not hundreds. Some were nothing more than tumbledown shacks with shackles bolted to concrete blocks to hold prisoners. Planks set over barrels for desks. But not here. Not in a rich mining county. The job of county sheriff would be a very lucrative one.
    You could expect nothing less of Jackson Dirker.
    Cabe waited there, lighting a cigarette and studying the wanted dodgers on the walls, town ordinances, a rack of repeating rifles chained into a hardwood case.
    The door to the back—the holding cells, Cabe figured—opened and Dirker stepped out and Cabe felt butterflies take wing in his belly. Dirker wore a striped suit with a gold watch chain and a string tie. The sort of duds a banker might wear. But Dirker had impressive bearing and he would’ve looked like the man in charge had he worn a corset and dress.
    He sat down across from Cabe. “You have business here, Cabe?”
    Cabe felt his voice catch in his throat, snag there like denim on a nail head. For a moment he wondered if maybe he had the wrong man here…but no, there was only one Jackson Dirker. Cabe had known it was him the moment he’d come into the Oasis. The face was older, lined impeccably by experience. There was a touch of gray at the temples. But those eyes, you couldn’t forget them. Twenty years had not tempered their ferocity. They could still burn holes in cinderblock.
    “ You remember me, Dirker?”
    The sheriff nodded. “I do.”
    “ Didn’t seem like you did back at the saloon…”
    “ It took a moment.”
    “ The scars refreshed your memory?”
    Dirker arched an eyebrow. “Scars are