February, 2012

Issue #29

Under the Outhouse
by Josh Wittenberg

Rachel wasn't so much a town as a clutter of saggy buildings separated by a rocky dirt road. In its center was a small park; essentially a dollop of thirsty grass with a small gazebo perched atop it. The gazebo had a peaked roof with a cupola, the roof being plated with old splintery shingles that made it look almost shaggy on top.

When Lawton Parrish rode in on his red mare, Marie, a number of what he presumed to be townsfolk were bunched up in front of the gazebo, watching the portly man standing inside of it, in the shade of the shaggy roof. Whatever the man was saying, he conducted his words with excited movements of his short arms, waving them about like his sleeves were on fire. Once he pointed over towards a building on the right side of the main street. Lawton winced his eyes over that way as he dismounted his horse, and saw 'First Bank of Rachel' on the sign below the string of windows on the building's second floor. The man then wildly gesticulated behind his back at the road out of town, almost as if he were pointing Lawton out to the townsfolk. The townsfolk seemed to turn their heads and shift their gaze to Law in unison. None of 'em had what Lawton considered particularly welcoming expressions on their faces.

Lawton wound Marie's reins around a hitch post in front of the town's livery and filled the water trough with some water from the nearby pump and a bucket. Then he patted her and left her to go see what all the hubbub was about.

By the time he got to the gazebo, however, the meeting had broken up and the congregation had filtered out. Lawton had noticed that a lot of the men had had guns in their hands.

"'Scuse me," Lawton said to the portly man who'd been the center of attention.

"Uh, yes young man?" The little guy had a bowler hat on his roundish head. His nose was big and pink with lots of dark, wide pores, and was ribboned below with a thick and curly handlebar mustache. The mustache was waxed and shiny.

Lawton said, "I'm looking for a bean pot and a bed. Any chance I might find a meal and a room in this town? I been on the road for days now, and I need somethin' 'sides squirrel and scummy water."

The roly-poly man grinned and twiddled one of the spiral curls of his waxy mustache. "Why of course!" he exclaimed. "We could use the money, to be frank with you. Even if we don't cotton much to strangers in Rachel. No offense, son, just that we ain't been having much luck with outsiders."

"That what your little town meeting was about?"

"Er . . . yes. Well, not strangers specifically. Just one in particular, at the moment. And I guess he ain't much of a stranger, neither. You ever hear of Gus McCree?"

Lawton rubbed his stubbly jaw and felt around his teeth with his tongue. He'd only been in the hot, dusty town for a few minutes, and already it was starting to leave a bad taste in his mouth.

"No," he finally said, "can't say as I have. I imagine, way you ask about him, he's a crook though. Am I right?"

The man nodded. "Worst kind of crook. He just blew into town this morning. He walked right in to the First Bank of Rachel and cleaned it out — took everything. Not just the money, either. That McCree is a petty but thorough bastard. He took the bonds, the painting off the wall in the lobby, the deeds to most of the local businesses and homes, hell, he even took the pens on the little chains that are at the teller windows for folks to use when they come to make withdrawals or deposits."

Lawton snorted a little laugh and cocked his hat. "Sounds like a real jackass. But why didn't someone just air 'im out? I saw all the guns those men were holding. Most of 'em were stroking shotguns the way an old woman strokes a cat. You tell me not one person was able to shoot him down?"

"Oh, we tried!" the man exclaimed, his eyes widening to the size of eggs. "But McCree was bulletproof."

"Bulletproof! That's a new one on me," Lawton supposed. "How'd he pull that off?"

"It was the damnedest thing," the man said, leaning in close to Lawton as if it were gossip meant for his ears only, his voice tuning down to a raspy half-whisper. "This morning I was sitting in my office — oh, I'm Mayor Luther Tate by the way, how do you do? — anyhow, I was sitting in my office, and at about nine o'clock, one of the tellers from the bank, Ms. Viola Green, she bursts into my room and says the bank is being held up.

"Naturally I tell her to grab the sheriff and that there's not much I can do about it, and she says she already saw the sheriff and that McCree had already laughed off a few bullets and left the sheriff gut-shot on the floor of the bank. So I got a few men and headed over just in time to see McCree loading up two horses with satchels of stuff from the bank. He was wearing some sort of shiny steel suit of armor.

"I declared he stop in the name of the law and my men drew pistols on him, but damn if he didn't just turn around, double over, and squeak out an offensive mallard call at us from of his shiny hinder, and chuckled. The men fired and the bullets seemed to knock him around a little, but the sonofabitch got right back up on one of the horses, grabbed the other one's reins, and rode right out of town with all our money. Laughing all the way, I might add."

"I see," Lawton said quietly. He didn't, really, but under the circumstances it was the only thing he really had to say about the story he'd just been told. "But you're sure it was this McCree fella?"

"Yes," the Mayor gibbered. "He had a helmet on, but his voice was unmistakable. It was Gus McCree all right, the bastard. I'd know that worm-peckered, stone-livered, rattlesnake raper anywhere."

"And how's that?"

"Because," Mayor Luther Tate complained, "he's my brother-in-law!"

Lawton was hit hard with the notion to spin on his heels and leave town. He was tired, bedraggled, and hungry as a beakless buzzard. Last thing he needed was to wander into the middle of some cockamamie family feud — especially one involving an entire town and a smarter-than-average criminal. Still, there was the small matter of paying for that meal and that bed he'd inquired about. He had less to his name than a dead man, and his pockets were empty. Still, the urge for hot food and a soft mattress itched deep.

"Well, Mr. Tate, my name's Lawton Parrish. How about a trade," Lawton said, fighting the urges of his better sense.

The Mayor cocked an eyebrow and breathed deeply. "What kind of trade?"

"A room and a meal for me and for Marie," he pointed to his horse, "for this McCree character?"

Mayor Luther Tate fiddled some more with the curlicue ends of his mustache, smoothing and primping them. "What makes you think you can do it? Bring him in, I mean?"

"I done my share of bounty hunting," said Lawton. "I've hunted and captured — sometimes killed — things meaner 'n a crook with a kettle around his belly."

Mayor Tate thought about it for a moment. He turned sharply to scan the quiet town behind him, as if there might be somebody there he meant to confer with, but found none, and turned back.

"Alright," he agreed. "Come with me to the Skeleton Key. We'll get you some lunch and let you rest your haunches a bit."

"Sure you don't want me to set out right away?" Lawton asked. "That crook, brother-in-law or not, is gaining ground on us. Might be best if I saddle up Marie and try and find him before dark."

Tate rolled his bowling ball head from side to side. "No need. I know exactly where the fink is. He's got a cabin 'bout three miles out of town."

"Didn't notice it on my ride in," Lawton exclaimed. "And why would he just go back home, knowing you knew where he'd be?"

"His place is west of here, up on Miner's Flat. Near some old silver mines that've been abandoned for a decade or so. One of the mines is still technically under McCree ownership, though no one goes up there anymore. That cabin he lives in is the one my wife grew up in. And as for the second part, Gus is dumb as a stump, but he's got balls the size of train wheels. He even said to me as he rode out of town: 'You want your green back, you know where to come get it.'"

Mayor Tate saw that Marie was taken into the livery and fed and brushed, while Lawton accompanied him to the town's sole tavern. It was a low-ceilinged slop house that wanted desperately to be a saloon. A wrinkled old bartender stood with his starched white apron behind the smooth wood counter of the bar, and there were old, rusty spurs and derelict pistols and rifles mounted on the walls, as well as printed posters for past town celebrations sponsored by the bar.

"Howdy, Mayor," the old man said in a voice like a dry fart.

Mayor Tate nodded in response and pulled a chair out at a table under a massive bear's head snarling down from the wall. Lawton joined the Mayor.

Mayor Tate ordered, "Two whiskeys, Mort," and the wrinkled old man with a face like curdled buttermilk grabbed the bottle and poured out two shots and carried them over.

The Mayor then ordered two 'Skeleton Key Specials' as the drinks were set down on the table, and told Mort to bill his office. Mort nodded, stuffed the unused order pad into his back pocket and the pencil behind a pickled ear, and trudged off to the kitchen.

Lawton heard the sizzle of raw meat hitting a heated grill. His mouth salivated heavily and his gut ached with emptiness.

"So, why they call this place the Skeleton Key anyway?" Lawton asked.

Mayor Tate pointed past Lawton, who turned to see the piano against the wall behind him.

Mayor Tate said, "Look at the keys on the piano."

Lawton obliged, sliding his chair towards the instrument. And sure enough, what looked like a standard saloon hall piano from a distance became a more sinister novelty up close. All the white keys on the piano's keyboard were replaced with human toe and finger bones. The black keys were old, time-darkened skeleton keys.

"Sure is a creepy setup you got there. Mind if I ask how you came about something like that?"

"Not at all!" the Mayor gloated. It was clearly a story that had been injected into the local folklore; probably purposely purchased for just that reason, Lawton guessed. "A strange fellow came through town some years back. He took up residency here for some time. A queer old guy who later moved on to Plot Hill down there in Louisiana, I think. Got a job as an undertaker.

"Anyways, he was a real ghoulish type, but he had money up the wahzoo. While he was here for about three years, he accumulated all kinds 'o stuff in the house he occupied, and when he left, well, he just kind 'o left everything behind for the town to cannibalize.

"Mort grabbed this puppy. Thought it might drum up business. Ain't that right, Mort?"

The old bartender grumbled and nodded as he set two plates down on the table. It turned out that the Skeleton Key Special consisted of a burnt and blackened steak, a side of runny mashed potatoes and some boiled carrots. Lawton wanted to suggest that maybe it wasn't the lack of a novelty piano that was keeping the customers at bay, but considered the fact that it was a free meal nonetheless and decided to drown his thoughts, and dinner, with a liberal application of ketchup.

During their meal, Mayor Tate continued to relate the town gossip to Lawton, especially where it concerned his brother-in-law, Gus McCree. Gus was a miner who grew up working the silver mines, but spent maybe a little too much time underground, (in the Mayor's words), and got to disassociate with people. He grew introverted and surly. And when the mines on Miner's Flat were considered unsafe, and more or less all mined up, they were abandoned. It took five deaths in three different mines to do it, but folks eventually either took up another profession, leaving the mines behind altogether, or took off for greener mining pastures.

Not Gus, though.

Tate said that was about the time his sister moved out and hitched up with him, and that infuriated Gus further. Mayor Tate's wife, Eloise, was a teacher in the only school in a seven-mile radius. She was the only other source of income the McCree household had had after their parents died. They had been farmers by trade, but Gus wasn't much for farming, so he continued to mine in the shaky underground caves until they started to collapse so bad from over-excavation, that he couldn't get down inside them anymore.

When Eloise married Luther and moved out, that left Gus to his own devices. She gave him a small stipend to cover groceries and such, but he had to take on a plethora of odd jobs to cover the rest of his living expenses. Work was hard to come by in a town so small, at least finding small jobs that people wouldn't do for themselves, so he spent most of his time sitting up in that lonely old shack, living under the constant scrutiny of the black, hollow, ever-watchful eyes of those abandoned mine entrances.

"Some say those mines are haunted now," Tate said, chewing with loud, wet chews that sounded like snapping rubber bands. "Never been in one to tell ya the truth. Won't even go to the cabin. Eloise won't go near it anymore, either. Something wrong with Gus's mind now."

Lawton asked Luther to draw a map to the place. Luther flipped a little printed paper placemat that read, 'The Skeleton Key Saloon — Deadly Delicious Dinner & Drinks', in red ink, decorated with a drawing of a skeleton playing the odd finger bone and key piano, and did just that.

"I'd like to have a man or two with me, if possible," Lawton said while the Mayor doodled his directions on the placemat. "If I can surround the cabin, I'll have a better chance of bringing him back alive. It's just me and him, I have a feeling I might have to shoot him to bring him in."

Mayor Tate said, "I'll see what I can do. I'll have to be careful, though. As you saw earlier, most folks are ready to just silence Gus for good — and using a shotgun for a muzzle no less. My wife would get mighty icy if I let that happen."

Their meal finished, and at least in Lawton's case, not sitting too well in his stomach, like a feral monster fetus trying to kick its way out, Mayor Tate walked Lawton back to the livery to get his horse.

"So, in all this time that Gus has been alone up there," Lawton asked as they approached the stable, "he ever come to town and do anything like he did this morning?"

The Mayor chuckled. "Some. Nothing like today, mind you. Lotta drunk 'n' disorderly type nonsense. One night I guess he got mad up there, thinking about how he presumed Eloise had abandoned him, and he was drinkin', got stewed up real good, and he came into town and smashed out all the windows of the school with rocks. Tried to set fire to the schoolhouse, too. Fortunately this was in October and the ground was wet with frost and condensation then, the wood too moist; so it didn't take.

"Other incidents, too," Mayor Tate added, " but nothing like robbing the bank in an outfit made of steel."

"Is Gus a blacksmith? He make that suit himself, you reckon?"

The Mayor chuckled again.

"Gus? Well, I don't know. I doubt it. Gus has never been real capable with his hands. Any time he tries to do something constructive — like building or mending — it usually ends up crooked or lopsided or something. Proof of that in the outhouse he put up behind his place. Saw it myself the last time I was out there. First off, he built it a bit too big, too wide; and second, it ain't got any ventilation on it. And it's lopsided!

"Must be a mighty ripe turd closet on hot summer days like today!" the Mayor added.

Marie came around, led by the stable owner, a man named Pierce, and she looked well groomed and rested. Mayor Tate asked Pierce if he would be interested in accompanying Lawton in apprehending Gus, to which he responded with a wide-eyed, slow-twisting head shake. He said that that snake was straight crazy and didn't want anything to do with him. He did offer up his two sons, though.

They were eighteen and twenty. Both seemed up for the challenge, and agreed. Mayor Tate deputized all three men and waved them off.

"Remember," the Mayor shouted through a makeshift bullhorn made from his cupped hands, "bringing Gus back to town ain't important. It's the money that'll make or break us."

Lawton and the Pierce boys traded a sideways glance and rode on.

After riding out a ways from Rachel, and twisting to the right, baking and basting in their own sweat in the flaming golden eye of the sun, the eldest Pierce boy pointed out the flat hilltop called Miner's Hill.

"That chimney you see poking up above the wheat grass fringing the hill up there, that's old Gus's place. Only one lives up there these days." His name was Rodney. He had a head of shaggy rust-colored hair shaped like a helmet that trailed down his jaw on either side and forked into a beard and mustache of greasy, bristly hairs.

"Mayor tells me he thinks the mines up there are haunted," Lawton sniggered, "so maybe he ain't so alone after all."

Even under the chafing pink sunburn on their faces, Lawton saw the Pierce boys go pale as chalk. They looked to one another without speaking a syllable, and trotted on. Clearly they thought something wicked was happening up there. Something worse than just Gus McCree.

The boys showed Lawton the way up to the top of Miner's Hill, crossing the wide Silver River by means of a shaky handmade bridge that ran across, just above the surface. Based on the Mayor's description of Gus and his technical skills regarding carpentry, it had all the earmarks of his sloppy craftsmanship.

Lawton asked the boys if Gus made the bridge and they reckoned he did, reiterating the fact that he was the only one who lived up this way anymore and would've been the only one to use it.

"How deep is that thing?" Lawton inquired, nodding towards the running gray snake of river beneath them.

"'Bout five feet or so at the deepest," Dean, the younger Pierce said.

When all three men were safely on the opposite side, just a hundred yards or so from the cabin, he brought the boys in to a huddle formation and told them his plan.

"We leave our horses here, at the bottom of this short incline. That way they're accessible if he tries to run, but they won't hinder us none, allowing us to sneak about the cabin with our heads down."

"And what about when we find him?" Rodney asked, checking his pistol's cylinder and slipping bullets into the empty slots.

"We worry about that when we find him," Lawton answered. "The main thing is, don't let him get to far out of our net. We're going to break up and move towards the cabin from three angles. You see him run, you holler out. We let him get too far out of our perim'ter, he might get away. Like treeing a squirrel or something."

"And if he has that steel suit on?" Dean wondered.

"I've got some thoughts about that," Lawton said. "Of course, I ain't seen it yet, so I can't say until I'm sure. But I got a few ideas cooking in the old bean pot upstairs," he said, tapping his noggin with an index finger.

"And be careful," Lawton added. "According to the Mayor, this ground is full o' sink holes and such from the mines. I'm sure old Gus knows each rock and crater like the backs of his thievin' hands, but we don't, so keep those eyes peeled. Could mean the difference between walking away and a broken foot or leg."

The boys assured Lawton that they understood and he sent them off. They scampered up the hill, hobbling around the cabin with heads low and backs hunched.

Their guns were drawn.

Lawton waited until the boys were in position and then he walked up the hill and across the flat shelf of rocky land, straight towards the cabin's front door. His gun remained in its holster in the niche of his left armpit, hidden by his jacket.

He stepped up to the front door and knocked.

There was no response.

The door wasn't locked, so Lawton opened it slowly, pushing gingerly with his fingertips while keeping his body against the wall around the edge of the doorframe. It opened wide with no response.

His heart beating in his throat, Lawton slid his revolver from his holster, and spun around the doorframe, stepping into the cabin's large one room. It was empty. There was a cot with sweat- and filth-tanned sheets and a pillow in one corner of the room. There was a small stove with a couple pots and pans nailed to the wall above it. Opposite the bed, on the other side of the room, was a small bureau with some random knick-knacks on it. Closer to Lawton, directly to his right in fact, pushed up against the wall under the sill of a front-facing window, was a table. On it were some moth-eaten gunny sacks, a bad oil painting of a row boat in a fake gold-gilt frame, and a couple of pens with short lengths of tiny beaded chain limply dangling from their ends.

"Gus? You home?"

It was clear he wasn't.

Then there came a shot. Dean screeched, "Hold it, Gus."

Lawton dashed outside and rounded the cabin to see Dean standing with his gun drawn, the barrel pointed at the door to the large, lopsided outhouse. Rodney was standing a few feet away with his gun aimed too. In the frame of the door stood a paunchy middle-aged man in a pair of full-body red long johns. His hands were in the air. A black beard of curls ringed the wide, yellow smile on his otherwise hairless head.

"We need that money you took, Gus," Lawton said, stepping towards the outhouse.

Gus just grinned, hands up in surrender. "Never seen you before, mister," he said through his grin, his words almost accentuating it. "That fat pig Luther send you up here to slap me on the wrist and take the green back?"

"I don't want nothin' to do with your wrists," Lawton said over his gun barrel. "In fact, less I have to touch you, talk to you or deal with you, the better this is for me. So, now that you've lost your little tin tuxedo, why don't you tell me where the money is so I can go back to Rachel and get me some sleep, huh?"

Gus let out a raucous laugh and snorted. He spit on the ground. "Not so easy, boy." In a maneuver surprisingly spry for the chubby old guy, Gus ducked back inside, slamming the door closed behind him.

Lawton looked to Dean who looked to Rodney.

"That man is plain crazy!" Dean said. "Nowhere to go in a shitter."

Despite the knowledge of that fact, the three approached said shitter in a slow and cautious manner.

"Okay, Gus," Lawton huffed, exhausted from the heat, "we got you cornered. It's hot and I'm not in the mood for games. Just give me the money and I don't even need to take you to town. Mayor said he didn't care if you came back or not anyway. The boys here heard it."

"That's right, Gus," Rodney said.

No response. It was quiet enough to hear the heat breathing on their necks.

"Goddamnit, Gus," Lawton hollered, losing his cool, "I'm done negotiating." He grabbed the handle on the outhouse door and jerked it open, thrusting his gun forward to shoot if needed.

It was empty.

"How the hell'd he do that?" Dean gasped.

Rodney jogged around the back, kicking the boards of the structure's rear wall, and scanning the area behind it. "Doesn't appear to be an escape door or anything."

"No," Lawton affirmed. "We would've heard it if he slipped out some back hatch. We'd have seen him take off running, too." Lawton stepped into the outhouse. "Hey, it doesn't stink in here," he said. "Shouldn't an outhouse, particularly in this type of weather, smell to high hell?"

His companions agreed that it should.

Lawton knelt down near the circular hole in the ground and pushed his face near the aperture. It was dark, but it was also obvious that no one had shat in that hole, recently or ever. Lawton fished a hand into one of the pockets on his jacket to fetch a match, still ogling the hole with his face near it, when a brilliant flash temporarily caused him to wince his eyes closed. A firm, hot, hard grasp clenched his throat.

A metal hand had come through the hole. It must've been one of the gloves of the bizarre metal suit Gus had used to rob the bank. Lawton's hands instantly went to the fingers of the metal glove, prying them away from his windpipe. It was just as he figured, the fingers were a series of separate steel pieces with tiny gaps in between, allowing the knuckles and joints to bend. If the suit was that way on the fingers, Lawton realized, it must be the same for the rest of the joints of the body.

The metal fingers pried away from Lawton's trachea, Gus's gloved hand disappeared back down into the dark hole in the floor. Lawton quickly stood up to get some visual distance, and began to scan the floor of the outhouse. Finding the wire-thin crack he was looking for, he bent down and grabbed at the edge of the hole, pulling the floor upwards. A narrow door opened in the floor, revealing wooden stairs leading down into the darkness.

Bingo, Lawton said to himself.

The two stunned Pierce boys followed Lawton down into the earth beneath the false outhouse. An oil lantern burned on a hook in the rock wall of the stairwell, the flame dancing on the wide wick like a drunken pixie doing a striptease. Lawton grabbed the lamp and held it at chest-height to light the way.

When they reached the bottom of the stairs, they found a wide but low cavern. The cavern was old and seemed to be a natural formation, not chiseled and chipped like a mine would be. The lantern caught something shiny. There was a pile of old mining equipment, cluttering the space around some small stalagmites jutting up from the rocky floor like giant muskie teeth.

"Damn," Dean whispered. "This place is spooky."

Lawton brought the lantern to head-height and extended his arm out as far as it would go. His other hand was numbly wrapped around the handle of his revolver.

"Gus?" Lawton called. His voice echoed and wavered, bouncing back and forth amongst the nooks and crags in the subterranean rock, swelling and dipping in pitch and volume the way a wave crests and melts in the sea.

A shot pinged out from the darkness somewhere in front of them. The unseen bullet hit the rock wall behind Rodney and caromed off, ricocheting two or three times in different trajectories before coming to rest somewhere. Lawton heard the spent slug drop to the floor of the cavern somewhere unseen.

"You want that money back, stranger?" Gus howled, his voice seemingly deeper Lawton thought, but then he realized it wasn't deeper, just muffled. That meant he had his steel helmet on. "Well, you're going to have to fight me for it!

"That swindler Luther owes me. That whole dried-up town owes me. First they took my livelihood, closing down the mines. Then Luther took Eloise. Only person in that tinder-pile called a town ever gave me the time o' day was that old feller who took off for the south. He gave me this suit. Had it made for me. So you want that money back, mister, you gonna have to earn it."

Lawton saw the form step out from behind a natural outcropping of rock in the distance, just far enough away to be barely lit by the lantern. The lantern caught the reflective metal surface of the suit. Gus looked huge with it on. Shiny steel boots extended up to bulbous steel kneepads and thigh guards. There was a steel diaper around Gus's groin and backside. Lawton could see the red of the long johns through the thin spaces between the pieces. Around Gus's torso was a large armor bubble that looked like a giant shiny marshmallow. His arms were plated in several small steel marshmallows, ending in the steel gloves. On his head was a helmet that looked akin to an upside-down feed bucket without the handle, with a deep slit across the eyes for him to see out of.

"So," Gus balked, stomping forward with a metallic clank from each footstep, "go ahead, tough guy. Take your best shot."

Lawton had to think quick. He swung the lantern around and found what he was looking for — the money. It was lying in a sack on the floor. "Dean, do me a favor," he said, backing up and lowering his voice.

"What's that?"

"Go back topside and get yours and Rodney's horses. Bring 'em back here."

Dean holstered his piece and raced back up the stairs.

"Ha!" Gus spat. "Running away? You cowards aren't even goin' to try and take me?"

Lawton raised his gun and squeezed a shot out. It smacked the mouth of the helmet loudly, creating a small confetti of sparks.

"Ha ha! Nice shot, gunslinger. But bullets can't harm me. Not in this thing."

Lawton shot again, quickly, aiming for the dark slit Gus used to see out of. Gus was too busy chuckling to notice, but when the bullet hit, it was as if a bee had flown into his helmet. Both steel-plated hands went up to the opening, frantically massaging the metal helmet.

"You son of a bitch!" Gus wailed. "You're too smart fer your own good. That slot was a tit-hair wider, you'd have spilt my brains out."

Lawton shook his head. "I didn't think there'd be much to spill."

Enraged, Gus stumbled forward. Clearly he wasn't adept at running in the armor yet. He looked like a big metal toddler taking his first clumsy steps. Only this big metal toddler had a gun in his hand.

In less time than it took to blink, Lawton fired off another shot, expertly hitting the dark slit in the helmet. Gus roared with rage, again, temporarily blinded. Lawton signaled to Rodney to rush up the stairs, and the two men dashed through the floor of the outhouse and back into the baking sun of the afternoon. Dean was just arriving with the horses.

"Rodney," Lawton turned to his companion, "I want you to hide behind the outhouse. I'm going to try and draw Gus out after me. When he's focused on me and out of the outhouse, I want you to sneak back down and grab the bag of money. Then you and your brother take off back for town. Got it?"

Rodney nodded and curved around to the back of the outhouse and waited.

A loud, dry snapping sound came from inside the lopsided 'turd closet', accompanied by a string of helmet-muffled curses. Gus had found the narrow hatch in the floor too small to squeeze through. In his anger, he'd started punching up the boards of the floor, demolishing the outhouse around him. Finally his large, metal form hulked through the doorway and stepped out into the yard.

"Hey Gus," Lawton chided, "why don't you wiggle those steel-plated ham hocks you call ass cheeks over here, and show me what a big strong man you are?" Lawton quickly tugged out another two shots, this time hitting the open cranny between the big metal diaper and the steel thigh-plate on his right leg.

Then he took off running.

First he ran to Gus's cabin. He stopped outside the window facing Gus's bed.

"I imagine all that steel weighing ya down, it must be mighty difficult to move too fast, huh?" Lawton joked. "I wonder, maybe you'd move faster if you had some motivation." Lawton had still been holding the lantern he'd grabbed in the cavern below. One swift hurl and he sent it crashing right through the window. Glass scattered everywhere, and the dancing pixie flame sashayed out from the confines of the lamp and caught the blankets on Gus's bed. The bed burst into flame instantly; smoke bellowing out from the busted window's frame.

"You done it now," Gus growled. "I ain't playin' games no more. Now I'm going to plain tear your limbs off!"

The metal juggernaut sped like a runaway train aimed directly for Lawton. He noticed that Gus no longer had his gun in his hand. He assumed he'd had to lose it when working his way out of the narrow floor hatch in the shitter. As Gus got close to his burning cabin, muffled promises of vengeance coming from beneath his bucket head, Lawton dashed off towards the Silver River. Gus carried forward into the front of the cabin, the inertia and momentum carrying him further than he planned. He smacked into the front door, knocking it inwards off its hinges. It fell flat into the main room of the cabin, surrounded on all sides with bobbing tongues of yellow flame and thick drapes of smoke.

Gus lay there for a second, the wind knocked out of him. The heat around him swelled in the metal armor he wore, making his body feel like a piece of meat cooking in an oven. Clumsily he tried to steady himself. Finding it difficult to see or breathe, he finally relented and tore the helmet off his head, throwing it across the burning room in frustration.

Gus took a second, panting, to survey his last few possessions as they were licked into nonexistence and ash by the many tongues of flame. Any worn thread, any small semblance of self-control that existed in his mind burned away with the cabin.

The river. He'd seen that smug stranger run off down the hill towards the riverbank. Gus made up his mind, the blood in his temples percolating like coffee. That boy would never reach town alive. Money or no, it didn't matter anymore. Clumsily he pulled himself off the burning sheet of wood that once served as his front door, and he marched down towards the water's edge to find his prey.

Lawton was there waiting. He saw Gus coming down, smoke wafting off his shiny form as if he were dissipating up into the air little by little. Lawton noticed the bucket helmet had come off. That only meant one thing — that old nut cake was seeing things through a thick red filter right about now.

Just as Lawton planned.

"Glad to see you could catch up, Gus," Lawton said, the man still marching towards him. Gus's face was a twisted mask of hate: unflinching, unwavering. He looked like he could've chewed through an iron bar, if properly seasoned. "I decided to wait for you here in the water," he added. "Thought you might like a little cool-off after I got you so burned up back there." Lawton threw a mocking little laugh at the end of his quip. It was calculated. He knew it meant stoking the fire.

Gus broke his stride and snapped into a lumbering but deadly run. Lawton backed into the river, trying to keep his footing on the slick, erosion-smoothed rocks lining the bottom. Gus waded in after him.

Lawton coaxed him forward. "That's right ole Gus, you wade in here deep as you like." Lawton kept backing up. He kept his gun holstered.

"You keep runnin' at the mouth, boy," Gus spat, seething. "It's the last bit 'o runnin' you ever gon' be able to do. You hear me!"

Lawton skipped back to just past the halfway point across the river. The water leveled just below his nose. He hoped his plan worked.

Gus kept forward, driven by rage and the fact that his intended victim was just a dozen feet away. Each step came harder, though. His legs began to knot and strain. Finally, just a few feet shy of arms length from Lawton, his body froze as if his feet were cemented to the riverbed.

"Sorry 'bout your cabin, Gus. Was a bit extreme, I admit. But like I said, I'm mighty tired and my tolerance for games is less than zero. My eyes are sore from no sleep, my ass is sore from travelin', and my guts are sore from that sorry meal your brother-in-law served me in town."

The Pierce brothers appeared over the edge of the cliff. Rodney had the moneybag tied to his saddle. They galloped across the makeshift bridge, slowing to wave an indication of success to Lawton, then continued on.

Lawton waved back. Gus watched stupefied as the brothers disappeared in the distance, his mouth gaping open.

"What the hell you do to me? I can't move a muscle!"

"Water, genius. Those big heavy steel boots you're wearing are full of water. I imagine you have trouble operating them the way it is, them being so heavy and you being — no offense here, but let's call a spade a spade — not exactly the muscular type. Soon as I realized I couldn't shoot you I had to come up with a way to contain you. I ain't got a rope, and even if I had, I doubted you'd let me get close enough to use it.

"All that stuff I did back up there, the shooting in your eye slit, the torching your cabin, the making fun of you, that was all to rile you up to a point where you didn't know what you were doing beyond lusting for my blood. I figured I could get you to that point, you'd follow me anywhere just to get your hands on me."

Lawton finished crossing the river. He called his horse, Marie, and she made her way across the shaky bridge to join him.

"Right now the water is just up to your shoulders. That means every piece of that big bulletproof suit of yours is full and heavy as a cauldron. I wouldn't plan on moving anytime soon." Lawton hopped up on Marie. "I'm riding back to town to make sure the money's safe and accounted for. I'll let the Mayor know where you are. He'll send deputies out for you I imagine. For the time being, just keep your head above water and there'll be less of a likelihood of you drowning."

Lawton gave Marie a slap on the rump and she took off towards town. He didn't look back to watch Gus shrink as he made distance. The man was more or less frozen there until someone came and yanked him out with a rope or something. All the water pressure in his suit holding him in place, it would take some doing too.

Thinking things through on the ride back to town, Lawton felt that despite what he did, he found himself empathizing with Gus a little bit. It had been a rough deal, the mines caving in and drying up like they did. Wasn't the Mayor's fault, of course, and there were other jobs out there, but still, it was a hard thing when loss of work threatened one's connection to the town and home one grew up in. Eloise moving out must've been difficult as well, Lawton imagined, but that was natural too. Gus couldn't rightly expect his sister to stay a spinster the rest of her life just to cook and clean for him and pay for the groceries; a man has to make his own way at some point.

Still, there was a sadness in Gus that Lawton recognized. It was a frustration bred of somber futility. Something like that starts eating at the brain and the soul, especially when its basted often with rotgut liquor, it's bound to drive someone insane. Now, adding insult to injury, even if that injury was mostly a crooked point of view on Gus's part, he was shamed, homeless and humiliated, stuck in the middle of Silver Lake, smelling the sweet wood smoke of his torched cabin.

Lawton almost pitied the poor slob.

Mayor Tate was beaming when Lawton galloped back down Main Street, past the livery where the Pierce boys were standing, brushing out their horses. He held his arms open wide in a jubilant greeting.

"Mr. Parrish, welcome back! I just want you to know the entire city of Rachel appreciates deeply what you've done for us."

Lawton took a quick look around. Aside from the Mayor and the two Pierce boys, there didn't seem to be many people doing much of anything, let alone appreciating, in the streets of town. A drunk was singing a bawdy old ballad while sitting in the dirt in front of the Skeleton Key; his voice as sour and off key as his appearance; and there was an old dog sleeping loudly on the walk in front of the Rachel General Store.

"Now that room you wanted," Tate swooned, "I promise, sir, you'll get the very best room at the Rachel Hotel. No charge, of course."

"Mayor," Lawton interrupted, "Gus McCree is still alive. He has no home. I had to burn his cabin down. I guess the word 'had' might be a little strong, but either way, there it is. He's still alive and standing in the middle of Silver River. I suggest you get some deputies out there to drag him out. Might need an ox to do it. He's still wearing that bulletproof suit of his.

"By the way," Lawton added, "he claims that eccentric old feller who left you folks your prized piano had it made for him. Seems like the old corpse-stuffer was maybe adding to Gus's paranoia, feeding it a little bit. Or maybe a lot. Maybe got him so worked up as to reaching the point where he'd come into town and rob a bank and kill a sheriff. Not sayin' Gus doesn't have inexcusable things to answer for, but maybe he had help getting pushed to it. After all, that character that made the suit for him, he knew something was going to happen. Maybe Gus had drunkenly discussed his intentions with him. Gus claims the guy was his 'only friend,' as he says.

"Guy wants to stir trouble up, presented with the luxury of leavin' town before things get too excited, maybe he gets to working on Gus about his sister taking off and the mines being useless and Gus being useless."

Mayor Tate dropped his grin and rubbed his jaw with a chubby palm. "That's an awful lot of conjecturing, Mr. Parrish."

"I guess so. But Gus — I've met others like him before. He's driven. And he was driven. Maybe most of it is psychological, some bad wiring or just depression takin' its toll or something. But he don't seem like a man who's mean for mean's sake. There were steps that led him there. Not sayin' he didn't forge that path, or that he didn't take it knowing there were other paths out there. Just something to think about."

"I can assure you, Lawton," Mayor Tate said, inflating his chest with an exaggerated swell of pride "that Gus McCree will get a fair and honest trial. Rachel and its citizens pride themselves on their due diligence."

Lawton nodded a silent response. Seemed to him, that folks in Rachel were mighty busy, what with all the appreciating and due diligence going on.

"Now," the Mayor said, returning to the topic of the bargain, "like I said, your room will be —"

"Actually," Lawton interrupted again, "I think I'm just going to head on out. I appreciate your holding your end of the bargain and I'm glad I could help out with your situation, sir, but, to be honest, I think maybe it's best I keep moving."

The Mayor's ruddy face was overcast with a glum pallor by Lawton's words.

"Oh, well . . . ." He raised a hand with obvious disappointment and Lawton took it. Having said their goodbyes, Lawton turned Marie and headed her out of town. As he passed the Pierce livery, he raised a hand in a wave to the boys who were still standing in front, grooming their horses.

That night found Lawton lying on his back on his tattered bedroll under the stars. He was only about five or six miles away from Rachel, and only a meager two or three from the next town over, but he decided he wanted to be alone after all, to think. And after the meal at the Skeleton Key, the jerky and fire-heated beans tasted pretty good. As he traced the spectral flecks of light in the sky with his eyes, joining them to make shapes only he could see, he found his mind wandering back to Gus McCree. He wasn't entirely sure why. The man was a killer, a bank robber, an attempted arsonist, and a bum. But still….

Sleep started to massage Lawton's brain and eyelids. A powerful yawn put the choke on his energy and the world around him started to melt into sleepy darkness. He rolled over to check on Marie. She was asleep near a pine tree some feet away, painted a dancing orange by the flickering campfire.

Then a notion hit Lawton Parrish as he stretched and pulled the thick horse blanket over his supine form on the rocky ground. The reason his mind kept going back to Gus McCree, was that he saw a bit of himself in the old crackpot. The man was a loner, uncomfortable around people. Lawton realized, not without a slight chuckle at the irony of the situation that he'd left Gus McCree in before heading back to town, that like the Mayor's troubled brother-in-law, when it came to people, he was just a fish out of water.

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