Back | Next
Contents

Chapter Twenty

By the time the banker came to, rattling along in the cab of the Double-A, Hiram had tied his hands behind him with a length of cord. Hiram had also blindfolded the man with an old blue bandana from the upper section of his toolbox. From the lower section, he had removed a small dried frog, completely dissected and wrapped in a square of deer leather, soft with age, and tucked it into his own pocket.

Deer leather. The irony wasn’t lost on Hiram.

Michael turned up to Frenchie’s Canyon and parked in a thick stand of junipers along the Colorado River, where they would be hidden from the view of the road.

Michael helped Hiram lower Green to the ground. Hiram had his revolver in his pocket and the rest of the rope coiled on his shoulder. He prodded the banker from behind, forcing the man across the road and up the rocky trail to Preacher Bill’s amphitheater. A back trail blind canyon should be a good enough place to keep themselves out of sight and the banker out of the hunt. Whatever the hunt was.

And whatever the deer-beasts’ role was in the hunt.

It was getting harder to see, with the sun gone from the bottoms of the canyons. They sat the banker down on a flat rock. Hiram checked the dugout, including its hidden chimney. The place was deserted.

Green chuckled. “Hiram, you can remove the blindfold. I know it’s you. You shouldn’t have come back.”

“I won’t lie,” Hiram said, “but what makes you guess it’s me, Erasmus? Why not, say, a bank robber, wanting your help in opening a safe?”

“I fell asleep at my table and whiskey wasn’t involved. How would a bank robber accomplish that?”

Michael shot Hiram a panicked glance. Hiram jerked his head, wanting Michael back in the shadows, while Hiram interrogated their prisoner. Michael moved himself behind Erasmus.

“Drug your food, maybe?” Hiram undid the blindfold and stuck the bandana in his pocket. “Remember that you came after us first, Erasmus.”

“That would result in me falling asleep after the meal, rather than before it.” The banker grunted laughter. “We didn’t really come after you. We wanted to get to Preece’s daughter. Why was she leaving town all of the sudden? What does she know about the Blót?”

Hiram stood in front of the man. “What’s the Blót?”

Erasmus grinned, and rattled off a string of foreign words.

Hiram let the rope drop in loops. “Let’s stick to English.”

“Hiram, what are you doing, kidnapping me?”

“I promised Addy I’d keep her safe from you, and to do that, I need to know the nature of your hunt…or tithe or Blót. It’s all the same thing, isn’t it?”

Green didn’t answer.

Michael was quiet.

“I want to know more about Jimmy Udall and Lloyd Preece,” Hiram said. “I want to know whether you and your friends were involved in their deaths, and what the connection is to your hunt.”

“And if I don’t tell you a word?” Green asked.

“That’s what the rope is for.” Hiram walked behind Green, caught him up in a lasso, and then pulled him back, dragging him to the dirt. At the same time, he looped an end around a knob of rock on the lower part of the canyon wall. Green lay on his back, pulled down, facing the darkness of the fading blue sky.

Michael stepped back farther into the shadows.

“And I will also seek help from the Lord Divine.” Hiram loosened and unclasped the banker’s shoe-string tie. He then undid the buttons on Green’s shirt to expose pale skin.

“What is the meaning of this?” Green asked nervously. “Hurting me won’t get you anything.”

“All I want is the truth.” From out of Hiram’s pocket, he took the square of deer leather, and unfolded it on the sandstone table next to Green. He picked up a frog’s tongue, thoroughly dried, about an inch in length. He laid the tongue on Green’s chest.

To add power to the charm, Hiram whispered Ephesians, chapter four, verse twenty-five: “Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.”

Green twisted. “What are you doing? What is this?”

“You’re going to tell me everything you know,” Hiram said.

“Ha, damn you, Hiram. I won’t. And even if I did tell you, you couldn’t possibly understand. You’re not prepared for the knowledge, so it would simply bounce off your forehead.”

“I’d understand more than you think.” Hiram himself had said uncomfortably similar things to Michael, quite recently. “Tell me about the Blót.”

“Go to hell!”

Hiram took his hat off and ran his fingers through his thinning hair. The frog’s tongue should compel the man to speak the truth—why wasn’t it working? Did Erasmus Green have a countercharm? Did the power that transformed him also protect him?

Was Hiram still weakened by his thoughts of the widow? Having his craft work sometimes-yes and sometimes-no was worse than it never working it all.

“We know that tonight, Jupiter enters the third face of Scorpio,” Michael said.

Hiram felt stricken. He wanted to keep Michael out of this.

Green laughed meanly. “Oh, is the Injun going to work his savagery on me? You gonna do a rain dance, boy?”

Hiram wanted to shut the man up, but he didn’t move.

Michael picked up the frog’s tongue from the banker’s bare chest and examined it. “Pap, this business of ours involves a lot of tongues. Dried dog’s tongue to keep other dogs from barking. Dried frog’s tongue to get people to tell the truth. I wonder what a dried ‘Injun’ tongue would do?” Michael snickered. “Or a dried deer-man’s tongue?”

“I don’t know,” Green said, “but I do know my wet tongue still rooted firmly in my head isn’t going to tell you a thing.”

“We’ll see about that.” Michael laid the tongue back down on Green’s chest, and he repeated the Bible verse Hiram had quoted. Michael had never really learned his Bible, but he had a quick memory.

The minute Michael was done, Green writhed, trying to dislodge the frog’s tongue from his skin. Despite his movements, the dried piece of leather stuck in place, as if glued.

“Tell us about the Blót,” Michael commanded.

“It is ancient. It comes from Iceland, where my mother’s people come from.” Sweat trickled down Erasmus Green’s forehead. “We haven’t always been Mormons, you know. The missionaries only found my people in the 1870s. My parents, my father, they came to Utah, settled in Spanish Fork, for a bit, but they didn’t fit in. They came south, to Moab, or really this valley before it was a town. They came here in 1877, crossed the Colorado, floating one piece of furniture across it at a time. That’s how the story goes. I was born here in 1883, to Cornelius Green and my mother, Hekla Jónsdóttir. My father wasn’t Icelandic nor was he Mormon, but his closest friends were both. My father raised me to be Mormon out of respect for his wife, and my father’s friends raised me with the Blót. I ran my first Tithe when I was sixteen.”

Michael’s eyes flicked up to Hiram. “So it gets him to talk, but the charm doesn’t really compel him to focus on the question.”

“He’s resisting,” Hiram murmured.

“Hell yes, I’m resisting!” Green was sweating, his face pinched, his teeth clenched. “That frog’s tongue is not going to overcome my own good sense. I won’t tell this Injun shit! Let me go, or you’ll have the whole herd down on you!”

Michael poked the man’s arm. “My father isn’t doing the interrogating. I am. And luckily, I’m a righteous man, a humble man, with a forgiving spirit. I’m going to turn the other cheek, but don’t call me an Injun again.”

Hiram smiled, proud for a moment, until a thought made him frown. Would Michael ever be able to work at any ordinary profession, after experiences like this one?

“Okay, Erasmus,” Michael said. “You can turn into a deer, can’t you?”

“You know the answer to that,” Green snapped. Then he grinned. “I have to talk. And I have to tell the truth. But I don’t have to keep talking.”

“Do you know who killed Jimmy Udall?” Michael asked.

“I don’t.”

“Who killed Lloyd Preece?” Michael asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you have your suspicions?”

Green twisted, exhaled, and blinked against his sweat. “I do.”

“Whom do you suspect?” Michael’s question was clear.

“The hunters.” Green grinned, but there was pain in his eyes. “The pack killed him.”

“Lloyd was one of you?” Michael asked. “He ran the Tithe?”

Green laughed. “Of course, you idiot! He was First of Hoof! How do you think he got so rich?”

Michael frowned, thinking. “Who is in the pack?”

Green spewed more of the harsh syllables, which must be Icelandic. Green was strong and he was clever—was he clever enough to outwit Michael?

Michael didn’t appear nervous. He stood, arms straight on the sandstone, leaning hard against it. His legs were behind him. “Well, we know that tonight there’s going to be a hunt. And we know the hunt is connected to the Tithe, or maybe it is the Tithe. And we know that you get money from the hunt, because you admitted it yourself when you threw out that little inside joke, during your story of the 1923 robbery. You got your money back through insurance, and the Tithe.”

“I’m not going to say a word on any of that in English. How is your Icelandic, boy?” Green asked.

“We’ll see.” Michael didn’t seem upset. “Yes or no, is Leon Björnsson part of the hunt?”

Green grimaced, but out of his mouth popped, “.”

Michael chuckled. “That’s a yes. It’s close enough to the German. Yes or no, is Howard Balsley part of the hunt?”

Nei!” popped out of Green’s mouth.

Michael gave Hiram a sweaty smile. “ and nei helps us out. It’s kind of like the lantern game we did with the ghost that first night. Twenty questions! I’ve already asked him about Jimmy Udall and Preece, and he doesn’t know.” His son thought again, and then asked, “Yes or no, if we let you go, will you try to kill us?”

Green didn’t even try to answer it in Icelandic. “No, not if you can keep what you know a secret. And why would you tell anyone? Who would believe you? There might be movies about werewolves, but there aren’t movies about deer men.”

“Yes or no, do you hunt during the Blót?” Michael asked.

“No.” Green scowled.

Hiram felt a shiver run up his spine. Then what was the hunt, exactly?

Michael’s face was thoughtful. “Who hunts you during the Blót?”

“The pack. Do you really want to keep playing this game? I can play all night.” Green laughed. “I won’t tell you anything useful.”

“You’re telling us immensely useful things,” Michael said.

Erasmus Green hissed.

“Yes or no, is the widow Artemis part of the Blót?” Michael asked.

“No. Women can’t be a part of the Blót. But Diana is involved.”

Hiram felt as if he wasn’t breathing.

“How’s that?” Michael asked.

“Oh, I don’t mind talking about this. Let’s just say, the widow Artemis has a definite open mind when it comes to anything that brings her money. She was at Preece’s when he was killed.”

“Yes or no, do you think she killed him?”

“Yes and no,” Green answered. “How do you like that answer? Ha!”

Michael’s face darkened. “And how do you know Diana was at Preece’s when he died?”

“Because someone told me!”

“Was it Diana?” Michael pressed.

“Of course not!”

“Who told you she was there, then?” Michael frowned.

A long stream of Icelandic ensued.

Hiram felt compassion for his son. And Hiram had wanted to protect his son, but this was the result of Hiram bringing his son into the very real world where men and women did desperate things. Would Michael turn to cynicism? It seemed to be in his nature. Intelligent, complicated men often turned to cynicism as a shield against the world and its pain.

Hiram wished for a servant’s heart.

How could Hiram best serve Michael, or the man tied to the rock?

Perhaps they’d learned enough from Green. Perhaps they’d learned enough to be able to try some of Grandma Hettie’s divination techniques.

“Anything else do you want to ask him?” Hiram asked.

“We could go through the entire town, to figure out who is part of this Tithe thing,” Michael suggested. “He says he can do this all night, let’s give it a try.”

Michael spent the next several minutes going through everyone in town he and Hiram could name. Sheriff Jack Del Rose, Bishop Gudmund Gudmundson, Deputy Russ Pickens, and the ranch hand Clem were all part of the Blót, according to Erasmus Green. Mormons and Catholics, it didn’t seem to matter. Icelandic ancestry or not, didn’t seem to matter, either. Rex Whittle, Hiram was pleased to hear, was not part of it. Ernie and Bobette Smothers, Jeff Webb, Orville Peterson, and Don Pout were not. Leon Björnsson was.

“Surprise,” Michael said. “The guy who stuffs dogs inside of other dogs is part of the crazy.”

When asked whether the individuals were deer-men or hunters, Green laughed and spewed long Icelandic speeches.

“Is the Blót a plot to commit murder?” Michael asked.

Hiram expected an answer not in English.

Green though, surprised him. His laughter evaporated abruptly. “Absolutely not. We don’t want to hurt anyone, and if others do, well, there’s an old maxim of the law that says volenti non fit iniuria.”

“Great,” Michael said. “Latin?”

Green smiled. “It means, if the victim is willing, there is no crime.”

“There’s something else I want to try,” Hiram said.

“I hope it involves letting me go.” Green looked at Hiram.

“Not tonight,” Hiram answered. “I do have a salve for your scalp. I’m assuming your psoriasis doesn’t have anything to do with your two-formed nature or the hunt.”

Green smiled. “That would be nice of you, Hiram. See? We’ll get past this. The hunter and his victim can be friends.”

Hiram imagined he and Michael would let Green go, and then flee back to Lehi. Once Hiram got his head in order, he’d have his craft to protect him.

Until then, he had another charm to show Michael. Hopefully, it would tell them the killer and maybe get Green to talk a little more.

“Let’s take him back to the truck,” Hiram said. “We’ll finish this up by the river.”


Back | Next
Framed