voice was harsh and thin and came through his long nose. At proximity, his astounding grotesqueness altered into a perverse beauty, such were the chiseled planes and crags of his brow and cheek, the lustrous blackness of his matted hair that ran riot over his entire body. His teeth were perfectly white when he smiled, and he smiled often.
The cakes, fried in pure lard and smothered in butter and maple syrup, were pretty fucking divine. Blackwood ate with almost dainty precision and his small, dark eyes shone brightly in the candle flame and ye gods the heat from the stove was as the heat from a blast furnace and soon all of us were in shirt sleeves or less, the girls quickly divested themselves of blouse and skirt and lounged around in their dainties. I didn’t care about the naked chickadees; my attention was divided between my recurrent pains of hand and ear, and gazing in wonder at our satyr host, lacking only his hooves to complete the image of the great god Pan taking a mortal turn as a simple gang boss. We had him alone—his men remained below in the dark—and yet, in my bones I felt it was me and Dick and Bly who were at a disadvantage if matters went south.
“Don’t get a lot of fellows with your kind of bark around here,” Blackwood said. He reclined in a heavy wooden chair padded with furs, not unlike the throne of a feudal lord who was contemplating the fate of some unwelcome itinerant vagabonds. “Oh, there’s wild men and murderous types aplenty, but not professional gunslingers. I hear tell you’ve come to the Hollow with blood in your eye, and who put it there? Why dear little Connie Paxton, of course; the moneybags who rules from his castle a few miles yonder as the crow wings it.”
“Friend of yours?” I said, returning his brilliant smile with one of my own as I gauged the speed I could draw the Luger and pump lead into that hairy torso. Clementine slithered over and caressed my shoulders and kissed my neck. Her husband had been a merchant marine during the Big One, had lain in Davey Jones’s Locker since 1918. Her nipples were hard as she pressed against my back.
Blackwood kept right on smiling. “Friend is a powerful word, cousin. Almost as powerful as a true name. It’s more proper to say Mr. Paxton and I have a pact. Keepin’ the peace so we can all conduct our nefarious trades, well that’s a sacred duty.”
“I understand why you’d like things to stay peaceful,” I said. “No, cousin, you don’t understand. The Hollow is far from peaceful. We do surely love our bloodlettin’, make no mistake. Children go missin’ from their beds and tender maidens are ravished by Black Bill of the Wood,” he winked at slack-jawed and insensate Abigail who lay against Bly, “and just the other day the good constable Jarred Brown discovered the severed head of his best deputy floatin’ in Belson Creek. Alas, poor Ned Smedley. I knew him, Johnny! Peaceful, this territory ain’t. On the other hand, we’ve avoided full scale battle since that machine gun incident at the Luster court house in 1910. This fragile balance between big predators is oh so delicately strung. And along come you Gatlin-totin’ hard-asses from the big town to upset everything. What shall I do with you, cousin, oh what?”
“Jesus, these are swell flapjacks, Mr. Blackwood,” Bly said. His rummy eyes were glazed as a stuffed dog’s.
“Why, thank you, sirrah. At the risk of soundin’ trite, it’s an old family recipe. Wheat flour, salt, sugar, eggs from a black speckled virgin hen, dust from the bones of a Pinkerton, a few drops of his heart blood. Awful decadent, I’ll be so gauche as to agree.”
None of us said anything until Clementine muttered into my good ear, “Relax, baby. You ain’t a lawman, are you? You finer than frog’s hair.” She nipped me.
“Yes, it is true,” Blackwood said. “Our faithful government employees have a tendency to get short shrift. The Hollow voted and decided we’d be best off if such folk weren’t allowed to bear tales. This summer a couple government rats, Pinkerton men, came sniffin’ round for moonshine stills and such. Leto, Brutus and Candy, you’ve met ’em, dragged those two agents into the bog and buried ’em chest deep in the mud. My lads took turns batterin’ out their brains with those thumpers they carry on their belts.