Deadman's Crossing by Joe R. Lansdale Read Free Book Online

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    A little dust devil danced in front of Jebidiah Mercer’s horse, twisted up a few leaves in the street, carried them skittering and twisting across the road and through a gap made by a sagging wide door and into an abandoned livery stable. Inside, the tiny windstorm died out suddenly, dropping the leaves it had hoisted to the ground like scales scraped from a fish. Dust from the devil puffed in all directions and joined the dirt on the livery floor.
    Jebidiah rode his horse to the front of the livery, looked inside. The door groaned on the one hinge that held it, moved slightly in the wind, but remained open. The interior of the livery was well lit from sunlight slicing through cracks in the wall like the edges of sharp weapons. Jebidiah saw a blacksmith’s anvil, some bellows, a few old, nasty clumps of hay, a pitchfork and some horse tackle gone green with mold draped over a stall. There were no human footprints in the dirt, but it was littered with all manner of animal prints.

Jebidiah dismounted, glanced down the street. Except for an overturned stagecoach near a weathered building that bore a sign that read GENTLEMAN'S HOTEL, the street was as empty as a wolf’s gut in winter. The rest of the buildings looked equally worn, and one, positioned across the street from the hotel, had burned down, leaving only blackened ruins and a batch of crows that moved about in the wreckage. The only sound was of the wind.
    Jebidiah thought: Welcome to the town of Falling Rock.
    He led his horse inside the livery, looked about. The animal tracks were what you would expect. Possum. Coon. Squirrel. Dog and cat. There were also some large and odd tracks that Jebidiah did not recognize. He studied them for a while, gave up on their recognition. But he knew one thing for sure. They were not human and they were not truly animal tracks. They were something quite different.
    This was the place. Anyplace where evil lurked was his place. For he was God’s messenger, that old celestial sonofabitch. Jebidiah wished he were free of him, and even thought sometimes that being the devil’s assistant might be the better deal. But he had once gotten a glance of hell, and it was well short of appealing. The old bad devil was one of God’s own, because God liked hell as much as heaven. It was God’s game, heaven and hell, good and evil. That’s all it was, a game, and Jebidiah despised and feared God because of it. He had been chosen to be God’s avenger against evil, and he couldn’t give the job back. God didn’t work that way. He was mighty mean-spirited. He created man, then gave him a choice, but within the choice was a whore’s promise. And instead of making it easy for man, as any truly kind spirit might, he allowed evil and sin and hell and the devil to exist and blamed it all on man. God’s choice was simple. Do as I say, even if I make it hard on you to so. It didn’t make sense, but that’s how it was.
    Jebidiah tied his horse in one of the stalls, took the pitchfork and moved the old hay about. He found some good hay in the middle of the stack, forked it out, shook the dust from it and tossed it to his horse. It wasn’t the best there was, but it would do, along with the grain he carried in a bag on his saddle. While the horse ate, Jebidiah put the fork aside, went into the stall and loosened the saddle, slid it off and hung it over the railing. He removed the bridle and reins, briefly interrupting his horse’s feed, slung it over the stall, went out and shut the gate. He didn’t like leaving his horse here in this bleak unattended stable, but he had come up on another of life’s evils and he had to be about his business. He didn’t know the particulars, but he could sense evil. It was the gift, or the curse, that God had given him for his sins. And this sense, this gift, had come alert the minute he had ridden into the ghost town of Falling Rock. His urge was to ride away. But he couldn’t. He had to do