His Ragged Company

by Rance Denton

  The gaping maw opened. Sand poured out likes waves between brown teeth.

  “There’s only enough room on this saddle for one of us, Faust.”

  He was gonna—

  Eat me? Consume me? Rip me to pieces.

  I was going to die here.

  “You know,” I said between breaths, “what you sons-of-bitches never remember when you start trouble?”

  “Enlighten me.”

  I’d managed to eke the flask out of my pocket with my right hand and twist the lid between two fingers...

  “I don’t fight fair,” I said.

  I splashed whiskey into those silver eyes.

  His violent scream pierced my ears. The limbs jittered and jerked like a stuttering machine. He fell away from me, the ball-bearings stuffed into his eye-sockets thrashing like angry silver insects.

  I grabbed the talon-blade out of his grip and drove it into him.

  It split Dos’s clothing and skin like burlap, then spilled out a shit-ton of hot sand across my knuckles and the saddle. I just kept swiping at him with his own knife, hooking into his flesh and shredding him. I wanted the red stuff. Every time I cut him, he was dry. There just came more sand.

  When he fell, I was alive again.

  He hit heavy. The crumpled shadow disappeared far behind me.

  Before I took too many chances and had more of the black-robed Gregdons popping up out of the sand to kill my ass, I kicked the black horse into a sprint just as the tail-end of the train toward Rouseville rattled by. I heeled hard until I was just even with the caboose. Sweat glistened on the horse’s sleek neck.

  When I grabbed the hard, metal railing, my duster cracking in the drafts, I loosened my feet in the stirrups and leaped.

  If I wasn’t humble, I’d tell you I mounted the back of the red caboose with pride and grace. No point in lying, though. I jumped and almost didn’t make it. I wrapped both of my hands around the bottom of the rail and got a goddamn lot of sense knocked into me when my shoulders and elbows locked and my boots scuffed across the gravel and the tracks. I whipped a leg up, crawled my boot-tip to the bottom stair on the caboose, and heaved myself up to the car’s back porch.

  I lay there for what felt like a hundred miles, even though it was just a minute or two. The black horse finally stopped running, slowed to a canter, and vanished on the horizon as the train rode on.

  I still had that talon-blade.

  Everything was done. Curtis was dead. Rufus Oarsdale was too. I wanted to sleep. I brushed my sandy hands off on my duster, and reached for the caboose’s little door. I pulled it open. I staggered inside.

  The whole caboose shook left and right as the weight shifted on the tracks. When my breathing slowed, I heard clapping. I opened my left eye just enough to see a sleek figure sitting next to the caboose’s only window.

  “What a show,” she said. “What a show.”

  She smiled at me. And I swear to God, I thought the coyote sitting next to her did too.

  30

  I don’t think the woman and the coyote were crew.

  Though I couldn’t see much of her, I’d rarely met a lady of such immediate radiance. She wore a dress made out of skins and hide. The skirt of furs had a slit in it that revealed high, dark boots. Her face, stifled by a hooded cowl topped by the head of a wolf, seemed simultaneously humorless and yet entirely charmed. She ran her fingers through the matted hair of her coyote companion, the lolling tongue dropping tiny specks on the floor as it watched me.

  A stellar sense of style like hers could only mean she was a taxidermist or a sideshow manager. Around her neck, a necklace of what looked like bits of pemmican and jerky caught my attention. Ears. All sorts of them. Long and thin, some squat and fat. The nub of a boar’s ear. The sharp point of a mountain lion’s. The round, flappy edge of a man’s.

  She drew back her hood, showing me her crisp skin and the straight hair underneath, shining like filaments of steel. “Why, Mister Marshal,” she said. “You’ve got quite a habit of staying alive.”

  “About the only thing I seem to be able to do with any kind of predictability, ma’am,” I said.

  “You’re popular for it,” she said with some admiration. “Renowned. Famous in these parts.”

  “Or infamous.”

  “That depends on the storyteller,” she said. “Do sit down, Mister Marshal.” She motioned to the chair across from a little table beside her. When I approached, the coyote gave a rumble in its throat. The woman’s fingers sank into the nape of its neck. “Be civil, Constantpaw,” she chided. Then back to me: “We couldn’t possibly trouble you but for a few minutes of your time. A chance to talk. To parley.”

  Didn’t like that word. But I clunked the sandshade’s talon-blade on the table, withdrew my two Colts, their oils all gunked with sand, and set them beside it. I teetered over the chair, wondering how my body was managing to keep most of itself in one piece.

  The coyote beside her sat on haunches coiled like springs. It perked. Its sickly gaze found my breast pocket.

  I clapped the Eye down on the table.

  It rattled into one of the gutters between the panels of the table and rolled, and rolled…

  It fell off the table. And before I could react, Constantpaw snapped it up in its jaws and swallowed. I suppressed the instinct to go for the little scavenging bastard.

  “We needed to see what all the fuss was about,” she said.

  “Worth it?”

  “Still deciding.”

  “Cigarette?”

  She shook her head.

  I’d never seen her before. I don’t think I would have forgotten that metallic hair, those gunmetal-gray eyes. I grimaced against the sharp reminders of pain that began to awaken throughout my body. “Have we met? Perhaps at a dance…”

  “No. We’ve never met. Though we might oblige you in a dance if you so desire it. We’re not against doing what needs to be done to get closer to a resource. Likewise, we’re certainly not obligated to tell you anything about ourselves, Mister Marshal. Before you ask,” she added.

  “The hell you here for, then?”

  Regardless of the wolf’s cowl, she smiled the way snakes smile. “To congratulate you on your survival. To put our true gaze upon you. Any person willing enough to combat the Gregdons deserves a little attention.”

  “Your friend,” I said, looking at the coyote, whose beady eyes never left me. “Maybe that’s who I recognize.”

  “Perhaps. She doesn’t like you, Mister Faust. You killed a good deal of our family, and while that’s a regrettable act, it’s certainly expected.” Coyotes were unnatural beasts the closer you got to them. Like wasted sketches in a child’s scrapbook, they might as well have been half-dog, half-fox, puppets of gray, brown, and bone that could blow themselves up to a wolf’s width and shrink themselves down to slither underneath doors. Then, with simplicity in her voice, the woman said, “You didn’t heed our warning, Mister Marshal.”

  “You mean the dead coyote on the path? I prefer notes.”

  The landscape whipping past the window outside must have reflected in at just the right moment, because I thought I saw the color in her eyes shift from gray to a mustard yellow. “Gravelfoot was an old soul, Mister Faust. She was ready to die and be of some use. We took no cheer in wielding the knife that killed her, but the early death was a kindness. Leaving her body on the trail had purpose. We wanted you to go back, to stay away.”

  “Why?”

  “Curtis Gregdon was going to die.”

  “How do you know that?” I said.

  “We were hired to kill him first.”

  When she deigned to look at me, it was from a thousand miles away, aimed just past my shoulder. Or through me entirely. “The mysterious woman has a story just waiting to come out. I’ll bite,” I said. “You did work for the Gregdons?”

  “Occasionally. We gathered intelligence for them, patrolled the wilds, got our snouts wet with blood when it was needed.”

  �
��But what about Curtis,” I said.

  “We accepted the contract to kill him. Then we chose to break it.”

  “Imagine that went over about as well as a fart in church.”

  “We had every right to rescind the contract, Mister Marshal. The Magnate refused to inform us that a hit on Curtis Gregdon was actually a hit on his own son. We did not realize the relationship prior to accepting the job.”

  “It’s sort of…right there,” I said. “Out in the open.”

  Her eyebrow slanted.

  “In the names,” I said. “Magnate’s a Gregdon. Curtis is a Gregdon.”

  “Human names are as deeply confusing as they are monumentally unnecessary,” she said. “Regardless, as strong advocates of family, our pack retracted our willingness to complete the task. Killing one’s own pup is a waste.”

  “But killing your Gravelfoot, that wasn’t a waste?”

  “Death is a suitable fate for the aged and the brittle, especially when that death brings both use and release.”

  “All this to tell me I should have turned back,” I said.

  “We were afraid your life would be lost in the fray.”

  “Obliged, though I admit, I don’t exactly understand. All this talk about not taking the Magnate’s contract and yet, your friends tried to chew on us last night.”

  The woman did not pause a beat. The coyote’s tongue hung further out of its thin snout and it turned its neck to receive more attentive scratches. “You merely got in the way last night, Mister Marshal. You weren’t our target. We were looking to eliminate Curtis Gregdon.”

  “I thought you were opposed to killing the Magnate’s son.”

  She smiled again, but not in that way you do when you’re amused. She smiled sort of like an old teacher, like she was frustrated with a stupid-ass attempt to do arithmetic. “When we retracted the terms of our contract with the Magnate, Mister Marshal, all Gregdons became our enemies. Those with whom we break our provisions run the risk of falling victim to our claws.”

  “Oh. Technicalities. You and I don’t have provisions, I reckon.”

  “Not yet, Mister Marshal.”

  “That make me an enemy?”

  “Undecided,” she said, “though your violence last night does indeed make you less likely to win our favor. But oversights occur. You’re but one mind and one mind alone, Mister Marshal. Some concepts will be regrettably lost on you.”

  For a minute I thought I’d really not mind being back in all the flying bullets. After all, bullets were honest. They didn’t manhandle your brain too much unless they had somewhere to be that your head just so happened to get in the way of. “There’s something in this for you too, about the Well that every Gregdon, Blackpeak’s mayor, and just about the rest of the world seems to want to sniff out.”

  “Rest assured, Mister Marshal, we have very little investment or interest in seeking out the Shattered Well. Beings may choose one of two ways to be in this world: very alive, or chasing down the origin of a myth and ending up very dead in the process. We suggest a similar approach for you.” Then she stood up. Her long legs drove her nearly to the cabin’s ceiling. This nameless woman was a creature of damn near seven feet tall. “Disrobe. Quickly.”

  “’Scuse me?”

  “Remove your clothes, Mister Marshal. We’d hate to ruin them.”

  The coyote’s ears flattened against its skull. Its lips rolled back to reveal black gums. It ripped out a demanding snarl.

  So I started to get undressed.

  As I did so, Lady Freakshow crossed an arm over her chest, poised an elbow upon it, and tapped at her lips. “We do not envy your position, Mister Marshal. You have been tasked with a demanding responsibility: namely, to preserve the order in an increasingly chaotic world. We roamed these plains well before they sprang up into that which became Blackpeak, and well after Blackpeak is abandoned, we will roam them still. To entrust a man of limited potential and capability with such an enormous task is a cruelty.”

  “Real sweet of you to say.” I swirled my tongue around, felt one questionable tooth start to wriggle, then spit everything there out on the floor. Constantpaw leaned over and sniffed the chunk of blood and spit. “You intend to throw your hat in the ring, too? Is that what you’re here for, to announce your bid as new Grand Master of Everything? Emperor Supreme of this tiny one-intersection pimple on the ass-cheek of Texas?”

  “You misread our intent,” the woman said, gliding close enough to me to grab my chin in her pert fingers. “We want you alive, Mister Marshal. As long as you can be. Stability and peace ensures our continued prosperity. It benefits us. As we speak, Blackpeak teeters on the brink of destruction.”

  Normally, being this naked next to someone’s body meant a whole other kind of day was in the cards. “How…how you figure?”

  “You aren’t there to hold it together.” Her bony fingers crawled up to brush along the cut scraped on my face. “The Marshal of Blackpeak is little more than a man, it seems, capable of being harmed, of bleeding, and – as is the talent of creatures like you – of persevering beyond comprehension. If it weren’t for your diligence up until now, we would have watched as that bastion of human indecency descended into greater disorder and destruction. With the Shattered Well so close—”

  “That would be bad?”

  “That would be bad,” she agreed. “We have every reason to rally our support behind you, Mister Marshal. With Curtis Gregdon having drawn you away from town…”

  Cold realization struck me. “You think someone’s making a move,” I said.

  She nodded. “Which is why we are here. It’s to our benefit that we aid you in quick return to Blackpeak, where your attentions are sorely missed.” She applied a faint bit of pressure to my chest, pressing me back, back across the car, as she withdrew an object from the folds of her cloak and crushed it into my palm, all its bristly hair and strange, stiff coolness. “A gift for you, Mister Marshal. Something we think might benefit you. We had to meet you before we could know whether or not you would misuse it. For the moment, we believe very highly in the stubbornness of your integrity.”

  I looked down. My blood stopped in my veins.

  A desiccated paw, gray and withering, lay across my fingers. Sun and heat had cracked the battered pads. A brown, cleanly-severed bone stuck from its cap.

  “Gravelfoot sends her regards,” Lady Freakshow said. “Her death was but one of many. It’s our way: we live, we die, and we run anew, if not as our old selves, then however we must.” She closed my fingers around the rotten object. “Our futures will find their ways close to one another again, and when they do, may they be amenable. If we meet you again as an enemy, then we will take pride in killing a local legend. If we meet you again as a friend?

  “Then we will have a past like all good friends desire to have. Problems shared, problems solved.” So close, she smelled like pinewood and rust. “For now, think of it as an even trade. An exchange. After all, that’s what trains are for, are it not?”

  “Even trade,” I said. “But I didn’t give you nothing in the first place.”

  “Yes,” said the woman, another streak of yellow zapping through her eyes. “Yes, you did.”

  I looked out the window and saw figures dashing over the distant hills, running with the train. Coyotes. Faster than bejesus. They had their eyes on me, yellow as jealousy, knowing right where I was like they could see me through the walls. Following. Waiting…

  Constantpaw crept forward, its elongated face rigid and restless. Its claws clicked against the wooden floor.

  My legs shook. My palms clammed up with sweat. “One more thing, Madam Mange,” I said. “I work better when business is casual.”

  “Names are useless, Mister Marshal.”

  “Sure,” I said. “But if you want friendship, I’ll want to know who I’m sharing it with.”

  “And if we have to kill you,” she said, “you’ll want to know who bested you.”

  “Something like t
hat,” I said.

  This near, she overwhelmed me. Her high cheekbones, the cliff-ledge of her tan chin, the pale, dandelion color that bled across the surface of her pupils and consumed the tiny dots at their centers. On her breath, a whiff of steel, gorge, and blood. “They call me the Quicktooth.”

  She turned her head.

  “Constantpaw,” she commanded. “Now.”

  A blur of slobbering teeth and forty-some pounds of mangy gray-and-brown blasted into me like a sledgehammer. I crashed back, naked and tired, through the cabin’s door. I fell and fell toward the tracks as the train toward Rouseville shot, bullet-fast, away from me…

  I heard the Quicktooth’s last command. It pierced me like an arrowhead.

  “Run.”

  Even after bounding off me like a stepping-stone, Constantpaw hit the ground first. When I struck a split-second later, it barely seemed to matter. Bones and skin, they didn’t hold a candle to stone and steel and wood. I shattered into a million tiny pieces. Elias Faust, Blackpeak’s favorite broken porcelain doll.

  I held tight to that putrid paw. For prosperity’s sake. Good to have company when you’re…

  …unraveling?

  Sky was up. Ground was down. Hit the ground. Found my feet. Did as I was told. Ran.

  Ran fast, ran hard, ran because to run was as good as breath and as good as life. Ran,

  tha-tha-thum

  tha-tha-thum, ache was but an ache, for what I am is stubborn-rubber

  and

  strong-as-bone

  and Constantpaw, head-of-us, knew I was fresh-in-life and so she ran

  tha-tha-thum

  tha-tha-thum

  and both of us, we ran, and ran…

  She said to me this is One Great Run and glad you once again Run This Run and then

  she bit-for-play and the world flew by underneath our two-by-twos until the