by Rance Denton
“You should be dead.” She stood, clutching her apron so hard I swore the white bone would tear out through the skin of her knuckles. She shrunk herself against the door. “You turned me back. Just like that, you turned me back, tore me out of what he did to me.” Behind her, she grabbed the glass doorknob until I almost thought she’d yank it right out of the wood. “It’s not human, to live in spite of it all. In spite of lead and gunpowder. Living to end it all with a single blow.
“That’s not natural. It’s not human.”
Drunk with trembling anger and yet coldly sober, she straightened her back. Her hand slipped into her skirt-pocket, feeling for familiar safety. Just in case.
Nobody got the best of Miss Lachrimé Garland. Nobody.
“What the fuck are you, Elias Faust? And why are you still alive?”
I never had the time to answer. She opened the door, retreated into the hallway, and vanished into that world where fighting pits were all she had to worry about.
I sat in that bed, staring at the Mark etched into my veins, filling myself with what remained of Miss Garland’s bourbon. My cigarette ashes scattered like black snow across the bedding. I found a wrinkle in the bedclothes, traveled across it with my eyes, and didn’t think of much at all. No Magnate, no dead things, no Well. So imagine my surprise when, from the doorway, somebody said, “I think it’d be in your best interest to stop doing your best impression of a side of beef.”
A pistol-hammer jacked back.
“If you’re gonna shoot me,” I said, “then at least aim for something vital.”
“Does that even work anymore?”
“We could give it a try.”
In the door stood Grady Cicero, his .44 Russian held in the air beside him, muzzle pointed at the ceiling. His right arm was in a sling. His mutton-chops looked freshly oiled. He had a grin on his face bigger than a pig eating shit.
What I saw wasn’t so much a whole man as it was a scabby puzzle-map of skin where thorny vines had torn perforated lines across his cheeks, his nose, and even along the backs of his hands. For a moment, my breath stuttered. I asked, “You have a date-gone-wrong with a broken pane of glass or something? If you think I look bad, you should—”
“—see the other guy, yeah, yeah,” he said.
“How’s the town?”
“Still terrible.” He lifted the bottle from the table. “Want some more bourbon for that glass?”
“Any special occasion?”
“Winning. Skin of our teeth and all that.”
We both drank. He curled his nose.
“Tastes like hell,” he said.
“But it tastes,” I said, “which means you aren’t dead.”
“Says the guy who makes it look easy.”
I liked simple things. Cicero understood that. And yet as we sat there, drinking and talking like there weren’t matters at hand, we could live the theatre of carelessness, like nothing else went on beyond that room. “How’d you do it,” he finally asked, after a span of silence got between us and our smiles and our premature laughter.
“Crashed one bit of magic into another. Figured if a bullet couldn’t do it, there had to be other ways.”
“Fortunate guess?”
“Suggested course of action.”
That, I think, was why I’d grown to like Grady Cicero. Because when there were questions that needed to be asked, he didn’t always ask them.
I watched a ring of smoke catch the first rays of morning sun. A new day. The light, pink and blue and fresh, seemed like the run-off from another world.
Grady Cicero finished our last cigarette without asking if I even wanted a draw. He crushed it out with his fingers. “It’s not just your responsibility.” He flicked the paper out the window. It fluttered away, burnt and useless. “You shoulder too much of this shit and it’ll just crush you. It’s already begun. Don’t make me watch. Christ, man, don’t you dare make me just watch.”
“Did you think I was dead?”
“You just don’t assume a friend’s dead. You make damn sure he is, and then you try to kill the sonofabitch who did it.”
“And if he’s not?” I said.
“Then you fight your way out of the shit with him when the time comes for shit to get fought.”
I grinned for what felt like the first time in days. Dried blood cracked on my face. You don’t miss a sunrise like the one that came reaching up over the peak of the Blackpeak town hall without, for just a moment, standing still in time.
He raised the empty bottle. “To living.”
I raised my glass. “To dying.”
“’Death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.’”
We drained our last drops of whiskey.
“This place needs you, Cicero,” I said.
“So it does,” he said with a smile. “So do you.”
Summer started to wane, but in Blackpeak, it was anybody’s guess when it really stopped or started. Just hovered, mostly, like a ghost or a cloud. Life had come back to Blackpeak. Sure, there were some burned buildings, but it wasn’t so bad other than that. The heartbeat returned. And the drinking.
Hammers and wood saws sang all hours of the day. Miss Garland, Emp, and a handful of others oversaw the return of Blackpeak’s goods from the mines, and just like that, regularity returned to our dusty pit of a town. Nobody said anything about any odd encounters in the mines. No sandshades, no fights, no lingering threat. I guess if you cut off the head of the snake the tail doesn’t live very long. Destroying Illemone’s Heart had done the work that no amount of bullets or gunshots could. My body, still barely pieced together, was thankful for the cane I took from Levinworth’s belongings, rest his soul.
Sometimes I drew little triangles on tiny pieces of paper. Every time I did I burned them up with a match.
One night I was busy on the saloon porch trying to find Orion in the sky when a pair of yellow eyes reflected the moonlight like precious gems. I felt them boring into me. When I blinked, they were gone.
I made sure nobody was around when I got up off the bench, wandered down the porch, and went across the street to the alley where I’d seen them. I held the wooden cane almost like a sword.
When I stepped into the shadows, a growl greeted me. A wolf-like beast was there, hackles raised like the tongue of a lumberjack’s saw.
“Hey, Spitjaw,” I said.
Its tall ears twisted. It turned and lumbered down the alley, bouncing with every one of its steps.
Every few yards, the impatient beast turned and looked at me, silently asking me what was taking me so long to follow. Obligingly, it slowed down, taking its occasional time to snuff at something curious on the ground.
It led me to the husk of one of the burned buildings on the edge of town. All that was left of the tanner’s was a skeleton of black beams and old walls. My spine started to prickle. An audience of other eyes sprang to life, winking in the blackness. Watching me, remaining obedient. But something in the air whispered a breath of calmness. Calmed me, too. A presence, a chilling mantle of peace, like a mother’s whisper…
The Quicktooth sat amid the ruins. There were four coyotes sitting around her feet. They raised their heads when I came near.
“We knew, inevitably, that we would need to speak to you again, Gravelfoot.”
I sat down next to her, but not too close. She didn’t look at me. Her silvery hair seemed to suck in the starlight and not let it go. “You could have just gotten me on a train,” I said. “Seemed to work well enough last time.”
“Friendly encounters are best engaged on familiar ground.”
“I’d venture that ‘friendly’ is just the closest word for what it really is.”
“We may have strikingly different definitions in mind,” she said. “We thought it best to come to you and convey our gratitude. The Magnate is dead.”
“I was there.”
“We took it upon ourselves to retrieve his remains from the fallen home. To dismantle the
m. So he could not be reconstructed.”
“How dare you break a trend,” I said.
“We’ve brought you a morsel of his flesh and a sliver of bone to prove the deed’s completion.”
“Your social graces could use some work,” I said.
“You have assisted us in killing the Magnate and removing one less threat from our territory. In turn, we have brought for you a portion of the kill. The bargain is complete.”
“Spitjaw, Constantpaw, and Rat,” I said. “They helped save my people.” Three pairs of coyote-eyes flickered at the gratitude. “I owe them. I owe you.”
“We are not predatory animals, Gravelfoot. We are merely protective of what is rightfully ours. Consider their assistance a contract of peace.”
“Didn’t we already have that? Or something like it?”
The coyotes circled. The set of her jaw became iron. “Much has changed since then. It behooves us to write new peace.”
“Like you did for the Magnate before you turned on him?”
“You have intrigued us for months. The Magnate had been watching you for some time. We were his eyes. We witnessed your first gunfight with his sons from afar. And we later realized that you would be an invaluable asset in ridding us of our problem.”
“Coal, silver, gold, platinum, and Faust,” I said under my breath. “You sent me after him to cover your own ass. In case any of his boys survived, or in case the killing didn’t go as planned.”
“Better to send you than to bring a war upon our family if we could help it. You benefited. We benefited. The choice was clear.”
“What makes you any different from him if all you did was use me?”
“Principle is what divided us, not lack of similarity.”
Shooting a woman wouldn’t exactly make the night much better for me, but I doubted it would do anything to make it worse, either. “I’m willing to call us Even Steven if you explain the triangles to me. The ones he performed all his powers with.”
“A primitive visual totem used to draw supernatural power into the natural world.”
“I used them,” I said.
“Meddling with such power will get you killed.”
“Sure, by people like me.” I spun my cane between my palms. “How much do you know about these triangles?”
“A great deal more than we care to.”
“I destroyed the Simpkin house with triangles Billy and Curtis Gregdon had used to mark one of the scenes of their murders. I pulled the place down around the Magnate. And after it was done, I saw something. I saw—“
“Visions,” she said, turning to me.
“You know about them?”
“It is not often encouraged to use gates created by others, Gravelfoot. They leave hints and clues behind, information of the creator that those who access it can use to their advantage.”
“Sounds like it could be sort of useful,” I said.
“Or—“ she reached down to stroke the snout of one of her coyote-children, “—those who access that gate may even absorb something of the creator, something they cannot shed no matter how hard they try.”
“So use only your own,” I said. “Right.”
“Use none at all. It is best not to dabble in such nonsense.” She took something out from her hide satchel. It was a small wooden box with a clasp on it. She put it in my lap. She tapped the box with a long fingernail. “The spoils of your campaign.”
She stood. The threads and furs of her grand garments spilled down over her legs. The coyotes got to their feet and pinned me into place with their yellow gazes. When they circled her, they watched me with beastly caution, loping and slinking in subtle patterns around their leader. She stepped over the coals and the lumps of black rubble. Her pack jogged beside her, never straying.
“Quicktooth,” I said.
The woman stopped. I raised the box. It was about the size of something you'd buy cigars in.
“The hell am I supposed to do with this?”
“Destroy the contents. Black secrets lie within. No human eye can be trusted with them. We trust you to know where the lines should be drawn between curiosity and greed. Perform your duties as marshal and we shall not need to speak again.”
Some curiosities don’t need feeding. Sometimes you just have to bury them away and hope nobody will ever come to nourish them. Good to live that way, I think. When she was gone, I opened the clasp with my thumb.
Inside was a book, a vellum volume with a triangle branded onto the front. It was the same book that had been sitting on the table beside the Magnate's makeshift throne.
I peeled open the first page. Tucked near the binding was a little shard of something I first mistook for a toothpick. It was grayish. Looked like it had been broken off a larger piece. The underside of it was dark and black. Next to it was a little flap of what I swear was pigskin, but at closer look I realized…
I dropped the book.
“Fuck me sideways,” I said.
She hadn’t been lying.
A month later, Grady Cicero and I drank whiskey and sat on the hill overlooking the Western Elbow. We'd only brought one bottle. We were in the sun. Little wiggly mirages floated up from the train-tracks. Any hotter and I thought they'd melt into the ground.
“Time's this train supposed to be here,” he said, passing me the bottle.
“You in a rush or something?”
“Tired.”
“I-was-up-drinking-all-night tired, or stroking-it-until-dawn tired,” I said.
“If I told you the truth existed somewhere in the middle, would you cease asking me questions?”
“I sawta wish y’all’d jes’ stopped talkin’ ten minutes back.” Peggy, who was more brawn than both of us put together, had her arms crossed and spent her time sweating like a tired mule. Underneath her dress-sleeves, two patches of perspiration grew and grew. She shot a streak of brown tobacco out of her mouth. She’d come along too. She’d insisted.
I offered her the bottle. “Despite admissions, he’s still drinking at ten in the morning. I guess we know which he did more of.”
“Hair of the dog,” Cicero said.
“Like yer one’ta talk, Marshal.”
“Treachery, Peggy Winters, is punishable by a very sober and thirsty death.”
We all could have taken the piss out of each other for hours, and we’d have known we meant nothing by it. They wouldn't have let me come by myself. Even though we'd organized a trade-schedule with Crown Rock, with Miss Garland taking over the helm of Edward Sloman’s store, we had our work cut out for us. We almost felt normal.
“Miss Garland paying you for your work here?” I asked Peggy.
“Yawp,” Peggy said.
“With money?”
“Nope.”
“Tell her I said she’s stingy,” Cicero said.
“You do it cha’self, li’l man,” Peggy said.
The ten-twenty from Crown Rock was just a few minutes early. It came chugging around the bend. When it stopped, we greeted the cargo manager and sweated for an hour or two lugging crates to the wagon we'd brought with us.
When the engine finally left, Cicero and Peggy and I watched until it looked as small as a snake sinking into the distance.
When it had gone and the wardrum beat of its pistons faded away, I started to turn. A long ride back to Blackpeak, after all. If we stayed any longer, we'd be drunk as hell.
“Faust,” Cicero said, snapping his fingers. “Hey, you see that?”
He pointed. Sure as shit, something in the distance. It was moving. Something black like a blotch of ink with legs was marching down the side of the tracks. Not just marching, though. Galloping. And at a good pace. I heard hooves thundering against the sandy ground. A black horse came toward us.
“Wild,” Cicero said.
“Maybe,” I said.
“Rabid,” Cicero said.
“Pro’bly,” Peggy said.
“Shoot it?” Cicero said.
“You and sh
ooting things,” I said.
“Could punch it,” Peggy said.
“You and punching things,” I said.
I thought the animal was just planning to ride right by us, but as it got closer, it started slowing. No saddle that I could see. No bit. No stirrups. It had a tail that looked like black glass and a mane of thick, jetty hair. It stopped right in front of us. Huge, dark eyes took Cicero and me in from just a few feet away. It huffed out a breath like we'd gotten in its way.
“Now that’s a horse,” he said.
I scratched my chest through my shirt. I could still feel the ridges of the metallic triangle that had been seared into my skin. It felt right to leave it there. People weren't supposed to believe things like I'd seen in the mines. When I stopped believing them, I'd take my knife to it, peel it up by the edges, and put it up on my wall.
But until then, it'd stay. For now, anyway. I'd earned it.
The horse glared at the three of us. It kicked its hoof into the ground and blew up a ring of dirt and sand.
“Weird-ass animal,” Cicero said.
Someone else, in what I swear was a vaguely English accent, said to us, “If you gents and the lady wouldn't mind moving aside, I'd appreciate it.”
The three of us looked at each other.
The horse whipped its mane. It lowered its snout down in front of my face, pressed its forehead almost against mine, and studied me.
Then – I swear to God – the horse reared back and said in that same voice, “Wait a moment. You’re him. Oh, thank goodness. You're Marshal Elias Faust, aren't you?”
Cicero, eyes wide, said, “As a matter of fact, he is.”
“Bloody fantastic,” said the horse. “I've been looking all over for you, Arbiter of the Well.”
About the Author
Husband. Son. Cat-dad. Dog-dad. Self-professed synthwave addict. Podcaster. Moonlighting actor. Historical reenactor. Martial artist.
Rance’s poetry, prose, academic publications, and journalism can be found littering the Internet like time-bombs. When he isn't writing, he is one-half of the podcast duo The Quarantine Book Club (http://www.thequarantinebookclub.com).