"I'll take a nice bed with cool, crisp sheets any day," she said. "You can have your great outdoors."
Halladay smiled and looked up at her, "Afraid of the dark?"
Something howled in the distance and Winnie shot up from the ground and sat down next to him, pressing her shoulder into his chest. He chuckled and put his arm around her. She grimaced at the darkness and said, "I told you I don't like it out here."
He nodded and stared into the darkness. His voice was low and sonorous as he said, "Be not afeard, this isle is full of noises. Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum in mine ears and sometimes voices, that, if I had awakened after long sleep, lure me to sleep again. And then, in dreaming, the clouds I thought had opened and shown riches ready to drop upon me, that, when I waked, I cried to dream again.”
Winnie laid her head on his chest and closed her eyes, "You are the strangest man I ever met, Royce Halladay."
He removed one of the bottles of whiskey from his coat pocket and flicked the cork out of the top and into the fire. He took a long swig of it and pursed his lips, feeling it burn all the way down to his stomach. He passed the bottle to Winnie and said, "You'll need some of this if you intend to keep warm."
"I need some of this after the night we just had. I went from standing naked in a room with two maniacs to burning down a cat house. Now I'm stuck out in the desert. It's a strange, strange life."
"That it is, indeed. For the record, I looked away when you were undressed."
"Yeah, right."
"On my honor."
She turned and looked at him. "Why?"
"I may be many things, Edwina, but one of them is a gentleman."
She took another sip of the whiskey and scrunched her eyes shut until the burn dissipated. "You sure you didn't even take a peek? I'd have peeked if it was you standing there."
"I assure you, you would regret it."
"No I wouldn't," she said. "You should have seen some of the men I had to do business with. Some that would make you look like a model right out of a catalogue."
"You are most kind," he said. "And also, delusional."
After the bottle was finished, he grabbed the bedrolls from Buttercups saddle and spread them out near the fire. Winnie was already sprawled out in the dirt with her eyes closed. He unbuckled his gunbelt and laid it on the ground after removing one of his pistols and sliding it under his headrest. He stuck his knife in the dirt nearby, close enough to grab it in the dark but far enough down that he didn't slice himself open on it accidentally.
"Edwina?" he whispered. He sighed, smoothed out her blanket and propped up her head rest, but when he tried to get her to lay down on it, she rolled over onto his and refused to move. "Fine. You can have my bedroll for tonight. All I ask is that you attempt to not get sick on it."
"I ain't gonna get sick on it," Winnie said. Her words were curved and shaped by the whiskey and she tried to sit up and reach for him, but missed. "And you ain't goin' nowhere. Lay down next to me and shut up."
"I hardly think so."
He laid down on her bedroll, and she slid across to lay next to him. She wrapped her arm and leg over his body, anchoring him to the ground, and said, "You're holding me out here whether you like it or not."
7. Happiness is a Warm Gun (Bang, Bang, Shoot, Shoot)
Tom Masters peeked through the Sheriff's office window and said, "There he is. Moving in right across the street, like he's rubbing our faces in it."
Sam looked up from his newspaper and said, "My face ain't being rubbed in anything, and neither is yours, you damn fool. Let it go."
"It don't bother you? Some off-worlder come here showin' off his fancy clothes and speakin' like he's some kind of stage performer?"
"I don't rightly know, Tom, considering I never met the man. Frankly, I don't care if he walks around in a tutu and speaks duck, I'm just glad to have a doctor back in town. Betsy wants to start havin' babies right away as soon as we get married."
"Doctors don't do nothin' but take all your money and sell you a bunch a snake oil. Long as you eat right and don't sit around on your ass all day like Lyle, you won't ever need one."
"Pregnant women need 'em, and so do babies, so I'm glad he's here." Sam checked his pocket watch and said, "Listen, go home. I'll cover the rest of your shift."
Tom bent down to peek back through the window's blinds, muttering something.
"Tom? Go home. I'm sure Martha will be glad to see you."
The newcomer was slender and tall, with a carefully groomed mustache and slicked back hair parted straight down the middle. It was hot enough to cook eggs on a flat stone, but he was dressed in a silk shirt and dark vest with an expensive-looking black cravat knotted under his chin. He carried a watering can to water the potted plants in front of his freshly-painted office. Some kind of dandy, Tom reckoned. Doctor Royce H. Halladay the sign said. Big deal.
Halladay looked over his shoulder as Tom passed and said, "Hello, officer. How do you do?"
"It's deputy," Tom said.
"My apologies," Halladay said. "I am still attempting to learn all the idiosyncrasies of your little town."
"Little, huh? I might not know about whatever big metropolitan-class place you hail from, mister, but you might want to show some respect around here if you expect to last."
Halladay frowned at Tom, "I assure you that I meant no offense."
The Sheriff's door opened across the street and Sam Clayton came out, heading straight toward them. He glared at the other deputy, who instantly looked away, then he smiled at Halladay and extended his hand, saying, "Hi, I'm Sam Clayton. I ain't had the chance to come say hello yet. I see you already met Tom."
Halladay took Sam's hand but kept his eyes on Tom, "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance. You must be the Sheriff."
"Not in this lifetime." Sam looked at Tom and said, "You gonna go take care of that thing now?"
Tom nodded and said, "I guess so. Take care of yourself, Doctor Halladay."
They both watched him go, before Sam said, "Don't mind him. He ain't been the same since he got back from Seneca 3. Them boys saw some nasty business over there, and people weren't too kind to him when he came home."
"I will try to bear that in mind," Halladay said.
"So, you getting along okay here?"
Halladay shrugged, "So far, I suppose. I'm finding my way around and letting people know that my office is open. Some haven't had proper medical care in years."
"I know," Sam said. "Listen, my fiancé Betsy told me to let you know that if you and Katey are interested in having dinner sometime, we'd be happy to show you around."
Halladay looked at him evenly, "I see that gossip travels fast here."
Sam smiled with embarrassment, "Betsy grew up next door to the Cummings family. Her and Katey been friends forever. I wasn't trying to pry. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, maybe dinner and a beer."
"I'll be sure to ask her the next time I see her."
"Don’t wait too long. Some of these miners would give their eyeteeth to take a beauty like Katey Cummings out on the town."
"Thank you for the tip," Halladay said dryly.
"Anyway, I gotta run. Nice to meet you Doc. You mind if I call you Doc?"
Halladay started to say, "Actually, I would prefer," then changed his mind and said, "Whatever makes you feel the most comfortable, sir."
"Sam."
"Sorry?"
"Not sir. Just Sam."
Halladay nodded and said, "Okay, Sam. I'm Royce."
"Nope," Sam said. "I like Doc better. Doc Halladay. It's got kind of a ring to it."
Halladay opened his eyes to the grey clouds drifting over them like dirty seawater. Winnie was busy folding her bedroll and stuffing it into Buttercup's saddlebag. The destrier was happily munching on a few tall stalks of desert grass. He sat up and found his coffee cup from the night before and sipped its muddy remnants to get the taste of so
mething in his mouth besides sickness and sleep. His pale, wan face was covered in sweat, despite the cool breeze blowing across the mesa. Winnie saw that he was awake and said, "I need to do something before we go on."
"Such as?"
"Such as go to Seneca 5. I have a brother there, and if this gets out of hand, I need to warn him so he can protect himself."
Halladay swirled the small tin cup in circles to get the remaining coffee to absorb the small clump of undissolved sugar. "You realize it completely subverts my plan to leave, don't you? I assumed we'd be waiting for Mr. Starr and his friends to arrive and proceed to blast them to seven kinds of hell before they knew what was coming."
"An ambush, you mean?"
"Exactly."
"That's not what I want," she said. "I don't want him to just be riding along thinking of whatever the hell a diseased miscreant like that thinks of, and then boom, it's done. I want him to know exactly why he's dying. I want him to feel it."
Halladay grimaced at the taste of the coffee and dumped the rest of it on the smoldering fire. "You realize that you are a complete sadist."
"What's that mean?"
"It means you are a highly disturbed person who receives enjoyment from the suffering of others."
"Maybe," Winnie said. "But just bad people."
Halladay climbed up onto Buttercup's saddle, "A fellow moral relativist. How charming. So off we go once more, the maiden fair and her utterly lamentable knight."
He reached down for her hand and she said, "Do me a favor?"
"Yes?"
"When you meet my brother, either talk like a normal person or just keep your mouth shut, okay? I don't want him to think I'm hanging out with any weirdoes."
Halladay unscrewed the cap on his metal flask and took a deep drink as she wrapped her hands around his stomach and tucked her knees in behind his. "As you wish, m'lady. Your merest utterance is like the command of an Empress to me."
"That. Exactly what I'm talking about. Right there."
They rode hard the entire day, with Buttercup bouncing them around in the saddle so much that Halladay had to stop her so he could shake feeling back into his hands. "I've never seen a destrier push itself so hard," he said. Heat radiated from the animal like a furnace and he forced her to walk, trying to get her to cool down and maybe look for water.
Winnie looked around the wasteland of gray sand and dry brush, the ground was littered with jagged rocks and fragments of animal skeletons. "She has bad memories of this place. Deputy Masters was killed not too far from here."
Halladay patted Buttercup's muscular neck and scratched gently. She snorted and rumbled like a powerful engine. "They say that a female destrier will bond with its first owner and are useless after that. In fact, the breeders call them 'widows' and will not sell them to anyone else."
"She ain't thrown your ass off yet," Winnie said defensively. "I think she's doing a fine job."
"I suppose you are correct," Halladay said. He looked back at her and added, "After all, she is only a female."
"Keep it up, old man. Right now the women got you outnumbered two-to-one."
"That reminds me of nights I spent with the nursing staff while I was in medical school," he said.
Winnie smacked him on the arm with a sharp laugh, "Dirty bird. I knew you were just another pervert."
"Once upon a time, my dear. But then I met my wife and everything changed. From the first moment I laid eyes on her, nothing could ever go back to the way it had been."
Winnie laid the side of her head against his back, between his shoulder blades. She could hear gurgling in his lungs right before he coughed. She could smell his light aftershave, a mixture of tobacco and clove and exotic spice. "You talk about her so much it's almost like you forgot," Winnie said.
"Forgot what?"
"She's dead."
Otis Saringo stuffed a fresh wad of sweetweed into his mouth and chewed it up like it was cud. He drank a little of the juice, just a couple drips, a rare feat among men who chewed. To Otis's mind, it separated the ones who were serious about it from the ones who just thought it looked cool.
He'd once made a hundred dollars severian in a bet that he couldn't drink a whole glass of sweetweed juice without puking. People puked just watching, but within fifteen minutes, the glass was empty, and he was a hundred bucks wealthier. Suckers.
The doorbell rang to his office as the front door opened, and Otis mumbled a curse. Whoever it was had another think coming if they expected him to talk after he'd just stuffed a whole package of cut into his face. They could wait. He leaned back in his chair and swung one beefy leg up along the edge of his large wooden desk and continued to chew as the two men walked in.
Johnny Starr took off his hat and smoothed down his hair, smearing the sweaty styling grease. "Good morning," Starr said. "You must be Sheriff Saringo."
Otis chewed and nodded, managing to grunt an "Uh huh," in the meantime. He looked Starr over carefully. The man's fancy clothing meant he had some money and that was always of interest to Otis. Rich people always needed favors and hated getting their hands dirty, and Otis made it a habit of letting the right people know he was willing to take on side-jobs, regardless of what they may be.
Most people just needed something transported across the wasteland or some person told to leave their daughter alone. "You want that done verbally? It's this price. You want it done with some emphasis, particularly of the physical variety, it's slightly extra," he liked to say.
Johnny Starr might have dressed like a dandy, but the man he was with was anything but. Otis looked Mr. Pine up and down, focusing on the musical instrument case strapped over his shoulder and said, "You some sort of musician, boy?"
Mr. Pine's eyes were like small black dots as they turned on Otis and the Sheriff swallowed a little bit of sweetweed involuntarily. Starr smiled benignly and said, "My associate is a man of few words, Sheriff. I was hoping you might clear up some questions I have about a recent incident."
"What's that?"
Starr continued smiling but his voice turned steely, "I heard a wild rumor that some maniac burned down my bar and the local law enforcement refuses to get off its fat ass and find those responsible."
Otis looked at Starr without speaking for a moment, then picked up his spit cup and spat out the entire mouthful of sweetweed in one black, tarry chunk. He wiped his mouth with his fingers and got up, adjusting his gunbelt under his belly so that his hands rested on the enormous brass buckle at the front. "Now let's me and you get one thing clear, mister. You ever talk to me like that again in my town and I'll knock out all your teeth and piss in your bloody mouth, you understand me?"
Starr's eyebrows raised in surprise at Otis's reaction and he said, "I believe I do."
"Damn right you do. Now we do things a certain kind of way around here, Mr. Big Shot Whorehouse Owner. I get paid to keep the peace and take reports. You want extra, it can be arranged, but that don't get done by you comin' in here talkin' out your ass to−"
By the time Otis realized it was happening, Starr had already grabbed the lip of his desk and flipped it forward. It crashed into his gut and knees, sending him down under its weight in a swirling torrent of files and papers. Otis scurried for his gun, but Starr vaulted over the desk, using it to launch himself over Otis's head and land on him with a punishing elbow. Otis collapsed to the floor, feeling like someone had tried to open his head up with a ballpeen hammer.
Starr looked back at Mr. Pine and said, "Watch the front door." Otis's legs were pinned under the heavy desk and Starr grabbed him by the hair and punched him between the eyes so hard that he feared he'd broken his knuckles. Starr reached down and unsnapped Otis's sidearm and ripped it out of the holster.
Otis spat up on himself, covering his sheriff's uniform with a mixture of oily sweetweed juice and vomit. "Don't kill me," he whimpered. "I got a little boy and a wife and they need me. I beg you, don't do it."
"Do you know why I'm so angry with you, S
heriff? Because your sole reason for existence in this disgusting little place is to protect people's property. In this case, my property. And when I come here to inquire about it, instead of finding you hard at work on solving the case, I find you sitting on your enormously fat ass doing nothing." Starr pointed the gun at Otis's face and cocked the hammer back, "How do you think that makes me feel, Sheriff?"
"Bad," Otis sputtered.
"That's right, Sheriff. But I have to tell you, my disappointment is fractional compared to Mr. Pine's. He'd tell you about it himself if he could."
Pine opened his mouth and wiggled the severed stump of his tongue at Otis, who moaned in disgust and said, "I'm sorry about your place. Real, real sorry, in fact. I made all the usual inquiries and sent out descriptions to all the settlements for our suspects."
Starr looked back at Mr. Pine and said, "Did you hear that? He sent out descriptions. Does that make you feel better?" Starr frowned and turned back to Otis and said, "I don't think that makes us feel better, Sheriff. Why don't you tell me what you know?"
Otis swallowed and tried to focus. His hope of survival was a tiny raft passing by him in a raging sea and he was going to reach for it and cling on with all his might. "It wasn't easy because people just scattered after the shooting started, but we, I mean, I, because it was me who managed to find a few witnesses that described them as a thin older man and a pretty young girl. I think it must've been a business deal gone wrong, because everyone said your buddy Frisby Clement took them both up to one of the rooms, and about ten minutes later all hell broke loose."
"A thin older man and a pretty young girl?" Starr said. "What else can you tell me about them?"
"That's it," Otis said.
Starr clenched his eyes shut like Otis's words had kicked him in the nuts and said, "What is it going to take to convince you I am not to be taken lightly, Sheriff?"
"Wait!" Otis cried out. "I meant that's all we have right now, but we'll have a whole lot more once Frisby wakes up. I'm hoping he can tell us all we need to know."
Starr's eye twitched slightly, but he kept the gun aimed directly at Otis's forehead. "What do you mean, 'wakes up?' I was told he died in the fire."
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