Quaternity

by Kenneth Mark Hoover

  Nothing moved on the canyon floor. A dry wash with fingering tributaries snaked between sotol stalks and scoria like the imprint of distant chains. Scrub brush and slag choked shallow ravines like brain coral.

  The long day ended. Darkness rolled through the canyon in a quiet rush. Preternatural dark. Tiny free-tailed bats funnelled like sorcerers from a hidden crevice in the canyon wall. They scissored and chandelled, scrawling arcane signatures upon the darkness.

  Marwood was about to climb down into the canyon when something flew through the air behind him and he froze. He put his hand on his gun and turned his head. Nothing there. His heart slowed. It had been too heavy for bat-wings, too distinct for an owl or hawk hunting mice along the brush lanes.

  Marwood licked his parched lips. He knew well that horned and leather beat. He had heard it as a Union soldier in Glorieta Pass, and again at Sand Creek. It had accompanied him as a Kansas range detective riding railheads along the 98th meridian. It was a part of his life. It was him.

  A martial drum roll. The secret beat of his red-muscled heart, which had shadowed all the years of his life, and found residence in the tattered remnants of his soul.

  What had the bruja said? Ten thousand tears wept on his soul. This was one more in that awful multitude.

  He did not descend right away into the canyon. Fragments of memory were returning in a rush of sound and colour. Half-forgotten years of an impossible past. If man was but the measure of his years, then Marwood thought he was little more than a half-finished golem of clay and blood and reason.

  Images all—kaleidoscopic and puzzling. They drifted and sawed through his mind like warped glass, bounced like unsettled beads of water on a taut string, and fell into swelling darkness, nevermore seen.

  More distant than anything he could imagine. Stone cities and dark men with tattooed faces, who spoke tongues long dissolved into time eternal. Men, and not a few women, called to stand against that which must be faced. Men who carried cold and ancient things inside them, awakened in times of need.

  Marwood squeezed his fists to his eyes. He felt himself back there with those people. They were his reality. He was one. He knew he was one of those men. But he had left, or been taken from them, and now he was lost and could never get back. If he did return, he was not at all certain he would be accepted.

  The overwhelming sense of anxiety ebbed. When he opened his eyes he was returned to the lip of the canyon. Lost and alone, yes, but he had a gun and the determination to survive. The memories faded beneath the amnesia that dominated his waking moments. Bits and pieces remained like the ember glow of a setting sun. He could sense their faint pulse, feel them move like distant thunder in the foggy crests and troughs of history. Tugging him. Always tugging him northward.

  Marwood entered the canyon. He found shelter in a shallow cut where a section of cliff had given way in some distant cataclysm—a shallow cave once used by ancients. The floor was littered with bones of animals and lithic flakes. The domed ceiling was blackened from the soot of a thousand primitive fires.

  Marwood folded his long body into the hollow and bundled himself in his torn and filthy deerskin jacket. He was thirsty, tired, and hungry.

  He studied the sky outside.

  The clouds rolled over the horizon with the last blades of light. A clear welkin and fractured moon stood high. But something was wrong with this sky.

  Marwood did not recognize these stars. He watched the heavens for sign.

  He did not know this world.

  He crawled out of the cave, rubbing his eyes as bright day filled them. He saw a mourning dove fly the length of the canyon and whip behind a stand of cottonwood trees.

  He walked toward the trees. Twenty minutes later he faced the terminus of a bleak cliff. The trees around its base sloped down along the edge of a precipitous drop-off. Marwood got on all fours and wormed his way over thick dry chaff. He crawled through a deadfall of honey mesquite and salt cedar, and chased the steepening flank downward, slipping and sliding on loose talus.

  He found the water seep hidden between flat stones. Long haulms of grass grew between the cracks. The water was topped with white scum. He bundled a handful of grass to use as a filter and drank. He sat back, wondering if Botis and the men had made it out alive, and drank again.

  With a bellyful of water he climbed out of the canyon and stood upon the immense plain. As he walked, his shadow stretched to his left. When the sun was at its zenith he sat down and rested. His head hurt and his shoulder ached. After an hour he rose and walked until his shadow flung across the hard ground to his right.

  He made a dry camp in the open country. He had collected half a dozen sotol stalks, and scraped the root base with his front teeth and chewed the vegetable quid. The stars came out and chased away the blood-red clouds hanging in the west.

  He knew these stars.

  Another new star brightened and flickered on the far horizon. It was a campfire many miles away.

  Marwood checked the loads in his gun and made for the camp. He lost the light when he dipped through low elevations between esker-like rills and fiddle-backed hummocks.

  When he got close enough Marwood held the gun to his jacket to muffle the trigger cock.

  “Hail the camp,” he called.

  An indistinct shadow in shaggy coat and wide-brimmed hat quit the firelight and moved behind a horse. A gun hammer clicked.

  He was too slow. Marwood already had his gun out, and if it came to killing the man’s horse to get his water, he would make that hell bargain.

  “Who are ye?” the stranger answered.

  “I want to share your fire.”

  “I got ye skylighted.” The stranger paused. “What have ye got that’s any good?”

  “Trade tobacco for water.”

  “Ye got no tug?”

  “I haven’t had meat for days.”

  “I’ll Carson some of the ’bacca if ye care to share it like a Christian,” the man said.

  Marwood drew up to the fire. It was a smoky dung blaze of white ash and crimson glow. A man in a stinking buffalo robe and shaggy leggings hid behind a slat-ribbed bay tacked with a bosal hackamore and horsehair mecate. He pointed an 1861 Navy Colt across the Mexican saddle. The saddle rig was fitted with tapaderos sewn from uncured hog skins.

  “I don’t like it when people point guns at me,” Marwood said.

  “I was making sure ye was white.” The stranger lowered the gun and came out from behind the horse. “Although, under all that dirt it’s hard telling what ye are. First off, I thought ye was one of them salt ghosts what track the desert night. Pleased to meet you, mister. My name is Lee Canton.” He did not offer his hand.

  “Evenin’.”

  Canton had a broad, seamed face and stooped shoulders. His black hair fell from the corners of his hat onto his collar. He was covered in trail dust and uncounted years of sun sweat and salt rime.

  The man poked a pink tongue between his sun-blistered lips and put his gun away. “This country is full of Mexican bandits,” he said. “I didn’t know ye was a white American.”

  “I don’t know that I am,” Marwood said. “Are you going to unsaddle your horse?”

  Canton looked at his horse and spat. He glared at Marwood. “My horse.” He took in Marwood’s own dirty clothes and gun. “Ye don’t look none too prosperous yerself. I guess ye ain’t fooling when ye say ye got no grub.” He held out a hand with long nails. “I’ll take that chaw if ye don’t mind.”

  “Water first, Canton.”

  The man pitched him a canteen. “Easy sippers. It’s all we got.”

  Marwood drank. He gasped and took another long swallow. He opened a rawhide parfleche and shook out enough Virginia kinnikinnick to make up a quid. Canton stuffed the coarse mixture in his cheek. His eyes gleamed with sprightly pleasure.

  “I thank ye kindl
y.” His long salt and pepper whiskers bristled like oiled quills as he chewed.

  “Where are you from?” Marwood asked.

  Canton tucked his hands in his back pockets, elbows knocked out. “I rode down from El Paso.” He jerked his chin in the general direction. “I used to live up Fort Smith way, though. Ye ever been to Fort Smith?”

  “Never.” Marwood took one last swallow and stoppered the canteen with the heel of his hand. He handed it back to Canton. His head ached. He had gotten too much sun and too little water. He wanted to sleep for a year.

  “How about Greenville? I got family in Greenville.”

  “I’ve never been to Arkansas.”

  Canton spat and rubbed his lips with the palm of his hand. “I worked all them flatboats on that river,” he said, “until they up and gave my job to a free nigger. That’s why I come to this here country.”

  He studied Marwood. He leaned over and spat at the fire. “Ye never said ye name, or where ye was headed. I been listening, but ye never said.”

  “My name is John Marwood.”

  Canton moved the tobacco from one cheek to the other. “That’s half.”

  “I’m headed north.”

  “Mayhap that sun boiled your brain pan, Marwood. Most people are looking to shin it out of Texas.”

  “I lost my outfit in a creek flood.”

  Canton eyed him with suspicion. “Rangers ain’t after ye, are they? I want to ride through the country unnoticed.”

  “I saw Rangers but they didn’t give me any truck. I was supposed to do a job of work in Ruidosa when I lost my outfit. That’s all.”

  Canton spread his hands over the fire. His nails were black glass grime. Knuckles crusted with old scabs. “Ye sure got a damnable habit of answering questions without answering them,” he said with a sniff. “I guess I smelled law when ye walked up on me.”

  Marwood shook his head. “I used to be a range detective. It’s not steady work. Ranchers won’t pay anything once they get their stock back and the rustlers are hanged.”

  Canton juiced the quid. “Coming from ye that’s damn near a political speech. Look it here. That’s a sack of prairie chips at ye feet. Fetch one on the fire and I’ll see to my horse before ye split your pants over it.”

  Marwood did so and collapsed in the dirt. Canton unsaddled the bay. He threw down bedroll, gun, and panniers beside the fire, but left an Indian blanket hanging over the saddle. The horse browsed on what meagre provender it could find.

  Canton joined Marwood by the fire. “Wish I could pasture him a week or two,” he said of his horse. “I ain’t even got cottonwood bark for forage. He’s damn near bottomed out, and so am I.”

  In truth, both horse and man looked abused beyond all redemption.

  Marwood’s shoulder ached something fierce. The dull throb accentuated the pulsing headache behind his tired eyes. He needed sleep. The warmth of the stinking fire bathed his face and hands.

  Canton laid another chip on the fire. He seemed to burn all kinds of dung he could lay his hands on: coyote, human, dog, buffalo, cattle. It was as if his life’s mission was to funnel the bodily waste from man and creature into his smoking campfires.

  Canton’s gun lay on top of his bedroll. Marwood eyed it.

  Canton juiced the quid and spat another string of brown spittle. “Range detective. Is all ye did was air out rustlers and such?”

  Marwood did not think Canton would have his six-gun positioned like that if he was planning dirt. Belike the man was who he said he was, a saddle tramp looking to pass through the country undetected.

  “Something like that,” Marwood answered. “I once did a job in Saltillo.”

  Canton’s grin flashed between his greasy whiskers. “That’s what I figured. I knowed men who hired out for such. I ain’t judging ye. I’m passing along what I heard over whiskey.”

  “Sure.”

  “Ye killed some feller down in Saltillo, I take it?”

  “I finished a job I was hired to do.”

  “Shoot him in the back?”

  “Didn’t have to.” Marwood had shot the land agent through a window while he was at his desk forging permits.

  Canton jerked a nod at Marwood’s gun, holstered across his stomach. “My Pap worked the taxidermy and tanning yards when he wasn’t jailed for drunk. That handle ain’t no horn or pearl made. Ain’t even ivory.”

  Marwood watched him close. “No.”

  Canton wiped his mouth. He laughed to himself. “Do tell. I’ve seen scrimshaw and jigged gun handles in my day. Damn if ye ain’t a caution.”

  Marwood watched the fire. “I can’t help what I am.”

  A block of silence froze between them. Canton settled back. “My stomach feels like my throat’s been cut,” he said. “There ain’t no decent game in this country. If there was I’d a found it.”

  “I found sotol stalks yesterday.”

  “Keep ’em for your grandmother,” Canton snorted. “I ain’t one for eating roots like a dirty Apache. Look here, Marwood. I’m headed for Sabinas, myself. Got me a job lined up. Ye ever been to Sabinas?”

  Marwood told him he had not.

  “There’s an ex-Colonel living down there in Mexico. Vickers. Used to be an officer in the Rebellion. After the surrender he bought an estancia across the border and churched a fat widow. Now he sells horses and Mexican cattle to the Texas Rangers. For a right good price, people say.” Canton poked the fire with a short hook iron. He leaned over it, elbows crooked like branches. The hair on the back of his wrists was long and matted. “I met a ramrod in El Paso out to hire summer hands. Mebbe it ain’t my look out, but this Colonel Vickers might want an experienced man like yerself on his payroll.”

  “I’m headed up country.” Once more Marwood wondered if Botis and the men had made it out safely.

  “Do as ye must think best.”

  The horse nickered and looked at them from the dark. Canton yawned.

  “Ain’t ye going to sleep none?” he asked.

  “I guess I will.” The fire lowered between them.

  “I don’t want to watch ye all night expecting a knife in my guts,” Canton said.

  “I’ll bunk out here,” Marwood said. “It’s not the first time I slept on hard ground.”

  Canton dug thumb and forefinger on the back of his neck and pinched some small struggling life between them. He threw it into the fire.

  “My horse ain’t much, but we could spell him between us,” he offered.

  “Thank you, but I will keep pointed up north a ways.”

  Canton rubbed his hands over his britches. “Do as ye like. I’m only making conversation to pass the time.”

  “Sure.”

  Canton hooked the spent tobacco out of his mouth and flung it away. “Ye got a piece of tender chicken waiting for ye in Texas?”

  Marwood lay on his side, elbow on the desert floor, head supported by one hand. “I feel I’m being pulled as from some great lodestone.” Marwood didn’t know if he was talking to himself or the other man.

  Canton knuckled his mouth, nodded sagely. “I know what ye mean. There are times I feel I have to saddle and pull for the high country or I will bust.”

  “No,” Marwood corrected him, “this is more . . . this is . . .” He turned quiet. How could he explain a thing to another person when he couldn’t explain it to himself?

  “Ye got any money?”

  Marwood stared at the man.

  “So’s we can buy ye a horse. I guess we could steal ye one.” Canton hitched a knee. The torn leggings draped his shin. “So long as ye feel no need for range detecting and hang us for our crime.”

  “I’m not a lawman, Canton. I have no money. I lost everything when I lost my outfit.”

  “Goddamn, Marwood, ye are a pitiful wreck on this empty desert. Damn near an orpha
n, and I ain’t in the orphan saving business.”

  “Didn’t ask it of you.”

  Canton pulled his hat down and turned away, arms crossed. “I’m quit with ye. Save ye turd in the morning—there ain’t naught else to burn out here.”

  Marwood could feel the knife in his boot pressing against his leg. He closed his eyes. Somewhere in the dark the horse cropped thin shoots of grass. Sleep lapped the ragged corners of his mind. He did not let himself go under but rested on an uneasy shore of twilight. He needed to rest his eyes or he would fall asleep forever, and Canton’s gun was lying well out of reach on the bedroll . . .

  Canton had turned to sleep—without his bedroll.

  Marwood’s eyes sprang open. A filthy hand clapped his mouth and the keen bite of a blade cut the skin under his ear. He corkscrewed off the ground and drove his own knife into Canton’s thigh, sawed stringy muscle deep into his groin.

  Hot arterial blood pumped over Marwood’s fist. Canton screamed. It was a shuddering high-pitched wail that cut the desert air. Marwood kicked him away and rolled clear to his feet, chest heaving.

  The horse smelled blood and snorted in fear. Canton stumbled backward and sat dumb on the desert floor. Blood pumped from his groin in black spurts. He tried to compress it with his hands, but the harder he squeezed the faster it pumped through his fumbling fingers.

  “Ye cut me bad.” His face was white-bone scared.

  “I aim to finish it out,” Marwood said.

  He kicked away the hunting knife Canton had dropped. Something inside Marwood thundered and he saw naught before him but pain and death—a thing indescribable and of no comprehension to any sane man. But of all the things Marwood was, both past and present, he was not at that moment sane. All his rage and hatred centred on Canton’s screaming face. Marwood felt blood boiling through his limbs like acid. His mind roiled with half-forgotten images and words from his distant past, coalescing as the coiled, wintry thing in his heart came fully awake and opened its black maw to demand Canton’s life. And if it could not be sated, it would be fed the lives of others, of cities, of entire worlds.