by Brian Hodge
Matt had three shots left. Taking careful aim, he placed them as close as he could to the first two. No good. He was going to be gored or, most likely, trampled … when the buffalo missed a step, staggered, missed another step, and pitched forward. The old bull almost recovered for a moment, then faltered and sank slowly to its knees, a felled tree swaying in the wind before finally toppling over onto its side. Dust geysered upward.
Several seconds passed before Matt realized his .44 was empty. He quit cocking and firing it.
Holding his unfastened pants, Matt warily approaching the downed animal, gave the carcass a vicious kick. He was angry at himself for being so careless.
"I think it's about time to get into another line of work." Matt took a deep breath and walked away from the dead bull. He almost got to his horse before his knees gave way and he sank to the ground. He yanked off his hat and wiped his forehead with a sleeve, letting his held breath pass through clenched lips.
That had been close. Way too close. He stood there with the .44 dangling from fingers that twitched and jerked with a life all their own. He dropped the pistol to the ground and tried to fasten his pants, but his hands refused to cooperate. The buttons kept evading his thick fingers.
After a few minutes, his breathing returned to normal and his hands quit shaking enough to shake the cartridge casings out of his revolver. To hell with the tongue, he wasn't that hungry anymore. He went over to his horse, bent to cut the hobbles. The rawhide thongs had been drawn tight by the skittish animal and there was no way Matt could untie them.
The horse squealed and leaped sideways, leaving Matt squatting in the dust.
Before Matt turned he knew what had happened it was impossible but the blood-splattered animal was on its feet and coming at him again.
"Son of a bitch," was all he could say. A precious moment was lost as Matt straightened from his crouch. He stood nailed to the spot, staring in disbelief before his hand darted into his pocket, trying to dig out more shells.
Wrong pocket. Wrong god damned pocket.
He always put them in the left pocket.
(Did he even have any more shells?)
He yanked his hand out and his pants pooled around his ankles. He pulled them up, reached into the other pocket —his fingers closed around one—
He dropped it, found another.
His hand came out, his pants went down.
Racing against time, he desperately tried to reload, fumbling with a cartridge that seemed too big to slide into the cylinder. He risked a look out of the corner of his eye and saw the animal was nearly on top of him. Cursing his stiff joints, he managed at last to jam a shell into the chamber. Snapping the cylinder into place, he raised the gun and fired, all in one motion. No way he could miss. He was shooting point blank.
The bull was rocked back as though poleaxed by a hammer, caving in at the knees, yet Matt knew the slug wouldn't be enough to stop the headlong charge.
Matt attempted to throw himself out of the way, but he was out of time and he was hobbled by his pants around his ankles. All he could do was watch. For some strange reason he expected it to hurt more than it did, because he heard more than felt something snap in his right leg.
Darkness swallowed him and Matt shaded his eyes and looked for the walking man, but the strange shadowy figure was nowhere to be found, and then to his amazement he saw the blackness gathering on the horizon wasn't a storm—it was a giant herd of buffalo; countless, untold numbers of buffalo stretching across the prairie, a herd so large he couldn't see the end of it. The earth began to tremble at their approach as they swept toward him like wildfire driven before the wind, chasing the daylight from the sky.
Mesmerized by the enormity of what he was witnessing, he stood rooted on that dry, cracked earth watching their progress for what seemed an eternity, and all during that time the herd kept moving toward him, becoming clearer and clearer. Gradually they drew near enough for him to see there was something wrong with them, dreadfully wrong. As he stared at the animals, his gaze widened. Somehow, they were all wounded, terrible gaping wounds that streamed blood, until the ground was soaked, until the very air became filled with the sickly sweet scent of copper.
In a moment Matt knew he would be crushed in the stampede. He raised his hands in an effort to fend off the inevitable, and when his fingers closed around the coarse fur of the first animal—his eyes jerked open—and he stared uncomprehendingly at the fur clutched in his hands. After a moment he realized it belonged to the buffalo he'd killed earlier. As he lay pinned beneath the carcass, he could still hear the thunder of the giant herd echoing in his head. Finally the sound died and he saw he had been unconscious for hours, because while he'd been dreaming, the night had crept close.
He took quick inventory. Everything seemed to be in working order, except his right leg, which no longer felt like it belonged to him. When he tried to move, he found he couldn't, and for the first time today a grim smile touched his lips. "This is one fine howdy-do," he said to the dead buffalo. "Just fine. I can see the marker, now. Here lies Matt Thomas, bare ass naked, first man to be kilt by a buffalo while taking a shit. Probably get me in all the history books."
Matt spat blood and began working his leg from beneath the crushing weight, fighting pain so intense he bit into his lip to keep from crying out. Getting out was slow going. But after nearly an hour of digging, he managed to work his leg free. He studied the damage; it was bad, no doubt about that, his foot hung at an unnatural angle, and when he pulled up his pants leg, he could see red-edged shards of bone poking through. The trip to his horse seemed to take slightly less than a hundred years and he was bathed in blood and sweat by the time he pulled himself into the saddle.
Each time his horse took a step, a slow rhythmic drumbeat of agony marched up his leg, and he couldn't say it was a tune he enjoyed. But at least it kept him from passing out. By the time the campfires finally swam into view, he felt as though he'd ridden halfway across Kansas. When he went to swing down, he found he couldn't lift his leg.
"Would somebody mind getting me down from here?" he said. "I think my ass is stuck to the saddle."
A buzz of indistinct voices was his answer, and then hands reached out and pulled him from his horse. As they lowered him to the ground, he tried to give them directions to the dead buffalo. If they didn't get there soon, a lot of meat would be ruined by scavengers.
A bottle found its way into his hands and he tipped it up, taking a long pull. When the whiskey hit bottom in his stomach, it felt as if a fire had been built down there. Warmth spread through him and the pain was starting to recede a little when somebody grabbed his arms. Somebody else began tugging on his broken leg. White-hot agony lanced through Matt, and he did the only sensible thing he'd done all day; he fainted dead away… and the herd of wounded buffalo passed right through him—a dark, swiftly flowing river that could not be touched. He realized they were no more than shadows, yet the earth shook and he heard the heaving sounds they made when they galloped past. Fear drove them. Their eyes were rolled back in their heads, showing only the whites, and strings of saliva dripped from their straining mouths.
From out of their midst, the shadowy speck he'd first seen appeared, moving toward him like a swimmer fighting a strong current. As the speck neared, he saw it was an Indian, dressed in nothing but gray tattered buckskins and a stovepipe hat, like some kind of make-believe wooden figure that shopkeepers put out front to hold cigars.
No tribal markings of any sort decorated the copper-skinned body except for a blood red feathered serpent on its chest.
When Matt looked at the face, he saw it was rigid, unmoving, as though the face weren't real, as though it were a mask meant to conceal what the figure really looked like. The Indian, neither young nor old, approached to within a few feet, doffed its hat and began capering and prancing about like some kind of puppet he had seen at a carnival when he was a child.
The effect should have been comical, yet there was noth
ing funny about the disjointed scarecrow who confronted him.
And there was nothing funny about the knife that caught the rays of the sun in a blinding flash.
At first Matt thought the man meant to attack him, instead the Indian placed the blade against his own copper-skinned chest and slid it downward, slicing off a strip of skin, which he held out to Matt. The bloody skin held the feathered serpent. There was still no expression on the man's face, though Matt somehow sensed great anger.
Matt turned away from the grisly offering, and when he looked back he saw the Indian now had no features at all. While he stood there, the face of the stranger began taking shape. Turning into dust. The wind started to build, blowing the dust away. Revealing what was beneath. And as the face continued to emerge, the figure walked toward him with its arms open wide, as if it meant to embrace him. When they were almost near enough to touch, blood began welling from the corner of its dusty eyes and started rolling down the cheeks… like tears.
Matt wheeled around to run, but something held him to the spot. A quick look over his shoulder and, to his horror, he saw the face begin changing, becoming, one after another, people Matt had known in his life. All of them dead now. They called out to him, with familiar voices. He saw his wife, his son, old Lame Bear, who he had loved like a father.
Then the face steadied, became one that he was all too familiar with—his own bloodstained features stared back at him.
The figure smiled and beckoned. Matt redoubled his efforts to escape, but now they were only inches apart. The face began to melt, bubbling up like wax from a hot candle, revealing the skull beneath, revealing empty black eye sockets that watched him hungrily.
Matt fell to his knees in mindless terror. The figure stood over him, and an instant before the skeletal fingers closed around his arm
Matt awoke to the familiar but deafening din of railroad construction: men yelling, harness creaking, pickaxes and sledges pounding loud enough to raise the dead. That was an apt description of how he felt when he sat up. Fragmented, murky images from the nightmare chased across his mind, then remembering, he looked down to see his leg bandaged, splinted, and that he was lying on a cot in the track boss's car. Throwing back the blanket, he gingerly swung his legs around and sat them on the floor. Darkness obscured his vision as he fought to remain upright. After a bit, his head cleared and he looked down at the purple discolorations that stood out around his ribs. They didn't feel busted. But his leg was a different story, throbbing like a bad tooth as he balanced himself and began hopping toward the door.
He peered out, wincing at the heat that slammed into him. His eyes fastened onto the track boss, a beefy Irishman with receding red hair by the name of Charlie McAllister.
Matt tried to call out, but all that came from his throat were croaks.
They were enough.
"Well, it's about time you got your lazy ass out of bed," Charlie said, relief plainly written on his face as he walked over with a canteen. "We was about to give you up for dead. What the hell happened? Your horse fall on you?"
"No," Matt laughed, lowering the canteen, "I ran out of cartridges and I had to throw the last one by hand."
After Matt finished relating what had happened, Charlie said, "You're a lucky man. Sounds like you damn near met your match out there. If that old bull had got hold of you, there wouldn't have been enough left for a good Christian burial. Not that," he concluded with a grin, "anybody ever mistook you for a good Christian."
Matt rubbed a hand across his bristly face and looked down, trying to hide his unease. "Did Doc say anything about my leg?"
Charlie didn't answer right away, and when he did, he wouldn't meet Matt's eyes. "I got to get back to work. I'll send the doc over and he can tell you all about it. You need anything?"
"Yeah, ask old Corky if he could send over some grub."
After a while, one of the mess boys brought over something that vaguely resembled beans. Matt took one look. "Shit, ain't these the same beans we had day before yesterday?"
"Yep, the same. Corky says he ain't cooking nothing else till they're all gone."
"You try feeding them to the dogs?"
"They won't touch 'em neither."
Matt had almost choked down the last of his beans when Dr. Marigold Fraser appeared, quiet and dark as a rain cloud on an autumn day. The mournful doctor was something of a mystery around these parts. A lot of folks in camp had their own ideas why the small, portly man had come west. Some said, back east, the doc had killed a man in a duel over a rich dowager and was fleeing the rope, some said he'd sobered up enough to get a good look at her and had decided he didn't need the money that bad. Still others claimed a few too many snorts of peach brandy before an amputation had led to some slight misunderstanding about which of a patient's legs was supposed to come off.
It was a source of endless speculation. What the truth was, nobody knew.
Doc didn't say anything at first, just slapped some dust off a black suit that had more shine to it than a newly minted silver dollar. He eased his bulk into a chair that groaned in protest.
"How's business?" Matt inquired, to be polite. He knew
Doc had few patients. The fact that he owned a half interest in a funeral parlor might have had something to do with it.
"Been pretty good, lately," Doc said, cleaning his glasses, "we buried three last week."
Matt glanced up from his plate to see if his visitor was kidding. Doc's face never changed expression and Matt was glad he didn't play poker with the good doctor.
"I got good news and I got bad news," Doc continued, putting his glasses back on. "Which one you want first?"
"The bad."
"That leg of yours is busted in three places," the dour man replied. "I set it as best I could, but with a break that bad and your age being what it is, I can't make no guarantees. You should be able to walk, but you can count on having a bad limp."
"What's the good news?"
"You'll always know when it's going to rain." Doc smiled—and the smile vanished quicker than a rabbit down a hole, so quick Matt wasn't sure he'd even seen it.
Matt gave up on the beans and pushed them aside. "How soon before I can travel?"
"Like I said, a lot depends on how fast you mend." Doc pushed up his glasses. In the blink of an eye, they returned to their former position on the tip of his nose. "Let's just say you'll know when you feel up to moving around." With that he got up, slapped some more dust off his suit before advising Matt to keep his wounds clean.
As Doc left, Matt pulled out his pipe, letting his thoughts turn inward, back to the days when he had lived among the Oglala, back to the days before everything had gotten fouled up between the red man and the white man. Sometimes he longed to go back, but he knew there would be no welcome for him now. Of late he had begun thinking a lot about old places, old times, and old friends.
And dying.
When his eyes closed, his sleep was without dreams.
The days passed and every time Doc stopped by he assured Matt that he was healing up good for a man his age. Matt spent most of the time whittling himself a walking stick. To his surprise, he discovered the head of it was shaped like a snake, a feathered snake. He was sitting in an almost nonexistent patch of shade working on it when Charlie McAllister came over.
"I talked to Mr. Simpson this morning and he says you can stay on till you're fit enough to go back to work." Charlie waited for Matt's response, eager as a puppy that had just spied his first rabbit.
"Well, Charlie, you tell Mr. Simpson I appreciate his offer. But soon as I'm able, I'm going into business for myself—the hide business," Matt added. He folded up his knife and put it away. "Way I figure, one good season and I can retire."
Charlie shook his head sadly and looked at Matt as though the older man had gone simple. His voice was dead earnest. "You'll get yourself kilt for sure. There's a war on, in case you ain't heard. Your hair'll end up decoratin' the lodge pole of some young buck."
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"I got the answer to that," Matt said. "I'm going to take you with me, Charlie, 'cause it's for damn sure no self-respecting Indian would ever be caught with your scalp."
Red faced, Charlie ran a hand across his head, smoothing down the few strands of hair that still sprouted there. "I can see it ain't no use trying to talk sense to you, Matt. When you set your mind, you have got to be the most stubborn, mule-headed son of a—"
"I hate to interrupt," Matt laughed, "'specially before you get to the interesting parts. It ain't often I get a good Irish cussin', but I think I'm going to need a partner."
"You serious?" Charlie asked. "You with a partner?"
Matt nodded. "I'm slowing down. I need some help. You know anybody might be interested?"
"Yeah, I might know of someone. He's a new man, name of Steven Adler. Don't know much about him except he's been making a lot of noise about quitting. Says the work's too hard for the money. Been complaining about the cooking, too." Charlie looked more perplexed than usual. "I don't know what he's hollering about. We only work twelve hours a day, all you can eat, and thirty-five dollars a month—just like clockwork."
"Some people just don't know when they got it good," Matt agreed. He had to look down at his walking stick to keep from laughing. A moment later he was serious as he thought how he sure could use an extra pair of legs. "Would you send him over when you get a chance?"
The shadows were stretching toward evening, and Matt was cleaning his Sharps when he heard footsteps approaching. He gave no sign that he noticed. When his visitor's shadow fell across his legs, he looked up. Neither said anything as they regarded each other intently.
The younger man tipped his hat back and broke the silence first. "Name's Steven Adler and I hear you're looking for a man to go partners with you."
Matt looked at him evenly, trying not to grin. The man Charlie had sent him was a kid and not much over twenty-one by the look of him. Medium height. Blond. Slender. He looked more like a gambler than a railroad hand.
"No need to stand on formality here. The name's Matt. Why don't you sit down, Steven, cause I'm getting a crick in my neck staring up at you."