Malice of Crows

by Lila Bowen

  “Hellfire. What got him?”

  “The Rangers say it was a sand wyrm. I never heard of one, but I’ve never seen anything like this, either. It’s not like a snake’s venom, nor even a spider or scorpion. It’s like gangrene, like the wound is eating into him with acid. I can’t stop it. Stitches won’t hold it. He’s just… falling apart at the seams.” The doc slipped off his pince-nez and shined them on his shirt. The feller looked like he didn’t get or want much sleep and like he was personally annoyed that the case refused to be solved reasonably.

  “So you can’t fix it?”

  “I reckon nobody can.”

  “How long’s he got?”

  The doc gently pulled back the light blue sheet over the Captain’s half-naked body to show a huge circular ring of red on his torso, not quite a bite. The outside looked like a burn, and then there was a curling layer of wet yellow, and then… meat. The doctor gently pressed on the red burn, and the Captain whimpered like a child, his eyes springing open.

  “Goddammit, let a man die in peace, you sadist,” he barked.

  “Not long,” the doctor murmured.

  The feller apologized and went to wash his instruments in the ewer, and the Captain’s eyes focused on Rhett. The old man swallowed hard and licked his scabbed lips and reached toward Rhett with one clawed hand. Rhett held his hand out, feeling downright foolish but never wanting to deny the Captain anything. But the Captain reached past his hand to the Scout badge he wore on his shirt.

  “Give me that.”

  “Sir?”

  “Your goddamn badge. Give it here.”

  Rage and grief surged through Rhett, but so too did a glimmer of hope. The Captain had always done well by him. Surely the man’s dying act wouldn’t be to strip Rhett of his Ranger Star. So Rhett undid the pin and put the heavy badge in the Captain’s palm, much as he hated doing so. The Captain held it up to eyes going rheumy and coughed, and Rhett slipped an arm behind his bony back to support him.

  “The son-of-a-bitching doctor’s right. I ain’t got long, son,” the Captain began, all while Jiddy banged on the door and hollered. “Either those boys’ll get in here, or I’ll die, and I got things that need to be said, things you need to hear.”

  “You ain’t gonna die, Captain. And I’ll kill any man who speaks against you.”

  “You’re doing it now, fool. I most surely am going to die, and soon. So shut your smart mouth.” The Captain fumbled around with something on a little table by his bed and pulled Rhett closer by his shirt. When Rhett straightened up again, he was completely shocked to see that he was wearing a Durango Rangers Captain badge. He stared at it like it might bite him and fumbled for words.

  “Captain, no. I can’t. We can get you better.”

  The Captain’s laugh turned into a wracking cough. “Doc just showed you what’s killing me. Eating me, outside in. Nothing can stop it. Damn sand wyrms. We sure could’ve used you out there, Rhett. These boys rush in at the wrong time and pussyfoot when they should attack.” He sat up a little straighter and pinned Rhett with the old familiar glare. “How’d your job go?”

  It was Rhett’s turn to give a dark laugh that almost became a sob. “Well, Haskell’s working with Trevisan, and if I hadn’t noticed his ring before we mentioned our job, I reckon the Rascals would’ve shot us on sight and made a few dollars in scalps. So I went into the train camp alone, spent a few weeks digging ditches and running rails, broke a few bones, got in a fight —”

  “I don’t have much time, son. Did you kill him or not?”

  Rhett hung his head. “Thought I did. He was an alchemist. Jumped bodies. We didn’t know he was still alive till he’d killed a good man and took off in an innocent child’s body. So now we got to track him down, try to save that little girl. My destiny, it led me here first. Reckon I need your help. The book you gave us, it’s got nothing about how to kill alchemists.”

  The Captain shook his head. “I don’t know everything, nor even a little slice of it. We got books you can use. Sounds like you’re dealing with a lich. Worse comes to worst, head down toward San Anton. Just west of the city, there’s a mission there, mostly abandoned, but a nun keeps track of all the books and nonsense. She’s helped me a few times, these last years. There’s more out there in heaven and earth than I ever goddamn reckoned, Rhett Walker.”

  “I believe it, Captain.”

  “But why’d you come back? How come you aren’t chasing your alchemist?”

  “I wanted to chase him. Hell, I still need to. But my destiny… it brought me here. Dragged me here, pretty much. Guess it knew…”

  “That I need you here, son. I can’t leave this outpost to Jiddy. He’s the strongest of who’s left. He’s a good scout, but he ain’t a good man, and he’ll end up more Haskell than me without somebody to keep him in check. Now I did some things when I was a younger man, led my Rangers into the wrong fights. Many’s a grave in Durango ground or a pile of sand and ashes above it that keeps me up at night, wondering if I done right. But you understand it, Rhett. You know what needs to die, and you know how to reason with what ought to get to live. We can’t just kill, son. That makes us…” He coughed up a splatter of blood. “That makes us the monsters.”

  “But Captain. They’ll never believe me, never accept me as…”

  The Captain sat up, blankets slipping off his skeletal frame. “You’d better believe they’ll accept it. They’ll do as I tell ’em to, by God. Open that door right now, and let them come in and hear it straight from me.”

  Rhett caught the Captain as he almost slumped over and guided him back onto his pillows. “This can’t be good for you, Captain.”

  “You don’t tell me my business, and I won’t tell you yours. Now open that door.”

  Rhett arranged the man’s blankets, straightened the new star on his own dusty shirt, threw back his shoulders, and unbolted the door. Jiddy burst through it, his hands turned into giant brown bear paws tipped in long black claws.

  “This here sick room is off-limits, you little upstart shit!” Jiddy growled, getting closer to the bear than Rhett ever wanted to see. The other Rangers were behind him, six or seven men that Rhett knew but didn’t much like. Troublemakers, he’d have pegged them. Dan and Sam followed, too, both wearing their badges and resting fingers lightly on their guns. Seeing them there, faces closed down and hard, bolstered Rhett and helped him keep his head high.

  “I can still maintain control of my own goddamn outpost, Jiddy, you ass,” the Captain said, his voice just as strong as ever, even if Rhett could see his hands trembling under the sheet.

  “Sorry, Captain. As your number two man, I want to make sure your rules are followed,” Jiddy said with a shit-eating grin that shouldn’t have fooled anyone and certainly didn’t escape the Captain.

  “I’m glad to hear that, as I need you to continue that care for my rules when I’m passed on.” Everybody interrupted him then to explain how he was going to be just fine, and he slashed at the air with a skeletal hand. “Oh, now don’t pretend I’m going to pull through. You all know I’m for it and soon. So get everybody in here, quick and snappy, and listen up.”

  Rhett didn’t budge from his place by the Captain’s side, and Jiddy managed to squeeze around to the other side of the bed and pretend like he belonged there. Runners went out and fetched the other Rangers from their work and bunks. Milo and Virgil Scarsdale, the Captain’s oldest and grouchiest Rangers, pressed up near Jiddy, giving Rhett a double stare of doom. In just a few months, the group had already changed, with some folks missing and some new faces popping up, fresh and unscarred and still grinning. Rhett felt like he’d been gone a hundred years, and damn if the Captain didn’t look like he’d lived through that much pain and sorrow since their last meeting.

  “We all here? Good. Then I’m going to say my piece, and we got plenty of witnesses. I’m dying, boys, and I still got enough strength to pull the trigger if anybody wants to argue. Doc’s doing the best he can, but we all k
now there’s no magic that can stop a sand wyrm bite from taking its toll, so hold your tears and let’s move on. It’s my responsibility and my right to select my successor, and that man is Rhett Walker.”

  The room went so quiet you could hear the soft hiss of sand wyrm spit gnawing a hole in the Captain’s side. No one said a word.

  “Now I know you boys are all loyal, both to me and to your Ranger duties, and that means I know you’ll all do your best to support your new Captain. If you haven’t had the privilege of working with Rhett Walker before, you’ll quickly learn that he’s smart, well-trained, courageous, and will do anything to save a fellow Ranger. He’s got a good head on his shoulders and will continue to lead you down the road of justice and protection to which we’ve all sworn our lives. Virgil and Milo, I want you to counsel him. Jiddy, you scout for him. Dan and Sam, you be his deputies. If you work together, I feel certain that you will continue the good work I’ve begun here. I know you’ll keep Durango safe. For everybody.”

  When the room’s silence grew chilly, Rhett removed his hat. “I don’t reckon anybody can be half the man you are, Captain, but I’ll do my very best.”

  The sound of Jiddy’s spit hitting the floor caused more than a few guns to be silently drawn from their holsters.

  The Captain shifted, his lip curling. “If you don’t like it, Jiddy, you and your friends can head right on over to Haskell’s outpost. He’ll put up with insubordination, a lack of bathing habits, and unnecessary violence, but I didn’t, and Rhett won’t. Will you, Captain Walker?”

  It took Rhett a moment to realize that the Captain, his Captain, had just asked him a question and called him… Captain.

  He stood a little straighter, raised his chin a little higher, tucked his thumbs in his vest to let his badge catch the light.

  “No, I don’t reckon I will.”

  The Captain went into another cough just then, and Rhett turned to support him and hand him a bandanna. When the fit was over and Rhett stood back up, bloody fabric in hand, half the fellers in the room were gone, most notably including Jiddy and the Scarsdales. The Captain noticed, too.

  “They’re going to give you trouble, son. Most new Captains cut their teeth on hunting a monster, or maybe a big pack of Lobos. Looks like your first challenge will be winning over the weakest of your own men.”

  Rhett looked down at him. “Weakest? They never seemed weak to me.”

  “Their hearts are. Those men went to war too young and came back twisted. Right and wrong is only shades of gray. Their hearts are dark. They need a firm hand, a leader who won’t back down but who can still listen to good advice. You reckon that’s still you?”

  Their eyes locked, and Rhett bit his goddamn lip to keep it from wobbling with feeling.

  “I reckon that’s always been me, Captain.”

  The Captain shook his head sadly. “You can’t call me that anymore. I’m just Old Man Walker now. So go on and call your boys to supper and see if you can’t bring ’em around. Might take joshing, might take hollerin’, might take a few well-timed threats, but a barrel of liquor would help.”

  “I do believe they call that a wake, old man.”

  The Captain sighed, and it was like all the air and life went out of him as he sunk back down into the bed with a crackle of straw. “Well, don’t wake me. I’m tired, and I’d like to rest. Man can’t attend his own wake, anyway. It’s undignified.”

  His papery eyelids fluttered down, his breathing shallow as he fell into a light sleep.

  “Go on out, fellers,” Rhett said, his voice low. “He needs rest.”

  Most everybody else cleared out, hats in hand. Dan and Sam stayed, shuffling up close to Rhett, their boots the loudest sound in the room.

  “I’m sorry I can’t do anything else,” the doctor said, standing there looking awkward and small in a room recently cleared of fighting men, his white hands wrapped around the handle of his black bag. Rhett had completely forgotten he was there at all. “I’ll leave laudanum for the pain. Just a drop on the tongue, as he needs it. You can’t really overdo it, at this point. He’s near the end. I’m so sorry.”

  Remembering his new role, Rhett held up a hand. “Wait. What do we owe you, doc?”

  He had no money, but surely someone among the Rangers knew how such things worked.

  The doc shook his head. “Nothing. We got a deal, me and the Rangers. Captain leaves me to mine, and I help out when someone’s injured.” Rhett could feel it now, a wobble in his belly as he shook the doctor’s clammy hand.

  “If I can ask, which I reckon I need to, as the next Captain: What are you?”

  The doc shrugged. “Wendigo’s the name they give it around here, although I’d rather you just called me Doc. I have the unfortunate need to feed on human flesh, but I’m averse to killing, so I do what I can with the patients I lose. I keep mostly to myself, in a small village a few miles northwest.”

  “You don’t worry about him, he won’t worry ’bout you,” the Captain whispered.

  “Fair enough, then,” Rhett said, making a note to find out more about wendigos when the time was available. “Go on, then, Doc, with our thanks. Captain, you got any more such arrangements I need to know about?”

  The Captain’s hand flapped at a worn book sitting on the table, and Rhett took it, opening it up to see a whole bunch of letters and numbers that of course made no sense to him. Writing still made him angry and uncomfortable, so he handed it to Sam.

  “Would you give it a look-through, let me know what’s important, please, Sam?”

  Sam smiled and took the book, flipping through it. “You know I’ll help in any way I can, Rhett. Jiddy’s liable to cause a ruckus, seems like.”

  Dan grunted. “If by ‘ruckus,’ you mean ‘mutiny,’ I agree. But I’ll help, too.” He gave a wistful grin. “Of all the people you’ve punched in the teeth, Jiddy deserves it the most. He’s been unkind to me since the day I showed up. To you, too, I reckon. Nothing worse than a shifter who hates shifters.”

  Rhett smiled as he pictured it. “As long as he didn’t turn into a bear and kill me, I reckon punching Jiddy would be mighty…”

  “Cathartic?” Dan offered.

  “Pleasant, more like.”

  “That, too.”

  “Y’all go on,” Rhett said. “Make sure Conchita’s got dinner ready with plenty of extra helpings, and rustle up a cask of booze, if you can find one. Make sure none of the fellers are skulking around, talking bad. Make sure Cora and Winifred are safe and Earl isn’t getting into fights.”

  “What will you be doing, Captain?” Sam smiled like the morning and flicked Rhett’s new badge, making him blush.

  “I’m gonna sit here with the real Captain for a few minutes and try to make my hands stop shaking and make sure I don’t upchuck in a spittoon.”

  They each patted him on a shoulder and left him there. Rhett’s legs gave out a few moments later, and he landed on the corner of the Captain’s bed, careful not to touch the man’s feet and cause him pain. The world seemed to spin and land square on his head, heavier than a house. He was really Captain now? Him? The half-breed critter from nowhere? The newest Ranger? The Shadow with a destiny that had to be followed, regardless of what orders came down from… well, wherever the Captain got his orders? Hellfire, Rhett had a lot to learn. And now he was supposed to mosey over to some Rangers’ meeting in a big city and sit at a table with Eugene Haskell and a bunch of other smug white fellers and try to remind them he was an equal when such a statement would just make them draw their guns?

  “This is dumb as hell,” he muttered, head in his hands.

  “No it ain’t, son.”

  He looked up. The Captain hadn’t moved, hadn’t opened his eyes. His breathing was shallow and quick, sometimes stopping for a good long while. A clicky whistle in the back of his throat made Rhett downright uncomfortable, but he would stare at those rough lips until they spoke again.

  The Captain’s desiccated tongue slipped out,
licked, and he cleared his throat. “You’re the only one strong and stubborn enough,” he rasped.

  Desperate for something to do, Rhett tipped his canteen onto his handkerchief and used it to gently pat water on the Captain’s lips.

  When the Captain spoke next, he sounded like he always had before, strong and certain.

  “The Lord sent me an incomplete set of utensils, Rhett. He does it to everybody, just to see what we can make. The Scarsdales are too egotistical. Jiddy is ignorant and vulgar. Sam’s too sweet. Dan’s too spiritual and he hates white men too much. All the other men are inferior in their own ways, too. It comes down to you. I seen what’s special in you, son. I seen you run into fights you can’t win. I seen you sacrifice yourself for your friends without a thought. And you never hold it against nobody. You don’t judge a man by what he looks like, but by how he treats his inferiors. You’re a good man, the kind of man I tried to be, once I knew enough about the world to want to leave it better than I found it. I ain’t saying it’s gonna be easy, but it’s the only road I see.”

  “But what if I fail, Captain?”

  There were tears in Rhett’s eyes now, for himself and for this good man moving on. With Monty, he’d barely had a moment to speak, to apologize, to beg. But here, it was just him and the Captain, his hand curling around the man’s old bony fist and feeling those fingers cling tightly like Rhett was the only thing tethering him to this world.

  “You can’t fail, son. That’s why I picked you. You won’t settle for failure.” He let out a sad, windy chuckle. “I figured you’d punch failure in the mouth, if it came to that.”

  “Yes, sir, I reckon I would.”

  Rhett moved to sit alongside the old man, his back against the wall. They sat there in the gloaming, in the silence, holding hands. They sat there when Conchita rang the bell and the building shuddered with boot stomps and filled with the rough talk of rougher men. They sat there as the whippoorwills began to call and the horses nickered their good nights across the yard. The old man’s grip never lessened, and Rhett didn’t think of letting go, either. No matter that his stomach grumbled, and no matter that his lips were parched. No matter that he was slowly falling asleep, his head sliding down the wall to rest near the Captain’s wrinkled pate. The man was much diminished from what he’d been, but people were made to bounce back, to get stronger.