Devils Unto Dust
Page 7
“You know, I do believe that. What I want to know is, was that really you gave Dollarhide that shiner?”
“Whoever it was, I’m sure he had it coming,” I say with a nonchalant shrug, but Amos isn’t fooled.
“Ha! I knew it,” he laughs, teeth flashing white against his darker skin. “He was out here at dawn, still tangle-legged. You watch out for that one, Willie, he’ll be after you with a sharp stick. That your party?”
From the Homestead road I see the Garrett brothers walking, and just like that I feel woefully outgunned. It’s one thing to know you’re hiring hunters and another to see them decked out like the cavalry. Curtis has two long-nosed revolvers at his hips and a bandolier slung across his chest, the cartridges shining like so many rows of teeth. The hilt of a sabre juts up from his back, and his throat and forearms are covered with thick leather guards. Benjamin, too, is wearing the leather guards and a wide-brimmed hat tugged low over his forehead. He’s carrying a revolver at his waist and a rifle on his back, the sun glinting off the polished metal. Best of all, in one hand he’s got the lead of shaggy gray mule loaded with supplies.
“Where’d you find that piece of crow bait?” I call, walking to meet them.
“You hush,” Curtis answers, patting the mule’s nose. “Nana here is the finest pack animal that ever was. Show some respect to your elders.”
The Garretts come to a halt and the mule eyes me with disinterest.
“Howdy, Nana,” I say, and she gives me a slow blink. “I didn’t think there were any soft animals left. Never thought I’d be so happy to see a mule.”
“She’s too tough even for the shakes to take. Load her up, then,” Curtis says, and I hand him my bedroll and sack to add to Nana’s packs.
Benjamin hasn’t said anything, and I can’t make out his expression under his hat. In the spirit of forgiveness, I vow to make a fresh start with him.
“Morning,” I say politely, and get a grunt for my troubles.
“You’ll have to excuse him,” Curtis says. “Early mornings make my brother a touch grumpy.”
“How can you tell the difference?” So much for a fresh start.
Benjamin pushes back his hat and glares at me with red-rimmed eyes.
“You got something for us, or you just here to visit?” he asks in his rough voice.
I tug open the purse around my neck and slap the stack of bills onto Benjamin’s open palm. He counts it calmly, then folds up the money and puts in into his front pocket.
“Well?” I ask him, folding my arms across my chest.
“What do you want? We’re square.”
“An apology would be nice, but I guess that dog won’t hunt.”
“You got a big mouth for someone so small.”
“All right, that’s enough,” Curtis interrupts. “Ben, you know better. I’m not going out there if you’re gonna be tetchy the whole time. If you two can’t be civil, you can be quiet.”
I look down at my feet, embarrassed. I’m acting no better than him, and I feel like a reprimanded child.
“I can be civil,” I say.
“Ben?”
Benjamin nods curtly.
“Shake on it, then,” Curtis orders.
Benjamin holds out his hand, and I clasp it briefly. His hand is warm and callused, his handshake firmer than I would expect given his obvious disdain.
“That’s settled, then. Porter, how’s it looking?” Curtis asks.
“Mostly clear,” Amos tells him. “Spotted a couple near the road, maybe a half mile down to the right. They’re lying low enough our shots aren’t scaring ’em off.”
“We’ll take care of them,” Curtis says. “Ready?”
“When you are,” he says, nodding. “Happy hunting.”
“Open her up,” Curtis says, and Amos whistles for his partner and they put their shoulders to the gate. It opens with a terrible reluctant screech that makes my insides crawl.
“Eyes out,” Curtis says. Amos claps me on the back as we walk through the gate, and suddenly we’re past the perimeter, breathing in the hot fumes of the open desert. I don’t look behind, not even when the gate screams shut. It occurs to me that it’s too late to back out now, and there’s some small comfort in that. For better or worse, this is happening. The desert stretches out endlessly before me, and I could walk forever, as long as the road leads away from Glory.
PART TWO:
THE
ROAD
In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;
“But I like it
“Because it is bitter,
“And because it is my heart.”
—Stephen Crane
17.
For the first few minutes we don’t speak at all; the only sound is the soft tread of our boots on the dirt and the occasional snort from the mule. Two roads lead to and from Glory: the winding High Road that goes north, and the Low Road. This is the one we take, headed straight east, cutting a long razor across the land. The path isn’t easy to see, just a slight depression in the ground from years of repeated use, but the brothers walk purposefully and I trust them to know the route. A change comes over Curtis, a stiffening of the spine and an alertness that overtakes his easy manner. I do not see such a difference in Benjamin, but my guess is he doesn’t leave his vigilance in the desert. My opinion of him raises a hair; he must know, like I do, that a perimeter locks in danger just as much as it keeps it out.
I hum to myself for a bit, feeling lighter than I have in days. I dislike being caged, even if it’s a big cage and even when I know it’s for my own protection. My memories of Glory before the perimeter are hazy at best, but I remember a time when people weren’t always afraid. When I didn’t feel trapped, when I didn’t worry about money or Pa coming home drunk. Ma used to sing, silly songs she would make up while she cooked or knit. She sang less and less often, and then she stopped altogether. The way I remember it, the day she went quiet was the day the fence went up, when the ugly wire started looming taller and taller. I feel like singing out here, like filling up the vast empty space with sound.
“Sign,” Curtis calls, and I stop mid-hum. He points ahead to a small dirt mound to the right of the road. The dirt moves and separates into two figures and my stomach drops to somewhere above my ankles. I take a step back, as if that would help.
“Those’ll be the ones Amos saw,” Ben says, his voice remarkably even. He pulls his revolver from his belt and Curtis follows suit.
My palms are sweating, and I hastily wipe them on my pants before I reach for my own gun. My hands are tight and it takes me two tries to cock it. I tell myself I shouldn’t be afraid; I’ve seen shakes before, killed them before. Never like this, though, never without a perimeter in sight, never without somewhere to run to. Where can I run to out here, when there’s no place to hide?
Curtis gives me a steadying look. “When we start shooting, they’re gonna come for us,” he says.
“I know,” I say. My voice comes out only slightly high, but I hate that I give away any fear.
“Ready?” Ben asks.
“Ready,” Curtis answers.
It happens so fast; Curtis fires a shot across their heads and the shakes leap away from whatever dead and rotten thing they were crouched over. They come for us, rail thin and snarling, teeth bared and blackened with dried blood. More shots go off, deafening and smoky. I take aim and shoot but it goes wide; they move so fast and erratically that it seems impossible to hit them. Then one shake goes down as a bullet finds a wet home in its neck. It scrapes at its throat as it falls, blood staining its hands. The other keeps running at us, and every instinct is telling me to turn my back and flee. Curtis takes aim and a shot hits the shake’s thigh; it stumbles and falls over, and Ben darts forw
ard to fire one shot directly into its head.
Everyone seems frozen in place: Ben, standing over the shake, Curtis at my side, my knuckles white where my hand grips my gun. Ben breaks the spell first, nudging the shake with his boot to make sure it’s dead. I take a deep breath and then wish I hadn’t, the smell of foul blood and gunpowder making my stomach churn. Curtis moves to check on the other shake; there’s a gurgling sound that means it’s still alive. I don’t want to look, but I can’t avoid it. It’s hard to tell because it’s so thin, but the long matted hair makes me think it’s a woman. Her lips move wordlessly and blood bubbles up from her mouth. I turn my head away so I don’t have to see what happens next, but I still flinch at the shot.
“All set?” Ben asks his brother.
“Yeah,” Curtis answers. “We’re done here.”
I tell myself that I did the right thing, hiring hunters. That I never had to shoot moving targets like that before, that those shakes would’ve killed me. But I don’t feel like singing anymore.
18.
The desert is still, no sign of movement, not even dust. But it’s a calm stillness, ancient and unchanging. The desert was here before us, and it will be here long after, watchful and patient and unmoved.
The ground is hard and flat and endless. There is something comforting about the sameness of it all, the way the color has been leeched from the land until everything is a blurry brown. Even the whiplike ocotillo and the saw-toothed green sotol blend into the ground, the slight shadows they cast swallowed up by the dirt. The light is still low, but when it hits noon, the sky will lose all color as well, the blue bleached white by the blast of the sun.
I can see the first marker from a ways off; the red stake in the ground is hard to miss. We reached it quicker than I expected; five miles in under two hours. This is the farthest I’ve ever been outside the fence, and I lightly tap the stake for luck. It’s a reassuring sight, proof that we’re still on the road and a sign of those that came before.
“If we keep to this pace, we should be at the first way station by around four,” Curtis says, breaking the silence.
“Is that good?” I ask, not so much because I want to know as because I want to be distracted.
Curtis nods. “We’re making good time. I think—”
“Sign,” Benjamin suddenly interrupts, and my stomach lurches.
“Where?” Curtis asks immediately, snapping to attention.
Benjamin points due west, behind us, and I spin around to stare, my hand going to my gun. All I can see is a small swirl of dust rising up, but it looks ominous.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Movement. Could be nothing. Could be something,” Benjamin says.
The dust floats up and dissipates into the air and everything is still again. The boys don’t move for a long moment, then there’s an unspoken word between them and they both shift away.
“Keep an eye on it,” Curtis says to Ben. “There’s a hotbox in a couple miles if it turns into something. Let’s keep moving.”
We start walking again and questions build up on my tongue. I keep looking over my shoulder until I almost run into Curtis, and then I keep my eyes on my feet.
“What’s a hotbox?” I finally ask when my curiosity gets the better of me.
Ben snorts. “It’s what it sounds like,” he says. “It’s a wooden box with a tin roof that gets hot as all hell.”
“It’s a blockhouse,” Curtis says. “There’s one every ten miles. It ain’t much, really. It ain’t tall enough for a man to stand up straight or long enough to lie flat, but in a tight spot it’s something between you and a pack of shakes.”
I suck in my breath through my teeth, trying to imagine being trapped in a box while shakes surround you. It sounds all kinds of awful.
“You ever had to use one?” I ask.
“Just once,” Benjamin says. “Got caught out at night, outside Hide Town. Some tenderfoot thought killing a shake would be a good time, wanted to try it for himself.”
“What happened?”
Curtis gives a small snort. “Late afternoon and the fellow tripped over his own feet and broke his ankle. He couldn’t walk so we had to carry him to the nearest hotbox, and the last hour it was almost full dark. Longest night of my life.”
Despite the heat, I shiver.
We fan out, Curtis in the lead. I walk a ways behind him, glancing to the left and right, watching for any flicker of movement. We head directly toward the sun; Curtis’s shadow stretches long and thin, his distorted head moving under my feet. I slow my pace by a hair until my boots are clear of him. It seems impolite to trespass on someone else’s shadow, like walking into a house without knocking. Benjamin follows last with Nana, turning every so often to look behind. We’re too far apart to talk now, so I count my steps to keep my mind alert. I lose track twice, once at six hundred and thirty-six, and again at eight hundred and twelve. The road begins to curve north, and I wonder who first plotted out this course. A man, I wager, but what manner? And for what purpose? Was it before the sickness came, was it as easy as riding on his lonesome through the dust? No need to be watchful for anything but rattlers and hoof stones, no roof but the stars over his head at night. How simple life must have been, then, how exquisitely simple.
It was after most of the horses died that people started leaving, at least those who could manage. No one wanted anything to do with us anymore. The Union all but disowned anything south of Llano, which leaves us with the territories to the west and the border to the south. Then the railroads starting failing, and that was the end of any outside help. You can still see where they laid the track, just barely; the sand has erased most of the evidence. Even if they could get it up and running again, they wouldn’t come here; why bother when we have nothing to offer? The cotton fields are too big to protect, and no one wants to die for a farm. It’s not an official quarantine, but an effective one; if you want to go north you have to walk, and chances are you won’t make it out alive. If the shakes don’t kill you, the sun will. We’re on our lonesome out here, trapped in this no-man’s-land, hemmed in on all sides by dust and death.
Something rustles to my right and I jump slightly before I spot the lizard. I feel a pang, surprisingly sharp, thinking of Calvin. It is too soon to be homesick, but guilt pinches just as hard. I scold myself, reminding my traitorous conscience that I am doing this for a good reason. The lizard doesn’t even look like Goldie; this one is brown and thin, blending into a creosote bush with branches so thin and wispy it looks like a cloud of smoke rising from the bowels of the earth.
The sun climbs in the sky and I angle my hat lower to keep the light out of my eyes. Sweat beads on my upper lip and I lick it away, tasting salt and the dust that has already begun to coat my face and clothes. By the end of this trip I’ll be more dust than girl. The desert claims everything, in the end.
19.
When we reach the second marker, I catch sight of my first hotbox and Curtis calls a break. He halts by the post and it takes me a minute to catch up to him, and another for Benjamin to reach us.
“Let’s take a breather,” Curtis says, wiping his face with a red handkerchief.
Benjamin takes a swig out of his canteen and passes it to his brother. Curtis takes a generous drink and hands it to me. I hesitate for a moment, not wanting to dip into their water supply.
“Go on,” Curtis says. “Nana has extra. You need to keep drinking or you’ll pass out.”
“At least I’d be lighter than that Hide Town feller,” I say, and drink. “Thanks. Is there enough to last the day?”
“There’s a well at the halfway point, if you don’t mind the taste of iron,” Benjamin says. I pass the canteen back to him and he takes another mouthful before replacing the lid.
“What’s halfway?” I ask.
“About another hour.”
I nod, calculating in my head. If all goes to plan, we’ll cover around twenty-four miles today. Not a small feat. I’m not out of brea
th yet, but there’s a fine sheen of sweat covering my face and the beginning of an ache in my right heel.
I study the hotbox while Ben rummages through one of the packs on Nana’s back. It’s an odd little structure; it looks like someone started building a house and stopped halfway through. There are no doors or windows, only a series of grooves on one wall and small loopholes that go all around the box, just big enough to fit a gun barrel. We’ll pass another one before the day is over, and I hope we have no cause to use either.
“How do you get in it?” I ask. “There’s no door.”
“There’s a hatch at the top. You gotta climb up the side,” Ben says, emerging from Nana’s bags with a small round loaf of dark bread. “Here.”
“Is that Elsie’s brown bread?” I ask. She makes it especially for the road, and her recipe is a well-guarded secret. The crust is so hard it’s impossible to break off a piece with only your hands, but the inside stays soft and light.
“What else?” Curtis answers, smiling. Benjamin cuts himself a chunk of bread and passes it to his brother. I open my rag bundle and sugar sack and get my penny knife and some dried apricots to go along with the bread.
“Why do you wear those?” I ask, chewing on the fruit. I point to the leather guards on the brothers’ wrists.
“Shakes go for the arms and the neck first,” Benjamin answers. “The most exposed areas. The leather helps deflect, some.”
Curtis hands me the bread while I think this over. My neck suddenly feels very vulnerable with nothing around it but a bag of bullets. I open my penny knife and go to work on the bread, making a mess of it.
“Sign,” Curtis says abruptly, and I startle, the knife slicing across my palm sharply. I ignore the stinging pain and look where he’s gazing, back along the road.
“Wait for it,” Curtis says. Everything is silent while we all stare intently at nothing, and then it happens: a bright flash of light as the sun glints off something. I blink rapidly, waiting for the spots in front of my eyes to clear.