by R. Kent
Not a problem. It was only a snag. One time in a million. Just a little rusty. I’ve got this.
I slapped the grips again, and made sure to twist the gun high enough to clear. I bumbled the action. My brain got in the way of my work. Thinking wasn’t always a great thing. Not if it jammed the process.
More determined, I gripped it and ripped it. Too tight. Speed was affected.
I drew again. Too loose. The barrel canted to the side. No accuracy.
Again. My wrist was straight and locked. I’d feel the jarring percussion in my thumb and down through my palm, numbing my successive shots.
Sweat broke out on my brow.
I propped my gun loose in its holster, shaking my hand out at the wrist. With a jostling of my shoulders, I tried to loosen the growing tightness. My side screamed in stabbing pain that made me buckle. Breathe. Just breathe.
Practice was all I needed. The trapper who had taught me said I’d build muscle memory. And I had. I’d have to now remind those muscles of what they’d forgotten.
The rainy day waned on. Sahara came and went. I was no better for the practice. My arm ached. My ribs grew too tired of complaining and decided to settle into a constant screaming pain instead. My breathing ran fast and shallow with exertion. Little blisters bubbled over my palm.
I pushed at the pustules but didn’t pop any. Burst blisters meant open sores that festered and rotted. I did what I thought TwoFeathers would do. I poured whiskey onto them and loosely wrapped a cloth around my hand.
I took a sip of the smooth brown liquid. It burned. My throat clenched. I coughed and coughed. That was a big mistake. The hacking jarred my ribs to striking back. I chastised myself, but was in no mood for the rebuke. So I gulped several mouthfuls quickly without tasting the toxic brew.
Now I really did cough, finding it hard to breathe again. My face scrunched into contortions at the singeing flavor left in my mouth. Heat washed across my cheeks and forehead. Sharp inhales were answered with fiery stabs of pain. But the smoldering warmth from the brown liquid sliding along my insides was surprisingly comforting.
Rain poured down outside. I hunkered by the firepit and took a pull on the whiskey bottle. The sky grew dark. Flash flooding whooshed in the not-too-distant distance. I wrapped my lips over the mouth of the bottle again and again throughout the night. Much like a lover’s kiss. I giggled at the thought. A sloppy lover.
The next morning, I stood in the rain again. My head felt near to splitting. Someone, pull the ax from my skull. I shoved sopping strands of hair out of my face. Ratty limp ropes of it fell back over my eyes. Rainwater dripped from the ends onto the revolver in my open palm.
I stared at the gun. I was no good any more.
My left hand was tender. My arm complained from the weight of the gun. The steel was cold. The antler grips were coarse. And the cold rain poured down.
Huddled in my sodden cotton, store-bought shirt, I squeezed off shot after shot. Missing.
“You can’t go after Jack McKade.” Sahara wrapped the woven wool blanket about my hunched shoulders and tugged it tightly around me. “Look at you. Soaked and shivering. You’re going to catch your death.”
“Sometimes it’s about doing the right thing, not the easy thing.”
She rolled her eyes. “Sometimes staying alive should be the first thing.”
I plucked the bottle from the mud. Sahara walked off.
I took a swallow before emptying the spent cartridges from the cylinder and shooting again. My aim might have improved with the whiskey. I know my pain had subsided when I drank enough.
The sun hadn’t peeked through the gray overcast all day. At night, the stars couldn’t gouge their way past the clouds. This was the wettest November I’d ever remembered anywhere. Prickly pear cacti happily gorged on the water when they should have been hibernating beneath frost. Everything else was miserably drowning. I passed the night huddled by the fire attempting to feel dry.
In the morning, it was still raining. And cold. Three days of drenching torrents. I had started drinking coffee through the day. More so than whiskey, but then I started combining the two. In this type of weather I saw the appeal that I’d never understood in the past. Coffee with a nip. Warmth crept over my tongue as I sipped the hot beverage before stepping into the deluge.
I wiped at my eyes. My lashes held water, giving the landscape an ethereal look around the edges. It was fitting. My nightmarish visions had come back in force. I had once-upon-a-time thought they’d leave for good when I took off my guns and put my silver dollars on land. They hadn’t. The vivid memories constantly haunted me, as if trying to disclose some truth I absolutely couldn’t live without.
I raised my left hand and fired at the slumped targets on top of a flat boulder I had set up yesterday.
Crack. Crack.
My mind’s eye took me back to a man in Durango.
A sickness churned in my gut. My knees felt like they’d buckle.
Two bullets slammed into his chest, a split second apart. A jaunty bowler hat kicked from his head on impact. Blood spurted from each hole. His gun was out, but it hadn’t leveled. He went down. He fell and fell and fell. His shoulders hit the dry street with a thud. A cloud of dust burst from beneath his inert body. The nose of his gun with its overly raised sight smacked the ground and jumped loose from his grip.
Dirty blond curls sprung around his face, outlining ruddy cheeks, a button nose, and a delicate chin. He was slight for a grown man. Angelic. Cherubic.
He was dead.
A solid blast of thunder from a Hawken jolted me out of the nightmare. The entire line of targets went down like toppling dominoes.
I gagged, heaving until whiskey burned my throat, ten times more caustic on its way back out.
The gun in my left hand drooped as if it had swooned from exhaustion. I stuffed the weapon into its holster. I hissed through my teeth as a blister splayed open. The raw stinging crept through my palm. I grabbed the whiskey bottle from the muck at my feet.
A big paw wrapped around my skinny wrist. He was usually gentle. At present, he was unusually rough. TwoFeathers flipped my hand over. He extricated the bottle from my fist then dropped it into the mud. Rain pelted oozing blisters. I squirmed under the stinging barrage. TwoFeathers held me firm.
He slapped salve into my seeping palm, then wrapped and tied it in a clean bandage.
I yanked my hand from his fierce hold and shoved him away. I didn’t need TwoFeathers. I didn’t need anyone. All I needed was that whiskey to soothe my pains away. And the bottle sat upright, neck deep in mud, waiting for me to rescue it. I did. When I did, I pressed its mouth to my lips. He pried it from me.
TwoFeathers walked off.
I tried to follow, reaching for that bottle. Mired in mud, I fell to my knees. “Damn you, injun. Damn you to hell.” I dropped fully into the slurry and spanked the mud with my right hand as if it had insulted me. The splash rained back. Grit landed in my mouth to lodge between my teeth. It was gritty. “I hate grit! Grit! Grit! Grit! I hate grit. I hate mud. I hate hate hate! Hate!”
I rolled around like a newborn calf, unable to gain my feet. After a while, I didn’t try. Why should I? This wasn’t the life I wanted to live. I had had dreams. My dreams had been derailed. Derailed by Sahara Miller. Everything revolved around Sahara Miller. I never asked for the girl.
A big pair of moccasins stomped beneath my swollen nose. He lifted me by the middle of my back in one meaty fist, then lugged me over the mud. My wet, stringy hair hung like a heavy theater curtain. My knees bogged, plowing furrows a farmer would envy. Still, TwoFeathers hauled me onward.
I quit struggling. Let the McKades of the world have the place. I stopped fighting TwoFeathers’s grasp. Let the Indians and the Whites battle for the land. I’ll find my place between their worlds as always. Alone. I gave in to being dragged. Let Sahara love her copper and her rich men, if money is all she wants. I gave up. It was too hard. Life was too hard. It had always been hard.
Every day, I struggled to find my way. It was complicated. I was complicated. I didn’t fit in. I didn’t even fit me.
Dumped by the fire in a sorry state, I curled into the fetal position and rocked my wounded body well into the dark afternoon. At some point, sleep overwhelmed me.
Waking in the night too many times was disorienting. The rain hadn’t let up. Its monotony pounded inside my brain. I heard the fat drops pattering the hard ground in a slow drum roll. I’d heard the onslaught gush in foul torrents, flooding rushing runnels. The rain had been the sole noise in the blackest darkness.
In the morning, gray skies tattled that the foul weather wasn’t planning to stop. Maybe ever. The fire was near out. Smoldering coals weren’t to be coaxed to glowing in the frigid dampness. And the pot coffee was a cold sludge.
By the dim light of that squelched dawn, I tripped over TwoFeathers’s long, outstretched legs. Strange. I expected Charlie Horse to laugh at me, in the way horses do, as I stumbled on numb feet, intent on milking the cow.
“Horse is gone. Woman is gone.” TwoFeathers glared at me accusingly. The whites of his eyes were pinched with squinting, but they still pierced the dimness.
A fresh bucket of milk sat in Charlie Horse’s place. The heifer calf poked and prodded her dam’s drooping udder.
Gone?
I blundered from the overhang, running toward Molasses Pond.
By the time I reached town, the skies had lightened. Main Street was a slough of mud. There was no wagon traffic. The sludge was impassable for wheeled vehicles. Even saddle horses labored to lug each hoof from the sucking muck.
Sitting rainwater soaked into hoofprints even before hooves moved forward. Fetid odors hung thick in the drenched air. Saturated leather steamed on sweaty, straining horses. Soaked canvas tents sagged. Sopping men in soggy clothing hauled their hat brims to the bridge of their noses and scurried for cover. Overflowing privy pits washed through alleyways into the road. Wet dogs hid under dripping boardwalks. Stale, sodden stenches mixed in the most foul ways. The entire town was rank.
I skirted around the main street until I got to the alley between the land office and the burgeoning bank. When I plunged into the slow moving sludge on Main Street, my neck itched. I scratched at the uneven patches of scarred skin beneath the silk kerchief with my cold fingers. My neck only itched when something was unsettling to me.
Townsfolk moved from my path but lingered in my wake. They wore neckerchiefs, doubled and knotted. I had never thought myself the height of fashion before. My clothes were practical. I didn’t own a leaky parasol or stained white gloves. I didn’t have silver spurs with jinglebobs dancing on the rowels.
“She’s in there.” Justice chucked his chin toward the Watering Hole as he stepped in front of me.
Panic ripped through me with those three little words. She’s in there. My eyes slid to the front of the saloon. Ropy strands of dripping hair fell into my sight. Charlie Horse was tied at the hitch rail.
I tried to shove past Justice. He held his ground, clutching my upper arms. “She came here for you.”
I settled in his grasp.
“She had a sack of copper with her,” he said.
I wretched, grabbing my belly.
Justice had the good sense to let go of me.
I puked. The bile stank of stale whiskey. “If she had a sack of copper then she came for herself.” I swiped a forearm across my mouth. “I want my horse.”
He stepped from my path. “A man’s got a right to his horse.”
I thought I saw disappointment in his eyes. I thought his shoulders slumped a little more than the cold, wet rain had called for.
What did he think? I could save her? That I could save this town? Hell, she didn’t want me to. She’d made up her mind.
Seth sauntered from the Watering Hole. Thumbs in his pockets, he leaned against the shingled wall. “The girl done told the boss that’s all there is. One sack.” He spit a wad of tobacco. Spittle drooled from his bottom lip. “Now I don’t care about your copper. Yet.” Seth picked at the calluses on his hand. I briefly wondered what he’d get calluses from. I never saw him actually do any work. “I’m gonna have me a visit with that girl first,” he said, “then I’ll get real interested in your copper.
“You got at least a day to clear out. My business could take longer though.” He ran his tongue over tobacco-yellowed front teeth, then licked brown spittle from his lower lip.
Flight or fight. There was only, ever, those two options.
“Oh, that’s right,” he said over his shoulder as he turned to slither back into the Watering Hole, “almost forgot.” Seth spit a slimy dollop onto the boardwalk. “We got us a friend of yours inside.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Bullets.”
The clerk looked at me like I was a spook with two heads. He prodded his wire-rimmed glasses higher up his narrow nose, then smoothed his bow tie against his throat. His engorged Adam’s apple bobbed from a huge swallow.
I was dripping onto his counter. A puddle accumulated, threatening his scratch pad and stubbed pencil. “I do have money on account,” I said.
He shook himself from his staring stupor. “Yes. Yes you do, Mr. Austin.” Swooping his pencil and pad into his petite hands, he said, “I’ll get those right away. .45-caliber?” He scuttled off before I answered.
The clerk dropped the box to the counter like it was weighing him down. “Can I get you anything else? A coat? Or a hat perhaps?”
I have a coat and a hat. Somewhere between my hogan and the Apache lands. “Whiskey.”
“Mr. Austin, we don’t sell spirits here. You’ll have to go to the Watering Hole for those.”
I crushed my fist around the paper-wrapped box and slid it from the counter. A brightly swirled stick of peppermint candy looked too enticing to pass up. I plucked one from the jar. “And this.” Before the clerk nodded, I had the peppermint stick clenched between my teeth.
“Color me pink and put me in a pig pen. It’s Austin.”
Lily. Lily often chirped ridiculous sayings that belied her true nature. I used to think they were cute. I used to think she was pretty. I turned toward her, making like I was tipping my hat to a lady. “Lily.” Leaning my buttocks against the counter, I peeled open the box of bullets, drew one of my revolvers, and methodically loaded each chamber.
She spun on her buttoned boots and pattered from Percival’s Mercantile. The bells above the door jingled with her passing.
“Now, Mr. Austin, I don’t want any trouble in here.”
I shifted the peppermint stick to hang from the other side of my mouth then slipped the first gun home. The bruise over my ribs complained, but I was beginning to ignore it, for the most part. I plucked my second weapon and began to fill its empty cylinder. Rose shuttled in. The bells jingled. The red plume from her hat brushed them as she walked beneath. “I saw Lily. She’s in a rush. I knew there had to be something gossip-worthy in here.” She bobbed her head in a polite manner. “Austin.”
I clicked the cylinder around, listening to its smooth ratcheting and feeling for any hitches in the well-oiled action. “Rose.” Her face looked strained. Her lips pursed, pinching her cheeks inward.
She squinted her eyes ever so slightly. “They have the pastor.”
“What’s it to me?” Which wasn’t fair. It was something to me. He was something to me. He had saved my life.
“You listen here, Austin.” She spun into my face with the speed of a much younger woman and the ferocity of a poked bear. “Jack McKade will take everything you love. He’ll hold it just out of reach to taunt you, to torture you, and finally, to break you. If you don’t break, he’ll dance you like a puppet on strings until your life is nothing. He enjoys destroying others.”
Rose sat back on her high heels to regain her composure. “Your fight is up here.” She tapped my temple with a gloved finger. “Use it. You’re a smart boy. Think first. If you go blundering in with guns blazing, you’re only doing exac
tly what he’s goaded you into. Don’t.” Her cap fell onto the bridge of her nose. The plume dusted my face.
She pushed her hat to the top of her head and patted her hair. When she turned to leave, she pulled her cloak to her earlobes.
Minutes passed. My stomach rolled. I was beginning to feel my toes again, but they were angry knives stabbing my feet as they thawed. The clerk anxiously tutted over the water I dripped onto his counter. He wasn’t likely to ask me to leave, but I knew he’d cheer after I had.
I walked to the door and cracked it open to peer outside. Before making a move, I closed the door of the mercantile and contemplated my options, as Rose eloquently suggested.
A crate of fireworks collected dust beneath the front window of the mercantile. Leftovers from a long forgotten Fourth of July celebration. I pressed the barrel of my Smith and Wesson to my lips as if I were to kiss it, and shushed at the clerk. He nodded in an overexcited fashion.
I propped my second revolver loose in its holster for the ready. A plan was coming to mind. Into my baggy cotton shirt, I packed firecrackers and cherry bombs. I jerked a calculated length of dynamite fuse from its spool and stuffed that into my drawers, briefly scanning for the dynamite. None.
Rain came down harder. I stepped from the warmth of Percival’s Mercantile. It was going to be a long journey around Molasses Pond to get behind the Watering Hole unnoticed.
Men gathered as I tromped the boardwalks of the mercantile and past the bank. Women collected their children from my path. When the boards ended, I dropped into muck and scurried from the crowds, losing any followers in the alleyways.
Sewage burbled from beneath the privy sheds. Ditches overflowed their waste in gushing streams. The cold, drenched air calmed the stench, but it was still definitely ripe. I coughed, gagging more than once while splashing through the crap to circle around the outskirts of town.
The sky opened up to loose another torrential downpour.
I kept a blistered palm over the fireworks as I ran. My shirt was soaked. I rounded my shoulders forward to keep it from sticking to my chest. I hadn’t replaced my wraps, or the trouser prop. If I looked down, I’d see the budding female body that didn’t align with my boy’s brain. Don’t look. Don’t look. It was repulsive. A hideous reminder that I didn’t fit anywhere—even in myself.