by SA Sidor
“Oh, none taken,” Evangeline said.
Well, I was taking some offense. It is rude to threaten people with murder and to compare a man or a woman to a bucket, especially if you are not related to them by blood. I did not think Billy’s effrontery needed to be discussed in the moment, however, the timing being poor.
I implied my objection with stern silence.
“Billy, where are our horses?” McTroy asked.
“Horses?” he said, sneering. “Did you lose yours, pard?” He laughed and his boyish features pushed out like a fat man’s belly. “Cuz I seen some pretty nice horses yonder in a swale might be yours. You can’t make ’em out from here. They looked fine, those horses did. Heehee.”
“I’m not your pard, Billy. But I am partial to the windy doc here. We got history in common, like you and Pat Garrett.”
“Don’t say that bastard’s name. Just hearing it makes me mighty sore.”
Billy shifted his gun to the bounty man. His jaw jutted forward, causing his neck cords to flare like fish gills. He was rattled and squirming in place as if he was getting ready to fly to pieces and pepper us with human shrapnel. The Kid came farther into the middle of the trail. His boots sucked up and down in the mud. He forked his legs far apart to keep from slipping.
“He’s the man who popped your cork, ain’t he?” McTroy said. “Fort Sumner as I recall.”
“Goddamn, mister. Pat Garrett hijacks his friends in the dark. Do you sanction that?”
“Sounds a mite frosty for a friend,” McTroy admitted.
“That’s what I’m saying. It’s like a cheat. Like tricking a person, shamming them when they don’t expect it from you. It’s a greasy way to lose a companion, I’ll tell you. He gets hisself famous for doing a thing that should make people spit when they hear his name. Pat Garrett shot Billy the Kid! Well la-di-da… it’s Billy the Kid’s name that sparks folks’ eyes and lights their dreams. That’s what legends do. Not backstabbing like barkeep turned turd-weasel Pat Garrett.”
“Billy… Billy. Why are you listening to Rex? He’s getting you riled up so you forget your purpose. Put your pistol back on the doctor. Let me talk with my friend.” Gavin Earl approached from a blind bend in the trail. Dirty Dan and the grizzly bear were right there with him, side by side. I never knew bears could be so quiet. Dirty led a mule loaded with bear traps, extra snowshoes, and a Winchester rifle. Pops held back the farthest as if he didn’t mean to mix with violent men but was only present to watch them do things to each other for his own jolly amusement. He was draining a wine sack into his gullet. He capped it and threw the sack high overhead to McTroy who caught it one-handed, drank, and spat out what he had in his mouth.
“Tastes like licorice and kerosene,” McTroy said, spitting again.
“I make it myself,” Pops said. “It’s herbals and laudanum. I add alcohol for a kick.”
McTroy motioned to pass the refreshment to Earl.
“Give it to Evangeline and your Chinese,” Earl said. “It’ll soothe their nerves.”
They politely declined his offer.
“Dr Hardy, you want a taste, don’t you?” Earl asked questions in a way that made you want to answer in the affirmative, as if he were a teacher helping you and yet marking grades.
“I am tired enough from walking,” I said. “Laudanum might make me fall sleep.”
“You’re gonna sleep,” Billy said. He was back to hating me for no reason.
“What do we have here, Gavin? You a horse thief now?” McTroy asked.
Gavin Earl smiled. He had a gold tooth like McTroy, only his was on the other side. “I came here for the bounty of riches, Rex. Same as you… the very same as you…”
“Same as all of us,” Evangeline said. She trudged up through the gray slop and Billy was thinking of training his pistol on her, but Earl waved him off. “My skirts are soaked, and my feet are freezing. Are you playing games, Mr Earl? Or are you here to do business?”
“Can’t I have it both ways?”
“Why don’t we work together?” Evangeline asked. “The eight of us can catch this Beast and take Oscar’s bull. He’s the one pitting us against each other. It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“I don’t like to share, Miss Waterston. My nature is selfish, greedy, and hard.” He was proud of who he was. That was plain. He said evil things about himself like it was bragging.
“He’s never liked having partners,” McTroy said.
Gavin Earl smiled and nodded.
It was chills I felt looking at him. He was cold bathwater on a tin-skied January morning.
“Go and stand back where you were, Evangeline,” Earl said.
“I will go when I am finished.”
“You are finished.”
“I do not need your permission to talk.”
“Billy,” Gavin said, “If she doesn’t back up, shoot the Chinese.”
Evangeline walked backward without taking her eyes off Earl.
“The lady cooperates,” he said after she returned to her spot.
“What do you want, Gavin?” McTroy asked. “Is it that you’d like us off the mountain?”
Earl considered the question. Finally, he said, “I don’t know if leaving solves anything. Not between you and me. It puts things off into the future. I’ve had you in my future for too long, Rex. I’d like you only in my past.” That black goatskin glove moved down to his holster.
“I want to kill that talker in the derby first,” Billy the Kid said.
“Drop the rifle, Rex,” Earl said.
McTroy didn’t move. The rifle was almost parallel to the ground. He’d levered it once, back when we were only worried about mountain lions. His finger rested on the trigger. Dirty Dan’s bear wandered forward with his head swaying and his tongue poking out like it didn’t fit in his mouth. His ears were golden and soft-looking. The hairs shivered in the breeze like tufts of brown cotton. He made a hoarse huffing sound as he came toward me. It was almost friendly. He yawned, and I saw teeth, orange and crooked. His tongue was like a tenderloin of mottled beef.
The bear stopped and sat down with a heavy sigh.
“Now the bear’s in my way!” Billy said. “Tell your bear to move, Dirty.”
“Bears don’t always listen,” Dirty Dan said. He unhooked a tomahawk from his furs. McTroy threw the wine sack to Pops. Billy almost fired at him when he did that. He kept switching his gun from McTroy to me. I was mostly hidden by the bear though.
That was when the whistle started. It made my skin go bumpy. The bear picked up his head and sniffed the breeze. His skin was twitching like he had flies on him, but it was too late for flies. The whistle climbed higher, and Billy stuck a pinky in his ear. Pops looked around, high up in the pines because it sounded like a high-up sound, floating over us, flying tree to tree.
“That’s what we should be chasing,” Evangeline said. “Not a grudge between you two.”
“I’m dropping the rifle,” McTroy said. “We’re going home.”
“Go on then,” Earl said.
When he talked I felt a cold flood come rushing down the Copper Trail. I was caught in the current but couldn’t see a thing. It pulled at me like something big I couldn’t escape. Like I was pinched in machinery that was chewing me up and there was no thinking being behind it.
McTroy chucked his rifle in the snow.
Before it hit the ground, Billy, who was aiming at me, pulled his trigger.
The bullet slapped into the bear. Billy yelled, “Goddamn!” The bear sat up and roared.
McTroy pulled his Peacemakers out of their leathers. They were barking fire.
He hit Billy twice in the center of his body. The fourth shot tagged him above his right eyebrow, putting him down. McTroy’s third shot missed Gavin Earl.
Earl fired twice so quickly that it made one sound.
McTroy twisted like his name had been called from behind him in the woods. I thought mayb
e somebody was coming to save us. But no one was. Blood blossomed on McTroy’s chest. It was right where I’d seen the black mark from before, the same dirty shape. Only now the mark was red. McTroy looked surprised. His Peacemakers pointed at the ground. He dropped them. Then following his guns, he fell softly on the dry pine needles. I hoped he might roll away and come up shooting.
But he didn’t.
McTroy didn’t move at all after that.
14
Events Tend Towards the Peculiar
Evangeline saved Yong Wu’s life. I wish I had, but I was too startled by McTroy falling like he did, the unbeatable man beaten, and by all appearances dying for the second time since we’d met. My premonition of the black marks on his body unsettled me. They were coincidental, I tried to convince myself – after all, nothing had happened to his hand. I did not want the responsibility that went with knowing events before they occurred, particularly those of the mortally dangerous and peculiar varieties. I had precious little time to consider the scope of these recent developments. The disgruntled grizzly bear in front of me took up most of my attention. He’d been eyeballing me like I was the one who’d shot him. Might I convince him otherwise? He’d moved from sitting to standing, then dancing a slow jig, pedaling his front legs like he wanted to box me, or maybe he’d just grab my head and eat it. I’m glad Evangeline was there.
Wu’s hand dipped to his blue sash and drew out his Colt pistol.
Earl might’ve killed him if the smartest, bravest woman I’ve had the privilege to know didn’t manage to block his target and twist the gun from Wu’s hand simultaneously. She held onto Wu’s wrist. He was crying hot tears and thirsting for quick revenge. She saved him from himself. He didn’t know better. In the moment, he didn’t care.
Earl took the gun from Evangeline.
“She saved your life, boy,” he said.
“Rex wouldn’t want you to die on his account,” she said to Wu. “It’s of no use.”
Yong Wu sat on the ground, hugging his knees. He turned his face away from the bloody spectacle and stared into the pines, blinking away tears.
Evangeline’s talking this way made the fact sink in that McTroy wasn’t speaking for himself. Where Wu raged with emotions, I was as numb as the mountain. I couldn’t accept that Rex McTroy might die. Or that we might soon follow him. We searched a mountain for a Beast and found our gravest threat in other men. Heroes made no difference. McTroy lost.
But was Rex McTroy dead?
Earl, thinking along similar lines, sought an expert’s opinion.
“Pops,” he said. “Check him.” Earl hadn’t put his gun away.
Pops waddled up with his Gladstone bag in hand. He must’ve stashed it around the bend. Given the present company, he figured somebody here would need doctoring. Walking past Billy, he glanced at the outlaw’s fatal wounds. “The Kid’s going to hate that hole in his head.”
There’s an odd complaint, I thought. Appearances were the least of the Kid’s problems.
“Do Rex first,” Earl said. “Billy can wait.”
Earl’s order confused me. I couldn’t imagine what difference it was going to make. These two patients were beyond any help but the miraculous kind. Dead is dead. Well, usually it is. It is true that I had encountered a few notable exceptions: revivified ancient mummies, Chinese vampires, and ghouls. None were strictly alive. But I’d witnessed Billy and McTroy cut down with my own eyes. I saw no supernatural factors in the vicinity that would change these facts.
Then I recalled the words Evangeline had said to me.
Facts are not all there is under the sun.
“What about my bear?” Dirty Dan said. “Puddin’s suffering terrible. He ain’t himself.”
Puddin’ groaned. Dirty called out, “Oh, my poor boy!”
The bear staggered to him for a comforting hug.
“I am no animal doctor,” Pops answered. “You treat him, mountain man.”
The fur-suited tracker mumbled in soothing tones to his ursine companion who seemed bored but kept contorting to bite at the new hole in his backside. Dirty Dan assessed the damage.
“Aw, it’s only puckered under the skin,” Dirty said, cheered by what he’d seen.
I don’t know if he was directing his diagnosis to Pops or to Puddin’. But Dirty Dan snatched a handle of big ole bear flesh, choked up on his tomahawk neck, and used the blade to slice an exit for the spent slug. It squirted into Dirty Dan’s fingers. He held it aloft like it was a gold nugget. “Hoorah! The worst’s over now, Puddin’. You’re good as new and pretty as a picture!” Dan rubbed his grinning, moony face in the bear’s pot belly. The bear stood staring off to the side like he was shy about public displays of affection. His rear continued to bleed but not as badly as you might think. Then he settled in for a snooze, his chin propped on a boulder.
Pops kneeled at McTroy’s side.
McTroy had an arm flung over his face as if he were napping. His motionless body lay twisted away from the medical man.
“Are you going to help him?” I asked.
“Some might call it help. Others would not.” Pops grinned at me.
The latch on Pops’ Gladstone was broken. The bag yawned when he placed it on the ground. I caught a whiff of menthol and… mescal? Yes, Doc Spooner collared a demijohn with a worm floating in it. I felt a certain well-earned queasiness around Mexican worms. The surgeon guzzled the straw-colored spirit, dribbling some off his chin into the overstuffed bag. He saw me watching in horror, winked, and – tapping the cork home with his palm – stowed it away. Out came a syringe with a glass barrel the same circumference as a shot glass. Clutched in his other fist, Pops had a bottle from his patent line of nostrums, liniments, and elixirs. It was a bright green glass to catch the customer’s eye, or so I thought. But when Pops filled the syringe, I noticed the contents provided the glow – an eerie hue – akin to foxfire or the absinthe I’d seen on a bar shelf in New Orleans.
“Wait, Pops,” Earl said.
He trained his gun on McTroy. He toed McTroy’s arm away from his face, and then used his boot to roll the bounty man flat onto his back, wary that my friend was playing possum. I wished that he were, but his color was not that of a living man.
McTroy’s eyes stayed closed; his mouth fell open. Snowflakes drifted in.
Pops touched my friend’s neck. “He’s not dead yet. But the reaper isn’t far off, if you want me to let him bleed. I never used it on a live one before. The results are unpredictable.”
“Will it bring him around?” Earl asked.
“I can guarantee that,” Pops said. “It’ll make a skeleton dance.”
“And he’ll feel pain?”
“Oh, yes. He’s fresh, and his nerves are full of juice.”
“Then stick him,” Earl said.
Pops drove the nail-like needle into the base of McTroy’s neck, towards his brain. He depressed the plunger and the thick luminescent liquid disappeared into McTroy.
“What are you doing?” Evangeline shouted. “Leave him alone!”
The men ignored her protests.
“Let me dig that bullet out of him while he’s finding his way back to us.” Pops dropped the syringe in his bag and rummaged until he found his forceps. Turning to McTroy, he poked his finger three knuckles deep into the bloody chest wound. “I can feel it. Your first shot missed?” Pops squinted at Earl.
“It drifted,” Earl said.
The slanting snow fell faster as the wind picked up. I buttoned my overcoat to the neck. I gripped my walking stick so hard I worried I might twist the ape’s head off. If I charged these outlaws they would kill me. What would happen then with Evangeline and Wu?
Pops withdrew his red finger and went exploring with his forceps. His eyes were like a pair of glass balls dabbed with wet blue paint and a stroke of clear varnish. His pupils gaped: two snake holes. I wondered if I watched too long, would I see something cold-blooded slither out? These men we
re something south of human. I hated them.
McTroy’s body convulsed.
“Damn it,” Pops said. He backed out the forceps and tossed them bloody into his bag. “Mr Earl, hold his shoulders down, please.”
Earl reluctantly pinned McTroy to the ground. Pops dumped his bag on the mud trail. He picked through the instruments – heavy scissors, pincers, a curved blade (rusted) that could only be called a scythe, and a saw! – until he found what he was looking for. It was like a long soda fountain spoon with a hook on the end instead of a scoop.
“Keep him from bucking,” Pops said to Earl.
He began to probe the bullet wound in earnest. His tongue poked out of the corner of his mouth as he concentrated. Pops worked that fountain spoon like he was going for the last sweet drop of strawberry syrup at the bottom of his dish.
I turned grayer than the slush I stood in. The world grew watery as my vision darkened.
“Hardy, you are fainting,” Evangeline said.
She came to me through the blurry periphery.
“We cannot let them defile him,” I said. “But we are at their mercy.”
“He’d better not puke. I hate the smell of a stomach turned out,” Earl said.
Evangeline gathered snow, applying it to my forehead. “At the mercy of men is where I have lived my life,” she said. “We watch and we remember. Our chance will come.”
She loosened my collar and tried to get me to sit on a stump until the dizziness passed. But I would not budge. I feared I would black out if I tried to walk anywhere, only to awake to Pops poking his filthy fingers and tools into me. The coldness of the snow refreshed me. I cupped some in my mouth and sucked it.
“You have your color back,” Evangeline said.
“If they plan to murder us, you will squeeze the lemon,” I whispered.
She nodded and pushed her thigh into mine, so I felt the impression of her holster.
