His Ragged Company

by Rance Denton

  In the middle of the crowd, holding a dull revolver high in the air, there was a rider on an impatient horse. He sauntered the animal back and forth in the crowd, making circles. He shouted at the top of his voice when he saw me.

  “Took you long enough, Faust,” he said.

  “Could you have picked a cooler day,” I yelled back. Old boy wanted to make himself obnoxious, visible, apparent. He wasn’t looking to kill me, because if he was, he would have pardoned the whole process, come to my office, and laid me out.

  He donned ratty clothes and dirt-caked boots. One eye followed my every movement, but the other was hidden behind a leather patch and complimented by a splash of dirty bandages from his ear to his nose. A few raw, moist strips of red went uncovered just under his chin and along his throat. Tracks where skin used to be before it'd been shredded away.

  “Problem?” I asked.

  “Leg’s looking good,” he observed.

  “Working,” I said. “It healed up nicely, barely a scratch. But I imagine you don't know how that feels, Curtis.”

  I heard his teeth grind in his mouth. “You get paid for your sense of humor, Faust?”

  “No. Just makes what little I’m paid that much easier to appreciate.”

  What remained of Curtis Gregdon's face resembled mashed pork and gravy. Staring at the mutilated face of one of my most recent mistakes turned the morning from fine to foul.

  My stomach turned and twisted.

  I remembered the paper.

  My Billy.

  Only one name.

  I should have known. Goddamn loose ends. Goddamn sloppy work.

  I said, “Good to see you dropping by, Curtis. Minus most of your face."

  “If I wanted to hear snarky shit, Faust, I’d go to the funny-shows.”

  He broke open the top of his revolver like a shotgun – Smith & Wesson, probably – and emptied out six spent rounds. He proceeded to slip cartridges into each chamber from his belt. The horse tromped in a circle below him, widening his space. “What do you want," I said. "You're interrupting a perfectly peaceable morning."

  "What do I want?" Gregdon asked me, closing the top-break. “I want you to know that I’m comin’ for your ass, Faust. I’m comin’ for you when you least expect it, and if you wake up with a bleeding hole in your head—“ he tapped at my forehead with a finger, “—you can be damned sure the bullet belongs to me.”

  The barrel of his gun swept across the crowds. They surged back.

  “Put the gun away, Curtis.”

  “And what are you going to do about it, Faust?”

  “Depends on how soon you put the gun down.”

  He leaned off the horse and put the mouth of the gun right against my forehead. I felt a ripple of surprise rustle through the crowd, carrying them all back a step or two more. Town law was being held at gunpoint by a vengeful criminal; they had no reason not to take it seriously. When he lifted his thumb and drew back the hammer to cycle the newly-filled chambers, neither did I.

  “You pull that trigger,” I warned, trying to keep my voice steady, “you probably won’t survive very long.”

  “You think these people give a damn about you, Faust?”

  A battered, eyeless face snapped to mind.

  Problem with you, Faust, is that you ain’t established any system here. You let these people run roughshod on you.

  I realized my muscles were tight. Even if I had wanted to go for one of my Colts, I would have never gotten it out of my holster. My mind entertained a series of stirring images involving my brain flopping around in the dirt like a suffocating fish. Afraid? Damned right I was afraid.

  Curtis saw. Curtis knew. And like a wolf, Curtis leaned over me, his mossy teeth gleaming. “A reckoning is coming. Give you a chance to rethink what you did to my brother.” He pushed the barrel against my head until I could feel the pressure growing in my skull. “I won’t have a chance to see you like this again, so I wanted to take the time to do it now.”

  We locked stares. I saw a fire that wanted to burst out of him. Gregdon was doing his best to stay his hand.

  “Who’s telling you not to kill me, Gregdon?”

  His lips tugged back like an animal’s. “Billy didn’t deserve to die.”

  “He could have cooperated. You could have cooperated.”

  “We ain’t bitches.”

  “Really? Then who’s filling your pockets?”

  I put my hand on the revolver at my left hip. I wanted to stretch the boundaries, but not far enough to get a brand new hole. The tension danced in the air like the sparks over a hot bonfire. I stared. He stared.

  He pulled his second gun and pressed it against the other side of my forehead.

  “You pissed some people off good and well,” whispered Curtis Gregdon. “They gonna give you a chance to make it right. Tonight.”

  “Where?”

  “You’ll get the message. Trust the ink. ‘Hamstring their horses, and burn their chariots with fi—”

  He didn’t get through the sentence before the whip-sharp blast of a gunshot interrupted him.

  My hat went flying off of my head as Gregdon’s pistols discharged wildly not two inches from my ears. I didn’t hear their shots as much as feel them, as if they’d crushed my head in invisible hands. All the sound in the world got sucked away. My legs went weak and shaky.

  The crowd rushed away, sinking into the alleys and disappearing into buildings. One of Gregdon’s pistols fell to the ground. His hand was clamped against his left ear, trying to catch the blood spilling out of the black hole where skin used to be. He swayed in the saddle. Red droplets splattered to the dusty ground like beads from a broken necklace.

  Somebody had shot him.

  The commotion scared up Gregdon’s horse. Though I couldn’t hear the hooves, I felt them beating against the ground as the beast whirled around. Gregdon steered it down one of the streets, almost sagging off the saddle. In a scattering spray of dirt—

  (Dirt? Or sand? Black figures. And sand, like that storm of breath…)

  —he managed to control the horse enough to rush off into the distance.

  When Gregdon vanished, I turned toward the source of the shot. Grady Cicero stood on the porch of my office, his cheek pressed up against the butt of the old Winchester, its barrel still smoking.

  Note to self: Don’t leave prisoners unattended near powerful weaponry.

  I leaned over and picked up the Smith & Wesson that Gregdon had dropped and tried to ignore the bloody tangle of skin that lay next to it, which was all that was left of Curtis Gregdon’s ear. Paul Fulton came bursting out of the thinning crowds and over to me, barely reaching me by the time I stumbled against him. Time and sensation came disjointed.

  That intense surge of nausea revisited me. Sprang up out of nowhere. Flooded over me like a storm.

  What I felt rising in me, I realized too late, was panic, springing up from a tiny pocket beneath my heart. Were these sounds – the gurgle of rushing blood in my ears, the da-dum, da-dum of my frantic heartbeat – just illusions? Or was I deaf?

  Balance failed me. Then Cicero was there, all but wrangling me like a cow. He dragged me into my office and slapped me down in my chair. I caught a glimpse of Miss Garland standing in the doorway, her face holding to some secret like an iron trap. The world spun, the orchestra inside my ears still howling.

  Can you hear me, I said, feeling the vibrato of the words in my chest.

  I pulled my hands away from my ears, examining my palms. No blood.

  Stitching words together, I said, Will one of you find Curtis fuckin’ Gregdon and tie his ass to a pole…

  Paul’s lips clapped and flapped about something or other next to my face, so close his spittle hit my cheeks. I turned away.

  About that time, my eyes danced past one of the windows of my office, where a perfect avenue of sight cut between the rooftops of Blackpeak’s squat skyline toward a hillock beyond. A flashing wink of silvered mirror caught my eye. I saw t
hem: shadows on horseback, some regular, and others misshapen, looking like robed scarecrows…

  A fistful of imaginary sand clogged my mouth.

  A whole roomful of hands pinned me down into a chair. I clamped my eyes shut.

  I owe you, I told Cicero.

  13

  The moment the gaggle of folk in my office realized I hadn’t actually been shot, they crept out one by one to tend to their own needs. Or to drink.

  Soon the muffled noises of the office around me began to introduce themselves again, from the creaking moan of the wood to the rattle of an occasional wind against the window's frame. I nursed a pounding headache, the kind that felt like it was trying to punch its way out of my skull from inside. The light of the day was more fierce than before. When I stood, the world tilted around me, off-kilter.

  I looked outside. Up on the hill beyond town.

  No lingering shadows. Just blots in my memory.

  “He stirs," said Cicero from the cell, laying along the cramped bunk. "How are you feeling, Faust?”

  “Like someone ran a herd into my mouth and out my ass,” I said.

  “He hears,” Cicero proclaimed.

  “Fortunate for you. Would have held you liable.”

  He frowned. “Where’s my damn compliment?”

  “You've got a good eye. Or did you aim for his head?”

  “Figured you'd want to do the honors yourself one day. I just grazed him.”

  “You could have hit one of those townspeople.”

  “But I didn't," he said, bearing the grin of a proud child.

  “How thoughtful.”

  “Just doing your job,” he said. He slid the keys across the floor and out of the cell. They clicked to a rest against my boot. “That fellow seemed particularly interested in you. What’d you do to him, Marshal?”

  “Killed his brother.”

  Cicero’s face crunched up.

  “He shot at me first,” I added. ​“Bullets just get personal.”

  I sat back down, hoping to ease the wardrums trilling behind my eyes. I picked up the gun Gregdon had dropped. I stared at it, rocking back and forth in my swiveling seat. It was a Schofield, a thick-bodied revolver with a pin-hinge just past the guard of the trigger that could drop the cylinders open for quick loading. “Nice gun,” I said, and crammed a thumb-knuckle against my ear.

  “Not good enough to kill you,” Cicero said.

  “He didn't plan to.” I worked and worked my jaw, trying to free that nutshell of hollow noiselessness out of my brain.

  I dragged my tongue against the front of my teeth. Fucking sand.

  Through the widow the fading sunlight burned my eyes.

  “You good?” he asked me, voice soft.

  Oh my God, Elias. Who plucked out his—

  “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah.”

  “So then maybe you can explain who I saw off in the hills beyond the town hall, looking like a goddamn Greek chorus when this all transpired. I thought about throwing them a warning shot, but I wasn’t going to make a mistake on presumption alone.”

  So he’d seen them too.

  Gregdon had friends that didn't take kindly to rules. Take away most every other desire, vengeance proved to be a mighty powerful motivator. Opium for the heart of the ill-at-ease. It’d ushered Keswick Everett a few hundred miles in pursuit of a purse of cash, had driven Curtis to launch himself like a cannonball into the middle of a town he knew I was in.

  Good afternoon for a glass of whiskey. I took an old bottle out of my desk. When Cicero saw it, he lost interest in his paperback.

  “Liar,” he said.

  Night fell. Eventually I started to hear the tinny music from the piano at The Crooked Cocoon warbling its way down the street. You’ll get the message, Curtis had said. Thanks to him, I kept a Colt in my lap and my senses sharp.

  “You’re starting to look more like an owl than a sick turkey,” Cicero said.

  But nothing happened. Whole town seemed to forget the afternoon. No flickers of movement in the night.

  I was out on the porch thumbing a cigarette out of my shirt-pocket when a familiar piece of paper crumbled at my fingertips.

  Which is when I realized—

  Trust the ink.

  Frantically, I opened it, flattening it against a railing so I could see it in the lantern-light. Sure enough, there it was: a new series of slices and slashes in black, reading 11:6.

  Over my shoulder, Cicero whistled. “Alright, come clean: which is your bank balance and which is your age?”

  But my brain was already winding through wordless paths and possibilities. First, a sinking sensation. I'd been too late. Then a furious, gut-wrenching anger. Stupid tricks. Stupid wit. Stupid smart people, playing subtle games. I hated being rocked back on my heels, shoved into corners.

  I flew inside. Seconds later, I shoved the Winchester against Cicero's chest. He cradled it like a baby. “You're coming with me,” I said, and dangled the Schofield on a finger for him.

  “Hello, Yellowboy, old friend,” he said to the gun, before squaring his stare on me. “I thought you said you owe me.”

  “I hope you enjoyed your whiskey.”

  "Is this conscription?" Cicero slipped the Schofield uncomfortably into his left pocket — I had no holsters for it — and opened the Yellowboy’s loading shaft, sliding a handful of .44s down into its tube magazine. When he was done, he racked the repeater and placed it over his shoulder. “You're going to owe me more than just some damn whiskey.”

  “A nice gravestone, then.”

  I stepped out of Blackpeak with Cicero on my heels and my shotgun at my side. I focused on the horizon, walking fast but not fast enough. At night the lands were faded monochrome. The grasses and dirt shone almost white, but the distant mountains were scribbled with charcoal. I looked out for shadows within those shadows, expecting at any moment that they might come alive.

  “Why aren't we riding?”

  “Reasons,” I said.

  “Which ones?”

  “Tell you when we get there.”

  "Why then? Why not now?"

  As the ground crunched beneath my boots, I imagined I was walking on ashes. “Because I don't want to be wrong when we get there."

  14

  As much of Blackpeak lived outside of it as lived within. Those with the money and wherewithal owned land in valleys where sunlight dared to turn the dry hind-quarters of Texas into something lush and viable. Blackpeak was, on the best day, just a spoke in the center of a wheel, an anchor of life and business. A means for whiskey and feed.

  We walked for ten more minutes in silence. By that point, the moon was a silver pendant in the sky.

  Even though the Fulton home wasn't a decrepit husk of wood and wallpaper like the Simpkin farm had been, a certain familiarity started crawling along the hairs on the back of my neck. Another farmhouse, another inopportune circumstance. Paul Fulton had built their wooden home with months of his very own sweat and industry. It was a squat home amidst a number of fenced-in fields where horses milled about as dark lumps against the backdrop of the night.

  In the moonlit lawn out in front of the Fulton residence were five shadows, two on horses, each with a rifle, and three others milling about on foot. Huddled at their feet was the family. Paul Fulton sat with three small boys leaning against him. Eliza Fulton had her head bowed, no doubt snapping out a constant litany of silent prayers.

  I closed my eyes and listened to my stomach.

  No wave of nausea. No twisting.

  I crouched down behind a dry bush. “Keep your head down,” I whispered.

  “This is a hell of a first date," he said.

  “You sure look nice,” I said. “I was right.”

  “Right about what?”

  “11:6. Chapter and verse. There’s some damn Bible school still left in this old boy.”

  “Or maybe it’s the corporal punishment.”

  “See that barn over the way?” I nudged my shotgun toward t
he towering wooden building just beside a wide, gated field to the left of the home. Stacks of squared hay leaned against its side. It rose up high, its roof a hard spine of angled slate. “Paul and Eliza Fulton’s barn. My friends, Cicero. They’re starting shit with my friends.”

  “I don’t see Gregdon. Probably nursing his ear,” Cicero answered, flashing me a grin in the moonlight. “Let’s do this thing, Faust. What do you have in mind?”

  As I ignored the nervous rush of my heart behind my ribs, I explained to Cicero the plan I percolated. It was no strategic brilliance, but it’d do in a pinch, and this was indeed a pinch. I scampered back the way we had come, wanting to backtrack away from the bush. I circled around a few hundred yards and came toward the house more from the east.

  I think I took the group by surprise, because I was only about thirty feet away from them when I flicked a match with my thumb and flared up a cigarette. The horsemen and footmen all turned. Guns clicked and cocked. I felt sights on me, a cold rush of fear that came only with leveled steel and the promise of gunpowder. I adjusted the shotgun draped over my arm. “Evening, gentlemen.”

  One of the men on foot – he had an old Army cap-and-ball revolver – took a step forward. “You Elias Faust?”

  “If I’m not, can I go home?”

  “Don’t be a smartass,” he said. “You got the message?”

  “Sure did,” I said.

  They all wore dark clothes. Dark hats, dark pants, dark scowls, as if they were part of an exclusive club. The one with the old revolver aimed from the hip had a thick, graying beard. “You made a bad choice, Elias Faust. Heard you’re the one killed Billy Gregdon.”

  “Killed and dropped him,” I clarified.

  One of the horsemen let out a little giggle. “He’s trying to soften you, Partridge.”

  “He don’t scare me,” Partridge said over his shoulder, still watching me.

  “Not trying to scare you,” I said. “Just reliving past accomplishments.”

  “Well, Billy’s why we’re here.” Partridge turned around and motioned to the Fulton family. Paul looked at me, begging me to help. Eliza never looked up. Partridge reached over and grabbed her by her red hair, wrenching her against him.