by J. P. Sloan
“Hey. You shouldn’t do that. Don’t close your eyes. Folger. Hey!” I slap his face. “Stay with me. You’ll slip away if you do that.”
He struggles to keep fluttering lids open.
It was horseshit, but it kept him with me. I’d seen men laid low with rifle shot and cannons. They all closed their eyes. Less than half of them opened them ever again. But I didn’t want to be here come sunset, with a dead Folger and a pissed strigger who had told me in no uncertain words that she expected me to be long gone.
I needed Folger present, awake, and aware when she crawled out of her basement. My life likely depended on it.
espite my best efforts, Folger slips in and out of consciousness as the square of sunlight dropping from his window makes its slow track along the bed. I find myself able to gain my feet and take steps. At a point during midday, I consider dragging Hitchens’s corpse outside into the grass to keep the stink from setting in. I think twice of it, though. The boy’s important to Folger, despite being the finger that threw lead through his gut. And the body’s like to gather coyotes or worse. It can sit until sunset.
Folger suffers a coughing fit something fierce and manages to stay awake long enough for me to gather him into a more comfortable posture. I prop him up onto a heap of rags and pull off his shoes. I re-dress his wound and get him wiped down as best I can. He looks up at me with a heavy eye.
“What?” I ask.
“Chris,” he answers with stronger volume than earlier. “Boy was drunk.”
“How do you figure?”
“Whiskey on his breath… angry.”
“Yep. That about sorts it. Probably good he got to you before the Parson.”
Folger shakes his head.
“No, it is,” I explain. “Parson would’ve fed you to his ghouls. If you survived it, you’d be up in the hills, too, chewing bones and swillin’ all their evil.”
“Evil?”
“Hmm?”
He shakes his head. “Confused.”
“Well, you’re hurt pretty good,” I offer.
“No. Uriah. Chris. Confused.”
“They ain’t confused, Denton. They’re victims of evil. I know you don’t take to talking about God and evil and all the kit I’m peddling, but I got you on your back, and by God, I think I earned a moment to bend your ear.”
He smiles and nods.
“Listen. I talked at Holcomb this morning. He says you’re a good man, one who doesn’t need me bringing monsters into your doorstep. Looks like that pony’s kicked at this point. And I’m sorry on that. But you should know, if a person or a thing, however you see it, intends you harm… ain’t it better knowing? I mean, they say ignorance is bliss, but I think that’s a crock of distempered horseshit.”
“You mean well,” he whispers.
“But what if I didn’t?” I have to tread light, here. “Anyone could be a monster. No matter how close. Even those we trust.”
Folger tries to right himself, but I lay a heavy arm on his shoulder and pin him down until he stops squirming. “I can sit up.”
I shake my head. “You lie still until your wife can put her skills to you.”
“And you.”
“I’m all right.”
“You’re shot.”
I shrug. “Seen worse. Worse that you nursed me through, so do me this favor, hold your ass still, and wait for sundown.”
“Why did you come back?”
“I don’t know. Had a feeling things weren’t right.”
Folger grins. “Glad you did.”
I check the progress of sunlight. “This game you’re playing with Richterman? It’s gonna get you killed, you know? Figured it’d be Scarlow that’d be drawing iron on you, not the people you were trying to save.”
Folger’s grin vanishes. “Chris was angry. Angry and drunk. What can… anyone do to stop that?”
“The Parson said the boy was looking for Richterman.”
“Richterman would have been next. Chris had to know he wasn’t riding back from that.”
“Well, the liquor puts steel in your stride even when it’s suicidal.”
Folger sighs and coughs his voice into a parcel more strength. “We have to find Jack and Mary. Tell them what happened.”
“That might not be possible. They’ve done pulled up stakes and headed north. If we weren’t a punctured pair of sumbitches, one of us might have run them down.”
“Where’s the body?”
I nod to the bedroom door. “Up front. Didn’t take it out for the coyotes. I’ll tend to it when your better half unburies herself.” Folger gives me a nasty look, and I regret my choice of words. “Sorry.”
“You’re trying to protect me.”
“I try to protect everyone.”
“Why me?”
I stare at him, then back at the sun spot. I can’t answer the question in a clear way, so I simply say, “You seem like you need help more than most.”
“You’re not wrong.”
I nod.
“I do need your help, Lin. But I can’t ask you for it. Can’t put you in Richterman’s sights like that. It isn’t your fight.”
“Hell it ain’t,” I correct him. “That creature is precisely my fight.”
“Again, here you are calling people creatures.”
“He’s an undead, blood-sucking demon. Least that’s my instinct on the man.”
Folger manages to pull his shoulders up along the wall and gives me a severe look. “Like Kate?”
I can’t meet his eyes.
“You think the same about her.” He gestures me closer, and I oblige before he reaches up and grips my shirt tighter than I figured he had the strength for. “Tell me. Have you tried to hurt my wife?”
Slowly, deliberately, I shake my head.
He releases me and winces as he spits out a long breath.
“Listen, Denton. There are things in the world that don’t make any kind of Godly sense. Evil things. These days, they seem to be crawling in every shadow, and everywhere the sun don’t shine. Value of human life done got itself good and cheap on us, which suits these creatures of walking evil just fine. Makes it easy to feed and move on. Lest people like Gil put a stop to it.”
“Man is perfectly capable of evil. No Devil required.”
“You ain’t seen what I seen. If you had, you wouldn’t be holed up in the frontier armed with a newspaper instead of a rifle.”
Folger swats my words away with a limp hand. “It’s the only weapon against a man like Richterman.”
“Richterman ain’t no man.”
“He is a man, Lin. Just like you and me. We’re all the same. We all have our trifle prejudices and passions.” He pulls a hand to his mouth to hock a gob of blood onto his wrist. He winces and continues, “We’re all capable of violence.”
“I can’t see you in a violent humor.” I laugh.
He lifts a finger with a serious brow. “But I am capable. Perhaps not as proficient as you or Richterman. Every man possesses the darkness. We can choose to fight it, or we can succumb to it. Indulge in it as Richterman has.” He waves his bloodied hand at the front room. “Chris succumbed to the darkness. His anger and his pride. It took him over and did this to us.” He pats the bandages on his side.
“Well, maybe you and I won’t never see eye to eye on this.”
“Perhaps, but that doesn’t mean I don’t value your passion, Lin.” After a space, he adds, “What now?”
“What indeed?” I answer. “I suppose I owe it to you at least to see you healthy. Then I’ve got a choice to make. I gotta get the silver back to Gil. If’n I do, I can ride back with a whole passel of Godpistols, clear out the nest of trouble that done dug itself into Gold Vein.”
“A band of gunmen? Sounds like something Richterman would do.”
“Or,” I continue, “I can stay. See you put together. Help you deal with that piece of work on your terms.”
His eyes drop slowly as he pulls his lip up at the corner. “I
want to trust you, Lin. The way you speak… you seem to intend well. But I hear violence between your words that leaves me unsettled.”
“The work is violent, but it is God’s work.”
He gives his head two weary shakes. “If you stay, you must promise. No killing Richterman.”
I bite the inside of my cheek.
“And Kate. You have to stop treating her―” He coughs enough to double him over. His face draws tight and pale.
“I promise. We’ll do this your way. Take Richterman down with your weapon of choice.” I smooth his shoulder and give it a squeeze. “And don’t you worry about your woman. She won’t come to harm at my hand.”
He opens one eye enough to blink it again.
He believes me.
If only I did.
he pain takes Folger, and he passes out after a short space. I cozy in some bedding beneath his sides and head, as much to situate the man in place as to offer him comfort. I watch him for a while, but the buzzing of flies needles at my attention. The Hitchens boy’s body is starting to take smell, and the flies will become unbearable soon enough.
I check Folger’s breathing and pull myself into the main room. Coyotes be damned, this gory piece of work is going outside. I manage the gnawed-on corpse several feet along the blood-slicked floorboards before it hangs up on dry wood. As I give it a jerk, the hole in my side gives me polite reminder it’s still here and bleeding. I have to work through the pain, but I get it done. I lay the body outside in the tall grass side by side with the two ghouls I dropped before.
I take a moment to inspect their faces. The dark-skinned fellow can’t be a local. Possibly a native by his dress. Magner’s cannibals are adding to their numbers, and they’re hitting plains folk outside of the valley. This is turning into some kind of plague.
I catch clean breaths between shots of death-stench as the breeze pushes air from the north. I cling to the front of Folger’s house, gaze moving along the horizon, watching the hills.
I had the Parson scared. He knew I could end him. And I swear to it, something human inside those eyes wanted me to do it. This business weighs on me, as does the mission. I have silver slugs in precious need of delivery.
Only, now I have a promise to keep. A promise to help Folger. A promise not to kill Richterman.
Or Folger’s wife.
I hated lying to Folger, but nothing about my botched attack on his wife would have made sense to the man. Hemlock stakes. Inhuman speed and strength. These aren’t words he’d find in his paper press. I can keep my promise for a while, at least. I’m seeing the ties that bind Folger to his wife. Shackles, perhaps. But these are not shackles I can knock off the man. He’ll be the one to let them fall when he’s ready to see the truth.
In the meanwhile, the sun is just rounding its arc in the sky, and I have to steady myself against the doorframe. My head’s feeling light. I reckon the wound’s bled me out more than I’d figured. I retire into the house and manage to right one of the overturned chairs before my stomach lurches. I take a heavy seat and catch my breath. Shortly, fear leeches into me again. Fear that the wound is worse than I’d hoped. Fear that I could lose consciousness and not wake up again.
Nothing can stop the sleep. It’s too strong, and at the present, I’m too weak to fight it. I angle myself with a foot against the front door before I nod off. At least if anything opens that door, I’ll awaken before it takes me.
In fact, it isn’t the door that wakes me, but the crash from beneath the floorboards. The first crash, anyhow. The second round of racket that smashes along the side of the house I reckon is the two cellar doors flying open at the hands of an angry strigger.
A whirlwind of parting grass sweeps to the front door, which swings open to frame the silhouette of Folger’s wife. Her black lace gown whips on the evening breeze, rising around her like wings of some avenging angel.
She finds me sitting amid the overturned furniture in the dark room. Her eyes are wide and fierce, but human. Her entire face is drawn into her more comely visage. She stands rigid, staring at me from the door, her arms bracing in the doorframe.
I take a second to realize I’m sitting in the remains of her home. I, the man whom this demon ordered off her property just this morning, also have her husband’s blood caked onto my hands and arms. I need to say something, or she will most assuredly rip my throat out.
Sucking in an even breath, I stand and nod to the bedroom door. “He’s in there.”
“Who is?” she whispers.
“Denton.”
Her arms drop, and she steps slowly into the house. “What has happened?” she asks as she moves through the darkness directly for the lantern tossed under furniture.
“That there is a question.”
She sneers as she cranks the flint on the side of the lamp, spilling pale orange light over her face. “So answer it.”
“The Hitchens boy rode in this morning while I was in town. All cocked up on hooch and packing a rifle.”
“Christopher?” she mutters, lifting a hand to her brow. “Why?”
“Denton and I saw the lot of them packing their goods and heading north, thanks to Richterman.”
She blinks furiously and shakes her head. “Where is he now?”
“The Hitchens boy? You stepped over his body coming in here. He put a round into Denton’s gut. Unfortunate for him, some of those hill cannibals came a-calling, took his leg and probably worse.”
Her face drifts dark, eyes blazing with shadows. “They were here?”
“Parson led a couple of ‘em down. They probably tracked me here.”
“Not you,” she mumbles as she moves for the bedroom door.
“Denton’s out. I checked his wound. It’s a clean shot, but he’s weak. He could use, well… your skills.”
She pauses at the door and gives me one more glance before stepping into the bedroom. The woman returns only a few seconds later. She kicks the legs of the overturned table, spinning it upright before brushing past my chair. That same smell of night-blooming jasmine rolls over me.
“He’s hurt pretty good,” I urge.
“He’s fine,” she replies as she drops to her hands and knees, snatching bundles of herbs that had fallen in the arbitrament between Hitchens and the Parson.
“I dressed the wound myself.”
“I see that.”
“The bullet ain’t stuck inside him, but gut shots ain’t never clean.”
“He will heal, Mister O’day.”
“Odell.”
She climbs to her feet with a clutch full of herbs and tosses me a disdainful eye. “Odell, then. He will survive.”
“You barely looked at him. I don’t think he’s―”
“I know my husband, Mister Odell.” She yanks a tiny stone bowl from over the stove and starts snatching off tips of herb to toss them in. “I can hear his pulse from here. I know the scent of his blood, and how much he’s lost.” She grabs a pestle and gives me a lift of the side of her brow. “You are the one whom I do not know.”
“What is that you’re doing?”
“Making a poultice.” She drops her chin and releases a long gob of sputum into the bowl.
“God,” I grumble.
She ignores me and blends the herbs with her spittle in the bowl, whipping her arm with fervor. As she turns to me, carrying the bowl around the table, I stiffen my spine.
“Wait, that ain’t going in any of my wounds.”
“Stop whining.” She sets the bowl on the table and reaches for my head.
I cringe reflexively, but she manages to jerk my chin forward and hold it still. Her floral aroma washes over me, and my muscles ease.
She rolls my head forward, inspecting my face.
“What are you doing now?” I whisper.
“Checking your eyes.” She releases a dry snicker. “Making sure your brain has not cracked worse than it already is.”
“Hilarious.”
She reaches for the bowl of herb-
spit, and I shake my head.
“I said you ain’t puttin’ that shit on me.”
“What is the problem?”
“You put your fluids in it. I seen what striggers can do to people. The way they turn living people into one of their own.”
She winces as I say “strigger.” Suppose she don’t much care for the word. Good.
With a sigh brimming with impatience, she shoves me back into the chair. The wound in my side punches pain into my gut, but I hold my face stony.
“It has already been on you. I dressed your snakebite, remember? So if you do not want to catch fever, you will stop your lips from making annoying noises and hold still.”
I brace myself as she slices through my dressings with a long-clawed finger. She crouches down and jerks me aside, poking at the entry and exit wounds. With an unsatisfied grunt, she begins smearing the goop over my wounds. Stings at first, but cools quick the way your mouth chills when chewing a mint leaf.
“It won’t turn you,” she mumbles. “It takes far more work than just this. And almost never worth it.”
“That why you ain’t turned Denton?”
She pauses and gives me a deadly look from my side before continuing. “Denton has enough problems.”
“It’s gotta be hard as Hell playing a regular wife for him.”
“You do not know the half of it. Why are you making our lives your business, Mister Odell? I thought I told you to leave this place.”
“I was in the process, had myself pointed west. Got a feeling, I suppose. A feeling Denton needed me.”
“Well, I consider your debt to him repaid.” She presses her hand against the slathered wounds, and I barely feel it. She stands and wipes her hands on a length of muslin she snatches from an overturned chair. “At sunrise, you leave.”
“Well, that’s done got a bit complicated.”
“Then uncomplicate it.”
“I promised your man I’d stay, help him out with Richterman.”
Her gaze bores holes through my skull. “Unnecessary.”
“You think so? You don’t think Richterman’s going to settle accounts with Denton, eventually?”
“I do not.”
“Listen to me. I know what Richterman is.”
