Dust Devils

by Janz, Jonathan

  She went on with her separating. Cody was stunned to find tears blurring his eyes. Of all the emotions he wanted to feel right now, sadness was the one he desired least, but the pain deepened, the lump in his throat so large and painful he’d soon gag on it.

  “They don’t love you,” he said to her, but if she heard him she made no sign. He watched her heft a handful of jewelry from the top drawer and place it atop the dresser. He was surprised at the amount of it and only recognized one piece—the cameo brooch given to her by his grandmother this past Christmas. His grandma had died in March, and to his knowledge this was the only remnant of the woman in the house despite how close Cody had been to her.

  Cody was finally able to sit up. He propped onto his elbows and said the first thing that popped into his mind. “Grandma wouldn’t have given you that brooch had she known what kind of person you are.”

  “And just what kind of person is that?” a voice asked from the doorway.

  Cody whirled, his heart instantly thudding.

  Billy Horton leaned against the doorjamb, his brown porkpie hat tipped back arrogantly.

  Cody sensed Angela’s eyes on him and told himself to keep steady, to damn well show this asshole what happened when a man wronged Cody Wilson.

  “The kind of person Angela is,” Cody said in a voice that shook, “is gullible. The type of person who’ll forsake her vows and run off with the likes of you in the hope she can have an easier life.”

  Horton glanced at Angela with innocent surprise, then returned his gaze to Cody. “We ain’t promised her anything, Wilson. She wants to take up with us. And as far as vows go, I’d say you’re the one hasn’t lived up to your end. You been married how long?”

  “Three years,” Cody said, though his throat had gone so dry his voice came out in a croak.

  Horton whistled softly. “Three years and you ain’t got her with child? Sounds to me like you’ve got problems performing your marital duties.”

  Buried under the avalanche of self-loathing and outrage, Cody’s reason pleaded with him to not climb out of bed, pleaded with him not to stride over to where Horton stood to take a swing at the man. That’s exactly what Cody did. Ignoring the tempest of nausea and dizziness that enveloped him, Cody reared back and swung at Horton. So great was Cody’s disorientation and so poor was his balance that the blow would have done little damage even had it connected. Horton dodged it easily, but rather than striking back at Cody, the muscular actor gave him an effortless shove in the middle of the back. It was enough to send Cody sprawling on the floor. Furious and close to puking, Cody pushed to his hands and knees, but before he could stand, Horton booted him squarely in the buttocks and sent him skidding forward on his chin. While the kick was humiliating, it was his skinned jaw that stung the worst. But Cody couldn’t let on he was hurt, couldn’t allow this to be the end of it.

  He swayed to his feet and spun, meaning to catch Horton off guard. The man was ready for him. The haymaker Horton struck Cody lifted him a foot off the ground and hurled him backward like a sack of meal.

  Dumbfounded and sure now he was going to vomit, Cody rolled onto his back and tried to rise one last time. But Horton’s boot came down on his chest, the bastard grinning down at Cody in triumph. “Now I’m goin’ on in there to fuck your wife some more. You’ll have to wait out here awhile ’cause I don’t do my business as quickly as you.” Horton shook his head, his grin broadening. “Way Angela squeals when one of us sticks it to her…it musta been a long time since she’s been pleasured by a real man.”

  And with that, Horton had lifted his boot and stomped on Cody’s face.

  It was some time later that Cody awoke to find Horton still riding his wife.

  Chapter Nine

  Cody first distinguished the buildings in the distance just before dawn and worried they’d get to Mesquite too early to find help. He imagined riding down the main thoroughfare in ghostly silence while Willet’s situation grew gradually worse, then shunted the image away.

  But the town’s closeness proved an illusion, and it was actually well after dawn that they pulled even with the first building, a morose-looking outpost that was simply labeled BROGANS. Cody didn’t know if that meant they sold clothing or the owner was named Brogan, but it didn’t matter. They had to locate a doctor.

  The boy’s voice shattered the stillness of the morning. “Where’s Rusty?”

  Cody started, glanced down at Willet and noticed the boy’s eyes were still closed. He’d just about made up his mind to ignore Willet, when the boy repeated, with more insistence this time, “Where’s Rusty?”

  “You talkin’ in your sleep, kid?”

  “Goddammit,” Willet muttered, his voice slurry. “I ain’t sleepin’. Rusty’s my daddy’s sorrel. I rode him to the valley after those bastards.”

  Cody suppressed an urge to slap himself in the forehead. Things had been so horribly confused back when he and Willet first met that he hadn’t even considered how the boy had arrived at that godforsaken valley.

  “Where’d you tether him?” Cody asked.

  “’Bout a quarter-mile from that rolling coffin.”

  It took Cody a few seconds to realize Willet was referring to the coach the devils traveled in. It was large and festooned with gilded letters and black paint and all sorts of fancy scrollwork, but the more Cody thought about it, the more he thought Willet’s comparison apt. If the coach wasn’t the shape of a coffin, its sensual curves and obsidian exterior did remind Cody somewhat of death.

  Cody shook off the thought. “I don’t know what happened to your horse, Willet. There wasn’t time—”

  He cut off abruptly when Willet’s body jerked and went rigid, the slender tendons in the kid’s neck straining against the pain. Cody put his hands over the kid’s shoulders to ensure he wouldn’t buck sideways off the mare. Willet’s back was as stiff and ungiving as a harrow blade.

  “Willet?” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “Hey, can you tell me what’s wrong?”

  But before the boy could speak, Willet slumped forward onto the mare’s neck, unconscious.

  Oh hell, Cody thought. He had no idea what a physical reaction like the one he’d just witnessed might mean, but he knew it couldn’t portend anything good. Without ruminating on it further, he spurred Sally forward and rode toward town as hard as he could without spilling Willet out of the saddle. They passed a few scattered dwellings, ramshackle hovels that looked more likely to burn down or blow away than they did to remain standing another six months. These gave way to sturdier structures, ranch-style wooden ones and a couple built of stone. The business district came next. It wasn’t much, just a smattering of two-story buildings spread out over four blocks, but one of them had a sign that simply read PHYSICIAN. Taking care not to jostle Willet too much, Cody guided Sally toward the nearest hitching post, dismounted and did his best to tie the old girl to the post before she could get surly and hurl the boy off.

  Cody got under Willet and gathered the boy into his arms. Before he pivoted to cross the street toward the doctor’s office, Cody’s gaze happened upon a single word carved into the side of the wooden two-story building looming over the hitching post. The word, painted in a deep wine color, was MARGUERITE’S. Cody turned toward the road, and seeing that a pair of riders had moved past, he bore Willet toward the doctor’s office.

  As they neared the door, Cody wondered how he’d knock with both his arms full of Willet. But before he could think about it further, an older man of medium height appeared in the doorway. The man certainly looked like a doctor with his snowy mustache and wiry spectacles. The clothes were plain, but the jaunty bowler he wore and the slight paunch in his midsection spoke of a man who’d enjoyed more than his share of monetary success.

  “I’ve got an injured boy here,” Cody said.

  The doctor stood in the doorway but made no move to allow them in. Even in the ashen early morning light, Cody could see how pale the man’s blue eyes were, like memories
of younger days.

  Willet was growing heavy in Cody’s arms. Standing there that way, cradling this twelve-year-old kid the way he was, Cody felt like a groom attempting to carry his wife over the threshold of their new home, only to find he’s forgotten the key to the front door.

  Cody returned the doctor’s inscrutable gaze. “You gotta help us, sir.”

  The old doctor eyed him impassively.

  Cody licked his lips, glanced down at Willet. “He’s my brother. He got shot last night, and now he’s talking crazy.”

  The doctor continued appraising him, and Cody pictured himself as this man must be seeing him: dark hollows for eyes due to sleep deprivation, a week’s growth of beard, clothes so draggled that he looked like an indigent.

  But the old man surprised him by giving a barely perceptible nod and receding into the building. Taking care not to bang Willet’s head against the jamb, Cody hurried after the old man and, without being invited, laid Willet on a table in the dim room’s center. The doctor removed his hat and began to study Willet’s leg.

  “His pants are damp,” the doctor said.

  Cody steeled himself for a reproach.

  The doctor paused, his bushy white mustache hovering over his open mouth like a fresh dump of snow, and fixed Cody with his light blue eyes. “How’d they get wet?”

  “I rinsed his leg in the river.”

  When the doctor only continued watching him with a look that might have been disdain or perhaps disbelief, Cody went on, “My dad always said it was best to wash out wounds. I thought I was helping the boy.”

  Without comment, the doctor resumed his examination of Willet’s leg. The air in the small room felt thick with accusation. Cody longed to be outside, yet that would mean leaving Willet in here with this sullen old man.

  The doctor produced a large pair of shears and began slicing through the thick wool of Willet’s pant leg.

  “Should we just take ‘em off?” Cody suggested.

  “Got to make sure there aren’t other wounds to worry about on the leg,” the doctor said. “Could be we’ll start them leaking again.”

  “He just got hit in the one place,” Cody said, but the doctor ignored him, continued cutting right on up to the boy’s upper thigh. Cody had a vague worry about what the kid would wear now that his one pair of pants were ruined, but he pushed away the thought. First things first. He had to make sure Willet’s leg was all right before he worried about the kid’s wardrobe.

  Might not even need pants with two legs, a cruel voice whispered.

  Shut the hell up, Cody thought and stared grimly out the window. The view of the sky was obstructed by the buildings across the street, but judging from the number of passersby outside it had to be getting on toward seven o’clock.

  That was still a long time before he could get a drink. God, he’d never wanted one so badly in his life.

  Cody remembered the two-story building across the street. “What’s Marguerite’s?”

  The doctor was pinching the skin around Willet’s wound, the half-conscious boy groaning at the inspection. “It’s a saloon,” the doctor said without looking up. The thumbs and index fingers continued their squeezing, one time actually expressing a fresh dribble of blood along the rim of Willet’s wound. Cody repressed an urge to jerk the man’s wrinkled fingers away, to tell him to take it the hell easy, the kid had been through enough.

  Mercifully, the doctor’s hands went away. Willet sighed as the ministrations came to an end. Cody relaxed too.

  The doctor went over to a bowl of water and plunged his hands inside. As he washed them, Cody became aware of just how thirsty he was, and if he was thirsty he couldn’t imagine how poor Willet must feel. Without asking, he went over to the wooden water barrel by the door and ladled a bit into a filmy glass. He went to the boy, raised his head as gently as he could and brought the glass to Willet’s lips.

  “I wouldn’t…” the doctor began, but Willet responded the way Cody knew he would, the thin, cracked lips opening and sipping steadily at the glass rim. Out of the corner of his eye, Cody could see the doctor toweling off his hands, watching as Cody set the glass aside and used the sleeve of his shirt to wipe off Willet’s mouth. When Cody laid the boy’s head again on the folded blanket and glanced up at the doctor, something about the man seemed to soften.

  He eyed Cody speculatively. “You two don’t look like brothers.”

  Though Cody had expected this, he still didn’t know how to respond. He hesitated a moment, said, “I lied about that. He’s just someone I met.”

  The doctor reached up, brought a bottle of pills off a shelf. “You the one who put that hole in his leg?”

  “Do I look like I’d do that?”

  “Then maybe you’re the reason why it’s there. You get him shot?”

  Cody chest tightened. “No.”

  The doctor unscrewed the lid off the bottle, shook out a couple large white pills. “No,” he said, coming back to where Cody stood over Willet. “You don’t seem the type.”

  The doctor put a hand under Willet’s muddy neck. “Help me get him up,” he said.

  Cody wrapped an arm around the boy’s back and raised him to a sitting position.

  “You hear me, son?” the doctor said into Willet’s ear.

  Willet only moaned.

  “I need to give you something for your wound,” the doctor said. “If I put a pill in your mouth, can you swallow it?”

  The faintest of nods. The doctor glanced at Cody, who held Willet steady. The old man placed a pill inside Willet’s barely parted lips. Then the doctor brought the glass up again, waited for Willet to get the pill down. After repeating the process, the doctor nodded at Cody, who eased Willet onto the table.

  “One’ll help him sleep,” the doctor said. “The other will help with infection.”

  The doctor produced a small amber vial of liquid. He used swabs to dab it onto the wound.

  Cody wrinkled his nose. “What is that stuff?”

  “Creosote,” the doctor said, eyes narrowed in concentration.

  “Isn’t that what they use to finish wood?”

  The doctor chuckled softly. “There are different kinds. This one serves as an antiseptic and prevents necrosis if used early enough.”

  “Necrosis?” Cody said. “Is that what I—”

  “Gangrene,” the doctor said. “But you won’t have to worry about that. I suspect you got him here in plenty of time.”

  Cody relaxed a little. Willet’s wan face looked like a death mask in the sallow morning light. But the doctor didn’t seem worried. And if the doctor wasn’t worried, Cody reasoned, he shouldn’t be either.

  The doc doesn’t care about Willet though, the cynical voice reminded him. You do.

  On the heels of that came another, more unwelcome thought, one that Cody had a hard time shaking. As the doctor unbuckled Willet’s trousers, Cody said, “I don’t have much money.”

  The doctor threw a nod down at Willet. “Help me, would you?”

  Cody joined the doctor in taking down the boy’s ruined pants. Without asking, the doctor balled them up and tossed them into a wicker wastebasket. The dingy underwear the boy wore made Willet seem more pathetic than ever. The old man took a brown woolen blanket off a shelf and covered Willet with it.

  “Best if you got some sleep,” the doctor said to Cody. “You’ve been wounded too.”

  Cody blinked at him. He’d been sure the man hadn’t noticed the hole in his own trousers, but apparently the pale blue eyes were sharper than they let on.

  “I’m okay,” he said, but the doctor was bending and reaching under the examination table. Standing with a slight wince, the doc dragged out a shabby little cot that nonetheless beckoned to Cody like a newly sewn featherbed.

  “You can stay with him long as you need to,” the doctor said, going toward the door. He paused, nodded at a cabinet. “You need ’em, there’re more blankets there.”

  The doctor went over to the same bo
ttle he’d used earlier, shook out a couple more tablets and handed them to Cody. “You know where the water is,” the doctor said. “Speaking of that, I’ll water your horse while you rest.”

  The tears in Cody’s eyes surprised him. God, he was cracking up.

  “Anything else you need?” the doctor asked, the pale blue eyes not noticing or maybe pretending not to notice the tears in Cody’s own.

  “No,” Cody said, averting his eyes and running a hand through his greasy hair. “I’m indebted.”

  He sniffed, wiped his nose with the back of a hand. His breath came in short, husky intakes. When he was certain the man had gone, he looked up again, but the doctor was still moored to his spot by the door. The old man’s eyes were on a timepiece he’d taken out and stood polishing with a red rag.

  “Those men,” the doctor said, huffing hot breath onto the watch’s glass face. “The ones shot you and the boy.”

  Cody went cold all over. “What about ’em?”

  Another huff of hot air. Even from this distance Cody could see the glass fog, the red rag describing brisk revolutions over the timepiece. “They apt to follow you two?”

  Cody thought about it. Horton dead. One of the twins dead too. Penders smashed like an egg someone dropped. That left Price and the remaining Seneslav twin.

  “They’ll come,” Cody said. “But I wouldn’t count on ’em until nightfall.”

  “Any reason for them to wait so long?”

  Cody waited a long time before replying. A still inchoate suspicion was forming somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind. At length he said, “They just seem to like the dark better.”

  The pale blue eyes fastened on his. Then, without another word, the doctor went out.

  Cody awoke with a start. Despite the thunderbolt of pain in his calf, he managed to sit up and gaze out the window. It didn’t appear as though much time had passed. Midmorning at the latest, maybe not even nine o’clock. His stomach clenched angrily. He imagined it in there, a shriveled, pulsing pink raisin. If he didn’t get something in it soon, he’d pass out, and that sure as hell wouldn’t do. If he and Willet were both unconscious when the devils rode in…