by Lila Bowen
Looking up at the clouds, he figured he might as well stop here as anywhere else. Worst thing he could do, really, would be to stumble into the railroad camp and take a lucky shot to the chest from a drunk feller. This part of Durango was unfamiliar and strange to him, with altogether too much green and not nearly enough mountains and crags and tablelands. Rhett was accustomed to orange. Orange dust, orange rocks, orange sunsets. But here, the trees were taller than him, and some of the damn things had actual leaves. He’d wandered away from the stream, angrily walking in the direction where he knew the railroad camp lay, following the tug behind his belly button, but he had no way of knowing where he was compared to where it was, distance-wise.
And, yes, he’d half hoped Sam would come barreling after him and drag him back to the campfire. But…Sam had done no such thing. Probably because he was too disgusted by what his friend had been doing with his other friend while he slept innocently a few paces away.
“Hellfire,” Rhett muttered.
He felt lost in every way.
With mountains, a man knew where he stood. There was something to put your back against, with a mountain. Out here, it was just piddly trees, and they all looked alike. Rhett tried sitting with his back against one and then another, but they were both equally uncomfortable. And the ground was almost…wet.
“I hate trees,” he told them.
The trees did not respond, so Rhett kept walking. Finally, he just found a pillow-sized rock and flopped down on his back.
“This place is too horrible for rattlers,” he told the clouds. “No nice, comfortable caves. No flat, sun-warmed boulders. Just…” He dug his hand into the ground and pulled it up. “Dirt. Sandy dirt. To hell with Lamartine and to hell with Major Eugene Haskell and to hell with Earl Donkey Boy O’Bannon.”
But even cussing all the malcontents on his list didn’t make him feel better. Finally, sick of himself and his current situation, he stripped, turned into a bird, fluffed his feathers, and went to sleep on a pile of his own clothes, blessedly free of such sticky things as thoughts and feelings and especially guilt.
The bird startled awake and leaped to its taloned feet, beak already open in readiness. Just out of striking range sat a thing. The bird’s brain said DANGEROUS and then it said NOT EDIBLE and then it said GODDAMN COYOTE DAN.
The thing dropped the leather bundle in its mouth, became a man, and purposefully turned his back to the bird. In response, the bird turned back into Rhett Walker and stood. Rhett yanked his shirt—well, Dan’s blue shirt—over his head, glad it covered him down to his knees.
“Come to wish me well, Dan?” he said.
“When you stormed off, you forgot the witch’s powder. Without it, Trevisan’s camp won’t see you for a monster and hire you.” Dan held out a small pouch quite similar to the one in which Rhett had previously carried his treasures.
Rhett took it, hefting the weight and feeling the contents squish within.
“The book said nothing of it, so I don’t know what it is or the best way to use it, but it seemed to work, whatever you did last time. Winifred made the pouch in our tribe’s traditional way, so if you say it carries your mother’s ashes, anyone familiar with our people will neither question you nor take it away.”
“And if they ain’t familiar with your ways?”
“Then you do your best to act upset and sad and like taking it away would break your heart and make you a bad worker with a bigger grudge than usual.”
Rhett pulled open the drawstring on the bag. The powder inside did look like fine ashes. He pressed the tip of his pinky in it and looked up at Dan. “Anything?”
Dan cocked his head. “No.”
With a shrug, Rhett touched the tip of his pinky to his tongue and swallowed the grit of the fine powder, which tasted nothing like ashes. When he looked up again, Dan smiled and nodded.
“That eye is something else.”
“Guess having one only makes me half as ugly, huh?”
Dan sighed that sigh that said he was right consternated. “Rhett, you are the Shadow. You’re meant to be deadly, not beautiful.”
“Don’t mince words, friend.” Rhett slipped the bag’s leather tie around his neck, turning away so Dan wouldn’t see how much that smarted. “Thanks for the ugly powder, I guess.”
“I didn’t take you for the vain type.”
“Well, maybe I am. Maybe you don’t know what type I am.”
“I’ve been watching you for a long time. I have a good sense of what type you are. And my sister must like the look of you enough.”
Rhett snorted at that. “I reckon one person feels about the same as another when you’re lonely in the dark.”
“Then you haven’t touched many people.”
Turning his back, Rhett stepped into his britches, pulled on his socks and boots. For now, the shirt hid his chest, and he wouldn’t let Dan witness the personal process of wrapping it down with the long sheet of muslin balled in his fist.
“Why do you always got to be throwing such things in my face? No, Dan, I haven’t much felt a kind touch in my young years.”
“Winifred knows who you are. What you are. She welcomes the feel of you.”
“She might be thinking about somebody else.”
Even Rhett could feel the twinge of hurt in those words, a sentiment he’d taken pains to keep to himself.
Dan gave a small chuckle. “Whose name does she call when you touch her?”
“I don’t know, Dan. I don’t speak your language.”
The morning air trembled, and Rhett didn’t look up.
“The word she says is Shadow, Rhett. She knows well enough who she’s touching.”
Rhett could only nod at the gently spoken words, his throat working as he tried to swallow down that knowledge. He’d wondered—hell, he’d worried. But now relief flooded him. He didn’t love Winifred, and he didn’t want Winifred to love him, not like that. He knew that much. But he still cared for her and he still wanted to be wanted for himself, to know that he wasn’t being used randomly, just a pile of skin and clever, calloused fingers.
“Well, I reckon I knew that,” he said.
When he looked up, Dan was grinning. “Oh, I figured you did.”
“So I got my powder…” Rhett turned to stare at the black smoke already riding the morning breeze. “Reckon I should go.”
“We need to discuss communication,” Dan started.
“I prefer it when you don’t talk at all.”
At that, Dan laughed for real. “I know. But if you get into a tight spot, you might wish to call for reinforcements.”
“Haskell’s not going to help. You know that.”
“I do. But you’ve got three friends who are decent shots, two of whom are hard to kill.”
“And the donkey could probably kick somebody in a tender place.”
“Possibly.”
“You hate him, too?”
Dan smiled. “He’s rude, Rhett. Why must everyone be so rude?”
Rhett gave a rare chuckle. “Let’s hear your plan, then, while we’re agreeing on things. But keep it quick. I got to piss.”
“I’ll follow you today—in coyote form,” he added before Rhett could protest. “We’ll find a lonely spot between scouts, maybe near the privy. If you have a problem, you find three big stones and build a little house, like this.” Dan scrabbled around until he’d found three flattish stones and stacked them, two on the bottom and one on top. “That’s the signal. You hit the latrine the next day, and I’ll try to get close enough to talk. If it’s really bad, so bad you need us to come riding in with our guns out, you stack two rocks on top.” He added another rock. “And if, for some reason, you can’t get far enough away to do that, just find a way to make this symbol. Use a stick to scratch it in the dirt, or carve it onto a tree. That work for you?”
“I reckon it will,” Rhett said, swearing he’d never make that symbol for any reason.
Dan held out his hand. “Then good l
uck, my friend.”
“You keep ’em all safe while I’m gone, Dan.”
Rhett shook his hand, enjoying the manly punishment of their mutually squeezing grip. Then he nodded, picked up the doctor’s bag, kicked over the pile of stones, and headed out.
He’d never let Dan know it, but hearing the coyote trot along behind him was almost like walking with a good friend. He liked Dan just fine when the feller couldn’t talk.
The smell and the noise came all at once, and Rhett understood well enough when Dan made a sad, whining noise.
“Shit and smoke,” Rhett murmured. “It’s gonna be a pleasure of a time.”
They were in what was left of a forest that had been logged within an inch of its life. Nothing bigger around than Rhett’s wrist was left, the stumps of the bigger trees squatting sadly among their plucky lessers. The smaller trees clacked together in the early autumn wind, their still-green leaves rustling and dropping every so often to the ground like they were in a fight to see who could die first. The birds were mostly gone, and Rhett longed for the heavy tug of his gun belt around his hips.
A louder yip caught Rhett’s attention, and he turned to find Dan sitting by an especially large stump, his tail tucked and his ears back. He nudged the stump with his nose and stared hard at Rhett with those uncanny eyes. Rhett noticed that a big chunk of the coyote’s ear was missing.
“Sure. This forest. That stump. Or any stump nearby. A pile of little rocks. I got it.”
Dan glared for a moment more.
“I said I got it!” Rhett flapped his hand, but Dan didn’t budge. The coyote tilted his head sideways and slowly and deliberately closed his left eye.
Rhett almost laughed, it looked so comical. Then he realized what Dan was trying to tell him. “Oh, more powder. Good point. You win that one, Dan.” The coyote nodded and let his tongue flap out, and Rhett reached into the bag around his neck and touched a dab to his tongue. “You think more, maybe? Just to be sure?” The coyote nodded. “Fine. Fine. Now git!” And Dan shook his coyote head, his clipped ear flapping, and ran off.
For the first time since he’d leaped off a mountain and become a senseless bird, back before Earl, Rhett was wholly alone, and it was both a relief and a curse. He’d learned, since leaving Mam and Pap, that being alone could be a hell of a pleasant thing, with no responsibilities and no getting beaten for not upholding them. But he’d also grown accustomed to the pleasant feel of living among a group of men—and Winifred, damn her. The joshing, the insults, the jostling and thumps on the back, the burps and farts and spitting and roughhousing to let off steam. Most keenly, though, he missed the feeling of knowing he was surrounded by fighting men, men bristling with guns and knives, ready to back a feller up, even when they didn’t know or like him that well.
Rhett reckoned that where he was going, he’d have a hard time finding a group that would accept him as readily as Monty and the Double TK Ranch or the Captain and his Rangers. Still, he was going to walk in like he wanted to be there, so he wrapped his chest tightly in muslin armor, picked up the doctor’s bag, lowered his shoulders, stuck out his chin and headed for the ruckus like he couldn’t wait to get to work.
As he emerged from what was left of the woods, he tried to puzzle out what he was seeing. Even though he’d flown over this very spot, he’d somehow been expecting a railroad and an orderly line of men hammering at it. He’d thought a train was a couple of big boxes with wheels rolling around. What he wasn’t expecting was an entire goddamn town, one bustling with activity and enough people to make him downright twitchy. There were tents everywhere, the canvas stained with mud and muck. Pigs and horses and chickens were corralled or roaming around or tied up, and men of all colors and types did work that Rhett found mystifying. The scents of manure and burning coal and unhappy flesh all crowded together like bad stew under brewing storm clouds.
“You lost?” a man asked.
Rhett looked up, unsure whether to smile or frown. He’d been told that his smiles could look more like he was about to bite somebody, the first time he met them. The feller in question was mostly white under a face full of dirt and soot, his clothes likewise stained the color of wet ashes. The disgust on his face suggested he was hoping Rhett was, in fact, lost, and the man could beat him to a pulp and steal whatever goods he had on him.
“Just looking for work,” he said, making his eye hard and his voice rough.
The man stuck a thumb toward a row of tents.
“See Griswold. Tent says Foreman.” The man made like he would spit but didn’t. “Don’t got no letters, do you? Can you count, at least? Third tent from the left.” Shaking his head, he walked off. Rhett couldn’t help noticing the man wore no weapons, which struck him as downright pitiful. If a white man couldn’t carry his guns, what was the point of being white?
Rhett’s boots squelched in mud as he walked toward the tent the man had indicated. There was something a little like a road, although it was beat to hell and half made of manure. The tent openings facing it were mostly closed, but the third one was tied open with lettering above it. Inside, a surly-looking old dwarf sat at a small desk, and Rhett walked toward him, preparing his speech.
“Hey, lad! There’s a line!”
Well, hellfire. Rhett hadn’t noticed the group of slightly cleaner men lined up along the thoroughfare.
“Sorry,” he muttered, going to stand in back.
The men ahead of him grumbled, all white and mostly Irish, from the sound of it. Like a whole crew of Earls, which was just too much for Rhett.
“Any of you fellers know a Shaunie O’Bannon?” he asked.
“Piss right off,” one said.
He was quieter after that.
As Rhett waited, he tried to put his finger on what was so peculiar about the camp, and then it hit him: It was all one big belly wobble. He hadn’t really noticed it as he approached because it was so all-encompassing—like walking in fog. Every man here was a monster of some sort. It didn’t pay to look strange men in the eyes, but he suspected that doing so would reveal rectangular pupils like Earl’s and all sorts of other strange eyeballs that were anything but human. And when they looked at him, thanks to Prospera’s powder, they’d see one red-and-yellow bird eye, sharp and canny. They might not like him, but in a way, he was one of them. A monster. The feeling was both comforting and scary.
If they really didn’t like him, they knew exactly how to kill him.
And he likewise knew where to aim if he wanted them dead, but he had neither guns nor knives, and stout twigs were hard to come by when the forest had been stripped bare. For all of his strength as the Shadow, Rhett felt downright vulnerable. And he didn’t like it.
The noise of the camp was something, too. Sounded like they had a whole herd of blacksmiths, and about a million pickaxes. Horses whinnied and water sloshed and men hollered and somewhere, up ahead, a group of men sang a bawdy song together about some lady who was going to feed them dinner, the words breathless and chanted in time with their work. The line seemed to go on for hours, the hot sun beating down and the stink rising up off the mud. Rhett took a step forward, from time to time, but it all blurred together.
Too damn much, it was, rubbing up against his elbows.
“Son!”
Rhett looked up. The old dwarf at the little table was staring at him, one hand out.
“What’s it take, an invitation from the queen?”
“Sorry,” Rhett said as he hurried into the tent and sat on the low stool, feeling it sink into the muck under his weight.
“Sorry, sir,” the feller said. “You here for work, boy?”
“Yes, sir.” The word tasted like poison, but Rhett said it, and he didn’t even sneer.
“What’s your name?”
Rhett had to swallow before he answered. They hadn’t discussed this part. But since Haskell knew the last name he’d traveled under, and since his first alias was probably wanted for murder back west…
“Ned Hennes
sy.”
The dwarf raised a bushy eyebrow. “You don’t look like a Ned.”
“If I ever find my daddy’s grave, I’ll dig him up and tell him that.”
Barking a laugh, the dwarf scribbled in a book. “You worked in a camp before, Ned?”
The dwarf wore Confederate gray and had an accent much like Sam’s. Same as the people of Burlesville, he was short and stocky and bald as an egg, his long beard tucked into his jacket to keep it out of the muck. His pince-nez had slid down his sweaty nose, and his eyes were hard and gray.
“No, sir. Worked under a sawbones.” Rhett held up the bag. “Brought his kit.”
“And what happened to your sawbones?”
“Lobos got him. He was human. I couldn’t save him.”
“How’d you escape?”
It was Rhett’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “By being harder to kill.”
“What are your skills?”
Rhett sighed. “Breaking broncs. Good with horses. Can help a sawbones. Got a strong stomach for that sort of thing.”
“Let me rephrase that, son. Can you swing a pickax?”
“I don’t mind hard work. But my true talents are—”
“Mr. Trevisan don’t run a talent show. He’s building a railroad. And you’re not white. So the best you can hope for is to be the sort of strong, silent type who can follow directions and keep working.”
Rhett nodded. “I reckon I can do that.”
The dwarf wrote something on a slip of paper and handed it to Rhett. “Your walking boss is Mr. Shelton. You can start on the cut line after lunch. First, you’ll report to the physical evaluation tent. You take a right and head all the way down the thoroughfare, and you’ll see it.”
“What the hell’s a physical evaluation tent?” Rhett asked.
The dwarf put a finger to the side of his nose and winked. “You’ll see, Ned. You’ll see.”
Chapter
19
Outside the tent, Rhett couldn’t help but feel like he’d been swindled somehow. The only other job interviews he’d experienced had involved breaking a bronc and surviving Delgado’s beans, but he would’ve preferred either activity to visiting whatever the hell a physical evaluation tent was.
