Malice of Crows

by Lila Bowen

  Sometime in the long, dark night, Rhett fell asleep in the Captain’s bed.

  When he woke up in the morning, the Captain was dead, his gnarled fingers gone cold in Rhett’s hand.

  Rhett had to get himself back together. The new Captain of the Durango Rangers Las Moras Outpost couldn’t be seen like this, with sobs jerking his body as he cried like a goddamn baby. He shook his bloodless fingers loose from the Captain’s stiff fist and closed the old man’s sightless eyes and went to stare at himself in a small, cracked mirror hanging over a ewer beside a man’s shaving supplies. Rhett’s face was gaunt, but it always had been. His eye was red from crying with a dark purple circle underneath from constantly troubled sleep, and his hair was starting to get spiky as it grew out. He found his hat on the floor and resettled it, mashing it down. He flicked water from the ewer onto his face, but it didn’t do a damn thing. His mouth kept trembling, so he focused on firming it up. He straightened his shirt and vest, settled his gun belt at the right angle, and adjusted his kerchief over his gone eye.

  The feller glaring back from the mirror didn’t look one goddamn jot like a Captain, no matter what the badge said.

  Although it hurt to do so, he looked at the Captain, his Captain, so small and shriveled in the bed. What about the man had given him such a respectable and imposing visage? Rhett couldn’t grow facial hair, so that was out. He wasn’t much for smoking, so that wouldn’t work, either. But the Captain had worn a nice vest and a necktie, so Rhett murmured his apologies and dug a tie out of the heap of cloth draped over a chest. It slightly choked him, but he puffed out his chest and felt a little better. He could never be as great as the Captain had been, so he would have to be the best damn Captain he, Rhett Walker, could be.

  Picking up the Captain’s well-known Henry repeating rifle and slinging it over his shoulder as the Captain often had, Rhett took a deep breath and put his palm against the door to the hallway. The noises of the company at breakfast had been building all along, while Rhett privately grieved and prepared himself. But when he pushed the door open and walked down the hall, every boot step echoing, all the men of the Las Moras company stopped their eating and jawing to stare. Rhett wouldn’t allow himself to quake or cave in or apologize or do anything that showed cowardice or an unCaptainish lack of confidence.

  Chin up, mouth grimly set, the Captain’s Henry in hand, he said, “I regret to inform you-all that our great Captain has passed in the night. He went quiet-like. Peaceful. I reckon he was asleep. I know I was. And I assure you that I will do my level best to lead this outpost of the Durango Rangers in his name and spirit, according to his wishes.”

  Rhett reckoned it was the best speech he’d ever made or would make in his life, and he felt pretty good about it up until Jiddy stood, chair slamming back on the wood floor behind him with a clatter.

  “That man killed the Captain!” he shouted.

  Rhett was surprised as hell to see that Jiddy was pointing at him.

  “Me? Hell no! You can ask the doc, Jiddy. The Captain… he was a great man, but he was human. He couldn’t make it through. The wounds were too much. You can’t think I would… that I… Hell. C’mon, Jiddy. Even you ain’t that dumb.”

  Jiddy pulled his revolver and aimed it at Rhett’s heart. “You calling me a liar?”

  “No, fool. I’m calling you dumb.”

  Jiddy pulled the trigger, and Rhett felt the hot punch of a bullet in his arm, grateful that the other man was as bad a shot as Rhett had always suspected him of being.

  Every man stood. Every hand held a weapon. The air in the room went still and thick enough to bite. Rhett found Sam, Dan, Winifred, and Earl bunched together at one end of the table, just as armed and angry as the rest of the Rangers, most of whom were white and human. Rhett did not reckon himself a smart man, but he also figured intelligence wasn’t what would get an outnumbered crew out of a situation like this one.

  “You were there last night when the Captain declared Rhett his successor,” Dan said in a level, matter-of-fact voice. “Jiddy has just shot the acting Captain. Let’s see a show of hands if you think Jiddy was right to do so.”

  Jiddy glared around the room, and hands went up one by one. Both of the Scarsdales, Jiddy himself, and at least half of the remaining fellers. It was a pretty even split.

  “Well, then,” Dan said, and quick as a blink, he reached into the holster of the man beside him, whipped out the feller’s pistol, and shot Jiddy in the chest.

  Rhett flung up the Captain’s Henry and popped off two shots at Virgil and Milo Scarsdale before he was dragged to the ground as a hail of bullets whispered overhead. It was Winifred who had pinned him, and she clambered off him and whispered, “Go for feet and knees. Most of them are human.” She had a knife in hand, and she slammed it down into the boot of the nearest man, who screamed and fell over blubbering like a baby.

  Gunshots peppered the air and pinged off the wood walls. Cries of rage and pain gulped and squawked, and Rhett’s vision went razor sharp as he looked for the familiar spurs of Sam’s boots. Sam was just as human as the Captain had been, and any one of these bullets could land him in the same place: dead.

  Winifred was stabbing feet and legs and tossing guns aside as their owners fell, and Rhett used the relative cover to crawl under the table to Sam’s boots. He could tell by Sam’s stance and the sounds above that the feller was in the heat of the gunfight, not paying any attention to just how easily he could get hurt. He tugged on Sam’s pant leg and got a pistol in the face.

  “Get down here, fool,” he hissed, batting it away.

  “Fight’s up here,” Sam growled, looking so determined and dangerous Rhett could’ve swooned.

  “Fight’s wherever you take it,” Rhett said, and he shot Virgil Scarsdale in the knee from under the table and landed the old son of a bitch on his ass.

  Another bullet caught Rhett somewhere in the back, but in a meaty place that didn’t stop him from shooting Milo Scarsdale in the thigh. Up above, Sam cried out in pain and crumpled over, falling right where Rhett had wanted him but bearing a red splotch on his shoulder that Rhett didn’t like a bit.

  “Winifred! Cover him!” he called.

  When the girl let up on foot-stabbing to crawl over, Rhett dropped the Henry, took a pistol in each hand, and popped up where Sam had just been, shooting every goddamn traitor who’d raised his hand for Jiddy.

  His aim was pretty good, and for all that he took three or four bullets, he killed or hobbled three or four fellers in a row up until something exploded against his face. He dropped both of his guns and staggered back. When the red blur cleared off and he stopped seeing stars, he found Jiddy’s hand wrapped in his neck cloth, the man’s fist reared back for another punch. There was something shiny over Jiddy’s knuckles. Rhett’s hands went up, but too late. Well, shit. Silver knuckles. No wonder it hurt so goddamn much when Jiddy popped him in the nose.

  He wanted to punch Jiddy back, but he was at a disadvantage and gushing blood like a well pump, so Rhett threw himself backward, yanking Jiddy with him. As the man fell, his beard seemed to spread over his face, the silver knuckles dropping as his thick fingers sprouted claws and bristly black fur. Rhett was on his back now, Jiddy’s weight getting heavier and heavier as the asshole turned into a bear. Rhett scrabbled at his belt for his Bowie knife and punched it right up into Jiddy’s gut.

  The bear just laughed.

  Through teeth half turned into fangs, Jiddy growled, “You ain’t my Captain.”

  Rhett scrabbled the knife up, sawing through whatever Jiddy had for guts. “You self-hating son of a bitch. You hate me because I’m a monster, too, or because you know I’m the better man?”

  “You’re a mongrel…” The words came out jumbled as Jiddy’s nose stretched out into a snout.

  “You ain’t all white, you bear-changing son of a bitch, so you might as well stop pretending.” Rhett’s knife stopped, scraping up against bone, and Jiddy’s mouth snapped open in a bear’s scre
am.

  Rhett’s arms were trembling now, holding up the bulk of a bear getting near to the size of a horse, the butt of the knife’s hilt starting to press into his own belly. Rhett let go with his other hand and scrabbled for a gun but couldn’t find anything under the table except sticky blood. His fingers tugged on Sam’s boot, and Sam ducked back under the table.

  “Gun,” Rhett muttered.

  “What the hellfire? Is that —”

  “GUN, Sam.”

  Sam put the gun to the side of Jiddy’s bear head as the black snout snarled and bristled.

  “Do it,” Rhett urged.

  The gun went off, and Jiddy’s head splattered all over Rhett, half its face gone. The mouth was still screeching, though, and the other eye was mad as hell.

  “Give it here.”

  Sam put the pistol in Rhett’s hand, wrapped his fingers around it, and Rhett pushed it against the side of Jiddy’s chest and shot him straight through. The bear didn’t turn to sand, though, just fell over sideways, pawing at the quickly healing hole. It should’ve been easy enough to hit the critter’s heart, but it was Jiddy, so maybe the damn thing was smaller than usual.

  Rhett sat up, drawing a full breath, and shot Jiddy in the face again. What was left was half bear, half human, and mostly ground meat. But Rhett wasn’t done. He would keep shooting until he found Jiddy’s goddamn heart – for disrespecting him and the Captain both. He crawled over to where he’d left the Captain’s Henry, dragged it back, put it up against Jiddy’s chest, and pulled the trigger.

  Finally!

  The man-bear exploded in gray sand that filled the room like smoke. A few of the fellers coughed, and the gunshots stopped for a moment as they got their bearings. Rhett coughed, covered his mouth and nose with his neck cloth, and stood up holding the Henry and breathing hard through his mouth as his nose tried to knit up from being split open with silver.

  “Anybody who wants to live can drop his goddamn gun,” he said.

  Milo Scarsdale, just about riddled with holes but running on anger, shot Rhett right in the belly, twice, before his gun clicked, empty. The shots went straight through, and for a moment, Rhett felt the air whistle straight through him. Then it just hurt, the way Rhett’s guts wriggled around and re-formed, but Rhett didn’t let that show. He didn’t even bother to put the Henry to his shoulder as he shot Milo in the gut. The old man fell to the ground beside his brother, Virgil, blubbering and pissing himself in a satisfying sort of way.

  Rhett looked around again. There wasn’t a man there without wounds, and even Winifred had a new gash along her hairline, still dripping blood.

  “Anybody else want to take a goddamn shot? Because I can do this all day, and I reckon most of you fellers can’t.”

  One feller shot him in the leg, and then another shot and missed, and then some complete fool led a charge in from the porch, and Rhett roared, “Let’s get out of here!”

  He fell to his knees, rammed his pistols home, snatched up the Henry and his knife from the pile of sand, and bolted down the hall to the Captain’s old room. He could hear his friends behind him, but he didn’t bother to look back to see how many there were. Despite all the death he’d wrought, there were still more of Jiddy’s boys than his own, and he didn’t like the odds. The ones who hadn’t raised their hands – well, they’d been shooting at him, too, the cowards. It’s not like he was going to win over men who wanted him dead, anyway. Better to get the hell out than keep fighting a bunch of assholes he could never lead.

  Bullets pinged off the floor and walls, and the glass window at the end of the hall shattered. Rhett felt a bullet punch into the back of his leg, cussed at it, and kept on clambering. Once inside the Captain’s room, he dove sideways. Winifred, then Dan, then Sam scuttled in after him, and he put his foot against the door and prepared to kick it shut once Earl had joined them. But Earl didn’t arrive. Rhett had seen him at breakfast, his hat down over his hungover eyes and his plate full of extra bacon. But he’d lost sight of the Irishman in the battle, and now he was notably absent.

  “Did donkey-boy go out the back door?” Rhett asked.

  “Don’t think so. But I didn’t see sand, neither.” Sam was up against the wall now, teeth clenched as he held a kerchief to his shoulder wound.

  “Cora is in the wagon, at least,” Winifred said.

  Rhett peeked out the Captain’s window to confirm but didn’t dare make his head visible to anyone outside. Jiddy might’ve lived through having half his face blown off, if he hadn’t taken a bullet in the heart, but Rhett wasn’t interested in trying such a strategy for himself, considering he was already full of holes and could feel each separate bullet singing its wretched discontent in his flesh. He couldn’t see the wagon, but the horrible thought occurred to him that some of Jiddy’s men, some of his own Ranger brethren, might mean the girl harm.

  “Anybody hurt bad?”

  Dan snorted. “Just a few bullet wounds and stabbings.”

  “As long as you’re not complaining.”

  “Oh, I’m complaining. About those traitorous cowards too proud to call a brown man Captain.” Dan looked down, poked a finger through a bloody bullet hole in his shirt. “Days like this, I wish I shifted into something dangerous.”

  Rhett dusted gray sand out of his hat brim. “Yeah, well, that didn’t do Jiddy much good, did it? Look, you-all stay here. I’m going out there for Earl.”

  Winifred gave him the look she almost always gave him – at least during daytime. The one that said he was a born fool hell-bent on dying young. “You’re going to walk into a room full of men who want nothing more than to see you dead, all to save a man with a death wish who doesn’t even like you?”

  Rhett stood, feeling a little wobbly. The knitting holes in his belly felt heavy, and the fresh new scars pulled and burned across his legs and back and arm. Everything he had hurt, including his heart.

  “I most certainly am, and if it’s any comfort, I’d do the same for you. You-all are my posse, and whether or not those shitheads out there acknowledge it, I’m the Captain. I’m gonna kill what needs to die and save what must be saved.”

  He stomped over and picked up the Captain’s metal piss pan off the floor. It might’ve once been used to pan for gold, and then it had been part of a dying man’s sick room, but now it was dry as a bone, about the size for making a pie, and he hefted it and looked around the room a bit more. There was a bible on the bedside table, a smallish and beat-up thing that he only recognized thanks to the gold cross on front and the red ribbon sticking out of it like a snake’s tongue. He placed the bible in the piss pan, opened up his shirt, and slipped the whole thing under his binder.

  “What the hell is that?” Sam asked, looking up from his wound as Rhett rebuttoned his shirt and arranged his vest over the slight lump.

  “The only thing between me and a pile of sand, I reckon,” Rhett said.

  He checked his guns and found fewer bullets than he preferred, but the Henry was still half-full, probably.

  “You want me to go see to the horses?” Dan asked. “Outside looks clear.”

  “Those fools are probably planning on barging in here,” Rhett said. “Without a leader, it’s what a damn goat would do. Just keep butting heads. Go on and sort our ponies, if you can. We might not have enough time to saddle up, though. Maybe throw the saddles in the wagon, if there’s a chance.”

  Dan nodded once, wrenched the window open, and slithered out.

  “What do you want us to do?” Winifred asked.

  Rhett gave her a hard look that brooked no refusal. “Keep Sam safe, and your own self as well. Once Dan has your ponies ready, get out and ride west, the way we came. We’ll find our trail to Trevisan once we’re all out of harm’s way.”

  “But you’re the Captain,” Sam said, wincing as Winifred helped him stand.

  “And as far as I’m concerned, I’ve got the better posse. Wait until I’m in the hall and they’re focused on me before you run, you hear?”
Winifred and Sam nodded, and Rhett touched each of his weapons again. Gun, gun, knife. The Henry was in his right hand and ready to fire. Far as he reckoned, there were maybe ten fellers still in the dining room who could fight. And they’d be fighting to kill.

  Rhett hadn’t lived with the Rangers long enough to learn their ways, to absorb whatever tactics the Captain taught. His fights with them – well, they’d all gone cattywampus, and Rhett had used his wits and hotheaded bravado to singlehandedly save their ungrateful asses. What would they expect him to do, now that the tides had turned? Stand, fight, or run?

  He walked to Sam, stood close enough to hear the man’s labored breathing.

  “What are they expecting?” he whispered.

  In the peculiar silence, Sam gave a small chuckle. “They’re expecting to kick your ass. Probably hanging back, seeing as how there’s nobody smart or brave left to lead the charge. You seem like the kind of man to take advantage of that.”

  Rhett’s grin was a slow, dangerous thing. “I am that kind of man, yes. Wish me luck, Sam.”

  Before he could think twice about it, before Sam could answer, he kissed Sam, brief and hard and glancing. He didn’t hang around to see what Sam thought about it, neither, just went for the door, threw it open so hard it banged against the wall, and screamed a ululating war cry as he flung himself into the hallway, guns up and aiming to kill.

  Rhett expected a pile of bullets, and that’s exactly what he got. It took the boys a minute to catch up, though, so he leaped onto the long table and shot the Henry at each man in turn as he stalked along its length. He took two bullets that he felt, but they no longer bothered him, so long as they went into meat. Everything hurt but he felt nothing. Nothing but rage. His aim wasn’t ideal, but the men he shot fell over no matter where he shot them. Humans were like that, he’d noticed.