by Tim Marquitz
Hammers banged wooden frames together at the far end of Main Street, real structures to replace the tent city that had originally accommodated the growing town. Dogs barked, pots and pans rattled against the sides of wagons, and men shouted at one another as if they were in a competition to see who could wake the fucking dead.
Coburn Station. Ass end of nowhere. Nina shook her head and leaned against the rear of their covered wagon. She pulled a rolled cigarette from the top pocket of her denim overalls, lit it, took a puff, stifled a cough. Too much damn smoke. She covered her mouth to hide her discomfort.
Not only did she hate towns, she hated cigarettes, too.
Nina’s job was to watch the goods while Pa, always the crafty salesman, worked his magic on the proprietor of Smith & Towne’s Antiquities. If things worked out, they’d take their earnings to the general store and purchase some supplies. They needed salted pork, bread and cheese, a fruit or two, and a new ax; if they had enough left, maybe they’d procure a few sketchy items, as well, from the back alleys and shacks around town. Those would take special arrangements, meetings under the cover of darkness, and a shit-ton of balls. Death waited on every corner in Coburn.
Another part of Nina’s job was to not look like Nina. That is, a half-Injun with a decent pair of tits and long, fuckable legs. Natives had been raiding U.S. patrols along the Snake River for a couple years now. Nina and her pa wanted no part of that. They’d not seen her mother’s people in years, not since her spirit had passed on from this world. If anyone recognized her as anything other than imported help, she might just be raped or shot or both.
Nina took comfort in the Colt 1861 Navy bulging beneath her coat. Pa’s gun, but she could shoot it, and she’d not hesitate if any cocksucker gave them trouble. Speaking of which, she spotted a man watching her from across the street as folks bustled past. His feet crossed in front of him, he leaned against a pole in front of the Nugget Saloon and acted as casual as could be. He held a cigarette by his waist between draws, and made no attempt to hide his curiosity. He wore his hat tilted forward, shading his eyes, but Nina could make out the shadow of stubble framing his jaw and a thick, dark mustache over his upper lip.
“Where you from, stranger?” Another man came around the side of the wagon and stopped two paces from Nina, a big-eared, screw-mouthed fella. He flicked ashes into the mud and put his cigar between his teeth. “I’ve been in Coburn forty-some days. Ain’t never seen you around.”
Nina knew the accent. South. Deep South. She’d been to Alabama once. It was the kind of drawl that made her think of cotton fields and black, sweaty faces. So, it didn’t surprise her that this man, after noticing her copper complexion, had come to see what he could fuck with. Or maybe he was just being neighborly. Never could tell.
Just another day in Coburn fucking Station.
Nina spoke in her rehearsed tone, the deepest baritone she could muster without sounding like a put-on. “Just rolled in. Gettin’ supplies.”
“Ah, yeah. Common enough intent. But what kind of...supplies you lookin’ for? Might have some things can’t be found at the general. And especially not at this fuckin’ Jew cunt’s place.” He motioned at the antiquities shop behind them.
Nina’s stomach flipped. A trap. If she pursued his offer, he could turn her in to the law. Maybe he was the law, although he didn’t look the part, with his threadbare jacket and cotton trousers. She couldn’t see evidence of a gun on him, but that didn’t mean he was unarmed. If she told him to fuck off, he’d have even more reason to be curious about her.
“Been coming here for years. Off and on.” She chanced a glance at him, just as he glanced at her. His eyes were that dangerous combination of ignorance and predatory hate. He was the sort of mean man Nina and her pa had experienced many times in their travels.
Nina might be in a bit of trouble with this one.
She hoped he couldn’t see past her dirt-rubbed cheeks and tar-blackened teeth, the disguise she wore whenever entering the white man’s world, but her confidence was shot to pieces when the man pulled his cigar, gave a greasy smile, and rolled his tongue out over his lips.
Definitely in trouble.
She took a draw from her cigarette and glanced across the street at Mustache. He hadn’t moved, so maybe this wasn’t a two-man operation. Maybe Mustache just wanted to watch the show.
Meany’s eyes narrowed, and he edged closer. “So you, uh...it’s just you and your pa?”
Nina took a step back, blowing out a slow cloud of smoke as if she could hide behind it. “Yup.”
“Well, ain’t that somethin’?” He glanced around furtively, backing her up. It was only a matter of time before he made his move. “See, I know about rocks. Always have. What I mean is rocks always got somethin’ under them. You just gotta lift them and look. That’s why I come over here. I lifted, and look what I found, a pretty little Injun girl...”
A commotion at the far end of town interrupted him; a chorus of dogs barking, howling, and yipping all at once. A shiver ran down Nina’s spine. She walked around Meany to have a look, checking him with her shoulder as she went by. He was all skin and bones beneath his coat, and he did indeed have a pistol in the inner front pocket. He grunted and moved aside easily enough; only one thing a violent fellow like this understood, and that was greater violence. Nina would dish him some if need be, but that wasn’t her primary concern right now.
What the fuck was happening at the other end of town?
She rounded the back of the wagon and jerked back as a pack of dogs ran by, mongrels with matted coats and patches of mange, yelping like they were being beaten to within an inch of their lives. The hair on the back of Nina’s neck rose. She chanced a second look as two more packs scurried past.
The wagon shimmied and shook as her horses, Apple and Oatmeal, pulled nervously in their tugs. Nina turned and ran smack into Meany, who was right on her heels. She didn’t know if this was his move, or if he was just curious about the noise, too, but she wasn’t waiting to find out. She hooked a foot behind his legs, grabbed the front of his shirt, and shoved him into the mud.
Without waiting to see his reaction, Nina hopped up on the boardwalk and went to the front of the wagon. She took hold of Apple’s reins to calm the old boy, even as he continued to nicker and paw the ground.
More fuckery was happening at the far end of Main Street. An old piece of shit covered wagon resting across the lane took a battering from some unseen force. It vibrated and bumped around, suddenly flying up and flipping on its side, falling to pieces.
“What the fuck?” Nina whispered.
Horses and cows poured over and around the crushed parts and stampeded down the street, flying with reckless abandon, churning up mud as they came, crazed eyes spinning around in their tossing heads. Nina’s first thought was that they were infected with something. What did they call it? Rabies?
One man ran to the middle of the lane and held up his hands as if to stop the oncoming horde.
Don’t do that, mister. “Oh fuck.”
A young bull lowered his head and barreled over the man, sending him careening down the lane where he landed hard on his back. Blood covered his face and lips, but he was still alive. He looked up just as the herd ran him over, crushing him to pieces beneath tons of panicked flesh.
Nina glanced across the way, catching Mustache’s eye just as the herd raced by. She probably mirrored his expression, neither of them ever having seen so many spooked animals. She blinked, and Mustache was gone.
Time to get Pa and haul ass. They could come back some other time when things were less out of hand. She turned and found her path blocked, again, by Meany.
“Now darlin’,” he started to say, but Nina cut him off with a punch to the nose. It didn’t break, but it must have stung. The man staggered back two paces and clutched his face, eyes watering. “Hey!” he cried, a muffled sound.
Nina pulled her Colt and pointed the barrel at his chest. She cocked the weapon and gave hi
m a final warning, no longer concerned with disguising her voice. “I’ll put a bullet in the same spot if you don’t back the fuck off, mister. You think I’m joking you just...” Nina stopped, her threat falling short. The man’s eyes were opened wide, his mouth an O behind his hand. He wasn’t looking at Nina or her gun. He wore an expression of dumb terror; something was scaring the God’s-fuck-all out of the cocksucker. Something behind her.
Going against one of her golden rules—never take your gun off a son-of-a-bitch until he’s either dead or gone from your sight—she turned and gave pause.
“You’ve got to be fuckin’ kiddin’ me.”
Rambling down the street after the panicked herd was another pack of animals. Injured horses bled from horrendous cuts, gashes, and tears. Horseflesh hung in swaths, muzzles chewed to the bone as if crows had been at them for a week. One beast was half-skinned, the fibrous muscles of its shoulder and hind quarters painfully visible, glistening with congealed blood. A second animal had a rip down its side, eviscerated, dragging its bowels through the mud. Another disturbing thing—just a small bit of non-horse fucking behavior that stuck in Nina’s craw—they had no breath; no billowing, nostril-flaring puffs of steam an equine with heaving sides might display in the cold, spring air.
The herd cantered along on unsteady legs, bumping against one another as pieces of loose skin and gristle sloughed off into the mud. A lumbering, silent mass of dead meat.
Nina backed away from the unholy sight, suddenly wishing she’d listened to her mother’s religious convictions, for surely she must have died and taken the express train straight to fucking Hell.
