His Ragged Company Page 4

  He grabbed up my hand like he was some child on a date. “We need to go back up to them horses. Back to Blackpeak. Can’t tarry. Got to get you seen by the doctor.”

  With Oarsdale in front of me, I staggered up the hill. The sun had almost entirely vanished. The sky was a bonnet of black and blue fading into an orange glow near the horizon. Peaceful, really, if you didn’t take into account the sulfurous smell of recently burned powder in the air. ​Behind us, Curtis Gregdon thrashed in the dirt. “Can’t see,” he moaned. “Can’t fuckin’ see!”

  I’d send someone out to retrieve him once we returned to Blackpeak. Man who manages to survive a shotgun blast like that probably deserves to have a second chance. Doesn’t mean he couldn’t hurt a bit beforehand, though, just for good measure.

  When we returned to the horses, Oarsdale helped me onto mine. Without any other words, the two of us rode toward Blackpeak by the stark moonlight.

  I remembered the heat on my chest.

  I found the folded bit of paper in the still-smoking pocket of my shirt just as we crossed into town limits. It was prim and proper, folded tight as a sergeant’s bedsheet. Three fingerprints of Billy Gregdon's blood winked up at me from the parchment’s corners.

  4

  When Doctor Levinworth answered his door, he didn't look pleased. “Marshal,” said the doctor. ​​But the fellow’s eyes shot wide open when he looked down and saw the blood.

  Rufus and I had gotten back to Blackpeak sometime after dark. With the exception of the Crooked Cocoon Saloon and the whorehouse, everything was shut down, including the office of Doctor William Levinworth. He had been upstairs, probably reading, probably drinking a gin or two before bed when we came knocking. Blood stops running for no man’s busy schedule.

  I’d been in that dark office ten times too many. While I'd been to Levinworth for all sorts of problems – all ones that hurt – I'd never been to him for a gunshot. Hell, I’d been to lots of doctors in lots of towns for everything from boils to a bad belly, but gunshots? I’d avoided those. The office was cold, clean, and littered with basins, various knives, clamps, and fabrics. I sat on a wooden table with leather straps on it for struggling feet, hands, and necks. There were stains on it, sunk dark and deep, all relics of frantic operations.

  “You kill whoever it was who did this to you?” asked Levinworth as he soaked a few clean linens in a basin.

  “You know the Gregdon boys?” I said.

  “Regrettably.”

  “Billy Gregdon,” I said. “Body’s at the old Simpkin farm.”

  “It can stay there for awhile,” said Levinworth, not hiding the disdain that came to his wrinkled face. He tied on a white apron around his nightshirt. He adjusted the wire spectacles on his nose, brought the lamp nearer to the table, and began to cut through the seams of my britches. The gunshot wound was clean-looking, at least. Pink skin puckered around a welling hole. I hissed as he lifted my leg, clamping my teeth down on my tongue to keep from cursing.

  “Easy, Elias,” said Rufus, who stood behind me, looking curiously at the procedure.

  The doctor placed my leg on a pile of clean linens, folding back the tattered remnants of my pants so he could have easier access to the wound. He reached into another basin and stirred whatever was in it around with his free hand.

  He ladled a helping of water and splashed it across the hole. Little pinpricks of pain blossomed inside my thigh.

  Levinworth pressed hard at the skin around the little gurgling hole like he was trying to find something. The world spun, and nausea leaped around and around in my belly.

  “Brandy, salt, cold water,” he said as he mopped up the blood.

  “What for?” I asked against gritted teeth. Doctors all do gunshots in different ways, none of them particularly comfortable.

  “Distraction, mostly,” he said. “Cleaning the wound, too. Maybe some numbing for the next part.”

  Rufus asked from over my shoulder, “The next part?”

  “Removal of the bullet.”

  “It’s still in there?” I said.

  Levinworth shrugged. “There’s only one hole, Marshal. There’d be two if it had gone anywhere else. The hole you have isn’t too deep, either, because if it was, you probably would have been dead by now. Lots of things in a man’s leg that can break open and bleed him out. Mister Oarsdale?”

  “Yassir?”

  “How are you in a barfight?”

  “Got a lot of missing teeth.”

  “Good muscles?”

  “Good for raising a drink,” Rufus said.

  “Ever put a bit on a horse?”

  “’Course.”

  “Ever strangled a man?”

  The old drunkard shook his head, but then his eyes got distant. “No man, but that Nabby Lawson, she said she likes it when—“

  Levinworth shut him up by throwing him a dry towel. “Make like you know what you’re doing, then.”

  Rufus held the towel for a few seconds and kneaded it as if he was trying to figure out exactly what the doctor was asking him to do with it. Then, victim of a sudden epiphany, Rufus Oarsdale flashed me an almost toothless smile. It was a little too wide and eager for me to take seriously.

  “What the hell are you—“

  No sooner were the words out of me than Rufus put his arms over me from behind and yanked the towel back against my mouth and teeth. I tried to mumble out a few curses in the process. He pulled me back against him, restraining me. Then metal clicked, and my thigh exploded with pain.

  A thousand black and white spots danced in front of my eyes. While Rufus held me still, Doctor Levinworth – maybe with his fingers, maybe with a pair of forceps, I don’t know – scoured the inside of the hole punched in my leg.

  I squealed against the gag in my mouth, biting hard. If you think getting shot is painful, believe me, getting un-shot is a lot worse. It went right to the top on a list of experiences that I didn’t plan on regularly repeating.

  A second later, the spots in my eyes stopped swirling and Rufus loosened up on the gag. I yanked the thing out of my mouth while Levinworth pressed some cheesecloth against the wound. I waved him away and applied the pressure myself, leaning forward to take a few much-needed breaths. Sweat crept down my face, stung my eyes.

  “Mary and Joseph, Elias,” said Levinworth. “What did you go and get yourself shot with?” In the teeth of a pair of bloody tweezers, he turned a deformed ball back and forth. He dropped it down into a small bowl full of water with a muffled plunk. “Count your blessings, Marshal Faust. You could have lost the whole damned leg if that thing had hit bone. He was close, wasn’t he?”

  “Right in front of me, like from me to you.”

  “I suggest retiring that shotgun of yours and picking up something a little more conducive to longer living. Maybe the piano,” Levinworth suggested, wrapping my leg in a few layers of tight fabric.

  Rufus leaned over the table to stare at the pink-colored water where the mangled bullet lay. Then, as if he were about to pick up a sweet, he flexed his fingers and whispered, “Come here, you little devil.”

  He picked up the bullet, which had become a lot less round since its firing, and examined it. He punched me playfully in the shoulder and gave out a thick laugh. “Faust, you’re one slick hog, you know that? Tell me, how come you ain’t got a hole the size of a wagon-trail all the way through you?"

  I shrugged.

  “How come you didn’t lose your leg when this thing hit you? Flintlocks are strong. Brutal.”

  I shook my head.

  Rufus brimmed with cheer. He hunkered down in front of me, thrust the bullet up so I could see it, and from behind it he whispered, “I was hopin’ you’d get this thing back for me, Faust. I knew I could count on you. Didn’t think you’d believe me if I told you what I was so worried about getting back, but goddamn if you didn’t get it back for me anyway.”

  “The…bullet?”

  “Ain’t just any bullet,” he shouted. “This is my
lucky bullet.”

  I swiped my hand down my face.

  “Them Gregdon boys knowed I had it packed and ready to go case I ever needed it,” Rufus said. “My granpappy, when he was fightin’ the Resolution, he kept this lucky bullet loaded and ready for such an occasion, but he ain't ever need it. He got killed quick-like, run through with a bayonet. Since then, it's been passed down in my family for whole generations. This here’s an heirloom.”

  The muscles behind my knuckles began to tense. They tried to get me to make a fist. "What about your flintlock?”

  "How much luck is a gun if it ain't got a bullet?" He opened a small pouch at his hip and dropped the ball into it, then pulled a flask out of his pocket and took a long draw. When he finished, he smacked his lips and raised the flask to me.

  "To Elias Faust," he said. "Best damned marshal the town of Blackpeak could ask for."

  He said nothing more as he clattered out the front door of Levinworth's office. He sidled off down the main drag of Blackpeak, going back to wherever Rufus Oarsdale goes to settle at night.

  Rufus Oarsdale had played me like a fiddle all afternoon. All for his lucky bullet.

  Levinworth went about his cleaning while I simmered on the table, not yet brave enough to give my leg a try. So I said, "A man's dead because Oarsdale wanted his bullet.”

  Levinworth was putting his tools away, speaking without looking at me. “Men die all the time. They die like dogs likely because they are dogs. This place breeds them left and right. While it might be you or another good man that pulls the trigger, Elias, it's they who do the job of weeding themselves out. Nothing for you to be ashamed of.”

  “All this over a piece of lead?"

  “Rufus Oarsdale doesn't have much more to him than a few thin superstitions and some old lies he's turned into a family legacy.” He took off his bloodied apron and hung it up on a hook on the wall. For a minute, I finally saw the age in the doctor: crow's feet behind his spectacles, a slight shake to his hands when they weren't occupied. From a decanter he poured two glasses. He gave one to me and then tapped his against it. I lit a cigarette and pocketed the burned match.

  “I’ve been in Blackpeak all my life, Elias, well before you showed up. I've seen some strange things come and go. I knew the mines when they used to thrive. But things change. People like the Gregdon boys start trouble, and better men come along and remind the town that, while it isn't always pretty to do and it never really seems right, there's somebody who cares enough to keep it clean. Taking a bullet's worth that much, I imagine. Besides,” Levinworth said, hiding a grin behind his glass, “I wouldn't be surprised if there was something to it. The bullet, I mean.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “No leg should have survived that.”

  “Boys don't know how to shoot old guns these days,” I said, blowing smoke.

  “Maybe,” he said, though he didn't sound convinced. “Bottoms up, Marshal.”

  Levinworth was right. Billy Gregdon might be dead, but rules are rules. I stick by them. Somebody has to.

  We drank. The gin tasted bitter, burned good, but went down nonetheless.

  Now

  Think small enough and you realize a sharp-enough needle doesn’t really pierce the fabric. It just moves the tiny fibers aside, without trauma or struggle, and slides right through. Guess I don’t know what I expect of the worms. Probably needles. Certainly not sledges or pick-axes. I clench my teeth until the nerves inside pulse like fidgety jackrabbits. The goddamn pain.

  His blurry silhouette leans forward, curious. You could color me surprised he didn’t just start poking at me like some bug. “There’s still more,” he says. “I can see it sloshing around inside you.”

  “You got any prettier way of putting it?” I say against the pain. I breathe. My innards burn, scream, warn me, Run, Faust, you dumb bastard. “You see what you want, why don’t you just take it?”

  But I can’t run. Not here. He watches me with every eye, and follows me down into the hot sun of the Blackpeak in my memories.

  “How do you open a good bottle of wine,” he asks, “except very carefully?”

  Part II

  The One-Armed Man

  5

  “Reckon they’ve had enough?” I asked.

  “They’re still standing, aren’t they,” she said.

  “I didn’t think you approved of duels to the death.”

  “Never,” she said. “I just like watching white men beat the shit out of each other for the hell of it.”

  Miss Lachrimé Garland knew that people needed to blow off steam. She knew that if you kept it in long enough, it’d come out in a bad way. She knew that if you didn’t fidget, fight, or fuck, you were liable to run through your life like a boil ready to burst. If there’s something Miss Garland surely didn’t want, it was for a whole town of plug-uglies to fire off like a bad bit of porridge all at once.

  So she ran the weekly fights, and you could sign up to swing and bruise – or be bruised, if it so suited you.

  And be damned if Blackpeak didn’t love it.

  She watched over it, arms crossed, a smile carved on her face. “It’s a wonder you haven’t tried your knuckles out yet, Faust,” she told me as she watched two men swing at one another like oversized children in the bloody sand. “I think you might survive a round or two.”

  “Fists never treated me so good,” I said.

  She smiled. “You could get lucky. Who knows if you don’t try.”

  “Plenty of people might like a chance.”

  “Plenty of people might never bother you again,” Miss Garland said, “if they saw those fists do the talking.”

  Miss Garland’s kingdom was a twelve-by-twelve sheet of land a few hundred yards outside the city limits where, every Wednesday afternoon, you could toss your name in the hat, make whatever bet you please, and go at someone until Miss Garland called it off. Town had to abide by my rules, but in this tiny province, she ruled. She glided along the outside of the packed dirt ring on bare brown feet, rattling her pocket-watch. The crowds parted for her. A fat purse bounced at her skirt-hip.

  I stood by. That was all. I made sure no enterprising, whiskey-fueled up-and-comer tried to start more trouble than was sanctioned. Just a few rules in Miss Garland’s Café:

  No killing.

  No grudges.

  No guns. Except for mine, of course.

  When the action in the middle of the ring began to wane – one of the big boys reeled back to spit out the blood pooling in his lower lip – Miss Garland thrust a fist into the air and snapped her fingers. “Keep going, boys. This fight won’t end itself.” So the two shirtless buffoons threw themselves at one another, and the men and women gathered around blew up with excitement. For a few minutes we all forgot about the sun. The sour stink of sweat brushed toward us on the tail-end of a wind.

  “Here,” Miss Garland said, turning to me as the relentless slapping of fists on cheeks drew every eye to the pit. “I know being here isn’t an official duty of yours, but I insist.”

  A small bundle of bills rolled from her palm into mine.

  “If most everyone in the town’s out here,” I said, “not much to oversee there.”

  “Good breather,” she said. “You know what I heard? I heard the whiskey’s drying up.”

  “Sloman been telling fibs again?”

  “His shelves say as much.”

  “Crooked Cocoon Saloon’s still selling it,” I said.

  “Crooked Cocoon’s into making money. You don’t have to be smart to make money today. You have to be smart to make money tomorrow.”

  “And you’re smart,” I said.

  She watched as one of the men hit the other so hard that two of his teeth flew out of him.

  “Damned right I’m smart,” she said, wearing a grin as wide as a sunrise.

  Under her order, a bunch of men dragged the unconscious loser from the ring while the winner scrubbed his knuckles off with a splash of beer. A l
ittle girl raked the sand. Her hem left sidewinder trails behind her. Money started changing hands again. Efficiency, efficiency.

  Miss Garland was about to turn and say something to me when a large hand stuck itself out between two big shoulders and grabbed hold of her wrist.

  My first reaction was to go for my gun, but instead I crammed my palm into the face of a burly fellow I’d never seen before.

  “The hell you think you are,” Miss Garland said.

  I pushed him, freeing up enough space to reach around for my pistol.

  “Hey,” he said. “Hey, now.”

  “Let go of her,” I said.

  “Just trying to get her attention,” he said.

  “You want to let go of her,” I said.

  A pistol-hammer clicked near his belly. He understood.

  Miss Garland drew her hand up to her chest and held it like a delicate flower. Likely she could have broken this mutton-chopped meatball all on her own. “You got something to say to me, boy,” she said, “that requires you manhandling me?”

  “I didn’t want to let you pass by without talking to you, ma’am—” he said.

  Miss Garland’s eyes narrowed. “You call me Miss when you want to speak to me. I’m neither a wife nor a weathered crone. I belong to myself and myself alone.”

  “Christ. You all always so ready to rip a bloke’s head off?” It took me then to realize he was speaking in a vaguely English accent. Or what I thought was an English accent. I’d never met somebody with that kind of tongue before. “Sorry,” he said, pinching the brim of his road-dusted bowler. “Really, I am. I just arrived a few hours ago.”

  “You coming to audit the mayor?” I said.

  “What?”

  “You have that look to you.”