In a place just outside the marshal’s office, on a wooden bench that faced east, sat the frontier territory marshal, Vellum H. Marshall.
He sipped at his coffee, finding it to be as thin and unsatisfying as it was every morning, but he kept most of his attention on the sunrise that was slowly creeping above the little town of Iktómi’s Web. The marshal was yet to enter his office, as he preferred the morning to be in full bloom before he began his shift, but he could hear the typical sounds of his deputy shuffling about within. He raised his cup, and strained more of the acidic mixture through his teeth, and watched as the violet sky gave way to the fiery blossom of orange sunlight – as the mountains went from shadowy things to dark dangerous silhouettes. Then he stood up and went inside.
FOOL!
The greeting didn’t come from his deputy, but instead from the pale cockatoo that sat perched just above the doorway. Marshall had purchased the thing from a travelling oddities exhibit some years prior, having always wanted an exotic bird and intent in teaching the thing to have the sort of one-sided conversations that you couldn’t really ask of another person. Instead it had grown testy and territorial, and resentful of the necessary absences that pulled him away on business. Perhaps most frustrating of all, the bird had learned only a single solitary word that it repeated again and again in various tones.
FOOOOOL?
“Good morning to you as well,” Marshall nodded at the bird. He doffed his wide brim hat and shuffled it to the hand with which he still held the remains of his coffee. Then he offered his bare fingers out to the creature in an act of reconciliation. He was unsurprised when it instead nipped at him sharply, bringing a line of blood to the surface of his thumb.
“Shit,” he breathed quietly.
“That you, marshal?”
This time the greeting did come from his deputy.
The marshal nodded as he sucked at his bloody appendage.
“Morning, Inman,”
“Deputy Inman,” the little man corrected.
“Morning, deputy.”
“Good morning to you, sir.” Inman watched patiently as the marshal hung his coat and found his usual seat behind his desk before commencing with the morning’s business. “I already sent for your son, he should be along shorty.”
“Mmm,” Marshall hummed as he set his coffee and hat on the rough surface of his desk.
“Also, Bixby Allen plans on bringing four hundred head through town limits sometime past noon. He’s got a full team and says it won’t take but a couple hours to get the herd moved along and down to the low wash – he apologizes for the inconvenience in advance.”
“It’s no inconvenience,” the marshal shrugged. “Not for me and you, anyway. He need any help?”
Inman shook his head. “You’ll love this, though. There was a note this morning under the door, from the widow Urbaker.”
The marshal sighed and leaned heavily onto his desk. “What’s got her upset this time? Is the boogeyman meddling with her droves?”
“Something is,” Inman smiled back warmly. “Widow Urbaker claims she loses a wether each new moon.” The short man grabbed a stool and saddled up next to the marshal’s desk excitedly. “According to the widow, no matter what she does, no matter how she guards them, one billy goes missing at the start of each cycle. Claims it’s been going on for months and that she’s even taken to keeping her goats inside with her to prevent it.”
“Well, Inman – “
“Deputy Inman.”
“Well, deputy,” Marshall shook his head, “that don’t make much sense. Widow Urbaker’s herd isn’t much to account for as is. If she’s been losing one each month, for several months, then by my reckoning, she ought to be at negative-something goats.”
“That’s just it,” the deputy’s crooked teeth showed an excited smile that never quite reached the marshal’s own. “She says that the missing wethers come back each full moon, but painted up to look like something different.”
FOOL! FOOL!
Marshal Vellum H. Marshall considered that for a moment, then glanced at the offensive little bird that danced above the doorway, before looking back to his deputy with a shake of his head.
“Anything else, Inman?”
“Deputy,” the man corrected once more in a voice that was nevertheless, painfully polite. “Why’s it so hard for you to call me by my rank during work hours, sir?”
“We’ve been neighbors for fifteen years, deputy. Friends too. Besides, I don’t mind if you call me Marshall.”
“But you’re the only marshal I know that’s actually named, ‘Marshall.’”
“I’m the only marshal you know that’s named anything.”
“Not true,” Inman tsked. “I know Marshall Malone over in Low Gulch.”
“He’s not a marshal,” chuckled Marshall.
“Still a Marshall though.”
Marshall shook his head. “Anything else?”
“One more thing.” Inman looked up at him with a sideways glance. “Just this,” he said with a look of nervous anticipation, and plopped down a telegram onto the desk. Marshall stared down at it and saw words like ‘ceasefire,’ ‘treaty,’ and ‘surrender,” and found himself on his feet in disbelief.
“Is this real?!” He raised the letter and read through it quickly. “Is it …?”
“Apparently so,” Inman nodded. “Arrived this morning.” The rising sun, all but forgotten outside, was just making its way through the transom of the door when Inman announced all too apathetically, “The war’s over.”
FOOL!
“Four years, millions of dollars, and countless lives, but … it’s over now.”
“Over…” Marshall said quietly beneath his breath. He lifted the telegram and turned it in his hands, as if to tell himself that it was really real. He was excited, and something more. Moments like this stayed with you for your entire life – the place you were when you first heard the news. He looked up to see none of that self same enthusiasm along the face of his normally energetic friend and deputy. Then the full weight of realization hit him, but all he managed to say was, “Jennie -”
“ – wants to see you this evening, at your convenience.”
“Does she know yet?”
Inman shrugged. “I’m not sure, sir. But I’ll have Blythe saddled up for you and ready to go.” The deputy’s face showed something that looked almost like pity in the depths of his grey green eyes. “I’m sorry, Marshall.”
“You ought’n to be.” The marshal’s mouth had gone dry. “Tell my wife that something came up. Tell her … I had to head over to Wabash to check on the post.” He forced the smile back onto his face and turned it outwards to his deputy. “And hey, nothing to be sorry about.”
“But I am, though.”
If there was more to it, Marshall never got the chance to hear it. From the far end of the room, the door pushed open to show the tanned complexion and fair hair of his teenaged son, Levi, who had entered the offices in wool trousers and a shirt rolled to the elbows.
FOOOOOOOL!!!
The bird that guarded the door shouted its challenge in a voice that now sounded accusatory, as Marshall’s son entered the offices, flooding the interior in a scorching golden light.
“I’ll, uh, leave you to it,” Inman insisted. He left the telegram on Marshall’s desk and patted the boy on the shoulder as he made his exit, closing the door behind him.
“You wanted to see me?” the boy asked.
“Yeah.” The marshall moved the stool out from where Inman had sat and positioned it in front of his desk, where he could address the boy directly. “Telegram came this morning from back east. Looks like the war has ended.”
“Okay,” the boy agreed. “That’s good, right?”
Marshall only nodded along nervously with the young man, unwilling to expound on the hellish details of battle, but afraid to address the more pressing matters at hand. It stayed silent in the office for a count of three heartbeats, before Marshall reached into his pockets and found a distraction.
“What do you think of these?” he asked, handing over three treasures of rock that he had found in his wanderings – jasper, amber, and yellow chert.
Levi looked up at him suspiciously, unclear on why his father had summoned him to study stones together. He picked up the piece of fiery orange amber and held it up to the light that flooded in from the transom, taking in the tiny form of a bug that had long ago died and calcified within.
“Is that a spider?” the boy asked.
“Yeah.” Marshall found himself smiling. “Amazing, right? I thought I might polish it down and set it in a chain, something to wear that isn’t canvas and wool.” He wanted his own excitement to reach his son as he added, “I mean how many kids you know who get to walk around wearing a fossilized insect?”
The boy’s eyes lowered with realization, and he nodded an amiable if embarrassed agreement. “Dad, is there anything else? I have a lot to do.”
The marshal sighed deeply and bit at the interior of his lip. He retrieved the stones and placed them back in his pocket, then opened a drawer in his desk and produced Levi’s leather bound journal. He hefted it once or twice, watching as his son’s eyes widened with realization. Then he slid it slowly across the dull wooden surface of his desk. The surprise on Levi’s face gave way to terror.
“Dad, I – “
“Your mother found this, and wanted me to talk to you.”
“It’s not what it looks like – “
“This part, especially, was concerning.” Marshall thumbed quietly to a page that had been filled with charcoal drawings of grotesque forms and dangerous geometric oddities, and he felt the nervous tension that rose in his own neck along his spine. There was accusation in the marshal’s voice when he asked, “Do you want to explain yourself, Levi?”
His son stopped speaking and shook his head slowly.
“You’ve been down to the vein.”
The boy’s eyes remained fixed on the pages of the journal – on images of rocks inlaid with etchings of impossible things.
“How many times have I told you to stay away from it?!”
Levi looked up to meet his father’s eyes at last.
“How MANY?!!!”
“Enough,” the boy sighed. “You’ve told me enough times.”
”And yet you – “
“I went.” The boy’s voice wasn’t insolent, or even defiant. It was clear, and tired, and rang with an unassuming honesty that Marshall couldn’t help but find familiar. Levi shrugged his shoulders and looked his father in the eye with an earnest plea. “The vein isn’t what everyone says. It’s different.” The boy swallowed hard before he said hesitantly, “It showed me things, dad.”
A twinge ran along Marshall’s scalp as he considered that, accompanied shortly by an acrid flavor on his tongue that tasted of mold and dirt. “The vein,” he said through a dry mouth, “was left behind by a tribe of primitives that tampered with something that should have just been left alone.”
“I don’t think that’s true.” Now Levi’s voice was defiant. Just a little. “I think it’s older than the Indians. Older than people. I think there are answers in that seam that stretch off in all directions; answers hidden in the rock that can really help people if they’ll only take the time to -”
“That’s enough.” Marshall didn’t raise his voice, but his words were sufficiently stern to brook no further discussion from the boy. Levi nodded and lowered his eyes once again, and waited for what was coming. Marshall, however, found himself at a loss for words, and so he borrowed someone else’s that he’d heard a thousand times before. “You’ve disobeyed me, and disappointed me, and worst of all you’ve lied to me.” He lowered his brow and shook his head, and affected a look that he hoped would resonate with his son long after their discussion. “I think a month in the stables might help you remember the rules, and why we have them.”
“A MONTH?!” His son’s eyes went wide. “DAD COME ON!”
“Maybe two months,” Marshall said evenly. “Until I’m sure you understand.”
The boy made to argue, but then the air went out of him in the face of further consequences. “Yes, sir,” he breathed with reluctant acquiescence. “The stables.” Levi looked up with sad eyes at his father, and the two of them regarded one another across a fissure of unfortunate misunderstanding, before the boy finally said, “Can I go?”
Marshall nodded, and closed the journal, and bound it back up with its leather thong before sliding it over to Levi. “Ezekiel will be expecting you at the stables. Check in with him before supper, once your other chores are finished.”
Levi nodded, deflated, and turned away from the leather bound book with which he had incriminated himself. He was nearly to the door of the marshall’s office when his father called after him.
“Levi?” Marshall asked in a voice that was not unkind. “How did you find it anyway? The vein.” When the boy only stared back at him blankly he added, “For most of these folk it’s just an old campfire tale.”
His son almost laughed when he answered. “I figured out how to find the vein when I was nine years old, when I heard you and John Inman talking about it over whiskey on the porch.” Marshal’s blood went cold as his son continued. “I laid there out of sight, listening to stories of demons, and monsters, and men from the sky – all waiting to be found in the rock tunnels down below the mines.” He held his father’s gaze a moment longer until he was dismissed, and then closed the door behind him.
FOOL!
Jennie met him at their usual spot. She greeted the marshal with a wave and a nod of her head, perfectly acceptable for two riders crossing one another’s paths, and revealing not the least bit of indiscretion. Her slender features made her look warm and innocent, but her smile betrayed her own furtive designs. It spread out a bit too widely along her face at the approach of her blonde haired cowboy.
Though she was a perfectly capable rider, Jennie hitched her horse to an aspen tree and climbed aboard Blythe so that they could ride the rest of the way together. Her hips swayed as they rode, rubbing against Marshall as she leaned back into his large frame. The palomino kept up an even pace, taking reassuring steps beneath them. They climbed to the top of the mesa, where only the two of them ever went. And for the first time that day, Marshall felt some of the worry that had dominated the morning begin to slip away, the way it always did when he and Jennie found time to sneak off together. Soon, he was singing beneath his breath almost without realizing what he was doing.
Open your arms to me
This will be the one moment that matters
He hummed the words as much as he sang them, making up the lyrics as he went along.
And this will be the one thing we remember
This typically brought a laugh from the little woman – the childish act of creating a song out of nothing more than his own good intentions. Marshall leaned his head down to take in the scent of her hair, and added a line or two that he sang quietly into her ear.
And this will be the reason to have been here
And this will be the one moment
That matters at all
But she didn’t laugh this time.
Blythe nickered when they reached the top of the mesa, taking the last few steps with measured accuracy as the horse pulled herself and her cargo up with a strength that seemed almost incomprehensible to bipedal beings. Marshall dismounted and offered Jennie his hand, then walked to the edge of the mesa’s sheer cliff edge. He was just beginning to lay out a bedroll when Jennie touched his hand to halt him.
“Just the sunset tonight, Vellum.”
Marshall felt his heart sink, though he’d prepared in the deepest parts of it for this very eventuality. His voice never quavered when he asked, “So this is our last time then?”
Jennie gave his hand a squeeze and came about to stand in front of him, looking up at him through her wire spectacles. “Actually, last time was our last time.”
“Yeah,” the marshal nodded. “I was afraid of that.”
She didn’t lean in to him, or offer him hollow reassurances. Instead she stared up at him with brave eyes and said, “It has to be this way. He’s coming back. I told myself, ‘just until the war is over – til Brock is on his way home.’ And now … the war’s over.”
“For me, the war’s been over a long time.” Marshall cleared his throat. “That telegram that arrived today said that the ceasefire was signed a week ago. Makes me wonder how many men died in the days that followed, fighting a war they didn’t know had already ended.”
He let his vision drift from the beauty of her soft features, past her concerned smile and practiced confidence. His gaze set out towards the horizon, where the world was fast becoming a maze of indigo and orange.
“Hey,” she said, sensing the change in him. She pulled his chin back until his eyes met her own, and asked him something to catch him off guard. “Why’d your momma name you Vellum?”
He smirked and kissed the top of her head. “It’s a Lakota word – means ‘whipping boy.’” When her brow raised in alarm he admitted, “I’m just having a lark. Vellum is something you write on.”
“I know what vellum is.”
Well, knowing my mother, she probably heard it in a sermon and misunderstood it.” His laugh was tinged with regret, “I left home before I ever thought to ask her about it.” He gave Jennie’s forehead another desperate kiss, trying to drink in the taste of her skin before he finally conceded. “So this is it then?”
She nodded.
“Because Brock would get hurt.”
“Everyone would get hurt.”
“Yeah,” he admitted, and he felt the inconvenient stirrings of anger and resentment that he’d worked so hard to outgrow. “Still, it’s strange though, isn’t it? That in the name of making one relationship healthy, we have to cut another that already is.”
“Vellum, it wouldn’t be right. We couldn’t do it.”
“I know. Not here, anyway. Not now.” He avoided staring out to the horizon when he added, “It would never work. Not in this place.”
“People have notions of propriety, and tradition, and – “
“God?”
Her expression remained amiable as she nodded. “Do you?”
“Do I what? Have god?”
“Yes.”
He didn’t notice that his hands had slipped down to his own pockets when he said, “When I was about Levi’s age I went out hunting one day, up here in fact. I was scouting along the edge of the mesa, hoping to clap eyes on a herd of whitetail I’d been following with hungry interest. I never really liked hunting but, a man’s gotta eat. I sat and I waited until the sun started to set before I packed up and made to head back down. Then I realized I’d forgotten my rifle somewhere up here in the brush, left leaning against one of the thousands of junipers where I’d spent the day.”
Her hand raised up to give him a squeeze about his upper arm.
His hand closed tight in his pocket around the surface of a small polished stone.
“It was almost dark, and I stayed up looking for it until well after sundown, trying to retrace my tracks. It was my grandfather’s rifle, the only thing of value I’d taken when I left home. And as I searched and panicked, I remembered the words of the Sunday minister, preaching about the power of prayer. I knelt down and called out for god. I asked him to help me find it, whatever the cost. In a world of injustice, and murder, and all manner of cruel depravity, I asked god to step in and help me find a missing rifle.” He laughed to himself. “The god of lost guns.”
Her arm climbed up to the base of his shoulder.
His hand picked along the hidden stone in search of sharp edges.
“I prayed with all the fervor of an innocent and hopeful heart, the way only a young boy can. I made every promise under the heavens. I had never asked god for a single thing in my entire life, and I knew if he was anything like the way they described him in church, one missing rifle shouldn’t have been too much to ask for.”
Her fingers found his collar and she reached up to run a slender hand around the back of his neck, twisting it in his flaxen hair.
“And?”
“And nothing,” he shrugged. “I never found it.”
“So God failed you?”
He shook his head slowly. “Nah. God reminded me he was never there in the first place. It was the most important lesson I could have learned that day. People fill their gaps in understanding with any number of things. They try and help create an explanation for themself to make sense of a senseless world.” He said the next part slowly, hoping that the words came out right. “When the likelihood of something happening … seems as unlikely as god himself … then people fill those gaps with god.” He hated the truth of his words, but found comfort in their cold reassurance. “Even if I’d have found the rifle that day, nothing would have changed in the long run. I’d have believed in god for a moment maybe, perhaps deeply so. But eventually I would have figured out that god wasn’t any more real than campfire stories and Indian myths. Eventually, I’d just have explained the experience away using some other way to fill the gaps.”
“Is that why you never carry a gun?”
“I don’t know, maybe.” His skin was warm and flush from the feel of her hand. “Like I said, for me the war’s been over a long time.”
It was hard to say which of them leaned into the kiss first. Good kisses were like that. And there atop the mesa where only the two of them ever sojourned, where Marshall had lost his faith and found something better, they enjoyed a last perfect moment of need, and wanting, and craving, and fear, and regret. Their mouths intertwined in a soft dance, Jennie’s thin wire frame spectacles rustling slightly as their cheeks moved in harmony. Then the marshal broke free and pulled away reluctantly, before his body took over and crossed boundaries that Jennie intended to keep.
He turned her around to keep her from seeing the moisture in his eyes, and held her in his arms as the two of them took in the lonely beauty of the setting sun.
“Vellum,” she said through her own tears, “I want you to be happy.”
He chuckled to himself and shook his head, “So do I.” He waited to speak again until he was sure that he had his emotions in check, not wanting to be carried over the edge by an unexpected gust of dejection. “In this world, happiness always seems like it’s just over the next horizon. Like it’s just out of reach, but close enough to keep us reaching.” The tears came in spite of his better intentions. Just a little. “Happiness is a phoenix that’s born anew each morning, and dies in the sad inevitability of the evening.”
“I loved you,” her voice was shaky now, and weak. “I loved you as much as I was allowed.”
“I know.”
“What do you think that’s worth, in the scheme of things? Amidst the wars and fighting and all the hate?”
Marshal Vellum H. Marshall, duly appointed officer of Iktómi’s Web, didn’t have an answer for that, so he just said the words that he’d repeated to himself each day since Jennie had first crawled into his life.
“I think whoever loves hardest wins.”
They stayed a few moments longer, though not nearly long enough in the face of never-again. Then the marshal declared that Jennie ought to take Blythe back down to where her own horse was waiting, insisting that he’d prefer to make the journey on foot, just like old times. When she’d gone, he gathered some dry wood and built himself a campfire, and emptied the stones from his pocket, setting them dutifully along the edge of the fire’s stone rings. He laid on his back and stared into the flames, imagining new lyrics to sing that pulled at his heart without ripping it in two.
There’s nothing more lovely
Than the certainty that all of this will end
He sang them aloud, staring up at heavens that never seemed to stare back. Then he drifted off to sleep against his better intentions, watching the last remnants of the day as they expired and gave way to darkness.
The marshal didn’t dream. Not this time anyway.
He woke to the sound of someone moving through the brush, and looked over quickly, not realizing he’d fallen asleep. He felt warmth spread out along his insides, through his limbs and midsection as he waited with undeniable hunger for Jennie to return to him. He imagined her eagerness in coming back, and took solace in the shared shameful need that united the two of them – that had brought her back up the side of the steep mesa to be with him. Their last time was apparently not the last time. This time would be the last time. Or maybe next time.
Instead, a man pushed through the thicket, emerging from a patch of low scrub. He was wearing riding clothes and an open-crown hat. He paused, seeing that he had caught the marshal unawares, and threw up a hand in careful conciliatory greeting.
“Evening, marshal.” The man waived his other hand to show that he was unarmed, and even went so far as to pull back his coat to reveal an empty belt. He took a careful step towards the small glowing embers. “Mind if I join you at your fire?”
“I know you?”
“I don’t think so,” the man took a slow careful seat across from the marshal. He had pale skin and dark rings around his eyes. His scalp was bald, and his black riding clothes were accented with little shreds of pinned fabric – red, orange, and gold, “You’d remember someone like me, wouldn’t ya?” He smiled, showing a set of bad, yellow teeth.
“Are you lost?” The marshal rolled carefully to one side, and found his hand reaching for a sidearm that he never wore.
“Mmm,” the bald man nodded. “Lookin’ for someone.” He raised his eyes to take in the view of the stars above them. “What about you?”
“I, uh…” and Marshall found himself stammering for a defense, “Marshal business.” He squinted over to the man, who returned his gaze now blankly. Marshall sat up cautiously, before taking a seat at his own fire. “How’d you know I’m a marshal?”
“Your badge,” the man nodded down at the thing. “And your horse, I guess. Looks like the type of horse a marshal would have.” The marshal wasn’t sure if he should thank the man for the sentiment, but then remembered he’d sent Blythe away with Jennie.
“My horse?”
“I saw it hitched down below,” the man added quickly. “Magnfiicent creature.” The low firelight danced on his pale skin before he nodded and changed directions. “You a collector?” he pointed down innocently at the rocks that the marshal had removed from his coat to set by the fire. “This is a good place for it.”
“It really is,” Marshal found himself admitting reluctantly. “There’s rocks here you won’t find anywhere else on earth.”
“Mmm,” the man hummed, and with an open hand he beat out a slow rhythm, against his chest.
THEMP! THEMP! THEMP! THEMP!
He stared at the marshal with his dark ringed eyes, an uneasy unbroken gaze. “Inyaŋ Wakȟáŋ,” he said at last. When the marshal only stared back at him blankly he added, “The old Indian stories said this place was full of holy rocks. That it had stone seams that ran straight down into the heart of the earth, like the veins of creation itself. Tunnels where a man might descend into the darkness below, and live out lives other than this one.” He smiled harmlessly. “Ghost stories, marshal.”
Marshall licked at his dry lips. “I’ve heard those stories, too,” he admitted carefully.
“Mmm…” the man hummed to himself again. He was still drumming steadily against his chest, his head now swaying lightly with the beat.
THEMP! THEMP! THEMP! THEMP! THEMP!
“Back in those days, for a man to join the people, he would have to prove himself against the darkness of his own thoughts, and venture below to witness a miracle.” The man shrugged as he said, “Makes you wonder though, how many truly made the journey, and which ones just spent the night in the cave of some convenient side cavern.”
“Ha.” The marshal laughed, as he often wondered the same thing.
“Do you sing, marshal?”
THEMP! THEMP! THEMP! THEMP! THEMP! THEMP!
“No,” the marshal lied.
“We are star people, you and I.”
THEMP! THEMP! THEMP! THEMP! THEMP! THEMP! THEMP!
“I’m from Nebraska, originally.”
“No,” the pale man said, “you are not.” His eyes cooled, and degraded into two black pools of oblivion as he sang.
The miles reclaim our footprints
Our bones keep looking back
The overgrowth is swallowing
Swallowing our path
And our bones keep looking back.
Our bones
Keep looking back.
Marshal wasn’t sure what to say. He stared astonished at this uninvited guest, not bothering to hide his confusion, wonder, and surprise. But he said nothing as the man continued singing onward in a voice that was more gravel than graceful.
Before the grace of God, go we
Before the grace of God
Before the grace of time and chance
And entropy’s cruel hands.
And the fire kicked up, ever so slightly, catching some pocket of fuel that had somehow sidestepped its journey into embers. It hissed for a moment, before letting out a sharp SNAP! of air that punctuated the man’s closing words.
And our bones keep looking back.
Our bones
Keep looking back.
THEMP! THEMP! THEMP! THEMP! THEMP!!
The fire crackled a little more, while all around them the rest of the world dared not break the sacred silence. Then the man leaned forward across the fire, and spoke in a polite voice.
“Can I trade you? For one of your rocks?”
Marshall looked down at the three stones he’d gathered for his son, and watched as the man pointed out the amber tomb of a small arachnid.
“This one,” the bald man said. The marshal nodded his agreement as the man stood and dusted himself off. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” Marshall droned absentmindedly, then almost as an afterthought he added, “What do you propose to trade for it?”
“I’ll owe ya one,” the bald man said somberly, “I’d better be getting on. My quarry is elusive, to say the least.” Then he put his open crown hat back onto his head, and gave the marshal a nod and a lift of his newly acquired stone treasure. “Marshall.”
The man had slipped out of sight before he actually reached the brushline, and Marshall couldn’t help but feel bewildered at their awkward, if somewhat brief encounter. He chuckled to himself and shook his head, then chuckled some more before he gathered up his remaining rocks and stamped out the embers.
“This fuckin’ place,” he laughed to himself.
And really, what else could he do but laugh? In the dark of the frontier, the stars stretched off overhead in infinite directions. The marshal laughed at them too, with his usual perplexing mix of wonder and contempt. They glimmered like impossible far-off gems, ones set beyond the height of mortal men that taunted heroes and thieves alike with a beauty that could never truly be possessed. He laughed as his grip tightened around the remaining stones in his pocket, while his mouth filled once more with the bitter flavor of dirt and mold. He laughed at a life that no longer had Jennie in it, and at a son that never really listened, and a bird above the door that always served to remind him of his mistakes. If there really were gods up there among the stars, then this life was a joke that they told one another, and moments like this were the punchline.
And all
you could do
was laugh.
A familiar rustling from the brush line failed to bring the marshal’s attention back earthward.
“You change your mind about that amber?” he called apathetically. “If you’d prefer the jasper, I hate to tell you but, I’m sort of attached to it.”
His words were greeted only with a guttural grunt.
Marshal spun around to see a dark shape silhouetted against the cedar treeline. It was squat, and powerfully built, with large eyes that regarded him in the starlight. The boar was shaggy, with a long snout and two upturned tusks that jutted from its heavy jaw. It grunted once more before it let out a long squeal, and charged towards the marshal, and the sheer cliff beyond.
“Shit!” the marshal hissed under his breath. He nearly stepped backwards over the cliffside, giving a truly ignominious ending to his story, but he caught himself with clear headed realization and took off running along the edge of the sharp drop. Behind him, the boar squealed and lurched, picking its way easily through the landscape while the marshal struggled over each stone and gnarled root that clawed at his feet. “SHIT!” he said again, to no one in particular.
The beast was nearly on him when he turned suddenly and made a lunge for a patch of gnarled junipers. The boar’s confusion lasted only a moment, before it rounded and came back around, squaring the marshal up as he backed helplessly into the twisted stump of the tree. It didn’t grunt this time, it just rushed forward and bit into the marshal’s leg, drawing blood and pain and expletives from its prey.
“YOU GODDAMN FUCKING COWARD!!!” The marshal screamed and kicked at it, but the boar seemed unaffected. “YOU WANNA KILL ME, BOY?!!! YOU THINK THIS IS WHERE I WRAP UP??!!!” He didn’t stop to take in the ridiculous sentiment of his words, aimed at a mindless animal that understood none of them. Rage filled his whole body, the type of rage that he never let himself indulge, and Marshall reached deep within until his fists were balled, and he was slamming a jagged piece of yellow chert into the boar’s crown. “I DIE EVERY FUCKING DAY AND YOU WANT TO KILL ME NOW?!! YOU WANT TO HURT ME? FUCKING HURT ME!!!!”
And then it did. The boar clamped down on a spot just below the marshal’s knee, tearing sinew and tendons as something gave way with a crunch. Pain lanced through the marshal, until his hand opened involuntarily, dropping his precious stone as he struggled to remain conscious. His head swam, and his eyes blurred, and for reasons he couldn’t quite explain, he thought of the little spider that now sat buried in amber – long since dead, but still on display.
“GRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!” he screamed wordlessly.
His body convulsed, and thrashed, and for a moment, the boar relented, and stepped back. It eyed him with veiled satisfaction and gave out a huffing grunt, breath steaming in the cool night air. The marshal pushed himself back into the stump, and raised one hand into a fist, determined to greet his fate with a warrior’s ending. His other hand, reaching around behind the bark of the tree, tried to steady his shaking frame as he endeavored to stand once more, if only to die on his feet.
Then his hand found something, truly unexpected.
It closed around a bolt of cloth, thick and woven, and he pulled it roughly back to himself despite the pain that ran through his arms. It was a holster strap, ragged and threadbare, but still bearing a rusty old rifle within its confines. The boar, as shocked by the development as Marshal himself, regarded the scene only momentarily before it lowered its head and charged once more.
It was ridiculous, all of it. This night, and the man, and the boar, and this ludicrous lost rifle – found now at last after all these long years. Deep within, the marshal knew the thing would never fire, having been left for many long years in the caustic, withering conditions of the mesa’s harsh climate – and that was regardless of if it was even loaded. There was no chance, and no hope, and nothing beyond the fool’s errand of bringing it up to his shoulder, still holstered, as he pointed it at his attacker.
He took aim, and just as the thing reached him once more, he pulled the trigger.
Daylight was just spreading along the streets of Iktómi’s Web when Marshal Vellum H Marshall, lawman of the frontier territory, limped back into town trailing bloody footprints behind him.
He paused when he reached the wooden bench that sat outside of his offices, facing east as he sat down in a heap of viscera and exhaustion. His shirt, which had been ripped to tatters, now sat tied around one leg, holding the thing together with little more than hope and good intentions. He couldn’t hear the sounds of his deputy working within, and he had no coffee to strain through the gaps in his teeth. He didn’t bother watching as the sky bloomed into life before him, but instead closed his eyes, and relaxed.
