Hole up thar, buttbrain, says the one-eared mestizo with the eyepatch, rising to his feet. Aint nobody messin with the sheriff, not while I’m deppity.
Yeah? And whut yu gonna do about it, yu scumsuckin greaser?
I’ll show yu whut I’m gonna do, yu mizzerbul dumsquizzled lardass, snarls the mestizo, throwing away his white stick and hurling himself at the fat man with his whittling knife. The fat man is caught off guard and the knife rips into his groin, the cigar butt popping from his lips as though triggered out by the invading blade, but he manages to plunge his own butcher knife deep into the mestizo’s belly, both men grunting and staggering back before lunging at each other again.
Hey! Jest wait up thar, fellers! he shouts, raising his rifle. Stop thet!
Now dont go botherin inta other folks’ bizness, sheriff, says the old fellow with the squinny, batting his rifle away. This aint none a yer concern.
But—!
Others grab him and pin his arms back. It’s outside yer fuckin jurisdiction, sheriff, they grunt, raising him off the ground and roping his ankles together.
Defense is not a significant part of either man’s technique. They just go at it freestyle, cutting each other over and over; it’s more a matter of pace and persistence than artfulness as their bloodied knives, catching the light from the campfire, flash in and out of each other’s bodies. His deputy loses his other ear and his voice pipe, no doubt more within besides; the fat man’s smile is widened from ear to ear, his stiffened handlebars snicked to a brush, and his belly’s so punctured his guts start to spill out; but neither man gives an inch. Whuck, whuck, whuck, the knives go, and nothing he can do but watch, both men blinded now by blood and injury, taking blow after blow after blow, the other men of the posse cheering them on, laying bets on the side, pushing the antagonists back into it if they chance to stagger apart. Finally, the butcher knife breaks off in the mestizo’s ribs and, as the disarmed fat man slumps to his knees, the mestizo finishes him off in the slaughterhouse manner by stabbing him two-fisted in the back of the neck.
His minced-up deputy stands there, weaving about, still wearing his crushed bowler and the broken blade in his chest, his body sliced open in a hundred places and showing its inner regions, but with his own bloody knife outthrust as though ready as ever to take on all comers. The fire shimmers patchily on his chopped-up face and casts a hulking shadow on the chuckwagon behind him.
Awright, awright, deppity, we take yer point, says the brawny lout irritably. But whut about our goddam cattle?
The deputy, his vocal cords cut and dangling from the hole in his throat, cannot reply, but he turns to the bald ocarina player and gestures with his knife.
Reckon he wants yu t’pipe us a tune on yer sweet patayta, says the bespectacled hunchback.
The man cups the instrument in his large bony hands, bends his gleaming dome toward the fire, and once again imitates the moan of lowing cattle. Almost instantly, about as fast as the fluttered shuffle of a deck of cards, the prairie fills up all around with grazing cattle again.
With that, they set him down again and unbind his ankles. He picks up the fallen Winchester. Ifn yu could do thet, he grumps, why’d yu make sech a fuss?
Aw, sheriff, dont mind us, says the preacherly fellow with a squinnied wink, as they drag the ruined fat man away into the dark beyond the fire. We’re jest skylarkin, y’know, a little cockeyed fun like cowpokes always do, it’s in our nature. Now why dont yu set down’n hep yerself t’some beans’n buffalo hump.
Aint hungry. He’s starved, more like, but their vittles do not appear to be of the edible variety. Wouldnt say no t’summa that whuskey though.
Haw. A silence descends as though fallen from the star-pocked sky. Bet yu wouldnt.
No one moves. Hard to read their expressions. The fire has died down to coals, painting their faces a deep crimson. Mostly, behind their thick red masks, they seem to be grinning or staring at him blankly. Waiting to see what he’ll do. No choice about that. If he wants anything he’ll have to help himself, and he’s already manifested his wants. There’s a lone bottle standing on a stone just on the other side of the fire, catching its light. Like a taunt. He watches their hands. There’s nothing to be heard in the tense motionless silence but the hushed pop and crackle of the dying fire. Even the cattle seem to have paused in their grazing. He has about decided to shoot the bottle, just blast it away and ask for another, see what happens, but then his deputy leans over to pick it up, squirting jets of blood out of his wounds, and staggers over to him with it, stumbling right through the firecoals. As he hands it to him, his good eye rolls up into the back of his head and he collapses at his feet. The deathly stillness maintains. He wipes the blood off the neck of the bottle. Thanks, deppity, much obliged, he says flatly and, watching them all warily, puts the bottle to his lips.
The bottle is empty. He tosses it away, listens to it clatter over the parched earth, a thin paltry sound that makes his eyes ache. He’s all alone, lying on his back with his hat over his face to shield him from the blazing midday desert sun. He can see, peering out into all that light from under his hat brim, that the men of his posse, what was once his posse, have cleared out and taken their herd with them, nothing left of them but for a few bleached bones and a charred place where the campfire was. Plus a saddlebag. He doesn’t want to know what’s in it. He struggles painfully to his feet, trying not to fall over again; his head weighs a ton, hard to keep it on his shoulders. Near him, half buried in the sand: the skull of a steer gazing up at him with empty sockets, a note stabbed onto one of its horns. We’re over yonder, it says. Come find us ifn yu’ve a mind to. Any extry hand welcum. Yer pals the x-posse. There’s a P.S. on the other side: Watch out fer thet rattler residin in the skull, it’s a real mean fucker. Too late. Its fangs are already driven deep into his inner thigh, its flat glassy-eyed head as big as an old scuffed boot lodged there in his crotch, its huge striped body wriggling wildly between his legs like a freak dick from a carnival sideshow. The dull ache in his head is immediately replaced by a sharp ferocious pain throughout his lower parts. His chaps and buckskins should have protected him, but the big snake has struck in the soft part of his thigh, and now its fangs are helplessly locked there in flesh and leather. He whips his old staghorn-handled bowie knife from its sheath and cuts the rattlesnake’s head off at the throat. The headless body twists and thrashes on the ground, but the severed head, even after he stabs it between the eyes, continues to gaze up at him from between his legs with a look commingled of regret, familiarity, and grinning defiance. He rips it out and tosses it away but the fangs remain like steel needles driven to the bone.
He unknots the chaps and tears at his buckskin breeches, but they’re a tight fit; he can get them down off his butt but not past the snakebite on his thigh: they’re like a second skin. Already his thigh and groin are swelling up and changing color and he’s starting to feel sick. He knows he should suck the poison out but the bite’s in a place he can’t reach, even if he could get his pants down. So he cuts into the punctures through the pantleg with his bowie knife and squeezes the blood and pus out as best he can, feeling his whole body begin to puff up and turn feverish.
He figures he’s done for, but then he spies the town over on the horizon, shimmering in the heat. It’s his only chance. He tosses his gunbelt over his shoulder and, in a cold sweat, staggers off in that direction, stumbling, falling, picking himself up and carrying on. The poison’s getting to him. Sometimes the town is out there, sometimes it isn’t. He sees a soft quilted bunk that fades into sagebrush when he reaches it, a watering hole which turns into a dry gully when he falls into it, mouth open, face in the sand.