“I’ll be straight with you,” said Brooke, “and tell you that we were hoping we might be able to owe you some work or a favor of some kind, in exchange for a room. We’ve been in the woods for weeks now.”
“Months,” said Sugar.
“Months,” said Brooke. “We’re hard workers and we can commit ourselves to just about any task.”
“That your wife?” said the keeper of the inn.
“My brother,” said Brooke.
Sugar removed their only weapon — a small blade he’d sheathed in the front leather of his half-inch-thick belt. He placed it on the counter and let his hands fall to his side.
“How about a challenge?” said Brooke, “if a favor won’t suit you.”
The old woman stared back at him, unflinching, circling her jaw.
“From behind the counter, which of the two of you can get closer to my body without piercing me from across the room.” Brooke took several steps to place himself against the far wall.
“You strike me, you lose,” he said. “You get closer than my brother without doing so, and we’ll come back when we’ve got some money.”
“Two throws a player,” said the woman. “I don’t have much experience with a knife.”
“Two throws then,” said Brooke. “Sugar, why don’t you join her behind the counter there.”
“You have to untwist that wire,” said the woman.
A coil of wire was threaded between two copper loops, keeping the waist-high door at the end of the counter cinched shut.
Sugar’s fingers were trembling slightly. He wasn’t nervous, but still sore and uncertain.
The woman watched his hands work the wire and declared that she would go first.
“It’s my roof and my wall,” she said.
Brooke nodded, and Sugar unthreaded the wire and joined her.
She did not rise from the stool, but took the knife from the counter and held it a moment. She let it lower her hand, bounced it a bit. She held it by the blade, then the handle. She held its edge before her eye, then its handle. She brought her arm back and sprung it forward as she loosed the knife. It plunged into the wall a foot or so to the left of Brooke’s neck and held there.
“You’ll announce the throw next time,” said Brooke, unshaken.
Sugar retrieved the knife and rejoined the woman.
“I’m throwing,” said Sugar.
The knife appeared half a foot from the scar left by the woman’s throw, just to the left of Brooke’s neck. Brooke smiled. The vein in his neck swelled just slightly with each heartbeat.
Sugar retrieved the knife and rejoined the woman.
She did not rise from the stool. She took the knife from Sugar and held it a moment. She let it lower her hand, bounced it a bit. She held it by the blade, then the handle. She held its edge before her eye, then its handle. She brought her arm back and sprung it forward as she loosed the knife. It plunged into the wall halfway between Sugar’s scar and the left edge of Brooke’s neck, and held there.
Sugar retrieved the knife and rejoined the woman.
“I’m throwing,” said Sugar.
The knife appeared then just at the left of Brooke’s neck. When he exhaled, his flesh pressed against the blade.
“A winner,” said Brooke.
The woman shook her head.
“Three throws,” she said. “I said three.”
“You undoubtedly said two,” said Brooke, removing the small knife from the wall and joining them at the counter.
Sugar stood beside the woman, sporting a vague grin.
“Three,” she said. “My roof and my rooms and my wall.”
“How will three not turn into four?” said Brooke.
She shook her head, spit into the pot.
“Can you give me a shave, Sugar?” said Brooke.
Sugar nodded.
“Three a player then,” said Brooke.
He took his place back at the wall, aligning himself with Sugar’s final scar.
The woman did not rise from the stool. She held the knife in her palm. Let it lower the hand, bounced it a bit. She held it by the blade, then the handle. She held its edge before her eye, then its handle. She brought her arm back and sprung it forward as she loosed the knife. It plunged into Brooke’s right thigh, hilt deep.
“You win,” she said.
Something was eating. In the darkness, there was nothing but the pain in his arm and gut and the slurping and gnawing ringing out as if against stone. That’s what it was. They were in stone. Encased in stone like at the bottom of a canyon. The bottom of a canyon with only a canyon above. His one arm was still mobile and relatively painless. He reached over himself to touch the outer layer of his opposite arm. Bending ached his gut, and touching made the whole arm scream. But he was silent. Tears came, but no sound. Only the sounds of it eating, coming from all around him. As if the boy were thinking it, rather than hearing it. What should have been flesh was rough, wet tissue, like the dense pile of leaves on a forest floor. His left hand recoiled. The eating sounds ceased and the stone moved again. Moonlight lit the cavern walls, Bird’s broken body, the cart to which he was tied, and then he was sealed away as before.
Brooke sank to sitting, pulled the blade from his leg, and the windows of the inn exploded with gunfire. Sugar struck the floor and met Brooke’s eyes from across the room.
“No,” cried the woman, “not the windows and walls.”
The gunfire did not cease until she had set to cursing into the palms of her hands and crying just a little and the two brothers had joined one another behind a sagging couch near the center of the room. They had only the blade, slick with Brooke’s blood.
Soon they heard boots on the planks of the porch and a voice that called out, “Toss what you’ve got and rise up slowly.”
The boots found their way into the main room, an innumerable cluster of bumps, knocks, and creaks, settling then to silence.
Brooke wiped his blood on the knee of his britches and shook his head to Sugar, who rose up slowly, hands in the air.
Before him stood a line of eight unrecognizable faces, and then that of the bartender. Six-shooters in fourteen hands and shotguns in the remaining four.
Brooke was bleeding through his fabrics. His foot twitched at the ankle.
“My brother’s got only a knife,” said Sugar. “And I’ve got nothing.”
“Step out from behind the seat,” said the leader, a man in a brilliant white button-up topped with a loose brown vest. He bore no signifying marks or pins. He appeared roughly forty years of age, give or take a few years. He was hard-faced and scarred at the chin. “Do it now,” he said, evenly.
Sugar did as he was told. He did not glance at Brooke, who was attempting to steady his foot and gain a clear head.
“The other too,” said the leader.
A skilled shot nicked the blade of the knife as it landed a foot or so to the left of the couch. It skittered and spun to the far wall and a young boy near the end of the line apologized.
Brooke’s hands emerged first. Then the back of his head, his shoulders, and the broad black back of his leathers.
“Turn,” said the leader.
“Can’t,” said Brooke, his hands gripped to the couch’s back. “I’m pierced and bleeding.”
“Go around and see,” the leader said to the man beside him. An older man in a worn black top hat, striped whites, and suspenders set to examine Brooke.
“We’ve got them,” said the boy.
“He’s bleeding all right,” said the man in the top hat, looking back at his party from the couch’s left edge.
“I had them,” said the inn keeper, rising from behind the counter. “I had them both and you came to us like this and bore apart my walls.”