‘I wonder what was the matter with him,’ said Charlie.
‘Some kind of grief has made him insane.’
By the time we mounted our horses, the weeping man was out of sight, and the source of his worry would remain forever a mystery.
Chapter 4
We rode along in silence, thinking our private thoughts. Charlie and I had an unspoken agreement not to throw ourselves into speedy travel just after a meal. There were many hardships to our type of life and we took these small comforts as they came; I found they added up to something decent enough to carry on.
‘What has this Hermann Warm done?’ I asked.
‘Taken something of the Commodore’s.’
‘What has he taken?’
‘This will be revealed soon enough. To kill him is the thing.’ He rode ahead and I rode after. I had been wanting to talk about it for some time, before the last job, even.
‘Haven’t you ever found it strange, Charlie? All these men foolish enough to steal from the Commodore? As feared a man as he is?’
‘The Commodore has money. What else would attract a thief?’
‘How are they getting the money? We know the Commodore to be cautious. How is it that all these different men have access to his wealth?’
‘He does business in every corner of the country. A man cannot be in two places at once, much less a hundred. It only stands to reason he’d be victimized.’
‘Victimized!’ I said.
‘What would you call it when a man is forced to protect his fortune with the likes of us?’
‘Victimized!’ I found it amusing, genuinely. In honor of the poor Commodore, I sang a mawkish ballad: ‘His tears behind a veil of flowers, the news came in from town.’
‘Oh, all right.’
‘His virgin seen near country bower, in arms of golden down.’
‘You are only angry with me for taking the lead position.’
‘His heart mistook her smile for kindness, and now he pays the cost.’
‘I’m through talking with you about it.’
‘His woman lain in sin, her highness, endless love is lost.’
Charlie could not help but smile. ‘What is that song?’
‘Picked it up somewhere.’
‘It’s a sad one.’
‘All the best songs are sad ones.’
‘That’s what Mother used to say.’
I paused. ‘The sad ones don’t actually make me sad.’
‘You are just like Mother, in many ways.’
‘You’re not. And you’re not like Father, either.’
‘I am like no one.’
He said this casually, but it was the type of statement that eclipsed the conversation, killed it. He pulled ahead and I watched his back, and he knew I was watching his back. He stuck Nimble’s ribs with his heels and they ran off, with me following behind. We were only traveling in our typical fashion, at our typical pace, but I felt all the same to be chasing him.
Chapter 5
Short, late-winter days, and we stopped in a dried ravine to make up camp for the night. You will often see this scenario in serialized adventure novels: Two grisly riders before the fire telling their bawdy stories and singing harrowing songs of death and lace. But I can tell you that after a full day of riding I want nothing more than to lie down and sleep, which is just what I did, without even eating a proper meal. In the morning, pulling on my boots, I felt a sharp pain at the long toe of my left foot. I upended and tapped at the heel of the boot, expecting a nettle to drop, when a large, hairy spider thumped to the ground on its back, eight arms pedaling in the cold air. My pulse was sprinting and I became weak-headed because I am very much afraid of spiders and snakes and crawling things, and Charlie, knowing this, came to my aid, tossing the creature into the fire with his knife. I watched the spider curl up and die, smoking like balled paper, and was happy for its suffering.
Now a shimmering cold was traveling up my shinbone like a frost and I said, ‘That was a powerful little animal, brother.’ A fever came over me at once and I was forced to lie down. Charlie became worried by my pale coloring; when I found I could no longer speak he stoked up the fire and rode to the nearest town for a doctor, whom he brought to me against or partially against the man’s will—I was in a fog but recall his cursing each time Charlie walked out of earshot. I was given a kind of medicine or antivenom, some element of which made me glad and woozy as when drunk, and all I wanted to do was forgive everyone for everything and also to smoke tobacco ceaselessly. I soon dropped off into dead-weighted sleep and remained untouchable all through that day and night and into the next morning. When I awoke, Charlie was still at the fire, and he looked over to me and smiled.
‘Can you remember what you were dreaming of just now?’ he asked.
‘Only that I was being restricted,’ I said.
‘You kept saying, “I am in the tent! I am in the tent!” ’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘ “I am in the tent!” ’
‘Help me stand up.’
He assisted me and in a moment I was circling the camp on wooden-feeling legs. I was slightly nauseated but ate a full meal of bacon and coffee and biscuits and managed to keep this down. I decided I was well enough to travel and we rode easy for four or five hours before settling down again. Charlie asked me repeatedly how I was feeling and I attempted each time to answer, but the truth of it was that I did not exactly know. Whether it was the poison from the spider or the harried doctor’s antivenom, I was not entirely in my body. I passed a night of fever and starts and in the morning, when I turned to meet Charlie’s good-day greeting, he took a look at me and emitted a shriek of fright. I asked him what was the matter and he brought over a tin plate to use as a looking glass.
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘That’s your head, friend.’ He leaned back on his heels and whistled.
The left side of my face was grotesquely swollen, from the crown of my skull all the way to the neck, tapering off at the shoulder. My eye was merely a slit and Charlie, regaining his humor, said I looked like a half dog, and he tossed a stick to see if I would chase it. I traced the source of the swelling to my teeth and gums; when I tapped a finger on the lower left row, a singing pain rang through my body from top to bottom and back again.
‘There must be a gallon of blood sloshing around,’ said Charlie.
‘Where did you find that doctor? We should revisit him and have him lance me.’
Charlie shook his head. ‘Best not to search him out. There was an unhappy episode regarding his fee. He would be glad to see me again, it’s true, but I doubt he would be eager to assist us further. He mentioned another encampment a few miles farther to the south. That might be our wisest bet, if you think you can make it.’
‘I don’t suppose I have a choice.’
‘As with so many things in a life, brother, I don’t suppose you do.’
It was slow going, though the terrain was easy enough—a mild downhill grade over firm, forested earth. I was feeling strangely happy, as though involved in a minor amusement, when Tub made a misstep and my mouth clacked shut. I screamed out from the pain, but in the same breath was laughing at the ridiculousness of it. I stuck a wad of tobacco between my uppers and lowers for cushioning. This filled my head with brown saliva but I could not spit, as it proved too painful, so I merely leaned forward and let the liquid leak from my mouth and onto Tub’s neck. We passed through a quick flurry of snow; the flakes felt welcome and cool on my face. My head was listing and Charlie circled me to stare and ogle. ‘You can see it from behind, even,’ he said. ‘The scalp itself is swollen. Your hair is swollen.’ We passed widely around the unpaid doctor’s town and located the next encampment some miles later, a nameless place, a quarter mile long and home to a hundred people or less. But luck was with us, and we found a tooth doctor there named Watts smoking a pipe outside his storefront. As I approached the man he smiled and said, ‘What a profession to be involved in, that I’m actually happy to see someone so distorted.’ He ushered me into his efficient little work space, and toward a cushioned leather chair that squeaked and sighed with newness as I sat. Pulling up a tray of gleaming tools, he asked tooth-history questions I had no satisfactory answers for. At any rate I got the impression he did not care to know the answers but was merely pleased to be making his inquiries.