Episode 50

All Damnation Rising

With reluctance the teamster pounded a fist on the jailhouse door. A scowling face appeared at the barred port set at eye height.

“State your business,” the man at the port growled.

“Fella gave me a message for you. Told me to bring it to the marshal’s office.” The teamster was a rangy man with a face seared crimson from the sun. He was just into Mercury Wells with a load of fence wire for the Three Rivers.

“What fella?”

“Didn’t give me his name. Met him along the road ten or so miles north of here. His clothes were dusty. Tore a page from a book and wrote a few words before handing it off to me.”

“What’s the message?”

“I was wondering myself seein’ as I can’t read a word beyond my own name.”

The teamster heard bolt after bolt shot free before the iron strapped door squealed opened.

Seth Dugan took the offered piece of paper and unfolded it. The paper was wrapped around a brass marshal’s badge. It was a page ripped from a bible with a ragged hole punched through the center. He stepped back into the gloom and slammed the door closed.

“You’re welcome all to hell,” the teamster said, marching back to his team of four. He smiled as his fingers fondled the double eagle the stranger had given him for the delivery of the note.

“What the hell’s it mean?” Les said after his brother had read him the contents of the short note.

“How should I know? It might as well be Latin for all the sense it makes,” Seth spat.

“The old man would know,” Les said.

Seth made his way to the Majestic while Les remained behind, locked away in the sweatbox of the jailhouse. Ben Temple was not at the Majestic nor at his room at the Grand Prairie. At last, he found the old blind man sitting in a celestial’s tent sipping Chinese tea.

Ben Temple nodded when Seth was finished reciting the contents of the note. He made a fist of his hand, his lips pressed together, and brows furrowed.

“That mean damn all to you, Temple?” Seth said.

“Clear as glass. He’s said he’s riding for Big Bend country,” Ben said, a brittle edge to his voice, no trace of his usual glib humor.

“Why in hell? Nothing down there but Mexicans, army deserters, breeds and Christ only knows what manner of two-legged animal.” Seth studied the old man’s face for sign. Temple’s visage turned to a mask of stone.

“You and your brother best split the kitty and ride. Wait till dark and let those men you’re holding free. Then get clear of Mercury Wells.”

“You gone crazy. My brother and me gave Joe our word we’d stick with him, see the law done here.”

“It won’t be the law riding with him when Joe comes back.” Ben slammed a fist on the table. The cup of tea toppled to send a scalding spill across the wooden top.

“I’ve known Joe Wiley a long time. And I can’t just ride off and leave him. If he’s coming back to this shithole, he’ll find the Dugans standing where he left us.” Seth was losing patience with the old coyote sitting before him talking nonsense.

Ben Temple looked up then, locking eyes on Seth Dugan as if he was seeing the manand seeing him whole. Or more like his blind eyes were seeing into the man. His brows relaxed, unraveling. The hard line of his mouth softened. He was seeing past Seth Dugan, seeing something only he had witnessed.

“I’ve known Joe Wiley longer than you. Almost his whole life. I knew an entire different man than the man you think you understand him to be. I saw him become a man and then make himself, by pure guts and will, into someone else. But that younger fella, that feral wolfling, is still there inside, lying deep. And something’s caused that younger Joe to stir again to the surface.”

Seth Dugan stood regarding Ben Temple who was sagging at the shoulders now, head drooping. The years were piling up on Ben now all in a moment. The old blind man continued, voice rasping.

“He’s coming back here, all right. You can count on that like you can the next sunrise or like you can count on snow in the high ranges come winter. But this time he ain’t bringing the law with him. You think yourself a hard man, Dugan. You and your brother both. And by the lights of these days, I suppose you are hard men. Only you ain’t never seen what these blind eyes have seen and you ain’t never seen the Joe Wiley that’s going to ride out of Big Bend with all damnation riding behind him.”

Ben trailed away to silence and sat unmoving, hand still fisted, eyes peering back across the years.

There were no words left to hear. Seth crushed the bible page in his fist and dropped it in the steaming pool of tea. He backed from the tent and strode to the jailhouse without looking to either side of him.

* * *

Billy Carruthers woke late that night with a rumbling in his guts. That damned greasy mess of fried beans and eggs they served them for supper. He clambered over Nestor Ortiz and stumbled to the bucket in the corner. He touched the bucket with the toe of his sock and the contents sloshed over the lip onto the floor soaking his foot. The damn bucket was filled to the brim with piss and shit.

“Hey!” he called; face pressed to the bars. “Shit bucket’s full! You gotta toss this out.”

No answer from the dark room beyond.

“I’m serious now. My ass is set to blow wide open any second. ’Less you want to mop up after me…”

He expected a retort to that. Especially from the meaner of the pair of brother deputies. Still there was only silence from the gloom. Billy leaned harder into the bars, shifting his cheek against the cold metal for a better angle on the room where the lawmen spent every night playing cards or swapping bullshit.

His weight caused the door to give. He pressed a hand to the bars and pushed. The door swung open, hinges squealing. With one piss-soaked foot in front of the other he crept from the cell toward the marshal’s office. Blue moonlight came in through the bars of the narrow port set high on the jailhouse door. Deep shadows described the shape of a table, chairs, standing desk and an empty rack for shotguns and rifles set up against a wall.

And no lawmen, not a one, anywhere to be seen.