Devils Unto Dust(22)

It happens so fast; Curtis fires a shot across their heads and the shakes leap away from whatever dead and rotten thing they were crouched over. They come for us, rail thin and snarling, teeth bared and blackened with dried blood. More shots go off, deafening and smoky. I take aim and shoot but it goes wide; they move so fast and erratically that it seems impossible to hit them. Then one shake goes down as a bullet finds a wet home in its neck. It scrapes at its throat as it falls, blood staining its hands. The other keeps running at us, and every instinct is telling me to turn my back and flee. Curtis takes aim and a shot hits the shake’s thigh; it stumbles and falls over, and Ben darts forward to fire one shot directly into its head.

Everyone seems frozen in place: Ben, standing over the shake, Curtis at my side, my knuckles white where my hand grips my gun. Ben breaks the spell first, nudging the shake with his boot to make sure it’s dead. I take a deep breath and then wish I hadn’t, the smell of foul blood and gunpowder making my stomach churn. Curtis moves to check on the other shake; there’s a gurgling sound that means it’s still alive. I don’t want to look, but I can’t avoid it. It’s hard to tell because it’s so thin, but the long matted hair makes me think it’s a woman. Her lips move wordlessly and blood bubbles up from her mouth. I turn my head away so I don’t have to see what happens next, but I still flinch at the shot.

“All set?” Ben asks his brother.

“Yeah,” Curtis answers. “We’re done here.”

I tell myself that I did the right thing, hiring hunters. That I never had to shoot moving targets like that before, that those shakes would’ve killed me. But I don’t feel like singing anymore.





18.


The desert is still, no sign of movement, not even dust. But it’s a calm stillness, ancient and unchanging. The desert was here before us, and it will be here long after, watchful and patient and unmoved.

The ground is hard and flat and endless. There is something comforting about the sameness of it all, the way the color has been leeched from the land until everything is a blurry brown. Even the whiplike ocotillo and the saw-toothed green sotol blend into the ground, the slight shadows they cast swallowed up by the dirt. The light is still low, but when it hits noon, the sky will lose all color as well, the blue bleached white by the blast of the sun.

I can see the first marker from a ways off; the red stake in the ground is hard to miss. We reached it quicker than I expected; five miles in under two hours. This is the farthest I’ve ever been outside the fence, and I lightly tap the stake for luck. It’s a reassuring sight, proof that we’re still on the road and a sign of those that came before.

“If we keep to this pace, we should be at the first way station by around four,” Curtis says, breaking the silence.

“Is that good?” I ask, not so much because I want to know as because I want to be distracted.

Curtis nods. “We’re making good time. I think—”

“Sign,” Benjamin suddenly interrupts, and my stomach lurches.

“Where?” Curtis asks immediately, snapping to attention.

Benjamin points due west, behind us, and I spin around to stare, my hand going to my gun. All I can see is a small swirl of dust rising up, but it looks ominous.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Movement. Could be nothing. Could be something,” Benjamin says.

The dust floats up and dissipates into the air and everything is still again. The boys don’t move for a long moment, then there’s an unspoken word between them and they both shift away.

“Keep an eye on it,” Curtis says to Ben. “There’s a hotbox in a couple miles if it turns into something. Let’s keep moving.”

We start walking again and questions build up on my tongue. I keep looking over my shoulder until I almost run into Curtis, and then I keep my eyes on my feet.

“What’s a hotbox?” I finally ask when my curiosity gets the better of me.

Ben snorts. “It’s what it sounds like,” he says. “It’s a wooden box with a tin roof that gets hot as all hell.”

“It’s a blockhouse,” Curtis says. “There’s one every ten miles. It ain’t much, really. It ain’t tall enough for a man to stand up straight or long enough to lie flat, but in a tight spot it’s something between you and a pack of shakes.”

I suck in my breath through my teeth, trying to imagine being trapped in a box while shakes surround you. It sounds all kinds of awful.

“You ever had to use one?” I ask.

“Just once,” Benjamin says. “Got caught out at night, outside Hide Town. Some tenderfoot thought killing a shake would be a good time, wanted to try it for himself.”

“What happened?”

Curtis gives a small snort. “Late afternoon and the fellow tripped over his own feet and broke his ankle. He couldn’t walk so we had to carry him to the nearest hotbox, and the last hour it was almost full dark. Longest night of my life.”

Despite the heat, I shiver.

We fan out, Curtis in the lead. I walk a ways behind him, glancing to the left and right, watching for any flicker of movement. We head directly toward the sun; Curtis’s shadow stretches long and thin, his distorted head moving under my feet. I slow my pace by a hair until my boots are clear of him. It seems impolite to trespass on someone else’s shadow, like walking into a house without knocking. Benjamin follows last with Nana, turning every so often to look behind. We’re too far apart to talk now, so I count my steps to keep my mind alert. I lose track twice, once at six hundred and thirty-six, and again at eight hundred and twelve. The road begins to curve north, and I wonder who first plotted out this course. A man, I wager, but what manner? And for what purpose? Was it before the sickness came, was it as easy as riding on his lonesome through the dust? No need to be watchful for anything but rattlers and hoof stones, no roof but the stars over his head at night. How simple life must have been, then, how exquisitely simple.