Then there was the accompanying noise. The blistering roar from pistols, rifles, and shotguns when they sent the certainty of eternal damnation echoing through my quiescent brain. The entire ball of wax often seemed masked in a cacophonous, chilling cloak draped across the narrow shoulders of that insatiable, bony-fingered, skull-faced Thief of Souls.
But even worse than those skin-pimpling horrors were the agonized, screeching cries and whimpers of wounded and dying men. The nerve-grating screams of injured, wild-eyed, panicked horses. My nighttime apparitions rolled themselves into a calamitous tumult brought on by a litany of misty and confused visions of gore, thunder, and violent death, that I came to feel sure had not yet occurred but would present themselves soon.
There was no denying it, those blood-spattered nightmares seemed genuine beyond human understanding. So authentically sharp, clear, and saturated in the colors of departing mortality. Even the piercing, gut-wrenching burn of being shot felt real. The hornet-like sting of the massive, red-hot slug as it entered the fleshy part of my side caused me to groan in my half consciousness and squirm atop twisted bedding. And for way longer than necessary, I relived the events that had transpired outside Marshal Jacob Cobb’s office each time my head hit the pillow and I closed my eyes.
Top of everything else, it was doubled-up summertime in Texas and hotter’n a burning mesquite stump. During the day everything with legs spent most of its time looking for any spot not deep-fried by the sun. Even the coming of darkest night brought almost nothing in the way of much-needed respite. ’Course, as I’ve said before, I didn’t mind the heat back then.
But early on one particular morning, the unrelenting, elevated temperature snapped me awake coated in the damp sheen of an icy sweat. Seemed as though every square inch of my aching body was slick with clammy flesh. Groggy from being snatched out of my dreadful nightly tossings and turnings, I rolled onto one side.
Propped on an elbow, I hacked out a croupy cough, then wheezed as though being strangled by some evil, unseen spirit. Damn the nightmares. Ugly, confused visions possessed the uncommon power to give me a case of the waking willies. Or maybe it wasn’t the dreams this particular time. Something else, possibly.
“Sweet Jesus, have mercy,” I grumbled and cast a heavy-lidded gaze at the open doorway and out onto the veranda.
Fuzzy-headed from the night’s short, dank siesta, I swung aching legs around and came to a stoop-shouldered, humped-over sitting position. Clawed at a spot on my throat, beneath a stubble-covered chin. It felt as though my mouth had somehow been filled with a wad of flour glue laced with a handful of straw.
My narrow, coffin-like cot—a wood-frame and leather-strapped contraption—appeared as though it had been specifically designed by hell-bred demons to torment the unsuspecting user. This medieval torture contrivance was topped by a lumpy, cotton-ticking bag stuffed with brittle corn shucks. The sack crackled and crunched with my slightest move.
“My God, but this is a right sorry mattress,” I mumbled to the empty room.
Used a fist to poke at a particularly rocklike, irritating bulge near the spot that one unthinking leg usually sought out. The entire less-than-comfortable apparatus groaned, creaked, rustled, and complained as I shifted from one spot to another.
With considerably more conviction, I growled, “Damnation.” Then set to rubbing my lower back. Yawned. Pawed at one sleep-matted eye with the back of a clenched fist. Picked at something wayward on my lower lip. Puckered and tried several times to spit the offending article away.
Pushing off the wobbly bed, I went to work getting completely erect. My saddle-abused spine creaked into place, one bony vertebrae at a time. Kind of like a carpenter’s folding, metal-jointed ruler. Felt as if I was being stabbed with heated ice picks, when all those grating bones snapped and ground their way to the spots where each belonged. ’Course that set me to wondering what daily life would be like when I actually went and got old.
I wobbled a bit on sluggish legs. And, in the manner an ancient, solitary, battle-scarred grizzly, awakening in his hidden den, I stretched, shook all over, then snarled to warn off any wayward intruders.
Swaying in the near dark of the advancing morn, I ran shaky fingertips over the thumb-sized, near-healed weal on my right side just above the belt line. Then I slipped those same fingers around to my back and gingerly checked the spot where the bullet had come out.
“Damn Irby Teal for a good shot, anyhow,” I muttered. “Guess if the evil bastard had been any better with a pistol I’d be dead, buried, and nothing but a gob of rot just like him, his brother, Boston, and their stupid friends.”
Satisfied that the matching welts of angry flesh had not somehow miraculously vanished during the previous night’s tussle with evasive sleep, I grunted my disapproval at the slowness of their healing and shuddered. Figured I might as well resign myself to the fecklessness of Irby Teal’s questionable aim and just try to forget about the angry-looking wound. Fat chance.
I hobbled across my sultry bedchamber. The shadow-filled room was ever so slowly, but very certainly, growing brighter with the unhurried rising of the sun.
Stopping at the nightstand, I snatched the ewer from its matching bowl. Poured lukewarm water into one hand and sucked it across dry lips, like a wary animal drinking from a tiny pond. Slapped some of the liquid onto my face and neck. Sure as hell felt good. I rattled the jug back into place, then lurched for the room’s open door.
“Always darkest just before the dawn,” I muttered and stared into the framed dimness of coming sunup outside.
One hand pressed against my knotted spine, I paused in the room’s entryway. The broad porch of our rented, dog-run ranch house lay at my feet. I cocked an inquisitive ear and twisted my head to get better focused on the question that plagued my sleep-fogged mind.
A hundred yards away, in the trees near the river, frogs quarreled. Whip-poor-wills called back and forth to one another. Off to the north, near a barely silhouetted, rock-strewn hill, a solitary coyote yipped. Doves, surprised by something unseen, fluttered up in a flurry of racket just a few feet from the front steps and clattered their way to raucous safety. Crickets chirped and buzzed in every direction.
“Mite noisy this morning. But it’s better than living up north around Fort Worth. Have to put up with the constant racket from all the damned locusts,” I said to the fast-approaching light. “God Almighty, but I do hate their infernal buzzing.”
Pleasant fragrance of wildflowers, carried on the approaching morning’s barely detectable breezes, wafted across the grass-poor yard. The refreshing aroma tickled the edges of my flared nostrils. Distracted, I momentarily abandoned my mission and tilted an inquisitive nose up to get a better whiff of the delicate bouquet.
Lilac. But then again, maybe not. Still hadn’t acquired the talent for telling one flower from the other just by the smelling. Hell of a failing for a man who spent most of his waking life out on the raw edges of civilization.
Maybe the perfume came from bluebonnets blooming somewhere nearby. Yeah, that made perfect sense. Bluebonnets. No women around this haven for us ole shot-to-a-pulp bachelors to tell me for sure.
Clad in nothing but a pair of cotton, calf-length, faded-red drawers, I grabbed the doorframe’s crossbeam to steady up a bit, then leaned forward, ever so slightly. Scratched an itchy belly, then tried to pick anything by way of odd, inappropriate sounds from the soon-to-be stifling south Texas air.