Stanton straightened his trim, elderly frame. “I am a trained physician, my good man. Cum laude Boston University of Medicine. A description of mere nasal expectoration, however extreme, would not intimidate me.”
Barker nodded toward the closed door to room 12. “Then for the love of mercy, Doc, go in there and see to the poor traveler — before he brings my place down around my ears! I’ve had four transit customers left already this week because of his roaring and snuffling.”
The doctor’s lips tightened. “Very well then.” He took a deep breath. “I expect you are right: an oath is an oath.” He faced the door, then glanced back. “I would be beholden to both you gentlemen if you would accompany me. To, um, bear witness to, um, whatever treatment it may be required that I apply.”
The others hesitated. Then Bales shrugged. “It’s my hotel. I reckon I’ve no option in the matter.” Beside him, Doland blew a puff of imaginary cigar smoke.
“My life is all a gamble anyway. I will have your back, Doc.”
The door to room 12 was not locked. There was neither reason nor need why it should be. No one in their right or even their wrong mind who knew anything of its present occupant would have thought to enter with malice in mind.
Mad Amos Malone lay sprawled across two iron-frame beds that, though pushed together, were still insufficient to accommodate his considerable bulk. Emerging from the prodigious eruption of gray-peppered black hirsuteness lying at the head of the two beds, a thunderous great concatenation of torso, arms, and legs sprawled across the pair of groaning mattresses. The prone mountain man was clad in rough red long johns that had been deeply stained by use, experience, and a plethora of fluids best left unidentified. Twin columns of callused flesh, his bare feet hung well over the bottom of the beds.
On an end table to the right of the recumbent figure stood a flowery ceramic water pitcher, a tall glass, a bottle of Dr. Vanhoffer’s Viennese laudanum, and half a cigar. A few personal accoutrements, including a Sharps rifle, lay in a corner. While not overpowering, the general vapors in the room were less than salutary. Conscious of his professional oath, Stanton held tight to his medical bag as he approached the foot of the bed. Following directly, Doland and Barker were mindful of the door that had been left open to the hallway.
Leaning toward the conjoined beds, the doctor adjusted his glasses. “He’s asleep.” Having rendered this verdict, he turned to go.
From deep within a chest cavity of awesome dimension, a voice rumbled, as if from the farthest reaches of Mammoth Cave, “No I ain’t.”
Compelled to halt, Stanton cleared his throat. “I am Dr. Elias John Stanton. How—how are you feeling today, Mr. Malone?”
Bushy brows drew back and eyes fixed on the solicitous physician. “Like I been glued to a teat suckin’ tar instead o’ milk, Doc. What you got fer thet?”
“Um, a dilute solution of appropriate spirits might help to alleviate your discomfort, sir, by acting to thin the mucus that presently—”
“Spirits!” the giant mountain man bellowed, sitting up with such alacrity that Stanton threw up an arm to shield himself while stumbling backward. From the hallway to which they had precipitously withdrawn, the hotel owner and the town’s resident professional gambler looked on apprehensively.
“I knew somethin’ was preyin’ on me. Spirits!”
To Stanton’s credit he had not joined his companions in hasty flight. He did, however, edge aside as the room’s enormous occupant sat up, stood up (having to bend to ensure that his head would not damage the ceiling), and hurried to peer out the nearest window.
“I knew I heerd it! I knew!” Looking back and down, he locked eyes with the doctor. “Don’t you hear it, too, noble member of the Asklepiades?”
Stanton held his ground. “Hear what, sir?”
“Why, the wind! The wind, friend!”
The doctor glanced back toward the open doorway. Barker and Doland exchanged a glance, then shrugged. “Yes, Mr. Malone,” Stanton avowed, “we all, um, hear the wind.” Displaying bravery comparable to that exhibited by the men of Pickett’s Charge, he moved close enough to place a reassuring hand on the center of the giant’s lower back. The rough material of the wool long johns seemed to prickle against the doctor’s open palm. “Mr. Malone, sir, it may be that your illness is affecting your judgment. If you would lie back down again, I shall endeavor to—”
“No time, no time!” Snorting through the noble promontory centered on his bearded face, Malone bounded across the room and began pulling on his buckskins. “Thet wind: you hear it but you don’t hear it. You feel it but you don’t understand it. It’s got to be stopped, and stopped right quick, or it’ll shred this town like a blind pig goin’ through a reaper.”
More concerned now than ever about his incipient patient’s state of mind, Stanton tried to reassure the giant as shirt followed pants. “Mr. Malone, sir, it is only the wind. Nothing to get alarmed about. Here south of Denver on the east front of the Rockies, wind is a feature of daily life. We are quite used to it even if you are not, and being used to it, we are hardly alarmed by its occurrence.”
Malone looked up from pulling on a boot. “Well, you ought to be. This ain’t no ordinary wind that’s comin’, friend.” Eyes like black diamonds flashed. “‘Used to wind’? Why, let me tell you, Doc. I know the wind. I’ve done felt the Bayamo blowing hard off the coast of Cuba, and suffered the Harmattan while stuck atop a complainin’ camel. I’ve sailed through the Levant round the Canaries and shouted insults at the Mistral for delayin’ me in Marseille. I’ve fought the Ostria on behalf of the Turk, sucked up the Sirocco off of Tripoli, and stood arms akimbo while I let the Squamish scour my pits right close to where Vancouver first set his stick. I know the wind.” Cupping a hand, he coughed into it.
“And even though I’m feelin’ poorly, I aim to take a stand on behalf o’ this town against the wind what’s comin’.” His gaze swept past the confused physician and wandered to the hallway beyond. “If fer naught else, on behalf o’ a certain lady who done more than her duty by me.”
“That’s very thoughtful of you, Mr. Malone, I’m sure.” Stanton had his bag open and was hunting among the contents. If he could just load his needle… “For whatever reason. But I say again it is only the wind, and in my professional opinion you are somewhat unsettled in mind. If you will let me, I will…”
Fully dressed now in skin and cotton, leather and wool, Malone was at the doctor’s side in two strides. Stanton was distressed that the mountain man now stood between him and the doorway, but he bore the discomfort manfully.
“Doc, you familiar with the expression ‘The wind is dying’?”
Stanton blinked. “Well, certainly, sir. Even a child knows the phrase. It is a common thing.”
Malone nodded, and the wolf’s-head cap he wore seemed to nod agreement on its own. “What d’you think happens, then, to the wind when it dies?”
The doctor’s reaction indicated that this was a line of thought to which he had not devoted much in the way of prior contemplation. “I must confess that I fail to follow your reasoning, sir.”
“The wind.” Malone’s voice was low and intense. “When it dies. What happens to it?”
Striving to help (from the safety of the hallway), Hearts Doland spoke up. “Why, it simply fades away, sir. One moment there is a breeze, and the next there is none. Nothing remains but a stillness of the aether.”
Malone turned in the gambler’s direction. “Most times, thet is the way of it, yes. Most times, but not all. There are rare occasions, scarce times, when conditions are just right, when it is with the wind the same as it is with people. Times when something remains. Some small fragmentation of former existence. Some semblance of the previous. You’ve probably felt it yourself. That moment when something unseen tips your hat but naught is to be felt. When a woman’s petticoats are bestirred above her ankle sufficient to draw the eye but nothing else is moved. It is no more than a flicker of movement, a whisper of the cosmos, a breath of the Earth. Here and then gone.” He drew himself up, banged his head lightly against the ceiling, and winced.