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The coffin lid opened but Bass was just too damn weak to do anything about it, beyond opening his eyes.
He saw Grimes leaning over him.
“Do you know,” Grimes said. “You don’t look all that tough laying there in all of that shit and piss.”
“I don’t feel all that tough,” Bass admitted.
“It wasn’t always that way was it?” Grimes asked.
Bass stared up at the man questioningly.
“You don’t know just how worried you had me back there in the cabin,” Grimes went on.
“Worried?” Bass asked.
“Yes, worried,” Grimes said. “I really thought I was done for. I mean here I was being hunted by the great bounty killer, Bass Clayton himself. I figured I was as good as dead so I invited Helen up to the cabin for one last poke before you came and killed me. I figured you would ride in and shoot me down. I figured you knew what you were doing.”
“Ha,” Bass laughed. “I guess you figured wrong.”
“That’s for sure.”
Then Grimes leaned down and pushing something into Bass’s mouth.
The something looked a little like a slice of dried horse turd.
“Here,” Grimes said. “Chew on that for a while.”
Whatever the horse turd really was it sure tasted a whole lot worse to Bass.
“Damn,” he choked out. “This would go down a lot better with some water.”
“Water?” Grimes asked. “Do you want water?”
Bass tried to shut his mouth but it was far too late. Grimes dropped his trousers and pissed straight into the coffin. As far as Bass could tell Grimes was aiming for his mouth.
Grimes had a pretty good aim for a one-armed man.
“Is that better?” Grimes asked.
Bass just choked.
Grimes waited until Bass was ALMOST done choking and then he shoved the horse turd into Bass’s mouth.
“Now get this down your neck and into your gullet,” Grimes ordered. “Chew and swallow or I will feed you some freshly dropped shit the next time around.
Bass dutifully chewed on the turds and got them down his throat just as best as he could. He didn’t see what other choice he had. He was too damn weak to fight back with much effect.
“What is it?” Bass asked. “Poison?”
“It’s a little late to ask now, isn’t it?” Grimes asked.
“Goddamn it,” Bass swore. “Is it poison?”
Grimes shrugged.
“It is for some,” he allowed. “It is peyote. The Indians chew on it when they want to walk wide.”
Bass wondered just what the hell Grimes meant by wide-walking. Was that his way of telling Bass that he was getting ready to shoot him, once and for all?
Goddamn it.
“Are you going to let me go?” Bass asked.
Grimes kind of half-grinned.
“In a manner of speaking,” he replied.
Bass didn’t like the sound of that one little bit.
“It wasn’t my fault, you know don’t you?” Bass argued. “Her dying. I didn’t set out to kill her.”
“That’s just it,” Grimes replied. “Maybe you didn’t set out to kill her but she sure as hell got shot.”
“That wasn’t my doing.”
Grimes just laughed.
“Says you,” Grimes said. “It was your fault. Your doing. And now you’ve got to stay here with her until you truly own just exactly what you left behind.”
That last of it, what Grimes had said, the words began to smear the air around the man’s mouth. The smell of the shit blurred around Bass’s ears. Grimes looked down and grinned at him – a mouth full of shotgun shells and rain clouds, his eyes wide and round like silver dollar full moons.
Bass slid away into the peyote darkness, walking wide without the aid of a compass, a map or a single solitary hope in hell of surviving.