“It’s because you’re a terrible fucking gambler, is why,” Sol Parker is saying. “I don’t even know why you try to call yourself a gambler.”
“That’s a load of crap, Solomon, and you know it. Anyone can have an off night.” Agamemnon Rideout is in a huff. He and Sol have been having this same argument for the last hundred miles, since they’d had to leave Twin Falls in a hurry yesterday. The sun is just on the edge of setting and they still need to put as many miles between them and their latest mistake as they can. He leans over his horse’s neck to spit. “I’m surprised you ain’t killed no one in the last five minutes.”
“I’m surprised you ain’t killed no one,” Sol mimics in a high-pitched, mincing voice. “I wouldn’t have had to kill no one if you were a better gambler, Ag. I mean, really, you can’t deal right sober, much less drunk as you were. Even I could see you were palming, or fucking trying to, and I was otherwise occupied, as it were.”
“Bullshit, Sol, bull and shit. No one saw what I was up to.” Ag holds out his hands, palms down. “Look at these. Just look: steady as rocks. Even with a dram of liquor in me, they’re steady and you know it.”
Sol rolls his eyes, making a rude motion with his free hand.
“Listen, you were one that started the whole fracas, brother,” Ag continues, “getting all cozy with that young lady. That’s what made that gentleman take exception.”
“Well, then, I don’t know what I was thinking, trying to do the right thing, Rideout,” Sol replies. “I should have let him knife you. Hell, I should be riding with that fucking gentleman now, instead of you, fool. The company would certainly be better.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t of killed him, Sol. Study on that, idiot. He wasn’t going to knife me. I keep telling you: you just got all worked up and panicked and shot the poor bastard. And now we’re in this godforsaken mess.”
Actually, the murdered gentleman in question was in rude health, his haberdashery requiring a mend being the full extent of his injuries. It was anyone’s guess what had actually started the excitement; the only things truly known were that no knives had been drawn and that both Sol Parker and Ag Rideout had been so profoundly drunk that it was a mercy no lasting harm had been done in the affray. Once Sol had started shooting and Ag had commenced to hollering, dropping his own gun when he’d fallen over a chair, it was only divine providence and Sol’s poor aim that had prevented actual injury to anyone. A quick-thinking barkeep had shouted that the boys had killed the man – who’d merely hit the deck in self-protection – encouraging them in no uncertain terms that they needed to get out of his tavern, and Twin Falls in general, sharpish, before the law arrived. The saloon patrons were still laughing about it.
Sol and Ag had been pushing their horses ever since, bickering all the while, one eye over their shoulders for the posse they were sure followed. Even as they griped at one another, they were both somewhat stunned at the turn their lives had taken in the few short weeks since they’d left their mother’s ranch. They were the kind of brothers – half-brothers to be precise – that, when together, sounded more like an old married couple than siblings. Their arguments, as a general rule, were overtired and stretched thin from long use. This new squabble had been worn to a nub in a matter of hours.
“And what will the girls say, knowing that now they have a murderer and a outlaw for brothers?” Ag continues. Both boys were fiercely protective of their two younger sisters, the product of their mother’s third and, so far, final marriage. Their mother was apt to say, privately, that she’d had little luck keeping husbands alive and even less luck getting anything good out of them while they’d been around, her daughters notwithstanding.
“Oh, you’re a outlaw now, are you, Ag? Is that what you’re saying?” Sol snorts out a puff of air. “Far as I can tell, you never did anything outside the law to begin with. Unless there’s a law against being a shitty fucking card player or dropping your goddamn gun with those steady hands of yours. I’m the one who is in all the trouble now, just for saving your narrow ass. A deed which, let me tell you, I’m regretting more and more. You, Mr Outlaw, are just tagging along behind me like a goddamn duckling, quacking your damn gums.”
“That’s a load of crap, Small-a-man.”
“Goddamn it, Ag, what did I fucking tell you about that?”
“What’s that, Small-a-man?” Ag replies innocently.
“Just don’t, boy. Don’t.” Like many short men, Sol is touchy about his height.
They lapse into sullen silence for upwards of five minutes before reverting to carping at one another again, trying to make the dry miles pass until they reach San Francisco. They’re broke and neither has much in the way of ideas on how they’re going to make any money, being both wanted men, as far as they know, and lacking much in the way of skills. As boys, they’d fantasized vaguely about card sharping or robbing banks but, in practice, neither one has much desire now to continue a life of crime, after their brief introduction to it. However, both young men are deeply and secretly convinced that they have profound and hidden skills at, well, something, which has not yet made itself known to them. But even Ag will admit to himself, privately, that perhaps he isn’t a natural talent at the gamblers’ art. Sol still feels guilty and sick that he’s shot and killed a man, tough as he likes to think himself. Each hopes that something, somewhere between here and the Pacific coast, will steer them towards some kind of money-making revelation before the law catches up and hangs them. They just need to keep moving.
On the other hand, Josiah McDaniel is motionless, drunk, and lying in the dust. Not a little drunk, but the kind of inebriation that requires the closing of one eye to bring the world back into focus. Just then, though, his left eye was already swollen shut, courtesy of a rancher’s heavy fist, but the other allows him to make out his wife’s features in the silver locket that he holds close to his face in the fading daylight. A tiny, admittedly poorly done, portrait of Mary looks back at him from the left oval of the locket; from the right a sharp-dressed, eager-eyed version of himself keeps watch. He looks little like his portrait now: his clothes are torn and stained, his bruised eye is puffed shut, and his smile lacks the component part of two of his incisors, knocked out by the same rancher that did for the eyeball.
A dentist with missing teeth wasn’t right, Josiah thinks, muzzily. Like a shaky-handed barber or a banker in shabby clothes. It isn’t reputable. It doesn’t inspire confidence. No one likes a dentist, anyway.
“No one likes a dentist,” he hollers sloppily at his horse, after swigging from his whiskey bottle. “No one likes a dentist, anyway.” The repetition seems important. The horse ignores him, placidly nosing around for forage amongst the sagebrush. It’s only the creature’s inherent laziness that keeps it around, still saddled, with the reins hanging loose. A smarter horse, unhobbled as it was, would have wandered off to find better grass or, at least, a better owner, after Josiah had fallen off this last time. Maybe the horse is simply used to him dropping from the saddle by now, the way it’s used to the pungent fumes of whiskey, vomit, and long-unwashed clothes. Perhaps, to the horse, falling off is simply an idiosyncratic behavior of this particular rider.
Josiah scratches a hand through his dirty, unwashed hair, prods his tongue across the holes in his gums where once he’d had teeth. Mary had liked his strong white teeth. She’d liked the fact that he was a dentist, a professional man, a good provider with clean hands and a sober disposition. He knows that she’d shudder to see him now, drunk, lying in the dirt with filth caked under his broken nails, vomit down the front of his shirt. She wouldn’t see him, though, not ever.
“Mary liked a dentist,” he mutters.
With the hand not holding the whiskey he scrabbles at his jacket, trying to dig the small bottle out of his pocket. The pocket seems to be moving on him but, eventually, he gets his fingers inside it and pulls the bottle out. Dr Hedwith’s Chock-a-saw Sagwa Tonic, he reads, for the thousandth time, once he gets the label in focus. Vital For Health. A Cure for Ills, Agues, Fevers, and Low Spirits. Pat Pending. With his dirty fingers, he squeezes the thick glass so hard he hopes to break it, to feel the shards cut into his flesh, but again is defeated. Instead, he lifts the whiskey bottle in his other hand and drinks.
He has to lean over and weakly puke again, then, dribbling liquor and bile out of his split lips. “Vital for health!” he yells to the horse once the gagging subsides. His vision swims a bit and he has to lie down on his back. He closes his eyes, trying to concentrate on the smell of sage in the dry air, the sound of the wind murmuring through the canyon.
He’d left Boise for good on the back of this latest beating; he won’t be returning, he thinks. He won’t go back. To hell with all of them. He just wants to lie here; he’s far enough outside of town that, when he finally dries up and dies, no one will try to bring him home and shake life back into him again. When the last bottle of whiskey runs out he’ll just curl up under the sagebrush and wait until he can open his eyes and see Mary again. The damn horse is smart enough to find its own way back.
“No one likes a dentist!” He yells it again, feeling satisfaction in the drunken leitmotif, as some men get when at their liquor. To Josiah, it sums up what his life has been drawn down to: the fact that he can’t even sit in a tavern, quietly mourning his wife, a husband’s right, without some dentist-hating yokel taking exception and beating on him.
He’s already forgotten how he’d worn out his welcome in most of Boise’s saloons, with his drunken carrying-on and belligerence during the last weeks. People went to taverns to enjoy a drink and cheerful company, not listen to a crazed toothpuller hollering about a dead wife and a patent-medicine conspiracy. The rancher that had blacked his eye and knocked out his teeth had finally simply lost patience with Josiah and let his temper get the best of him although, not two nights before, the man had carried him to his own home and put him to bed, not for the first time, making sure Josiah didn’t get himself into any mischief.
“They took her from me,” Josiah mutters, “they took her.” For some reason he can’t help, he starts to laugh, rolling over on his side, spilling most of the remainder of his whiskey. He curls up into a ball, laughing and then crying into the dirt and then laughing some more, before flopping over roughly onto his back again. “No one likes a dentist!” he drunkenly screams again at the darkening sky.
“Now, what the hell is this?” a voice says from above and behind him.
“Someone who hates dentists, I reckon,” a second voice says.
Josiah scrabbles and scrambles towards upright, making it about halfway before overbalancing and falling over some sagebrush. “You get back,” he yells, waving an arm as he tries to reach his feet. “Just stay right there.”
“I reckon he’s got a right to beef, Sol,” the first voice says. “Look at his mouth.”
“That right, sir?” the man called Sol asks. “Some fucking dentist do you poorly? Looks like he must have beat on you some, too. You look like you been used hard.”
“I’m a dentist,” Josiah mutters.
“That seem strange to you, brother?” the first voice says.
“It sure does, Ag. Seems like a dentist should have his teeth. Physician, heal thyself, as Mama would say, out the Good Book.”
“You’re right, Sol.” Ag looks down at the filthy little drunkard weaving around his horse, still loosely waving an arm around. “Sir? You OK, sir?”
“Luke,” Josiah says blearily.
“OK, Luke, you OK? You need some help?”
Josiah shakes his head, tries to swig from the empty bottle he somehow still has hold of. “Gospel of Luke. Physician heal thyself. Matthew, Mark, Luke. I’m a dentist.”
The brothers look at one another.
“So you said, sir,” Sol says. “Do you…”
“Josiah McDaniel.”
“That the dentist who whaled on you?” Ag asks.
“I’m Josiah McDaniel! That’s my name. I’m a dentist and they killed her. They killed my Mary. Don’t you…” Whatever else it is that Josiah has to say is thrust out of his lungs in a huff when he hits the ground, dead to the world.
“Well, we can’t just leave him here, Sol,” Ag says. “I mean, look at him. He’s a mess. We need to at least wait until he wakes up and then we can get him back on his horse.”
“Goddamn it, Ag, listen to yourself. Remember how you’re the big fucking outlaw? Well, sometimes us outlaws have to do some things that ain’t necessarily what you’d call neighborly. I’m not saying we kill him or bother him: let’s just take what he has of value and be on our way. He’s not but a day’s walk from Boise. He’ll be fine.” Sol shakes his head at his soft-hearted brother. In truth, Sol’s vestigial, but deep-seated, morality is struggling with the idea of robbing a pitiful, unconscious drunk, but sometimes life is hard and you have to just button your pants and get on with it. So he tells himself, trying to work up to the chore.
Ag looks at his brother, knowing that the hard stance is more than half bluster. Probably it’s all bluster, when it comes right down to it. You didn’t just leave a sick man to die out here in the middle of nowhere. You might cheat a little at cards and you might shoot off your gun in a moment of excitement, but cold-heartedly robbing a little man who is obviously doing poorly was just not right. He knows that they’re in a tight spot and need money, but this is too much, and he wants no part of it. He tries to back out with some logic. “The law will hang us for horse thieves, Sol. It ain’t worth the risk.”
“Goddamn it, Ag, the law’s already going to fucking hang us for Twin Falls, or maybe you don’t remember that. Or maybe it’s because I’m the one who’s going to get hung, not you, Mr Outlaw. Now that there’s some fucking skin on the table, the game’s too rich for your blood, that it?” Sol points a thick finger at his brother. “It’s all fine and good, long as I’m the only one who’s in real trouble… that right, Mr Lawless?”
“Bullshit, Sol! Don’t you play that on me!” Ag yells back. “What would Mama think, if she found out that we’d robbed – and probably killed, by un-Christian neglect – some fellow traveler, lost in the hills?” At times, Ag tends toward the poetic.
“What would Mama say? What would Mama say? She’d say that we’re in a tight fucking spot and he had it coming, dipshit.” Sol slips off his horse, reaches into his saddle bag for his canteen, takes a long swig of tepid, tinny water. “He ain’t lost, Ag, he’s drunk. Maybe you remember drunk: it’s when you can’t cheat at cards without almost getting fucking killed, you remember that?” He points at the man on the ground. “Also when you get beat up and your teeth knocked out, and then pass out drunk in the goddamn dirt.” He starts to walk over to the man’s horse, which is still placidly nibbling at the brush.
Ag is off his own horse and at his brother before Sol is able to grab for the reins. Soon enough, they’re both rolling in the dust, hollering at one another and wrestling, slap-fighting in the manner that boys who have grown up together will do. Josiah’s horse calmly moves out of the way as they fight and curse, ignoring the two while finding a patch of scraggly grass to nibble. Even given their varying sizes, the brothers are evenly matched: Sol has the weight and low center of gravity but Ag knows how to use his long body for leverage and, more importantly, knows his brother’s style. He knows that Sol is impatient and easy to drive into a fury, where Ag himself is better at biding his time until he finds some advantage.
They grunt and roll and curse on the ground. Sol gets atop his brother but, before he can pin him into immobility and commence to slapping in earnest, Ag hooks a long leg around Sol’s neck and flips him over onto his side, trying to ride the momentum to get onto his brother’s back and choke him in the crook of an arm. Sol flings an elbow back as they turn, catching Ag in the ribs, driving his breath out in a gasp. Had they spent more energy actually fighting and less on cursing at one another there may have been an advantage to either party but, as prior scuffles would indicate, they’d simply keep slapping and twisting and grunting profanities until they tired each other out.
They’re nearing this point, hot and sweaty and exhausted, full of righteous indignation, when the whiskey bottle comes sailing weakly over, bouncing off Ag’s head. Sol immediately leaps off his brother, one fist raised in a fury, storming over to where the little drunk lies half-sitting on the ground. “You don’t throw fucking bottles at my fucking brother, dentist!” he hollers.
“You two stop that,” Josiah mumbles. “You quit fighting.” He tries to sit a bit more upright. When he’d hit the ground earlier, the impact had been enough to slightly wake him from his stupor, although he could only lie there for a long time, with his eyes closed, breathing in the dry smell of dirt and sage, listening. In his whiskey-fogged mind, though, he’s latched onto a single thing: these men are outlaws. They’re killers.
“Perhaps you should mind your own business,” Ag says, bitterly, rubbing the back of his head, where the whiskey bottle had landed. “If I want to put this black-hearted rascal in his place, it ain’t no concern of yours.”
“But it is my concern, young man,” Josiah says, looking at them owlishly. “It is my concern. I’ll show you.” He fumbles around in his coat, pulling out a thick wallet, tossing it on the ground between them. The brothers can see that it bulges with bills. “I want to hire you boys,” he continues. “I want to hire you two to kill a man.”
Sol and Ag look at the wallet, then at each other and, for once, neither has much to say.