The jostling wakes her first, and then the smell. Even disoriented, half-awake, with the bag on her head, Elizabeth knows at once that she’s on horseback; she feels arms around her, a body pressed to her back, some person who is presumably the source of the odor, a muddy, coppery, spoiled-meat reek that wafts into her nose, making her want to vomit around the gag in her mouth. It reminds her of the time a possum had gotten under the floorboards of the schoolhouse and died, during the heat of summer, baking the classroom with the smell of dead, rotting flesh until one of the smaller boys had been prevailed upon to wriggle under the building and pull the poor creature out. Now, confused and scared, she fights against the ropes that she can feel binding her hands to the saddle; her feet are tied together by a rope running under the horse’s belly.
“Now, now,” a man’s thick, mumbled voice says in her ear. “Hush.” Instinctively she tries to snap her head back into the voice, but a hand grips her by the hair and she feels the point of a knife slipped beneath the bag, denting the flesh of her neck, under her jaw. “Let’s not push it, shall we?”
The touch of the blade at her throat brings her fully alert, clearing her head. She remembers ducking into the tent with Mercy and then a flash of motion, something hitting her on the temple. Her legs had gone weak and rubbery and her vision had receded; as if from a long distance away she’d seen the fat face of the man called Lyman, the man who had stabbed her, leaning down. He had one hand covering his own neck and, when he’d moved it, she could see the gaping cut in his throat. But Lyman is dead, she thought, and then she couldn’t think anything.
“How are you feeling, Miss McDaniel?” he says now. “Has the Salt healed you?”
Elizabeth has no idea what the man is talking about. What salt? She has vague memories of Mercy and Dr Potter talking about some such thing, but can’t recall any details now. What is happening to her? She’s tied up on a horse, pushed up against a fat man who stinks like a dead animal and, worst of all, she has to pee. The jostling is doing her no favors on that score. “I have to use the bathroom,” she tries to say, around the rough gag in her mouth. All that comes out is a sloppy, gnawing mumble, which she repeats several times until eventually Lyman seems to understand.
“Oh, no, dear. I’m sorry, but we won’t be stopping for quite some time. No. I expect the fools in Baker City will be trailing us, so we need to make haste. Don’t worry, though: they won’t find us. I’ll get us both safe to the doctor. Don’t fret.”
“I have to use the bathroom,” she mumbles more urgently. “I have to… to pee.”
“Just relax your bladder then, Miss McDaniel. The horse won’t mind. I won’t either, for that matter.”
The arms about her squeeze her tighter into the dead smell. He’s humming in her ear, a song that seems vaguely familiar somehow, foreign-sounding, in a way, rhythmic and stylized. Over the next hour or more, as near as she can reckon it, she tries to focus on anything but her bladder and the rotting smell of the man behind her, his wheezing, wet breath in her ear. Eventually she can’t hold it any more and, ashamed, urinates where she sits.
“There you go, my dear,” Lyman says. “Just relax.”
She doesn’t know how long they’ve been riding. Her thighs are chafed raw from her wet underthings and the rub of the saddle, her shoulder and back sore from trying to hunch as far away from Lyman as she can, mile after mile after mile. The feel of the air on her skin and the hazy illumination that penetrates the bag on her head tell her that it’s been at least part of a night, a day, and now it’s night again. Or maybe there have been more days and nights, maybe they’ve been riding for weeks. They’ve maybe been riding forever. Her head feels strange, at once muddy and preternaturally focused. She dozes, lolling in the saddle, listening to Lyman’s wet hum.
From time to time, Lyman talks to her, or maybe simply to himself. His tone is always hazy and distracted, as if he’s drunk. The doctor is a great man, he’ll say, over and over. Rather, he calls this doctor a Great Man, each word verbally capitalized in a way that’s readily apparent. Other times he’ll sing in French, in a flat, off-key voice that bubbles and sucks through his neck: Love is a rebellious bird / that none can tame, she translates. Her mother had been French-Canadian and Elizabeth still holds a long-unused smattering of the language herself. The bird you hoped to catch / beat its wings and flew away. She wants to fly away, like the bird. You think to hold it fast / it flees you.
Other times, Lyman murmurs in a dreamy voice about how beautiful he was, once, how beautiful he’ll be again soon. I’ve only lacked the Stone, he says, over and over, and now it is come. She wonders what he’d say if he saw himself, now, dirty and bloody with rotten-meat skin, dripping with graveworms and corruption. At least, this is the image she has of him in her mind; she can almost see him, like a physical manifestation of his dead stink. The possum, when they’d pulled it out, had had an almost human grimace on its sharp-snouted face, its body churning and rippling with maggots under its fur. I’ve always been beautiful, Lyman says in a sing-song voice. I’ve always been quick; they called me Quick Lyman. Sometimes he calls her Mercy, and tells her he is very disappointed in her, that she is nothing but a whore, that she’s tricked him. Once she’d been beautiful, like him, but now she is just a tired whore. He shouts it, shouts nonsense that she tries not to listen to.
Elizabeth knows that Lyman is insane, and she is terrified that he’ll do to her whatever he’s done to Mercy and the others. She is in a nightmare from which she can’t wake.
Finally, after many, many years, the horse to comes to a halt and she feels her captor slide off its side. There’s a tug at the ropes on her ankles and those binding her wrists to the saddle; when they loosen, Lyman pulls her down after him but, when her feet hit the ground, her legs buckle and she slumps over in a heap, falling on her side in the dirt. He walks past where she’s lying on the ground, exhausted and sore, pausing to tug the bag off her head. Lyman ignores her after that, taking the saddle off the horse, giving it a quick and perfunctory rub. “The horse is tired,” he says over his shoulder, eventually. “We’ll let it rest awhile. We need the creature.” He pauses, looking around. “Just a small fire, I think.”
She watches him gather some sticks and get a blaze going with a phosphorous match. The moon hasn’t yet risen and, normally, a fire would be a comforting thing but, now, it does little more than illuminate Lyman’s fat, half-dead face with shadowed light. He crouches over the little fire, feeding it sticks from time to time, rubbing his hands in its feeble warmth and murmuring to himself. She’s cold; the sweat and urine dried to her body has chilled her. One part of her wants to move nearer to the blaze, but another fears to get any closer to Lyman.
“Come on, now, my dear,” he says, looking over at her. “Don’t be shy. I won’t bite.” He waves her towards the fire, smiling. When she doesn’t move, the smile dries up. “Get over here, bitch.”
She shuffles closer, keeping the little flame between them, for all the good that it will likely do. The shadows wash across his face, the light flickering in his empty eyes. She doesn’t know what’s happening to her, but Elizabeth’s mind feels entirely sped-up now, her senses sharpened. She imagines she can see each tiny interplay of muscles and expression in Lyman’s round face. She feels her blood thrumming in her ears, her heart pulsing in her chest.
Suddenly Lyman is across the fire and on her. She scrabbles backwards, swinging her bound hands, kicking her heels at him, screaming through the gag. He calmly holds her down as he pulls the gag from her mouth. “There,” he says, moving back across the fire to his previous spot. “That’s better now, isn’t it?” He nods over and over, smiling in a vacant sort of way. The light in his eyes seems brighter now, madder.
Elizabeth watches him warily from her back, half-expecting him to pounce on her. Eventually she sits back upright, eyes still on him. She rubs at her mouth with the heels of her bound hands, trying to soothe her raw skin and lips. Her tongue feels thick, gluey. “Water,” she whispers, hoarsely, trying to work up the spit to talk. “May I have some water?” Without speaking, still staring at her, Lyman tosses over a tin canteen. She fumbles the lid off with shaking hands and takes a mouthful. When she swallows, she almost vomits from the dead-meat taste of it, as if it’s been corrupted by the touch of Lyman’s lips. As thirsty as she is, she can’t stomach any more.
“Raise your shirt,” Lyman says. “Let me see your belly.” Warily, Elizabeth lifts her shirt the smallest bit. “No, higher. There.” He pauses, leaning forward. “There’s no wound. The Salt is working. It’s working, Mercy.” He starts nodding again, an eager look on his face. “It’s working.” He’s rubbing his neck as he nods, and then starts to murmur to himself again, low words she can’t hear, even as close as they are.
Elizabeth watches him, trying to discover some weakness, some slowness she can exploit to get away. She can still feel her blood pounding in her body, which she hopes implies a strength born of fear that she can use in some way. I only need a few seconds, she tells herself, enough time to get up and on the horse and then I’ll ride. As tired as the horse is I can get a few fast miles out of it, enough of a distance that Lyman will never catch up on foot. She looks around, trying to find landmarks, but she has no real idea where she is. The sky is overcast so that she can’t even tell direction. No matter, as long as I ride fast and far enough, I can find my way to something, some road, some help; I just need a few seconds. I just need a few seconds, she thinks, and then Lyman is on her.
The taste of her blood in his mouth doesn’t make Lyman’s body sing, as he’d hoped. He still feels the pain, the exhaustion; his throat is a burning ring of agony, dry and cracked, each breath a torment. He closes his eyes, trying to feel any change, any improvement in his condition but, if anything is happening, it’s slow and subtle. He hurts so badly, so very badly; the bottles of fixative Salt he’d consumed back at the camp, before visiting his judgment upon Mercy and the others, is only keeping him alive, and that just barely. It hasn’t healed him. It hasn’t. If the girl has the Stone in her blood, it is useless in its present state: it needs to be concentrated, strengthened, refined in some way. The doctor will know how to do so. He must. He will know, yes.
Lyman wipes a bit of blood off the corner of his mouth, licking his fingers afterward. The girl is holding her neck, sobbing with anger. He wonders how long it will take for her wound to heal, to return that smooth pale skin to its unmarred state. She is very pretty, he thinks; not unlike Mercy had been, at first. Perhaps the doctor will allow him the girl afterward. Although Lyman realizes that, by then, she will most likely be in no fit state for company. Who knows, though, perhaps even tapped of the Stone she will thrive.
He hadn’t even known he would do it at first but, then, the sight of her slender neck in the firelight and his own hunger for the pure Salt made him go for her, to try to suck it out of her. Like Lord Ruthven in Polidori’s story, really, the one that had been so popular in the London of his youth. Alas, her neck had been extremely difficult to bite into, given his weariness and loose teeth and her firm young skin. He’d gnawed more than bitten her, finally freeing enough blood that he could suck some into his mouth. It merely tasted like blood, though; there was no power to it. The Stone was trapped inside her and he’d simply have to wait until they reached Portland so that the doctor could free it.
Later that night, he figures the horse sufficiently rested and pulls the girl back to her feet and onto the horse, retying her ankles and wrists. Mounting up behind her, he clucks the mare into motion again, heading northwest. He’d laid enough of a false trail upon leaving Baker City that he’s sure any posse will be nowhere near them. More likely there is no one following at all; if anything, the sheriff will have merely searched a close circuit around town and then telegraphed the other towns in the region. Lyman will be expected to arrive on one of the main trails or, perhaps, via train. People are lazy now, civilized, which makes those willing to be hard and uncivilized able to do what they need without any great fear of reprisal.
They ride with the rising sun at their backs. Lyman hasn’t bagged the girl’s head yet and, leaning forward, notices that the ragged wound on her neck is already beginning to heal, the marks of his teeth faint and fading. The Stone is in the girl; it is only a matter of time. As they ride, he sings: Mais si je t’aime, si je t’aime; Prends garde à toi!