Bad Medicine

“You’re a feeble woman, One Dog,” Will yelled back. “You ride with cowards—and you, too, are a coward. You crawl under the blankets of your cowards at night and play the woman for them. I will kill you, Dog, just like my partner an’ me have killed your drunken guards and outriders. And my wolf dog has more courage than the whole godforsaken bunch of you swine!”

One Dog hawked his throat and spat. “This is for your dog. I will tear his heart out and piss in his chest. Such is what a sneaking chicken killer deserves.”

“Think we can get a shot at him?” Ray asked.

“Not with a pistol. He’s outta range.”

“OK. Let’s git to our horses. If they decide to charge, we’re well and truly screwed.”

They backed away from the dune, jumped to their feet, and began to run, hoping the renegades’ line of vision was broken. Will tripped, fell, and got a face full of dirt—and knocked the breath out of his lungs.

“I’m . . . gettin’ . . . mighty . . . tired of this . . . running shit,” he gasped.

“Ain’t far now. An’ tomorrow night we won’t be doin’ no runnin’.”

The day that followed was interminable, and as hot as a smith’s-forge fire in hell, to boot. Wampus, tongue lolling, moved frequently, following the stingy patches of shade afforded by the desert pine.

Will rolled and smoked cigarette after cigarette, one after another, lighting the next one from the nub of the last.

Ray, his Colt resting on his chest, more or less slept.

Finally, Will spoke, his voice unusual in its tone—neither accusatory nor conciliatory.

“I . . . uh . . . seen your initial on that Indian,” he said.

“Yeah. I figured you would.”

“You had no goddamn right to do that, Ray.”

“I killed him. He was mine, jus’ like when a man takes down a deer or elk.”

“That’s not the point.”

Ray’s voice was tight, heated. “Then what is the point?”

“This: That little pissant R was too small and was in the wrong place. It shoulda been the size of the big letters and tagged right on the HW—shoulda been HWR.”

Ray’s smile could have lit up a very dark night. “You mean . . . ?”

“Yep. I give it lots of thought. I surely do mean it.”

“I . . . I got nothing to bring to a spread, Will.”

“You lazy, Ray? Stupid? You gonna steal the operation blind?”

“Why hell no. I ain’t none of them things. You know that, Will.”

“There ya go, then.”

“HWR,” Ray repeated, almost reverently. “Damn, if that don’t sound good.”

“Sounds good to me, too.” Will held out his hand and Ray took it in his own. They shook solemnly, as if they were sealing a pact or maybe a major business deal—which, in fact, they were.

“One more thing we gotta settle,” Will said. “One of us is goin’ to kill One Dog. We don’t know how the battle will go—there’s no way to tell where Dog’ll be. There’s only one rule we need to agree to. Whoever kills him can’t use a rifle and drop him from a hundred yards away. One of us has got to look into that pig’s eyes as he dies— whether we kill him with a knife, a pistol, or a damn club don’t matter. But One Dog’s gotta know it was one of us, and why he’s dying.”

“I want him awful bad, Will,” Ray said.

“An’ I don’t? Like I said, it all depends on how the final battle works out. I’ll take him if I can; so will you. But face-to-face.”

“Well hell,” Ray said, “it ain’t impossible that the pair of us get our asses shot off an’ One Dog rides off with our hair after chowin’ down on our hearts.”

Will grinned. “I’d say that is impossible—but I guess we’ll see.”

The day dragged on. Will dozed, smoked, and dozed again. Ray piddled around with his equipment, not because it needed attention but because he needed something, anything, to do. There was a tension in the air—a storm coming, although not of the natural sort—that both men pretended to ignore. It was an anticipatory kind of desire/dread; neither of them was frightened, and neither was terribly confident.

Once, as Will dozed, Wampus sat up and flapped his rear paw under his ear, chasing a flea. Will’s Colt was in his hand before he was actually awake, with the hammer thumbed back. Ray looked away as Will reholstered his pistol.

In the late afternoon Ray tossed his saddle on his horse. Will watched through sleepy eyes. “Where ya goin’?”

“I’ll be back in a bit—an’ I’ll bring a meal.” He stood next to his horse and took a roll of latigo from his gear. It was half an inch wide and maybe twenty feet long, and it was very nicely tanned and oiled. A knife appeared in Ray’s hand and he centered the latigo on the blade and began easing it through. The leather split into two equal- width pieces its entire length, as neat and clean as if it’d been cut by a coat-maker’s machine. He gathered up the latigo, mounted, and rode off at a jog.

Will dozed again, his mind playing with the leather strips. Trip wires? Neck busters?

When Ray rode in less than an hour later, his bow was strung and swung across his back.

He held a decent-sized jack by its ears.

Will got a cook fire going. “Screw the smoke. After tonight smoke ain’t gonna matter, anyways.”

“Well, yeah. But we got a problem,” Ray said.

“Oh?”

“Your wolf dog, Will. The crazies know now that he ain’t a spirit from hell—One Dog said so. Them renegades will fill Wampus with enough lead to bust a damn bridge.”

“Damn.”

“We can sink a post, Will. I got some metal-core rope—not much, but enough—an’ I got some laudanum, too.”

“I hate to do it,” Will said quietly.

“So do I. But we’ll dope him first an’ then take care of the post an’ rope.”

Will shook his head. “Suppose the two of us get killed?”

“Then all three of us played our cards wrong, Will.”

The deeply buried post was a fine idea—except there was nothing that would serve as a post. The men decided they would secure the wire-cored rope around the base of one of the desert pines, the only option they had. Getting the laudanum into Wampus presented no problem. Ray poured all of his remaining jerky into a pile and then dumped the laudanum over it. The label on the brown bottle read:

Dr. Lucian Golden’s Positive Cure For All Human Ailments

(Being a highly efficacious medication absolutely guaranteed to treat and cure cancer, blindness, disruption of the bowels, vapors, rickets, pneumonia, tuberculosis, flatulence, male performance problems, malaise, and all other problems that afflict men and women.)

Directions:

Ingest up to three tablespoons of Dr. Golden’s Elixir several times per day, as required. Upon even the first dosage, the patient will immediately notice a recession of symptoms and a sensation of good health and physical and emotional well-being.

—Dr. Golden’s Elixir is available in convenient one-quart glass containers—

“Hey!” Will said, looking at the bottle. “Wampus ain’t sick! He don’t need no medicine. Why do you want to go an’ give him . . .”

“Will,” Ray said, “this stuff ain’t no more medicine than rotgut whiskey is. Fact, it’s almost pure laudanum. It’ll give Wampus a nice ride whilst we’re gone.”

“You sure?” Will asked dubiously.

“Positive.”

Will waved the drooling wolf dog to the jerky. The medicinal/alcohol scent didn’t deter him for a second. He