A Cold Place in Hell

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A COLD PLACE IN HELL

PINNACLE BOOKS

Chapter One

It was Independence Day, which you knew, but that was not the reason for all the ribbons and hoorah. Fourth of July in Salt Springs, Wyoming, is also the wedding birthday for Mr. and Mrs. Fergus Blackthorne, and Fergus, being richer than buttered sugar, has always hosted a town party to celebrate that fact. You might see Mr. Blackthorne and wonder why he felt the need, but that wouldn't be none of your concern. Mr. Blackthorne always said he gave up his independence on Independence Day. He said it every damned year he threw one of these things, and there'd be tons of people to laugh because we all lusted for free whiskey and beef, both of which were plentiful in all directions.

Billy Piper isn't Gospel sure, but he thinks he was seventeen or eighteen on this Fourth of July. Not that his age is an item that mattersmuch. What matters is what happened after he took Fergus Blackthorne up on his bet that no one could stay on Black Iodine for more than ten seconds, which did take a sackful to make the bet, when you knew that no one ever stayed on Black Iodine for seven seconds, much less any Go-to-Hell ten. But Billy wanted to impress Pearline and she wanted to be impressed, just the same.

Pearline worked as one of the girls at Honey's, and she was Billy's girl. Not that Billy was the only cowboy she took upstairs for stroke and poke, but there was other stuff going on, even times when he'd go to Honey's and she and Billy would just sit out on the airing deck of her room and watch the sky and talk. Honey hated that and the example it set, but Billy, just a rider for the Starett ranch, couldn't afford to be at Honey's more than two times a month, so the sky-watching times didn't cut into her profits much more than a mouse bite or two. So when a time like the Blackthornes' Fourth of July came around, and Billy and Pearline could just walk out like they was Pastor Smith and store clerk Jones, no one much minded that going on. They both had a lot of tough swear times in the normal part of their lives, so no one blamed them much, no one wished them sour.

Everybody started to cheer when they brought Black Iodine on out of the barn. They had his head all wrapped in burlap to hold him in check, but it didn't seem to be all that good at calming him down. He was still fractious as they get, tugging this way and that when they brought him close to the rail where Billy Piper was waiting to climb on.

"It's going to be all right, isn't it, Wilbur?"

I looked over and there was Pearline standing next to me. She had a lacy hanky in both hands, all balled up like a cat's toy. There was nothing but tremble in her smile. "If there's a man can do it, Billy's the man," I said. She didn't believe me and neither did I. She was porcelain with pink cheeks, and I wished I could have said something better than I did.

Billy's backside hit on Black Iodine and away they went, dust kicking all around with the crowd screaming and Pearline chewing on that balled-up lacy hanky. Seemed to go on forever, but of course that's not true. Later on, the timer said it was about a whisker past six seconds when that hellcat sumbitch reared up and frog-flipped back, coming down with Billy Piper flat under him, screaming like you don't ever want to hear a man scream, or anything else, for that matter. Maws was covering kids' eyes and tugging them away, while cowboys come pouring over the top rail; Fergus Blackthorne one of the first, me a couple of puffs behind Fergus himself. There was hats waving and men pushing on Iodine's flank, trying to roll that bastard horse off Billy, who had stopped screaming, stopped moving. I could hear Pearline yelling out from the other side of the fence, calling out his name over and over. Other girls from Honey's was trying to pull her away, but Black Iodine turned her man into muddy blood. When Black Iodine finally rolled away and bucked up to all fours, I saw Fergus's skinny hand go to his holster and wrap around the butt of the hogsleg there, thumbing back the hammer while he pulled it free of the leather.

I clamped down hard on his wrist. "Don't do it, Mr. Blackthorne. Billy wouldn't want something like that done. He wouldn't want it, sir!"

Fergus Blackthorne looked at me the way dogs look at you when you try to stop them from humping your leg. Mr. Fergus was a substantial man in town, wasn't used to taking orders from an old Texas waddie like me. He chewed on what I said for a time, then let the hogsleg fall back into the holster. "You're right," he said. "We'll let Billy do it when the time's right." And we both looked back over at Billy.

They got a blanket under him and was lifting him, four men to a side. He made a noise, a spittle noise, but he didn't know it. The eyes were closed tight. His left leg was turned in a bunch of ways legs don't turn. The pants leg was soaked clean through, dark and hot.

They started walking off with Billy, moving in the direction of the barn, and I could hear people calling out for Omar Jordan, who wasn't a doctor but was as close as we had in Salt Springs, being as he spent thirty odd years in the horse soldiers and had seen pretty much every kind of gutshot and shatterbone you could see, and if he wasn't a doctor, at least he'd been there for times when a real doctor had to be around and might remember what got done. I didn't want to see what was going to get done to Billy. His bottom half looked like matchsticks on the trestle after The Special passed, and I didn't want to see any of it at all. I took me a step in the direction of Rooney's Rest, and this time it was Fergus Blackthorne's turn to do some wrist clamping.

"You're his pard," Fergus said. "Be good if you're there when he comes out of it."

"If he comes out of it."

"Be good if you're there either way."

Which was true right down to the ground, and I knew it. Still, I wriggled once more: "He won't know if I'm there."

Fergus's hand had picked up a liking for folding around the butt of that pistol of his. "Wilbur, you got me to show mercy to that damned horse a few seconds ago. I'm not a man who's known for showing mercy twice in one day."

"You wouldn't shoot me."

"I'd feel bad, that much is true. But I've always felt bad before. It doesn't last long." The look in his eyes would have to warm up a lot before you'd call it cold.

I turned away and started for the barn to see whether Hell was going to claim Billy Piper fulltime or just rent him out for a spell.

Chapter Two

Them parting like that gave me my first good look at Billy, and there wasn't anything good about it. They'd stripped off his britches and what was there was awful. Pink baby skin and red dripping meat and muscle, with snow-colored bony parts jaggering through at various parts. Billy and me sometimes'd go bony-butt raw in Bear Creek, so I knew his left leg had a knee about halfway down, but you couldn't prove that by what I was looking at now. If you cut the strings on a puppet, the legs might end up like Billy's left one was now.

"Dear dark Jesus," Omar said when he walked around the door table. Then he made one more circle and said it again: "Dear dark Jesus."

"Omar, tell us what to do."

"Be easier if he was a horse. We'd be done in no time."

"He don't look like a horse to any of us, Omar. Tell us what we need to do."

Omar rubbed his face. It was all rolled wrinkles. Pie dough like a young girl'd make first time out. "Have some of the women tear sheets up in strips about this wide, then boil the strips till they're too hot to pick up. Somebody else go find six, eight straight stout branches. Like you'd use for a cane. Three feet long, say. Take a knife, slice away the offshoots. Bring 'em here." Omar looked over the circle round Billy. He stopped looking when he fastened on a no-chest bald buzzard at the far end. Willard Ganeel. Store clerk. "Willard, there any laudanum out to your place?"

"You know there is, Omar. My grandpa's got the growth."

"Needs it, does he?"

"Fierce."

Omar nodded down in the direction of Billy on the door table. "Then leave some for your grandpa, Willard, but bring the rest on out here to this boy, because I'm about to put him through a Hell the Devil thinks is a lot too harsh."

Willard Ganeel did not move for a number of ticks, looking from Omar down to Billy, then back up to Omar a final time, before he wheeled around and left the circle, popping on his derby hat just before he shoved the door open and got into the sunlight. One by one, we all moved off from the door table, finding some shade in the corners, hunkering down, not saying a thing as there was not a thing to say. There was just the waiting to do, and none of us were very good at that. Wyoming doesn't breed that in.

Door opened and we all started to get up, thinking the hot sheet strips were coming in or the straight tree limbs. (We all had our doubts about the laudanum.) But it wasn't any of that. It was Mr. Starett. He never showed his face at the Fergus Blackthorne Fourth of July hoorahs because him and Fergus were skunk and housecat both wanting the same spot of sun under the tree. They both had considerable money, but Mr. Starett also had considerable courtly concern that he brought with him wherever he had cause to go. Not that Fergus Blackthorne didn't have his own style. He did. Shit probably has a taste, too.

Mr. Starett walked slow to where Billy Piper was put. He stared hard. His mouth was tight. "Is he dead?"

"He wasn't that lucky, Mr. Starett."

Starett looked over at Omar, not liking what he just heard. "Can you fix him, Omar?"

"I can try." He knew that sounded empty. "I will try."

"Will he be able to cowboy again?"

"No, sir. Don't look for that. He might be able to set a horse, ride a little, but he'll never get it back to hell-bent, Mr. Starett. Never be doing that again." Omar cleared his throat. "That's all on the bet I don't kill him while I'm trying to fix him."

"That could happen?"

"Could. Pain can do that. It can kill."

Starett's hand reached out and his fingers touched Billy's cheek. Billy didn't react, didn't budge. Starett talked without looking away from Billy's face. "Wilbur Moss? You in here?"

"Over here, Mr. Starett."

"You can stay with Billy."

"Cookie's looking for me to help out, sir."

"I'll deal with Cookie. You stay with Billy. You sleep here. You eat here. You're Billy's chum. Now he's your job."

I didn't want to step up to the line and tell Mr. Starett the only reason I was in the barn there at all was because Fergus Blackthorne kicked my ass in there, not because I was all that tight with Billy. Though, come down to it, I was, and that was why I didn't want to go in, because he was a pard, a chum, and didn't laugh at me and my ways like some of the other boys did. "Whatever you want, Mr. Starett," was what I said, what I settled on.

The sheets came in still steaming, carried in a wood laundry tub.

Right behind came Matthew Brodbeck with the stout limbs, which were more straight than not straight. Omar sent two men out to the trough to get a couple of buckets of mud, though he didn't say what he needed mud for and if he'd had told us, we still wouldn't have done anything but go out and get those buckets of mud. Omar told me to go out to the Starett place and get what I'd need to stay here and when I asked for how long, just said "long," and I accepted that just like we went along with the order to get buckets of mud. When I was just going on out the door, in came Willard Ganeel. He was carrying a glass jar, filled almost to the top with something copper-colored. We nodded to each other. He headed for Omar. I headed for the sunlight.

There was a circle bench around one of the oak trees outside the corral fence, and that's where Pearline was waiting, along with two other girls from Honey's. There was Arlene, who said she was from New Orleans and might have even been telling the truth, and the other was Rosalie, who was nice enough, pretty enough, but coughed too much for my peace and was always emptying spit into the hankies she kept close. I went over and sat down next to Pearline, keeping distance from Rosalie.

"Is he awake?"

Shook my head. "And won't be for a time. Omar's filling him up with laudanum to knock him out while they're doing what they can."

"Will it hurt?"

"I expect so, Pearline. What happened to him is bad." Rosalie cleared her throat, brought a hanky to her mouth. There was pink on the hanky. I edged back around a little in Pearline's direction, took her by the hand. Her eyes were satin soft. "Pearline, Billy won't be the same after this is over with. Don't know how bad it's all going to be when it gets to the other side of things, but won't a piece of it be good or easy."

There were some soft little pops way off in the distance, off in the direction of Gundersen's pasture. Fireworks. Fourth of July. I'd almost forgot.

Arlene reached over, tugged on Pearline's sleeve. "Time for us to get back, Pearline. Honey says there'll be a stampede after the barbeque."

"Arlene, I can't be there today. Not after this. You tell Honey. She'll understand."

"Hell she will, Pearline."

Just then, there came a scream from inside the barn, louder than the fireworks, loud enough to make the horses tethered to the corral top rail rear up and try to pull away.

So much for Willard Ganeel's lawdmandamn.

Chapter Three

Someone was calling me. Somebody old, somebody with a whiskey voice, a cigar growl, the sound of pure spittoon stink. Wasn't the kind of voice you'd want to wake up to. Wasn't the kind of voice that ever said anything made the room better for it being said.

"Wilbur?"

I opened my eyes the way you'd pull off a poultice. Crisscross slats way up high above me. Sunshine coming in steep from the side. Eastern light. Sunrise. I was in Fergus Blackthorne's barn. It was Billy Piper talking to me.

They'd put the door flat on the floor so he couldn't roll off in the night. There were flannel ties wrapped around him, waist and chest. His left leg was stiff with dried caked mud, the straight stout limbs were under that, all layered with the sheets that had dried up stiff around his leg. I came up on one elbow. "Hey, pard ..."

He cleared his throat a couple of times. I scrambled over and grabbed on to the canteen. Wet his lips. He took in what he could and cleared his throat once more. He had his regular voice back when we talked, but spiderweb, not solid. "What the hell happened to me, Wilbur?"

He didn't remember a solitary thing after climbing up on the fence when they started leading Black Iodine over in his direction. I told him what I could best as I could, making it sound like he'd stayed on Black Iodine a little while longer than he actually had, and just said he got his leg bad twisted under the horse when they went down. Didn't mention the screaming, the maws pulling the kids away.

"Lemme see," Billy said. "Lift me up. Lemme see."

I got an arm under his shoulders and lifted him up a few inches.

He looked at his left leg for a long time, studying the way you'd study a first-time river crossing. He looked, closed his eyes, looked again.

"Got me a leg like a sidewinder," he said.

"Does it hurt?"

"Throbs. Hammer-hammer-hammer." He let his head fall back. There were drops of sweat all over his forehead. His breathing was deep and slow, like he was trying to keep it slow, hanging on to hold level. "Who did me? Omar?"

"Omar, yeah."

"He say when I can get up and around?"

"Nope."

"He say if I'm getting up and around?"

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from A COLD PLACE IN HELL by William Blinn Copyright © 2009 by William Blinn. Excerpted by permission.
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