A bend in the desert the two spirits follow. Old man’s shoulders long dragged down with golden weight as he leads horse. Steps go by slow, quick, and slow; even soundlessly tracks old man as the wind yokes his hair into quick braids. Horse has her clop-clop-clop as the only noise in the natural wastes—ferric booms in the High. White-slated mountains hang along the tips of pine and fir. Dirt path roughed with feet old and young, the woods stifling in the blue.
Horse stumbles into a fall and old man has her crash into his side. Both collapse, the sky spinning over their gazes. Knocked on his back, old man claws his fingers into flinty dirt and some iron smell catches his nose; horse lain still, she traces her ears to find desperado far out. Just before an outcropping, a sinuous hole burrowed into a mountain like some behemoth serpent’s home. Stench of metal eating into his nostrils. Wooden slants holding rotten headframes dripping with clear liquids. Pooled just at the mouth of this shaft, an iridescent puddle shining all colors at him. The way torn from fat minecart wheels dragging the ground with the rails. He steps back a few. Treacherous black void. Some foliage hides the top of the entry, gravel deposits all round and breathe stale air. Gunslinger takes one forward—horse whinnies at his shrinking image. Black olives bedded in cedar snout, her face tosses up and back down.
More steps in and already the sun blisters less. Few more paces, and the cold underground swallows what heat lingers at the mouth of its tunneling bowels. Long-extinguished torches line into the dark, three or four out until the row disappeared. Some far-off rattles echo forth and old man follows. Facing his tunnel, a torch he dislodges and flicks his lighter for new flames to crackle.
The tracks run far down at some intersection. Closer with the glow of his light, a dark oak lever-pulley for shifting ores at each level—a small square set with a gunmetal winch and large cart stuck in the center. On the cart he goes, and the gunman squats at his feet and nudges the lever stuck in brown axel. The elevator drops fast and he bashes his flat head into the reinforced wood; the lever cracks out of place and flies into the falling stone walls veined with fibrous iron and chunky gold and glinting silver.
Hazes of shapeless dark, and his stomach was reaching into his chest with a back driving into the floor. A massive creak hushes the grating din; a complete pause pumps the minecart onto desperado and he barely tugs his senseless legs from being crushed. The torch licks the slates of the wooden planks—low-level draft smothers the flame. Desperado still lain out only stares on. Eyelids swelling and throat closing, old man manages to hurl his body from the platform and into a shaft free of wood or tools. Some shuffling—he shoots his arm for his gun belt, yet his body slugs his limb past his handle and flops to his side. Still upturned, he breathes in that damp air and dank his lungs become with his chest falling heavy.
A sharp pang arrows right between his eyes. Smell of iron hits him hard. Past his knees and elbows, he feels faint pricks. A fire cupped in a tin lay right at his feet. Some eyes stare across the flame; yellow jewels pulsing in the dark, some of the dark moves around there. A voice scratches through.
Took ‘ye damn long.
He pauses there, sucking on his lip and squinting him down.
What you want?.
Nothin’.
A scarred arm flitters around the top of the fire, cuts and tears black in his skin. He worms it around so he can have a good look, retracting it soon after.
Thought that beast got you.
Sure did. Got myself patched up; whipped me into ‘im. Beat me black out there— got some bills. Don’t matter now.
Huh.
The metallic odor switches sweet, and the air suffocating.
That smell?
Yeah?
Don’t smell so good.
Ain’t supposed to.
Old man activates what muscles are still working in his neck and looks about. Darkness is all there is. The fire exposes some stone around his boots, and his back is resting on some cold surface—it’s all carved out.
This still the mine?
Far out, yeah.
How far?
Yellow eyes sink into black. Some tin clatters hollow on the ground. Smacking lips sound out across the flame.
Where we at?
Don’t matter.
Hell you mean, don’t matter?
Under Daggett.
Embers’ luminescent circles pop just before a face torn of its top lip.
Carried me that far out?
Got skin enough to lug off iron. There’s just some rails yonder.
Huh.
A click of the shadow man’s tongue cuts through. More rumbling far out.
Heard you fall, thought you dead. Was gonna take what you had.
You saw me?
I know a man’s noises. Some beast shaking around deep here.
That’s it?
What you mean?
Thought you’d chew me up or something.
I ain’t that sick.
The caverns hound eating calls; a noise scuttles into his ears as though millions of ants working into his brain folds. Yellow-eyes is his name, and he dilates his pin-prick pupils onto the flame, again. Horse meat circles through his mind. Crackling in the whispers, the campfire flings incendiary fingers toward the stone above. Old man’s new companion locks his gaze on what lays before the flame. The arms fizzle, and his intestines empty of food or drink.
Still wake up if I go to sleep?
Don’t know, wanna?
Don’t pull that game, now. You aim on cutting me?
Nah, not really. Dragged ‘ye here fo’ that minecart would crush ‘ye, don’t care now. My bells long bottomed out.
Ping of a water hitting its pond echoes into desperado’s left ear.
Daggett ain’t far off if that’s what you’re thinkin’. Brick below the bank from what I sense up there. Caves carved out for some mean trick, rolled over some waxy sticks a while back.
Gunslinger keeps on listening.
Hell, got nothin’ better to do. See it here—“Hell-spawn swallows up town.” Caves here good for runnin’— rush up on trains.
Pupils dilate further, shining in warm embrace.
Gotta be somethin’ with that smell.
Glow rock.
Huh?
Itchy. Blood and shit eat up from there. Head fuzzy from it.
Subterranean bellows fight into the stomach, wringing with organs and fiddling with tubules. Place of Abaddon—minds forsaken and forgotten. All everyone reduced men of unfit narratives into dark, and in a place out of view.
You got no more till next winter, maybe. I’d say. . . I’m burning off at three days.
The words go through one ear out the other; the pistoleer minds the crumbling pit stones. Yellow-eyes caught on.
You don’t got long to live. Be lucky if your leg ain’t dumb. It eats and eats, and all you can do is wait, wait until all’s left is that ugly beneath.
Ground brimming with silence, old man rests front of His fire and plays with his fingers.
Let’s get on with it.
Wagon wheels trundle in the main street while passersby flock to their shop perches; the men stumbling round the saloon and women waving away what drunkards lingered their way. Drying in the Sun, the horse dungs harden into bricks which kids would lob at the anemic general store man.
Down along the road were more caravans, and blanketed families cower in their covered wagons ballasted with frontier hope. Feet leap off the platforms and onto the ground, where just beneath scheme two men that have grown to inherit the West in spirit and body.
Where we now?
Ground split from the saloon—maybe one of them stores.
Yellow-eyes fiddles with sticky wax that about pastes to his hands. Bony fingers dance into twilight tangle with strings and dynamite into diorite arches.
Hold that torch close.
Old man rounds out some paces back, keeping his eyes on the glints of silver wire.
Know why they ran for me?
Holding his focus on rigging those sticks, Yellow-eyes turns an exposed chin.
Tell me.
They had to.
Got to do better than that.
All I can say.
Hands jump from spot to spot. Yellow-eyes traces the wall to plant another. Old man had not realized, but now he stands in the place he had begun. A circle licked with nitroglycerin. The flame shines another trail of wire far out.
Just here where he near killed me.
The cave rumbles, pebbles tossing away.
Had them watch.
A spark bursts from Yellow-eyes: a face with cheeks cut and dried to his jaw, nose burnt to his palate, his hair bedraggled, and skull crushed near everywhere. Muscle fibers oozing from his skin. The flames reached the silver strings. Running hisses into their minds, the two rush to the floor. Old man ropes the wiry creature into a hug and both tumble from the altar. On their feet, the shushing trailed their racing through the cave ways. The torch pitches through the endless corridor, and some final embers crack away, until two worlds break into one. Breaths run heavy slags of mucous. Yellow-eyes staggers into shuffles, laboring to match old man’s speed. Huffs grow faster, shorter; the jaundiced fiend collapses into gallops, flesh pounding the ground—heels and wrist switch back and forth, mechanized into what movement for his survival. Glow rock stench thins out as crackles source into the thumps of their hearts; in their sprinting and galloping, a stomach-etched cry runs out. Old man’s eyes jitters to the folds of the walls, the wire falling blank in just little more steps. With a final pull and leap, the two empty into an atrium braced with an elevator and offloading site. Clattering down, old man knocks his head around to feel for his brain; Yellow-eyes sticks just next to him, panting invisibly. Gunslinger cramps up into some beggar’s hold, and the fiend keeps to its floor. His eyes buzz, trying to gauge how far out the explosion would reach.
How long it take?
Soon enough.
Out they make it, with shambling and mewling that hum in their steps. Once more Pandemonium chimes it bells, calls of the non-being that only wants chaos. Keep man’s soul misunderstood, his convictions baited with wool so thick he may no longer breathe. Thickets build around their dragging shoes, tagging in the creases of their denim. Again, Yellow-eyes shifts into wolfen gait. Nascent dusk, the horizon materializes horse.
Think we stop here.
Huh?
Here’s good enough.
Hell you mean? Them folk’ll drive right over us.
Do what I say or I’ll drive right over ‘ye.
Yellow-eyes cranes its neck, form inhumane. Drool bounces of its defiled mouth. Desperado matches its gaze.
Right.
Embracing its element all too well, Yellow-eyes corkscrews the spine, slithering into laying prone, thighs drawn up its breast and elbows outstretched: a canid frog. Pistolero falls squat, heels flat. Horse observes, far out. Yellow-eyes croaks its voice.
Which ones?
Hm?
Bodies you want?
Don’t follow.
Men or women?
What’s it matter?
Cause I like the men.
Huh.
Damn harder to carve.
Pistoleer looks on this spirit—eyes burying all color, perfect twilight. As though its own tongue would reveal his mind, spread it for the world to know of this danger that not even its body would dare conceal. Just shoulders apart the two beasts lie, and their shoulders tense their necks.
Don’t.
Pouncing powers from heel to wrist, Yellow-eyes fast before its claw reaches just the lashes of old man—his .44 punches its stomach through, balling his abdomen as it was, a fish wrung back into harbor. The thickets bob; the falling sun films a now yellow world; everything golden from skin to leaf. Flaxen arbiter becomes he, old man, and now stands above his witness. It rejects the glow, hacking out intestine and bile, red offence testifying this thing as no man. Silver magnum becomes this same amber, desperado a blond incarnation of what moral resurfaces. A pace, aim, and click. Up goes the barrel.
What have ye’?
Damn ye’.
I say, what have ye’?
Its body forces out organ and skin and fur and mineral. Eyes of failed liver mess into red, yellow, and black—murky globes that can only draw in more light. As a spotted predator, its back hunches with its coughs and bones protrude for leaps and spare facial muscles tilt his orbs in slants. Heels kick and fall into its form, mutated and beyond. Flesh rejecting its own master. It spake with words bloody and soul unforgiven.
Make it right.
A thud plants the being there, never to wake again. Rays medallion burst in this ritual; gunslinger ordained in warmth he was to not know, never bothered to know. The moonlight which had once bathed him, flaked away in body engineered of will for correction—for redemption.
White light flickers and heavenly sparks devour the dark; the far-out ceiling ruptures with sand and columns—the bodies weaving into the growing rubble. Equestrian hinds mix with lady ones and arched cloth balloons into the air as above sees the Earth reclaiming its clay: ramadas and overhangs and buttresses splinter into wood and metal, men un-egged as viscera, bill notes turn ash. Volumes of life and town blister in the shaven routes, all awfully silent. Streams of energy run sunk, limb after shout, the flesh curling in on itself, joining that terrible mass.
In nature’s forgiveness, this new light was to name the world which still consumes him. Smoke and firelight shadow on the rolling hills, and the heavenly window closes on this field; the planes of gold turn to dust, and His reminder that desperado’s connection to this Earth last stern and knotted. Silver magnum reappears, the blood dark with skin alabaster, and horse in its dark coat. Slamming revolver to holster, he mounts his worldly stead. Strong leg muscles hit the sand, sending vibrations into the pistolero. Auric burden still in those satchels.
Yelps and howls pulse in horse’s walk; as he turns his back, irradiated beasts surface from their grottos and domains, forced upon this dirt and gravel. For this sinner has unclasped a barrier, and now may the gates of Hell open—man bridging the rejections that powers divine had restrained, and the doors swing in the wind, land of disorder empty.
