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Desperation Wind

Chris Allen

    “Get up you bastard,” said a deep and gruff voice.
    The man on the ground didn’t move. He was kicked in the side by a heavy and pointy boot, giving out an uhff sound. He was awake now but still in a daze. The ground was rough and cold on his face and on the palms of his hands. He curled his hands into fists, drawing in the dirt, gravel, and sand as he did so, bringing his surroundings back to mind. It was cold in the early AM and he didn’t want to wake. He preferred to stay covered by his warm wool blanket.
    The sun was rising over the mountains, letting in the light for the new day. The man on the ground sat up and pulled the blanket up to his shoulders; he seemed to have rolled away from the campfire in the night. The fire now was being fed by Cotton, for that was the name of the capturer. Cotton was feeding the fire and fixing breakfast; his back was turned to the captured man and he wasn’t sure if he was awake, and if he wasn’t he was going to kick him in the face hard enough to break his jaw. Of course he would love to break that kid’s jaw; all he did was talk and try to piss one off.
    The kid on the ground whistled and said, “That sure smells good.” Holding out the good like: gooood.
    Cotton turned around and looked at the kid who was sitting on the ground with the blanket up to his shoulders and a smile on his face. Yep the young bastard was going to start to burn Cotton’s nerves as quick as ever.
    “I’m glad you think so,” said Cotton. “I’m looking forward to getting into this, but I think you’ll be satisfied for a slice of bread. You see, I don’t have meat as of now for the both of us. Now until we get into the Rockies, and out of this barren desert, you’ll be getting pretty light; light enough that you won’t be able to walk. I expect to see you lose about twenty pounds before we’re in Colorado. And when we reach a place with nice game, I might let you get a bit of deer – should we be so lucky.”
    The kid still sat there with his burning grin. “My, my,” he said at last.
    After the two breakfasted, if you could call what the young man had to eat as breakfast, cotton packed up camp, then they sat out on their horses for Colorado.
    They were in a fairly wooded area now and the captured kid bounced around on his horse, dozing in and out of sleep. His hands were bound and around his horses neck. Cotton rode a few yards in front of the kid and was busy packing his pipe.
    “You mind to stop for a bit and let me take a piss?” asked the young man.
    Striking a match and lighting his pipe, John said through clenched teeth: “No. I do believe that you can piss your pants. That won’t bother me a bit, nor the horse, and that’s who I’m more worried about.” He blew smoke from his mouth and turned to look at the kid to get his expression.
    “Look, I know I upset you, but why are you dragging me all across this Godforsaken country to Colorado?”
    “I’m not sure if I’m heading just to Colorado. Yeah, I reckon we’ll head through it all right. As for what I’m doing to you, well, I’m not sure, I figure I’m just trying to cool off my temper that you had heat up. You know you shouldn’t bet in a poker game, go all in, if you haven’t the money to pay. Then you try to steal from me, put a knife up to my throat while I’m sleeping, and try to take back what I won from you.”
    “Couldn’t have just turned me into the law?”
    “Don’t trust the law when I can’t stick around to see how they straighten out the criminal. I’m laying my justice on you since you thought you could steal from me.”
    With that, no more was said, and the two rode without speaking for some time.
    It was getting late again and the sun was beginning to set behind the mountains in the west. They weren’t in the woods anymore but in a flat land and grassy land that had about three inches on the ground.
    “Kansas?” asked the kid.
    “Most likely,” replied Cotton who didn’t bother to look at him, and was content to let the kid keep on suffering on his horse.
    Cotton dismounted and began to unpack his things for camp. He managed to get a small fire going and began to brew coffee and fry a piece beef. Meanwhile the kid sat upon his horse looking at Cotton with painful and sad eyes.
    “I know you want to deliver some justice unto me, but this is a little much,” said the young man. “Can’t you just – I don’t know, do something besides this torment? I’ve learned my lesson; I’m sure of that.”
    “No, I don’t think you quite have,” replied Cotton. “I was wanting to play a gentleman’s game of poker for fun, and yes, to win a bit of money, but you sought to win a whole lot and were ruining the game, and then you were beaten. Even then you couldn’t stand that and tried to steal from me and possibly kill me. I was placing low and honest bets, you were gambling high, and in both ends you have lost.”
    The young man looked on, not quite sure how to respond. It was true that Cotton did catch him with a knife against Cotton’s throat, and the young man was asking him where the money was. The only response from Cotton that night was him kicking the kid off of him, getting out of bed and immediately charging the young man, pinning him against the wall, and then disarming him. The small brawl ended when Cotton ran the kid’s head into the wall, knocking him unconscious. He was mad enough to kill the damned, dumb kid, but decided instead to tie him up on his pack horse and take him with him until he cooled off.
    That night they both slept. Cotton on the ground, covered in blankets next to the fire and the kid atop his horse, exposed to the frigid cold.
    The kid slipped off of the horse and slammed his elbow into the frozen ground, knocking the air out of his lungs. With a big inhale he sucked in the cold, freezing his lungs and causing his eyes to water. He could barely move he was so cold; all he could do was wiggle and produce odd hooting noises. He looked down at his hands and noticed they weren’t bound anymore. He looked at this with dumbfound amazement and then pushed himself off of the ground.
    He stumbled towards the campfire and found Cotton asleep. He could choke Cotton if he wanted to, but his strength in his arms had faded from lack of nutrition. He put the thought of murder aside and went through Cotton’s saddlebags until he found a few blankets. He slept on the opposite side of the fire from Cotton.
    The next day the young man woke up sometime in the early noon; he was surprised to awake like this and not violently. He looked at his blanket and noticed it was covered in snow and that the openness around him was mostly white.
    The fire was out, the camp packed, except for Cotton’s coffee pot that sat on top of the ashes of the burned out fire.
    “Why’d you cut me loose?” the kid asked from under his blankets. It came out as mumble.
    “Speak up,” said Cotton, not looking at him.
    The kid arched himself up on his elbows and said: “I said: why did you cut me loose?”
    “Because you asked me to.”
    The kid looked at him blankly.
    “Don’t you remember?” Cotton said, walking towards the kid. “You asked me to let you down that you wanted to sleep. You just never got off of your horse.”
    The kid still looked at him blankly.
    “I might be a mean buck, but I ain’t no monster.” Cotton picked up the coffee pot and picked up a small tin cup, then walked back to where the kid sat. “Drink this,” he said, “we’re heading out.”
    Cotton rode a few paces ahead of the kid as he always did. The kid’s hands were untied and it wouldn’t matter anyway, he couldn’t muster the strength to do much. Most of the time the kid just sat there watching Cotton, studying Cotton. Who was this man? How does everything change so drastically, yet not at all? Still a hostage, a prisoner, yet the hardship had let up. Or had it?
    “We’ll be in those mountains by nightfall,” called Cotton. “Goodbye Kansas.”
    That night they camped in a rocky, wooded terrain. Cotton lay on the ground beside the fire, and on occasion, would gather wood for it. The kid could barely stay seated on his horse and fell off of it a number of times.
    Cotton appeared to be in a negative mood, because he refused to let the kid sleep on the ground, but said he could stay wrapped up in the heavy blanket on top of the horse. When the kid slipped off the horse, Cotton would growl at him and tell him that he was starting to get mad.
    Cotton was sleeping when the kid became alert and snapped out of his sleep. He was thirsty and his face felt numb. He drifted to the side of the horse, but didn’t fall off, however, his blanket did. He looked at it as it lay upon the ground, and reached his arm out believing that he would be able to reach it. He fell off of the horse. At first he thought he must have broken something; the ground was completely frozen and he believed he heard something snap. It pained him to do it, but he forced himself to squeeze and flex his hands. Having got some of his blood flowing that way, he crawled on his belly towards the blanket, grabbed it and rolled over on his back, letting the blanket wrap around him.
    Delirious as he was, and maybe due to that, the kid saw flashes of Cotton approaching him or standing over him. Then he was gone. That’s when he realized that he had to get away as fast as he could, but it wouldn’t be able to happen; he was in no condition to leave.
    With all the strength he could muster, the kid crawled over to where Cotton lay by the dying fire. As he got closer the kid could see a buck knife sticking out of its sheath on Cotton’s ribs. The kid’s heart beat rapidly as he put both hands on the knife and removed it. The kid thrust the knife into Cotton, just below his ribs. Warm blood spilled onto the kid’s hands and a scream filled the air. Again the kid stabbed Cotton. And again and again. His hands weren’t so cold anymore and they were covered in drying blood. Cotton gurgled and coughed, then became silent.
    The kid got on the other side of Cotton, close enough that his feet were nearly in the fire. He rolled Cotton over on his belly and removed the duster that he had been wearing, and the kid put it on himself. Feeling his energy leaving him, the kid grabbed the blankets that had covered Cotton and covered himself with them and collapsed.
    The next morning he woke to frigid winds and snowfall. His whole body was numb and his feet he couldn’t feel at all. He walked over to Cotton’s horse and rummaged through his saddlebags. Delight came over his face as ran his hand across cornbread and Jerky. He ate two handfuls of cornbread and jerky, then walked over to the other saddlebag and grabbed a bag of coffee and the coffee pot; the snow would be used in brewing.
    Using flint, Cotton’s scraper, and the wood and kindling Cotton laid out before, the kid managed to get a fire going. He then set the coffee pot on top. While it brewed he ate another handful of jerky and cornbread.
    The coffee warmed him and the food on top of that made him feel more alive than he had been at birth. He drank the last bit of coffee, boiled more water to rinse it out, and placed it back from where he got it.
    Standing over Cotton the kid looked down upon the man he killed during the night, eyeing what he had on him that he would need. There were a pair of leather gloves stuck between Cotton’s belt and kid grabbed them and put them on his hands that were a flaky, dark gray color from the dried blood. The next thing he took was Cotton’s gun belt.
    He walked about the small camp trying to get his temperature up and his blood flowing. Everything seemed to have been gathered. He had folded and packed the blankets shortly before and went over Cotton’s corpse to see if there was anything else of value; all he took was the buck knife, flint, and scraper. He mounted Cotton’s horse after he tied a rope around the reins of the horse he previously rode. He tied the other end of the rope to saddle of Cotton’s horse.
    The kid wasn’t very good at the terrain and he hadn’t paid much attention to his surroundings and paths that were taken, but he managed to stay on the right track back to Kansas. At night he would set up camp, afraid that he would easily get lost if continued on at night. The feeling of his feet never returned and he feared that it must be frost bite.
    Three days after his escape he came upon what he believed to be Kansas. The kid had become sick the night before and he shivered constantly. His horse walked at a slow trot and the kid had his head hung low and was almost on top of the stranger before he heard or saw him.
    “Huhlo there,” the stranger called out.
    The kid’s head shot up and he stopped the horse. “Hello,” said the kid.
    “Awful strange to be someone such as yourself to be out here all alone. I ain’t never seen someone out here like that. Except maybe a rogue or near to death vagabond.”
    “I could say the same about the likes of you.”
    There was a pause for the moment. The two riders looking at each other and then the older rider spoke up. “Why you lookin’ me over like that? Someone oughta be keen and take offense to wandering eyes like that.”
    “Just trying to determine who you are. You can learn a lot by looking over someone. Can’t be too careful.”
    The stranger gave a light laugh. “That a fact?” he said. “What can you tell by looking at me?”
    “It’s cold out.”
    The kid hunched over and threw up. His back was hunched and he almost felt like he was choking.
    “Oh hell,” the stranger said, and he withdrew a Navy Colt revolver that had been concealed by his heavy duster and buffalo skin. He aimed at the kid and fired. The shot echoed for miles and the kid flew off the horse. The stranger dismounted and walked over to him and turned him on his back with his boot and kneeled down beside him.
    “I’m sorry to that,” said the stranger, “but I was a surgeon during the war and I miss the times where I had to save a man from a bullet wound. I seen that you were sick, in fact, I could see it when I was approaching you. The fact you spilled your meals all over you proves that you’re close to dying anyway.”
    The bullet entered just below the kid’s neck and was lodged somewhere beneath his broken color bone.
    “You’re some hundred miles or more from the nearest town,” said the stranger. “If I can save you I’ll bring you there. Think I’ll tell ‘em I saved you from a gang.” He withdrew a knife and some pliers from a medical satchel that he wore and began to dig into the kid. “If you die,” the surgeon continued, “I’ll just leave you out here. Of course it won’t be good to do that: anyone discovers you they’ll blame the injuns for the murder of a beautiful white boy. They get a lot, you know? And I can’t have any harm come to any innocent injuns.”
    The kid started grinding his teeth from the pain, then his mouth was forcibly opened and a ball of cloth was shoved into his mouth.
    “Keep you from eatin’ your tongue,” said the surgeon.
    The surgeon ripped the pliers out of the kid and there was a fragment from the ball between the clamps.
    “Part of it,” the surgeon said smiling. And he went back to removing the other pieces.
    The surgeon finished what he had done and wiped his tools off and put them back into his satchel.
    “Frost bite,” said the kid in a daze.
    “Frost bite you say?”
    “The kid slowly nodded. His eyes were closed and he was close to slipping away.
    The surgeon looked at the places that he had seen frost bite before, and when he didn’t find it, he removed the kid’s boots and socks, revealing solid black feet.
    “Shame,” the surgeon said, shaking his head.
    The kid tried to say something but couldn’t. He closed his eyes and then opened them. He was lying on his back in a snowy empty land with clear skies. The sky was light blue and the sun hurt his eyes, still, he kept them open. With them open he looked in wonder at the vast sky... and then there was nothing.

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