Ghost Town: A Novel by Robert Coover Page A

grazing cattle again.
    With that, they set him down again and unbind his ankles. He picks up the fallen Winchester. Ifn yu could do thet, he grumps, why’d yu make sech a fuss?
    Aw, sheriff, dont mind us, says the preacherly fellow with a squinnied wink, as they drag the ruined fat man away into the dark beyond the fire. We’re jest skylarkin, y’know, a little cockeyed fun like cowpokes always do, it’s in our nature. Now why dont yu set down’n hep yerself t’some beans’n buffalo hump.
    Aint hungry. He’s starved, more like, but their vittles do not appear to be of the edible variety. Wouldnt say no t’summa that whuskey though.
    Haw. A silence descends as though fallen from the star-pocked sky. Bet yu wouldnt.
    No one moves. Hard to read their expressions. The fire has died down to coals, painting their faces a deep crimson. Mostly, behind their thick red masks, they seem to be grinning or staring at him blankly. Waiting to see what he’ll do. No choice about that. If he wants anything he’ll have to help himself, and he’s already manifested his wants. There’s a lone bottle standing on a stone just on the other side of the fire, catching its light. Like a taunt. He watches their hands. There’s nothing to be heard in the tense motionless silence but the hushed pop and crackle of the dying fire. Even the cattle seem to have paused in their grazing. He has about decided to shoot the bottle, just blast it away and ask for another, see what happens, but then his deputy leans over to pick it up, squirting jets of blood out of his wounds, and staggers over to him with it, stumbling right through the firecoals. As he hands it to him, his good eye rolls up into the back of his head and he collapses at his feet. The deathly stillness maintains. He wipes the blood off the neck of the bottle. Thanks, deppity, much obliged, he says flatly and, watching them all warily, puts the bottle to his lips.
    The bottle is empty. He tosses it away, listens to it clatter over the parched earth, a thin paltry sound that makes his eyes ache. He’s all alone, lying on his back with his hat over his face to shield him from the blazing midday desert sun. He can see, peering out into all that light from under his hat brim, that the men of his posse, what was once his posse, have cleared out and taken their herd with them, nothing left of them but for a few bleached bones and a charred place where the campfire was. Plus a saddlebag. He doesn’t want to know what’s in it. He struggles painfully to his feet, trying not to fall over again; his head weighs a ton, hard to keep it on his shoulders. Near him, half buried in the sand: the skull of a steer gazing up at him with empty sockets, a note stabbed onto one of its horns. We’re over yonder , it says. Come find us ifn yu’ve a mind to. Any extry hand welcum. Yer pals the x-posse . There’s a P.S . on the other side: Watch out fer thet rattler residin in the skull, it’s a real mean fucker . Too late. Its fangs are already driven deep into his inner thigh, its flat glassy-eyed head as big as an old scuffed boot lodged there in his crotch, its huge striped body wriggling wildly between his legs like a freak dick from a carnival sideshow. The dull ache in his head is immediately replaced by a sharp ferocious pain throughout his lower parts. His chaps and buckskins should have protected him, but the big snake has struck in the soft part of his thigh, and now its fangs are helplessly locked there in flesh and leather. He whips his old staghorn-handled bowie knife from its sheath and cuts the rattlesnake’s head off at the throat. The headless body twists and thrashes on the ground, but the severed head, even after he stabs it between the eyes, continues to gaze up at him from between his legs with a look commingled of regret, familiarity, and grinning defiance. He rips it out and tosses it away but the fangs remain like steel needles driven to the bone.
    He unknots the chaps and tears