Sarah and Riley by Jackie Penticost

Heat burnished the ground as Sarah walked towards the cabin. She could hear the low note of bees singing through the honey-flowers and marjoram, but these dog days brought no wind and no scent on the breeze.

On the veranda, the insect screen hung loose.  She pulled it open and stepped inside into the cool shuttered house.  

The smell was metallic, sweet and sickly.  And terribly familiar. It reached down inside your psyche and pulled out fear, dark and red.  It was the essence of violence, maybe murder, and it had violated this space.

Sarah stepped forward to pull back the shutters, and her boot stuck unexpectedly.   Liquid, viscous and clinging, pulled at her foot and she recoiled, stepping aside quickly. She reached for the Winchester and hefted it.  Whoever, whatever had done this might still be inside.

A deep moan, and a hand grasped at her dress hem. Startled, she drew away and aimed the rifle downwards.

She looked at the man on the floor, not understanding, not recognizing.  The only familiar thing was the blanket that covered him. She’d sold it to the old trapper last Spring.  But this wretch was barely human.  He stank of blood and piss and frontier whiskey, and flies buzzed around him like uninvited guests at a feast.

A whisper was forced into the air.  ‘Sarah’

She bent over and pulled back the blanket.  The stench from the shoulder wound threw her back like a blow. Must have been a couple of days old, and in this heat it had putrefied early.

‘How come you know me?’

‘It’s me. Riley’

For maybe the first time in her life, Sarah gasped with surprise and shock, and then stifled it quickly.

‘You old fool, I guess they came for the furs.  You look bad, and you stink worse. And what’s on the floor don’t bear looking at’

A low wheezing chuckle. ‘T’aint all mine, I did some damage’. 

‘Well, I can pour more whiskey into you, and you’ll die smiling.  Or I’ll wash your wound out with it, and maybe you’ll die in the wagon on the way to the Doc.  Or maybe you won’t’. What’s it to be?’

She helped the old woodsman to sit up. He was as light as summer kindling, and as like to snap.

‘They took it all, Sarah’

Silently, Sarah nodded, and handed Riley the whiskey. His good hand grasped the hooch like a drowning man.   She lit the stove and brewed thick, murky, pungent coffee for them both.   He’d never last the winter back in town.  She opened the shutters and heard the horses rattling their harnesses, eager to be gone.

‘I’ll stay till ye die, and I’ll ride back to town for a coffin.   We’ll bury ye here, as ye’ve no money for a preacher’  The old man nodded and took another draw from the bottle. 

The wheat fields whispered in the heat and a buzzard cried.

Sarah and the old man sat silently, until there was only one of them left.  It had been a soft departing.  She pulled the blanket over his face, unhitched the horses, and set off back to town.