Brian Garfield - Fear in a Handful of Dust

Mackenzie said, “You knew I was Navajo. You should have thought about that.”

“Half Navajo. Beligano .”

“White man hell. I put myself in your moccasins, Calvin. I knew what you’d do. I got here ahead of you. We played your game and I won. You hear me?”

“I hear you, Captain.” Duggai stood dripping, all hard dark musculature-mammoth and unbowed. He gaped at Mackenzie in that maddening way of his. “You can kill me now.”

The rifle was so heavy he could hardly hold it. He stopped Duggai at the tailgate and shuffled painfully around him in a wide circle. He got the truck open and found the pieces of wire where Duggai had tossed them inside. He threw two of them at Duggai and got his hand back on the rifle.

Mackenzie’s lips peeled back viciously. It came out in a whisper of rage: “ You know the drill .”

Duggai’s eyes went a little wider. He bent down and picked up the wire. While he was bent he hesitated a moment and Mackenzie knew he was thinking about making a try-throwing dirt in Mackenzie’s eyes-but it was too far for that and finally Duggai twisted the wire around his wrist and sat down on his naked butt and wired his own ankles together. Then rolled over on his belly and put both hands behind his rump.

Mackenzie approached him very slowly and put the muzzle of the rifle against the crotch between the buttocks and held his right hand on the trigger. With his left hand he wired the hands together behind the small of Duggai’s back.

He had trouble standing up after that but he made it. “Get in the truck.”

“How?”

“Hobble it.”

Duggai hopped like a farmer’s kid in a potato-sack race. Then he sat on the tailboard and lifted his legs and swiveled himself up inside.

“On the bunk now.”

He wired Duggai’s feet to the floor cleat as his own had been wired. He jammed the rifle against Duggai’s hip and again held the trigger at arm’s length while he leaned behind Duggai and wired his hands to the steel crossbrace of the wall.

“You fixin’ to leave me out in that desert, Captain?”

Mackenzie slammed the door in his face.

The truck came strenuously across the ravaged earth. Approaching the camp it tipped clumsily through a gully that almost rolled it over. It righted itself and advanced, gears snarling.

Shirley came out of her hole hollow-eyed and hesitant. She stood with her arms folded as if she were cold and stared at the truck with the face of a prisoner awaiting execution against a wall.

Drawn by the hated sound, Jay arose from the grave and sidled toward Shirley. He touched her hand and they stood together, watching.

The truck whined slowly up the slope and finally stopped. Mackenzie in shirt and shorts and boots opened the door and stepped out, all his muscles twitching. He had to keep a grip on the door to keep from felling over on his face but he managed a grotesque smile.

They stood behind the truck watching while Mackenzie opened the camper door. Inside Duggai sat wired on the bunk. He gaped at them with that idiot vacancy he used to mask the ceaseless wild hatred that filled his soul.

Jay coughed horribly and found his voice. “I’m glad you didn’t kill him.”

“It would have been too easy.”

“Yes. Better to leave him the way he left us.”

“No,” Mackenzie said.

“What?”

“We’re taking him back.” All the fury of the desert climbed to a screaming pitch in him. “ We’re taking the son of a bitch all the way back .”

Jay slumped against the truck, terrorized by Mackenzie’s sudden venom. Shirley reached for Mackenzie’s arm, her face alarmed, but he veered toward the truck: he took a canteen off the bunk and tottered past them toward Earle’s trench.

Earle blinked up at him.

“You’re still alive, then.”

“I never doubted I would be,” Earle said. He even smiled. “Providence, Sam.”

Mackenzie lowered the canteen to him. “That’s all yours. There’s plenty more. We’ve got the truck-we’ll leave as soon as it cools down. By midnight we’ll be on the highway. Have you in a hospital before you know it.”

“God be praised.”

“God and Samuel Mackenzie.”

“That too. I won’t begrudge your strength. It’s God-given.”

Earle’s God or the silversmith’s gods. One or another-Mackenzie believed it.

Shirley brushed past him with the first-aid kit. Jay lurched behind her, his arms flapping as if broken. He’d put a hat on his head but he stood stark naked under it-an awe-inspiring scarecrow. “What do you mean, take him back? For God’s sake, take him back? ”

Mackenzie felt too weak to stand. He stumbled toward the truck. Jay chased him with comic alacrity; caught him at the truck, hauled him around. “What did you mean, take him back?”

Mackenzie felt the pinch of Jay’s weak grip on his arm. He didn’t push Jay away. He put both hands on Jay’s shoulders and gripped them hard, feeling the strength surge into his hands.

He measured his words out with infinite effort. They fell with equal weight; like bricks.

“This desert was our hell. But the one thing he can’t stand-that’s Duggai’s hell.” He pounded Jay’s shoulders happily, taking cheap pleasure in vindictiveness and feeling no shame for it. “Think of the worst thing we could do to him. The worst thing we could possibly do to him.”

Jay’s face changed with slow comprehension.

Shirley whispered, “The hospital?”

“The hospital,” Mackenzie replied.

They both began to nod and Mackenzie turned to see her better but the red haze washed her out. He had something to tell her. With stubborn determined effort he tried to form the words but then for a while he passed out.