Big Medicine
Chapter 1—Ten Dollar Hat
They chose a crooked, sideways branch that made a rocking chair noise in the wind. The rope creaked in the dark. Rain smelled of dust. Bit by bit, he blacked out slow.
When it was done, Boss threw down his butt and they mounted up. He never knew you could hear ‘em ride away when you were dead. There was a lot he didn't know.
Loud noise, blistering heat. Hell on the way, come to claim its own. He could hear the souls roaring, and something touched his foot. Red on his eyelids. The thing touched his foot again and stayed there. He faded more. This deal was done and so was he.
A bee stung his neck, waking him. He knew now, as his toe landed. He’d lived somehow, and he was touchin’ the ground. Pressing his toes, he tried to take some pressure off his neck. He pressed again, hard as he could, twisting slightly in the wind.
He'd forgotten he was wearing Cavalry boots, not pointed-toe cowboy boots. These boots had a square toe. He turned his ankle, the boot’s toe touched at its corner, and he rotated in a slow spin, then the other way. His eyes opened, just a crack.
The tree was on fire from a lightning strike, and the branch was split off the burning tree trunk somewhat. He waited.
He was standing like a man when his eyes opened again. His hands were only calf-wrapped, so he found the tail of the rope and worked it loose, unwrapping his hands. Grabbing the noose, he swung his legs up, got ‘em around the branch and it finished breaking, falling heavy to the ground next to him, bruising his knee.
He worked the noose over his head and he was out, sitting there catching his breath. Bastards took his brand new ten dollar hat.
He faded to black.
He wakes, finding himself some distance from the burning tree. He… musta staggered away and passed out. Lying there, looking back towards the tree, he can see there's a stranger in a top hat sitting at a small campfire, close to the burning tree.
Lynch draws closer, crawling on his hands and knees.
It's an old man with long stringy gray hair, watching him. The old man reaches over and turns the rabbits on the fire. He's got a long Sharps rifle leaning next to him, against—It's a wagon. Lynch can see part of a wheel.
The old man draws a Navy .44 and lays it on his lap, then he beckons to Lynch, nodding.
Lynch sits. The rabbit meat is hot, greasy, dripping onto the sandstone between his boots. His stomach growls, but he doesn't eat yet. His left leg feels heavy, a dull rhythmic heat pulsing inside the leather, right against the meat of his calf. Maybe he's got a cinder in there. Lynch sets the meat down on a log.
He reaches down, works his thumbs into the top of his tall left boot and pulls. The leather resists, sticky with sweat and old dust, but it finally comes off with a sweaty chill. Reaching inside the boot leg, he finds an oilskin packet. He pulls it out, into the firelight. It's lined with stiff, yellowed parchment.
He already senses what it is, not needing to read the archaic, angular script scratched across the surface to understand. He can feel the hum of it through his fingertips. A deep vibrating sting, matching the frequency of the lightning strike that restarted his heart.
This is what did it, he knows, the anchor that dragged his soul back across the never-ending void. He begins to study it, eyes squinting against the cloudy blur of his hanging, not fully recovered yet.
It's a language he's never seen before. Lynch remembers seeing a picture in a book, a tracing of hieroglyphic symbols. These are similar symbols, but none that he recognizes. He looks at the back and there's some cursive he can't quite make out, not sure if it's English or another Western script, French maybe. Squinting doesn't really help.
The old man watches from under the top hat. A slow, toothy grin splits his gray beard. He doesn't say a word, just reaches out across the coals, his long, yellow-nailed fingers making a small, twisting gesture in the air. A quick wiggle of the knuckles.
Ffft.
The oilskin doesn't really catch fire, it simply dissolves, flashing into a puff of grey dust that smells faintly of old grease and copper, then blowing away into the creosote before it's even able to hit the dirt.
Lynch’s hand is empty. His fingers are still curled, but they're wrapped around nothing. Realizing the document was somehow important to him, anger, loss and sadness tingle, up from his back, his neck to his scalp. His jaw sets mean, a hard lump forming in his throat, under the rope burn on his neck.
“Didn't think I'd letcha keep it, didja?" Medicine Man cackles, a dry, rattling sound. "Naahh… don't think so, brother. Not for you.”
The old man reaches to his side, hand disappearing into the deep shadow by the front wheel of the wagon, where he grabs a flat leather courier pouch, greasy, cracked at the corners. He tosses it over and it lands with a heavy slap against Lynch's bare leg.
“That there's whatcha need, son," the old man says, nodding toward the leather. "Just watcha need.”
Lynch opens the brass clasp, pulling out another oilskin, but this one is thicker and lined with the same ancient parchment. He spreads it across his thigh.
It’s a map, or something like one. Black lines cutting across the page in jagged impossible geometry, twisting around landmarks that don't match any territory he’s ever seen. He blinks, trying to focus, but his eyes just ain't right yet. The lines just crawl, shifting like a nest of garter snakes on the parchment.
He can't make it out. He folds it back up, his hands heavy, and passes it back across the fire to the Medicine Man, who snatches it, sliding it back into the pouch.
“I'll keep it good, boy," the old man says, voice settling flat.
He hands a cold canteen of water over and Lynch drinks deeply, greedily.
Medicine Man picks up his knife again. "Time fer vittles now.”
Lynch has a couple sips of whiskey, good quality, from a tin cup passed over the fire by Medicine Man. It warms him in the chill desert night, stars bright and plentiful, the vast expanse in which they now sit, feeling close and small.
Just a circle in the black of desert.
The fire's warm and the whiskey's warm. Medicine Man brings a blanket for him, draping it on his shoulders, and Lynch begins to drowse a little, starting awake whenever he remembers the hangin.
He finishes the whiskey, feeling peaceful, warm, grateful to be alive in this circle of light among the vast dome of endless stars. He wakes when he hears his own soft snoring.
Fades again, wakes himself snoring again. The crimson lady painted down the side of the coach is watching him. He's certain, looking in her eyes. That he knows her. She winks at him from beneath the parasol, lying relaxed, and he wakes himself snoring once more.
Medicine Man is watchin, and his wise eyes are knowin. Time to put Lynch to sleep. He gently lifts the blanket off, takes the exhausted man by an elbow, leads him to the stairs at the back of the coach, and tells him, “Her name is Traveller.”
He holds the door open at the back of the Medicine Wagon and gestures inside, the economy of a man who doesn't explain things twice.
Unable to remember climbin' the steps, Lynch looks at the Murphy bed folded into the wall, because it's slightly ahead of its time, and therefore exactly the kind of thing Traveller would have. He don't ask about it, because some questions about this Medicine Wagon don't have answers, he can tell.
Old man pulls down the Murphy bed. Lynch sits on the edge of it, tryin’ to look around the too-big interior, but he's just too tired. Too damn tired to take it in. Books, tables, shelves, chairs. Wood stove. He falls back on the bed.
Medicine Man is already outside, doing whatever he does before Traveller moves. The bed sets solid under Lynch's weight, a solidity that feels older than it should be. The interior smells like old wood and something else he can't name. Road or distance, miles maybe.
He's asleep before the first wheel turns.
Black and white dreams. Nightmare vision, of an adventure story that's also… actual travel. Traveller going where she needs to go, as Lynch's sleeping mind processes what the road requires.
Fires and ships, coyotes and train engines roaring in the night, smoke streaming behind. Night sky, stars streaming, faces laughing. The Lady, red hair with blue eyes, smiling kind, his heart breaking. He never remembers her face.
He arrives having dreamed the destination, before he sees it with open eyes. Lynch doesn't travel to Canyon Diablo.
He dreams his way there. Fitful, bright, black and white nightmare vision that's his only access to what Connor Lynch was, before the rope.
Except this time the dream don't dissolve when he wakes. He opens his eyes, and the canyon is there, the camp is there.
The smell of it, woodsmoke and whiskey, unwashed men and desert cold, is absolutely present. Not a dream at all. Lynch's consistent nightmare register. Adventures he doesn't remember living, a journey he can't account for, always in black and white like a tintype of someone else's life.
Hell on Wheels, in the dream, is the same Canyon Diablo he wakes up in.
The dream isn't a dream. It's navigation.
Traveller's kind of travel.