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Living Ain't Much Without It

Chapter One

Milo

The sun blisters down. Where the land flattens, a haze rises from the sand as though the ground's heat escapes in gas-like vapors. The shimmering film makes the washed-out colors of limestone, rock, and dust dance in a quivering blur. A thirsty man might imagine a cool pool of water in the earth's hot breaths if he looks hard enough and desires it sufficiently. It would only be a mirage, however, a taunt from the harsh landscape, a macabre wink from the forsaken land to its thirsty inhabitants.

I have to squint my eyes against the brightness to look up and see the clouds. They are bare traces of empty promises against the piercing blue of a relentless sky. The scant, white wisps offer no relief from the merciless sun. I have not seen a tree for miles, only sparse shrubs, and these toss and bounce about over the arid ground, their shallow roots and spindly branches, victims to the dusty wind.

A man's brain would bake like a mess of scrambled eggs after too much time out here, I think.

My name is Milo Malone, United States Marshall.

I am well aware of my hulking figure, and right now, that hulk is a massive weight on the rickety, flat-bed buggy upon which I am a passenger. The seat I occupy is spring-loaded, and in the half-hour ride to the rock quarry, I keep having to scoot myself toward the middle to balance things out. My body is heavy. I'm built like a Clydesdale, so if I sit too far to one side, it causes the seat to lean disproportionately.

The guard beside me, thick leather reins in his hands, rifle propped between knobby knees, chatters in an endless stream of bored, one-sided conversation. Every so often, I add a deep-throated grunt in response, but I'm more concerned with my ponderings than anything the talkative old guard has to say. For one thing, I'm still shaking off the gloom of the prison, the gates of which I exited only minutes prior. It is not often that I have to visit the Texas Territorial Prison. I am purely thankful for this. The place gives me the jitters, tugging at a big soft spot of compassion and regret deep inside. My infrequent trips here are always eye-opening: stark reminders of terrible consequences, the punishment the criminals I capture and bring to justice often face. Anyone condemned to be a guest here would and will pay their full dues to society and then some; that is a certain fact. Many men would rather die than have to serve time in this prison, and I understand why. If hell has a spot on the earth's surface, it is here.

And there live dying... their endless tragedy. A stream of written words loops with near constancy through my head, always. It is an annoying habit that I cannot seem to break. I have one of those memories (a blessing and a curse) that locks away information and stores it there as though housing it in a steel vault. Consequently, anything I read, and I read a lot, gets pulled out of a file in my brain and then runs a loop.

The ringing and clanging of metal against rock is a constant din now, over the rumbles and squeaks of the wagon. The depressing bulk of the prison is about four miles behind me and the chattering guard. I could still see its foreboding shape if I were to look back like Lot's wife did at Sodom. But I've no desire to turn to a pillar of salt nor see that scar and symbol of suffering upon the land again.

A team of steamy mules pulls our buckboard over the road's uneven surface, ever forward, closer to the quarry. The sound of pick axes breaking porous, blinding white stones into gravel has its own rhythmic, albeit piteous, song. The breaking of the rock is an endless task, a ruthless punishment designed to break the mind and the back. Men become something else here, broken things, beasts of punishment and shame. I have to remind myself that these are criminals, each has earned the punishment they receive, but the hellishness of this place disturbs me. It is hot as Dante's Inferno, but I still feel a chill work its way down my spine.

"Ixion's wheel," I mutter suddenly, but unfortunately not quietly.

"What's that?" The guard who introduced himself as Sam Gamby asks.

Me, Milo, his oversized passenger, had interrupted with the words that held no value or meaning to anyone but myself. I glance over and find that Sam has fixed a quizzical eye on me.

I clear my throat. I would never admit this to a living soul, but it embarrasses me to no end when I do that, speak out loud unintentionally, I mean.

"Nevermind, Sam" is my reply, and I know my voice is a deep rumble. It suits my size, I suppose. Sometimes those looping thoughts make their unconscious way to my tongue, and I had just spoken aloud my thought of a condemned god bound for an eternity of repetitive suffering to an endlessly spinning, fiery wheel.

I clear my head this time, rather than my throat, and look out to see the men or the convicts, rather, for they have forsaken their status to be perceived as anything else. They are spread over the rough, rock-cluttered hillside. In the distance, they had looked like insects. But now, I can see them as men baked by the angry sun to the blackish-blue of fresh bruises. It is the color of their uniforms, I think, that gives them such an appearance. The dark denim of filthy clothes and the brown leather of skin stands in stark contrast to the color-leached ground they endlessly toil against. The condemned beat at the earth as though in battle with it, but it is a war that man will lose to nature, with this methodology, anyway. The occasional glint of a rifle barrel flashes as a warning, a threat to those who labor. Guards pepper the hillside, each armed with a Carbine, sidearm, and billystick.

"That Harper, Marshall, he's trouble."

Sam finally says something that catches my attention, subsequently interrupting my musings of others' misery.

"Don't know what business you've got with Harper, but the man's a real sidewinder if you ask me," Sam prattles on. "Young hellion. He's got this look about him, though he's right about between hay and grass, hardly growed from a kid to a man, really, a way of prowling around like a bobcat hunting a prairie dog. Kindly gives me the spooks. Makes me feel like I'm the danged prairie dog bein' hunted."

The guard takes his eyes off the mules for a moment to look across at me with his heavy-lidded eyes in shameless admittance of his fear.

"You know what I mean?" He asks with a slap of the reins.

I don't, but he does not wait for a response, anyway.

"But I ain't got a hole in the ground to duck into," Sam drones on. "Most of the convicts in here are just plain mean. It ain't that he's mean, egzactly, just cold in a real smart kinda way… dangerous, more like. Besides that, everybody here knows that Harper's been a top gun, a killer for hire, these three years since the war. Well, 'till they locked him in here for safekeeping, anyway. Like I said, the man is dangerous,'' he says this with inflection and draws in a breath. "At any rate, he's been nothing but trouble since being one of our favored guests here."

I had not asked for the guard's opinion of the man I am about to meet. However, I did, for the first time since leaving the prison gates, tune in to what the man was saying. I suddenly decide that I like Sam, even if he barely pauses between sentences.

"I've heard something different," I say. My voice usually comes out slow and steady, unless, that is, it needs to come out a different way. "Your warden, for one," I continue. "He warned me about trouble with Harper, too. The man still seems to think pretty highly of him, though. Well, as best he can, given the circumstances."

I digress a little. It is hard to imagine a warden thinking highly of one of his prisoners, especially one that has bucked the orderly system as much as I've been told this Harper has.

"Ha!" Sam scoffs and spits the wad he has been chewing on the ground.

I'm glad for it to be gone, his words come out in a slobbery-sounding slur, and I hope the wad was the cause.

"Like the wardens the man to have an opinion, sittin' up there, high and mighty in his swanky office," the talkative guard continues. "Might as well ask the president his opinion of the kid. I'm guessing he filled you in on how slippery Harper's been since day one?"

"He did," I reply but offer no further detail. I can tell that the guard is squirming with curiosity. He is dying to know what business a U.S. Marshall has with Inmate 71933.

We pull to a dusty stop at the base of the prisoner-pocked hillside, and I'm glad for the jarring ride to come to an end.

"Clements!" Sam yells to his fellow worker a few yards away.

Clements leans up against a large boulder that is just big enough to provide a strip of shaded ground. His head darts up as his name is called. His nose is purple and splotchy, making me think of a rotted plum.

"Yo, Sam!. Who's yer passenger? Thought you had Block C duty today," Clements replies in a quick stream but looks lethargic as he swipes a sleeve across his sweaty forehead before glancing around.

The guards are careful out here, I note.

Rifle in hand, he leaves his speck of shade, no bigger than the one cast by Jonah's shady shrub at Nineveh. The man heads toward the buckboard as I ease off the seat, boots hitting the hard-packed ground with a two hundred fifty-pound thud. I am more graceful than I look, or so my sweet wife Sue tells me.

"The marshall here is after Harper. Where's he at?" Sam asks with a hand over his eyes in a salute to shade them from the blazing sun. He scans the prisoners scattered about the hillside. I move to stand beside him and do the same.

The sun is flaring like we're in a Mexican desert. It should not be this hot in East Texas.

Clements reaches us, then spins on his dusty heels to do his own search. "HARPER!" He yells through a cupped hand. The shouted name echoes over the noise of constant pounding.

I spy him, a dark-haired man, half my size, I'd say, about halfway up the hill. He stopped mid-ax-swing at the sound of his name. He straightens himself, now, letting the tool fall to his side like it's a rifle at ready. Straight-backed silence, that's how he looks down on us from his lofty perch, so close to the sun. An odd thought strikes me: If he takes a leap off that rock he is standing on, he might fly.

"Icarus," I mutter before I can clamp my lips down. A glance around shows that no one heard me, thank the good Lord.

Clements groans in apparent frustration and flashes bloodshot eyes over at me. A heavy drinker, I think. It would explain the blown vessels across his face.

"Not sure what yer wanting with Harper, but he's stubborn as a mule, Marshall, sir. We can't seem to teach him no manners. Watch'a want him for, anyway?"

I grin at the man, but it's my out of patience grin that cranks up each side of my mustache in a threatening way, like a dog protecting his bowl of food. "I'd appreciate it if you would just get him down here for me," I say, pleasantly enough after showing him just enough canine to motivate him. "Of course, I don't mind going up and getting him myself if you're too busy." I lean back against the buckboard, arms folded across my ample chest.

Beneath his hat's sweaty brim, the guard drills me with a quick up and down that lasts a couple of blinks. He gives me a sharp nod and says, "Yessir. I'll get him down. No problem." Another yell: "HARPER! You better give me a 'yes sir,' boy! Start workin' your way down here!"

He doesn't wait for a response but begins to climb toward the recalcitrant convict who ignores the order to move, even though he for sure heard the command. I watch as, when he is ordered to, the man drops his ax with obvious disdain. He still stands straight and belligerent, not making a sound, while his fellow inmates bang away around him, each in their own level of hell.

"Harper got a new set of leg irons yesterday, Marshall," Sam says conversationally from beside me.

I wish he wouldn't stand so close smelling like week-old sweat and stale tobacco.

"He's more than a tad touchy on a good day, and it ain't a good day for him. He's got the blue devils, for sure. His own fault, though. He ain't proud of the new set, that's the danged truth, and it'll take some time before he's broke to wearing 'em. They're mean pieces of work. These irons are short, heavy, and twice as thick as the regular issues. He's mad as a stirred hornet about being made to wear 'em. Though, I'd say it ain't like that's any kinda change for his charming personality."

I glance over at the sarcasm from Sam. He gives me a pulled-lip smile, turns for a canteen in the back of the wagon, unscrews the lid, and continues. "Can't say as I blame the kid for being hoppin' mad. I'd feel the same if it were me in his place, no doubt. See, I try to feel a little for the convicts, Marshall. They ain't all so bad. And in this place, they're treated worse than most animals." He swishes a mouthful of water before spitting it onto the ground and offers me the canteen.

I am listening to Sam but watch Clements through squinted eyes as he reaches Harper and grabs an arm who pulls it back with a jerk. I almost groan aloud at the beating I fear is about to come the man's way as the guard raises his billy to strike. I get some relief, though, as the threatened man raises his hands chest level in obvious concession. The stick is lowered, and I'm thankful. Clements starts him down the hillside, keeping a tight grip on that arm. I sure hope he is more compliant with me than he appears to be with any figure of authority. He was a good soldier during the war. I know that about him.

Sam is still talking about those chains. It seems as though he has a mouthful for any topic involving this Jess Harper that I am finally about to meet.

"Yesterday," Sam rambles, "One of the guards caught Harper bringing an ax down on the set he was wearing… fool thing to do." He shakes his head like he feels bad and thinks it's a raw deal. "Anybody who's tried snappin' their chain that'a'way gets caught doing it. No way to hide it, see? It's just that some get so desperate to run, they can't seem to help takin' the chance. And Harper, he's desperate… been that way since the day he was first dragged in. But it lands 'em in a world of hurt. After that, we graduate them to the big boy irons for a six-month trial period. They get their old ones back after that if they keep a clean nose. The new kind Harper's got now is too short and thick to work over with an ax. Can't even make a dent in 'em. They make it so a man can hardly walk, too. They ain't pleasant hardware to have to be dressed in, I'll tell ya. Inmates wearing those things can just barely make it down off that pile of rocks." He gestures upward. "Looks like Clements is hauling the kid's hobbled carcass down for ya, though."

It is slow going for the man in chains as he takes short, halting steps over the rough terrain, pulled impatiently along by Clements. It seems to take forever for the pair to reach level ground, and finally, I am up close and personal with the infamous Jess Harper. It had been downright painful to watch the man's restricted steps, and I am glad to see him land and stop moving.

I straighten the towering length of myself, push off the buckboard and close the remaining distance between us.

Harper jerks his arm loose again, but it is grabbed harshly. "Boy, I'm gonna have to smooth some'a the humps outta yer ornery hide," the guard threatens.

"You can let go of him now, Mr. Clements," I interrupt with a touch of warning to take it easy in my voice. And I come to a halt.

The whiskey-nosed guard hesitates a moment before releasing his grip. "Whatever you say, Marshall." He says it like I've just told him he can't have his favorite dessert but obediently takes a few steps to the side.

Not far enough, though. "If you don't mind, I'd like to speak to Mr. Harper alone."

"Yessir. This ones gotta mouth on him, and you've got to watch him close. He's slippery and violent. He gives you any lip or grief; you let me know. I'll take care of it real quick," he says, forever threatening Harper with that stick. But I catch the quick drop of his eyes as they meet the seething hate in the prisoner's glare. He's afraid of the man he tries to lord over, I can tell. Clements regains composure in a blink, points that mean-looking billy once more, and growls, "Behave, boy."

Not even acknowledging me, in a posture far removed from suppliant, Harper continues to stare at the guard, looking like he wants to tear the man to pieces bare-handed. His hands are clenched in tight fists at his sides. It impresses me that he has not even tossed a glance my way. I am stared at everywhere I go because of my size. Most who first meet me are awed by my unusually massive stature and can't tear their eyes away.

Clements takes a stick-raised, threatening step forward. "You've been here eight months now, and you still ain't learned yer manners. You better respond how you've been taught," he practically snarls.

A small muscle in Harper's jaw pulses steadily, and his hate-filled gaze leaves the man's face for the briefest second as his eyes flick up to the stick about to crash down on him.

I'm ready to step in and stop it.

"Maybe some time back in the box will help you remember what we've been tryin' to teach you. What do ya say, Harper? You need a little time to cool off in the hotbox? You're sure askin' for it."

Where the skull cracker stick had failed, that threat seemed to work. Well, work may be too much of an exaggeration for the lack of submission Harper displays. I hear a hiss of breath escape his nostrils. He looks coiled tight like a snake about to strike.

"No," the young man eventually seethes out, and his throat bobs in a painful-looking dry swallow before adding, "Sir." Like they were poison, he had bitten off each hate-laced word between clenched teeth. Never once did he drop his eyes.

My whole body relaxes. The conflict seems to have passed. I am relieved as Clements backs away and heads toward his strip of shade, just out of earshot of the conversation I am about to have.

Sam had wordlessly drifted off upon hearing my wish to be left alone with the prisoner. I knew I liked that man in spite of his mouth and his smell.

The heat and dust swirl around us. We are alone in a crowd now, and I don't let the pause between us last for long. I am still holding the canteen. "Water, Mr. Harper?" I offer. "You look like you could use some."

He finally looks up at me. The second those startling blue eyes meet mine, I feel horse-kicked in the gut. "Make the angels weep," I think, but thankfully do not say out loud. There is so much sadness and misery in those windows to the soul of Jess Harper, I can hardly stand it. I have seen that kind of pain before in the eyes of the Shoshone, the Sioux, the Cherokee, all of the wild ones, captured, torn from their families, their homes, and sent to prisons and reservations. I saw it during the war, too, in the eyes of dying men and starved prisoners of war. I feel unnerved, but only for a moment because he reaches out for the canteen, then proceeds to swallow down its contents as though he has just taken a waterless trek across the Sonoran.

Wiping the excess moisture from his mouth, he tosses the canteen back with a quick flick of the wrist. I catch it and am about to speak, but he interrupts.

"Thanks for the water. A man gets plenty dry out here." He pauses like he is thinking about what to say next, surveying me from head to toe. Rebellion and a boiling anger drip off the man like the slick of sweat on his body.

I note right away that his voice is uncommonly deep and smoky for one so young.

"I'd be obliged if you'd just call me Jess. It'd kinda make me feel like I ain't a chained and beat dog…" he trails off and ducks his head, "I guess… or somethin' akin to that…,'' he adds. If his skin were not so darkly tanned, I am certain a red blush of shame could be seen crawling up his neck and across his cheeks.

I think he surprised himself by being so candid with me, and I have to wonder how long it has been since he let anyone see even a speck of weakness or vulnerability. He is astonishingly young for his reputation, freshly turned twenty-one in prison, actually. But there is a lot of hard living packed into those ridiculously short years. I am twice his age and add over a decade to that figure.

"What's your name, Mister?" he asks, fixing those fierce blues on the badge I wear pinned to my chest. "What's a U-nited States Marshall want with me in the Territorial? It was one of yer kind that dragged me in here." He paints on a bitter smile that makes him look a tad wolfish. "It'd be a fine trick'a fate if one'a the same breed was here to set me loose."

Spoken like a prophet. The kid doesn't even know how right he is.

"Jess," I say and draw out the name, trying to let him know I respect it. "Milo Malone," I add, holding out my giant hand for him to shake.

His head cocks to the side, and he hesitates for a blink but returns the gesture. His grip is strong, his hand as rough as the rock he breaks.

"I am pleased to meet you, finally, Jess."

He throws me a wry, humorless grin at that, but it fades from the drawn, honed lines of his face instantly. "Yeah. I'll bet you are," he scoffs. "I've had lawmen pleased to meet me for some time now. Real anxious-like to get a piece'a me. Well, before this place, anyway. Back when I was bellyin' through the brush, and there was a price on my head, fer all the greedy takers. But you still ain't said why you're here, Marshall Milo Malone."

There is a strong tone of defiance in the way he draws out my name and title, but I choose to ignore it.

"Jess, I am here to offer you a job."