Wilmer was finally warm, and getting sleepy, when he thought he heard a horse. He'd have assumed it was his own. He was comfortable in the bed of straw he'd fashioned in the chimney corner, and he doubted very much whether he'd get up to check.
That's when the door slammed open. The wind was screaming like a dying thing, and the fire went nearly out as snow swept in around Wilmer's ankles, for you can bet he was standing now. He wasn't alarmed, any more than he'd been alarmed when first he'd been locked up, but he was certainly surprised. They were over thirty miles out from Dodge, in a stand of woods nobody had called theirs since probably before the war. The house, if you could call it that, once had two rooms and now had one, the other collapsed behind a door. It hadn't even a stove–just a hearth, with an enormous cast-iron crane somebody must have pried from their grandfather's inn back east someplace, even though George Washington was meant to have stayed there once.
Chester slammed the door.
"Well, fancy this," said Wilmer. "Good evening to you." The fire bloomed again, and Wilmer couldn't help but grin. The marshal's mustache was frozen white, along with everything else upon them both. Chester was glaring murder, hunched and shivering, and the marshal, curiously, wasn't doing much of anything. Wilmer only noticed when Chester let go that he'd had a hand on the marshal's coat, as if he'd hauled him in by the collar, the thought of which got Wilmer even toothier.
"He alright?" Wilmer asked.
"Yes."
"I'm only asking, Chester. He looks a little punchy to me. And the pair of you are just blushing like roses...why, have you men been drinking?
"Be quiet."
"It's no good to drink if you're gonna be out in this kind of weather."
"Be quiet and stay that way 'til we get back to Dodge and I can gag you with a iron bar."
"You hear that, Marshal?"
"I'd worry of my own self if I was you."
"I weren't talking to you, Chester."
"I don't like your voice, Wilmer," said Chester. "Those your provisions, there?"
"That's right."
Chester looked to the marshal, who still hadn't said a word. Dillon looked up to the ceiling.
"Will I make us something to eat?" said Chester.
"Yeah," said the marshal, after a second.
"You best set by the fire, Mr. Dillon."
"Oh my," said Wilmer, clicking his tongue regretfully. "Has the cold addled him?"
"I'll addle you in a minute."
"Sure, Chester, sure. Just like you done the last time." Chester had come in with his gun pointed, and Wilmer thought he looked awfully puny, with all that fuss to take a sorry shack like this one.
"Drop your gun, Wilmer."
"Sure."
"I said drop it!"
"Take it easy, take it easy! There."
"Now kick it o'er to me, please."
"Okay."
"Thank you." Chester stuck it in his belt and steered the marshal, who was walking sort of dizzy, over to the fire. "Fetch some water, will you, Wilmer? Don't worry about your horse or nothing. You'll be going out as you are."
"Without my coat, you mean?"
"Yes."
"Without my boots, even?"
"You won't be long gone, will ye?"
"...Reckon not."
"Well, go on."
"Aw, now–"
"Go on, I said."
"You sure did." Wilmer made his way slowly towards the hearth.
"Where-at do you think you're going?"
"I gotta have a bucket, don't I?"
Chester shrugged. Wilmer rolled his eyes and picked up the ancient stewpot. The marshal was sitting on a pinewood footstool, which was the only furniture on the place. Wilmer had never stood so close to him without being manhandled one way or another. The marshal wasn't even looking at him now, though. He was gazing into the fire, blinking over-long, and as Wilmer watched, his chin dropped to his chest once, then again. Like some old drunk. Wilmer brushed hard against him on his way by.
"You know," said Wilmer, "You put hot water on 'im you're liable to stop his heart, Mr. Jailer."
"The water's for my coffee."
"Your coffee?"
"Yes." Chester flicked his gun at the door. Wilmer shrugged and went out.
"Chester?"
"What?" Chester crouched before him on the hearth.
"Where's Wilmer?"
"He's making hisself useful. I sent him to get some water. I'll make us some coffee. He's got some bacon and meal and all like that, too. It'll last us the storm if we don't feed him too good." Chester was still so cold it made his voice shake in his chest, like some traveling theater-actor giving King Richard. If he could have kissed the fire, he would have. The heat, on his back, was better than a kiss. It was enough to make him weak in the knees.
"We're not staying here," said the marshal.
"Let's ought to get your coat off, it's dripping wet."
"We're riding back tonight."
"Mr. Dillon…"
"I told you before." He wasn't shivering much, which seemed odd, because his lips were blue. Chester stared back, until the marshal blinked.
"Well...alright," he said, just as if he'd go along with it. "But we'll still need to warm up some before we do."
"I'm fine now."
"Mr. Dillon, you...don't look altogether well."
"Why wouldn't I be well?"
"The cold's kindly got to you, that's all. Hasn't it?"
"I'm not cold."
"Maybe not no more, but you sure gave me a turn just now."
"Well, if you're cold we can stay a few minutes."
"Alright, sir. Will you take your coat off, please?"
"Are you cold?" Chester stood up and started to unravel his shawl. It was stiff as wire.
"I could sure be warmer," Chester replied.
"I don't see how." He smiled suddenly, which was always a bit alarming–his teeth were both sharp and rotten–and Chester hoped fervently he wouldn't start laughing again. It had scared him half to death, waist-deep in snow on the prairie, when Mr. Dillon started laughing at the drifts. He'd just about knocked himself down laughing. "Where's Wilmer?" Mr. Dillon asked again.
"He'll be back directly. I'll take care of him." Mr. Dillon finally set about unbuttoning his coat, but it was slow going. Chester couldn't feel his fingers, either, or he might have helped. Chester, though, had not been struck frozen in the head. He wondered why. Chester had heard of it happening, heard that a body could get so cold it slowed their blood and made them drunk. He'd heard you could die that way, if you got stuck for very long. He'd have thought he'd be the one it'd happen to, though, out of the two of them, being particularly slow-blooded to begin with. Doc said that's why he took so long to feel his liquor and, when it came to it, his medicine. Mr. Dillon said it wasn't that he didn't feel it, so much as that he wasn't convinced he did until he was already a nuisance. Miss Kitty said it didn't matter. There was never any reason to say so, but Chester thought it was probably just that he'd gotten fat. When he was younger, he could get stone drunk practically for free. Anybody can if there's nothing to eat.
"Chester?"
"Yessir?" Mr. Dillon looked Chester in the face, smiling with his blackened teeth and his thawing mustache, and barked out laughing. Chester flinched in spite of himself. Mr. Dillon could be very loud when he wanted to, or, it turned out, when he was cold enough. "Forevermore," said Chester. "What's so funny, anyhow?" The door opened as he spoke, as catastrophically as ever, and Wilmer came in, shaking, with the cauldron packed with snow. Chester stood.
"I guess you are, Chester," Wilmer answered.
"Give that here," said Chester.
"Sure." Mr. Dillon doubled up and laughed harder and quieter. Chester hung the cauldron and Wilmer stood a few steps distant and watched in some small amusement. "He been that way long?"
Chester didn't say anything. He could sure look at you funny, Wilmer had to give him that. Chester had a harelip that never got fixed quite right, so he always looked like he was pulling a mild face. Wilmer knew that kind of scar, or else he'd figure Chester had some spunk, the way he looked crazy at strangers.
"Say, Chester," said Wilmer. "I always wondered, you got a hole in your mouth?"
"Of all the foolish…"
"I really am curious, I got a girl cousin's got a hole in her mouth. Her people took her to St. Louis to get her sewed. Come out good as new so far as to look at, but she talks like a chinaman. Who done mended you, huh, Chester? Your ma? With a sewing needle? Your auntie?" Chester stared. "They might have been one in the same, they say that's how these things happen, sometimes."
"You leave my mother outta this," said Chester, after a few seconds, and unwilling to leave the fire just yet, began laying out the food in his mind. It hardly ever stormed like this for more than a few days at a time. He'd just have to ration it. Even if they'd had nothing, nobody could starve in a few days, even if they felt like it. That's what Doc always told him, as if Chester didn't know it to be true.
Mr. Dillon got to coughing from laughing, and from there got to be quiet. Chester rung out all the clothing he could respectably remove, and started to pick the debris out of the water before it got too hot. Wilmer didn't seem sure what to do with himself, and Chester wasn't about to gentle him along by telling him. He wished he might have the decency to look put-out about all this.
"Chester?" said the marshal.
"Yessir?" Chester flicked a piece of gravel in Wilmer's direction.
"I'm going to bed."
"Y'are?"
"Turn the light out before you leave. You don't need anything." Chester wasn't sure if that was a question, but there were no lights. With that, Mr. Dillon got abruptly down from the stool and curled up on the floor, with his back to the fire.
"Wait a minute, Mr. Dillon. You got to get out of all them wet things."
"Yeah, listen to mammy, marshal," said Wilmer.
"Oh, shut up, Wilmer." Wilmer stuck a piece of straw in his mouth and sat against the wall. Chester shook the marshal by the shoulder, then hauled him up to sit. The marshal grumbled.
"It'll just be a minute, Mr. Dillon. You'll be warmer this way, besides you go to sleep wet, why, you wake up with a sore ear. Everybody knows that." By the time Chester had said as much, he'd already taken the marshal's hat and scarf and was briskly unbuttoning his coat. "Kick off your boots, now." Chester jerked his coat out from under him. "That's it." The marshal got one of his boots off, and Chester got the other. "Alright. Goodnight, Mr. Dillon."
"Yeah, yeah," said the marshal, and curled up again. Wilmer could tell he was asleep by the time Chester had laid the things out to dry.
"You're mighty elegant undressing a man," said Wilmer.
"None of it ain't your business. I don't see you helping."
"Help?" Wilmer chuckled incredulously. "What do you need help with, I'll help."
"That's enough out of you."
"Alright, alright." Wilmer stretched out in the straw. "Reckon I'll get some sleep myself, then. Prisoners' privilege. It's not so bad on the floor here. Not so bad a t'all."
"Oh…" Wilmer closed his eyes and smiled serenely. "I'll have you know I got four kid brothers and a big one what's off in the head," Chester said, in a tone which implied Wilmer was being somehow shown.
"What?"
"Nevermind."
"Are you talking to me?"
"Nevermind, I said. Go to sleep a'fore I kick you dark."
"Sure, Chester, sure. Goodnight, now."