A Rope of Thorns (Hexslinger 2)

“Nothin’.”

“That Rook’s the only one I’ll ever love—was that it? Why ex-Agent Morrow, you sad sentimental. Or was that your clumsy idea of offerin’ an alternative?”

Morrow didn’t bother to answer, blushing to his hat-hid ears. And Chess laughed, off and on, throughout the rest of the day—almost from the time they mounted up right to the time they made camp once more.

All of which maybe proved Morrow either far too lust-struck to think straight, too punch-drunk on hexation-overspill to be reliable, simply plain stark crazy, or all three at once. But it had to count for something, didn’t it?

“Chess,” he made himself say, back in the here and now, “it’s . . . okay. I’ll be fine.”

“No you won’t.” Chess gave an angry sigh. “Tooth-rot’ll kill you, fool. Gets in your blood. Saw plenty die that way, back in the Lieut’s Company.”

Morrow set his lip, mutinous—tried to, anyhow. “Look, Chess—I’ll be fine. Don’t need no damn tooth-puller. I’ll just—”

Ride it off? Was that what he was going to say? Sounded ridiculous, even to him. And it didn’t matter, anyhow. Having made up his own mind, Chess just rolled right over Morrow’s protestations.

“Big man like you, ’fraid of a pair of grabbers—that’s pure foolishness, son. We’ll get it looked to, maybe put some gold in your smile . . . now, how’d that be?”

“Aw, stop tryin’ to bribe me, you damn fancy-dancer! Call me ‘son,’ when you’re half my age.”

“Yeah, there we go. Get mad, Goddamnit! Act a man.” With a grin: “’Sides which, I really wanted to bribe you into anything, I could do it a sight more cheaply—and amuse myself while doin’ so, too.”

Morrow couldn’t keep himself from flushing at the implication. “Rate your services pretty damn high, don’t you?”

“Sure. But then again—I’m worth it. Ain’t I?”

Morrow couldn’t argue with that, literally.

“Saddle up,” Chess told him. “Next shit-hole’s . . . Mouth-of-Praise, or some such, I seem to recall, from the last time the Rev and I rode through here. Should get there roundabout suppertime—and if the sawbones does his duty, you should be fixed enough to eat it, too.”

“Chawin’ down with a raw socket ain’t my idea of fun,” Morrow muttered, heaving himself haphazardly into the saddle. “Man, I wish old Kees Hosteen was here.”

Chess, already seated, tossed his head just the once at their dead friend’s name, like he was flicking flies. “Well, he ain’t,” he replied, shortly.

Morrow sighed. “I know. It’s just . . . he had a way of makin’ things go smooth, is all.”

Not the world’s best epitaph—but one he thought Kees might have appreciated, was he still in any way able to.

Chess shot him another look, this one almost completely unreadable.

“Talked a sight less than some people, that’s for sure,” he said, at last. And kicked his horse forward, hard as it would go.

As only seemed fitting, Mouth-of-Praise was mainly false fronts, with every house and shop jacked up twice its actual size with an overhanging façade meant to mask the disrepair within. They rode in slower than Chess usually liked, with what seemed like an inordinate number of eyes on them right from the get-go. Probably didn’t help that Morrow was drooping like he’d been shot, or that Chess’s coat was brighter than most of the ladies’ dresses.

“Might be they recognize us,” he said.

Chess didn’t even bother to look ’round. “Oh, ya think?”

Most places, the local barber did what extraction or patch jobs were needed—but here, perhaps as another mark of greatness yet to come, they’d somehow managed to attract an honest-to-goodness certificate-holder with university bona fides. His shingle, hung beside the expected red-and-white pole, read: CURRER GLOSSING, D.D.S. Painless Process Practised!

Morrow, who’d had two teeth yanked already, doubted the claim on sight—but damn, if it wasn’t getting difficult to even keep his left eye open. He slid down heavily while Chess tied up their horses, and immediately felt a wave of vertigo so intense he almost wanted to thank Doc Glossing—a plump little thing, blinking meekly up at him from behind gold-rimmed glasses—just for opening the door.

“Gentlemen,” Glossing said. “You two appear to be in sore need of denticular assistance.”

He took one of Morrow’s arms, as Chess shrugged himself under the other. Together, they managed to wrangle him over the threshold, and laid him down onto a red plush couch that wouldn’t’ve looked amiss back in one of the ’Frisco whorehouses Chess had grown up in. In similar style, cash changed hands almost immediately—and where Chess had gotten it from, Morrow wasn’t quite sure, given they hadn’t exactly stopped to rob any banks since leaving Mexico, but he wasn’t about to ask. Could be dead leaves dressed up, like in them fairy tales his Ma used to tell. Or dirt, more likely.

One way or the other, deal done, Chess took up a stance near the window, watching the street as Glossing went about his business: Moistening two pledgets of cotton with a tincture of aconite, chloroform, alcohol and morphine, then packing them firmly ’round the afflicted section of Morrow’s gum, where he fixed them in place with a spring-wound clamp.

Morrow groaned at the feel, so pathetically it caused Chess’s head to whip ’round,