Valley of Fire (10 page)

“No!” Sister Geneviève wasn't talking so sweetly now.

That's my girl!
I thought.
Start shooting these bastards.

But she just said, “You must not kill him.”

Now, you got to understand that I couldn't see too clearly. Not with a rifle barrel between my eyes, and all them tears welling in them from getting my head bashed in, but it seemed to me that Demyan Blanco didn't care one whit about the nun's demands.

“You fool!” Once again, Sister Geneviève sounded like that madam up in Colorado. “You kill him and we'll never find that gold!”

He looked up, but his finger was still tight on that Winchester's trigger.

“He knows where the gold is. I don't!”

The finger slipped out of the Winchester's trigger guard. I closed my eyes. Might have even mouthed a prayer. The pressure left my nose, and when I opened my eyes, and blinked away all them tears, Demyan Blanco had stepped away from me, moving toward the nun. I sat up, went right back down, rolled over, and heaved
cabrito
and tortillas and coffee and water onto the ground. Got so dizzy, I dropped into my own vomit. Almost immediately, I got out of that wretched muck. Then I fell right back into it, and watched, and welcomed, the world turn black.

 

 

Gran Quivira lay maybe eighty-five miles southwest of Anton Chico. Eighty-five miles of rough travel, especially once we reached the Estancia Valley. If we reached it . . .

Felipe Hernandez would find that we wasn't in Puerto de Luna, might have already got there, and he'd come back, madder than that feller had been in Jacksboro when he'd figured out that I was using a marked deck, and he'd broke my nose, and likely would have broke some more things if Big Tim Pruett hadn't bashed his head with a whiskey bottle.

I always liked Big Tim. Wished he was riding with me right then.

Drums pounded inside my head, flattening my brains, and my stomach felt as if I'd swallowed a gallon of bile. I feared my bowels would loosen, and I'd embarrass myself in front of Sister Geneviève, but God was smiling on me.

So was that damned sun.

They'd let me sleep in my own vomit, then splashed water on my face, the fools—I'd rather have had them urinate on me rather than waste good water—jerked me up, tied my hands with leather cord, and boosted me in the saddle.

Breakfast had been tortillas and water, but I didn't eat. My stomach wasn't up to food right then. They had decided to run a cold camp and get moving quickly, before the sun turned the country into a furnace. Or maybe they decided Felipe Hernandez might be on his way back toward Anton Chico.

All morning, we rode, the nun in front of me, Blanco taking the point, and de la Cruz, pulling the mule, bringing up the rear. It wasn't so bad, not at first. The morning dawned fairly cool, clouds helped, and we rode in the arroyo, twisting this way and that, till the dry creek bed ended, and we climbed out into rugged plains.

By that time, them clouds had blown away, the sun baked us, and the wind blew hot and dusty. Finally, we started climbing, maybe a thousand feet in elevation, and Anton Chico's probably at least a mile high. That was good. I mean once we started climbing, the piñons and junipers provided us some shade, and blocked most of the wind.

We didn't stop for noon. Didn't stop for nothing, except when the horses, and once Sister Geneviève, had to answer nature's call. Them two cousins made some hoarse whispered comments while the nun did her business in the bushes. I didn't like the way they looked at her. Come to think on it, I didn't like Blanco and his cousin none at all.

The trees grew too thick, branches slapping at us. Well, slapping ain't the best term. They knocked the hell out of us, leaving both arms with scratches and welts. The mule got stubborn, locked his hind legs like anchors, causing de la Cruz to cuss and torment and pull. The big oaf had to climb off his horse, and pull and tug and cuss some more. I had stopped, turning around, watching the fight from my saddle. Demyan Blanco came riding back, yelling at his cousin, yelling at the mule. Then he rode behind the mule, and jerked the Winchester from the scabbard.

For a second, I thought Blanco was going to shoot the poor beast. But, no, he done something even dumber.

He jacked a cartridge into the chamber and aimed. Realizing his intentions, I grabbed a tight hold of my reins. That big cannon boomed, the bullet slamming into the rocks between the mule's hind legs. Oh, that got the mule moving all right. It also sent de la Cruz's big buckskin horse cutting through the timber, heading to parts unknown.

I ain't no cowboy. Never claimed to be, never wanted to be. That piebald did a little bucking, and the only reason I didn't lose my seat in the saddle and wind up tasting gravel was because I'd hemmed the gelding in pretty tight between them piñons. The roar of the Winchester echoed loudly. A limb knocked my hat off, caused my head to pound some more, and I caught a glimpse of the mule hightailing it, heard Blanco cussing, and in the corner of my eye, I saw de la Cruz running after his frightened mare. My gelding calmed down, just enough, that I craned my neck, just in time to see the mule slam into the blue roan, and send Sister Geneviève sailing. The mule stopped. The roan rolled over, and I was off my horse.

“Dear God!” I prayed, which ain't nothing I do often. Feared the roan had rolled over the nun, and a Sister who weighs a hundred pounds after a heavy rain ain't no match for a nine hundred pound gelding.

“Stop!” Blanco shouted at me, but I paid him no mind. The roan gelding was coming up, and I snagged them reins. That horse was like a jackrabbit dodging a hawk. He reared, them front hooves coming close to braining me. He backed up, jerked me to my knees, dragged me a few feet, then his butt hit a juniper branch, and he come right at me.

I was up in an instant, still holding the reins tightly, biting back pain as the leather burned my palms. The roan just missed running over me, but I pulled the reins, started hushing and sweet-talking him. The mule brayed. Blanco cussed and come running at me. I heard him jack another shell into the Centennial.

My head was throbbing again, dust stung my eyes, the reins had left welts on my palms—should have bought a pair of gloves back at Abercrombie's—and my knees was skinned and pants ripped—should have bought some chaps, too.

The blue roan snorted, but started to calm down. I felt Blanco's rancid breath on my neck, but I wasn't in no mood to put up with that horse's arse.

Turning, I thrust the reins at him and snapped, “Here. You hold him.”

Leaping over a dead tree, I found the nun laying on her back. Her hood was down. She held a handkerchief under her nose.

I knelt beside her, and when she started to rise, I put my hand on her shoulder, gentle but firm. “Don't move.”

She sank back to the ground, removed the handkerchief, sighed at the blood, and placed it back, sniffling.

“Anything busted?” It taken a moment before I could find the words. My heart was still racing, and my breath came out in short bursts. It sorta hurt to breathe.

“I don't think so.”

My hands, still bound with that leather cord that bit into my wrists, touched her left ankle, then I eased up her leg, not touching the skin, nothing like that. Just on her skirt. She lowered the bloody piece of cotton underneath her nose, which had stopped bleeding, watching me. I looked at her, then moved my hands to her other leg, seeing if she flinched, touching her ankle, calf, lower thigh. Didn't go no higher.

Using her arms, she pushed herself up. I decided her wrists and arms wasn't broken.

“Take a deep breath.”

She obeyed. Didn't gasp or nothing.

“I don't think you busted anything”—I smiled—“'cept your nose, and it ain't broken.”

“I'm glad to know that.” But she tested it with her fingers, just to be certain.

We just stared at each other.

Crazy. I mean the first thing I noticed about her, with her hood down and all, was her eyebrows. They were perfect. Well, it ain't that I'd ever noticed any woman's eyebrows or nothing like that, so I can't say I'm an expert. But they looked perfect, thick then tapering in this perfect curve. Her eyes were a light brown, not too dark, not too light. I reckoned they was perfect, too.

Her dark hair, which hung to her shoulders, was kinda matted and sweaty and coated here and there with specs of dirt and piñon needles. I mean, it was a hot day, and she'd just been rammed off a horse and over a dead tree, so you couldn't expect everything about her to be perfect.

She started to move again, but I shook my head. “Just sit there for a minute. Get your breath back. Make sure you're really all right.”

“I'm all right.”

“Just listen to me, Sister. For once.”

Her face softened, and she sank back a bit, relaxing. Oh, I knowed she wasn't hurt too bad. I just wanted to look at her some more.

It was a round face, not too tan, not too pale, the neck long, lovely. Made me wish I could place a string of pearls over them, then I remembered I'd broken off that crucifix she had worn. She smiled. Lovely smile, showed me that her teeth was white. She had all of them, near as I could tell, unlike most of the women I'd knowed. The lips was rosy, narrow on top and thick on the bottom. Her smile pushed her cheeks up, and she was so lovely there, with blood above her lip, and her hair all messed up, and her habit dirty and ripped.

She looked like an angel.

I could have stayed like that for another hour or so, but I heard Demyan Blanco panting, heard the mule bray and then start urinating. Then Blanco was yelling, not at Sister Geneviève and me, but at his cousin, who come panting and cussing and groaning.

No longer smiling, Sister Geneviève decided that it was time to get up, and I moved over to help her, then saw something else almost as lovely as that young nun. I did a kind of stumble, dropped to a knee beside her, and caught myself with my bound hands. Snatched up that little .22, which the good Sister must have lost during her spill, so smooth that none of them b'hoys knowed I'd just armed myself. Have I ever mentioned that I am mighty good at palming cards, too?

With a little laugh, I stood, saying, “Lost my balance there,” and slid the hideaway gun into the pockets of my trousers.

Blanco and his cousin was too busy cussing each other to notice. Sister Geneviève didn't see my slight of hand, neither.

I helped the nun over the dead tree, and she sat on it. I started to do the same, but decided I'd better go fetch my hat, check and hobble my paint horse.

Them two cousins, staring at me as if I was to blame for all this unnecessary excitement, looked mean.

“Where's your horse?” I asked Jorge de la Cruz.

He answered in a tirade of Mexican profanity.

It's a damned fool idea to travel across this country with four people and grub for two. It's even dumber to keep going with three horses and make some poor, dumb son of a bitch walk.

Naturally, that poor, dumb son of a bitch was me.

The big farmer's horse had skedaddled, likely loping back toward Anton Chico. All of us hoped that that big buckskin would break his leg in a prairie dog hole and feed some ravens and turkey buzzards, and not make it back to the little village. Folks would start questioning things, and one of them folks might be Felipe Hernandez.

That wasn't the worst of things, neither. Sister Geneviève's blue roan had cut up his left rear leg pretty bad, and he shouldn't be going nowhere for a long while. That left the mule, which wasn't going anywhere if she didn't feel like it, my paint, and Blanco's black. That horse, which looked to be part Arabian, might have been able to run down de la Cruz's buckskin, but Blanco wasn't about to leave me and the nun alone with his dumb cousin.

So they decided they'd do without.

Damned fools.

I should have shot them right then and there.

But the more I studied on it, the more I looked at Jorge de la Cruz, I started to understand just why the Sister hadn't opened the ball earlier. Like I already mentioned, a Ladies Companion ain't much of a gun. I mean a .22 is a handy little pistol when you're shooting at barn rats or maybe rattlesnakes, if you're close enough. But I didn't think a .22 would get through de la Cruz's muscles and into any vitals. Like as not, even if I emptied all five rounds into him, it would just make him madder—like a hornet sting or something. And I'd still have Demyan Blanco to consider. So I kept the little pistol in my pants pocket.

Sore and tired and more than a trifle mad, we made camp in the woods. Blanco did consent to some coffee, and we fried up some salt pork for supper, finished the
cabrito
, and went to sleep.

Next morning, our merry little group resumed our trek, even though I argued that if the Sister rode that roan too much, he'd go lame. Maybe even die.

They didn't listen, didn't care. Gold fever had struck both of them mighty hard. I figured it to be a fatal case . . . for them, for Sister Geneviève, and for me.

Still, I reckon we had made twenty miles that first day, pretty good considering the country, and the fact that Jorge de la Cruz, big farmer that he was, couldn't ride worth a damn. Sister Geneviève was better on a horse that he was.

Ask me, the farmer was the fellow who should've been walking.

Instead of me.

Me afoot cut our speed down considerable. We dipped into a draw, and followed it. I tried to keep Pedernal Mountain in my sight, but the trees often blocked the view. Around noon, we come to a water hole, and, man alive, did that water taste good. We drank, filled our canteens, soaked our feet, let the horses get their fill.

Blanco offered me a quid of tobacco, but I shook my head. He bit off a chaw, worked it with his teeth, then nodded his head southwest. “How far?”

“We ain't halfway there.”

He kept chewing. His Winchester had been left in his saddle scabbard, but the cousin was staring at me across the little pool of water, and his hand stayed too close to his ancient five-shot revolver.

“I am not used to this country,” Blanco said. “It is rough.”

I told him, “You ain't seen Hell yet.”

He looked at me, waiting for some explanation.

Sighing, I swept my hands around the country we was in. “In case you ain't notice, we've already started climbing down. This is high country, where we're at now, plenty of shade, plenty of water. We gotta follow this draw, and then the country's gonna flatten out and dry up. It won't turn hospitable till we're near Gran Quivira, and that ain't very hospitable.”

“How do you know so much about this country?” Blanco had worked his tobacco up enough to spit. Damned fool spit into the water.

“Didn't spend all my youth playing cards and . . . selling . . . yeah, selling horses.”

“You were a horse trader?” I'd gained some stature with Blanco.

“More or less.”

“So what did you do, to learn about this country?”

“Scouted some for the Army,” I said.

That was gospel. You'll find me on the muster roll of civilian scouts at forts Stanton and Craig. We'd chased some Apaches now and then. Thankfully, all we done mostly was chase. Rarely found any. My duties was usually riding dispatch between Stanton and Craig, but shortly before I decided it was time to desert, they had started sending me up toward Bascom. That wasn't a fort no more, but the Army was using it as a sub-post. Anyway, you ride through that triangle, you cover a lot of ground, get to learn the country. I'd crossed the Valley of Fire many a time. Had I knowed there was a fortune of gold buried underneath them black rocks . . .

I reached my bound hands to my chest, touched it, felt something that kinda reassured me for a moment. Then I cupped my hands full of water, away from where Blanco had turned it slightly brown, and washed my face again.

Those Army days brung back fond memories. That time I'd bluffed Sergeant Ernest Sadler with a king high, not the flush, to his three queens showing. One time, our patrol had even found some Apaches not too far from Gran Quivira, and I'd managed to hide and escape. Brought two soldiers back, deader than dirt, and everybody at Craig called me a hero. Wasn't no hero. I was just smart enough to hide. And I'd been lucky.

I'd also hid out in these hills, even used the ruins at Gran Quivira as a hideout. Like that time when they'd caught me passing that counterfeit bill at Grzelachowski's store in Puerto de Luna. Or when Jim Greathouse took umbrage over my winning streak. Or when Sergeant Sadler led a patrol trying to catch me as a deserter—or because he'd learned how I'd bluffed him out of two months' pay. Yes, sir, this was good country to hide out in. Not fit to live in. But hiding out, many outlaws considered it tops.

Yes, sir, some of this country had been good to me.

Sure wasn't now.

I reckon we'd covered ten miles that day coming into McGillivroy Draw and heading into the valley. Exhausted, we camped again in the draw, finishing the tortillas, wishing de la Cruz's buckskin hadn't made off with the farmer's canteen. I checked the roan's leg, put another mud poultice on it, patted him, give him some extra grain.

Next day turned worser. Pedernal Mountain lay behind us. So did the trees, the shade, the higher country. We descended into the Estancia Valley.

Some Mexican once told me that
estancia
, in Spanish, means “place of rest.” Permanent, I figured. We came out of the piñon and juniper and into a vast bowl of blowing dirt.

Oh, there was some desert scrub here and there, grass that already looked overcooked by the sun. I had to pull up my bandanna to keep from swallowing a pound of dust, kept walking, head bent low, hearing the horses laboring behind me.

We didn't talk. Couldn't.

If we was lucky, we'd cover maybe two or three hundred yards before we stopped to rest. One time, Sister Geneviève kneed her roan close to me, and without speaking, unhooked her canteen from the horn and handed it to me.

I shook my head.

Her mouth moved. Her lips were chapped. I reckon the hood of her outfit had gotten ripped up during her horse wreck, but she'd fashioned it into some kind of bonnet, which protected her a bit from the sun and wind. Her face was turning red, and her eyes was bloodshot.

My lips was sore, and when my tongue touched them to moisten them, they burned like hell.

“Drink.”

This time I heard her.

I also heard Jorge de la Cruz guzzling his water, like we had plenty to spare, like we had five miles to travel instead of fifty. He started cussing again, and Demyan Blanco was too tired, or maybe too disgusted, to cuss back.

“Save your water.” My voice sounded foreign, cracked, ugly, thirsty. Hell, I wanted that water she was offering me, but I knowed better than to drink it. We'd need it. Need a lot more than we had.

“Vámanos,”
Blanco ordered.

After motioning for the pretty nun to hook her canteen back on the saddle horn, I resumed my march.

Late afternoon, I noticed the clouds. At first they appeared over the Manzano Mountains, way off to the west, but soon I knowed they was bound our way. The wind picked up, hot at first, wicked, gaining fury. The mule began getting stubborn again.

“Por Dios,”
de la Cruz said, almost begging. He seen them dark clouds, too. “Maybe it will rain.”

All that powdery lime-colored sand had turned Blanco's black horse practically white. We was all dusted, filthy. The Sister's roan was lathered with sweat, which the sand had turned to mud. The wind howled.

Monsoons strike this country hard and furious, but usually them frequent afternoon thunderstorms don't start till July or thereabouts. June was a mite early, but I decided I wouldn't mind a good, soaking rain, even though a cold rain could leave a body shivering to death. From how them clouds looked, this storm promised to be a regular Old Testament, fire-and-brimstone, come-to-meeting kind of storm. Already, I could see the purple curtain stretching in the distance from those black clouds to the drab earth.

“We should find cover,” Blanco said. He had trouble keeping his horse in line, the black jerking his head this way and that, fighting the bit.

I laughed. “Where?”

The wind turned into a gale, then into a hurricane, then became the wrath of God. I could smell the rain, could practically taste it. I was moving closer toward Sister Geneviève and the blue roan, which was practically dragging his injured leg. The mule jerked free of de la Cruz's grasp and took off. The farmer tried to make my piebald go after him, but the horse suddenly did an abrupt turn, his back to the wind, to the storm. Blanco screamed as his black did the same. Even the nun's almost lame animal turned so he wouldn't face the coming storm. They refused to go.

I knew why.

“Get off!” I had to shout like hell so the nun could hear me. “Off !” I repeated, and she slipped from the saddle. I tried to help her as much as I could with my hands tied and all.

“What is happening?” de la Cruz yelled.

With my hands numb from the tight rawhide, I pressed Sister Geneviève close against the lathered horse. Taking the reins, I brought my arms over the nun's neck and pressed against her as tight as I could, sandwiching her between my body and the roan.

“What are you doing?”

I could just hear her. Before I could answer, the hailstones hit.