THERE WAS DARKNESS and a faint, far away sense of movement. Something pressed lightly against his chest, and down the side of his face there was wetness that seemed to pulsate, alternately cool and burning. He eased his eyes open. Closed them as brilliant sunlight shafted across the pupils.
His head ached, and it took him some time to identify his surroundings. Instead of the water-filled base of the gulley, he was stretched out inside a wagon. It was warm and dim, the heavy canvas shutting out most of the light. The sun came in through the opening at the rear, flashing through as the vehicle turned along a winding trail. He eased up to a sitting position, wincing as his damaged shoulder lanced pain through his neck and arm. The blanket that had covered him fell away and he saw that he was naked except for the bandages wound around his bicep and chest. Cautiously, he reached to touch his head: the hair was still in place, though a great wad of damp cloth was held to his face and neck by more strips of cloth.
‘It’s all right, son. You still got all your hair.’
The voice was deep, a ringing baritone that would have sounded exactly right echoing from the pulpit of a church.
The speaker hauled the wagon to a stop and swung round so that Azul could see his face. The impression given by the voice was supported by the features and the clothes. The man was bald, bristling, iron-gray sideburns running down the line of a powerful jaw to form a neatly-trimmed beard. His skin was deeply tanned and scored with a tracery of wrinkles that served to add humor to the twinkling blue eyes and the smiling, thick-lipped mouth. A black vest covered a deep chest, beneath the vest a shirt of the same color, except for the collar which was starched and white, standing up in a tight ring around the neck.
‘Name’s Josiah Bartholomew. Father Bartholomew if you want the full title. I’m a minister in the Church of Christ the Lamb. Lucky we happened along.’
‘We?’ Azul could see no one else.
‘Me an’ my daughter, son. Rachel’s up ahead, lookin’ for herbs.’
‘My horse.’ Azul found it difficult to speak clearly with the dressing constricting his mouth. ‘Where’s my horse?’
Father Bartholomew shrugged. ‘Best count your blessings. You got your life an’ you got your hair. State you was in back there, you’re lucky to have either. Give thanks to the Almighty, son. An’ forget the horse.’
For an instant the half-breed’s eyes glinted with a cold fury and his lips curled to a snarl. There was something feral in his expression, and the minister hurried to expand.
‘We was lookin’ for shelter. Rachel an’ me follow a wanderin’ kind of calling, takin’ the Word to the heathens around these parts. We was heading for Braddock’s Trading Post when we come on that poor, benighted Indian all set to lift your hair. I loosed off a barrel of shot.’ The man’s grin became apologetic. ‘Over his head, of course. Anyway, he turned tail an’ lit out with a string of ponies. Guess one must’ve been your’n.’
Azul nodded, grimly.
‘Found two dead ones.’ Now Bartholomew’s voice grew sad. ‘Sioux by the look of them. You kill them?’
‘They didn’t give me much choice.’ Azul twisted round, easing the dull ache in his shoulder.
‘No. I guess not.’ Bartholomew nodded slowly. ‘Word is there was a big fight up to the north. Whole bunch of the Seventh Cavalry wiped out, so the Army’s been chasin’ the Indians ever since. Those three most likely got separated. Figured they’d do better comin’ south.’
‘One did pretty good,’ Azul grunted. ‘Out of me.’
The minister shrugged. ‘You’re alive, son. Every cloud’s got a silver lining.’
The cliché brought the hardness back into Azul’s face. ‘So’s my horse,’ he muttered, too low for Bartholomew to hear.
The preacher mistook the mumbled words for a groan of pain. ‘Take it easy. You took some pretty bad bruises, and an’ arrow wound. Nothin’ that won’t heal with rest an’ time; an’ Rachel’s nursing. But right now you need to take it easy. We’ll fix some food soon as she comes back.’
‘Where are my clothes?’ Azul could not see them inside the wagon. ‘I’m going after him.’
‘You’re not goin’ anywhere.’ Bartholomew shook his head. ‘Right now you’d have trouble handlin’ a horse. Even if you had one. You’re so set on getting’ that animal back, then your best chance is to stick with us. Like I said, we’re headed for Braddock’s Post, an’ that’s most likely where that Sioux’ll head. If he’s got horses an’ gear to trade, he’ll take them to Braddock.’
‘How far?’ Azul demanded.
‘Day an’ a half. So long as the rain holds off.’
Azul nodded and sank back against the palliasse stretched over the hard boards of the wagon’s floor.
‘Besides.’ Bartholomew seemed to think this concluded the argument. ‘Your clothes are still drying. You was lucky you didn’t catch pneumonia.’
‘Yeah.’ Azul felt suddenly weary. In part it was a result of the beating he had taken, allied with hunger and the soaking. But mostly it was caused by the knowledge that he had lost the horse, with little apparent chance of finding it again. The silver didn’t matter – except as a point of personal pride – though without it he was unable to purchase a fresh mount or a new rifle. Given only the part-Arab stallion he could have lived off the land until he reached New Mexico, where he might have found refuge with an Apache band. Now, though, he was unhorsed in unfamiliar country, dependent on the charity of this wandering missionary and his daughter.
He closed his eyes, but then the world seemed to revolve sickeningly around his head. So he opened them again and lay staring at the grayish ceiling of the wagon.
Bartholomew sat upright on the drive seat, humming a tune that Azul recognized vaguely as a hymn. The half-breed wondered why the man didn’t climb down.
Then a voice interrupted his thoughts and he sat up again as a new face appeared at the forward opening. It was a cheerful face, set with blue eyes like the man’s, and surmounted by a bun of straw-colored hair. It was also an extremely ugly face, though its innate good-humor went a little way to off-setting the initial impression of a woman turned to missionary work for want of other commitments.
‘You’re awake. Good. I’m Rachel. Has father introduced himself?’ Her voice – like her father’s – was deep, though more brusque, more business-like. ‘I’ll check those dressings in a moment. Then we’ll eat.’
She reached over the backrest to fetch two long poles from the space beneath the seat. Each one was around five feet in length, solid and thick as a Comanche buffalo lance, with a foot-long cross-member at the top, wrapped round with cloth. Azul recognized them as crutches.
She eased them to the ground, propping them against the wagon on her father’s side, then raised freckled, wiry arms to help Bartholomew down. The preacher moved to the edge of the seat and lowered his hands to grasp the outer rim and the edge of the front board. Beneath his funereal clerical vest heavy muscles bulged as he swung his weight clear of the seat and over the drop. Rachel took hold of his waist, easing him down until he was hanging from the side of the wagon. Then she tucked the crutches beneath his arms and he swung all the way clear.
Azul remained upright, waiting for the girl to reappear.
‘How do you feel?’ The rear flap of the canvas cover was pulled back, and the tailgate slapped down. ‘You look a whole lot better. Move over. Let me take a look.’
The half-breed dragged the blanket about his waist.
‘I’ve seen it all.’ Rachel climbed nimbly into the wagon. ‘And it’s not the first time, so forget your modesty and let me take a look at you.’
Up close she was even uglier than on first sight. Her features resembled those of her father, but without any feminine softening of the contours. Her nose was large and strong, the mouth wide and full-lipped, but without shape. A wart browned her chin, three thick black hairs sprouting from the center where the jaw descended in a shallow fold to her thick neck. She wore a dirty blue-striped shirt and shapeless brown pants with grubby boots sticking from under the cuffs.
In contrast, her hands were delicate, the long fingers working deftly on the bandages.
She stripped them away and tossed them on to the tailgate. Then reached out to open a metal-clasped box bolted to the side of the wagon. Producing a square mirror, she turned to face Azul.
‘Take a look. Then you’ll know why you need some tending.’
The half-breed stared at his reflection. Across the upper side of his right shoulder there was an angry-looking weal surrounded by a massive bruise, yellow at the center and purplish black around the edges. It spread from the angle of his shoulder to the underside of his jaw, where a faint band of paler skin separated .it from the swollen hump covering his face from jaw line to just beneath the angle of the cheekbone. The flesh looked watery and red, inflamed by the liquids drawn out by the Sioux’s blow and Rachel’s poultice. His left shoulder was, in comparison, clear, though the arm beneath – where Sun Dancer’s stone axe had landed – was black and swollen.
‘You’re about as pretty as me right now.’ She rummaged through the box, producing fresh bandages and several pots of ointment. ‘Though not so strong. So forget this talk about finding your horse until we reach Braddock’s place. You couldn’t fight a baby possum, let alone a full-growed Sioux. Even one with a bullet hole in his arm.’
‘I hit him?’ Azul leaned back, letting her plaster the salves over his wounds. ‘Which arm?’
‘Left.’ She layered the ointments over his aches and began to wind the bandages back in place. ‘Father’d be too squeamish to tell you that, but I saw him dragging it. Couldn’t have been too bad. He got mounted fast enough, but he left a shield behind. There was a hole through it and blood on the inside.’
Azul nodded, committing to memory what little he knew of the horse thief. He hoped it was enough to find the Indian.
‘I’ll fetch your clothes in,’ said Rachel. ‘A spell on your feet might do you some good.’
‘Thanks.’ Azul watched her swing from the wagon. ‘Thanks a lot.’
A few moments later she returned, tossing in a bundle of dry clothes and slapping the tail flaps of the canvas into place. Azul dressed with difficulty, wondering where his weapons had gone, or if the Sioux had taken them all.
When he climbed down over the tailgate he saw his gunbelt hung from the water barrel and his throwing knife resting on the cover. He buckled on the Colt and tucked the slender-bladed knife back inside his moccasins. He felt dressed again.
Rachel was crouched over a small fire, stirring industriously at a blackened pot from which came a tempting odor of meat stew that reminded him of his hunger. Josiah Bartholomew was standing behind her, supported on his crutches: Azul saw why he needed them. The man’s legs were like flimsy rags, the angles of the knees and ankles all wrong, the feet twisted inwards at curious points so that he appeared to balance on his toes, using his feet only as vague supports to balance the crutches. His pants hung loose about his hips, the dark material flapping in the breeze that had started up, so that each pants’ leg was driven back against the withered flesh, outlining boney knees and distorted limbs.
They were in a wide draw, flanked on both sides by heavy timber that gave way to the spreading bowl of grass-covered meadow where Bartholomew had halted the wagon. The trail they had followed down the ridge zig-zagged through the trees, finally leading to a straight path running along the center of the draw. To the south it bled off between slanting walls of grassy soil that appeared to feed out on to open range. The sun was slanting down behind the left side of the draw, shading that rim with a bright red light that turned to gold along the apex of its path. Off to the right the sky was getting dark. Azul realized he had been unconscious for most of the day.
‘Fetch me those herbs, Father?’
Rachel spoke without turning her head from the stew pot. Bartholomew swung round and moved with surprising swiftness to the wagon. Balanced on his crutches as he opened a box fixed to the side, and came back with a handful of leaves.
Rachel dropped them in the pot and stirred them round. Still without turning her gaze she said, ‘Come sit down.’
Azul went and sat down.
‘Coffee?’
Without waiting for an answer she filled a mug and passed it to him. The half-breed took it, sipping slowly so as to avoid wetting his bandages.
Bartholomew came to join them. He took a grip of his crutches, high up, and eased his arms clear. Then, using the twin poles as balance points, he swung down and out with the deftness of long practice, dropping to the ground with his legs stuck out in front.
Rachel filled three plates with the stew and passed them round.
The food was good. Hot and thick with chunks of meat and potato, filling Azul’s belly so that a warm feeling of contentment spread through him, seeming to ease his aches as much as the salves the girl had applied.
‘What will you do when we reach Braddock’s Post?’ she asked; directly. ‘Get work there?’
Azul shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I want my horse.’
Rachel grunted, unladylike, and said, ‘Maybe.’
‘There is always work with us,’ said her father. ‘To have a strong man to accompany us on our journeyings would be a solace. And a reward for the man who chose to devote his time to the Lord’s work.’
Azul smiled past his bandages and swallowed the last of the stew. ‘I don’t think I’m cut out for that kind of work, Father. I appreciate what you done for me, and I’ll do what I can to pay you back. But spreading the Word isn’t in my line.’
‘No matter.’ Bartholomew shrugged his heavy shoulders, dropping back to the less sententious tones he had used before. ‘I never did reckon you’d be a likely apostle. Still, we’ll do what we can to find your pony.’
He dropped his plate on the grass and dragged his crutches forwards. Lifting them, he grasped each one as high as he could and hauled himself up. Azul began to rise, going to help, but Rachel grabbed his arm and motioned him down. Bartholomew balanced for a moment with the two poles stuck out on either side, then swung forwards, hooking his shoulders over the cross-members and darting his feet about until he caught his balance properly. Then he moved back to the wagon, dragging two bedrolls from an underslung box.
‘Rachel an’ me will sleep out here, son. Under God’s good stars. You climb back inside.’
Azul realized that he had not given them his name. And wondered which one to offer. Matthew Gunn, he decided, was the best and the safest.
He gave it.
‘Names don’t matter a whole lot to us,’ smiled Bartholomew. ‘Most of our brethren got two names. The one they was born with an’ the one they got baptized with. Names don’t count that much. It’s what’s in a man’s heart that counts.’
‘I was baptized in Santa Fe,’ said Azul. ‘In the cathedral.’
The fact that he intended to hunt down the Sioux who had taken his horse and get the animal back any way he could, he kept to himself. There was no point to upsetting the clear, bland faith of Father Bartholomew and his ugly daughter.
He climbed inside the wagon and went swiftly to sleep.
The dull gray light of the pre-dawn woke him to a chorus of birds’ song. He sat up, suddenly aware that he had not checked his Colt. Whether that was a result of his injuries or the embracing warmth of the Bartholomews’ friendship, he was not sure. But he upbraided himself for so lax a failure. The light was barely bright enough to see by, but he checked over the pistol – mostly by touch – emptying out the shells possibly damaged by the water in the ravine and cleaned the gun as best he could. Then he thumbed five fresh loads into the cylinder, dropping the hammer on the empty sixth before sliding the revolver back inside the holster. The leather was still smooth from the last greasing, and when he checked the draw it came out clean enough, if slowed by the bandages and the damage to his shoulder.
He swung down from the wagon and piled fresh wood on the fire, blowing the embers to life so that the glow took hold of the new timber and sparked the twigs to life.
Rachel woke before her father, stumbling from her bedroll with sleep-bleared eyes and her hair unfastened. She rubbed hands against her face and splashed water in her mouth. Azul Watched her as the coffee pot bubbled into life.
She dragged her hair round her fist and pinned it back in the familiar bun. Then came over to the fire. Bartholomew was still sound asleep.
‘Don’t hurt him.’ She said it slowly, as though wishing each syllable to sink in. ‘He’s a good man, but he doesn’t understand what this county’s like.’
‘I wasn’t planning to hurt him,’ said Azul. ‘I owe him. And you.’
‘That don’t matter.’ She took the coffee he offered her, sipping the boiling brew with relish. ‘I don’t figure you for a horse stealer. I never did think you’d rob us.’
‘So what do you mean? ’Azul asked. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘You’re bent on getting that pony back.’ The way she said it made it a statement; definitely not a question. ‘And you won’t let much stand in your way.’ Azul nodded without speaking. The ugly girl continued:
‘So you’re on foot and the best chance you got of finding the horse is at Braddock’s. We’ll be there by tomorrow. If you find the horse, take it quiet. Don’t start a shooting. That’d bust him up real bad. He believes in mankind’s better nature.’
‘And you don’t?’ The half-breed kept his voice low; like the girl’s. ‘Why not?’
‘I’m ugly.’ Rachel grinned as she sipped her coffee. ‘I’ll never get a husband, so all I got is my father. Momma died a long time back. When I was just a kid. Some Indians spooked her buggy. It turned over and killed her. The Indians were drunk on rot-gut liquor some dirty trader sold them. It wasn’t even rightly their fault, but some folks from town still strung them up and burned their families out. That was back in Minnesota. Father was a Christian man, and what his neighbors done disgusted him. He buried momma and sold our place. Just headed west until we found this little settlement up on the Canadian border. In North Dakota. It was run by a bunch of folks who thought they could live with the Indians. Called themselves the Children of the Lamb. Father took to them right off, and before long he got ordained.
‘The town grew and got itself a real church. Even built a school for priests. A seminary. Called it the Church of the Lamb of God. The idea was that them as had the calling should take the Word to the Frontier towns. Father opted to take it to the Indians. He never did marry again, so I kind of tagged along, seeing as how he couldn’t properly look after himself with his legs all busted up.’
‘How’d that happen?’ asked Azul.
‘He was driving the buggy.’ She emptied her mug. ‘It rolled on them both. Crushed his legs.’
As though cutting short a painful memory, she rose to her feet and began to fetch breakfast from the wagon. The sizzling of the bacon frying in the pan woke Bartholomew and she went over to him, carrying a mug of coffee and a pan of hot water. The preacher sipped the coffee as he shaved his upper lip, then trimmed his beard and fastened his stiff collar back in place. With the same dexterity he had shown the night before, he rose on his crutches and moved to the fire.
‘Looks to be a fine day.’
Azul glanced at the sky, sniffing the air. The rising sun was boiling the dawn mist clear of the draw and up high he could see three crows circling above the trees. The grass smelled fresh and clean, and the breeze carried a sweet scent of pine sap. Dew sparkled on the emerald green of the meadow. Somewhere close by a cricket chattered.
‘A real golden day,’ the preacher added.
The half-breed nodded, his eyes scanning the ridges with automatic caution.
A movement along the lower perimeter of the eastern tree line caught his attention and he rose slowly to his feet, stretching as though still encumbered by sleep. His eyes, though, continued to flicker from side to side, trying to outline the exact shape of the movement’s source. It was uncertain, but he thought he saw a solitary horseman move back into the trees, dragging behind him a string of ponies.
A half-remembered line his father had read to him came into his mind, and he repeated it:
‘But all that glisters is not gold.’
‘I don’t understand,’ smiled Bartholomew. ‘That’s Shakespeare.’
‘No,’ grunted Azul, his keen eyes picking up the flash of early light from dew-glistened gray hide. ‘That’s my horse.’