THREE STRAIGHT DAYS THEY RODE, sunup to sundown, and still saw nothing to break up the bone-whiteness of the land.
At first, as they’d ridden down off the bluff they’d passed a few old and withered sage-brush plants, and salt-grass enough to keep their horses in feed. But by the evening of that first day, even the salt-grass was gone.
It was a dreary thing, to stare hour after hour at a landscape so utterly devoid of interesting features. There wasn’t a hint of color or shape anywhere. No stones to mark their passage. No trees or cactuses. Nothing that created shade. The horizon remained as featureless and out of reach as when they began. No matter how far they went, or for how long, it never felt like they were making any progress. It sapped the spirits like nothing in Lu’s life ever had. He would have rather taken a good hard whipping than to spend another minute looking at those salt-white plains. The horses didn’t like it any more than the people did. Even Chino’s big mare, normally proud and spirited, hung her head. If he didn’t know better, Lu would’ve said the horses were melting. The sweat a horse could produce over the course of a day was astonishing. Out on the Lake of Fire, even a slow walk was enough to work them to a lather. The humans sweated nearly as much, but it got trapped in their clothes and soaked up by the dust.
The Lago was composed almost entirely of dust—powdery fine, salty dust. Bad enough if it were just lying out there, or happened on occasion to be kicked up by their horses’ hooves. But this dust wasn’t the lazy sort one might find in a house, relaxing on a bookshelf or lying casually atop a picture frame. This dust was active. And it was ruthless, too. No matter which direction Lu looked, the dust was always blowing straight in his face. Henry and Chino both wore bandannas, tied over mouth and nose like bank robbers. Sadie had her silk kerchief, the blue one she’d used to wrap up her little pistol. Unfortunately, neither Lu nor MacLemore had any way of blocking out the torture of the blowing salt. It chapped the lips, blistered the inside of the nose, and made the eyes stream. By the time they stopped, just after sundown each night, they were so crusted over they looked like snowmen. Sadie’s hair caught the stuff by the pound.
Around midmorning of their fourth day on the salt flats, misfortune struck. Somehow, MacLemore’s horse Cody found the only significant hole in the entire Lago and stepped right in. MacLemore was thrown and Cody rolled. The horse came up limping.
Chino inspected Cody’s ankles and hooves. He had a minor sprain in his right hind-leg. Cody could walk, but he wouldn’t be able to do any heavy work for a few days.
MacLemore, still sitting on the ground where his horse had flung him, wanted to know what he was supposed to do now.
“Put your saddle on the mule,” Chino said. “He’ll carry you easy enough.”
“No MacLemore ever rode a mule.”
“Walk then.”
Grudgingly, MacLemore placed his saddle on Lucky, who seemed no more thrilled with the prospect than his proposed rider. It did look strange, Lu had to admit. Everything about MacLemore, from his riding boots to his beaver hat, spoke of money. His clothes, once the finest Lu had ever beheld, were now worn and dirty, but a touch of the quality still shone through. Even his saddle, while not decorated with near the detail of his daughter’s, had the sheen of richness. He made quite a picture, poised atop a lumpy, short-legged mule.
By sundown, Cody was stumbling over rocks that weren’t there, and falling in holes too small to hide a thimble. He wore Lucky’s harness, but Lu didn’t guess that could possibly be the trouble. The harness weighed less than half as much as a saddle. Their remaining firewood added a few pounds, of course, as did the sacks of prickly-pears. But all together that didn’t amount to a fraction of what MacLemore weighed.
The wind was blowing so hard that a campfire was impossible. So they sat in the dark, heads huddled between their knees, as Sadie handed out shares of the roasted javelina. Lu complained about the size of his piece, but stopped when he saw Sadie upend the sack and fish out an even smaller bit for herself.
“Y’all had best enjoy it,” she said. “Tomorrow we’re back on pemmican.”
“How much pemmican is left?” Henry asked.
“Enough for a day. Two if we stretch.”
“We’d better stretch then,” Chino remarked.
“What about that grass you had me pick?” Sadie asked.
“We’ll get to it as soon as we’re done with the pemmican.”
They broke camp early the next morning. Lu felt sick, but knew it couldn’t be anything he ate. There was nothing in his stomach but a few swallows of warm water. By noon he was so hungry he thought he might pass out. MacLemore asked if they couldn’t eat a few prickly-pears, just to take the edge off, but Chino flatly refused. The pears were for the stock. If they ran out of everything else, water included, Chino said they might gnaw up a few. Until then, they’d just have to tighten their belts and grit their teeth. In the meantime, he offered each of them a cut of his tobacco. Sadie and her father both accepted. Lu refused. Even the smell of tobacco spittle was enough to make him want to throw up. And that was the last thing he needed.
Cody tripped and stumbled his way across a good fifteen miles of open desert before finally refusing to go a step farther. Sadie yanked and pulled at his reins, but the horse wouldn’t move.
“You don’t think he’s broke something, do you?” MacLemore asked.
“Naw.” Chino shook his head. “He’s just playin’ possum. I seen it before. Figures if he acts sick, we’ll give him an extra bit of food.”
“Can we?”
Chino pondered that a moment. “Well, all right. But just one prickly-pear. I don’t want the other horses gettin’ any ideas.”
MacLemore searched through their remaining supplies, finally coming up with a particularly large and juicy chunk of pear flesh, which Cody swallowed almost whole.
“Go on,” Chino said to Sadie. “Give him a tug.”
The extra nourishment must have done the trick. Cody followed her lead all the rest of that day without once tripping or falling in a hole. In fact, he barely limped at all. Lu judged the experiment a success.
By the next afternoon, however, he’d come to think differently. Once again, Cody was stumbling. Sadie cursed and screamed, but her threats didn’t seem to do any good. Eventually, Cody flat refused to move. This time, Chino wouldn’t be duped. He rode around behind the willful horse, drawing his pistol as he went. As soon as he was directly behind it, Chino let off a shot. Cody and Carrot both crow-hopped, leaping first sideways and then straight ahead. It was so sudden and unexpected a jolt that, for an instant, Sadie looked as though she might be thrown. If she was any less a rider, she would’ve been.
When both horses had calmed down, Chino told Sadie to get going. She did, and managed to drag Cody a whole mile without stopping. Then Cody dug in his front hooves again. Chino swore a blue streak.
For the rest of that afternoon, Chino rode directly behind the rebellious horse, kicking it, whipping it with his reins and firing his guns. It was a slow method of travel, and a difficult one. Come evening, Chino was as exhausted as the horses.
“Tomorrow,” he said, slumped beside the glowing remains of their fire. “I’m going to lead that horse. And if he tries to stop, I’ll jerk his derned teeth out.”
Chino was as good as his word, and the next day they managed to cover twenty-eight miles. All told, Henry estimated that they’d traveled one-hundred-sixty-two miles. And still they saw no sign of the Lago’s western end.
For supper that night, Sadie offered up the last of the pemmican.
“I reckon it’s about time we started in on that tea stuff you’re so dern tight with,” she said. “Ain’t nothin’ left now but prickly-pears, and one or two chaws of tobacco.”
Chino opened his saddle-bag and took out the bunch of stiff weeds Sadie had collected along the creek. “Bring me your water-skins,” he instructed. He got them to stand in a line, and then went from one person to the next, breaking up the shoots and dropping them down the necks of the bags. Sadie eyed the whole process with derision.
“Hell,” she muttered. “You could’ve done that five days ago.”
“It’ll work better now,” Chino said. “Less water to dilute the tea.”
Sadie took a sip and grimaced. “It’s awful.”
“But healthy. From now on we take nothing but tea. The horses’ll eat the pears.”
“Sounds like a lot of foolishness to me,” Sadie said.
The hunger with which they began the following day was almost more than Lu could bear. The gurgling in his belly was the worst. When he couldn’t take it any longer, he took a swig of tea. Sadie was right, it was truly awful. To Lu it tasted like moldy bread. But it did take the edge off. One swallow was enough to keep him from being thirsty for a whole hour. The only problem with it, other than the revolting taste, was that it made him want to urinate.
Chino was still dragging MacLemore’s horse, and they were making decent time. By noon they’d covered almost nine miles. Soon after, Henry, who always rode way out front, gave a shout.
“Water!” he yelled, and pointed at the horizon.
Lu squinted. He saw heat-waves, and even a bit of cornflower-blue sky away to the north. Then he saw it, a shine amidst the chalky dust. “I think I see it,” he shouted. “It is water, isn’t it?”
Sadie and her father were equally excited. Only Chino remained unmoved.
“It’s no good,” he muttered. “You can’t drink it. Can’t even wash with it.”
“How do you know?” Sadie asked.
“It’s salt. Or worse. Same as everything else out here.”
“I still think we should look it over,” MacLemore said. “Just in case.”
They adjusted their course, and were soon riding along the edge of a small lake. At the center stood an island of pure salt, dried into strangely shaped monoliths, some as much as five feet tall, and covered over with a thick layer of dust. Where the water had come from, only God knew. There were no streams leading into the lake, nor any that led out. Drinking it was out of the question. Even at a distance of a hundred yards the smell was enough to turn your stomach. Worst of all, a steely gray scum, something like the bubbles on a sink of old dish water, drifted across the surface, collecting on the windward side of the island.
“Bad water,” Chino said. “There are pools like this all over the Lago. It’d kill you as surely as if—”
They never heard the rest. All at once, and for reasons none of them would ever understand, Cody broke free and went racing toward the lake. He was standing knee-deep in the water before anyone even knew what’d happened.
“I’ll get him,” Sadie offered.
Chino shouted at her to stop, but Sadie wasn’t listening. She galloped right to the edge of the water, and nearly flipped over Carrot’s head as he sunk his front hooves into the sandy bank. By that time, Cody had waded chest deep in the muck, and was trying to go even deeper. Once she’d regained her seat, Sadie gave her horse a slap on the haunches, and set her spurs to his ribs, but Carrot refused to take another step.
“You’re lucky he’s an Indian horse,” Chino said, riding up beside her. “They’re too smart to wander into such as that.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Look.”
In his effort to reach the deep water, Cody had disturbed something in the mud on the bottom of the lake. Gray bubbles popped all around him, though Cody didn’t seem to have noticed. Amazingly, he was drinking the foul-smelling water. Lu guessed he’d probably drunk about a gallon, and was rapidly sucking in even more, when all of a sudden Cody let out a terrified whinny, reared and started thrashing his way back toward shore.
“What’s he doing?” Sadie asked.
“The water’s boiling his guts,” Chino said.
They watched in terrified silence as Cody struggled to reach the edge of the lake. He’d made it only half-way before foam began to spurt from his mouth and nostrils. It was gray, just like the lake water, though now flecked with blood.
“Wouldn’t be right to let him suffer,” Chino said.
Henry reached for his rifle.
“It’s my horse,” MacLemore said. “I guess I’ll be the one to shoot him.”
Without a word, Henry passed him the gun.
MacLemore checked the hammer, making sure the rifle was cocked, and then brought it up to his shoulder.
Cody shuddered. The foam pouring out of him was no longer flecked with blood, but more or less composed of it.
“Take him down,” Chino urged. “Do it now.”
The rifle gave its usual roar and Cody collapsed. He convulsed a moment longer, blood spurting from the bullet-hole in his neck, and then slipped beneath the surface of the pond. Pink bubbles burst over the spot where he’d last stood.
“He was a good horse once,” MacLemore said, handing the rifle back to Henry.
Lu nodded. He wondered if he ought to say something. Cody was the first horse he ever rode.
“No use bawling over it now,” Chino said. “Haven’t got water enough to piddle away in foolish tears.” Chino gave his horse a nudge, turning her away from the lake. “Time we put a few more miles behind us.”
Sadie glared daggers at him. But either Chino didn’t notice, or didn’t care. They had just over an hour of sunlight left, and he meant to use it to good purpose. He gave his mare a sharp kick, forcing her to a trot. In no time at all the lake was behind them, and then lost to sight.
As they rode on, Lu realized for the first time the true enormity of what had happened that day. The last of their wood had been tied to Cody’s back, as were the prickly-pears for feeding the stock. They had no fuel, no food, and what was far worse, absolutely no prospects for collecting more. If they hadn’t been carrying their skins looped over their saddle-horns, they’d have been without water too. Lu looked around at the others. Their faces were pinched and drawn. He guessed they were thinking the same things he was, but they were all too depressed to say anything.
The wind died as they made camp. For the first time in a week, Lu could breathe deeply, and through his mouth. It did nothing for his mood, however. He was angry and intended to stay that way. It was just like this darned old desert to give up blowing just after they’d lost their wood, he thought to himself.
Chino and Henry sat on their saddles, watching as the horses pawed through the salt. They spoke not a word. And yet, Lu thought they looked as if they’d come to a decision of some kind. Not an easy decision either.
“We’re in trouble,” Lu said to them. “Aren’t we?” Chino nodded.
“Is there anything we should do?” MacLemore asked. “Anything at all?”
“You a praying man?”
“Not anymore.”
“Nope. Me neither.” Chino sighed. “It was easier when I was. Feels good to put all the hard decisions on God.”
“Like what?” Sadie asked. “What’ve you decided?”
“I figure we can wait ‘til tomorrow night. But if we don’t see any change in the landscape by then, we’ll have to kill one of the horses.”
“Kill? What in the world for?”
“Meat. And blood.”
“Blood?” Sadie glared at the men. “What do you want with blood?”
“Mix it with some of our tea and the horses could drink it maybe. So could we.”
Lu’s mouth dropped open. “That’s disgusting.”
“Horse isn’t too bad,” Henry said. “We ate lots of it in the army. Never raw, of course, but—”
“Which horse do you plan to kill?” MacLemore asked them. Chino and Henry both looked at Lu.
“What?” he said. “Why are you looking at me?”
“Crash is a good horse, chico. Better than I’d have thought possible.”
“But you can’t kill Crash. He’s still strong.”
“I know he is. But it’s either Crash or Carrot. I think Carrot will be able to carry you and Sadie together. Do you think Crash can do the same?”
“Sure he can. And what about one of your horses? Or the mule?”
Neither Chino nor Henry said a word.
“He can. I swear it. Crash is strong.”
“All right,” Chino said at last. “If it comes to that, we’ll put down Carrot.”
They all looked at Sadie.
“Fine by me,” she spat. “Crash is a better horse anyway.”
“We ought to kill Henry’s horse,” MacLemore observed.
“My horse?” Henry didn’t sound angry, just surprised. His horse had been nothing but strong throughout the whole trip. It was the best horse they had left.
“He’s the last of our original stock. I guess he must be bad luck.”
Henry seemed honestly taken aback. “He’s always been plenty good luck for me.”
The next morning, as they were saddling up, Lu paid particular attention to Sadie. She’d been rubbing Carrot down for the better part of an hour, until his coat was entirely free of dust—no easy trick in the Lago.
“You all right?” he asked her.
“Sure. Just hate to see a horse shot, that’s all.” Sadie looked west, toward the emptiness that had dominated their every waking moment for the last week, and frowned. “Seems like nearly all the shootin’ we’ve done this trip was to shoot our own horses. When Daddy said we were goin’ to hire Jack Straw, I reckoned there’d be a whole heap of shootin’. But not our own derned horses.”
Lu didn’t know what to say. Sadie was a hard girl to understand. One minute she’d be swearing or spitting tobacco, and the next she’d say something as soft and tender as a snowflake.
“I guess we had to shoot Cody,” he said finally. “He was suffering just awful.”
Sadie shuddered.
“That lake was something.” Lu shook his head. “We have a lake back home, in St. Frances, only it’s not acidic. It’s more of a pond really. Folks row boats on it in the summer. One year, the mayor invited my grandfather to put together a fireworks display for the Fourth and I got to help. There were white folks sitting on quilts all the way around the whole lake, eating fried chicken and deviled eggs. I’d never tried a deviled egg, so the mayor’s wife gave me one. It was good.” Talking about deviled eggs made Lu’s stomach growl. “Anyhow,” he continued. “That’s it. Thinking of that lake made me think of the deviled eggs. Chinese people aren’t usually allowed to go to picnics, you know. Not with other people. White people, I mean.” Lu blushed. He’d meant to tell her about a nice lake, and suddenly here he was discussing deviled eggs. And with them starving, too. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I didn’t mean to … whatever.”
Awkward silence hung in the air as thick as the dust. Sadie stared at Lu for a moment, and then began saddling her horse. Still blushing furiously, Lu turned and stalked away. He’d only just mounted up when Sadie looked over at him again.
“Deviled eggs,” she said. “That’s a peculiar name.”
“Yep.” Lu grinned. “That’s exactly what I thought at the time.”
They rode all day. Other than to comment on the heat, or curse the dust, no one had much to say. They just stared at the horizon and counted the hours. As the sun started downward, they were still looking at nothing but a blank white line.
It was growing late, but Chino didn’t call a stop. Lu dreaded what was to come, and guessed Chino must feel the same. If he thought it’d do any good, Lu might have begged for a reprieve. He just couldn’t imagine shooting a horse as strong and good-natured as Carrot. He was still getting along so well. All the horses were, considering.
And then, just as Lu was about to speak up, Henry went galloping ahead.
“What in the hell?” Chino cursed. “Where’s he goin’?”
They caught up to Henry a few minutes later. He’d dismounted and was standing over the skeletal remains of a deer. He looked happy.
“It’s a mule deer,” Henry said. He gave the deer’s skull a sharp kick for emphasis.
“So what?” MacLemore asked. “Some old deer wanders into the desert and dies, and you act like it’s your birthday.”
“But wandered in from where?” Henry asked.
They all looked at the horizon again. Suddenly it seemed more hopeful than it had in days.
“Let’s keep riding,” Sadie suggested. “I’m not tired.”
They all agreed. The horses were less energetic, but not a one of them balked or turned surly, as Cody had done.
All through the night they rode, maintaining a good pace even in the face of a stiff breeze. And then, suddenly, it appeared. The first rays of the sun peeked over the horizon at their backs and there, directly ahead of them, was a hill.
They rode toward it in high spirit. There was no vegetation of any kind on its chalky face, but they climbed up anyway. From the top they could see, not even a mile distant, a whole landscape of rolling hills. And beyond that, so far away that they seemed almost to hang over the land like angels, were mountains
Crash was so exhausted that Lu decided to dismount and lead him the rest of the way on foot. The other members of their band did likewise. It was thirsty work, offering no opportunity for idle chatter, especially once they’d reached the hills. Up and down they went, seeing nothing apart from more and steeper slopes. Crash was really hanging back now. At the base of each hill Lu had to heave at his reins, and beg and plead with him to keep moving. Lu made promises of water to come. Crash peered uncertainly at him, but he always managed to summon the courage necessary to crawl up the next rise. Finally, just as the sun was beating down its hardest, they came over a bluff, and there, stretched out in a narrow valley below, was a whole thicket of sagebrush, surrounded on all sides by salt-grass. There was even one dusty old tree standing at the center. Lu didn’t know what kind it was, and didn’t care. After days without so much as a sprig of green anywhere, any tree looked fantastic. Crash proved less sentimental. As soon as he caught a whiff of the vegetation at the base of the hill he shoved Lu out of the way and went trundling down after it.
There was nothing for the humans to eat, of course, but that seemed somehow secondary. They still had a few swallows each of the Saint’s tea, and while they were famished, they weren’t yet in any serious danger of actually starving to death. Most importantly, they wouldn’t have to shoot one of their horses. Not today.
While the horses grazed, Lu slept. He didn’t even bother to unsaddle Crash before climbing into a hole beneath the biggest sage-brush he could find and settling his head on a rock. A rock! Lu chuckled to himself. He never guessed he’d get such a charge from a bit of old stone.
Lu was awakened, less than an hour later, by the titter of strange voices. At first he thought it was birds, then Sadie chatting with her father or one of the other men. But the more he listened, the more he thought it sounded like children.
Lu sat up. He didn’t see anyone, but was sure he’d heard something. Quiet as he could, Lu crept out of his hiding place.
He’d gone less than a dozen yards when he saw two boys. Both had dirty-blond hair, and they wore matching blue chambray shirts. Lu snuck up behind them without being noticed, so attentive were the boys to whatever they’d spotted in the bushes.
“Is so,” the younger of the two whispered. “You can just ask Brother Nephi. He’s seen one before.”
“Aw, I think he’s just an old Injun.”
“No Injun’s got skin that dark. He’s a black.” The younger boy pointed. “That’s the mark of Cain on his skin.”
They were talking about Henry. He was lying right out in the open, head on his saddle, hat balanced on the bridge of his nose. One hand rested across his chest, and it was this that so interested the boys.
“Let’s ask Ma,” the older one suggested. “We’ll just see what she says.”
“She’ll say it’s the mark of Cain,” his brother whispered. “You’ll see.”
“Shhhh, you’re talkin’ too loud. Do you want to wake him up?”
“He can’t hear me. He’s way over there.”
“But I can,” Lu said.
The boys yelped and spun around. The younger of the two—he was missing one of his front teeth—tripped over his feet and went sprawling.
“You’d better leave us alone!” the older boy shouted. He’d grabbed his brother by the shirt-collar, and was trying to drag him back to his feet. “Our Ma’s right over yonder. Ma! Ma! Help!”
“What in the world are you two on about?”
Lu looked and saw a girl, eleven or twelve, marching down a narrow gully between the hills. She was just tall enough for Lu to see her head over the tops of the brush, but even that was enough to know she was their sister. Same blond hair. Same blue cloth for her dress.
“Sis!” the older boy shouted. “Tell Ma. There’s Gentiles in the bushes.”
The girl saw Lu about that time and froze. She stared at him, as if expecting Lu to turn into a wolf or grizzly bear, and then went racing back up the path, her bare feet sending up little clouds of dust. A moment later, they heard her scream.
In the meantime, Henry had been woken up by all the racket, and come to see what the shouting was about.
“And just what do we have here?” he asked. “What are your names, boys?”
Both stared up at Henry wide-eyed.
“Well? Cat got your tongues?”
Finally, the younger of the two found enough courage to answer. “He’s Melvin. Ma called him that after our Pa.”
“And what’s your name?”
“Irus.” For the first time, Lu noticed something odd about that boy. One of his legs was twisted, so that his foot pointed sideways rather than forward, and it had been wrapped and bound about as tight as a scrap of old wool could be tied. The boy saw Lu staring at his foot and grimaced.
Henry held out his hand for them to shake. “Pleased to meet you both.”
“What’s going on?” Sadie asked, pushing her way through the brush. MacLemore and Chino were right behind her. “Who’s doing all that screeching?”
“It’s just a couple of kids,” Lu explained. “They were spying on us.”
“Where are you from, boys?” Henry asked.
“Our house is right over that hill,” Irus said. “All you have to do is go down the path. Your horses found us all right. They drank all the water from our goat’s trough.”
“Well, I’ll be,” Chino said.
“Where’s your father?” MacLemore asked them.
“He lives in town with his first wife.”
“His first wife?”
“Sure. Pa’s only got two though. We don’t got so much money.”
Their conversation was interrupted by more screams from beyond the hills. “Irus! Melvin!” It was an older voice. Not the same little girl, but a full-grown woman. “Where are you?”
“Over here,” Irus called back. “With the Gentiles.”
The woman, she looked no more than thirty-five, though significantly worn and frazzled, came racing down the path between the hills. She had a wild look in her eyes. Lu half-expected her to take a swing at one of them, and hoped she wouldn’t choose him. But she didn’t hit anybody. Instead, she grabbed the boys and squeezed them to her bosom. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“Sure,” Irus replied. “We’re fine. These’re friendly Gentiles.”
The woman looked at the salt-crusted faces surrounding her, still reluctant to let her babies out of her grip. “Who are you?” she demanded.
Mister MacLemore tipped his hat. Chalky dust slid off the brim. He introduced each member of their band, beginning with Henry and finishing with Lu. “We’re just in off the Lago,” he explained. “If you could spare a bit of food, I’m sure we’d be much obliged.”
“The Lago? Why, you must be about dead.”
“We are.” Chino put a hand on Lu’s shoulder. “Our boy here was as big as Goliath when we started.”
The woman looked them up and down again. She didn’t seem entirely sure of what she was seeing until she got to Sadie. Then her hard gaze melted.
“Normally, I don’t have enough to feed my boys,” she said. “But tonight we’re hosting the Bishop, so I expect there’ll be plenty to go around.”
MacLemore tipped his hat again.
“Well, c’mon then.” She gestured for them to follow. “Irus, Melvin, you boys run ahead. Tell your brothers to catch them horses and stick ’em in the corral. Then start hauling water from the well. We’ll need four good-size pails. These folks will have to clean up a mite if they’re to stay supper. And tell Sis to fill the tub in my room. We’ve a young lady here in dire need of a wash.”
Both boys went off at a lope. Irus had a noticeable limp, but managed to keep his older brother in sight. Sadie noticed the younger boy’s foot and gasped.
“Somethin’ wrong?” the woman asked her.
“Your boy’s foot,” Sadie said.
“You should’ve seen it when he was first born. Turned right around backwards. I been twistin’ and bindin’ it since Irus was two. I figure in a couple more years I’ll just about have it on straight.”
“Must hurt him awful,” Henry muttered under his breath. “Poor child.”
“Yep. Irus used to howl somethin’ fierce. He’s got tougher in recent years. Barely complains at all now.” She looked at the men and Sadie, and frowned. “Well, are you comin’ or ain’t you?”
“Just have to collect our saddles, ma’am.”
“Get to it then. I don’t have all day.”
Chino, Sadie and her father pushed back through the bushes, while Henry made the short walk to his own saddle and grabbed it up by the horn. By the time they got back to where Lu was standing, the woman was gone. She wasn’t a tall woman, but she was a fast walker.
“I guess she got tired of waiting,” Lu said.
“Where’s your saddle?” Henry asked him.
“Still on my horse, I suppose.”
Henry frowned. He didn’t have to say a word. Lu already felt guilty. Crash had been wearing his saddle for two straight days. It wasn’t right for Lu to have gone to sleep without unsaddling his horse. That was no way to treat a mount as loyal as Crash.
“I guess we’d best get going,” MacLemore said. “She didn’t strike me as an especially patient woman.”
“Nope,” Chino agreed. “Say, did any of you catch her name?” They all shook their heads.
“Well,” Sadie said, “I’d call that peculiar.”