Black flies buzzed.
Cicadas moaned.
The sun beat down on the pale sand and clay, on the dusty yucca leaves, on the sage, and on the rocks strewn here and there about the canyon floor. Lola felt it through her hat. It burned her neck and hands. She had to fold her dress closed to keep it off her exposed leg. She was a fair-skinned girl, and prone to coloring.
There was no water. At least, they hadn’t stopped for any fresh, which meant there probably wasn’t any. To Lola, it didn’t look like a place where there would be much water, except in the rainy seasons—April and September probably. Now the deep, wide gash through which they rode looked like the dry bottom of a long dead lake honeycombed with narrow, winding canyons.
It was an eerie, quiet place, these badlands, with no sign of other people and few of animals. Like several other natural places Lola had visited on the frontier, it had the feeling of having been abandoned by God. Eternity reigned here, the blue sky bowling overhead. It felt like either a sanctified place or an evil one. Lola wasn’t sure which.
But she didn’t want to die here. She didn’t want her bones to become like the ones she saw in the eroded gravel banks, chipped and ground by time, woven into the earth’s changing seams, and forgotten.
But then, if she were killed here, whoever killed her would probably take her back to Johnson City for the reward. They’d tie her to the back of a horse, and when they got to town, they’d lift her head by her hair, showing her face to Billy Brown. What would happen to her then? Would they bury her, or take her out in the country and throw her into some canyon?
How odd it felt to be hunted... for your body to be worth more dead than alive.
“Watch it—rattlesnake,” Prophet warned as Lola, aroused from her reverie, heard the angry hiss.
She looked around and saw a thick diamondback coiled beneath a yucca plant, flicking its tail and tongue, glaring through its coppery eyes, flat as pennies. Her horse contracted its muscles and bucked slightly, veering sideways, then continued down the trail, about thirty feet off the rump of Prophet’s mount.
Lola said nothing, just gritted her teeth against her misery—against the heat, her parched throat, sand-gritty eyes, burning shoulder, and aching thighs—and squeezed the reins. Her and Prophet’s horses blew and swished their tails at flies as they walked, heads down, shod hooves ringing off stones.
After two hours of steady riding, Prophet stopped to water the horses. While Lola rested in the shade of a gnarled shrub, he limped to the top of a butte shelving over a deep-cut canyon, its walls packed with white bone chips and gravel, and scanned their back trail through his field glasses.
“He back there?” she asked when he returned.
“Oh, he’s back there, all right,” Prophet said, replacing the glasses in the case hanging off his saddle.
But from the way he’d said it. she couldn’t tell if he’d seen the man with the big rifle, or if he was just relying on his own intuition again, that sixth sense he seemed so proud of. She would have asked him, but his demeanor had become so sour she decided against it. She just got back on her horse, afraid of being left behind, and rode.
They rode so hard that by late afternoon her butt and the backs of her legs were chafed raw and blistering. No matter how she sat, she couldn’t get comfortable.
“Prophet... please ... I have to stop,” she begged. “I’m not used to this … ”
He said nothing, just kept riding straight ahead, swaying with the rhythm of his horse, which he kept to a walk, saving it for a gallop when and if a gallop were needed. Lola was lonely and frightened. Her shoulder ached. She wished Prophet would talk to her, but the big bounty man said nothing. He silently, grimly led the way, kicking up the fine, brown dust behind him.
It was nearly dark when he finally stopped for the day. She’d been dozing in the saddle and was surprised when her own horse came to a halt. She looked around and saw that they were in a hollow surrounded by tall buttes and boulders, a few gnarled shrubs resembling pines. There was a cool breeze which played in Lola’s hair and dried the sweat on her face.
Lola tried to dismount but found that her legs and seat were too sore to move. She felt as though her skin had grown into the saddle.
“What are you waiting for?” Prophet asked as he hurriedly stripped the leather off his mount.
“I-I can’t move,” she said weakly.
She’d never fell this hopeless and weak. Right now she didn’t care if the man with the big gun strolled right into their camp, put his big gun up lo her head, and pulled the trigger. Here was as good a place to die as anywhere.
Prophet grumbled something as he tossed his saddle in a small alcove that had been carved out of a butte. He approached her, said, “Here,” and helped her out of the saddle—none too gently.
“Ouch!”
“Be quiet!” Prophet hissed.
“You opened up my shoulder again ... and ... and my butt hurts!” She lowered her head and sobbed like a child.
“Well, crying ain’t gonna help. Sit down over there by my saddle and let me get the leather off your horse. I’ll tend that shoulder in a minute.”
She did as he ordered, not so much sitting as reclining gently on her side, and watched him unsaddle her horse and stake both animals to the gnarled tree only a few feet beyond the camp. He obviously wanted the horses close. Why? In case they had to make a run for it? So they’d warn him if the man with the big gun came calling?
“I cannot gel on that horse again tomorrow,” she told him as he approached and knelt by her side.
“Let me see that shoulder,” he said, gruffly taking her arm.
As he inspected it, holding it out to catch the last light from the fading sky, she studied him soberly. “What in the hell are you so sour about?” she said. “I’m the one getting dragged to my death.”
“I ain’t sour,” he said. “Just busy. Keepin’ you alive has become one hell of a job.”
“It’s not too late to resign.”
He started to reply, but she stopped him. “Don’t! I don’t even want to hear it.”
She studied him curiously as he removed a shell from his cartridge belt, then produced a small clasp knife from his jeans. “What are you doing?”
He said nothing as he worked the lead slug from the brass casing with his knife. When he finished, he dropped the slug and said, “Hold your arm out.”
“Why?”
“I’m going to cauterize that wound.”
“What!”
“It’ll stop the bleeding. Hold still and turn your face away.”
She wasn’t sure what he meant, but it didn’t sound good. She drew her arm back and looked at him sharply. “Never mind. It feels much better all of a sudden.”
He sighed and regarded her sternly. “Listen, lady, I know what I’m doin’. I’m going to pour this black powder into the wound and light it with a match. That’ll cauterize it. If I don’t, you’re gonna bleed dry by morning.”
“Just pack some mud on it.”
“We’re low on water, and I’ll need some to clean my leg.”
She stared at his dark visage as she thought it over. Finally, reluctantly, she held out her arm. “This better not hurt.”
“Just for a second. Now turn your face away.”
She turned her face away and squeezed her eyes closed, wary but finding herself trusting the man. She supposed his type had to do this kind of back-country doctoring all the time.
She heard a match flare and felt a sudden burn on her arm, smelled the acrid odor of gunpowder, burned blood and flesh. As he had promised, the pain lasted only a second. The smell lingered, however, causing her nose to wrinkle.
“Did it work?” she said, inspecting the arm. It stung a little, but not bad. The blood appeared to have clotted.
“Like a charm,” he said matter-of-factly, turning to his own wounded leg. “Pull my boot off.”
“What?”
“My boot needs to come off,” he grouched.
She crawled around in front of him. “What are you so damn grouchy about, anyway?” She grabbed the heel and toe, and gave the boot a solid tug. It slipped halfway off the heel. Another tug, and it came free so quickly she nearly fell over backwards.
Prophet sighed painfully, removed the bandanna from around his calf, and rolled up his blood-soaked jeans. He grabbed the canteen and poured water over the wound, sighing again, whistling through his teeth.
Lola watched him pensively. A thought dawned on her. “Oh ... I know what it is,” she said, brightening.
“Know what what is?” Prophet said, his voice pinched with pain. He took up his clasp knife and opened it.
“What you’re so grumpy about.”
“I told you I ain’t grumpy, just busy. There’s a difference. But I wouldn’t expect a woman to understand.”
“Oh, I understand quite well. You’re all bent out of shape because I saved your life.”
He paused to look at her dumbly. “What?”
“You’re mad because a woman saved your life.”
“Oh, for crying out loud!” He removed a box of matches from his shirt pocket, struck a match on his thumbnail, and ran the knife through the flame, sterilizing it. “I never heard anything so stupid in my life.”
“Thai’s it! That’s it!” she laughed. “You’d rather have died back there than have your hide saved by a woman— a showgirl, to boot!” She laughed once more, for the moment not feeling her shoulder or the sting of the saddle in her loins.
She couldn’t see his eyes in the dark, but she could tell from his posture that Prophet was angry. “Listen, lady, I don’t give a shit who saves my hide—if it needs saving, that is. But my hide didn’t need savin’. I was about to plug that hombre myself. You just beat me to the punch, that’s all. Squeezed off a lucky shot.”
She snickered. “Oh, I admit it was a lucky shot, but the fact that it was fired by a woman—while you were cowering in the weeds—is going to haunt you till the day you die. Especially if anyone else gets wind of it. And believe me, Lou Prophet, if I live to tell the tale. tell it I certainly will!”
She threw back her head and laughed heartily, tears rolling down her cheeks. She hadn’t felt this good in days. Suddenly, she was actually enjoying herself. And at Prophet’s expense!
Prophet clasped a hand over her mouth. She stiffened, giving a startled grunt. Leaning toward her, the bounty hunter spoke through clenched teeth. “If you don’t shut up, you’re gonna lead that hombre with the Big Fifty right into our camp. Is that what you want?” He shook her angrily. “Is it?”
Incensed by his impertinence, she would have kicked him if she’d been standing. As it was, she was defenseless. She glared at him, outraged, her chest rising and falling heavily. Knowing the only way she could get him to release her was to shake her head, she did so, her eyes flashing scorn.
He removed his hand from her mouth.
“How dare you!” she rasped from deep in her throat.
He thrust the matches at her. “Now light a match and hold it next to my leg, so I can see to dig out that slug.”
“I certainly will not!”
“If that slug isn’t out of my leg pronto, neither one of us will be going anywhere come daylight.”
“Is that supposed to be some kind of threat?” she trilled, screwing up her eyes sarcastically. “I’ve already told you, there’s no way I’m getting back on that horse again tomorrow.”
“What about the hombre with the Big Fifty ... and everybody else gunning for you?”
She stiffened, folding her arms stubbornly across her bosom. She started to speak but checked herself. Her body slackened. He was right. If she didn’t ride tomorrow, she’d die. And, in spite of how much she ached all over, she really didn’t want to die.
“Give me the damn matches,” she groused finally, reaching for the box.
She struck a match and held it near his calf, wincing as she saw the blood.
“Hold it close.”
“I am.”
“Closer.”
“You wanna hold your own damn match?”
As he dug the knife point into the jellied wound, she turned away, covering her eyes with her free hand. “Oh, god ... that’s hideous.”
“It’s not that bad,” he said, his voice pinched again with pain. “Ain’t that deep. I think I caught a ricochet’s all.”
“That’s all?” she mocked.
“It’s not that deep,” he repeated absently as he worked, probing the wound with the blade tip, looking for the slug. “And better yet, it didn’t hit bone.”
“Oh, hush!” she ordered. Inwardly, she was amazed at his courage and resistance to pain. Whatever his faults, he was unlike any many she’d ever known....
The match burned down to her fingers, and she dropped it with an angry “Ouch!”
“Light another one.”
“I am, I am. Now where’s that stupid box?”
That’s how it went for the next several minutes, which seemed like an hour. Prophet dug with the knife while Lola burned her fingers on one match after another.
“Got it!” Prophet said through a quivering sigh, grinding his teeth together. He fished the slug out of the wound and held it up just as the match burned down to Lola’s fingers and went out with an angry “Ouch!”
Ten minutes later, Prophet sat back against the butte, his calf once again wrapped with the bandanna. He’d had to spare more water for a mud pack, but it was either that or lose several pints of blood by morning. He was just glad the bullet hadn’t gone deeper than it had.
He ate several pieces of the leftover rabbit, which the girl had refused, believing it spoiled. She dozed beside him, her head on her saddle. It was quiet and as dark as velvet. The alcove was capped with stars. Knowing the man with the Big Fifty was close, Prophet hadn’t wanted to risk a fire. He could smell the horses, hear them blowing as they slept standing.
He wanted to sleep, as well, knowing he’d need a good rest for tomorrow, but his calf throbbed and he generally felt anxious and out of sorts. He didn’t think it was all due to the man stalking them, either.
It was what the girl had said about him being mad because she’d saved his life. He guessed it was true. He’d gotten his tail all twisted and given her the cold shoulder when what he should have done was thank her. If it hadn’t been for her good shooting, lucky or not, he’d have been wolf bait.
The thought struck him now like a cold brace from a mountain stream.
He glanced at her lying on her side with her back to him, and shook his head. Wolf bait, sure enough. Imagine that, a pretty little redhead saving his hide with a bullet to a man’s forehead. Who would have believed it?
He licked the cigarette paper and twisted it around the tobacco, suppressing a humorous snort. It occurred to him that he might have liked her under different circumstances. He liked how she looked right now, but she was his job, and in his business, you never mixed business with pleasure and lived to tell about it. When he got her to Johnson City, Owen McCreedy would take her into protective custody until the trial, and Prophet would take the money and head back to Henry’s Crossing for his horse.
From there, it was on to the next face on the next wanted poster. It wasn’t the best life, but it was the best one Prophet had found. Besides, he’d made that pact with the Devil. Behind every face on every wanted poster was one hell of a shindig.
Besides ... she was awful mouthy.
He smoked the cigarette down, then stubbed it out in the sand. He glanced around one last time, listening closely. Satisfied they were alone, he rested his head on his saddle. He wasn’t sure how long he’d slept when he heard a horse whinny.
He sat up quickly and looked at his own two horses, knowing instantly that the whinny had not come from one of them.
There was another horse out there, between fifty and a hundred yards away.
Heart hammering, Prophet climbed slowly to his feet and reached for his gunbelt.