Our passage through California to Arizona should have been wonderful. Giant sequoia trees, vertical cliffs, canyons and cascading waterfalls gradually gave way to parched deserts dotted with cacti. But we were too frightened, pushed ourselves too hard, to take pleasure in the landscape. Always we seemed to go on the hardest route, down trails rutted by the men and women who had come before us, those hardy pioneers. We kept away, though, from the main stagecoach stations. Cyril Baker had been badly scared by the reported sighting of his brother. When he heard the story of the ghostly shoes, he became as jumpy as a startled deer.
I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. He was living on his nerves, hardly eating. His white skin had taken on a bluish tinge and he was so thin a breeze could blow him over. I wondered if I looked as awful as he did. Our affliction had made a strange sort of friendship between us. After a day or two of our journey, Cyril had managed to boot Waldo off the shotgun position next to the driver. Now he rode with my aunt. He said he wanted to be on the lookout. I knew he was armed, like the driver and Waldo. We were bristling with pistols, which should have made us feel safer. It didn’t. The more guns there are around, the less secure you feel.
The journey became harder every day. As we left California’s almond-scented climes, we saw fewer people. The occasional wary Indian, face painted with ochre. A couple of squaws, their babies tied in a bundle to their backs. Now and then a lonely rancher or wild-eyed cowboy. Sand blew in our faces, putting a burning screen before our eyes, making us gasp for air. Our throats rasped as we poured sips of warm water down them. But we had to be careful. Mr. Baker had brought plenty of supplies—the explanation for the boxes on top of the stagecoach—but as we came down off the Panamint Mountains and into Death Valley water was more precious than gold.
This valley is the hottest place in America, with a sun that scorched our horses as they labored, panting, to pull our coach. Our cowboy hats protected us from the worst of it, but the sun still bored fiery spikes into our heads. The pioneers who had traveled out here in search of riches in the gold rush had named this area Death Valley. Like us they were in a frantic hurry. I hoped we would be luckier than they were and would not lose members of our expedition to sunstroke and dehydration.
Waldo sat next to me on the ride through the valley, pressing into me and shading me from the sun coming in through the window. We were both sweating, damp with exhaustion. He paid no attention to me. Still, he seemed a little less hostile. Before we entered the desert, he had seemed to take pains to sit as far away from me as possible.
When all the others were dozing I took my opportunity to say a few words to him.
“Waldo,” I whispered, “I’ve never thanked you properly for what you did for me. When I was in a coma, I mean.”
He shifted uncomfortably, trying to move his arm away from me. I noticed his face was pink, his lip beaded with sweat.
“It was nothing,” he murmured.
“I could hardly have been very good company.”
“You were more … relaxing … than usual, certainly.”
I flushed. “That’s not very kind.”
He shrugged. “Maybe your coma knocked some sense into you.”
“What? You think I’m better off in a coma?”
“I didn’t say that.”
I looked at him. His blue eyes gleamed at me through layers of sweat and grime. A lock of sun-streaked hair fell into his eyes.
“Look, Waldo, I was just trying to say thank you. Why do we have to argue? Why—”
“Why can’t we just be friends?” he interrupted, finishing my sentence. “Because friends respect each other. Friends listen to each other. You’ve never taken the blindest bit of notice of what I say. You always charge along in your own bullish way, and I feel, frankly, that you’re not safe. You—”
“That’s not fair,” I cut in. “You said yourself I was quieter—look, Rachel said you sat with me all the time when I was ill. I was just trying to be polite because she said—” I stopped suddenly because I noticed that in the heat of the argument we had raised our voices. Aunt Hilda, Rachel and Isaac had woken up and were all staring at us, grinning like idiots.
“It’s just like the good old days,” Isaac said. “Waldo and Kit at daggers drawn.”
“Just a little lovers’ tiff,” Aunt Hilda said. “Take no notice.”
I bit my lip, humiliated. Waldo moved further away, which is hard to do when squeezed into a sweltering stagecoach.
“You’re quite mistaken, ma’am,” he said to Aunt Hilda. “Your niece and I can barely tolerate each other.”
I was so angry and ashamed I could hardly look at anyone. Well, here it was in black and white. Waldo could barely tolerate me. And I’d thought he was a friend, a good friend.
I’d have to try to be more formal with him in the future.
Aunt Hilda hadn’t had enough of embarrassing us both: “Stuff and nonsense, Waldo. You adore my niece. Anyone would. Stop talking guff.” She grunted. “Look at you two. Carrying on like a couple of—”
Midway through her sentence she stopped as gunfire cut her off. One, two, three shots. Thunderclaps that reverberated deafeningly around the interior of the stagecoach. We were cantering down a steep road which was overhung by a sharp slab of reddish rock covered in pinyon pines and thorny shrubs. Now our horses lurched to a halt in a cloud of dust. The seven black mares and one tawny stallion all neighing and rocking in alarm. Our coach swayed giddily from side to side.
Peering out in front of us, I couldn’t see anyone firing a gun, just the desert stretching away down below in monotonous whirls of sand. Then a man on horseback emerged from a crack in the rock. He had a coiled length of rope slung over one arm and a pistol pointing straight at Mr. Baker.
“I got y’all covered,” the man boomed. “Anyone moves and your friend gets hisself a bullet right through the neck.”