Old Toad had lied … somewhat. There was no horse waiting for us at the ramada, but Abby and the kids were there, and Charles was looking a heck of a lot better than the last time I’d seen him.
Not knowing how Toad or the others would react to my killing Luis, taking away something that was important to them in a way most gringos could never understand, I didn’t want to push my luck by demanding a mount. There was a canvas water bag hanging from one of the ramada’s posts, dripping fresh from the Río Concepción, and I grabbed it and tossed it to Abby and told her to bring it along.
“What’s happening?” she asked, obviously surprised to see me.
“Just take the goddamned water bag and your kids and start walking,” I replied in such a cutting manner I think she might have actually blanched. She was a swift-thinking woman, though, and didn’t take offense or ask a bunch of foolish questions. Slinging the bag’s strap over her shoulder, she swung Susan onto her hip with one hand and grabbed Charles with the other, practically yanking him along as she followed me out of the village.
I’d picked out a spot on the horizon just about due north of the ramada, and headed for it in swift, purposeful strides. When Abby tried to come up beside me, I barked for her to stay back.
“Get behind me and keep your eyes on the ground,” I snapped, and she immediately complied.
I had no doubts that we were being watched. I could feel the cold eyes of the People fixed on us like gunsights, but I didn’t look back, or reveal any inclination I might have had to run. Not even when a howl of rage engulfed the village as word of my treachery spread through the community.
We crossed the Concepción about a mile north of the village and continued on in as straight of a line as that scabrous terrain would allow. After about five miles of steady tramping, I veered west toward the Sea of Cortez. A hard push for Arizona was out of the question now. Without horses, we’d never get close. But we’d been moving more west than north ever since leaving Sabana, and I knew we couldn’t be far from the Gulf. There weren’t any real towns along the coast that I knew of, but there used to be a few trading posts and fishing camps, and I was hoping we might find one of those, and that it would be inhabited.
We kept moving for another couple of hours before I finally ordered a stop. Abby promptly sank to the ground, then scuttled into the mostly illusionary shade of a wait-a-minute bush, pulling her kids in with her. I remained on my feet, staring back the way we’d come. The land in that part of Sonora is about as flat as the bottom of a skillet, and, if not for the chaparral, I’m pretty sure I could have still seen the Yaqui village. Or at least the low rise of land it sat on. Instead my view was limited to thorny scrub and cactus. I knew it wouldn’t be difficult for a few hotheads to slip out on the sly and come after us, but an instinct honed by years of smuggling beer and tobacco into the American markets told me that we weren’t being followed. Toad had given his word that we wouldn’t be molested, and I felt confident the People would honor the old man’s promise—whether they agreed with it or not.
I don’t know how much you want to hear about the next few days. They weren’t very exciting compared with what we’d already been through, although they were certainly death-defying. In spite of all the hardships we’d endured since leaving Arizona, none of it really compared to that last sixty or so miles to the Gulf.
Just so you know, I’d told Abby to stay behind me with the kids and the water because that was the proper position for a woman of the Dead Horse clan, but once we started for the coast in earnest, things returned to normal. Abby still walked behind me most of the way, but that was only because I was following the path of least resistance, and she was following me. She kept her kids close the whole way. I think after nearly losing them to the Yaquis, she would have chained them to her if she could have.
Those were good kids, Charles and Susan, but they weren’t Yaqui. They lacked the stamina of a desert-born people. They did OK that first day, and even into the second, but by the third day it was as if they’d hit a brick wall. They couldn’t go on, and Abby and I weren’t doing much better. She was carrying Susan almost constantly by then, and I had Charles with me, riding on my shoulders. The water bag was empty, and the few tortillas Abby had managed to snatch on her way out of the ramada had long since been consumed.
By the fourth day our situation was getting desperate. We’d been crossing one sandy swell after another since dawn, trudging numbly forward under a cloudy sky, when all of a sudden I heard Abby stumble and fall. I staggered to a halt, took a moment to be sure of my balance, then slowly turned. Charles swayed limply above me, barely hanging on. Abby lay curled on her side, while Susan crawled around her as if looking for a niche to snuggle up in, something safe and familiar.
Very carefully, so that I didn’t end up on the ground at Abby’s side, I eased Charles from my shoulders. He immediately dropped down beside his mother. His eyes were closed and his lips were parted, and I thought his breathing seemed shallow and maybe a little irregular. I wanted to tell Abby of my concerns for him, but she wouldn’t have heard me.
For a long time, maybe ten minutes or so, I stood there in an indecisive daze of my own. A voice in my head was urging me to keep walking, insisting that I’d done all I could, and that I needed to think about my own safety. But something else was probing at my brain, like the niggling sensation of a fly walking across your face when you’re trying to nap. I turned to the west. A breeze rustled the limbs of a burro bush at my side, and a brackish odor toyed with my sinuses. From somewhere up ahead I heard a faint but rhythmic pounding. When I finally realized what it was, I told Abby to get on her feet.
“Come on,” I croaked around a tongue that felt twice its normal size. “We’ve made it.” When she didn’t respond, I nudged her with my toe. “Come on, now, we’re almost there.” She still didn’t move, and I kicked her lightly on the hip, loosening an unintelligible mumble, but nothing else. Running out of patience, I hoarsely shouted, “Damn it, woman, get up!” Then I kicked her harder. That time she groaned as the pain wormed through the dehydration and exhaustion blanketing her mind. Her eyelids fluttered open, and her gaze kind of wandered over to settle on my face.
“We’re there,” I said. “Just a little farther.”
For a moment she stared at me as she might a stranger, and I wondered what I’d do if she refused to go on. Then she sat up and looked around as if awakening from a deep sleep. “Where?” she asked in a voice nearly as unrecognizable as my own, and I motioned vaguely to the west.
“Over yonder.”
She thought about my reply for a moment, then struggled to her feet. It was just about all she could do to pick up Susan, and it didn’t occur to me until she already had the girl in her arms that I could have helped. Like I said, I was feeling more than a little off-plumb myself.
Being careful not to lose my balance, I gathered Charles in my arms, then slung him over my shoulder like a sack of grain. After a glance at Abby to assure myself that she was ready, we struck out across the low dunes, pushing forward one slow, dragging step at a time. Twenty minutes later we were standing ankle-deep in the Sea of Cortez, staring up the coast toward a rambling collection of adobe shacks and brush-and-mud jacales.
“Mister Latham,” Abby rasped. “I believe we have made it.”