Chapter 23
Prophet turned away from the dead lieutenant and walked over to where Colter lay against the bar. The redhead appeared to have been hit in his left arm and his left thigh. “How bad?”
“I just need to collect myself. Give me a minute.”
“You hotheaded fool!”
Colter grunted, winced. “My ma . . . she died in a plague. Along with my pa. I take it personal when her name is mentioned unfavorably. It ain’t a joke to me, ya see, Lou.”
“Yeah, well, you just got a case of lead poisoning to go with your thin skin. Christalmighty, anyway—you’re damn lucky you ain’t dead!”
“Am I?” Colter seemed to find some humor in that, albeit a gallows humor. He smiled and his eyes glinted. He was no more afraid of death than Louisa was . . .
Prophet spied movement in the upper periphery of his vision. He jerked back from the bar while casting his gaze behind it. The middle-aged barman with the curlicue mustache and wide green silk tie stood facing him, quickly raising his hands to show he wasn’t armed. “Por favor, señor—do not shoot me!”
Prophet had raised the Colt and clicked the hammer back—a benign gesture since the gun was empty. Realizing that fact just then, he automatically clicked the loading gate open and started emptying the spent cartridges onto the floor. “You spooked me, amigo.”
“Señor,” the barman said, “Lieutenant Ruiz was not lying. He rode into town with a sizable contingent. He and these men you killed came here to La Princesa . . . but there are just as many, maybe more, who rode over to Doña Fernando’s burdel just up the trail to the west.” He canted his head to his left. “They no doubt heard the shooting, which means they will be here to investigate quickly.”
“Ah hell!”
Prophet punched the last load into his Peacemaker’s wheel, clicked the loading gate home, and spun the cylinder before dropping the piece into its holster. He reached down and grabbed Colter’s right arm. “Time to rise an’ shine, kid. We got no time to shilly-shally.”
Colter cursed as Prophet hoisted the young man to his feet. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” Colter insisted, setting his hat on his head.
“The blood comin’ out of you says otherwise,” Prophet said. “Just the same, we gotta fog some sage.”
The redhead was obviously in pain, so Lou looked at the barman and said, “Give me a bottle for the road—will you, amigo?”
“Sí, sí, That will be three of your American dollars, señor.”
“Horse hockey—I left nearly a fresh bottle I paid ten dollars for upstairs. Hand me over more of the same. Damn good painkiller.”
The Mexican scowled at Prophet then turned to pluck a bottle off the back bar. He set it briskly down on the bar and fingered the right curlicue of his big, ridiculous-looking mustache, giving Lou the woolly eyeball. Prophet grabbed the bottle with one hand and wrapped his other arm around Colter’s waist, turning him toward the open door. “Onward, Red. Time to do-si-do—the girls is waitin’.”
“I’m fine, Lou. Really.”
He wasn’t walking fine. In fact, he was walking as stiff as a ninety-year-old ex–fur trapper with the chilblains in his knees. Prophet kept a tight grip on his waist as he led him through the door.
The crowd that had been reveling inside the saloon earlier was gathered in several loose groups out front of the brush ramada. The doxies who’d been working the floor formed a tighter group off the ramada’s right end. They and the customers regarded the two americanos warily, stepping back away from the two men as though they were afraid to catch a bout of the same lead poisoning Colter had.
“All’s well, amigos . . . señoritas,” Prophet said as he led Colter over to where their horses were tied at the far end of the third hitchrack. “You can all go back to havin’ fun now. Just a little hiccup is all . . .”
He chuckled dryly at that as he led Colter between Mean and Ugly and Colter’s coyote dun, heading toward Colter’s left stirrup. He paused to stare carefully west, happy not to see any more dove gray uniforms bearing down on him. Maybe he and the redhead would get lucky, and the other rurales were three sheets to the wind . . . or otherwise preoccupied . . . and hadn’t heard the gunfire. He helped the young man into the saddle, Colter grimacing and shaking against the obvious pain.
“As soon as we can,” Prophet told him, throwing him his horse’s reins from the hitchrack, “we’ll hole up and I’ll tend them wounds for you, get some painkiller into you.”
“Like I said, Lou,” said the redhead, sitting straight-backed in the saddle, “I’m fine.”
“Humor me.” Prophet wrapped some burlap around his bottle, dropped it into a saddlebag pouch, then swung up onto Mean’s back.
He neck-reined the mount out into the street. Again, he glanced west. Still, it was all clear. “Let’s go!” he rasped, and booted Mean to the west.
Colter did the same to his coyote dun. As the horse lunged forward into a gallop, Lou heard Colter give an agonized groan.
* * *
They ran the horses hard for nearly a mile.
The trail was wide this close to the La Bachata where it was likely well traveled, and it was lit by the stars and the light of a sickle moon kiting about halfway up the lilac sky to the east. When the trail narrowed and grew rocky, Prophet pulled Mean off the trace, to the right, and headed south for the murky darkness showing between two milky buttes.
He glanced behind. Colter was behind him but not as close as before, and the kid was sitting sort of loose in the saddle, his head wobbling. He held his reins with one hand, but his chin was down. Prophet thought the redhead was mostly just letting Northwest follow the leader—Lou and Mean and Ugly.
Worry touched Prophet. He wasn’t accustomed to worrying about anyone but himself. Sometimes Louisa. But mostly himself. He didn’t like the way it felt, because worry fogged the mind and just plain didn’t feel good. The truth was, he’d come to like the scar-faced redhead, and he’d feel even worse if the kid up and died on him. He’d probably feel worse about Colter Farrow’s death than the redhead would himself.
They had to stop soon. Lou just wanted to make sure they were far enough off the trail that the rurales wouldn’t find them if they came looking, that they wouldn’t spy the fire he and Colter were going to need to get the kid’s wounds cleaned and stitched properly.
The gap between the buttes doglegged first to the left and then to the right. When the gap ended, the buttes drifting off behind, Lou followed a sandy wash for another quarter mile or so between six-foot-high banks of crumbling sandstone. Finally, when he judged they were surrounded by enough cover in the form of rocks, boulders, and bristling desert chaparral that it would take a damn good tracker to find them in the dark, he drew rein and swung down from Mean’s back.
He turned to look behind him. Colter wasn’t back there.
Dread touched Prophet. He had a brief, imagined glimpse of the kid lying dead on the ground beside his horse. Lou began walking back the way he’d come but stopped when he heard a horse whicker. Hooves thudded softly. A shadow moved, growing until it became a horse and a rider. Colter was slumped forward across Northwest’s neck. He looked bad as hell. He looked damned miserable.
Prophet hurried forward and met the horse about thirty feet from where he’d ground-reined Mean and Ugly. He reached up and placed a hand on Colter’s shoulder. “Which side of the sod you on, Red?”
His voice must have startled Colter out of a semi-doze. He jerked, lifted his head. “You worry like an old woman!”
“Come on—I’ll help you down.”
“Quit mother-hennin’ me, damnit. I’m fine.”
Prophet pulled the younger man out of the saddle, eased him to the ground. “Yeah, I know you are. I’ve never seen anyone look so good. Just the same, why don’t we set you down over here and you try to stay awake while I gather wood and build a fire?”
Prophet helped Colter onto the ground near the bank of the wash. He retrieved the new bottle from his saddlebags, removed the burlap, and brought the bottle over to the redhead. He popped the cork and handed the bottle to the kid. “Take a couple pulls of that.”
“Are you kiddin’? I’m still sick from Don de la Paz’s pulque.”
“Hair of the dog that bit ya.”
Weakly, Colter took the bottle, and then Prophet wandered off in search of wood for a fire. Fifteen minutes later, he had that fire burning a little too brightly. The wood he’d gathered was tinder dry, and he’d included some brush in it, just to make sure it went. It went, all right, so that now he looked out from the pulsating glow, hearing the windy, crackling sound of the flames, wondering how far away the conflagration might be visible.
“Christalmighty, Lou,” Colter scolded. “You roastin’ a buffalo?”
“I admit I overdone it a little.”
Colter scowled and leaned back from the heat. The horses whickered where they stood ground-reined and sidled away.
“It’ll burn down soon,” Prophet said, taking a knee beside his trail partner. “Now, let me see how much damage old Ruiz did to you, kid.”
“Oh, leave me be, Lou,” Colter complained. “I’m . . .”
“Yeah, I know, you’re fine. Now, hold still or I’m gonna tattoo ya with my pistol butt!”
“Mother damn hen is what you are . . .” Colter took a pull from the bottle.
Prophet did a quick inspection of the younker’s wounds, relieved to find that neither one was too severe. They’d be sore for a while, but they were mostly just bad burns, the one in the arm a little worse than the one on the thigh. Both bullets had punched out some flesh, but Prophet was able to clean the wounds with some cloth from his saddlebags with little problem.
He sutured the one in Colter’s arm, only wrapped the one in his leg. The arm wound took six stitches, and the kid didn’t even flinch when the needle went in.
Prophet had a feeling this wasn’t the redhead’s first rodeo. Colter Farrow couldn’t hold more than a teaspoonful of alcohol, but he’d probably sported enough lead over the years that if all melted down would have supplied ammo for a small army. That might be a slight exaggeration, he opined with a wry chuff as he pulled the last stitch taut, but the kid had ridden the wild ’n’ woolly—there was no doubt about that.
Too bad about that tattoo on his cheek. That was the wound that grieved him most and likely would till they fitted him for his wooden overcoat . . .
“Stop starin’ at me, Lou,” the redhead cajoled him, lowering the bottle after taking another pull.
Prophet jerked his head away. He was putting his sewing kit back together and hadn’t realized he’d been staring. “Helkatoot.”
“You know what hurts more than someone lookin’ at me like I’m a dog with a dead snake in its teeth?”
“No, I don’t, but I reckon you’re gonna tell me.”
“Someone lookin’ at me with pity in his eyes.”
“Hell, Red.”
“There you have it.”
Feeling about as low as a sidewinder, Prophet returned his sewing kit to his saddlebags. “Let me get these hayburners tended and staked out, an’ I’ll put some beans on the fire.”
“Forget it.” Colter set the bottle down and heaved himself to his feet. It was an awkward maneuver at best. Not only was he sore as hell from the wounds and then having them stitched, he’d chugged down a good third of the mezcal, by Prophet’s estimation. Setting his boots under him carefully, the redhead strode over to his own mount and grabbed the reins. Slurring his words slightly, he said, “The day I can’t tend my own corn grinder is the day they plant me.”
“All right,” Prophet said, stripping his saddle from Mean and Ugly’s back. “It’s your plantin’.”
As he tended the hammerheaded dun, he couldn’t help keeping an anxious eye on his wounded but defiant young partner, hoping he didn’t get his feet entangled and fall and thus open those wounds. Colter managed all right, though. He was a picture of angry insolence and boldness, stripping the tack from his mount, thoroughly rubbing it down with a scrap of burlap from his saddlebags, then filling his hat with water and setting it on the ground where the dun could drink.
He stood a little uncertainly beside the horse, patting its withers but also furtively steadying himself as Northwest drew water from the hat. When the horse had had its fill, Colter picketed the mount where grass grew up along the edge of the wash, tying its halter rope to a picket pin, giving it room to move around as it foraged.
Prophet was already back to the fire when the kid stumbled into the camp, looking drawn and weary, his hair in his eyes. He practically tripped over the toes of his boots, his spurs ringing loudly. He dropped to his knees where he’d piled his gear and unrolled his soogan, his hands fumbling with the leather straps.
Prophet had started to make supper, but he needed a drink first. He picked up the bottle from where the kid had left it, popped the cork, and held it out. “Need a little more painkiller?”
Colter shook his head, cursing as he continued to fumble with his soogan’s straps. Prophet wanted to help the younger man, but he didn’t want to offend him further.
Finally, Colter got the straps untied. He rolled out his soogan and then knelt, staring down at the bedroll for a moment before looking across the fire, which had burned down considerably, at Prophet.
“Sorry about snapping at you, Lou. I was just bein’ a sorehead. I was feeling sorry for myself.”
“You got a right.”
“That was the busthead talkin’. Go easy on that stuff. It’s got some pop to it. I’m seein’ two of everything, and three of you.”
“Hell, one’s too many of me.”
Colter plopped down on his soogan, resting his head back against the woolly underside of his saddle. He snaked his arm across his forehead and lay staring up at the fire’s cinders that glowed until they turned to gray ashes against the black velvet sky.
Prophet took a long pull from the mezcal bottle. Good stuff. It instantly filed the edges off this trying day. He took another drink and then looked at the redhead lying there staring up at the sky. Colter was thinking about something.
Or someone.
Lou decided to play a hunch and risk sticking his foot in his mouth again. What the hell? He was used to the taste of boot leather.
“Say, Red, can I ask you a personal question?”
“Try me.”
“Did you leave a girl back in them mountains?”
Colter continued to stare at the sky. “Yeah.” In fact, it was she he was thinking about. But, then, Prophet likely knew that. Marianna Claymore was her name. “We were gonna be married. That was three years ago now. She married someone else. Has a little boy.”
“That’s tough.”
“It’s the way it is.”
“Still, it’s tough.”
Colter turned his head to scowl at the big man lounging on the other side of the fire. “Damnit, I’m tryin’ not to feel sorry for myself anymore!”
“Good night, Red.”
“Night,” Colter grouched, then rolled over and folded his arms across his chest. He must have fallen instantly asleep, for he started breathing deeply, slowly, each breath rattling in his throat.
“Still, it’s tough,” Lou repeated quietly to himself, and took another deep pull off the bottle.
He took another pull . . . and another. He looked at the bottle. There were two bottles now before him, along with two of his own hands holding it though he was sure he was holding it with only his right hand. So he was seeing two bottles held by two right hands before him.
“Damn good stuff,” he repeated, his words garbled even in his own ears. “But the younker was right. Goes down smooth then kicks like a mule . . .”
He finished off the bottle but didn’t remember even setting it down after his last pull before a thick veil of sleep closed over him. He woke with a dull ache in his head. His tongue felt like a dried-up snake in his mouth. He opened his eyes then quickly closed them again, for harsh sunlight assaulted him, feeling like miniature, razor-edged spears stabbing his eyes.
The sunlight reflected off the red desert sand and gravel only inches from his face.
Wait. Something was wrong. His face shouldn’t be that close to the gravel, nor in the position it seemed to be in.
He slitted his eyelids, looked around against the painful assault of the bright desert light. He saw ants toiling in the sand around him, just inches away from his eyes. They were so close he could see their itty-bitty little heads and feet, their itty-bitty little threadlike bodies.
He tried to rise.
No doing.
He couldn’t move his arms or his legs. They were weighed down, held taut against him. He couldn’t even move his fingers.
He was dreaming, of course. It was one of those dreams where you try to talk but your tongue is too heavy, and you try to move but your limbs are too heavy, too.
As his eyes adjusted in small increments to the light’s vengeful assault, his heart thudded and cold blood pooled in his belly. He was not dreaming.
A silent scream ripped through his head, deafening him.
The reason the ground looked so close, including the many little ants . . . and the reason he couldn’t move a damn thing on his body . . . was because he’d been planted up to his neck in the desert!