Black Valley Riders

Lawrence Shaw rode the dusty switchback trail upward nearly a mile, then stepped his big bay over onto a rock ledge and looked down, checking his back trail. Beneath him the speckled bay chuffed and shook out its damp mane in a gust of dry, warm wind. Overhead lay a wavering white-hot sky. Below, a desolate, broken world of stone, gully, hilltop and cut-bank lay carpeted over with sand—a harsh, unaccommodating fauna that showed no welcome toward humankind.

Home . . . he told himself wryly.

The bullet wound in his head had mended slowly but steadily for the past four months. The doctor who had most recently examined him declared Shaw’s being alive a miracle of medical science. Shaw supposed it was true. Leastwise, he himself had never known anyone to take such a shot and live. As far as it being a miracle, he couldn’t say. Miracles didn’t come around much, the way he saw it.

He wasn’t even completely certain who had shot him, and, for some reason he himself did not understand, he didn’t care. It was the young woman though, an inner voice told him. He gazed out from his saddle across endless rolling hills bathed in a harsh glare of sunlight and wavering heat. Deep inside, he knew it had been her.

Now put it away . . .

Being a gunfighter, being known as the fastest gun alive. There were more people wanting to kill him than he ever cared to think about. Getting shot was something he’d learned to take in stride long ago, a part of the life he’d chosen for himself. So was getting killed if it came to it, he reminded himself, watching a big, lone hawk swing in a lazy circle high above him. He tried not to make a big thing of it, getting shot. It happened to everybody now and then.

His memory was not clear on what circumstances had drawn him back here to the fiery Mexican badlands, but it was good to be back all the same, gunshot wound or no. His pal U.S. Marshal Crayton Dawson had called this his kind of place—“Gun Country,” he’d said. And he’d been right, Shaw realized. There was solitude here. This was a good place for a man like himself. Anyway, here he was . . .

The bay scraped a hoof and tossed its head. Shaw touched back on its reins.

The bullet had hit him at almost point-blank range, so close that the blast of powder had burned his hair off. But instead of entering his skull, the big .45 caliber slug had only fractured it. Oddly enough the bullet had flattened and crushed its way upward and bored a path across the top of his head. It split his scalp like a dull hatchet, leaving in its wake a long furrow of cracked skull bone along the way, and came out on the other side. He winced, thinking about it.

A miracle? Maybe . . .

He turned the big speckled bay and rode back onto the dusty switchback, reminding himself once again not to think about it. But more than likely, it had just been a bad bullet, a weak load. Hell, who knew . . . ?

The bullet wound had not left him unscathed. Even now he went about his day-to-day life with much of his consciousness still partially mired in a dark, dreamy numbness that refused to turn him loose. Peculiar though he found it to be, there were days, even weeks at a time that he could not account for. Then, out of nowhere, his memory seemed to catch up with him in some jumbled, unsteady fashion, as if he’d been traveling somewhere far ahead of it.

It was strange, he told himself, nudging the bay forward. But he’d gotten used to strangeness in his life a long time ago.

Home . . . he told himself again, this time without the irony. Finally, he forced himself to dismiss all thought on the matter and gazed off across the rocky hilltops and into the endless breadth of earth and sky. He took a deep breath and let it out.

“We’ve still got a long way to go,” he said down to the bay. Yet, in truth he had no real destination in mind, only a deep, persistent need to keep moving.

He wore a long corduroy riding duster with leather-trimmed pockets and collar. Beneath the open duster front, his big Colt stood in its holster on his right hip. His headwear was a large black bandanna pulled back and tied at the base of his skull beneath a tall sand-colored sombrero. The sombrero was plain, but with a fine line of green embroidery the color of pale wild grass on its high, soft crown.

His boots were caballeria style, high-welled, battered and scuffed to the desert hue. The right boot was plain seasoned leather, but the left boot bore a wraparound carving, tooled in fine detail, of two wild stallions locked in a death battle.

When he arrived at Little Ester, the first town in a string of ancient Spanish-settlement remnants, he stepped down from his saddle beside a short stone wall surrounding the town’s watering well. He hitched the bay to a thick iron ring attached atop the short wall. Reaching down under the bay’s belly, he loosed its cinch and let it drink.

As the thirsty horse drew water, Shaw pulled a gourd dipper up from an oaken bucket sitting atop the stone wall and drank from it himself. Behind him an elderly man appeared from the dark shade between two adobes, a frayed straw sombrero in his knobby hands.

“Bienvenidos a Pequeña Ester, señor,” he said. Welcome to Little Ester.

“Gracias,” Shaw replied. He wiped a hand across his lips and dropped the gourd dipper back into the bucket.

The old man paused, looked Shaw up and down, taking particular note of his finely tooled boot.

“May I ask what brings you to Little Ester?” he asked in stiff English.

Shaw turned facing the smiling old man. “Passing through,” he said.

“Aw, sí, passing through,” said the self-appointed town greeter. “I understand.” His eyes went back to Shaw’s boot, then back to his face. “Always when men come to Little Ester from the east, they are passing through.” He offered a smile, seeing that Shaw had little conversation for him. Shaw glanced at the shade between the two adobes the old man had walked out of.

But as the old man turned to walk away, Shaw said out of the blue, “Tell me, senor, is there a witch here who carries a covey of trained sparrows?” As soon as he’d asked, he’d realized it had been a mistake. But it was too late; he had to let it play itself out.

“A bruja?” the old man said, curiously. “With trained sparrows?” He considered the question and he rubbed his goatee for an answer.

“Never mind,” Shaw said, wanting to let it go. It had been over a year since he’d seen the witch and her covey of dancing sparrows. And it hadn’t been here in Little Ester. It hadn’t even been close. These were the kinds of things that concerned him about himself lately. This was his head wound talking, he thought.

But the old man did not know what the term never mind meant. He studied the question for a moment longer, then raised a thin knobby finger and said, “Ah, wait! But, yes, I do know of such a bruja.”

“You do?” Shaw said. Then he said quickly, “It’s not important.”

“She does not come here,” the old man continued all the same. “She travels the hills south of here across the desert basin.”

“Yes, gracias,” said Shaw, “I remember now.” He didn’t manage to hide the look of concern on his face.

The old Mexican tilted his head and asked, “May I ask why you seek her, senor?”

“I’m not seeking her,” Shaw said. “I was just curious, is all.”

“Oh,” the old man said, only appearing to half believe Shaw. “I thought you seek her because she is from your country.”

“From my country?” That got his interest. “She’s American?”

“Sí, Americano. Did you not know that about her, senor?” the old man asked.

“No,” Shaw said, “I didn’t know that.” He stepped over closer to the bay and loosened its reins from the iron ring.

“It is a good day when a man learns something new,” the old Mexican said, grinning over bare gums.

Shaw reached into his trouser pocket.

It had been in the dusty adobe village of Valle Del Maíz that he’d seen the old witch wrapped in a ragged black cloth. She had tossed her covey of paper-thin sparrows upward in a circle of glowing firelight and appeared to orchestrate their movements with the tips of her bony fingers. An American . . . ? That was a surprise.

“Tell me, amigo,” Shaw said, dismissing the witch and her sparrows, “have two American lawmen passed through here?” He took out a small gold coin and placed it on the old man’s weathered palm.

“Americano lawmen . . . ?” The old man closed his palm over the coin as he gave the matter some thought.

“Yes,” Shaw said, “one is called Dawson. The other one is called Caldwell—some call him Undertaker. They track outlaws along the border.” He reached down under the bay and fastened its cinch.

“Ah, yes, I have heard of these men,” the Mexican said, tapping a finger to his head. “But no, they have not been to Little Ester. This I would know, if they had.”

“You’re certain?” Shaw said. He tested his saddle with a gloved hand.

“Sí, I am certain,” he said. He stepped back from Shaw as if in caution. “Are they hunting you, maybe, these lawmen?”

“No,” Shaw said, not wanting to offer any more about himself or the two lawmen than he needed to. He swung up into his saddle. “Maybe I’m hunting them.”

“Oh . . . ,” the old man said. Shaw saw the man’s eyes go once again to the tooling on his left boot, then back to Shaw’s face as he turned the bay and put it forward along the stone-lined trail.

No sooner had Shaw ridden out of sight than three gunmen walked out of the same dark shade where the old man had stood before venturing to the well.

“Who is he, old man?” a young Mexican named Dario Esconza asked. He stood expectedly with a bottle of mescal in one hand. He held his other hand loosely shoved down behind his gun belt, close to the big bone-handled Starr revolver holstered low on his hip.

“He did not tell me who he is,” the old man said, having buried the coin out of sight inside his ragged clothes. He rubbed his bristly chin as if trying to recall what Shaw had told him. “I cannot remember why he said he came here.” He grinned sadly. “My mind does not work as well as it used to. Life is hard.”

Esconza scowled at him, knowing the old man was fishing him for money. “If you think life is hard now, imagine how much harder it will be when I stamp my boot down on your throat.” He took a step closer.

“Por favor, Dario! Please, no,” the old man said, raising his hands as if to protect his face. “I will tell you what he said.”

Esconza stopped and stared at him. The other two gunmen, both Texans on the run from the law, looked on, liking the way Esconza handled things.

The old man said, “He searches for an old bruja who carries a covey of trained sparrows in her bosom.”

“A witch with sparrows in her bosom . . .” Esconza said staring flatly at the old Mexican.

“Sí.” The old man shrugged, knowing how unlikely it sounded.

Esconza and the two gunmen looked at one another. Then Esconza turned back to the old man and took a deep breath, running out of patience.

“That’s real good, old man,” he said, stepping forward again. “Now I’m going to kick you back and forth in the dirt for a while. Then we’ll start over.”

“It is the truth, Dario. I swear it,” the old man said, speaking hurriedly now. “He asked about the bruja, and I told him she does not come here. Then he asked about the two lawmen you told me to look out for, the ones who you said are hunting down the Cut-jaws gang.”

“The two lawmen, eh?” said Esconza. “Now we’re getting somewhere. What did you tell him?”

“I told him they have not been through here.” The old man shrugged his bony shoulders. “Because it is true—they have not.”

Esconza turned up a drink from the bottle of mescal and passed it to one of the other two gunmen. He stared along the rise of dust Shaw’s horse stirred in its wake.

“What else?” Esconza asked. “Is he running from them?”

“He did not say,” the old man replied. “I asked if they hunt him, and he said maybe he is hunting them.”

One of the gunmen, a Texan named Ollie Wilcox, lowered the mescal bottle from his lips and passed it to the other gunman. “That’s no answer,” he said.

The third gunman, a Tex-Mexican named Charlie Ruiz turned up the bottle, swigged from it, then lowered it and said, “Yep, he’s on the run, if you ask me.”

“Yes, I think he is,” said Esconza.

He furrowed his brow in concentration and added, “I know this man . . . I have seen him before somewhere.”

“Yeah . . . ?” said Wilcox. He just stared at him. Esconza nodded his head in contemplation. “It will come to me.”

Ruiz grinned at Wilcox and asked Esconza, “So, what do you want to do? Chase him down and tell him you know him from somewhere?”

“We are looking for good men, eh?” said Esconza. “If he is hiding from the law and he is good with a gun, we will invite him to ride with us, I think.”

Ruiz grinned again. “What if he’s hiding from the law but is not good with a gun?” he said. “What if he has toes missing from being so bad with a gun?”

Esconza shrugged and reached out for the bottle in Charlie Ruiz’s hand. “Then I will kill him, and we will ride away.” He looked at the old Mexican and said, “See how life is not so hard for those of us with a bold nature?”

“Sí, I do,” the old man said. Then he fell silent and stood staring at the drift of dust above the trail.