The Crossings (8 page)

Then the window shattered. Bullets slammed into the wall behind us.

Mother was reloading and so was I, frantically. My hands were shaking and I couldn't seem to grip the bullets and feed them into the chamber. We heard footfalls coming toward us on the steps outside and men cursing. Hart drew his pistol and stepped past the bodies to the room's front door. He turned to Elena.
Go! now!
he shouted and stepped out into the hallway and his Peacemaker roared as she turned and ran.

A moment later Mother and I were beside him.

TWELVE

I became a ghost
, she said.

I watched in the shadows between the two outbuildings to the left of the hacienda as the men stumbled out the doorway and down the steps under your fire and Paddy Ryan in his death mask strapped on a pistol and gave the order to pull a wagon between the window and front doorway on the left and another to the windows on the right for cover. Drunk or not, stupid or not they did this quickly and by then you were firing through the front windows and I knew I had little time, that it would not be long before Ryan sent some of his men to the rear door to cut off your retreat. When he did they would have no trouble seeing me here.

Celine and the others were on their knees or trying to crawl away but hobbled close together as they were there was nowhere they could really go. To get to them I needed to cross twenty yards of open space past a bonfire still burning low but there was no help for that so I pulled the
soldado
's good sharp knife from my belt and made my run.

I knelt in front of her and all she said was
sister!
startled, as I cut through the ropes at her feet and all I said was
come, hurry!
as I drew her to her feet and pushed her out ahead of me toward the mouth of the canyon and handed the knife to the Anglo girl beside her and perhaps that was my mistake. Perhaps the other girls freeing themselves one by one was what drew their attention first to them and then to us because as we neared the dead guard's smoldering campfire Celine stumbled to the ground or so I thought and clutched at her hip and I saw that she was shot, blood seeping through the dirty white slip.

I hauled her up and wrapped her arm about my neck and over my shoulder and moved her past the fire into the brush. I glanced back and saw Paddy Ryan staring straight at me, straight in the eye, saw his look of recognition and he pointed to me and shouted, then pointed to the rear of the hacienda directing his men toward the back.

And then he and three of the others were running after us. We ducked into the brush but my sister stumbled again and cried out in pain. The bullet had either chipped her hipbone or perhaps hit a nerve or both. I pulled her to her feet again and now I was half dragging her. We were not going to make it to the horses.

I could practically smell Paddy Ryan behind us.

Her leg was weak but not her arms I thought
. Can you climb?
I asked her. We were coming to a stand of trees beyond the fires' glow and it was dark
. Celine, can you climb? I think so,
she said. She managed to give me a brave frightened smile
. I always could. This one,
I said
. Use the good leg. Jump.
I put my hands around her waist gone so slim I could feel her ribs like the hoops of a barrel and pushed her up. She caught hold of a limb. I pushed at the sole of her boot and she was up and climbing through the branches and I saw her wince in pain. I slung the rifle over my shoulder and followed.

Moments later we heard them below and I could only pray to all the gods, your own included that they were neither Indios nor night hunters and would not look up because although I had unslung the rifle I could probably shoot two of them or maybe even three but I was not going to shoot them all before they shot me. We were lucky. They continued on
.

Toward the horses.

And a few moments later returned with them — the horses snorting, disliking the heavy clinging scrub they were being led through and I heard Paddy Ryan laugh and say
like to see how far they get without these
and then shout as he passed the dying campfire
, see you in the morning, ladies,
knowing we had to be nearby
.

When we were certain they were gone I helped my sister down.

It was quiet. The shooting had stopped. When I didn't know.

We waited for you
.

THIRTEEN

"You think she's had time?" Mother said.

"She'd damn well better have," said Hart.

"You figure we wore out our welcome here?"

"That I do."

There were three guards dead in the hallway from their first blind rush at us but we hadn't done much outside. I counted them at twelve or thirteen firing from behind or under the wagons. Rifle fire kept pouring through the windows. It was hard to get a shot in much less aim effectively. We ran for the back door. Midway down the hall I glanced over my shoulder and saw a dark shape coming toward us and I fired off a round in that direction and then kept running.

Ten steps further and we'd have made it to the door. Ten steps less and we could have turned into one of the open rooms on either side.

Instead fortune trapped us there in the hallway with six rifles to our three.

I took the first hit like a fist to the thigh at the same time two of the guards went down beneath our fire and Mother took the second just above his hip and the then a third square in the chest yet amazingly remained standing, only stumbled back behind me still firing, the three of us moving slowly forward pressed back against the walls, dropping two more men in the doorway while the two remaining backed on out over the threshold, turning their rifles in and firing wild and blind, Hart unsheathing the Peacemaker and blasting great splintered gouges out of the casing trim on either side until we were almost there and I heard a sound come out of Mother unlike any a man should ever hear.

I turned and so did Hart as Mother's rifle hit the floor and we saw something the size of a railroad spike protruding from his neck. And then seeming to try to
withdraw
from his neck, moving side to side and up and down as though it were a living thing there trying to wriggle free, Mother's hands fisted and grasping at it as though to keep it a part of him instead, his eyes wide and blood pouring like thick bright syrup down off his mouth onto his chest and tides of it pulsing against the wall.

He shifted his weight and there was old mad Eva behind him — tiny in his shadow, some horrible gnome who would bring a giant low — grasping at the hilt of her obsidian blade with both bony hands and trying to wrest it out of him, her lips snarled back in a feral grin, eyes squinting and twitching as though she were trying to focus on something far away in blinding light until Hart stepped over and shot directly into one of those rheumy yellow eyes and painted the wall with whatever manner of filth had come to nestle in her brain.

She lay still and I saw what the white filmy garment was which left her long thin dugs and cascades of belly flesh so nearly and revoltingly naked.

Flayed human skin.

Mother fell to his knees. His hands dropped away from the dagger and his arms swayed at his sides. He seemed to gaze at Hart for a moment with puzzlement and then with slow recognition and that was all.

His weight shifted back.

He hung there perfectly still.

I did not think at that moment about how Mother had cared for me, taught me. I did not think that as one is wont to love another man I perhaps had loved this one. That would come only later. I saw a dead man. Mother was fled.

"
Aw jesus, Mother
," said Hart.

The gunfire outside had stopped. The men had retreated from the doorway and as yet we had no notion why. It didn't seem reasonable. All they had to do now was come at us from both ends of the hallway if they did it quick enough. We could retreat into one of the rooms but couldn't hold out there forever. They'd lose some men doing it that way but they'd surely have us sooner or later.

I was aware of a tingling climbing down my leg. Not gone numb as yet but it felt as though it very well could given time. Above the wound it throbbed.

"Can you manage, Bell?" he said.

I nodded. I looked at the dead man kneeling before me and didn't trust myself to speak.

I saw that Hart had been shot high in the side of his chest. I didn't want to address that either. There was a lot of blood.

"We best try to get out of here."

We stepped over the four bodies in the doorway acid headed for the outbuildings — expecting gunfire all the way.

Gunfire that never came. We skirted the buildings into the brush and beyond to the clearing where we'd tethered the horses. But of course there were no horses.

Only Elena and Celine in open moonlight.

"Mother?" said Elena.

Hart didn't answer. Didn't need to. His look was enough. His eyes were pure dark flint and she took his glance like a physical blow. I could almost feel her thinking,
this man blames me. Of course he does. He blames me for the loss of his friend
.

It was certainly possible. You couldn't know. Sometimes you just couldn't read him.

Her response was to get busy. She gestured toward me.

"
Ayudame, Celine
," she said, "
esteuno
."

Celine walked with a bad limp and I could see where she'd been hipshot and the hem of her slip torn off for a bandage, something brownish beneath the bandage which I learned by repeating the process later on myself was a simple mix of dirt and her own urine — but the next thing I knew she was opening my pants and rolling them gently down over my hip to get at the wound while Elena drew Hart's shirt off over his shoulders. He'd been hit just under the armpit, the bullet passing through the tissue between chest and underarm front and back. The bleeding was largely stopped by now but there'd already been a lot of it.

"So you're Celine," I said.

The words sounded stupid even as I uttered them. I may even have been close to shock, I don't know. But I seemed to need to say something. Here was this pretty young Mexican girl dabbing at my naked thigh with a strip of cloth torn from her slip. Another inch or two and I'd have no secrets at all from her.

"I don't know how to thank you," she said.

She looked at Hart. "Both of you."

Hart's expression went from a grimace to something nearly a smile.

"They'll expect us to run," he said. "Probably come after us at first light. They'll figure it'll be easy, with us on foot. So you want to thank me, girl? How are you at horse stealing?"

FOURTEEN

I doubt any of us slept at all that night. I know I didn't. Wouldn't have even if my wounded thigh had let me. And when, in the darkest hour, just before sunrise, the hour of the wolf, they call it, Hart touched my shoulder to rouse me I was as ready as I ever would be.

We returned by way of the scrub, skirting the guard's dead campfire, much as Hart and I had come the night before, Celine and I with difficulty, through a light steady rainfall and by dawn we were crouched in the dripping brush with a full view of Paddy Ryan sitting in a rocking chair on the porch, scrubbed clean of his black and white makeup and drinking from a dainty china cup.

We saw two guards each in front of the pair of outbuildings to our right which led us to presume the remaining captives were housed within, three more in the corral feeding and currying the horses and another in the center of the compound near the well. Finally, the men Elena called Fredo and Gustavo stood with their backs to us in front of a wagon wheel directly ahead tossing rocks and pebbles at something and laughing.

When they stooped down to collect more stones and pebbles we saw what it was.

I'd heard of it during the war.

It was not only heart, tongue or genitals the guerrillas might take from a man.

There were times they took his brain.

And there was Mother tied spread-eagled to the wagon wheel. The top of his head was sawn away just above the eyebrows and it was into this cavity, empty now but for rainwater, that the men were pitching their stones.

Elena touched Hart's shoulder.

"Hart," she said.

He didn't answer. Only stared out at the men, the dice clutched tight in his fist.

"Hart. I'm so sorry."

"Why's that?"

"
Please
, Hart. Please."

I thought she was about to cry.
Elena, about to cry
. It was almost as shocking as what was going on in front of us. But then he turned to her and for the first time when he spoke to her his voice was gentle.

"I'd never hold it against you, ma'am. And neither would he. Like I said, it's family. Everybody's got family."

And for a moment I saw something pass between them, something true and almost tender made of respect and loss and suffering and she nodded to him and he said softly
even me
and turned his gaze back to the yard.

To the sounds of Fredo and Gustavo laughing in the yard
.

Tossing their stones.

Even me
he said again and this time you could feel the heat of all his anger in the words. We watched in silence for a while.

"I count eleven," I said. "Spread out all over the place. It'll be rough getting to those horses."

"We aren't going for the horses."

"Huh?"

"Mother just changed plans for me."

I looked at him. He sighed.

"Bell, you're a lot better man than you think you are. At least when you're sober. But you're not gonna be doing any running on that leg for quite a while yet and neither is this young girl. We're not going after any horses. Hold these for me minute, will you?"

He handed me the dice. He unholstered his pistol, opened it and spun the chamber, closed it and reholstered it and then turned to Elena.