Valley of Fire (14 page)

“One more inch, mister, and you will make me pull this trigger, which the buzzards will surely appreciate, but, alas, that would deprive Vern of his pleasures. So, please, kind sir, stop and live . . . for a few moments longer.” While The Voice was talking all fancy, all deep and strong, he'd punctuated that statement with a sound I knowed all too well. It was that triple, deadly, metallic click of a Colt single-action revolver being cocked. He didn't have no Dean and Adams spurless .436.

I stopped, but Vern didn't. A boot caught me in the ribs, rolling me over, and when I had the presence, or lack, of mind to lift my head, another kick knocked me right by the fire.

“Micah!” That was Gen, but the next sound wasn't.

“Your aim and timing appear to be slightly off, Vern,” The Voice said. “I remember those glorious days when you would have knocked him into that fire.”

“Nah,” Vern said, real slow, drawing out them words. “Didn't wants him burnin' none. Till I's finished with 'im.”

Since Vern hadn't meant to kick me into the flames, the fire was still going, unaware of the predicament Gen and I was in. Somebody, reckon it was Vern, added some logs to the fire, and as I slowly sat up, the fire was going real good, and I got a good picture of them two newcomers who looked older and meaner than the desert.

Vern had a dark beard down to his sternum, and railroad ties was smaller than his arms. Must have stood six-foot-six in his stockings, but he wasn't wearing no stockings. No, sir. He had on the biggest boots I'd ever seen, with mule pulls on the sides, and leather pants stuck down the stovepipe tops, but the boots was old and dusty, and one bottom was wrapped with a bunch of rawhide, and the other had his toes—no socks—sticking out.

That big cuss made Jorge de la Cruz look like a midget. He wore fringed leather pants, and a grimy buckskin shirt. Looked to be advertising a leather shop. He cracked his knuckles—sounded like chair legs being busted over some rowdy's head in a saloon tussle—and pushed up the brim of his greasy slouch hat. Then he smiled. Didn't have but three teeth that I could tell, and I only could see them because the flames reflected off the gold fillings. He carried a big machete, and started running his thumb over the blade as he squatted, then farted.

“Dear Lord,” The Voice said, and laughed, before he looked down at Gen.

His left hand gripped her shoulder, and I could tell from her face that he was squeezing real hard. His right hand held that .45 Colt aimed at me. Slowly, real careful-like, I tested the knot forming on my forehead, then rubbed them aching ribs.

“This is truly an unexpected delight,” The Voice said. “We were like wandering Jews, lost in the desert, and then, I asked Vern, ‘Did you hear that?' And Vern nodded, and although he is really a simpleton, he said to me, ‘Can't be no fools in this land.'” The Voice give a perfect impression of his idiot partner. “But I said back to him, ‘Well, let us see. '” He doubled over laughing so hard, wiped his eyes with the back of his hand holding the Colt, then shook his head. “But, swear to God, never did I think we would find this. Not out here.” He looked around. “What was that shot we heard earlier today? Your horses?”

Now, The Voice, he wasn't no bigger than me. Deep voice sure didn't fit his little body. He had on worn shoes, duck pants, and a striped shirt that I taken to have been issued to him by some jailer, seeing that the Territory of New Mexico had no penitentiary at the time but sent its most despicable convicts off to Kansas. These two should have been in Kansas, by my thinking.

He wore a kepi, so maybe he was a deserter from the Army, and muslin undershirt covered by a yellow brocade vest with all the buttons ripped off. He was clean shaven. Didn't even have stubble on his chin. His hair was silver. He talked like a fancy thespian, or maybe a professor. But he wasn't acting, and I didn't care to learn nothing from the likes of that son of a bitch.

“I asked you a question, kind sir,” he demanded. “Where are your horses?”

That wasn't what he'd asked at all.

“Run off in a thunderstorm. . . .” I had to think, but couldn't. “Don't really know how long ago.”

“Run off.” The Voice sighed, then laughed right cheerful, and spouted off with, “‘A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!'”

Vern stopped thumbing that machete blade and looked at his pard like it was The Voice who was the simpleton.

The Voice quit laughing. “Oh, dear, how I love
Richard III.
But back to our interview. What was that shot which led us here just in time, alas, to interrupt your, ahem, carnal desires?”

“Shot at a rabbit. Look around. You can see the bones.”

“You et it all?” Vern asked.

“We weren't expecting company,” Gen said, and grimaced as The Voice laughed again and squeezed her shoulder even harder.

He shaken his head, The Voice did, pushed up his kepi's brim with the gun barrel. “That is such a sweet shame. From the looks of you, you have no food, either. No money, I warrant.” He sighed. “No horses. No water.”

I wasn't about to tell him about that hole.

His voice hardened, as did them light-colored eyes. “No future, either. 'Tis a shame. Truly it is. For you see, we hoped that you had some horses, on account that we have none and the law seeks us.”

“The law,” Vern said deliberately.

I figured he couldn't talk no way else without really thinking about what he was saying.

“Law might've heard that shot, too. Might come lookin' for us.”

“Vern, Vern, Vern,” The Voice said in mocking rebuke. “We have crossed over The Journey of the Dead. By now, the marshal of Magdalena has likely given us up for dead.” He turned back toward me. “That explains our presence in this country, but why on earth would you two be here?” He clucked his tongue. “It isn't quite the most romantic spot.”

Maybe they did have some human decency in their black souls. “She's a nun,” I said. “A Sister of Charity. I was guiding her to the ruins at Gran Quivira.”

The Voice was staring down at Gen. He grinned. “You sure is a pretty thing, for a nun. I've never seen a nun like you. But I'm sure you will be real charitable. Real charitable for a wanderer in a wasteland who hasn't seen a woman, any woman in, well . . .” He laughed. “As Vern would say”—he did a right fine impression—“in a coon's age.”

“She's a nun, damn you!” I snapped. “A Sister of Charity.” Most men, even outlaws, they ain't ones to harm women. Even if they ain't nuns. But Vern and The Voice, they wasn't men, they wasn't even human.

The Voice wasn't listening no more. He jerked Gen to her feet, then slammed her roughly against the arroyo's high bank. I heard that nice green and white checked shirt rip, heard her scream, but I couldn't move because, well, it was on account of Vern.

“And you,” Vern said, leaning closer to me, putting his machete down by his side, farting again. “You'll be real charitable with me, pretty boy. Won't you?”

His breath stank like them rabbit guts I'd buried.

“I'll take real good care of you, pretty boy, just like he's takin' real good care of that”—he chuckled—“nun!”

He had dropped to his hands and knees and started crawling, licking them thin lips with his tongue, then flicking the tongue in and out like a serpent.

The Voice was laughing, deep and throaty. Now I knowed what The Voice was attempting with Gen, but I just . . . just . . . just couldn't move. Just stared at that big, ugly bearded monster crawling right toward me. I mean . . .well, I ain't sure what I mean. Wasn't sure what he meant, what the hell he was doing, and then that long beard started dragging between my legs toward my private parts, and he righted hisself, came at me on his knees, his hands working at the buttons of them leather pants. Only then did his intentions strike me like a big flaming stick of wood.

That is what I grabbed and slammed into his head.

I hit him again, and holding the torch, I smelled that awful stink of smoke and burning hair. His beard must have been thick with grease of some kind, 'cause it erupted in flames. He was screaming, beating at his face, which was engulfed in orange flame. He fell backward, his leather shirt burning, too.

Grease. Had to have been the grease. Or God's will.

Me? I was moving.

“Vern!” The Voice cried out. “Vern! Dear God, Vern!”

Too late, I understood that I could never reach the Dean and Adams. Wasn't rightly sure I could even find it, so I changed course and headed for the machete.

“Roll over, Vern! For God's sake, don't run!”

My hand latched onto the wooden handle of that big sticker, and I rolled over on my back. The muzzle flash from The Voice's big Colt practically blinded me, and the bullet carved a ditch across my side. I let go of the machete, and grabbed my bleeding, burning side. That's what you do when you get shot. What I do, anyhow.

“You bastard!” The Voice came toward me, thumbing back the Colt's hammer. “You son of a bitch.” He wasn't talking fancy no more. And them's the nicest things The Voice called me. I could see that little man coming toward me, could see the three long scratches across his cheeks, and his fly undone, just as Vern's had been.

That got me boiling mad.

I made my hand leave that throbbing side, and I cussed The Voice, and cussed Vern. I rolled over and I grabbed that machete. The gun boomed, and dirt flew into my eyes, and I rolled over, flinging the machete, praying it would gut that fancy-talking, evil, evil cur, but hearing it clang across the rocks. I knowed I'd missed, and I knowed I was dead, and I knowed what them sons of bitches would do to my true love if I didn't take them to Hell with me.

Clawing dirt out of my eyes, I still couldn't see, but I made myself move, diving to my left as The Voice fired again, missing me. The Voice swore, Vern screamed, and then Gen yelled, “Hey, asshole!”

Still, I couldn't see much of nothing, but I heard The Voice thumbing back that hammer, heard him spinning, heard the Colt boom. Then I heard the crack of the Dean and Adams, and The Voice didn't sound so much like a man no more.

Opening my eyes through the grime and tears and darkness, I saw him doubling over, the Colt falling to the dirt, and him holding his groin, yelling like a girl, begging and blubbering, and the Dean and Adams barked again. That bullet must have caught The Voice right in his head, 'cause he didn't say nothing else. Just dropped headfirst into the sand. But Gen fired again, and the bullet tore into his back (I saw that later).

The next cap misfired.

And then she was standing over him. She had picked up my machete and . . . well . . . it wasn't pretty.

I made it to my feet, and as she brought that bloody blade over her head, I stopped her. She wasn't acting human. That checked shirt had been ripped, but The Voice hadn't gotten no further, thank the Good Lord. The Voice wouldn't be doing nobody no harm. Not now. Not ever.

“Eustace!”

That brought me back to my senses.

“Eustace!”

Here come Vern, his face blackened, smoldering, a grotesque mask of black and purple, illuminated by our campfire. He staggered, maybe half blind, and I could smell burned flesh and hair, which stunk even more than the lightning-struck corpse of Demyan Blanco. Big Vern held a smoldering piece of wood.

I was reaching for the Colt that The Voice had dropped, but Gen picked it up first. She calmly thumbed back the hammer, and sent a bullet between what was left of Vern's eyes. He dropped to his knees again, and Gen's next shot hit his groin, too. Only Vern didn't feel nothing by then. Gen kept thumbing back the hammer and pulling the trigger, but by then, the only noise I heard was her sobs and that clicking sound as the hammer fell on empty chambers.

Slowly, I got to my feet, tore off my bandanna—the one I'd used to sink the canteen into the pool with a stone—and shoved it across the ditch carved down my side. Bleeding like a stuck pig, I taken the gun from Gen's hand with my hand that wasn't trying to stop myself from bleeding to death, dropped the Colt by The Voice's corpse, and moved Gen away from all the ugliness. “Go.”

She stared at me.

I could see the emptiness in her eyes, the remnants of the fire still burning. “We're leaving here.”

She blinked.

I wasn't sure she saw me or understood. “Come on, Gen.”

She tensed when I put my arm around her, and those eyes weren't empty no more, but angry, and she almost reared back and put a fist into my nose.

The blood was soaking my bandanna, and I couldn't see her, and I was falling to my knees.

She caught me. “Micah!” She pulled me close. “Oh, Micah.”

She'd regained her reason.

“Get the canteen,” I told her. My head jutted toward the pack one of them two bastards had dropped near the fire. “I'll get that. You get the Dean and Adams. And our saddlebag.”

“Where are we going?”

I seem to recall being asked that before. “Away from here.” I started for the bag, but I never made it.

We wasn't—at least I wasn't—going nowhere.

It ain't the most pleasing smell. Not like bacon frying in the skillet, or a warm peach pie. When my eyes opened, I smelled flesh burning, and my side was screaming. Orange and red and green stars flashed before me, and then I saw only blackness, emptiness, a bottomless pit sweeping up to swallow me whole.

That last part, the words I underlined, I didn't write my ownself. I mean I did, but they ain't original. It was a saying I recollect Big Tim Pruett reading aloud from that half-dime novel about Kit Carson fighting Mormon bushwhackers. I always liked it. And it fit what I felt and saw to a T.

Could've been worser, though, much, much worser. It didn't stink like gangrene, just of burnt flesh. My own.

“Hello, Micah,” Gen said softly.

I saw her then, as them colorful dots faded, my eyes focusing. She was smiling, but no joy in it, and clutching the ripped checked shirt with a hand stained with dried blood. When I seen that ripped shirt, my cross of Lorraine against her pale skin, and I recollected what The Voice had been trying to do, it made me hate his damned soul all the more. The blood started rushing to my head, even though The Voice was now shouting at the devil.

“Welcome back.” Gen's voice settled down my blood pressure, and for a while there, I forgot all about them two dead bastards.

I laid shirtless in the shade. Must have been nigh dusk, which meant I'd been out for some time. Almost a whole day, I figured. I reached for my side, but her hand came and taken hold of my forearm, and moved it back down. “Don't touch it. I had to cauterize it with the . . . pig's . . . machete.”

That I already knowed, that she'd sealed that bullet wound with a hot blade, not that she had used that big sticker. That's what smelled liked burned flesh . . . because it was burned flesh.

She turned, looking into the dusk, and her face hardened. I knowed she was looking at the two bodies. She said, “‘The day is ours. The bloody dog is dead. '” Slowly, she looked back to me, must have seen the confusion in my face, because she explained, “
Richard the Third.”

That didn't explain nothing to me, but I nodded as if I understood. Nodded, 'cause that's all I could do.

I tried to talk, but didn't have enough spit in my mouth to form no sentence. Bless her heart, she understood, moved closer, lifting my head, pouring water from the canteen down my throat. Tasted sweet. Then she laid my head on her lap, set the canteen down, and started stroking my hair, just gentle, the way I always figured my mama would've, had I ever knowed her.

“How long?” That's about all I could manage right then and there.

“Two days.”

I sighed. I'd been out two whole days. That bullet across my side must've been a lot worser than I'd imagined.

I smelled something else, too, and knowed what that stench was. We hadn't gotten far from The Voice and Vern. They must've been still lying dead in the sun, stinking their way to Hell.

I looked up, and saw sun creeping its way between slots in a roof. A roof? No, not quite a roof. I was in a brush arbor, or maybe a lean-to. “Did you build this?” I managed to point up.

She grinned then nodded, “It isn't exactly the St. James Hotel in Cimarron.”

Forcing a smile back at her, I said, “It's better.” Well, not really. I mean, that Frenchy who ran that place knowed how to cook, and you could get some fine whiskey, even good wines, up there. 'Course, you could also get killed, real quick, Cimarron being one of them kinds of burgs.

Oh, it was pleasant, me lying in Gen's lap, her gentle fingers on my head again, but I knowed we couldn't stay there. Them bodies was likely already bloated, soon to get worser, and even through the slots in the roof Gen had built, I could see turkey buzzards floating in the breeze, waiting for us to hurry up and leave them to sup.

“I need to sit up,” I said, and started to move. Gen almost protested, but she must have seen that I could be as mule-headed as she could be, and she helped me slide up, then eased me back against the arroyo wall. Well, there was some dizziness, and I thought for a moment I'd just lose anything in my stomach, but that passed. So did the chills. I begun looking around and pointed. “That their pack?”

“Yes.”

“You go through it?”

She shook her head. “I . . . couldn't.”

“Bring it—” I stopped myself.

She was a nun, and she'd just come close to being violated—hell, there wasn't no
come close
to it. That son of a bitch had ripped that shirt, and she had clawed his face. She had made him pay for his transgressions. Vern, too.

“Do you think you could bring it to me?” I spoke softly, gently. “Probably should go through it, see if there's anything we need.”

Trouper that she was, Gen ducked underneath the lean-to, hurried to the pack, maybe two rods away, and dragged it back into our shelter, the shelter she had built. Her fingers begun working at the rawhide cords that fastened that decrepit piece of smelly canvas. I leaned forward, thinking I might could help, but a spasm of pain sent me back against the sandy wall. I closed my eyes, bit my lip, and tried not to scream. Must have done all right, because she didn't notice. Just went right on and got them cords undone, tossed open the cover, and reached inside.

First thing she drug out was an empty whiskey bottle, which she tossed aside. Then a rusty old food pail, also empty. She tossed that away, too. Then a gourd, which she shook, and, perplexed, looked at me. “They're packing this junk? Across the desert? Were they that stupid?”

“Not so stupid,” I said. “Bottle and pail could hold water. So could the gourd if they hollowed it out.”

Dead weight? Right. That's what you're likely thinking. Why would anyone carry all that across the desert, after I'd even dropped an empty canteen? But The Voice had Vern to haul all that dead weight for him.

Her head bobbed. She'd be careful from now on if she come across something that she might have mistook for garbage.

Next, she pulled out a box of lucifers, and these she cherished, setting them gently on the ground.

“How many are in there?”

She opened the box. “Almost full.”

“Good.”

Back to work she was, but what she taken next made her stop, and the color drained from her face. It was a lady's chemise, French-made, hand-embroidered, real fine white cloth. One woman's hose, an ugly myrtle green color, fell out.

A stocking like that would run a body a whole thirty-nine cents for a pair. I knowed that because this strumpet I'd consorted with in Denver had made me buy her a pair, just like that one lying in the sand. I done it, and left her, because even a whore should have better taste than wear stockings that wretched color.

But I saw Gen wasn't thinking about nothing like that—how could she?—but was thinking about how them two ruffians might have come to possess such items.

“They aren't ripped,” I told her. “Likely found them on the trail, too.”

Not sure she believed me, but she dropped them to the ground, tried to steady her breathing, then combed her hair with her fingers.

“Put the top on,” I said.

She studied me real hard, uncertain of my intentions.

“Your shirt's ripped. It'll be extra protection from the sun.” I smiled. “Besides, it's real pretty.”

“I don't feel pretty.” Her voice was hard, bitter.

“You are.”

The smile came, slowly, but it came, and she pulled the ripped shirt off, not embarrassed, nothing of the sort. I saw the cross I'd give her. The chemise went on, and then the torn shirt over it. Grinning, she held up the hose for my inspection. “And this?”

“I don't know. We could use it as a bag, I reckon.”

“Or a bandage.”

Back to work she went, hands disappearing inside the pack, then pulling out the next item. Wasn't another hose. It was a book, its cover torn off. It wasn't a Bible or nothing, so she just throwed that away. Same with a tintype of some naked lady, which she practically heaved all the way to Pino Mountain. Didn't let me see it, neither. Only reason I know what it was is 'cause she told me two days later.

She dragged out some clothes, too dirty for any human to wear, and a top hat, with its top all smashed down. She pitched it to me, and I put it on. Even though it didn't fit too good, it would help me in the sun when we took to walking again.

Finally, out come a canteen, which she held up and sloshed around. Glory, something was in it. She handed the canteen to me, and I pulled out the stopper, tilted it, my eyes already watering, taken a swallow—and liked to have died.

Coughed so hard, I feared, and so did Gen, that I'd open up that wound in my side. I spit, and wiped the tears in my eyes, felt snot pouring out of my nose, leaned back, and finally got my breath back.

“Now I know why the marshal of Magdalena was after them boys,” I said. “That's the worst whiskey I ever drunk.”

“Are you all right, Micah?” Gen asked.

I wiped my eyes, my nose, then my hands on my trousers. “Will be,” I said, wheezing some. “As long as I don't drink no more of that forty rod.”

She held the canteen, which was covered with blue wool, one of them old Army issue ones, and for a moment there, I thought she might take a taste. Instead, she turned the canteen over, and the whiskey fell on my side.

Well, I screamed as that whiskey burned, and I cussed, and I probably would have wet my pants if I'd had enough fluid in my kidneys. Next, she was yelling like a panther, and through the tears in my eyes, I saw why. She'd poured the rest of the whiskey on that bad cut over her calf.

Finally, both of us was all screamed out, and the turkey buzzards had flown away we'd hollered so much. She put the empty canteen by the other plunder worth keeping, and reached inside the bag. She pulled out a leather pouch, pretty big, and something was inside it. I hoped it might be some greenbacks, even though we didn't have no store or café to spend money on. Ain't that just like a gambler and thief?

No. What she pulled out, she immediately dropped.

“God,” I said. “A scalp.”

Her Adam's apple bobbed. “More are . . . in here.”

I looked at the long black hair. Now I knew what for the law was after them two scoundrels, and why they deserved what they got. I've done some pretty wicked things in my time, but never, never have I taken a human scalp.

“Indian?”

My head shook, though I wasn't certain, but it was a pretty strong suspicion. “Mexican government pays a bounty for Apache scalps, but”—I had to take a deep breath, and slowly let it out, slowly swallow down the disgust in my throat—“some men figure that you can't tell an Apache scalp from a Mexican one.” I knowed something else, which I didn't let on. That scalp, the one she'd dropped in the dust, had come off a woman's head.

Gently, Gen picked up the scalp, put it back in the pouch, taken it outside and buried it. When she got back, she grabbed the pack, and figured there wasn't nothing else in that bag for us, certainly nothing we wanted to take a chance on seeing, and she dragged it as far from us as she could.

Once she was back, she sat beside me and started sobbing. First, I figured it was because of them scalps, and I put my arm around her, pulled her close.

The cries got stronger, little short, choking gasps, and I moved closer to her, despite the burning in my side, and whispered that everything was all right.

She shook her head. “I killed two men.”

Now . . . it wasn't that I was trying to be funny, and it wasn't because I wasn't really thinking about what I said and all, but it was on account that, as I think I've wrote down in this here account of mine before that I do know something about math and all, because what I said was “Actually, three, counting Jorge de la Cruz.”

Wrong thing to say, because she begun all-out wailing.

I pulled her to me, and let her cry on my shoulder. I rubbed her back and whispered, “They weren't men, Gen. None of 'em was even close to being human.”

She wailed.

“They would have killed us,” I said. “Both of us.”

More wretched, heartbreaking sobs.

“This ain't the Sisters of Charity orphanage, Gen. It ain't church. It's a hard country. And to live, you got to do some unpleasant things and all.”

She made herself stop bawling. That's the kind of woman she was. I felt her arms come over my head, and she pulled me close to her, and my side was just tormenting me fierce, but I didn't cry out in pain.

“Bless me, Father,” she said, “for I have sinned. It has been seven years since my last confession. . . .”