Valley of Fire (15 page)

Let her talk, I did. What else could I do? Let her talk until she cleansed out her soul and fell asleep. Easily, I laid her on the ground, and went down beside her, putting my right arm over her, thinking about her, about me, about us, about Sister Rocío. I went to sleep. At least, I tried to.

 

 

Next day, I knowed we had to leave. Gen must've not remembered anything about her confession, about the scalps, maybe not even about the two men she had killed. Well, she never looked at them, anyhow, and didn't mention nothing about all she'd said.

By this time, gray wolves had begun gathering around, running off the coyot's. Big wolves kept snarling in the distance, waiting to get at The Voice and Vern. I wasn't gonna deprive them critters for much longer.

That stocking turned out to be a right fine bandage across my side, and I taken the whiskey-soaked canteen, the empty bottle of King Bee Whiskey, and the rusty pail to the water hole. Filled them up—rinsing out the old canteen three times upon Gen's orders—and set them aside. Well, the rusty pail wouldn't hold a drop, so we left it, but I did hollow out the gourd with that pocketknife, and it held a bit of water just fine.

“Were there any bullets in that bag?” I asked Gen.

She shook her head.

I give her The Voice's Colt, a long-barreled .45. “It's empty.” I reckon she already knowed that on account that she had emptied it. “But it's a good gun. Might find some bullets for it somewhere down the line.”

She shoved it into the saddlebag, along with the gourd and the whiskey bottle.

I tipped up my too-small top hat and hefted the machete, but it proved too cumbersome, too heavy. I tossed that big sticker toward the swelling, stinking corpse of Vern. Besides, I had a pocketknife and a Dean and Adams, which I had reloaded.

Gen had found me a piece of driftwood, good and hard and twisted, which I could use for a crutch to help me with my bum side and all. Once I picked up the canteens, and slung them over my shoulder, she took the saddlebags and pulled my hat down on her head. Then she walked to me, taken that top hat off me, give me mine, and put the silly battered old top hat on her.

“It fits me better anyhow,” she said.

I wasn't going to argue that point. Never cared for top hats. Too dandified for me.

Her head tilted north.

Mine shook. I pointed south.

“We don't have to go to Gran Quivira. Or the Valley of Fire.”

“Gran Quivira's closer,” I said.

“But—”

“There's shelter there. And I should be able to find water. Or at least trails.” I gestured toward the other direction. “Head back through that furnace?” I couldn't stop shuddering at the mere thought of such torture. “Six miles, no more than eight. We'll be climbing up Mesa de Los Jumanos. We'll be out of this hell.”

“Micah,” she pleaded, but I had my stubborn streak going.

“It's our only chance,” I said.

Her head dropped, but nodded, and she taken off, with me limping just behind her.

Them wolves wasted no time once we got moving.

 

 

Bad as my side ached, we didn't make good time, but we was far from them bad men, far from them bad memories. I don't know. Maybe what I should have done was taken Gen up on her suggestion. Mayhap we should have tried to make it back north, toward Anton Chico, and rolled the dice, said the devil with Felipe Hernandez. Or we could have moved west. There was passes between those mountains as the Manzanos were well north and west of us by then. We could have picked up the Camino Real
,
or the Rio Grande, even the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. Might could I'd even pay a visit to the marshal of Magdalena, see if he'd trust me—if not me, then Sister Geneviève Tremblay—and find out if there was some kind of reward posted on The Voice and Vern.

Might be, of course, that I was just a damned fool. Nah. Ain't no
might
to that.

On the second day, we begun to climb, sliding on them rocks, grabbing scrub, making footholds. Now, that mesa ain't nowhere near the Sangre de Cristos or Manzanos, but when a body has been walking as far as me and Gen had, gone through all we had, well, even a stroll across the Santa Fe Plaza would be a handful.

On the fourth day, we was well up the slope, even had some black cedar for shade. Seen us a couple rattlesnakes, but they seen us first. By whirring their tails, they let us know that we wasn't welcome.

“We could shoot one,” Gen suggested. “Ever tasted rattlesnake?”

“Enough to know I'd rather eat something else.”

Leaving them alone, we kept going.

 

 

“They called the Indians here Jumanos,” I said as we kept on climbing, following what appeared to be an animal trail, cougar I reckon, maybe some pronghorns. “Means ‘The Striped Ones.' See, the Indians here painted a stripe over their nose.”

We stopped to rest under the shade of a lone juniper. After taking a swallow from the canteen, I offered a slug of water to Gen, but she turned up her nose.

“Is there any water in the other one?”

Struck me odd, but I sloshed our old one around, pulled it off my shoulder, handed it to her. “That one,” she said, making a face at the canteen I'd drunk from, “was the one those cutthroats had. With the bad whiskey.”

“We rinsed it out,” I told her.

While drinking, she shook her head.

“Three times. You made me do it.” I reached up and tapped the wooden bottom. Her eyes peered over the container. “Not too much. Got to last us a bit more.”

After she had corked the canteen, she handed it back to me. I taken one more quick pull from mine, and didn't taste nary a hint of that rotgut, put the stopper back in it, and knelt, removing my hat, wiping the sweat from my brow.

“How do you know?” Gen asked.

“Know what?”

“About the Jumanos
.
”

Had to study on that some. Finally, I shrugged. “Not exactly sure.”

“When you were scouting for the Army?”

Done some more thinking. “Maybe, but I doubt it. Seems to have come to me earlier.”

Her eyes twinkled. “I think those Tompiro Indians were before your time.”

My head bobbed. “Yeah. I warrant they was. How'd you know?”

She laughed, so musical, and life just danced in them sweet eyes of hers. “Because you're not that much older than me, Micah, and . . .”

My head was shaking, so she let her words fade. “That they were called Tompiro? That's what I meant.”

“The church had a mission here,” she said. “That's why we are bound for Gran Quivira.”

Again, I shook my head. “The Sisters of Charity weren't here.”

No more laughter, no more life in her pretty eyes. “Are you interrogating me?”

I snorted and slapped my knee, which irritated my side. “No, girl. Of course not.”

The smile returned, but she wasn't so certain no more. “The Catholic church, Micah, had the mission here. The Sisters of Charity are part of the Catholic church.”

I pushed myself back to my feet with the crutch Gen had got for me.

On we went, chewing salt grass leaves when we could find them, conserving our water, resting a lot, moving south.

 

 

Next morning—I think it was, but it's hard to tell. Days just run together when you're walking through desert, hardly eating, hardly living, barely surviving. Anyhow, it was morning when I knelt by a plant, and plucked a red berry, maybe the size of a marble, from it. I popped it in my mouth, made a face, then grabbed another, and handed it to Gen, who was kneeling beside me.

She ate it, and her face scrunched up, too. Gen spit hers out. “It's bitter.”

“Wolfberry.” I handed her some more. Indians, I recollected, boiled them, then dried them and ate them. That I had learned during my brief career as an Army scout. But you could eat some raw. If your taste buds did not object too much. And your stomach.

“I can't—”

“You got to,” I said, and forced another into my mouth. “It's food, and we need food. You just can't eat too many.”

She ate another. “You don't have to worry about that.”

 

 

That's about all the food we had. Oh, I spied a herd of pronghorn once, way off in the distance, probably eight or ten, but I knowed I'd have no chance of sneaking up on them close enough to shoot with a revolver. And even if I lucked out, pronghorns being dumb, curious critters, I was pretty certain even if I hit a buck or doe with a bullet, I wouldn't kill it outright, and a pronghorn can run a long ways before it dies.

We made it into thicker timber, then started down, me limping right badly by that time, and fairly often cussing myself silently as the biggest damned fool in New Mexico Territory.

All this while, though, I kept formulating plans. Eventually, I'd come to the conclusion that my brilliant idea would get me killed, but I'd then start thinking of another one.

Gen fell silent, too, troubled. Or maybe she was formulating her own plans.

I hoped hers was a whole lot better than mine.

See, plans wasn't my point of expertise. Generally, as I'd told Gen before, I made things up as they come to me.

Heading downhill now, we reached the end of the timber, coming to a sea of bluestem, blue grama, and Indian rice grass, all of it tan from the sun and lack of rainfall. But the grass sure waved in the wind.

The sea didn't go on forever. I pointed to a hill.

Gen shielded her eyes and stared.

“Gran Quivira,” I told her, smiling slightly.

She lowered her hands, and turned to me, mouth trembling. “Micah. . . .” she started, but I was already walking through the ugly grass.

“Watch out for snakes,” I told her. “Don't want to get bit by one this close to home.”

Not that Gran Quivira was home, but it might be my final resting place.

Despite my bum leg and throbbing side, I moved at a pretty good clip, heading across the little valley that separated the mesa from the old ruins. Hell, it was too hot in the day for rattlers to be out no how.

Rattlers meaning animals, of course. There is another kind.

“Micah!”

I stopped. She'd caught up with me, was walking beside me, and pointed toward the ruins, which we was just now beginning to make out. This time, it was me who had to shield my eyes. Four horses came loping down that rocky slope, and they wasn't wild beasts. Far from it. They carried riders.

“Run!” Gen screamed, but I tossed down my crutch, and raised my hands over my head.

“We'd never make it,” I told her. “These them friends of yours?”

“No,” she said, which was not a good answer.

Two of the riders spread out, armed with Winchesters aimed in our general direction. The other two rode right for us, sunlight bouncing off the revolvers in their hands.

Gen stepped toward them, but stopped, and slowly lifted her hands toward the heavens, too.

The two boys flanking us pulled up, keeping us covered. They must have figured us important, ornery heroes just like Kit Carson and Jesse James.

The other two riders slowed their horses to a walk, and I started my right hand for my waist, but the Dean and Adams wasn't there.

“Damn it!” I turned to Gen. “I must've lost my revolver.”

She seemed relieved.

The rattler on the claybank rode up easily, chuckling, shaking his head, grinning at me whilst pointing a Colt revolver at my head.

“I'll be damned,” Sean Fenn said. “I'd given y'all up for dead.”

A second later, Sean Fenn's expression changed. Gone was that look of delight, replaced with utter shock. “Jesus Christ!” he shouted, and swung deftly off the claybank, handing the reins to the rider beside him and holstering his gun. He took two steps toward Gen, stopped, and whispered, “My God, Gen, are . . . are you . . . all right?”

Me? I shot a glance at Gen, didn't see nothing strange about her.

“Yes, Sean,” she said softly. “I am fine.” Her voice betrayed her true feelings, though, and Fenn was waving his hat at the two outriders, hollering at them to hurry in, bring some water, some jerky, and some hardtack.

As Gen got pampered, Fenn walked over to me. I didn't expect to rate such fine treatment and respect. No concern on his face when he come up to me. Instead, he sniggered. “Christ, Bishop, you look like hell.” When he got closer, though, he stared at me long and hard. “Good God Almighty.”

Well, he sure didn't make me feel real pretty.

He started to bend down for my crutch, thought better of it, and his hand touched the butt of his Colt. “Let's have your gun, Bishop.”

“Lost it,” I told him.

“Like hell.”

“It's true, Sean.” Gen's voice carried across the flats, and me and Fenn looked at her. Lowering the saddlebags, she knelt, opened one of the pouches, and pulled out The Voice's empty Colt. “This is all we have.”

The first rider taken the handgun, pulling it to half cock, opening the loading gate, and rolling the cylinder on his arm to see that it was unloaded. Then he lowered the hammer and shoved the weapon into his waistband.

A smirk returned to Fenn's face. He picked up the crutch, handed it to me, and for that I was grateful. I leaned on it. 'Course, he still didn't trust me, so he pushed up my ragged, dirty, ripped shirt and found no Dean and Adams .436 or Continental Ladies Companion—only the green hose that had become a bandage. He laughed.

“That must have been some time y'all had, eh, Bishop?”

I wasn't paying him no mind, though I absently drew the pocketknife from my trousers, and tossed it to him, reckoning that would make him feel better. One of the riders handed Gen a piece of bread, probably rock hard. She taken it, and just stared at it as if she'd never seen sourdough before.

“Go ahead, Gen.” Fenn was looking at her, too. “Feast. You're nothing but bones.”

“She shouldn't eat too much,” I said. “Make her bad sick.”

Back at me, he frowned. “What have y'all had to eat?”

“A rabbit,” I answered. “Little bit of jerky. Some wolfberries a day or so ago.”

“Since when?”

Now that took some figuring, and even though I knowed how to cipher real good, and determine odds, and things like that, I had no idea. When had that thunderstorm hit? How long had I been laid up after The Voice plugged me? How many days had we walked since leaving the water hole? Even now, I still ain't rightly certain.

Even after Fenn told me the date, I couldn't fathom a guess. Well, we hadn't been wandering for forty years, but I felt fifty years older.

“Corbin!” Fenn turned toward the guy with the bread. “Put Gen on your horse. Take her to camp. We'll feed her some of that soup. Now, damn it!” Turning back at me, he said, “But you, Bishop, you walk.”

I limped past him.

“Sean!” Gen managed to call out. “He can barely walk. We've walked forty miles.”

Well, the way I figured it, I'd walked a lot farther than that.

“He'll have to,” Fenn said to her. “There's no way I'd ever trust Micah Bishop on a horse, especially my horse.”

Even I had to laugh at that one.

 

 

Here's another reason I didn't like Sean Fenn. He had no respect for nobody but hisself. You take the ruins of Gran Quivira. He said only fools would have lived in this country, he called the Indians that had called this country home “diggers,” and said while these savage Indians didn't even know about the wheel, the Renaissance was happening in Europe. And . . . the priest who had started the big church never even finished it.

“Because,” Fenn reasoned, “he was smart enough to leave.”

I looked at those crumbling walls, some of them thirty feet high and six feet thick, and the rotting rafters that must have weighed maybe as much as two tons—from trees that had to have been fifteen miles from here—and I had nothing but respect for the Indians who built this place.

But I reckon sentiments such as them won't be enough to get me through them pearly gates, or slip me out of a hangman's noose.

Anyhow, they herded Gen and me into a square room without windows and only a single exit in one of the smallest structures. One of Fenn's men taken the horses somewheres. There was coffee in a pot, cold, since they had no fire going at the moment, and soup in a bucket, likewise cold. They fed Gen. Told me to sit down.

Fenn had three men with him, the gringo with the bushy mustache and Texas hat, Corbin. Another one wore a sugarloaf sombrero, and I think his name was Benigno. The third one, lanky and rawboned and ugly as sin, I never heard called nothing. His face was heavily scarred, so I just thought of him as The Pockmarked Man.

Once Fenn made sure Gen was comfortable, he left her to her soup, which she could barely eat, and knelt across from me, rolling a cigarette with one hand.

The other three men stood behind him, holding their guns.

“Mind if I ask you something?” I said, all polite and friendly.

“Ask away. I'll be asking you questions as soon as I have myself a smoke.”

“How'd you get off that train?”

He grinned.

To make him feel proud of hisself, I added, “Figured they would haul you all the way to Santa Fe.”

“They did.” He found a lucifer in his vest pocket, struck it on a rock, and got his cigarette going. “Took me all the way to the county jail.”

“And?”

“Santa Fe is in Santa Fe County. Las Vegas is in San Miguel County. There's no love lost between those two jurisdictions, and not much cooperation among the legal authorities.” Fenn smiled. “Besides, you've lived in this territory long enough to know that. ”

Should've knowed. He'd bribed his way out of the calaboose.

“How long have you been waiting here?”

He wagged a finger at me and blew a smoke ring into the air. “You asked me some
thing
, Bishop. Now it's my turn. Fill me in, pretty please, on what happened since you left my company.”

I told him what I figured he needed to know, nothing more.

“You expect me to believe that bit of nonsense?” He blew smoke in my face, but I didn't cough.

I just stared back at him. I hadn't lied. Everything I told him had been gospel.

“It's true, Sean,” Gen said.

She was standing, though leaning against the rocky wall to keep from falling.

Fenn glanced at her, then leaned toward me and crushed his cigarette out on my forearm.

I couldn't just stare him down then. I yelped, slapped at the burn, then he slapped my hat off, and punched me to the ground. My teeth clicked hard against each other, and I spit a bit of blood onto the rock. One of his boys hooted. The others said nothing.

“Leave him alone, damn you!” That come from Gen.

Fenn had balled his hand into a fist, and I was expecting another hammer to my head, but he turned and saw Gen. His fingers reappeared, and he pushed back his hat. First he looked at her, then at me, then at her, then again at me, then at her, and when he turned to face me again, he was grinning.

“Were your evenings with her as pleasant as she once made mine?”

That's another thing I despised about Sean Fenn. He knowed how to hurt a person, not just with guns and fists, but words. “Go to hell, you son of a bitch,” I told him.

That prompted him to hurt me more with fists, which, you might find hard to believe, I preferred to his words.

 

 

When I come to, I peeled the wet bandanna off my eyelids, squinted at the bright sunlight, and felt fingers on my forehead, fingers whose touch I'd recognize anywhere.

Gen came into focus.

“You're a damned fool,” she said.

I could tell she'd been crying. That was easy. Tears cut quite the path down all the dirt on her face, but I guess she still looked beautiful to me. Over her objections, I pushed myself up, leaned against the rocky wall, and felt my right boot.

“How bad is that foot?”

“It's all right,” I said, and let out a sigh of relief.

“Let me look at—”

“No!” I grabbed her arm before it touched my leg, and she jerked from my grip, my anger, my reaction.

“You ain't a nun, are you?” I said.

Her lips trembled, and she had to wipe away the tears that had begun flowing down those dirty cheeks. Her head shook. She couldn't speak.

“I figured.” I spit out some blood, run my tongue over my teeth, and didn't notice none missing. Fenn wasn't hitting as hard as he once did, or maybe he realized he needed me to be able to talk.

Her head bowed. I let her sob. She choked out something, then spoke so I could understand. “I tried to tell you.”

My head shook, and maybe that broke her heart. “You didn't try that hard, Geneviève.” I figured it had come time to drop the
Gen
. For now. Sean Fenn called her Gen, and I didn't like nothing about Sean Fenn.

“Did I tell you . . . any . . . anything?” she asked.

She must've blocked out her confession, and I don't rightly blame her for that. I even hoped she had forgotten most of what had happened, wouldn't recollect The Voice and Vern, or, for that matter, even Jorge de la Cruz.

She was reaching under her ripped shirt, into her chemise, but my hand stopped her, gently this time, and I shook my head. “Keep that,” I whispered.

“I can't.”

“Please.”

Her hand fell away from her chest, and I sighed with relief.

“Can you forgive me, Micah?” she asked, hopeful.

I smiled, which hurt like hell. “Already done that.”

She leaned over and kissed my bearded cheek. That hurt like hell, too, but I didn't mind, didn't wince, didn't complain.

“Damn,” Fenn's voice called out, “I can't leave you two lovebirds alone for a minute, can I?”

Geneviève turned around, and even beneath all that dirt, and dried trails of tear, I could see her face flaming red. “Don't you touch him again, Sean Fenn. Don't you ever lay a hand on him.”

Fenn's face hardened, and he reached for his holstered revolver. “Mind your tongue. Out here, I'm God.”

“We need him,” she said, spacing her words out for emphasis.

“Why do you think I busted him out of jail?” He pushed her aside, and pointed a finger at me. “Think that deal in Las Vegas was for old time's sake, pard? Is that what you think?” He was madder than Geneviève. “Here's the deal, Bishop. You live as long as I let you live. You don't make love to my girl behind my back—”

“I never—”

He slapped me down. That one really hurt. Didn't knock a tooth out, but it sure loosened one of them big ones. My head slammed against a rock, and blood gushed from my head. Reckon that blow jarred some sense back into me, as instantly I recollected that I'd never been real good at planning things, and this plan—if I ever had one—wasn't turning out the way I'd hoped.

“Leave him alone!” Like a catamount, Geneviève leaped on Fenn's back, but he flipped her over his head, the wind whooshing from her lungs when she landed.

That I saw, and I came up, blinking blood from my left eye. Fenn turned, drawing his revolver, but I wasn't going after him. I was crawling to that girl, lying, eyes staring vacantly, and me fearing that bastard had broke her neck or back. Her lungs fought for breath, and I lifted her into my arms as Fenn eared back his Colt's hammer. I expected we was both dead, but one of Fenn's men—Corbin, it was—stopped him from really making a mess of things.

“You best control your temper, Fenn,” the gunman said. “I didn't hire on to be part of a lover's quarrel. You promised us a fortune in gold. And to hear you talk, you need that fellow there.”