Valley of Fire (2 page)

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Kensington Publishing Corp.

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Table of Contents

The Lord works in mysterious ways.

Yeah, you've read that before. So have I, and I ain't much when it comes to picking up books. Well, ain't nobody ever accused me of being a writer. Rapscallion. Gambler. Liar. Whoremonger. Drunkard. Cardsharp. Horse thief. Two-bit assassin. Son of a bitch. Been called them things, and worser. Yet I have come to believe that, indeed, the Lord does work in mysterious ways.

How else could you explain why I sit, one more time, in this damp, stinking dungeon in Las Vegas, New Mexico Territory, legs shackled, sentenced to hang? Fitting, I guess. The padre who frequented that old orphanage always said I was bound for the gallows, so I've accepted his prophesy as gospel. In eight hours, it will all come true.

But how I, Micah Bishop, wound up here . . . well, that is one thing I'm still trying to figure out. And I ain't got much time to reach some satisfactory conclusion.

These words I write for the undertaker and the ink-slinger reporting on my execution for the
Las Vegas Daily Optic
. These is the facts, or best guesses, as I know them.

My name is Micah Bishop. Maybe. I'm an orphan, but that's the name the Sisters of Charity told me that my ma or pa had given me. I am thirty years old, or thereabouts. I have been accused of killing a gambler in this burg a few months ago, which, if you must know, is true. It wasn't, though, exactly murder. I called it self-defense, but nobody believed it. Nobody on the jury, or in the entire courtroom, or anywhere in the territory believed it.

Except two people. Maybe. Sister Rocío and Sister Geneviève, would believe me, but they wasn't around to testify on my behalf. It don't matter. Besides, they wasn't in that bucket of blood when I dealt this b'hoy named Gomez out of the game, permanent-like. The county solicitor would likely have objected to anything them two nuns had to say under oath regarding the untimely passing of Manuel Gomez, since those two nuns didn't witness the shooting.

But if not for Rocío and Geneviève, I wouldn't be here. If I'd never heard of the Valley of Fire, if Geneviève had not busted me out of jail, if Sean Fenn hadn't been such a greedy bastard, if priests and Spaniards hadn't done such a dirty, rotten thing more than two centuries ago, if Sister Rocío hadn't been so damned honorable and good, if and if and if and if . . . well . . . it's like I said. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

So here I sit. Alone. Just me, a candle, a couple writing tablets and a few pencils. There's a Bible over in the corner, next to the slop bucket, but I haven't cracked its spine yet. Too busy writing.

Is this my confession? I don't know. Maybe. I'm trying to figure that out, too.

Just like I was always trying to figure out Sister Geneviève Tremblay. And even old Sister Rocío.

Maybe it'll all make sense to me when I'm finished writing. Or more than likely, I won't know the truth till some trusty hangman springs that trapdoor open and I get dropped into eternity.

For me, it all started here in Las Vegas after I'd sent Gomez to meet his maker, after I was first sentenced to hang. It began like this....

Continental Arms Company calls its little pepperbox pistol “Ladies Companion,” and, honestly, it ain't much of a gun. But when that five-shot .22 is an inch from your eyeballs, it might as well be a cannon.

Even when it's held by a nun.

“I didn't bust you out of that hellhole ten minutes ago,” Sister Geneviève said, her hand not wavering a bit, “to have you quit on me now. So sit down, Mister Bishop, or I scream, and that mob hauls you back to jail, or, more than likely, straight to the gallows tree”—her finger tightened ever so slightly on the trigger—“providing I don't wallpaper this pigsty with your miserable brains.”

We was in a hotel room, and it was a pigsty, but not as bad as the one I'd been in just minutes earlier. I was in that pigsty on account of a sawed-off little runt called Gomez, who caught me dealing off the bottom over at Hernandez's Gambling Parlor on La Plazuela, then had the stupidity not only to pull a pistol out of his waistband, but to send a ball through my hat, part my hair, and scar my scalp. He would have done a lot more damage had he gotten off his second shot. He didn't, but only because I put a bullet in his gut. After which, the good citizens of Las Vegas bruised me considerable, hauled me off to jail, and sentenced me to hang in less time than it has taken me to write this all down. There wasn't no grand jury or coroner's inquest. They hadn't even given me a trial. How was I supposed to know that the late Gomez was Felipe Hernandez's brother-in-law? Felipe Hernandez owned not only Hernandez's Gambling Parlor on La Plazuela, but a big freight line than ran from Raton Pass to Santa Fe, and an even bigger rancho just north of town. And by now you've likely figured out that he also owned the mayor, marshal, and some mercantile in New Town, where the hangman had bought his rope.

Well, they could have strung me up right then and there. But they give me a day or so to rot in the jail. Torture, I call it. Making a body think about that hemp scratching your throat, wondering what it'll be like, if your neck will break or if you'll just kick and choke and strangle. Sons of bitches.

Guess there ain't no point in trying to explain that I was innocent. Sure, I had killed Hernandez's brother-in-law, but I had warned Gomez not to pull that pistol, had told him he was making a bad mistake, and he had gotten off the first shot and come a couple inches from killing me. That made it self-defense, even if I had been cheating, which nobody could prove unless I confessed, and that certainly wasn't in the cards. I had been protecting my person. Same as I'd been forced to do with that drover in Missouri, and that outlaw down in the Indian Nations. I hadn't killed nobody in Texas, but them Texians seemed to suspicion just how come other men's horses kept following me home.

That was my story. And Sister Geneviève's? That was what I was trying to figure out.

Staring at that pepperbox, her gloved hand so delicate on those rosewood grips, her finger tighter than I'd like against that trigger, I began to suspicion that Sister Geneviève wasn't no Sister at all. Granted, I had spent some years trying to forget what those nuns had tried to beat into me back at that orphanage, but my memory told me that nuns usually didn't have such cold brown eyes, and seldom looked so beautiful, not to mention deadly. Maybe they'd cuss a little when riled, but I doubted if nuns carried pepperbox pistols. And, sure as hell, I'd never heard of a nun busting a fellow out of jail a few hours before he was scheduled to die. Even the Pope, I figured, would frown upon a Sister going that far to save a gent's soul.

I didn't have to figure how Felipe Hernandez would take my escape. Sounds from the street drifting through the open window told me that, plain enough.

Criminy, just a few minutes earlier I had been confined in the worst jail I'd ever struck, picking over the hog and hominy I expected was my last meal, washing it down with cold coffee—and no sugar, mind you—wondering if I'd wet my britches when they come to string me up. About that time the jailer, a toothless old coot named Evers, had ducked his head into the hallway and said, “A nun's here to see you.”

I had rolled my eyes.

“Boy,” Evers said, “iffen I was you, I'd see her.”

“You worried about my eternal damnation?” I asked.

He snorted and spat. “I don't give a hoot 'bout you, mister. But that sister, she looks finer than frog hair cut eight ways. Was I younger and condemned to die, I'd be of mind to pray with a gal like that.”

“Hell, Evers, send her in.”

Old Evers was right. This nun walked in, clutching a Bible in her right hand, and pressing the silver crucifix she held in her left to right pretty, full, rosy lips. Dark as that pit was, I couldn't see her too well, and considering how she was all decked out in a loose dress of black serge with white coif and black veil covering most of her head, about all I could make out about her was her face.

A beautiful face. Perfect nose, not a blemish about her, with such soulful brown eyes. When she got closer, over the stink of the dungeon, I could even smell lilac on her person. She looked younger than me. Lowering the crucifix, she told me, “I am Sister Geneviève of the Sisters of Charity.”

Sisters of Charity?
That sent a chill up my spine, recalling to mind them years just down the trail in Santa Fe where I had spent most of my childhood getting walloped by nuns who had looked nothing like her.

She turned to ask Evers, “May I enter the cell to pray with him?”

Sounded perfectly French. Not that I knowed what perfect French sounded like.

Evers, miserable reprobate that he was, shook his head. “Nobody's allowed inside, Sister. Marshal's orders.”

Marshal's orders?
I thought.
You mean Felipe Hernandez's!

“Very well,” she said, and bowed in the filth and muck that covered the flagstone floor. Once she taken to praying in Latin or some foreign tongue, Evers left and locked the big oaken door behind him.

Soon as Evers turned that key, she looked up with eyes not so much soulful but rather harder than a beer bottle. “I need you to take me to the Valley of Fire.”

“Ma'am?”
Valley of Fire?
At first, I figured it was some Catholic talk, about me telling her the wickedest things I'd done—which would have taken considerable time—and feeling the fires of Hades before getting absolution and avoid going to the bad place.

“You heard me.” She sure wasn't speaking Latin. Or French. She sounded like the hard-rock madam at that hog ranch a few miles north of Trinidad, Colorado. She asked again, her voice far from forgiving. “Can you take me there?”

That inquiry was the last thing I expected, and I spilled most of my cold coffee over my duck trousers and almost sat down in the slop bucket. “Ma'am?”

“Take me and others to the Valley of Fire.”

This was summer. The Valley of Fire, or Fires, as some folks called it—as if it wasn't hot enough already down there with just one fire—lay east of the
Jornado del Muerto
, the “Journey of the Dead” along the old Camino Real, maybe a day or so from Lincoln . . . but more than a hundred and seventy-five miles from these gallows. Brutal as that country was, it did seem more inviting than what Las Vegas offered me. But there was one little thing....

“Sister,” I said, “much as I'd like to help you out, I don't think Felipe Hernandez is gonna let me guide you nowhere.”

She was standing. “Let me worry about that. If I get you out of here, will you help me?”

“Hell, yes!” I felt no pressing need to meet up with Saint Peter.

“Deputy!” she called. Had to call twice more before Evers unlocked the door and headed down the hallway.

“That was quick. You—” He almost choked on the quid of tobacco he was gumming when she stuck that pepperbox in his face.

“Let him out,” she said, spoken like the word of God.

She didn't give him time to stall. When he just stood there drooling brown juice into his beard, she cracked him upside the head with that little pistol, and brought her knee up savagely into his groin. Old Evers went down, and her knee went up again smashing the poor fool's face, then she pounded the back of his head with her Bible and the pepperbox. He fell hard against the flagstone, and I feared she had killed the reprobate. That .22 disappeared in the folds of her habit while she grabbed the ring of keys he had dropped.

Faster than David could sing a psalm, we was out of that jail, skedaddling in the shadows. Seemed to me like we was making a beeline for the livery stable, when all of a sudden we both heard old Evers screaming and cussing from the door to the jail. Made me wish she had hit that loudmouthed jailer harder, maybe even killed him. As luck would have it, Felipe Hernandez happened to be riding right past the jail with a bunch of his gunmen. So much for sneaking to get us some horses. Shots was fired, and every drunk in town came flying out the saloons along the plazuela. Instead of running to the livery, we cut down an alley and hurried up the back stairs of El Hotel Gallinas, making it to the second floor. The good Sister had a key, and after she unlocked the door to room 22, we quickly found ourselves panting and listening to the ruction being raised outside.

Wasn't much of a room, illuminated only by a couple candles, but El Hotel Gallinas ain't much of a place to hang your hat. Once I had caught my breath, I thanked her for her trouble and told her I'd see about fetching a horse and be on my way. That's when I was suddenly looking down the same pistol barrel that old Evers had seen before she'd knocked his lights out.

That's when she told me, “I didn't bust you out of that hellhole ten minutes ago to have you quit on me now. So sit down, Mister Bishop, or I scream, and that mob hauls you back to jail, or, more than likely, straight to the gallows tree, providing I don't wallpaper this pigsty with your miserable brains.”

I didn't sit. “How you plan on getting me out of here?” I jutted my jaw toward the window. Since she sure wasn't deaf, she could hear those shouts from the darkened streets. Men was cussing a whole lot more than she'd just cussed me, and I could savvy that Felipe Hernandez wanted me brung back dead, and he didn't care what they did to the gal who had sprung me loose, either.

“I got you this far.” She jerked her head toward the cot. “Sit down!”

The bed squeaked.

“You said you'll guide us to the Valley of Fire.”

Who was
us
? I wondered. Being honest for a change, I said, “A man about to hang's likely to agree to just about anything.” I smiled.

She didn't.

The pepperbox came closer to my eyeballs. I'd expected what she had just done—a nun, helping a convicted murderer bust out of jail—to weigh heavily upon her shoulders, to cause her to tremble, and cry, and maybe fall into my arms. Instead, I got another good look down the barrel of that little cannon.

“Are you really a nun?” I asked.

But she must've not heard me because she was saying, “Sister Rocío insisted that you were the only one....”

“Rocío?” Instinctively, my right hand felt the back of my head.

Her eyes hardened. “You know Sister Rocío?”

I rubbed my noggin. “An old one-armed crone?”

Sister Geneviève's head bobbed just slightly.

“She cracked my skull and knuckles a million times back at the orphanage.”

My rescuer didn't trust me. Not yet. “Where was this orphanage?”

“Santa Fe.” For effect, I emphasized. “
Sisters of Charity.
Next to St. Vincent's.” That was the hospital the nuns had started right after the War of the Rebellion. Later, them nuns had formed the orphanage, and then what they called an industrial school for girls. Those sisters wandered all across the Rocky Mountains begging for money, for help.

“She was older than dirt back then, and I left, what, sixteen years ago. She couldn't be alive after all this time. She looked liked she was about to bite the dust when I knowed her. She must be dead. You must have another Sister Rocío.”

“Left arm amputated at the elbow. Blind. She just turned seventy-three.”

“Seventy-three? I thought she was a hundred when I knowed her.” Still, I couldn't stop smiling. “Good for Sister Rocío!” I meant what I said, but I was also thinking,
That old hag's mind has gone. She's mistook me for some other wayward lad she tried to beat sense into.

“She insisted that you're the only one who could take her there.” Geneviève Tremblay was whispering to herself, but I heard.

When I stood, she pointed that pepperbox right at my stomach, but my fingers slowly reached inside my vest pockets, though I knowed they was empty. Then I checked the mule-ear pockets on my britches, but they was the same.

“Thieves,” I said.

“What are you talking about? What are you looking for?”

“Just a rock. An old black piece of lava. Watch fob. Rocío gave it to me right before I run off—before I left.” I smiled. “That and a heavy silver Cross of Lorraine.”

“Lava?” she asked.

“That's how the valley got its name,” I explained.

It must have convinced her that I was honest, sometimes, because she lowered that gun, and said, “I'll take you to Rocío.”

Outside, among all the shouting from the streets, came words like
muerto, guero,
and
puta
. The population of Las Vegas, New Mexico Territory, sounded mightily riled.

“I don't mean to sound skeptical, Sister, but the way I figure it, old Evers has told everyone that it was you who busted me out of the calaboose. They'll likely search your room.” In a pig's eye. Criminy, there wasn't no
likely
to it. At that moment, I heard floorboards groaning and spurs chiming just outside the door to our room.