Wake of Vultures

by Lila Bowen

  The next morning, Milo led over a half-draft horse capable of carrying Regina’s considerable weight without wobbling at the knees like the paint did.

  “Captain took a dozen mounts from her town,” he muttered. “Says she might as well not lame your pony.”

  Nettie knew better than to thank either of the old coots. Her new saddle barely fit the wide horse, but the big feller took on the weight without protest, and Regina didn’t seem to know the difference as Sam ponied her along at the end of a long rope. Riding bareback as she was, Nettie’s rump grew calluses and went numb. Every time she jumped down off Ragdoll’s back, she nearly fell over on aching legs. Taking her cue from the other fellers, she switched off to ride Puddin’ every other day to give Ragdoll a rest, her boots hanging to the gelding’s knees. As she’d never ridden bareback for long periods before, it was one hell of a lesson for her, and she swore next time they were plundering, she’d choose two saddles, just in case. At least the paint was short and agreeable, and she could soon hop on and off the little horse at a walk or a trot.

  “You must have plenty of Injun blood,” Jiddy said with a sneer. “Trick riding that way.”

  Nettie kept riding, swaying back and forth with the barrel-bellied pony as if the dig hadn’t hit home. “You never told me, Jiddy. How was it you didn’t see that siren woman coming?”

  In response, he spit in the dirt, narrowly missing her new boot, and trotted back up to his place behind Virgil and Milo. The Captain hadn’t given him a bit of the spoils from the saloon and had, in fact, burned it to the ground with booty still inside just to prove a point. Nettie looked down at her badge, licked her thumb, and put a little shine to the metal. She wasn’t a monster, and she sure as shit wasn’t incompetent. Whether or not she was an Injun remained to be seen, but she was starting to figure she’d rather be any sort of mixed breed than a pedigreed man full of hatred.

  The land was pretty in West Durango, long swaths of green speckled with purple flowers, all of it watched over by jagged mountains and the occasional herd of buffalo. The horses took every chance to graze, and agreeable creeks and placid lakes seemed to pop up whenever they needed one. Whenever they saw evidence of a ranch, they stopped to feel for monsters before giving the claimed land wide berth. Rabbits were plentiful, and the men took turns shooting at quail and grouse that rose, flapping, from the fields. For the first time in her life, Nettie wasn’t hungry most of the time, nor was she lonely, what with Sam riding by her side. If she hadn’t been marching toward the monster of all monsters, Nettie would’ve considered it the best stretch of her life.

  Late one night, Hennessy woke her, a hand on her shoulder. She was round-bellied and dreaming deep, thanks to a lost, unbranded beef some of the boys had ridden down and carved up for supper. Regina was a softly snoring mound across the fire, and Hennessy sat back on his heels and smiled at her as she rolled up to sitting and checked the time on her new watch. The moon was as high and nearly as full as it could get, which meant it was practically daylight on the plain. A little after two in the morning, but Hennessy wouldn’t know that, as he hadn’t yet earned his watch or his badge. Quick as a snake’s blink, he snatched her timepiece from her hands, stood, and dangled it out in front of her.

  “Time to wake up, other Hennessy,” he whispered. “Your turn for night watch. Come and get it.”

  Nettie leaped to her feet and ran after him before quickly checking herself. Cowpokes did not skip and giggle, and up until just that moment, neither did Nettie Lonesome. Hennessy was behind a screen of scrubby trees, and Nettie hurried back there, trying to appear dignified, should any of the other wranglers be awake.

  “Give me back my watch, other Hennessy. I’ve got guardin’ to do.”

  Hennessy stopped jogging backward and held out the watch, letting it dangle by its chain. When Nettie snatched it, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her close, his hands hot on her biceps. They were of a same height, although she was whip-thin and he was built of golden muscles held together with sugar frosting, far as she could figure. But the way he was looking into her eyes made her feel like Sam was taller, and stronger, and altogether more real than she was. The light blue of his eyes matched the moon, and the little golden hairs on his cheeks sparked like glass in sand.

  “Howdy, pardner,” he said, voice mellow and deep, and Nettie realized, all of a sudden, that he meant to kiss her. So she did the only thing available:

  Nettie Lonesome turned on her boot heel and bolted.

  CHAPTER

  17

  Hennessy didn’t call after her, and she didn’t hear his footsteps giving chase, so she slowed to a walk and returned to the fire like her heart wasn’t about to beat out of her chest. Trying to catch her breath, she stuck her watch back in her vest pocket, snatched her holster off the ground, and took off for the little valley where the sixty-or-so horses were asleep, tails twitching. The herd had swollen with the sound horses from the siren’s town, but they’d blended into the group with little fuss. There was a flattish boulder in just the right sort of place to watch over the area, and when Nettie sat, she sighed deeply. Had Samuel Hennessy’s rump recently warmed the same rock? Or was that just what was left of a day under the hot, desert sun? Didn’t matter. Nettie lay back, letting the heat soak up into her every crevice, unstiffening her back and thighs from a long day riding bareback.

  For a long time, Nettie lay there, trying to make sense of the stars. And of Sam. Horses she could understand, and men a little, too, but the stars were too far away. She’d heard somewhere that there were pictures among the stars telling stories from worlds long toppled, but all she saw were shiny bits of nothing, holes poked in an old, black sheet. And yet they seemed to move, to dance, to slowly twirl. It made her dizzy, watching the stars, but then again, so had Hennessy. What had he meant, looking at her like that? Moving his face so close, his eyes begging her to understand something that made no more sense than the stars? Why had her belly swooped and swirled when he was the opposite thing of a monster?

  And why had she run away instead of sticking around to see what happened next?

  She knew how horses mated, and she knew how to geld stallions who didn’t know their place. As she’d assured Dan, she knew how a herd would behave as each horse found its place. Hell, she even had a good idea of how men and women joined, as it couldn’t be much different from what horses or dogs did in broad daylight. But the only man and woman she’d ever watched together were Pap and Mam, and they didn’t behave in the logical fashion of animals. During the day, they barely spoke, and at night, if Pap caught Mam, it was as good as two cats fighting and ended with Mam facedown on the old cornhusk mattress, snuffling like a pig. Sometimes Mam cried out, but mostly she just cried, and those were the nights Nettie had slept in the broken rig in the barn with a blanket over her head.

  She’d never seen folks kiss outside of the saloon, and even that seemed to produce feeling in only one of the partners—the human one that paid for the privilege. Kissing and bed sport for their own sake had never been anything Nettie had considered as a possibility. Until Hennessy went trying to match his lips to hers.

  Suddenly, Nettie had wanted to find out exactly what those lips would feel like.

  And that scared the shit out of her.

  So she’d bolted.

  She could face down any number of monsters, but she couldn’t let a feller she liked just fine get two inches closer without turning tail and running away like her hat was on fire. She’d followed him around at a distance, the one summer he’d been with the Double TK, but she hadn’t really understood why.

  Now she did.

  Maybe there was something to being a girl, after all, if Hennessy liked having her around.

  “Hellfire,” she muttered to herself.

  In answer, a coyote yipped, and Nettie realized too late that the pleasant flip-flop continuing in her belly had been caused by more than just thoughts of what a completed kiss with Hennessy might’ve felt like. When she
sat up, she found a brown coyote sitting politely at the base of the rock, a tidy package of sticks and leather at its paws.

  “That you, Dan?”

  The coyote yipped. Nettie looked back toward the sleeping camp, expecting to see the shine on a gun barrel and the sound of a certain bearded grouch spitting in the dust.

  “Can’t Jiddy feel you?”

  The coyote shook its head, tongue lolling comically.

  “Then go put on that little skirt of yours and tell me what you want in people words. I don’t speak yip.”

  With an all-too-human shrug, the critter picked up the leather packet and trotted off behind some scrub. Five minutes later, Coyote Dan moseyed around the corner wearing nothing but his leather flap, his bow and quiver strung over his shoulder.

  “Jiddy knows my scent. And if he weren’t drunk and full of spite, he might be vexed to feel me nearby. Poor bastard knows I’m a better scout, and he would love to shoot me. But I have the Captain’s permission to come and go. And after all, Durango is a free country.”

  Pulling her knees up to her chin, Nettie couldn’t help staring at Coyote Dan, considering most of him was exposed under the peculiar blue-white light of the moon. He seemed entirely at ease in his skin—in both of his skins. Relaxed and yet ready for anything. It was peaceful around him, mostly, just because he seemed like he was exactly where he wanted to be, not rushing or balking or worrying as most fellers did.

  “Why are you here, Dan? The Injun woman’s been pointing me this-a-way, so I reckon we’re on the right track.”

  He nodded, gave the ghost of a grim grin. “Your passage has not gone unnoticed. The smoking ashes of Reveille and a large herd of stolen horses led me right to you.”

  Nettie’s eyebrows drew down in irritation. “You saying we shouldn’t have kilt that siren lady who was luring folks in, stealing their belongings, and eating their goddamn faces off?”

  The real grin arrived, wry and wide. “If she was a siren, killing her was necessary. A siren’s hunger is unstoppable. Burning her captive husband alive with a well-built town that could have sheltered others was a tragedy.”

  Nettie went cold, right down to her toes.

  “I didn’t know about that. Never asked what happened to that feller.”

  “Most people don’t. The Captain takes no chances, which means many innocents suffer in his path. What do you think he would do to the tribe of Javelina we met?”

  Nettie just stared through him as it played out behind her eyes. The Captain’s men would draw their guns, and the Javelina leader would stand to proclaim their mission. Sure as shit, one of the Javelina would shift or grunt or do something innocent and foolish, and some Ranger idiot dumber than Chicken had been would shoot off a wild bullet, and then there’d be two less Rangers and an entire tribe of well-meaning folk murdered. Just another hill of sand in a prairie of endless sand.

  “What the Sam Hill am I supposed to do about that, Dan? I see you looking at me like I can stop it. I can’t. All I can do is hunt down this Cannibal Owl, whatever and wherever it is. And it’s danged tiresome. Already saved me one troublesome creature this week.”

  Dan glanced toward the fire, where Regina slept beside the bulk of Hennessy, wrapped in his blanket with his back to where Nettie sat watch. “If only the rest of the Rangers shared your impulse to save innocents. What will you do with the woman? And her child?”

  Nettie fidgeted; she didn’t like thinking about that. “Leave ’em in the next town we find, I reckon. Provided it’s not just the mouth of another damn monster. Her husband’s dead, but I ain’t gonna be the one to tell her.” She fiddled with the strings of her serape. “She says they were keeping her safe for the Cannibal Owl. As a tribute. Best I can reckon, they meant to give it the baby.”

  “That’s logical. She’s very near her time. Did you know that?”

  Nettie shuddered and looked toward the fire. “That’s what Sam said. We’d best get to a town right quick, I guess.”

  When she turned back, Dan squinted and stepped closer, looming over her. Long fingers reached out to flick the star over her chest. “So you’re one of them now.”

  Nettie shrugged away, wishing she’d had the good sense to tuck the badge under her vest. “I was the only one the siren couldn’t call.”

  “Because you’re the Shadow.”

  She snorted and kept her voice too low to carry. “Or because I’m a girl.”

  Dan crossed his arms over his muscled chest and sat beside her on the rock, facing the same direction. “You think the siren’s song affects only men?”

  Scooting away, she muttered, “I seen how it is. Stallions and mares. Cowpokes and whores.”

  Dan sighed, his bare shoulder close enough that she could feel the heat through her shirt. “Your heart is not a rock that stands unchanging. It’s like water. It flows, it moves, it allows neither boulders nor canyons to stand in its way. It hardens and softens and expands to fill new spaces. You are still becoming yourself. And you have a lot to learn.”

  “You keep saying that, but you keep on teaching me nothin’.”

  It only put her in a fouler mood when Dan laughed like she’d just mouthed off a joke. She hopped up and stalked toward the horses. At least they didn’t talk gibberish. At least their shit was honest.

  Behind her, a certain sound set her teeth on edge: an arrow being drawn from a quiver.

  She stopped but didn’t turn. “You gonna shoot me, Dan?”

  “No, Nettie. The opposite. I want to teach you to shoot a bow. A gun can misfire, get wet, or be taken from you. You can run out of bullets. But once you know how to make a bow and arrows, you’ll always have a way to fight. And if your aim is as good as I think it is, you’ll be able to end a monster—any monster—with one shot to the heart.”

  She looked over her shoulder, eyes slitted, remembering how her bullets had bounced off the siren. “What’ll it cost me?”

  Dan walked up and held out his bow. “Only time. In a tribe, it’s considered a man’s duty to teach others what he knows. Teaching someone how to protect the tribe is expected. The world needs you. If my time will help you stop the Cannibal Owl, I’ll be more than repaid.”

  “I ain’t in a tribe, Dan.”

  “But you could be.”

  Nettie snorted. “I’m a little late to be a papoose.” She took the offered bow and turned it over in her hands, trying to figure out the ways of it. “But I reckon I can learn. It’ll keep me awake during watch, at least. It’s always useful, knowing a new way to kill stuff that won’t shut up.”

  Dan took the bow back, but gently, and held it out at arm’s length. “A simple piece of wood, hard and flexible. Osage orange, cedar, ash, willow, juniper. The bow is thicker in the middle and notched at each end. A cord, preferably rawhide, but sinew or bark will do. The arrows are hard, straight wood, half the length of the bow, tipped with arrowheads and fletched with feathers. Vulture or turkey. These materials are so important that I carry them with me wherever I go as man or coyote. They’re more important than clothing or food or water, because they allow me to obtain clothing, food, and water. Do you understand?”

  “What I understand is that I need to know how to shoot that thing before I need to know how to make it.”

  “You think so?”

  “I know so.”

  Dan’s laugh was short and harsh. “Because you were raised by ignorant people. They taught you to use things before you understood them. To kill things before you recognized them. To hate things before you knew them. But you’ll appreciate a thing better when you know where it comes from, when your hands know the shape of it.” He scanned the prairie. “Take the bow and an arrow. I’ll make a target. If you can hit it, I’ll give you this bow.”

  “And if I miss?”

  “Then I’ll teach you to make the bow and arrows so that you’ll truly understand. You have twelve days and nights until you reach the lair of the Cannibal Owl. Perhaps you’ll learn something while the moon sti
ll shines so that when the sky is dark, you’ll have a better chance of hitting your target.”

  Nettie looked up at the fat orb and shivered. “Twelve days?”

  Dan nodded. “It’s fitting that you strike just before the new moon.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Owls don’t see as well, then. Perhaps it will help.”

  Nettie snorted. “That’s bullshit, and you know it. If the critter likes to hunt on a new moon, I reckon it’s strong as the damn devil then.”

  “Then you’d best be stronger.”

  While Dan went to muck around in the dry grass, Nettie inspected his bow and the arrow he’d left with her. The marks of a man’s care and use were clear beside the gouges from an animal’s sharp teeth. The leather grip knew the shape of his hand, and the arrow’s feathers were tied with horsehair and an eye for beauty. The tip itself was a marvel to the girl, who hadn’t known before that rock could be mastered and shaped to such sharp perfection. The arrowhead in her bag was a rough thing compared to Dan’s work.

  That would be a powerful trick, to know how to turn a rock into a cutting weapon. She was testing the tip of it against the pad of her thumb when Dan returned and pointed to a roll of dry grass about the shape and size of a large man’s torso set up twenty paces off. Its general shagginess reminded Nettie of Jiddy, and one side of her mouth curved up as she took aim as she’d seen Dan do.

  He watched her struggle until the arrow had fallen from her hand three times, then stepped closer, both arms going around her as his chest pressed against her back. When Nettie tried to pull away, he held her close in the cage of his arms, his hands wrapped around hers at the bow’s grip and the arrow’s feathers.

  “Back off, Dan. I can do it myself.”

  She struggled, but god damn if he wasn’t as strong as a mule.

  “You need to learn to take instruction, Nettie. Other wranglers seek to dominate a bronc, to beat the sense into a larger animal. But you seem to know that kindness and understanding are the true way to a creature’s trust. You can gentle a horse, but can you be gentled yourself? You can’t learn if you’re this tight in mind and body. The arrow won’t fly true if your hands are shaking.”