A Cinnabar Sky

by Billy Kring

  Hunter’s neck was on fire from holding it off the rock for so long. She turned her head to the side, and the pain forcing stiff muscles and ligaments to twist made her breath whistle.

  As soon as her head touched down, she jerked it up.

  Water ran in a small rivulet down the floor of the shaft, two inches deep and six inches wide. Hunter’s stomach felt a ball of ice form.

  The water’s rising, and fast.

  Hunter’s fear of tight spaces and of drowning almost caused her to faint as the blood pounded in her ears, but she held on and pushed the fear back down. “Adan, the water’s rising, so put your face to the side when you need to.”

  He patted her ankle, but didn’t speak. She heard him spitting out spiders.

  She crawled ahead, feeling the water grow steadily deeper on her chest. The spiders didn’t like it, so they gathered on her head and face, any place above the water. She felt goose bumps every time their tiny legs touched her neck and went into her ears.

  She snorted when they went into her nose, and with her head turned sideways to stay above the water, it was constant.

  The water was cold, and made their teeth chatter, but it also helped with the pain on their knees. When several dime-sized hailstones floated down to her, she knew why.

  Five minutes later, the water was so deep she had to turn her head and raise it, using her stiff, burning neck muscles to do so. She tried to talk once, but failed. Making herself cough helped, and she said to Adan, “Keep your head as high as you can. The spiders are getting less. If you can put your head on my heel, I’ll try to help keep you up.”

  “Okay.”

  The water was a stream now, and ice cold. The spiders seemed to have left, but the water sapped their strength every second.

  Hunter held her breath and turned her head, putting her mouth and nose under water so she could see up the shaft. Only the faintest gray indicated the opening. Checking her phone showed three minutes of power left.

  Fear pumped adrenaline through her, and Hunter moved faster, keeping her head turned to the right and as high as she could. The water reached her chin, and still rose. Adan coughed and sputtered, but came on, still holding her ankle.

  Hunter’s phone failed when they were several feet from the entrance. The coldness and the dark filled her with despair. A brilliant flash of lightning lit the sky and let her see how close they were, maybe ten feet from the opening.

  The lightning also brought a heavy deluge of ice cold rain, so much that the shaft filled at a rapid rate. Hunter pushed and crawled as fast as she could, but the rain continued to fill the shaft.

  She heard Adan gurgling, she raised her legs to lift his head as water covered her mouth and one eye. With time for one last breath, Hunter hooked her foot under Adan’s arm and pulled him forward as she continued in the dark and without air as the water closed over her.

  Her lungs burned and panic gave her strength to continue. When she pushed again, her hands, reaching as far out in front of her as she could, broke the water’s surface.

  She pushed forward while pulling a limp Adan with her feet, and her face broke the surface. She gasped several huge breaths while climbing out of the hole and reaching down to grab Adan. She lifted his head from the water as she shivered and her teeth chattered.

  As soon as she turned him on his side and called his name, the boy coughed out a cup full of liquid, choked a bit, then breathed. He said, “Are we alive?”

  Hunter stroked his head and helped him sit up. Both were waist deep in the water as she said, “Let’s not do that again, okay?”

  With their bodies numb from cold, they crawled out of the bowl-like depression that housed the shaft entrance. She said, “So that’s why all the water.”

  They crawled on hands and knees to the lip of the bowl and looked around. Short brush crowded the rim and provided good protection.

  Adan hugged himself and said, “I am so cold.”

  Hunter said, “Me, too.” She motioned with her hand for him, “Come here.” They hugged each other for body warmth as she looked around for shelter.

  Adan’s teeth chattered. That’s when Hunter spotted a small overhang along the side of the mountain. She told Adan and he squinted, trying to see it. Hunter pointed with her forefinger and said, “Look along my arm to the finger, like sighting a rifle. Its right at the end.”

  Adan finally saw it, then said to Hunter, “How could you see that?”

  “Eating lots of carrots,” She smiled at him. They started across the hillside, and moved up to the slope, along a shelf of stone that stood out from the side.

  When they reached the shelter forty minutes later, both were exhausted. Hunter climbed into the shelter, a stone ledge undercut where softer stone and caliche had washed out to leave a space six feet high in the center, and ten feet in depth to the back wall and extending for twenty feet to where the ends tapered down to the ground.

  Evidence of prehistoric Indians showed with the burned rock that had been shoved out the mouth of the shelter and down the slope. A large, abandoned rat nest was along one portion of the back wall. Hunter knew it would supply a lot of dry wood and tinder so they could start a fire.

  She searched around the pile, found a dry sotol stalk, and a flat piece of some hard wood, she thought mesquite. The abandoned nest was comprised of fine pieces of grass, hair, downy feathers, and bark. She arranged a handful on the stone floor, and used the sotol stalk to rub the mesquite and make a friction fire. They had flames in less than two minutes.

  Adan fed the flames with twigs to create a small, almost smokeless fire, with room between it and the back wall to reflect the heat. They sat between the fire and wall, and within twenty minutes were dry and comfortable.

  Hunter spotted a pitaya cactus nearby and went to it to pluck the strawberry-flavored fruit. Animals and birds hadn’t gotten to it, so the cactus was full. She carried them in her shirt front, holding it like a basket, and brought them to the fire, where she and Adan ate, relishing the tart sweetness of them after their ordeal.

  Adan said, “Do we walk to the border now?”

  Hunter held up her phone and saw the batteries were dead. “I think so. We’ll have to be careful in case Ellis or his men are looking for us.”

  “They believe we’re dead inside that mine.”

  “Uh-huh, and we want to keep them thinking that way until we get somewhere safe.”

  They sat in silence after that, both exhausted, and watching the sun go down. As the burning orb dropped to the horizon, it turned the bottoms of the low clouds an incredible, deep red so rich it appeared they glowed with a vermillion inner light.

  Hunter motioned Adan to her and they scooted close to the fire that had burned down to coals. She positioned Adan so his back was to her front and her arms over his chest to put her body heat around him. The night grew cool, then cold, with the fresh rain’s humidity making it feel even colder. They soon fell into exhausted sleep as the now clear, cloudless sky full of stars turned like a gigantic, slow-motion wheel through the night above them.

  Chapter 16

  Hunter woke when there was a faint light in the eastern sky. Stars shone everywhere in the night above them. She scooted away from Adan so he could sleep longer, and the movement sent jolts of pain through her knees when the scabs tore open. She made a silent grimace, but still didn’t waken the boy.

  The more she moved, the more pain she felt. In her stiff neck, where the tendons seemed as tight as cables, and her shoulders, which caused a white fire of agony in the joints from her position in the air shaft. She moved slowly, until her limbs felt able to function. The fire burned down to a few coals, so she used the small pieces of grass and twigs to get it going again. Once flames rose, she added other wood to it, and soon had a nice blaze the size of a hat. There were three pitaya fruits left from the day before, and she ate one, leaving the other two for Adan when he woke.

  Thirst was a big thing, so she walked out of the shelter and looked fo
r small potholes or depressions in the rocks where yesterday’s rain left water. She found one, fifteen feet from the shelter and lay on her stomach to suck out the water from the small depression holding a cupful of moisture. She spotted several others nearby, but wanted to wait for Adan to rise so he could also drink.

  When she returned to the shelter, Hunter sat down and pulled back the torn cloth over her knees to check her wounds. Both were crusted with half-dollar sized scabs that wept blood from the cracks.

  “Those look like they hurt,” Adan said, startling her. She hadn’t heard him rise.

  “Yeah, they sting a bit.”

  “I saw some prickly pear yesterday, wait here.” He rose and picked up a shard of thin stone before walking out of the shelter and back along the way they had come. He knelt beside a small growth of the cactus for a moment, then returned with four pads of the young, green ones. He sat beside her and took each pad to scrape clean and get the interior of them exposed. Then he said, “These will help.” He took off his shirt and tore several strips off it, using them to hold the cactus on her knees.

  “That already feels better,” She said. “How’d you learn that?”

  “My mother.”

  “That’s a good trick to know.”

  “I bet you knew it.”

  “I did, but I didn’t see the cactus.”

  He smiled, then looked around, “Is there water near?”

  Hunter pointed to several small depressions holding moisture, and Adan went to two of them, drank and came back.

  He ate the fruits and asked, “When do we go?”

  “Today. No reason to wait.” She led the way from the shelter, going down the mountain toward the mine entrance. “We’ll go to the mine, see if Ellis and RL have left.”

  “If there is a car or truck, maybe we can take it.”

  “Maybe so.”

  They walked with care, partly because of their aches and pains, and partly to keep a watchful eye out for Ellis. The further they descended, the aches and pains lessened because of muscles warming up and blood pumping at an increased rate.

  Hunter took a path the last third so they could approach the shed undetected. They worked to a point in the junipers that was two hundred yards from the mine entrance. Hunter and the boy found a comfortable spot and watched the area for an hour, but saw no other life. She said, “Let’s go,” and the two walked across the slope and through the juniper and cedar to the shed, or where the shed had been.

  The slope above the shed had collapsed on it, leaving only a small piece of corrugated tin protruding from the huge pile of rubble.

  Hunter checked the tracks for both people and vehicles and recognized those of Ellis and RL and their SUV. She checked close, putting her face a foot from the tread tracks to see evidence of insects and weathering. When she rose to her feet, she said, “They left this morning, for sure after last night’s rain and today’s morning dew.”

  “Good, I don’t want them around anymore.”

  “Me either.” She scanned the area in all directions, “Well, you ready?”

  “Yes.”

  They walked a steady pace that gradually increased in speed as they reached more level ground and their muscles warmed to the task. She stopped every fifteen minutes or so to scan the horizon. An hour later, she saw a pale column of dust in the air coming from behind them.

  “I think we might have someone on our trail.”

  Adan turned and watched it with her. “They are coming right where we walked. Look, they’re where we followed the shallow ravine.”

  “Let’s make a turn up here, see if they stay on us. If they do, it means there’s a tracker in their group.”

  Walking at a slightly faster pace put them quickly into the rougher areas, with fingers of alluvial washes spread out like long, spidery fingers. They crossed two dozen such cuts in the terrain, some were three feet deep, while others only six inches, but all prevented fast pursuit.

  Hunter spotted the vehicle again, an older model Ford pickup with oversized tires, still coming their way. It was a good seven or eight hundred yards behind them, but made much faster time than the two did on foot. She turned and said to Adan, “We need to speed up.”

  They moved into a dog trot, a ground-eating, shuffling run that Apaches used in the nineteenth century to cover a hundred miles a day, and glided over the broken ground. Adan kept up, but he showed the strain on his face.

  The sharp snap of a supersonic round passing close and the plume of dust from the bullet strike showed thirty feet in front of them. Two seconds later, the distant boom of the report reached their ears.

  Hunter sprinted ahead as Adan ran beside her. She said, “Cut into that arroyo up there.” She was also shocked at how close the man came to hitting them from that distance. He’s good, she thought, and that frightened her.

  They cut into the three-foot-deep arroyo and Hunter dropped down to crouch as she continued along the cut. Adan labored with his breathing. “I can’t go much farther, Hunter.”

  “A little farther, okay?”

  He nodded, saving his breath.

  Another bullet hit far from them, so Hunter relaxed but kept up the pace. They were still some thirty or more miles from the border and any help, and that made her stomach weak with dread.

  The arroyo deepened to five feet, so the two runners raced upright, going quicker and breathing easier than before. When the arroyo split, Hunter took the left, and took the next left off of that. She stopped and caught her breath as Adan collapsed on the sandy arroyo floor. When their breathing slowed, she listened.

  The pickup was still coming. She found some sage growing at the edge of the cut, and raised her head behind it to peek at their back trail. The truck was two hundred yards, maybe a bit more, behind them. The driver had already cut the distance by over half. She saw the scoped rifle out of the passenger side window as well. They had a shooter, a tracker, and a vehicle. Hunter swallowed, and her mouth was dry.

  She watched the pickup wallow across several small washes, and Hunter saw two men in it. One was the shooter, he was obvious. The other was the driver and the tracker. She figured that out when they stopped and the driver got out to check for sign. The shooter took his rifle, a scoped, bolt action Remington, Hunter thought, and scanned the area through the scope. When the tracker signaled for him to return to the pickup, he lowered the big bore rifle and hopped inside.

  Adan touched her shoulder, “I know them. They work for Winston Hart, on his big ranch.”

  “Who are they?”

  “The one with the rifle is Anselmo Ancira. The driver is Ben Zambrano.”

  Hunter pointed at the healed scar on his face, “Did they do that to you?”

  “Ancira did. Zambrano is nicer. Not nice, but nicer than Anselmo.”

  Adan saw Hunter’s nostrils widen and her eyes take on a hard look when he told her about who hit him. She said, “Okay, then.”

  Adan said, “We cannot outrun the men in the pickup, can we?”

  “No, but I have an idea. Are you game?”

  “Por supuesto, of course.”

  She told him her plan, and he smiled.

  **

  Ben Zambrano slapped the steering wheel, “These two are causing me some major grief!”

  “They’re like damn jackrabbits, cutting this way and that way, then disappearing and reappearing someplace else. I can’t even get a bead on them,” Anselmo said.

  “I’m calling for some help.” He lifted the mike from the fifteen-watt two-way radio and called, reaching the ranch. He sent their coordinates and told them to send a couple more guys, armed. They said two men were on their way with AK-47s, be there asap.

  Ben saw the boy rise up in sagebrush a hundred yards ahead of them and take off running across a flat area. He floored the gas and they pursued him across a patch of washboard and hardpan, then through a thick copse of creosote bushes, where he dropped out of sight like jumping into a well.

  Ben slowed and drove
to the point where they last saw him, and stopped parallel to a small wash. He got out, leaving the truck running, and found where the tracks showed in the sandy bottom. “I’m gonna follow them for a while.”

  Anselmo nodded, took his rifle and walked to a nearby high point to check the area.

  Hunter rolled out of the sage patch twenty yards to the side of the pickup and hurried to the vehicle, sliding into the driver’s seat without a sound. She glanced at the two men and, with her heart beating as fast as a hummingbird’s, pulled the shift into D and shot out of there.

  Ben looked back over his shoulder and shouted, “Hey! Hey!”

  Anselmo turned, brought up the rifle and shot.

  Hunter felt the bullet hit the passenger door with a hard, metallic sound and it entered the cab to smash the two-way radio into several pieces. She cut the wheel and took a sliding turn around a hill no more than six feet tall, but that was enough. A final, futile bullet whined overhead, and she was in the clear.

  Adan raced out of a second arroyo as she approached, and Hunter slid the pickup sideways to him. He hopped into the passenger’s seat before it stopped while Hunter gunned the motor and they sped away, leaving a rooster tail of dust behind them.

  Hunter felt an enormous sense of relief as they drove toward the border. Adan wore a goofy grin and giggled. He said, “We did it.”

  “You did a good job.”

  They drove across the country, being careful to dodge potholes or rocks large enough to tear out the transmission, until Hunter spotted a primitive road on her left. They took it and made better time, but she was still careful, watching for anything that might slow their progress.

  She said to Adan, “Look around in here, see if there’s any water or something to eat.”

  He opened the glove compartment and pulled out two sticks of jerky, but there wasn’t any water in the pickup. She said, “Let’s hold those until we get some water. There’s a lot of pepper on them.”

  Adan nodded. They continued, now close enough to the border to see the massive mountain ranges in the Big Bend and Mexico. They were getting closer, she could feel it. She wondered what Ben and Anselmo were doing now that they were afoot. The thought made her smile.