Cowboys and Aliens

by Joan D. Vinge

  He spoke from his own heart as he looked out at their faces; his spirits rose as he saw them working side by side to clean up the wreckage of homes and stores, or help each other search for things they had lost—lost, but waiting to be found, he prayed.

  Like Jake Lonergan, who had saved the town from demons last night with the otherworldly weapon on his wrist—and then ridden away like the devil was on his tail, after trading words and blows with the Colonel. . . .

  Jake Lonergan: wanted, dead or alive. Damned if he did, damned if he didn’t even remember. God help him, Meacham thought, with complete sincerity.

  He saw Emmett, who had lost his grandfather—his only kin—helping a little girl pull her half-burned doll out of the rubble that had been her home. Meacham smiled at the sight. Emmett was trying to deal with his loss in the best way Meacham knew by helping others deal with their own loss.

  “. . . BUT MOSES SENT his spies to survey the land, and they returned with fearful hearts . . . for they’d seen giants there, evil beings more powerful than they’d ever encountered. ‘We won’t survive against them’, they said. . . .”

  Emmett wandered on down the street, seeing his life in a mirror . . . a broken mirror: This was his life, lying in ruins. He’d lost Grandpa, even Abuela Juanita . . . but somehow he was still here, although his own body didn’t even feel real to him.

  When he looked in the mirror, it was empty. He must have thought that same thing a hundred times over. But no matter how often he thought it, he couldn’t really feel it; not yet. His mind and his body had gone numb, like they had when Mama died. He knew how much it would hurt when the numbness went away. . . . What was he going to do then? What was he—

  He stopped suddenly, as he saw Preacher Meacham’s Bible lying in the street, dusty and slightly singed, but miraculously intact. He picked it up and brushed it off, then turned and ran back up the street to where Preacher Meacham was speaking.

  MEACHAM GLANCED DOWN, breaking off in mid-sentence as Emmett held his Bible out to him. He smiled for the first time since yesterday—which seemed like a hundred lifetimes ago, now—as he accepted the boy’s offering, and realized that the answer to his one personal request to God had been “Yes.” The smile he gave Emmett then was one that last night he could have sworn would never touch his face again until Judgment Day.

  Seeing it, Emmett smiled, too, although only moments before, he’d been sure he’d never smile again. Resting his hand lightly on Emmett’s shoulder, Meacham murmured, “Bless you, boy,” as he felt his resolve double. God had not abandoned him, or these people.

  “. . . and for their faith, the spies were allowed into the promised land, where they stood tall against the giants, and were saved.”

  As he picked up the thread of his sermon, he glanced toward the Gold Leaf Saloon, where this morning Doc was engrossed in his true calling as a healer. All night Doc, aided by family members and volunteers, had been treating townsfolk who’d been seriously injured but were still alive. For one day, at least, the saloon had become a field hospital, and Doc could refocus his life for a time, without spending every moment grieving over Maria.

  Doc glanced up from his work, hearing Meacham’s words, looking out the window. His eyes met Meacham’s, then looked past him at the sunrise. His face filled with certainty and purpose, things Meacham couldn’t remember ever seeing there before. Maria might be missing, but with God’s help or without it, Doc meant to get her back alive.

  Meacham gave him a slight nod, and looked around where he stood. If he turned in one direction, he could see the infernal machinery of the demons. If he turned another way, he faced the rising sun.

  Suddenly inspired, his thoughts became his own call to arms to the people working all around him. “If those creatures are proof of Hell,” he said, pointing at the dead machine, “then they’re also proof of God! He’s testing our faith—so we’re goin’ after our kin. Thy will be done, Lord, and there’s an amen behind it.”

  Still smiling, he turned back toward the church to begin preparing for the journey.

  JAKE WAS ABLE to make better time as the new day brightened around him. He could leave the main trail now and head across open country, where he was less likely to meet anybody else who thought they knew him.

  But as he topped another ridge, a sense he couldn’t name ran its fingers up his spine, making the back of his neck prickle: the same thing he’d felt yesterday in the saloon, just before the sheriff and his men had come through the doors. . . .

  He reined in his horse, looking over his shoulder: He was being followed. His hand went to his gun out of habit as he watched his back trail, waiting. Had Dolarhyde changed his mind—?

  His mouth tightened as the rider who was following him came into view: only one person, a woman . . . Ella. He recognized her by her dress. The only concession she’d made to riding out alone into the desert was that she had a man’s hat pulled down over her long dark hair, for protection from the sun. That woman had to be crazy. He wondered if she’d even brought a canteen with her.

  It suddenly occurred to him that maybe she did want the bounty on his head. A thousand dollars was enough to turn a lot of people crazy . . . with greed.

  Frowning, Jake stayed where he was until he was sure she’d seen him, too. He watched as she headed up the slope toward him, and then he dismounted.

  When Ella reached the top of the ridge, she found Jake’s horse cropping grass in the scrub, riderless. Jake had disappeared. Her face fell as she searched the far slope of the hill, where Jake wasn’t, either. She looked from side to side at the mesquite, sage, and creosote bush that turned the entire ridge into a maze.

  The look on her face became one of despair; the obsessed light faded from her eyes. She gave a sigh that sounded more like a sob of exhaustion as she began to pull her horse around—

  Jake’s arm came out of nowhere; his hand caught the back of her gun belt and jerked her from the saddle. He slammed her to the ground and straddled her, pinning her arms, glaring down at her with the feral eyes of a hunter who’d been hunted almost to extinction. His voice was murderous as he said, “You come clean right now, or I swear I’ll kill you.”

  Ella met his stare with eyes like a wall, her gaze filled with disgust and resentment. But then something changed, in the mind behind her eyes, until she wasn’t even seeing him anymore. Her eyes filled with tears—tears that had nothing to do with the pain of the fall, or any threat of death. “They took my people too,” she said, and her voice shook with grief.

  Jake blinked, and blinked again, as the unexpectedness of her reaction broke the spell of his fury. Suddenly he could see her face clearly, as if he was seeing it for the first time. He let her go, moving aside, sitting back on his heels as she pushed herself up from the dry grass.

  Her eyes were alive with memory, and the kind of loss that could only exist in someone whose entire reason for living had been torn away. “I’ve been looking for them a long time,” she said, her voice growing steadier as she got her emotions back under control. “I know you can help me find them.” Her strange gaze suddenly held him captive again, pleading with him to admit that he understood . . . as if she knew him better than he knew himself, or thought she did.

  Yesterday in the bar her eyes had looked straight in through his own like they were open windows . . . and somehow she’d seen the truth: that he couldn’t even remember his own name.

  But she’d seen something more, too . . . lost in the darkness, afraid of the light, she’d seen her own soul reflected back at her in the eyes of a wild animal.

  Pain like he’d swallowed broken glass cut him up inside. He couldn’t tell her feelings from his own, suddenly, didn’t know which ones were trying to make him answer, Yes. I will. Anything. Because I know. . . .

  No! He turned away, breaking the bewitchment of her gaze, even though it took every shred of his willpower to push her out of his mind. He got to his feet, and jerked his horse’s rein free from the shrub where it wai
ted.

  He was more sure than ever now that she was trying to manipulate him, that she wanted the weapon on his arm and nothing more, even if it killed him . . . just like Dolarhyde.

  He didn’t care who she was; it didn’t matter how she’d done that to him. . . . It only mattered that she could.

  “Stay away from me,” he said, his voice like sleet. He barely glanced at her as he swung up into the saddle.

  Ella got to her feet, holding out her hands as if she was actually begging him to listen. “I can help you—” she said.

  Even with his back turned, he could feel her eyes, her whole body, reaching out to him. He touched his horse with his spurs, and headed away down the slope beyond the ridge. Don’t look back . . . ever.

  ELLA STOOD ALONE at the top of the ridge, her face stark with failure, watching Jake disappear until he was only a speck on the bleak rising plain, lost to her eyes among the distant rocks and desert scrub. He never looked back, even once.

  How could she have been so wrong about him . . . about everything? The desperation inside her doubled. How did these miserable people live with themselves, let alone each other? Why was she even here—?

  At last, drained by the unexpected intensity of her own emotions, and Jake’s reaction to them, she made herself stop watching nothing at all disappear into a greater nothingness. What was the matter with her . . . ?

  Turning away, she picked up her hat and got on her horse, and started back toward town. There was only one choice left to her now, and she didn’t like it any more than she liked the people it involved.

  8

  In the middle of Absolution’s main street, Wood-row Dolarhyde and the toughest, most reliable of his men—only half a dozen, not counting Nat—were checking over their weapons and the supplies on the pack mule. They were waiting now for any townspeople desperate enough, or with guts enough, to join the demon-hunting party.

  Dolarhyde wasn’t expecting much. Even his own men had balked, threatening to quit, after the rumors of what had happened out by the river, as well as in town, spread through the bunkhouse like a plague.

  He was certain now that the two things were related—that his missing cattle and men had been sucked into the sky like the people in town last night. He couldn’t fire his whole crew. He needed someone to tend the ranch and the cattle while he was gone. He’d finally offered a bounty to any man who’d ride out with him today; but still only six of them had taken him up on it.

  Damn Jake Lonergan. That coward, that insolent piece of shit who’d taken the demon gun with him when he’d run away. . . .

  A few—very few—of the townspeople were coming to join the hunting party at last. Dolarhyde’s eyes fixed on Doc Sorenson: Doc already looked tired to the point of exhaustion as he mounted his horse; as if he hadn’t even slept last night.

  “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Dolarhyde asked, his voice as scathing as his stare. The damn fool was as scrawny as a kid, he couldn’t use a gun, and he was blind as a bat without the spectacles he always wore.

  “I’m coming with you,” Doc said, as if Dolarhyde was the stupid one.

  “You’re dead weight.” Dolarhyde nailed the other man with an unrelenting frown.

  For once Doc met his stare and held it. “I’m dead weight? I’m a doctor. You need me. They took my wife, you hear me—?” There was something in his voice that Dolarhyde had never heard before, that forced him to listen, for once. And there was something about Doc that even the man himself seemed to have forgotten, until now—he actually was a doctor. It finally occurred to Dolarhyde that Doc might have been awake all night treating victims of the demons’ attack.

  “I stand just as much a chance as any one of you,” Doc said, daring him to deny it. “You don’t like that? Tough.”

  Doc went on staring back at him until Dolarhyde decided Doc must have lost his mind, along with his wife. Well, it was no skin off his nose if Sorenson got himself killed.

  “Suit yourself.” Dolarhyde rode on past, followed by Nat.

  Looking at his own men again, Dolarhyde noticed the uneasy glances they were beginning to trade as they saw how few townspeople seemed intent on joining them. “Somebody got something to say?”

  Greavey cleared his throat nervously. “What if . . . they’re already dead, boss?”

  Dolarhyde’s face hardened. “They were roping people, you understand? It was a roundup—” How many times would he have to say it, before these dumb sons of bitches got the point? “If they’d wanted to kill them, they would’ve.” He rode on, heading with Nat toward the place where they’d found the demon’s footprint last night.

  The rest of the ranch hands looked at one another again, unconvinced. Finally Greavey said, in a low, resentful voice, “You heard the Colonel.” They mounted up at last, and began to follow Dolarhyde away.

  EMMETT STOOD BY the entrance of the stables, his face solemn with determination, holding the reins of his saddled horse as he watched Mr. Dolarhyde and his men ride away. He looked back as they left, to see who besides Doc meant to go with them.

  He saw Preacher Meacham ride up, and relief filled his eyes. The preacher had always treated him more like an adult than anybody else in town; and it was the preacher’s words earlier this morning that had caused him to be standing here now.

  The preacher was wearing a brown hat and coat, with a rifle slung over his shoulder, not his Sunday coat and hat. He didn’t look in the least like a preacher; somehow his whole manner was different. For a moment Emmett had the strange feeling that he was seeing into the preacher’s past. That was something Grandpa seemed to know about, but neither man had seen fit to talk about it to “just a boy.” But still, if anybody in town would hear him out today, it’d be the preacher. . . .

  The only other person who looked ready to go along for the ride was Charlie Lyle. Charlie was acting sheriff, now—which made this an official posse—as well as being the only deputy who was willing, or able, to go after Grandpa and the other kidnap victims. Emmett began to smile. Grandpa had always said Charlie was a man to ride the river with. He was also the closest thing to a big brother Emmett had ever had; Charlie would understand why he had to do this.

  Charlie mounted up alongside the preacher, and Emmett started toward them, leading his horse. As he crossed the street, Jake Lonergan’s black dog trotted out from between two buildings and headed toward him.

  Emmett’s solemn face broke into a smile as the dog came right up to him. He scratched its ears and patted its back, happy to see it had survived last night. The dog’s tail waved like a flag, as if it had discovered a kindred soul, after a lifetime of searching. An outlaw’s dog . . . it must have had a lonely life. And now Jake Lonergan had gone off without it. The poor dog didn’t even have him anymore.

  “Come on, boy,” Emmett said, with sudden inspiration. “You can come with me . . . good boy. . . .”

  Emmett looked up again to find the preacher and Charlie Lyle staring at him.

  Meacham shook his head, before Emmett even had a chance to ask. “Can’t come, son. Too dangerous.”

  Emmett’s face filled with sudden defiance. How many times had Grandpa said that to him, before he rode out to do “man’s work”—but it was Grandpa who’d gotten kidnapped by demons, not him. “I ain’t stayin’ with these folks.” He shook his head at the town behind him. “Besides,” he said, “how do you know it’s safer here?”

  Meacham looked at him, startled, and didn’t answer, as if he couldn’t think of anything that made more sense, even to him.

  “Come on,” Emmett insisted, catching his hesitation. “I’ll water your horse, do whatever you say . . . you’re all I got now.”

  Meacham’s expression said he surrendered, reluctantly; as if there was nothing to be done with the truth but accept it.

  “I’ll look after him on the ride,” Charlie said. He smiled down at Emmett, and Emmett saw that he did understand: Neither one of them was going on this journey just out of a
sense of duty. Charlie glanced at Meacham, his gaze agreeing that it wasn’t right to leave the boy here alone, at a time like this.

  Meacham sighed. “Go fill your canteen,” he said to Emmett.

  Emmett grinned, and climbed into his saddle, where a full canteen of water already hung from the saddle horn. He followed the others as they rode off after Dolarhyde’s men, the dog trotting contentedly behind him.

  AS ELLA HAD expected, the posse tracking the escaped demon was already gone by the time she returned to Absolution. But a dozen horses heading off into the desert were a lot easier to track than a single demon; it wasn’t long before she spotted a telltale cloud of dust, and not much longer before she began to make out the actual posse.

  What had looked from a distance to be one group of men turned out to be two, subtly but deliberately riding separate from each other. She spotted Wood-row Dolarhyde and some of his ranch hands in the lead; the few townsfolk who had joined them rode clustered together in their wake. Interesting, although hardly surprising.

  What was surprising to her, on first sight, was the particular group of townspeople who had elected to come on this demon hunt. That Deputy—for now, Sheriff—Lyle was here made reasonable sense to her; it was his job, his responsibility. But a preacher, a saloon-keeper, and a young boy didn’t make any more sense to her than seeing the black dog—the one that had seemed to belong to Jake Lonergan—keeping pace alongside them.

  But then she remembered that Doc had lost his wife, and Emmett his grandfather, to the aliens. Maybe the dog was just lonely: in this world of closed-off, solitary humans, even their animal companions suffered for their losses, their weaknesses.

  And the preacher . . . the preacher was something else again. He didn’t look in the least like a preacher, now; and from what she’d observed of him, he didn’t behave like most preachers she’d met, either. He was the one she chose to approach, as she said, her voice respectful, “If it’s all the same, I’d like to ride along too.”