“Your friend doesn’t look so good,” the farmer observed.
“He took an arrow to the chest yesterday morning.”
“My wife Becky knows something about medicine, she was an animal doctor back before the Judgement.”
Coal and Kyle shared another quick look, “All the way back then?” Coal said.
The farmer nodded, “The homestead ain’t far, with the Lord’s blessings and working through Becky’s hands maybe we can provide some relief to your friend.”
“With the Lord’s blessing!” Coal repeated with a grin.
Taking the bounty-hunter’s words as permission the farmer nodded in earnest and with Kyle’s help, began to hoist Miles from the rover.
“My name’s Zebadiah by the way, Zebadiah Hart. My apologies, with all the excitement I forgot to introduce myself.”
“By excitement, you mean when you were pointing that shotgun at us?” Coal remarked.
A sudden flash of fear spread across the farmer’s face, and he quickly nodded in reply. The bounty-hunter and the scavenger hooked Miles’ arms over their shoulders and between them they followed Zebadiah down the canyon. They rounded a nearby bend and then followed him up a narrow gorge. The path took them out along the same ledge where the farmer first spotted them. As they neared the old shotgun, still leaning against the canyon wall Kyle saw Zebadiah hesitate as if the man had first intended to pick it up but then thought better of it.
“You just going to leave your weapon behind Zeb?” Coal asked.
The farmer hesitated just a moment before scooping the shotgun up, his face showing an odd mix of guilt and embarrassment. Coal and Kyle shared another confused glance before continuing to follow after their strange new friend.
As it would turn out, they wouldn’t have to follow Zebadiah very far. They followed the farmer along the ledge perhaps a hundred yards before it intersected another gorge and Zebadiah guided them down it. They rounded another bend, and without warning, they came to a rusted steel door set into the canyon wall. Kyle was so surprised he blinked twice and forced himself to look again. The wall itself was the same tan colored sandstone that made up the rest of the canyon, but he realized he could see where the layers of rock he was used to seeing were intersected by verticals lines here. Kyle realized he was staring at an artificial wall, made from layers of stacked sandstone and what looked like concrete.
“Please, come right in,” Zebadiah said, raising a simple latch on the door.
Coal and Kyle had to turn sideways to slide through the doorway. The inside of the home was surprisingly large, and Kyle could see right away that the home had once been a natural overhang in the canyon wall. Shelves, cut into the rock, held a selection of books along one wall and an odd assortment of dishes on another. At one end of the room, a wooden rocking chair sat in front of a large stone fireplace, while the center of the room was dominated by a long wooden table with benches on each side. A pair of holes set high along the outer wall held makeshift windows, made from clusters of old wine bottles cemented together. The opposite wall held another doorway leading down what appeared to be a fairly long hallway.
The farmer leaned his shotgun against the wall and called out, “I’m home, and we have company.”
A moment later a woman stepped into the room. She wore a long gray dress, and her hair was covered, tied back in a matching cloth. She appeared to be in her mid-50s, perhaps a decade older that Zebadiah and Kyle immediately thought she had the look of someone who didn’t smile very often. The woman took one look at the group of strangers in her home, and her eyes narrowed immediately. Then her gaze shifted from Coal and Kyle and finally to Zebadiah. At that moment the farmer seemed to have found the floor suddenly much more interesting and was looking down. Kyle sensed that if he didn’t make nice with the woman of the house right away, that their stay might not be very long or pleasant.
“Uhhhh…greetings ma’am. I apologize for barging in here like this. Our friend was wounded, and we got lost in last night’s storm. Zebadiah said you have some medical experience and you may be able to help us? I mean if it’s not too much trouble.”
The woman looked at Kyle and then turning she shook her head, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know a thing about medicine.”
“I’m sorry gentleman, I should have explained. My wife Becky is the one with medical experience. This is my wife Margret,” Zebadiah explained.
“What?” Kyle managed in reply.
A moment later a second woman appeared from the doorway, she was dressed in the same muted colors as Margaret, her hair tied back and covered as well, but that’s where the similarities ended. She was in her mid-30s with dark black hair and quite pretty, she smiled widely upon seeing them.
“Oh we have company, how wonderful!” she said happily.
Coal looked between the two women, “Becky?”
“No, I’m Claire. Becky went out to check on the goats.”
“Of course she did,” Coal replied grinning widely now.
“I’ll run and fetch her.”
With that Claire went out the front door. Margret gave Zebadiah one more lingering stare. “I’ll get a pallet made up for our…guest, the wounded one that is,” she said and then turned and headed back down the hallway.
Once she was gone Zebadiah turned to face them, “I’m sorry, I guess I should have explained things. You see, we follow a more…fundamental form of Mormonism. It can cause problems sometimes, especially in mixed communities, so we choose to keep to ourselves, and live out here on the very edge of the Protectorate.”
For a moment neither Coal nor Kyle spoke, then the half-breed asked, “So you mean to say your religion allows you to have more than one wife?”
Zebadiah nodded slowly, and Coal grinned, “Well I’ll be goddamned! Zeb, believe it or not, I guess I was a Mormon for years and didn’t even know it!”
The farmer gave Coal a look of surprise, mingled with disbelief, but remained silent and Coal added.
“I had four wives at one time. Then one of them double-crossed me and killed the rest. But no worries, I’m pretty sure that bitch is dead now.”
Then it was Zebadiah’s turn to look confused, “What?”
Hard Broke
“As best I can tell, it sounds like a handful of Two-Steps’ new Braves rode in late last night and took Daniel Strongbow’s body away somewhere, and David went with them,” Laughing Dog reported.
Little Bird nodded, “And David went willingly?”
“It sounds like it. That young Brave that helped us prepare Daniel’s body, he called it an honor guard. He said that Strongbow was going to be laid out beneath the sky in a sacred place, like our ancestors and not buried under the earth like the whites. Exactly where that is, of course, is a secret.”
Little Bird let out a long breath that even to her sounded a bit like defeat. They were back in her kitchen again, sitting around her table and drinking bitter tea. Though the discovery that Daniel Strongbow was murdered convinced the rest of the council that she was in fact not crazy, it still left them with very few options. The group of seniors had been following the Chief for almost two solid days now, but they still knew next to nothing about his plans or where he was hiding his growing army.
“He’s thought of everything hasn’t he?” Amy Red-Tail pointed out. “Without a body, there is no proof that Strongbow was murdered.”
“That’s if you could even convince people that a knot on the back of a dead man’s head proves murder,” Laughing Dog added.
“He hasn’t thought of everything, the man’s smart I’ll not deny that, but you can’t pull something like this off, something this big without leaving signs of it somewhere. The only problem is figuring out what we’re looking for,” Little Bird said.
Laughing Dog shook his head, “Now ain’t that some fucking circular logic. To figure out what he is doing we need to find proof. But since we don’t know what he is doing, we don’t know even know what that proof
is.”
“Maybe there isn’t even any proof left to be found. Maybe Two-Steps has tied up all his loose ends, like he did with poor Daniel,” Amy offered.
“No, killing Daniel was him sending me a message,” Little Bird replied. “Two-Steps wanted me to stop asking questions.”
Laughing Dog crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, his eyes going distant for a moment. “Was it though?”
“What do you mean? Of course it was.”
“Think about it for a second, maybe that’s it exactly what he wanted you to think.”
“That does play right into your ego,” Amy Red-Tail pointed out.
Little Bird shot the woman a fierce look before replying, “Go on.”
“I mean what did Strongbow actually tell you? That the Chief took a bunch of boys and made them into Braves? That was only really a secret from you. All of them boys’ families sure as hell knew what he did. Mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters, that must be 90 some odd people right there. And sure, they were all sworn to secrecy, but they all knew it, and a hell of a lot more people than that probably had some idea of what was going on.”
“So what are you saying? Him killing Daniel the day after the man spoke to me was just a coincidence? ”
“No, I’m saying he knew Daniel Strongbow had already talked to you once. Maybe he was afraid of what the man might tell you if you talked to him again,” Laughing Dog said.
The three elders sat in silence for a moment, each turning the idea over in their heads. The more Little Bird considered it, the more she started to believe that Laughing Dog was on to something. Until now she felt as if she had done nothing but underestimate the young Chief. Perhaps this line of thought would be the first step in getting ahead of him for a change, but there was only one problem.
“And just how in the hell are we supposed to figure out what Strongbow might have told me?”
For a moment the three remained silent and finally it was Amy that answered, “Well, what do we know about the man?”
“I know next to nothing. He has a son, he had a reputation as an honest man, and he liked to watch horses,” Little Bird said holding open her hands.
“I was acquainted with Daniel for almost 30 years,” Laughing Dog began. “We were never close, never really friends, but we knew each other.”
“And?”
“And What? He joined the Air Force right after high school. Came back to the Res 4 years later with a Navajo girl that he picked up someplace. David was born a year later, and a year after that she split on them for good. He made a living as a ranch hand and worked at a lot of different places around here over the years. Strongbow seemed to like horses more than people, but after David’s mom, who could really blame him? After the world went to shit, it was Daniel more than anyone that started the Nation’s herd. He rounded up wild ponies, broke them, cared for them and bred them. For a lot of years, it was Daniel that trained every Brave how to ride and care for their animal. Then one day he talked to you, and now the poor bastard is dead.”
Little Bird opened her mouth, ready to point out that if Laughing Dog’s own theory was true, then talking to her hadn’t killed him, but the words froze on her tongue. Since the discovery of Daniel’s murder, she had nearly forgotten about the horses. In fact, she was on her way to ask Daniel about the herd when she found Two-Steps waiting for her instead.
“So, then assuming Two-Steps’ secret doesn’t involve loose women, it’s safe to assume that whatever Strongbow knew probably involved horses?”
“That makes sense to me,” Amy said nodding.
“The other day I noticed that there doesn’t seem to be as many horses in the corral as usual.”
“It makes sense that we would be short, assuming Two-Steps wanted each of his new Braves mounted, that’s 30 something head right there,” Laughing Dog replied.
“And don’t forget the older braves, the ones around before Two-Steps became Chief. There is only about a half dozen on the Res at any time now.”
“So, add what another 20? That’s about 50 horses he has out and about, give or take,” Laughing Dog said nodding.
Little Bird was nodding too, “I’ve been scratching my head trying to figure where Two-Steps would hide the 30 boys he turned into Braves. But all of these boys grew up out here, living off the land, they could be anywhere and would probably get by just fine. The real question is where could he hide 50 horses?”
“That’s going to mean a lot of food and water, isn’t it? And it’s not like anyone has been running supplies out to him from the Res. I’m sure that we would have noticed that.” Amy added.
“Food, not so much,” Laughing Dog explained. “All our ponies were bred from wild stock. They are more than happy to graze off what they can find out in the desert, as long as they are given enough space to roam. What’s more important is shelter, someplace to get them out of the midday sun. It keeps them cool and helps keep them from wandering too far off. But of course, the biggest consideration would be water, 50 head of horses is going to need a shit load of water, especially if they are being ridden hard.”
“So where does Two-Steps find that much water?” Amy asked.
The trio of elders sat quietly for a moment each lost in thought before Little Bird offered, “Maybe the same place we found ours, an old spring somewhere?”
While the first few years after the collapse were hard times on the Res, the loss of the modern world had provided one small silver lining. For decades the white man had been drilling and pumping more and more groundwater to the surface and continually depleting the local aquifer. When all those pumps suddenly stopped working the water level slowly began to rise again. As it did, a spring just north of the Res began to flow again, for the first time since the 1930s. When Little Bird’s people rediscovered the spring, the elders hailed it as a gift from their ancestors. They built a cistern to collect it, and the spring has provided the water for the Indian Nation and its horses ever since.
“You think Two-Steps found an old spring somewhere? And that was the secret Daniel was keeping?” Laughing Dog asked.
“I don’t think Daniel was the kind of man that would keep a water source secret, not from his own people,” Little bird replied. “But you said it yourself, Strongbow worked on a bunch of different ranches in the area, maybe Daniel knew about a place that once had a spring or even a boarded-up old well.”
Laughing Dog was nodding now, “Someplace that’s been abandoned for years, maybe even before the collapse, where no one would think to even look for water these days.”
“And what? The Chief goes out and starts searching all of these abandoned homesteads on the off chance that one of them has water flowing again after all these years? That sounds like a hell of a lot of work on just an old man’s hunch” Amy added.
“It’s more than a hunch, it happened here with our water, and that means it can happen at other places too,” Little Bird pointed out.
“If you’re right, then I bet if we asked around and talked to some of the other elders, I bet we find more than a few that could recall friendly conversations with our new Chief. Conversations in which he was eager to hear all about the old ranches and homesteads in the area, especially if they had springs or wells on them. Maybe we should start talking to some of them ourselves?” laughing Dog suggested.
“No, absolutely not. Two-Steps killed once to keep his secret, there is no reason to think the bastard wouldn’t kill again.”
“So what do we do then, search the whole damn desert?”
“We wouldn’t need to search all of it, just anything within half an hour’s ride,” Amy said.
Both Laughing Dog and Little Bird turned to look at the elderly women, “And just how in the hell do you know that?”
Amy Shrugged, “It’s simple. When Two-Steps rode out to tell David about his father’s death and then bring him back, he was only gone for about an hour. I figure that means a 30-minute ride out and the same back.”
&n
bsp; Little Bird narrowed her eyes as if reassessing the woman again. Laughing Dog leaned back in his chair and just grinned. “I guess that means I need to go borrow a horse,” he said.
“No,” Little Bird said, “It means you need to go borrow two horses.”
Juan leaned forward and tapped the pressure gauge on the pump again. The brass needle bounced a few times and when it settled Juan marked the glass with a grease pencil and sighed. The pump had been running for nearly two hours, and already they were down 5 lbs. of pressure. The water was still flowing for now, but Juan didn’t know for how much longer that would be the case. While Juan worried over the pump all around him business continued as usual. The Grease Monkeys and the Black Jackets carried on, most blissfully unaware of the pump’s prognosis. Since dawn, a steady stream of work crews, overseen by Black Jackets arrived carrying large containers to resupply the distribution centers around town. However, they weren’t the only ones waiting for water, as large groups of townspeople had gathered as well, no doubt drawn by the rumors of last night's massive water dump.
Allen stood just a few feet away watching the crowd. The dark-haired boy had been silent nearly the entire morning, and Juan thought he must feel it too, that sense of building tension in the air as if something dramatic and undoubtedly violent was about to happen. Allen’s left hand rested on his belt, just inches away from his knife. Juan could only hope that things wouldn’t turn ugly and that the pump would hold out long enough to at least supply the waiting crowd with water, but as he turned back to the pump his heart sank. The brass needle had slipped just past the red line. Juan knew there was no way they would be able to run the pump for the full four hours today.
As Juan was fretting over the pump behind him, a commotion began to spread throughout the crowd. The boy turned and found that several of the work crews and their Black Jacket escorts had returned, now carrying new containers to fill and pushing their way through the crowd of townspeople. Jasper shoved his way through the crowd ahead of them.
The Road North Page 29