The Mule Tamer III, Marta's Quest

by John Horst

  The horse pulling the wagon panicked and also ran wildly into the desert and after a time she realized that she was all alone and it was fully dark now. She did not recognize this place so surmised that she had to be somewhere other than southeast of the town as that was the route she knew and she’d never been on the road nearby. She slowly got to her feet and stumbled to the burning corpse which was by now devoid of most of its flesh, the face gone, now nothing more than a red burning skeleton and she realized that this did not scare her but actually made her feel good. He was a bad man and this was the first of his kind that she’d seen get what he deserved and she couldn’t help be a bit proud of the fact that she’d made it happen to a certain extent. No one could say that she’d killed him or burned him up, she just stunned him with the rock, but he was dead now and he’d died a fittingly horrible death and she was partially the reason it happened.

  She sat down next to the corpse, upwind as she didn’t want to smell like greasy burning human, but she was suddenly very cold and the corpse gave off a fair bit of heat and she warmed herself and the coal oil dried from her dress and she became sleepy. She slept next to the shopkeeper until morning.

  When she awoke it was full daylight and the corpse was burned out. Nothing much was left but a skeleton and she regarded him again. She could recognize him. His nice teeth were recognizable. She needed to urinate and did and had to push extra hard as things were bound up down there and something popped or tore and she looked down to see that her urine was reddish and she realized then that he’d been up to no good but that she’d been so sleepy from what he’d given her to drink or eat that she didn’t know. She was glad of that and now she looked down to survey her dress and saw blood on it and further surmised that she’d been bleeding at some point. What he’d done to her made her bleed and made her very sore. He was a wicked man and she looked on the corpse again and was glad to see him in such a state. She was glad that he was dead.

  She got her bearings and began walking toward town. She was famished and had nothing but her soiled dress and needed to get her things. She wondered if the goats were still tethered to the post out front of the burned man’s store. She found some water and drank until she was full and washed herself and it burned and stung very much and she felt down there and could feel that her body was torn and that it would scab over then open up whenever she urinated and wondered how it would ever heal.

  She soaked her dress where it was bloody but it wouldn’t come out. It had dried there and was fixed. She’d have cut it away but her knife was gone, so she resolved to continue walking in her bloody dress. There was nothing more that she could do.

  She arrived to town at midday and the goats were gone. She checked the store and it was locked. She checked the windows and could not open them. She sat down and was shakier than before. She began to doze again when a man on a horse rode up and dismounted. He tied his horse to the post she’d used for the goats the previous day. He wore a uniform and a sword which bounced about on his side. He walked past her and pulled on the store’s door, then peered in while knocking. He turned and regarded her.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting.”

  “For what?” He looked around. “Where’s Sanchez?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know who that is.”

  “The shopkeeper.”

  “He’s…I, he’s not here, but he has my things. I need my things.”

  The rurale regarded her. He looked at her dirty and bloody dress. “What have you gotten yourself into?”

  She realized that she might not want to tell him much. “Chicken blood.”

  He shrugged and shook his head. “Big chicken.”

  He began to walk away and she decided that he was her only hope. She called out to him as he mounted up. “That man, Sanchez, he has my things. I need to get inside.”

  “You, peon, have no business with Sanchez. He’s a respected shop owner. You come back when he’s here, don’t bother me with such things, child.”

  “But he took…” she thought better of it. “He has my things, it is my right. And my goats are gone.”

  “Hah!” He sneered. “You have no right, child. Go back to your hole in the ground, go back home.” He was gone.

  She did as she was told, automatically and by sundown she was nearly home. She walked without thinking and was so hungry now that her stomach ached constantly. She drank a few times through the day and that helped a little. By full dark she was just too tired to go on and resolved to lie down for a while. She thought that she would only rest for a little while and then go on.

  But she didn’t wake up and it was full daylight by the time she got moving again. She worried over the old woman and wondered and hoped that she was okay. She did not know what she’d tell the curanderas. She wanted them to treat the old woman but now had nothing to give them. She decided that she couldn’t worry about that now. She decided now, after all that had happened to her in the past two days, that she’d not worry about things that she could not control, but that she would resolve, from now on, to control as many things as she could. She also resolved to trust no one, as the old woman had told her, except herself. She could rely on no one in the world and that was the way things would be from now on.

  She saw smoke off in the distance, in the direction of the hovel, and she hurried on as best she could as such a large fire made no sense to her. She finally arrived to the hovel burning, the mean man and his wife and the curanderas looking on. The mean man sneered. “You are late.”

  “Where’s the old woman?”

  The mean man’s wife pointed at the hovel and the girl looked at them. “Why?”

  The mean man spit tobacco at her feet. “She was dead when they came to treat her. They said it all needed to be purified and we burned it. She’s gone, child.”

  The little girl watched it burn and was eventually alone. The curanderas left and the mean man and his wife went about their business. She watched the little hovel fall apart and watched now as the foundation was revealed and she remembered everything she could about her time there. She could not say that any of the times were really good, but they were her time and the old woman’s time, and sometimes she was a little happy when she made the old woman smile. She never went hungry and the old woman was good to her, better than any other human being had been and now she was dead. She thought about crying but didn’t. She lay down in the shade and fell asleep until the mean man’s wife nudged her awake. The wife was nervous and looked back at her own hovel often as her husband would be cross if he knew that she was helping the whore’s spawn, but the woman was good and she could not help herself.

  She had food for the girl and sat beside her as the child ate. She reached over to touch the girl’s hair and the child recoiled, pulled away and put several feet between them. They were both shocked at this behavior.

  “Take these things, child.” She gave her a bundle of old clothes wrapped in a rebozo along with a knife and a flint and steel. At least the child could make fire. She gave her a sack of tortillas and some dried beans and a water gourd.

  The little girl looked the things over and then into the woman’s eyes. “May I live with you?”

  The woman looked away, at the burned remains of the hovel. “No, child. You may not and you may not stay here. He won’t allow it.” She regarded the child’s dress and the bloodstains. The bastard missed nothing, she thought, looking back at the hovel where her husband was likely eating, gorging himself while this little one suffered. His mean, beady little eyes saw everything.

  “He says you are no good, that you are the product of a whore and now you’ve been spoiled.” She looked away and the little girl saw that she was crying. She felt sorry for the woman even though she was not going to help her beyond the little bit that she had. She stood up and brushed her skirt off. She looked down on the woman’s head, grabbed her new kit and was gone.

  She walked back to the town as she now remembered the nec
klace she’d hidden. She needed to get it as it was the only thing she had left in the world, other than her kit and her clothing that was of any tangible value. She at least was not hungry and this helped her progress a good deal. She killed a rattler with a rock on the way and made a fire and cooked it. If she could do this regularly, she could save the tortillas for when she was in the town as she did not know how long she’d be there or even what she’d do after reacquiring her necklace.

  She was just outside of town at dusk and decided to bed down in the desert. She felt safe in the desert and vulnerable in the town. That was curious to her as she thought a lot about her little time in the town and the shopkeeper and the rurale were not good to her. It seemed that the desert was safer as it had no people in it.

  She made a fire and found water and filled her gourd and settled down for the night. She’d made her camp in an arroyo so that her fire would draw no attention. No one taught her this, but it was reasonable to think that it would be best to remain invisible. She found an armadillo and killed it with a blow from a stick and ate it. At least she was not hungry and she was safe. She was alone and she missed the old woman, but the thought of being alone did not bother her as much as she thought it might.

  Before going to sleep, she had to urinate and it hurt again, but not so bad as before and she no longer bled. Her wound was healing and now she went to sleep.