Valley of Fire

by Johnny D. Boggs

“Sorry I broke it.”

  She begun working on them dead man’s undergarments, and she pulled up the muslin cloth, revealing her calf. She had lost the bandage where me and de la Cruz, back when the big farmer had acted nice and not crazy for gold, had doctored her up. The horsehair stitches still held,

  I taken the canteen, give it to her, told her to go ahead and wash it. “Don’t want it . . . getting infected . . . and all,” I said.

  “I don’t want to waste water.”

  “We gots plenty to spare. Now.”

  She undid her boots, pulled off the filthy sock, and poured water onto that limb of hers. I watched.

  “Take another drink,” I told her, and she did. Then I did.

  I remembered something then. “Here.” I started unbuttoning my own shirt, just the top, since it was one of those pullover boiled numbers, too.

  “Micah . . . ?” she asked, kind of nervous, like she feared I was gonna bare my chest for her, same as she’d done earlier.

  My right hand found the mescal beads, and I withdrew the heavy necklace over my cooling head. “Here.” I handed her the silver cross.

  She taken it in her hands, which seemed to be trembling.

  “Sometimes I forget I have it on,” I told her. “It’s a cross of Lorraine. Not a crucifix, I reckon. Not Catholic, I guess, but maybe it’ll comfort you.”

  She felt the warm silver, looked at the inscription on the back. “How long have you had this?”

  With a shrug, I told her, “Reckon half my life. Sister Rocío give it to me. Then I run off. Must’ve been fifteen, sixteen.”

  “What’s the inscription mean?”

  “Oh, I couldn’t tell you,” I lied. “Bunch of nonsense.” I stopped quickly. “I didn’t mean that. I mean, nonsense and all. I mean, I kept it all these years.”

  “Maybe you aren’t quite the heathen you think you are.” She handed it back to me. “I can’t accept this, Micah.”

  “Sure you can. Fits you better than me, anyhow.”

  Again, our eyes met, held for the longest time, and I swear, tears welled in them soft brown eyes. She put the necklace over her head, slid the heavy silver four-armed cross inside that green and white checked shirt. I didn’t get no glimpse of her breasts when she done that.

  “Thank you, Micah.” She leaned over, and kissed my cheek. “God bless you.”

  Then she laid down, her head on my lap, and went to sleep.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  For two days, we stayed like that. I mean, not with her asleep with her head on my lap, and me leaning against that arroyo wall, running my fingers through her wet hair as it dried and thinking of things that would have landed me in a confessional with a million Hail Marys for penance had I not been such a scoundrel and heathen and lapsed Catholic who had never actually been confirmed because I’d been taken by the wanderlust when I was a teen.

  I guess I couldn’t actually call myself Catholic, lapsed or otherwise.

  We kept refilling that canteen and drinking the water, slowly building back our strength.

  I cleaned up the Dean and Adams, reloaded the chambers, put fresh caps on the nipples, and then God delivered us a rabbit.

  It wasn’t like I had been praying for one, though maybe Gen had—I’d taken to calling her that, dropping the Sister, as she’d stopped using the Mister—her having a better relationship with the Almighty and Mary, Mother of Jesus, than me. I had left Gen by the water hole, and walked along the arroyo and dried playas, just trying to get the lay of the land, see what this country looked like, and figure out what the best way to Gran Quivira would be.

  From the looks of things, Mesa de Los Jumanos, which most folks had always considered the southern end of the Estancia Valley, appeared only six or so miles south. We could start climbing out of this furnace, likely find some water there, and then come into the Liberty Valley and make our way to Gran Quivira.

  Sweet Mary, blessed Father, we might just make it out of this place alive.

  From the old ruins, we could easily pick up a trail, make our way east to Whiskey Jim Greathouse’s place, where I was sure we could outfit ourselves with horses and grub and clean duds. Whiskey Jim had been dead a few years, but the folks who’d taken over his ranch, like Whiskey Jim, had no love for the law, but respected ladies, especially ones who looked as lovely as Gen. Yep, they’d grubstake us.

  Then . . . either go after that gold in the Valley of Fire, or just forget the whole damned thing, and maybe Gen and me could head down to Mexico, live on the beach, eat shrimp all day and night, drink tequila, and live happily ever after.

  That’s what I was thinking.

  I wasn’t hunting. Wasn’t expecting nothing.

  And this jackrabbit hopped out of some chamisa.

  At first, I mistaken him for a rangy ol’ coyot’. That’s how big he was. He stopped, started chewing something in the shade, and didn’t even see me.

  Well, I had to be no more than ten yards from him, standing in the arroyo. My knees started buckling as I slowly pulled that old pistol from my waistband and my hands got all sweaty, all clammy. That gun was just shaking in my right hand, so I had to steady it with my left.

  The rabbit just waited.

  With my left thumb, I reached up to thumb back the hammer, and that’s when I recollected a Dean and Adams has a spurless hammer. Ain’t no external one to thumb back. It’s a double-action pistol, meaning all a body’s got to do is pull the trigger. The cylinder rotates, the hammer strikes the cap, the cap ignites the powder, and the powder sends the ball after the target. Pretty simple. Means you can fire a whole lot faster.

  ’Course, I’m old-fashioned when it comes to revolvers. I like the single action, the ones you cock with your thumb, then pull the trigger. See, Big Tim Pruett once told me, right after he killed Long Dick Watson in El Paso, that double-action guns tend to pull to the right. Or maybe it was the left. I don’t rightly remember all the particulars on account that when he told me, we was hightailing it toward the Mexican border to get away from Long Dick’s kinfolk, of which there was a considerable number.

  Anyway, the gun pulls one way or the other, ’cause you’re pulling the trigger. A single-shot ain’t likely to do that as you’ve already cocked the hammer with your thumb and just gots to squeeze slowly.

  Well, I tried to keep that barrel steady, but couldn’t. It was like I had a bad case of buck fever, shaking, nervous, just froze in stock, and it wasn’t no deer or elk or pronghorn I was trying to kill, just a raggedy-ass jackrabbit.

  But he waited, the rabbit did, and I squeezed the trigger, the British gun kicked, liked to have knocked me to my hindquarters, and . . .well . . . I don’t know. Seemed to me that the rabbit jumped into the .436 ball. Got him right in the head, and he plopped dead in the sand.

  Smoke stung my eyes. I shoved the revolver back into my waistband, then cussed good and long, jerking the gun out, dropping it into the sand, and calling myself an idiot because that barrel had been hotter than it was in this frying pan.

  “Micah!” Gen screamed my name.

  “It’s all right!” I shouted back, picked up the Dean and Adams with my left hand, the rabbit’s long legs with my right, and started running back for camp, and her.

  “It’s all right!” I told her again.

  “What was that shot?”

  “Supper!”

  Cooking it was another thing. Oh, I skinned and gutted it. Was so hungry, I almost tried eating it raw. You should’ve seen the look on Gen’s face. Well, maybe you shouldn’t have. I did, and meekly laid the rabbit on a hot rock, and scooped up the entrails and skin, taken them to the edge of the arroyo, buried ’em, then come back to her, where she held out the canteen and ordered me to wash my hands.

  Which I done. That’s a great feeling, you know, having water to spare for such annoyances as washing.

  We gathered dead grass, easy to find in that wasteland, made a pile on top a flat rock at the edge of the arroyo away from the wind, and I sprinkle
d gunpowder from the flask over the grass. I pulled another copper cap from the tin, gently laid it down, then taken the Dean and Adams by the barrel, which had cooled by then, and gripping it tightly, like a hammer, slammed the curved grip down.

  And missed.

  That’s how nervous I was.

  Gen taken the gun from my hand, which was throbbing ’cause I’d slammed the revolver so hard. With a smile, she raised the Dean and Adams, brought it down, the grip’s bottom striking the cap, which exploded, the powder burst into smelly fire, and the grass started burning.

  Carefully, we added small sticks to the blaze, and as they built up, we put on more sticks, larger ones, till that fire was burning hot enough to add some good big dead cholla arms, and other driftwood. Funny thing about driftwood. You’ll find wood even in a treeless expanse like the hell we was in. Well, we was in an arroyo. I reckon some of them trees could have been washed down from long about the beginning of the Manzano Mountains.

  Gen quickly set up a roasting stick, skewered the rabbit, and then we was turning that thing ever so gently, smelling the grease as it dripped into the fire, us both laughing.

  It probably wasn’t even full done when we ripped it from the fire, and I tore the rabbit in two, giving her half, and me wolfing down the meat, then sucking the bones.

  Tasted better than rustled beefsteak at Panhandle Pete’s place in Tascosa.

  I feared we might get sick, but we didn’t. Wasn’t that much meat to that rabbit after all, and it wasn’t wormy or nothing. After wiping my greasy fingers on my filthy trousers, I leaned back, and added another log to the fire.

  “Why didn’t you think of this?” Gen motioned at the fire. “Before now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Starting a fire with the powder and revolver.”

  I shrugged. “Didn’t strike me till now. Didn’t have no need to do it.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “These past few nights have been rather cold.”

  “Oh.” I laughed. “Well, the powder was dry and the revolver was all fouled after that frog strangler.”

  She looked perplexed. “Frog what?”

  “Flash flood,” I translated.

  She wasn’t looking at me with beady eyes no more. She smiled. “I thought you just liked hugging me in the night.”

  Them manly notions started forming again. I crossed my legs. “Well . . .”

  She crawled over to me, our backs against the arroyo, and leaned her head on my shoulder. “You were warmer than any fire, Micah.”

  Slowly, I tossed away the leg bone I’d been fingering, and moved my arm over her shoulder. The sun was down by then, birds was out chasing bugs, there weren’t no coyot’s howling, and the wind had died down. The fire smelled good. The smoke didn’t even follow me and irritate my eyes as smoke normally done around campfires.

  She lifted her head, and I turned slightly, moved my arm some to get more comfortable, and we just looked at each other. The campfire reflected off her face, and her eyes sparkled. I wanted to cross my legs again, and kinda slide up some, but her left leg was over my right, and them cotton shirt and flimsy undergarments wasn’t holding much back. I wasn’t sure I was breathing no more, but I knowed I wasn’t dead because my heart was pounding fierce, and that wasn’t the only part of me that was pounding. She reached up and brushed a lock of my dirty hair off my forehead, and her finger traced a scar, the one I’d gotten when—hell, now I done forgot how I got that thing.

  My hand dropped some more, and she moved her body some, and the fire was warm, and it had gotten dark, and she wet her lips, and said my name softly, and I couldn’t say nothing.

  Then she said, “Micah, your hand is on my breast.”

  I jerked that thing away like it was hot, but it hadn’t been hot. Kinda firm. I apologized profusely, and tried to sit up, but I couldn’t move on account that she was kinda pinning me down, despite her not weighing a whole lot.

  Soon her hands was on my face, exploring me, and I was running my fingers through her beautiful dark locks, and then touching her shoulders, and then squeezing them, and soon she was just inches from my face, and it was beautiful. Her face. The night. Everything. Our lips was almost together, and, damnation, I really wanted to just pull her to me and . . . well, that could have been the best night I’d ever had.

  “It’s all right,” she whispered.

  But even though I’d never been confirmed, I just found it hard to keep on. I mean, she was a young nun, and I surely didn’t want to be the cause of her burning in Hell or condemned to Purgatory or excommunicated or stoned to death.

  Her eyes closed, and she got even closer to me. I knowed my hand wasn’t on her breast no more, but I’d managed to put it inside her shirt, and was rubbing the soft skin on her stomach. My eyes was closed, and we was so close to mortal sin.

  Still, that was a night I’d remember forever, but not because of me and Gen.

  It was because just as I was about to kiss her, a voice sent the beautiful woman diving off me, and me reaching for my gun, but never getting it.

  “This is quite the pretty picture, isn’t it, Vern? An amorous couple in this savage emptiness, and they are kind enough to invite us to join them.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “One more inch, mister, and you will make me pull this trigger, which the buzzards will surely appreciate, but, alas, that would deprive Vern of his pleasures. So, please, kind sir, stop and live . . . for a few moments longer.” While The Voice was talking all fancy, all deep and strong, he’d punctuated that statement with a sound I knowed all too well. It was that triple, deadly, metallic click of a Colt single-action revolver being cocked. He didn’t have no Dean and Adams spurless .436.

  I stopped, but Vern didn’t. A boot caught me in the ribs, rolling me over, and when I had the presence, or lack, of mind to lift my head, another kick knocked me right by the fire.

  “Micah!” That was Gen, but the next sound wasn’t.

  “Your aim and timing appear to be slightly off, Vern,” The Voice said. “I remember those glorious days when you would have knocked him into that fire.”

  “Nah,” Vern said, real slow, drawing out them words. “Didn’t wants him burnin’ none. Till I’s finished with ’im.”

  Since Vern hadn’t meant to kick me into the flames, the fire was still going, unaware of the predicament Gen and I was in. Somebody, reckon it was Vern, added some logs to the fire, and as I slowly sat up, the fire was going real good, and I got a good picture of them two newcomers who looked older and meaner than the desert.

  Vern had a dark beard down to his sternum, and railroad ties was smaller than his arms. Must have stood six-foot-six in his stockings, but he wasn’t wearing no stockings. No, sir. He had on the biggest boots I’d ever seen, with mule pulls on the sides, and leather pants stuck down the stovepipe tops, but the boots was old and dusty, and one bottom was wrapped with a bunch of rawhide, and the other had his toes—no socks—sticking out.

  That big cuss made Jorge de la Cruz look like a midget. He wore fringed leather pants, and a grimy buckskin shirt. Looked to be advertising a leather shop. He cracked his knuckles—sounded like chair legs being busted over some rowdy’s head in a saloon tussle—and pushed up the brim of his greasy slouch hat. Then he smiled. Didn’t have but three teeth that I could tell, and I only could see them because the flames reflected off the gold fillings. He carried a big machete, and started running his thumb over the blade as he squatted, then farted.

  “Dear Lord,” The Voice said, and laughed, before he looked down at Gen.

  His left hand gripped her shoulder, and I could tell from her face that he was squeezing real hard. His right hand held that .45 Colt aimed at me. Slowly, real careful-like, I tested the knot forming on my forehead, then rubbed them aching ribs.

  “This is truly an unexpected delight,” The Voice said. “We were like wandering Jews, lost in the desert, and then, I asked Vern, ‘Did you hear that?’ And Vern nodded, and although he is
really a simpleton, he said to me, ‘Can’t be no fools in this land.’” The Voice give a perfect impression of his idiot partner. “But I said back to him, ‘Well, let us see. ’” He doubled over laughing so hard, wiped his eyes with the back of his hand holding the Colt, then shook his head. “But, swear to God, never did I think we would find this. Not out here.” He looked around. “What was that shot we heard earlier today? Your horses?”

  Now, The Voice, he wasn’t no bigger than me. Deep voice sure didn’t fit his little body. He had on worn shoes, duck pants, and a striped shirt that I taken to have been issued to him by some jailer, seeing that the Territory of New Mexico had no penitentiary at the time but sent its most despicable convicts off to Kansas. These two should have been in Kansas, by my thinking.

  He wore a kepi, so maybe he was a deserter from the Army, and muslin undershirt covered by a yellow brocade vest with all the buttons ripped off. He was clean shaven. Didn’t even have stubble on his chin. His hair was silver. He talked like a fancy thespian, or maybe a professor. But he wasn’t acting, and I didn’t care to learn nothing from the likes of that son of a bitch.

  “I asked you a question, kind sir,” he demanded. “Where are your horses?”

  That wasn’t what he’d asked at all.

  “Run off in a thunderstorm. . . .” I had to think, but couldn’t. “Don’t really know how long ago.”

  “Run off.” The Voice sighed, then laughed right cheerful, and spouted off with, “‘A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!’”

  Vern stopped thumbing that machete blade and looked at his pard like it was The Voice who was the simpleton.

  The Voice quit laughing. “Oh, dear, how I love Richard III. But back to our interview. What was that shot which led us here just in time, alas, to interrupt your, ahem, carnal desires?”

  “Shot at a rabbit. Look around. You can see the bones.”

  “You et it all?” Vern asked.

  “We weren’t expecting company,” Gen said, and grimaced as The Voice laughed again and squeezed her shoulder even harder.