No. What she pulled out, she immediately dropped.
“God,” I said. “A scalp.”
Her Adam’s apple bobbed. “More are . . . in here.”
I looked at the long black hair. Now I knew what for the law was after them two scoundrels, and why they deserved what they got. I’ve done some pretty wicked things in my time, but never, never have I taken a human scalp.
“Indian?”
My head shook, though I wasn’t certain, but it was a pretty strong suspicion. “Mexican government pays a bounty for Apache scalps, but”—I had to take a deep breath, and slowly let it out, slowly swallow down the disgust in my throat—“some men figure that you can’t tell an Apache scalp from a Mexican one.” I knowed something else, which I didn’t let on. That scalp, the one she’d dropped in the dust, had come off a woman’s head.
Dirty, rotten, miserable sons of bitches.
Gently, Gen picked up the scalp, put it back in the pouch, taken it outside and buried it. When she got back, she grabbed the pack, and figured there wasn’t nothing else in that bag for us, certainly nothing we wanted to take a chance on seeing, and she dragged it as far from us as she could.
Once she was back, she sat beside me and started sobbing. First, I figured it was because of them scalps, and I put my arm around her, pulled her close.
The cries got stronger, little short, choking gasps, and I moved closer to her, despite the burning in my side, and whispered that everything was all right.
She shook her head. “I killed two men.”
Now . . . it wasn’t that I was trying to be funny, and it wasn’t because I wasn’t really thinking about what I said and all, but it was on account that, as I think I’ve wrote down in this here account of mine before that I do know something about math and all, because what I said was “Actually, three, counting Jorge de la Cruz.”
Wrong thing to say, because she begun all-out wailing.
I pulled her to me, and let her cry on my shoulder. I rubbed her back and whispered, “They weren’t men, Gen. None of ’em was even close to being human.”
She wailed.
“They would have killed us,” I said. “Both of us.”
More wretched, heartbreaking sobs.
“This ain’t the Sisters of Charity orphanage, Gen. It ain’t church. It’s a hard country. And to live, you got to do some unpleasant things and all.”
She made herself stop bawling. That’s the kind of woman she was. I felt her arms come over my head, and she pulled me close to her, and my side was just tormenting me fierce, but I didn’t cry out in pain.
“Bless me, Father,” she said, “for I have sinned. It has been seven years since my last confession. . . .”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Let her talk, I did. What else could I do? Let her talk until she cleansed out her soul and fell asleep. Easily, I laid her on the ground, and went down beside her, putting my right arm over her, thinking about her, about me, about us, about Sister Rocío. I went to sleep. At least, I tried to.
Next day, I knowed we had to leave. Gen must’ve not remembered anything about her confession, about the scalps, maybe not even about the two men she had killed. Well, she never looked at them, anyhow, and didn’t mention nothing about all she’d said.
By this time, gray wolves had begun gathering around, running off the coyot’s. Big wolves kept snarling in the distance, waiting to get at The Voice and Vern. I wasn’t gonna deprive them critters for much longer.
That stocking turned out to be a right fine bandage across my side, and I taken the whiskey-soaked canteen, the empty bottle of King Bee Whiskey, and the rusty pail to the water hole. Filled them up—rinsing out the old canteen three times upon Gen’s orders—and set them aside. Well, the rusty pail wouldn’t hold a drop, so we left it, but I did hollow out the gourd with that pocketknife, and it held a bit of water just fine.
“Were there any bullets in that bag?” I asked Gen.
She shook her head.
I give her The Voice’s Colt, a long-barreled .45. “It’s empty.” I reckon she already knowed that on account that she had emptied it. “But it’s a good gun. Might find some bullets for it somewhere down the line.”
She shoved it into the saddlebag, along with the gourd and the whiskey bottle.
I tipped up my too-small top hat and hefted the machete, but it proved too cumbersome, too heavy. I tossed that big sticker toward the swelling, stinking corpse of Vern. Besides, I had a pocketknife and a Dean and Adams, which I had reloaded.
Gen had found me a piece of driftwood, good and hard and twisted, which I could use for a crutch to help me with my bum side and all. Once I picked up the canteens, and slung them over my shoulder, she took the saddlebags and pulled my hat down on her head. Then she walked to me, taken that top hat off me, give me mine, and put the silly battered old top hat on her.
“It fits me better anyhow,” she said.
I wasn’t going to argue that point. Never cared for top hats. Too dandified for me.
Her head tilted north.
Mine shook. I pointed south.
“We don’t have to go to Gran Quivira. Or the Valley of Fire.”
“Gran Quivira’s closer,” I said.
“But—”
“There’s shelter there. And I should be able to find water. Or at least trails.” I gestured toward the other direction. “Head back through that furnace?” I couldn’t stop shuddering at the mere thought of such torture. “Six miles, no more than eight. We’ll be climbing up Mesa de Los Jumanos. We’ll be out of this hell.”
“Micah,” she pleaded, but I had my stubborn streak going.
“It’s our only chance,” I said.
Her head dropped, but nodded, and she taken off, with me limping just behind her.
Them wolves wasted no time once we got moving.
Bad as my side ached, we didn’t make good time, but we was far from them bad men, far from them bad memories. I don’t know. Maybe what I should have done was taken Gen up on her suggestion. Mayhap we should have tried to make it back north, toward Anton Chico, and rolled the dice, said the devil with Felipe Hernandez. Or we could have moved west. There was passes between those mountains as the Manzanos were well north and west of us by then. We could have picked up the Camino Real, or the Rio Grande, even the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. Might could I’d even pay a visit to the marshal of Magdalena, see if he’d trust me—if not me, then Sister Geneviève Tremblay—and find out if there was some kind of reward posted on The Voice and Vern.
Might be, of course, that I was just a damned fool. Nah. Ain’t no might to that.
On the second day, we begun to climb, sliding on them rocks, grabbing scrub, making footholds. Now, that mesa ain’t nowhere near the Sangre de Cristos or Manzanos, but when a body has been walking as far as me and Gen had, gone through all we had, well, even a stroll across the Santa Fe Plaza would be a handful.
On the fourth day, we was well up the slope, even had some black cedar for shade. Seen us a couple rattlesnakes, but they seen us first. By whirring their tails, they let us know that we wasn’t welcome.
“We could shoot one,” Gen suggested. “Ever tasted rattlesnake?”
“Enough to know I’d rather eat something else.”
Leaving them alone, we kept going.
“They called the Indians here Jumanos,” I said as we kept on climbing, following what appeared to be an animal trail, cougar I reckon, maybe some pronghorns. “Means ‘The Striped Ones.’ See, the Indians here painted a stripe over their nose.”
We stopped to rest under the shade of a lone juniper. After taking a swallow from the canteen, I offered a slug of water to Gen, but she turned up her nose.
“Is there any water in the other one?”
Struck me odd, but I sloshed our old one around, pulled it off my shoulder, handed it to her. “That one,” she said, making a face at the canteen I’d drunk from, “was the one those cutthroats had. With the bad whiskey.”
/> “We rinsed it out,” I told her.
While drinking, she shook her head.
“Three times. You made me do it.” I reached up and tapped the wooden bottom. Her eyes peered over the container. “Not too much. Got to last us a bit more.”
After she had corked the canteen, she handed it back to me. I taken one more quick pull from mine, and didn’t taste nary a hint of that rotgut, put the stopper back in it, and knelt, removing my hat, wiping the sweat from my brow.
“How do you know?” Gen asked.
“Know what?”
“About the Jumanos.”
Had to study on that some. Finally, I shrugged. “Not exactly sure.”
“When you were scouting for the Army?”
Done some more thinking. “Maybe, but I doubt it. Seems to have come to me earlier.”
Her eyes twinkled. “I think those Tompiro Indians were before your time.”
My head bobbed. “Yeah. I warrant they was. How’d you know?”
She laughed, so musical, and life just danced in them sweet eyes of hers. “Because you’re not that much older than me, Micah, and . . .”
My head was shaking, so she let her words fade. “That they were called Tompiro? That’s what I meant.”
“The church had a mission here,” she said. “That’s why we are bound for Gran Quivira.”
Again, I shook my head. “The Sisters of Charity weren’t here.”
No more laughter, no more life in her pretty eyes. “Are you interrogating me?”
I snorted and slapped my knee, which irritated my side. “No, girl. Of course not.”
The smile returned, but she wasn’t so certain no more. “The Catholic church, Micah, had the mission here. The Sisters of Charity are part of the Catholic church.”
I pushed myself back to my feet with the crutch Gen had got for me.
On we went, chewing salt grass leaves when we could find them, conserving our water, resting a lot, moving south.
Next morning—I think it was, but it’s hard to tell. Days just run together when you’re walking through desert, hardly eating, hardly living, barely surviving. Anyhow, it was morning when I knelt by a plant, and plucked a red berry, maybe the size of a marble, from it. I popped it in my mouth, made a face, then grabbed another, and handed it to Gen, who was kneeling beside me.
She ate it, and her face scrunched up, too. Gen spit hers out. “It’s bitter.”
“Wolfberry.” I handed her some more. Indians, I recollected, boiled them, then dried them and ate them. That I had learned during my brief career as an Army scout. But you could eat some raw. If your taste buds did not object too much. And your stomach.
“I can’t—”
“You got to,” I said, and forced another into my mouth. “It’s food, and we need food. You just can’t eat too many.”
She ate another. “You don’t have to worry about that.”
That’s about all the food we had. Oh, I spied a herd of pronghorn once, way off in the distance, probably eight or ten, but I knowed I’d have no chance of sneaking up on them close enough to shoot with a revolver. And even if I lucked out, pronghorns being dumb, curious critters, I was pretty certain even if I hit a buck or doe with a bullet, I wouldn’t kill it outright, and a pronghorn can run a long ways before it dies.
We made it into thicker timber, then started down, me limping right badly by that time, and fairly often cussing myself silently as the biggest damned fool in New Mexico Territory.
All this while, though, I kept formulating plans. Eventually, I’d come to the conclusion that my brilliant idea would get me killed, but I’d then start thinking of another one.
Gen fell silent, too, troubled. Or maybe she was formulating her own plans.
I hoped hers was a whole lot better than mine.
See, plans wasn’t my point of expertise. Generally, as I’d told Gen before, I made things up as they come to me.
Heading downhill now, we reached the end of the timber, coming to a sea of bluestem, blue grama, and Indian rice grass, all of it tan from the sun and lack of rainfall. But the grass sure waved in the wind.
The sea didn’t go on forever. I pointed to a hill.
Gen shielded her eyes and stared.
“Gran Quivira,” I told her, smiling slightly.
She lowered her hands, and turned to me, mouth trembling. “Micah. . . .” she started, but I was already walking through the ugly grass.
“Watch out for snakes,” I told her. “Don’t want to get bit by one this close to home.”
Not that Gran Quivira was home, but it might be my final resting place.
Despite my bum leg and throbbing side, I moved at a pretty good clip, heading across the little valley that separated the mesa from the old ruins. Hell, it was too hot in the day for rattlers to be out no how.
Rattlers meaning animals, of course. There is another kind.
“Micah!”
I stopped. She’d caught up with me, was walking beside me, and pointed toward the ruins, which we was just now beginning to make out. This time, it was me who had to shield my eyes. Four horses came loping down that rocky slope, and they wasn’t wild beasts. Far from it. They carried riders.
“Run!” Gen screamed, but I tossed down my crutch, and raised my hands over my head.
“We’d never make it,” I told her. “These them friends of yours?”
“No,” she said, which was not a good answer.
Two of the riders spread out, armed with Winchesters aimed in our general direction. The other two rode right for us, sunlight bouncing off the revolvers in their hands.
Gen stepped toward them, but stopped, and slowly lifted her hands toward the heavens, too.
The two boys flanking us pulled up, keeping us covered. They must have figured us important, ornery heroes just like Kit Carson and Jesse James.
The other two riders slowed their horses to a walk, and I started my right hand for my waist, but the Dean and Adams wasn’t there.
“Damn it!” I turned to Gen. “I must’ve lost my revolver.”
She seemed relieved.
The rattler on the claybank rode up easily, chuckling, shaking his head, grinning at me whilst pointing a Colt revolver at my head.
“I’ll be damned,” Sean Fenn said. “I’d given y’all up for dead.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
A second later, Sean Fenn’s expression changed. Gone was that look of delight, replaced with utter shock. “Jesus Christ!” he shouted, and swung deftly off the claybank, handing the reins to the rider beside him and holstering his gun. He took two steps toward Gen, stopped, and whispered, “My God, Gen, are . . . are you . . . all right?”
Me? I shot a glance at Gen, didn’t see nothing strange about her.
“Yes, Sean,” she said softly. “I am fine.” Her voice betrayed her true feelings, though, and Fenn was waving his hat at the two outriders, hollering at them to hurry in, bring some water, some jerky, and some hardtack.
As Gen got pampered, Fenn walked over to me. I didn’t expect to rate such fine treatment and respect. No concern on his face when he come up to me. Instead, he sniggered. “Christ, Bishop, you look like hell.” When he got closer, though, he stared at me long and hard. “Good God Almighty.”
Well, he sure didn’t make me feel real pretty.
He started to bend down for my crutch, thought better of it, and his hand touched the butt of his Colt. “Let’s have your gun, Bishop.”
“Lost it,” I told him.
“Like hell.”
“It’s true, Sean.” Gen’s voice carried across the flats, and me and Fenn looked at her. Lowering the saddlebags, she knelt, opened one of the pouches, and pulled out The Voice’s empty Colt. “This is all we have.”
The first rider taken the handgun, pulling it to half cock, opening the loading gate, and rolling the cylinder on his arm to see that it was unloaded. Then he lowered the hammer and shoved the weapon into his waistband.
A smirk r
eturned to Fenn’s face. He picked up the crutch, handed it to me, and for that I was grateful. I leaned on it. ’Course, he still didn’t trust me, so he pushed up my ragged, dirty, ripped shirt and found no Dean and Adams .436 or Continental Ladies Companion—only the green hose that had become a bandage. He laughed.
“That must have been some time y’all had, eh, Bishop?”
I wasn’t paying him no mind, though I absently drew the pocketknife from my trousers, and tossed it to him, reckoning that would make him feel better. One of the riders handed Gen a piece of bread, probably rock hard. She taken it, and just stared at it as if she’d never seen sourdough before.
“Go ahead, Gen.” Fenn was looking at her, too. “Feast. You’re nothing but bones.”
“She shouldn’t eat too much,” I said. “Make her bad sick.”
Back at me, he frowned. “What have y’all had to eat?”
“A rabbit,” I answered. “Little bit of jerky. Some wolfberries a day or so ago.”
“Since when?”
Now that took some figuring, and even though I knowed how to cipher real good, and determine odds, and things like that, I had no idea. When had that thunderstorm hit? How long had I been laid up after The Voice plugged me? How many days had we walked since leaving the water hole? Even now, I still ain’t rightly certain.
Even after Fenn told me the date, I couldn’t fathom a guess. Well, we hadn’t been wandering for forty years, but I felt fifty years older.
“Corbin!” Fenn turned toward the guy with the bread. “Put Gen on your horse. Take her to camp. We’ll feed her some of that soup. Now, damn it!” Turning back at me, he said, “But you, Bishop, you walk.”
I limped past him.
“Sean!” Gen managed to call out. “He can barely walk. We’ve walked forty miles.”
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