The Cost of Dying

by Peter Brandvold

  Again, Prophet looked down at his chest. Yep, no blood. He still couldn’t quite believe it. Had he just dreamed, imagined the pain?

  Taking a deep breath as though to confirm that he was, indeed, alive, he looked around his covering nest of rocks to gaze down the arroyo. Yet more posse riders were falling, cursing and screaming. Some tried scrambling for cover only to be cut down from somewhere above.

  Prophet could hear the distant belches of a rifle but he couldn’t . . .

  Wait.

  There.

  On the ridge on his left, on the eastern ridge, smoke puffed from a nest of rocks. The shooter was maybe two hundred yards away, but he had the high ground, and he was picking off the posse like ducks on a millrace.

  Prophet counted eight or nine posse members, including Rodane, lying amongst the rocks, unmoving. He saw three others running back down the arroyo, crouching, casting quick, wary glances up the eastern ridge. The shooter up there triggered two more quick shots, pluming the dust just behind the three running with their tails up, as though to haze them on their way.

  Prophet thought one of the shots broke off one of the runners’ spur rowels. An accident?

  Something told Prophet it hadn’t been a lucky shot.

  He looked up the ridge again as the last smoke puff dispersed on the wind.

  “Now,” he muttered, sleeving sweat from his forehead. “Who in the hell . . . ?”

  No movement up there. The smoke was gone. In the harsh light, he wasn’t sure he could even pinpoint the exact spot the shooter had fired from. Rocks and more rocks . . .

  He looked down at his leg. He felt as though a mule had kicked him. The wound burned. He unknotted the sweaty, grimy bandanna from around his neck and tied it around his leg, breathing through his teeth, cursing the pain the dustup had caused him but thanking his lucky stars. Or, more specifically, thanking his as-yet-unknown benefactor.

  Knotting the bandanna tightly, trying to get the bleeding stopped, Prophet cast his gaze once more up the eastern ridge. Still nothing.

  Prophet holstered his Peacemaker, securing the keeper thong over the hammer, then reloaded his Richards, just in case. He heaved himself to his feet, an awkward maneuver, given the growing stiffness in his leg. He peered up the northern slope, sighed, then continued his ascent.

  It was a ponderous, painful climb, but he wasn’t complaining. He might be lying dead down there in that nest of rocks, the buzzards already tearing meat from his bones. By the time he reached the top, he was almost crawling. In fact he would have crawled if his dignity hadn’t already taken a hit or two by the fact he’d let himself walk into an ambush without his Winchester.

  No, he couldn’t crawl, damnit.

  So, with a hitch and side swing to accommodate the stiff leg, he ambled over to where he’d left Mean and Ugly ground-reined amongst big rocks that had some wiry brown grass growing up around their bases. Mean eyed him dubiously. The horse had heard the gunfire, all right. He knew Prophet had mucked up again and had nearly become crowbait.

  The horse switched his tail sharply and twitched his ears, whickering softly, reprovingly.

  “I don’t need any guff from you, you cussed hay-burner.”

  The bounty hunter grabbed his canteen off his saddle, popped the cork, and took a drink. He took several swallows, more than he would have taken normally out here in this godforsaken desert in which it was always wise to conserve water. But he knew he was close to the vineyard his pal Oscar Otero had run for many years and that, while Oscar had met his demise several years ago now, his vineyard remained. At least, the well he’d used to irrigate his vines remained, drying out in the summer but refilling at the end of every year with the winter rains.

  At least, the vineyard had been here two years ago, when Prophet had drifted down this way to spend the winter soaking up the Mexican sunshine and the monetized love of the dusky-skinned, chocolate-eyed señoritas plying their parlor trade in a village near the Pacific. He hadn’t yet seen the vineyard this trip. He’d paused here on this mountain to make sure he wasn’t leading any unwashed types, including his shadowers seeking to avenge good old Roscoe Rodane, to the vineyard, where he had intended to stay the night.

  That was when he’d walked into that ambush.

  “Leastways, I didn’t lead them toughnuts to the water,” Prophet said. He took another deep drink of the brackish canteen water that was almost hot after so long in the sun. “At least I didn’t do that.”

  He gave a wry chuff, adding under his breath, “Almost got myself beefed but . . . at least I didn’t lead them to the water . . .”

  He let his voice trail. After all, he was just talking to entertain himself, as he so often did when he’d found himself too long alone in the middle of nowhere. Looping the canteen over his saddle horn, he looked around again for his guardian angel—the one with the rifle instead of a halo.

  All he saw was white-gray rock and gravel. And a washed-out blue sky bludgeoned by that giant molten bell of the sun.

  Below lay the cactus-bristling desert, showing the erosions here and there, the knife-slash arroyos of previous winter rains. The flatland rolled away, pale pink as an unripe peach under a layer of dirty cream mist that was the dust suspended in the sunlight reflecting off the desert floor. Fifty, sixty miles beyond lay cool blue mountains that might have been clouds hovering just above the horizon but which Prophet knew from past experience to be the Sierra de la San Pedro in which “his” village lay—Sayulita.

  That was where “his” señoritas were, gazing toward him even now, dark and smooth-skinned and ripe, wondering where he was, what was taking him so long, their lives had been so empty for the past two years without him . . .

  That made him laugh.

  “Okay, old son,” Prophet said, mounted up now and heading down the southwest side of the mountain, along an ancient Spanish and Indian trading path that he knew led to Otero’s vineyard. “You’re layin’ it on a little thick even for you.”

  Lou chuckled again despite the pain in his leg and his neck, the heat burning down on him. As the trail wound around the shoulder of a barren butte, the butte pulling back to his right, he saw the vineyard directly below, in a broad bowl between large razorbacks of red-and-cream-colored mountains clad in more of the same rocks that littered all of this part of Baja and made it so inhospitable to men that Prophet was relatively sure no one would have found Otero’s old vineyard even now, these many years after the old man’s death.

  In fact, Prophet himself had discovered the old man’s mummified carcass. Lou had had no idea what had killed Otero, but it had appeared he’d died in his sleep. He’d probably been dead a year or more before Lou had found him. When Prophet had discovered him, his old friend had been wearing a peaceful grin on his lips and in his half-open eyes beneath a gray-black shelf of coarse, unevenly trimmed bangs. A striped blanket of coarsely woven wool had been drawn up to his chin.

  He’d died comfortably in his sleep, maybe dreaming of past loves. Every man should be so lucky. In his passing, he’d left casks and ollas of aging wine and a whole well and several wooden tanks full of water that changed out as the well dried and refilled, pumping water through Otero’s small, painstakingly laid pipes that spiderwebbed out to his precious vines.

  The vines were overgrown now, of course. They were green and brown tangles that rarely produced uvas for lack of pruning. Or the blossoms produced tiny grapes the birds would eat or that would simply wither on the neglected vines.

  There was nothing down there now in that natural bowl between sierras except Otero’s old, cracked jacal fronted by a dilapidated ramada and flanked by two or three acres of vines. Behind the vineyard humped up another rocky, cream and brown hogback, dwarfing the old Mexican wine ranch, as Prophet had always called the place. Lou had called his old friend an uva vaquero, or grape cowboy.

  Prophet gigged Mean on down the mountain and into Otero’s yard. The wind blew from the northwest, picking up dirt and sand and tossing i
t, obscuring the yard and moaning as it caught in the brush ramada and whistled through the jacal’s open windows. One shutter banged loudly. When the gust died, it fell silent again.

  Prophet cursed as he studied his surroundings. He and the old man, who’d been an outlaw in the southern reaches of Mexico long before Prophet’s first kick in his mother womb, had had some good times here. They’d sipped Otero’s delicious vino and sangria, swapping yarns, most of them lies, but having a good time because neither had held the other to the truth or even close. Otero’s water, sparkling cold from the earth’s bowels and gathering here in his well, was even better than his wine.

  Otherwise, Prophet wouldn’t be here. Not with the old man lying dead in the grave Lou had dug for him amongst the untended vides.

  Truth was, Prophet was afraid of ghosts. Such superstitions had their roots in his Old Southern upbringing. He’d been raised by folks who believed spilled salt was an invitation to Old Scratch, as Prophet still did, and knew that when you saw three crows together in one tree, someone in the family would die, which Prophet also still believed. He believed the restless dead moved about at will and could put hexes on folks for past transgressions.

  He did not, however, believe that Otero would be restless. The old Mexican had no reason to think Prophet had been anything but an amigo. So Lou nudged Mean on up to the stone-and-wood stable beside the adobe and lifted his tender leg over the dun’s rump with an aggrieved groan and a heartfelt oath.

  He tended his horse first, because he wasn’t dead, and especially in the far-flung desert a man with any sense at all knew to tend to his horse first, no matter what—to see to its needs and comforts because without its four legs you might never see anything but this far-flung desert again. Besides, a horse was the best friend a man could have. Aside from Oscar Otero, that was.

  Fortunately, Otero’s well wasn’t far from the jacal and estable, so Prophet was able to fetch water without doing significant further damage to his leg. He fed the horse a bait of oats from his saddlebags and turned him into the old Mexican’s corral of woven ocotillo branches. Gathering mesquite wood from the side of the shack, he set about building a fire in the yard fronting the ancient adobe.

  He dug his sewing kit out of his war bag, stripped down to his short summer underwear, and sterilized his needle in the fire’s flames. He drank down a third of a bottle of whiskey from his saddlebags to kill the pain, then sutured the wound closed. The procedure was a very businesslike matter to Prophet, who’d performed the deed more times than he cared to think about though the endless maze of white, knotted scars all over his body—a tattoo diary of a violent life—were unassailable reminders.

  When he had the wound tended to his satisfaction, complete with a flannel poultice of spiderwebs, mud, and whiskey (he’d found plenty of spiderwebs inside Otero’s cabin), he returned to the cabin for wine. Oscar had several casks in a back room. There were a good many more spiders and scorpions in there, too, so that Prophet practically had to fight his way in, quickly filling a stone pitcher with the cool, dark red elixir from grapes of years past, then fought his way back out again.

  He didn’t care to linger in the old man’s jacal, where Otero had breathed his last, so he’d arranged his gear outside around the fire. Benevolent or not, a ghost was a ghost. Lou didn’t have much to eat except beans into which he tossed his remaining jerky, but the beans and jerky went down nicely with the vino.

  After supper, he sat back against his saddle, rolled a smoke, refilled his tin cup with wine, and smoked and sipped the wine and missed Otero’s presence around the fire. Every sip of the wine reminded him of old Oscar, and the stories he’d told about his old days running wild in Old Mexico.

  Sipping the wine and communing uneasily with the old Mexican outlaw’s friendly ghost, Prophet watched the rose of the sunset darken the mountains against it and turn the desert dust to a fine, otherworldly mist before the sun was gone and the night was black despite the stars kindling across the zenith.

  The fire snapped and crackled, resin popping. The fragrant gray smoke drifted upward to disappear in the darkness hovering low above the flames.

  Coyotes yammered in the surrounding ridges.

  Silence for a time, like that inside a sealed sarcophagus.

  Mean gave a warning whinny, jerking Prophet out of his dolor, causing wine to splash over the rim of his cup.

  A disembodied voice drifted quietly out of the eerie night: “Halloo, the camp!”

  Chapter 7

  Prophet reached for the Winchester leaning beside him. He loudly pumped a cartridge into the action and said, “Ride in. Slow.”

  Hoof thuds sounded from straight out away from the fire. They grew louder—the slow clomps of a walking horse.

  The horse blew. Bridle chains rattled. Leather squawked.

  A horse and rider materialized out of the darkness. Firelight shimmered in the eyes of the horse first and then, as they continued toward the fire, in the eyes of its rider, beneath a brown Stetson with a low crown and a wide, flat brim.

  The light found the S that had been burned into the rider’s left cheek, limning it in light and shadow, showing the knotted scar in stark relief against the otherwise long, smooth-skinned face framed by long, copper-red hair hanging straight down from the hat.

  The rider wore a hickory shirt and suspenders under a faded denim jacket, and faded denim jeans. An old Remington rode in the cross-draw position on the kid’s right hip. A southpaw. A Henry repeating rifle jutted from a leather scabbard on the coyote dun’s left side.

  The redhead was maybe twenty, lean as a rail. Prophet thought that, dripping wet and stuffed with supper, he might weigh as much as the bounty hunter’s right leg.

  The two men studied each other—Prophet from the ground, the kid from his saddle. Mean gave another whinny from the corral obscured by darkness. The kid’s coyote dun turned his head toward Mean and pricked his ears, pawing lightly at the ground with one front hoof.

  Prophet frowned as he studied the kid closely. He looked a little familiar, maybe. “Have we met?”

  “Nope. Leastways, not official. I know who you are, though. Your reputation precedes you, Mr. Prophet.”

  “Well, ain’t I the famous one?”

  The kid almost smiled.

  “That’s Bill Rondo’s tattoo on your mug.”

  The kid didn’t say anything. He stared down from his saddle without expression; the cheek behind the tattoo twitched slightly.

  “I hear he’s dead, Rondo,” Prophet added.

  “Couldn’t have happened to a more deservin’ fella.”

  Prophet cracked a wry grin, nodding. He jerked his head toward the corral. “Since you saved my hide with that old Henry, I reckon I’d best invite you to a plate of beans. There might be a few left if you dig deep enough into that pot. Go ahead and corral your horse with mine. I hope that stallion will stand up for himself.”

  “Oh, he will.”

  Prophet glanced at the coyote dun casting the stink eye toward Mean and Ugly, and smiled. “I do believe he will at that.”

  When the kid had tended his horse and walked back to the camp, slouching beneath the burden of his saddle and the rest of his gear, Prophet was holding a sheet of paper up between his knees. He tossed it onto the ground beside the fire. He’d dug it out of his saddlebags where it had resided with a dozen more printed circulars. The kid’s face stared up from the coffee-stained leaf—or at least a rough likeness of the kid’s face—complete with the S brand on the cheek.

  WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE took up nearly a third of the heavy paper.

  “Ain’t this my lucky night?” Prophet said. “Not only did some mysterious shooter pluck my fat from the fire, but a four-thousand-dollar bounty just rode into my camp!” He picked up his wine cup. “My worm is turnin’. Purely it is. I might buy my own private parlor house in San Francisco.”

  “Those California girls would send you to an early grave, Mr. Prophet.”

  “Ah hell
—since you saved my life and made me rich, you might as well call me Lou.”

  “Colter.”

  “I appreciate the help, Colter. I’d just as soon put off dyin’ as long as possible. Costs too damn much.”

  “The deal you made with the devil?”

  “Heard about that, did ya?”

  “Who hasn’t?”

  “How’s your leg?”

  “I’ve hurt myself worse fallin’ down drunk. Trouble is, that’s no exaggeration.” Prophet snorted then glanced at the redhead. “I just want you to know, young Farrow, I was just about to set those boys on the run with their tails on fire.”

  The kid had dropped his gear on the opposite side of the fire from Prophet and fished a spoon out of his war bag. “I decided to kill ’em fast so they wouldn’t suffer.”

  “Why?”

  “Why didn’t I want ’em to suffer?”

  “Why’d you save my rancid old Confederate hide?”

  “Maybe I didn’t want you to suffer, Lou.” The kid smiled as he scraped beans out of the bottom of Prophet’s cook pot.

  “You got a soft spot for ole Lou, do you, Red?”

  “Nah.” Colter Farrow sank back against his saddle, the cook pot on his lap. “I was just hopin’ that maybe one day you’d introduce me to the Vengeance Queen.”

  He cut another sly smile across the fire at Prophet, the fire reflecting off his eyes that matched the copper color of his hair.

  “Kid, Louisa Bonaventure would turn you inside out, stomp your heart in the dirt, and leave you howlin’.”

  Colter shrugged as he kept working on the beans. “Not that I don’t believe you, Lou, but I’d just as soon see for myself.”

  Prophet chuckled and sipped his wine.

  Young Farrow spooned beans into his mouth then licked the spoon, stared at it, and said, “I figured I might need the favor returned someday.”

  “Huh?”

  “You asked me why I plucked your fat from the fire. That’s why.”