The Cost of Dying

by Peter Brandvold

  “Maybe you wouldn’t get yourself in such a tinhorn situation in the first place.”

  Colter shrugged as he continued to spoon the beans into his mouth, grinning. “When I get as old as you, maybe. Old men get careless.”

  Prophet threw a chunk of wood at him. It bounced off the redhead’s shoulder. Colter chuckled and continued eating the beans, scraping the charred leftovers off the bottom of the pot.

  “Why were they after you, Lou?” Colter looked across the fire at him. “I mean . . . if you don’t mind me askin’.”

  “Hell, my life’s an open book. I shot a man I shouldn’t have. A deputy sheriff. I shot him for a doxie. Never shoot a man for a doxie unless you know for sure who you’re killin’. A doxie don’t always tell you the whole story.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “She was a good doxie in other ways, though.”

  “Those are the important things.”

  “What are you doin’ down here . . . so far from Sapinero?” Prophet asked the younker, glancing at the brand on the redhead’s cheek again then looking away quickly, sheepishly. “If you don’t mind me askin’, of course . . .”

  “Similar trouble. I killed the wrong man. Er, men, supposedly.”

  “Rondo?”

  Colter glanced down at the wanted dodger offering the four-thousand-dollar federal bounty on his head. “If I’d killed him quicker he might not have framed me for the murder of two deputy U.S. marshals.”

  “That’ll boil Uncle Sam’s oysters, for sure.”

  “Tell me about it.” Colter set the empty pot aside and ran a sleeve across his mouth. He sighed, belched, spat, looked around, and said, “Somehow I attracted bounty hunters to my trail, so I decided to head for Mexico.”

  Prophet took another sip of Otero’s well-aged vino and arched a brow at the redhead sitting across the fire from him. “I seen you behind me, trailin’ me, so don’t get to thinkin’ I’m so old I don’t know what’s a shadow an’ what ain’t.”

  “You did?”

  “I glassed you yesterday just after noon. I seen you before but I wasn’t sure you was followin’ me. When I realized you was followin’ me but stayin’ clear of Rodane’s bunch of cutthroats also followin’ me, I figured you might be an independent contractor.”

  “Sort of like yourself?”

  Prophet shook his head and gave a fateful chuff. “Believe me, there’s none worse. Or more unpredictable.” He chuckled as he swirled the wine in his cup, admiring the reflection of the fire off the bloodred liquid.

  Colter crossed his arms on his narrow chest and regarded Prophet through the low, dancing flames. “I think our stars might be aligned, somehow.”

  “Oh?”

  “This ain’t the first time our trails have crossed. You probably don’t remember, but there was a time or two . . .”

  “I remember the brand. And the red hair. The left-handed gun.” Prophet looked at the kid, looked away, then turned back to him again. “Tell me, kid . . . does it hurt? The brand, I mean. I apologize for the question, and you sure as hell don’t have to . . .”

  “Only when a purty girl looks at me and flinches. Or looks at me, just like you just did, and then turns back to stare.” Colter gazed off grimly. “Then it hurts powerful bad. Almost as bad as when Rondo first pressed that red iron against my face.”

  “I’m sorry I stared, kid.”

  “That’s all right.” Colter curled another wry grin. “You’re not pretty enough to make it ache.”

  Prophet laughed. “Kid, you remind me of someone.”

  “Oh? Who’s that?”

  “Me. A few years back.”

  “What were you doin’ when you were my age, Lou?”

  “Runnin’ west after the war. Lookin’ for any sort of trouble I could get into. Any sorta trouble that would keep me from remembering all the friends and cousins and even some of my uncles blown to bits or hacked to pieces by bayonets and minié balls, during the War of Northern Aggression.”

  “Well, that makes us different, then.”

  “What does?” Prophet asked.

  Again, the young man stared grimly into the darkness. “You were runnin’ to trouble. Me? I’ve been runnin’ from trouble ever since I ran into it in the form of Bill Rondo’s dead carcass on his kitchen floor.”

  “Mexico’s not such a good place to avoid trouble, Red.”

  “I reckon it’s a matter of which skillet is hotter at any given time.”

  “Tooshay, as I heard a French parlor girl say once.”

  “What’s it mean?”

  “Right as rain, but I’m no Frenchman.”

  “Ah.” Colter nodded.

  “You want some wine?”

  Colter looked at him, flushing a little. “Truth be told, Lou, I haven’t refined my drinking skills yet. I’m workin’ on ’em.”

  “All the more for me, then, though ole Otero has a house full of the stuff.”

  “Really? Where is he?”

  “Dead.”

  “Don’t that beat all?”

  “You didn’t know about this place? I mean, before now?”

  “Hell, no,” Colter said. “I just followed you here.”

  Prophet regarded him curiously.

  “Like I said,” Colter explained, “our stars must be aligned. I just happened to spy a fella ahead of me—one with a fine bunch of cutthroats after him. I worked around the cutthroats an’ must’ve glassed you right around when you glassed me. I couldn’t see you very well from that distance, but I spotted your horse. I put the big man and the big horse together, an’ . . .”

  “Yeah, we stick out, me an’ Mean do,” Prophet said.

  “So, anyways,” Colter continued, “I figured if you wouldn’t mind, we could maybe throw in together. Fact is—and I’d appreciate if you didn’t bandy this around overmuch, as I embarrass easily—but I tend to get a little homesick out here all by my lonesome . . . from time to time. I thought it might be nice to have a kindred spirit to share the trail with. If I’m crowdin’ you at all, Lou, just say so and I’ll pull my picket pin at first light tomorrow.”

  “Ah hell, no, you ain’t crowdin’ me.” Prophet refilled his wine cup from the stone pitcher. “Two pairs of eyes is better than one, I reckon. But I must say, I do have a way of attractin’ teetotalers.”

  He chuckled dryly, thinking of Louisa, who never drank anything stronger than sarsaparilla.

  “Well, then,” Colter said, heeling the ground absently as he sat back against his saddle, “where we headin’, Lou? Me—I got no destination in mind.”

  “I know this sweet little town up in them mountains yonder, on the other side of the desert,” Prophet said. “The señoritas up there . . . well, let’s just say they’re . . .”

  He spent the bulk of the next hour describing the attributes not to mention the talents of the soiled doves residing in the little village of Sayulita. Of course, he was doing more than talking. He was remembering, anticipating, taking himself out of this dry-as-dust world and leaping ahead to that more idyllic one across the desert. Forever across the desert . . .

  He talked until he saw that he’d put his new partner to sleep over there on the other side of the fire. Chuckling, he drifted away from the fire to bleed off some of the whiskey and wine, then took a big long drink of Otero’s sparkling cold water and rolled into his soogan.

  He’d let the fire burn down to umber coals. The fewer folks who knew about his and Colter’s presence here, the better. Even the wildcats that prowled these rocks and washes . . .

  He soon learned that his new trail partner shared more than a penchant for teetotaling with his other, more comely, blond partner, Louisa Bonaventure. He shared her inclination for troubling dreams.

  Prophet woke to hear the young man muttering the name “Marianna” over and over again on the other side of the fire’s slowly dying coals—restlessly, anxiously, as though calling out to her over a long distance, rattling a sob from time to time before he rolled over
and somewhere in the tortured caverns of his lonesome mind found peace at last.

  “Sleep easy, Red,” Lou whispered, and fell into a restless sleep again himself.

  Chapter 8

  “Lookee there—fresh meat,” Prophet said as he stared up at the dead man hanging upside down and by one ankle from a giant sycamore.

  Prophet and young Colter Farrow had been on the trail crossing the desert together for two whole days. This was the early afternoon of the third day, and they were finally starting to reach the Sierra de la San Pedro—as well as Rosario “One-Eye” de Acuna’s cantina on the aptly named Arroyo de los Muertos.

  “What do you suppose the poor hombre did to deserve such an end?” Colter asked.

  Prophet stared up at the dead man. The corpse was badly bloated, so it had been hanging there for several days, but it was a far more recent expiration than the several other men whom Prophet and Colter had also seen in similar dispositions along the trail.

  At least Prophet had assumed they were all men. He’d been able to tell for sure that only one was a man, for given the other cadavers’ extreme states of putrefaction—two were veritable skeletons with only a few strips of leathery flesh clinging to the bones—it was impossible to gauge the sexes.

  This was a male, all right. A Mexican in a short leather jacket, white shirt, and pantalones stuffed into high, brown, calfskin boots. The bloating had so disfigured the man that it was impossible to tell much else about him except that he’d been shot several times and also sliced up pretty well with a knife. Something had been shoved into his mouth, and Prophet didn’t even want to think about what it might be, though, given his knowledge of the particularly grisly and punitive Baja form of punishment, he had a pretty good idea.

  “No tellin’,” Prophet said. “I know ole One-Eye’s work, though. The severity usually only depends on what kinda mood he’s in at any given time, though I’d say this fella mighta tried to take advantage of One-Eye’s advanced age and rob him or abuse one of his putas.”

  “One-Eye?”

  “The old mestizo who runs the place. Rosario de Acuna. Claims to be descended from Spanish kings, with an Aztec war chief hidden somewhere in a woodpile, but many a man claims to be a lot of things down here. He also claims to be a hundred years old, but he was claiming that when I first started cooling my heels down here nearly fifteen years ago now so that’d make him older’n Methuselah. So who knows? One thing I do know is that old One-Eye makes a helluva javelina stew. That’s why I risk stopping here.”

  “Risk?”

  Prophet gave a dry chuff. “You’ll see.”

  The bounty hunter booted Mean and Ugly into the arroyo then up the other side. There was more growth here than only a mile back, which meant there was more water.

  Agave cactus, elephant trees, the massive cardon cactus, tree yuccas, and spiked shrubs of many shapes and sizes pocked the desert around the rocky trail that showed the marks of recent travelers. Since One-Eye Acuna’s cantina was the only place within a hundred square miles one could find water as well as food and busthead, and since it was on a main freight route from the Sea of Cortez to the Pacific Ocean, anyone passing through this part of the Baja peninsula usually stopped for an hour or two or even a night or two, to rest their horses before the hard climb over the mountains.

  It was a remote, lawless place, and any man who stopped here was taking his life in his hands.

  “You watch my back, kid,” Prophet said as he rode on into the cantina’s yard, “and I’ll watch yours.”

  “You’re makin’ me nervous, Lou.”

  “It’s good to be nervous at old One-Eye’s.”

  Prophet and Colter stopped their horses in the middle of the dusty yard, near the windmill and stone stock tank ringing its base. The horses had smelled the water from a mile away and were eyeing the tank eagerly while Prophet and his trail companion took their measure of the surroundings, getting the lay of the land.

  Several saddled horses stood before the big, boxlike, brush-roofed adobe sitting back from a wide ramada. A barn and corral sat to Prophet’s right. Goats, pigs, and chickens foraged in the low, rocky desert hillocks to his left, around several small stone stock pens and an adobe chicken coop. As far as Prophet could tell, no trouble was afoot. He’d ridden up to One-Eye’s place before when men from rival bandito gangs were exchanging lead, so he knew from experience it paid to be cautious.

  Besides, this was Mexico . . .

  “All right,” Lou said, reaching down to snap the keeper thong back over his Colt’s hammer. He’d released the strap when they’d left the dead man hanging by the wash. “Quiet as a preacher’s parsonage on Sunday after . . .”

  He let the words die on his tongue when boots thumped and spurs chimed on the ramada. He glanced at the cantina. A man was just then walking through the batwing doors that were made from woven greasewood stems. The tall Mexican outfitted in the brightly colored trail garb of the border country stopped just outside the doors, as they slapped into place behind him.

  He lifted his chin as though to take a deep breath, composing himself after too much drink, then walked forward with pronounced carefulness. He stepped out from under the ramada into the sunlit yard then stopped again.

  Suddenly, he dropped straight down to his knees. He knelt there for a second then gave a little whining, strangling yell before falling on his face in the dust. The crown of the red velvet, silver-stitched sombrero hanging down his back poked straight up at the sky. Below the sombrero, the brass-framed, pearl handle of a stylish knife jutted from the man’s back.

  Something moved behind the cantina’s batwings. A man stood there, staring out. He pushed through the doors and stopped under the ramada, staring straight out into the yard at Lou Prophet and Colter Farrow. He was dressed very much like the now-dead vaquero, only he was shorter, with a slight paunch, and he sported long drooping black mustaches.

  As he sized up Prophet and Colter, the Mexican’s right hand strayed toward a pistol holstered high on his right hip. Prophet smiled without guile at the gent and opened his hands to show that he was no threat.

  Colter did the same.

  The mustached Mex slid his eyes between the newcomers cautiously, then removed his hand from his gun and strode over to the dead man. He placed his left foot on the dead man’s rump and pulled the knife free of the man’s back with his right hand. The knife made a sucking, grinding sound as it slid free of the dead man’s flesh.

  The dead man’s killer cleaned the blade on the dead man’s short leather charro jacket, then stuck the fancy pig sticker into a sheath jutting up from the well of his right, silver-tipped, high-topped black boot. He crouched once more over the dead man and pulled something from the dead man’s right coat sleeve.

  He looked at it then, giving a Spanish curse, angrily flipped the object into the dirt. Prophet’s eyes were good enough for him to make out the queen of hearts.

  When the Mexican had returned to the cantina, Prophet turned to Colter and narrowed one eye in warning. “You don’t want to cheat at cards here.”

  “No,” Colter said, staring at the pasteboard lying faceup beside the dead man. “No, I don’t.”

  He and Prophet swung down from their saddles and loosened their horses’ latigo straps so they could drink freely from the stock tank. The men tossed their reins on the ground, effectively ground-reining the beasts, who wouldn’t stray far from the water, anyway, then headed over to the cantina.

  Prophet pushed through the batwings first, Colter flanking him. He looked around at the men playing cards at tables around him. Then he squinted his eyes into the smoke-hazy shadows at the rear of the earthen-floored room, where a raisin of a little one-eyed man held his place beside his range upon which a stewpot perpetually smoked, sizzled, and bubbled, filling the room with the peppery, tangy smell of Mexican stew.

  The stew was One-Eye Acuna’s specialty whose Spanish name Prophet couldn’t remember. What he could remember was that it was one hel
l of a rib-sticking meal chock-full of goat or javelina and seasoned with chili peppers and several other spices Prophet didn’t recognize and which he’d eaten only in Baja. (One-Eye had once confessed to the bounty hunter that his secret was simmering a goat’s head in the estofado overnight then removing it the next morning. There was no seasoning in all of Mexico like boiled cerebros de cabra, or goat brains!)

  Prophet stopped in the middle of the room, folded his thick arms across his broad chest, and grinned toward the old man whose head poked up maybe a foot above his plank board bar. “Lookee there, the old reprobate is still kickin’!” Prophet intoned. “Now, if that ain’t proof ole el diablo walks amongst us, I don’t know what is!”

  The old man looked up from the age-yellowed newspaper spread out before him. It was a big paper likely left here by some pilgrim from Mexico City.

  One-Eye’s face was so dark he might have been mistaken for a full-blood Aztec. It was every bit as creased as a raisin. The man’s longish, extremely thin hair was coal black and swept straight back over his head, tucked behind his tiny black ears. The hair was so thin that warts and black cancers showed through its thin screen, all over his head. He had more abrasions on his face. He squinted his lone, milky black eye toward Prophet, a black patch covering the other one.

  A grin shaped itself slowly on his lipless mouth, showing what appeared to be a full set of badly tobacco-stained teeth. Ashes from the loosely rolled corn-husk cigarette dangling from a corner of his mouth dribbled onto the newspaper, which lay beside a five-gallon glass tarro filled with pickled baby rattlesnakes—another Baja delicacy.

  Tears came to the ancient mestizo’s lone eye. He shook his head as the tears started to dribble down his nearly black cheeks, the skin drawn so taut against the severe bones that it appeared on the verge of splitting.

  Making a strangling sound that Prophet knew to be warm, delighted laughter, One-Eye walked out around his bar, small and frail and slightly bent forward at the waist and with a slight hump pushing his head down but still fleet on his feet for all his years and ailments.