The Cost of Dying

by Peter Brandvold

  Lou traced a winding course up the incline, so steep that he occasionally dropped to his hands and knees. When he gained the crest of the one-hundred-foot-high formation, he lay at the base of a fingerlike protrusion jutting straight up toward the sky, rising still another hundred feet.

  He was sweating and breathing hard.

  “What’s the matter, Lou?” Colter said, crawling up behind him. “Don’t tell me you’re gettin’ too old for a leisurely climb.”

  Lou spat to one side and raised the field glasses. “It ain’t the years, Red, it’s the trail of sins I’ve left behind me.”

  Prophet aimed the binoculars back along the path they’d taken down from a ridge two ridges to the west. There was no path, exactly, so he was mainly looking for movement behind him.

  All he could see were rock and cirios, the occasional candelabra cactus, and thin clumps of saltbush. A lone hawk hunted high above the ridge down which they’d ridden into the barranca. For a time, the raptor appeared to be holding absolutely still but then a sudden dip of either wing told of its riding a thermal, looking for an early supper along the shoulder of the ridge below it.

  “Anything back there?” Colter asked.

  “I don’t see nothin’.” Prophet handed the glasses over to the redhead. “You give it a try. Your eyes are probably better than these sinful old peepers of mine.”

  Colter poked up his hat brim, held the glasses to his face, and adjusted the focus. He slid the binoculars left, back to the right, then slowly left again.

  “Nothin’ but that hawk up yonder. Oh, wait!”

  Prophet’s heart quickened. “What?”

  Colter lowered the glasses, grinning. “Coyote.”

  Prophet released a held breath, scowling at the younker. “You ought not torment your elders so.”

  “Sorry, Lou. I think Jack has it right. If Yeats knew about the canyon, we’d see him by now. He wasn’t that far behind us, and he’s gotta be madder’n an old wet hen.”

  Prophet looked off, pensive.

  “What is it?” Colter asked him.

  “What was that coyote doin’?”

  “Huh?”

  “Was it just moseyin’ along or was it runnin’?”

  Colter hiked a shoulder. “It was sort of joggin’.”

  “Joggin’ an’ lookin’ behind it, or was it chasin’ a rabbit or a mouse or some such, looking forward?”

  “It was lookin’ behind,” Colter answered, studying Prophet curiously though apprehension was building slowly in his eyes.

  “Give me them glasses.”

  Prophet rose to his knees, held the binoculars to his face, and scanned the rocky terrain flanking them once again. The coyote must have drifted off through the rocks, for there was no sign of it. No sign of trouble, either. There was nothing along their back trail but more rocks and cactus climbing one ridge after another until all the ridges merged into one big blue blur beyond which lay the Pacific Ocean.

  “Hmmm,” Lou said. “That brush wolf must’ve been watchin’ his shadow. Or maybe we spooked him.”

  Colter smiled at him. “Satisfied?”

  “No, I ain’t satisfied. I’m gonna keep an eyeball skinned and so should you, but I reckon I’m ready to head to Jack’s canyon. I could use a good, quiet night’s sleep for a change, though that ain’t the ideal place for it.”

  He and Colter made their careful way back to their horses. Alejandra was where Lou had left her, sitting atop Mean. She sat slumped forward, head hanging, her thick red hair obscuring her face. Prophet pulled his reins free of the shrub and frowned at her.

  “You all right, señorita?”

  She turned to him and brushed her hair out of her eyes, throwing it straight back over her head. She looked weary and drawn, probably foggy from all the weed she’d smoked for the past several weeks she’d been housed in Yeats’s lair. Maybe now that reality was settling over her, she was realizing the mistake she’d made, forsaking her family for Ciaran Yeats and his locoweed.

  She said nothing but merely returned her gaze to the pommel of Lou’s saddle.

  Prophet mounted up and, Colter following close behind him, continued along the barranca’s twisting course between high red ridge walls painted by the ancients and flecked with the bones of dinosaurs and likely with a few of the ancient folks’ bones, as well. Prophet didn’t relish the prospect of spending another night in the canyon amidst all the ghosts that lingered in the ancient village. Despite the strange haunts of the place, though, it was likely the best sanctuary around.

  If Baja Jack was right, that was, and Yeats didn’t know about the canyon—didn’t know that the mysterious cliff dwellings were where Jack would be heading with whatever he was carrying on his burros.

  Prophet’s uneasiness ratcheted up when a croaking cry rose from ahead along the barranca. A strangled wail followed, echoing. A mule brayed.

  Lou glanced back at Colter, whose eyes popped wide as the strange sounds that could only be from a man in distress continued to vault off the canyon’s close walls. Prophet whipped his head back forward and ground his spurs into Mean’s flanks, the dun giving an indignant whinny and lunging off its rear hooves.

  Prophet galloped around a bend in the barranca and then, spying movement ahead of him, shucked his Peacemaker from its holster, holding the gun barrel-up in his right hand. When Mean had taken three more long, galloping strides, Lou jerked back on the horse’s reins and stared ahead in shock toward where the canyon’s back door was a black hole before him.

  Pepe and the burros were clumped near Jack’s trigueño in front of the portal. The trigueño’s saddle was empty, its reins hanging. The Arabian’s neck and tail were arched and it was looking up and dancing around nervously. Pepe, mounted on his mule, was also looking up and shaking his head and yelling in shrill Spanish, gesturing with one gloved hand.

  What the old man and the trigueño were gaping at was none other than Baja Jack himself, who dangled six feet off the ground before the canyon’s narrow entrance. He was suspended in the air, sort of dancing and twisting and snarling like a leg-trapped bobcat. A rope encircled his chest, drawn up taut beneath his arms. He clawed at the hemp with his fat little hands.

  Lower jaw hanging in befuddlement, wondering if the cavern’s strange magic wasn’t already in play, Lou followed the rope straight up from Baja Jack’s sombrero-clad head. Lou’s jaw hung even lower and his eyes grew even wider when he saw . . . or thought he saw . . . Louisa Bonaventure kneeling on a ledge over the cavern’s portal. Her pinto horse flanked her.

  The rope suspending Baja Jack over the portal angled over Louisa’s right shoulder and curved up and over her saddle horn. She held the end of the taut rope in both her gloved hands down close to the ground, keeping a firm grip on the hemp.

  The Vengeance Queen’s jaws were taut. Her face was red from strain. She glared down at the thick little man dancing the midair two-step beneath her. She appeared to be saying something to Jack, but Prophet couldn’t hear her above Jack’s crowlike rasps and wails and his shrill curses as well as the hoarse protests of old Pepe and the braying of the old man’s mule.

  Prophet blinked and shook his head as though to clear his vision.

  Surely he was seeing an image spawned by his weed-fogged brain or the canyon’s dark magic. But when he opened his eyes again, Louisa was still there on the ledge above the canyon’s mouth, dangling Baja Jack over the portal like a worm on a fishing hook hanging into a lake.

  When Lou finally found his voice, he bellowed, “Louisa, for the love o’ Uncle Mike, stop playin’ cat’s cradle with Baja Jack, you crazy catamount!”

  Chapter 42

  Louisa turned her head from where Baja Jack dangled below her, kicking and twisting at the end of the rope. She held Lou’s gaze, frowning at him curiously from beneath the brim of her tan Stetson.

  Lou gestured wildly with his right hand still holding his Peacemaker. “Turn him loose! Turn the old buzzard loose, fer chrissakes!”

 
; Louisa shrugged. She released the rope, and Baja Jack plummeted the six feet to the ground. He landed with a sharp grunt followed by an indignant wail. Dust wafted around where the little man lay writhing.

  “Heaven help you if you killed that little bastard!” Prophet swung down from Mean’s back and ran up through the nervous burros and Jack’s horse and Pepe’s loudly braying mule.

  He dropped to a knee beside Jack, who snarled and shook his head and madly tried to free himself of the noose that hung slack around his lumpy torso.

  “Ease up, Jack,” Lou said. “Lemme help you!”

  When Jack relaxed a little, sitting up, Lou lifted the rope up over his head and tossed it away.

  He set a hand on the little man’s shoulder. “You all right, John Brian? She didn’t hurt ya none, did she?”

  Jack was flushed, his buzzard face swollen and red behind his natural dirty-brown. He was breathing hard and reaching forward to caress his left ankle curled before him. “Oh, Lordy—I think my ankle is broke!”

  “You think so?”

  “Oh, mercy, what an indignity I’ve suffered!” His face creased with misery, Jack looked at Lou and Colter, who was also kneeling beside him now, regarding the little man with concern. “I was just ridin’ along, mindin’ my own damn business, headin’ into the canyon when lo an’ behold out of nowhere someone drops a ketch rope over my head from above!”

  Jack jerked his head slightly to his left, and his eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. He jutted his left arm out in wild fury. “There she is! That’s her now! She’s the one who lifted me right up out of my saddle and hung me there to dry!”

  Lou turned to see Louisa descending the ridge a hundred feet to the right of the canyon mouth, her pinto stepping carefully down what appeared to be a steep game path. At the canyon bottom, the blond Vengeance Queen swung the pinto over to where Lou and Colter were on their knees beside the indignant Baja Jack.

  Louisa rode easily in her saddle, her face expressionless, hazel eyes as unruffled as ever.

  “There she is right there! That’s the one!” Jack exclaimed.

  Stopping the pinto, Louisa poked her Stetson back off her forehead and leaned casually forward against her saddle horn. “Don’t get your drawers in a twist, little man,” she said. “It played out differently than I figured.”

  “Jesus, Louisa,” Lou said, staring up at her in exasperation. “Why in the hell did you throw a long loop over Baja Jack?”

  “When I saw just him and his burros heading toward the cavern, I figured he must have thrown you to that lion, Ciaran Yeats. I wanted to get the story from the horse’s mouth, and I thought maybe hanging him up for a bit would loosen his tongue.”

  “He didn’t throw me to no lion,” Prophet told her. “He saved my hide, as a matter of fact. Both me and the kid’s.”

  Colter rose to his feet, doffed his hat, and held it over his heart. He smiled shyly up at the pretty blonde Vengeance Queen sitting atop the big pinto. “I’m Colter Farrow.”

  Prophet glanced at the love-struck redhead and snorted a laugh. “Don’t swallow your tongue over her, Red. She ain’t worth it. She eats men for breakfast, lunch, an’ supper.”

  “Only when there’s a paucity of anything more appetizing,” Louisa said. “Like scorpions or rattlesnakes.”

  Lou straightened to stand beside Colter gazing up at Louisa. While love at first sight glittered in the redhead’s eyes, Prophet’s gaze was dubious, deep lines cut across his forehead beneath the brim of his battered, funnel-brimmed Stetson.

  “What’re you staring at?” Louisa asked her sometime partner, sometime lover.

  “It really was you the other night.”

  Louisa hiked a shoulder. She was ignoring Colter gazing dreamily up at her. “Someone has to watch your back.”

  “What’re you doing here?”

  “Waiting for you. And Yeats.”

  Lou scowled, incredulous. “Huh?”

  “I had a feeling you were going to skin out of Baluarte Santiago with Ciaran Yeats tight on your back trail. You have a habit of skinning out of places with men tight on your back trail. When you showed up here, which I knew you would, thinking you could escape him this way . . .”

  Louisa gave a self-satisfied smile as she reached out to caress the stock of the Winchester repeating rifle jutting up from its saddle scabbard on her right.

  “You’d blow Yeats out of his saddle?” Lou said, skeptically.

  “Right between the eyes.”

  “So I was bait?”

  Louisa shrugged.

  Prophet laughed without mirth. “The joke might’ve been on you, you know, you crazy blond polecat. If Yeats was behind us, there’d be a few more than just the Mad Major himself, you have to figure!”

  “They’d die bloody. Or I would . . . after a bloody battle. But at least Yeats would be dancing with the devil. I’ve wanted him for years, for all the girls he’s taken from their families, mostly poor peon families. I just never found a way to get him.” Again, Louisa smiled that irritating, unflappable smile of hers. “Until I saw that you were stupid enough to go after him without a plan of any kind . . .” She glanced snidely at Alejandra sitting on Lou’s saddle atop Mean and Ugly. “Only knowing there was a beautiful girl at the end of the trail . . . just trailing along behind this . . . this . . .”

  Louisa indicated Baja Jack with her hand, leaving the question open, her lips shaping a grimace.

  Caressing his ankle, Jack glared back at the Vengeance Queen. “Who does this crazy gringa think she is, Lou? Don’t she know it ain’t polite to come down here to Mexico and long-loop unsuspecting hombres out of their saddles?”

  “Which question you want me to answer first, Jack?”

  Baja Jack shook an exasperated finger at Louisa still sitting her saddle like a queen upon her throne. “You, young lady . . . you need to be taken in hand. If you were my woman, you’d walk behind me, never ahead, and when I told you to jump, you’d ask how high!” He’d intoned this tirade with his good eye flashing bayonets of glinting fury, his wild eye dancing around in its socket like a demented mouse in its hole.

  Louisa furled her brows at him bemusedly. “Do you have a woman, little man?”

  Jack compressed his lips at her, looking indignant and vaguely sheepish. “At the moment, I’m between women.”

  “I’m between women, too, Miss Bonaventure,” Colter said, still holding his hat in his hands, like a boy who’d come calling on the preacher’s daughter with whom he wanted to share the porch swing for an hour or two.

  “That there’s the Vengeance Queen?” Baja Jack asked, skeptically.

  “That’s her,” Colter said through a fawning smile.

  Baja Jack croaked out his crowlike laugh. “She don’t look like so much to me! What she does look like to me is a girl in need of a man taking her over his knee!”

  “If you think you’re that man . . .” Louisa closed a hand over one of her fancy, pearl-gripped, silver-chased Colts. “Come and get it.”

  “Ah, fer chrissakes—stand down, Louisa!” Prophet dropped to a knee again beside Jack. “Don’t let her get to ya, John Brian. How you feelin’ now? Think you can stand?”

  “No, I don’t think I can stand,” Jack whined. “I think she busted my ankle for me, the crazy polecat!”

  “How does this feel?” Lou waggled the little man’s child-sized foot clad in the child-sized black, hand-tooled boot.

  Jack gasped and stiffened. “That hurts like hell!”

  Lou smiled. “If it was broke you’d scream a lot louder than that, Jack.”

  “I can’t scream any louder than that, Lou. I’m in too much pain!”

  After further albeit brief examination, it was determined that Baja Jack’s ankle was only sprained, and Lou and Colter pulled the little man to his feet. Jack yipped and howled and sucked sharp breaths through gritted teeth as he settled his weight on the ankle in question, but finally they got Jack and themselves and all the horses, burros, and
old Pepe into the canyon, where they could set up camp for the night. They gathered around where Louisa had built a small cookfire over which a coffeepot—or a teapot in Louisa’s case, since she drank only tea and abstained from all form of tangleleg—steamed on an iron spider.

  While Jack limped around, trying to keep his ankle from stiffening up, Prophet pulled Alejandra down from Mean’s back. Louisa led her pinto up near Prophet, glanced at Alejandra in her filmy gown, and gave a snort. “You sure know how to pick them—don’t you, Lou?”

  Alejandra gave Louisa the woolly eyeball then turned to Prophet. “Who is she, Lou?”

  Louisa arched a brow. “It’s ‘Lou’ already, eh?”

  Prophet’s ears warmed a little as he said to Alejandra, “That there is . . .”

  “I know who she is,” Alejandra said crisply, giving Louisa the slow, critical up-and-down. “I mean—who is she to you?”

  Prophet’s ears got even warmer. Louisa saved him from a response by giving a response of her own: “Don’t worry, honey, our relationship is purely adversarial.”

  Alejandra looked at Lou and said with a skeptical, vaguely jealous air, “Is that right?”

  Jesus, Lou thought. I was safer back at Baluarte Santiago!

  Colter, who was pouring water into his hat for his horse, chuckled and shook his head.

  “Shut up, Red,” Prophet said.

  “I didn’t say nothin’.”

  “Shut up, anyway.”

  “All right.”

  Prophet decided to leave the ladies to their stare-down. He turned to where Jack was still trying to walk off his injury while old Pepe, like Colter, watered his mount from his hat. “What I want to know once an’ for all,” said the bounty hunter, moving to one of the burros and opening a pannier strapped to the aparejo, “is what in the holy hell you have . . .”

  He let his voice trail off. His eyes grew wide. He looked at Jack, who stood with the bulk of his weight on one foot, and said, “Is that what I think it is?”

  Jack smiled, both eyes glistening, even the one staring at the tip of his nose.

  “What is it?” Colter asked, loosening Northwest’s latigo straps so the horse could drink freely.