An Evening at Joe's (20 page)

His anger lent power to his legs and he ran for all he was worth, lungs screaming, legs screaming, arm screaming, but it wasn't enough. His path was cut off by the horses of the Sheriff and one of his men. He pulled up and turned around, running in the opposite direction, but was met by more men and more horses. He was trapped, a lone fox ringed by a pack of snarling hounds. He stopped and turned back to the Sheriff, slowly raising his good arm in surrender, his wounded gun arm hanging bloody and useless at his side.

"You win, Bruton, you got me."

"I should just shoot you where you stand, Adams," the Sheriff hissed.

An excellent suggestion. "Go ahead," he goaded, "I dare you. Or maybe you're just too yellow-bellied?"

"Of some fancy-pants foreigner?" Bruton cocked his revolver and aimed. His target braced himself for the impact and the two men stared each other down. Then Bruton holstered his gun. "You got balls for a foreigner, but I won't deprive the people back home of the pleasure of seein' you swing." The Sheriff indicated to two of his men. "Tie him to a horse. Let's get him outta here. And you two—pointing to two more deputies—"go back to his horse. Make sure the gold's all there."

As they rode off, the first two men dismounted. Their prisoner looked around as they approached him, assessing everyone's position, looking for any means of escape. Then, as they tried to grab him, his "useless" right hand suddenly slung the gun from his holster, shooting one man in the chest, the other in the gut.

He whirled before the other men had a chance to react, shot one in the shoulder, knocking him from his horse. He shot two more as they cocked their rifles, then turned and fired at the Sheriff, missing him but hitting his horse in the withers, throwing the Sheriff to the ground.

He tried firing again at the Sheriff, but the gun clicked uselessly, empty. He quickly shoved it back into his holster. Seven men, six bullets—he'd never liked math. He tried grabbing a gun from one of the two men at his feet, but one of the men still mounted got off a shot, winging him in the left shoulder. He took off running again amid more rifle fire.

Up ahead he could see where the forest ended and he made for it as fast as he could. As he approached the end of the treeline, he looked back over his shoulder again—Bruton, mounted on one of the dead men's horses, and two of his deputies were gaining fast. He looked ahead again and stopped dead in his tracks.

In front of him the forest floor dropped away into nothing and before him stretched the largest canyon he had ever seen. He'd heard locals tell of the great canyon, but he'd thought they were exaggerating—nothing could be that vast. Another two steps and he would have been over the side. He looked over the rim—it was a mighty long way clown,

The hoofbeats behind him reminded him it was no time for sight- seeing. His eyes desperately searched the rim for a path or another way down into the canyon. They would have an advantage over him down there, because he could sense it was a holy place and rules much older than the Law of the West would prevent him from fighting here, but he was counting on the fact that most White men wouldn't enter the canyon at all, whether from fear of the Indian spirits or the actual Indians who lived within it.

But there was no path. No way down. He could hear the lawmen rein in their horses behind him.

There was one way down. He turned to them.

"Say goodbye, Sheriff," he bluffed and pulled his empty gun. One of the deputies caught him square in the chest with a round from a Winchester rifle and the impact knocked him off the rim of the canyon.

Bruton and his men watched him fall, his body bouncing off a rocky ledge far below to land, a broken heap, nearly a mile below.

"Shit," the Sheriff said, and motioned for his men to follow him back to Fraziers Well, empty handed.

He was pain. A ball of pain. A throbbing mass of pain. Pain was his entire existence. Pain was his awareness. He could not see or hear or even feel, but he knew the pain. It was in him and through him and around him. He gasped for air and it seared down his throat like molten lava.

Hearing returned first. He could hear a great rushing, like a mighty ocean or a river. A river... a canyon... suddenly he remembered. He remembered the canyon, the lawmen, he remembered Immortality, he remembered so many, so many years. He was no longer pain. He was Methos.

But he was still in pain. He heard a sound like a silent footstep off to his right and he struggled to force his eyes open. He looked up into the sky pure and blue high above him and on either side of him walls of impossible colors jutted up to touch the sky. The feeling of vertigo was so intense he closed his eyes again. A twig snapped, like the passing of a small animal, and he turned his head toward it. Muscles and bones alike protested as he moved. There, behind a bush, he saw a boy not much more than 10. An Indian boy. He locked eyes with the boy for a moment until the boy ran off. He tried to call out to him, but speech had not yet returned.

He lay where he had fallen for a while without moving, feeling the healing, feeling the pain slowly start to recede. He knew he had to get up, to move away before the boy returned, but his spine and his legs could not bear his weight. Finally, still on the ground, he tested each appendage—head, arms, legs—to make sure they worked, then climbed to his knees. The effort exhausted him. He waited a minute and then, feeling stronger, was able to stand.

He looked down at himself, covered head to toe in blood, clothes twisted and torn, and made his way to the river. Removing his boots and duster, his vest, shirt and belt, he waded into the Colorado. The bone-chilling cold of the river recharged him and he fell to his knees, dunking under the water repeatedly to get the blood and the taste of death off of his body.

As he came up out of the river, wiping the water from his eyes, he realized the river bank was lined with Indians. The small boy, his eyes wide, silently pointed him out to one of the men of the tribe. Then the Indian man and boy entered the water and walked out to him. The Indian spoke to him, but in a language he could not understand.

"Sorry," the white man said with a shrug. "¿Español? English?"

The Indian nodded. "I am Crow's Feather and this is my son, Little Crow." "Pleased to meet you. I'm...." Who was he in this situation? He certainly didn't want word getting around that Ben Adams was still alive, "...lost. Can we go ashore? It's a little cold out here."

The Indian and his son escorted him to the river bank, where all the other Indians, twenty or more, gathered around him. Some reached out to touch his smooth chest, his unblemished shoulders. Crow's Feather said a word and all the Indians stepped back, giving them room.

"Little Crow says he saw you fall from the Eagle's Nest. Some of the women saw it, too, from our village."

"I'm afraid that's true. Always been a little clumsy." He tried to read the Indian, but couldn't.

"Little Crow also says he came to see where you had fallen and you were like a snake trampled by horses. You were dead. And then he watched you come back to life." The Indian looked at him, searchingly. He just laughed it off. "You know how boys are, always exaggerating things."

"My son does not lie," Crow's Feather said solemnly. "And he is more than old enough to know when someone is dead and someone is alive."

The two men looked into each other's eyes, each surprised at the honesty and wisdom they glimpsed there. Crow's Feather went on.

"There are stories handed down from our fathers of beings who live far beyond the life granted ordinary men. Beings who can only be killed among lightning and fire. Little Crow tells me you are such a being. Are you?"

He did not know whether these people would consider him an agent of good or a demon spirit to be cast out and destroyed, but he felt he owed them no less than the truth. "Yes, I guess I am."

"Our ancestors say these beings are messengers of the Great Spirit who created these lands and should be treated with honor."

This particular "messenger of the Great Spirit" was sure his great relief could be seen by everyone present.

"Come, Eagle's Flight, we will give you food and warm clothes. We have much to learn from each other."

Alexa sat on the little balcony overlooking the old square and tried to write her postcards. She was woefully behind on her correspondence, she knew. There'd been so much to see, so much to do, since she had left home with Adam. Was it only three months? It felt like a lifetime... and of course, it was, near enough.

She'd grown to know Adam well enough that his little moods no longer fazed her. Usually when his eyes got that faraway look she could joke him out of it... or try kissing it away, that usually worked, even when it took a lot of kissing. Once or twice he'd gone so far into whatever place in his head his mystery was, there'd been nothing for it but to leave him alone for a day or two. He'd scared her the last time—he was so distant and distracted, she was sure he was trying to figure out a way to tell her he'd had enough, it was time for her to go home. They'd been in Cairo and he'd disappeared at midnight, sneaking out of the room while she pretended sleep, and she'd lain there for four long hours, huddled in her half of the bed, wondering if he would come back at all or if she would find herself in the morning abandoned in a foreign country on the other side of the world.

He'd come back, covered in sand and sweat, and he'd shed the long coat he always wore with angry haste, flinging it across the room as though he couldn't bear the sight or the feel of it, and then he'd slipped into the bed, trying not to disturb her, wrapping himself into a tight ball. Not wanting to push, she'd waited until she could bear the silence no longer, then had reached for him, found to her astonishment that he was trembling with exhaustion, almost shivering, like a child trying to sleep after a nightmare. She'd pulled him into her arms, trying to offer comfort, and he had reached for her with surprising passion, as though some bottled up need were spilling out, almost beyond his will. All but crushing her mouth with his, he'd tangled one of those big gentle hands none too gently in her hair, spreading the other in the small of her back and flipping her over with him on top, plunging into her with such suddenness and strength that she'd cried out into the kiss, and he'd taken her cry and echoed it back at her, a primal sound from the edge between pain and pleasure, their two bodies locked together in satisfying the need that had, for that moment, consumed him.

In the morning they'd left Egypt for Jerusalem. In the Holy City Adam had returned to himself, the beast that had possessed him for that one night banished back to wherever in his soul he stored the part of him he did not share with her. Alexa questioned nothing, let him have the time he needed, and after a week of respite he'd suggested that she might like to see Greece, and they had come to Athens and taken this little sunny room with the courtyard view, and nothing more had been said of that night in Cairo.

And now there was this. The call had come on Friday and Alexa had been surprised and pleased to hear Joe's voice on the other end of the line—but he'd been hasty, clearly troubled, as he'd asked to speak to Adam, and Alexa had watched the pall settle over Adam as he listened in silence. She recognized the look, the one that said "Don't ask," as he'd turned to her, almost not seeing her. He had to go to France for a few days, business. Joe would call her if there was anything she needed to know, he told her, his tone struggling for lightness. And then he'd stopped in the doorway, very serious, and told her to do whatever Joe said, anything. And then he'd been gone, leaving her in an agony of wondering what he'd meant. He wasn't a person who liked confrontations, he avoided arguments whenever possible. Was this his way of avoiding a messy scene—faking an urgent call, urgent business, and then having Joe call her in a few days with the bad news and the price of a ticket home?

Well, if it was, Alexa decided stoutly, she wasn't sorry she'd come. Whatever happened next, she'd had her grand adventure, she'd seen some of the things she'd dreamed of, before it was too late. She had Adam to thank for it, and she determined to forgive him whatever he was about to do, even as her heart closed up at the thought of him gone.

And if these were to be the last days of her world tour, damned if she was going to spend them in a hotel room when Athens and all its wonders were right outside her door.
It was an effort of will not to miss Adam every minute. He had been such a splendid tour guide in every city they'd visited, she was painfully conscious of his absence as she negotiated the unfamiliar city with the help of a four-color guidebook's superficial hints and histories. Returning to the hotel each night exhausted from the day's explorations, she tried to force herself not to hope to find Adam waiting there. More than once she thought she saw him at one of the tables at the cafe on the square, huddled in his big coat, watching for her return—and every time it had turned out to be some other young man, an English history student or a French tourist or an Italian local, looking away as she passed.