Mojave (22 page)

A Spiller & Burr was strapped to my hip. I had a Marlin repeating rifle with I don't know how many bullets remaining. I had one canteen full of water, another one half-full, and a flask containing maybe three or four shots of Mad Dog John Milton's gin. I knowed where I was going, but had no idea how I'd ever fine Calico.

Had to be forty or fifty miles from where I stood.

Odds was, I'd never make it.

Even from the top of the ridge, I could feel the warmth of the flames below.

Here's where things get real strange. I was speaking, sounding like I was in
Henry IV, Part I.
Sounding like I was reading a book of poetry to Sister Rocío back at the Sisters of Charity orphanage. Maybe that's where I'd first heard it. Maybe that blind nun had recited the poem to me. Maybe I was being touched by the hand of God.

Staring at the fire, I said:

Then I turned and walked down the last dune.

 

 

After that, the country flattened, more or less. Well, there wasn't no more shifting sand dunes I had to climb. I dropped down into a wash, following it along a southerly basis. Came to one fork, and taken one, but when it turned north and west, I went back. The next fork also proved to be a dead end.

Eventually, the wash ended, and I climbed out. Kept walking, hardly even stopping to slake my thirst. Crossed an alkali playa, moved into rougher country of creosote and yucca. Kept walking.

At some point, with the graying sky behind me telling me that dawn was nigh, I come to a water hole, and I stopped, dropped to my knees, and thought about drinking. Now, I had one canteen full of water, and I had another which still held enough to get me through maybe one more day. Yet here was water, smelled fresh from that big thunderclap we'd had. I dipped my fingers in it, felt the coolness, wondered if I should drink, if I should fill my second canteen.

Wondered, also, if this was an alkali hole, or pure poison and would kill me dead.

That's a tough thing to endure, and my body, by now in complete torment from all I'd been through, just couldn't take no more. I scooped up a handful of that water, and drunk it down. My empty belly roiled, and I fell onto the ground, staring up at the stars, seeing Jingfei's face in the night.

“Bless me, Father,” I said, “for I have sinned,” but didn't get around to telling the stars all of the sinning that I had done. I closed my eyes, and for the second time that day, I, Micah Bishop, died.

The sun blazed high overhead when I woke up, the muscles in my arms screaming from all the heavy lifting I'd done back in the dunes. Usually, the only lifting I do is cards and beer steins and whiskey bottles, and the occasional saddle when I'm too broke to tip the kid at the livery stable to do it for me. Shielding my eyes from the sun, I slid up against the rocks by the pool of water. Found the hat I'd slept on, put it on my head, and said, my voice raw, “Water wasn't poison. I ain't dead.”

“You will be soon,” a voice said, and I turned to see some wretched creature with an evil grin on its monstrous face. It spit venom between my legs, and I reached for my Spiller & Burr, but it wasn't there. The creature held it. Cocked it. Pointed it at my private area.

“You burned my bus, Micah Bishop. That rig cost me a bunch of horses I'd stole in Utah.”

The monster moved around, till its big head blocked the sun. I could see clearly now, and my mind hadn't been playing tricks on me. I wasn't suffering sunstroke. Indeed, it was a monster.

“Crutchfield,” I whispered.

The sun had burned Candy Crutchfield's face to the point it looked blistered. She'd lost her hat, and you sure needed something on your head in this furnace. The .36 trembled in her right hand, she could barely keep it aimed at me, and a Spiller & Burr ain't no heavy Walker or Dragoon. She hadn't yet even cocked the hammer, and, betting man that I am, I'd give good odds that she didn't have the strength to do it.

“That horse-bus was ruined,” I told her, “thanks to Whip Watson.”

The revolver lowered, and she snarled and cussed and practically foamed up in her mouth like a hydrophoby dog. “I'll kill that peckerwood,” she said. “Kill him dead.”

“That's the best way to kill a person.” I watched her try to steady the pistol with which she seemed intent to kill me dead.

“You followed me,” I said.

Her head tilted a bit in affirmation, but she didn't lower her—
my
—gun.

“I had to burn the wagon,” I said.

“Cremation.” She nodded.

“Couldn't leave them to the buzzards and coyot's,” I told her.

“You left Emilio.”

I give her a look of bewilderment.

“Emilio,” she snapped. “Emilio Aldana y Narváez. You left him under Yago.”

Yago would be the dead Arabian. I shrugged. “He was stuck.”

“Wolves managed to dig him out,” she said. “Others, too.”

The water in my belly got churned to butter.

“Well, you could have come help me,” I told her. “Instead of stayed atop those dunes watching me.”

She didn't have nothing to say to that. I'd guessed right. She had come back, waited on the dunes, then followed me. Which meant the sun had clearly touched her bad because no sane person would have followed me.

Tiring of this conversation, I decided to do something else to torment her. I drank. Just reached over, cupped my hands, filled it with some water, brought it to my lips.

Now, the way I figured it, she had likely drunk some water when she reached this spot. I don't think she just taken my .36. She had likely filled her belly, but she'd still been out in that sun all of yesterday, and without water since Whip Watson's ambush. The sun was already fairly high up in the sky, and it had turned hot, dry, and miserable.

I drunk some more.

Just drunk my breakfast as she watched, eyes darting this way and that, then cooled off my neck and face with the water. It didn't taste as cool or as fine as it had right before dawn, but the sun was fairly high by now. Bathed my left arm, and untied my bandanna, dipped it in the water, then gingerly placed that rag on the welts on my back.

That caused me to gasp.

But sight of all that water, my luxury bath, it cracked poor Candy Crutchfield, and she dropped the pistol she'd taken from me whilst I slept, and fell to her knees, and plunged headfirst into the small hole.

Drunk like a hog. I mean, even as hurt and weary and miserable as I felt, listening to her slurp up that water sickened my stomach. While she lay on her belly, drinking and making dreadful noises, however, I moved and picked up my Spiller & Burr. Then I went around so that when she finally drunk her fill, and sat up, she'd be facing the sun, and I wasn't going to be her parasol.

Finally, just before my stomach was about to roll over, she stopped snorting and cavorting, put her hands in the pool, pushed herself up. I aimed the .36 at her broad back, thumbed back the hammer, and waited. For a moment, she was still, then she sucked in a deep breath, gasped, and fell facedown into the water, her greasy hair floating. Bubbles come up. But she didn't move.

Well, I cussed, lowered the hammer and shoved the revolver into my holster. Walking on my knees, as I was too damned tired to stand up, I made it over to the pool, reached over, and taken her by the collar.

The human body and the human spirit can act real strange. Last night, I'd been able to carry or drag the dead all across that sand, somehow lift them, or push and pull them, even toss them, into that battered omnibus. Did it without complaint, and some of them bodies weighed more than Moby-Dick.

That had been last night. This was late morning.

I heaved, damn near give myself the hernia Buster hadn't give me. Got her head out of the water, then my fingers lost the grip, and she splashed back into the water. She was muddying up that hole real bad, and I thought I could see the oil coming off her greasy hair, polluting my source of water even more.

Cussing her, I reached down, and taken a better hold, and pulled, leaning sidewise, groaning, but making progress. She cleared the water, and the mud, and I dropped her in the dirt. Once I'd managed to catch my breath, I moved around her, got my hands under that stone-hard belly, and, cussing some vile words, rolled her over.

As soon as I'd beached that whale, I saw her mouth open, watched her suck in a deep breath of air, and then I knowed I'd done a real foolish thing, and that I should have let her drown. In the corner of my eye, I seen that bone handle of her big knife come at me.

It caught me just shy of my temple, and down I went, not losing consciousness but definitely losing the grip on the Spiller & Burr.

I had underestimated Candy Crutchfield. While I was trying to push myself up, her boot caught me in my lower ribs, the ribs that hadn't been busted during my fracas with the late Buster. Either that water had revived her like the Fountain of Youth, or she was a fair hand at running a bluff. Up I flew, only to land hard on my back. Groaning, I forced my eyes open, and spit out blood from the lip I'd bit while I'd been rolling down the dune the day before trying to fake my demise.

Candy Crutchfield hovered over me, and I got a look at that knife.

“That's it?” I said. “That's your knife?”

She stepped back, glanced at the blade, then come a bit forward, glaring. “It does the job,” she said.

“The handle is five times bigger than the blade,” I told her, and slid myself up against more rocks.

“So?”

“That handle's huge. But the blade . . .” I sniggered.

“I'll peel the hide off you, Micah Bishop,” she said, “and show you just how good this knife works.”

“Knife that small, it'll take you a week.”

“Will not.”

“Will, too.”

“Not.”

“Too.”

Flustered, she sheathed the knife. I ain't fooling. That bone handle was a foot long, thick as the palm of my right hand at the bottom. The blade though wasn't more than four inches long. Looked more like a dagger than a skinning knife.

“The hell with it,” she said. “I'll just shoot you dead.”

She reached down to pluck the revolver I'd dropped. I was too tired to move, so I sat there and watched her squeeze the trigger. The cap popped, but that's the only thing that worked. She thumbed back the hammer, tried again. Not even the cap sparked this time. Again. Nothing.

“It rained yesterday,” I told her. “Remember? Hard rain. Fouled the powder.”

She cussed the gun I'd won at Beal's Crossing and shoved it into her waistband. “If I hadn't lost my own guns after gettin' my hoss shot out from under me, you'd be dead now.”

I nodded my agreement.

“But you's already dead.” She drew her knife, just to keep me at a safe distance. “Don't try nothin'. This blade may be small, but it'll find your throat or heart.”

Figured she was right about that, so I just stayed there, and watched as she walked around. She taken the Marlin repeating rifle, and the two canteens, though she didn't have sense enough to fill the one that wasn't full with water. She also didn't have the brains to shoot me dead with the Marlin, which I was fairly certain would still fire, brass casings generally protecting the powder from water and all.

“Give me your hat,” she ordered, and since she now seemed to be of mind to take only what I had but leave me alive, I tossed the hat to her. She caught it, cradled the Marlin under her armpit, and jammed it on her head. Tried again. Cussed, and pulled.

I also had sense enough not to laugh at that hog head of hers.

Finally, she threw my fine hat into the pool of water. I picked it up, shaken the water off, and put it on my head.

“Bet your head ain't the only part of your body that's so damned puny.”

Uneducated insults seemed better than getting my head blowed off with a .40-60-caliber bullet.

“How 'bout that kerchief.”

I flung the wet bandanna to her, and watched as she tied it on her head like it was a schoolmarm's bonnet. She looked damned ridiculous, but again I held my tongue.

By this time, she had all she needed from me. She pointed the Marlin's barrel off toward the east, and laughed. “How long you reckon it'll be till that water hole dries up?” she asked.

Already, my throat started to feel parched.

“Don't rain often in this country,” she said. “And, as you reminded me, it rained yesterday. I'll be leavin' you here, Micah Bishop. My bet is that come a day or two, you'll be wishin' I had kilt you with my knife.”

I watched her walk away, heard her singing “Blow the Man Down.”

Didn't move until I couldn't see or hear her no more, then I made myself drink some more of that muddy, greasy water, drunk long and hard, then soaked my hat. Then I done a foolish thing. I walked after her.

 

 

Having lived in desert country, I knowed what I should do, what you had to do. Hell, just a year ago, I'd been stuck in
Jornado del Muerto
in southern New Mexico Territory, without horses, without water, without no chance. But I'd survived.

Because I knew, for one thing, you don't go walking across the country in the heat of the day. You wait.

I didn't wait. I walked.

The sun dried out my hat pretty quick. I couldn't see Candy Crutchfield, and this ground was so hard, there weren't no tracks to follow. I stopped to listen, but the only voice I heard was my own.

 

“Way, hey, blow the man down.”

 

“Stop singing!” I yelled at myself.

Staggered along, holding my left arm, my back burning once again. The country looked the same, flat but rugged, rocks, yucca, creosote. That's all you could see for miles, that land, and the endless sky. No clouds. Just a sun that was directly overhead. Still, I walked. Wasn't much in the way of shade anyhow.

Walked on and on.

The sun was in front of me, and I had to pull down my hat. My lips had already cracked, and my throat was dry. Yet on I walked. Let's see, what did I have to do? Go fifty, maybe sixty miles to Calico? Without water?

Kept on walking, though. Singing “Blow the Man Down” and not stopping myself.

Till I come to a quick realization. I stopped singing to myself and begun conversing with myself.

“Calico is to the west. I was walking west. The sun was on my back. Then it was over my head. Then it was in my face. Yes, yes. That would be right. Walking west. The sun sinks in the west. That's right. That's how it should be. Right. But . . . this doesn't make sense. The sun is on my back. It's low. Getting cold. How long has the sun been on my back? What's it doing sinking there? I've walked all day. I've . . .”

I smelled the water. I staggered to it. Wasn't muddy. Wasn't greasy. Wasn't as deep, but it was there. I saw the marks left by boots. Of a scuffling. I saw the rocks. I turned and looked west and saw the sun dipping below the horizon.

“You damned fool,” I told myself. “You've walked all day in one damned circle. You're exactly back where you started from.”

Nodding in agreement with myself, I laughed. “But hell, you've got water.”

So what I done was exactly what Candy Crutchfield had done. I dropped to my belly, and I lapped up that precious, cool, sweet-tasting water like a dog, or a rattlesnake. I drunk my fill, wet my face, my back, my hair, my hat. Then I crawled over to the rocks, satisfied, content. I closed my eyes, and sang myself to sleep singing “Blow the Man Down,” and dreamed of sailors and ships and whales and Captain Ahab. Dreamed of water. Water. Water.