Vengeance Road (28 page)

The ceremonial rite is over when we get back to camp. The children are gone, likely to bed, 'long with most of the women. Bodaway sits with one of the male guards, smoking tobacco. The other sentries must be off at the mesa, protecting the perimeter.

The Apache watch us as we lay out our bedrolls beneath the stars. I ain't sure when they retire for the night, but soon enough I'm the only person awake. Jesse fell asleep almost instantly. He looks so worn beside me, so beaten. The bandage on his chest rises and falls with each breath. His hat's tipped low over his eyes, but I can see his lips still—slightly parted, full.

I touch mine, something tightening in my stomach.

He pulled away. He flinched.

It shouldn't sting as much as it do. I only did it to shut him up, to keep him from shattering. He weren't in a state of mind for kissing. It's unfair of me to have wanted anything from Jesse in that moment.

But I did. Still do.

Maybe I just want a distraction.

Maybe it's selfish greed.

Maybe I'm losing my mind out in this wild land and think Jesse can help me escape all the darkness.

I frown, running my thumb over the engraving in my Colt, and tell myself to see sense. I got a score to settle with Rose—for Pa, Will, and all those other souls he's struck down—and no boy's gonna be the reason my head's done hopped a runaway train. Not in a million years.

“Up. Get up,”
I says, nudging Jesse with my boot.

He rubs his eyes, grumbling, and squints at the sky. It's still dark and heavy overhead, with a tiny sliver of soft red 'long the horizon. “The sun ain't even awake yet.” He looks a little better today—more color in his cheeks.

“Good thing, too. We gotta hike outta this camp and into them canyons before the sun breaks over the horse-head rock.”

“The landmark?”

I forgot he read the journal, already knows everything I do. “I saw it when I were scouting the Riders' camp, the evening before I came for you. It's partway down the other canyon, if you take the left fork. We get there in time, we'll know where the mine is. Soon as the sun shines over the rock form's neck, it'll light up a portion of hillside 'cross the canyon, marking the location.”

Jesse pauses, bedroll half cinched to Waltz's burro.

“Well, we still got a deal, don't we?” I says. “I'm more ready than ever to see Rose take his last breath. Figured you'd be the same.”

“But he's still got the journal.”

“It don't matter. Not if those notes 'bout the horse-head rock are true.”

I plop my Stetson on my head and fuss with my kerchief a minute, trying to ignore my aching skin. My forearms were red when I woke today, and tender to the touch.

“Kate, 'bout last night . . .”

“Don't worry 'bout it.”

“I was a mess. Still am.”

“I said don't worry 'bout it.”

He frowns. I strap on my pistol belt. When I glance up, he's still looking at me. “So that's it? We're back to chasing Rose?”

“You don't wanna avenge Will?”

“That ain't what I'm saying.”

“Well, what are you saying, Jesse? I can't hear words that ain't spoken.”

He checks the bandage on his chest and sees to the buttons on his shirt. Finally, he says, “Reckon we should get to it then, huh?”

I pull my rifle from the scabbard strapped to the burro. “Just one thing before we go.”

“Give this to Bodaway,” I says, passing my Winchester to Liluye. “Payment for his healing.”

“What's this?” Jesse asks.

“Liluye explained everything to me yesterday. The payment is a gift, a courtesy.”

“I can pay for my own healing fine,” Jesse insists. “Don't go giving up yer rifle. I know how much it means to you.” He jogs over to the burro and pulls his long-barrel off. Balancing it 'cross his palms, he extends it to Liluye. “For . . .”

“Bodaway,” I says.

“For Bodaway,” Jesse echoes.

Liluye looks at him long and hard. Finally, she accepts the weapon. He gives her a fair bit of ammo, too.

“Lil . . .” he says.

“Liluye,” I correct.

“Liluye.” He don't pronounce it quite right, but he's trying. “I ain't been kind to you. I ain't never said a nice word in yer favor, nor looked you in the eye, and yet . . . I'm grateful. You did more for me than I deserved. You and yer people.”

“I did the only fitting thing,” she says.

Jesse looks shocked. “How's that?”

“When Kate came to me yesterday, you unconscious and halfway to the Happy Place, I looked at my options. If you died, I would not care. As you say, you have never been kind to me. But letting you die, not answering Kate's pleas . . . that path was lonely. I had lost my Spirit Guide, and so I examined again.

“Another path showed me bringing you to Bodaway. My mother—she is my guide—said that your time was not up. She suggested I call on Bodaway's Power. If Ussen was not content to have you live, you would not. But He was. Last night I heard coyotes call in the canyons and owls sing to the skies, and I knew you would heal strong.”

A part of me wants to point out that coyotes cry most nights round these parts, but I bite my tongue. I heard them same creatures last night and they felt like a gift, a soul that were listening. Whatever higher power Liluye believes in, there were something in that to get Jesse through a shadowy place. I reckon that magic's the same reason my folk worship the Lord from those cramped Prescott pews every Sunday. The same reason Pa had a crucifix hanging above his bed. I always thought it were a crutch, religion; the Word telling you what to think. Like poetry, it were another flowery thing to suck time away from the stuff needing doing. But now, after everything . . . I ain't so sure.

Maybe religion's there so we feel less alone, so that we have something to believe in when the world goes dark. Liluye speaks of her mother, her Spirit Guide, like she's a guardian angel always there to lead her. I screamed at God after Pa died, cried like a baby for Pa to come back to me, to say something—
anything
—so I didn't feel so lost. But I never truly believed I might be able to hear him. Or Him. And maybe that's my problem. Maybe I gotta believe in something other than my own two hands. I know life ain't always easy or fair or righteous, but going it alone sure hasn't helped me none. And last night, sending my prayers to the wide Arizona sky . . . that were the first time I felt like someone'd heard me since Pa passed.

“I'm sorry, Liluye. For how I treated you,” Jesse says.

She nods.

“I mean it.”

“She ain't deaf, Jesse.” He shoots me a look, but Liluye's already moved on from the matter.

“If you need water,” she says, “use the spring. What runs in the marsh is brackish and stale. And be smart. Not all of the tribe was pleased by your arrival. They worry you will violate Mother Earth in your quest for gold. If so many men were not away, I imagine they would track you.”

“How many times I gotta explain I ain't after gold?” I says. “It ain't even Jesse's greatest concern no more neither.”

He ain't told me this, but he don't speak otherwise, so I reckon it's true.

“It is complicated,” Liluye says. “We hear ‘White Eyes' speak of gold and can only think bad things. It is all we know from experience. Be careful.”

“You got it, boss.” I give her a small salute.

“What is that? I have seen it among White Eyes but never understood.”

“A sign of recognition. A way to say, ‘I hear you, I respect you, I acknowledge yer words.'”

Her mouth twitches into a pinched sorta smile.

“If I don't see you again, thanks for everything, Liluye. I hope you's found what you were looking for.”

“You too, Kate Thompson.”

We shake like we ain't two souls on opposing sides of a battlefield.

“Liluye,” Jesse says, tipping his hat.

She nods, quiet.

And just like that, the Apache girl exits my life as unexpectedly as she joined it.

Jesse and me hike hard. He's doing well despite the injury. That or he's just hiding the struggle.

By the time we get back to the valley, the sky's lightened plenty. On flat desert plains it'd be above the horizon, but I reckon we got another hour or so till it's high enough to shine over the canyon ridge.

Where the trail divides, we take the left fork, moving closer to the horse-head. I lead, Jesse on my tail and the burros trailing us. The back of my neck is tingly, my fingers itching to pull my pistol. I got a notion a Rose Rider is waiting round every bend, fixing to send us to hell. Or the ghost shooter, camped somewhere in the rocky terrain, getting us in his sights, aiming to finish what he started yesterday. But when I scan 'long the ridge, there's no sign of a flashing barrel. The canyon is eerily quiet today. With each step, Weavers Needle grows, reaching into the sky taller than seems possible.

'Bout a half hour later, I point to a steep but small mesa located between the canyon path we took and the one we didn't. “If'n we climb this, we'll be able to see the horse-head to the southeast,” I says. “And we should be high enough to view everything to the dead south.”

“The light will hit somewhere in those hills?”

“It should. I'm almost positive this were the vantage point the journal said to use—the ridge between these two canyons.”

Jesse checks the sky. “We better hike fast.”

Nearly to the summit, we have to leave the burros. Jesse ties 'em to a scraggly tree growing from between rocks and takes his binoculars and his notebook with him.

He gives me a boost up the ledge that were impossible for the donkey. I pull myself up and am greeted with an unobstructed view of the Superstitions. The horse-head rock stands proud on the eastern ridge, and Weavers Needle pierces the sky a bit farther south. From here I can see she's tall, but not in the way I imagined. She's a spire rising outta an already massive mountainside. While hiking—when I couldn't see that mountain—I just pictured her an endless obelisk, a sword that climbed and climbed and climbed.

“Kate. A little help?”

I extend a hand to Jesse and help haul him atop our small mesa. The sky is a golden red, the sun moments away from breaking over the horse-head. We couldn't've cut it closer.

The mine supposedly sits in the shadow of Weavers Needle. This early in the morning, the Needle's shadow stretches away from us, toward the west, and the sun rising over the ridge is lighting up land directly before us, to the south. Jesse and I agree that the clue must be referencing the late afternoon sun, when the Needle's shadow will grow back this way, overlapping the same land to the south. So for now we choose to focus solely on the horse-head clue.

Jesse pulls out his binoculars and examines the rock form.

“Couple more minutes, I reckon. Wanna look?” He passes me the binoculars.