by Tom Lin
The horse’s breathing was slow and rough. Its eyes came to rest on Ming’s face. It seemed to be asking for something.
“I’m so sorry,” Ming murmured.
In time a wash of gray rose up in the east and the stars were rinsed from their perches. Ming stowed his bedroll and unclasped his pack from the prophet’s saddle. The pinto did not move. Its coat gleamed in the morning light and its head was twisted at an odd angle. There was no life left in its great eyes. Ming slung his pack over his shoulder and set off on his own.
He moved low and quickly through the sagebrush, scaling the small foothills that preceded the Sierras. Periodically he would stop to glass Huxton and his prisoner as they drew closer. They had made good time through the preceding night and by midday Ming had no need for his spyglass. From his ever higher position on the slope he could distinguish their shapes moving through the valley.
He had managed to put them out of mind for a moment when the report of a rifle echoed off the mountains. Ming whirled around, frantically trying to locate the source of the sound. Huxton and his prisoner had stopped in a small clearing. Ming pulled his spyglass from his pack and crouched low, peering at Huxton through ground cover. The man was truly gigantic, nearly as tall as his horse. Tracks of dried blood ran down one side of his face. His cratered eye was creosote black and gleamed in the sunlight. The air was so still that in the eerie silence that follows a riflecrack Ming could hear a faint trace of the outlaw’s mutterings. Huxton let go the reins and scanned the slopes. He did not seem to find Ming.
“I know you’re out there!” Huxton shouted.
He fired again into the dirt and presently the sound reached Ming on the mountain. Ming did not move.
“I found your horse,” the outlaw called. “Come and face me like a man!”
Still Ming did not move. His thighs were burning but he stayed low and crouched, his gaze fixed on Huxton in his spyglass. A long silence ensued.
“No horses!” Huxton called finally. “Are you watching?” The outlaw flashed an enormous bowie knife, held it up for Ming to see. It caught the light as he moved it. He reached up and grabbed a fistful of his horse’s mane and with a tug he brought the horse’s head low. In a smooth motion his knife hand passed before the animal’s great neck and blood rippled down onto the sand.
The horse’s jaws snapped at nothing and it jerked its head about in wide-eyed panic. It managed one faltering step forward and then simply fell as the earth around the animal blackened with its blood.
Huxton sheathed his knife and walked round and grabbed his prisoner by the arm and pulled him up, the prisoner’s legs crumpling underneath him, one of them clearly broken. Huxton undid the knot on the prisoner’s hood and whipped it free of his head. But by now Ming already knew who it was. “Watch, Chinaman!” Huxton roared. “Your false prophet!”
Ming bit his lip to keep from crying out. He knew he could only watch. The prophet had told him not to come near when his time was at hand. Huxton took the prophet by his hair and lifted him just off the ground. The old man’s body twisted serpentine and his shoulders rippled as he struggled fruitlessly against his bonds. With one great hand Huxton tore the cloth gag from the prophet’s mouth and cast it aside. Blood and spittle speckled the ground. The prophet shook with racking coughs and then fell silent. All this Ming saw through his thin brass spyglass. The blind old man, the wild-haired pursuer, the dead horse, the blood-darkened dust all around.
“Say something,” the outlaw commanded the prophet.
“My hour is upon me at last,” the old man called out. His voice carried clear and unwavering across the desert and up to the bluff. It seemed to come from another place entirely, another man, a man not tied up and bleeding on a desert floor. “Man out of bounds,” he said. “Remember, my child, when this is finished, turn and run.”
Huxton bent the prophet’s head backward and planted his boot in the small of the old man’s back and with a low grunt he forced the prophet to his knees. He held a great twisted handful of the prophet’s hair in one hand. With the other he unsheathed his knife again and reached down to the prophet’s navel with the point of the blade. In a single, silent movement he dragged the fiendish blade upward toward the sky and opened the prophet’s body out onto the dust. Huxton let go of the old man’s hair and the eviscerated prophet fell forward and rolled over onto his back. He lay in a strange position, his back arched over, his hands still tied behind him. Blood ran from his belly like wine.
The prophet’s sightless eyes flickered across the white sky. His mouth opened and closed and his expression was one of wonderment. He writhed about, the toes of his boots describing little arcs in the sand, but still his face was serene.
Huxton stood over him and regarded his twisting form with something akin to pity. The prophet smiled and blood ran up and out of the corners of his mouth, flowed along his ancient cheekbones, pooled in the crow’s-feet of his eyes.
“Chinaman!” Huxton bellowed. “Come and face me like a man!”
Ming collapsed the spyglass and stowed it in his pack. He was weeping, hot tears blurring his vision. He dried his face with a sleeve rough and worn. On the valley floor below him Huxton wiped his knife flat across the prophet’s bloody trousers and sheathed it. He touched his ruined eye with broad fingers and looked up at the slope again, no doubt squinting to find Ming. After a while he looked away and began to walk west, toward Ming.
Perhaps Huxton still hadn’t seen him. The outlaw moved slowly, one foot dragging a little in the sand. Then he stopped and raised his rifle. Ming did not move. Suddenly there came a riflecrack and ten yards from Ming a sagebrush tree exploded into splinters. Huxton’s triumphant laugh echoed out over the slope. A few moments later another riflecrack and a spurt of dust blasted up only feet from where Ming was crouched. The outlaw’s laughter was cruel and deep.
Ming turned and ran.
53
It was cold in the mountains. Ming lay in a small clearing, sheltered by an overhanging slab of granite. He scarcely breathed. In the distance he heard what might have been human footsteps, Huxton’s footsteps. He drew his gun and waited. The sound paused, lingered, and then continued off in a different direction. Some kind of animal. He exhaled and holstered his gun again.
The night was clear and cloudless and the moonlight threw shadows over the slopes for those who knew to look for them. Ming held his spyglass aloft with numbing fingers and watched the approach to the slope. Huxton had emptied a full Henry into the mountainside, sixteen shots thumping into the ground behind Ming as he’d sprinted uphill, his feet slipping on dried pine needles and loose dirt. He’d vaulted the windgap and turned back to the sight of the outlaw beginning to climb the slope.
Ming wondered how many rounds Huxton had left for the Henry rifle. For nearly two days now he’d been without water and his mouth felt as though it were full of ashes. He tried to spit but nothing came out. Farther up into the mountains he would find water. But his pulse was fast and when he closed his eyes he felt as though his head would burst. He ranged up the slope, his eyes scanning the nighttime landscape for any glimmer of water. Nothing.
When he reached the ridge of the foothills he sat and sucked the thin film of saliva from his teeth and breathed short and shallow. Pine needles crushed underfoot nearby and two luminous eyes appeared in the low brush a few yards away. The land itself seemed to be emitting a low and continuous rumble. Ming reached for his gun and rested his hand on the holster, watching closely. From the shadows emerged the sleek and shining shape of a cougar, white as marble from tip to tail. His breath caught in his throat. The cougar came near, a growl thrumming in its chest. Ming bowed his head a little and the cougar stopped and seemed to bow its head in return. They stared at each other awhile in the moonlight.
“I’m passing over,” Ming said in a deferential tone. “I’m passing over to the other side.”
The cougar settled down onto its haunches and then lay on its side, its huge paws matted with
dirt and pine needles. Its eyes followed Ming with interest.
Ming opened his mouth to speak but his throat was too dry and he coughed a little, jamming his mouth into the crook of his shoulder to stifle the sound. He took a deep breath and tried again. “I need water,” he said with a tinge of desperation. He wondered where Huxton was—somewhere down below in the pine forest, closing the distance.
The cougar opened its mouth and yawned. The sickles of its teeth glinted in the cold light. Its great tail swept across the forest floor and it rose to a compact crouch, muscles rippling under its pristine white fur. It gazed at Ming a moment more and then turned its head and began to walk along the ridge. A few paces ahead the cougar stopped and turned back toward Ming again, as though beckoning him. He stood up and trailed the white cat as it padded through the undergrowth, weaving a route through the gnarled trunks of ponderosas. Ming stayed close behind, keeping his head low. Soon he was met with the sound of running water and then the cougar leapt up onto a tree branch and Ming stepped forward to a clear snowmelt stream carving a channel through the dirt and he fell to his knees and dipped his head deep to the water and drank greedily, feeling the cold water run down his chin.
When he at last looked up again the cougar was nowhere to be found. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and filled his canteen with cold water. When he was finished he put his canteen away in his pack and started to descend the mountain, keeping the stream to his right. He followed it until it broadened and began to run clouded and dirty and the pine forest melted away.
Ming built a weak fire up on the ravine beside the stream’s valley. It was fire enough to be seen by Huxton—however far away he was—fire enough to be hunted by. But the outlaw would find him soon enough anyway. Ming checked his revolver and found six rounds. He smeared ash and soot on his face and arms, rendering his body as gray and lifeless as the earth underfoot. He crept into the bushes only a short ways from the fire, his gun tight in his hand. He drew a bead on the embers.
After some unknown time Ming fell asleep and dreamed of a hollow earth, of continents pushing one another about on the surface of a planet that would ring booming and forever were it struck by some cosmic hammer. He dreamed of rooms so vast the roof and walls disappeared into endless fog and of a town reduced to rubble, with weeds springing up through shattered timbers. And then he dreamed of falling, squinting into the violence of the wind whistling past his head, and then he dreamed of impact, and then he was awake once more. The gun was still in his hand. There was a figure only a few yards away from him.
It was Huxton. He crouched over the dead fire, knife in hand. The sun was not yet risen. He had not seen Ming. Even in the faltering light of the setting full moon Ming saw once more that he was a giant of a man, his shadowed bulk massive against the fading stars. His hair was wild and matted with blood and when he stooped it dragged in the dust. With the tip of his knife he turned over the ashen coals in the firepit as he gazed across the desolate landscape. He wiped his knife clean on his trousers, sheathed it, rose to his feet. His gaze came to rest directly on where Ming was hidden. For a moment it seemed as though the giant had not seen him. And then he lunged.
Ming fired one two three four times before Huxton slammed into him and his head struck the stones and flashes of light blossomed in his field of sight and all he knew was that he could not let go his gun. He blinked his eyes open in time to see the outlaw drawing his boot back to kick Ming and he cocked his revolver and shot Huxton in the knee. The outlaw crashed to the ground and Ming sprang to his feet for a brief second before Huxton tugged Ming down with his giant hand. A crazed smile flashed over the outlaw’s face and with his free hand he reached to his waist for his bowie knife. Ming drove the heel of his boot into Huxton’s face and then kicked wildly at the knife, knocking it out of the outlaw’s hand and sending it skittering across the drought-cracked earth. It came to rest mere inches from the edge of the ravine.
Huxton bucked to his hands and knees and lunged at the knife, his injured leg grotesque and twisted, dragging behind him. Ming clung to his back like some murderous child. On they struggled in the steely predawn light, with no sounds but the scratching of boots slipping in the dry dirt and the muted reports of blows landing on bodies. Neither man uttered a word. Ming forgot the gun in his hand, forgot his spike. There was only the outlaw’s knife, which lay out of reach in the dirt. What strength remained was fast fading.
Huxton lunged once more and at last managed to wrap his fingers round the rawhide handle of his knife. He grinned wide and fiendish and a sound like laughter came triumphant from his bared teeth. There was no more time. Ming rolled as Huxton swung his knife, dodging its lethal arc. The sound of the stream below them filled his ears. Ming took great fistfuls of the outlaw’s shirt in his hands and leaned backward into nothing. The two men went over the edge. Huxton put out his hands reflexively to break his fall but there was nothing to catch them. In freefall the man’s eyes went wide, his wild hair drifting around his face like a filthy halo. Then they slammed against the face of the ravine. They were rolling. A billowing cloud of dust. Specks of mica shimmered in the first light of a new day. Thirty feet below, two limp bodies came to rest at the riverbank. Neither moved.
54
Ming woke with his head throbbing and his mouth filled with the foul metal taste of blood. He opened his eyes and gazed up at the blue-white sky. He curled and uncurled his toes in his boots, made weak fists with his hands. Still whole. His right hand yet gripped his gun. He could not raise his head to see it but he felt its metal angles reassuring in his palm. His eyes seemed to have swollen in their sockets. He swept his gaze upward, looking at where he had fallen from. He could not remember how he had fallen.
There were gouges in the face of the ravine indistinguishable from a thousand other gouges of more natural origin, the carved tracks of phantom rivulets that ran only with the spring snowmelt. Groaning he turned to one side and came face-to-face with the ghoulish visage of the outlaw, his great shaggy head half-submerged in the icy waters of the stream. The water moved over his insensate and unblinking eye, pulled his ragged locks into a shock of dark hair that writhed and throbbed in the current like something living. Now finally up close and in the daylight Ming could see the hole in the outlaw’s head where he’d shot him through the eye, the bloodied and matted patch of his scalp where the round had exited his skull. He had put the round precisely where he’d meant to.
The outlaw lay crumpled on his side, his arm bent at an unnatural angle, the hilt of his great knife still gripped in his hand, the blade buried in his own ribs. Dark tracks of dried blood ran over the rocks and down into the stream. Ming watched the water lapping at the outlaw’s face for a long time. It occurred to him that he should find his pack, to gather his belongings once again, to prepare for the next thing.
And so at last Ming sat up slowly, the pressure in his head surging with the effort. He spat blood into the stream and it was carried away. He cupped water in his hands and drank, one mouthful at a time. The burning in his throat abated. He spotted his pack ragged and dusty a few yards down the riverbank but he hurt too much to go pick it up. The young sun was still cold and catching on the lip of the ravine it cast a hard-edged blade of shadow down onto the far riverbank. Ming knelt by the river and continued to drink. Bit by bit sunlight followed the shadow of the ravine across the stream. It touched the dead man’s head and lit his hair, a posthumous coronation.
Ming knew Huxton was finally dead. But he’d also witnessed the man stagger to his feet with a hole punched through his skull. He had to make sure. His entire body ached. Gritting his teeth against the pain he raised the revolver in his hand and raked back the hammer. He reached over nearly crying out with the effort and pressed the muzzle of the gun to Huxton’s temple and fired his last round. The water leapt up pink and a bloom of dark blood erupted below the outlaw’s head, twisting wisps of gore unwinding in the torsion of the running stream. Panting with exertion Ming holstered his g
un and looked back up at the sky. He lay for a long time, simply breathing. Everything hurt. He gathered his strength and moaning through a clenched jaw crawled to his pack. His fingers were curling from the pain as he thumbed the clasp open and pawed desperately at the contents for the ampoule of strange laudanum the doctor had given him so long ago in Winnemucca. At last he found it. The little glass vial had survived the fall intact. He willed open one clenched and white-knuckled fist, his brow beading with sweat from the agony of it. He plucked the ampoule from his pack and snapped off the glass neck and tossed its contents into his mouth. It tasted of metal and flowers and bitterroot and he retched before at last choking it down.
He crawled to the base of the ravine and sat leaning against the dirt face. The blade of the sun chased him. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again it was dusk. Then night. The constellations lurched about the polestar. Then another daybreak, another dusk. The strange laudanum worked its magic and the pain in his body sublimated into the air. In the deep night he rose at last and went to the stream. He knelt upstream from where the outlaw lay rotting and he drank deeply, the fine grit suspended in the water crunching between his teeth. When he was sated he filled his canteen. Then he pried the dead man’s knife handle from the hand that yet gripped it in rigor mortis and tugged it free from the body. The smell of rot filled the air as blood and water exited the wound. Ming unclasped the sheath from the man’s waist and fastened it around his own. In the stream he cleaned the blade. When he was finished he walked downstream until the ravine stooped lower to the earth and then he climbed out. The broken foothills stretched before him endless, heat-thickened, seemingly whispering to one another in the darkness.
55
Perhaps it was the strange laudanum still running, albeit diluted, through his veins or perhaps it was his head still swimming from the fall days ago but as Ming began to move once again westward he felt shadowed and asynchronous, as though he had fallen out of one world into that ravine and somehow climbed up unawares into another world entire. The land felt different, the trees moved different. The air left a bitter taste in his mouth. This was a world that resisted the touch of a hand. He walked through the breaking day and then into the afternoon and still the feeling persisted. The sun threw heat and light and yet it was as though it was passing partway through him, prickling only faintly on his skin. More than once he turned to check the ground behind him, searching for his shadow, and experienced not relief but an odd hum of foreboding when he located it. He was out of joint with the land. It was a sense he could not shake. He found himself wishing the prophet were still alive.
