by Merl Fluin
Swiftly she descended the bank, put her belongings away, bundled the bedroll, and picked up the saddle and blanket. The mare stood quietly while she threw the blanket across its back, but at the sight of the saddle it whinnied and skipped away.
“I know, girl, I feel the same way about it. But we need water if nothing else, so we don’t have many other options.”
She approached again, and again the horse kicked and skittered. At the third attempt the horse wheeled and one of its rear hooves made contact with the saddle, knocking it out of her arms.
She and the horse stepped apart, each glaring at the other. The horse opened its mouth, showed its teeth and rolled its eyes.
TJ walked away from where the saddle lay on the ground. The blanket had fallen off the horse’s back. She went to pick it up, returned to cover the saddle with it, then walked away again in a semicircle. The horse had to turn one hundred and eighty degrees to keep its eyes on her. The saddle was now behind the horse’s feet, out of its eyeline.
TJ started talking in a singsong voice.
“You remind me of my girl, you know that? Always bucking and fussing she was, right from a child. I remember the first time I tried to put a saddle on her. She upped and bit me on the arm. I still have a mark, if you know where to look. Mei-Lin near enough bit me herself when she heard about it afterwards. Her precious foal-girl, her daughter that she birthed alone in my wagon while I kept watch on the steps outside. If she’d owned Cowhead as her daughter, Mei-Lin would have been thrown out of the Two Slits, but I never did understand what that really meant to her. All I understood was that Cowhead was beautiful, her lovely foal, and that Mei-Lin was beautiful, her lovely mother, and that they both needed me to take care of them and their secret. And that Cowhead needed to take a saddle so that she could live alongside me, where she would be safe and happy.” She swallowed. “Just like you need to take this saddle now, so that we can both survive in this desert, and you can find Cantos, and I can find Cowhead. Because the circus is gone, and Mei-Lin is gone, and my whole goddam life has gone with all of them, and if I’m not the best circus stunt rider in the west, or Mei-Lin’s lover, or Cowhead’s protector, then I’m nothing and no one at all, you stupid fucking horse.”
The mare bolted down the arroyo. TJ swung around, kicked at the rock behind her and sobbed, rubbing her face and nose on her sleeves. When she finished crying her face was streaked with red dirt.
Immersed in darkness at the bottom of the arroyo, TJ gathered up the saddle blanket, folded it inside Cantos’s bedroll and slung the bundle over her shoulder. Then she set off after the mare, walking quickly and lightly to the end of the arroyo bed. The banks were less steep here, and she climbed to the ridge without using her hands. The mare’s black rump was visible among rocks beneath the ridge on the other side. A sunset plain opened out beyond. The smoke still drifted over the canyons far away, but the group of travellers had disappeared.
TJ descended and followed the curve of the rock to where the horse stood with its head between two boulders, presenting round muscular haunches to the setting sun. She clicked her tongue.
“Sulking? Ok. I’ll wait.”
She sat a little way off, gazing towards the smoke. She turned at the sound of hooves. The mare had backed itself out of the rocks, but TJ remained where she was until it approached her. It lowered its head to meet hers.
TJ reached up, caught the bridle in one hand, and stroked the mare’s ears with the other. “Ok, girl.” She pulled the saddle blanket from the roll, threw it over the mare’s back and jumped astride, gathering the reins and patting the mare’s neck.
They set off at a walk towards the canyons. The slanting sunlight pulled shadows out of the dust alongside them. The sky and canyons turned the same shade of violet, fringed with pale blue where earth and air met at high altitude. There was nothing green here.
When the sun was a long low curve in the distance, they stopped by a pile of rocks that reached higher than TJ’s head. Something winked on the ground a few feet away. TJ dismounted and peered at it through narrowed eyes. Then with a cry she dashed to pick it up.
It was Cantos’s hat, and inside it was the spyglass.
In three deft movements she sat and then stood on the mare’s back. She bent her legs and swayed her hips as the mare put back its ears and shuffled beneath her. Then she clambered up the rock pile, the spyglass in her pocket. Her hands and feet found purchase between the golden stones. Perched at the top, she pulled out the spyglass and pointed it at the smoke.
The plume leapt into focus. It was rising from somewhere amid the rock formations beneath the canyons. She could see no fire.
The spyglass swung back and forth along the canyons and across the plain, until TJ spotted a movement that had speed and loose shape. She took the glass away from her eye, then raised it again. After repeating the sequence four times she climbed back down, her eyes on her feet.
She put Cantos’s hat on her head and jumped onto his horse. “I can see how fast they’re going, but I’m not sure where they are. But if they’re horse or human, they must at least have water. Wonder if you’ve got any more canter in you.”
She made for the smoke.
11.
TJ led the horse into shadow behind a clump of low rocks. She stowed the bedroll in a crevice, then found a sloping section on the face of the canyon and slithered on her belly, up and along.
The smoke still rose into the air, the sky was still the same shade of violet, the sun still the same low arc on the horizon. The canyon was smooth and cool. The rock glinted between her bare fingers. The smoke smelled woody and green, but she could not reach it.
She dropped into a shallow crease in the rock and took the hand mirror from her pocket, angling it around until she could see the smoke in the glass. Then she stretched her arm full length and tilted the mirror. The reflection of the plume unravelled. In the oval of the glass appeared a large tree, its outspread branches silhouetted against violet. Each leaf was a plume of silver smoke that undulated upwards.
She swivelled her wrist, rotating the mirror. Shadowy images streamed across the glass as it turned. Smooth skin of rock; loose stones; glistening sand; a dung beetle rolling a ball of manure; a grey horse’s hoof and fetlock; a coil of rope; red and blue fabric; a flare of sunset.
Shoving the mirror back into her pocket, she rested her elbows on the rock’s surface. With her head half out of the crevice she could see along the curve of the canyon and into a snaking pass a few yards below.
There were six riders and eight ponies. The riders were shrouded in long white veils attached to their heads with brightly coloured cloths. The cloths were knotted on their foreheads, just between and above the eyebrows. Their bodies and faces could not be seen except in size and outline. Some were small, some tall in the saddle. Some wore boots that were visible in the stirrups; others were barefoot; a couple had no stirrups at all.
One of the riderless ponies was laden with rolls and saddlebags. It was tethered loosely to the back of a rough wooden cart that was pulled along by the second riderless pony. The cart had no driver. On the flat bed of the cart lay a long oblong lidless wooden box. Inside the box was a human body wrapped in a blue and red coat, its head cushioned on yellow hair. From the tips of the pointed boots on the body’s feet hung small monkey heads that swayed back and forth over the soles like pendants as the cart jolted along. The body was otherwise motionless.
The group rode at a walk without conversation. The only sounds were the dull fall of hooves and the creaking of the cart.
TJ jerked her head at a clatter behind her. A clacking, scraping sound came from the direction of the smoke-leaved tree and echoed around the canyon. The setting sun blazed on the ridge.
The clattering stopped. More figures were now visible below, groups of four or five on horseback blocking either end of the pass. The pony riders and cart were trapped between them.
The ponies stopped dead. The riders twisted wildly in their
saddles to look before and behind, veils fluttering. One of the riders threw back her veil to reveal a face and neck swathed in jewellery. From folds of cloth she produced a stick-like object half the length of her forearm. She raised one end of it to her lips. She moved her fingers and a repeating series of five notes looped the length of the pass in both directions.
As the light faded and the five notes continued, something happened to the newcomers’ horses. Their necks drooped, their heads fell low, their mouths dropped open. The riders pulled at the bridles and kicked the horses’ flanks, but the horses continued to nod and drift. The notes grew in length and volume; the darkness intensified. A meteor hurled itself across the blackening sky.
One of the riders at the end of the pass produced a rifle and shot the piper’s pony from under her.
The piper screamed as she fell. Two of her companions dismounted at a jump. One rushed to pull the piper’s body from beneath the pony. The other cradled the pony’s head and held its face close to his. His long black hair and beard fell over the pony’s mane like a black shroud.
Orchids of white light bloomed at both ends of the pass, followed by sharp crunches and animal cries. The man abandoned the head of the dead pony and began to unfasten the other from the shafts of the cart. Two of his companions pulled the piper to her feet. One hauled her up into the saddle behind him.
The ponies pawed the ground, heads and necks high, eyes rolling. Horse riders approached them at a canter, still firing.
The cart pony fell before the man had released it from the shafts. He leapt in front of the pony he had been riding, shielding its body with his own, and took a bullet to the shoulder. He crumpled to his knees. One of the horses cantered past, then wheeled to make another assault.
The coffin slid from the overturned cart and careened into the wall of the canyon. It hit the ground at an angle. One corner splintered apart. TJ jumped up and half ran, half fell down the face of the rock into the pass with a yell:
“Cantos!”
Her derringer was in her hand as her feet hit the ground. In a split second she was flailing, using the butt to beat the skull of the kneeling man. Then she leapt over his fallen body, grabbed hold of Cantos and started pulling him out of the coffin.
As her hands touched Cantos’s face, his eyes fell open. He looked straight up at her.
Screams and thunder. Two more of the ponies’ riders had been shot down. The man TJ had beaten was trampled by one of the implacable horses. Its hooves dragged his broken body across the ground in front of her. She watched, her face contorted.
The piper and her companion dropped from the saddle and made a zigzagging run for it. A shot cracked and the companion fell, but the piper kept running.
A horse rider, tall and lean, dismounted, walked over to the screaming cart pony, produced a pistol from a gun belt, and shot it in the head.
TJ reached for Cantos.
A pair of arms grabbed her and pulled her backwards into a narrow crevice in the canyon wall. A hand clamped over her mouth. She could smell sweat rising. An unseen woman behind her hissed:
“Still! Silent!”
She felt a blade against her throat.
In the purple gloom the figures moved, dismounted, walked amid the bodies and debris, but their faces could not be discerned. Voices seemed to come from the smoke-leaved tree rather than from the figures in the pass.
“Anything else worth taking?”
“You want the flute?”
“Any of them armed?”
“Nothing on this one.”
“This one neither.”
“Grab their pack animal, make sure all the bags are secure.”
“Coffin?”
“I think the cart’s ok. Push the coffin back on and hitch up the pack pony.”
Grunts, curses, scraping wood, scrabbling sounds of bridles and straps being fastened and unfastened. The cart was set upright again, and a pony stood between its shafts. Two wild and woolly figures in dusters picked up the coffin at either end and shoved it back onto the rough slats of the cart. The yellow-haired body inside the coffin was inert.
“We should present all this to the Directrix for her blessing.”
“Here she comes.”
An entourage of ten or twelve came into the pass, on foot and horseback. An enormous grey Shire headed the procession. Its lustrous coat and flowing tail shone like pearl-handled bowie knives. The figure mounted on the Shire was upright, stiff and tiny.
“Madam Directrix.” The gunslingers stepped aside to give the Shire and its rider a clear view of wreckage. One of them indicated the cart at the centre of it all with a flourishing arm. A child stepped forward from the procession, holding a flaming torch high to light the scene.
The torchlight revealed the face of the Directrix. Long yellow hair, arched eyebrows, wide-open eyes. An open mouth showed bared teeth amid the white sheen of a painted wooden face.
12.
The procession filed out of the pass, the Directrix at its head and Cantos in his coffin at the rear.
The piper spoke into TJ’s ear: “Move a muscle and this blade will be in your throat.”
“Move a muscle yourself and I’ll put a bullet in your leg.” The derringer was still in TJ’s hand, the butt sticky with blood.
“Drop the gun.”
“No.”
A pause that lasted minutes, then the knife dropped to the ground.
The piper’s arm remained around TJ’s neck. TJ slipped the gun into her pocket. She raised both hands and felt walls of rock closing in on around her head.
“Start moving,” said the voice behind her.
The piper dragged her along backwards in a stumbling shuffle. The crevice was too narrow to turn around, and the walls scraped their elbows and shoulders. The further back they moved, the thicker the darkness became. By the time the walls either side began to slope outwards and away from them, TJ could see nothing at all, but she was able to turn in the direction of her captor. The piper’s breathing sounded loud and ragged, and the smell of her body was strong.
They stopped moving. TJ touched a wall behind her and guided herself down to sitting.
“Ok,” she said. “Why don’t you tell me what the hell is going on? What were you doing with Cantos, and who were those bastards on horseback?”
“You’re the stranger here, you give the explanations. What’s that man to you?”
TJ sighed. “I guess the first thing I need to explain –”
“Damn straight.”
“– is that I still have my derringer, and you’ve dropped your knife.”
“And I have old Colt’s forty-five in my hand right now.”
“I don’t believe you. I didn’t see you draw so much as a twig during the gunplay.”
“I guess we’re going to find out exactly how sure you are about that.”
Two heartbeats, three. Then: “Ok. I guess the stakes are about even, and I don’t recommend that either of us fire while we’re in this hole. My name is TJ Breckenridge, and I’m riding with Cantos.”
“You ride with the dead. Riding to where?”
“That’s my business. Your turn.”
“My name is Lulu. The man you murdered was called Jimmie Longlegs.”
“I’m sorry I hurt him, but I didn’t kill him. It was the horse riders that did that. They killed your other friends too. Who were they?”
“The Star gang. Blood feud.”
“What do you or they or anyone want with Cantos?”
“That man is –”
“Enough with that. He’s not dead. He looked me right in the eye. I don’t know how you got hold of him or what you used to drug him with, but I want to know what the hell happened out there. Right now.”
Silence.
“All right, why don’t I help you get started? You’re Eleven Twenty-Threes, and you’re on the tramp because your house got burned down.”
With a choking cry Lulu threw herself at TJ, pinning her body flat to the
ground beneath her weight. She bawled into TJ’s face:
“Fucker! What are you?”
TJ pushed her hand further into her pocket and prodded Lulu’s flank with the contents. “Still armed. Don’t give me a reason.”
Lulu pulled her upper body away, straddling the prone TJ between her legs. TJ could feel the pulse hammering inside the woman’s thigh.
“Better. I know who you are because I recognised you from the Two Slits, and Jimmie too. I used to be with Mei-Lin.”
