Wake of Vultures

by Lila Bowen

  Nettie shrugged. “Cowhand.”

  Gray Hawk shook his head. “Maybe. Now.” After he’d drunk some water from the dipper to make more spit and finished slapping his medicine on the woman’s feet, he took up a pipe and packed it full and leaned back against the bunk to smoke.

  “Pia Mupitsi is Big Cannibal Owl. Comanche monster. Lives in a cave in the mountains. When little girls and boys are bad, Mama says be good, be quiet, or Pia Mupitsi will come steal you away. Pia Mupitsi comes in the night, puts children on a spike and takes them away forever.”

  A sharp chill sliced down Nettie’s back. She hadn’t given it much thought, but that stranger she’d met and killed two nights ago had been more monster than man, which meant that an owl-monster with a spike wasn’t too far off from believable. But she wasn’t going to let anyone know she was frightened of an imaginary bird.

  “You saying she’s scared of a bogeyman?” Nettie spit on the dirt-daubed boards for extra emphasis.

  He shrugged, and warm brown skin flashed through the unpatched bullet holes in his shirt. “Those were her words. Said Pia Mupitsi came to her village, stole all the children. Stole her child. All they found was a foot. Little baby foot. With toothmarks on what was left of the skin.”

  “Where’s the rest of her village?”

  “Beyond her. The foot was found in her cradleboard. They turned her out.”

  “That ain’t fair. Was it her baby’s foot?”

  He looked at her, cold and stark and solemn over his frilly pink coat. “To the Comanche, nothing is more precious than children. It is a very grave thing, to hurt a child. She is lucky they did not stake her in an anthill.”

  “She don’t look lucky.”

  “She said she ain’t. Said she wishes she was dead. Wants to know where the Rangers are, so that they will hunt Pia Mupitsi and take back the children.”

  Nettie made a sound that was a bitter thing, the reverse of a laugh. “The Rangers won’t help the Comanche. Might as well wish the sheriff was sober and giving out penny candy.”

  “I told her that. She don’t care.” He smeared the last of his medicine on the woman’s bleeding elbows and placed a wet rag over her head before leaving. “It would probably be better if she died.”

  A weight lifted off Nettie’s bound chest as soon as she was out of the bunkhouse and back to sweating under the sun, where she belonged. You could trust the heat, trust the sun’s honest light. The things that happened at night flat out didn’t have the guts to take place under the watchful sun.

  Monty was working the next horse, exhausting the poor critter to hell with his spurs. He was a good hand, but Nettie liked her way better. She’d picked out the next mare and readied her loop as she headed into the corral, giving Monty a salute. Sun and horses and heat: That was what she knew. As she got acquainted with the bay and introduced her to the feel of a blanket, Nettie tried to forget the fear in the woman’s eyes and the weirdly familiar smell of Gray Hawk’s medicine. She tried to forget the dark imaginings of a shining gleam of silver, of a monster owl blotting out the moon, of falling through stars, of a man falling apart to sand and leaving nothing but teeth behind. It worked about as well as trying to forget that she’d been brought up as a slave in a drunkard’s house and that Pap and Mam might, at any moment, wobble over to the Double TK and ask if anybody’d seen a no-good half-breed that needed another whipping.

  Goddammit. Memories only made life harder. From time to time, she had a little flash, kind of like a dream, that she thought might’ve been her life before Pap and Mam. For just a moment, she was warm and weightless and free, held close, and it made her chest constrict painfully, like her heart was too big to be contained by her body. Those flashes of golden light always felt better than anything she’d known since. She looked into the sun until her vision went over white. And then she broke the bay with tears in her eyes.

  And then a rangy grulla.

  Then a slicked-up black.

  And then the dinner bell was ringing and Monty was watching her, one foot on the fence.

  “Nearly a two-dollar day,” he said with a grin. “Not bad, Nat.”

  She grinned back. It was good, being ribbed like a man. “Well, it ain’t as good as that nickel I made yesterday, but I got a bit done.”

  They washed the sweat and red dust off their arms and the backs of their necks at the well, the cool water drying almost the second it plopped in the sand around their boots. Nettie couldn’t help being glad she’d chopped off her pigtails. It was mighty easy to keep her hair clean now that she just had to run water through it with a hand and shake it off like a dog did. Felt goddamn good to have her hat on top of a wet mop, and she forgot to hide her eyes and her happiness as she walked into the ranch house.

  “Where you from?” one of the wranglers asked, a seasonal fellow called Sil.

  She shoved her hat down and turned away. “Tanasi I said. What of it?”

  “Just bein’ friendly.”

  But Nettie didn’t want that kind of friendly, so she hurried to a different part of the table and sat with Monty and Poke. Dinner was ham and beans and cornbread, which suited her fine, especially considering as how she hadn’t cooked a lick of it herself. Living with the wranglers was about her idea of heaven, outside of her unsettled time in the bunk with Gray Hawk and the constant worry that Pap would come sniffing around for her. She finished her supper first again and gladly took another scoop of beans and a cool slice of ham. The ranch boys didn’t talk much while they ate, just listened to the music of spoons scraping on metal and the burps that burbled up at the end. When Monty rubbed his spare belly and pushed away from the table, she followed him out the door, but not so close that it looked like she was tagging along.

  “Come on down to the saloon, Nat. Friday night means we’ll get a show. And I do believe I owe you a drink.”

  “I don’t drink.”

  He lowered his head, gave her the gimlet eye. “You will if you want to fit in with the wranglers. Man passes you a jug, you drink and give your thanks.”

  Nettie nodded. There were about a million ways to start a fight with a cowpoke, and she wanted to learn as many of them as possible so she could avoid them. Up until the night she’d stabbed the stranger, she’d never been in a fight, but she sure as shit knew the feel of fists and boot toes and would do her level best to avoid them in the future.

  The whole ranch was headed to the saloon, seemed like. Hobnailed boot heels kicked up clouds of dust to blot out the starlight, and good-natured joshing started up, with men shouting dares and slurs at each other like little boys. Nettie lingered in the back of the pack, staying behind Monty and doing her best to go unnoticed. It worked until Jar pushed through the double doors into the Leaping Lizard, spilling warm light into the street, along with smells Nettie had never known but recognized instantly. Perfume, wine, and fine cigars mixed with the more familiar scents of chewing tobacco and moonshine. She only hoped that whatever rotgut Monty planned to toast her with tasted better than the bull piss she’d sipped once from Pap’s jug, trying to understand why he drank so much of the damn stuff. Best she could figure was he wanted to scrape off the lining of his stomach on a daily basis with the liquid equivalent of a sharpened spoon.

  Although she’d spent all of her life in Gloomy Bluebird, Nettie had never set foot into the Leaping Lizard—or any building in the town proper, outside of the general store. Not even the church. It had been made clear from early on that she could beg at doorsteps but wasn’t welcome beyond.

  The saloon was a peculiar mix of cheapness and fancy, with warped boards that let in chunks of night sky next to rich red drapes over the stage, the fabric as deep and soft as a horse’s winter coat. A crooked staircase wobbled up to a narrow balcony with three plain wood doors. And as the wranglers pulled out chairs and stools at the splintering tables and long, rickety bar, those doors opened, and out came women like Nettie had never seen in her life. Her mouth plopped right damn open with surprise.


  The men saw them, too, and the commotion that started up was about the same as the cowboys gave a good bronc riding. Whistles, catcalls, stamping. Sil took out his pistol and looked like he was thinking about shooting it, but the barkeep knocked it to the ground with his elbow as he came around with a bottle of spirits.

  A loud whistle from the balcony split the shouts, and all eyeballs turned upward to gape.

  “Don’t go off half-cocked, boys. Just keep your pistols in your pants until you pay.”

  The woman who spoke from the top of the stairs was probably the prettiest person Nettie had ever seen, with creamy white skin and long, blonde hair and lips as red as the cherries on Mam’s prized teacup. Even if Nettie’d only seen a hundred people in her entire life, she still knew that wherever this lady went, whatever she was wearing, men would go as weak-kneed as a sick cow and fall at her feet, tongues lolling.

  “That’s Dulcey,” Monty whispered reverently, and as if hearing her name on his lips, the woman smiled and struck a pose.

  Gray Hawk was back at the piano, a shot glass by his music book. He took up a song that sounded like horses galloping, and Dulcey and her girls hurried down the steps with a rustle of skirts and stomping of heels that made the thin wood banisters quake. There were only three doors, and there were only three girls, but they sang and danced and shook the boards like a goddamn army.

  One had skin as white as Dulcey’s and hair the fire-hot color of the sunset, and the other was small and fine and Aztecan, with hair so black it was almost blue piled high and curling down over soft shoulders. Each woman had a flower over her ear, and Nettie couldn’t even begin to contemplate how anyone could find such a bloom within a hundred miles of Gloomy Bluebird.

  Every cowpoke whooped and stared at the girls with the single-minded intensity of a stallion with an itch. But Nettie watched them like she watched snakes or coyotes, like they were a strange function of nature she couldn’t quite figure out, and they might reveal their secret magic if she just watched long enough. At home, Mam was an unfortunate, doughy woman with a face like bad milk and hair that always seemed to be straggling somewhere else. Her dresses were sad, faded things bought secondhand when the last one couldn’t be patched anymore. Nettie had decided long ago that there wasn’t a damn useful thing about being female and had started studying the cowpokes’ bow-legged swagger instead.

  But, law, these women were a different sort of creature altogether, dressed in colors Nettie had never even seen before. Bright red and brilliant blue and a queer, hot green, shimmering under the oil lamps and glimmering with shaking black fringe to show forbidden, slender calves. When the redheaded lady stopped by their table and ran a satin-gloved finger under Jar’s chin, Nettie nearly swallowed her own goddamn tongue. Something peculiar stirred in her belly, and she looked from Jar to the redhead, confused. She knew boys liked girls and girls liked boys… or they were supposed to. She thought Jar was an idiot and the lady was probably of loose moral fiber, but still she felt a powerful pull toward each of them, which didn’t make a lick of damn sense.

  That was another reason she preferred horses: Horses were simple.

  When the song drew to a thunderous close, each of the women chose a table, and the cowpokes shoved aside to make room. Dulcey sat on Jar’s lap, and as he was the youngest and best-looking wrangler at the table, no one saw fit to challenge him.

  “Shall we play cards, boys?”

  Dulcey’s voice was like warm honey, and Nettie was just as captivated as the men were. All the cowpokes fawned over her, complimenting her hair and eyes and figure, and Nettie just kept her hat down. When they started betting, she reckoned she could toss in about three of her pennies and be fine. Pap had taught her to play poker long ago, when the winter got long and cold and he wanted to feel like he was winning something. That meant she’d learned how to lose gracefully without the other players knowing about it. And it also meant she knew how to win.

  So she figured she’d try and do that.

  With two pair, Nettie won the first hand, easy. But then again, all the men were focusing elsewhere, namely in their sloppy-filled glasses and the crack in Dulcey’s bosom every time she leaned over to select a card.

  “Goddamn pup,” one of the older hands muttered, throwing down his cards as Nettie scooped up the kitty.

  Next round, she only bet one penny, and she made sure she lost it.

  “What’s the matter, sugar? You don’t like whisky?”

  Dulcey pulled at Nettie’s chin, forcing her to look up, and Nettie fell off her stool. That fine, beautiful woman had eyes that matched her lips, eyes the color of blood. And they were filled with amusement and concern as she held out a gloved hand.

  “Looks like whisky don’t like you. Come back up and have another sip.”

  When Dulcey smiled, Nettie saw the last goddamn thing she ever wanted to see again.

  Fangs.

  CHAPTER

  4

  Nettie butt-scooted away and stood to bolt out the saloon doors.

  “Nat?” Monty asked, but she just waved him off.

  “’Bout to piss myself,” she called.

  Outside, she realized she already had pissed herself, just the tiniest bit. That beautiful woman couldn’t be… whatever that stranger had been last night. Surely the cowpokes would’ve noticed. In the dark of the barn and the yard, Nettie hadn’t seen the stranger’s eyes, but then again, she hadn’t noticed the teeth first thing, either. Dulcey seemed kind enough, but maybe that was just because they were in a fancy saloon with a dozen well-armed horny-toad men.

  It wasn’t until she felt a glove on her shoulder that Nettie realized running off alone into the night might’ve been the dumbest thing she’d ever done.

  “What’s got you riled?”

  It was the Aztecan woman, her voice just as musical and Texan-twangy as Dulcey’s and also just as amused. Sweat trickled between Nettie’s shoulder blades, but she felt cold as ice.

  “Nothing. Had to piss.”

  A dark chuckle. “Now that is a lie. I’m betting you don’t piss unless you’re good and alone. So they won’t see what you ain’t got. Now let me look at you.”

  The woman spun her around with strong hands and pulled her a few feet away, into the light spilling out the saloon’s fancy glass window. Rude as you please, she knocked off Nettie’s hat and grabbed onto her face in one hand to gaze up at her as if judging a balky mule at the auction.

  And like a mule, Nettie spooked and went stiff all over.

  Because what did she see?

  The beautiful Aztecan whore had red eyes and fangs.

  Goddammit. Another one. What was wrong with this town?

  With a gasp, Nettie tried to yank her face away, but the woman was too strong. Nettie’s fingers ached for the knife in her boot, but she couldn’t just pull it out in the street on a whore. And even if she did, if this woman was the same thing the stranger had been, only a stick in her heart would finally fetch her up as sand, and no sticks were currently handy, unless she could start a bar fight and break a chair. If a critter could take a sickle in the eye and still live, Nettie didn’t want to stick around long enough to need a sickle. The woman pried Nettie’s lips apart and looked at her teeth like she was calculating a mare’s age.

  “Sixteen,” Nettie said, yanking her face away.

  “And still pure, I think. Don’t know how you managed that out here. Might be pretty, if you had proper hair and smiled more.”

  “I had hair yesterday.” Nettie took a step back and pointed at the woman’s complicated updo and the curls cascading over her shoulder. “Reckon you’re wearing it now.”

  The whore laughed like chimes and patted her head. “Then I owe you thanks. Much better than the old rat I was wearing before this. I keep thinking this little town will boom, but so far, it’s just fizzled.”

  The woman shrugged and pushed up her bosoms and turned to go back inside, but Nettie’s mouth opened up without her brain’s permission
and said, “What are you?”

  The woman spun around, back as straight as a branding iron.

  “I’m a whore, honey. But you can call me Rita.” The kindness was gone from her red eyes, replaced by two things Nettie knew well: rage and indignation.

  “That’s not what I meant, ma’am. What about…” Nettie pointed at her own eyes before grabbing her hat off the street and stuffing it back over the cattywampus whirls of what was left of her hair.

  Rita’s head cocked to the side with a slow click.

  “You asking what I think you’re asking?”

  “If you ain’t going to kill me, I reckon so.”

  “And if I am going to kill you?”

  Nettie pulled the knife from her boot.

  “Then I reckon I’ll make as much noise as I can before I turn you into a pile of sand.”

  They stared at each other, and a coyote yipped a laugh somewhere far off, and then the saloon doors exploded outward with Poke waving a jug of whisky.

  “You takin’ a shine to Rita, Nat? Can’t say I blame you. Prettiest little strawberry this side of the border. Seeing as how it’s your first offic-ielle week as a cowpoke, this one’s on me.”

  Damn, but Poke was a sweet drunk, and damn if it wasn’t the worst thing he could’ve done, just then.

  Rita caught the silver dollar Poke tossed in the air and snatched up Nettie’s wrist in an iron grip.

  “We’re gonna get along fine, Poke. I’ll save a taste for you after, shall I?”

  Poke tipped the jug up, letting the golden liquid wet his beard as he guzzled. “You’d best, girl. You know how I get after a good game of cards. Nothing settles me down like your mouth. Go easy on ’er, Nat.”

  Before Nettie could argue, Rita was dragging her down a dark alley and up the back stairs of the saloon.

  “I don’t want no poke,” she said, yanking away as she suddenly realized where the old wrangler’s nickname had likely come from.

  “And I don’t plan to give you one. I’ll give you something better, if you’ll just go easy.” Nettie gave a powerful yank, and Rita slapped her hard upside the head. In a quieter voice, she whispered, “Carita, if I wanted you dead, you’d be dead. Now hurry.”