Wake of Vultures

by Lila Bowen

  When Nettie looked up, her hat slipped down her back, and she hurried to stick it back in place. But Chuck looked at her, curious-like.

  “What are you, Nat?”

  Nettie grunted. “Wrangler. Bronc breaker.”

  “No, dumbass. Like, what are you made of?”

  She settled her hat harder and kicked her horse to a slow lope. “Blood and bone and vittles, same as you, I guess,” she hollered into the wind.

  He kicked Rain to keep up, and the pony snorted in protest. “But what color are you?”

  “Brown.”

  “Damned if you ain’t thick-headed. I mean… who are your people?”

  Her eyes slid sideways as they cantered, side by side, across the empty prairie toward Azteca. “Why’s it matter, Chuck? I’ll tie you to your damned pony if you fall off. Why’s it matter where I come from?”

  Chuck slowed his horse back down to a trot, and Nettie did him the kindness of joining him. With his wet eyes on the moon, the boy said, “Just been thinkin’ a lot today. I don’t remember my mama too much, as she died of fever when I was little. Pappy was a farmer, but everything he did turned to shit. Older brother took to wrangling, and as soon as I could walk away from the plow, I followed him. But damned if I know who my people are. Sure enough I don’t feel like Charles Ridgeway Jr. So I figured I’d see if maybe you felt that way, too. You feel at home on the prairie?”

  “Being sick makes you right philosophical,” Nettie grumbled, but he was looking at her all desperate-like, so she watched the horizon between Ragdoll’s ears and told him a little truth. “Don’t know who my people are. Some kind of red and some kind of black, I guess. I ain’t white, and that’s all that seems to matter to folks. All Pap and Mam ever said was I was lucky they took me in and taught me anything. I must’ve been right small when it happened. Sometimes, I think I recall the jog of a horse, watching backward over a spotted rump. I like to think maybe I was somebody’s papoose. Just wish I knew what I did to get handed down off that horse.” Immediately feeling like she’d said too much, she added, “Goddamn moon. It’s too bright by half for a not-half-full thing. Let’s catch up to the rest of the hands before they holler at us. I don’t want to be chopping up beef tomorrow when I could be breaking broncs, that’s for damn sure.”

  She whooped and kicked Ragdoll into a dead run, and after a few beats, Chuck followed her. For a time, they raced side by side, and Nettie lay low on her mare’s neck and let her hat fall back in the wind, and it felt like flying, and flying felt good. As the run fell off to a lopsided canter, a shape turned off the pack of cowpokes up ahead and came back toward them, and she recognized Monty on his sorrel. She pulled Ragdoll into a trot, and Monty turned his far more polished gelding on a hoof and rode up beside her.

  “Best hurry up, boys. River’s just over that ridge.”

  As he said it, the last of the other wranglers disappeared into an arroyo, and Nettie caught her breath from the run to gather courage before crossing the river. Ragdoll had thus far proven to be a strong and fearless swimmer, but Nettie was always a mite scared of dark, running water and what might lie beneath the current. She’d once heard Pap tell of a boy he knew who chanced to cross a high river after a storm, and his horse swam right into a ball of water moccasins, and they bit the boy until he swole up to twice his size and died.

  “You got any water?”

  Chuck’s voice was ragged, and Nettie pulled her hat back on and tightened the strings before she reached for her water skin. The boy’s hand shook as she gave it to him, their horses at a slow walk side by side, and something about his moist, bulging eyes and dry, stretched-looking lips worried her.

  “Monty,” she said real low, inclining her head at Chuck as he gulped her water.

  “You drunk, boy? Maybe hungover?” Monty asked, and Chuck handed back Nettie’s empty water skin, a rudeness she would not have expected from him.

  “Ain’t been drinkin’.”

  “You fevered?”

  “The opposite. Feel cold as ice, like I’m about to die of thirst. You got any water, Monty?”

  Monty watched him a second, then said, stern and soft, “Get off your horse, son.”

  The night went quiet as the three horses stopped. Chuck slid off his mare like a boneless snake, and Nut pricked his ears and danced around a little as Monty dismounted and walked the sorrel around Nettie. The old cowpoke put the back of his hand against Chuck’s forehead, saying, “I don’t need no green wrangler mucking up this run, Charles. If you’re sick, best turn around and head back to the bunkhouse to sleep it off.”

  Monty slapped Chuck’s cheek lightly and looked up at Nettie as he patted Ragdoll’s neck. “What about you, Nat? You’ve been working with Chuck, ain’t you? You feeling poorly?”

  “No, sir. Fit as a fiddle.”

  There was a peculiar bit of a pause as they both realized Chuck wasn’t getting back on his horse to head home or to bravely defy his illness and gallop for the ridge. He was just standing there with his back to them, breathing funny.

  “Chuck?”

  The boy spun, fast as lightning, and jumped straight for Monty’s throat.

  CHAPTER

  7

  Monty gave a gurgling holler and stumbled back, holding Chuck away by his shoulders. The boy had gone plum crazy, growling and biting again and again for Monty’s neck. Nettie could barely tell what was going on, what with the horse dancing nervously under her and the darkness of the prairie cut clean with stark moonlight and the fact that there was no reason at all for Chuck to go after a good man like Monty. Unless maybe he had the rabies? But then he wouldn’t have asked for water. Not knowing what else to do, Nettie tried to grab for Rain’s reins, but the fool horse ran off, and Nettie almost got dumped on her rump by Ragdoll’s crow-hopping.

  On the ground, the two men struggled and grunted. Chuck had managed to rip a hunk out of Monty’s neck, and blood spilled all down his shirt, black as a cat in the moonlight. When Chuck jumped again and knocked Monty onto his back, Nettie’d had enough. She pulled out her whip and cracked the damn thing around Chuck’s leg, yanking him off his feet and pulling him a few yards away so Monty would have a chance of escape. His well-trained sorrel gelding stood but a few paces away, whuffling and confused. Like any cowboy worth his salt, Monty hopped up, grabbed for his gun, and staggered toward his horse.

  About that time, Chuck freed himself from the rawhide whip and yanked it out of Nettie’s hand with a right unfriendly growl, almost tugging her flat out of the saddle. Luckily, her mare jumped away, and she managed to keep her seat. But Chuck kept on coming at her, hunched over like a buffalo with gut problems. Nettie spun her horse in a circle, keeping her distance. The mare was more jittery than usual, and for good damn reason. But still Nettie didn’t go for her gun.

  Because this was a feller who’d been kind to her, and that was a rare thing.

  “What’s got into you, Chuck? Are you hurtin’ bad?”

  Chuck shook his head like he was trying to rid himself of a pesky fly.

  “So thirsty, goddammit. So goddamned thirsty.” When he growled, it wasn’t a noise Nettie had heard before out of animal or human.

  Nettie yanked on the reins and kicked her mare, praying the raw critter had enough sense to back up instead of rearing and possibly smacking Chuck upside his fool head with a hoof. Surely whatever pained him could be fixed by a sawbones, or maybe Gray Hawk back in town? But Chuck didn’t want help right now. He was stalking her. And when he jumped, she wasn’t ready.

  Her friend’s hands dug into her leg as his teeth clunked into the leather of her boot. Nettie screamed, and her mare reared, and in that very moment, Monty pulled his pistol and shot. The night tore in half with a bullet’s crack, and Chuck shrieked like a damned banshee and spun to figure out who’d shot him.

  Monty hadn’t made it to horseback. Poor feller just stood in front of his confused sorrel, one hand holding a bandanna to his torn-up neck as he pointed a shaking repeating p
istol at the second greenest cowpoke of the Double TK Ranch.

  “Ain’t polite to bite your friends, Chuck,” Monty said, voice thready, as Chuck twisted forward and backward trying to make sense of the hole in his back that never came out his front.

  Finally, whatever’d taken Chuck over decided that revenge for being shot was worth more than Nettie’s blood, and he jumped for Monty before the injured wrangler could pull the trigger again. Nettie had no choice but to draw.

  A second shot rent the moonlight, and Nettie was grateful she’d practiced with her pistol all day or the kickback would’ve busted up her nose for sure. A startled little gulp drew her attention past Chuck’s falling body to Monty’s face. There was a hole in the middle of his forehead, and he fell on his face looking most surprised.

  Jumping Jesus on a jackrabbit.

  She’d shot Monty.

  Monty.

  Dismounting in a damn hurry, Nettie checked that Chuck was good and dying, which he was. Her bullet had torn straight through his throat, which was possibly why it had possessed enough gumption to bury itself in Monty’s skull. She skittered around Chuck’s still body just in time to flip Monty over and hear his whisper.

  “What the hell just happened?”

  Monty’s eyes were trained on Chuck’s face.

  But it wasn’t Chuck’s face.

  The skin was ragged and pulling away to reveal a layer of green-gray scales underneath. The eyes bulged over-large, yellow with black vertical pupils, all Chuck’s haughtiness and decency fled. His lips had thinned, black and dry and shriveled around too-long teeth, the most prominent of which looked like viper fangs. Chuck’s nose was pushed back into his face, his nostrils now slits. He looked like nothing so much as a snake in man form, and one that had died godalmighty pissed, at that. The blood from the bullet hole was dripping down his neck into the dirt, and Nettie watched it fall on a grasshopper. The critter got busy dancing to death like it was on a hot frying pan.

  “I don’t rightly know,” Nettie whispered. “I’m so sorry, Monty.”

  “Not your fault, Nat. Best you run, now. Go on.”

  And then Monty died in her arms.

  After saying something a little like a prayer over the cowpokes’ bodies and closing Monty’s eyes, Nettie took what she could, her hands heavy and gentle with guilt. Just a few days ago, she had a one-eyed mule and a too-big pair of cheap boots. Now she had an ugly mare, three pistols, three Bowie knives, and a borrowed bandanna that she couldn’t even bury with Monty because she needed it to gallop away. Not to mention that she also had the vampire’s wad of cash, more money than she knew what to do with and that she couldn’t use in any town without somebody suspecting she was an escaped slave who’d stolen it. She left all the fellers’ other personal items on the bodies and didn’t bother ponying either horse, as hanging for horse thievery wasn’t to her taste. She did take Monty’s water skin, though, considering Chuck had emptied hers before turning on his friends.

  When Nettie heard gunshots far off, she mounted her horse and rode away. Not toward the river, and not toward Gloomy Bluebird. Just away. Nobody would ever understand what had happened here, why a kind-hearted and hard-working fifteen-year old boy named Chuck had turned into a snake and attacked his boss and friend and been shot by the only feller lower than him in the ranks. And as a half-breed, a green cowpoke, a girl pretending to be a boy, and the only witness, she’d likely be hanged for murder just to simplify things.

  With his last breath, Monty had told her to run. He would understand. And she would do her level best to avenge him, if she ever saw another… whatever the blue hellfire Chuck had become.

  As she galloped across the prairie and into new territory, something far ahead caught her eye, up on a tableland. It was the Injun woman, or the ghost of her, mounted on the spooky black filly that always shone wet in the moonlight. The woman raised her arm and pointed to the west.

  Nettie turned her horse in that direction and kicked her mare harder, running like all the world was chasing her tail.

  The night went on and on as Ragdoll carried Nettie Lonesome into the unknown. The dead run skipped off into a long lope, and eventually that jittered down into a hard trot. Sometime around sunup, the mare gave a last jounce and fell to a dull walk, her head hanging low.

  They hadn’t passed a stream all night, and Nettie had brought no food, considering she’d planned on nothing more than a quick raid over the river with the rest of the hands to guide her. Best she could do was let the mare lap up some water from Monty’s skin, but Nettie knew well enough that the lukewarm dribble would barely make it down the critter’s throat. With the sun crawling up the horizon, the hard red disk promising a white-hot afternoon, she let her reins drop and gave the mare her head. If anyone could find water in the desert, it was a thirsty mustang pony.

  Ragdoll twitched her tail and swung her head from side to side, dusty nostrils going wide and ears pricking as she chose a path. Judging by the sun, she was headed north. Nettie didn’t know where the Injun woman had meant to send her, but she figured she couldn’t get there if she and her horse died of thirst in the wasteland. North had to be good enough, at least until they found a way to survive the long stretch of nothing. There wasn’t even enough shade to hide a fly out here. If somebody’d put a knife to her neck, she would have guessed they were somewhere north of Gloomy Bluebird, somewhere near the Durango-Azteca border. Near didn’t mean shit when you were looking death in the eye.

  Nettie’s belly was grumbling something terrible, but she knew well enough that eating jerky on a dry stomach would only bring on a worse sort of pain. She allowed herself a sip of Monty’s water, and she would’ve sworn she could taste the man on the leather, a lingering flavor of tobacco and kindness that made her eyes wet with tears she couldn’t afford to waste.

  The mare was headed toward a patch of green, but Nettie figured it was just mesquite, which didn’t do anybody any good. Damn plants drunk up all the water, but you couldn’t get the water back out of the tree. Stupid horse. But maybe there was a little creek or something that they could sip from, maybe get them as far as the closest city. If she didn’t show too much coin, or maybe if she traded Chuck’s gun, they could get a little food and water and find another ranch to wrangle at. Of course, considering that nobody at the Double TK would know what had actually happened, she might soon find a Wanted poster for a half-breed boy named Nat riding an ugly spotted pony the color of a prairie dog. Although it pained her mightily, the best thing to do would be to trade Ragdoll for a plain sorrel, trade the dead man’s clothes for used, trade her name for a new one, and head up north or west. Maybe farther south into Azteca, to where they hadn’t yet passed laws against folks that weren’t white enough.

  Then again, the Injun woman had pointed her straight west. But she couldn’t find the Injun woman’s Cannibal Owl if she got hanged in some two-horse town. And she didn’t want to get hanged before she found out who her real people were, especially considering she’d just lost the old man closest to something like family. There was a hole in her heart, and she had to keep it beating to fill it back up.

  But first: They had to live through today and find a town big enough to offer a spare set of boy’s clothes and a sound horse. In a place as wide and wild as Durango territory, that was no small feat.

  “Is it water, Rags?”

  The pony was stepping higher, her nostrils flaring. If it wasn’t water, it was something good. Nettie pulled her hat down against the sun’s first slaps of heat and prayed to whatever was watching over her that water was hiding in the thicket.

  Of course, the only thing currently watching over her was a particularly large, circling buzzard that wasn’t accepting prayers.

  It was waiting for her to stop praying.

  It was water the mare was headed for, sure enough. But the water was mixed with dirt to form a mud patch that Nettie couldn’t use for more than some face paint to keep her skin from falling off like cracklins as soon
as noon set in good and hard. As Ragdoll slurped the sheen off the dirt pudding, Nettie slipped from the mare’s back onto jelly legs and found a long, sturdy stick. Folks who poked around high, wild thickets without a stick deserved whatever bit ’em, so far as Nettie was concerned. Of course, this patch was too dry for even the skinniest little rattler. The only breathing thing she could find was the buzzard that kept spiraling hopefully overhead. When she launched a rock straight up with her best throw, the thing screeched something that sounded a little like “Bitch,” and Nettie decided she’d best sip from the water skin before the tumbleweeds started talking back.

  Having lapped up what she could, Ragdoll walked over to nuzzle Nettie in the shoulder.

  “I ain’t got no grain,” she muttered. The mare blew muddy air into her face, to which Nettie could only respond, “Rude. Why’s everybody got to be so damn rude?”

  When Ragdoll started delicately cropping the barest fuzz of grass, Nettie loosened the saddle and hobbled the horse and settled down with her back to a boulder in a scant sketch of shade. The sun was up, and the ground was starting to shudder with heat, and the mare needed to suck up every bit of life she could from the tiny dot of green in the great brown prairie. They’d set off again in the afternoon, when it was almost bearable.

  “Keep watch for me, girl.”

  In response, Ragdoll tried to shake the saddle off and failed. Her bottlebrush tail twitched in frustration. Nettie sipped the warm, Monty-tasting water from the skin, pulled her hat down over her eyes, and placed her pistol on the ground, one hand flat over the sunshine-hot steel. Watching your friends die was damn near exhausting.

  Way up high, the buzzard laughed.

  Nettie fell into an uneasy sleep. The horse stepped closer, her cracked gray hoof almost brushing the girl’s fingertips where they lay over the gun.