Border Snakes

by Peter Brandvold

  Finally, when either his eyes swelled shut or he’d simply lost consciousness, welcome darkness came like hot, black, gravelly tar.

  The darkness was shot through with near-relentless agony. Between bouts of nearly unbearable, overwhelming pain in every bone, muscle, and sinew of his body, he slept so deeply that in some squalid corner of his subconscious, he figured he was dead.

  But a pain spasm shooting up like a splintered lance head from his groin or belly or ribs or from deep in his skull always returned to remind him that he somehow still lived. He yearned for death, for only then would the pain finally abate for good, and he could curl up in a tight ball and sleep out the infinite ages.

  At times, his own cries woke him.

  Or the clatter of his own teeth as he shivered against an impenetrable chill.

  An eon of misery broken by only intermittent snatches of restive sleep passed. There was the cold of outer space and then the heat of hell’s blazing ovens. It was hard to tell how long each interval lasted. At the time it seemed just short of forever. Each period dwindled almost imperceptibly, dovetailing gradually into the next building agony.

  Hawk tried to reposition himself, to find some comfort in his own limbs, but he could get nothing except a few fingers and toes to move. Even his head was fixed as though it were encased in solid stone.

  Somewhere between the apex of agonies, a pain sharper and somehow more immediate than the others woke him. His swollen eyes slitted enough to see, as he stared down his naked chest to his bare feet, a hawk perched on his right thigh, digging its talons into his flesh. The hawk lowered its head to peck at the soft skin above his hip, and when he felt the sharp, savage nip of the bird’s beak, he screamed and tried to move his hands and feet.

  He could do little more than ever-so-slightly bend his knees.

  “Get off me, you goddamn carrion eater!” he heard himself rasp.

  The bird fixed its pellet-like eyes on him. It jerked its head this way and that, befuddled. Then it gave a near-deafening screech, spread its wings, and gave Hawk’s thigh another miserable pinch as it stretched its hair-tufted legs, rose, and fluttered up and away, the sinewy sounds of its wings dwindling quickly behind it.

  Hawk’s vision quickly began dimming again, but in the waning seconds before unconsciousness swept over him, he looked down the length of his naked body to see that he lay spread-eagle on the desert sand, his ankles bound with straps of rawhide to buried stakes.

  He couldn’t move his head enough to see to either side, but he was aware suddenly that his arms were stretched out to either side, slightly above his shoulders. They, too, were likely bound to stakes, as he couldn’t move either hand a bit.

  A momentary shudder of bald horror swept through him, and then, mercifully, the tar washed over him once more.

  He slept.

  And he dreamt. Mostly fleeting images from his past. Some made some sort of dim sense to his slumbering mind; others were nonsensical and either uplifting as sunny days from his childhood, or as terrifying as snarling wolves’ heads lunging toward him, attacking.

  At one point, he was suddenly convinced that Linda and Jubal were not dead. Jubal had not been killed on that storm-brushed hill, and Linda had not hanged herself from the cottonwood in Hawk’s backyard. They’d been alive all this time while he’d been living as though they were dead, and he just hadn’t realized it.

  Some horrible trick had been played!

  While Hawk had been off hunting bad men to somehow get even for their deaths, they’d been living back on the farm that Hawk and Linda had rented in Dakota Territory, just after they were married and before Hawk had gone to work for the U.S. marshals service.

  That’s where Jubal was born one cold winter night after Hawk had ridden four miles to bring the German midwife out from the settlement called Napoleon, and where he and Linda had spent the previous nine months as excited as schoolchildren upon hearing the circus was coming to town.

  They were about to start a family. And when Hawk made enough money from his corn and wheat and the steers he’d trailed from Kansas, he’d invest in seed bulls and heifers, and he’d build one of the largest ranches in the county.

  Linda and Jubal were back there, on the little ranch they’d rented from old Sam Jahner, on the banks of Juneberry Creek. They were waiting for him there. . . .

  He couldn’t ride fast enough. The long gallop took forever, up and down the chalky buttes and across the shallow rivers and streams.

  He was about to be reunited with his family!

  Finally, he rode through the gap between hills stippled with bur oak and chokecherry and into the yard.

  The buildings—the small dugout cabin, brush-roofed barn, windmill, and corrals—were tumbledown and overgrown with thistle and lamb’s ears. Hawk could see through the cracks between the cabin’s broad, rough-sawed plank walls. Linda’s pumpkin and potato patch was all wiry brown weeds and gopher holes.

  No one had lived here in years.

  Hawk leapt off his horse, ran up the porch steps, and threw open the rickety door, the hinges screeching like magpies. He yelled for his family as he bolted across the door-jamb.

  He stopped suddenly. His heart leapt. Horror gripped his gut in an iron fist, eyes snapping wide, lower jaw falling.

  Hawk dropped to his knees, wailing and stretching his arms up toward his wife and boy hanging slack and doll-eyed from the ropes dallied around the rafters above his head.

  14.

  LAST CHANCE RANGE

  “JUBAL.” Hawk lifted a hand to smooth a wing of auburn hair back from the boy’s right eye.

  “Name ain’t Jubal, mister.”

  Hawk froze, his hand only half raised. His mind was wrapped in gauze, and there was a thick, opaque lens over his eyes. “Jubal?”

  The boy, whose sunburned, lightly freckled face hovered over him, shook his head, frowning. “I ain’t Jubal. Name’s Harry.” The boy leaned back slightly, warily, and called over his shoulder, “He’s awake, Ma!”

  The boy’s voice kicked up an anvil-like ringing in Hawk’s ears. He heard quick footsteps, and a curtain was pulled back from the low, narrow doorway behind the boy.

  A woman peered into the room, a white towel in her hand that held the curtain back, a small tin teapot in the other. Her eyes met Hawk’s, and she stepped slowly through the doorway, setting the pot and the towel on a small dresser wedged into the pantry-sized room.

  “Hello.”

  She stood beside the boy, who’d gotten up from the stool he’d been sitting on while sponging Hawk’s face. He held a small bowl and a sponge.

  Hawk tried several times to speak, but his lips were dry and crusted with blisters, his throat constricted. Inexplicably, he detected the smell of butter and mint. Finally, he managed, “Where am I?”

  An eager cast brushed across the woman’s dark blue eyes, and she gently shoved the boy aside and sat down on the stool. She took the sponge from the boy, dipped it into the basin, and leaning toward Hawk, ran the cool, refreshing sponge gingerly along his right cheek.

  “Last Chance Range.” The woman smiled. “At least, that’s what my man called it.”

  She had coal-black hair gathered in a tight bun behind her head, and skin nearly as dark as an Indian’s. She was fine-featured, almost beautiful, with small lines around her eyes and mouth that betrayed her age to be in her late twenties or early thirties. Her dress was simple, conservative, with a white collar and sleeves, and a cameo pin secured at her throat.

  “I’m Gloria Hughes,” she said. “This is Harry.”

  The boy said, “We found you staked out in the desert. Was it Injuns?”

  Hawk’s mind was slow to process the boy’s words. Even when he did, he wasn’t sure at first what he was talking about. Staked—out—in—the—desert? Slowly, the memory came to him. He’d made the unforgivable error of letting himself get caught by the very man he’d been trying to catch.

  His face warmed with chagrin. “No. It wasn’t Inju
ns.”

  He tried to move his arms and legs, and he winced at the multiple pain spasms shooting through him, and the raking sunburn that scraped like coarse sandpaper from his hair to his toes.

  “Best not to move around too much,” the woman said, squeezing water from the sponge, then laying it gently against Hawk’s neck. “You have several broken ribs, and I’ve never seen man or beast so bruised. Bruises take longer to heal than breaks, so you’ll be right where you are for a good while longer.”

  Hawk sniffed the not-unpleasant aroma.

  “That’s the crushed mint from my kitchen garden,” the woman said. “I’ve rubbed that with butter over your burns. Best sunburn cure I know.”

  “How long . . . ?”

  “Almost three weeks.” She dabbed at Hawk’s forehead with the sponge. “Thought we’d lost you several times. I even had Harry dig a grave last week, when you seemed about to go. Your breathing was so shallow, and I couldn’t hear your heart beating. You needed a doctor, but there isn’t one in fifty miles, and the trails aren’t safe. I couldn’t send Harry, and I didn’t dare leave you.”

  She shook her head and smiled. “You’re waking now means you must be out of the woods. But I have a feeling the real pain is about to begin.”

  “Got me a feelin’, too,” Hawk managed, gradually becoming aware of an all-encompassing misery. He licked his lips, feeling the hard roughness of scabs and dried blood.

  “Not to be nosy, but it might be easier to address you if I knew your name.”

  “Hawk,” he said, his brain too dull for lies. Likely, she wouldn’t have heard of him, anyway. “Gideon Hawk.”

  “Are you hungry, Mr. Hawk? I’ve been forcing broth down you, but some solid food would do you good.”

  Hawk shook his head. “I’ll take a shot of hooch, if you got it.”

  “I have that.” She looked at the boy. “Harry . . .”

  When the boy had left, Gloria Hughes set the sponge in the washbasin and rose from the stool. “You’ve gotta be tough, I’ll give you that. You were out in the desert at least three days when we found you. We were out looking for mavericks that might have strayed from our mountain range.”

  She set the basin on the dresser, then, as the boy pushed through the curtain with a bottle and a small water glass, she took the bottle and splashed whiskey into the glass. “Bobcat tracks around. You might have been about to become that wildcat’s supper. A female, by the size of the prints. Probably with several little mouths to feed.”

  “Ma thinks she was layin’ around, waitin’ for you to die,” the boy said, proud of his knowledge.

  Hawk gave a snort. “I sort of remember a cold nose sniffing me out. I wonder why she didn’t go ahead and dig in.”

  He winked at the boy. Then the woman sent Harry out to gather firewood for the supper fire.

  When the boy had gone, she helped Hawk take a sip of the whiskey. He got half a shot down, and smacked his lips. “Not bad.”

  “There’s not much more,” the woman said. “My husband’s old stash. I don’t imbibe. I’ve been pouring it down you with the broth. You’ve been in a lot of pain, crying out.”

  “Hope I haven’t kept anyone awake.”

  She raised the cup. “More?”

  Hawk nodded. The pain was welling up inside him like a physical thing. He hated to think how badly he was bruised and how many ribs were broken.

  Likely he wouldn’t be back on the trail for weeks. When he was, he’d have to give his think box an overhaul. It was Saradee Jones who’d distracted him. He should have killed her back in Sweetwater, even if it would have meant shooting it out with Melvin Hansen and the rest of her gang. . . .

  The second whiskey shot helped ease the physical fires inside him, as well as the deep searing burn of the sun over every inch of him, and he found himself drifting off, eyes closing as Mrs. Hughes set the bottle on the dresser, glancing over her shoulder at him, frowning with curiosity.

  When he woke again, it was morning, and when Mrs. Hughes had helped him use the thunder mug beneath the cot, turning him just enough that he could urinate on his own albeit with extreme self-consciousness, she brought him a cup of coffee and a bowl of oatmeal. He ate a few bites of the breakfast before his insides recoiled.

  He took a couple sips of the coffee that went down more easily with the shot of whiskey he tasted, then set the cup on his belly. He couldn’t sit up, but only hike his shoulders a little. During his set-to with Kid Reno’s bunch, he must have wrenched his neck and back.

  “Forgive me for prying again, but who’s Jubal?”

  Hawk winced inwardly. The dream of the old ranchstead ached as badly as any of his wounds or broken bones. “My boy.”

  Mrs. Hughes was standing with her back to the dresser, wearing a purple dress today, as fresh and crisp as the one she’d worn yesterday. It highlighted the indigo black of her hair, which appeared not quite as tightly wound behind her head as yesterday, a few wisps hanging loose about her face.

  Hawk wasn’t sure where he was; she’d mentioned mountains. He also remembered that she’d used the past tense when mentioning her husband. The ranch had the feel of an isolated backwater, probably not many men around.

  “And Linda?” she asked, flexing her fingers uncomfortably along the edges of the dresser behind her.

  Hawk lifted his cup to his lips, his hand shaking slightly. “Wife.” He sipped, swallowed with effort, and set the cup back down on his belly. “She’s dead, too.”

  Mrs. Hughes nodded sadly. “My husband, Romer, died last spring. He was prospecting, and a rock fell on him. It crushed his skull.”

  He just looked at her. He wasn’t up to hollow words of apology.

  She looked down at her hands. “He wasn’t really a very good husband—more dreams than common sense, just like my father warned me back in St. Joseph—but I loved him.”

  Hawk glanced at the room’s sole window covered with a sackcloth curtain letting in lemony light around its edges. “What mountains are we in?”

  “The Vultures. We’re near Eagle Eye Peak. We have a little cattle ranch, Harry and me. Some chickens and a milk cow. I do some sewing in the winters.”

  “When I can,” Hawk said, though at the moment he couldn’t imagine being able to leave the bed, nor of ever facing the sun again, “I’ll do some work around the place. I’m very grateful for your help.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Mrs. Hughes said. “I’d have done the same for a dog I found in a trap.”

  Hawk noted the guarded, slightly admonishing tone.

  She fidgeted with the cameo pin at her throat. “Whoever it was that worked you over, they must have really had it in for you—staking a man naked in the desert so he couldn’t even move his head from the sun. They weren’t Apaches or you’d have been even worse off than you were.”

  “They weren’t Apaches. The gang of Americanos and a few Mexicans I was tracking. Their leader’s a man named Kid Reno.”

  Her voice acquired a hopeful tone. “You’re a lawman?”

  Deep down even he himself knew that he was merely a vigilante, as much on the run from the law as the men he hunted.

  He settled for a simple, honest reply. “No.” And he left it at that.

  She stared at him grimly, her chest falling slightly as she exhaled. “I see.” She turned to the door. “I’ll bring your lunch in a couple of hours.”

  Hawk slowly, gradually healed. As he did, his days on the Hugheses’ Last Chance Range turned to weeks. Days as well as nights slowed down, and boredom set in.

  The aches in his body ebbed and dulled, but because he had too much time to think, his mind grew tender and raw.

  When he could start walking again, he did so eagerly. At first he had to use a cane—a knotted oak branch that the boy, Harry, had found for him—but he couldn’t walk far. Every day he pushed himself a little farther until finally he was making it out to the hay barn roughly sixty yards from the tight little log cabin, in the small yard ringed by rocky
peaks and piñon pines.

  From the barn he made it to the creek running along the base of a slope, through cottonwoods. Here he sat every day around three in the afternoon, perched on a large rock, leaning forward on the cane, resting and thinking. . . .

  Of course, recuperating here with a pretty widow roughly his own age, and a boy roughly the age Jubal would have been if his son were alive, he couldn’t help wondering what might have been. He found himself attracted to Gloria Hughes, as any man would have been, and he grew close as a stepfather to the boy, Harry. They often fished together along the stream, and the boy was always close when Hawk tried to push his walks a little longer, in case Hawk should fall, which was always a risk with his slow-healing ribs, knees, and hips.

  He sensed that his feelings for Gloria went both ways, and he couldn’t help taunting himself with the possibility of his staying here, of becoming Gloria’s husband and Harry’s father. Of giving up the stalking trail for a settled life here on Last Chance Range.

  The possibility of such a change toyed with him as he toyed with it, and he found himself vaguely considering it more and more as he abandoned the walking stick and started working about the place—slowly at first, bringing in wood, forking a little hay, and currying his own grulla as well as the Hugheses’ four ranch ponies.

  But the stronger the possibility grew inside him, and the more he favored Gloria with speculative glances, the more she seemed to withdraw from him. She spoke to him less. And her eyes retreated from his gaze.

  Most nights after supper, the three of them sat around the cabin’s stone hearth, reading the newspapers that a friendly old hand from a neighboring ranch dropped off once a week on his return from visiting the saloons in Prescott. More and more often, when it was time for bed, Gloria retreated silently to her own room, bidding good night to only Harry and quietly latching her bedroom door behind her.

  One night, however, she sat up later than her usual nine o’clock. After the boy had eaten his customary before-bed gooseberries and cream and retreated to his room in the loft, Mrs. Hughes set aside the afghan she’d been crocheting and turned to Hawk, who sat with a newspaper folded in his lap—he’d read every word of the outdated paper twice—and staring wanly into the fire.