Gabriel's Story

by David Anthony Durham

  AROUND NOON THE NEXT DAY they came upon three bowls carved by nature into a large, bare shelf of rock. They were each a couple of yards in diameter, a couple of feet in depth, and half filled with green, putrid water. The men thanked God and Satan both and drank it down like animals. They calmed the horses and let them cool off and allowed them to drink slowly. Once their canteens were full and each of them had drunk all he could take in, the men set out to destroy the water source. Dallas splashed around in the bowls, kicking the water into the wind, spraying it out across the parched granite and so exposing it to the heat of the sun. Before he left, he wrote his name in urine. They rode on, Dallas spitting into the wind and challenging their pursuers to follow them now to their own parched deaths.

  That evening the girl indicated that she had no more tomatoes. She lay down as on the previous nights and Gabriel felt the closeness of her once more. As she whispered between the two boys, Gabriel stared out at the firmament, a canopy of stars brighter now than he’d ever seen before. Before long James fell asleep, his breathing a dry rasp that was painful just to listen to. Gabriel tried to listen to the girl instead and was surprised to discover that she’d begun to speak in English. The shock of it lasted only a second. He realized he’d always known she could understand them. Of course she could.

  At first her whispers seemed strewn together in a meaningless string of recognizable words. It was only gradually that Gabriel began to understand her fully. She was telling them goodbye. She said that she believed in them, that she understood them. She said that they both wore their hearts on their faces and that their hearts were good. “I know that you are afraid and that you are good. You thank me for helping your friend, but it is not him I help. It is me. I help my soul. You must do the same. I help him now, yes, but when my time comes, I will go and not look back. You should do the same.” She paused and lay still for some time. “You have a gun. One day . . . use it.”

  Gabriel turned over and looked at her. “I’m sorry . . . for what they did to you.”

  But the girl shook off his sorrow. She motioned with her hand that she didn’t need this from him, then she stretched out a thin finger and touched his chest. “Your name is Gabriel, yes?” The boy nodded. “Then don’t forget who you’re named after. I have the name of the first woman that God created. Understand? They are the ones who will be sorry. They will all die.”

  Gabriel began to say something else, but she silenced him with a finger. She touched it to his lips. “Sleep. My brother comes for me tomorrow. Rest, Gabriel.”

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON THEY DESCENDED through a pass in the hills and rode out across a wide plateau of scoured land that stretched for miles in each direction. It was already late in the day. The sky to the north had darkened with ominous roils of gray clouds that seethed southward with a Biblical bulk. There was a wavering line of darkness on the land far ahead, perhaps twenty miles or so, which Gabriel knew to be a river. Beyond that the land stretched out in all its barrenness to the horizon, where there was only the faintest yellow hint of more mountains. Gabriel knew that once out on that flat expanse, they’d be in clear view through a full day of riding. If he knew this, the others must too. But none commented or even slowed their horses. They rode into this new terrain in silence.

  Two hours later they caught their first glimpse of their trackers, and for the first time the whole group understood the reality of their situation. The trackers were no myth of Caleb’s, nor were they their own fears, no phantoms haunting their conscience. They were a band of twelve, riding down into the basin and across the plateau like a military phalanx. There was something uncanny in their progress. They took chunks out of the land with each passing minute, as if mounted on ever-fresh horses. They rode with bold and undisguised vigor, like preordained missionaries who did not fear their own death for the glory of their cause and were propelled onward to destiny with a knowledge unknown to the heathen. As they came on, so did the clouds, laying a blanket of darkness across the plains and bringing with them deep rolls of thunder as if the belly of the earth were hungry.

  “For fuck’s sake!” Rollins said. “Can you believe this? Who the hell are they?”

  Marshall wheeled his horse and studied them, bringing the group to a sudden halt. “They ain’t Texans, that’s for sure. No Texan has that kind of religion.” He spat, then looked down at the circle in the dust as if he regretted it. “Tell you what. Let’s give them the girl. If it’s her they’re after, maybe that’ll satisfy them.”

  “And if they ain’t after her?” Dallas asked.

  “Maybe she’ll satisfy them anyway. Leastways, distract them a bit.” He turned and looked at the girl. “It was a pleasure, miss. Consider yourself free to go. I think we’ll be doing the same. Let’s go. And that means you too, boys. If I were you, I wouldn’t want to meet up with that bunch anyway. Off we go.” He spurred his horse forward a few steps. The others started forward as well, but paused when Marshall did. He turned his eyes hard on the boys. “Come on.”

  Gabriel’s and James’s horses whinnied and moved forward a few steps, but still the boys didn’t ride. Gabriel met the girl’s eyes. She was calm, calmer now than ever. She sat almost serenely in the saddle, as wind whipped her garments about her and the clouds billowed. She held the hair that was blowing about her face with one hand and gestured with the other, a motion somewhere between a dismissal and an absolution.

  “Go. I cannot say they wouldn’t kill you.”

  Marshall looked at her wide-eyed. He cracked a smile and said, “I’ll be damned. But you heard her, boys. They got killing on the mind. Let’s not make it too easy for them.” A moment later he was off, the others fast behind him.

  “Go,” she repeated.

  This time the boys did as she instructed. Gabriel looked back often as he galloped. The girl never changed her position. She sat on the horse, growing smaller with distance, waiting.

  The boys caught up with the group when they paused to study a canyon. It began as a small depression in the plateau but soon narrowed and deepened and dropped out of sight. They rode along its rim for another half-mile, then came abruptly to the river that Gabriel had seen from the hills. But it was not as he imagined. It was not a river to be forded but a canyon that dropped down a hundred feet or more, with sheer sandstone walls that dizzied Gabriel with their muted colors and fine, wavering designs.

  Caleb rode out to the left, paused and studied the canyon, and returned. He believed there was no way across and would be none for many miles. They could ride along the rim and hope that somehow this would lead them to something before the horses died of thirst. Or they could drop down into the canyon via the smaller one they’d ridden past. If they were held up there, they could fight, perhaps, or find some route out.

  Marshall looked from one to the other among the group, his eyes for once not full of answers. There was a quivering tension in his face, and he cast his vote for the canyon. For Gabriel, the smell of fear from Marshall was more frightening even than the sight of the riders behind them.

  As the storm broke and rain fell from the sky in quarter-sized drops, the group dropped down into the canyon. They had to dismount and lead their horses, cooing to them and humming and trying to keep them calm as they skittered and fought for footing. The men slipped and bashed their shins on the loose flakes of stone, and lightning lit the sky and thunder rolled across the prairie like someone tossing out a blanket of stones. Gabriel could barely keep his footing. His horse supported him as he dangled and stumbled at the end of its reins and followed him down out of a sense of obligation that had nothing in common with its own wishes.

  Soon the descent eased to a more gradual slope, but as it did, the walls on either side grew higher, narrow and carved by the workings of water into smooth organic shapes, so it seemed as if they were descending into a living creature. The walls played tricks with the already mysterious flashes of light, each bolt creating around them a moving landscape of contours. The horses didn’t li
ke it. James’s horse began to buck. Gabriel saw it in brilliant, electric detail, the horse dancing from side to side, fighting against the walls, then kicking out behind it and lunging forward. The canyon darkened for a long moment of commotion, and when Gabriel could see again, James’s horse was gone, having somehow bolted past the boy and pushed through the line ahead. James rose from the ground, sore, groaning, and cursing. He set out after the horse.

  Feeling as though he were alone for a moment, Gabriel turned and looked past his own horse. Caleb stood only a few feet away, watching him, with his horse so close behind him that the creature’s muzzle nearly rested on his shoulder. Gabriel moved forward again. A few hundred yards in and the walls gradually widened, enough that they could walk two abreast. The rain still fell steadily, and Gabriel noticed for the first time the water through which he sloshed. It was only ankle deep, but it rushed by him in a stream that seemed to increase in volume even as he watched. It was as if the earth, parched for so long beneath the sun, had forgotten how to absorb the moisture and was trying to shed it instead. He stumbled through it with careless feet, kicking them forward and trusting his boots to find their footing of their own accord.

  Then they reached a dead end. The walls around them curved into a sort of bowl, twenty feet wide, facing a branch of the river, which rolled by in swirls of boiling current, mud-laden and brown like the walls around them. It seemed a different form of the same substance: rock turned to water, sand to flowing current. The horses shied and brushed against each other and looked around with wild eyes. The men let loose their headstalls and the horses bent to drink, only in this activity finding a moment of calm.

  Dallas scrambled back up the canyon to keep lookout, and the men huddled in the rain and tried to think. None of them stated it, but they seemed of a single mind on one point. They had no wish to do battle with those twelve, not here, not like this, not with the rain pelting them and the horses wild and their hearts trembling with a terror they couldn’t fully name. James stood close to the others, his eyes hard on each of the men as they spoke. He seemed to have forgotten his fear of these men and his loathing for their deeds. For a moment, he was united with them by a greater fear. Gabriel stood a little away from the others, watching the horses, the current of the river before them, and the walls of the canyon up to their brim, above which the sky had darkened almost to night. He thought of the girl as he’d last seen her. From where did her serenity come?

  Dallas returned at a dead run, stumbling and tripping, moving forward more like a rolling boulder than a two-legged creature. “They’re coming,” he cried. The men were in motion instantly. They moved toward the horses, and as they did so, a clap of thunder brought its hand down on the canyon, sending a jarring rumble of echoes through the place. The horses grew frantic. One reached for another with its teeth; two others passed a few blurred seconds exchanging kicks. The men tried to separate them, to soothe them so that they could be ridden. But in the end Marshall yelled to just grab a horse and mount up, damn it, or die here. He was on a horse the next second, apparently having jumped from the ground and landed dead in the saddle.

  In the flickering light, Gabriel watched him spur the horse into the water. The horse fought and neighed and would have balked, but Marshall’s will was stronger. Horse and man entered the water, sank into it, and were swept away. Gabriel stood without moving, and it was only by accident that he caught a horse. The creature was running past him, up the canyon, and its reins brushed his hand. He grabbed them. The horse stopped, and Gabriel mounted. He watched Dallas and Rollins go into the water, and it was only then, as they were swept downstream, that he knew what he could do.

  As James entered the river, Gabriel felt a sudden desire to yell to him, to call him back. He didn’t have the plan formulated clearly in his mind. It was only a vague notion of a possibility, and he needed extra seconds to think. But James’s mount kicked free of the shore. The boy turned and shot a glance back over his shoulder. Gabriel didn’t move. He met James’s eyes, but he didn’t beckon. He didn’t call to him. He didn’t gesture. It was too late for any of these things. He simply met his eyes and watched him slip away.

  Caleb followed James’s gaze back to Gabriel. It was just a momentary glimpse, and the next second he was in the current and moving. Gabriel almost followed, so strong had the touch of the man’s eyes been, but when he heard a sound behind him he found his resolve once more. He moved the horse to the water, talking to it, asking for its strength and for its faith in him, and also calling silently to James to forgive him. They entered the water, and he turned the horse upstream.

  At first Gabriel had to fight to keep the horse pointed into the current. It tried every few seconds to turn, but he yanked it back on course each time. To his surprise, the horse found some footing. It strove forward a few good strides, water billowing off its chest, then it fell into deeper water. Gabriel shot glances behind him but could see nothing. It seemed they had already put a cornice of stone between him and the beach, although he scarcely thought this was possible.

  His attention was drawn back to the horse as he almost pitched from the saddle. The creature had swum into a swirling eddy that sent the confused horse and boy circling in a strange flow of gurgling, recirculating water. Gabriel felt the horse fighting panic beneath him, trying desperately to sort out the currents and make sense of it all. In a moment between swells, it slipped forward again and crossed the main current. Gabriel thought for a moment that all was lost and that the horse was retreating. But the creature never turned the side of its body to the current. Instead, it ferried across the current at a slight angle, touched land, and a second later was up on a shore that Gabriel hadn’t even noticed.

  The horse didn’t await further command. It bounded up a shallow wash, paused, and went on, slipping where it got steeper. Gabriel pitched forward in the saddle. The horn twisted into his abdomen, and as he called out in pain, he fell from the saddle, his foot tangled in the stirrup and his body dangerously close to the horse’s frantic hooves. He rolled away, sprang to his feet, and was back with the horse in a second. He tried to stroke its muzzle, but the horse snapped its head up and bared its teeth. Gabriel gave it the full length of the reins and then led it forward until the ground sloped more gradually. He mounted again, and the horse pushed forward in a frantic set of strides.

  Horse and boy burst into the open air of the prairie like creatures expelled from the earth by force. The horse paused, shocked by the sudden change. For a second, Gabriel thought that all was silence, but then he realized it was just the opposite—all was sound, the steady beating of the rain on the earth, of the wind across it. He shot a glance behind him but wasn’t even sure he could see the wash through which they had traveled. He was sure of one thing: there was not a living person left on God’s earth, not a living creature to be seen at all, save for the horse and himself.

  A sputter of sheet lightning afforded a quick illumination of the land. Under its light, the boy realized for the first time why he’d felt so little control over the horse. It wasn’t his horse. He looked down on the long silver withers and sharp ears of Marshall’s dun. He spurred her forward and was off, fighting through motion the deep sense of foreboding that this realization left within him.

  Part 4

  FOR THE FIRST HALF-MILE THEY CLUNG TO THEIR EXhausted horses with little semblance of control. They bobbed and swirled with the current, both men and horses fighting to keep their heads above the waves. The torrent pushed them onward. The walls rushed past on either side, adding to the chaos of speed and amplifying the roar of the river, which was now the only sound save for the muffled shouts of one man to another.

  The blond man held the lead by a good forty yards. His eyes were riveted downstream, but he realized too late that the flood of water in which they flowed was not this river’s main stem. He saw the sky open before him, and as he rose on the crest of a wave, he saw the junction of the two currents, this one and the larger one it fed. Wh
en the rivers merged, the two currents tore into each other. Both he and his horse were sucked under. He felt the horse slip away from him, though he tried with all his strength to hold the reins. The current was a hand that pushed him down and twisted his limbs and rolled him over. It held him down long enough that he feared for his life, and then thrust him up to the surface. He turned and would have shouted to the rest, but he spat water instead of words.

  Each of the others hit the boil line and overturned just as quickly. Feet and hooves gashed the air, and then all went under. They were tumbled about like straw figures and came up gasping and as white as their skin tones would allow. The large man breached the surface with both hands raised above him as in supplication to God; the young man lashed out toward the air and broke into it cursing; the thin-chested black boy came up stroking toward one shore with all his might; the dark man in the rear only lost his horse for the space of a few seconds. Alone of them all, he seemed to find purchase on top of the water.

  The horses swam for shore, but the current was swifter now and even more chaotic. The black horse reached a sieve of boulders and tried to mount them. It scrabbled against the stone with its shins but could find no footing. The water pushed against it, and its body buckled between two rocks and stuck fast. Another horse, the glossy-hued sorrel, scrambled onto a shelf of rock, but it was so crazed that it ran into the wall and slipped. Its hind legs twisted, and it came down against the edge of the shelf with a force that broke its back.

  Having witnessed most of this, the blond man turned his gaze back downstream. He breathed deeply, and rode impassively through a train of twenty-foot waves, finding a rhythm within them and breathing each time he broke the surface, resting when he went under. Breathing and resting. So he rode them out. A half-mile further down, he crossed an eddy line. He swirled downward, but once more the depths found him distasteful. When he breathed again, it was in quiet water behind a jutting shelf of rock. He pulled himself halfway out of the river and collapsed. The black man and his horse joined him sometime later. They sat beside him and shared the dripping night in silence.