Mojave

by Johnny D. Boggs

  I drunk some more.

  Just drunk my breakfast as she watched, eyes darting this way and that, then cooled off my neck and face with the water. It didn’t taste as cool or as fine as it had right before dawn, but the sun was fairly high by now. Bathed my left arm, and untied my bandanna, dipped it in the water, then gingerly placed that rag on the welts on my back.

  That caused me to gasp.

  But sight of all that water, my luxury bath, it cracked poor Candy Crutchfield, and she dropped the pistol she’d taken from me whilst I slept, and fell to her knees, and plunged headfirst into the small hole.

  Drunk like a hog. I mean, even as hurt and weary and miserable as I felt, listening to her slurp up that water sickened my stomach. While she lay on her belly, drinking and making dreadful noises, however, I moved and picked up my Spiller & Burr. Then I went around so that when she finally drunk her fill, and sat up, she’d be facing the sun, and I wasn’t going to be her parasol.

  Finally, just before my stomach was about to roll over, she stopped snorting and cavorting, put her hands in the pool, pushed herself up. I aimed the .36 at her broad back, thumbed back the hammer, and waited. For a moment, she was still, then she sucked in a deep breath, gasped, and fell facedown into the water, her greasy hair floating. Bubbles come up. But she didn’t move.

  Well, I cussed, lowered the hammer and shoved the revolver into my holster. Walking on my knees, as I was too damned tired to stand up, I made it over to the pool, reached over, and taken her by the collar.

  The human body and the human spirit can act real strange. Last night, I’d been able to carry or drag the dead all across that sand, somehow lift them, or push and pull them, even toss them, into that battered omnibus. Did it without complaint, and some of them bodies weighed more than Moby-Dick.

  That had been last night. This was late morning.

  I heaved, damn near give myself the hernia Buster hadn’t give me. Got her head out of the water, then my fingers lost the grip, and she splashed back into the water. She was muddying up that hole real bad, and I thought I could see the oil coming off her greasy hair, polluting my source of water even more.

  Cussing her, I reached down, and taken a better hold, and pulled, leaning sidewise, groaning, but making progress. She cleared the water, and the mud, and I dropped her in the dirt. Once I’d managed to catch my breath, I moved around her, got my hands under that stone-hard belly, and, cussing some vile words, rolled her over.

  As soon as I’d beached that whale, I saw her mouth open, watched her suck in a deep breath of air, and then I knowed I’d done a real foolish thing, and that I should have let her drown. In the corner of my eye, I seen that bone handle of her big knife come at me.

  It caught me just shy of my temple, and down I went, not losing consciousness but definitely losing the grip on the Spiller & Burr.

  I had underestimated Candy Crutchfield. While I was trying to push myself up, her boot caught me in my lower ribs, the ribs that hadn’t been busted during my fracas with the late Buster. Either that water had revived her like the Fountain of Youth, or she was a fair hand at running a bluff. Up I flew, only to land hard on my back. Groaning, I forced my eyes open, and spit out blood from the lip I’d bit while I’d been rolling down the dune the day before trying to fake my demise.

  Candy Crutchfield hovered over me, and I got a look at that knife.

  “That’s it?” I said. “That’s your knife?”

  She stepped back, glanced at the blade, then come a bit forward, glaring. “It does the job,” she said.

  “The handle is five times bigger than the blade,” I told her, and slid myself up against more rocks.

  “So?”

  “That handle’s huge. But the blade . . .” I sniggered.

  “I’ll peel the hide off you, Micah Bishop,” she said, “and show you just how good this knife works.”

  “Knife that small, it’ll take you a week.”

  “Will not.”

  “Will, too.”

  “Not.”

  “Too.”

  Flustered, she sheathed the knife. I ain’t fooling. That bone handle was a foot long, thick as the palm of my right hand at the bottom. The blade though wasn’t more than four inches long. Looked more like a dagger than a skinning knife.

  “The hell with it,” she said. “I’ll just shoot you dead.”

  She reached down to pluck the revolver I’d dropped. I was too tired to move, so I sat there and watched her squeeze the trigger. The cap popped, but that’s the only thing that worked. She thumbed back the hammer, tried again. Not even the cap sparked this time. Again. Nothing.

  “It rained yesterday,” I told her. “Remember? Hard rain. Fouled the powder.”

  She cussed the gun I’d won at Beal’s Crossing and shoved it into her waistband. “If I hadn’t lost my own guns after gettin’ my hoss shot out from under me, you’d be dead now.”

  I nodded my agreement.

  “But you’s already dead.” She drew her knife, just to keep me at a safe distance. “Don’t try nothin’. This blade may be small, but it’ll find your throat or heart.”

  Figured she was right about that, so I just stayed there, and watched as she walked around. She taken the Marlin repeating rifle, and the two canteens, though she didn’t have sense enough to fill the one that wasn’t full with water. She also didn’t have the brains to shoot me dead with the Marlin, which I was fairly certain would still fire, brass casings generally protecting the powder from water and all.

  “Give me your hat,” she ordered, and since she now seemed to be of mind to take only what I had but leave me alive, I tossed the hat to her. She caught it, cradled the Marlin under her armpit, and jammed it on her head. Tried again. Cussed, and pulled.

  I also had sense enough not to laugh at that hog head of hers.

  Finally, she threw my fine hat into the pool of water. I picked it up, shaken the water off, and put it on my head.

  “Bet your head ain’t the only part of your body that’s so damned puny.”

  Uneducated insults seemed better than getting my head blowed off with a .40-60-caliber bullet.

  “How ’bout that kerchief.”

  I flung the wet bandanna to her, and watched as she tied it on her head like it was a schoolmarm’s bonnet. She looked damned ridiculous, but again I held my tongue.

  By this time, she had all she needed from me. She pointed the Marlin’s barrel off toward the east, and laughed. “How long you reckon it’ll be till that water hole dries up?” she asked.

  Already, my throat started to feel parched.

  “Don’t rain often in this country,” she said. “And, as you reminded me, it rained yesterday. I’ll be leavin’ you here, Micah Bishop. My bet is that come a day or two, you’ll be wishin’ I had kilt you with my knife.”

  I watched her walk away, heard her singing “Blow the Man Down.”

  Didn’t move until I couldn’t see or hear her no more, then I made myself drink some more of that muddy, greasy water, drunk long and hard, then soaked my hat. Then I done a foolish thing. I walked after her.

  Having lived in desert country, I knowed what I should do, what you had to do. Hell, just a year ago, I’d been stuck in Jornado del Muerto in southern New Mexico Territory, without horses, without water, without no chance. But I’d survived.

  Because I knew, for one thing, you don’t go walking across the country in the heat of the day. You wait.

  I didn’t wait. I walked.

  The sun dried out my hat pretty quick. I couldn’t see Candy Crutchfield, and this ground was so hard, there weren’t no tracks to follow. I stopped to listen, but the only voice I heard was my own.

  “Way, hey, blow the man down.”

  “Stop singing!” I yelled at myself.

  Staggered along, holding my left arm, my back burning once again. The country looked the same, flat but rugged, rocks, yucca, creosote. That’s all you could see for miles, that land, and the endless sky. No clouds. J
ust a sun that was directly overhead. Still, I walked. Wasn’t much in the way of shade anyhow.

  Walked on and on.

  The sun was in front of me, and I had to pull down my hat. My lips had already cracked, and my throat was dry. Yet on I walked. Let’s see, what did I have to do? Go fifty, maybe sixty miles to Calico? Without water?

  Kept on walking, though. Singing “Blow the Man Down” and not stopping myself.

  Till I come to a quick realization. I stopped singing to myself and begun conversing with myself.

  “Calico is to the west. I was walking west. The sun was on my back. Then it was over my head. Then it was in my face. Yes, yes. That would be right. Walking west. The sun sinks in the west. That’s right. That’s how it should be. Right. But . . . this doesn’t make sense. The sun is on my back. It’s low. Getting cold. How long has the sun been on my back? What’s it doing sinking there? I’ve walked all day. I’ve . . .”

  I smelled the water. I staggered to it. Wasn’t muddy. Wasn’t greasy. Wasn’t as deep, but it was there. I saw the marks left by boots. Of a scuffling. I saw the rocks. I turned and looked west and saw the sun dipping below the horizon.

  “You damned fool,” I told myself. “You’ve walked all day in one damned circle. You’re exactly back where you started from.”

  Nodding in agreement with myself, I laughed. “But hell, you’ve got water.”

  So what I done was exactly what Candy Crutchfield had done. I dropped to my belly, and I lapped up that precious, cool, sweet-tasting water like a dog, or a rattlesnake. I drunk my fill, wet my face, my back, my hair, my hat. Then I crawled over to the rocks, satisfied, content. I closed my eyes, and sang myself to sleep singing “Blow the Man Down,” and dreamed of sailors and ships and whales and Captain Ahab. Dreamed of water. Water. Water.

  “Damn you, Crutchfield,” I heard myself saying drowsily, “stop snorting up that water.”

  Crutchfield didn’t listen, but kept right on making a racket as she drunk.

  That’s when my eyes shot open. It was dusk, and I was back at the water hole, and somebody else was drinking, but it couldn’t have been Candy Crutchfield. Not unless she’d gotten as lost as I had.

  It wasn’t.

  I held my breath.

  “Hey,” I said softly after realizing that this was no mirage.

  The chestnut Arabian horse stopped drinking, lifted its head, stared down at me.

  I came up slowly. The horse stepped back.

  “No,” I cooed. “It’s all right.” The ears flattened against his head. Not a good sign. I tried to be stiller than I’d been when I’d been playing dead. The horse studied me, but I knowed it might take off at a gallop at any second.

  First I smiled. Then I wet my lips. “Hey, Yago,” I tried. Stopped myself. Yago was the Arabian horse who’d been killed. Yet the name caused this horse’s ears to perk up as if he was interested.

  “Yago,” I said again, softer, cooing, and the horse stepped toward me. I smiled, wishing I had a cube of sugar. The horse snorted. I caught a rein. Breathing much easier, I got to my feet. Took the other rein. Let out a sigh of relief, and come to the horse, rubbing my hand on his neck.

  The cinch was loose, but the saddle was still there. So were the bags behind the cantle. And there was a Winchester in the scabbard. Even better, there was a canteen wrapped around the horn.

  “I don’t know what your name is, boy,” I told the Arabian, “but it’s Yago from now on.”

  I let the horse drink more, then I filled the canteen, checked the bags, which had some clothes that wouldn’t fit. But smelling my own duds, and seeing the hobbles in the other bag, I decided everything has a purpose. I hobbled Yago close to the pool, and replaced my bloody and ripped shirt with a fancy one of red silk, and exchanged my pissed-on, and bloodied, and dirtied striped trousers with a pair of vaquero pants of deerskin the color of a palomino. They were too long, and too big, but they slid into the tops of my boots, and the gun belt would keep them from falling down.

  Of course, I was still something out of my head, because after I’d put the hobbles back in the saddlebags, and swung into the saddle, I was yelling, giving Yago plenty of rein, letting him find his own lope.

  The sun was down, but I rode that night. I rode, cussing Candy Crutchfield and Whip Watson. I rode west, and this time I wasn’t gonna go in circles. I’d find Calico.

  I yelled to the sky:

  “‘And I looked, and behold a pale horse’—I mean a chestnut. ‘And his name that sat on him was Death!’

  “You hear me Crutchfield? You hear me Watson?

  “‘And Hell followed with him!’”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Some folks at Folsom argue this point, but shortly after I left the sand dunes, my madness ended. I slowed Yago down, then reined him to a stop. Climbed out of the saddle, loosened the cinch, and waited till the moon rose. Then, after letting the Arabian hurriedly drink from my shot-up hat, I tightened the girth and got back in the saddle. I kept the pace at a walk, moving into a trot every now and then when the country—and my ribs, back, and buttocks—could handle it.

  When dawn neared, we found us a spot that would be shady. That’s where we stayed, waiting till the sun was going down, and the weather had cooled. Then we’d ride till it got dark, rest and wait for the moon to rise, and hit the road again.

  That, my friends, is how we made it out of that furnace alive.

  Oh, it wasn’t easy. Taken us three and a half days, and the last day was without water, my canteen by that time dry. I was leading Yago down the trail late in the day, the sun sinking behind some big clouds, following a well-traveled trail that I remembered as the Calico Road. Ahead of me, I spied dust, so I taken the Winchester from the scabbard, pulled back the hammer, and approached slowly.

  Slow, that is, till I topped a rise and saw what was making that dust. Then I pulled myself into the saddle, kicked Yago into a lope, and hurried down the hill toward the wagon, rode right past it, before I wheeled the horse around, blocking the road, and give the driver and his companion a polite nod.

  “Howdy,” I said.

  They just stared. Slowly, both men raised their hands.

  “You robbin’ us?” one of them asked.

  I blinked.

  The fellow who had asked that damned fool question looked to be older than Methuselah, bald underneath the most miserable excuse for a hat I’d ever seen. You might have mistook his duck trousers and muslin shirt as leather. That’s how dirty, greasy, and awful they was. I doubted if they’d been washed since the last rain. His face was the color, and texture, of leather, thanks to who knows how many years in the desert and not a razor handy for a week or so. He had real beady green eyes.

  The other guy was maybe a hundred or two hundred years older, but he had hair, white as Moby-Dick. Hair he had, but no teeth, and his face had more wrinkles than Rip Van Winkle. He did have second helpings of muscles. Old man like that, but he seemed sturdy, solid, and tough. Well, maybe not that tough. I mean he had lifted his hands way higher than his pard’s.

  I said, “Nice dog.”

  The dog, a bony mutt of black ears and patches of black here and there where the mange hadn’t taken off the hair, looked to be trying to hold its front legs up in the air, too. The dog, I figured, was older than the two desert rats combined.

  Yet that dog wagged its tail. The two men stretched their hands higher.

  “Don’t shoot us, mister,” the man with the big arms pleaded.

  That’s when I remembered the Winchester in my hands. Quickly, I eased down the hammer, and slipped the rifle into the scabbard.

  “Boys,” I said, “I’m no highwayman.”

  Well, I had robbed a cattle buyer in Denison City, Texas, some years back, but only because I’d been cleaned out by some crooked faro dealer and needed a stake and the cattle buyer had money to spare.

  Only the dog seemed to lower its paws.

  “You look like one,” the big one said. “Do
n’t he, Cicero?”

  “Shut up, Kermit,” the driver said.

  “Listen.” I pointed back toward the east and north. “I’ve been in that hellhole for more days that I’d care to remember. Haven’t had water in a day. I’d be obliged.”

  The old codgers glanced at one another, then even looked at the dog, and finally turned behind them as if they didn’t know what they was hauling into Calico. After the longest while, they both turned back toward me.

  The big cuss scratched his chin with dirty fingers.

  The driver patted the dog’s head, then sighed and said, “But this wagon belongs to the Calico Water Works . . . Incorporated.”

  “It’s a water wagon,” I said, “and I’m dry.”

  Again, they looked at each other, without speaking, turned to the dog for advice, who wagged his tail, and looked again at me.

  “It’ll cost you,” the driver said.

  The big coward sang out, “Not because us, no sir. Iffen it was up to us, you see, we’d let you even take a bath. But, well, we work for the Calico Water Works . . . Incorporated.”

  “Three dollars.” That driver’s beady green eyes had brightened and gotten bigger with greed. “To fill your canteen.”

  My shoulders slumped. I pushed my hat up. I stared at the big coward, then the dog whose head had dropped onto the edge of the pillow that was sticking out of the driver’s butt. At last, my eyes locked on the driver.

  “It only costs two dollars,” I reminded him, “in town.”

  The sorry excuse for a man grinned. His teeth was white and shiny and straight. Well, the three he had was, anyhow. “Yeah, mister, but we ain’t in Calico . . . yet.”

  Hell’s fire, the only thing I could do I done. The Winchester came out, and I eared back the hammer, and I pointed it straight at the driver’s dirty buttons on his shirt.

  “You get out. You come here. You get my canteen. You fill it. Or I fill that water barrel behind you with holes. Then you can explain this accident to the Calico Water Works . . . Incorporated.”