“An old fellow at the bar told me what he could,” Bardwell said. “Said Maddox was smoking long grass and looked sick?”
“That’s what the gal said too,” Curtis added. The young lawman struck a sulfur match against the boards and lit a cigar. “So what’s the plan?” he asked.
Bardwell spit out the corner of his mouth. “We ride for Arroyo de las Vegas come morning,” he said. “We’ll corner those sons of bitches sooner or later.”
“Not too early though?”
“No,” Bardwell said. “I’d like to get some tobacco and more bullets while we’re here in town.”
“There may not be another,” Curtis said. “Before we catch up with them?”
“Exactly,” Bardwell said
“So, don’t worry, Son,” The lawman said, “You can sleep in if you like. We’ll get something hot to eat come morning and see what little else Yaqui Gulch will give up in the way of information.
***
Bardwell was up before the sun—as was his usual—and sitting near the window, watching as the daystar clawed its way into the coming day. One thing that was sure—being a lawman—there were no guarantees of seeing the sun rise the next day or the next. Somewhere out there, there was a bullet waiting.
The bullet could be in the cylinder of a gun Maddox or Holderman or Deville were wearing at that very moment? It could be something as simple as a fall from a horse or running too far out into the desert and not finding the life-giving water needed to reach the other side.
Curtis slept off the whiskey of the night previous. Bardwell sat at the small table disassembling each of his weapons, giving them a good cleaning before putting them away. Cool mountain air filled the small room.
It was another two or three days on to the New Mexico city at best. The horses were strong and well rested. There were places out there where they could find water and rest, the lawman was sure of that.
If the boy didn’t wake soon, Bardwell reckoned that he’d go in search of coffee for the morning.
After taking the boy on as a partner, it had been the same on every trip. Franklin Curtis bitched and complained about the hours they kept, but he always came through when needed. Bardwell had been a lawman for as long as he could remember and the boy was probably the best tin star that he’d had the pleasure of riding with.
Curtis would go down in the history books if a bullet didn’t take his life young. He’d already shown so much promise behind the gun. Although the boy seemed scared of his own shadow at times, he’d be the first to draw a pistol and his eye was true. More importantly, his heart was true.
The lawman pulled on his boots and hat before closing the door behind, off in search of that coffee that called his name. Curtis would wake in an hour or two and then they could begin the long day still ahead.
Chapter Twelve
The daystar was well up in the clear sky when the two lawmen got underway. The railroad town of Yaqui Gulch passed about as quickly as it had come into view. Bardwell and Curtis followed the iron rails down out of the hill, through mountain passes, and across great river gorges. Each man knowing that by sundown, they would once again be in a very hostile place, a place with little or no water and no escape from the fierce, high median sun.
Bardwell reined in on one of the last low hills before starting onto the shifting desert floor beneath.
“What are you thinking, Sir?” Curtis asked alongside.
The lawman pointed to a range of low rolling hills in the distance. “We should stop soon and rest the horses before we start out across the sand.”
Curtis nodded his agreement.
“I reckon that it’s five rods or better to those hills out there,” he said. “We can cover that distance easily after sundown.”
Again, Curtis agreed.
It was wise to travel out here during the cool of the desert night. The decision would conserve both water and energy. There was still a long journey ahead and it would do no good to come up lame this far from their intended destination.
The lawmen rode another hour to the very edge of the great Mojave sands. Bardwell stepped down and unsaddled his mount.
“We can rest here,” Bardwell said, slapping his mare on the ass. The horses wouldn’t stray far from camp, this much the lawman knew. There were plenty of ways to get hurt out here in the wilds and the horses knew this just as well as their riders.
A small fire was kindled for coffee. Skins were filled with the cool water that would see them on. Contents from the saddlebags were shuffled and repacked. Weapons were checked once more.
“You think Arroyo de las Vegas is a fortified city?” Curtis asked. “Well…as fortified as that last place.”
“I believe that it will be,” Bardwell said, leaning back on his saddle. “Not like we saw in Los Angeles, but defended. To offer some protection against the Mexicans, should they decide to travel that far.”
“You think they rode all the way up here?”
Bardwell nodded. “They do on occasion. Every once in a while, they go in search of plunder for their colonies down there.”
Pine knots cracked and popped in the small fire sending burning embers across the camp. There was no danger of setting a fire in the sparse grass and vegetation the land here offered. Coffee boiled. The lawmen relaxed, neither said much as the hot sun overhead began its descent behind the range now at their backs.
The horses saddled once again after a short rest of a few hours, the lawmen climbed aboard for another long night in the saddle.
Behind them the evening sky was lit in brilliant red, pink and purple. Ahead there was nothing but darkness taking the land.
Bardwell had gotten a look at one of the ancient maps back at the station. No longer would the lawmen expect to run across a welcoming village or oasis as they rode on. Rather than follow the railroad—where they could at least be sure of water—they would travel the great macadam ribbon, the ancients called I-15.
Before them were twenty rods of the most uninhabitable desert the New Mexico territory could provide.
There was no sound on the desert floor. Stars rotated overhead in the quiet night sky. Bardwell stuck to the ancient highway. The horses would have no problems walking on the pavement. If they had ventured too far off into the sand, they would tire quickly.
Midnight found Bardwell and his partner dismounted and leading the animals. The lawmen ate hard bread and jerked beef. The horses had two apples each, left from the visit with the clansmen north of the city.
Six hours later—the daystar was beginning its journey into the morning sky—the lawmen were still more than a rod away from the hills of their intended destination. The horses behaved as though they smelled water. He knew they required it desperately.
Curtis pointed to a small gathering of green down in a dry canyon as they crested a rise looking to the east and north. Bardwell nodded, nudging his mount in the direction the boy pointed.
Cool spring water bubbled up from the rock deep below. Trees grew to twice the height of a man and there was grass enough for the horses.
Bardwell had a nervous glance at his timepiece. It was half past ten and four hours later than they had intended to find rest.
After hobbling the animals and drinking their fill of clean water, the lawmen lay back in the shade to rest. There would be no fire or boiled coffee today, just sleep after a long night’s ride across the unforgiving Mojave Desert.
***
Six o’clock found Bardwell kicking the boy’s foot as he lay sleeping in the grass. A late day sun was beginning to drift downward behind the range they had ridden from the day previous. The after median temperatures—although high—were bearable to start out. The lawmen readied the animals for another long night and ate at some of the hard bread contained in their leather saddlebags.
Unless they happened upon an oasis of some sort on the dry valley floor, the next possible place to rest appeared twice as far as what they had already traveled. The desert floor presented
no sign of life as far as the lawmen could see in any direction. Bardwell started out of the low desert range leading the unsaddled horse.
“Ten rods today,” Curtis asked, mounted on a fine gray animal behind.
Bardwell spit to the sand below. “Could be,” he said. “With that dust blowing across the valley, I don’t really know?”
It was two hours into the journey when the daystar finally set behind the range and darkness overtook the desert floor once again. Bardwell reckoned that they’d traveled a bit more than a full rod. It was still twenty-five or six degrees Celsius—and rather warm—but much cooler than it would have been at high median out here with nothing but sand to absorb the unrelenting rays of the daystar high overhead.
As the day was overtaken by night, the desert temperatures continued to plummet. Just as the daystar began to rise into the morning sky, the lawman reckoned it would be down close to a bone-chilling four, maybe less?
If the Mojave only offered more in the way of shelter—from the daystar—and water, the pair would have only traveled during the early morning and just before sundown. With a lack of shelter and water, the lawmen and their mounts would have to journey across the desert wastelands with no rest.
High median came the following day. The horses had traveled well through the night. Now the animals plodded along with their heads low. The animals were spent from the fierce after median sun. A rod in the distance, a nomadic tribe was seen crossing the black macadam. There was no chance of catching the desert clan as they traveled to the south and east.
Curtis pointed to the hulk of something reflecting the daystar off to the side of the ancient highway.
Bardwell had been looking in that direction for some time now. He nodded.
“What is it?” Curtis asked.
“A flying ship of our elders,” Bardwell said. The animals continued to plod along ever so slowly. Further and further out into the desert they traveled.
The aluminum shine from the aircraft drew closer as time passed. Bardwell turned in the direction of the forgotten craft, as it sat not far from the hot macadam they wandered.
“Biggest one I’ve ever seen,” the young lawman said, dismounting in the shade of a great wing. The animals seemed to appreciate escaping the sun, if only for a short while.
“A great flying coach,” Bardwell said, starting inside through a damaged place in the fuselage. The lawman made the sign of the cross over his face and body.
“Don’t tell me that you’re going in there,” Curtis said, having a drink of the warm water contained in the skins.
The lawman paid no mind and continued on in. Inside of the craft, there must have once been seating for more than a hundred. Entering from the rear, Bardwell kicked at the accumulated dust and sand exposing several pieces of silver. This he bent to retrieve. In each of the stations there seemed to be a few coins.
“So that’s how you come up with so much money,” Curtis said, from the entrance behind. “I’ve been wondering about that for the longest time.”
The lawman, careful not to disturb what remained of the ancients, retrieved another handful that went into a drawstring bag.
“Look at this,” Curtis said, pointing to a pair of rings with stones embedded. The bones of the two hands held fast to each other after all of this time. “I would have figured the local folk would have stripped this clean of anything they could find of use?” Curtis asked.
“The nomadic tribes and clans here in the wastelands,” Bardwell said. “They’re very superstitious. They won’t venture this close to the dead of the elders.”
Curtis nodded his agreement. “What do you think happened here?” he asked.
Bardwell scooped a handful of coins from the dirt between the metallic chairs in the coach. “On the day that time stopped for the elders,” he said. “Every machine they used ceased to function.” He thought over what he said. “I believe that they called it an electromagnetic pulse?”
“I’ve read of it?” Curtis said, “The blast was detonated high in the atmosphere and the computers that they used then stopped.”
“You’re right,” Bardwell said, continuing to fill his sack with the forgotten treasure in the dust. “These folks were probably lucky to have landed at all?”
“Everything, not metal has burned away,” Curtis said. “One of the big bombs must have gone off nearby setting the contents ablaze?”
“Most likely,” Bardwell said, walking to the plane’s galley ahead. The lawman opened a box mounted to the wall. He cracked the top from one of the cans it contained smelling the contents as he poured.
“Water…?” Curtis asked.
“Yes,” the lawman said, daring to take a sip. “It’s good,” he said.
Some of the cans contained a sour smelling lot and something with a sticky, foul smell poured from others, but the water was deemed drinkable. These, the lawmen hauled outside to refill the skins and supply the animals.
“How much do you think you got in there?” Curtis asked, of the coins.
Bardwell cracked open cans to fill his hat, the only trough to let the animals drink from here in the desert wasteland. “Two hundred,” he said. “I’m not sure?”
“I reckon that I did the same,” Curtis said, looking back across the desert they had traveled.
Removing his watch, Bardwell dared a glance. It was just past two. “The horses have rested and been allowed a drink,” he said. “As much as I hate to say it, we should be moving on.”
“As much as I hate to agree,” Curtis said. “You’re probably right.”
After resting in the shade with a long drink of water, the horses started off. Less than two hours into the hot after median and they began to lower their heads and plod along.
Seven o’clock saw the daystar setting ever so slowly behind the weary caravan. The lawmen had ridden across many rods of nothingness, great, dry river washes and a range of low rolling desert mountains. Neither they nor the animals had seen anything of water since the wreckage of the great flying coach.
With the daytime temperatures dropping like an unwanted rock, Bardwell dismounted to allow the animals a rest.
For ten thousand paces, the lawmen led their mounts along the macadam. There were no small fires or signs of civilization in the distance. Bardwell climbed back into the saddle where it seemed that they had been for the last three weeks. The horses, at least, held their heads higher after a short rest and the absence of the daystar.
Midnight presented nothing but forbidding desert darkness. The lawmen were so far out across the great expanses of the Mojave that not even coyotes dared to venture here. There were no buzzards, or any other scavengers for that matter one would expect to see in such a place.
A fierce wind came up from just north of west. For hours, man and animal traveled with their eyes nearly closed against the blowing dust and sand. The Mojave did what it could to punish both.
On through the night, the winds howled as if the great barren landscape itself were in mourning, crying and pleading for life-giving water. The lawmen dismounted to lead the animals once again. The blowing, shifting sand made keeping to the macadam difficult at best.
As suddenly as the desert winds had come up, they dissipated, not long before sunrise. In the absence of strong wind, the young lawman could smoke.
Bardwell removed his timepiece. Curtis held the match to it nearly burning his finger.
“The daystar will be up soon,” Bardwell said, looking to the north. It was half past four and the lawman was not looking forward to spending another punishing day riding.
The skins were nearly dry. If they didn’t find water before long, they would all die here in this land called Mojave.
Eight o’clock saw the lawmen leading the animals down through a range of low rolling hills. Ahead of the heat shimmering up across of the morning sand, the outline of a few tall buildings could be seen.
“You think there’s anyone down there?” Curtis asked, pointing at the great stru
ctures in the distance.
“I don’t know,” Bardwell said. “I’d be happy with some water for now.”
The lawmen climbed into the saddle once again to make time along the macadam. Their mounts moved at a snail’s pace after two nights and a hot day under a relentless sun. Not more than a thousand paces into the journey and the lawmen were leading the thirsty animals once again. There was no longer water in the skins to offer them.
It was high median when the lawmen led their mounts to the shade of the tall buildings on either side of the great macadam highway. The weather faded leaning sign read WHISKEY PETES in the letters of the old.
There were no signs of anyone having been there recently. The grass had been grazed over in the last month and possibly by some of the nomadic tribes that frequented the land. Bardwell had a look at the dust covered ash from their small fires while his partner struck out for a look around himself.
“We got water, Sir,” the boy yelled from between the tall buildings. The elders that had lived here had built a railroad of some sort that traveled high into the air before looping around on itself.
Someone had fashioned a trough for their animals under a rusting pipe protruding from a crumbling concrete wall.
Bardwell led his pair of animals to the sound of his partner’s voice. His mount was already splashing in the trough and gulping at the cool water.
There were few trees in the area and those—along with what little grass there was—grew only in the shade of the tall buildings. If the horses ate every blade available, it wouldn’t fill the three of them up, but it was a start.
After the horses drank their fill, the lawmen unsaddled the two and hobbled them in the shade to graze and rest for a time.
Five rods in the distance, the outline of their destination stood out against the hot desert backdrop.
“What’s the plan, Sir?” Curtis asked, pouring a skin of the cool water over himself.
“The horses are spent, Son,” Bardwell said. “After two hard days of travel, I think that we should remain here tonight and tomorrow.” He paused, “We can start out the next?”
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