The Cost of Dying

by Peter Brandvold

  The bean-eater’s eyelids drew down as though in ecstasy, and in a soft, seedily intimate voice he said, “Can you feel the devil tickling your escroto, señor?” He grunted out a girlish laugh.

  Prophet’s vision was dimming and his brain was starting to die from oxygen starvation. In fact, he thought he could feel the devil’s long-nailed finger tickling him down low.

  The fast-expiring cells in Lou’s brain were getting desperate. Suddenly, realizing he’d run out of all other options, he decided to slam his forehead up hard against that of the brute’s. He didn’t have enough room to build up much momentum, so he was pleasantly surprised when the man’s head snapped back and he momentarily eased his pressure on Prophet’s throat.

  That gave Lou the half second he needed to reach down to his right hip with his right hand and shuck his big bowie knife from its sheath.

  He lifted the knife just as the brute began grinding his thumbs into Prophet’s throat once more, grinning girlishly, the tip of his tongue poking out one corner of his mouth. Prophet’s vision was dimming again, as though an even deeper shadow had passed over this side of the mesa.

  He probably would have passed out in another second or two if he hadn’t managed to poke the razor-edged tip of the bowie through the brute’s smoke-stained javelina-hide serape and into the man’s left side, just beneath his ribs.

  The man’s eyes suddenly widened. He gasped, lower jaw loosening.

  He shivered as if chilled.

  Instantly, his hands fell slack against Prophet’s throat.

  Lou had gotten the bowie into the big man’s body only about six inches, but now as he sucked a strength-replenishing breath into his starved lungs, and the shadow of unconsciousness began to lift, he gritted his teeth and rammed the knife several more inches into the big bean-eater’s body.

  “¡Dios!” the brute cried, staring down in horror at Prophet’s large, gloved wrist wrapped around the bowie’s hide-wrapped walnut handle, between the handle and the brass hilt. Dark red blood bubbled up over the blade.

  The brute raised his right fist, cocking it up near his shoulder, but before he could ram it down against Prophet’s face, Lou slid the bowie even farther into the man’s brisket, twisting and turning the blade, angling the savage point, curved like a wolf’s fang, up to the heart. Lou felt the point glance off a rib just before perforating the thick, beating cardiac muscle itself.

  “Ach!” the brute screamed. “¡Mierda! ¡Estoy muerto!”

  His right fist dropped slack to his side.

  Prophet grunted and lifted his head and shoulders up off the ground, funneling more strength into his right arm and hand, driving the knife up even deeper into the man’s heart until Lou could feel the organ spasming desperately before it stopped beating.

  The brute gave a choking, strangling sound as blood bubbled out between his lips. He fell straight back between Prophet’s spread legs. Since his legs were still straddling Prophet’s torso, it was a bizarre sight. Only the handle of Prophet’s bowie protruded from the big man’s side, drenched in blood. Prophet tried to pull himself out from under the lug, but he was too weak from the choking and the effort it had taken to kill the beast.

  He lay back against the ground, breathing hard.

  “Now that was somethin’ to see!”

  Prophet whipped his head to his left. He blinked incredulously.

  Baja Jack stood about ten feet away, smiling in amazement. Colter stood behind the little man, two heads taller. The other men in Jack’s gang, including old Pepe, stood in a ragged semicircle flanking Jack and Colter.

  “It purely was at that,” Colter agreed with the smaller man. He was smiling at Prophet and slowly shaking his head.

  Prophet scowled at them all. “How long you been standing there?”

  “Only a couple minutes,” Colter said.

  “You been standin’ there a couple minutes and you didn’t offer a hand?”

  “It was a sight to behold!” Jack clapped his fat dark hands together, stretching his lips so far that if he’d been wearing dentures he would have lost them. “Two rogue grizzlies going head-to-head! Truly a sight to behold, partner!”

  Colter walked forward, holstering his Remington. “Don’t worry, Lou. If I didn’t think you’d get the better of him, I’d have helped you out. It looked like you were doing all right, though.” He extended his hand to Lou and helped Prophet crawl out from beneath the dead brute.

  “It looked like I was doing all right?” Prophet was out from beneath the big man now. He released Colter’s hand and heaved himself to his feet. “He was that close to snuffing my lamp! If I hadn’t had the bowie on me, I’d be a goner . . . while you stood there enjoyin’ the entertainment!”

  “Ah, don’t be a sorehead,” Colter chided him.

  “Yeah, don’t be a sorehead, Lou.” Baja Jack walked over, took Prophet’s right hand, and shook it, tipping his head back to smile admiringly nearly straight up at the taller man. “That was one hell of a show. Purely it was. We was all gonna help you out, but when we got up here and saw you two big fellas goin’ at it so hard and savage-like . . . two wild bruins goin’ at it tooth and claw . . . I reckon we didn’t have the heart to interrupt!”

  “Well, thanks a whole damn bunch for bein’ so considerate!” Prophet glanced over at the other members of Jack’s gang. They were exchanging money, some laughing victoriously, others grumbling curses. Prophet glared at Colter and Baja Jack. “You mean, you took the time to bet on the outcome?”

  Colter held up both hands, palms out, and shook his head. “Not me. No, sir. I’d never bet on a friend in such a dire situation, and I’m hurt that you’d think I would.”

  Jack shrugged then planted his fists on his broad hips. “I admit I would have wagered, but I was transfixed.” He loosed a croaking laugh and shook his head again in amazement.

  Prophet looked down at himself in disgust. He was covered in blood. At least, it wasn’t his own. That was something, anyway. He crouched over the dead man, planted a boot on the man’s hip, and yanked the bowie knife free.

  Cleaning the knife off on the man’s deerskin leggings, he turned again to Colter and Jack.

  “What about the other robbers?”

  “Oh, there was only two more,” Colter said. “When we heard your gut-shredder thunder, we knew trouble was afoot and dispatched the only two that threatened us in no time. You cleaned out the whole rest of the gang yourself, Lou.”

  “Too bad a scribbler for one of the eastern newspapers ain’t here,” Jack said. “Why, he’d have some ink to spill!”

  “I gotta admit,” Colter said with some chagrin, “I was beginning to think you was old and washed up or maybe the scribblers was exaggeratin’ about you. But, no. You still got it, Lou, and I’m just proud to know I was here to see it on full display!”

  Jack and Colter started heading back toward the springs, which is where the other men must have vanished to, as well. Having settled their bets, they were no longer in sight.

  “Hurry up, now, Lou,” called Baja Jack. “We can’t linger here much longer. It’ll be gettin’ dark soon. There are many more banditos where those pendejos came from!”

  Prophet stared after both men—the slender redhead and the bandy-legged little buzzard of a sombrero-clad mestizo. He gave a caustic chuff. “You mind if I take a piss?”

  That was what he’d stepped away from the springs to do in the first place.

  His bladder was fit to bust.

  Chapter 29

  Prophet did his best to clean the blood out of his tunic at the spring.

  There was a lot of blood, so it took a while. He got tired of hearing the others grumbling impatiently while they waited for him, so he told them to head on up the trail and he’d follow when he’d rid his duds of the Mexican brute’s bodily fluids.

  Colter offered to wait for him, but Lou told him to ride on ahead. He was feeling owly and he was aching from the beating. One eye swelled up only a little, but he’d be su
rprised if by the next morning he wasn’t sporting two big shiners. Sundry cuts and abrasions on his cheeks and lips oozed blood. Not a lot but enough that he could feel the sting of each one. A loose tooth added to his laments.

  “Sorry sons o’ Satan,” the bounty hunter grumbled as he scraped the soaked tunic on a rock beside the spring. “Bettin’ on the outcome, my ragged rebel behind . . .”

  He donned the tunic, which felt refreshingly cool against his hot, sweaty, trail-grimed skin, and mounted Mean and Ugly. The horse had also been eyeing him and whickering impatiently, as though he too were saying, Stop bein’ such a sorehead, Lou. Stop bein’ so prissy about a little blood, fer cryin’ in Grant’s bourbon. Let’s haul our freight and get to our destination. I want a good roll in the dirt, a slow rubdown, and a hefty feed sack.

  “Ah, shut up,” Prophet grunted out as he booted the horse up the trail.

  After fifteen minutes, he caught up to the others just as they were descending into yet another boulder-choked canyon. This one was even harder to negotiate than the first, because by now it was around five-thirty in the afternoon, and the shadows were growing longer and darker.

  The trail was narrow and winding as they descended still farther into the canyon, which was a dinosaur’s mouth of jagged rock outcroppings and boulder-choked arroyos. Ahead of Lou, he could see the others riding Indian file along the twisting, turning trail. He held back, riding drag, moving slowly now, for the canyon was a treacherous place to travel, given the fading light, all the rocks, and the trail pocked with deep holes his horse had to negotiate around or over.

  He and Mean and Ugly traveled along the floor of the canyon for a good half hour before, as he followed a bend in the canyon’s high wall, he drew back abruptly on Mean’s reins. Ahead, the others had disappeared. He stared, squinting into the canyon’s deepening shadows.

  Nothing. No sign of them. It was as though they’d vanished into thin air.

  “Come on, boy.” Prophet nudged Mean forward, frowning, curious, growing more and more concerned.

  He’d ridden another fifty yards before a soft whistle sounded on his right. “Lou! Over here, amigo!”

  He turned to see Baja Jack poking his gremlin’s head out from behind a pillar of pale rock. The little man almost seemed to be embedded in the canyon wall, but of course that wasn’t the case. It was a trick of the dim light or the stone wall or a combination of both.

  Grinning, that one eye crossed like that of an impish boy full of devilish secrets, Jack beckoned. “Come on, come on!”

  Prophet swung Mean off the trail’s right side. As he approached Jack and the canyon wall, he saw that Jack was standing in a natural stone foyer of sorts, one that blended so well with the wall that you had to scrutinize it pretty closely before you recognized it . . . and saw the dark opening beyond it.

  Again, Jack beckoned.

  Prophet swung down from Mean’s back. He studied the natural portico of rock protruding from the face of the cliff wall and partially hiding the almost triangular-shaped opening in the wall flanking it. The ground dropped severely to what was apparently a cave opening. Down this decline Jack ambled in his bandy-legged fashion, teetering from side to side, little arms angling out from his sides like a penguin’s flippers.

  Prophet looked at Mean. The horse looked back at him, laying one ear back flat against his head. Lou shrugged and stepped forward, leading the horse by the reins.

  He and the mount dropped down the inclination paved with red and black gravel and passed through the opening, which was around ten feet high at its pointed apex and roughly that wide near the ground. Jack had disappeared from his view when the little man had entered the cave but now as Lou stepped into the darkness, which was refreshingly cool, he saw the little man again, lit by the light angling through the opening behind him and the horse.

  Baja Jack smiled up at him, his crowlike eyes flashing.

  Prophet looked beyond him, surprised to see the others standing so far away from him—a good twenty feet, at least. Jack’s men formed a ragged cluster. They dismounted and were unsaddling their horses. Old Pepe, the burro wrangler, was removing the panniers from the pack of one of his burros. Colter stood off to the left of Jack’s men. He was holding his horse’s reins and looking around in amazement. Prophet could see only the kid’s back from his vantage, but he knew Colter was looking around in amazement, because he was looking at what Prophet was looking at, and it was truly amazing.

  What they were standing in was not a cave but a canyon. At least, it was technically a canyon from about fifty feet back away from the entrance, because that’s where the “roof” opened, showing the dimming light of the desert sky. The canyon was maybe a hundred yards wide by a hundred yards long. The ridges forming its walls were honeycombed with what appeared to be mud dwellings stacked atop one another halfway to the crest of the ridge. They looked like the nests of giant mud swallows.

  The ridges were not sheer but sloped at maybe a thirty-five-degree angle, leaning back away from the canyon floor. Each level of the swallowlike homes was separated by a ledge of maybe ten or fifteen feet. Steps had been chiseled into the canyon walls, like the steps of an amphitheater, giving access to each level of the dwellings.

  Prophet had seen such cliff dwellings before, for there were many all over the Southwest. An old prospector had guided him out to a vast one tucked away in southwestern Colorado, which was the only one he’d ever seen that was more extensive and elaborate than the one he was getting a neck ache gawking at now.

  The floor of the canyon appeared to be the bed of an ancient river—likely the river that had carved the canyon, offering a well-hidden fortress home to some ancient people who’d likely lived and died thousands of years ago, even before the Aztecs and the Quill. They might have been dead, but their ghosts lingered here. Prophet could sense them. They were almost as real as they’d have been if he’d seen them. There was no imagining the flesh rippling between his shoulder blades and along the backs of his arms and legs, as though chilled by the ghostly breath of those long-lost souls who’d lived, loved, fought, mourned, and died right here.

  “Pretty damn impressive—eh, amigo?” Jack ambled up to stand between where Prophet and Colter stood, turning their heads this way and that, scrutinizing the dwellings.

  Colter whistled. “Right nice digs, Jack.”

  “I wish I could take credit for it.” Jack chuckled. “I stop here on every run to Baluarte Santiago.”

  “You ain’t worried about getting trapped in here?” Prophet asked. “Looks like there’s only two ways in or out.”

  “Nope. Ain’t never been worried one iota about that. You see, I don’t think another soul knows about this place. At least, I’ve never seen sign of anyone living or even overnighting here in all the years I’ve known about it, and that’s been a long spell.”

  “How’d you find it?” Colter asked, still admiring the ancient folks’ handiwork.

  Birds flitted through the canyon, flashing golden up where the sunlight reached, flicking like shadows nearer the canyon floor.

  “My pa and I found it on one of our gold-hunting excursions, don’t ya know! I was maybe ten years old. A little shaver. Even littler than I am now. Hah! A storm chased us and our pack burros into the main canyon. We needed shelter fast. Pa and I made camp just outside that entrance over there. We was lounging around the fire that night, roasting a pair of jacks under the overhang of a boulder, and Pa got to staring at the canyon wall while he smoked his pipe. He noticed something odd about how the light played across the side of the ridge. He got up and walked over to the wall and gave a yell. I jumped near afoot in the air. Pa—well, he damn near fell down that drop to the canyon’s front door!”

  Jack croaked out a long, snorting laugh.

  “The next day we explored this canyon. Whoever lived here long ago had ’em a good fortress hidden away from their enemies. The Injuns all over Baja was fierce folks, don’t ya know. Just like ole Baja Jack himself—fierc
e!” More laughter. “They’d fight each other at the drop of a hat . . . er, tomahawk. What have you. They knew what they were doin’, too, because in all the years I’ve known about this place, I’ve never seen a single sign that anyone else knows about it. I’ve talked to a lot of desert rats. No, sir—not one word about it. I never let the cat out of the bag my ownself, because I had a feelin’ someday I might need the hidey-hole, too. It makes a right fittin’ place for me and my guards to hole up, safe from banditos, on the trail to Baluarte Santiago.”

  Jack whipped around and pointed toward the canyon’s far end, which was a small, gray-blue oval from this distance. “It lets out on another canyon. Beyond that canyon, another day’s ride, is Baluarte Santiago.”

  And Ciaran Yeats, Prophet added silently to himself.

  Prophet glanced at Jack’s men. “What about them? You sure they’re gonna keep your secret.”

  “And what about you and El Rojo here?” Baja Jack looked cunningly up at Lou and Colter. “How can I be sure you two will keep the secret?”

  “I reckon you can’t be sure,” Colter said.

  “What good’s a secret canyon lessen you can’t use it when you need it most? Am I right?”

  “I reckon you’re right, Jack,” Prophet allowed. “And for what it’s worth, your secret is safe with me.”

  “Me, too,” Colter agreed.

  “What’s that rumbling sound?” Prophet had been hearing it since he’d entered the canyon. It was so soft that he hadn’t realized he’d been hearing it until just now. He could feel a faint vibration in the ground beneath his boots, like the reverberation you feel with the passing of a train.

  Baja Jack grinned up at him, delighted by another secret.

  He lifted his thick little right hand and hooked his index finger. “Come on. I’ll show you something.” He started to turn away but then turned back toward the men who were tending their horses. He ordered one of his men, Tío, to unsaddle his horse then added with an afterthought to unsaddle “his guests’” mounts and tend them, too.