The Cost of Dying

by Peter Brandvold

  Pepe had already galloped off on his mule, pulling the jackasses, who were complaining mightily. Jack galloped after the old wrangler. Prophet and Colter did, as well, Colter sidling up to Prophet, looking befuddled. “I don’t get it. How’d he know to have our mounts saddled?”

  “I don’t know, kid,” Prophet said, hunkering low as he prodded Mean into an even faster lope, because guns were now crackling from the bastion walls behind them. “But you know the old saying . . .”

  “Yeah, I know,” Colter yelled above the clatter of their horses’ galloping hooves. “Never look a gift hoss in the mouth!”

  Chapter 40

  Prophet reined Mean to a halt on the far side of the canyon north of the promontory atop which Baluarte Santiago sprawled. He curveted the horse so that he could see back out over the canyon toward the bastion.

  Colter came up behind him and stopped Northwest, looking back toward the old fort, as well. “Any sign of’em?”

  Jack and Pepe had stopped their own mounts and the burros a little farther up the trail and higher on the mountain shoulder the party was climbing.

  Lou shielded the bright morning sunlight, glinting painfully off the breeze-rippled sea, with his hand. “Not yet.”

  “Maybe I hit Yeats worse than I thought I did,” Jack said, also staring back toward the bastion bathed in the smoky haze of lemony morning light. “Without Yeats—”

  “Forget it.” Lou saw several riders galloping out from the far side of the bastion, from the direction of the stables. It was hard to tell for sure from this distance, but the big man riding point, with a red sash tied around his waist, appeared to be Yeats himself. “If you hit him at all, you must’ve only winged the son of Satan.”

  “¡Mierda!” Jack said.

  “Yeah,” Lou agreed.

  Colter whistled as he stared, counting. “You were right about one thing, Jack. There’s still a small army of ’em!”

  Sitting his mule beside Jack, old Pepe crossed himself.

  “That’s all right,” Jack said. “We’ll lose ’em in my canyon!”

  He cackled out his crowlike laugh, reined his trigueño around, and booted it on up the trail. Pepe spurred his mule along behind the little man, tugging the lead line of the five burros tied tail to tail and sporting the aparejos and bulging panniers.

  “I wonder what he’s got in them packs,” Colter wondered aloud as he and Prophet booted their own mounts into the dust kicked up by the lead riders and the burros.

  “Took the thought right out of my head,” Lou muttered. As Mean loped up the rising trail toward a high, craggy ridge crest, Prophet looked down at Alejandra riding before him. She sat stiff-backed in the saddle, her hands wrapped around the horn. “You’re mighty quiet,” he observed.

  She turned her pretty face to him, but her eyes were slitted into a devil’s smug grin. She spread her compressed lips in a frigid smile. “It’s enough for me to know he’s coming. If he’s coming, he’ll run you down. There is nowhere for you to run, nowhere to hide, cabrón. You have taken his most prized possession from him. Me!”

  She smiled with demonic delight, nearly closing her eyes as she gazed up and back at Prophet.

  “You’re as modest as you are charming, princess.”

  She winkled her nose at him, hardened her jaws. “Stop calling me that. You’re only mocking me.”

  “Sorry . . . princess.”

  She spit against his cheek. Prophet didn’t bother wiping it away. He’d swapped more than that with her the night before, and he’d enjoyed the taste. Besides, the dust-filled wind blowing against him as Mean continued to climb would dry it in a minute.

  He gave a wry chuckle. “Like I said, as modest as you are charming . . .”

  * * *

  They rode hard for another hour.

  Then two hours . . . then three.

  Occasionally, Prophet peered along their back trail but it was impossible to tell if Yeats were gaining on them. The country they were traversing was a dinosaur’s mouth of steep rocky ridges, dry arroyos, and violently carved barrancas choked with desert scrub and bristling with cirios and elephant trees.

  He hadn’t had a clear view of more than a quarter mile behind him since they’d left the canyon ridge overlooking the bastion. A couple of times he thought he saw dust rising, but in the bright glare of desert sunshine, it was impossible to see anything clearly.

  He knew Yeats was behind him, of course. For the very reason the señorita had pointed out. And for revenge, a dish better served cold in Mexico.

  And then there was the matter of what Baja Jack had in his panniers.

  They rode hard for another two hours, pausing only long enough to water their horses and burros at a rare spring. Mounting up again quickly, wanting to put as much ground between them and Yeats as possible, for this was no country to make a stand in—at least, not against a small army that had you badly outnumbered—they rode for another hour and a half before Jack reined his trigueño to a stop and swung back to face old Pepe, Lou, and Colter.

  “This here’s where we leave the main trail for my secret canyon.” Jack pointed his hawk’s beak down into a stone-choked barranca to his left.

  Lou poked his hat back off his forehead. “You mean we came up out of there on the way to the bastion?”

  “We sure did.”

  “Funny, I don’t recognize it.”

  “That’s the way of this crazy country. It’s a maze. That’s where we came from, all right. The canyon’s another hour’s ride down through that old river gorge. Only I know the way.” Jack grinned proudly.

  Colter said, “Jack, are you sure Yeats don’t know about your canyon?” He glanced at Prophet. “I sure would hate to get trapped in there, with only two ways in or out.”

  “No one knows about that canyon but me!” Jack was exasperated, rising up in his short stirrups. “Ole Pepe knows, of course, but he ain’t long for this world. Hell, he’s damn near as old as that canyon. Hah!”

  If the old burro wrangler had understood, he didn’t let on. He sat his mule, casually smoking a loosely rolled corn-husk cigarette and regarding Jack with a bland smile. The smile widened as Jack laughed but still Prophet didn’t think the old man had understood. He was only reacting to Jack’s amusement.

  Jack continued with: “Now you two know about it, of course, but hell, you’ll never remember how to find it. Hell, you didn’t even remember this is where we turn off the main trail to get to it! We’ll lose Yeats right here, I tell you. The word of John Brian Rynn-Douglas may not be good on a lot of things, but it’s bond on that!”

  “All right, all right, we’ll take your word for it,” Prophet said. “Let’s mosey, old son. Mean’s getting tired of carryin’ double. Um . . . no offense, princess.”

  She turned one of her frigid smiles on him and said sharply but softly. “Go to hell.” She turned her head forward again, silently fuming.

  Jack reined his horse to one side and waved the others ahead. “You all go on. I’m gonna stay back and cover our trail.”

  “Jack, tell us real quick what you got in them pouches,” Prophet asked. “I been dyin’ to know all day.”

  Jack grinned his rotten-toothed grin. “In good time, mi amigo. In good time. Now get on with ya so I can cover the trail before Yeats shows!”

  “All right, all right,” Prophet grumbled, booting Mean off the main trail and into the rocks. He glanced at Colter riding beside him. “He just loves keepin’ us in suspense, that little buzzard does.”

  Colter glanced behind as he and Prophet followed old Pepe and the burros down the slope toward the knife-slash barranca. “Lou?”

  “Yeah, Red?”

  “What about Yeats?”

  “What about him?”

  Colter glanced at Alejandra sitting astride Lou’s saddle then narrowed one eye at Prophet. “You know . . . the agreement we made with the don . . . ?”

  “To kill him, you mean?” Prophet wasn’t afraid of offending the princess. �
�I don’t know, Red.” He glanced behind at the stark, jagged, rocky, sun-hammered country they’d just traversed. “I have a nasty feelin’ we ain’t seen the last of Ciaran Yeats. We might get another shot at him, though we might not survive it.”

  Alejandra threw her head back and gave an ominous laugh.

  “You should act more like a lady,” Prophet told her. “Since you look like one an’ all.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “I figured that’s what you were gonna tell me to do. You got your sister’s pepper, all right. But I don’t think she would’ve made the poor choice you made, throwin’ in with Yeats.”

  Alejandra glanced back at him in surprise. “Oh? You met my sister, eh? Hmm.” She turned her head forward.

  “Hmm, what?”

  “Are you in love with her?”

  Prophet laughed.

  Again, she glanced at him. “What’s funny?”

  “She warned me not to fall in love with you. Now I reckon I know why.”

  Alejandra slid a lock of windblown hair back from her right eye, tucking it behind her ear. It was a distinctive gesture in the particular way she did it. Prophet remembered Marisol making the same one. “Answer my question,” she ordered in her imperious tone.

  “I don’t know the señorita well enough. I gotta admit, though, I wouldn’t mind getting to know her a whole lot better.”

  “Every man falls in love with Marisol the moment they lay eyes on her. My father loves her, too. Far more than he loves me.”

  Prophet scowled down at her skeptically. After his conversation with the don, Prophet was left with the impression that the old man loved Alejandra very much indeed. Maybe even more than he loved Marisol.

  “Sí, it is true. You see, we had an older brother who died when he fell from his horse and snakes bit him.”

  “Salvador.”

  “She told you the story?”

  “Yeah, but I got a feeling you have a different version.”

  “After Salvador died, my father turned his attention to Marisol. You see, I was the youngest and nothing but a distraction. With Marisol, he could ride about the hacienda. She became a substitute Salvador for him, I think. I felt left out, alone.”

  Prophet let out a breath.

  “Why do you sigh?”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” Lou said, marveling at the complexities of families. How could people of the same blood and who lived practically on top of each other for years misunderstand each other so completely?

  “Yeats gave me a way out,” Alejandra said. “He gave me the spice. It made me forget my problems.”

  “Locoweed ain’t a way out,” Prophet told her. “It’s just a way to numb yourself, a way to feel just fine doing nothin’. Baluarte Santiago was no place for you, livin’ like that old man’s puta in a crumbling ruin of a place. Livin’ with outlaws. Murderers. Rapists. Gettin’ all hop-headed on the locoweed. You got a family that loves you, Alejandra. You might not see it, but I do, and they ain’t gonna be around forever, so you’d better learn to appreciate ’em while you still can.”

  Alejandra looked up at him again, this time less accusingly, more speculatively. “You sound as though you speak from experience, Mr. Prophet.”

  “I lost a lot of my folks in the war. That’s why I been runnin’ off my leash out West for the past twenty years, tryin’ to find somethin’ I realized a while back might not even exist. Not only that but I know a pretty young lady your age who lost her entire family to cutthroats. There ain’t a night that goes by she don’t suffer the most terrible nightmares from missin’ ’em so.” Prophet shook his head. “You got folks who love you, señorita. And I’m takin’ you home to ’em. Maybe someday you’ll thank me for it.”

  She didn’t say anything more. She just sat staring straight ahead though Prophet thought she wasn’t holding herself quite as rigid as before.

  Thinking about Louisa now, Lou glanced around. They were nearly to the bottom of the barranca. As he kept scanning the rugged mounds of rock and ancient volcanic lava piled around him, spiked with cirios and cactus, Colter frowned at him. “You see somethin’ out there?”

  “What? No. I was just lookin’ for somebody. Turns out I got me a guardian angel I didn’t know I had till we were in that crazy canyon we’re headed back to. I was just wonderin’ where she was now. We could sure use another gun hand, and she’s one of the best but I’ll thank you not to tell her I said so.”

  “Who’re you talkin’ about, Lou? You don’t mean . . .”

  “The Vengeance Queen.”

  Colter glanced around as if half expecting Louisa to raise her pretty blond head up from behind a near rock. “She’s out here? Nah!”

  “Sure enough.”

  Colter chuckled at him. “You’re imagining things!”

  “Hell, no, I’m not.” Lou reached back to stuff his hand into the back pocket in which he’d tucked the pink handkerchief Louisa had given him.

  He frowned.

  “What is it?” Colter asked.

  Lou probed the pocket deeper with his fingers. “I’ll be damned.” It wasn’t there.

  “See?” Colter said.

  “No, it was here. I know it was.” Prophet frowned, staring straight ahead and saying softly, half to himself, “I musta . . . I musta lost it on that long bender we took at Baluarte Santiago.”

  “Yeah, that must be it,” Colter said with a sarcastic snort.

  “Yeah, that must be it,” Lou said, though he was beginning to wonder now himself.

  The pound of hooves sounded behind them.

  Chapter 41

  Lou turned to see Baja Jack riding toward him atop his brown Arab with tricolor shading.

  “Got the trail covered,” Jack said, grinning, his wild eye rolling toward his nose. “We’re safe now, amigos. Yeats will drive himself madder’n he already is scouring these rocks but he’ll never find us. We’ll wait in my canyon until tomorrow night and then flee under cover of darkness.”

  “He’ll hunt you down, Jack,” Colter said. “He’ll follow you back to the farm where you grow your locoweed. I don’t know what the ‘purty ones’ are carryin’, but you piss-burned him positive with that Gatling gun.” They were riding along single file now, Jack riding drag behind Prophet and Alejandra. Pepe and the burros led the way into the deep, forbidding gorge carved by an ancient river. The rocks on each side of the knifelike slash of the canyon were limned brightly with ancient paintings—haunting, harrowing scenes of savage pageantry from long ago.

  “Sí, sí,” Jack said. “You got that right, Red. He would follow me, all right. But I’m not goin’ back there.”

  They all looked over their shoulders at him, including Alejandra.

  “Where the hell you goin’ if you’re not goin’ back to your farm?” Prophet asked.

  Jack rode along leisurely, casually rolling a quirley, one thick leg bent around his silver-capped saddle horn. “Me? I’m gonna head east to New York, Philadelphia, Washington City, which I hear they call Washington, D.C., now. Look around a bit. My dear old pa told me about some things I should see before I snuggle with the diamondbacks and angleworms. I’m gonna go to the museums, the Smithsonian an’ such. Hell, I’m gonna see the elephant!” He laughed. “And then I’m gonna hop a steamer and head on over to Pa’s home—Rynn-Douglas Manor in Newcastle. I’m gonna meet my long-lost relatives, don’t ya know. Hell, won’t they break the teapot when they get a load of me?”

  He slapped his thigh and threw his head back in silent laughter. He snapped a lucifer to life on his thumbnail and lit the quirley, inhaling deeply, his wild eye rolling queerly back in its socket.

  Prophet narrowed an eye at the odd little man, curiously. “What’s in the panniers, Jack?”

  Smiling merrily, Jack blew smoke out his mouth and nose and said, “Soon, Proph. Very soon now, indeed.”

  “Whatever it is, it must be worth a sizable fortune.”

  “Soon, Proph,” Jack repeated. “Very soon indeed.”
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  Lou gave a caustic snort. Jack was enjoying tormenting him and Colter with his secret. Lou couldn’t help chuckling. Baja Jack had a special way about him, Jack did. Lou had met some characters in his life, but none more colorful than Baja Jack.

  Lou drew back on Mean’s reins. “Let’s stop here.”

  “Why?” Jack said, checking the trigueño down behind Prophet.

  “I wanna check our back trail.” Lou shoved his left boot into his stirrup then swung his right leg over Mean’s rump before dropping to the ground.

  “What for?”

  “I wanna make sure Yeats ain’t behind us. If we get trapped in your canyon, Jack, our goose is done scalded, plucked, and greased for the pan. The only English family you’re gonna meet are them that’s done been planted six feet down.”

  Jack rolled his head and grimaced. “What a negative nancy you are, Lou!”

  Lou gazed up at Alejandra. “Do I need to tie you to the saddle?”

  She turned to him, blinking once, slowly. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not exactly dressed for a run across the desert.”

  Prophet looked at her sheer dress, her bare feet, and smiled. “I noticed.”

  Lou tied Mean’s reins to a twisted bush growing from a crack in the stony embankment. He grabbed his field glasses out of his saddlebags and glanced at Colter. “Come on, Red. Four eyes are better than two.”

  Colter swung his right foot over his saddle horn and dropped smoothly to the ground.

  “That old borrachón ain’t behind us, I tell ya,” said Baja Jack, his voice indignant as well as adamant. “I covered the trail, what little sign we left in the rocks, an’ I know for a fact I’m the only one who knows about that canyon.”

  “Keep movin’, Jack,” Lou said as he started climbing the steep escarpment rising on the barranca’s right side. “We’re gonna take a gander and then we’ll be along.”

  Jack pulled his horse around Mean and Ugly and Northwest, and gestured for Pepe to continue on down the barranca. “Wastin’ your time, boys!” he called smugly over his shoulder, his quirley dangling from one corner of his mouth. “Just ’cause I’m short an’ ugly don’t mean I’m stupid!”