The Cost of Dying

by Peter Brandvold

  Lou was numb with shock. He turned his gaze back to the pannier and slowly dipped his hand inside. Colter hurried over to another burro and opened a pannier on its back. The redhead dipped a gloved hand into the pouch and withdrew a handful of . . .

  “Pearls?” he said, turning his incredulous gaze to Lou.

  Prophet held a handful of the pale, luminous little objects, some as small as the tip of his index finger and some as large as jawbreakers. Most were perfectly round and as smooth as polished marble. Some were nearly eggshell-white while others seemed to radiate the soft blue of a late-summer sky.

  Prophet dipped his other paw into the pannier and pulled up another handful, letting the little baubles trickle from between his fingers, making soft clacking sounds. Smooth, supple, and perfect, they were as kind to the touch as a young woman’s breast.

  “Pearls,” Lou said, turning to Jack, his eyes still wide with exasperation. “Where in the hell did you get these, you old reprobate?”

  Jack stood grinning deviously. “Yeats always pays me in pearls. It was our special arrangement.”

  “He paid you for your locoweed with all these pearls?” Colter asked, opening yet another flap and dipping his hand inside.

  Baja Jack shook his head. “No, no, no. He paid me a single pouchful. The others, you see . . .” He paused as he made his way over to a low stone shelf at the base of the towering cliff dwellings. He sat down on the shelf with a soft sigh of pain and crossed his stubby arms on his thick chest, smiling like a banker. “The rest, you see, we stole. Will-John Rhodes and myself.”

  He cackled softly, his shoulders jerking, thoroughly enjoying the rapt attention of his listeners.

  Chapter 43

  “You an’ Rhodes?” Prophet said, closing the pannier flap and putting his back to the burro, staring skeptically down at Baja Jack. “I don’t follow.”

  All eyes were on Jack now. Jack loved the attention.

  Old Pepe stood leaning back against the hindquarters of the burro named Escorpión, filling his corncob pipe from a hide sack of chopped tobacco. He chuckled softly to himself. Lou didn’t think the old man understood English, but he obviously caught the gist of Jack’s story. He was a character in it, after all.

  Jack said, “On my last weed run to Baluarte Santiago, Rhodes and I threw in together to separate the Mad Major from his pearls. Rhodes was tired of Yeats’s mad ways and of runnin’ wild down here in Baja. He wanted to go home to America, but he needed a stake. So he set his sights on the pearls that he and the Mad Major had been plundering from hacendados up and down the coast of the Sea of Cortez for years. Pearls, you see, are the preferred currency for most business transactions around here. Pearls have been in the families of the landed muckety-mucks for generations, starting way back when the first Spaniard set foot on the peninsula. Hell, some of the Indios even traded in pearls!

  “Anyway, to make a long story short, me an’ Rhodes threw in together, because Yeats wouldn’t give the lieutenant a cut of the pearls and let him leave a wealthy man. No, sir—the Mad Major was hoarding them pearls, and the other men backed his play on account of how they loved his weed so much . . . and the young girls, of course. No, Rhodes was gettin’ mighty sore against Yeats, an’ mighty desperate.

  “So, for the past four nights, while Yeats and you and most everybody else at Baluarte Santiago was stompin’ with your tails up, three sheets to the wind, thanks to my specially formulated locoweed, me an’ Rhodes smuggled the pearls out of the strongbox in the bastion’s dungeon. We took only a few fist-sized pouches at a time, so we wouldn’t get caught and shot by firin’ squad, or made to make a mad dash to the wall with Yeats usin’ us as target practice for them Russians of his. We carried the bags out—staggerin’ like we was drunk like the rest of you, only at night, late at night when Yeats was in his cups. Little by little, we filled Pepe’s panniers.”

  The old ass-wrangler chuckled delightedly around the stem of his corncob pipe.

  “We was gonna pull out tonight,” Baja Jack continued, turning his gaze to Lou. “But when I heard the señorita kickin’ up a fuss and then guns blazin’ like it was a Mexican’s birthday”—Baja Jack cackled a delighted laugh at his quip—“I just had me a feelin’ it was you, Lou. Of course, I knew you was here to kill Yeats. Why the hell else would a gringo bounty hunter be here if not for the bounty on the Mad Major’s head?”

  Louisa fired a haughty look at Prophet. “I told you he knew!”

  Ignoring her, Prophet kept his eyes on Jack. “You didn’t need me to kill him for you. You or Rhodes could’ve done it when he was . . .”

  “Sure, sure,” Jack said. “We could’ve killed him when he was pie-eyed, just before we lit out. Which was our plan. But I figured if you did it, you’d kick up just the diversion I needed to make a run for it with the pearls and the burros, and if by some slim chance you managed to kill Yeats, all the better!”

  “So why didn’t you and Rhodes just light out with the pearls when Yeats’s men were chasing Lou around the bastion?” Colter wanted to know.

  “That’s what I was gonna do. As soon as I heard the fuss, I sent Pepe out to saddle up the purty ones and the horses, yours included. I figured I owed you a chance, anyways, for your trouble.” Jack grinned. “When I seen that damn Gatlin’ gun, I couldn’t resist.” He slid his smiling gaze between Lou and Colter. “I don’t have that many friends, ya see, an’ I reckon I count you two among ’em, even though we ain’t known each other that long. Besides, Yeats purely was . . . er, is . . . needin’ a bullet.”

  The little man rubbed his hands together, deviously grinning. “Besides, I saw a chance to kill both Yeats an’ Rhodes in one fell swoop . . .”

  “And then all the pearls would be yours,” Lou said, smiling knowingly. “What about your guards, though, Jack? Why’d you leave them behind?”

  Jack made a face. “With this many pearls, I didn’t think I coulda trusted ’em any more than I coulda trusted Will-John Rhodes not to slit my throat some night as I slept. Now, you fellas . . .” He smiled again at Lou and Colter. “I figured I could trust you two to help me get the loot to a bank in San Diego. For a price, o’ course. I aim to pay you both very well if you see me all the way to California!”

  He slid his gaze to Pepe. “Me an’ Pepe, that is.” Jack heaved himself to his feet and limped over to stand beside the older Mexican, who wasn’t much taller than Baja Jack himself. Smiling up at Pepe, he said, “My old amigo’s gonna join me on my tour of the world, don’t ya know? I’ve named him my private secretary!”

  He laughed then translated for the benefit of Pepe, who chuckled around the stem of his pipe, showing teeth in no better condition than Jack’s own.

  Mean and Ugly lifted his head suddenly, turning toward the canyon’s mouth—the one they’d entered by—and giving a shrill warning whinny. A gun cracked. Pepe lurched forward, eyes snapping wide as his pipe dropped from his teeth.

  “Pepe!” Jack cried as he reached up to catch his old friend. Pepe was too much of a load for the little man, however. As Pepe fell, blood welling from the fist-sized hole where the bullet had exited his forehead, he toppled Jack over onto his back.

  Jack screamed and flopped his arms and legs.

  Prophet swung his surprised gaze toward the canyon entrance through which they’d come. A snake flopped in his belly as he saw several horsemen galloping toward him, guns flashing, bullets screeching in the air around his head.

  Prophet cursed as he ran over to Mean and Ugly and shucked his Winchester from its scabbard. Alejandra screamed as more guns cracked, triggered by more riders thundering into the canyon.

  “Yeats don’t know about your canyon—eh, Jack?” he shouted, racking a cartridge into the Winchester’s breech.

  Lou dropped to a knee and fired the rifle into the group of riders bearing down on him, blowing two men out of their saddles and wounding another before a bullet carved a burn along his left side. He cursed, racked another cartridge into the rifle’s acti
on, aimed hastily at another rider galloping toward him, and fired.

  Louisa and Colter took knees to either side of him, hurling lead toward the horseback riders silhouetted against the rear opening roughly fifty yards away. The echoing cacophony of the rifles was punctuated by the metallic rasp of the cocking levers and the pinging of the empty cartridges falling to the canyon’s stone floor and dancing around the boots of the three defenders.

  Lou watched in satisfaction as several more of Yeats’s men were thrown from their saddles, hitting the canyon floor and rolling, wailing, some being kicked by their horses as the mounts wheeled and ran back in the direction from which they’d come.

  Chaos had exploded like dynamite in the canyon as the rifles cracked and horses bucked and whinnied and the burros pitched wildly, hee-hawing and kicking. Yeats’s men shouted and cursed. A bullet hammered into one of the burros, which went down screaming.

  “No!” Lou heard Jack wailing beneath the din of gunfire, hoof thuds, and the screams of the horses and the braying of Pepe’s mule. “My pearls! My pearls! My pearls! ”

  Prophet emptied his Winchester into Yeats’s men, unseating two more and causing the others to draw back on their mounts’ reins, leap from their saddles, and dive for cover. “Let’s mount up and hightail it!” Lou shouted to Colter and Louisa.

  “Don’t have to tell me twice!” the redhead said, running toward where his coyote dun was dancing with its tail arched.

  “Where’s Yeats?” Louisa yelled, staring toward where guns flashed near the far entrance.

  “Forget him,” Lou yelled at her. “Mount your horse!”

  “You may have gotten what . . . or who . . . you came for, but I’m here for Yeats!” Louisa shot back at him.

  Prophet lunged for Mean’s reins. The horse was wheeling this way and that as the bullets flew around him, some hammering the floor near his prancing hooves. Again, Prophet grabbed at the reins, catching them this time and leaping into his saddle.

  As he rode over to where Alejandra lay near a dead burro and the dead Pepe, covering her head with her arms, Prophet saw Baja Jack standing as though in shock, gazing wide-eyed and hang-jawed at the pearls now littering the canyon floor.

  Apparently, the burros, several of which were now dead or wounded, had in their frenzy caused the precious pearls to bleed from the panniers. There were so many pearls on the canyon floor that it appeared as if a hailstorm had recently passed.

  “My pearls! ” wailed Baja Jack, sandwiching his crowlike face in his small, thick hands. “My pearls! My pearls! My precious pearls! ”

  “Forget the pearls, Jack!” Prophet shouted. “Mount up!”

  “¡Vamos, señorita!” he yelled at Alejandra, who lowered her arms and gazed up at him, eyes dull with shock. Lou extended his hand to her. She took it, and he swung her up behind him even as he neck-reined Mean and Ugly hard toward the canyon’s other mouth, opposite the end from where Yeats’s men were firing on them.

  The horse took two lunging strides before Lou jerked back on the reins, yelling, “Whoa!”

  Just then galloping riders had burst through the front door, triggering pistols and rifles.

  Colter checked down his own horse, staring straight ahead in horror. He whipped a wide-eyed look back at Lou. “We’re trapped!”

  While Colter and Louisa, who’d apparently given up on Yeats, threw lead at the riders heading toward them from the front door, Lou swung his head around to stare toward the men moving toward him from the back door, most of them now on foot and running, crouching and firing from rock rubble strewn at the bases of the two high ridges of stacked cliff dwellings.

  Lou snapped up his Colt and hurled three .45 rounds, trying to hold the attackers from that direction at bay.

  Meanwhile, Baja Jack was on his hands and knees, gathering up his pearls and jamming them into the pockets of his deerskin charro leggings. He screamed when a bullet sliced across his left cheek and another tore through the nap of his vest but he continued gathering pearls. His trigueño was prancing and whinnying angrily on the far side of the canyon, panicked by the gunfire.

  Lou slung three more rounds toward the back door, glad when one of the shooters cursed and dropped, shooting his own pistol into the canyon floor. But it wasn’t enough. Yeats’s men were working their way toward Lou’s party from both ends of the canyon. They’d caught them in a whipsaw and there was only one way out.

  The thought had brushed like a shadow over Lou’s consciousness.

  The underground river.

  It was their only escape. Probably an escape to a watery death, but it was their only chance.

  Horrified and repelled by the thought of leaping into the black water, not knowing where it came from or its exact course on the way to the Sea. Lou swung his head around. “Colter! Louisa! We have to get to the river!” He turned to Baja Jack. “Jack, get your horse. We have to get to the river!”

  Baja Jack paid no attention to him; he continued gathering his consarned pearls.

  “Jack!” Lou bellowed at the top of his lungs.

  Jack lifted his head, gazing at him glassily, his wild eye wobbling around untethered in its socket. “The river, Jack!”

  Jack blinked, looked at the pearls rolling around him. He looked at Lou again, his brows ridged dubiously. “Help me gather my pearls, Lou!” He heaved himself to his feet and threw his arms out in pleading. “Help me gather my pearls, Lou! Please! I can’t leave them. They’re all I’ve got, Lou!”

  His head jerked sharply forward and to one side. Blood and brain matter lapped from his left temple.

  “Ah shit!” Lou cried. “Damnit, Jack!”

  A bullet curled the air off Prophet’s left ear. Another one carved a hot line along the outside of his right thigh. That braced him, jerked his mind from Baja Jack, who now crumpled and lay dead upon his blood-washed pearls, to the river.

  Lou turned back to where Louisa was hurling lead in both directions now from atop her wheeling pinto, shooting each one of her pretty Colts in turn while Colter crouched in his own saddle, quickly thumbing fresh cartridges into his Henry’s loading tube.

  “We have to get to the river!” Prophet shouted.

  He booted Mean and Ugly over to the far side of the canyon. The dun was sporting several bloody bullet grazes himself now, his eyes wide, glassy, and white-ringed. Lou took his Richards sawed-off in both hands and sent a wad of double-ought buck hurling toward the shooters at both ends of the canyon, evoking a couple of shrill, satisfying cries of agony.

  When he reached the steps that, if he remembered correctly, rose to the cavern that led to the river, he swung down from Mean’s back and lifted Alejandra down, as well. Colter and Louisa galloped up behind him, crouching in their saddles, both streaked with the blood of wounds or grazes. They were both firing toward the shooters at both ends of the canyon, so far holding the onslaught at bay.

  Prophet shoved Alejandra down beside him and dropped to a knee, trying to shield her body with his own. As he reloaded his shotgun, he looked at Colter and Louisa, who both swung down from their own saddles. “We have to get our horses up these steps, into that cavern. Leastways, I think that’s the one.”

  Colter fired a round toward their attackers then glanced incredulously at Prophet. He shook his head. “I don’t like that idea. I don’t like it at all, Lou!”

  “What river?” Louisa asked, looking at Prophet as though he were addlepated.

  Lou thrust his reins into Colter’s hands. “Show her, Red! Take my horse and take Alejandra! The river’s our only way out of here!”

  “It’s a hell of a way out of here!”

  A bullet blew Colter’s hat off his head. The redhead flinched and looked sharply toward where the bullet had come from.

  “You got a better plan?” Prophet asked him.

  Without replying, Colter picked up his hat, stuffed it onto his head, and then began coaxing both his horse and Mean and Ugly up the steep stone steps.

  Louisa, holding the
reins of her own horse, stepped up to Lou. Her eyes were bright with incredulity. “What river?”

  “You’ll see.” Prophet had reloaded his shotgun and slid it back behind his shoulder. Now, casting desperate looks toward both ends of the canyon, where Yeats’s men were moving on them more quickly, he punched fresh cartridges through his Winchester’s loading gate.

  He glanced at Louisa, laughed mirthlessly, and shook his head. “I just hope you can swim, darlin’!”

  Chapter 44

  The horses balked at being led up the cliff wall.

  At least, they balked until Lou triggered one of his wads of twelve-gauge buck toward the attackers scurrying into the canyon from the rear door, and another wad toward those running and firing from the front door. The twin blasts, one on top of the other, made all three horses whinny shrilly and leap on up the steps, in a hurry to escape the din as well as the bullets hammering the cliff around them.

  Mean and Ugly knocked Alejandra to her knees. Colter grabbed her, pulled her to her feet, and then continued leading Mean and his own horse, the redheaded beauty scrambling along behind him barefoot. Louisa led her pinto behind them both, occasionally stopping to use one of her Colts to sling lead into the canyon.

  When they and the horses were safely into the cavern, Lou ran up the cliff steps, crouching, wincing against the lead screeching through the air around him and spanging off the slope to each side. One bullet pinged off his right spur, sending the rowel spinning off and away.

  “That’s no way to treat a spur, you filthy swine!”

  Gaining the cavern entrance, he stopped, swung around, and flung himself belly down to the cavern floor. He poked his head and rifle back out through the door. Yeats’s men were running toward the steps. There must have been thirty of them. Lou pumped a cartridge into the Winchester’s action, ready to buy Louisa and Colter some time to get the horses into the river.

  He centered his sights on one of the onrushing attackers but held fire. Movement from the other side of the canyon had distracted him. A chunk of that ridge, above the cliff dwellings, had suddenly broken away from the ridge proper. It leaned precariously forward, seemed to hang suspended there for a couple of seconds, and then plunged straight down the ridge.