The Pot Thief Who Studied Billy the Kid (6 page)

We stopped
to eat.
Wiley
needed to build up his strength. He
got a whole
chorizo
. Geronimo got half of one. I decided it was a perf
ect time to start that diet I’
d been contemplating. I was up to 160,
much
more than my 5’ 6” frame
is accustomed to.

We made a few miles
that afternoon,
but it was clear we were going to spend a night on the
Rio Grande plateau.
At dusk,
I found a
suitable place for
a
campsite in a small depression
between two
ju
niper trees.
I discovered
a roadrunner also liked the site
when I reached for some dry sticks at the base of one of the junipers and
h
e
growled at me
.

Yes, growled. They do not go “beep, beep
”
like the cartoon version
. T
hey have quite a vocal repertoire—cooing, clacking, growling, whirling, popping and barking. In this latter r
espect, they outshine Geronimo.

This particular roadrunner was probably upset that we were in his territory. They mate in the spring, so he wasn’t protecting a ne
s
t, a task he shares with the female. They are good parents except for the fact that a chick who is sickly will be
dismembered and
fed to its siblings.

Life can be harsh in the desert.

Roadrunner cartoons are fun, but in real life, coyotes do not chase roadrunners. For one t
hing, they couldn’t catch them.

Which is probably a good thing for the coyote. Roadrunners are fierce. The males draw night hunting duties when chicks are in the nest, so I’ve seen quite a few when I’m also on midnight hunts. I’ve
witnessed
a roadrunner catch a rattlesnake that was trying to strike him
.
He grabbed the s
nake
’
s
head so he could
n’t
bite and
t
hen wh
i
pped
the poor reptile
back and forth on the grou
nd
until
the
spinal column
was
shattered and the snake immobilized. I suppose he took it back to the nest, tore it into pieces and fed it to his young.

A
fter l
ecturing Geronimo about The Nat
ive American
Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and e
"Palatino Linotype">xplaini
n
g to
Wiley
that he had to follow us out of the canyon even if his leg hurt, I was beginning to feel a bit like Dr. Doolittl
e. So I told the roadrunner (sc
ientific
name:
Boulevardius burnupius
) that he’
d
just have to put up with us because we were too
tired
to move on.

Dinner was half a
chorizo
for
Wiley
and
a quarter of
one
f
or
Geronimo
.
I sprayed some more Bactine on
Wiley
’s leg.

My own dinner was
the
Euell Gibbons
special
–
some goosefoot seeds, juniper berries and a few
piñon nuts
. The BLM requires a permit to gather
piñon nuts
.
I’d already committed two felonies by violating ARPA and NAGPRA
,
so
I wasn’t
much
bothered by adding
a
misdemeanor
to my rap sheet
for
gather
ing
piñon nuts
without a permit.

What
did
bother me was the tooth I broke while splitting the tough outer shells of the
piñon
s.

I found a flat rock with a slight depression in it and tipped in a few tablespoons of water for Geronimo. Then I added a few for Wiley. When Geronimo and I moved
away from the rock
, Wiley lapped up the
water
.

I took a sip from the canteen and then rattled it like they do in the old movies to judge how much water was in it. I’m not sure how to convert the sloshing sound to an amount,
but it didn’t sound like much.

A person can survive about three days
without water. I wondered what ‘without’
meant
in this case
. Would a few tablespoons a day prolong survival?

I cuddled up with Geronimo for warmth and tried to sleep. I knew my diet was working because my stomach
was
rumbl
ing
.
I passed the time I should have been sleeping by
wondering whether I could
bake g
oosefoot seeds
into griddle cakes as the
Zuni traditionally did
.
I had the fire but
lacked a pan. Not to mention enough seeds to make a cake bigger than a dime. I suppose you grind them and mix them with water. I didn’t have much of that either.

I awoke shortly before sunup.
Wiley was gone.
I couldn’t blame him. I wasn’t providing enough food or water. His chances of survival were better on his own.
Nature had equipped him for it.

I was sort of fond of him. He had a bushy tail and a mouth that curved up at the sides so that he seemed to be smiling. I would miss him, but I was happy he was gone. I could give more food and water to Geronimo who, unlike Wiley, was n C Wilinot prepared for survival in the desert.

Unless we found a big ant hill and he could feast on those.

Wiley wasn’t the only thing that was gone. My hat was nowhere to be found.
Even though it had two holes in it where I had forced the rebar through, I was sorry it was gone
.
I liked that hat
, in part because the label claimed it was
“
handcrafted with Canadian
persnicketiness
.”

We skipped breakfast and headed out.

At the edge of the depression in which we had spent the night
was a mound of
damp
sand.
At the bottom of the hole from which the sand had
been excavated
was a
tiny amount of water
.
I figured Wiley ha
d dug for water before he left.
It would be nice to think he left it for us, but
it’s more likely that it
seeped in after he left. But
at least he knew where to dig.
I let Geronimo drink it.
It wasn’t
much of a sacrifice
– I hate gritty water.

There was no way to know when Wiley had left. Maybe he dug the hole right after I
went to sleep
, found no water and left. In that case, the water Geronimo had lapped up had taken
all night
to accumulate. Not worth waiting for.

Or maybe it had all seeped up in just a few minutes.
I dug deeper and waited to see if more water wou
ld see
p
in. Cino see

One symptom of dehydration is irrationality.
Waiting too long for water that might not come could prevent us from reaching La Reina w
h
ere there was water. But the small amount we had might not be enough to get us there.
I
tried to stay calm and rational.
I decided to give it an hour.
N
o water accumulated.
We started walking.

We were well above seven thousand feet. That meant the air was relatively cool. But it also meant the sunlight had less atmosphere to penetrate.
Lacking a hat,
I draped the gunny sack over my head to protect against the sun. As the day heated up I began to feel like I was under a broiler.

Thirsty people
panic and make bad decisions. Like not drinking enough water. Victims of dehydration are sometimes found next to half-full canteens. In their desperate attempt to save water, they dehydrate their brain. Better to take a quenching chug and keep moving than to take sips that only wet your whistle.

We were making better time without Wiley. I wanted to maintain our brisk pace. I wanted to drink enough water to hydrate my brain. I tipped my head back to take a swig from the canteen. My foot caught between tw
o rocks, and I fell on my face.

The canteen clattered away, its precious contents washing over the rocks. At least Geronimo had the good sense
to lap up what he could get to.

7

“Who is Euell Gibbons
?“
Susannah asked.

“
H
e was before your time
.
I liked him because he
and I both
grew up in New Mexico. During the dust-bowl
d
ays when he was just a kid, his father left the family to try to find work. After
he’
d been gone a few days, the family
had eaten everything
in the house
except s
ome
dried
pinto beans
. Euell
w
ent int
o the wild
and came back with
piñon nuts, prickly pear
fruit and
puffball mushrooms
. His mother and three siblings survived for a month on the food Euell foraged.”