Valley of Fire (7 page)

I loosened the tourniquet. Color flowed back into her pale legs. Blood didn't soak the bandage.

Satisfied, I hooked the tobacco out of my mouth with a finger, pulled the cork out of the jug, and taken a swallow. I coughed, gagged, wiping the tears from my eyes and the snot dripping from my nose. I had me another pull, laid the jug beside the sister, and went to the corral.

Well, I had one of them mules saddled, reined to the corral, and was working on the big Jack when I heard the shotgun. Knowed it was a shotgun on account I heard the first hammer clicking, then the second. The second hammer taken some time to get set, which troubled me, because I feared it might accidentally go off. I turned around slowly, raising my hands, but not stepping away from the mule. I figured the man with the shotgun, iffen this was his mule, wouldn't be inclined to send two barrels from a shotgun and risk wounding or killing one of his mules.

He was one big Mexican. Looked to be the size of Goliath, with a beard like Moses. He sounded like I'd always figured Moses would have sounded. Strong. Deep. Demanding.

“Step away from Juanito, señor, so I can kill you without harming my mule.”

Luckily, he spoke and savvied English.

My head tilted toward the lean-to. “There's a nun lying yonder. She cut her leg real bad. I need to get her to the doctor in Anton Chico.”

“There is no doctor in Anton Chico.”

“Well, there's a church. And a priest. And a midwife, I reckon.”

“There is no nun, señor. You are a thief.
Por favor,
step away. That is a good mule. I do not wish to hurt him when I kill you.”

Bless that nun, she picked that moment to moan.

The Mexican didn't lower the shotgun, didn't look away from me, but he'd heard. His eyes turned skeptical, but when the Sister groaned again, I could see the hesitation, the doubt underneath that massive beard.

He stood on the riverside of his farm, so he couldn't see inside the lean-to, and I wasn't sure that he wouldn't just kill me, and his mule, then do his investigating. So I spoke some more. “Her name is Geneviève. She's with the Sisters of Charity in Santa Fe.”

He give a quick glance toward the lean-to, but I didn't move a hair. His eyes was back on me in an instant.

“Mister,” I said, “I ain't got no gun. Not even a knife. And I ain't wearing boots. They's in the lean-to, so I ain't going nowhere. Look inside that lean-to. You don't want to kill me and find out you made a bad mistake. That nun, and God, sure wouldn't forgive you for murdering me, who's trying to save Sister Gen's life.”

He had already started inching hisself around the corral, keeping that shotgun aimed in my general direction. He backed up till he had a clear look inside the lean-to, but I didn't resume breathing again till he had eased down them barrels of that shotgun. Crossing hisself, he seemed to forget all about me, and hurried into the lean-to.

I joined him, once my legs got to working again, leaving the second mule half-saddled standing in the corral. He had lifted the Sister's dress, and studied the leg. When he looked up at me, contempt masked his face.

“Did you do this?”

“No, I didn't cut her leg. She fell. Uh, she—”

“No.” His head shook violently and muttered something in rapid Spanish that I couldn't catch. In a tone of disgust, he spoke to me in English. “Is this what you call doctoring?”

“Well . . . yeah . . . I mean . . .” For a moment, I thought he might fetch that shotgun off the straw and blow a hole in my belly.

Instead, he untied my bandage, tossed away the cloth, and pulled a handkerchief from his mule-ear pockets. To my surprise, the handkerchief looked clean. His chin jutted toward the whiskey. “Hand me the jug.”

I'd been demoted from surgeon to nurse. I done as I was told, kneeling beside him on the other side of Sister Geneviève, watching as he splashed that rotgut onto the white cotton, soaking it good, then began scrubbing around my stitches, wiping off the tobacco stains, the bacon grease, all the good doctoring I'd done.

That whiskey must have burned considerable—it had certainly burned a wicked path down my throat—because, even unconscious, Sister Geneviève's eyelids tightened. She moaned, turning her head one way and the other. Beads of sweat soon appeared on her forehead.

The Mexican mumbled an apology in Spanish, wiping her brow with the whiskey-soaked rag, leaving it there, then running them massive fingers of his over my mule-hair suturing. Them stitches still held. She wasn't bleeding much.

“You should be a seamstress, señor,” he said.

I told him, “I am, well, sort of prone to accidents.”

The Mexican smiled, which surprised me, and rose. “Bring the Sister into my home. We will tend to her there. It is better than here. Cleaner, at least.”

He must have forgotten that I'd been inside his jacal, and didn't find it much cleaner than this lean-to. But he was walking away, shotgun in his arms, so I picked up Sister Geneviève and followed. Once I laid her down on the cot in the corner that served as the farmer's bed, I let my hand slip inside the pockets of her habit. I felt a couple pouches and a purse, but those wasn't what I wanted. I'd hoped to find that little five-shot pistol.

The Mexican told me to move, so I stepped away.

He was on his knees again, putting a bedroll at the foot of the cot, gently lifting the nun's bum leg, elevating it. “Señor, if you can get a fire going, we shall boil water. And heat up coffee and soup. When was the last time you have eaten?”

Criminy, now that he mentioned coffee and soup, my stomach started growling.

 

 

That Mexican farmer, he sure was thorough. While the coffee and soup warmed, he boiled the white shirt I'd ripped, then cut that into more strips and fashioned a real good bandage. I reckoned that he had suffered even more accidents than me. He seemed that good at doctoring.

Folks can fool you. I'd figured that farmer for some uncouth bum, but them big hands of his had a woman's touch. He was gentle as he refixed the Sister's leg, though I am proud to say he didn't find no fault with them stitches. He cleaned her leg some more, wrapped the bandage on good and tight, and covered Geneviève with a pretty blanket. He also removed the purse and pouches from her pockets, and left them beside the nun's side.

“Are you alone here?” I asked over his shoulder.

“
Sí.
Unless you count the mules, burro, and goats.” He kept focused on Sister Geneviève.
“Me llamo Jorge de la Cruz.”
Grunting, he pushed himself to his feet, turned, and them Old Testament eyes of his blazed through me. He had just told me his name. Now, it ain't polite to ask a fellow his name, and he wasn't asking, but I could tell he wanted to know. Wanted to know my name, and a lot of other things.

“I am Big Tim Pruett.” Hell, it was the only handle I could think of.

“You are not very big, señor.”

I shrugged. “That's what they call me.”

It satisfied him. “The Sister sleeps. That is good. Come, Señor Pruett. We shall eat.”

While Sister Geneviève rested, we sat at the table, me on my second helping of tortilla soup, and Jorge de la Cruz slowly sipping coffee, glancing at the nun every now and then. At last, he asked me, “How did you get here?”

I wiped my mouth with my left hand, then wiped my hand on my trousers. He filled my empty tin cup with more coffee, and I sipped it.

I knowed that question would come along, so I'd been thinking on an answer. “We was traveling on the westbound train.” That much was true. “We left the train last night.” So was that. “She is on her way to Anton Chico, and asked me to guide her.”

“To the parish of San José?”

That must have been the Catholic church there, so I nodded.

He set his cup of coffee in front of him. “Why did you not follow the road from Romero to Anton Chico?”

“She's a nun. Wants to visit all the farms along the river.”

Glory to God, he believed it. His head bobbed. “And how did she come to cut her leg so badly?”

“It was nighttime,” I said. “She slipped, must have bashed her leg against a sharp rock. We was making camp just by the trestle. I didn't know she'd cut herself. And she didn't tell me. Stubborn, she is. Stubborn as a witch.”

He didn't like that, but kept on listening, just listening and sipping and staring. Trying to catch me in a lie, but if there's one thing I was good at, it was lying.

I kept on talking. “Must have wrapped it herself. Never let on. I don't think she would have told me nothing, but when we crossed the Pecos to get to your farm, the cold water must have shocked her. She passed out.”

That's something else Big Tim Pruett had taught me. Adding a dash of truth to your lies makes any falsehood more believable. It sure was working for me.

“It's a miracle that I reached her before the current took her under and she drowned,” I continued. “I got her to the lean-to, found the cut, made a tourniquet, and stitched her up.”

“With a hair from Juanito.” The Mexican smiled. Well, I thought he grinned. It was hard to tell underneath that thick beard.

“Actually, I think it was the Jenny.”

He nodded. “Ah, Lucía.
Bueno
. Lucía will like having helped save the life of a holy woman.”

He wasn't done with his interrogation. “But where is your valise?”

I give him the dumb look.

“Clothes? Food? Bedrolls?”

“Oh. Well. She's a Sister of Charity. They take the pledge. You know, live in poverty. Them kinds of things. She figured on relying on the Christian charity of homesteaders such as yourself for food and lodging.”

He chewed on that. And before he could ask another question, I slowly rose, saying, “If you don't mind, Señor de la Cruz, I'll go out and put on my boots. They should be dry by now.”

After his nod of approval, I walked back to the lean-to. Got the boots on, and looked all over where the Sister had been lying down. No pepperbox. Nothing but the crucifix I'd broken to save her hide. That I picked up, slipping it inside my vest pocket as I walked to the river. Didn't find the Continental nowhere on that path.

I looked downstream and upstream and into the piñon and juniper woods along the river. Upstream came the faint sound of an AT&SF train's horn. The eastbound train was making its way toward Las Vegas, and that got me to fretting. A posse might be aboard that train. It also got me to thinking something else, because about that time the notion struck me that Sister Geneviève had lost her hideaway pistol. Made plenty of sense, what with her dangling from the side of a moving locomotive, falling off a trestle into a river, then getting practically swept downstream after she'd passed out. Yeah. That was it.

Satisfied, I returned to the jacal.

That's where I found the .22. It was in Geneviève Tremblay's right hand. She was awake, and had that “Ladies Companion” cocked and pointed an inch from the farmer's face.

“That had better be you, Mister Bishop.” Once again, she sounded like that madam I'd knowed up around Trinidad. Didn't look at me, didn't lower the pepperbox, didn't take her eyes off the burly farmer.

“It's me,” I said, once my voice box recovered from the shock. “That's, um, that's Jorge de la Cruz, Sister. We're at his farm. He fixed you up. No need thanking him with a .22 through his eyeballs.”

Her finger relaxed on the trigger just a tad.

“Not for him, ma'am, you would have bled to death.”

She lowered the pistol, and I stepped inside while she asked in Spanish for the farmer's forgiveness.

“Well,” I let the good Sister know. “I mean, I done some good doctoring to yourself. Even fished you out of the river like you done me.”

The big farmer nodded toward me. “It is Señor Bishop you should thank, Sister.”

I decided he was a one standup guy for a farmer.

“He stitched your cut, stopped the bleeding.” Then he was giving me a mean look, but not so Sister Geneviève could see, and I knowed why. He had stressed the name
Bishop
. I'd told him my name was Big Tim Pruett.

Well, a body never can get all his lies past scrutiny.

I give the farmer a polite grin and sat on the cot beside the nun. “I knowed I should never have given you that little pepperbox.” Turning to the farmer, I explained. “For her protection, señor. You know, not everybody in these parts is honorable, even to a woman of faith.”

Jorge de la Cruz was by the hearth, filling a mug with hot soup. He picked my spoon up from the table, didn't bother washing or wiping it, just dropped it in the cup, and brung it over to me and the nun. “Here.” He thrust the soup toward her. “You should eat.”

“Gracias.”
I helped her up, and she ate the soup like a wild dog fighting for supper. Famished.

While she ate, I did some fast talking. “I told Señor de la Cruz about you asking me to guide you to Anton Chico. How you fell on a rock, cut yourself, and didn't tell me. And I guess I shouldn't have give you that little popgun.” I turned toward de la Cruz, smiling. “Thought it would be good, for her protection, and all.”

He scowled.

I looked back to the Sister. The pepperbox was gone.

She handed me the empty cup, the spoon rattling inside. “May I have some more?”

Well, I just went back to the fireplace, ladled in some more soup. When I come back, Sister Geneviève was sitting up. She'd pulled up her dress and was examining the fine bandaging job the farmer had done. Not a drop of blood on them white strips, but that had to be on account of my needlework. She had also lowered her hood.

“Thank you, Señor de la Cruz.” She sounded perfect French again. “My leg feels so much better.”

She give that old gent a look that no nun I'd knowed had ever give me. I could practically see de la Cruz's beard melt. I even saw his smile. The farmer had forgotten all about that gun she'd stuck in his face, all about my lies, all about everything but just what a beautiful woman she was.

“As I said, Sister, it was nothing.”

“But it was!” She said that with pure emotion.

“Well, it was the least I could do, Sister. Will you tell the priest at Anton Chico to remember me?”

“Most certainly. And I shall never forget you.”

Me? I was seething. Them two talking like I wasn't in the room. Her praising him for all his kindness and hard work, but it had been me who'd fished her out of the Pecos, had stitched up her leg before she bled out like a stuck pig. I pulled the crucifix from my vest and gave it to her. “Sorry it broke.”

She took it, but didn't look at the pin I'd snapped off, didn't look at nothing but that giant farmer.

“We'd better be on our way,” I told her.

“Pardon me,” Jorge was saying. “But your leg should rest. You should spend the night here then leave in the morning. Already, the day is late, and Anton Chico is twelve miles or so downstream. Please, rest here for the night. I know it is not much, but . . .” Shrugging, he grinned like a teenage schoolboy.

Finally, Geneviève Tremblay sought out my advice.

“I heard the train just now,” I said, all conversational-like. Hoping she'd get my drift.

She didn't. Or if she did, she ignored it.

“Heading to Las Vegas,” I said.

She ate more soup.

“Wonder if Sean Fenn's on it.”

She kept right on eating.

I got her meaning. Turning to Jorge de la Cruz, I said, “I reckon it would be good to rest here. Maybe I can catch some trout in the river. Cook some up for supper.”

It is what I done.

Didn't get thanked for that, neither.

 

 

Here's one of the first mistakes—not counting falling off the train and into the Pecos River—Sister Geneviève made. She smiled too often at Jorge de la Cruz. Oh, not that he got any manly notions, not as old as he must've been, but he just couldn't let that lovely nun out of his sight.

Next morning, after cooking us a fine breakfast, he insisted that he would escort us down to Anton Chico. It was too far to walk, he said, for a woman of the cloth with such a fresh wound to her limb. So I saddled the two mules that I'd had to unsaddle the previous night, and the big farmer helped Geneviève Tremblay into the saddle, practically barreling me over to do the deed. Made sure she was comfortable, handed her a canteen of water and a sack of tortillas and
cabrito
.

Yep, they rode, and I walked. Twelve miles south. Having spent the night in the lean-to with that farmer, who snored like a dozen damned howitzers, keeping me awake all night. Twelve miles down the river, and Jorge de la Cruz didn't shut up once, just kept talking to Sister Geneviève the whole day.

 

 

Anton Chico ain't nothing but a village in the Pecos River Valley, but it was a mighty important one—a million-acre land grant full of cattlemen, sheepherders, freighters, and the like. The Spanish colonists had built it like a fort when they was settling here in the early 1860s. Homes of stone, and high walls, a church built stronger than the Alamo.

They rode right through the village, the Sister and the farmer, with me walking behind them, hat pulled low and head bowed, just in case any of Felipe Hernandez's men was watching.

We passed a nice stone building with a barn and corral, and there was plenty of good horseflesh in that corral—which caught my fancy.

“Look at those horses, Mister Bishop,” the nun called out. “Are those the kind of horses you have expressed an interest in purchasing?”

They was sure worth stealing, but I didn't answer.

“Sister Gen.” The farmer had trouble saying Geneviève, so he'd shortened it to Gen just how Sean Fenn had done and how I did on occasion. “That is the home of Demyan Blanco, surely one of the finest caballeros in the Río Pecos Valley.”

“Does he sell horses?” she asked.

“But of course.” Jorge de la Cruz turned to give me a look I'd seen plenty of times before, like when waiters and hostelers was wondering if I could pay my bill. “But he is a tough one to haggle with, especially over horses.”

We went on to Abercrombie's Store, which was right next to the San José church, but the bells was ringing in those twin towers by the time we got there. It had taken us all day to ride and walk to Anton Chico on account that de la Cruz insisted on traveling like a snail so not to wear out Sister Gen, and we'd stopped for a noon meal that had taken a coon's age to finish on account that even while eating, the farmer couldn't shut up.

Geneviève swung off Lucía, and tested her leg. “It is Mass. We should attend.”

“
Bueno,
” de la Cruz said. “Afterward, I shall introduce you to Padre Guerra.”

“Gracias,” she told him, and leaned against his massive body so he could help her inside the church. “But it would be much better if you could introduce Mister Bishop to Señor Blanco.”

He shouted something, belching out a laugh, saying that he would be much happy to do that, and that Demyan Blanco was his cousin.

So I went to Mass. Sat squirming on the back pew, all that Latin and all that kneeling and such bringing back to mind my years at the Sisters of Charity orphanage. I knowed I couldn't partake of any of the doings, since I'd never been confirmed, and knowed if I done something only Catholics could do, I'd be struck dead by lightning and sent straight to Hell. So I squirmed, and got to thinking about Sister Rocío and the Valley of Fire. But I couldn't think of nothing that one-armed hag had told me, nothing that made sense, nothing that would explain why a nun would bust me out of jail. I couldn't think why a nun like Sister Geneviève would stay with me and insist on finding something buried in a bunch of lava rocks, or what a nun knew that would interest Sean Fenn.

Every once in a while, I'd catch myself praying, coming up with the right responses to something the priest said, but mostly I wondered if Felipe Hernandez, or Sean Fenn, would be waiting for me once I stepped out that front door.

They weren't. Maybe God listened, though I doubt if He cared a whit for me.

It was nigh dark. Anton Chico was about to go to sleep, but we headed to Abercrombie's Store, where Sister Geneviève pulled out her purse and paid for supplies. Coffee and tortillas, grain for horses, canteens, bedrolls, jerky, enough grub to last a week or so, I figured.

“How about this here Winchester?” I hefted a big old Centennial model, a big caliber baby that would be sure to stop buffalo, which we wasn't gonna run into, or Sean Fenn, which I was certain we would see.

“No firearms,” the nun said. “The Lord will provide.”

Easy for her to say. She still had that little derringer, which wouldn't stop Sean Fenn, and maybe not even a scrawny jackrabbit.

She spent her last coins on the stuff, then said we'd be back to pick up our supplies after we'd bought some horses and tack from Señor Blanco. The merchant was glad to wait on her. The cad wouldn't give me the time of day. Then we wandered off to see Demyan Blanco.

 

 

Blanco, indeed, proved to be the best haggler in the territory. Only he didn't haggle. He set his price, and stuck with it, on account, I reckon, that he saw how desperate we was. Even de la Cruz couldn't persuade him to lower his price, which wasn't even close to being fair. I had half a mind to walk away, then come into his corrals later that night and steal some. In particular, that fine blue roan that I knowed could go across the desert like a camel. That was a fine piece of horseflesh, but even that gelding wasn't worth $200. A hundred, maybe.

“Señor,” Sister Geneviève pleaded, “all we seek are two horses, and you have many, and perhaps a pack mule, but the prices you stick with are—”

Angry, de la Cruz interrupted the Sister, yelling at his cousin. “Perhaps I shall ask Father Guerra to read your name in Mass, Cousin.”

I figured they were distant cousins, or just didn't like one another.

Demyan Blanco grinned. “Did you see me at Mass tonight, Cousin?”

Sister Geneviève had to step in front of the big farmer to stop the fisticuffs before they begun. “We are a civilized people and we are Christian.”

“I am a freethinker,” Blanco said.

“And you shall burn in Hell for your wickedness,” the farmer roared.

The nun stared, giving Blanco her best, most un-nun-like smile, her eyes twinkling, but that Demyan Blanco was the hardest rock in a county of hard rocks.

“How much for the roan?” the Sister asked. That had taken me for surprise. I'd been eying that fine gelding, had casually asked about him, but directed most of my bartering and haggling and questioning at a bay mare and a piebald gelding.

“As I told your amigo, two hundred dollars, American. Gold preferred. Ten dollars for the saddle and bridle. I have a sidesaddle that I can let go—”

“No sidesaddle. We have hard country to ride across.”

That stopped Blanco, who wet his lips, and reevaluated the nun.

“How do you ever sell any horses?” I asked. “If you don't give and take?”

“I give,” he said, opening his palms in a gesture of gentility. “I give horses. I take money. And I even lower the price when it suits me. It does not suit me now.”

“You are—” de la Cruz started, but Sister Geneviève hushed him.

“I will take the blue roan”—she shot me a quick look—“for me. The paint horse I will pay no more than fifty dollars for, and you will throw in the saddle for Mister . . .” She had forgotten the name I was using. Hell, so had I. “For my guide.”

“Let him ride bareback.” Blanco was a nasty man.

“You will throw in the saddle or we will walk away.”

“As you wish.” He bowed.

“And the mule over there.” She pointed to a big mule. “How much for him?”

“Ten dollars.”

That was fair.

“And a pack saddle?”

“Twenty?”

That wasn't.

“Then I owe you two hundred eighty dollars.”

By grab, she had done all that ciphering in her head.

“American.” Demyan Blanco smiled. “Gold preferred.”

“But, of course.” Sister Geneviève was smiling herself. “I spent my last eagles at Abercrombie's.” She reached into her habit.

I stepped back, ready for her to pull that little pepperbox pistol and watch Demyan Blanco wet his britches.