|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Chapter 1
Sunset was two hours past and still he kept pushing, pushing the big black gelding on through the darkness. Despite his skittishness the horse gamely plowed on mile after mile responding to the jolt of sharp spurs relentlessly jabbed into froth-flecked flanks. White foam sprayed from the beast's mouth with every lunge of his massive head flying back on the black clad rider bent low in the saddle, his prey long since hidden by the gloom of night.
Only the thundering of the lead horse's hooves and the occasional glimpse of a white linen duster in the distance kept him going. His closeness to the fleeing rider, a man who might answer his questions, lead him to the murderer of his wife and child, caused him to pull out all the stops and plunge virtually blind across the inflexible and inhospitable desert.
Cactus and mesquite tore at both horse and rider and cut through material and hide alike. Pulling his hat lower to protect his eyes Chris Larabee saw flashes of silver and gold cut across the desert in front of him in the waxing moonlight and the black, taken by surprise shied, his great weight listing to one side as once solid footing gave way to soft, slippery sand.
Both horse and rider tumbled off a narrow precipice, the horse landing hard but able to keep his footing. In doing so the rider was flung off to land with a resounding thud on the rocks and sand of a dry creek bed.
Pain and the sharp exhalation of breath expelled forcefully from lungs was what he felt, what he heard, and then all was still except for a ragged gasp as he tried to force air back into oxygen-starved lungs. As he lay on his back Chris heard the blow of his winded horse and, catching a glimpse of silver on black, he knew Sire stood nearby apparently unharmed.
Still stunned from his sudden dismount Larabee took in a few slow even breaths, his head swimming, a resounding buzzing sounding in his ears. He mentally took stock of his situation. A few cuts and many more bruises but once his head stopped spinning and he could get to his feet he would remount his horse then make camp until first light and Cameron, finding the black clad lunatic no longer in pursuit, would either hole up or continue on picking his way more carefully through the darkness. Either way the chase was ended.
Larabee's head slowly stopped whirling but the buzzing in his ears remained and his horse suddenly bolted up and out of the wash and into the dark. As he groggily tried to sit up a sharp pain shot through his cheek and something quite heavy pulled down on skin and muscle.
A second pain shot through his hand as he lifted it to tear at the weight that hung from his face. He grabbed the thick object and pulled hard flinging it as far away from him as possible the skin on his cheek tearing open painfully. Two more piercing pains flashed hotly, one on his lower back and the other on his right thigh.
Unable to utter a sound the buzzing in his ears became a roar and the very earth beneath him moved as rattlesnakes that had just hours before been sunning themselves lazily along the rocks of the dry creek began undulating over the sand and rocks drawn in their night blindness to his heat and movement. Scrambling to his feet Chris scrabbled up the side of the wash on his hands and knees and, once free of the snake pit, knelt on the hard ground.
Chris Larabee panted laboriously as his anger and his fear rose, foaming and bubbling out of his mouth along with the venom and blood from fangs struck so deeply into his cheek that they cut through to his tongue. Death would not be swift but it would be decidedly sure and he could hear his own scream carry for miles across the desert as he bellowed in anger cursing the day he'd been born.
Pitching face first into the sand he could also hear the yipping of the coyotes that had spooked his horse but their night song suddenly ceased as the howl of a lone wolf cut the night. It was a big one and close by. Sire whinnied in fear, the sharp jingle of tack telling Chris that the horse remained close but was ready to bolt yet again.
Unable to rise, the hapless gunman could only turn his head, rubbing sand into the gaping wound on his cheek, and vomit as the paralyzing poison begin to deaden his limbs. He saw the beginnings of disjointed delusions out of the corner of his eye and he was sorely disappointed. He saw neither his wife smiling and beckoning to him nor his son racing toward him. He did however see a bright light but instead of the Almighty a wizened old man bathed in the glow of a lantern walked up to him with a large wolf in tow.
Chris laughed humorlessly at the sight, let out a long breath, closed his eyes slowly and, just before his world ceased to be, heard, "Ah, here you are. The beast showed me the way."
The old man squatted in the dust and spit a stream of tobacco juice off to his side as his gnarled hands reached out to roll the gunman onto his back, Chris' swollen hand coming to rest on his chest. The old man's fingers, crooked with arthritis, his nails long and ragged and caked with dirt grasped the gunman's chin and drew the lantern close. Swollen flesh, mottled purple and yellow, surrounded the two deep wounds on the downed man's cheek and the muscles beneath the taught skin quivered.
"Oh, you were a pretty one, mister. Clever, too, but not so smart as to lay down with serpientes de cascabel." The old one continued to talk as he checked out the fallen man. "Your clothes...the color of mourning...of death. And you wear your gun high up on your hip. A pistolero, I think."
The old man rolled Chris onto his side and shook his head. "I will take you to Señora de las Sombras. She might take pity on you and save your sorry hide. But I'm keeping your gun in case the Lady of the Shadows spares your wretched life and you decide you might want to kill her in return."
Chapter 2
The face of the one the old man called the Lady of the Shadows was ageless. Her olive hued skin had neither the wrinkles of age nor the youthful bloom of innocence. Her hair was heavy, shiny black and long. It flowed down past her slim hips often times mistaken for a veil. Her eyes were dark brown, almost black and sparked with anger.
"Why do you bring me a dead man?" she asked pointedly as the old man shouldered his way through the door of her tiny cabin followed by the wolf, the larger man thrown over his shoulder and carried like so much feed in a sack.
Letting his burden flop bonelessly across the small bed in the corner of the one room shack, the old man stepped back. "Oh, he ain't dead yet...and he was pretty once. You can make him pretty again, maybe keep this one and not live your life alone. It ain't natural," was his reply, broken and breathy from the exertion of hauling the man from the horse to the bed.
The woman, dressed in a plain white cotton shift, stepped up to the side of the bed and looked down at the stranger for long moments. She finally reached out and laid her fingers gently on the swollen black and yellow mass that was his cheek and felt the muscles contract spastically and watched as his eyelids twitched.
"It's too late," the woman proclaimed and pulled her hand away and wiped her fingers on her shift. She turned to face the old man and dismissed him with a wave of her hand. "Take his boots, his pistol and his horse. Come back in two days.
The old man pulled off the stranger's black leather boots, his grunts punctuated by the jingling of the rowels as he labored, then ran his fingers lovingly over the silver inlays before he removed the gun belt with the stag gripped Colt Peacemaker. He grabbed up Chris Larabee's belongings and clasped them tightly to his bony chest. "I won't sell his things just yet because I have faith in you, Señora de las Sombras."
The dark haired woman had many names among the people of the Southwest besides the Lady of the Shadows. Señora Blanca - White Lady - Señora Negra -Black Lady. Some called her La Niña Santa - the Holy Girl and even La Flaca - the Skinny One. But she was most recognized by her given name - Santa Muerte – Holy Death.
She had been given the name by the people of her village when she was born...two days after her mother's apparent suicide by hanging. The devout and the superstitious alike had called her birth an abomination and the village priest had refused to bury her mother on sacred ground...or to baptize her.
"Do as you wish you old fool but see to it that you return in two days. I'll need you to help me bury him," she stated flatly already reconciled to the stranger's fate. It wasn't simply the fact that the gunman had been severely bitten by a number of rattlesnakes but the woman could "see" deep within him and knew that he was already dead…his heart…his soul.
Santa Muerta turned her attention back to the dying man but the old man still insisted, "He'll be pretty again because you are bruha." She huffed and wished the old one would be on his way so the stranger could die in peace.
The wolf lifted his head and with quick, intelligent, yellow eyes followed the old man's shuffling retreat to the door. Sighing audibly he returned his wide head to rest on his paws after the old man laughed knowingly and slammed the door behind him.
The rending of cloth broke the silence as the woman began cutting off the black shirt with a sharp knife exposing Chris' upper torso. His hand, swollen to twice its normal size and with skin pulled so taught that it had started to split and weep bloody fluid from the small fishers, would no longer fit through the sleeve so she slit it neatly up the seam and watched in fascination as the corded muscles of his forearms jumped convulsively along with his biceps.
Rolling him over onto his stomach she pulled off what was left of the shirt and examined the wounds on his back then turned her attention to his pants. Cutting both pant legs up the side and through the waistband, she was able to remove them quickly and assess the remainder of his wounds
Four strikes. Three from smaller snakes from which he might have recovered if he was lucky but a king rattler had bitten him on the face, the puncture wounds far apart denoting a massive snake. The gunman's jaw was slack for a moment between convulsions and she opened his mouth and saw the damage within. The inside of his cheek was hideously swollen and as his jaw snapped shut and his teeth clamped together in a spasm, she wondered if he would suffocate before she could begin to try to draw out the poisons.
"Will you thank me if I save you, dead man? Or will you want to kill me, too?" she asked him as she ran her hand down his uninjured cheek and felt the coarse whiskers and the trembling muscles just beneath the skin.
Well used to and soothed by the woman's voice, the wolf sighed again and continued to watch as she took a seat on a small wooden stool next to the bed. Taking a deep breath she gently ran her fingers across the man's swollen hand, his knuckles, his wrist and finally placed her fingertips directly on the punctures and closed her eyes.
The hands that caressed Chris Larabee felt hot and burned his skin everywhere they touched. Screams echoed in his ears, a man's screams …his. Oh, God, it hurt. His muscles cramped painfully and his breathing became labored. He wanted to give up but something deep inside of him wouldn't let him even when, in his delirium, Sarah tried to kill him with the touch of her burning hands.
Adam finally came and called out to him and, although he wanted to run to the boy, he was held fast, held back by a muted voice. The words were unfamiliar to him and try as he might he could stop neither the mewling sounds that came from his own mouth nor the trickle of tears that ran from his closed eyes.
Chris tried to lift his hand but found that his limbs wouldn't respond to even the simplest of commands. To even take a breath was now a monumental task, one that he felt he might no longer be able to perform as his body continued to convulse.
Lukewarm water wet his dry, cracked lips and he wanted desperately to open his eyes, to look upon the beauty once again that was his wife and as if reading his mind, fingers settled gently on his shuddering eyelids.
For reasons of his own Chris Larabee's body and mind fought the Holy Death every step of the way and at every turn. Even so close to death there was no peace for this man. Santa Muerta placed a few more drops of powdered willow bark in the water she drizzled on his parched lips and he soon slept fitfully even though every muscle in his body continued to twitch and convulse.
After a while the poison became easier to draw out and she slid one hand under his back to lie directly on the snakebite. She ran her other hand over the smooth skin and golden hairs of his well-muscled thigh and rested her fingertips on the puncture wounds there. She closed her eyes and moments later her body began to shake and sweat burst forth from every pour.
The wolf, hearing her labored breath and soft moans, rose up and padded softly to where she sat next to the strange entity. Sniffing her trembling hand, the one that still gently touched the stranger's thigh, the wolf snorted and backed away. He knew the smell of her and he knew the stink of death but this odor, the smell of the poison that emanated from the stranger and threatened to envelope the woman, caused a growl deep within his throat and the hairs to stand up on his ruff.
Chapter 3
"It's all right, wolf," Santa Muerta said through chattering teeth, her lips and face as white as her nightshift, "If he were healthy he would no doubt shoot you down for your nature alone but right now he's as weak as one of the lambs you slaughter."
The wolf blinked as if in understanding then twisted his head violently and growled at her when she raised a hand to caress his big head as she often did. "The poison will be gone by morning and maybe the stranger, too."
She lifted her hand from the wolf's head to stroke Chris Larabee's unharmed cheek and the gunman's eyes flew open. Before she could draw her hand back he grabbed her wrist roughly, painfully and after a few long moments her dark eyes grew wide and she forcefully pulled her hand out of his grasp and let the scream that had bubbled up die in her throat.
The healer then took a quivering and cleansing breath, stared at him for a few seconds, then hissed, "Why don't you close your eyes and sleep?"
The gunman's gaze was sharp as a hawk's one moment then wild and distant, like a glass-eyed paint's, the next and Santa Muerta noted the dark circles and bruised eyelids fairly twitching for what she suspected was now simply a lack of sleep.
"I'm afraid I'll die," he answered honestly in a throaty whisper as fear coiled up inside of him like one of the snakes in the wash and sent it's poisoned tendrils throughout his body.
The Lady just snorted. She didn't believe for a second that this man was afraid of anything, least of all death. For those brief moments he had held tightly onto her wrist she had seen through his own eyes the many men he'd faced over his lifetime and knew he'd felt nothing as he'd shot them down, sometimes justly, other times not. She felt that dying was something he embraced with open arms.
Chris saw the disdain in her eyes, heard it in the disparaging noise she made and grabbed her arm again and tried to will her to believe him. Images of fire flashed through her mind's eye, horrific with unimaginable pain and suffering, and she pulled her arm once more from his grasp. This time she stood up and took a step away from the bed, her blood pounding in her ears.
A moan escaped his lips as his fear continued to consume him and, frantic for the warmth of a human touch, Chris eased himself up on one elbow and threw off the quilt determined to go to her even though he could see that the thought of his touch revolted her. Santa Muerta knew some sort of evil worked through him. An evil as toxic as the snake venom that now flowed through her veins and further weakened her to resist his plight.
Chris only managed to sit up and he slowly stretched out his hand, fingers reaching toward her, his eyes bright with hallucinations and he began to recite; "Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I die before I wake…" The unfinished prayer, which he had recited so often with his son, was said softly and with an almost childlike belief and the woman stared in disbelief at the gunman as he opened his mouth to speak again. Nothing came out as Chris tried again to tell her his secret.
Finally, after a few more false starts, he sighed heavily and finally whispered, "I'm afraid that if I close my eyes, if I dare to sleep tonight, I'll die and finally be made to pay for my sins."
"You're afraid you'll go to hell?" she asked rhetorically her dark eyes staring intently into his.
He lowered his gaze and cried out miserably; "Yes!" and a tear slipped down his face and trailed over the healing wounds on his cheek.
Returning to the bedside the Lady wrapped his cold hand in hers and held it gently over her breast. The frightful images that had raged through him only moments before were quieted and she pushed him back onto the pillow and smiled. "I'll keep you safe," she assured him, "I'll lie with you tonight and protect you from El Diablo. He'll have to come for your eternal soul some other day."
Sighing softly Chris allowed his taught body to relax. She leaned over and helped him turn to face the wall and, although the cabin was stifling hot and sweat ran down between her breasts and down the nape of her neck where her hair hung heavily, the gunfighter began to shiver uncontrollably as even the blaze in the fireplace failed to warm him. Slipping off her nightgown she lowered herself onto the bed beside him and covered them both with the quilts.
"This is the best way to warm you now and to keep you warm throughout the night," she explained moving closer to him. She felt his frigid skin on hers and wrapped her arms around him and he sighed as she added, "and it's the best way to keep you safe."
"Thank you," he whispered fully conscious of her lush breasts pressed up against his bare back and the reaction of his body to the fact.
"I'll leave you two scars…to remember," she told him feeling the wound on his back wet and rough against her skin, "The others will fade quickly but the puncture wounds to the top of your right hand; your gun hand, will remain to remind you that you should be dead."
Santa Muerta had seen good men throw away the precious gift of life time and time again while the evil horded it, fought tooth and nail and even killed to hold onto it. She knew this man was a good man but filled with so much pain that a cold fury drove him to seek revenge. A dish best served cold but once eaten nothing would ease his hunger for those lost to him. He could kill and kill again and still his soul would be empty.
"Hopefully every time you draw your gun you'll remember that life is a precious gift...no matter how painful," she added but sleep had already overtaken the gunman.
Chapter 4
"Looks like blood," the longhaired tracker said as he knelt by the arroyo and poked at the ground. He picked up a piece of dried matter, crushed it between his fingers and held it close to his nose. "Puke," he then said, the distinctive odor still faintly present in the sun-baked offering.
Peering over the embankment and down into the dry stream bed JD could see the distinct imprints of shod hooves. "Down here, Vin," he shouted and pointed to where a horse had stumbled down the embankment, stopped and then come back up a few feet further down the wash.
JD stepped closer to traverse the steep bank and sand and rocks spilled down the hill before him and the silence was broken by warning rattles. The kid launched himself back and away from the edge and, landing on his backside, turned his head and stared up into Buck Wilmington's concerned face. The ladies' man offered him a hand up and brushed the dirt off of the younger man's seat.
"Always best to look 'fore ya' leap, J.D. although it looks like somebody didn't heed the warnin'," Buck then added pointing to the boot and hand holds coming back up the wash in front of the two of them. The young Bostonian's face was positively white with fear, his eyes wide with shock and when he had recovered somewhat he smiled sheepishly at him.
"Mr. Tanner, have a look at this." Ezra stood a few feet away from the others, his coat powdered with a dusting of dry desert residue draped over his arm.
Vin walked over and squatted next to where the gambler stood and looked at the three sets of tracks, those of a man and a horse and, of all things, a wolf. Vin ventured, "Mighty strange travelin' companions if you ask me."
"You think it's Chris' horse?" JD asked leaning over the Texan's shoulder to get a better look.
Vin figured the boot prints were too small to be Chris' and the wolf prints were unusual but not unheard of in the desert. Only the hoof prints gave him some small comfort. At least Chris' horse wasn't down and maybe the gunman been aboard when Sire had been led away. "Chris' horse has a sand split and Yosemite fitted him with a special shoe a few weeks ago," Vin told them.
Well, whoever he was he was more than likely dead by now, Nathan thought but kept his foregone conclusion to himself. Someone had been snake bit and sick but there was no sign of a body. If the rider was as full of venom as the healer believed him to be even the deserts most voracious scavengers would have given the corpse a wide birth.
Josiah, not ready to believe their fearless leader and friend had been unfortunate enough to have ridden into a gully full of rattlers, said, "Could be a hundred other horses with that kinda shoe."
"Only one way to find out," he said as he picked up Peso reigns and swung up into his saddle. The others followed suit and the six of them headed due east.
Santa Muerta walked to the edge of the porch and listened as six voices carried on the hot wind. They were close and made the wolf anxious. "Yes, I hear them, too," she said petting the beast's massive head soothingly, "They are near...but still so very, very far away."
The gunfighter groaned and she returned to his bedside. "You hear them, too, don't you Chris...Christopher," she whispered rolling his name off of her tongue as she looked down on him. She thought he was still asleep but his eyes fluttered opened, his lids heavy, and he smiled weakly.
He thought he'd been dreaming when he heard the voices of Vin and the others and he half expected them to come walking through the door at any moment but the woman only smiled and sat down on the bed next to him.
"They won't find you. You are far too lost," she told him and believing her he closed his eyes again. Taking a wet cloth from a water bucket next to the bed she gently bathed his brow and his flushed cheeks, the one almost fully healed. She continued down to his chin, the cloth tugging gently on his whiskers, then pulled back the blanket that covered him and bathed the sweat from his chest, her ministrations clearly arousing him as she pulled the blanket lower.
As she continued to listen to the outside world she was startled when her patient sat up. He reached for her and dragged her down on the bed to lie next to him and kissed her hungrily, desperately. Santa Muerta hesitated only a moment before she opened her mouth and her body to him granting the gunfighter sanctuary between her legs and in her arms...if only for a little while.
Later, as they lay together in the evening's twilight, she said to him, "Your name, it means the anointed one, the messiah. Are you the redeemer of the men who search so diligently for you? Are you their salvation?"
Chris shook his head sadly. "I can't even save myself," he admitted to her with a halfhearted laugh.
"Then why do they bother to look?" she asked him as she ran her fingers along the faded fang marks on his thigh.
Chris closed his eyes wearily and shook his head. "I don't know," he told her truthfully.
"There are six men who search, each for a different reason. One looks to you as he would a father while another has grudgingly grown to respect you. One has healed your body while another has soothed your soul. One thinks of you as a brother while the last cherishes your friendship above all others."
"And when push comes to shove I can't save any of 'em. Not my wife and son. Not any of 'em!" he finished angrily.
"If they were lost would you look for them?" she asked and he thought it was a foolish question.
"Of course I would," he answered indignantly.
"Why?" she asked simply.
"Because they've stood by me, " he answered without hesitation.
"For most men that would be enough," she said softly.
"Because they stood by me, " he answered without hesitation.
"For most men that would be enough," she said softly.
Chapter 5
Santa Muerta looked down at the man lying next to her and, gently placing her fingertips on his eyelids, Chris Larabee slept. It was a healing sleep for his body if not for his soul. That, she feared, she could not save. He had told her about his wife and his son and the vengeance that had fueled him from one death to the next and admitted that it had taken such a heavy toll on him that the thought of death was almost appealing.
He had bought a small plot of land and built a cabin and a corral on it but spent precious little time there, choosing instead to guard a small prairie town named Four Corners with a small band of men, the same men who now searched so diligently for him.
But the altruistic venture was nothing more than a ruse. Four Corners was not a home to him but simply a home base from which to hunt and she wondered why the others even bothered. Stepping outside of her home Santa Muerta looked off into the darkness. They were still there, six of them camped around a small fire and she stepped from the porch, the wolf by her side, and made her way to them.
The painted pony smelled the wolf first and moved closer to the other horses in the string and she told her companion to return to the small rise in the distance while she stood in the darkness taking the measure of each of the men as they talked softly amongst themselves, planning to fan out and search a wider area at first light.
"Who would care if Chris Larabee was dead?" she asked softly and the young one heard her.
"What kinda question is that, Vin?" J.D. asked and turned to the longhaired tracker.
"What are you talkin' about, J.D.?" Vin asked peevishly as he hadn't said a word.
"I heard you," J.D. insisted angrily, "You said 'Who would care if Chris was dead'."
Vin looked questioningly at the young peacekeeper then turned to stare out into the darkness, his senses heightening, the hair on his scalp and arms standing upright.
"He does have a certain death wish," Ezra commented, speaking the truth as he knew it, and no one contradicted him.
Not even Chris's oldest friend. "Sometimes I think it would be for the best..." Buck started but was cut off by J.D.
"Best for who?"
"Best for whom," Ezra corrected poking a stick into and stirring the fire.
"Not for him!" J.D. said hotly then added more gently but no less adamantly, "and not for me! Chris is a hero, he's like Bat Masterson, he's like Wyatt Earp..."
Buck Wilmington snorted interrupting J.D. excited speech. He knew that Chris would cringe at the notion of being called a hero and being compared to a man who wore a sissified bowler hat and one who "buffaloed" men with the butt of a gun instead of arresting them outright. "Whoa there now, J.D." Buck cautioned but the young man was determined to speak his mind.
"He's like Wild Bill..." J.D. continued and Buck just rolled his eyes. J.D. saw him in the firelight and sputtered, "He's like...he's like..."
"Like the pa you never had?" Nathan asked him, gently placing his hand on the boy's shoulder, "He's a fine man to look up to. J.D. and I'm proud to call him my friend."
"I can see that," Buck said softly and he could. He had seen it since the very first day and he was fine with the boy admiring his oldest friend so much.
"Chris Larabee's a hard man but I'd be sorely saddened if he was to die," Josiah concurred, "I think God would be, too."
"Chris Larabee is a hardened case and a difficult man to know, that is for certain," Ezra agreed and added, "but I like to think that I have persevered long enough and worked hard enough for him to finally trust me and consider me a friend, as I do him, and Lord knows I haven't many."
Buck doubted that Chris would ever truly trust Ezra Standish but felt he indeed considered the Southerner a friend. "Hell, I didn't mean anything by it," Buck tried to explain tossing another log onto the fire, "It's just that I knew him before Sarah and Adam died and things are different now. He's different now and a lot of people would be happy to see him dead."
"But some wouldn't and right now that's all that counts," Vin said with finality.
His voice carried out into the darkness and Santa Muerta turned to go.
Chapter 6
The Lady of the Shadows made him sleep deeply and, as she watched him, she realized that his heart was so hardened after the deaths of his wife and son that he couldn't see the good that he had done nor appreciate the friends he had collected along the way despite letting no one get close to him. It was then that Santa Muerte made her decision and when he awoke the fire was long dead and he was alone.
Underneath his black hat, a pair of old brown saddle pants lay on the end of the bed along with a white shirt and a faded serape to protect him from the elements, the cold of the desert night and the blaze of the white hot sun, in case he couldn't find those who searched for him. As Chris Larabee dressed in silence, his thoughts jumbled and fragmented, he noticed the two newly formed puncture scars on the top of his gun hand and raised it to his cheek and felt only the rough stubble of whiskers.
When he pulled on the pants he felt a twinge in his right thigh but saw no scars other than those he was familiar with. He found the small of his back was a little sore as he slipped the shirt over his head but the skin was smooth to the touch. As he pulled on his boots and tried to piece it all together he remembered that there had been a woman and his groin tightened at the memory.
Chris Larabee also knew he had been very sick and more scared then he'd ever been before in his life and, pushing the unnerving memories from his mind, he opened the door and stepped out onto the porch. There he found his gun and holster hanging on the railing and, slipping the rig on, he buckled it tightly, familiarly around his trim waist.
Flexing the fingers of his right hand he drew the Colt and it cleared the holster a fraction of a second before he fired, his bullet hitting a nearby cactus dead on, the apparent damage to his hand affecting neither his speed nor his accuracy.
Pulling the serape over his head Chris stepped off of the porch in search of his horse and wondered if Sire come through this nightmare with him unscathed or was his snake bit carcass rotting somewhere out in the desert. He took a few more steps out onto the hard packed earth and scoured the horizon. Maybe he was tied up around the back of the cabin, he thought, but when he turned there was nothing behind him. No horse, no cabin, nothing but desert.
Squeezing his eyes shut tightly the gunman shook his head hoping his vision was playing tricks on him but when he opened them again he realized that he had quite possibly just lost his mind. But what was more disconcerting than that was the fact that he was now alone and on foot in the middle of the desert without food or water.
Chris remembered that he had started his now more than likely suicidal ride due east in the small town of Blood Gulch. In his haste to catch the rider he had put many miles between it and where he had fallen but there were probably just as many miles due west to Four Corners as due east back to where he had started. Whatever his decision it would take a miracle to get to either town.
He stood for a good long time, his feelings running the gamut from disbelief to anger, to self-pity, for his current predicament, to self-loathing, for the recklessness that had brought him to this crossroad. Weighing his options he figured his best bet was to head west toward Four Corners and hope that someone considered him worthy of salvation, if only in body. Adjusting his gun belt and placing his hat on his head Chris Larabee started his trek for home and, as he walked, he prayed to God.
Chapter 7
Josiah Sanchez stood up in his stirrups and shaded his eyes as he looked toward the east. Settling back down in the saddle he motioned for Vin and the tracker walked Peso up next to him. "I can't be sure but I think I see something...dead ahead," the preacher told the tracker pointing toward the shimmering heat waves in the distance.
Pulling his spyglass from inside his shirt Vin snapped it open and put it to his eye asking, "Whatdaya think it is?"
Josiah shrugged his massive shoulders and said, "I can't tell if it's a man or just my eyes hoping against hope that it's the answer to my prayers."
Vin surveyed the horizon but couldn't see anything but cactus and mesquite. Lowering the brass telescope he sighed, "I don't see nothin'"
"There! About ten o'clock!" Josiah shouted and Vin again lifted the spyglass to his eye as the others rode up abreast of them.
"You see anything, Vin?" J.D. asked anxiously his nervousness causing his horse to dance skittishly under him.
"Cactus, cactus, cactus..." Vin told the young peacekeeper then suddenly stopped his sweeping motion, "By God, there's somethin' out there and it's moving this way!"
The odds were against it being Chris Larabee but nevertheless the six of them headed east one last time before their own lack of food and water forced them to return to town.
As they drew closer they saw it was indeed a man but one dressed in dun colored pants and a torn faded gray serape. The man’s hat however was black and familiar in size and shape and Vin knew immediately that it was Chris'.
The knowledge gave him little solace until the stranger pushed the brim back to reveal sharp green eyes and a genuine smile and he let out a shout. After three days of frantic searching they had finally found Chris Larabee alive and, other than a new wardrobe, a few days growth of beard and two finely defined new scars on the back of his right hand, he seemed no worse for the wear and genuinely relieved and please to see them all.
It was only afterward, on the long ride back to town doubling with Vin, that the gunman became even more distant than usual, a reaction they all chalked up to the loss of his horse.
But Sire was neither dead nor missing and, after a hot bath, a change of clothing and much to Chris' surprise, he found his horse tied to the railing in front of the saloon where Buck Wilmington and Josiah Sanchez stood on the boardwalk staring stupidly down the street.
Running his hands solicitously over his horse Chris found him to be sound, well fed and watered and retired to the saloon with the others. He stood at the far end of the bar, a shot glass and bottle of Rye before him, and listened to Buck as he spoke animatedly.
"I may have been out in the sun too long or I just might be plumb loco but I could swear that the old man who brought your horse back was, just for a second, the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my entire life. Why she even winked at me," the tall ladies' man said as he continued to pace the barroom floor in agitation.
Vin's eyes followed him as he moved to and fro a few more times before he stepped directly into Buck's path and stopped the larger man's forward motion. The tracker spoke softly to him, "The Indians call them skin walkers."
Meaning neither harm nor disrespect, Buck would have ordinarily laughed off Vin's spiritual beliefs simply because he was a man firmly rooted in the here and now and more than a little skeptical of things he couldn't grasp with his own two hands or see with his own two eyes, like the breast of a comely saloon girl or the golden hue of a freshly pulled beer. But when he stared into his friend's eyes and saw only Vin's unabashed acceptance of what he himself had just said, he gave him a slight nod.
"Well, I for one vote for plumb loco," J.D. avowed, "And thinkin' that a smelly old geezer was anything but that…a smelly old geezer… is just plain hooey." JD turned his back on the two of them and with his elbows planted firmly on the bar he took another sip of his own beer.
"Maybe I have been too long without the company of a sweet young thing," Buck conceded returning to the bar and his unattended beer, "But whoever, or whatever, she was she was a beauty." Buck sighed audibly into his mug and added wistfully, "Hair as black as a crow's wing and eyes the color of midnight."
"And whiskers down to here!" J.D. added with a laugh, his hands intimating a beard.
Vin stepped up to the bar between Buck and Josiah and waited in silence as Inez placed a beer in front of him.
"It's maldición de la bruja, a witch's curse," she said, her quiet voice reaching his ears as she moved away wiping the bar with a wet rag.
"Veneficus maledictio," Josiah said in Latin but it didn't quite explain what he had seen. "I saw her, too," the big man said, "Hair as black as coal and long, real long, almost like a shroud. But she wasn't beautiful. She was hideous with a face like a skull."
Chris stood three feet down the bar, a shot glass of rye whiskey poised at his lips, the scars on his right hand plainly visible in the mirrored back bar as he tried to recall memories that grew fainter by the minute. When Inez heard Josiah's description the gunman heard her sharp intake of breath and she made the sign of the cross hastily over her ample breasts.
Whispering reverently she said, "The Holy Death" and looked at Chris Larabee in a new light realizing that the hardened gunslinger had been taken by Mictecacihuatl, the lady of the land of the dead, but, instead of taking him to her realm, she had let him go…but to what end?
Santa Muerte, the Mexican's version of the grim reaper, was not who Buck had seen and he started to tell them so emphatically but Chris cut him off.
"I was with her...in the desert," he said his voice was soft and almost wistful as it reached out and grabbed Nathan's attention.
"Well, I know you was tended to by somebody out there," the healer said from a near table where he sat with Ezra, "We just couldn't find anybody. No old man. No woman. No wolf. No nothin'. Just a bunch a tracks leadin' away from where you was thrown that we followed and…"
"It was if you'd disappeared into thin air," Ezra finished and downed a shot of whiskey as Nathan continued.
"An' them scars. I can see you been bad snake-bit on your hand but them scars 'pear to be old, almost gone, and with that much venom in ya', ya' should be dead, not standin' here at the bar with a drink in your hand," said and rubbed his hand across his face in exasperation.
"Just what did happened to you out there, Chris?" Josiah asked as Enez poured another shot of rye in the gunman's glass.
"I don't know, Josiah," Chris admitted, "Maybe it was some kind of divine intervention. Maybe it's like Inez says. Maybe she was a saint sent by God to save my sorry sinner's ass." He downed the shot and grabbing the bottle took a seat at an empty table.
J.D. followed in his wake and, without being invited, boldly sat across from him. "More like the devil if you ask me," he suggested wide eyed, leaning forward, "Or maybe a witch."
Chris didn't want to continue to talk about events he couldn't quit remember or believe and pouring himself another drink he chose to ignore the kid.
Vin sauntered over and took a seat next to him and settling back in his chair the tracker lifted his mug of beer and toasted, "Well, for whatever reason...here's to saints."
Chris agreed and allowed a smile to cross his handsome visage as he lifted his shot glass he added softly, "and to sinners."
FIN
Feedback to: Cowgirl_from_hell@msn.com
Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed my little piece on Chris Larabee. Eventually there will be seven.