Pins (33)

 

New Mexico
1849

The heat grew as the morning wore on. Emmett removed the hacendado's Remington, tied him up with hackamore rope, and kept the rifle trained on him. He gave Abigail time to rest and recover as best she could, but he did not want to linger for fear the peon would return with reinforcements. 

The hacendado sweated and stewed, but he had been pampered too long, and had become a coward. Abigail laid out on the pallet bed, and the hacendado's wife prepared them some quesadilla and dried carne asada from her saddle bag supplies. She seemed in awe of them. Emmett waited until it began to cool off in the late afternoon. He wanted to get a good head-start on whatever the peon might unleash from the hacienda. 

The sky had a deep magenta glow and was brushed with downy cirrus clouds. Emmett took the hacendado's gun and bullet belts and left him hobbled in the shack. They went through the Mexican's horses and filled Buck's saddle bags with food, utensils, water canteens, bedroll and blankets. He dragged the comandante's body out into the dust, and left him for the vultures and varmints.

Before they left, they constructed a fifteen-pin safe shape around the wooden box. Abigail helped the hacendado's wife into a chair by the box. The sick woman sat shivering whilst a shimmering umbrella unfolded over her. 

Emmett collapsed the shape and they packed up and rode off, leaving her sitting in the early evening warmth. Her cheeks were flushed and rosy, and she did not cough. She sat calmly with her palms spread out on the wooden box and watched them ride into the arid flatland. They hit the crest of a broad valley, and when they looked back her hand was raised.

They dipped into the valley, and Emmett spurred the horse west as best he could. West. It was always on his mind. Channel Islands. The Farm. The Halfway Place. They crossed a stretch of stark lowlands and saw a line of rugged mountains far to their right. Patches of dry yellow grass were dotted amongst the dust. Clumps of spiny, whip-like ocotillo sprang up, and soon they were passing through bushier stretches thick with creosote and mesquite. They trotted down a steep decline and hit a faded dirt trail that twisted through a large meadow. There were thickets of aspen and douglas fir, and further beyond was the rustling wall of a great forest. 

Emmett steered Buck towards the safety and shade of an aspen copse, and they made a small camp while the horse grazed. He had taken flint and a tinder box from the comandante's saddle bags, and risked a small fire beneath the canopy of trees. Abigail heated some beans in a covered pan, and they ate them with flour tortillas and cheese. 

They unpacked their bedroll and laid out amongst the trees. It was a cool night. Stars seeded above, and a glassy moon was ground out through the black sky. Neither of them spoke for a long time. They lay in shock, turning events over in their minds.

'Good lord,' Emmett breathed, eventually.

'Yes indeedy,' Abigail whispered, and her voice cracked. Emmett felt panic creeping over him as he lay.

'We'd best git a couple hours and cut stick while it's still dark,' he said. Abigail rustled beside him and sighed.

'Yes, boss,' she muttered. Emmett tucked his hands behind his head and watched the rippling roof of lime-green leaves. Abigail rolled round and pulled her blanket over her shoulder.

'Sure got a lot of folk after us now,' she said. 'You're buildin' up quite a following.'

'Yup,' Emmett breathed. Abigail leaned over and poked him in the shoulder.

'And they're all awful,' she said. 'You couldn't even of picked some drunk bandits to chase us about. You went and got monsters and whole darn haciendas.'

Emmett closed his eyes.

'Yup,' he said. He could feel her watching him.

'How's your chest now?' he said, trying to change the subject.

'Fine,' she said, and frowned. 'That shape fixed me right up. It don't feel... it feels like a different kind of rememberin'. Like it happened to someone else. I can see it, but I cain't feel it, and it feels like lookin' at a picture. I don't wonder there's folk that won't stop at nothing to git them things.'

Emmett rolled away from her. The conversation was prompting images to form in his mind. He saw the blood pumping from her chest again. The comandante leering. Sleep. Sleep was a respite. 

'Are you still scared?' Abigail whispered.

'Abi,' Emmett groaned.

'Just before you said you was so scared you couldn't take it,' Abigail said. 'I was just checkin', that's all.'

She reached out and patted his head, and he frowned.

'Are you, Emmett?'

Leaves rustled in the breeze. Emmett ground his palms into his eyes.

'Always,' he whispered. There was a silence punctuated by Buck's soft nickering.

'Like how bad?' Abigail said. 'Out of ten?'

'Darn it, Abigail.'

She eased over until she was pressed against his back. Ash blew from the remains of the fire.

'It's just so I know how bad it is,' she said. 'Then we can work on it and make it better. So how much out of ten?'

'Well, what are you?' Emmett snapped.

Abigail was quiet.

'I'm a five,' she said. Emmett rolled back round and looked at her.

'A five? You just got shot in the dang chest.'

'Well, maybe I ain't as much of an old croaker as you,' she said. 'So, what are you?'

'A ten,' Emmett groaned. 'I am a big old croaker.'

Abigail flapped a hand over his chest.

'Well, that smelly deuce that shot me kilt hisself,' she said. 'So maybe that knocks like two off?'

Emmett rubbed his temples.

'What?' he said.

'So you'd be an eight now,' she went on, counting her fingers. 'Then tonight we'll try and knock more off. We'll ride fast and escape them all, and that'll definitely knock at least three off. Then you'll be a five too.'

'Right,' Emmett sighed.

'So do you feel like an eight now then?' Abigail said, poking him again.

'I do,' he muttered. 

'There,' she said, 'pretty soon you'll be cool as a cucumber.'

Emmett adjusted his arm, and she slid her head into his armpit. Her frizzy hair nuzzled into him. He closed his eyes and saw black threads spoking over a dusty plain. 

*

He awoke several hours later in a cold sweat. It was still night. His mouth felt warm and sticky, and when he sat up a thick black fluid dribbled out of his lips. He coughed and more fluid oozed out, an oilish slick. 

He looked down at Abigail's sleeping shape. He caught a strange vision: a monolithic rectangular structure, blotting out a sweep of stars. 

He remembered it. He had seen it before. The same disturbing image had come to him when he looked into the cloth-faced man's eyes, at the saloon in the boomtown.

Abigail turned in her sleep, and he leaned down and clasped a hand around her chin. The need to survive came over him, and it was a changed and separate need. He eased her mouth open slowly, and moved over her. Black drops dribbled from his mouth. He wanted to feed her, and he wanted to survive. He did not understand the mechanics, but it felt natural. It felt like something he should be doing. Something he had to do. 

Abigail's eyes snapped open, and she slapped him and crawled away. He held his cheek and wiped webby black strings from his chin. The feeling passed. He remembered her and he remembered the world and sat shaking. Abigail dragged her blanket over and sat against a tree, away from him.

'We need to get to this Farm quick, Emmett,' she whispered.

*

They packed up whilst it was still dark, and crossed the remainder of the meadow. The trees grew thicker until they were riding beneath a seemingly impenetrable wall of trunks. A dense mesh of fir tree needles whispered and moved before them. 

The dirt trail vanished at the entrance to the forest, and the horse stepped anxiously around the periphery. They tried to prompt him in several times, but always after several feet the strapping trunks and lattice of crooked branches proved impossible to negotiate. They backed up and loped along the fringe of the forest, trying to find a way around.

The horse came up over a rise, and they rode down into a canyon beneath. The dark line of trees vanished as the horse stepped over jumbles of scree, and red granite walls rose up in their place. They passed cottonwood and oak groves. As the land levelled out they stepped through a bank of trees, and there was a small rocky pool below. They dismounted and tested the water; it was a hot spring. They removed their clothes and washed in it. Afterwards they followed the spring to a nearby stream, watered the horse, and filled their canteens. 

Abigail hooked her feet in the girth, and Emmett leaned over her and gripped the reins. They trotted out of the canyon and saw a buttery merigold line soaking the dark horizon. The horse slipped on the rough decline, and Emmett lost his hold on the reins. He grasped a handful of the mane, and the horse tossed its head and grunted as he guided it through prickly pear thickets. They hit the base. The rising sun illuminated a parched and bleak land before them.

Emmett dismounted and stepped around the bottom of the escarpment, seeking a suitable spot to rest. The prickly pear was abundant, and the rocky stretches were too open. They were flanked on their right by a stretch of rugged mountain ranges. It seemed unlikely to him that anyone would find them in such a lonely isolated spot, but nevertheless he wanted the security of cover. He turned and looked back towards the red cliffs. As the amber light washed across them, he saw the silhouette of an enormous black bear lumbering down the slope. It was heading in their direction. 

He raced back to the horse and hauled himself onto its back, spurring it into an immediate lope, and then a dead run. They stuck close to the slopes of the mountain, galloping over basalt rock, and as the land climbed imperceptibly they hit an elevated plateau dotted with fan-like crested saguaros. The wildly branching, bulbous cacti arms seemed to reach out for them as they galloped past, their ridges edged with needle-sharp spines. A herd of bighorn sheep scattered before them. 

The land flattened out and the sun beat down. Emmett felt Abigail swaying and dozing before him. His clothing was hot and sticky, and his lips were chapped and dry. He gave the horse a one-rein cue. It slowed to a canter, and he cast about the stark wilderness. 

Beyond a clump of cholla there was a warped elephant tree, its stout branches twisting away from one another like wrinkled, fleshy trunks. He guided the horse over to the shade of the tree and lifted Abigail down. She stood blinking and nodding as he laid out their bedroll, too tired to talk. 

He hobbled the horse to the twisting branches. As soon as he lay down beside Abigail, a large scorpion scuttled over the bedroll between them, and he shot back up. She joined him in sitting against the elephant tree trunk, and they watched a dry breeze stir up sand across the plains.

'I ain't knocked nothin' off my score today, Abi,' he said. Her head bobbed, and she fell asleep in his arms. 

He sat watching the dirt ground and fighting sleep. His head was beginning to cloud when he heard a deep rumbling out on the plains. He held Abigail tighter without thinking, and she opened her eyes. The low roll grew, and he felt the earth beneath them vibrating. 
 

 

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