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Sands of Sedona
Copyright 1982-2003 TrixiePixGraphics
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Sands of Sedona -- Western Fiction
Approx. 67962 Words
Chapter Nine
John slept poorly next to Chowder for most of the night. Before first light he saddled Chowder and rode off into the hills. Again, he'd been in town too long. He needed to think. He needed a place to think. The hills seemed to be the only place he could do that.
He found his previous campsite between the two tall pines a few hours after dark. He thought there'd been potential in that spot for tranquillity. He needed tranquillity to think clearly, and it seemed that thinking clearly was always something he was struggling to do.
John set up camp and cooked a turkey he'd killed on the way. He'd killed it neatly with an eight inch shotgun he carried for snakes. He cooked it slowly, and seasoned it until it made his mouth water. Chowder didn't care for turkey, and John offered him none anyway.
He hobbled the horse and let him go. He'd seen mustangs in the area. Chowder never left the campsite for more than an hour when he was hobbled. He always came shuffling back, to make sure everything in camp was okay and that John was still where he could find him if something particularly scary came along. Chowder was always on the lookout for bears when he was in tree country. Chowder didn't like bears at all.
John was more at ease on this night than on his previous visit to the spot. Two of the men who'd murdered his family were dead. He felt himself lucky to have gotten the two. He had considered that he may never find any of them. John did feel an emptiness. He felt it not as a result of remorse over killing the two men, but because he had not made them suffer as he'd hoped. He pondered the feeling. He wasn't sure what it meant. It made him uneasy.
He was glad that he had come to terms with Kelly over Joe's death. He knew she could never like him as a friend, but she did not seem to hate him, or want to kill him. He wondered if that would be how Joey felt too, once he was told the truth. Kelly said she didn't plan to tell him for a while. He had been through enough in the preceding few days. She would tell him, she said, when she felt in her heart it was the right time. John respected that, although he couldn't help feeling that he was shirking his moral responsibility. After all, he had killed the boy's father. He should take responsibility for his action and bear the brunt of the boy's wrath, if that's the way it went.
John had had the sense that he was being followed as he rode up into the high country. Chowder had told him. Normally, he would have built his fire and moved off half a mile to sleep, but he had seen so much trouble in the past week that he felt a little more would be no real inconvenience. He had no sense that the other two killers were in the area, though he hadn't a clue as to where they might be, either. If someone was following him, it was likely a garden variety robber. The thought of robbers didn't bother him much tonight. Hell, he thought-- he might catch the thief, tie him up, and force him to engage in some stimulating conversation. He wished he'd talked more with Sid. Sid, he thought, probably had interesting things to say. It was a pity that whatever the old pirate might have had to say could never be heard.
Still John Hannal wasn't as foolhardy as his mood. After consuming the entirety of his turkey he built the fire up and moved off forty yards to sleep. His only dilemma was that Chowder kept finding him.
John drifted in and out of sleep. He half expected a visitor, but for some reason he was not overly worried. He slept lightly and was confident he would hear anyone coming, and if they came afork a wild horse, Chowder would surely invite them in and awaken everyone in the process.
Shortly after bedding down he heard Chowder blow softly as he looked up from his grazing. A few minutes later the horse nickered. At first John thought that mustangs were approaching. Chowder wouldn't nicker to a domestic horse, though he might, John thought, nicker to a person he liked.
John was instantly up with his Walker in his hand with the hammer back. He had an unobstructed view of the campfire, which was now just red embers. Still, the moon was now half full, and the Eastern rim was brightening. He could see the area clearly.
He heard twigs break as something approached the fire. This relaxed him, for whatever it was made no effort to sneak. Presently a horse's head came into view, then the entire horse. A figure was slumped over the saddle horn; the rider looked to be wounded.
John didn't believe it was a trap; still, he approached warily. The horse looked familiar. Then he recognized little Joey. John spoke to him and he struggled to sit up. Joey tried to answer but could only mumble. John turned Joey's face toward the moon. The child's face was blistered and raw. Little Joey couldn't open his mouth.
John carried him from the saddle and placed him near the fire. He was half dead from thirst and the sun and he was so stiff from riding that much of his body did not work at all. He was savagely sunburned; the backs of his hands were blistered and his nose was bleeding.
John pried his dried lips apart and poured some water into the small opening. That loosened his mouth, and after a few moments he was able to open it completely. Joey's voice was froggy but he managed to explain what he was doing there.
"I brung my mom's mare," Joey said. "I just wanted to ride with you. But you never stopped!" He said incredulously. Joey had never ridden sixty miles nonstop before-- had never dreamed of such a thing. He'd brought no water at all, and not even a hat. His brains are half cooked, John thought. He would have a bad case of sunstroke.
"You shouldn't have done that Joey." John's voice was understanding. "What if you'd lost my trail?"
"I did a couple a times," Joey said. "But Chowder is easy to see. I kept seeing him way up ahead. I wanted to go back, but I thought I might get lost. I-- I think I fell asleep after a while. I think Marietta found you all on her own."
"I guess it's good you kept coming ahead. Your mare would have found her way home," John said, "but she might have taken her time about it." The mare might have taken several days to meander homeward.
John realized that Chowder's one real shortcoming was that he was albino. John had ridden a white horse named Silver in his rustler patrol days, but the horse was forever getting him shot at. It was like riding a big target, especially in any kind of moon. In those cases a white horse is almost luminescent. In the day, even on the brightest days, the horse stuck out like a sore thumb; his color did not offer camouflage in any type of terrain or brush. The horse had only been useful for sneaking and hiding when it was snowing.
"I reckon we'd better get you home," John told the boy. "Your mother will be combing the countryside about now."
"She knows I followed you," Joey said. "She saw me leavin' a little ways behind you, and she waved to me. But I reckon she didn't expect me to go so far. Why'd you go so far, John?"
"Well, this is just a place I wanted to go to," he said. "A lot has happened, Joey, and I wanted a place where I could think and have some peace. I've been here before."
Joey looked up and said weakly, "I like the trees, John."
"We better get started back, or your mother will die of worry."
But just then Joey began to heave. It was the sun. He was far too sick to travel.
They camped for another day and a night. Joey was still sick, but the heaving had nearly stopped. John hadn't been able to get more than a sip of water into the boy, and no food. John ate the last of what he'd packed. He couldn't hunt; he'd not wanted to leave the boy.
On the second day Joey was still sheet white. John felt for him; he had been that sick on occasion. It was better, he thought, to suffer a bullet wound or a knife stabbing or a broken leg, than to feel like Joey did. He would be sick for a long time, John knew. He had seen men get so sunstroke that they were ill for several months, and didn't feel quite right for half a year. Joey was young; he would recover better than an old man. Still, this would be an experience he wouldn't soon forget.
John had been weighing the benefits of getting Joey back to his mother against the discomfort of making the boy ride. Kelly was probably combing the hills, without sleep, with whatever men from the town she could entice to help. The boy had been violently ill. Now, with Joey able to stand wobbly for a moment, John thought it was time to get moving. His mother would be nearly insane with worry. He hoped no one would think he had kidnapped the boy. Many of the residents of Paydirt were illogical to say the least; they were downright stupid to put it plainly.
John and Joey rode through the morning and afternoon. The pace was slow. Many times Joey begged to stop; he just couldn't go another step. John immediately stopped at his requests and helped him down, and sat with him until he felt strong enough to go on another mile. It wasn't that the boy would die had John pressed on at a faster clip, but rather that he empathized with the child so much that he had to stop when Joey was feeling especially poorly.
By afternoon the boy hadn't heaved for several miles. That was a good sign, and John was able to get him to swallow one sip of water. Joey hadn't wanted it, but just the act of choking it down would get the body used to the idea of it, and perhaps, in a while, he could swallow some more.
Joey was still badly dehydrated from his sixty mile ride across the desert in one hundred degree heat and penetrating sun. John reflected that the boy was exceptionally lucky that his mother's mare had kept on the trail and stumbled into camp hours after Joey gave up. On a different horse, the outcome might have been tragic.
They had covered barely fifteen miles toward home when John spotted the silhouette of several horses on a ridge behind them. Chowder had been skitterish and kept turning back to look. It was doubtful Chowder saw them in the daylight, but he knew they were there. John finally stopped and turned him around and scanned through his binoculars. He could barely see the horses even then.
At first it appeared to be a band of riders, but John dismounted and steadied the binoculars against a rock; it was only a herd of mustangs. Sometimes mustangs in that part of New Mexico could be bothersome. John noted them and rode on.
At the rate they were traveling, they'd have to stop and camp that night, before reaching town.
Two hours later John reined down into an arroyo. There was a muddy seep at the bottom of it, likely left over from the hard rains the previous week. A few more days in the sun and it would be dry. He never missed an opportunity to water his horse or fill his canteen, even with dirty water. You could always pour the dirty water out if you found better. On the New Mexico ranges, you never knew when you would be pursued by irate Indians or dumb bandits, and may not have access to water as readily as you'd like.
The mud was deep and soft; he cautioned Joey to stay back, and he dismounted and let Chowder pick his way, squishing heavily into the sandy muck to the water's dirty edge. The water was as bad as any he'd seen. Chowder agreed. He sniffed it several times, then looked at John, apparently in disbelief that his master would ask him to drink anything that unpalatable. The horse sipped at it a few times-- he seemed to understand the importance of drinking when he could, but in the end, the horse concluded that was enough of that. He jerked back away from it and would have no more.
John was about to ask Joey to dismount so his mare could squish through the mud and make up her own mind about the water, when he heard a buzzing. It was a buzzing that could not be mistaken; he'd heard it a million times. He'd heard it all of his life.
One summer, during a year in which the rattlesnakes found it particularly easy to flourish around Walker, he had killed over three hundred, and he'd only killed those that he deemed too impolite or aggressive to have around the ranch. It seemed that all he did was kill snakes that year. He'd seen only a dozen around the spread the year before, and saw only a dozen or so the following year. That one year, however, they were everywhere. It was three years later his son was lost.
During that snaky summer Chowder had taken a memorable spill. John was just loping him along on a straight, flat stretch of path not a mile from the house when he went down like a train wreck. The horse had a tendency to go to sleep at the oddest times when he was younger.
John flew clear as Chowder's great bulk hit the ground. John felt the thud just behind him and thought, in that split second, that was fine. At least the big brute had managed not to fall on him. But John's relief was too quick in coming for the beast had one more roll to make, and his rear half then landed solidly across John's own rear half.
John covered his head so he wouldn't get kicked as the bronc was getting up. But Chowder didn't get up. The mustang's head was bent around at an unnatural angle and his eyes were wide open, just like that pony's. The horse didn't move. John thought he was dead, but Chowder had only knocked himself out again. John wriggled and shoved as best he could, but it was no use-- He was there for the duration.
It was then John began to remember what a snaky summer it was. He had unpleasant visions of roving herds of sinister rattly snakes who might happen along to visit him. He could imagine them there before him, poised in a semi circle, laughing, taunting him and shooting dice to see who would get to bite him first. However no snakes came at all.
Presently the silly mustang woke up and they went on their way. For years afterward, Chowder became agitated as he approached that spot in the road, and he would gather himself and leap as high and as far as he could. Then he would continue on down the trail as though nothing had happened.
Almost every day that summer, John would see some bird swoop down and pick a snake out of the desert, and fly up again, a hundred feet in the air. The snake would be writhing in protest, gripped tightly in the bird's claws. Sometimes the birds just flew away with the snakes. John always marveled at how the birds never seemed to get bit, no matter how those snakes twisted and writhed as they flew through the air, hanging from the birds' claws. Most often, the birds would gain some altitude and then drop the snake. It was hard to tell if they dropped the snakes when they came too close to biting the birds, or if it was purposeful, intended to stun or kill the reptiles before eating them.
Twice that summer the silly birds had grabbed their victim off the desert floor, and had swooped high over the cactus, only to seemingly take aim right at John as he rode along. Once the falling snake had bounced off his stirrup leather. Another time the bird dropped the snake and it bounced off Chowder's hind end. John had even seen it coming and had thrown his hands and arms over his head and had bent over the saddle horn. He thought he might have squealed accidentally as well, but he wasn't sure. He was glad he was alone, dozens of miles from anyone, if he had squealed.
He felt the snake thump on Chowder's rump. John thought the thing might have stuck there and was about to bite him in the back or the butt; it had felt like a somewhat soft landing and he doubted the snake was killed or even much stunned. He dropped out of the saddle like his horse was on fire, only to come face to face with the snake on the ground. It turned out the snake was some stunned after all, for he did not strike, and he could have easily clamped onto the fleshy parts of John's face. John jumped backwards, away from that snake and rolled into some brush. Chowder just stood there, looking at him wide eye'd, wondering what in the hell was the matter with the man.
Chowder had noticed the snake all right, once it was on the ground. He conscientiously stepped sideways, away from it, and that solved his problem. He couldn't seem to understand, however, why John was wasting so much energy over a little tiny snake.
Most horses, John knew, weren't terrified of snakes, as some folks thought. Many horses were completely dumb about them and would step right on them. Most, however, treated them like any other stickery thing in the desert; they avoided them, but they didn't make fools of themselves about it.
John remembered that Danny Lewis's mother had been bitten in the ankle by a rattlesnake. She was so fat she never even got sick.
One had just missed Wendy too. It struck at her on their back porch two years after that one snaky summer when there seemed to be none around. You just never knew about snakes.
The rattler on the ground was eight feet from John, but only a foot from Joey's mare's hind feet. It was rattling wildly-- John knew it was highly agitated and was ready to strike. It was oblivious to the presence of the mare; rather it looked at John and was telling him in its reptilian way to stay back. John was happy to oblige. "If you'd have rattled sooner, we'd not have come this way," John told the snake. The snake buzzed even more loudly at the sound of his voice.
Joey was leaning over his saddle horn, feeling as though he might begin to heave again. He barely heard the snake, or John's comment to it.
John spoke more loudly and addressed the boy, "Joey, just sit still. Don't move for a minute, okay?" He had not wanted Joey to suddenly become aware of the snake and be startled, and kick his horse into some sort of foolish action. "Let's just all stand still for a minute and see what he does."
Joey heard John and sat up very slowly. He looked down at the snake. "John?" He said, as his eyes grew wider.
"It's okay," John told him. "He just wants to let us know we're trespassin'. I think if we just set a minute he'll go on his way."
And so he did. Once or twice the snake stopped and looked back to see if he was being pursued, but after a moment it slithered off into the grass around the seep in the bottom of the arroyo.
John was about to help Joey down from the mare so the mare could taste the water when he spotted yet another snake making its way along the edge of the mud hole, from the opposite direction. This one was huge, as big around as John's arm, and longer than Chowder's tail.
"Damn!" John exclaimed. "Okay Joey, it seems this water hole is taken. Let's us ride on out of here. We're ridin' a couple of camels; they'll get us to town."
Joey didn't know what camels had to do with anything, but he was happy to leave the snake den behind.
John mounted and turned the horses and moved them up the hill away from the dirty water. He'd taken Joey's reins; he didn't want the horse to do anything strange if they met another snake.
He pony'ed the mare up to the level ground, a hundred feet from the water hole. There he stopped to adjust his saddlebags and to see what had become of the big snake. He looked down to the water's edge but didn't see it. Just then something caught his eye; it was the same snake not more than fifteen feet from them, and it was wriggling as fast as it could right in their direction.
"What the hell is this?" John swore. He immediately turned the horses and headed them along a trail that was cut in a steep "V". It was one of the little tributaries of the main arroyo they'd just left. He trotted the horses for seventy yards. The "V" became deeper, with steeper sides. The horses could not get out. It finally dead ended right in front of them, and the only way out was back the way they'd come.
John turned the horses back and was again surprised to see that belligerent snake still coming ahead. It seemed bent on reaching them. He had seen snakes come after people before-- had had it happen to him on several occasions. He'd also had snakes crawl right over his boots and never give him a glance, to continue on their way. This snake, however, had gotten the idea it wanted to try horse flesh, or so it appeared. John had listened as a thousand sod farmers from the East told their wide eye'd wives and children about the big mountain snakes they were going to encounter in their new home in the West. The Easterners told their families how those snakes were nothing to worry about, as they were far more afraid of humans than humans were of them. That was usually correct, John reflected, but not always, as this snake was determined to prove.
"Hang on to that mare," John said. Joey sat up then, more alert. "Get a grip on her," John urged him. Joey obeyed, and got a firm hold of the reins. John drew his little eight inch shotgun with the pistol grip, took aim, and blew the snake to smithereens, ten feet from his horse. There were no scraps in sight.
Joey's mare only jumped a little. She was old and didn't have too many spooks left in her. She was also still stiff and cranky from Joey's marathon ride, trailing Chowder into the high country. Hell, John thought, she probably refused to spook at the shotgun blast just out of stubbornness. Mares were often stubborn.
They moved more cautiously back down the "V" cut and emerged again onto the flat ground of the desert. It had all been flat once when it was underwater, millions of years before.
John moved carefully through the sage, knowing they were in a snaky place to be sure. They'd not traveled fifty yards when there was the distinctive buzzing right in front of Chowder. Again, the snake had waited long enough to sound off, John thought.
Against John's wishes Chowder took two more steps forward. He was just unconsciously finding a more comfortable place to stand after being asked to stop. The snake took it as an insult and struck. John thought it was going to hit himself in the shin, just below the knee, but instead its wide mouth sunk deep into the soft flesh of Chowder's right breast. The horse grunted, then reared, then came down on the snake with a vengeance. Chowder bucked and squealed and stomped the snake to a hundred pieces. John rode him out and after a moment he settled down. Joey had smartly backed the mare away from the commotion and kept her calm, and he was in no danger. The boy's ability to handle his broncs rose another notch in John's esteem.
Hearing no more snakes John dismounted and examined Chowder's breast. The snake had bitten him all right. It already seemed swollen. Chowder was still wide eye'd. It must hurt like hell, John thought. He would have to keep the horse calm and not work him.
They couldn't stop where they were; he would have to get them away from the snakes and then see how Chowder's bite was doing. If the horse became too sick to travel John would stay with him no matter what. But as often as not the bites weren't serious at all, except for horses who were careless enough to get bitten on the snout. Even then it wasn't the snake's venom that killed them; they suffocated when their nostrils swelled closed.
With people, however, it could be different. With small, sick, weak boys, a snake bite could easily mean the end.
"Well Joey, it seems we got ourselves a problem," John said.
"Yes sir," Joey answered weakly. He was far from home. He was sick and unsound, and a little disconcerted by all that had taken place. Now these damned snakes were complicating his life even more. All he'd wanted to do was go for an hour's ride with John. This had not turned out to be fun at all.
"Is there more of them around?" Joey asked.
"I reckon so. It seems we stumbled on to a regular community of them."
"Can't we get through them somehow?" Joey asked again.
"I reckon we'll have to try," John answered. "Let's just take it one step at a time and see if we can find a place where they aren't."
That sounded okay to Joey.
John reflected back to that snaky summer on his ranch with Wendy. He had finally walled off a small area of the house and installed her canvas bathtub in it, so he wouldn't have to leave the house when she wanted to take a bath. It was inconvenient in cold weather to do go outside.
He'd rigged a little pipe that went through the floor, then out to the side of the house so the bath water could drain. One night when Wendy went in to take a bath she was met by a huge mountain rattler right in her bathtub. She screamed and John ran into the little room. The snake struck at him and missed; then it slithered back down the drain where it had come from. John ran outside thinking to kill the snake but it was slithering away through the grass.
He jammed a stick into the pipe where it came out of the side of the house, hoping to discourage any more snakes from doing the same thing. Then he went back inside and pronounced the area safe.
It had taken Wendy a while to calm down but she eventually decided to try the bath again. After all, the water was already hot, and heating enough water for a bath was no small feat to be wasted on account of some pesky snake. She took a pot of water into the tub room but shrieked again and spilled the water. John ran to the room to discover the same damned snake, coiled and buzzing in the bottom of the tub. He fetched a broom and tried to scare the snake back down the drain, and the snake obliged. Then John remembered that he'd plugged the hole outside the house.
He was wondering what to do when the snake came backing out of the drain in the tub. It had only gone part way down the drain the first time, too. The snake he'd seen slithering away outside was its partner in crime.
The rattler in the bathtub was now thoroughly pissed off. Without hesitation it slithered over the top of the tub and wriggled out into the living room.
There'd barely been time to warn the girls; they saw it coming toward them and shrieked louder than Wendy had. Then they ran outside. John chased that snake all over the house, not wanting to shoot it in the house and make a mess. He had no snake loop, as many folks kept around for such an occasion.
He tried to enlist Wendy's help in herding the thing in various desired directions but she just kept shrieking and was of almost no use at all. John had thought an Indian girl would be more used to such things, but Wendy had been found as a child by Missionaries, and had spent most of her life back East. Chasing snakes around her house was not something she'd bargained for when coming back out West.
Finally John scared the snake outside where it struck at him again. He dispatched it with his little shotgun.
Wendy hated for him to kill snakes; he was in their territory uninvited, she argued. But there was some logic in the theory of survival of the fittest. He intended for his girls to survive, and he had learned to always be the fittest.
John and Joey had not traveled another fifty feet when they heard the telltale buzz from off to their right. It was thirty feet away and of no concern. They continued gingerly through the sage.
At one point John heard three snakes at the same time but all were well out of range. Still, he stopped to give any that might be near, time to get their rattles going.
Joey was riding with his feet propped up on the pommel. Joey wasn't afraid of one or two little snakes in his own environment, but this was getting ridiculous. He had sometimes chased baby rattlers out behind the stable, near where the town dumped its trash into the arroyo. His mom had scolded him for it, but he couldn't see how those skinny little snakes could cause a person any real harm. Once he had picked a small one up. It arched around and tried to bite him so he dropped it. Now, with the whole desert overflowing with these big brutes with heads as big as a cat's, and with no vacillation whatever about striking, he realized that he liked snakes less and less.
As they stood there a loud buzzing came from under Joey's mare. John couldn't believe it. This was a veritable rattle snake roundup. John wondered what combination of circumstances had brought so many belligerent and pushy snakes to one location.
Again John told Joey to be still, but Joey didn't have to be told. Several more snakes began to buzz, all within a few feet of their horse's feet. So far both animals had mostly ignored the snakes, though Chowder was somewhat apprehensive about being bitten again. John could see that his breast was swelling. He needed to get the horse to safe ground and let him rest. The horse was sweating now, though he was not being worked at all. It was partly stress, and partly the action of the venom; the two were a bad combination.
John and Joey sat their mounts, not moving. Once or twice Joey's mare tried to put her head down to munch some grass. Joey jerked it up.
"You just keep doing that," John told him. He didn't want the mare to get bit on the snout, only to go crazy and maybe even rear over backwards, landing little Joey into the brush with what had become a dozen or more buzzing and irritable snakes. Joey would be bitten at least a few times before John could get to him. He would likely die.
John was afraid to try and move the horses for fear a snake would take offense and bite it on the lower leg. He wasn't sure that even he could stay on Chowder, if the horse got bit near the foot. He began to wonder if they'd have to sit there until the damned snakes died of old age. It was a perplexing situation.
The rattlers showed no signs of moving away; they just held their ground and buzzed. He couldn't shoot the snakes; he couldn't risk upsetting the delicate balance that currently existed between themselves and the rattlers. He didn't even have enough shotgun shells to kill them all, unless he got three or four with each shot. He had his Walker, but it held only five rounds-- he carried the hammer always on an empty hole for safety. Besides, that was the one gun that Chowder objected strongly to, for it shot sparks out of its breech at right angles to the direction it was pointed. Chowder wouldn't stand for the hair on the side of his neck to be singed.
The snakes slithered around the horses' feet, changing position, coiling up, then relaxing, then moving over here, or over there. Several times John saw big ones go right between the mare's hind legs. He couldn't understand why they wouldn't move away. They must be close to a den, he assumed. However it seemed that no direction they went took them out of the snakes. He contemplated spurring the two horses on the count of three and bolting for a mile, hoping for the best. That was a last resort; it was sure to cause at least a few more bites and he didn't want to get the poison pumping around in Chowder's system any faster than it already was.
In the end they just sat still in their saddles with their feet up on their pommels, trying to keep the horses from moving, and they waited. John figured they would be a ridiculous sight for any passers by or robbers that might come along. John began to like snakes even less than he normally did.
They endured the afternoon until sunset in this manner. Once they had decided it was safe to move but they'd not covered a hundred feet when they found themselves in the same snaky predicament. The rest had been good for Chowder; that was the only consolation. He'd been able to absorb the poison slowly and to let it run its course. The horse still should not be stressed; he should be locked in a stall for a couple of days. But they were still far from home, and he would at least have to walk.
At dusk they were able to move out. The snakes had vanished completely. John monitored Chowder closely as they rode. He kept moving until midnight. John wanted to cover some ground, and he also wanted several territories between themselves and that patch of snakes.
They finally made a dry camp in a dense patch of brush. They were too tired to find anything better.
John let Joey sleep for five hours. The boy had taken some water but the thought of any kind of food still nauseated him. "You'll remember this," John reminded him. Joey agreed.
By sundown the next day they had covered thirty miles altogether, which left them thirty miles from Paydirt. It was slow progress and John cursed the circumstances that slowed them. At least it was generally downhill to town, for John's campsite in the trees had been at the eight thousand foot level, he calculated, and Paydirt was only six thousand feet above sea level.
Chowder's bite had worsened; it was hot and swollen. The swollen area was larger than John's open hand and as massive as two fists. The horse favored his right front leg some, but he'd kept moving.
They camped again in a clump of Aspens near a little pool of scum covered water that stank. The horses drank a little of it; John and Joey drank none.
He roused Joey at daylight and got him on his mare. She was an annoying animal at times and she acted up in the cool, early morning air. Joey slapped her and she calmed down. At least, thought John, the child was regaining some strength and some interest in life.
They moved out across a broad valley. It was smooth and long with featureless tan hills that rose up on either side. There were a few pockmarks on the sides of the hills where prospectors had sought to strike it rich. John marveled at men who worked so hard at the business of getting rich without working.
In the center of the broad valley was a deep arroyo with sheer clay walls a hundred feet deep. They needed to cross it at some point and so John skirted its edge, watching for a place where they could get the horses down.
He had almost been washed away in such an arroyo when he was a kid, for he had found a way down into one all right, but his rank old inherited mare could not get up the other side. He'd made attempts to get her to climb back out the way they'd come down, but she steadfastly refused. It was stubbornness.
He'd paid the dilemma no mind at the time but had just walked along, figuring that sooner or later he'd find a way up the opposite wall. He'd walked his mare a mile like that when he heard the noise. It was like a swish, and a low roar, and a bubbling, and a clacking all at the same time. Though the weather was clear and hot where John rode, a cloudburst far away in the hills had dumped a flood and it found its way down John's arroyo.
He tried to gallop the mare to outrun the wall of water that stampeded down upon them but it came far too fast. Finally she stumbled onto a higher piece of ground, gasping for air and shaking. It was a little bench that was left by a back eddy from some previous flash flood.
The raging water rose to her feet, then to her knees, then to her chest. John stayed on her back for he had no choice. The water finally stopped rising but it was eroding the clay ledge under her feet. She constantly lost her footing and kept sinking deeper. John thought that at any moment she would be reduced to swimming, and then they'd be swept away and his fate would be uncertain.
By dusk the water began to recede. Once he was able to dismount he climbed out on foot. He left the mare in the arroyo and walked home.
She straggled into her pen two days later. John was not sure if he was glad to see her or not, but he was at least glad to get his saddle back. He had been nine at the time. It was not long after that the mare broke her leg in the fence. He didn't miss the horse.
Now John was more careful. He would not descend into an arroyo of any consequence if he could not also see a place to get back out. Black thunderheads rimmed the horizon now, pouring gigantic columns of water down onto distant hills, and one was trying to form right overhead. John felt there was risk in crossing the canyon even if it was dry when they started down, and even if there was a clear and visible trail up the opposite side.
Chowder heard the hoofbeats first as he always did. John let him turn toward whatever was coming. It might yet be too far for John to see-- he had heard nothing himself.
After a minute both he and Joey could see dust moving rapidly along the same trail they were on. Then they could make out brown horse bodies, a half dozen of them, galloping together just ahead of the dust.
Joey sat up straight in his saddle. "Maybe it's my ma," he said with all the enthusiasm his weak frame could muster. "Maybe they found us!" The boy looked at John.
"Maybe." He said. "Maybe..." But John didn't think so.
They sat and watched as the horses came closer. Joey finally slouched down in his saddle and announced dejectedly that it was just mustangs; no riders. John tried to cheer him up.
"Well, the worst is behind us Joey. It isn't so far now. You're feeling a little better aren't you?"
Joey nodded, not sure if he did or not..
"You'll see your mom before long. Then we can rest these broncs, too."
Joey nodded again, resigned.
They turned and started down along the rim of the arroyo again, careful not to get too close to the edge lest it calve off like a glacier and send them tumbling to the bottom. But John almost immediately let Chowder turn back around for the wild horses had not stopped some distance away as he'd expected them to. They were on a course straight for he and Joey, and at a dead gallop, and they showed no signs of slowing or changing direction. John was unsure what to do; he had never encountered wild horses like these before.
Joey had some experience with the wild horses that rummaged around the back lots in town. They were nearly as plentiful as rabbits in the sage and if you lived on the western ranges you sooner or later had experiences with them.
One day he'd been out riding his mother's mare about daybreak. He liked to sometimes get up early and go for rides. Kelly always cautioned him to stay close to town and he did. But ahead on the trail there loomed a big, muscular, rangy, desperate looking wild stud. The poor little mare just stopped and trembled and Joey turned her and gently headed her back down the trail towards home.
The stallion followed at a distance at first but soon picked up the pace. Shortly Joey had the mare in a high trot, then a lope-- then a run, then a flat out gallop, careening through arroyos and mashing cross country through the brush, and still the stallion was gaining ground.
Joey had been scared at first, but after a couple of miles he got tired of the chase and the mare was just plain tired. A little angry, he turned the mare to face the approaching stallion and then spurred her to charge right at him, all the while flailing his arms and yelling. The big mustang slid to a stop in his tracks; his eyes got wide; he executed a show stopping roll back and disappeared over a hill, never to be heard from again. Joey thought this was just fine and proudly told the story around town for months, though he never felt the drunks and gamblers of Paydirt fully appreciated it.
This approaching herd however, was different from that single stallion, close to home. The herd came ahead on with heads raised and necks arched and tails flagged in the breeze. Joey saw what was happening too. In quarter of a minute the mustangs would be on top of them if they didn't slow or veer away.
"What do we do?" Asked Joey nervously.
Joey's mare was in heat and the stallions would have sensed her. John looked around but could see nothing they could get behind. Once the mustangs realized the horses were ridden they should have veered away or stopped and kept their distance. That would have been natural.
The mustangs were now fifty feet from Joey and John. If anything, the leaders poured on the coal.
"Hang on!" That was the only suggestion John could shout to Joey.
There was no point at all in trying to out run them. John fired a shot in the air with his little shotgun but the herd paid no attention. Then they were upon them. The broncs surrounded Chowder and Marietta like bullies in a dark alley.
Joey's mare spun and began to dance around. John thought later that they may have been able to come out of the encounter relatively unscathed had it not been for that silly mare, for while the actions of the rogue stallions were terrifying to her, there was also a part of her physiology that found it strangely exciting, and the raucous attentions of those bold studs scrambled what little brains she had in her mostly empty head.
There was the usual preliminary squealing, kicking and striking out, but even the mare's most vigorous protests were but love taps to the stallions. The more violently she fought the more amused they became and within half a minute the studs were taking turns with the mare and fighting over who was next.
Joey, meanwhile, was kicking 'till John though his legs would fly off. He reined the mare this way or that, trying to keep her head to the amorous advances of the stallions, but he could not outwit all of them at once. He slapped the mare and whipped her severely but the horse was drunk with excitement and John did not believe he could have gotten her to move himself.
Joey was crushed in the saddle over and over, while just as frequently John rammed Chowder into the mounted studs to knock them off of the mare. A dozen times, two dozen times he knocked them down, flat on their sides in the dirt, but by the time he could get back to the boy, Joey was beneath the heaving chest of another.
John emptied his Walker into the herd, trying to target the most aggressive first. Five rounds only put one of the horses down completely, though blood ran from three others.
A dozen times John found himself in the same predicament, pinned to his saddle, the horn smashing into his breastbone while stallions, too frenzied to know or care, mounted Chowder from behind. Chowder would struggle to scoot out from under them but their hooves often hung up in some bit of saddle rigging, or he was prevented from moving ahead by other horses or by terrain. John recognized that it was a bad situation.
He yelled for Joey to make a run for it. There was no point in saying it, for it was the one thing uppermost in Joey's mind. The boy began to fight the stallions with his bare hands, slugging and punching, uppercutting them to the jaw, or flattening a nose, poking an eye, screaming and slapping and scratching and gouging and kicking-- It was a fight, hammer and tong.
The mare was thoroughly terrified and out of control. Several times she was knocked to her knees, but Joey stayed in the saddle. John had never seen such riding from a youngster.
John continued to ram the wild horses with Chowder. Whatever John asked him to do he simply did. Chowder fought on his own too-- he reared and struck and kicked. Over and over he gathered himself, took a deep breath, closed his eyes and waded in swinging, only to get thrown from the ring again and again.
Half a dozen times John was able to cut most of the stallions away from Joey's horse. Then she had a chance of making a run for it, but his silly mare was by now so flustered that it didn't know which way was up and would not answer to rein or spur.
John thought of abandoning the horses and trying to make a run for it on foot but several things stopped him. He couldn't leave Chowder to the stallions in his weakened condition. He didn't know if the mustangs would chase them down on foot, and it was still thirty miles to town-- too far in that heat with no water and no good walking shoes. Joey was in the most danger, and probably could not have gotten clear of the melee without getting stomped into the dust. Besides, it always appeared as though they were on the verge of extricating themselves from the battle.
John carried a Winchester in the saddle scabbard and was finally able to draw it out. The little boy was bruised and beaten and John could see blood on the mare in numerous places. John chambered a round and fired at the head of a particularly vicious mustang. He dropped in his tracks, a quarter of his head blown away. John chambered a second round and tried to take aim on another but Chowder was in the midst of his own battles and it was nearly impossible to get a bead. John didn't want to waste a single round.
Another stallion mounted Chowder from behind and smashed John into the saddle horn again. The stallion's front legs went down along Chowder's neck and became tangled in his breast collar. John was thinking of turning the rifle around to shoot the horse off his back but he was promptly kicked in the arm by another. The rifle butt splintered. It flew out of his hands and landed in the red clay to be immediately lost under the fray of hooves. There was not the slightest sign that the mustangs were wearing down.
The mustangs just kept coming and coming-- John couldn't believe their resolve.
At times Joey was being pushed dangerously close to the crumbly sides of the deep arroyo. John tried to knock some of the mustangs over the edge with his horse but could never get them in just the right position and he was afraid he would go over with them as well.
Suddenly Joey bleated out a blood curdling scream, "JOHN!"
John spun to see Joey's mare lose her hind legs over the rim of the arroyo. She dug her front hooves into the earth and hung there. Joey was still in the saddle, his face wild with terror. The sides of the arroyo were crumbling; the mare was scrambling to get back on top. She was almost running with her hind legs but she was gaining only enough ground to stay even as the rim of the arroyo calved and great hunks of earth fell below her. It was like a man trying to climb back onto the ice after falling through it-- it kept breaking off.
John noticed that the arroyo was full of dark, swirling water. Hunks of wood and piles of sage brush and tumbleweeds were racing past. He'd not even been aware that it was filling. He realized for the first time, as well, that it was raining.
Lightning slammed into the ground all around them. Steam hissed from the wet sand where the bolts hit. The storm seemed only to enrage the vicious horses all the more.
John spurred Chowder toward the slipping mare but Chowder hesitated when he saw the ground crumbling away and splashing into the raging water below. Joey had now climbed up onto the mare's head; he braced his feet against the front of the pommel of his saddle; his feet kept slipping off from the greasy clay that covered everything. Joey held onto the mare's browband with one hand and extended his other to John.
John spurred Chowder again and the horse moved forward. His front feet mixed with the mare's; the mare was slipping backward into the abyss, and Chowder was slipping forward into it. Chowder scrambled with his hind legs to keep from going in head first. It reminded John of the time Chowder had fallen into the quicksand bog.
For an instant his hands touched Joey's. John lunged forward, almost going over Chowder's head, and clasped Joey's right hand with his left. Just as he did the mare fell backward into the torrent with a great splash, leaving Joey suspended over the edge, hanging from John's hand. Joey's hands were covered in greasy clay and he felt himself slipping but John's grip clenched him like a vise. John pulled Joey to him and Joey climbed up Chowder's neck. John held the boy in the saddle.
To their right, one of the wild mustangs saw the mare go into the water. He edged toward the precipice and struck out at the air with his hooves while he whinnied and blew. He hesitated several times but finally he launched himself clean over the edge and plunged into the flood.
John and Joey saw the mare's feet for an instant as she tumbled in the current. They never saw her head again.
The mustang who'd jumped in after her was paddling first toward one side of the sheer clay wall, then toward the other, but there was no way out. He was still doing that when he disappeared around a bend in the arroyo.
Chowder back away from the edge and John turned him to solid ground. Three stallions remained alive, but they were thirty feet away. Several others were two hundred yards away and retreating. Four horses now lay on the ground between John and the standing studs. One horse was dead; the other three were in stages of dying. John spotted the remains of his Winchester and tried to calculate whether he could get to it before the horses charged again, but it was not necessary. The stallions reared and struck out at each other, rather haphazardly, John thought. Then they trotted off, back up the trail, as though nothing had happened.
John knew they hadn't fought the mustangs off. They just finally were sated.
Chowder's breathing was ragged; he was beaten, bleeding and exhausted. John and Joey both had countless bruises and cuts. Joey's eye was swollen shut where a stallion pawed out and nicked him.
John's saddle was torn and scarred. Bits of broken and shredded tack hung off his saddle at ungainly angles. Joey's saddle was gone altogether, of course, along with the mare.
Joey sat across the saddle in front of John. They sat there in the rain for five minutes catching their breath.
Finally John looked at Joey and said, "Well son, we've had one hell of a day so far."
"Yes sir," Joey answered.
John retrieved his broken Winchester. The barrel was packed with wet clay, which he removed by knocking it against a rock. The rifle consisted of an action and a barrel with a few short fragments of splintered butt stock still attached-- not enough to get a good hold of. It looked as though it might still shoot. There were three rounds left.
It was pouring rain; the sky was dark. It was nearing twilight. Joey and John were both now shivering; their bodies had been soaked with sweat from the fight and now the cold rain and savage wind chilled them. There was thirty miles to go before they hit Paydirt, and they still could not cross the arroyo.
Chowder favored his leg in a pronounced way now, as they straggled along, looking for a place that would afford some shelter out of the weather. Most of their blankets were gone-- John had tied the bulk of their gear onto Joey's mare, since he was the lightest rider, and Chowder needed whatever advantage he could get. They'd lost all their water, though for now at least, there was an abundance of it. If the next day turned hot they'd be thirsty.
Several hours after dark they stumbled on to a great Mexican Hat rock. It jutted up out of the flat desert to a height of forty feet and it was twenty feet across at the top. John hobbled Chowder, though the horse was too weary to move or even to graze, and he'd probably had enough of wild horses for one day anyhow.
John and Joey huddled against the base of the rock, trying to stay out of the rain. The wind shifted constantly through the night, as it does in thunderstorms, and they were forced to keep moving in circles around the rock to stay in its lee. There was little wood to burn and for a while John tried to move the tiny fire along with them, every time they were forced to rotate around the base of that pinnacle. After a while he just gave up and let it go out. He was sure they'd made at least three complete revolutions by morning; he wondered why he hadn't had the sense to just stay put in the first place. They could not have gotten any wetter and they would have gotten more rest.
It had been a maddening night. It was a night that reminded him of the last time he saw Joe up on the razorback, the night he'd killed the young boy's father in cold blood. He asked himself again if he'd been wrong to do it. Without hesitation the answer was no. Huddled there with Joe's son, John awed at the quirks and twists the course of a man's life could take.
The morning dawned bright and warming. Already the ground was nearly dry and the brush of the desert had turned green overnight. Joey had been gone four days. John could not imagine the state of Kelly's mind.
They led Chowder out of the campsite; he was almost completely lame from his snake bite and he was sore and bruised in other places from his encounters with the mustangs. He limped along reluctantly behind them. John and Joey took turns leading him.
As they skirted the brink of the arroyo that morning they spotted Joey's mare. She was on her back; her legs were stiff and they jutted straight into the air. She'd washed up against a boulder and had wedged there. At first she looked like a mud covered stump. John finally located a place where the arroyo could be crossed, four miles downstream from the scene of the mustang encounter.
The water in the arroyo was down though the mud was treacherous. Chowder struggled and went down several times as they crossed the bottom and clawed up a mild slope on the opposite side. John had to crawl on hands and knees the goo was so slick.
What little gear they had left they packed on Chowder's saddle but John carried the remains of his Winchester in his hand. He had worked the action and run his three shells through it several times. He was confident it would fire. He couldn't find his little shotgun. He thought he'd seen it slip out of his saddlebag and fall into the rushing arroyo when Joey's mare drowned. The Walker was no where to be found, and his powder for it was wet anyhow.
They were hungry and without food. If John saw a turkey he might try to shoot it with his Winchester. He wished he'd carved a hunk from one of the mustangs he'd killed, but he hadn't thought of it at the time.
By noon they'd made only ten more miles. It was been slow, painstaking progress, but it was relatively uneventful. A lone rattlesnake had crossed their path earlier; it rattled politely and in plenty of time, and it even moved partly off the path as it rattled, in a gesture of compromise. Joey wanted John to kill it. John told Joey that he could, but only if he killed it with his bare hands --they were short on bullets-- and if he eat it. The thought caused Joey to heave again and John was sorry he'd said it.
"You can't kill everything," John told him. "That snake was doin' its best to get along with us. He meant us no harm; he just wanted to live, like you and I do." John said the words, but in his heart he wanted to kill the snake a hundred times over.
Joey appeared to think about what John said. John saw that he was thrashing it over in his mind so he went on.
"You've got a right to live and to protect yourself if something comes after you," John said. "A man also has the right to punish something or someone if it does him harm." John was talking almost to himself but Joey was listening. "If the law will take care of those kinds of things for you, then you gotta leave them to the law. But if there's no law, then you have to become the law." John seemed almost to be struggling to get his own philosophies straight in his head. Sometimes his feelings and his beliefs conflicted, and that caused him grief.
"Like you?" Joey asked.
"What do you mean," John said.
"Like you, chasin' them killers. Like when you killed my pa?"
John was dumbfounded. He could hardly speak. "What do you know about your pa?"
"My ma says he was bad all the way through. I never did know him. She said he was gone before I was a year old. She said Injuns killed him. I guess she meant you. You are part Injun." Joey's voice trailed off for a moment. Then he added quietly, "An' so am I."
John said nothing for a few minutes; he just squatted on a rock where they stopped to take their break at midday.
Joey took up the conversation again. "I heard you tell my ma that you killed---killed my pa."
"Yes, I did. I had to."
After a pause, Joey said, "I know." After a longer pause he said wistfully, "I wish we had somethin' to eat." Apparently Joey meant something besides snakes.
"I do too." John answered thoughtfully.
It seemed Injuns were always killing somebody's pa.
After a rest and without another word they picked up and moved out again. John put Joey in the saddle; he was still weak from sunstroke and had not eaten, even when they'd had food to eat. His appetite was returning and that was a good sign, however.
It was easier going with Joey in the saddle for when Chowder slowed and balked Joey could give him a kick. It saved John having to pull on his reins all the time. Chowder was done in.
By late afternoon they were ten miles from the town of Paydirt. John debated whether to try and make it to town that night. They were both exhausted. Chowder was worn out and sick. Ten miles seemed like a hundred.
They trudged across a wide alkali flat, four miles in diameter, thinking to camp on the other side. The wind was blowing and the finest of the alkali dust swirled across the expanse like ground fog. It stuck to their sweat and made them look dead. John's and Joey's hair turned white and the stuff caked in their mouths and noses. Chowder's eyelashes looked like they were frosty. The late afternoon heat was unbearable.
Joey mumbled something but John barely heard it. He was too tired to ask Joey to repeat it. Joey found a stronger voice. "I see a horse John!"
John's thoughts immediately returned to the mustangs they'd fought before. He felt helpless; they could not hope to fight them off again if this group was as belligerent as the last. He did not believe the same herd had followed them.
He strained to look out onto the flats where Joey looked but the boy had the vantage point, being mounted as he was.
"Is it just one horse, Joey?" John asked.
"That's all I can see." Joey strained to look hard at the apparition in the distance. It was barely visible through the fine, white dust. Heat waves shimmered and made the form waver in the diminishing light. "I think it's got a rider."
John had originally thought the rogue mustangs had riders on them as well. He braced for another onslaught. He had no idea how he would handle it this time. He had never seen, or heard about, such hostile horses.
After a few minutes Joey announced that the horse definitely had a rider. A few minutes after that he announced that the rider was his mother. John hoped against hope and ten minutes later she rode straight up to them on a strong young gelding. Joey was ecstatic. John was relieved. Kelly was aghast. Her son looked as though he'd been through a war, and John--
"Where have you been?!" She demanded angrily. John could see that she was crying, she was so angry. He was afraid she was going to hit someone. He didn't get too close to her horse.
Kelly's gelding sidled over and tried to sniff Chowder's breath; Chowder snubbed him. The gelding was a domestic horse.
Joey launched into a discourse of the trials and tribulations of their journey thus far. Seeing his ma had positively revived him. John interrupted him and said only that they'd had some trouble, but what they really needed now was something to eat and drink. Joey agreed.
Kelly handed Joey a canteen, then dug in her saddle bags. John asked how many were with her. She did not look up.
"I am alone," she said.
John was incredulous. "You're alone? You mean no one else is helping you at all?"
Kelly shook her head. Again she did not look up, but continued to rummage in her saddle bags for something to give them to eat.
"I could not find any men to help," she stated matter of factly.
John was still taken aback. "What about the Sheriff? Surely he would have helped you? That's his Goddamned job," John said angrily. "At least you'd think the dumb sonofabitch could have done that!"
"The Sheriff is out of town," Kelly replied. "He left just after you did, and he has not returned. No one seems to know where he is."
"The new deputy?" John asked again. It was difficult to waste words.
Kelly laughed. "The new deputy," she said, "spends his days with the whores-- when he is sober enough even to do that."
"You have been looking for us all this time, by yourself? How could you hope to find us?"
"I can track a little. I tracked you this far yesterday-- your trail was not too easy to follow."
His outbound trail was four days old, John thought to himself-- not too easy to follow was an understatement. John could not believe how glad he was to see her. He felt a hint of admiration swell within him.
"But I needed supplies." Kelly went on. "I went back to get some."
She produced several sandwiches from her saddle bags finally and handed them to Joey. As she approached him she winced to see his injuries up close.
"I'm okay ma," Joey said, smiling at John. Joey handed a sandwich to John.
"Oh yes, I can see that both of you are just fine." Kelly said. "I may not allow either of you two brave Indians to go camping ever again." John thought she smiled at him for just an instant as she said it.
Joey dismounted and they all sat down together in the middle of the stark alkali flat, too worn to find any better spot. As the dust swirled in eddies around them they ate and informed Kelly of the highlights of their expedition. After a few minutes Kelly hugged Joey tightly.
"Did you think I was dead ma?" Joey asked, a gleam in his eye.
Kelly looked at John. "No. I did not think you were dead. But I thought you might want some sandwiches."
Joey smiled.
John was drinking from the canteen when he felt a hard thud in his leg. His leg jumped a foot. Curious, he thought. He thought Joey, who was sitting next to him on the ground, had kicked him for fun. An instant later he heard a muffled boom from out on the flats. A second after that his leg hurt mightily just below the knee. And a second after that he was aware of Chowder bucking wildly to one side of him as puffs of chalky alkali dust danced between the horses' legs. Kelly's horse bucked wildly two feet behind him. John started to get up-- he could see a rider standing in his stirrups, four hundred yards out. The apparition of the rider was diffused through the swirling dust and the heat waves. Then he was aware.......that he wasn't aware of anything at all.
Next Chapter
Sands of Sedona, Chap 1
Sands of Sedona, Chap 2
Sands of Sedona, Chap 3
Sands of Sedona, Chap 4
Sands of Sedona, Chap 5
Sands of Sedona, Chap 6
Sands of Sedona, Chap 7
Sands of Sedona, Chap 8
Sands of Sedona, Chap 9
Sands of Sedona, Chap 10
Sands of Sedona, Chap 11
Sands of Sedona, Chap 12