Her knees buckled and she fell. She tried to stop the rising bile in her throat, but gagged and vomited all over her dirty brogans. She wanted to turn, run back up the hill, but knew better. You’re tough, girl, she told herself. There’s nothing down here that can hurt you. What can hurt you is up that ridge.
After wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she staggered to her feet, and went forward, keeping her hand over her nose and mouth. Her eyes burned from sweat, from the stink. So hard to breathe. A gust of wind pushed a black cloud of flies off the dead mules, and she came to the dead man.
His shirt, once white, was blackened by blood. His face had…She looked away, and wretched again, falling, putting out her hands, catching the hot iron bars to keep from sinking.
When she forced her eyes open, she found another body, manacled hands reaching out toward the locked door, the wind blowing through his curly hair that wasn’t pasted with dried blood.
Blanche let out a sigh. She wasn’t as tough as she tried to make others believe.
She stepped from the wagon, read the words on the top of the iron cage.
U.S. MARSHAL, ARIZONA TY.
Something moved off to her right, and she jumped, stared, mouth dropping open. A man. A man was rising out of that wash, amid the ocotillo, and she tumbled backward, almost falling on the bullet-riddled carcass of what once had been a beautiful buckskin horse. Then, the dead man, the man in the wagon, rolled over, and she whirled but had the sense, the will, not to scream. His face looked leathery, but the dark eyes flashed open, and the cracked lips parted.
Blanche looked away. Back toward the cactus. Her heart skipped, and she realized it was The Greek, raising his big rifle over his head, signaling the others. She turned, faced the ridge, saw Bloody Jim Pardo tossing his mother the rifle and climbing back into the wagon bed with Blanche’s mother. The older man, the one called Phil, eased his horse down the slope, and others followed.
She spun around, focused on the man in the wagon. His eyes had closed. He was probably dead. His hands were manacled, but something wasn’t right. Her eyes locked on the six-pointed star pinned on the vest’s lapel, and she moved back to the wagon, stuck a trembling hand through the iron bars. She looked back at the dead man on the ground. He was wearing a badge, too. Deputy U.S. Marshal. So what was this one doing locked inside a jail-on-wheels, wearing handcuffs?
The dark eyes opened, and the lips tried to form a word.
Water.
“You a real lawman?” she asked.
“Yes.” Barely a whisper. And again: “Water.” But she couldn’t hear him, just read his lips. The eyes closed.
She reached for the badge. He jerked back into consciousness, the manacles grating as he dragged his arms across the iron floor, toward her hand, tried to stop her, but he was too weak.
“Mister,” she said, “I don’t know who you are, but I’m guessing you don’t belong locked up in this box. You damned well better be a lawman. If you ain’t dead yet, listen to me.” She pulled off the badge, surprisingly heavy, secured the pin in its clasp, and slid the piece of nickel into the pocket of her trousers. “My ma and me are prisoners of Bloody Jim Pardo, and him and his gang are coming down to fetch me. And maybe you. Though they might kill you.” She felt the bile rising again, knew she was about to throw up, if she had anything left in her gut, knew she had to finish quickly. “Don’t tell them you’re a lawman. That’s your…our…only…”
“This one’s dead, too,” Duke called out well beyond the prison wagon, and followed that with a laugh. “Some son of a bitch stole his boots. Don’t that beat all? He was a lawman till the end. No boots, but he’s still got his badge, by golly.”
The Greek pointed the barrel of his Sharps toward the arroyo. “The one there had no badge, just a bullet hole….” He stuck his thumb right underneath his rib cage. “Right here.”
Blanche let out a weary sigh. “That one’s still alive, I tell you!”
Pardo ran his hand across the beard stubble on his face. The girl started again, pointing at the still body on the floor of the wagon. “Harrah, check on the one locked up.”
“I don’t see no key.”
“You need a key for everything?” Pardo said wearily.
Harrah’s gun roared. He pulled the door open and went inside, while Pardo found his canteen and drank greedily. Three lawmen, all deputy U.S. marshals, dead in the desert. Another man over in the ocotillo, maybe one of them, maybe one of the gang that shot them to pieces, dead with a hole in his brisket. Dead mules. Stinking horses, and plenty of tracks heading south.
“How long you reckon, Ma?” Pardo asked.
Ruby Pardo sent a stream of tobacco juice between the mules pulling the buckboard. “No more’n two days. Likely the day we was wrecking the S.P.”
“Hell,” Harrah said softly, then louder. “Hell! That girl’s right. This fellow…he ain’t dead!”
Pardo moved back to the black iron cage, past the ten-year-old, as Wade Chaucer, the lazy bastard, nudged his horse toward the wagon and drew the nickel-plated Remington with his left hand, handing it, butt forward, toward Harrah. “Here,” Chaucer said, “put him out of his misery.”
“Leather that gun,” Pardo said, and stared through the bars at the tall man. “We ain’t killing nobody. Yet.” He lifted his gaze at Harrah. “How bad is he?”
“Man ought to be dead,” Harrah said. “Been baking in this oven for a day or two. Looks like he caught a bullet across his neck. Back of his head, hair’s matted with dried blood, too. He taken a pounding it’d take me or you a month of Sundays to get over.”
“You maybe,” Pardo said. “Not me.”
“Well, sure, yeah.”
“Get him some damned water!” the girl barked. “What kind of men are you?”
“Shut up,” Pardo told her, but he nodded at Phil, who removed the canteen from his saddle horn and headed for the wagon.
“Somebody wanted this hombre dead,” Pardo said, nodding at his deduction. He pointed at the bullet scars denting the black wall at the front of the wagon. “That’s for sure. And wanted him to hurt before he went under.”
“That the way you figure it, son?” his mother asked.
“Yeah. I think so.” To the men in the wagon: “You recognize him?”
Harrah shook his head, lifted the unconscious man’s head as, uncorking the canteen, Phil said, “Nope,” splashed a little water in his free hand, and wet the man’s lips. The man stirred, and Phil gave him a little more water.
“Three lawmen guarding one man. Maybe four lawmen.” Pardo’s head bobbed again. “If that one in the arroyo was with them. Either way, that’s impressive. Mighty impressive.”
“What’s so impressive about that?” Chaucer asked.
“Jimmy,” Three-Fingers Lacy whined from her horse. “This place smells bad. I’m about to get sick.”
“It makes me wonder,” Pardo answered Chaucer. “That’s all. Get the bracelets off that gent, boys. Put him in the back of the wagon with the petticoat. If he lives, I’d like to talk to him.”
Chaucer snorted. “Maybe next time we’ll bring an ambulance with us instead of a buckboard.”
“Maybe next time, you’ll need