Valley of Fire Page 5

  “And then? Backtrack to Romero? Follow that road you said down to—”

  My head was shaking, but she couldn’t see me. “No. Sean Fenn would suspect that.”

  “But we don’t have to worry about Fenn anymore.”

  “I always worry about Sean Fenn. He ain’t one to stay caught. Besides, Felipe Hernandez and the law will be after me, and that’ll be one of the roads they’ll be studying hard.”

  “Then why did you suggest it to begin with?”

  “In case you haven’t figured me out yet, I ain’t one for planning. I make things up as I go.”

  Sister Geneviève shocked me then. She laughed.

  So, we rode in the rain. In the cold. In the night.

  I studied on how to get the nun to the Valley of Fire. I also tried to figure out a plan to be shun of her, and go my own way, out of the territory and as far away from Sean Fenn and Felipe Hernandez as possible. Also, I tried to come up with something that made sense about why Sister Rocío would tell folks that I could lead them to the Valley of Fire. And why people wanted to go to that burnt-over patch of black rocks in some of the most miserable country you’d find in New Mexico.

  I only got wetter.

  Then, after a couple miles or more, I got smarter.

  I sat up and faced Sister Geneviève. “What the hell are we laying out in the rain for?”

  “You said—”

  “I know what I said. But I misjudged them fellows running this train. Thought they was smarter.”

  “That is something to which I can relate.”

  Smoke blew in my eyes. Coughing, I shook my head and told the nun, “We’ll just crawl back down, get inside the car, dry ourselves off. Then leap off the train when we’re near the water tower at Rowe.”

  Rowe was a little more than a water stop. Back when they was laying tracks, a bunch of folks from the settlement of Las Ruedas had built a pipeline from the Pecos River to the railroad, and Rowe was born. It was a railroad town, although it wasn’t much of a town. Nothing like Las Vegas or even Lamy, but most folks had stayed in Rowe after the rails were finished, and few had gone back to Las Ruedas. Rowe was all right. A person could find a little whiskey and something to eat. I could borrow a good horse and light a shuck for Arizona Territory. Rowe was practically civilized, and most of the folks living there were Catholic. They’d know what to do with a nun. Better than I knowed.

  “What if they check on the livestock when we stop for water at”—she had to remember the name—“Fulton?”

  “We can climb back up before then. Same as we just done. We’re getting handy at that kind of thing.”

  I mean, we was up here. We’d lost a rifle and a shell belt, but I hadn’t dropped the nun.

  “They shut the door, Mister Bishop,” the Sister said.

  “But they didn’t lock it,” I said, arrogance in my tone. “They couldn’t have locked it. We’ll climb down between cars. Then I’ll crawl out, push the door open, and help you get inside.”

  “Like you helped me get up here.”

  “I didn’t drop you.” Nuns was supposed to be forgiving, especially them from the Sisters of Charity.

  Her shadow stayed nailed to the roof.

  “Suit yourself,” I told her, “but it’s a shorter drop from the inside of a car to the ground, than it is from up here.”

  I stepped around her, with the wind and rain to my back, and realized there was only one car beyond the boxcar, and that was the caboose. Too close. I turned around, walking into the rain, into the wind, toward the next boxcar. Kept my arms out for balance.

  The whistle blowed. The train rocked some more. She was huffing, heaving, groaning—the engine—beginning the climb into the mountains. She’d be climbing a lot harder in a few miles. I could make out the glow from the lantern the fools hadn’t bothered to turn down inside the livestock car. It looked warm. Couldn’t wait to get inside, providing I didn’t break my neck trying to open that door.

  Behind me, Sister Geneviève called out, “Wait, Mister Bishop!”

  I waited. Even turned around. I could make out her figure as she rose, taking tentative steps toward me. I held out my hand to help her.

  A second later, the train rocked, and the nun slipped. Her shape disappeared. She screamed.

  I let out an oath. Called out for her.

  “I’m all right!” she cried out.

  I walked toward her voice. My boots slipped, and this time it was me screaming.

  And sliding.

  Right off the damned boxcar.

  Somehow, my right hand grabbed hold of something, kept me from going straight into the pits of hell, slowed my fall, and gave me a chance to get a better hold. Oh, I went over the side, but somehow caught the top slats. My knees banged into the side of the boxcar. The goats started yelling again. My fingers gripped them slats tight. That left me still a passenger on the train, but I didn’t know for how long.

  “Mister Bishop!”

  I looked up, could just make out the Sister’s face from the glow of the lantern inside.

  “I’m still with you, ma’am.”

  Her hand slammed into my face, prompting a few more offensive words.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right.” I spit out rainwater.

  “Grab my hand.”

  “Sister, you stay put. For now.”

  “Grab my hand.”

  “If I grab your hand, I’ll pull you off the roof.”

  Realizing the logic in that, she withdrew her hand. I moved down the side of the car. Still gripping the slats with my hands, I found the door and pushed with my leg. Get that door open, just a bit, just a little hole, and I could swing inside the car to my friends the goats and chickens and rooster and two geldings. Inside, I could open the door again and figure out a way to get the nun inside without killing her.

  My left foot found a hold between the slats. My right leg stretched out and pushed at the door.

  “What are you doing?” the nun called down to me.

  “Trying to get this door open.”

  I pushed harder with my leg.

  She said something, but the whistle and the wind and the rain and the clicking and the goats made it impossible for me to comprehend what she said. I ignored her, just pushed. Tightened my grip. Pressed harder with my foot stuck between two slats.

  That was something I shouldn’t have done.

  I guess the gelding had also cracked the slat my foot was on. Loosened it, anyhow. Because it snapped. All my weight was on that piece of wood, so when it broke, I was falling.

  The nun, bless her, screamed out my name—that, I heard—and grabbed my flailing hand, but she should have done what I had told her to do. Stay put.

  She would have had a long, wet, but safe, ride into Rowe, and maybe on to Lamy . . . instead of falling into the darkness, into what seemed like eternity, with me.

  The AT&SF rumbled on by. The lantern from the boxcar quickly disappeared, and we fell, our screams mingling together. We should have hit the ground by then, but, no, we kept on dropping.

  It was like one of those dreams, where you’re falling and falling. What’s that I’d been told? If you hit the ground in your dream, you was dead.

  I felt dead. Knowed I was dead.

  We must have fallen off a bridge. That’s what struck me first. What struck me next knocked the breath out of me, then everything disappeared, and I was freezing. And swallowing water. Cold, icy water. Then I understood. We’d fallen off a bridge, only not one over hard-rock earth. One over the Pecos River.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Río Pecos usually ain’t that deep, but winter had been hard and the snowmelt was still running off the mountains, so she was running higher than normal. The Pecos ain’t that wide, neither, so the Lord must have been watching over us. Or over Sister Geneviève, anyway.

  I come up, breaking the surface, spitting out water. Yep, the river was up, and flowing good, and I heard the nun screaming. She was being c
arried downstream, toward them rocks. I had to save her. I had—

  Hell’s fire. I said I’d set the record straight in this here account. Tell the truth.

  All right, if you must know, I didn’t come up, spit out water, swim over to save the nun from getting drowned. Truth is, after hitting the water, I didn’t remember a thing till I was coughing out water on the banks. On top of me, Geneviève Tremblay dug her knees into my back and pushed down hard with her small hands, forcing water from my lungs. Don’t ask me how she’d done it, but she’d grabbed my arms and dragged me out of the Pecos.

  It was her who’d saved my life, which was damned embarrassing, but that’s the gospel truth.

  Once she was sure I wasn’t dead, she toppled off me, crawled a few rods, then sighed.

  “Any other brilliant plans, Mister Bishop?” she asked after the longest while.

  Couldn’t answer. Couldn’t move. My body was numb from cold, my head was splitting, and it’s a miracle I hadn’t broke no bones. After I started breathing normal, I rolled over, groaning, the rain still pelting my face.

  “Well,” I said after an eternity. “Sean Fenn, them railroad boys, Felipe Hernandez . . . they’ll never find us here.”

  Then I fell asleep.

  Dawn came, and still we slept. When I finally woke up, the sun was warm, drying, merciful, and so was the wind. Figured it must be nine or ten in the morning, which was early for me, but way late to be getting up when you’re dodging the law. My muscles was stiff, but slowly I managed to sit up. It taken a good long while before I recollected everything that had happened, and realized why I was laying on the riverbank watching a nun wash her feet and legs in the Pecos.

  Sister Geneviève pulled down that black wool, reached over for a stick, and pushed herself off a rock. She limped toward me, using a chunk of juniper as a crutch.

  “You all right, Sister?” I called out.

  “I’ll be fine, Mister Bishop.” She hobbled toward me.

  Staring at the trestle over the river, she shuddered. When I looked at the bridge, I almost threw up. That had been a long drop. At least, it looked way up there from where we was. A wonder we hadn’t gotten killed.

  “Are we near Rowe?” she asked.

  “No, ma’am. Not even near Fulton. The Santa Fe crosses the Pecos at San Miguel, but there ain’t much to it.”

  She sat on a fallen tree and started massaging her right calf.

  “You sure you’re all right?”

  “Pulled a muscle,” she said. “What’s in San Miguel?”

  “Just a telegraph repeater, some railroad equipment. A few farms.”

  “You know a lot about the railroad.” She pulled off her hood, and looked into the sky, letting the sun bathe her face with warmth. Her matted hair needed ten minutes with a curry comb, and her hand holding the makeshift crutch was cut and bruised.

  “Helped build it,” I said. “Grading.” About the only honest job I’d ever really had. I didn’t bother telling her about the time Sean Fenn and me planned on robbing the train between Springer and Raton. We hadn’t gone through with it, though we had come up with a mighty good plan. Fenn had chased after a petticoat bound for E-Town high in the mountains, and I’d gotten drunk and passed out in the livery. By the time he come back, he couldn’t find me, and the train had gone on to Raton and into Colorado. Them railroad boys never knowed how close they’d come to being victims of a holdup that would have made Jesse James and Sam Bass envious.

  Even with her hair tangled so, Sister Geneviève looked mighty fetching.

  I still couldn’t come to terms with the fact that she was a nun. Maybe she wasn’t one. “You sure you’re a nun?”

  “I pulled you out of the river last night, Mister Bishop.”

  Good answer. Most women I’d knowed never would have done that. I reckon she was with the Sisters of Charity. She’d even saved my hat, which was drying on a rock beside me. We just sat there in silence, getting warmer, drier, me sneaking a peak at her every once in a while.

  Finally, she pushed herself up, leaning on that stick. “What now, Mister Bishop?”

  I made myself stand, took a few tentative steps toward her, turned around, picked up my hat, studied the railroad tracks and the river, upstream, downstream, then wet my lips with my tongue. They was cracked considerable.

  “Which way to the Valley of Fire?” she reminded me.

  I nodded in the general direction. “From here, it’s almost direct south. As the crow flies, I’d say maybe a hundred and twenty miles.” I give her a hard stare, just so she wouldn’t get some fool notion. “But we ain’t crows.”

  She got some fool notion, anyway. “But neither the railroad detectives nor the law nor Sean Fenn would look for us if we took this most direct route.”

  I sniggered. “Oh, it’s a direct route, all right, Sister. Straight to Hell.” I motioned toward the river. “The Pecos goes another way. It’s nice and cool here with plenty of shade. But after a few days, it turns hot and miserable and deadly. You won’t find no water till Piños Wells, if there’s any water there. Farther south you get, you’re around what the Mexicans and Spanish used to call Jornado del Muerto, which means—”

  “I know what it means, Mister Bishop.”

  “Well, you sure ain’t walking there. Not with a bum leg.”

  She give me a direct look into my eyes.

  God, they was beautiful, dark eyes.

  “I thought you have a certain way with horses, Mister Bishop.”

  I choked back some fine cuss words. She was tempting me to steal horses, which I was mighty good at.

  “Why?” I demanded. “What in tarnation has you so jo-fired to walk or ride better than a hundred miles through the worst country in the territory to dig up something in a valley of black rocks?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “No.”

  “Sister Rocío never told you?”

  “She never told me nothing, excepting who Jesus’s disciples was, how many Hail Marys I needed to say, and that I’d better eat all the posole in my bowl, or else.”

  “Maybe it’ll all come back to you when you see the Valley of Fire.”

  Silence. Then, “It’s worth your while, Mister Bishop.”

  That got me to figuring some more. It was also worth Sean Fenn’s while. I mean, it’s one thing for a nun to rescue a condemned man from the gallows. There was a story in the territory that one of them Sisters of Charity, Blandina had been her name, had helped out Billy the Kid in Trinidad. Not that it did the Kid any good seeing how Pat Garrett shot him down some years later. But Sean Fenn wouldn’t have lifted his little finger—the one on his left hand that this fellow in Denver had cut off at the second knuckle, clean as you please, with a Bowie knife four years back—to save my hide. So maybe whatever was in them lava flows was worth my while.

  But getting there . . . ?

  I gave up. I couldn’t win no argument with a nun. “Come on, Sister.” I started walking downstream.

  Two or three miles later, we come upon a little farm. Corral. Lean-to. Couple shacks. And a jacal. Didn’t see no smoke from the chimney, but there was two mules in the corral, and a burro and a bunch of stinking goats. The problem, naturally, was that this outfit was on the other side of the river.

  “We’ll have to cross here, Sister,” I told her.

  She looked around for a bridge. ’Course, there wasn’t one. She turned to me. “You’re stealing . . . those animals? We’ll drown for those?”

  “We won’t drown, and those animals can get us to Anton Chico. Pickings should be better down there. Then we can take off south, through the desert, toward your Valley of Fire and our graves.”

  She didn’t move.

  “I’ll hold your hand.”

  She limped to the bank and stepped into the water. Sighing, I followed her. Stubborn. Her head was harder than mine. Frigid water took our breath away. It had been deeper up by the trestle, but it was wider here.

  The nun slipped
once, but caught herself before I could. She kept moving, making a beeline for the bank. The stones on the bed got slippery, but the water didn’t get no deeper than my boot tops, at first. About midstream, Sister Geneviève stepped into a hole. That dropped her only to her waist, but she turned, and the color drained from her face. Next thing I knowed, her juniper crutch was flowing downstream without her, and her eyes rolled back into her head.

  I lunged for her, but she splashed into the water before I could save her. Me? I went down and under, came up holding onto my hat, moving for her as she floated after her crutch. Like I said, it wasn’t deep, but bitterly cold. I caught a handful of black wool, pulled her close to me, then heaved her up over my shoulder. Even sopping wet, she was light as a deck of cards.

  Moving through the water, I carried her, climbed out of the river, and left a trail of water to the lean-to. There, I laid her on straw, then pulled off my boots, added to the water trail, and knelt beside her. She was breathing, but out cold. One of the mules brayed. I rubbed the stubble on my cheeks, trying to figure out what to do.

  Finally, I spotted the blood, and gently lifted the black cloth of her dress.

  I swore. Quickly, I removed my bandanna, wrung it out, whipped and rolled it as thin as I could make it, and wrapped it just under her knee. Spying a little branding iron in the corner, I grabbed it, tied the bandanna into a knot, then put the branding iron’s stem atop the bandanna, tied the iron to it, started twisting until the bleeding had stopped.

  Ain’t no doctor, but I have had plenty of experience treating things like knife cuts and gunshots, dislocated shoulders, busted knuckles, and hangovers—things like that.

  Way I figured things, she must have cut her leg on a rock when we fell off that bridge. She’d fashioned a bandage of sorts, but hadn’t done nothing else. I reckon whatever rag she had for a bandage had washed off when she’d stepped into the river, the cold water just shocked her, and she’d passed out.

  Good thing, too. Likely, she would have bled to death before she’d have asked me for help, and I hadn’t been looking for some blood trail.