Valley of Fire Read online

  “Hey!” I called out to the jacal. “I got a nun here who needs help!”

  Nothing.

  I shouted out, “Help me!” My echo was the only reply.

  Her crucifix reflected sunlight. I reached down for the silver cross. It was actually a pin, fastened on a rawhide thong. Plain and simple. I unfastened it from the rawhide, pushed up the pin.

  One of the mules brayed, and I got me this idea.

  Leaving the nun, I left the lean-to, ducked inside the corral, and eased myself to the nearest mule, whispering to it like I’d known him all my life. I put my hand on his neck, rubbing in circles, moving down to his rear end. I snatched me a hair from the tail and hurried back to the lean-to.

  Beside the unconscious nun, I worked on that stickpin, bending it back and forth till it broke off from the underside of the crucifix. I hurriedly tied one end of the hair to the big side. Wetting my lips, I pushed the skin on the sister’s calf together with thumb and forefinger, then pushed the pin through.

  First time, it didn’t work. The hair slid off.

  Did the same the second time. I started to think that I might have to find a knife, heat it up somehow, and cauterize the cut. But the fifth time, the horsehair went through like it was suture thread and the stickpin was a surgical needle.

  Taken me twelve stitches, but I made them tight so she wouldn’t have no ugly scar. I tied it off, bit off the hair-thread, and looked down at my handiwork.

  Actually, I stared at the nun’s leg. It was a work of God. Pure. Slim. Beautiful, even with the blood and bruises. I pulled down the black wool.

  She moaned a bit, turned her head. I felt her forehead, but she wasn’t feverish. Still, I fetched a saddle blanket off the corral post, and covered her with it. Then I ran to the jacal.

  Someone lived here, that was a fact. A man. I could tell.

  The bed in the corner was unmade, and the place stank of dirt, man-sweat, and tobacco. The skillet by the fireplace was full of bacon grease, and the coffee left in the cup looked thicker than blackstrap molasses. Finding a trunk next to the bed, I opened it. One of the shirts looked passably clean, so I ripped off the sleeve and tore it into strips. I smudged one in the bacon grease, then found a twist of tobacco on the table, bit off a chunk, and started chewing. On my way out the door, I spied something else, so I picked up the jug, and ran in my bare feet back to the lean-to.

  Geneviève still slept. I lifted up her dress, saw she was still bleeding a mite between them stitches. I spit tobacco juice on it. Spit three or four more times to get that cut good and juicy because I knowed that the best thing you could do for a gunshot wound was to spit tobacco juice into the hole. It would fight off any blood poisoning. Big Tim Pruett had told me that, right before he died, and Big Tim had been one to ride the river with. Next, I slapped the bacon-greased rag over those stitches, and used the rest of the strips to fashion a bandage. I tied them good and tight, but not too tight, as I didn’t want to cut off all the circulation.

  I loosened the tourniquet. Color flowed back into her pale legs. Blood didn’t soak the bandage.

  Satisfied, I hooked the tobacco out of my mouth with a finger, pulled the cork out of the jug, and taken a swallow. I coughed, gagged, wiping the tears from my eyes and the snot dripping from my nose. I had me another pull, laid the jug beside the sister, and went to the corral.

  Well, I had one of them mules saddled, reined to the corral, and was working on the big Jack when I heard the shotgun. Knowed it was a shotgun on account I heard the first hammer clicking, then the second. The second hammer taken some time to get set, which troubled me, because I feared it might accidentally go off. I turned around slowly, raising my hands, but not stepping away from the mule. I figured the man with the shotgun, iffen this was his mule, wouldn’t be inclined to send two barrels from a shotgun and risk wounding or killing one of his mules.

  He was one big Mexican. Looked to be the size of Goliath, with a beard like Moses. He sounded like I’d always figured Moses would have sounded. Strong. Deep. Demanding.

  “Step away from Juanito, señor, so I can kill you without harming my mule.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Luckily, he spoke and savvied English.

  My head tilted toward the lean-to. “There’s a nun lying yonder. She cut her leg real bad. I need to get her to the doctor in Anton Chico.”

  “There is no doctor in Anton Chico.”

  “Well, there’s a church. And a priest. And a midwife, I reckon.”

  “There is no nun, señor. You are a thief. Por favor, step away. That is a good mule. I do not wish to hurt him when I kill you.”

  Bless that nun, she picked that moment to moan.

  The Mexican didn’t lower the shotgun, didn’t look away from me, but he’d heard. His eyes turned skeptical, but when the Sister groaned again, I could see the hesitation, the doubt underneath that massive beard.

  He stood on the riverside of his farm, so he couldn’t see inside the lean-to, and I wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t just kill me, and his mule, then do his investigating. So I spoke some more. “Her name is Geneviève. She’s with the Sisters of Charity in Santa Fe.”

  He give a quick glance toward the lean-to, but I didn’t move a hair. His eyes was back on me in an instant.

  “Mister,” I said, “I ain’t got no gun. Not even a knife. And I ain’t wearing boots. They’s in the lean-to, so I ain’t going nowhere. Look inside that lean-to. You don’t want to kill me and find out you made a bad mistake. That nun, and God, sure wouldn’t forgive you for murdering me, who’s trying to save Sister Gen’s life.”

  He had already started inching hisself around the corral, keeping that shotgun aimed in my general direction. He backed up till he had a clear look inside the lean-to, but I didn’t resume breathing again till he had eased down them barrels of that shotgun. Crossing hisself, he seemed to forget all about me, and hurried into the lean-to.

  I joined him, once my legs got to working again, leaving the second mule half-saddled standing in the corral. He had lifted the Sister’s dress, and studied the leg. When he looked up at me, contempt masked his face.

  “Did you do this?”

  “No, I didn’t cut her leg. She fell. Uh, she—”

  “No.” His head shook violently and muttered something in rapid Spanish that I couldn’t catch. In a tone of disgust, he spoke to me in English. “Is this what you call doctoring?”

  “Well . . . yeah . . . I mean . . .” For a moment, I thought he might fetch that shotgun off the straw and blow a hole in my belly.

  Instead, he untied my bandage, tossed away the cloth, and pulled a handkerchief from his mule-ear pockets. To my surprise, the handkerchief looked clean. His chin jutted toward the whiskey. “Hand me the jug.”

  I’d been demoted from surgeon to nurse. I done as I was told, kneeling beside him on the other side of Sister Geneviève, watching as he splashed that rotgut onto the white cotton, soaking it good, then began scrubbing around my stitches, wiping off the tobacco stains, the bacon grease, all the good doctoring I’d done.

  That whiskey must have burned considerable—it had certainly burned a wicked path down my throat—because, even unconscious, Sister Geneviève’s eyelids tightened. She moaned, turning her head one way and the other. Beads of sweat soon appeared on her forehead.

  The Mexican mumbled an apology in Spanish, wiping her brow with the whiskey-soaked rag, leaving it there, then running them massive fingers of his over my mule-hair suturing. Them stitches still held. She wasn’t bleeding much.

  “You should be a seamstress, señor,” he said.

  I told him, “I am, well, sort of prone to accidents.”

  The Mexican smiled, which surprised me, and rose. “Bring the Sister into my home. We will tend to her there. It is better than here. Cleaner, at least.”

  He must have forgotten that I’d been inside his jacal, and didn’t find it much cleaner than this lean-to. But he was walking away, shotgun in his arms, so I picked
up Sister Geneviève and followed. Once I laid her down on the cot in the corner that served as the farmer’s bed, I let my hand slip inside the pockets of her habit. I felt a couple pouches and a purse, but those wasn’t what I wanted. I’d hoped to find that little five-shot pistol.

  The Mexican told me to move, so I stepped away.

  He was on his knees again, putting a bedroll at the foot of the cot, gently lifting the nun’s bum leg, elevating it. “Señor, if you can get a fire going, we shall boil water. And heat up coffee and soup. When was the last time you have eaten?”

  Criminy, now that he mentioned coffee and soup, my stomach started growling.

  That Mexican farmer, he sure was thorough. While the coffee and soup warmed, he boiled the white shirt I’d ripped, then cut that into more strips and fashioned a real good bandage. I reckoned that he had suffered even more accidents than me. He seemed that good at doctoring.

  Folks can fool you. I’d figured that farmer for some uncouth bum, but them big hands of his had a woman’s touch. He was gentle as he refixed the Sister’s leg, though I am proud to say he didn’t find no fault with them stitches. He cleaned her leg some more, wrapped the bandage on good and tight, and covered Geneviève with a pretty blanket. He also removed the purse and pouches from her pockets, and left them beside the nun’s side.

  “Are you alone here?” I asked over his shoulder.

  “Sí. Unless you count the mules, burro, and goats.” He kept focused on Sister Geneviève. “Me llamo Jorge de la Cruz.” Grunting, he pushed himself to his feet, turned, and them Old Testament eyes of his blazed through me. He had just told me his name. Now, it ain’t polite to ask a fellow his name, and he wasn’t asking, but I could tell he wanted to know. Wanted to know my name, and a lot of other things.

  “I am Big Tim Pruett.” Hell, it was the only handle I could think of.

  “You are not very big, señor.”

  I shrugged. “That’s what they call me.”

  It satisfied him. “The Sister sleeps. That is good. Come, Señor Pruett. We shall eat.”

  While Sister Geneviève rested, we sat at the table, me on my second helping of tortilla soup, and Jorge de la Cruz slowly sipping coffee, glancing at the nun every now and then. At last, he asked me, “How did you get here?”

  I wiped my mouth with my left hand, then wiped my hand on my trousers. He filled my empty tin cup with more coffee, and I sipped it.

  I knowed that question would come along, so I’d been thinking on an answer. “We was traveling on the westbound train.” That much was true. “We left the train last night.” So was that. “She is on her way to Anton Chico, and asked me to guide her.”

  “To the parish of San José?”

  That must have been the Catholic church there, so I nodded.

  He set his cup of coffee in front of him. “Why did you not follow the road from Romero to Anton Chico?”

  “She’s a nun. Wants to visit all the farms along the river.”

  Glory to God, he believed it. His head bobbed. “And how did she come to cut her leg so badly?”

  “It was nighttime,” I said. “She slipped, must have bashed her leg against a sharp rock. We was making camp just by the trestle. I didn’t know she’d cut herself. And she didn’t tell me. Stubborn, she is. Stubborn as a witch.”

  He didn’t like that, but kept on listening, just listening and sipping and staring. Trying to catch me in a lie, but if there’s one thing I was good at, it was lying.

  I kept on talking. “Must have wrapped it herself. Never let on. I don’t think she would have told me nothing, but when we crossed the Pecos to get to your farm, the cold water must have shocked her. She passed out.”

  That’s something else Big Tim Pruett had taught me. Adding a dash of truth to your lies makes any falsehood more believable. It sure was working for me.

  “It’s a miracle that I reached her before the current took her under and she drowned,” I continued. “I got her to the lean-to, found the cut, made a tourniquet, and stitched her up.”

  “With a hair from Juanito.” The Mexican smiled. Well, I thought he grinned. It was hard to tell underneath that thick beard.

  “Actually, I think it was the Jenny.”

  He nodded. “Ah, Lucía. Bueno. Lucía will like having helped save the life of a holy woman.”

  He wasn’t done with his interrogation. “But where is your valise?”

  I give him the dumb look.

  “Clothes? Food? Bedrolls?”

  “Oh. Well. She’s a Sister of Charity. They take the pledge. You know, live in poverty. Them kinds of things. She figured on relying on the Christian charity of homesteaders such as yourself for food and lodging.”

  He chewed on that. And before he could ask another question, I slowly rose, saying, “If you don’t mind, Señor de la Cruz, I’ll go out and put on my boots. They should be dry by now.”

  After his nod of approval, I walked back to the lean-to. Got the boots on, and looked all over where the Sister had been lying down. No pepperbox. Nothing but the crucifix I’d broken to save her hide. That I picked up, slipping it inside my vest pocket as I walked to the river. Didn’t find the Continental nowhere on that path.

  I looked downstream and upstream and into the piñon and juniper woods along the river. Upstream came the faint sound of an AT&SF train’s horn. The eastbound train was making its way toward Las Vegas, and that got me to fretting. A posse might be aboard that train. It also got me to thinking something else, because about that time the notion struck me that Sister Geneviève had lost her hideaway pistol. Made plenty of sense, what with her dangling from the side of a moving locomotive, falling off a trestle into a river, then getting practically swept downstream after she’d passed out. Yeah. That was it.

  Satisfied, I returned to the jacal.

  That’s where I found the .22. It was in Geneviève Tremblay’s right hand. She was awake, and had that “Ladies Companion” cocked and pointed an inch from the farmer’s face.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “That had better be you, Mister Bishop.” Once again, she sounded like that madam I’d knowed up around Trinidad. Didn’t look at me, didn’t lower the pepperbox, didn’t take her eyes off the burly farmer.

  “It’s me,” I said, once my voice box recovered from the shock. “That’s, um, that’s Jorge de la Cruz, Sister. We’re at his farm. He fixed you up. No need thanking him with a .22 through his eyeballs.”

  Her finger relaxed on the trigger just a tad.

  “Not for him, ma’am, you would have bled to death.”

  She lowered the pistol, and I stepped inside while she asked in Spanish for the farmer’s forgiveness.

  “Es nada.”

  “Well,” I let the good Sister know. “I mean, I done some good doctoring to yourself. Even fished you out of the river like you done me.”

  The big farmer nodded toward me. “It is Señor Bishop you should thank, Sister.”

  I decided he was a one standup guy for a farmer.

  “He stitched your cut, stopped the bleeding.” Then he was giving me a mean look, but not so Sister Geneviève could see, and I knowed why. He had stressed the name Bishop. I’d told him my name was Big Tim Pruett.

  Well, a body never can get all his lies past scrutiny.

  I give the farmer a polite grin and sat on the cot beside the nun. “I knowed I should never have given you that little pepperbox.” Turning to the farmer, I explained. “For her protection, señor. You know, not everybody in these parts is honorable, even to a woman of faith.”

  Jorge de la Cruz was by the hearth, filling a mug with hot soup. He picked my spoon up from the table, didn’t bother washing or wiping it, just dropped it in the cup, and brung it over to me and the nun. “Here.” He thrust the soup toward her. “You should eat.”

  “Gracias.” I helped her up, and she ate the soup like a wild dog fighting for supper. Famished.

  While she ate, I did some fast talking. “I told Señor de la Cruz about you
asking me to guide you to Anton Chico. How you fell on a rock, cut yourself, and didn’t tell me. And I guess I shouldn’t have give you that little popgun.” I turned toward de la Cruz, smiling. “Thought it would be good, for her protection, and all.”

  He scowled.

  I looked back to the Sister. The pepperbox was gone.

  She handed me the empty cup, the spoon rattling inside. “May I have some more?”

  Well, I just went back to the fireplace, ladled in some more soup. When I come back, Sister Geneviève was sitting up. She’d pulled up her dress and was examining the fine bandaging job the farmer had done. Not a drop of blood on them white strips, but that had to be on account of my needlework. She had also lowered her hood.

  “Thank you, Señor de la Cruz.” She sounded perfect French again. “My leg feels so much better.”

  She give that old gent a look that no nun I’d knowed had ever give me. I could practically see de la Cruz’s beard melt. I even saw his smile. The farmer had forgotten all about that gun she’d stuck in his face, all about my lies, all about everything but just what a beautiful woman she was.

  “As I said, Sister, it was nothing.”

  “But it was!” She said that with pure emotion.

  “Well, it was the least I could do, Sister. Will you tell the priest at Anton Chico to remember me?”

  “Most certainly. And I shall never forget you.”

  Me? I was seething. Them two talking like I wasn’t in the room. Her praising him for all his kindness and hard work, but it had been me who’d fished her out of the Pecos, had stitched up her leg before she bled out like a stuck pig. I pulled the crucifix from my vest and gave it to her. “Sorry it broke.”

  She took it, but didn’t look at the pin I’d snapped off, didn’t look at nothing but that giant farmer.

  “We’d better be on our way,” I told her.

  “Pardon me,” Jorge was saying. “But your leg should rest. You should spend the night here then leave in the morning. Already, the day is late, and Anton Chico is twelve miles or so downstream. Please, rest here for the night. I know it is not much, but . . .” Shrugging, he grinned like a teenage schoolboy.