Bargain at Bravebank, Part III: MORE THAN ONE KIND OF VULTURE
(if you want to start back at Part I, you can still read it and Part II here)
It was pain that woke me a second time.
Sharp, piercin’ pain, shockin’ out from the bullet hole in my leg.
I yelled and lurched up before I’d even fully realized I hadn’t been awake in the first place. I threw out a hand blindly, the sun searin’ my vision. The world was a blur of white and heat, ‘cept the few dark shapes lurkin’ close. And one was over there near my leg.
It fluttered back a few steps as my hand came at it, and that’s when I knew they must be vultures of the animal variety, instead of vultures of the human kind.
Both kinds of vultures were bad news, in my opinion. And one not necessarily better or worse than the other. Not really. Not when you were in my kind of state.
I flung out my hand again. “Get!” It came out a harsh whisper instead of a shout.
The bird only watched me. Unafraid. Patient. Like it knew if it just waited a few minutes more, I’d lie back down and go quiet. For good.
I gritted my teeth and tried to conjure up a good swear, but I was too exhausted even for that. I groped for my gun, found it still on my hip. Well, least the birds couldn’t take those from me, unlike their human counterparts. I drug it outta the holster and half-rolled toward the feathered bastard. I propped myself on both elbows. Had to hold the damn gun with both hands.
Had it always been this heavy?
A sharp peck on the back of my right calf brought me swingin’ round again to the one behind me. “Damn you!” I spat. “I ain’t dead yet!”
Not yet. Though I was surely closer to it than I would have liked.
It raised its wings and hissed at me.
“Go to Hell,” I growled back. I pulled my trigger.
The others took off with loud cries of protest as their comrade fell, but I lifted the barrel and squeezed off two more shots at ‘em, for good riddance. Got one of ‘em, and it dropped like a rock back to the sands. I tried another shot at the one still flyin’, but my pistol jammed.
I swore and fell back into the burnin’ sand myself, rememberin’ my dented cylinder. Shoulda used the left pistol, instead. Closin’ my eyes, I felt for it now, and exhaled loudly when my fingers found it, safe and sound still where it belonged.
And then some clarity returned to my poundin’ head.
And I sat up with a start, and looked around at the shimmerin’ stretch of sand around me best I could with that cursed sun bakin’ me good as a fish in a pan.
I’d had a horse, hadn’t I? And water. And supplies.
But there surely was no sign of any of that now. Not even any hoofprints in the sand or dirt. I squinted and rubbed at my eyes. But my view didn’t change.
I s’pose if there had been a horse, its tracks coulda been covered over by the wind by now. However long it had been. How long had I been lyin’ here comatose in the sand again, tryin’ to die?
Long enough for the birds to think I was their next meal, I guess.
Had I imagined Clint and his sonuvacunt friend?
I didn’t think so, but then, I wasn’t sure of much anymore.
‘Cept the fact I was surely gonna die if I didn’t find Bravebank soon.
It couldn’t be that much further. I had to make it.
I pushed my gun back into its holster and then pushed myself up off the ground, my left leg stickin’ straight out, stiff as a board. Sweat ran in rivulets down my face and down my back. My arms shook, my vision dimmed, and a wave of nausea rocked me. I sat back down hard, the world tiltin’ sideways.
I tried to hold myself up, to brace myself, but this time it didn’t do no good. I collapsed anyway, the world still rockin’. I wanted to keep goin’. I had to keep goin’. I reached out with one hand, clutchin’ at a fistful of sand as if it were a hold on life itself.
I crawled forward. Or sorta crawled. More like slithered on my belly, movin’ westward still inch by inch. I was glad then that Holt hadn’t come. I surely didn’t want him to see me like this. And I was more glad that Nine-Fingered Nan had been left miles behind in her desert oasis. If she ever knew what she’d done to me here, she’d probably laugh until she finally croaked.
I groaned into the sand, a bit of dust kickin’ up into my face with my breath. Don’t be a fool. She knows exactly what she did to you.
That’s why she’d demanded I meet her man in Bravebank instead of in Grave Gulch, which woulda been a lot closer to her oasis and which is where I’d left Holt, who coulda been some back-up. Why she’d shot my horse. Why she’d shot me in the leg instead of the head. Why she’d made my sanity a condition in her agreement to give me a chance to earn Ethelyn’s freedom.
All so carefully arranged.
All so expertly manipulated to kill me. After makin’ me suffer awhile first, of course.
Damn her to Hell. Damn her straight to Hell. I pulled myself forward another inch. I couldn’t let her win. I couldn’t let Ethelyn go. Everythin’ in me screamed to keep goin’, but my body was givin’ out. It didn’t care what I wanted anymore.
I slumped into blackness.
#
Somethin’ jostled me.
I heard voices again. The goddamned vultures just wouldn’t leave me alone. I made to reach for my guns with heavy, sluggish arms, and there was an alarmed string of words in response. I couldn’t tell what the vulture was sayin’. Whether or not that was ‘cause of my own disorientation or ‘cause they was speakin’ some foreign language, well, I couldn’t sort that, either. But that didn’t matter. I’d kill ‘em either way.
‘Cept I couldn’t seem to get my hands around my guns.
Another voice answered the first, and this one cut through the haze of my sun-dazzled wits. A woman’s voice.
I couldn’t understand her, neither, but my heart jumped in my chest anyway, thinkin’ of Ethelyn. I attempted to roll over, to sit up. Where was I? Who were these people?
Women didn’t often travel with bandits of the sand… but then, there was Nine-Fingered Nan. She’d been a lady once. Maybe. Now she was the Devil incarnate. This woman here could still be a vulture, certainly.
Now there were two female voices talkin’, runnin’ over each other into nonsense. And a boy’s voice, too. What the hell? Who brings a kid out here?
I tried to drag my eyes open, tried to leverage myself up on one elbow. I felt wood underneath me, a stark difference from the shiftin’ sand. What in—
Somethin’ came down over my nose and mouth. A sweet-smellin’ cloth. I reached up in attempts to yank it away just as other hands took my shoulders and pushed me down flat to my back again. My eyes came open at last, but there was only blurry figures around me. My surroundings were dim, claustrophobic.
Looked like a man sittin’ over me, though, the one holdin’ the cloth to my face. I grabbed at his arm, but he was damn strong. Maybe if I hadn’ta just spent two days walkin’ in the desert with a bullet in my leg, I coulda taken him easily.
But not now.
His arm was rigid, the muscles in his forearm hard beneath my clawin’ fingers.
“Easy, son, easy now. Calm down. This is for your own good…”
The words filtered through my kickin’ and gruntin’, but gave me no reassurance. I’d heard such words before, and what followed had never been particularly pleasant. Not to mention this bastard seemed bent on suffocatin’ me. And I surely didn’t see how that could be fer my own good.
Though maybe there were a few lawmen out there who might’ve thought puttin’ me out of my misery was fer my own good.
Maybe this fella agreed with ‘em.
I felt the sleep comin’ on, and my beatin’ at the man’s arm and chest weakened. My arms dropped to the wooden planks beneath me, suddenly heavy as lead. Despite my best efforts, my eyes closed. My thoughts of Ethelyn, of dyin’, of Nine-Fingered Nan, drifted off.
“That’s it,” the man whispered, only now it seemed his words had gained the comfort he’d obviously intended, whether or not it was genuine. I eased into them. “That’s it. Just relax. Go to sleep. You’re in good hands, now.”
Suffocatin’ hands, I thought, still breathin’ into that sweet-smellin’ cloth, slow and deep now. Damn yer… suffocatin’ hands, ya… no good… sonuva…
#
Next time I came conscious, it was slow and peaceful. No voices this time, no hands on me, no pain. Least, no pain for awhile. Felt like I was floatin’. No burnin’ sun bakin’ me. No hot sand searin’ my skin. No sharp peck of vultures tryin’ to make me a meal.
Gradually, awareness came back to me. There was somethin’ soft under my back and my head. The light through my eyelids was subtle, not blindin’. The air smelled different… like fire smoke and somethin’ savory. And there were sounds, too, muffled but unmistakable: the creak of footsteps on floorboards, quiet conversation, the sound of a knife choppin’. Choppin’ what, who knew? Maybe vegetables. Maybe meat.
My gut twisted at the familiarity of it and I drew a sharp breath as memories came floodin’ back.
My fists gripped sheets.
I was in a house. I was in a damned house. A house so similar to the one I’d used to know…
My eyes flung open. I stared up at a beamed wooden ceiling. Daylight filtered in through a window to my right, framed in pretty lace curtains. The sight of ‘em hit me like a punch in the gut. Mama’d had curtains like that.
They’d burned up just as nice as everything else in the house.
Includin’ her.
A choked noise escaped me and I sat up, then reeled. That’s when the pain came back, all at once and somethin’ fierce. My whole left thigh felt like it’d been laid open and carved up. I clutched at it and cried out, and that’s when I noticed the shape of it didn’t look quite right under those crisp white sheets tucked in around me.
Footsteps came runnin’ and the door to my left banged open. I jerked my head toward it to see a middle-aged woman gapin’ at me. Instinctively I fumbled fer my guns, but I weren’t even wearin’ my gun belt no more. All I had on was a set of long johns, and I wondered how that’d happened.
The woman left the doorway, runnin’ off yellin’ fer someone.
I remembered the women I’d heard talkin’ when that man had tried to suffocate me, and figured these were probably the same people. She was probably runnin’ off to get the man who’d tried to suffocate me, to tell him he didn’t do such a good job of it.
I needed to get out of here. Didn’t matter that I was damn near naked, or that I didn’t have my weapons. Didn’t matter that the room was spinnin’ fit to put me right back down in the bed. I grabbed the edge of the blankets to throw them back when another person appeared in the doorway; a young woman.
The sight of her stopped me cold. Now it was me who was gapin’. I hadn’t expected the other woman I’d heard to be so near my own age.
Then the older woman returned, with a tall, thin man in tow. He wore small, round spectacles and had a well-oiled moustache that pointed upwards on the ends. From that and spotless condition of his fancy dress shirt and silk vest, I knew right off he was one of those so-called “learned” men. Had he really been the one tryin’ to suffocate me?
The bastard was stronger than he looked.
“No, no, no, no!” he said quickly, shakin’ his head as he came across the room at me. “You cannot be up! Lay back down before you hurt yourself!” He shoved me back down into the pillow with unceremonious force. “You are very, very lucky to be alive, son. But if you do not rest now, all of my hard work will be for nothing!”
Well, I understood his words alright now, but he had a heavy, lilting accent. “I ain’t lucky,” I growled. “And I ain’t yer son.”
His finely groomed eyebrows lifted above his spectacles. “Perhaps not, but I did save your life. You are welcome.”
“I didn’t say thank you.” Even as I muttered it, my eyes shifted from him to the older woman I assumed was his wife, and the young woman I figured was his daughter. Both of ‘em looked unsettled, concerned. The wife gripped the choppin’ knife in one hand, white-knuckled. So they were the smarter ones in the family, it seemed.
“I am quite aware,” the man stated wryly. “But nonetheless, it is done.”
Was it? I wasn’t so sure. Not with the fire that burned in my leg now. It hurt worse than it had in the desert. I turned my gaze back to him. “You shouldn’ta done that,” I croaked. “You shouldn’ta brought me here.” I’d learned long ago, helpin’ people most often just got you dead quicker. And this man had a family. He was even more an idiot for riskin’ ‘em like that.
The man scoffed, reachin’ to the bedside table to retrieve a stethoscope. So what was he, then, some kind of doctor? “Son, if I hadn’t of found you and brought you here, you’d certainly be dead, and the buzzards feeding on your carcass.”
I swallowed hard, knowin’ that was no lie. But that didn’t mean I’d wanted the help. Didn’t mean I was gonna owe him for savin’ my life. I couldn’t afford to owe anyone, and I already owed Nine-Fingered Nan everythin’ I had left. “I told you, I ain’t yer son,” was all I said.
He pursed his already thin lips at my response, then stuck the stethoscope into his ears and tried to press the other end of it to my chest like he was gonna listen to my heart. I knocked his hand away.
His wife in the doorway took a step forward, the knife liftin’ a bit as if in warnin’.
I met her hard stare over the man’s shoulder. As if? No. It was surely a warnin’. Her face spelled out her thoughts clear enough: Harm my husband and I’ll carve you up like a holiday ham.
“I need to listen to your heart,” he said, oblivious to the murderous glare his wife was borin’ into me. “Your leg was terribly infected when we found you. I think the infection was stopped at the leg, but I need to be sure.”
I looked at him again, tryin’ to understand him. Tryin’ to figure out why he wanted to help a man like me. Some stranger he’d found half-dead in the desert. His accent marked him as a foreigner. Probably come here from across the sea. Maybe that was it, then. Maybe he just didn’t understand how things worked over here yet.
If he didn’t sort it out quick, though, the damn fool and his whole family’d end up as dead as I would’ve been if he’d just left me where he found me.
Just as dead as Pa and Mama.
“Why,” I blurted harshly. “Why’d you help me? You shouldn’ta done that.”
He blinked behind the thick round glass of his spectacles. “Why? What kind of question is that? I’m a doctor, son. I took an oath. Not only that, but the Good Book says—“
“No.” The word tore outta my throat, unexpected tears burnin’ in my eyes. I closed them so the man and his family couldn’t see. I struggled to keep my composure, a grief fresher than I’d felt in years rakin’ at my insides. It had to be this damned house. The lace curtains. The mention of the Good Book, that my Mama’d like to read from every night as she’d knelt and said her prayers.
“No,” I choked out again. “Stop. Stop it.” I opened my eyes and stared straight into the man’s confused face so he’d know how serious I was. “Stop helpin’ people. Stop quotin’ the Good Book. Forget your oath.” I lifted a hand to point at his wife and daughter and then gestured out yonder, out beyond the walls of his house. “Take yer family and get back on a boat. Go back to where you came from ‘fore you all end up dead.”
He drew back a bit at my words, then looked over his shoulder to his wife and daughter. Maybe he was tryin’ to decide if I’d meant that as a warning or a threat. It didn’t matter, so long as he listened.
Then the floorboards from the other room creaked a little, and another face appeared between the shoulders of the wife and daughter. A boy’s face, maybe ten years old, and I remembered the child’s voice I’d heard when I’d been delirious. I’d hoped that’d been part of a dream.
It seemed it wasn’t.
His mother noticed him there and scolded him in their native language. I couldn’t make out what she was sayin’, but her tone and her body language said she was orderin’ him away. His wide, dark blue eyes stared straight at me, and his mouth hung open a little.
I glared at him, too.
His mother’s words became more urgent, and he finally, reluctantly moved out of sight again. Who knows where he went, but that didn’t matter, either.
I wasn’t stayin’ here, anyway. I couldn’t. I shook my head and pushed myself sittin’ again. “I gotta go. I can’t stay.”
The man reached out toward me and opened his mouth to protest my movements, but I threw back the covers before he could stop me.
And froze.
My left thigh ended in a stump. The rest of my leg was missin’.
Copyright 2019 J. R. Frontera
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
Part IV is here!
To get these chapters first, become a Patron!
To get them second, join my mailing list!
To get them third, join my Facebook Readers’ Group!
Or… just be patient and stay tuned here!