23. Twenty-Two
The ringing in my ears sat high and tight between my temples and wouldn't let the silence through.
It was the only clean thing left in the draw.
Everything else was soot and sulfur and the sour smell of horse sweat gone cold in the brush.
I kept my back pressed against the rusted iron sideboard of the flatbed, my breath coming in short, dry hitches that scraped the inside of my throat raw.
My right arm lay across my lap. The silver duct tape Zaroff's men had wound around the paint stirrer was too tight; it had bitten into my wrist until the skin was purple, and the fingers sticking out of the bottom had swollen fat and tight and didn't feel like they belonged to my hand at all.
They pulsed with every heavy thump of my heart.
Zaroff wasn't so scary now. He was on his knees in the dirt, back hunched forward until his forehead almost touched the stones. His left hand clutched his bloody right hand while he panted roughly.
John stood over him, his shadow cutting the white light in half. The rifle was still tucked against his shoulder, the heavy barrel pointed at Zaroff.
Ransom's rifle lay across his knees up on the ledge. Sierra was behind me. Cruz hadn't come down off the mare, and her saddle kept creaking, the only thing in the pass that couldn't hold still. None of them moved. They were waiting to see what the stock would do to the butcher.
Zaroff looked emptied out. Run past the end of himself and left there. His face was gray. The white light of the headlamp on the ground hit his chin, showing the wet, dark smear of his beard.
I reached down with my good hand and grabbed the wire necklace around his throat, and I yanked.
The copper wire bit into the back of Zaroff's neck, cutting a thin, red line into his skin before the twist gave way with a sharp ping.
The tusks spilled into my palm, heavy and greasy with his sweat.
I clenched my fist around them until the sharp, filed points bit into my skin, the pain sweet and sharp enough to clear some of the fog in my head.
"Get up," I said.
Zaroff didn't move. He kept his head down, his forehead almost touching the dirt, his whistling breath coming faster now.
I kicked him hard enough to make him gasp, to make him remember that he had a body that could feel the ground.
"Up," I said again.
He dragged himself onto his knees and looked up at me. The white light from the ground caught his eyes. They were wide, wet, and perfectly empty of the god he'd been at the gate. He was just an old man with a ruined hand, shivering in the draw.
"Take it off," I said.
He didn't understand. Or he didn't want to.
"The shirt," I said. "The pants. The boots. All of it."
"Coyote," John said.
I looked down at Zaroff. "You like the sport. You stood at that gate and watched your people strip me. Now it’s your turn."
Zaroff's fingers were shaking as he reached for the buttons of his canvas shirt.
His right hand was useless, so he had to use his left, his teeth catching the hem to pull the cloth over his head.
The white light showed the pale, soft skin of his belly, the gray hair on his chest, the small, circular scar from some old hunt on his shoulder.
He looked small. Without the leather jacket, without the boots that clicked on the hardwood of the porch, there was nothing to him.
He worked his belt open one-handed and shoved the canvas down off his hips.
He struggled with his boots, his good hand straining against the leather until they slipped off and lay hollow in the caliche.
He sat there naked on the stones, his skin turning a blue-gray in the cold standing air of the cut.
The cold was already settling into his limbs, making his shoulders bunch and his teeth chatter with a dry, rhythmic click.
"You get an hour," I said to him.
He looked up, his jaw hanging open, his breath whistling.
"That's what you gave me," I said. "You're going to get the same.
" I pointed out past the mouth of the pass, toward the east where the desert ran flat and empty toward the dry wash.
"The caliche is hard. The cholla spines don't care about your feet.
They'll go through the sole and find the bone.
If you run, you might make the ridge. If you don't, you'll still be sitting here at sunup, and then it's the sun's turn. But you aren't staying in my pass."
Zaroff looked out at the desert.
"No guns," I said, looking back at John now. "No horses. Just the dirt."
Zaroff's teeth showed when his jaw shook. "And if I refuse?"
"Then I let him kill you right here."
John didn't lower the rifle, but his eyes met mine. They were dark and deep-set, and they held on mine. He knew what I was asking. So did I. Whatever came back into this pass might not be the thing that walked out of it. But he didn't say no. He nodded once.
"An hour," John said.
Zaroff didn't wait. He didn't have the pride left to argue. He dragged himself up onto his bare feet, his knees knocking together, and took his first step.
His foot came down on the sharp gravel of the wash. He flinched, his whole body jerking as the stones bit into his soft sole. He didn't look back. He just started to limp out into the dark, his white shoulders bobbing in the starlight until the blackness of the desert swallowed him whole.
Nobody had anything to do for an hour. The cold came up out of the ground and settled in my feet.
The pain had turned cold, a dull, heavy throbbing that kept me awake. I sat down on a flat boulder near the mouth of the pass, my left hand still clutching the wire necklace. The filed points of the tusks cut into my palm. I kept my fist closed around them.
John came and sat down beside me with the kit and made me show him my hand.
I winced as he unwrapped it and looked away while he bound it again, correctly this time.
When he was done, he put two fingers on the inside of my wrist and held them there, counting, and then he tipped my chin up with his knuckle and thumbed my good eyelid open and looked into it.
"Pulse is a hundred and thirty and thin.
You're two quarts dry and your pupil's slow," he said.
"That's a concussion. Any other night I'd have you flat on your back with a line in your arm and I'd sit on your chest to keep you there.
" He taped the last of it down and didn't let go of my wrist. "I can live with an hour. I can't live with three."
"Okay," I said.
He started packing the kit. I made myself say it before I lost the nerve.
"I told you I'd take Cruz."
He didn't answer.
"I never meant to. I said his name back to you in the shed so you'd let it go, and then I saddled the mare and went up alone.
You didn't stop me because you had my word.
That's what I used. Not the horse and not the dark.
You." My throat closed up, and I made it open again. "I lied to you and I’m sorry."
John was quiet for a second. "You’re alive," he said eventually. “That’s what matters now. But if you ever lie to me again—”
"I won’t," I said. "I can’t. I won’t ever lie again."
I reached out. My good hand found his leg, the rough denim of his jeans, and I pulled myself up until I was leaning against him. He didn't pull away. He let my weight settle against his side, his big hand coming down to rest on my shoulder, his fingers heavy and warm through my dirty shirt.
Through his shirt, through the thick flannel and the undershirt, I could feel the hard, puckered scar over his heart.
"Still thumping," I said, my head resting against his ribs.
His hand shifted, his thumb rubbing the back of my neck, his touch rough and warm. He was the only warm thing anywhere I could reach.
Behind us, the others were quiet. Sierra was checking on the horses. Cruz was pacing back and forth, his shoulders hunched against the wind. Mateo hadn't come down from the ledge. He wasn't going to, not until it was over.
"You won't go after him," I said to John.
"No," he said. "He's yours."
"But you'll stay here."
"I'll stay right here. If he tries to double back, he'll find me. If he tries to make the road, he'll find me. I'm the fence, Coyote. But the hunt is yours."
I closed my eyes. The hour ran too long, and it wasn't long enough.
I wanted to lie down and never get up. My feet were swollen, the skin cracked and bleeding.
The splinted hand burned. But the desert was waiting, and Zaroff was out there, his feet bleeding into the caliche, his heart pounding against his ribs.
He was running from me now, the way it should be.
"Time," Ransom said from the ledge.
I stood up. My joints cracked, and for a second the world grayed out and spun around me. I held onto John's arm until the ground stopped moving.
"Don't die out there," John said. His fingers tightened on my shoulder until the bone ached.
"I won't," I said.
I looped the wire over my head so my hand would be empty, and the tusks sat cold against my breastbone.
I didn't take a gun or a knife. I had my teeth, my good left hand, and the dirt.
The moment my feet hit the open flat, the wind came off the desert straight into my face. Past the mouth of the pass, the desert was flat and empty.
I looked for tracks. In this dark, my eyes were only good for the big shapes: the dark clumps of mesquite, the pale spikes of the yucca.
I crouched instead, low enough that the ground came up under my one good eye, and I worked the pale things: limestone and caliche crust, anything that would hold a mark and give it back.
I found him out past the mouth of the pass. A drop of dark blood was on a pale limestone rock. I touched it with my good finger. It came away thick and heavy and still tacky, and it wasn't mine.
Zaroff.
Beside the blood, his bare heel had torn the caliche where it slipped on the gravel, a white scrape in the gray crust.