CHAPTER 10
THE MAP OF BLOOD
The room on the upper floor of the saloon smelled of pine and of the dense steam rising off the oak tub.
Downstairs, the sound of out-of-tune guitars and the babble of drunken men came up through the wooden floor, but inside that room the silence was nearly total.
Nero sank his body into the scalding water, letting his head hang back against the rough rim.
As the heat worked into muscles punished by the desert crossing and by the weight of the gunfight, the water changed colour, going dark with soot, with Gideon’s grease, and with the blood of Colonel Vance’s men.
His two modified Colt Patersons rested on a nightstand, exactly within reach of his right hand.
The cavalry sabre stood propped against the wall, the clean blade shining in the light of a single candle.
The door of the room creaked. Nero did not move, but his blue eyes opened instantly and fixed on the silhouette coming in.
Elena had a roll of yellowed paper under her arm and a bottle of the good whiskey from Do?a Clara’s personal reserve.
Gideon came just behind, still with the tool crate strapped to his back, but wearing a serious expression that contrasted with the euphoria he had shown at the bonfire below.
“The party’s a fine one, but time isn’t playing on our side,” Elena said, kicking a chair over near the tub and spreading the map on the nightstand, pushing Nero’s Patersons an inch aside.
“Dawn will be here soon, and the Russians won’t be waiting on us.
” Gideon came closer, beating the dust off his apron.
“I took a look at the mule and the black coffin,” the inventor remarked, pouring three fingers of whiskey into a dirty glass for himself.
“The iron wheels will hold up on a dirt road, but if we get into the soft sand of the Indian desert or onto the climbs of the Sierra Nevada, that reaper turns into an anchor. We need to lay out an intelligent route, or we’ll die of thirst before we ever see the face of one of the Czar’s soldiers. ”
Elena pointed her index finger at the worn tracing on the paper.
The map showed the brutal immensity of the continent, and her finger marked out the steps of that particular hell: first out of the Texas territory by the arid strip of New Mexico; then across the high country and the gorges of the Apache, who tolerated neither white men nor vaqueros; then over the Sierra Nevada before the first snows closed the mountain passes; and only then down to the California coast in search of the fortified enclave of Fort Ross.
Nero reached out a soaking arm, took the glass of whiskey Gideon had poured, and drank it all in one swallow. His cold eyes swept the markings of Santa Fe and the rough borders drawn on the map.
“We’re not going around the desert,” Nero said, his voice hoarse and muffled by the steam of the room. “We go straight through the middle. It’s the shorter road.”
“Going through the middle means crossing the country of Cochise’s warriors, Nero,” Elena warned, folding her arms, her eyes fixed on him. “They don’t care that you killed Colonel Vance. To them we’re just more pale-skins trespassing on sacred ground.”
Nero rose out of the tub, the water running down over his old scars. He took the rough linen towel and looked at the map, then at the two allies who had decided to burn their own fates along with his.
“The Apache defend their land,” the hunter pronounced, picking up one of his Colts and testing the weight of Gideon’s mechanical cylinder.
“The Russians enslave children. There’s a difference between men who fight for pride and monsters who fight for profit.
We ride out as soon as that bonfire downstairs turns to ashes. ”
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