Gabriel's Story (26 page)

Have you come to me to die?

That was not my intention.

Were you part of their crime?

The man answered that he felt some guilt because he had been
there and had been unable to stop them but that no, he had not
taken part in the crime. He wished with all his heart that it had
not happened, and he prayed for the family's forgiveness.

The son cocked an eyebrow. He studied the man closely: his honest, sun-reddened face, the deep hurt in his blue eyes, the slope of
his shoulders. He had not expected one of them to look like this.

Why are your hands tied?

The man told him. The others sat silent, looking between the
stranger and their friend.

The son listened. He touched his mustache with his fingers, felt
the give of the hairs against his skin.

You don't know what happened, do you?

The son helped the bound man dismount from his horse. He
sat with him on the ground a little distance from the others, who
watched with mistrustful eyes. The son told him the truth of his
family, of their fate, and the other man, the Scot, dropped his head
and cried and tried to speak but couldn't find the words. The son
looked away and waited.

The Scot tried to find the words to share his grief over the
other's loss, but again words failed him. The son nodded, but he
said, This thing that was done to my family was not God's work.
It was not in the plan of his universe. It was something that God
had no hand in. Sometimes man forgets himself and thinks he is
God, but he is not, and nothing good can come of this. Sometimes
the acts of man rip open wounds in the world that cry to be healed
but that can't be. Perhaps they can only be bandaged. Maybe not
even that.

But you'll try?

I will. What would I be if I didn't?

They were silent for some time. The horses nearby cropped the
grass. The men watched them and watched the horizon and
smoked. Eventually the son rose and pulled a knife from his boot.
He asked the Scot about his missing sister; the man told what he
knew. The son breathed in the news, closed his eyes for a second to
control it, then knelt and cut the ropes that bound the man's hands.

Go with God.

He met the man's eyes and studied them, checking once more
that he was not making an error, then he turned and signaled
with his hand for the others to mount up. They did so, although
they cast glances at the young man and seemed to think that all
was not as it should be.

The son was astride his horse and had turned it to the west
before the Scot called to him. He turned. The Scot asked his question. The Mexican nodded his answer and waited as the other
mounted up.

THE NEXT TWO DAYS PASSED IN A BLUR OF MOTION that halted only late in the evenings. They'd come into a high, dry land, baked by the unrelenting Arizona sun, through which only the barren ghosts of rivers ran. Water had grown increasingly scarce for some time, but now they found themselves eating up miles of desert without the slightest sign of moisture. The horses had little forage. They all showed signs of fatigue. The girl's gelding walked with tender-footed steps, and Rollins's black mare grew too weak to ride. She was let loose in the wilderness, and Rollins mounted the spare horse taken from the Mexicans. He rode away without a backward glance. The horse watched them go, seemed for a moment to consider following, and then decided against it.

Early that evening the group shared a few cans of tomatoes, their juice more delicious than Gabriel had ever imagined. His share was so small, however, that when they finally stopped, just after midnight, he sat with a dry mouth, sucking what moisture he could from the grease of bacon fat. The men had grown increasingly surly and taciturn. Rollins complained of a “stomping” headache. Dallas was a silent ghost of his normal self, although this had only partially to do with his fatigue and dehydration. Marshall had found out that Dallas had dumped some of their tinned tomatoes back at the Mexican homestead so he could use the space for mescal. He'd hit the boy hard enough to lay him out, then threatened to make him drink the foul liquid till he puked the stuff up and then make him drink it again.

None of the men showed any interest in the girl, and neither did they stop her from sitting with James and Gabriel, the only two with whom she voluntarily shared space. Once the men were all asleep, she roused the two boys, produced a tin of tomatoes, and shared it with them. She made sure that each drank slowly, and made it clear through gestures that James should let the moisture soothe his lips.

Gabriel thanked her, the first words he had actually spoken to her, but she shook away his thanks and hid the empty can. She slept between the two boys, again speaking with gestures that made it clear she would do so as long as neither of them touched her. They didn't, but as the night grew cool Gabriel swore he could feel heat coming off her body. He looked at her outline in the starlight and felt something for her that was not desire, something that was deeper, as if he saw in her all that he had ever seen of things kind, of things beautiful and feminine, and of God and mother. He felt no desire, save for the bone-deep longing for the world to be set right once more.

THE ENTIRETY OF THE NEXT DAY WAS SPENT EXPLORING a canyon that roughly followed their course west. The group dropped down into it with the hope of finding the stream that had carved it. But they found a dry creekbed choked with house-sized boulders. For much of the way the canyon was so narrow and jumbled that they couldn't even ride their horses but had to lead them instead. They climbed out of the canyon around dusk, seared and hollow versions of the people they had been that morning. The horses hung their heads low and sniffed the soil for moisture and shook their heads at the folly that had brought them here. James's horse threw a shoe coming out of the canyon. Gabriel had to hold her hind leg cupped in his armpit as Rollins chiseled away at the horse's hoof wall and then banged a new shoe in place with a fury that seemed a punishment. Dallas's pony watched the procedure, then stamped the ground with her right hoof as if demanding an end to this madness that very instant. But it didn't end.

That night the three adolescents again shared the evening's space. Again the girl made it clear she was not to be touched, and again she produced a can of tomatoes and shared it equally among them. James broke down crying as she fed him, the tears slowly progressing down his cheeks and into the corners of his lips. The girl smiled when she saw this and said something to him that she found humorous. But later she whispered to calm him, words of no lullaby and words that neither boy could understand but that brought some semblance of peace nonetheless.

AROUND NOON THE NEXT DAY they came upon three bowls carved by nature into a large, bare shelf of rock. They were each a couple of yards in diameter, a couple of feet in depth, and half filled with green, putrid water. The men thanked God and Satan both and drank it down like animals. They calmed the horses and let them cool off and allowed them to drink slowly. Once their canteens were full and each of them had drunk all he could take in, the men set out to destroy the water source. Dallas splashed around in the bowls, kicking the water into the wind, spraying it out across the parched granite and so exposing it to the heat of the sun. Before he left, he wrote his name in urine. They rode on, Dallas spitting into the wind and challenging their pursuers to follow them now to their own parched deaths.

That evening the girl indicated that she had no more tomatoes. She lay down as on the previous nights and Gabriel felt the closeness of her once more. As she whispered between the two boys, Gabriel stared out at the firmament, a canopy of stars brighter now than he'd ever seen before. Before long James fell asleep, his breathing a dry rasp that was painful just to listen to. Gabriel tried to listen to the girl instead and was surprised to discover that she'd begun to speak in English. The shock of it lasted only a second. He realized he'd always known she could understand them. Of course she could.

At first her whispers seemed strewn together in a meaningless string of recognizable words. It was only gradually that Gabriel began to understand her fully. She was telling them goodbye. She said that she believed in them, that she understood them. She said that they both wore their hearts on their faces and that their hearts were good. “I know that you are afraid and that you are good. You thank me for helping your friend, but it is not him I help. It is me. I help my soul. You must do the same. I help him now, yes, but when my time comes, I will go and not look back. You should do the same.” She paused and lay still for some time. “You have a gun. One day . . . use it.”

Gabriel turned over and looked at her. “I'm sorry . . . for what they did to you.”

But the girl shook off his sorrow. She motioned with her hand that she didn't need this from him, then she stretched out a thin finger and touched his chest. “Your name is Gabriel, yes?” The boy nodded. “Then don't forget who you're named after. I have the name of the first woman that God created. Understand? They are the ones who will be sorry. They will all die.”

Gabriel began to say something else, but she silenced him with a finger. She touched it to his lips. “Sleep. My brother comes for me tomorrow. Rest, Gabriel.”

THE NEXT AFTERNOON THEY DESCENDED through a pass in the hills and rode out across a wide plateau of scoured land that stretched for miles in each direction. It was already late in the day. The sky to the north had darkened with ominous roils of gray clouds that seethed southward with a Biblical bulk. There was a wavering line of darkness on the land far ahead, perhaps twenty miles or so, which Gabriel knew to be a river. Beyond that the land stretched out in all its barrenness to the horizon, where there was only the faintest yellow hint of more mountains. Gabriel knew that once out on that flat expanse, they'd be in clear view through a full day of riding. If he knew this, the others must too. But none commented or even slowed their horses. They rode into this new terrain in silence.

Two hours later they caught their first glimpse of their trackers, and for the first time the whole group understood the reality of their situation. The trackers were no myth of Caleb's, nor were they their own fears, no phantoms haunting their conscience. They were a band of twelve, riding down into the basin and across the plateau like a military phalanx. There was something uncanny in their progress. They took chunks out of the land with each passing minute, as if mounted on ever-fresh horses. They rode with bold and undisguised vigor, like preordained missionaries who did not fear their own death for the glory of their cause and were propelled onward to destiny with a knowledge unknown to the heathen. As they came on, so did the clouds, laying a blanket of darkness across the plains and bringing with them deep rolls of thunder as if the belly of the earth were hungry.

“For fuck's sake!” Rollins said. “Can you believe this? Who the hell are they?”

Marshall wheeled his horse and studied them, bringing the group to a sudden halt. “They ain't Texans, that's for sure. No Texan has that kind of religion.” He spat, then looked down at the circle in the dust as if he regretted it. “Tell you what. Let's give them the girl. If it's her they're after, maybe that'll satisfy them.”

“And if they ain't after her?” Dallas asked.

“Maybe she'll satisfy them anyway. Leastways, distract them a bit.” He turned and looked at the girl. “It was a pleasure, miss. Consider yourself free to go. I think we'll be doing the same. Let's go. And that means you too, boys. If I were you, I wouldn't want to meet up with that bunch anyway. Off we go.” He spurred his horse forward a few steps. The others started forward as well, but paused when Marshall did. He turned his eyes hard on the boys. “Come on.”

Gabriel's and James's horses whinnied and moved forward a few steps, but still the boys didn't ride. Gabriel met the girl's eyes. She was calm, calmer now than ever. She sat almost serenely in the saddle, as wind whipped her garments about her and the clouds billowed. She held the hair that was blowing about her face with one hand and gestured with the other, a motion somewhere between a dismissal and an absolution.

“Go. I cannot say they wouldn't kill you.”

Marshall looked at her wide-eyed. He cracked a smile and said, “I'll be damned. But you heard her, boys. They got killing on the mind. Let's not make it too easy for them.” A moment later he was off, the others fast behind him.

“Go,” she repeated.

This time the boys did as she instructed. Gabriel looked back often as he galloped. The girl never changed her position. She sat on the horse, growing smaller with distance, waiting.

The boys caught up with the group when they paused to study a canyon. It began as a small depression in the plateau but soon narrowed and deepened and dropped out of sight. They rode along its rim for another half-mile, then came abruptly to the river that Gabriel had seen from the hills. But it was not as he imagined. It was not a river to be forded but a canyon that dropped down a hundred feet or more, with sheer sandstone walls that dizzied Gabriel with their muted colors and fine, wavering designs.

Caleb rode out to the left, paused and studied the canyon, and returned. He believed there was no way across and would be none for many miles. They could ride along the rim and hope that somehow this would lead them to something before the horses died of thirst. Or they could drop down into the canyon via the smaller one they'd ridden past. If they were held up there, they could fight, perhaps, or find some route out.