THE SUN WAS A DIME in the white pan of the sky. Angel’s lips rustled together like tissue paper, reminding her wildly of the moment she pulled the wedding dress from its package in the dusty post office in Eureka. That had been four weeks and a lifetime ago.
It had been a creamy white then, but not anymore. Dingy with the dun dust of the desert, tattered at the hems, torn open high on her left thigh, and bright red in a spreading stain that surrounded a ragged hole just above the right hip, it clung to her as she moved doggedly forward under the pummeling sun. An empty canteen was strung over her neck and bumped her belly, and a tired Winchester rifle balanced limply in the hand without the ring.
Angel stumbled and dropped the rifle and went down to her knees and hung her head, her long dark hair—so recently plaited and pinned so elegantly—clung to her neck and hung in the dirt past her face. Above her, the sun beat down mercilessly. Below, the hot sand scarred and burned. The desire to simply lie down and sleep was so strong, she whimpered. Instead, she grit her teeth and hacked and spat and rose on shaking legs, taking the rifle with her.
Pursuit was important, but water was critical. She knew this, and she now took stock of her situation and cursed her rage-clouded decisions.
She’d mounted a horse and sped off in pursuit of the gang that had murdered her husband. The Great Spirit had seen fit to hand her a full canteen and eighteen rounds of ammunition the right fit for her Winchester in the worn saddlebags. Lord only knew whose horse it even was, whether the owner was alive or dead.
After several hours of hard riding, the horse had been spent and, having no interest in killing the innocent animal for a few more miles, Angel had dismounted, taken the canteen, gun, and ammo, removed the cumbersome petticoat (which rolled away on the desert wind like a jeweled tumbleweed), and checked the wound on her hip. The bullet had gouged a wide gash through the flesh, but little else. She poured a few swallows of precious water over it and re-tightened the bandage she’d made from one of her stockings.
Then, she’d started walking.
And now, she was living out the exact experience she would have predicted had she just stopped and thought for two minutes before jumping on that horse. Like a me’abi dua—a foolish child. Her head swam and pounded. Her tongue felt thick and stuck to the roof of her mouth. She needed water and food. And rest.
Angel stopped a moment and spun very slowly to get her bearings. The trail left by the five horses she’d been chasing was still plain to see. They’d made no effort to cover their tracks, and a glance at the sky and sniff of the wind confirmed the trail wouldn’t be washed clean any time soon. She knew this area of the desert well, and knew that they could only continue the way they were heading for another fifteen miles or so before needing to angle either north or south. North if they were smart, because south led to nothing but death.
From their look, she guessed the men were weak. Mean, cruel, and well-accustomed to killing, to be sure. But not desert-strong. “No sand in their veins,” her father might have said; “They do not live in the desert because the desert does not live in them,” would be her mother’s appraisal. They would run their horses out, then walk them, then run them again the moment the beasts’ chests ceased heaving… over and over until nightfall, when they would set up camp, thinking themselves free and clear. They would eat their food quickly, empty their canteens early, thinking replenishment must be just around the next rise or outcrop. An arroyo or oasis, perhaps.
They were wrong.
So, Angel kept scanning, and headed toward a short crag near the eastern horizon. She had been there years before while on degaigu’ with her mother—a three-day desert hike to hunt and gather food and supplies in the traditional ways. A spiritual pilgrimage of sorts. And a wonderful memory.
When she got there, she crept into a narrow cleft in the rocks and felt the delicious coolness of the shade. And, as she expected, deep in the underside of the narrow gulley, beneath a steep overhang, shallow bowls had been carved from the rock centuries before, and cool water lingered there. She stooped and drank slowly, feeling the moisture infiltrate each cell. Sitting back against the rock wall, she dipped the ragged hem of her dress in the water and lifted it to her forehead and neck, relishing the coolness.
Here, the ground wasn’t soft, but her exhaustion trumped comfort, and she fell asleep quickly. And all around, the indifferent desert moved on as she slept…
Angel gasped at the picture in the Sears & Roebuck catalog. Silk and crinoline, lace and mother-of-pearl—not just gorgeously impractical and extravagant, but mind-numbingly expensive. A luxury Hoss hadn’t even thought twice about. “Nothing’s too good for you, darlin’,” he’d crowed.
Howard was his name, (or Mr. Powers to the seemingly endless string of strangers who owed him money,) but everyone who knew and loved him called him Hoss. Angel had met him by accident at a dance held to celebrate the opening of the Eureka and Palisade Railroad. Barely seventeen, and only in town for a day and a night while her daddy traded their few cattle and meager crop yields for a stock of supplies to hopefully last the winter, she’d been drawn in by the gaslights and streamers and brassy band playing on the bandstand, and the ladies in their bright finery, and the men cleanly shaven, prancing and spinning, dust rising from the city square that had been blocked off for the festivities.
Clothed in her very best dress and her finest Sunday hat, Angel felt like the plainest wilted daisy in a thicket of roses. But, she lingered at the edge of the throng anyway, enthralled, wide-eyed and grinning. She nearly gasped when a light touch on her elbow brought her back to herself. Before her stood a tall and broad man in a stovepipe hat, his dark, oiled mustache twitching above a bright toothy smile.
“May I have this dance, madam?” he said, bowing and offering her his hand like they were in a salon in Paris rather than a hoedown in Nevada. She giggled and took his hand, and the night spun away…
Theirs was a whirlwind romance, like a dream. Hoss was ten years older, the son of a banker who’d, himself, come from money. Hoss had set himself up in Eureka as a financier, backing claims, ranches, and anything else the booming mining town needed money for. He was a shrewd businessman, sharp in his tactics when the need arose, but a kind man at heart. He showed mercy where it was warranted, maintained reasonable interest rates even when competitors gouged their borrowers. He was almost generous to a fault.
And she loved him. Plain as that.
Her father worried, of course. He was a quiet man, hardworking, peaceable. But, he was a white man who’d married a native woman, and the stigma still stung. Angel was light skinned, but only a moment’s glance made her native blood plain to see. He didn’t want to see her struggle with the same backhanded comments and veiled insults her mother and he had endured. But he’d agreed to have Hoss over for a dinner Angel prepared one evening a few weeks into their courtship, and Hoss had won her father’s admiration in three hours flat. Two months later, he’d proudly given his blessing when Hoss had asked for Angel’s hand in marriage, and Angel had wept with joy.
Three months later, she was walking down the aisle at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning, her father at her side, her unbelievable wedding dress trailing on the plain boards of the Eureka Fellowship Church she’d never attended, staring at her feet as a crowd of Hoss’s friends and family ooh’d and aah’d from the pews.
She was no Christian, and most of them probably knew that. Some probably resented it. But no one said anything, including the preacher, who dutifully pronounced them man and wife, took the roll of bills from Hoss’s hand, and made an unenthusiastic sign of the cross before wandering off somewhere. Angel thought she might have smelled some sacramental wine on his breath, but she didn’t care. She basked in Hoss’s smile and nearly floated to their reception.
He’d arranged food for a hundred, and more than enough beer and whiskey for everyone to regret it the next day. They’d ate and drank, danced and kissed, and she’d hugged her father after he toasted their happiness. And her only regret of the evening was that her mother hadn’t been there, though she knew her bii was watching from the rain and the wind and the summer sun. And smiling, she hoped.
It was nearly five when the plinking of the upright piano slowed and a drunken murmur grew from the back of the room. Angel had been showing her ring to two young women she hardly recognized and her back was turned when the music stopped and a gruff voice yelled, “Hoss Powers?”
Angel turned and froze.
Five men in dusty riding garb and wide-brimmed hats stood blocking the doorway. All four had pistols on their belts and one had a set of bandoliers across his chest and a short shotgun in a scabbard on his back. The man in the middle said it again. “Hoss Powers. Where is he?”
Angel breathed in. “What do you—”
“Shut it, ya injun bitch. This is men’s talk.”
Hoss stepped in from a side door, a halo of smoke trailing him. “What the hell’s this about? Who are—”
“Sonny Bell says howdy.” The man fired three quick shots and splinters exploded from the rough hewn boards behind Hoss. His body landed hard on the straw-covered floor.
The air ignited with sound. Angel screamed and rushed toward Hoss, but the crush of people stopped her. They yelled and scrambled, some pulled their guns; everyone was drunk. Shots rang out, bullets whizzed by her, and the smell of gunpowder stung her nose. Angel clawed her way against the current. A hot sting across her hip barely registered, just like the cry of the woman behind her a second later.
Just before she pulled free, her father appeared in front of her. “Angel, we must get out—” The left side of his face blew off and he crumpled to the floor. She stumbled over him and kept going.
When she got to Hoss, she knelt and cupped his face and watched his eyes flutter and open. Blood trickled from his mouth and a gurgling wheeze slipped from his chest. He raised a shaking hand and nearly touched her face, but lost the strength, so she snagged the hand from the air and pushed it hard against her cheek and wailed in the native Shoshoni language. She bent down and pressed her forehead to his and wet it with her tears and felt it when he breathed his last.
And she stayed there, unmoving, until the dining hall quieted to moaning and weeping and the shuffling of feet.
Then she rose, and stepped over three bodies on her way to the door. She reached the darkened street, looked both ways, and saw the clear tracks of five horses having galloped off down the main road heading west.
So she unhitched the nearest horse, grabbed the rifle unconsciously, slammed her heels into the beast’s flank, and set off after them.
Angel woke from her dream to the sound of a nighthawk crying overhead. She wiped her face, unsurprised to find she’d been crying in her sleep. “Grief is a hungry spirit,” her mother had once said, just days before the cholera finally took her. “Do not let it eat you, child.”
She rose, stretching a crick from her neck and rubbing her arms where the chill of the night had settled as she slept. She drank more at the depression in the rock and filled her empty canteen, then went out by the light of a full bone moon to find something to quiet her rumbling stomach.
It didn’t take long to find a small group of prickly pear cactuses. She made short work of one of the pear-sized fruits—not quite ripe, but still tart and refreshing—and one de-spiked green pad. She collected one more fruit to carry with her. Then, she set out again, following the trail, which was just as clear by moonlight as it had been during the day.
She scanned the horizon as her legs—reinvigorated by the rest, refreshment, and cooler temperature—ate up the miles at a steady pace. Just as the faintest stars began winking out in the eastern sky, she saw a thin line of smoke rising from the horizon directly in front of her.
She moved to the side of the trail where the ground was quieter. Once she was close enough to see the guttering campfire, she slipped out of her low-heeled white leather boots. Taking the rifle and several cartridges with her, she crept toward the camp in a crouch, keeping to the shadows.
They had chosen a sheltered spot in the lee of a steep rock wall. As the sky slowly turned from black to navy to magenta, one of the five stirred beneath his blanket. He eventually turned over, sat up, and stretched.
Angel kept her eyes on the rest of the group, but saw no movement.
The man rose, yawning and scratching, and wandered toward the edge of the outcropping.
He fiddled with his belt, then let his filthy dungarees fall till they bunched around his knees and his pale bony ass showed in the new day’s glow.
Angel silently untied the blood-soaked stocking on her hips and wound a length around each palm, listening to the man piss. She drew the slack tight between her hands—a length of about two feet—and stretched it taut. She crept toward him, crossing open ground where anyone could have seen her had they been awake. But they slept on.
His water still pattered on the sand when she stood tall behind him, threw the stocking over his head and yanked it hard across his throat. She drew it as tight as she could, spun, bent at the waist, and heaved him onto her back, the garrote now pinning him to her shoulder. Then, she walked away from the camp, the man suspended like a gigantic papoose, kicking, wheezing, and silently clawing at his throat. His sweaty head slammed back twice against hers and his thrashing nearly brought her down, but soon enough, he slowed, then stopped, and he was just dead weight.
She carried the outlaw long enough to know he was truly dead, and that the others could not see. In the shade of the rocks, the hardscrabble ground left little in the way of tracks, and, based on the wide swath they’d cut in the desert, she knew they weren’t trackers anyway. So, with a sigh of relief, she let the corpse slide off of her as she stretched sore muscles. Her shoulders and back ached, and her feet were badly bruised and cut in places from carrying such weight.
Searching the body, she found a box of matches and a dented steel pocket watch, a small deck of playing cards festooned with drawings of naked native women in various provocative poses, and a long hunting knife secured in a sheath cinched to his calf. Beyond that, she found a dirty, lice-ridden piece of human garbage, and she felt good.
He was not the man who shot Hoss. But, he may have been the man who shot her dad. Either way, she’d left him to The Father.
She took his buckskin jacket (shaking it out well before putting it on), strapped the knife to her own calf, and stuck the watch in a pocket. Then, she walked toward distant cover, carefully keeping the outcropping between her and the sound of four confused and groggy killers who were just now laughing about how “ole’ Denny’s still got the shits, I reckon.”
From the cover of some tall shoshoni grass—the namesake of her mother’s nation—Angel crouched and silently watched. The men’s laughter had turned to puzzlement, then alarm when “ole’ Denny” never returned. His horse remained hobbled, so they figured he hadn’t left them. But they didn’t worry for long. After a quick breakfast, they set out, one of the party walking the extra horse on a long lead. They never bothered to hunt all the way around the large hill they’d camped against, so they never found his body.
Hired guns, she concluded. Loyalty isn’t in their blood.
With a smile, Angel noted they were heading into a box canyon. She kept to the grass and other cover, well behind and to the east of the group to avoid attention, but close enough to hear them on this hot, windless day.
“How much longer, Bill?”
“Yer ass sore?”
“I meant till that creek. I’m right thirsty.”
“It’s just over yonder.”
“That’s what you said last night an hour ‘fore we camped.”
The rider in the lead spun in his saddle and Angel dropped to her stomach. “Shut yer mouth, Dicky, or I’ll shut it for you.”
Dicky shut up and the other two laughed.
Angel knew of no water in the direction they were headed, so she doubted Bill did either. That gave her an idea. She took two long swallows from her canteen, then turned and went back toward a field of boulders and scree—rock fall her mother’s ancestors would have attributed to ongoing war between The Father and the sun, but which her geologist father explained were dropped there when glaciers moved across this area tens of thousands of years ago. She liked the Shoshone explanation better.
She hunted among the bushes on the outskirts of the field and located two sturdy-enough branches with forks she could trim to create two long handles with diagonal prongs at the end. Then, she moved to the rocks and sought out small crevices and areas of shade until she found what she was looking for.
She heard the rattlesnake before she saw it, its triangular head shadowed within its lair, its tongue flicking, and its tail warning her to stay away. Instead, she crept forward very slowly, bringing one of the sticks around until it was poised directly above the opening, and one moving straight toward the snake. When the lower stick was inches away, the viper struck at it, and Angel brought the other stick down fast and caught it behind the head, pinning it to the ground.
She carefully picked it up, holding it just behind the head, and brought it to the mouth of her nearly empty canteen, which she opened with the other hand. Sticking the snake’s formidable fangs into the opening, she applied pressure and watched glistening drops of venom drip into the water in short bursts. When the venom sacs were empty, she threw the snake and watched it skid to a stop in the dust, then race off, unharmed.
She closed the canteen, swished the contents around slowly, and headed far to the east of the men, moving as quickly as she could in the heat. Judging the horizon, she got far enough away to stay hidden as she flanked and then passed them before moving ahead of them under cover of a low hill.
Then she laid her trap.
Two of the men on horseback were about two hundred feet away when one of them crowed, “It’s a canteen!” She heard the horse speed up until it was just on the other side of the outcropping where she lay, the pocketwatch clutched in one hand, watching through a small cleft in the rock. A few minutes of reflecting the sun in the steel casing had caught their attention and brought them nearer to investigate. Now, one of them dismounted and rushed to the canteen she’d laid on a shaded rock. “It’s got water!”
Dicky came up behind the first man, who was already unscrewing the cap. “You sure you should—” but the other man had already tipped it back and taken a swallow. Dicky jumped down and snagged it from him greedily. “Don’t hog it all, ya bastard.” He, too, brought it up and took a long swallow before the bastard snatched it back. But, when he brought it to his mouth, all he got were dribbles.
The younger man threw it down and punched Dicky in the jaw, sending him to the ground. Dicky got up quickly and rushed the bastard, grabbing him around the waist then landing on him, both of them rolling and scrabbling in the dust. Finally, the bastard stood and pulled his Colt.
A shot echoed across the prairie, and Angel expected to see Dicky fall. Instead, both men’s heads whipped around to see the leader of the gang cantering over, his pistol held casually, a wisp of smoke rising from it. “Will both of you idiots get back on yer horses and come on? Christ almighty.”
With another sidelong glance, they did. But Angel smiled nonetheless.
An hour later, the bastard fell from his horse and began shaking and sputtering on the ground. Angel was too far away to hear him, but she could imagine the sound. The leader and his sidekick hopped down and ran to him while Dicky made an effort, but got hung up in the stirrup and also collapsed.
The Shoshone often utilized rattlesnake venom in their ceremonies, so Angel’s mother had explained it to her. Injected, the venom was extremely painful and quickly fatal. But, heavily diluted and ingested, it offered hallucinogenic qualities that could last for hours.
There was danger, though; she recalled her mother’s description of a young warrior who had failed to dilute the venom adequately before swallowing it. Halfway through the dance, his eyes began to bleed. Blood dripped from his nose and ears. Then, he collapsed, convulsing, pink froth rolling from his mouth. Then he was dead.
She watched with satisfaction as the bastard—and then Dicky—succumbed to the same.
The leader checked both of their pulses in turn, mumbled something to his sidekick, who stood, removed his hat, and wiped his brow before proceeding to pace quickly, kicking up dust. The leader, though, stayed on his knees, and, with a hard stare, scanned the horizon in all directions.
Angel dropped flat to the ground, realizing that, in her glee, she had risen high enough to be seen. But, she heard no more. And, five minutes later, she risked a glance and saw the pair riding off, the two bodies and their horses left to bake in the sun.
Waiting until the riders were out of sight, she approached the bodies. She took both their guns and belts and transferred all of one’s food into the saddlebags of the stronger-looking horse. Removing its saddle, she set the other horse free, then climbed up on her own and followed at a slow pace.
She camped that night more than a mile from them—they couldn’t see her or her horse past the undulating hills, but from the top of a low rise, she could see their small campfire and the two men, hunched over their rifles.
“Fear breaks a man faster than stone,” she heard her mother say. And they were afraid, she knew.
Huddled in the stinking buckskin jacket and nestled against her saddlebags, Angel snacked on jerky and pemmican and refused to wipe the tears from her cheeks. On the hunt, she’d kept her mind occupied, but here, now, she let it roam; it always fled back to her father. And Hoss.
She fell asleep that way, a stub of jerky still in her dusky hand.
Above her, the sky was dark and deep and starless. Cavorting in that abyss was a snake with a tongue that glittered like all the missing stars had congregated there. Like it had licked them up.
All around her, the desert was silent. She stood, naked, eyes riveted to the undulating snake. In her periphery, she saw a coyote pad toward her and sit several feet away, its tongue lolling as it panted. From the darkness on her other side, a wolf did the same.
Then, the coyote spoke. “You wander far, child. Where are you going?”
She refused to answer. The coyote was a trickster, not to be trusted.
“No matter,” it said with a husky chuckle, “I know. You don’t run toward anything. You are running away.”
The urge to turn and scream at this filthy dog was so strong, she clenched her fists and felt her nails dig into her palms. But she continued to stare at the snake—now making lazy figure-eights miles above her—and breathed.
The wolf spoke up, its voice deeper, older. “Sometimes, away is the way back.”
The coyote laughed.
Angel sighed. “It hurts.”
“I know, child.” The wolf moved closer and nudged her hand with its cold, wet nose.
She stroked the great muzzle and powerful jaw, almost turned to it. But then, the snake shot toward her.
“Kill or be killed,” the wolf and coyote said together. And, just as the snake filled the world and would swallow her whole…
She woke.
The desert was still dark. The moon told her it was perhaps four o’clock, no later.
Her mother’s gray eyes burned in her mind. “There is nothing more powerful than a dream, Angel. Never ignore The Father.” And her father’s quiet smile. “Give ‘em hell, darlin’.”
Her legs were cold, but she rubbed life back into them, then devoured more jerky and pemmican. She craved water, but knew she could last without it, so she pushed that from her mind.
After a few minutes of preparation, she patted the horse’s flank and walked past it into the night.
The sidekick was nodding off when she walked into their camp. He was sitting on a boulder, leaning on his rifle. When she passed between him and the firelight, his head rose slowly and he blinked, no doubt more puzzled than anything else. Was she a dream?
She sauntered up to him, and watched him watch the moonlight trace her nearly naked form. He grinned. She reached out for his face with one hand, and brought the knife up swiftly with the other, driving it through the soft space behind the chin and up into his brain, then twisted it twice. Warm blood poured from his nose and throat over her hand and forearm, steaming in the night air.
He died sputtering silently, mouth pinned shut, eyes wide and glassy. She guided him to the ground, retrieved her knife, and smeared his blood across her belly, forehead, and cheekbones. Then she turned around.
The leader’s bleary eyes stared from where he lay on the other side of the fire, then flicked to the dead man and back again.
She could imagine the sight. A young woman wearing a band of cotton bound tightly across her breasts, white pantalets that only her husband should have seen, and nothing else, smeared with blood like warpaint, an eight-inch hunting knife, similarly dripping, all flickering in the bright light of the fire.
Shock and fear faded to recognition and his eyes turned cold. “The injun bitch,” he said. “You the one been pickin’ off my men one by one?”
She didn’t respond.
“You come to fight or–” His hand shot from under the blanket, grabbing at the gun from the holster by his head.
But she was faster. The knife flashed, spinning in the air, and impaled his hand to the dirt.
His scream echoed off the canyon walls.
She leaped the fire, picked up his gun, cocked the hammer, and shot off his right kneecap in one fluid motion.
He reflexively reached both hands toward his knee and left his hand flopping, half severed, when he yanked it off the stationary knife. He stopped screaming and only wheezed for a moment, staring wide-eyed from his hand to his knee and back again. Then he screamed again.
She let him. And shot the other knee. Then, she picked up the knife, retrieved her rifle from where she’d left it outside the circle of light, and sat cross-legged by the fire, her weapons within reach, and watched.
After a while, he ceased screaming and just whimpered, eyes tightly shut against the demon before him.
“I didn’t come here to fight,” she said quietly, “I came to kill.”
He kept blubbering, saliva and tears dripping from his chin. The blanket was bunched at his waist, his bisected hand clutched to his chest.
“But before I send you to The Father, I need to know why.”
His liquid eyes rolled in their sockets and grew cold again. He spat, and the phlegmy, bloody wad splashed on her shin.
She didn’t move to wipe it off. “Why did you kill my husband? And my father?”
“Screw you.”
She casually lifted the rifle and held it eight inches from the blanket, aimed directly at his groin.
“Alright, alright, alright!” His good hand had come up in surrender and his bad hand flopped apart.
She held the gun there. “Why?”
“We was paid. Five hundred dollars. Kill Hoss Powers. That’s it. That’s why.” He started crying again.
“Who is Sonny Bell?”
He growled through gritted teeth, the pain really coming now, it seemed. “Some bigwig in Reno. Banker or somethin’.”
“Why did he want my husband dead?”
“Didn’t say! Damn it, lady, I just take the money an’ run. I don’t ask questions ‘cause I don’t wanna know!”
She stared into his eyes, and she saw the snake diving at her from the sky. “I believe you.”
And she pulled the trigger.
He barely made a sound. Just slowly looked down at the hole in the blanket, then yanked the blanket aside and watched blood fountain from the hole in his dungarees and spread out like a urine stain. She smelled that he’d shit himself, and he probably did too.
She pulled the pistol and leveled it at his heart. “One for Hoss.” She shot, and he collapsed, dead. “One for Dad.” She shot again, this time through his upper lip. “And one for me.” A third time, through the left eye.
She picked up the knife and rifle, awkward with the pistol too, and walked slowly back to the saguaro a hundred yards away where she’d left the wedding dress and shoes she hadn’t wanted to dirty any more than they already were. She rubbed her hands, face, and belly vigorously with sand, cleaning off the worst of the gore, then picked up the dress and put it back on.
With the knife strapped to her shin, she carried the guns back to the horse who stood placidly watching her. Far off to the side, she thought she saw a dark silhouette keeping pace with her against the brightening sky. A wolf. But when she turned, nothing was there.
No coyote laughed. No snake sprung at her.
She was alone.
But no, she thought. Not alone. Hoss and her parents—and her ancestors on both sides of the great ocean—walked with her.
She mounted up, patted the horse’s neck. “You got four days’ ride in you, girl?” she murmured. “Reno’s about 200 miles, give or take.”
She glanced at the stars, nudged the horse’s head toward the west, and tapped him with her heel.