At a nameless turn on the trail between El Paso and Tucson lay the carcass of a young woman. Morning light found her the same time Roger did. Eyes wide and nostrils wide with terror, the grey gelding beneath Roger refused to go near the smudge of black clothes. He dismounted the pony and patted the lean neck. Roger could feel the horse still leaning back on its back legs, ready to return at the drop of a hat.
“Sit tight, señor.” Roger said, “just need to get her off the road.”
Once the grey was tied to a cedar tree, Roger walked over with his lasso and the horse’s apprehension now stirring in him. He expected a gruesome scene perpetrated by Apaches or bandits because horses are revolted by a scent of blood. He was far enough ahead of the law that he could do the courteous thing and drag the remains down into a wash.
She had no boots on. Her pale toes buttressed the sky and her palms held down the earth. Roger surveyed the area but did not identify any pertinent tracks around the old-fashioned black dress. Very old fashioned. He had never seen a woman in that attire. Her eyes were closed as if in quiet repose. She looked to be a young dead girl. Her hair was spread like a halo with no sign of struggle. What perplexed Roger was that she was soaking wet.
The last watering hole had been five miles back. The next rancher’s trough was seven miles up the trail. The morning light twinkled off the waterdrops on her ear and under her serene eyelids. Roger placed the knee of his chaps next to her and touched the sand by her black dress. Dry, and already warming. Roger peered down like a man looking into a deep cut well. Her face was fair to Roger but so steeped in sunless serenity he was terrified of the waters hidden that lapped along the caverns of madness.
She inhaled in horror.
Roger fell back and the grey gelding let out a guttural noise as he reared away from the cedar tree. The woman shook and clawed at her throat with teeth bared. She rolled over and vomited green water onto the sand. The grey gelding broke the branch he was tied to and raced away before he could be caught. The woman struggled to her hands and knees, shaking. Her fingers scratched into shores of eternity as if to hold from being swept away by the great tolling bell of calamity that rang before her death.
Standing in the hoofprints of the departed gelding, he faced her with an unholstered, unfamiliar Colt .44. She sat back on her haunches and her hands brushed the water from her neck. A scream boiled up from her fast-beating heart but she clamped it down with her lips. Her eyes looked past the Arizona mountains at fog cloaked islands with the colors of chaos splintering the collapse of her iris.
“Dear God,” she whispered, “what hadst I done?”
“Ma’am, you alright?”
She turned in a reaction that reminded him of a mountain lion. He put the pistol behind his chaps.
“I’m a friend, soy amigo.”
Words black as death flooded her tongue. But like the scream, she stemmed the tide. Not yet, not yet.
Pointing at his heart he said, “I’m Roger, and you are?”
He slowly cocked the pistol, not yet, Rog, not yet.
Now alive, she struck him as a beauty as unfamiliar as the steel in his hidden hand. She had a small face and a nervous set of lips. The collar bones revealed her meals had been scant and irregular. The toes reached and stood firm on the sand the way he had seen Apache squaws deny their mountains to the whites and Mexicans. She was a feral beauty encased in the oldest civilized fashion he had ever seen.
“Where am I?”
“This is the trail to Tucson. How did you end up here in the Arizona territory?”
The woman swayed as she gazed around. She never remembered the sun being so bright and unblemished. A sky so blue it sapped the pondwater that had been her coffin from her skin. Tremendous hills of red and rock reigned over dwarf trees that had no leaves. They were made of pale green, rolled up witches’ fingers with sun drenched canary eggs clustered on the wrists. The bark was layers of fibers that peel away like how a woman is burned alive.
Roger returned the hammer to safe and holstered the pistol since the woman was entranced by the desert landscape. He turned his attention to the more important task of locating the horse carrying everything that belonged to him. If she was there when he returned, he would offer help. If she was not . . . he had Tucson to worry about.
The grey gelding’s head cocked to the side and his top lip stretched out. Sharp, cool blades of summer grass beneath the shade of a mesquite tree crunched in the horse’s teeth. He jerked his head up as the cowboy approached. Roger saw the gelding’s eyes scan all around. The horse had recognized right away the shadow around her blonde hair and Roger reckoned it was right to heed the instincts of an animal.
“I think we ought to be careful too,” Roger admitted and grasped the gelding’s lead-line. They found the woman sitting in the shade. Roger glanced up the trail and still hoped he was still far enough ahead of the law. He had a better chance if he left the woman. He approached her and already the horse on the lead line was sitting back.
“My name is . . .” she closed her eyes as she struggled to remember how God would recognize her before the throne. “Constance,” she said. “Dost King James IV rule these lands?”
“King? There’s never been a king here. Ms. Constance, I think you’re mighty confused. But we need to skedaddle sooner than later.”
Constance stepped ahead of him. “I cannot be found. Not again.”
“Neither can I, Ms. Constance. I can get you to Tucson but after that we’ll part ways for good reason there.” Roger did not want her implicated, but mostly he never wanted to see here again.
The trail to Tucson weaved through the desert hills. Constance held to the saddle to stay on the back of the horse. Though only noblemen or knights possessed horses of their own, this drover wore no silks nor armor.
“From what lord didst thou steal this steed?
“This is my horse.” he said. They did not speak anymore.
…Part Two…
Three miles away atop a ridgeline, an El Paso sheriff and his posse of men watched them.
The trees of this land spoke a different dialect than the woods of dark green she grew up in. They shrank from the overwhelming sky that at times seemed to go on forever. As the sun burned ever hotter, the wind stirred a cauldron of devoured ghosts across the sharp rocks beneath the hooves of the grey beast. He offered his hat from over his shoulder and she wore the sweaty thing. ‘Twas only yesterday her and the old hag fed on raw rabbit flesh in the ravaging shadows of a bonfire as blue as waterfall flowers. Constance remembered the witch’s breath as her grey splotched tongue ventured from her grimy mouth. The next thing she knew, men from the village emerged from the forest shadows and gagged her. The old witch was nowhere to be found. With hearts full of fear and hands hard with hate, they flung her into the dungeon. Roger’s large brim hat cooled her and Constance wondered if not all men were cowards.
At sundown, Roger brought the grey gelding to an uneasy stop. He surveyed all around, then told Constance they would camp there for the night. The horse lowered his head to the ground in relief when Constance dismounted. Roger patted his neck and unsaddled the tired animal.
Constance turned away from the marvel of an orange and pink sunset and asked if he had any food.
“I’ll open a can of beans and I’ve some deer jerky. You probably need water.”
“Not water,” she snapped, “What else have you to drink?”
“I’ve some whiskey but . . .”
Constance held out her hand with a scarred wrist. She tipped up the flask and took several full gulps. Roger had not seen grown men accomplish that. Constance clenched her teeth as the foul poison warmed her throat and belly. Her eyes squinted; she handed the flask back to Roger. “Better than water,” she croaked.
They sat and Roger shared his food. He could feel her eyes in the dark taking in every aspect of his body.
“Shall we not have a fire, lord?”
“Don’t need it. Desert keeps it warm like this ‘til morning.”
At night, she saw much more clearly. Starlight granted her the power to almost see into him. She visualized the gripping light in his chest he dogmatically attempted to hide.
“The men of my village feigned to avert their eyes. They would raise their faces before the Almighty with clasped hands and just ever so slightly, see me in the prayers where wives should be. Thou on the other hand . . .”
“What messed up village are you from? Why did I find you in the middle of the desert soaking wet with no water around for miles? Tell me or I swear to God, I’ll kill whatever demon is talking right now.”
Constance perceived the hand of Roger gripping his silver weapon of fire and sound again. Blood gurgling whispers echoed in her ears and she leaned away from him. Death sounds dissipated and desert insects and coyotes resumed a calming background. She almost felt as before. When she was Constance of Northampton. Constance of Katherine and Roland. Constance awaiting trial.
“This morn, they brought me up from the dungeon. King James VI’s magistrate had arrived to oversee the swimming of a witch. Under storm clouds, they waited for me at Greer’s Pond, where my sister and I used to play while father fished. ‘Twas where I drowned the miller’s son and burned his body for the Dark Lord. A half bald priest invoked God’s judgement as they bound my wrists. Were I to sink, I shall arrive in heaven a pure woman. Alas, if the waters of baptism refuse the witch and she float, she was to be burned alive at the stake. The men tossed me into the water. I closed my eyes, and here I am.”
She opened her eyes to desert starlight. Roger leaned back and looked up as well. The endless stars deepened and made them both feel as if they were sinking. The cowboy wondered if time did not lay out like a fence line. His crimes at the beginning, twenty feet of barb wire, then Tucson and a chance to continue down the line. Maybe, Roger thought, time was a well in the desert. A well that spit up witches.
The barrel of a cocked pistol pressed against the back of Roger’s head. “Unhand that pistol, partner.” said the sheriff. Constance then saw five men with the same weapons emerging from behind the trees. Roger raised his hands and the young sheriff hoisted him up by the collar. “Youda made it to Tucson if you didn’t have a woman for an accomplice,” said the sheriff. “Get the ropes ready.”
The posse built a fire so they could see and threw two hang nooses over the bough of an old cedar.
“We caught the grey gelding you stole,” explained the sheriff as his men fit the loops around the necks of Roger and Constance.
“He’s my horse! My uncle willed him to me.”
“Same as this pistol I took from you? I recall this gun belonging to Mr. Henry, who saw you leaving his gate with his horse.”
“But the will—!”
“Your uncle was a drunk. What he jotted on some saloon napkin ain’t legal like Mr. Henry’s bill of sale. As for you,—” the sheriff turned to Constance, “a pretty young thing such as yourself would’ve done better at the saloon. But looks like your lot with ol’ Roger here has come to an end.”
With that, Constance bowed her head.
The sheriff retrieved the sentencing from his pocket and read the crimes and ordered punishment by the state of Texas. The rest of the posse glanced at the clouds rolling over the stars. The fire spat and shrank before the condemned. They glanced at each other as the sheriff droned with the sentencing. Desert shadows shrouded their faces. Fear turned their ears to the words behind the sheriff’s legal eulogy. To the men of the posse, the words were the shivering of cholera, the hiss of the rattler, the moans of starving cattle. To Roger the horse thief, it was the precursor of a miracle.
A gale of wind roared out of the north and doused the fire with sand. The sheriff and his men shielded their faces as the horses beneath Roger and Constance bucked and bolted away into the night. Roger’s weight cinched the rope to his neck and his boots kicked in the air. With the last choke of air, he rotated and saw Constance’s noose was empty.
The wind died and so did the swinging motion of the outlaw. The young sheriff rallied his men to search for the woman. She had to have slipped her neck out of the noose and rode away on the horse. However, when they found the pair of horses, she was nowhere to be found. The sheriff and his men were the best trackers in the state but they came up empty handed.
Jack Mint
