By the time he was finished it was close to midnight and a pale moon, its yellow face streaked across with clouds, was riding high in the blue-black sky. The night breeze carried a hint of rain, and away to the north a whippoorwill uttered its eerie cry. Baum built the fire up and beckoned Azul towards him. He moved round behind the half-breed, holding the Colt against Azul’s right shoulder. Then he slammed a foot against the back of Azul’s left knee, smashing the leg out from under so that the blond-haired man gasped and pitched forwards. He rolled clear of the fire, then felt the German’s pistol jam against his leg.
‘One move,’ grunted Baum, warning, ‘an’ you get a slug.’
Azul lay still as the bounty hunter looped a rope around his ankles and drew it tight. Then Baum hauled his legs up and dropped a noose around his neck. He cut a second length of rope and fastened it around Azul’s waist, fixing the half-breed’s hands tight against his belly. He chuckled.
‘Hope you’re a peaceful sleeper, feller.’
Still chuckling, he holstered his gun and dropped a blanket over Azul’s rigid form. The half-breed lay still, utilizing the arduous training of his Apache upbringing to hold his body motionless. His wrists were pinned firmly to his stomach, his left arm starting to ache as the circulation got cut off by his body weight, and his legs were drawn up at right angles, as if he were kneeling. The rope strung between his ankles and throat was taut, the slightest movement of his legs drawing the noose menacingly tight around his windpipe. There was no chance of escape.
Baum settled back on his bedroll and hauled a bottle clear of his saddlebags. It was almost empty, maybe three mouthfuls of whiskey slopping around in the bottom. He raised the bottle in mockery of a toast, holding it towards the cairn of stones.
‘Absent friends.’
The liquor gurgled into his mouth and he swallowed appreciatively.
‘Pore old Amos. He paid me plenty to watch you hung. He shoulda kept his temper. He’d be alive now if he had.’ More whiskey went down his throat. ‘Don’t pay to lose yore temper. Not in this game.’
He emptied the bottle and tossed it away. For an instant the glass shone in the firelight, then it hit the cairn and shattered with a tinkling sound that reminded Azul of the pianos back in Lordsburg.
‘Sleep well,’ laughed Baum. ‘But don’t sleep too tight.’
Chapter Thirteen
IN THE MORNING the threatened rain was closer, moving down from the distant bulks of the Mogollons on a wide curtain of black cloud. The wind was stronger, cutting over the flatlands with a chilling intensity that set the dried-up balls of the Tumbleweed dancing over the sand. Across the forefront of the cloud, thin streaks of fork lightning played, as though the storm marched towards the border like some massive, many-legged insect. When Baum built up the fire, long streamers of sparks blew clear, wisping over the sand like skittering red flies.
The German tugged on a slicker, shivering in the early chill, and set a pot of coffee on the fire before removing the noose from the half-breed’s neck and fashioned a hobble around the man’s ankles; then he freed Azul’s hands from his waist.
Azul groaned and rolled on his back. His knees and arms were numb from the constriction of the rope, and there was a dull ache in his side where his elbow had dug into his ribs.
And there was a memory.
He rested a while, then stretched out, wincing as the blood began to flow again.
‘I gotta piss.’
Baum chuckled, but he still helped the half-breed to his feet. Azul swayed, fresh pains shooting up his legs. Then he hobbled away from the fire, towards the cairn of stones covering Dumfries’s body.
‘Don’t go too far,’ Baum warned.
‘No.’ Azul halted at the piled rocks and began to fumble with his buckskin pants. ‘How can I?’
‘Yeah.’ The bounty hunter laughed. ‘I guess you’re kinda tied up with me.’
Azul got his pants open and directed a stream of urine at the cairn. Across the stones he could see the neck of Baum’s bottle, the cork resting a foot away. He emptied his bladder, staring down at the rocks: Watching the yellow stream splash over yellow boulders, over a colder, clearer color that interlaced the burial mound: the color of fragmented glass.
He finished and began to fasten his pants. Then he cried out and let his body pitch forwards. He twisted as he fell, folding his knees and turning his body so that his left shoulder struck the rocks and took most of the impact. It hurt: the fragments of wind-washed stone were hard, if not sharp. But he got his bound hands on a piece of glass. It was larger than most, a jagged fragment from the side of the bottle, towards the base. It was curved slightly, so that he was able to fumble it into his hands without slicing his fingers.
He stretched over the cairn, back turned towards Baum, and slid the broken glass inside his pants.
There was a moment of pain when the jagged edge cut into his belly, but then he fastened the pants and wriggled clear of the cairn.
Baum came over to help him up.
‘Jesus!’ said the bounty hunter. ‘I never thought this job would include helpin’ a man take a piss.’
‘So let me go.’ Azul stumbled towards the fire, supported by the bounty hunter. ‘I got a thousand dollars in my saddlebags. Take it and let me go.’
He knew the promise wouldn’t work even as he said it. Knew that Baum followed his own path – his own kind of honor – as firmly as did Azul.
There were some men who set out to do a job – to find a man, or build a house, or push a railroad through; to break a horse, or learn how to use a gun, or farmland – with a single-minded concentration that excised anything else. They did it. And they never stopped along the way to think about another path: they just pushed ahead to what they had promised themselves.
Azul could understand that.
He expected Baum’s answer.
‘I saw,’ said the German. ‘But it don’t make no difference. I took a contract, an’ I’m gonna keep it. Hell! In my line of work you gotta do that. I back out on a feller, an’ he’s gonna come after me. It ain’t worth makin’ enemies.’
‘I’m one,’ said Azul. ‘I’ll kill you, if I can.’
‘You don’t get the chance,’
said Baum. ‘I ain’t gonna give it you.’
By the time the horses were saddled the rain had started. The big black cloud was coming down and the prairie was dusted with the heavy spots of the shower preceding the storm. Baum tied Azul’s hands to the saddle again and strung Dumfries’s horse behind. The bounty hunter took the lead, his own pony linked to Azul’s.
By noon the storm was on them. The wind got wilder, and the sun got hidden behind a massive bank of cloud. Lightning danced all around, and overhead there was thunder like the drumming of cannons. The rain built up from a spattering of drizzle to a steady downpour, then took on the character of hailstones.
The horses’ heads drooped, soaking manes lashing against dripping necks. Both men were drenched. It was impossible to see more than a few feet ahead.
Baum called a halt.
