MANUELITO AND GLORY AND TISTO STOOD IN FRONT OF THE little ghost town, waiting for him.
“I hate this one!” Sam shouted. He kicked a rock, spat, and held his left hand up in the air away from his body. “What happens to my arm if I get rid of it?”
Glory looked up at the tall Indian. “Can he still switch? I think it would be good.”
She was wearing her backpack again, and The Legend of Poncho was in her hands.
Sam glanced at the book and then up at Glory. She quickly brushed a loose strand of hair back out of her face.
“What is it?” Sam asked. “How does it end?”
“I told you it was blank,” Glory said. Her voice was flat. Too flat.
“Still?” Sam asked.
Glory bit both of her lips.
“Tell me,” Sam said. “There’s no point in not telling me.” He peered down at Cindy. “This is bad enough already.”
“Parts are still blank,” Glory said. “But the ending isn’t good.”
“The book,” Manuelito sighed and turned away. “I do not care about this thing. Maybe you are reading it, but it is not yet written, because you have unfinished living. Come, eat, and discuss your real troubles.”
A tiny table, gray and weathered like driftwood, was set up just outside the nearest square house in the cave mouth. Three stools had been set beside it for Sam, Glory, and Tisto. The large red easy chair from Sam’s dream waited for Manuelito’s big frame.
On the table there was a heavy clay pot full of water with three matching clay cups. Fleshy yellow slices of what could only be cactus were piled up on a wooden tray beside small skewers of flat flame-darkened meat. A short tower of dark-brown flatbread sat on an old blue handkerchief.
Sam was hungry. He didn’t ask what kind of meat he was eating, because he didn’t care. He gnawed on the bread even though it tasted like a woodpile, and the warm water was sweeter in his throat than anything he had ever tasted.
While Sam kept his hands moving, he had no trouble controlling them. It was when he let them rest that Speck got distracted and slid his right arm down off the table to look under his chair, and Cindy tensed his left arm in a partial coil and rattled at Glory.
“Speckle was a pet snake at a miner’s camp from a very young age,” Manuelito said. “Many believe that a rattlesnake cannot be trained, and for the common man, that is truth. But Speck came close. The camp cook loved him, cared for him, and let him loose at nights to hunt rats in his kitchen. But when the mines dried up and the men left, Speck was set free for the first time in his life. When I found him, he seemed quite insane, slithering after me in the open without any hate. So I kept him. When you had need, he was willing.”
Sam set his right hand flat on the table and watched the rosy snake ripple his scales in the sun.
“How did you know he was willing?” Sam asked.
“As my brother Atsa is given mastery of time, I am given mastery of beasts.” Manuelito tore a piece of flatbread in half. “I have the words to teach them and the touch to hear them.” He popped the bread in his mouth and began to chew. “But Cindy was a different choice. She is a killer. A nightmare.”
Sam’s left hand was frozen six inches above the table. Cindy’s horn-hooded eyes were still locked on Glory. Glory chewed slowly, glancing up and down between Sam’s hand and his face.
Manuelito continued. “The most vicious of her kind retreat into deep isolation, but not Cindy. Railway camps. Stables. Schoolyards. She sought people out. And where she went, people died.”
Sam shivered. “Why on earth would you use her?” he asked. “It might have been better if you’d just cut my left arm off.”
“Maybe,” Manuelito said. “But every hero needs to be part nightmare. Moses turned a river to blood and called down the Angel of Death. Samson tore a lion open with his bare hands and killed hundreds with a donkey bone. When the world was young, my father Naayéé’ Neizghání bound lightning to an arrow and crawled deep into the dark caves below our feet to kill the Horned Monster alone. He was the greater nightmare. If your will is stronger than the snake’s, if you master her, then she will no longer be wicked. But she will still be deadly. And the wicked will learn fear. If you are fire, you need not fear the dark.” Manuelito laughed. “If you had not needed so dangerous an arm, she would have become a belt. I’d given her fair warning, and she still tried to kill me in my sleep.”
“But what if Sam can’t control her?” Glory asked. “What do we do then? I can’t let him face El Buitre like that.”
“You can’t let him?” Manuelito looked at her, smiling slightly. “Are you the queen of permissions?”
Glory sniffed. “I’m here to keep him from making the same mistakes over again. To make sure he wins. And if he doesn’t learn to control Cindy . . . we have to start over or something. Try something else. Another life maybe.”
“My brother,” Manuelito said quietly, “has bet too much of his life on this one already. I was not even able to honor his bodies. There will be no more starting over.”
Glory reached for the pot of water and Sam’s left hand struck, slamming into her wrist, snapping Sam’s fingers tight around it. Cindy’s horned head flexed and tugged, trying to tear free of Sam’s skin. He forced his fingers open, blushing while Glory stared at him.
“Sorry,” he said. And then he tucked his hand under his leg and sat on Cindy.
A brown-and-white-speckled bird with a needle-sharp bill and white stripes on its head swooped down onto the table, chirruping like a tree frog. Manuelito handed it a crust of bread, and when it darted away he stood, shading his eyes and peering out over the hills.
He pointed. “It is good that you are healthy and fed. Men have finally come. And there is murder in their hearts. Your next lesson will increase in difficulty.”
Down in the red rock and sage, a mile or more from the high mouth of the cave, six riders were pushing their horses hard.
Manuelito looked back down at Sam, where he was still hunched forward, sitting on his left hand. The big man spoke, first in his own windy tongue, and then in English.
“To the monsters, be monstrous. Be danger, and in all the world, there can be no place called Dangerous by the ones you love.”
Baptisto rose from his stool and clenched his right fist.
“You must be a new legend,” the boy said, thumping his chest. “With your heart first and then with your hands.” He looked out over the valley. “And both must be now.”
MILLIE ROCKED SLOWLY IN HER SEAT. DIZZINESS WAS OVERpowering and closing her eyes didn’t help. Every time she blinked she practically tumbled forward into the chessboard on the little table in front of her.
The room had a marble floor, but it didn’t feel solid at all. It swayed. It rose and fell. One moment, she felt too light for her body—and the contents of her stomach felt even lighter—and the next moment she felt heavy enough to crush the chair beneath her into splinters and punch through the floor.
She had hit her head when she’d been thrown from the train wreck, but the gash on her scalp was almost completely healed. She had been fed, though nothing nice. And she’d been given cold metallic water. So she wasn’t dehydrated or starving. Her wrists were sore where they were tied together on her lap, and her ankles chafed where they were chained to the floor, but neither of those things explained how sickeningly disoriented she felt.
The problem was the darkness.
The room she was in held only her chair, a little table with the small wooden chessboard set in the middle of the game, and an oil lantern hanging from a gold chain above her head. Thousands of splintered and broken chess pieces were strewn across the floor as far as she could see. Which was not very far.
The room had no walls and no ceiling. It was enclosed only with darkness—darkness so thick and swollen that it looked like the heaving belly of some living liquid.
While Millie watched, it crept toward her, pushing the light back, swinging the lantern above her. And the
n it receded and she felt suddenly heavy. Chess pieces swirled and skittered across the floor around her, but the pieces on the board were undisturbed, as if they had grown roots into their squares.
Millie didn’t know how long she had been sitting there. Not long. But maybe forever.
She was waiting.
For the man with the floating watches.
For the game on the board to end.
For the lamp to go out.
For the darkness to swallow her.
Again.
She knew that it had before. The sorrow inside her was old and familiar. The fear that filled her was like a childhood memory.
Hope was unfamiliar. She could hope for her brother to come. She could hope for them both to survive and find sunlight again. But that wasn’t what she remembered. Not ever. But still . . . it was there inside her. Like the lantern, with darkness all around, but never burning out.
Reaching up with her bound hands, Millie leaned over the chessboard. She reached across the white pieces and put her fingertip on the black king’s crown. Breathing hard, she flipped him over.
The piece snapped into thirds and spun off the table onto the floor.
Waiting, Millie wiped her damp forehead with the back of her hand. A moment later, every piece on the board snapped and splintered. The lantern swung. The darkness seethed.
Millie heard footsteps rising on metal stairs somewhere behind her. The woman was coming, just like she always did. Coming to reset the board.
8
Coil and Strike
MANUELITO WAS AS STILL AS THE CLIFFS AS HE WATCHED the dust rise around the distant horses. Finally, he lifted his face to the sun and shut his eyes, breathing slowly. From that pose, he spoke, and Tisto moved closer. The words of father and the words of son rippled quickly over and around one another.
Tisto finally nodded, squinting down at the threat.
“What now?” Glory asked. “What do we do?”
“Come,” Manuelito said, and turning back into the cave, he began to run.
Sam and Glory raced through the open cave city, but Manuelito’s strides were too long and too many for them to keep pace. Baptisto ran just behind his father, poncho flapping, occasionally glancing back to make sure Sam and Glory were still there.
“All the way back!” Manuelito shouted over his shoulder. “Tisto will lead you. After the opening volleys, I will come to you there.” The big man veered away down a tiny side street between collapsing stone houses.
Sam immediately slowed. Baptisto didn’t.
“C’mon!” Glory tugged on his arm and then quickly let go when her fingers touched scales.
“Pretty gross, huh?” Sam said.
“Don’t be stupid,” said Glory. “We have to hurry.”
Sam jogged. “Is any of this in the book? How does the story end now?”
“I guess it is. At least, outlaws find us hiding in a cave, and we have to escape. But there isn’t anything about your snakes.” Glory moved along beside him, suddenly silent. Well ahead of them, Tisto slowed.
“But what about the ending? Let me guess,” Sam said. “Happily ever after for the bad guys but not for my sister and not for me.”
“Millie lives,” Glory said.
“Seriously?” Sam stared at Glory, trying to find the catch. “That’s a lot better than it was.”
“But you’re still dead,” Glory said. “And so am I. And you’re the one who does it.”
“What? I kill you?” Sam shook his head. “No way! That’s just stupid.”
“With your left hand, Sam.” Glory watched Cindy swinging at Sam’s side as they jogged. “Don’t think about it now. We’ll figure it out later. We’ll change it.”
The cave floor rose steeply as they left most of the buildings behind. A stair had been cut into the uneven rock and they climbed it quickly. Above them, the roof of the cave sloped down steeply. The sides banked in. At the top of the stair, a large jagged crack like a lightning bolt veered up from the floor. Water trickled down its edges.
Baptisto had already gone in.
Glory ducked through as soon as they reached the top of the stairs, but Sam hesitated, looking back over the small ancient city behind him. A gunshot rang through the cave, but he saw nothing. He could feel Cindy’s rattle beginning to quiver slightly on his shoulder.
“Sam!”
Sam ducked through the crack. The little cot he had woken on was right where he had danced on it. The white of his bandages decorated the floor. But now he noticed more. There were shelves. Countless bottles of what had to be medicines. A stone bowl on the floor with water trickling in and overflowing out. A stack of newspapers. A pile of animal hides. Two other cots, pushed against the wall. And a bench covered with knives—huge cleavers and small saws and tiny bladed needles. He didn’t want to know which of those had been used to seam the snakes into his arms.
Sam saw no exits beyond the large crack. But Tisto was dragging a large battered wooden box out from under a shelf. He looked at Sam and pointed at it. It was labeled with white stenciled letters.
1,000 Metallic
Center-Primed
Cartridges
Solid Ball—.45 Caliber
Glory stood in the center of the room, gnawing her thumbnail. Sam jerked open the bullet box. He had no idea if they would fit the revolvers in his gun belt, but it was worth a try. He pulled his right revolver and stared at it.
“How do I empty these?” Sam asked, but Tisto wasn’t looking. He had pulled off his poncho and was strapping on a gun belt of his own.
Glory took the gun out of Sam’s hands, thumbed a small lever, flipped the cylinder out the side, and pushed in a rod that sent six dirty brass shells pinging across the stone floor.
Cindy rattled at her.
“Oh, shut up,” Glory said. She handed the open revolver to Sam, slapped his left hand down, and pulled the other gun out of the holster.
“I hate guns,” Glory said. “I mean, I didn’t mind them in books and movies, but when my dad took me shooting for real, it totally freaked me out. Maybe that was the whole point. But he said it was all about self-defense. Probably because he always kept you punks around.” She pinged six more shells onto the floor, and then dug some of the bullets out of the box and began loading. “Mom spent the whole morning telling me horrific story after horrific story, mostly of terrible accidents, or people getting killed with their own guns. And then Dad was like, ‘Here, make this crazy steel thing explode in your hands,’ all big smiles, flinging a piece of metal at that piece of paper on the fence post. I almost threw up before I even pulled the trigger, I was so scared something would go wrong.”
“But did you hit the paper?” Sam asked.
“Moron.” Glory snapped the loaded cylinder shut and shoved the revolver into Sam’s holster. “Of course I did.”
Sam holstered the other gun and turned around.
Baptisto was standing at the crack, his face far more serious than the stone. Now that he’d shed the poncho, he was wearing a loose, badly stained sleeveless and collarless shirt. Sam could see the veins pulsating in his dark neck. The snakes in both of Sam’s hands could sense the boy’s stress.
Tisto flattened his palm toward the floor. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
“What are you talking about?” Glory shook her head. “No! We’re waiting here like your dad told us to.”
“I cannot leave him,” Tisto said. “He is the stone beneath me.”
“I’ll come,” Sam said.
“No way!” Glory said. “You’re not thinking, Sam. Do you remember me? What’s my name? I’m going to slap you in a second if you don’t answer.”
“Gloria Spalding. I remember you.” Sam stepped toward the crack as Tisto disappeared through it. “More clearly than anything. More clearly than the pain in my elbows at SADDYR. More clearly than the Vulture’s bullets ripping through my arms. If you hadn’t risked everything to come with me . . . I’d be dead.”
G
lory blinked. “You can’t, Sam. In the book you don’t fight. We escape.”
“You told me how that ended,” Sam said. “So I’m going to change something right now.” He smiled. “See if I can’t erase a few more pages.”
He didn’t wait for an answer. And as he ducked back through the crack, another shot echoed through the cave.
Tiny, in his tight suit, bowler hat, and buckled boots, was halfway up the stairs with a gun already drawn and pointing at Tisto. Tiny froze when he saw Sam. He smiled, and his one icy eye sparkled.
Sam tensed. Cindy and Speck filled the cave with buzzing. Tiny glanced around his feet to be sure he was clear of any snakes, and then he looked back up.
Tiny laughed. “Samuel Miracle! There seems to be a Navajo boy between us. Shall I shoot you through him?”
Tisto flexed his fingers above his pistol grips.
“Don’t,” Tiny said. “I only need to kill one child today, and him slowly.” Tiny cocked his gun. “I take your heart from you while you still breathe, Samuel. That’s all the Vulture needs.”
Sam walked down the stairs behind the Navajo boy, and then stepped around in front of him.
Tisto sniffed, clearly irritated, but Sam didn’t care.
“So, Tiny,” Sam said. “If I kill you, then you’ll stay dead?”
Tiny’s lip curled.
“You ever read The Legend of Poncho?” Sam asked. “In the book, you were called the Tinman because you killed sheriffs and kept their badges.”
“The Boss just might have a copy lying around,” Tiny said, grinning. “And that’s the truth about the Tinman. Sheriffs. Deputies. Marshals. And a New York copper or four when I was just getting started.”
“And you shot me,” said Sam. “And Glory. If the priest hadn’t saved us, we would have died.”
“Ooh,” said Tiny. “Someone is remembering things. Did the priest mix you a memory potion? But you don’t remember nearly as much as I do. That wasn’t the only time I’ve shot you. I’ve killed you more times than the Vulture himself. Like me to tell you how many times we hurt your sister?”
Sam’s rattling grew, echoing through the cave. He flexed his fingers. His mind floated back to SADDYR, to his first time reading Poncho, to the Tinman’s final scene in a burning saloon and the gruff line spoken by the book’s hero.