Chapter 3 - The Limestone Gap
The rain didn't fall as water; it came down as a sudden, violent desert squall that turned the dust into red mud and plastered their clothes against their skin within seconds. Silas led the way through the back window of the loft, dropping heavily onto a narrow limestone ledge that overhung the dry wash.
His bad leg buckled slightly under the impact, and a sharp intake of breath hissed through his teeth.
Nalin caught his arm, steadying him before he could slide toward the edge. Her grip was surprisingly strong, forged from years of hauling water and scrambling through the steep ravines of the Dragoon Mountains.
"I can walk," Silas muttered, pulling his arm free with a grimace.
"You can barely stand," she corrected him, her voice low and firm. "And Vain has horses. If we stay on the flats, they'll run us down before we reach the scrub."
"We're not going to the flats," Silas said, pointing toward a narrow cleft in the rock face where stunted juniper trees grew out of the stone. "That's the old mule track to the upper springs. Vain thinks it washed out five years ago. But if the timber’s still wedged in the gorge, we can cross to the other side."
They scrambled upward into the gloom as the storm broke overhead, lightning flashing across the jagged peaks with blinding intensity. Every flash illuminated the white alkali flats below, where three riders could be seen cutting back and forth across their tracks like hounds hunting a scent.
"They found where we dropped from the window," Nalin said, looking back over her shoulder as thunder rolled across the valley.
"Let them look," Silas panted, his chest heaving as the steep climb strained his old wound. "The rain's washing our scent into the wash. By the time Vain realizes we didn't head downriver, the arroyo will be running three feet deep with flash flood water."
They reached the mouth of the cleft just as the first heavy sheets of rain turned into a blinding deluge. Silas pushed through a curtain of dripping wild grapevines and pulled Nalin into a shallow cave that smelled of damp stone and old bat droppings.
The roar of the storm outside drowned out all other sound, but the floor here was dry, sheltered by an overhang of massive granite slabs that had fallen centuries ago.
Silas sank onto a flat rock, his breath coming in ragged gasps, his hand pressed hard against his hip. Water dripped from the brim of his hat, running down his weathered cheeks like tears.
Nalin knelt beside him, unrolling a corner of her tunic to wipe the mud from his forehead. Her movements were matter-of-fact, lacking the pity that Silas usually encountered from people who saw an old, broken man.
"You're bleeding through your trousers," she observed, touching the dark stain spreading around his right pocket.
"Old lead," Silas grunted, closing his eyes against the throbbing pain. "Every time it rains, the iron remembers what it hit."
She reached into her small skin pouch, pulled out a handful of dried willow bark and a strip of clean linen, and began crushing the leaves between two flat stones. "My grandmother taught me this. It stops the fever in the blood when a wound goes bad."
Silas opened one eye and watched her work. "You shouldn't be wasting your medicine on a former army scout."
May you like
"You're the only one shooting at Blackjack Vain tonight," she replied without looking up. "That makes us partners, whether either of us likes it or not."
---
