scream.
In the hours that passed between the ruins of Reno and the river, Horse began to favor his unhurt legs, limping with the left hind leg. The Boy knew a powerful infection had already set in.
“He can’t go much farther,” said the Boy.
“He’ll have to. Another few hours to the foot of the mountains and then the river. I won’t sleep down here tonight.”
They rode on, passing through lonely crumbling hills in the weak last light of day. When the sun finally fell behind the lowest of the Sierra Nevada, the land turned to purple and the smell of sage hung heavy in the shadows.
“Another hour and we’ll be alongside the river. Once we’re to it my hunting lodge won’t be much farther on. I won’t waste a bullet on your horse. Load ’em myself and there’s precious few left now. Understand?”
The Boy said nothing as darkness settled across the lonely spaces that surrounded them. They heard the river long before they saw it, babbling in the moonlight. Its wide curves followed an old broken highway off to one side. Long, flat swathes of calm river erupted, burbling, over stones, and beyond that, small waterfalls marked their climb up alongside the river’s fall.
Horse was badly limping when Escondido stopped. They were on a wide turn below a small pass. The river, off to their left, was little more than soft noise. Escondido seemed to rise for a moment off his horse’s back, smelling the wind. The Boy tasted the night air also and found charred wood.
When they came to the river crossing that led to Escondido’s lodge, the Boy could see the charred remains of wood and stone from across the rock-filled river.
On the other side Escondido said nothing and climbed down from his nag. He walked into the midst of the burnt timber and ash. “Still warm.” He laughed. “Thought they’d burn me out, they did.”
The Boy got down off Horse and began to inspect the wound again. When he touched it, Horse danced away from him. He removed his pack and led Horse down to the river. The water was cold, startlingly cold as he washed Horse’s wound. At first Horse wouldn’t stand for it, but as the cool water numbed the heat in the wound, the big horse tolerated the cleansing.
By the time the Boy led Horse back up to the clearing where once the lodge watched the creek and the highway beyond, Escondido had built a fire.
“I’m gonna tell you something you don’t want to hear,” said Escondido above the clatter of a pot he set on the fire. “I’m lit out at first light. I’m done with this side of the mountains. It ain’t safe and it’s gittin’ a lot more dangerous. Time was it was just me between here and the Hillmen. Now all them southern tribes is comin’ north, just itchin’ fer a fight with the Chinese. This is my last hunt. Tomorrow I ride for Auburn. After that, who knows? There’s a widow for me somewheres, I guess.”
They watched the fire. Escondido cut branches from a sapling and roasted strips of lion meat.
“This part’s the part you ain’t gonna like. So here it is. That horse needs to rest and even if he does that, ain’t no guarantee he’s gonna make it. In two days or sooner we’ll have snow and if his infection is gonna come, it’ll kill him before we make it within the gates o’ the outpost.”
They were silent, each watching the meat and fire, the wood turning to ash, the orange coals beneath.
Escondido rose to turn the strips of lion and settled back down onto an old blanket.
“I come here twenty seasons musta been. Every summer I’d cross them mountains above us and come down here to hunt. First few days I got the place in order, then I had a whole operation to set up. Shoulda seen it. Hides tannin’, big porch I like to set on of an evenin’.”
“There was no trade in hides with the Hillmen ’fore the Chinese set up the outpost there in Auburn. Hillmen coulda cared less about lion hides. The whole bunch of ’em was different in every way. Lived out in the woods and only came together once a year when they’d get up a hunt or needed to fight one of the other tribes. I finally figured out why they called themselves the Hillmen when me and Danitra set up camp near the old school the year before it burned down. One night I was havin’ a look for anything useful and I saw that their old football team was called the Hillmen. Now they live alone out in the deep woods mostly, but they still think of themselves as some old football team from before the bombs. It was how they told the difference between them and strangers. Crazy, huh? But not really—makes more sense than some of the other tribes.”
The fire popped and the aroma of roasting meat caught the night’s breeze as sparks rose into the dark sky.
“Not much fat in lion,” noted Escondido.
Then…
“I’ll miss this place for the rest of my days.”
The mule honked at some ground squirrel. Escondido watched the forest for a long moment, his coal-black eyes wide in the dancing light of the fire.
“So, if you could ride with me, I don’t think you’d make it. Or more to the point, I don’t think yer horse’d make it. So I’m leavin’ you. Sorry. That’s the way it has to be.”
When the Boy failed to protest, his face calm, almost asleep in the firelight, Escondido said, “I’ll show you a few things in the morning, maybe even some bushes that’ll help with the healing. If you get to work on a shelter, you’ll be ready if them tribes come back lookin’ for me. Most likely they’ll take to you more than they ever did me. They’re tribal like you. Don’t like city people like me. Hate the Chinese, they do. Hate ’em. But you, you’ll be fine I suspect.”
They ate the lion and fell asleep near the fire. The night came on cold and the Boy dreamed of faces in windows. His last thought before he closed his eyes beneath the broken crystal of night was of faces. He remembered faces, though he did not remember who they belonged to. What was Sergeant Presley’s face like? He wondered and for a moment he could not remember its shape. But when he thought of the Sergeant’s rare smile, the face came back to him. And he was asleep.
Chapter 12
Snow fell and had been falling since they first woke. Now it was coming down steadily. High above, white clouds had replaced the startling blue of morning. Escondido, on the far side of the river and rounding the curve of the old highway that wound its way up across the pass, did not turn to see the Boy one last time, and then he was gone.
The wind rushed through the pines and made the only sound of the place where once Escondido’s hunting lodge stood.
And he did. The Boy knew he had to get moving. There were three things to do.
Make a shelter.
Gather healing herbs for Horse.
Find food.
But for a long moment he stood there. It was so quiet in between the thundering gusts of wind that shook all the pines at once that he could hear snowflakes landing on the ground all around him. Or so he thought.
Escondido left him with a simple knowledge of the area’s herbs and inhabitants. The lions wouldn’t come up this far and they didn’t like the cold anyway. There were some wolves. But wolves were wolves. There was a way to handle them. Then there was the bear: a mother brown bear, one of the worst kind. Two seasons ago, Escondido related, she had two cubs. This year he didn’t see the cubs. But the bear lived in a cave upriver at the top of a small conical hill. A small mountain even.
“You’d be wise to steer clear of her altogether. The brown are the worst. Man-eaters.”
Horse was on his side now. His large dark eyes were weak and milky. Often he would raise his head to make sure the Boy was near. But even that act seemed too much for him.
It was the voice of Sergeant Presley, heard over a thousand camps at morning, in the frosty nights of
