and both Callihan and Helen had been on foot. Just off the road, Babcock found a bloody strip of white cloth, just like the fibers he had found earlier. He didn’t know what to make of it. He coiled it until all the bloody spots were aligned. It looked like it had been wrapped around something, bigger than a leg or an arm. The head or a thigh? He hoped she hadn’t been snake bit. If that happened, there was little he could do for her.
Babcock drifted to sleep. He was young again, twenty-one or twenty-two? They had been fighting the Comanches and Apaches daily. A father had been to town and returned home to find it burned, his horses stolen, his wife filled with arrows and scalped, and his fourteen-year-old daughter was gone. The father told Babcock’s group, “She has yellow hair and blue eyes. I knew we shouldn’t have come out here to this God-forsaken land. If you find her and they’ve had her, if she’s ruined ….”
Babcock’s dreams were haunted by eyes. Those blue eyes that followed him through decades and beyond. Were they begging for mercy, pleading for relief, or begging to go home? Perhaps the glassy eyes no longer made sense of the world? Or was that something he had told himself to ease his guilty conscience?
The sound of the gunshot woke him with a start. He tried to listen over his gasping breath. Was the gunshot from his dreams or was it real? He heard his horse nicker nearby and he relaxed. It was the dream. This situation is bringing up things best left forgotten. It won’t end the same way this time. But I hope I can spare her the same horror. The sky was turning from black to blue, almost sunup. He packed his gear. Today I’ll find her.
* * * *
The tracks were still easy to follow. His horse trotted while Babcock tried not to think about the blue eyes in his dreams.
He hoped he could get to Helen before they crossed the border. Maybe that would balance the ledger with the Old Man Upstairs. Is that how it works? Does someone keep track of the debts and credits? Does it all come down to numbers in the end?
He heard a faint scream. He stopped his horse and listened. The screams of a woman and the shouting of a man drifted on the wind. He spurred his horse to a gallop while he drew his gun. He dodged around cactus and shrubs and then crested the hill.
He spied two figures in a struggle. As he neared, he saw it was Helen and a man he presumed to be Callihan. Helen stood at the base of a tree, her hands still bound by rope in front of her, but she wielded a large stick of mesquite. She was beating Callihan about the head.
Callihan was on the ground trying to fend off the blows. “Stop, stop! I should take you back, you stupid girl! No money’s worth this!”
Babcock noted the dirty makeshift bandage on Callihan’s head. It looked like the other bandage Babcock had found on the trail.
He slowed his horse to a walk as he approached and enjoyed watching Helen’s tirade.
She continued to hit Callihan about the head to accentuate her words. “You worthless,” whack, “no-good,” whack, “good for nothing,” whack, “pig!” whack, whack.
Helen stopped and looked at Babcock. She stood straight and caught her breath. “Mr. Babcock, I figured they’d send you. This scoundrel thought he could take me to Mexico and sell me! I did everything I could to slow him down since you were taking your sweet time finding us.” She threw the mesquite branch at Callihan in disgust.
Babcock let out a laugh that went from his toes, through his chest, and filled the scrubby landscape. While dismounting he said, “Come on, Miss Helen. Let’s get you back to your family, and I expect there’s also a certain fella who’s eager for your return. Folks are worried about you.”
She tried to tidy her hair. “They needn’t do that. I can take care of myself.”
Babcock helped Callihan to his feet then cuffed his hands. “Yes, ma’am. I see that now. But I’m sure relieved to see you’re okay. You don’t know how relieved.”
WILD HORSES, by Alexandra Burt
El Paso, Texas, November 1995
Three days had passed since his departure from the Fachada Ranch where Brady had spent his days feeding, watering, herding, branding, and loading horses into trailers. Until one day there was a fight.
His temper had flared. He recalled that frozen second between his anger igniting and throwing the first punch—there was always that split second when he could still go either way—when that fire inside of him made his hands tremble and his stomach quiver. There was a sensation of his limbs elongating and his muscles gaining strength. Shaking to the core, he felt as if he grew in height and weight, exponentially, expanding his slight frame to match the power of his wrath, like a jockey turning into a defensive tackle. There were broken bones, blood, stitches.
Getting into the Ford Bronco and taking off south had been an impulse on his part. Once Brady reached the interstate—speakers thumping and the night with all those stars sparkling above him—he gunned the car and headed farther south. Occasionally, he glanced into the side mirror, fascinated by the wind aimlessly throwing his hair around. But mostly he was anxious and his nerves were frayed to the quick.
On the first day, he was unable to keep down the food he bought at random gas stations. He pulled over by the side of the road, fell to his knees, and allowed the vomit to dribble off his lips. He thought about what he’d done, really thought about it: all he had in his name were a couple of hundred dollars and an ancient Bronco in need of new tires, with a bad transmission, and the brakes, moaning and screeching, were barely a layer away from hitting metal.
On the second day, he dozed off in the backseat of the Bronco in a Cobb’s parking lot—Lubbock, if his memory served him correctly, but he could be mistaken. In that lot he slept off years of backbreaking work cleaning stalls, branding horses, and mending hundreds of miles of fence. In his sleep he heard horses slurping water from troughs, followed by the animals’ snorting sounds. In his dreams he felt the breeze of their tails on his skin. In the sharp draft of the late fall he awoke, his back tight, and drunk with sleep. He cracked his knuckles where his fingers had been broken—his left index finger remained crooked and the pinky on his right hand was unyielding, he could hardly bend it at all.
He kept on driving and on the third day he felt himself coming off that sharp edge and on the fourth day, driving south on I-27, he reached Sweetwater. On I-20 West he pondered turning around for the better part of an hour, but when he hit I-10 West toward El Paso, he vowed to look ahead, the only direction there was.
As the dawn teased the sky into daylight—a sign above the highway announcing El Paso 15 miles—somewhere on the outskirts of the city, the flashing orange fuel light reminded him of reality at hand.
He pulled into a Choice Mart located on a large lot with cracked concrete among donut drive-thrus, pawn shops, and liquor stores. He killed the engine and the Bronco shuddered and shook, then quivered with a sigh of relief as if done roaming this earth. A good night’s sleep and he’d get on with it, call some landscaping companies, maybe moving and construction firms. He was bound to find a job if only he looked hard enough. He was a workhorse, after all, he did the work of three men, never complained, kept his head down. Unless his temper flared.
Scanning the parking lot, he made out newspaper boxes, a bench, a trashcan, a soda machine, a rusty dumpster, a mailbox, and more parking than this gas station would ever need. Harsh rhythmic music and a husky voice, chanting and rhyming words Brady couldn’t make out, drifted toward him from the left.
Three spots down from him sat a Ford Mustang—red and bold and shiny like
