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He found Tobin kneeling in the creek bathing his wound with a piece of linen torn from his shirt. The ball had passed completely through his neck. It had narrowly missed the carotid artery yet he could not make the blood to stop. He looked at the kid crouched among the skulls and upturned ribtines.
You've got to kill the horses, he said. You've no other chance out of here. He'll ride you down.
We could take the horses.
Dont be a fool lad. What other bait has he?
We can get out as soon as it comes dark.
Do you think there'll be no day again?
The kid watched him. Will it not stop? he said.
It will not.
What do you think?
I've got to stop it.
The blood was ru
Where is the judge? said the kid.
Where indeed.
If I kill him we can take the horses.
You'll not kill him. Dont be a fool. Shoot the horses.
The kid looked off up the shallow sandy creek.
Go on lad.
He looked at the expriest and at the slow gouts of blood dropping in the water like roseblooms how they swelled and were made pale. He moved away up the creek.
When he came to where the horses had entered the water they were gone. The sand on the side where they'd gone out was still wet. He pushed the revolver along before him, moving on the heels of his hands. For all his caution he found the idiot watching him before ever he saw it.
It was sitting motionless in a bower of bones with the broken sunlight stenciled over its vacant face and it was watching like a wild thing in a wood. The kid looked at it and then he shoved on past in the tracks of the horses. The loose neck swiveled slowly and the dull jaw drooled. When he looked back it was still watching. Its wrists were lying in the sand before it and although there was no expression to its face yet it seemed a creature beset with a great woe.
When he saw the horses they were standing on a rise of ground above the creek and looking toward the west. He lay quietly and studied the terrain. Then he moved out along the edge of the wash and sat with his back to the bone salients and cocked the pistol and took a rest with his elbows on his knees.
The horses had seen him come out of the wash and they were watching him. When they heard the pistol cock they pricked their ears and began to walk toward him across the sand. He shot the forward horse in the chest and it fell over and lay breathing heavily with the blood ru
He sat listening. Nothing moved. The first horse lay as it had fallen, the sand about its head darkening with blood. The smoke drifted away down the draw and thi
Throw that gun out now, said the judge.
He froze.
The voice was not fifty feet away.
I know what you've done. The priest put you up to it and I'll take that as a mitigation in the act and the intent. Which I would any man in his wrongdoing. But there's the question of property. You bring me the pistol now.
The kid lay without moving. He heard the judge wade the creek upstream. He lay counting slowly under his breath. When the roiled water reached him he stopped counting and let go on the current a dry twist of grass and tolled it away downstream. At that same count it was scarcely out of sight among the bones. He moved out of the water and looked at the sun and began to make his way back to where he'd left Tobin.
He found the expriest's tracks still wet where he'd left the creek and the way of his progress marked with blood. He followed through the sand until he came to that place where the expriest had circled upon himself and lay hissing at him from his place of cover.
Did you do for them lad?
He raised his hand.
Aye. I heard the shots all three. The fool as well, aye lad?
He didnt answer.
Good lad, hissed the expriest. He'd bound up his neck in his shirt and he was naked to the waist and he squatted among those rancid pickets and eyed the sun. The shadows were long on the dunes and in the shadow the bones of the beasts that had died there lay skewed in a curious congress of garbled armatures upon the sands. They'd close to two hours till dark and the expriest said so. They lay under the boardlike hide of a dead ox and listened to the judge calling to them. He called out points of jurisprudence, he cited cases. He expounded upon those laws pertaining to property rights in beasts mansuete and he quoted from cases of attainder insofar as he reckoned them germane to the corruption of blood in the prior and felonious owners of the horses now dead among the bones. Then he spoke of other things. The expriest leaned to the kid. Dont listen, he said.
I aint listenin.
Stop your ears.
Stop yours.
The priest cupped his hands over his ears and looked at the kid. His eyes were bright from the bloodloss and he was possessed of a great earnestness. Do it, he whispered. Do you think he speaks to me?
The kid turned away. He marked the sun squatting at the western rim of the waste and they spoke no more until it was dark and then they rose and made their way out.
They stole up from the basin and set off across the shallow dunes and they looked a last time back at the valley where flickering in the wind at the edge of the revetment stood the judge's nightfire for all to see. They did not speculate as to what it fed upon for fuel and they were well advanced on the desert before the moon rose.
There were wolves and jackals in that region and they cried all the forepart of the night until the moon came up and then they ceased as if surprised by its rising. Then they began again. The pilgrims were weak from their wounds. They lay down to rest but never for long and never without sca