Page 88 of Ransom
"Road into Pae Saco."
Coyote's eyes flicked up briefly. "Our land or theirs?"
"Theirs, I think. Close to the border."
"Your man is leaking, Ransom. Let me do the plumbing first, and then I'll fetch."
Coyote got to work.
The burn came up through the meat of my arm, hot and bright, and I gritted my teeth around it and didn't move. Coyote sang, low and tuneless, in a Spanish I didn't entirely follow, and his hands moved quick and sure. I lay there with Ransom's palm flat on my skull and watched him.
"You smell like a train hit you, Ranger," Coyote said, conversational, not looking up from the needle.
"That a medical observation?"
"That's just what you smell like. Hold still."
Ransom's eyes were on Coyote's hands on my arm, his face still as sheet metal, his jaw a clean line. He had blood on his knuckles and along the edge of his hand and up his forearm where his sleeve was rolled, and most of it wasn't his.
Coyote pulled a stitch tight. The skin closed under the thread and the burn came up fresh.
Coyote stopped singing. "Brown jar by your knee, Ransom. Two fingers. Spread it on what I've closed. Don't be shy with it."
Ransom dipped his fingers in and came up with something dark, pine pitch and the inside of an old barn. He laid it across the closed stitches, careful as a man icing a cake, and the cool of it spread under the burn. I closed my eyes for a moment.
"Eyes, Ranger."
"Yeah." I opened my eyes. I hadn't realized I'd closed them.
His fingers kept moving down the cut behind Coyote's needle, and I thought about the dead men on the road. What would happen if someone came up on them before Coyote got them moved? It was wrong that I was worried they'd get caught, that Ransom might go away for murders he'd absolutely committed. But he'd killed those men for me, and it also felt wrong not to be a little thankful for it.
Especially since I knew he'd kill more if I asked.
Nimue shifted on Coyote's shoulder and resettled.
I waited for the part of me that was supposed to argue back, the Ranger in me, the lawman, the man who'd worn a badge half his adult life. He didn't show up. The Ranger had been packing his desk all morning while Cap looked at his face. The Ranger had finished packing it on the road when Ransom had gone past me with a knife. The badge in my back pocket was a piece of metal a captain in El Paso was a few days from repossessing. There was no Ranger left in this cave to argue with anybody.
"Time to fix your snout," Coyote said.
I'd been dreading the nose.
He tied off the last stitch, wiped his hands on his thighs, and came up around to the head of the pallet. Ransom shifted to make room. Coyote took my jaw between his thumb and two fingers, light.
"Look at me, Ranger."
I looked.
His eyes were black and calm and a little too still. "Ransom. Hold his shoulders."
Ransom moved over me, knees on either side without putting weight on the ribs, a hand on each shoulder. His weight settled, and I looked up past him at the smoke marks on the cave ceiling and thought,Alright, fine, alright, here we go.
Coyote grabbed my nose with two fingers and yanked.
The sound was wet and bright. The pain bloomed through the whole front of my skull, and I bucked up off the pallet against Ransom's hands. Ransom held me down, and Coyote kept his fingers on my nose a moment longer to be sure, and let go.
"There," Coyote said, conversational. "That's better. Don't worry. You'll be pretty again someday, Ranger."
It wasn't better. But it was less wrong than it had been, like a fence post somebody had put back upright. I lay there breathing through my mouth and counting smoke marks. Ransom's hands came off my shoulders slowly, and he sat back on his heels.
