Page 92 of Coyote

Sierra had probably put a rifle in John’s hands by now. I'd have bet anything on it. The old man would haul that rifle all the way out here, ready to break himself in half, only to find the mess already made. He'd yell at me for it. I'd let him.

I'd let him do anything he wanted if it meant I got to keep him.

My tongue felt like sandpaper. It had felt like that since the pen, and there was nothing out here to fix it, so I quit thinking about it. I kept my stride steady toward the ridge like the prey they'd paid to see.

The cold had been coming up off the desert floor since before they cut the padlock. My nerves went haywire. My legs started shaking, not from the cold, and not from fear, but from whatever cocktail they'd pumped into my neck.

A mesquite branch hung low across my path. I reached out with my right hand to shove it aside. My splinted hand took the weight, and the entire night flashed blinding white.

Fuck, that hurt.

I bit down on my own forearm, right above the tape, and forced the scream back down my throat. My knees buckled, but I refused to hit the dirt.

I reached for my throat and missed the weight of Nimue. Nine years we'd been together, and the one time I put her down was the one time I'd let someone get the drop on me.

Never again, I thought. When I get back, I'm never letting Nimue or John out of my sight again.

The moon came up high enough to turn everything gray. I was starting my arc south when I saw the tracks. They came in from the west, slicing right across my line of sight, heading straight toward the trailers. They were the only new thing on all this empty ground, right between me and the yard.

I knelt to get a better look. They were deep enough that the heel had punched a real crater into the dirt. Long strides, longer than mine, which annoyed me on principle. And he'd walked dead-straight across the flattest, brightest stretch of ground for a mile. The kind of spot where some bored prick with a scope on the flatbed would sweep just to pass the time. The brush offered perfect cover just yards away, but whoever this was had walked straight through the open like nothing out here could touch him.

And he'd done it twice. There were two lines out there, not one, the same boot and the same crater heel, laid down a stride apart and pointed opposite ways. He'd walked in toward the lights, and then he'd walked back out.

Someone had snapped a branch clean off a mesquite well above my own head. I tried to prop myself up with my right hand to get closer and almost passed out.

I tried using my left hand, but my head tilted at a useless angle. So I went flat on my chest, naked on the cold gravel, cradling my busted hand against my ribs, keeping my one good eye inches from the dirt. In the shadow, the print was a gray smear with a hole punched in the middle.

I had to feel it. Was the edge fresh or crumbling? I touched it with my splinted hand and felt nothing but tape. My left came down too heavily and crushed the edge of the print.

I'd ruined the track. Fuck.

The drug was still sloshing in my veins, and the knot over my right ear was hot and swelling, expanding into whatever brain cells I had left.

They'd broken me. I was going to die out here in the dark because five guys with a bat had beaten the only useful part of me to mush.

I almost missed the white scrap.

It was hovering on my blind side. I pushed up onto my knees to start back toward the yard, and it flickered in the dead half of my face. I didn't see it at first. Then the wind blew, the white shifted, and the movement caught the edge of my good eye.

I had to wrench my whole neck around to look.

Someone had knotted a scrap of white cloth around a mesquite branch above me. Nothing I'd tracked on this ground stood tall enough to reach it. I dragged my feet under me, which hurt about as much as everything else had that night, hooked the branch down with my good hand, and worked the knot loose with my teeth.

Gauze.

I brought it closer to my nose and sniffed. Sweat, skin, cedar, well water, and the warm, heavy scent that lived under John’s beard. It was soaked deep into the cotton and dried there. It wasn't just a faint whiff; it was the smell of every hour the man had worn it.

Big John.

I stood there, naked in the middle of the desert, shut my good eye, pressed his bandage against my face, and inhaled him until my chest ached.

Bite when you need. I'm right here.

I had the cloth in my teeth before I even realized my mouth was open.

I turned it over. The dried blood formed a perfect ring. It ran thick along one side, then stopped, leaving the center of the cotton clean. I'd made that mark on his chest, and now it was tied to a branch on the only straight line anybody had walked across this ground tonight.

Back in the pen, they'd had everything. But now John was out in the dark.