Page 96 of Coyote

"You're right," I said and lowered the gun. "A bullet is too quick for him."

The ringing in my ears sat high and tight between my temples and wouldn't let the silence through. It was the only clean thing left in the draw. Everything else was soot and sulfur and the sour smell of horse sweat gone cold in the brush. I kept my back pressed against the rusted iron sideboard of the flatbed, my breath coming in short, dry hitches that scraped the inside of my throat raw.

My right arm lay across my lap. The silver duct tape Zaroff's men had wound around the paint stirrer was too tight; it had bitten into my wrist until the skin was purple, and the fingers sticking out of the bottom had swollen fat and tight and didn't feel like they belonged to my hand at all. They pulsed with every heavy thump of my heart.

Zaroff wasn't so scary now. He was on his knees in the dirt, back hunched forward until his forehead almost touched the stones. His left hand clutched his bloody right hand while he panted roughly.

John stood over him, his shadow cutting the white light in half. The rifle was still tucked against his shoulder, the heavy barrel pointed at Zaroff.

Ransom's rifle lay across his knees up on the ledge. Sierra was behind me. Cruz hadn't come down off the mare, and her saddle kept creaking, the only thing in the pass that couldn't hold still. None of them moved. They were waiting to see what the stock would do to the butcher.

Zaroff looked emptied out. Run past the end of himself and left there. His face was gray. The white light of the headlamp on the ground hit his chin, showing the wet, dark smear of his beard.

I reached down with my good hand and grabbed the wire necklace around his throat, and I yanked. The copper wire bit into the back of Zaroff's neck, cutting a thin, red line into his skin before the twist gave way with a sharp ping. The tusks spilled into my palm, heavy and greasy with his sweat. I clenched my fist around them until the sharp, filed points bit into my skin, the pain sweet and sharp enough to clear some of the fog in my head.

"Get up," I said.

Zaroff didn't move. He kept his head down, his forehead almost touching the dirt, his whistling breath coming faster now.

I kicked him hard enough to make him gasp, to make him remember that he had a body that could feel the ground.

"Up," I said again.

He dragged himself onto his knees and looked up at me. The white light from the ground caught his eyes. They were wide, wet, and perfectly empty of the god he'd been at the gate. He was just an old man with a ruined hand, shivering in the draw.

"Take it off," I said.

He didn't understand. Or he didn't want to.

"The shirt," I said. "The pants. The boots. All of it."

"Coyote," John said.

I looked down at Zaroff. "You like the sport. You stood at that gate and watched your people strip me. Now it’s your turn."

Zaroff's fingers were shaking as he reached for the buttons of his canvas shirt. His right hand was useless, so he had to use his left, his teeth catching the hem to pull the cloth over his head. The white light showed the pale, soft skin of his belly, the gray hair on his chest, the small, circular scar from some old hunt on his shoulder.

He looked small. Without the leather jacket, without the boots that clicked on the hardwood of the porch, there was nothing to him.

He worked his belt open one-handed and shoved the canvas down off his hips. He struggled with his boots, his good hand straining against the leather until they slipped off and lay hollow in the caliche. He sat there naked on the stones, his skin turning a blue-gray in the cold standing air of the cut. The cold was already settling into his limbs, making his shoulders bunch and his teeth chatter with a dry, rhythmic click.

"You get an hour," I said to him.

He looked up, his jaw hanging open, his breath whistling.

"That's what you gave me," I said. "You're going to get the same." I pointed out past the mouth of the pass, toward the east where the desert ran flat and empty toward the dry wash. "The caliche is hard. The cholla spines don't care about your feet. They'll go through the sole and find the bone. If you run, you might make the ridge. If you don't, you'll still be sitting here at sunup, and then it's the sun's turn. But you aren't staying in my pass."

Zaroff looked out at the desert.

"No guns," I said, looking back at John now. "No horses. Just the dirt."

Zaroff's teeth showed when his jaw shook. "And if I refuse?"

"Then I let him kill you right here."

John didn't lower the rifle, but his eyes met mine. They were dark and deep-set, and they held on mine. He knew what I was asking. So did I. Whatever came back into this pass might not be the thing that walked out of it. But he didn't say no. He nodded once.

"An hour," John said.