RUNAWAY ROSE
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Rose rode northward through the desert,
slumped tiredly in the saddle. It had been two days since she had killed Guerrero
and stolen one of the bandits’ horses, making good her escape.
She had been fortunate, she realized. In
spite of everything that had happened, she was alive, and there had been no
pursuit.
She had grabbed the first horse she came
across, soothing the skittish animal as she saddled it. She had been fortunate,
too, in that the man who had cared for the horses that evening had been
careless with the saddles, leaving them in a pile near to where the horses were
tied. In a matter of minutes, she had had the animal saddled and had been on
her way.
She had been lucky in another way, too. The
guard she had hit with the rock wasn’t dead. As she had climbed into the saddle
and ridden away, she had glimpsed him getting slowly to his feet, holding his
head. At least she didn’t have his death on her conscience.
She had ridden through the night and well
into the morning. She had no food or water, but at least she had not been
pursued. They could have caught her easily, she knew, just by following the
tracks of the horse she had stolen. All of the surviving bandits had horses
available, since she had killed Guerrero. She didn’t know if they had pursued
her or not, knowing that she had had a head start of several hours, even riding
in the dark, and the surviving men would all have been nursing headaches in the
morning, the guard from being hit with the rock, the other two from drinking
themselves into a stupor.
They would probably also have taken the time
to see to Guerrero, Rose realized, though she wasn’t sure just how loyal they
had been to him. If they had been loyal, they might have taken the time to bury
him, or cart him off to the nearest town, but if they hadn’t felt any loyalty
toward him, they might have left him to the coyotes and vultures.
She shuddered at the thought. It wasn’t
right, leaving someone to be torn apart by scavengers, no matter how bad the
person might have been. She would have tried to bury him herself, in an attempt
to assuage her guilty conscience, had she not known that time was of the essence.
She had had to escape at once, or her life would have been forfeit.
Rose looked out over the landscape, hoping to
see some sign of inhabitation. Nothing. She had been riding for two days, and
had seen no one. Perhaps, she thought, I’m just not looking hard
enough. She was exhausted, having gotten little sleep since she had left
the small town where she had found Will, and the wound on her head was only now
beginning to heal. She had no food, and had drunk nothing except the juice of
cacti.
She was grateful that one of Esther’s ranch
hands had shown her the trick of getting water from a cactus. The water was not
what one would find in a creek or river, but it kept her alive. The spiny,
forbidding looking cacti stored their own water supply inside their thorny
exteriors, and it could be reached by breaking the cactus open with a rock and
pounding the flesh inside to a pulp, releasing the juice. It wasn’t the most
palatable drink she had ever had, but it quenched her thirst and provided a
little nourishment.
Rose had no way of carrying any of the juice
with her, so as soon as her thirst was quenched, she would step back and let
the horse drink from the mutilated cactus, keeping a close eye out to be sure
that it didn’t try to chew on the spiny skin. She wished that she could eat the
way the horse could, watching enviously as it cropped the short, dry grasses of
the winter landscape. Twice, she had tried to catch small animals, but there
was no way she could run fast enough to catch them, and her aim was too poor to
allow her to hit them with a thrown rock. She almost wished that she hadn’t
dropped Guerrero’s gun when she had gone to steal a horse, since she was a
decent marksman and probably could have caught something to eat with it.
She knew that she had to find food, and soon.
She hadn’t eaten in two days, except for the cactus juice, and, although some
of the plants were recognizable to her, none offered anything edible in early
February. It had been a dry winter, and the spring bloom, what there would be
of it, was weeks away.
Staunchly, she rode on, heading farther
north, knowing that eventually she would reach the United States—if she
survived.
*****
On the third day out, late in the afternoon,
the horse went lame. Rose, not knowing what else to do, unsaddled it and set it
free, hoping that it would be able to fend for itself. She couldn’t take care
of it, and to continue riding would only hurt the animal further.
Leaving the now-useless saddle behind, Rose
continued on foot. She didn’t know how much longer she could go on. It had been
three days since she had eaten, and the cut on her head had reversed its
healing and was beginning to fester. At least, she thought, if I do
survive, the cut won’t leave a scar. It was under her hair, but perhaps that
wouldn’t matter. The chances of her surviving were growing slimmer and slimmer.
The area that she was traveling through was
dry; even the cacti were few and far between. She had no supplies except for a
sharp-edged rock that she had found the evening before and taken with her. The
one advantage she had found was that the weather was relatively cool in winter.
Had she been traveling in the heat of summer, she would have died long before.
Darkness fell, and still she stumbled along.
She wasn’t even sure why anymore.
At last, she came to a small, dry streambed
and descended into it, curling up in the soft sand. She hoped that it would not
rain and catch her in a flash flood, then hoped just as fervently that it would
rain. She hadn’t had anything to drink since early afternoon.
Wrapping her arms around her knees, she
curled into a fetal position, hoping that no predators would find her before
morning. She was tired...so tired, and even as she worried about being attacked
by a hungry animal, she felt herself slipping into sleep.
*****
Rose was awakened by bright sunlight. She had
been lying in the shade of a dry smoke tree, but a look at the sky told her
that it was mid-morning, far later than she usually slept. She sat up, looking
around.
The vegetation was thicker here, encouraged
by the occasional abundance of water. Only a few smoke trees grew in the
streambed itself—other vegetation was washed away by the occasional violent
flash floods—but other plants grew on the banks and in the surrounding terrain.
With a look of relief, Rose made her way over
to a barrel cactus that stood alone, the few short plants growing around it
long since chewed away by desert wildlife. Drawing the sharp stone from her
pocket, she unwrapped the dry grass she had covered it with and set about
opening the cactus.
It took a long time, and she was getting
ready to scream from frustration when she finally succeeded in chopping a hole
in it. A little more work opened it enough for her to access the juicy flesh
inside.
Pounding the inside of the cactus until it
yielded its juice, Rose realized how weak she was. She was dehydrated and
starving, and a tentative examination of the cut on her head revealed that the
infection had grown worse overnight. She worried about the infection, and the
possibility of gangrene—she certainly couldn’t have her head amputated.
Scooping some of the juice into her hand, she dribbled it on the cut, scrubbing
at the soft, infected scabs until they came off and the cleansing blood was
able to flow.
The cut hurt badly, but at least the bruise
around it was healing. It no longer ached to the touch, except for the cut
itself, and she continued to scrub at it until she had removed the worst of the
infected tissue, using the sterile juice from the inside of the cactus to
cleanse it.
When she had finished cleaning the cut, Rose
removed her shirt and pressed the part of it that she had spilled tequila on to
the cut until it stopped bleeding.
Putting her shirt back on, Rose bent to the cactus
again, scooping the juice into her mouth, and even ripping up a bit of the
flesh to chew on, wondering if she should move on, or stay where she was and
hope that someone would come along. She was feverish from the cut, and she had
no guarantee that she would find help if she left. The cactus would provide
enough water for a short time, but after that, she would have to move on.
The chances of someone happening along were
slim, Rose admitted, and if someone did find her, they could be as bad or worse
than the men she had escaped. If she moved on, she might come to a ranch or a
village. The people at such a place would be more likely to offer help than a
stranger riding through the desert.
By noon, she had made her decision. Tucking
the rock back into her pocket, she drank the last of the juice she had pounded
out of the cactus and set along her way again, slightly rejuvenated from the
rest and fluid.
Rose walked along doggedly, concentrating
upon putting one foot in front of the other. She saw the brush around her
growing thicker, saw the tracks of animals, but the meaning of these signs
didn’t occur to her at first.
It was well into the afternoon when she
stopped, exhausted, wondering if she had made the right decision in moving on.
She stopped in the shade of a creosote bush for a few moments, sitting on the
ground, until a bunch of ants crawling over her encouraged her to get up and
leave.
She stumbled on, ready to drop, until she
noticed that the ground was growing damp beneath her feet. Suddenly realizing
what the damp ground meant, she pushed on, forcing herself to keep moving,
until she emerged in a small, spring-fed oasis.