Mojave Read Online Free Page A

Territory.”
    I smiled. “I’ve been to Arizona. Never seen California.”
    Which satisfied him, I reckon, ’cause he moved on.
    â€œNo canteen, either,” he said.
    I looked around, like this white-haired man dressed in black would have fetched my canteen and left it within my reach. Like I told y’all, I didn’t remember shucking it, but it sure wasn’t in with the hammers and pans and powder in this wagon.
    Give up looking. I turned back to my savior with a sheepish look on my face. “I had one,” I told him. “Don’t know what I done with it.”
    â€œYou’ve never been in the desert before,” he told me, and puffed on his stogie.
    Oh, I had. Had almost died in what, in New Mexico Territory, they call the Jornado del Muerto , the “Journey of the Dead,” which is just as deadly, just as miserable, and just as barren as the Mojave. If I didn’t have the canteen no more, I sure knowed why. Even empty, canteens feel heavy, and for a fellow afoot with no water, they weigh as much as a dead man’s bloated body. But I didn’t say none of this. Something about this guy’s demeanor told me that he didn’t cotton to arguments or getting hisself contradicted or corrected.
    â€œSo I ask myself, we found you lying against some rocks,” the man in black with the white hair said. “What kind of man is it, who with no water, no horse, nothing except a ratty old hat. . . .”
    I reached up for my ratty old hat, which sure wasn’t as fancy as my rescuer’s Stetson, and give him another one of my sheepish looks.
    He had stopped to draw on his cigar, pushed the blue-gray smoke up toward the canvas roof again, and he finished his question.
    â€œI ask myself, what kind of man is it, who alone in the desert, no horse, no gun, no chance . . . what kind of man is it who still carries a revolver?”
    With that, his left hand snaked behind his back, and he pulled out that old .36. With a grin, he flicked the antique toward me. I ducked, let it slam into the wooden slats. Then I reached over and picked it up.
    â€œA cap-and-ball antiquity that, by my guess, even empty—as it was—weighs more than an empty canteen.”
    â€œSister Rocío,” I told him, “always told me I had more luck than sense.” Instinctively, I looked down at my knuckles, almost feeling the good nun’s ruler rapping them hands of mine. She could wield a ruler like a sledgehammer.
    â€œYour sister?” he asked.
    I shrugged. Didn’t see no need in giving him any information he might be able to use against me somewhere down the line. “Just a woman I knowed,” I told him, “back when I was a kid.”
    Course, I was more interested in the revolver. It felt different because it had been cleaned. I could feel the oil on the cylinder, the barrel, could smell it, too. It also felt heavier.
    â€œIt’s loaded,” my savior told me.
    I shot him a quick look. He was holding the cigar with his left hand, dangersomely close to one of them kegs of powder, but the thumb of his right hand was hooked on that fancy sash, just a hop and a skip from the Colt near his left hip. Next, I studied that Spiller & Burr a mite closer.
    Carefully, I laid the .36 between my legs.
    â€œYeah,” I said, “but it don’t work without caps.”
    He chuckled, slid the cigar into his mouth, and used his left hand to reach into another vest pocket. Something shiny come flying toward me. This one, I managed to catch.
    It was a straight-lined capper, brass, fully filled with likely fifteen number-eleven percussion caps. Put them babies on the nipples on that cylinder, and I’d be ready to tackle some sore losers from Fort Mojave or set up another crooked poker game.
    â€œThanks,” I said.
    â€œReckon you owe me,” he said.
    â€œReckon I do,” I told him.
    He pushed himself to his feet, kneeling a mite,