Justin Allen

Excerpt from Chap­ter 9 of Year of the Horse

“A Bill Comes Due”

The storm must have blown itself out some­time dur­ing the night, because when Lu woke up the next morn­ing all was bright and beau­ti­ful once more.

At first he didn’t know where he was, or how he’d got there. It took a minute for him to recall the pre­vi­ous night’s light­ning storm, and the flight down through the steep­est, deep­est and most vertigo-inducing canyon in all the Ter­ri­to­ries. They sure didn’t call it the Hell Mouth for noth­ing. See­ing the canyon from above, under the mid-afternoon sun, had been a rev­e­la­tion. Who­ever knew rocks could be so gor­geous? But being inside it at night, when a storm hit, had been ter­ri­fy­ing. In the rain and wind, Lu had quickly fallen behind his group. It was darn scary being out there all alone. So when he found what he’d thought was a short cut, he took it. Remem­ber­ing back on that moment near choked him with guilt. They’d all said he was just a boy, not yet ready to shoul­der a man’s respon­si­bil­i­ties, and now he’d gone and proved them right.

Lu felt stiff and groggy as he pushed between his horse, Crash, and his mule, Lucky, and stum­bled out of the lit­tle cave. The sun was just begin­ning to peak over the walls of the canyon but already it was hot. He splashed through the pud­dles that had col­lected on the nar­row piece of ledge sur­round­ing the cave entrance, right to the edge of the precipice, and was shocked to see the river not even a hun­dred feet below. He was even more sur­prised when he glanced to his left and saw the very same red and burnt-orange nat­ural stone bridge he’d mar­veled at the morn­ing before, and with a path lead­ing up to it as surely as if it were the fin­ger of god point­ing out, with no uncer­tainty what-so-ever, exactly where he needed to go.

As he chewed a bit of pem­mi­can, Lu con­cocted a plan. He’d cross that bridge — if such a thing were even pos­si­ble — and then head north along the oppo­site wall of the canyon until he found his miss­ing friends. He laughed out loud as he imag­ined the looks on their faces. They’d be hun­gry, he guessed. Unless one of them had thought to squir­rel some­thing away in a sad­dle­bag, Lu had all the remain­ing food. Henry would bless the day he’d first met Lu. Chino would swear up a storm of hap­pi­ness. And Sadie would want to shower him with kisses. Even Jack Straw would for­give him for get­ting lost.

The march to the bridge was a good deal far­ther than Lu had first reck­oned it – he’d for­got­ten about the dif­fer­ence between actual and appar­ent dis­tances in the canyon – but he man­aged to reach it at least one full hour before noon.

Look­ing across, Lu began to seri­ously ques­tion the wis­dom of his under­tak­ing. It wasn’t that the bridge lacked strength. Even at its nar­row­est the stone bridge was at least ten feet wide, a ver­i­ta­ble high­way of stone. And it was as thick as a pair of rail­way engines, stacked one atop another. A hun­dred horses wouldn’t have weighed enough to break that estimable stone beam. But as a bridge it had one major flaw. It was round. And not gen­tly round either. Seen from above, the whole span resem­bled noth­ing so much as the pointy end of a chicken’s egg. Cross­ing it would be some­thing along the lines of walk­ing over the peak of a barn roof. Lu guessed he could man­age well enough, but Crash’s hooves were another mat­ter all together. It was impos­si­ble to imag­ine a horse bal­anced on a barn roof, even one as sure-footed as Crash.

But Lu couldn’t resist giv­ing the bridge a closer look. See­ing the faces of his friends again, tears of joy run­ning down their cheeks and kisses at the edges of their rosy lips, was just too much to give up. The very least he could do was to walk the bridge him­self. Maybe once he felt it under­foot, he’d decide that it wasn’t as peaked as he’d thought.

So Lu climbed down from his sad­dle and started across. The first few steps were easy. Being con­structed of sand­stone, the bridge offered plenty of grip for the soles of his boots. It was noth­ing to skip over, but it was cross­able. For­tu­nate that it was, too, because Lu had gone no more than a quar­ter of the way across before his horse decided to fol­low. And since his guide rope was fas­tened to Crash’s sad­dle, Lucky the mule was being dragged along as well.

That decided things in a hurry. Lu guessed he might find some way to get both ani­mals across that bridge, but turn­ing them around, or back­ing them over it, would be impossible.

It took the bet­ter part of fif­teen min­utes for the three of them to slink across, dur­ing which time Lu stared at noth­ing apart from the stone that lay directly in front of his feet. Think­ing back on it, there were undoubt­edly places where he might’ve taken a quick look around. And in ret­ro­spect, he prob­a­bly should have. But he didn’t, and so he was heartily sur­prised when Crash let out a loud whinny and refused to go even one step farther.

“Don’t stop now,” Lu said. “We’re darned near the other -”

He was inter­rupted by a growl so deep and rum­bling that Lu’s first thought was of thun­der. When he looked up and saw two lumi­nous gold eyes peer­ing at him out of a tawny face, he wished it had been.

A moun­tain lion lay sprawled across the far end of the bridge. If it’d had a mind to, it could have cov­ered the dis­tance between itself and Lu in a sin­gle leap. For­tu­nately, the lion seemed con­tent to do lit­tle more than pant and flick its tail.

“Shoo!” Lu hissed. “Go on.”

The lion stared at him. It looked nei­ther hun­gry nor vio­lent, but Lu couldn’t take any chances. He needed to get Crash and Lucky across this bridge, and he couldn’t do it so long as a moun­tain lion was block­ing the path. Really, he had no choice. Very slowly, Lu reached for the revolver in his pocket.

“I don’t know what sort of a pea-shooter you got stashed, but I’d leave it set if I was you.”

Lu turned toward the voice. A cow­boy, sit­ting atop a mot­tled gray charger, moseyed out from behind a fin of red stone. He wore a gray Stet­son and rawhide chaps. His hair was the color of sun­burned wheat.

“There’s a lion,” Lu said, fin­gers still tight on the heel of his revolver.

“Her?” The cow­boy squinted at the moun­tain lion. “Pshaw. Why, she ain’t nothin’ but a pussy­cat. Wouldn’t hurt a fly. Would you Sweetheart?”

“Do you think she could get out of the way then?” Lu asked. “Just for a minute?”

The cow­boy grinned. “Git along now, Sweet­heart. Quit teasin’ the boy.”

Reluc­tantly, the lion rolled to her feet.

“She looks fear­some, I’ll grant you that, but there ain’t no accountin’ for looks.”

As soon as the lion had gone, Lu grabbed Crash’s reins, drag­ging both he and Lucky the last few meters to safety.

“That’s one ugly horse you got there,” the cow­boy observed. “Wish I could ’a seen the crook what sold him to you.”

“Crash is bet­ter than he looks.”

“Must be.”

Lu stared at the cow­boy, not sure whether to thank or curse him.

“Well, mount up then,” the cow­boy said. “We got a mile or two to cover yet.”

“You… You want me to come with you?”

“Lookin’ for that group of pil­grims, ain’t ya’?”

“Pil­grims?”

“Them that nearly got killed in the light­ning storm.”

“Those are my friends,” Lu said. “You’ve seen them?”

He nod­ded. “And let me tell you, you’ll never find ‘em set­tin’ on your heels.”

Lu wasn’t sure what to do. On the one hand, this cow­boy seemed to know exactly where his friends were, and how to reach them. But he was also a com­plete stranger. He could be dan­ger­ous. “I’m not sure I ought to go with you,” Lu said at last.

“Not go?” The cow­boy guf­fawed. “You got some bet­ter option I ain’t aware of?”

Lu shook his head. He didn’t.

“Well then, get on that nag of yours and let’s move.”

He waited until Lu was in the sad­dle and then wheeled his horse around south.

“But aren’t my friends to the north?” Lu asked.

“Don’t worry, son, you’ll catch ‘em.” The cow­boy gave his horse a kick. “Home Widowmaker.”

Lu trailed after that cow­boy for the rest of the after­noon, until the sun had dis­ap­peared over the canyon walls. Days were short this deep in the Hell Mouth, shad­ows dark and omi­nous. Lu might have liked to talk to his strange new guide, but the cow­boy offered lit­tle in the way of oppor­tu­nity. His horse was a mir­a­cle of energy, alter­nat­ing between a trot and a can­ter for hours at a clip. Crash man­aged to stay within shout­ing dis­tance, but Lucky made even that dif­fi­cult. The mule was sweat­ing freely, droplets run­ning off his long ears, foam bub­bling around the straps of his harness.

At last they reached their des­ti­na­tion. It was a cave not unlike the one in which Lu had whiled away the pre­vi­ous night, though with the open­ing boarded over to resem­ble an ordi­nary cot­tage. There was even a length of tin chim­ney pipe jut­ting through a hole over the door.

“This here’s my house,” the cow­boy said, slid­ing down off his horse. “There’s a hitchin’ rail round that cor­ner yon­der, and a bale of fine green hay under an old over­turned trough. I’d be obliged if you’d feed Wid­ow­maker while you’re at it. I’ll start din­ner. Like biscuits?”

“Sir?” Lu stammered.

“Some­thin’ wrong?”

“My name’s Tzu-lu.” He held out his hand. “But my friends call me Lu.”

They shook.

“Bill,” the cow­boy said. His hand was as rough and horny as a snake­skin boot. “Take care of your gear, Lu. Must be wet as the grave in them bags.”