“No need for me to be cruel,” Sam growled. “I’ll put this one through your eye patch and let your good eye be.”
“Oh, that version of the story was nipped in the bud, kid.” Tiny smiled, taking another step forward. Sam’s eyes were on the man’s gun. “And you’re nowhere near fast enough to touch me with lead. Pull, girlie. See if you can even get one of those pieces clear of leather before I drop your skinny carcass just like the Vulture at the train.”
The tension in Sam’s arms was incredible. Both snakes were coiled and ready to strike. Both were sending clouds of fear and fury up into Sam’s head. They were both cocked and ready to explode, and Sam knew the trigger was inside of him.
Sam’s mind was slower than his hand. He focused on Tiny’s chest. The biggest target. He envisioned hitting it. And then he twitched his right arm—the one he was more likely to control. The rest happened all at once.
Sam felt like he was still reaching when the revolver went off, like he had just shot himself in the leg. But his arm was already up and smoke was rising from the barrel. Tiny’s gun clattered down the stairs, and Tiny was grabbing his hand.
Sam blinked. He’d missed. But he’d gotten lucky. He aimed again at Tiny’s chest, and cocked the hammer. But as he fired, Speck moved his hand.
The butt exploded off Tiny’s second revolver, still in its holster.
Tiny turned and ran.
Cindy was twitching, but Sam curled his fingers tight around his belt, holding her back. He walked down the stairs after the outlaw.
A man stepped out from behind a stone building, rifle raised. Sam swung his arm toward him and Speck fired. The weapon flipped out of his hands.
“Tisto! What are you doing?” Manuelito quickly descended the stairs behind Sam. He was draped with bandoleers full of bullets, wearing three holsters and his top hat, and carrying two rifles. He aimed both from the waist, and fired down into the shadows.
“I thought . . .” Tisto looked from his father back to Sam. “I wanted to fight.”
“Into the back! Now!” His hands were full, but he kicked at his son and then Sam, steering them back up the stairs.
Sam retreated slowly. “Can we catch one? I need to know where they’re keeping my sister.”
“Catch one?” the Indian snorted. “You won’t catch any of these fools. Go!”
Sam skipped steps back up to the crack, and slipped through it after Tisto as a bullet slapped into the limestone wall beside him. Inside, two of the shelves that had been loaded with medicines had been rolled clear of opposite walls. Two dark doorways faced each other across the room. Glory stood in one doorway, bouncing nervously, and gnawing on her lip. She had The Legend of Poncho wide open in her hands and she was reading as fast as she could. Rattlesnakes were pouring into the room out of the doorway across from her, but she didn’t seem to notice. A dozen fat snakes were already on the floor around Sam’s cot. Dozens more were following.
Rattles exploded everywhere.
“Sam!” Glory shouted. “Quick!”
Sam jumped over one snake and then two more as they spun into coils. His own rattles were buzzing again, and they grew louder with his fear.
He hit the cool stone wall and then slid into the dark doorway beside Glory.
“Nothing,” Glory whispered. “A few pages disappeared and then came right back. I tried to read fast, but I couldn’t tell if anything had changed.”
Manuelito squeezed back into the room.
“Come on, then! Come!” He picked up Tisto’s poncho and then buzzed his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Come!”
The snakes accelerated, slithering into the room until they had woven a loose carpet of serpent bodies across the entire floor. The interwoven snakes parted around Manuelito’s boots as he walked straight to Sam and Glory with Baptisto trailing behind him. The big man pushed all three kids deep into the darkness, handed Glory one of his rifles and his son’s poncho, backed his bulk into the tight space after them, and then pulled the rolling shelf closed, shutting them all inside.
Sam’s rattles were still buzzing.
Manuelito hissed sharply and both snakes went silent. The big man grabbed his son by the shoulder and squeezed the two of them between Sam and Glory to take the lead. Sam’s left hand slammed into the Indian’s chest as he passed.
“Cin!” Manuelito slapped Sam’s arm down. “Keep your focus, Samuel. Clear your mind. It is no different than what you have practiced already. Trust your hands, especially when they can see and you cannot.”
Sam held his hands up, and felt them both drifting away, but they were nearly invisible to him.
“Stay close to me if you can. I will talk as we go so you know where I am.”
Manuelito’s boots scuffed away.
“You first,” Glory said, shoving Sam. “I don’t want one of your hands grabbing me in the dark.”
Both of Sam’s arms veered to the right just before he thumped into a wall. Glory thumped into his back. Manuelito’s steps had quickened, and were rising in the darkness to their right. He could hear him whispering something stern to Tisto in their own language.
“Stairs!” Manuelito shouted. “Several flights. Quickly!”
“Glory, grab on to my shoulder,” Sam said.
Her hand stumbled down the back of his head and settled on Cindy’s rattle. With a squeak, she jerked her hand away.
“You’re still not wearing a shirt,” she said. “I don’t want to touch . . . those.”
“Well, get over it,” Sam said. “Because they can steer. Grab on.”
“Wait,” Glory said. “I have a rifle and this book and a poncho.” Sam heard her shrug off her backpack followed by quick zipping and the whistle and rustle as she slipped back into the straps. “Okay,” she said. “Now I can do this.”
Glory set her hand between his shoulder blades, away from the snakes, and Sam began to feel his way blindly up the stairwell. He didn’t extend his arms. He kept them bent at what had once been his elbows, with his hands palm down.
The snakes seemed more relaxed in the cool darkness.
Peace, Cindy felt.
Safe, felt Speck.
Hidden flowed up both of Sam’s arms.
Speck and Cindy moved at the same time as the tunnel changed—curving gently left and then banking hard right, turning left and finally doubling back and up to the right. But the snakes didn’t move in the same way. Speck was direct, but Cindy sidled. Even when Sam was moving straight, she would fight to wriggle a coil of Sam’s arm out beside her head. In the dark, the sensation was heightened. Her muscles flexing inside Sam’s arm. Her scales tickling his skin. Ripples and curves in his arm where there should have been solid bone.
On the final turn, she threw Sam’s elbow forward like a hose.
“Cindy! Stop it!” He slapped his hand against his thigh and shivered. “It tickles, okay? And it grosses me out. Just move my wrist, not my whole arm!”
“She doesn’t know English,” Glory said. “I don’t think words will help her.”
“They help me,” Sam said. “She flops all sideways and it makes my arm feel like a garden hose, or a jump rope, or something that isn’t at all like an arm.”
Gross, Sam thought. He tried to shove thoughts of grossness down his left arm into the horned head on his left hand. Not that Cindy would care even if she understood.
Sam started moving again. High up ahead, daylight spilled onto visible stairs.
Glory dropped her hand off his back. “She is a sidewinder, so it makes sense.”
“No,” said Sam. “It doesn’t. It doesn’t make sense at all. Why does my arm wriggle sideways? Because my bones and joints were wrecked and a Navajo healer grew a sidewinder into it. Oh. Right. That makes sense.”
Sam slowed slightly, catching his breath. “I probably wouldn’t mind if it didn’t tickle.”
“Do you remember SADDYR?” Glory asked. “Do you remember not being able to bend your arms?”
Sam did
n’t answer.
“Because I’m supposed to keep you remembering everything,” Glory said. “And I think remembering how awful that was could help you cope with this.”
“Cope?” said Sam. “Why would I want to cope?” His voice grew louder and the words burst out of him between heavy breaths. “I got my sister back and then lost her again. I got my arms back and then lost them again. The man who saved me more times than anyone will ever know just died because of me. Died for me. I don’t think he’d want me to cope. Manuelito didn’t graft vipers into my arms so that I would cope.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Glory said.
“I’m not coping!” Sam said, climbing stairs. “I want to save my sister and smash every little thing the Vulture has planned. Let him cope with me.”
The temperature rose steeply as Sam and Glory approached the day-lit exit. The two of them climbed up out of the tunnel and onto the sloping shoulders of the enormous rock that enclosed the cave below. Sam shut his eyes against the light and Glory moved past him, still holding Manuelito’s rifle.
“What is he doing?”
Sam opened his eyes and squinted. Glory was pointing at the big form of Manuelito, stretched out on his belly fifty yards away, peering down over the edge of the rock. Baptisto was bellied down beside him. While they watched, the big man slid back from the edge, stood up, and then jogged back toward them. Tisto stayed down with a rifle at his shoulder.
“One guard for all six horses,” Manuelito said. “And the heavy saddlebags mean supplies. We steal two and you head north until you hit the railroad. Follow the rail to Tombstone. From there, trains are the quickest route to California. If your sister is alive, she will be with the Vulture in San Francisco. He will not kill her until you have been killed. Simple prudence. She is useful bait.”
“We’re going right now?” Sam spread his arms, and felt the ripples of pleasure both snakes took from the sun. But he didn’t feel the same. In the light, his ribs were like pale tiger stripes across his chest. “I don’t even have a shirt.”
“A shirt will come more easily than a strong horse. Come.”
“Wait!” Glory jumped forward. “Shouldn’t I check the book first? I don’t even know what changed this last time. Won’t leaving this quickly change it all again?”
Manuelito stared at her. “Gloria Spalding, there is no time to play oracle with the book. If you want to know the weather, look at the sky. If you want to live well, be courageous in the most terrible of all the moments you are given. Do that, and in many years, Sam’s friend will write his book, and it will match your living.”
Manuelito hopped back into a jog, winding through scruffy sage until the rock pitched forward down a steep slide. Sam and Glory followed him down, hopping sideways, dragging one hand at a time on the slope behind them when they slid.
When they reached the bottom, dust spun in a cloud around them, and Manuelito held a thick finger up to his lips. They were hidden between a city of boulders and the huge stone hill that enclosed the cave, and judging from how far down they had come, Sam thought they had to be about level with the shelf below the cave mouth where he had done his practice shooting.
Manuelito inched forward, leaning out around the boulders to get a look.
Dust continued to rise.
“Count thirty,” he whispered, “then fire into the air.” Without explaining, he disappeared around the corner.
Glory looked at Sam and coughed quietly into her arm. Leaning back against the slope, she rested the rifle on her knee. Sam began to count.
“So,” she said quietly. “Tombstone?”
A gun fired above them and a rock shattered between her feet. Glory yelped and scurried forward. Sam spun around and flopped onto the slope as another bullet punched rock. On the top of a big rock, a man had his left arm hooked tight around a choking Tisto’s neck. With his right, the man was taking careful aim with a long-barreled revolver.
Sam didn’t aim at all. He snatched his right gun, pointed the barrel at the sky, and let Speck do the rest.
The gunshot thundered in his right ear, he heard the man above him curse, Tisto scrambled free, and a moment later, the long-barreled revolver slid to a stop in front of Sam’s face. There was blood on the handle where the butt had splintered around a bullet crater.
The man on the rock was gone.
“Glory?” Sam pushed off the slope and raced out into the open.
Six horses, all tied together, tossed their heads and stamped, whickering nervousness. A man with a huge white mustache stood in front of them with two guns drawn. One gun was pointing at Manuelito, the other was pointing at Glory. Manuelito was on his knees, bleeding from his shoulder. The outlaw moved his gun off Manuelito and onto Sam.
Rattles. From the train. Sam felt a pain prick of memory over his heart, where the man’s knife tip had been.
“Why, Samuel Miracle,” the man said. “Two old friends meet again. You know, my hair was black when I first started killing you.”
Glory suddenly laughed out loud. “You’re Rattles!”
The man looked at her, running his eyes over her modern shorts and shirt. “Girlie, I don’t know where you think we’ve met, or what this savage here has been doing to you to addle your sense, but we’ve never had the pleasure.”
“You say that in the book,” Glory said. “At least in the first version I remember reading. Not exactly, but close enough that you have to be Rattles. Poncho was out of bullets, and you knocked him down, kicked him in the face, and then rolled your spur slowly up his ribs and said”—Glory lowered her voice to growl—“‘My hair will be white by the time I’ve finished killing you.’” She pointed at him. “You’re Rattles. You are. You’re crazy scared of snakes and that’s how Poncho killed you. There was a den in the cave and Poncho had nothing to lose so he grabbed a rattler and whipped you with it. You died in the desert.”
Rattles looked from Glory to Sam. “Never happened. Never. Nothing but a bad dream. The Vulture took care of me. I’m standing right here, ain’t I? And I don’t go into caves.” He squinted at Sam. “What you got on your arms, boy? Crazy savage give you tattoos?”
Rattles whistled sharply, fluttering his mustache.
“Shoot him,” Manuelito said. “Now, Sam. Before the others come.”
Sam took a step forward and Rattles swung his other gun onto him. Sam was staring down two barrels. He swallowed hard and cold fear washed down into his arms. Immediately, both of his snakes began buzzing their tails on his shoulders and Rattles jumped in surprise, sweeping his eyes over the rock around him.
Speck whipped up his revolver, and Sam extended his tense, scaled arm. “Drop your guns and I won’t shoot you. This time.”
“Yes, you will,” Manuelito said. “Do it. Now.”
Rattles snarled at Manuelito and cocked both his guns.
Sam aimed at the man’s mustache. And he pulled the trigger. Rattles screamed as the bullet hit his fist. Both of the outlaw’s guns fired and a hot whistle licked Sam’s left ear. Glory and Manuelito ducked, and Glory’s rifle fired, kicking her backward into a sitting position on the ground.
Rattles slipped and fell. Glory had grazed his leg. His right hand was empty and bleeding, but his left still held a revolver. He raised his gun again and Sam fired once more. Rattles’s second gun bounced away into the sage. The outlaw scrambled up onto his feet and ran and slid and tumbled down the slope, taking cover behind boulders and cacti while Sam and Glory watched.
“Miracle,” Manuelito said, breathing hard. “Such rabid dogs must be ended, not toyed with. He could have killed two of us even after you fired. When he aims for hearts, do not aim for fingers.” He slowly rose to his feet, wincing in pain.
“I know,” Sam said.
“Never take a life without need . . . not even of an insect.” Manuelito led the jumpy horses forward, untangling the reins of two of them. His right arm was hanging limp beneath his bloody shoulder. “Grieve when that need comes, but d
o not hesitate when defending the lives of others.”
“It was Speck,” Sam said. “He doesn’t want to hurt people.”
“Then use Cindy.”
“Cindy would have shot him and then you and Glory and three of the horses.” Sam looked down into the yellow horned eyes on his left hand.
“You must gain control of the nightmare. Practice commanding her until your command is certain.” Manuelito crouched and grabbed the back of Sam’s belt with his left hand and then heaved him easily up onto the saddle of a big, gray Appaloosa stallion with a white speckled rump. He turned to help Glory, but she had already picked her horse: a pretty golden palomino mare with an empty rifle scabbard hanging from the saddle. Glory slid Manuelito’s rifle into the scabbard, hopped into the high stirrup, and swung quickly up onto the horse.
Gunfire echoed across the valley. Shots fired from above the cave. Rocks clattered and bounced down the shoulder, and then Tisto emerged, bloody and painted with dust. Keeping his rifle pointed up, he retreated toward the horses.
The Appaloosa stamped and danced sideways. The palomino under Glory posed calmly, ears forward, listening, blond tail swishing softly.
Manuelito stood up straight and removed his hat. His eyes were as cool and calm as cave shadows. “Samuel Miracle, I pray that I have not woven too heavy a curse into your flesh. Bear it. And bless the world when you pluck El Buitre from the sky.”
“But I don’t have a shirt,” Sam said.
“And Glory doesn’t have a dress,” said Manuelito. “Not your biggest problems.”
“Sam Miracle,” Tisto said over his shoulder. “I wish that I could have been the one chosen for your struggle. But I will not be a child with envy.” His eyes drifted toward Glory and then back to Sam. “Please wear my poncho when you have become the famous one.”
Sam wasn’t sure he would survive, let alone become famous. But he didn’t want to argue. So he nodded. Baptisto seemed satisfied.
Manuelito tapped his tall black hat back onto his head. “If you ever see my brother again, greet him for me. Now go. My son and I stand here against your hunters. You will have a strong start. North,” he said, but he wasn’t talking to Sam and Glory. All six horses looked at him. Manuelito clicked his tongue and spoke again, and this time, his words sounded like a wind combed by cactus thorns.