XV

Sidewinders were some of the most dangerous things that lived, out here in the desert. It wasn't their nature as a vicious predator that made them so. Not their wicked fangs or potent venom, either. What made the sidewinder so dangerous, what put them into such trouble, was its sheer speed. They would bury themselves in the earth and lie in wait. When some foolish creature wandered too close, that creature was in the sidewinder's before it could react. Poor, old Trudy. Poor, stupid Caff. He'd walked them right into it. He drew some comfort from the fact that it already had a meal. If luck was now with them, the old mare's corpse would be enough. It'd stay beneath the ground and leave them be. If luck was still against them it would spit out its meal and hunt. Then, they would probably die.

The scales of a sidewinder were thick and strong like cast-iron. Its belly was softer, if only a little. It was most vulnerable at the eyes and inside its mouth. Of all their guns, only the rifle he held had a chance to punch through those scales. He kept his eyes narrowed and on the place Trudy's corpse had disappeared. The stock of that rifle was pulled tight into his shoulder. He had a thought. If Jennie had loaded slugs into that twelve-gauge of hers, maybe they had a chance. He asked and wasn't answered. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that she had gone pale. Her jaw was clenched tight and her breaths shivered sharp and short from her flared nose. “Jennie!” he snapped. Her gaze flicked up to him. He asked her again.

She answered, “Shot.” and a low, cold sort of dread settled into his gut. He hadn't been afraid before now. He feared, not for himself, but for Jennie and for Everett. There was a deep, distant part of himself that wanted the sidewinder to take him. He wanted to return to the cold apathy of death. If he died here, though, it would mean he'd never find justice for Ruby. He'd never get the answers he sought. Worst of all, people would die who could've lived. “I know!” she whined, voice crackling and tense. “I'm sorry, I – I just didn't...”

He hadn't answered her, he realized. She had taken his silence as a condemnation of her. He muttered, “It's okay. It ain't moved yet. Maybe it's full.”

Jennie grunted. “Maybe,” she allowed. She sounded doubtful, and maybe a little hopeful. “What do we do?”

The horses were maybe two hundred feet away, if they hadn't run. Knowing now what had spooked Calliope so badly made him wish he had trusted her instinct. He didn't know what he'd have done different, if he'd known, but it would have been something. What to do depended entirely on whether the sidewinder was satisfied with Trudy's corpse. They couldn't outrun it. Probably couldn't kill it. But maybe, just maybe, they could convince it they weren't worth the effort. “Okay,” he said, “we get the kid out, and move slow an' quiet. Get over to the horses, get out. If it come for us, we raise hell 'til it leaves us be.”

Jennie was quiet for a moment. Then, hesitantly, she said, “Kid's hurt bad. Prob'ly can't walk on that foot.”

He wanted to berate himself for forgetting. In being thrown by the dying struggles of his horse, Everett had broken something in his ankle or foot. Badly. It was twisted, nearly halfway to facing the opposite direction. No way in hell could he move on that. “Shit!” he hissed. There was nothing for it. “I'll carry 'im. You can give cover with the rifle.” Overhead, the scavenger bird still circled. He kind of wanted to shoot it, out of a petty spite that it was safe.

“No,” Jennie answered. “No, I'll carry him. Your eye's better.”

“You sure?” he asked. She didn't answer right away. Every second they stood here was a second the sidewinder could make up its mind. “Jennie, are you sure?!”

She hesited a moment, then lied, “Yeah.”

He figured he understood. It's easy for someone to say they trust another with their life. It was a lot more difficult to actually do it. To be sure about it, that may very well be impossible. He grunted. She slung her twelve-gauge over her shoulder and crawled into the alcove Everett had hid in. Sweat slid into the open cut beneath his eye and stung. The dry, musty scent of the sidewinder was heavy in the air. It was still here. There was a quiet, muffled talk from the alcove. It was followed by grunts of effort and interrupted by a high, brief scream.

Silence fell afterwards. Every muscle in Caff's body went tense as lightning crackled down his spine. Fast, sharp breaths hissed through his nose as he swept the barrel of the rifle across their surroundings. His mouth was dry. He waited for a long, long moment. There was nothing. “Caff!” Jennie hissed, voice echoing off the rock she crawled beneath. “Is it doin' anything?”

He had to swallow before he could answer. “No,” he answered. “Reckon we're okay. What happened?”

The sound of something being dragged and Jennie's grunts of effort preceeded her hauling Everett out into the sun. she had her arm wrapped around his chest and was pulling him by that bond. He was out cold, face plastered with sweat and blooming with bruises. “He fainted,” she muttered, laying him flat. “knocked himself out tryin' to move on his own.”

“You got him?” he asked. She nodded, hauling Everett up to lay across her shoulders and rising to her feet with a groan.

“Yeah,” she said, breathing hard.

“Ready” He asked.

She took a deep, steadying breath and took a solid grip on Everett. “Let's go.”

- - -

They moved at a tense, silent run across the loose, red-brown earth. Caff's jaw was clenched, teeth grinding, as they moved wide around where they'd come through. Given how close they'd gotten to Trudy's corpse, they could have stepped on the damned thing's head. Every step of the two or so hundred feet to Iris and Calliope felt dragged out and tortuous. It may as well have been miles. They passed by where the sidewinder lay, and all the hairs on his neck stood on end. Each breath hissed short and shallow through his nose. This was hell. Death was preferable. Second after endless second passed. Something would give soon.

Then, a view of salvation. Iris and Calliope were where they'd been left. Their long, equine heads were tossing and they stamped divots into the earth with their hooves. Their desire to be well away from here was clear, and mirrored in their riders. Jennie let out a sound of pure relief at the sight. Her pace picked up, as did his. They were maybe thirty feet away when it happened.

A thick, wet slap split the air. He did not need to look behind him to see it. He knew. Something had just given. He snarled, “Run!” to Jennie and turned on his heel. She took off, hell-bent, for the horses. Trudy's corpse, glistening with fluid, lay on the ground. The sidewinder emerged. Its spade-like head came first, wide as a man. Cold, pale-yellow eyes focused on him. Its body was covered in light brown, black, and white scales. Each one was as wide as a cart horse's hoof. It slithered from where it had buried itself, easily twenty feet long. There was a singular moment of complete, utter stillness.

The sidewinder lunged. Two hundred feet between them and it carved forty off in a single leap. Caff backed up, pulling the rifle snug against his shoulder and sighting in. Thunder rolled, kicking the stock back into him, and a scale shattered into pieces. One of the thinner ones, on its nose. He didn't hurt it, not really, but the force of impact alone seemed to stun it for a precious second or two.

That was when he began to hope. There might very well be a way out of this. He opened the chamber, brass expelling itself with in a cloud of gunsmoke to land on the ground. Eleven shots left. He dropped the next one in and cycled the bolt. The sidewinder recovered and lunged again. He fired, catching the beast in midair. The round caught the seam of its jaw, forcing its head to snap up and its body to tangle beneath it. For a brief, shining moment he thought he might've killed it.

The sidewinder hit the ground and thrashed, and that moment ended. He heard Jennie swearing behind him, so close now, as she struggled to heft Everett's unconscious body into her saddle. He loaded the next shot. Ten left. The sidewinder righted itself as he chanced a look over his shoulder. Jennie was pulling herself into Iris' saddle behind the kid. Calliope waited, and he called for her. Then he turned and shot the beast dead-center of its blunt, spade-like head. Scale shattered, the round skipping off the thick bone beneath. It kept coming.

Calliope came to him, ears pinned flat and eyes rolling. A muscle in his thigh popped as he hauled himself into the saddle. He took up the reins with a free hand and spun her around in a tight circle. He dug his heels into her flanks and she leaped forward. Ahead of them was Iris. Jennie had wrapped herself around Everett's unconscious form and bent the both of them low. His heart hammered in his chest as he wrapped the reins around the saddlehorn and loaded his third bullet. If he had been astride any other horse, he would not have been able to twist around and bring the rifle to bear. Only Calliope's stride was sure enough, smooth enough.

The sidewinder followed, moving in lunging expressions of pure force that carved small hills into the cracked, red-brown earth. He held his breath as he sighted in, aiming for one of the creature's cold, pale-yellow eyes. In that heart's beat of a moment between lunges, he fired. Its head snapped to the side, a spray of shattered scale glittering as the round struck the protruding ridge above its eye. Fuck! He opened the chamber, the spent brass flying out over his shoulder as he loaded in his fourth shot. In those few seconds, the sidewinder recovered and closed the distance between. It wasn't catching up quite as fast now, but it still would.

Calliope pulled even with Iris. Jennie had bragged that her horse could outrun the night, and the little gray mare was putting truth to those words. She was running flat-out with no sign of flagging. Jennie cast a glance at him, eyes narrow and mouth pulled flat into a grim line. He loaded the fifth. To make the sidewinder give up on them before their horses did, he would have to deliver unto it as much pain as he could. He fired, striking just below the same eye as before. He watched a fragment of scale score across its open eye. He bared his teeth at its recoil and falter, viciously satisfied.

The sixth round went in. Halfway to empty. Jennie cried out, “Town's ahead!” and he chanced a look. Sure enough, Calavera rose in the distance. Vague smudges of buildings, not much more, but it was enough to give hope. Calliope's heaving flanks, gusting bellows-breaths past a foaming mouth, were enough to take it away. They were at least five miles out. The sidewinder would be on them in less than a hundred feet. They weren't going to make it, not unless he made good on his promise of pain.

Jennie drew her pistol and turned. Her hat whipped off her head and tumbled away. She fired once, twice, three times, and hit only once. The small caliber round sparked off the sidewinder's scale. It had no effect. She swore, jostling in the saddle. Everett listed wildly to the side as she sighted in and fired again. Another miss. Jennie had a steady hand and a keen eye, and in most any circumstance she'd hit what she aimed to. After her fifth shot kicked up a spray of loose earth near the sidewinder, she had to give up and keep Everett from pulling them both out of the saddle.

Caff let himself loosen up a little, allowed his body to follow the ebb and flow of a horse at full speed. It was an easier task with Calliope, who had the smoothest, surest run of any horse he'd heard of. He sighted in on its eye. The same one he'd wounded earlier, now weeping a clear fluid. The sidewinder bunched, pulling twenty five feet of coiled scales tight. He'd seen this happen five times now. It was about to throw itself forward. This time it would land right on him, and that would be that. His blood roared in his ears, heart drumming in his breast. Death loomed in a pale-yellow eye.

He fired. Thunder rolled across the desert. The rifle kicked back into his shoulder. With that sixth bullet, he spat in death's eye. The round punched through, sending the beast into a tormented thrash among the loose earth and brush. He stared. It was impossible to think, in this moment, that he'd done it. That he had actually gone and damn well done it. The truth of it sunk in quick, and he cried out. Jennie looked to him, then over her shoulder at the beast they were leaving behind. “You fuckin' got it!” she shouted, grinning widely. Her hair whipped around her face, eyes alight.

He could not and would not stop himself from grinning back. Victory's thrill had him throwing back his head and crowing like a fool. His town grew larger as Calliope and Iris raced across the desert. The sidewinder abandoned its pursuit, slithering back into the desert to nurse its wounds or die. He hoped for the latter. Such a mess he was: aches, bruises, at least one open wound. In this moment, he would not trade it for anything. Calliope slowed to a more sustainable lope. He felt a surge of affection for her and bent to run a hand down her sweat-lathered neck. “You done good,” he told her. Her ear flicked and she gave an exhausted whicker. “Done real good.”

They rode on, leaving the desert and all its wretchedness behind. Jennie had survived. So had the kid. Soon, Everett Swanson would be back with his parents. Alive and on the path to well. This, Caff decided, was good enough to call today a win. So he did.