The Spirit Trail

My ears are still ringing from the blast. It is like I am holding two pillows over my ears. I stumble behind Lou who is bleeding from somewhere. I can see it dripping from his right arm as he holds the lantern.

"Hey."
I might as well be shouting into a mattress. I reach up and put a hand on his shoulder. When he stops and turns I point to his arm. He shakes his head... what a bother. With his other hand he probes around until I see him wince. Then he pulls a long piece of splintered wood from below his collar bone and throws it to the floor of Ole' Crystal. With a few select words he turns and proceeds into the darkness with me on his heels.

The glitter of quartz is gone and now this is just a dark hole. Not even a cool dark hole. It is hot and the sweat is beginning to sting my eyes. We hike along about a half a mile and then start up at an angle. It isn't too long before we see the preverbial light at the end of the tunnel.

"This couldn't have gotten us too far from town." Lou's voice is a whisper as it echoes in the tunnel. Our ears have adjusted from the blast.

We see the opening ahead. The light of day has the three or so feet of this end of the tunnel illuminated. As we approach we tuck up against the side of this exit until we can get a good view of what is outside.

Nothing.

No one, no horses, no townsfolk, no cover of any kind. I poke my head out and back in like a fucking squirrel or something, waiting for the shot that might be waiting. A few seconds pass and we emerge from the shaft, guns drawn and our heads on a swivel. The tunnel opens into a slight canyon or wash. We will be easy targets for anyone up on the sides.

"What the fuck?"
Where did they...
There is a slight whistle ahead and to the left. Then we see Ollie peek around the corner and wave us over.

"Mire lo que encontramos." Ollie whispers. As we round the corner we see our horses.
"No shit. That's a neat trick." I grab the reigns to my horse and give him a couple of pats on the side of his neck. Ollie tells Lou that he found them near a patch of green grass about a hundred yards further down the trail.

I nod, "Orlis must have planted a little of their favorite seed so they would come running if they got separated. Some kind of reverse "Pavlov's Dog" kind of thing."

"Let's mount up." Lou says quietly. He winces as he yanks himself up into the saddle. He starts bleeding even worse. He motions to the saddle bag on my horse.
"Hand me that rag, Jake."

I look... it is an old bloody shirt that someone didn't want to get rid of. I pull it out and find a semi-clean spot. With a couple of tears I hand him a good piece of it. He stuffs it in over the wound. We are all up on our horses, Mike sprawled over the back of Andy's steed.

"Where to?" Chris asks, looking at the arroyo.
"Well... anywhere away from here is good. We've been east, let's go west." Lou says as he sets his horse in motion.

We go slow at first, making sure not to kick up too much dust. This arroyo is just deep enough to cover a horse and rider to anyone looking our way. It isn't until we have been riding for a good five minutes that we slope upward to the desert floor and are exposed. By this time we are out of sight of the trading post and at the base of a small range of crags cut with narrow canyons and caves.

"I'd be willing to bet they had another hide-out up here." Chris says, taking his hat off to wipe his brow. The heat of day is building and the sun is climbing. We have very little water, and no food. Even more than that... we have Mike with a gunshot wound.

"What are we going to do with Mike. We need help. Maybe I ought to take him to the Fort back there so he can see a doctor."

Lou cuts to me with a narrowed gaze, "Jake... this isn't the fucking movies. There isn't a doctor in that Fort that is going to take care of an "outlaw" that those fuckers at the trading post have already reported shooting." He shakes his head and calms himself a bit, "they would throw the both of you in the stockade until the noose was up, then they'd hang you sure as shit."

"This sucks." Andy says, then silence for a moment and a tisk that follows. "Let's just get the hell out of here and get back to the boat. I'm done playing cowboys and Indians." He gestures with a tip of his head to Mike sprawled out behind him, "How am I going to explain this to his wife?"

"He's okay, it is only a deep graze. The worse for him is over. He is still alive and it looks like the bleeding has stopped. He just needs that wound cleaned and dressed... a few stitches." Lou says while he checks on his own condition. As he pulls the wadding from the area below his collar bone he nods and throws it to the ground. Must be okay, I would assume.

Without another word we head up the larger of the canyons. The trail is well used. Lou points out that most of the tracks are unshod. Only a few of the tracks show the familiar horseshoe pattern in the soil.

"So?" Andy seems indifferent.
"Indians?" Chris asks. Lou nods and then pays a little more attention to our surroundings as we proceed.

As we go, Lou starts to see things and begins pointing them out. At first I think he is full of shit, pointing out plants and little piles of rocks, claiming that they have been placed there by Apache. We tell him he's stoned, or fucked up from loss of blood, Ollie calls him a homo... if I heard that mother-tongue correctly.

He stops in front of us and turns in the saddle. "Look, you idiots, we may be in some trouble here. I think we are riding on a spirit trail. It leads to where ever they bury their dead. They usually aren't to receptive to a bunch of dumbasses riding up to desecrate their most sacred land. So from here on out, let's ride in silence."

With that he turns and heads off up the canyon and we follow. I am thinking we should probably cut and run at this point. This little trip has already seen us robbed, shot at, nearly hung, blown up, and now we are marching straight into an Apache burial ground. I think I will fire my travel agent.

It is Andy that sees it first. Ollie is behind him, bringing up the rear. When Andy sees the shadow of a figure on the ridge above us, he whispers to Ollie without turning around. Then Ollie calls up to Chris, who is ahead of me, and tells him in mother-tongue that we have visitors. That information is passed to Lou who is on point. None of us give away the fact that we have seen this. But now all of us are looking at the shadows as we ride.

The one shadow turns into three, then eight, then twelve. Oh shit. I am waiting for the sound of an arrow or some blood curdling war cry. But instead I just see movement from somewhere above us.

Ahead of us is another pile of rock, this one with two black feathers protruding at odd angles and a pile of what might be moss. Lou stops and dismounts.
"Follow my lead." He whispers back to us.

We all dismount and remove our hats. When Lou takes a knee, we follow. He puts his hands in the pockets of his vest and comes up with that old knife that Seedling gave him before we took Orlis' gang at the Keep. He grabs some hair between his fingers and cuts the locks with the knife, setting them at the base of the make-shift alter on the pile of "moss". Without looking he passes the knife back to Chris. Now Chris' head isn't shaved, mind you, but the hair is barely long enough to grab between his fingers. He does his best to look like he cut some off and placed it with Lou's before passing the blade back. Before long we have all done the same and are waiting for our next cue.

Lou takes reigns of his horse and leads him on foot. We follow, making sure to do exactly what he does. The trail is different here. It seems... cleaner? There is no loose rock, almost as though it had been swept. Lou stops and we all remove our boots. I am thinking this isn't fooling anyone, but is seems to be working for our shadows on the ridge. They haven't attacked us yet.

Now, with boots off and hats on saddle horns, except for Mike, we walk up the trail leading our horses. There are small clutches of "offerings" here and there... rock piles adorned with feathers, some beads. But now the feathers are white, not black. This has some significance. Everything is turning an ashen grey/white as we proceed, as though it has been drained of color. Even the scrub sage and smaller scattered desert plants are the same color as the trail.

Lou bends down and runs a finger across the rocks. There is a streak of color where his finger passed. He is quick to wipe the track away and cover the spot once again.
"It's ash of some kind, they have spread it out on this entire area."
"Why don't we turn around and get the hell out of here." Chris whispers from behind.
"It's too late for that."

The canyon walls climb high around us. The worry of attack from the shadows from above abates just a little. Unless they start rolling rocks down on top of us, they won't be a threat. That thought scares me even more. I hope they don't start with the rocks.

As the canyon walls climb the light gets dimmer and the effect of the ash becomes more and more surreal. Everything around us is painted in this grey/white. We are a splash of color in the dimming light. The canyon starts to turn and twist, the angles so tight that the horse ahead disappears as it takes the corner. And now the smell of smoke, but not wood smoke... or not only wood smoke. There is an acrid edge to it.

Where Chris was following Lou, I see no one but the bleached stone of the canyon. They are swallowed up in the tightening maze of angles that this trail has become. When I finally see them again, they are standing side by side at the entrance to a huge hollowed out area... like a naturally formed amphitheater at the end of this canyon. A fire lights the scene, a thin spire of smoke makes it's way to the small openining fifty feet above our heads. In this pale light I can make out a man, a slight figure, painted in this same ash. It is not an Indian, or at least I don't think so.

The little man tosses something into the fire. It has to be gunpowder from the look of the effect. In that flash we see that he is not alone. There must be a dozen sets of eyes watching the man work. Their bodies covered in this same ash, kneeling with their backs to the canyon wall that is covered in that same ash. They are almost indistinguishable from their surroundings.

We all take a knee and try to look respectful... humbled to the ceremony that is taking place. One by one we take a small bit of ash and wipe it on our faces. Another flash from the fire, and now a little dance. It isn't until we hear the voice that we know who it is. Seedling.