The Cost of Dying by Peter Brandvold

Author:Peter Brandvold
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pinnacle Books
Published: 2019-05-27T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

Voices rose around Prophet. He could barely hear them above the horrified screeching in his own ears. His lifted his eyes from the ground that was snugged up close to his chin and saw several men milling around him.

Several men in the dove gray uniforms of rurales . . .

Of all the rotten luck.

One was looking at him. This man turned and said something in Spanish to the others and which Prophet translated as, “Look over here—this one’s awake.” Or some such.

Several others turned toward Prophet from where they were milling around nearby, holding tin cups in their hands. Prophet saw smoke billowing around the rurales and then, sliding his eyes to his left, saw that some animal was spitted over a fire. It looked like a javelina. It smelled like one, too. The smell of roasting wild pig would have smelled more savory had Prophet not woken to find himself buried up to his pea-pickin’ neck.

More men were sitting or lounging around the fire, and now they rose heavily to move in close to where Prophet’s head stuck up out of the ground like a sandy-haired turnip. Squinting as he gazed straight out before him, he saw that his was not the only head poking up out of the ground. The red head straight out before him, facing him from maybe ten feet away, belonged to Colter Farrow.

As the rurales closed around Prophet, panic swept through him, his heart racing. He desperately tried to move his arms and legs, but it was as though he were swathed in cement.

One of the rurales walked up to him. He was tall with a thick salt-and-pepper mustache and goatee. His face was long and very dark and the deep-sunk eyes were small, black chips of obsidian. He was not wearing the traditional tunic in this heat but only a sweat-stained gray undershirt and red suspenders that held his gray wool trousers up on his broad hips.

“Ah hell,” Prophet said, crestfallen. “Sergeant Casal . . . long time, no hear from. You should write more. We were getting worried back home.” He sounded much less anxious than he felt. Being buried alive was the stuff of nightmares. But wailing about it in front of these Mexicans would only add insult to injury, and probably even more torment, as well.

Sergeant Alonzo Casal usually rode with Lieutenant Ruiz. In the back of his mind, Prophet had wondered about Casal when he hadn’t seen him with Ruiz. Now he knew that the man had likely been one of the group that had gone over to the hurdy-gurdy house to get their ashes hauled while the lieutenant gambled in La Princesa.

Casal tipped up the clear bottle in his hand and took a long drink. He pulled the bottle down, smacked his lips, wiped the hand holding the bottle across his mouth, and smiled at Prophet. The sergeant’s eyes flashed drunkenly from the tarantula juice. “Lou, how are you, mi amigo?”

“Me?” Prophet tried to shrug but he couldn’t move his shoulders.

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