Salomon 2 by David Xavier

Author:David Xavier
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Bucklebury Books
Published: 2015-04-17T04:00:00+00:00

They stood beside a towering fire in the night, the flames scorching much more than bodies, and the next day they kicked through the burning ashes, destroying any smoldering bones and skulls. What was left was a black scar on the grassland like a fallen star gone white to nothing. Arturo stood looking down in the center of the scar like a man who survived a lightning strike, his boots smoking beneath him.

“There’s nothing left to bury.”

Marquez looked up from the grave he had been digging. He was on his knees and just his head showed above the ground. He tossed aside a toothed rock he’d been digging with and stepped out with his hands at his lower back and his face to the prairie. Salomon was riding a dozen gathered cattle in from afar, appearing again and again over each fold, coming at them like the cavalry. Marquez sucked his teeth and dropped his head. A pile of hardware, knives and pistols, had been tossed from the bodies before burning. He toed the hot barrels and blades and bent for a machete.

“What kind of American carries a machete?”

“He probably took it from a Mexican.”

Marquez twisted the blade in the sunlight and went into a fighter’s squat to slash once across the air, holding the pose. He straightened up.

“Well, I’m taking it back. For California.”

“That is weak metal. Look at the base.” Arturo pulled his own knife, one he had made years before, the one he had used for the first time to stick a man to the wall of his metal shop. He spun it several times. “I can make one for you that can cut a bull down in midstride with one chop to its spine.”

The ground began to rumble and both men looked. Salomon had disappeared with the cattle, nothing left of him but smoker’s wisps of rising dust behind the rolls. They looked at their feet as the tremors went through their toes. The cattle came over the final roll close to them, and the two men crouched and held their blades to the dozen herded cattle that trampled past. They dodged between cattle shoulders, avoiding being stomped underhoof in a cloud of dust. Salomon rode past behind the cattle and wheeled to face the two as the drum of hoofs faded.

“When you boys are done playing we have cattle to move.”

Marquez picked up his hat and slid the machete under his belt. He scooped the hot pile of pistols and knives together and took two long strides toward his grave, tossing the hardware into the hole. He knelt and rubbed his hands on his shirt.

“A shame to throw away such a collection.”

Arturo looked down from his saddle as he passed, leading four saddlepacked horses by reins behind him.

“Toss that machete in.”

Marquez watched him go on. He pushed the mounded dirt into the hole and swept over it with his fingers. He mounted his horse and followed, leading the remaining two American horses. He came back minutes later to dismount, dig, and bury the machete.

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