Halfway to Harmony

The young girl at my side hadn't spoken in what felt like hours. For the chatty little brat who hadn’t shut up since I’d found her, this was an unusual turn of events.

I asked her if she was thirsty. She said no. I asked her if she was hungry. She said no.

I gave up. We stayed our path, keeping the evening sun to our right. The road was little more than a dusty void between two ruts driven hard by wagon trails. The setting sun cast a red hue over the scene, drawing deep dark shadows from the scrub lining the trail.

“Mister?” She asked, after an indeterminate length of silence, “where we goin’?”

“We been on the road for three days now and you only just thought to ask where we goin’?”

I had to laugh. I’d found her curled up under a tarpaulin not thirty feet from the charred remains of a wagon. Horses had been shot, but there were no other bodies. Ordinarily I’d just ride on by but I caught sight of something under a rocky outcropping, rhythmically undulating out of step with the desert winds. She was just curled up in a little blue dress, sobbing soundlessly and clutching a beat-up wooden doll with eerie eyes.

I’d fed her, watered her, and tried to figure what went down. She didn’t know much. Whether that was out of necessity or not I couldn’t tell. Kids have this way of coping with shit they aren’t prepared for, and I reckoned nobody was prepared for what she’d seen that day. I told her my name, and convinced her that staying here wasn’t in her current best interests.

I’d left home not long after turning fifteen. When Mama died Pa took to drinking, and it didn’t take long before he wasn’t much good for anything but. I couldn’t bury him too, so one night I slung his rifle over my shoulder, packed whatever a kid that age thinks is important, and rode on out.

Don’t reckon I’ll bore you much with my life story. That’s a sad tale for another time. I took up with a gang after I left home, good people who did bad things to survive, and I learned to read the stories written in the aftermath of violence. Whoever this kid was travelling with, they were long gone by the time I found her. There was blood on the rocks; not much, about a day old. I’d heard the stories of slaver gangs raiding travellers after dark, dragging them off to God-knows-where. They don’t take kids though, tend to just shoot them there-and-then. I guess they got little use for those that can’t work. I didn’t see any other little bodies, so I surmised this girl was travelling with her folks who got pinched while she was away, likely passing water, and she hid at the first sign of gunfire. When she came back she was alone with the blaze and a few scattered belongings not worth taking.

“I’m taking you to Harmony kiddo. I was heading there myself anyways. Heard there’s work goin’ there. It’s a pretty big town, they got a school and everything. You’ll be safe there, find someone to take care of you.”

“Do you think my mamma and papa will be there?”

Damn near melted my heart that did. She was a cute kid, reckoned she was about ten, but she had a manner beyond her years, and when she was in a talking mood she’d wave her hands around like she was swatting flies. That night I’d managed to get her to fall asleep, and when she woke up she’d talked for hours. She told me everything about her family: how she really liked the last house they lived in, but then her daddy lost his job on some ranch and they had to leave. She told me about her older brother, who used to let her sit on his back and pretended he was a horse. He was gone now though, married a girl and took off someplace. Told me all about her doll too, the one with those unsettling eyes and a painted smile that seemed to hiding some malicious secret. Her name was Iris, after her baby sister who died in her sleep.

“Could be kiddo, could be.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her what I knew; that her folks were probably chain-ganged and being worked to death in a mine up in the mountains. No kid needed to hear that.

Only thing she hadn’t told me was her name. I’d asked a couple times, but she’d just look away and change the subject. I didn’t want to press the matter, she’d tell me in her own good time. We pressed on that way, her with her arms around my waist as I sat the saddle. She didn’t weigh much of anything, and Rosie didn’t seem to object none to being ridden double.

Until yesterday, when a damn diamondback jumped us. We’d been making good progress, and I guess I got greedy. We set out early, and I walked us too close to a rock formation where the thing must have been sunning itself. Didn’t give no warning, just bit poor Rosie on the ankle. I’d had that big girl for six months now, and hearing her scream was too much. I put a bullet in her, and the next day we carried on by foot. Damn saddlebags were heavy, but no way I was leaving them behind. We wouldn’t make it far without supplies, and besides I was still carrying a fair chunk of cash saved from my last job.

The kid hadn’t been in much of a talkative mood since then. She’d been feeding Rosie whenever we stopped, and I’d been showing her how to brush her coat and tie her up for the night. I figured in her head she’d been able to convince herself her parents were okay, that they were just separated and she’d find them again soon. But hearing that gunshot and facing the trip to Harmony on foot was too much for her.

We were cresting a ridge just as the sun was finally setting, so we settled down in the shelter of three boulders. Spires of rock punctured the horizon, ribs protruding from a long-dead carcass. The kid watched me start a fire with flint and my knife, and we shared some salt beef and my last tin of beans. Little thing could really eat, and my supplies were running low. Hadn’t counted on the extra mouth, but at least it lightened my load.

“How long ’til we get to Harmony?” She asked as she scraped the last bean out of her tin.

“Reckon we’ll be there by sunset tomorrow, if we make good time. Best be getting some sleep soon.” I rolled out a blanket for her by the campfire, and watched as she took off her boots and set them neatly beside her.

The sky was afire with stars now, and the low-hanging full moon sent shadows across the vast desert below us like blades. The wind was picking up, and loose sand crested down the escarpment in waves, a vast hourglass counting down to eternity. I found myself thinking about my mother. I often get pensive out under the stars. Thirteen years of erosion had left her face vague in my mind, but the sound of her voice and smell of her hair were as crisp and fresh as the day Pa and I buried her. I drew my revolver from the holster lying by my side, and set about cleaning and oiling it by the light of the fire.

I watched over my ward. The girl had turned her back to me. I could see the rise and fall of her slow breathing. I’d given her my only blanket, the one my mother used to wrap round her legs when she did her knitting, so after returning my gun to its holster I rolled up my jacket and propped my head, pulled my hat down over my eyes and looked to get me some sleep. Truth be told I’d not slept much since I found her. The desert gets pretty cold in the night and the fire didn’t give off nearly enough heat, but sleep found me soon enough.

It was still dark when I woke. The wind had shifted the desert around some, and when I lifted my hat a small stream of sand ran off the brim onto my chest between the buttons of my shirt. The campfire was glowing a deep red, but the heat had drifted away on the night breeze. I looked over at the kid, but there was nothing there except the old tattered blanket. I went for my gun, but the holster was empty. Fear coursed through me then, an ice-cold explosion in my chest.

“You there kiddo?” I called to the night. The wind held no response. I moved to the edge of the ridge on which we’d camped, searching for any hint of blue in the pre-dawn black.

I felt the shot before I heard it, like being kicked in the stomach by a horse The crack of gunfire pierced the lonely night, and I fell back against a rock. My hand went to my waist, and came back up dark and wet. I knew from experience that a gut-shot out in the desert was no dignified way to die.

It was still dark when the kid appeared from behind a sloping rock face, although I could see the first hint of dawn rising in the east. She was hand-in-hand with a woman. I couldn’t see a face from this distance, but the way the hips swayed gave her gender away. A holster dangled from her right side, and a rifle was slung over her left shoulder. Figured this was the source of the lead stuck in my belly.

“His money’s in the saddlebag, Sarah,” said my ward, a child of ten. Her voice had turned cold, the warmth that had charmed me previously having blown away on the desert wind with the remnants of my campfire. As they walked towards me I saw she was still holding the doll. I could swear that damn thing was looking at me now, those creepy eyes fixed on me with that merciless smile. I wondered if her name really was Iris.

“Fuck, there’s not much here!” Sarah remarked.

“Well sorry sweetheart, wasn’t expecting to have to share. Give me a couple weeks to see what I can rustle together.” I attempted to say this, but all that escaped my mouth was the trickle of blood I could feel running over my chin. First time in my life I’d been lain flat before I could run my mouth.

The girl walked over to me. I lifted my head and looked her dead in the eyes. Old Jeremiah would be laughing his fat ass off if he could see me now: “should’a just walked away kid, always playing the damn hero! Now you gone got yourself bushwhacked by a little girl.” She just stared straight on back, said “sorry mister” and turned away.

Sarah emptied my saddlebags while the kid brought a horse down the hillside. They took anything they could carry, and rode off into the night. The whole time I just sat there clutching my stomach, life pouring out of me, feeling the cold night penetrate the dying embers of my being. And there I sat, engulfed in the desert's parched silence, I was nothing but another grain of sand in the wind.