Deadman's Crossing Read online

  “You did.”

  “Is your life valuable?”

  “Of course.”

  “So that means I done a good thing, don’t it?”

  “It does.”

  “Do you kind of owe me?”

  “A debt I can never repay.”

  Flower was silent for awhile. “You know what?”

  “What?”

  “There’s a way you can pay off some of it.”

  “How is that?”

  Flower lit a lantern. The Reverend looked. She flipped the buffalo robe off of herself. She was nude, and with Flower, that meant really nude, because there was a lot of her. In the lamplight, except for her head and arms, she looked pale as biscuit dough, a tuft of darkness between her legs.

  “How about since I saved your life and you wouldn’t be layin’ there wasn’t for me, you get over here and pay a bit of that debt off.”

  The Reverend hesitated for only a moment. Thought: What the hell? I do owe her.

  A little later, lying in the crook of the sleeping, snoring, Flower’s arm, he thought: Damn. That was not half bad. Not after you got past the stink. And that was nothing a good bath couldn’t fix.

  Next morning the Reverend rode away from there, and when he was half a day out, he heard a noise behind him. He looked back. It was Flower on a mule, her big black dog trotting behind them. The Reverend waited and let her catch up.

  “What are you doing, Flower?”

  “Well, now, I don’t want you to think I come to get you to dip your wick again, though I didn’t mind it none at all, but I did figure on askin’ if I could be your ridin’ companion for a bit. I think me and that ole mine and that town back there have done played out on one another.”

  “Of course, Flower. You are welcome. As long as I do not have to attend to your dog’s tensions.”

  “Naw, I can do that. I don’t mind.”

  “Where did you get the mule?”

  “Stole it.”

  “All right,” the Reverend said.

  They began riding.

  The Reverend said, “Long as you and I are riding together, and I owe you for saving my life, for the next few days, before we get to wherever it is we are going, how about you let me work off some more of my debt.”

  Flower grinned at him. “Hell, Reverend, that sounds like one hell of a fine idea.”

  The Reverend winked at her, and the two of them, followed by the big black dog, rode on across the landscape.