they entered a double-walled runway of rock, in storm seasons a torrent, as testified by large tree trunks stranded high on the sides of the gorge. They drove the sheep fast up and around, leaving few scatters of dung as they cantered along, heading into dry rock terraces. They held the sheep penned restless in a cleft while Kale picked out one, a ram, slaughtered it, and dragged the entrails in a continuing direction. Then at a precipice off to one side (for thus the country angled, in every way mad as imaginable), when one sheep leaped, all leaped â the remaining three hundred and four of them clean away into a pool of water the colour of strong tea. Down those sheep went in a cascade of angled bellies, jostling rumps and alarmed heads and hit the water already swimming. They clambered shivering wet to the bank and gathering their instincts, went along afterwards quieter than before.
It had proved worthwhile ⦠the jump into oblivion ⦠as Rankine learned when he saw the trackerâs report a week later, and heard the governor declaring a trail gone cold at the ramparts and for sure Kale was perished. Except Rankine knew everything otherwise: they had angled back east, then south, crossed the biggest river twice where it was smaller; muddled through broken country; climbed that long, rough hillslope, and come on south through many slow days, and were safe from anyoneâs harm, as far as they knew.
Â
It was near dark when Rankine arrived at a promontory of rock overlooking a sheltered valley. Three fires appeared in the shape of a triangle on the dusky valley floor where nothing so unlikely was predictable in nature. Rankine fired a pistol shot. A faint shot answered. In half an hour he was down there far below with Kale and Moreno, his horses watering in a clear shallow stream.
Kale wore a cape made from sheep skins sewn together and tied at the neck with a leather thong. Moreno hung back from the firelight awaiting his turn for the greeting. Kale came at Rankine with that commandingly dissatisfied impulse in his greeting as was first experienced in a damp unlikely dungeon.
âNext time come sooner, Rankine, or Iâll get tired of these capers.â
Rankine smiled, fairly exhausted, waiting for an encouraging word from a man who made no concessions. âWe have done it safe,â he said. âItâs all made to look invisible. After a hard long ride, anyway, I am here.â
Under his tattered grey hair Kale had a broad forehead, damp brown eyes, a flat nose and wide, deep-breathing nostrils; a long upper lip, plump lower lip slightly quivering with antagonistic humour: âWe have done nothing yet that would even stir the dust of this country.â
Kaleâs jutting jaw was made to attract a punch, and Rankine was tempted. Others had given Kale a taste of his own proud medicine, leaving scars. But Kale had a saving grace withal, a wise engagement in that contradictory air of stubbornness. It created the spell of the Irishman and the only one resisting it hereabouts was Moreno.
The Spaniard looked a fright under his narrow-brimmed, high-crowned hidalgoâs black hat. In honour of Rankine he put on a red waistcoat fringed with black piping and gold thread. It was crumpled and dirty as he was. His flat dirty face was framed in tangled sidewhiskers; his features were pinched, small raisin-eyed. He sent Rankine a look of oblique resentment, unmistakably dismayed.
But still, the two men embraced, holding each other tightly and gladly kissing so many times on alternate cheeks that Kale said:
âIt is to be a continental inamorato, then?â
They were doing their living from the inside out of Morenoâs condemned rams. Rankine established his position by the fire, saddle and bedroll spread, and by the time he was ready there was food for him on a clean new dish. They started with a grill of intestines on a rack of sticks, lit by a tallow wick. As a side dish, Kale
Robyn Bachar
Jane Haddam
Darrah Glass
Kandy Shepherd
Daniel Polansky
Evangeline Anderson
Cheyenne McCray
James Keene
Daniel de Vise
Sherryl Woods