"First rule of bounty hunting," Ned Ezekiel told me when I'd asked where he was from. "Is to have a safe spot to go to that no one else knows about. A sanctuary. You'll find it comes in handy from time to time. So I won't tell you where I'm from, since it would be giving away my hiding place."
"All right," I'd said at the time, but that only made me more determined to find out. I tried to work it into our conversations, tried to get Ned to slip up. But he'd just get that look of amusement in his eyes and tell me it wasn't going to work. In the five months since he'd picked me, a thief, to be his apprentice, it was the only question Ned refused to answer. Did you ever meet a total stranger, and five minutes later, you're both talking like you've been friends your entire lives? Well, that's the way it was with Ned and me. He'd caught me and took me to jail, but then changed his mind and offered me a job instead. I served my time in jail and thought about what he offered. Good money, plus a chance to stop looking over my shoulder for every bounty hunter like Ned. And so I accepted his offer, and Ned has spent the last five months teaching me how to be a bounty hunter. We'd spent the past month hounding a murderer named MacLeish across three states, finally cornering him in a town called Trinity. My take of the bounty on him alone was more money than I'd made in the ten years I'd been a thief. I was really beginning to like this bounty hunting business. Ned told me that he had some business to do down south. He never came right out and said it, but I got the impression that he wanted to leave me somewhere and pick me up later. I know he was worried that I'd follow him and find out the location of his sanctuary. Even I could see the struggle he was going through. Ned had been acting strange all day as we rode south. When I saw him wince out of the corner of my eye, I asked, "You all right, Chief?" My partner pinched the bridge of his nose. "Just a headache." A bit later, Ned rubbed his elbow like it was sore. When I asked him about it, he just said that a storm must be coming, because his joints hurt. When it got dark, we stopped at a town called Mercer. Now, neither Ned nor I have anything against sleeping outside. The fact is, neither one of us can cook. Like Ned says: if you've got the money, why eat hardtack and jerky when you can buy yourself dinner? "Aren't you gonna eat?" I asked when we found rooms for the night above the Lucky Nugget saloon. "No," Ned replied wearily as he trudged up the stairs. "I'm going to bed." "Suit yourself," I shrugged. The poker game over by the bar looked interesting, so I headed that way. The next morning when I came downstairs, Ned wasn't there. "Have you seen the guy I came in with?" I asked the owner. "Nope," he yawned. "You're the first person to come down this morning." Frowning, I climbed the stairs again. Ned was always up before me. Usually he was prodding me to get up so we could ride out early. And as much as I hated to be awake at the crack of dawn, Ned told me that it was the best time to catch criminals. Hoist them out of bed before they knew what was happening. It'd worked catching me, hadn't it? I knocked on Ned's door and called his name. No answer. I turned the knob and slowly pushed open the door, worried that Ned might wake suddenly and throw a knife at me or something. The body under the sheets was certainly big enough to be Ned. He was curled up in a ball. When I touched his bare shoulder to shake him, I realized that his skin was hot. "Leave me alone," my partner murmured, rolling over to face the other way. "Jesus, Ned," I said, moving my hand to his forehead. "You're burning up. I'd better find a doctor." Ned muttered something in Spanish that I didn't understand. I went back down the stairs and found the owner. "My friend's sick. Is there a doctor in this town?" "Yeah," the man said. "Dr. Rush. Coupla doors down." As I thanked him and turned, the owner said, "Hey, he's gonna owe me another day's rent." Swearing under my breath, I dug some coins out of my pocket and slapped them on the bar. I walked down the boardwalk until I found a storefront with the name Dr. Adrian Rush on the door. I knocked a few times, then cupped my hand to the glass and peered in. "Jest you go on in," an old man said as he tottered by. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Some bounty hunter I was turning out to be, letting an old man sneak up on me. "He's probly sleepin' it off." The man scratched a huge goiter that hung under the left side of his leathery chin. "He won't shoot me, or nothing?" I asked cautiously. "Nah," the old man said. "You'd be lucky to get him t'wake this hour of the mornin'. Sleeps like the dead, he does. Whole place could burn down and not wake 'im." "I'm obliged," I said, touching my hat brim. The old man shuffled past me and entered the Lucky Nugget. I looked around at the town of Mercer. It must have been a pretty prosperous town at one time. Probably started as a gold rush town. The main street was long, with storefronts on both sides. Problem was, most of the buildings were boarded up. Seemed the only things left in Mercer were a half dozen saloons, a doctor's office, a brothel and a church. Heaven and Hell, I thought as I turned the knob and pushed open the door. And I'm not sure which is which. Dr. Rush was sprawled on a couch, snoring like a bear. He was a heavyset fellow with a nose enlarged by drink. I poked him on the shoulder and said, "Dr. Rush?" I had to poke a few more times before the doctor's eyes opened and he struggled to sit up. "Whaat?" he said in confusion. "Dr. Rush," I said. "Could you come and look at my friend? He's sick with fever." Rush blinked at me as if he just noticed that I was in the room. "Fever?" he repeated. "Where is the patient?" I let go of the breath I'd been holding. "Down at the Lucky Nugget." It took ten more minutes of pushing and prodding to get the doctor on his feet, find his medical bag and climb the stairs to Ned's room. Dr. Rush leaned over to look at Ned and nearly lost his balance. I grabbed his arm, swearing under my breath, to keep him from landing on top of my friend. "How long's he been like this?" Rush said, swaying in my grip. "He was feeling poorly yesterday, so he went to bed early," I replied. "When I found him like this this morning, I came right over to get you." The doctor pulled a pair of spectacles from his coat pocket and clamped them on his nose. Then he opened his medical bag, which I had set on the foot of the bed, and rummaged around inside. "I know I have a thermometer in here somewhere. Ah, here it is!" He shook the thermometer several times and then put it in Ned's mouth. He lifted one of Ned's eyelids and harrumphed. "Did he say how he was feeling?" "He had a headache yesterday afternoon and he said that his joints hurt." "Ah," said Rush. "Classic signs of ague. There's nothing I can do." "What?!" The doctor peered at me through dirty lenses. "There's nothing I can do," he repeated. "The fever will run its course no matter what I do." He pulled the thermometer from Ned's mouth and held it up to the light. "His temperature is normal." "Normal?!" I sputtered. I took the doctor's hand and pressed it to my partner's forehead. "Does this feel normal? He's burning up!" I picked up the thermometer and looked at it closely. The end was busted off. It'd probably been that way for God knows how long. "The goddamn thermometer is broken," I said, trying hard to rein in my temper. "It is?" Rush seemed genuinely surprised. "Well, there's still nothing I can do. Your friend will either recover or he'll die." "Die?" The thought hadn't even occurred to me. "What can I do? I'm no nursemaid." The doctor shrugged. "Try to get water into him," he said. "And wet his skin down with water to keep him cool." I dropped my shoulders in defeat. "Thanks, Doc." Rush dropped his spectacles into his coat pocket. "Sorry I couldn't be of more help." I spent that day trying to keep Ned cool. I took the china pitcher downstairs and filled it with water from the well. I wet down a towel and kept bathing Ned with the cool water, but his skin seemed to soak up the moisture as fast as I could apply it. I tried to think of a way to get water down his throat without choking him when it occurred to me that I might use ice. My brother Harry had had a fever when he was five, and I seem to recall my mother putting ice chips in his mouth to keep him from dehydrating. I went in search of ice. It took a twenty-dollar gold piece and the better part of an hour to get a chunk the size of my fist and little tin lunch pail to keep it in. I swore at the fools who thought more of money than a fellow's life. Then realized that I wasn't much different from them not so long ago, before Ned did me a decent turn and gave me a new start in life. It made me even more determined to see that my friend lived. So I sat on the chair beside his bed, occasionally mopping his face with cool water and sticking ice chips in his mouth. I started to wonder what I would do if Ned died. Certainly someone would want to know, to bury him next to his folks, but how could I find out? He often talked about his parents, but I knew they were both dead. And Ned was determined not to tell me where he lived. I paced around the room a few times before I noticed Ned's saddlebags. What if I looked inside? Certainly there would be something that would tell me where he was from. A letter, maybe. I knew that he wrote to a woman who looked after his house while he was gone, but Ned was always careful not to let me see the address on the envelope. I actually had my hands on the straps before I stopped. Ned trusted me not to pry. I felt ashamed of my thoughts and left the saddlebags where they lay. I resolved to wait. If Ned died, then I would look inside the bags for information. Ned had left a book on the nightstand. I never knew anyone who read as much as he did. Probably why he's so smart. I picked up the book and read the cover. The Count of Monte Cristo. Certainly Ned would forgive me for reading his book as I waited for his fever to break. I dropped into the chair, propped my feet up on the edge of the bed and began to read. I must have dozed off. The book slid from my fingers and hit the floor with a thud. I jumped up, my foggy brain spinning with thoughts of revenge and Frenchmen. I actually thought for a moment that I'd been shot. I looked wildly about, coming to the slow realization that it was dark outside. I don't carry a watch, but I knew that Ned had one in his vest pocket. I found it and looked at the time. Just after two. I checked Ned. He was still feverish, so I wet his face down again and fed him more ice. I'd wrapped my coat around the tin lunch pail, but the ice was still melting too fast. I could only hope that Ned's fever would break soon, before I ran out of ice. My stomach growled, and I realized that I hadn't eaten at all that day. I opened the door and looked down the stairs, but the saloon was dark. I rummaged around in my own saddlebags until I found a couple of pieces of jerky. I was mad at myself for falling asleep. Ned had made enemies doing the job he did, and he always took precautions to ensure that he wouldn't be caught sleeping. Come to think about it, I was surprised that he hadn't propped the chair under the doorknob before he went to bed. He must have been too sick to care what happened. Kicking myself for being so stupid, I wedged the chair under the doorknob and spread my bedroll near the door. The lamp on the nightstand was getting low on oil and was starting to sputter, so I turned it off and felt my way back to the bedroll. I lay there in the dark for a long time, thinking. This partnership with Ned smacked of something or someone much higher than us getting involved. Several times, I've wondered if the two of us were destined to meet. I'd been a criminal a few years less than Ned had been a bounty hunter, but we'd never crossed paths. He told me that he'd promised his mother on her deathbed that he'd find a partner, and then he turns around and runs smack dab into me. A couple of times, I've heard Ned mutter, "superstitious nonsense", so I wonder if he feels the same way. I decided to ask him when he was better. If he got better. By late the next morning, Ned was delirious. He spoke in Spanish, so I couldn't make out what he was saying. The ice was gone, and I didn't have the money to buy more. I searched Ned's clothes but could only come up with a few dollars. All I could do was bathe him with cool water. I was frustrated and angry. I'd have put my fist through the wall if it'd made me feel better. But then I thought that if Ned believed that I could be a better person, I shouldn't try to prove him wrong. It was useless to call on the doctor again. I suspected that he'd drunk all the medication that he possessed, so there wouldn't be anything to help my friend. The room seemed hot and stuffy to me, so I tried to open a window. That's when I noticed the church. It gave me an idea. I left the room and went outside. I stuck my head into the church, half-afraid that God would strike me dead for the attempt. A man in a black robe was wiping the dust off the altar. He lifted his head. "Good afternoon!" he called. "May I help you?" I stepped inside, still cautious. Then I remembered my hat and dragged it off my head. "Uh," I stammered, crimping the hat brim in my hands. "Can you help me, sir?" The priest dropped his dust rag and walked towards me, stopping a few feet in front of the altar to bow slightly and make some kind of motion with his hand. "I am Father Bernardo," he said. "How may I assist you?" "My friend is sick," I said, hoping that this brisk, take-charge priest could help Ned. "Very sick. And I'm pretty sure he's Catholic. Do you, uh, have some kind of," I swallowed hard. What do they call it? "Ritual?" The priest smiled. "It's called a ritual, and yes, there is one for a sick person. Where is your friend?" "In a room at The Lucky Nugget." The priest smiled confidently, and suddenly things started looking better for Ned. "Let me get my things." He walked back towards the altar, stopped before it and made that hand motion again, then veered off into a side room. He returned a few minutes later with a folded cloth and two small vials. The priest followed me to the saloon. "Has the doctor been to see your friend?" he asked. "Yes sir," I replied. "But he said that he couldn't do anything. The fever had to run its course." Father Bernardo shook his head in disbelief. "And was Dr. Rush sober?" "Not very." "Ah." We entered Ned's room. Father Bernardo looked at my partner with concern. Ned was still delirious, still muttering in Spanish. "You did the right thing, coming for me," the priest said, although it didn't make me feel any better. "What is your friend's name?" "Ned. Uh, Edward." The priest kissed the piece of cloth in his hand and draped it around his neck. Then he started to chant in some language I didn't understand. His voice droned on; several times I had to shake my head to stay awake. Father Bernardo opened the little vial and stuck his finger in it. Then he marked an X on Ned's forehead with something that left an oily mark. Then he daubed the stuff on Ned's chin, cheeks, nose, hands and chest. The priest made that hand motion again, touching his forehead, his chest, then one shoulder, and then the other. I've seen Ned do that from time to time, but never thought to ask him why he did it. When the priest turned to me, I said, "Will it help him?" Father Bernardo smiled. "Have faith," he said. "But---" The priest held up a forefinger in admonishment. "Trust God. You'll see." He patted my arm and left the room. I dropped into the chair next to the bed and put my head in my hands. "I don't know what else to do, Lord," I said. "Please help Ned." God must have been feeling charitable that day, because not long after Father Bernardo left, Ned's fever broke and he slept. Ned's cough woke me up. I'd dozed off in the chair again. I rubbed the back of my neck and looked at my partner. Ned was staring at the ceiling, looking puzzled. "Where am I?" he muttered. "Still in Mercer," I said. He stared at me. "How long have I been out?" I looked at Ned's watch, which I'd left propped open by the lamp. It was six in the morning. "Two days," I said. "What?" "You were pretty sick," I explained. "Running a fever. I was worried about you, Chief. Worried enough to call in a priest." Ned's eyes went wide as he struggled to sit up. "Let me get this straight. You went to a church and got a priest to come here?" "Yeah," I replied defensively. "He said some words over you and rubbed some oily stuff on you." Ned's hand flew up and touched the exact spot where the priest had anointed him. "Madre de Dios," he murmured as he stared at the oily residue on his fingertips. Then he began to laugh. And laugh. A big booming laugh from deep in his chest. "What?" I demanded, starting to panic. Ned rarely smiles, and now he was laughing so hard that tears were streaming down his face. "What did I do wrong?" "Nothing, Chance," Ned finally managed to say. "You did everything right." Ned was up and around that day, but didn't feel well enough to travel. I was so worn out by the ordeal that I slept the entire day. The next morning, we saddled up and headed out of town. Just after midday, we rode into the town of Las Floritas and the strangest thing happened. People called out to Ned. Some in English, some in Spanish. One old guy called Ned, "Nathaniel Segundo." My partner smiled and answered him in Spanish. Now, one of the things I've noticed about Ned is that he's invisible to most people. You'd think a fellow that big, people would notice. For example, he and I can sit down in a diner and the waitress will take my order, then turn to leave without taking Ned's order. It's not that she is snubbing him; she never even sees him. When I point Ned out to her, she's startled to see him sitting there. I've asked him if he does it on purpose, but Ned just shakes his head. I think he's just as confounded as me when it happens. And now, as we rode through Las Floritas, people were noticing Ned and calling out to him. I'm certain I rode the length of that street with my mouth hanging open. We rode around to the back of a small adobe house the far end of the street. "What's going on?" I said. "How come everyone knows you?" "This is my home," Ned replied. "I've lived here all my life." "But," I stammered. "I know what I said about not revealing my sanctuary," my partner said solemnly. "But after the past few days, you've proven to me that I can trust you." Then he grinned, and I almost fell off my horse in surprise. "Besides, I couldn't figure out a way to keep you from following me here." "But why now?" I asked as I slid off my horse and followed Ned into the stable. "There's a festival we have to honor the dead," Ned explained. "Día de los Muertos. I wanted to be here for my parents. If it makes you uncomfortable, you can go somewhere else and I'll catch up with you in a few days." "No," I said. "I'm nosy enough to stick around if you don't mind. What do you do for this festival?" "Clean and decorate the cemetery," Ned replied as he led his horse around to the stable behind the house. "Eat lots of good food." "Hey, I'm all for that." The house was cool and dark inside, and as neat as a pin. There were only four rooms: a parlor, a kitchen, and two bedrooms. One bedroom had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on two walls. "Lemme guess," I said. "This is your room." "We've all got our vices," Ned shrugged. "Mine just happens to be books. You can sleep in there. I usually go down to the bathhouse down the street to bathe when I get home." He smiled. "Their tub is big enough that I won't get stuck." "Sounds good." I noticed the framed photograph on the mantle. It showed a big man, built like Ned, a stunningly beautiful woman, and a little boy that had Ned's face. I looked closer. "That your family?" "Yes." I grinned. "Hard to imagine you were little once." Ned laughed. "I have trouble believing it myself, sometimes." Ned left to go to the bathhouse and I decided to take a nap. When I woke, I heard voices outside. I looked out the back window to see Ned talking to a short woman who was as round as she was tall. She had one hand on her hip and was shaking her finger at him. Ned had an unrepentant grin. I was still having trouble seeing him laugh or smile after all this time. It was like Ned was a different person at home. The woman started moving through the garden in the back of the house, cutting flowers and piling them in Ned's arms. Then they left through the back gate and headed down the street. "Come down to the cemetery," Ned said when he returned later. "I thought you said there was a party tonight," I said, confused. "There is," my partner said. "It's in the cemetery." "What?" I looked at Ned in disbelief. "You're actually gonna have a party in the cemetery?" I shuddered. "It will be fun," Ned grinned. "Trust me." The cemetery was unlike any that I'd seen before. Well, there were tombstones spaced out regularly within a large walled area. But every plot was piled high with flowers. The surrounding wall was dotted with candles, and there were lights spaced down the center of a long row of tables. There was music and food and it looked like the entire town was turned out for the party. "Wow," was all I could say. We found spots across from each other at the tables. People stopped and talked to Ned. He made a point of introducing me, and translating the Spanish when necessary. Everyone had a story about Ned's parents. I tried every dish and ate entirely too much. "That's what this fiesta is all about," Ned explained during a break in the visitors. "Remembering those who have died. Playing their favorite songs, eating their favorite food and remembering them with others." "Can I do it too?" I asked. "Even though I'm not from here?" My parents and younger brother had been killed in a house fire eleven years ago. Every year, their faces became less and less distinct in my mind until they were now only vague forms. I hated that I couldn't remember exactly what their faces looked like anymore. "Certainly," Ned said. "The more ordinary the story, the better." "Um," I thought a moment. "My ma was a schoolteacher before she married my pa," I said. "She was adamant about us boys not sayin' 'ain't'. She'd wash our mouths out with soap if she caught us sayin' it." I felt my chest tighten. I'd never told a soul about this before. "Take your time," Ned said softly. I took a deep breath. "It only took once to cure me of it, but my brother Harry was ornery. He went through several bars before he quit. I remember Pa sayin', 'Edith, that bar is wasted on that boy.'" I looked down at my hands for a moment, and then looked up. I'll be damned if I didn't see my brother in my mind's eye, as clear as if he was standing beyond Ned. He was coughing and spitting out soap. Harry was a gawky eight years old, with long thin arms and legs. He would've probably been tall and lanky like me, had he lived. His sandy hair was every which way, seeing as though Ma had had a headlock on him as she scoured his mouth. His flushed face emphasized the freckles across his nose. Harry wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and gave me a grin of pure challenge. If there's a chance I can get away with it again, I'll try he seemed to say. I blinked, and Harry disappeared. Ned said something. "Huh?" I said. "Feel better?" Ned asked. I wiped away a tear that had run down my face. Then I laughed. "I do feel better," I said, amazed. "Why is that?" "You remember them in here," Ned tapped his head. "And they'll never leave here." He tapped his heart.