They Ran Me Dry in the Desert, So We Came Back for the Whole Rim novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Tailgate

In her father's truck the Warden admits he remembers; they agree to take the Kimbroughs apart, and he warns Colt will pick a guest at tomorrow's fire.

I drove him out of the firelight in my father's truck, and neither of us said anything until the cattle guard.

I stopped on the ranch road under the ponderosas, where the dark was thick and the fire was only an orange smudge behind us.

I turned off the engine and left the key in it.

Ramiro sat with his back against the passenger door and his hands flat on his knees.

He had left as much room between us as the cab allowed.

"You remember," I said.

"All of it."

His voice cracked on the second word, and he cleared his throat.

"The Spring, the horn, the Count, and the first mile."

I had planned what to say if he answered like that, and none of it was left.

"You ran beside me," I said.

"The Warden does not speak on the first mile," he said.

"It is the oldest rule I carry."

"I know the rule," I said.

"I know you know it," he said.

He turned his head and looked out the windshield at the dark trees.

"I wanted to speak, and I could not."

I was angry, and I was also so glad to be talking to someone who knew that I could not tell the two apart.

"I woke up at the fire with beans on my knee," I said.

"How long have you been awake?"

"Since four this morning."

He took the whistle out of his pocket and laid it on the dashboard, between us, without touching my hand.

"I carved it this afternoon, out of a mesquite log from the woodpile," he said.

"I did not know what else to do with my hands."

I picked it up and ran my thumb over the notches.

They were clean, and they were mine, and he had cut them from memory.

"I had this one in my fist when I died," I said.

"You did."

He said it so quietly that it took me a moment to understand.

"I found you on the third day and took it out of your hand."

I held very still.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"I was the one who found you, and I was too late."

"There was a canteen in a cairn," I said slowly.

"A day before the end, in the wash, with the lid screwed on tight."

"Yes," he said.

"And a shirt hung over the barbed wire on the second ridge, where I could see it."

"That was mine," he said.

"I thought you might need the shade."

I did not cry, because I had cried all of it out in a wash, three days long.

I put the whistle in my own pocket instead.

He watched me do it and did not ask for it back.

"Then we use what we remember," I said.

"Before the monsoon, before the Count, before anyone puts a dead javelina in the Spring."

"That is what I want," he said.

"Say it so I know you mean it," I said.

"I will take apart every piece of the Kimbrough machine in front of the other packs," Ramiro said.

"And I will not ask you for anything."

That last part annoyed me, and I could not have said why.

A truck horn blew on the lodge road, one long blast, someone calling his dogs.

Ramiro flinched.

It was a small movement, but I saw his whole body pull in toward the seat, and the color went out of his mouth again.

In my memory of the Count, the Warden had raised the horn without a tremor.

I had never seen this man afraid of anything.

"What was that?" I asked.

"Nothing yet."

"It was something."

"It is mine to carry," he said, in a tone that closed the door.

I let it close, because I wanted to keep him talking about the Kimbroughs.

"Tell me what you know that I don't," I said.

"The Count reads the Kimbrough names first, then the old families, then the tenants," he said.

"The desert pack is last."

"My father?" I asked.

"Ninth from the end, and you are the final name before dawn," he said.

I did not ask how he knew the order.

The Count was his book, and any Warden would know it.

"And the water?"

"There is a cache in Sotol Wash, under the cairn at the third marker," he said.

"Six gallons, put there this morning, before I came up the Rim."

I laughed, short and startled.

"You woke up at four and put out water."

"It is the one thing I know how to do for you," he said.

I reached for the key in the ignition, and so did he, and he stopped his hand an inch from mine.

His fingers hung in the air over the steering column.

"You do not touch me," I said.

"Not unless you start it."

He said it plainly and fast.

"Why?"

"Because this pack has put hands on you your whole life without asking," he said.

"I will not be one more."

I turned the key and drove us back toward the fire.

Halfway there, I made him say one more thing.

"Tell me the next thing that happens," I said.

"Tomorrow night, at the fire, Colt Kimbrough picks a guest and puts his hand on her," Ramiro said.

"Last time it was a girl from the south fork, and no one said a word."

His jaw worked.

"This time I want it to be someone who knows the law of the fire."

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