As Jeff and the prospector labored in the sun to bury Benny, the old man clued Jeff in on what he knew of the Apaches. “Not the friendliest of Injuns, even to other Injuns. Thieves and murderers to their own kind. Had occasion to help an Apach once. He’d got himself wounded in a raid. His band left him behind, he stumbled onto my claim. What’s I to do, a suffering human, so’s I give him water, dig out the slug, cauterize the wound. He didn’t like that. Screamed bloody murder. Few days pass, his band retraces their steps a lookin’ fer ‘im. I figure even the Apach’s gotta have gratitude, but they returned m’kindness by takin’ every crumb of m’supplies. Left m’scalp, so I guess I shouldn’t complain.”

After an expedited ceremony, the crone trudged forward and demanded that Jeff get his best bull out of the cattle yard, along with six good cows. He’d drive them behind her and the bartender in their buckboard. The firing squad road along as escorts, ready to shoot Jeff down if he tried to break away. Prospector insisted he’d better go along to keep them honest, but they wouldn’t allow him to carry a weapon. They rode southwest for several hours until they arrived at an Apache village.

It then became clear that the saloon hag was not simply a Mexican trapped north of the border after the Gadsden Purchase: she was half-Apache, fluent in the language, and reputed to possess “strong medicine” of her own. A team of warriors had ridden out to meet them, and the hag screeched and crowed a mixture of greeting and opprobrium. They nodded permission to enter then rode ahead whooping and stirring the whole village. At least a hundred men came forward, all armed, and glared at the procession as it eased along towards a large teepee in the center of the village. By the time they arrived, the early sentinels had roused the shaman, who swept forward, draped in ceremonial attire.

His headdress consisted mostly of a coyote pelt, whole from nose to tail. The snout jutted forth from his brow, teeth intact, bared menacingly. The open eye sockets had been filled with silver discs with turquoise centers. The forepaws fell onto his shoulders, while the rest of the body draped down over his bare back. His arms were decorated with several gauntlets of beaten silver, encrusted with turquoise. On his chest was a silver medallion, embossed with a dog-like paw.

He was immediately interested in the cattle, the payment for his divination.

“He’ll cheat ya, Jeff,” the prospector whispered. “He’s in cahoots with the hag.”

Jeff had to agree. If she routinely brought him subjects to divine, he’d likely be more interested in telling her what she wanted to hear than what was the actual truth.

“She’ll tell him there’s more where these come from, but only if they get you outta the way. Dead men can’t drive cattle.”

The shaman poked at the cattle with a scepter-like rattle. It, too, was ornamented with beaten silver and studded with turquoise. Jeff recalled how the wolves recoiled in the presence of silver, how Benny, after he was bitten developed a violent aversion to it. Jeff felt not the slightest urge to flinch. Surely that was objective proof?

The shaman pointed the scepter at Jeff, and gestured for him to enter his tent. Jeff refused. “No, out here. For all to see! Let the tribe bear witness to the test!”

The shaman stomped and harangued Jeff in loud protest. Clearly, he wanted to perform his test in private, and pronounce his verdict without any scrutiny. The prospector cut him off, demanding, in the Apache language, if any of the tribe spoke English. He jabbed a finger at faces in the crowd, badgering them to come forward. Finally, a distinguished warrior stepped up.

“I speak your English.”

Jeff nodded thanks to the prospector, then turned to the warrior.

“They accuse me of having the mark of the wolf, but it is nothing more than a scratch.” Jeff showed him the straight cut on his neck and continued. “This woman wants him to pronounce me cursed by the wolf, so she can execute me and steal my cattle.”

“How a white man dies nothing to me.”

“Is it nothing to you, how your shaman prophesies? If you came to him for an answer, and your enemy paid him to give you bad information, what would you do? You may not care what happens to me, but you must care if this man can be trusted! If he would lie about me to take my property, why wouldn’t he lie to you to take yours?”

“What is you want?”

“Let me be tested in front of the tribe. So that the test will be truthful.”

The warrior stared at the shaman. The charlatan jabbered some objection, but it seemed to Jeff that he’d struck a chord with the warrior; the shaman might already be suspect. But would the warrior have the spine to oppose him. A superstitious savage feared nothing more than “bad medicine.” The warrior raised his hand to silence the shaman. The stoic savage turned back to Jeff, peering deeply into him, as if discerning for himself if some occult force were present.

“He says wolf only come in darkness. We wait.”

So they waited. From what Jeff could gather, there was little danger from the hombres lobos now that the full moon had passed. But the shaman could provoke the wolf to show itself in any man who carried the curse. How they intended to accomplish that was the mystery. The prospector had gleaned some information from his admittedly fractured understanding of the Apache language.

“Seems they’ll give you some pay-oat. The meat of a hellacious cactus. Tastes like breakfast in hell. I seen men puke their guts after chawin’ some. B’what’s worrisome is where it leads yer mind. Visions. If’n ye can think of ten things you’d shoot yerself rather’n look at, that’s yer openers. Y’ll have six to eight hours of fever dreams and spook shows. But if’n ya don’t foam at the mouth or grow hair all over, it’d be hard fer ‘em to claim ya got any wolf in ya.”

The Apaches posted a limbless tree trunk deep in the ground. The shaman demanded Jeff remove his shirt, then gestured for him to back up against the stake. They wrapped his arms around the stake and bound his wrists tightly. The savages then began a rhythmic drumming, as the shaman placed a wafer of peyote in Jeff’s mouth, telling him to chew. The bitter, ashen cactus seemed to rot on his tongue, polluting his mouth. A putrid tea followed, filth to wash down filth. Jeff’s stomach heaved in rebellion. More peyote, then more tea. Six morsels in all; the taste didn’t get any easier to take, nor was the gritty pulp any easier to swallow.

The shaman began a sinister dance, accompanied by other men decked out in coyote and wolf pelts: a canine pack to entice whatever wolf might be in Jeff to come out. When enticement didn’t work, they resorted to coercion. The shaman menaced Jeff with articles of silver: his scepter, his gauntlets. He even went so far as to cut Jeff’s chest with the sharp edge of a silver disc. Then taking a fistful of silver dust, the shaman blew the dust into Jeff’s face and onto the exposed wounds. To his surprise, Jeff flinched. He coughed and strained against his bindings. The reaction was altogether involuntary, but Jeff couldn’t control it.

The peyote now started to have its effect. The canine dancers seemed more real; true anthropomorphic dogs circling their prey. Deprived of his limbs for defense, Jeff snarled and bared his teeth to ward them off. He’d fight on their terms if he must. Jeff arched his back, craning his neck to face the moon. The creamy orb slouched, two days past its peak. Jeff suddenly felt abandoned, desolate.

A wave of nausea swept over Jeff, followed by a more powerful wave of despair. He convulsed. He vomited, filling his mouth again with the putrid cactus and the acrid bite of his own bile. He sobbed, but knew not why. Again, he felt a soul-wrenching loneliness, it rose like a tide within him, then like a broken levee, Jeff burst. He vomited and bawled like a frightened child.

There’s no manhood in this, Jeff lamented. He tensed his every muscle in discipline against the weak whimpering that emanated from him. Then came the release. The bindings on his arms dissolved. Jeff lolled forward before his rubbery legs stiffened to catch him. His chest no longer stung; the deep scratches were salved. Jeff stepped away from the stake and moved among the dancing canines, now wavering in lazy pantomime. Their rhythm had slowed with the lethargic drumbeat, which clopped at the pace of a rundown clock.

The moon rested on a ridge. Pallid, brooding over the desert, its waxen features congealed, from sallow and insubstantial to porcelain and precise. Its face was Estelle’s. A swirl of stars formed a delicate hand, whose finger dipped into the sand, drawing the surface back as a blanket to reveal cracked clay and a writhing child, scalded pink and blistered, whose pulpy flesh oozed and turned black, tainting the air with a carrion odor. The light in Estelle’s face dimmed, and she was no more. Then came the wolves. They pounced upon Jeff and gorged themselves, but he, as sad Prometheus before him, did not die, but sank in the sand, to his chest and then his neck. His lungs compressed under the pressure; he was suffocating. Then a fierce wind rushed over the desert, sweeping sand into a rolling dune. It struck Jeff full in the face and washing over, battering his head.

All was obscured. A gritty crust filled Jeff’s eyes, nose and mouth. Sand on and under his tongue crept toward the back of this throat. Jeff’s lungs burned, ready to explode, when suddenly the sand fell away.

The desert floor was swept clean. Jeff sat on a flat surface of cracked clay, extending as far as eye could see in every direction. The only mark on the landscape was a tall cactus, its flowers in bloom. Jeff reached out to pluck a flower, but pricked his finger on a needle. He watched the blood bead, then spread in rivulets into the grooves of his fingerprint. A white hand, a woman’s, reached out to him. She took his hand and lifted it to her face. She kissed the wound, her lips taking on the color of blood. Her cheeks flushed pink. Jeff saw Rebecca.

“How does a Beauchamp come to Malpaís?”

“I don’t know,” Jeff answered.

“They wouldn’t let me come to you.”

“Who?”

“You know who they are. They killed your friend. I have to get back before they miss me.”

Rebecca dropped his hand. A cold wind cut through Jeff and Rebecca quickly dissolved, turning into sparks of light that separated and ascended, resting in the black firmament. Jeff was alone, with only the stars that had been Rebecca.

“I have to find her,” he said, then immediately shielded his eyes. The sun was rising, white and hot. Jeff tried to wet his cracked lips, but his tongue was too dry. He felt incredibly hungry, then realized he was lying on his back. He rolled over onto an elbow and looked into the squinting eyes of the Shaman. The medicine man handed Jeff of bowl of warm corn mush. Jeff sucked it into his mouth, then swallowed gingerly.

“Where are the others?” Jeff asked.

The Shaman didn’t answer. The prospector walked two horses toward him. He held the reins out for Jeff. “Apach lost int’rest. Warn’t no wolf in ya. An’ they seen white men puke b’fore.”

Jeff hauled himself off the ground, smacked matted sand off his sweat-soaked back. “Let’s get the hell outta here.”

They rode together in silence back toward the town. The sun stung Jeff’s eyes, so he tipped his brim down and tucked his chin. Eventually, the prospector started jabbering.

“Never been a cattleman. Busted sod. Called it homesteading back then. Gal I’s supposed to home with ran off instead. I couldn’t stay put neither. Ev’ry row I plowed jest reminded me I’d be part of that earth someday. Wanted to see more’n forty acres ‘fore they closed m’eyes. War come up, I signed to fight the Mexes. Rough ‘n’ Ready. Ol’ Fuss ‘n’ Feathers. After, I hunted buffalo some. Was a skinner. That’s nasty business. No trade for a feller gots a sharp nose. Scouted Injuns for the army. ‘At’s when I picked up some Apach. Had me a woman for a time. Smart ‘nough to know which way the winds’s blowin’. Figured the white man’d win ‘ventually. Only some chiefs found out ‘bout her. Slit her throat ear to ear. Took her hair. We hit ‘em back.” The prospector breathed deep, and with effort, as if hefting a large boulder. He continued, “‘Round that time, the States went to war. I figured I’d done ‘nough killin’ for one lifetime. Heard there was silver hereabouts. These mountains. In fifteen years, that claim’s the best I ever struck. I figured, spend one more year underground, I’d have ‘nough to live like a proper gentleman.”

“Except?”

“’Cept, well, I ain’t no proper gentleman, case you been confused on that. An’ I ain’t much interested in another year underground.” He searched for the words to sum up his presentation. “Well, guess it’s been a while since I felt necessary to another human being. Things as they is, I’s thinkin’ I might keep on to be necessary.”

Jeff smiled mischievously at his new hire: “Except you’ve never been a cattle man.”

The prospector smiled in kind. “Never been. But how hard could it be?”

Jeff turned somber again. Sooner or later, he’d have to let the old man know his plans. Jeff opted for later. They got to town mid-afternoon and Jeff checked on his stock. He was pleased to find they’d been tended as per agreement, and all head were accounted for. He did a quick calculation. The prospector interrupted.

“We still got daylight Jeff, and I knows of good pasture to the northwest.”

“I’m not going northwest. Not yet. I’m heading east.” Jeff dropped a pair of gold pieces on the counter for the cattle yard proprietor. “Four nights ought to do it. Then I’ll be back to claim them. If by chance I don’t return, my friend here is authorized to claim them in my absence.”

The prospector’s jaw dropped, his eyes popped wide. “Jest what are you thinkin’, Major?”

“I’m thinking there’s something out there that killed my best friend. That will continue to kill. I’m also thinking there’s someone else I could help.”

“I’m guessin’ it’s a woman.”

Jeff only shrugged. How could he explain? There was a curse devouring everything he loved, it had brought him to Malpaís, and the only way he could save himself was to save Rebecca. After a few paces, he tossed his shoulders as if unloading a knapsack. He stretched his neck, then eyed the far horizon. No vision, no apparition, but a churning deep in his gut prompted him. “I’ve watched men die,” he said. “And there’s a weight to that. But at some level, it’s our nature. There’s something noble in a man dying to make a better world. But it’s our women who represent that better world. Their civility. Their refinery. I don’t have it in me to watch that waste away, wither and die. Or even to know it’s happening somewhere, because I didn’t act.”

As the two men left the cattle yard and strode toward the livery, Jeff spoke again. “I’d like to buy what silver you have left.”

“Go you one better,” the old man cackled. “We stop agin by my claim, I’ll show you a vein like none you ever seen.”

“I’d prefer you stay here, look after the herd.”

“What I know about cattle, Jeff?” the prospector screeched. “I know silver, and I know how to point a rifle. Seems that’s knowledge and skills you’ll be needin’.”

“I thought you’d had enough killin’ for a lifetime.”

“Killin’ men, fer sure. Killin’ monsters? I’m jest getting’ started.”

***