Page 76 of Coyote

I kept my fingers on his wrist and my voice level. "Promoted to what?"

"The long hunt," he said with his eyes on the ceiling. "The pit's the tryout, Doc. That whole show, the fights, the betting, all of it. He's at the rail every night, watching how they move. He's picking. The ones worth running get promoted, and promoted means they drive you out, and they give you a day's start, and then they hunt you. Rifles. Dogs some nights. He rides the ridgeline and takes the shot himself when there's a shot worth taking."

"Where," I asked.

"Past the river." His eyes lost their hold on the ceiling and wandered. "There's a cattle gate with a chain on it, and you follow the wash until..." He shook his head.

I stayed where I was, one palm on the dressing, two fingers on the pulse, and everything behind them turned cold and orderly, the way it had in the helicopters when the ground fire started.

"Dane ran two days," Miguel said. "They brought him back across the yard so we'd all see. They made us look at his feet, Doc. They made the pens walk past and look at his feet. And then they cleaned him up nicely and drove him somewhere, and that night I ran."

"That how you got shot?"

"Ortiz shot me." He almost laughed, and the laugh pulled at the packing and turned into a hiss. "Ortiz couldn't hit the pen wall from inside the pen. Day and a half I walked. I knew the doctor was here. Everybody knows where the doctor went."

Sarah sucked in a sharp breath through her teeth. I didn't look at her. I looked at the boy who had pushed water through a fence at me for five months, and never once raised a hand to me.

"Miguel. Five months I fought his boars, and I never won ten of anything. Why did he keep feeding me?"

"Saving you." His eyes closed. "For his birthday bash."

"I was beaten twice in that place," I said. "For refusing the fights."

"Ortiz had money down on you fighting." His head rolled toward me on the pillow. "Zaroff broke his hand for the second beating. Not for your sake, Doc. For the same reason nobody kicks the pens. You don't damage stock you mean to run."

Sierra took the basin out from under my hands and set a clean one down. I taped the dressing, checked the packing, and pulled the blanket to Miguel's chest.

"Sleep," I told him. "I expect the fever to climb tonight and break tomorrow. If I'm wrong, somebody will be in this chair to know it early."

He was asleep before I had finished saying it.

On my way out, I looked for Coyote and found him on the roof of the equipment shed, cross-legged in the sun, facing the river, the whetstone still in his hand. I lifted a hand to him. He didn't lift one back, but his eyes stayed on me until the kitchen door closed behind me.

I spent the afternoon between the cot and the kitchen. I let the water run over my wrists until my hands were steady enough to dry. Then I boiled the instruments and laid out clean dressings for the night.

The fever climbed at dusk, the way I'd expected. I took the first watch with the lamp turned low and two fingers on Miguel's wrist, counting. Five years ago I had counted like this with my hand flat on my husband's chest, in a room with better equipment and worse odds.

Coyote carried a plate in to me at the start of the watch, beans and two folded tortillas, and set it on the chair arm without asking whether I would eat. Then he stood over the cot and studied Miguel with his head tipped, the same way he studied ground.

"Did he ever hurt you?" he asked.

I shook my head. "He was good to me. Brought me chocolate once. He was softer than the rest. I always worried about him."

He watched the boy for a while longer. "Then nobody touches him." He folded himself down against the wall by the door with his knife loose in his lap.

The plate sat on the chair arm and cooled. Twice, Coyote tipped his knife at it from the wall, and twice I picked up a tortilla and put it back down. My stomach was too upset to eat. Sierra brought coffee after sunset, and the coffee stayed down.

Coyote rose, and on his way out, he kissed the top of my head. I leaned into it for the space of a breath, and then he took a cup from Sierra in passing and slipped out to walk the east line.

"If the wound keeps draining, the fever should break tomorrow night," I told Sierra. "If it climbs past what I can manage here, he should go to a hospital."

"Hospital will have questions about a gunshot wound," Sierra said.

"Let them ask. Doesn't mean we have to answer."

I checked the packing at ten and again at eleven, and changed the outer dressing when it soaked through. The thermometer read a hundred and three both times, and his pulse ran fast but no faster than it had at dusk.

Past midnight, the fever crested. Miguel surfaced out of it all at once, eyes wide and too bright, and his hand caught my wrist with more strength than his blood pressure had any right to lend him.