“You gonna take me prisoner?” The rope-puller was on his back in the dirt. His hands and feet were tied. Anders studied him. The man was small, but his arms were bare and sunburned and muscled like a day laborer’s. Veins sprang from his neck like raised lines on a weathered map. He wore handmade clothes: patchwork denim trousers, a loose-fitting shirt and flip-flop sandals.
“What’s your name?” Anders said.
“They call me Dutch. Hey, you gonna make me a prisoner?”
“I’m gonna drag you into the nearest camp,” Anders said. “Gonna trade you for some water and food.” He paused and looked harder at Dutch. “That is, if they’ll have you. I kind of have my doubts.”
“Nearest camp. Alright—I like that,” Dutch said. “Take me in, take me in and they’ll let me go. Nearest camp to here, it’s Blythe, alright? Take me to Blythe Camp.”
“You must be nuts, right?” You sure sound like it, Anders thought. He shook his head and spit into the dirt. He scratched his chin like a dog.
Dutch twisted in the dirt beside his captor. He sat up and squinted at Anders. “I’m just tired. I’m tired is all.” He let himself fall back into the soft dirt.
“They kill folks over there, in Blythe Camp?”
Dutch nodded his head—yep. “They look up at Papa out there.” He flashed a black-toothed smile and grunted.
Anders kicked at the dirt with his boots. He looked over at his horse. Her reins were wrapped loosely around the nearest creosote branches. She dipped her head at the desert plants and blew more air through her nostrils. “They look up at Papa, huh,” Anders said. “Well, don’t they all look up at Papa nowadays.”
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***
Anders tethered Dutch to his saddle horn. The man—his hands bound at his waist—walked alongside Anders and the white mare.
“Sheriff Cope, he’ll let me go,” Dutch said. “I just bet he’ll let me go if you try and trade me. Watch and see what Sheriff Cope does.”
Anders ignored him. There were no more lawmen in the West. They might all be gone—everywhere. The man might call himself Sheriff, but he no doubt lacked any sense of real justice. If Blythe Camp was full with ascetics, with Papa’s devout, like Dutch said, then he probably would be set free. Depended on how many prayers Dutch had locked away in that heat-crazy head of his.
Anders, for his part, could pass for a Papa’s devout. He knew how.
How many supplies Anders could trade Dutch for, that was the question. Water was wealth. Aspirin too. And Johnnie Walker. And jerky and cotton shirts and marijuana. Dutch might bring Anders a high price in trade, that is if Dutch played a convincing Papa’s devout. “You know Blythe Camp. Did you pray to Papa there—that how you know this man, Cope?”
Dutch stumbled through the low desert brush. “I know all the prayers, vigilante. I know ’em all. And Sheriff Cope knows me too.” Dutch looked up from his tired legs. He stared at the distant foothills. Too many clicks south. He looked down again and shook his head. “They all know Brother Dutch, yes sir.”
“But you don’t believe ’em, the prayers?”
“I believe ’em while I say ’em.”
Anders smirked at that. Dutch and everybody else. Well, maybe not everybody. If he could avoid the ascetics, maybe trade Dutch at another camp, he would. But Anders knew this: It’s either Blythe Camp or another hundred miles back across the desert. You won’t last. Neither will the white mare.
And, of course, Dutch would die too.