Chapter 10

With dawn no more than a pink tinge in the east, Lou decided to stop. His body was already hurting five different ways. He needed to rest. Looking around himself, he found nothing that promised protection against the heat of the day, so he lowered himself to the ground where he stood, dropping to his knees, then carefully moving to a sitting position. He could not bring himself to trust the shade of the canyon walls. Who knew when the earth might decide to buck again. Sleep hung at the back of his head, waiting to overtake him. Even so, his thoughts ran too quickly to allow sleep to win out. The pre-dawn quake still rattled him.

As he sat on the sand of the canyon floor, his mind wandering among his ponderings, a rabbit dashed out from around the base of a bush of buck brush not five feet in front of him. In its blind run to safety, it bounded right past Lou's outstretched leg. Making for the cover at the man's back, the animal did not seem to recognize Lou as a threat. In fact, it did not act as if it saw him at all. He himself might as well have been a rock or a bush. Passing Lou on his good side, the animal surprised him so completely he almost didn't react in time. His hand thrust out with a blinding speed, for a man whose strength was so nearly used up, and closed tightly on the panic stricken rabbit's throat. The quick movement caused a grunt, his sore ribs annoyed. Pulling the frantically struggling animal into his lap, Lou broke its neck with a swift twist of his wrist. Survival took over. He jammed his thumb into the animal's throat just below its head, then tore the artery loose and held the lifeless form above his face to drain the life giving liquid from its body. The salty tasting blood did little to satisfy his sense of thirst, but his dehydrated body savored the precious moisture. The desert sun had baked so much water from his body, any amount, from any source, was welcome. Lou struggled to his knees and began gathering small pieces of dry chaparral. He'd eaten the lizard raw. He intended to cook this meal.

Lou was down right happy to have the tin of wooden matches he'd scavenged from the stage coach wreckage. Ripping the hide from the hapless rabbit with his fingers was not too difficult. Any other critter's would not have been nearly as easy, but the rabbit's skin hung loose on its body and both skin and fur were quickly discarded. Next Lou field stripped the intestines and spitted the rabbit on a green branch. With his good arm he held his meal over the meager fire to cook. With his other, the starving man munched on raw heart and liver. He ate slowly. He'd been too long without food to go bolting it into his stomach only to have it come surging right back. He needed the nourishment. As the flesh on the spit browned, Lou took minute bites of liver, chewing each until it nearly dissolved. The rest of the intestines he tossed to the side and far enough away to keep flies from gathering too close to himself. He thought about keeping the rabbit's stomach, curing it to use as a waterskin, but he decided it would not hold enough water to make it worth keeping. He still had his canteen. If he found water, the canteen would carry him through.

Lou's strength seemed to increase even as each morsel passed his lips. The moisture did the most good. His blistered, cracked lips soaked up every drop they could. His swollen tongue softened. He even had enough saliva now to swallow whole bites of the cooked meat. Every bite held a taste of pure exultation. He might never admit how close he had come to giving up, but he could feel confidence in his own survival filling him as the roasted rabbit slid down his throat.

Lou wiped his hands on his denims. His small fire had died out while he ate. After some minutes of simply enjoying the feel of food in his stomach, Lou carefully pushed himself to his feet. Fortified by his meal, he felt stronger than he had in days. The need for sleep had fallen to the side as well. Before the heat of day had a chance to force him into the shadow of a rock, he was bound and determined to push on. Today he would find water.

Moments later another rabbit bounded past Lou as if the devil itself were chasing it. Lou could not see any predator in pursuit. Certainly nothing on the ground. And he saw no hawk or late to bed owl circling overhead. None the less, the rabbit's track switched suddenly from one direction to another, a maze of jagged movements taking it nowhere in particular. In the next instant, when the earth began another of its quakes, Lou calmly sank to his haunches once more. As Lou rode out the earth's bucking, he wondered, was there a connection? Could the animal sense a shaking coming?

When this trembling of the earth subsided, Lou pushed himself up again. As he walked the bottom of the wash, Lou came up on a lonely, long dead tree laying on its side in the sand. It was another arroyo willow, testament to the fact that water had once run through this barren canyon. He had almost forgotten that some varieties of trees could grow and even thrive in the middle of the desert, particularly near underground water. From the looks of this one, what water might have given it the chance to sprout and grow was long since dried up. He skirted the branches laying across the wash bottom and nearly kept walking. He did stop, however. Picking up a slim but sturdy length of limb that had snapped free from the tree when it fell, Lou cleaned it of snags. He held the limb out in front of himself, examining his work. It would do. It would help him keep his balance, could be used as a weapon of sorts, and perhaps most important of all, it gave him a sense of accomplishment just because he'd thought to stop and acquire it. As the meat of the hapless cotton tail had strengthened him, the walking stick lightened his mood and strengthened him as well.

Continuing on his way, Lou next noticed a snake on the move. It slithered across Lou's path, but just as the rabbits that had moved in erratic panic, the snake gave him no notice. Had he wanted to he could have killed the snake with his stick, but his stomach seemed satisfied with the meal he had already given it. Lou stood still and gave the reptile freedom to move on and enough time to get far enough away that it was not a threat. He had no idea whether or not the snake was venomous. Nor was he certain whether or not the snake would attack. Normally they didn't unless they felt threatened. But the animals were all acting kind of spooky. These were not normal times, what with the earth bucking around every now and again since it started. For all he knew, the snake might consider anything in its path a threat. He breathed a whole lot easier when it was well behind him.

No two ways about it, things were acting down right strange; the animals of the desert behaving almost distractedly, the earth rattling itself none too properly either. A trickle of sweat ran off his forehead and he wiped it away, conjuring up an image of the earth that brought a chuckle from his dry throat. It was as if the earth had spent a night in town at the saloon and was paying the price of it. The shakes and tremors were like the dry heaves after everything possible had already been brought up. Maybe the earth had gotten too much whiskey, by golly, he chuckled again.

Squinting, Lou tilted his head back to gauge the time of day. Getting on towards noon, he figured. Time to lay up and let the worst of the day pass before continuing on. As he had for days whose number was long since lost to his thirst ridden mind, he looked around himself. The wash was wide here. Its sandy bottom held a patch or two of dry tumble weeds in mounds of scratchy brown balls. The canyon walls, although a fair amount lower than further up behind him, still held a threat he preferred not to risk, even if he could see a cave or cave-in to provide shelter. Looking down the length of the wash, Lou found he was approaching an entire copse of trees. Lou nearly yipped. Where there were trees, there was most likely water. Quickening his pace, he was still a ways from the copse when a small flock of raucous, black crows suddenly took to the air. Each bird crowed frantically as it left its perch and flapped its iridescent black winged way into the sky. Lou could see no reason for the sudden rush. He was too far away himself to have sent them scrambling. Then, seconds later the earth took to shaking again, and once again Lou noted the apparent connection between the tremors and the odd behavior of the animals. Having sat out the current quake, he continued hopefully towards the trees. He'd be watching to test his new theory. Next time, he wanted to see if he could anticipate the shaking himself.