EAGLES OF WEST AMERKA

Chapter 1: Odd Equine Quest Request

Tom was wondering how he'd gotten into this place in his life. Down deep in his soul he was, although it was hard to think of anything other than the desperation of his body for water. All of his body was focused on that one issue so it kind of drowned out anything else.

Still he would rather have been sitting on the front porch or even cutting hay than lying here in the desert, every inch of exposed flesh swollen and burnt nearly to a black-red, waiting to die because there was no water he could reach. He would cry tears of absolute despair except there wasn't any water inside him either.

He lay panting short breaths, crying out in his heart desperately for water, for anyone to come save him - except the man hunting him, although that would also be a saving action. Death would come sooner that way, and take away the overwhelming need for water.

The desert zones of western North Amerka were harsh lands full of monsters. No sane person went into them. Only the insane, suicidal, and very desperate. Thus why they were called Desperados, the ones who actually managed to survive. They were notoriously insane, willing to kill until they were killed having forgotten the value of life escaping their own death too many times. Their high, eerie laughs that came in ahead of them as they rode into town warned everyone to hide inside until they had gone again - what few decided to come back to civilization at all.

Tom was quite sure he didn't want to become one of those, but he certainly had been desperate to live, and now he was desperate for even the smallest drop of water to relieve his thirst. In the end, he might just be desperate to die, given how loud and large that need was. "Mother Caretaker, who loves all, please...don't let me die because of another man. I'll take my blame, but not his."

His swollen eyes closed against the full sun beating down on him. He could do nothing more. He'd used up all his energy just getting here, into a place that killed a man just for walking into it. He'd rather die by thirst and sun than at the hands of such a man as had chased him in here.

-:-:-:-:-

A nudge on Tom's shoulder, then his head, with snuffling and snorting woke Tom to a slight semblance of awareness. His whole brain felt swollen, like his hands and feet he could almost not feel any more. It took the creature giving a low whinny for Tom's brain to register that here might be salvation. It took almost five minutes of effort and stumbling (being caught by the large head of the horse several times) to get to his feet. He wrapped both hands in the long mane of the horse, and stumbled along with it.

It tried to go slow, but more often than not Tom was dragged along as his stumbling feet tripped over themselves and the low scrub of the desert. He couldn't even open his eyes, they were so swollen. He could tell his face was blistered on top of the blisters. His face was unhappy every time the sun touched it. There was only the heat and the walking now. Likely the horse had shaded him enough for the cool to wake him up.

Like any wild animal who could smell excellently, Tom's driving need for water made him smell it first. That made his feet work better and they moved a little faster. When the horse stopped and put his head down, Tom fell with it. He splashed into water, his hands still tangled in the mane. The cool water ran over his burned skin.

He worked desperately to get his hands free as his head turned into the water enough he could slurp the water into his mouth. The first few swallows hurt on his parched throat, and against the pain of the dry desert air in his lungs, then he was just in heaven's bliss.

He got his hands free and they fell limp on the ground. He dunked his hands into the water and he wanted to scream for the pain, but water going in didn't lend itself to air coming out. He managed to turn his head enough so his nose wasn't under water before he passed out again from the pain and the exhaustion.

-:-:-:-:-

Off and on over the rest of that scorching desert day Tom woke, dunked his whole face in the water, drank, rolled to soak the other side of his face and passed out again. When he woke feeling like he might actually live, it was night and the whole of the desert around him was moving with life.

He listened carefully and was a little surprised to learn he was surrounded by an entire herd of horses. He painfully got to his feet. Enough water had gotten into him that now some needed to be let back out again. That was a painful experience, too.

Tom didn't move far from the stream for it, just enough to not contaminate the water. In the dark without the moon up to show him what he might step on, he didn't want to run into scorpions or prickle bushes. Starlight might be brighter than no light, but it wasn't enough to differentiate the shadows on the ground.

He stumbled back to the stream and properly splashed water over his head, all the way down the back of his neck. The water dripping down his back was just as much heaven: to know that he didn't have to conserve water and he could bathe in it. He'd not been much for baths before now, but never again would he take them for granted. He might not even run from them, although he probably wouldn't go seeking them out every day either.

He had a new problem suddenly. His stomach grumbled at him very loudly, his body giving it's next complaint and strong desire. Tom sighed. He got shoved from the side and his hand went automatically to the neck of the horse. "Thank you for saving my life," he said in solemn gratitude, rubbing the horse's neck. The horse gave a snort and turned away, then looked back. Tom grabbed hold of its mane again and let it lead his feet.

They walked through the herd and on for quite a ways. It was farther than Tom's body wanted to be from the water, actually, and he kept looking back for it. He hoped the horse wasn't saying, glad you're better, now git. He'd heard that plenty from the farmwives to the tramps that passed through town. They might feed the indigent, but they didn't want them hanging around.

A new sound made it to Tom's ears and his head came up and around to hear it better and place where it was coming from exactly. Desert Rattlers were no joke, and this...was sounding like a nest of them. He drew in a quiet breath, then let it out real slow. The horse stopped and shifted nervously.

This wasn't git, this was, I saved you, now here's how you can repay us. This nest was too close to the horse's watering hole and likely feeding grounds too. They'd been walking through scrub grass and the snakes liked to hide. In grass and under brush were their favorites.

Tom thought about it. Snake was edible, if not the top of his list. If he could kill them in a way he could eat them, it would solve two problems at once. However...with this many, there was likely a queen somewhere nearby, too. He wasn't quite sure he had the strength just yet to face one of those down. He'd need to eat to get his strength up. It was rather a conflict. He let his eyes unfocus. He didn't always like to look at the world in this other way, but it was night and he needed to see what he was up against.

A writhing pile of Desert Rattlers was about fifty yards in front of them. They were all sizes from thin as his pinky to as thick as his arm, as long as his hand to over ten feet long. He took the time to look deeper into the pile. He was rewarded to see one that was as thick as his leg just above the knee and likely thirty feet long. It might be the queen. He'd heard queens could get hundreds of feet long and as big around as a horse, though.

What was in front of him would be enough to eat for a few days. A full-on queen might feed him for several weeks or even a month. He did wish he could fight the nest tonight and the queen a few nights later. That wasn't likely to happen, though, unless he was careful. He went through what he could do.

He could smash them. That would wake up the whole pile and he'd have to smash them all. That would make them all dead and non-food. He could try to capture a few. Then he could butcher and eat them. The rest might not care unless they thought he was a threat to all of them. He wasn't sure how to do that, though. It would be the better option, since then he'd have fresh food for a long time.

There was one other way, but he wasn't sure he had enough magic for it. It would be enough for the small fry. The one large one not so much, but...he could experiment and see if he could get it to work. If not, then he'd have to fight.

Tom sat on the ground and took his time to think about what he wanted to do. He carefully thought of what would happen if he did a specific thing, imagining the whole scenario in his mind. The ones that ended in death or full-out battle, he rejected until he had a plan he thought might work.

Carefully he gathered up his magic and told it what he wanted it to do, splitting it into two parts. One part he used to create a creature that would fetch what he told it to go getting for him. The other part he set to gathering up more magic as it learned what he wanted it to do. He showed it what action to perform and it sat and learned it, and more magic came and watched it to learn it, too. When he thought it might be sufficient, he told it to go.

In a very careful thin stream, the magic trickled along a round-about way until the thin finger reached the outer edge of the nest of Desert Rattlers. Slowly it spread out from that edge gradually freezing the snakes and the ground they rested on. When the magic had touched just enough he thought would make a proper meal size, he instructed the magic to stop moving and just work on the freezing part.

Tom watched that until the first tiny Desert Rattlers disappeared in death. Then he told the magic to stop and wait. He sent the fetching creature to bring back any and all Desert Rattlers that had frozen sufficiently that they wouldn't be able to attack on arrival. He pulled out his knife and waited, keeping an eye on the nest as a whole, and the largest of the Desert Rattlers specifically. If he woke that up, he'd need to run.

Each Desert Rattler that was brought to him, he made sure was encased in ice. If it was just in a stupor from being chilled, he enticed some of the Freeze magic to return and wrap around it to properly keep the head from biting him and the tail from rattling. When the fetching creature couldn't find any more safe enough to bring to him, he thanked it and let the magic that made it up return to the land. He did the same with the rest of the Freeze magic, slowly letting it all leach back into the land so it wouldn't hurt him from a too fast release.

Tom collected up his bounty, put his hand on the horse's neck again, and urged it to lead him back to the stream. It wasn't too happy to leave living snakes behind, but it went with him. When they arrived, he carefully butchered each snake. A little Fire magic got the snake meat cooked. It was hard to get much meat off a snake, but he had enough that by the time he was done eating his stomach was content enough to stop grumbling at him and relax.

He buried the remains of the snakes that he wasn't going to eat, washed up, drank gratefully from the stream, then sat and watched the stars overhead. The horse that had adopted him settled down next to him. Tom patted it on the neck. "I'll get rid of them all for you. Eventually I'll have eaten them all, but I can't fight the big ones yet. Let me get stronger first. Then you'll have your grazing grounds back." The horse swung its head around to snuffle at him.

He shifted to lean on it. The desert was cold at night. The snakes had been in their huddle to be warm. Even the horses and he would huddle. Likely the other horses weren't here during the warm day because the snakes left the nest looking for food. Even one of those underfoot was enough to cause great troubles for a horse.

He'd go with the horses maybe, or stay right here and watch for individual Desert Rattlers to come his way. He could deal with ones and twos at a time. Just not the whole nest all at once. With that decided, he relaxed and fell asleep with his companions.

-:-:-:-:-

Will wiped his sweating brow on the back of his sleeve. He took another swig of his water canteen, then shook it to check the water level. He'd finally found his quarry and he was determined to not let it get away this time. He'd been tracking the distinctive hoof print now for three days.

Since he'd been ten and first moved to the frontier with his parents, he'd seen this wild stallion. Once it had saved his life. But never did it let him get close if it knew he knew it was around.

He just couldn't let it go. He'd been wanting that horse since he'd seen it. This time, he was going to capture it for sure. Even if it wasn't because it was watching over him, he couldn't let it go. He'd heard the stories from the old men at the store and fallen in love with the romanticism of what that horse bore on it's backside: a winged wild-cat paw print. The stories of the horse that had that symbol imprinted on its side were legendary.

Will wasn't sure all the stories could be believed. They said the horse couldn't die. That it had lived in this range for hundreds, if not thousands of years. That no man could capture it and no man could tame it or ride it. When he'd said he'd seen it with his own eyes, he'd been laughed to scorn. They might tell the stories and legends, but they didn't believe it was real either. Will knew it was. This time, he was going to bring it back and prove it.

Glancing at the sun, then looking far ahead from his position up on the ridge, he calculated where he'd likely have to stop and rest for the night. The cliff that fell down to the desert valley below was striped yellow, red, and grey-green. The sands of the desert valley itself were mostly yellow but patches of the red made it seemed orange in places. It was covered in grey-green scrub from tiny plants up through scrub brush. Here and there were cacti, but most of that in this area was short and round - hard to see and easy to get pricked by. Larger broken rocks of the same material as the cliff-face were poking out all over.

Near to where Will was shading his eyes with his hand from the bright sun overhead in the cloudless sky was a cut in the side of the ridge that led down into a gorge that cut back into the plateau. The horse had walked down the loose scree of the cut about an hour to an hour and a half ago.

Looking down now at the mouth of the gorge where it let out into the desert, he saw the horse itself walk out of the gorge and start across the flat desert land northwesterly. Will sighed. He might be able to track it just fine, but that way led to death. He hoped he'd be able to catch up sooner than later. Here was where he'd had to stop before, not having a canteen with him that time. He wasn't going to stop this time.

-:-:-:-:-

Bobby rolled as best he could, the landing on the back of his shoulder rather painful. He was up on his feet as soon as he could be, running back just long enough to snatch his canteen off the saddle and his hat up off the ground. He jammed the brimmed hat on his head as he took off running as fast as he could. He was swearing under his breath as he ran, although not enough to use up his air.

He'd gotten a good head start, but a horse that went up in bubbles because it had stepped in a hole in the desert to fall and break its neck wasn't going to help him now. He knew sort of where he wanted to go - along the outer rim of the killing desert zone to where he'd scouted out some caves.

However, the men coming after him were also on horses and his had gone down too soon for being ridden too hard to watch the ground. That was his own fault, so he was cussing himself out. Stupid, stupid, stupid. That went for everything that had gone on before this moment, too, that had led up to it.

One hand looping the canteen around his shoulder, the other hanging onto his hat, Bobby ran as hard as he could. He tried to watch his own feet better than he'd watched the horse's. He was really wishing for a horse when he could feel the thundering of the hooves that were chasing him. He was down in a little dip, so he hoped they hadn't seen him yet. His eyes darted, looking for anything.

He suddenly saw a little slip and he dodged into it, jumping as far as he could to not leave a track for at least a little bit, then ran and hid behind the outcropping. He desperately scanned around and came to a sudden shocked freeze when he found himself face to face with a black nose. A warm snort went down his shirt and a bit of wet sprinkled all over him. Bobby grimaced, not appreciating that very much.

He slowly reached a hand up and rubbed it gently up the side of the nose of the horse. He was rather surprised it let him without comment. It's head came up and he grabbed the nose with both hands to prevent it from whinnying. "Shhh," he whispered desperately. "I'm running from them. Don't let them find me."

When it looked like it was going to stay quiet, he slowly moved (so as to not be seen from the mouth of the slip), to walk down the horse's neck and to it's side. He rubbed both hands on its side and front leg. It was a good sized black horse. He wasn't paying too much attention, since he was listening to the thunder of the hooves fast approaching and then in front of the mouth of the slip. As soon as they had passed the slip, he was jumping and heaving himself up on the back of the horse.

Bobby was amazed when it didn't buck him off. He lay down over its neck and spoke to it very quietly while rubbing it's neck and shoulders. The close ear turned to listen to him while the other turned to listen to the horses riding on past them.

He used his other-sight to make sure there weren't any other riders lagging behind to catch him. Since there was one, he held the horse still until that one had passed on by. He watched until that one was far enough along the path, then left the slip slowly and carefully.

This time he made sure to watch the path in front of his horse properly. He had to go straight out into the desert death zone, but he could turn and cut back and get to the caves after the men had been to them and searched them. Then they'd leave him alone for sure.

The horse let him turn to follow parallel to the rock walls of the outer edge, but when it was time to turn back out to reach the caves, the horse danced and shook its head to set its mane flying. Bobby swore and argued with it until it finally took off flying in the opposite direction he wanted to go.

"What are you, a hell steed?" he yelled at it in complete frustration. Had he been kidnapped for evil in the end? He really wasn't interested. But...he would die out here on foot. He knew that very well. So, he could only cling to the mane and back of the black horse and let it do what it wanted.

-:-:-:-:-

Bobby had given up and was just keeping his eye on the landscape and his ears tuned for pursuit from behind. The black horse was headed where it was headed and Bobby could only assume water would be at the end of the passage since horses needed water as much as men did.

Motion caught his eye and he focused, preparing to nudge the horse if they needed to run. When he made out the source of his attention he sat back in surprise. He shifted his hat, scratched his head, and decided to watch a bit longer. Most men living out in these zones were Desperados or dead. This one didn't really look like either.

As he watched, it looked more like a hunter or tracker, since he'd stopped and was inspecting the ground again. He stood and drank from a canteen, shook it a little, then capped it and moved on. Generally he was headed the same direction the black horse was so Bobby just kept his eye on the tracker for now.

It wasn't someone tracking him, although he supposed they might try when they didn't find him in the hills. That made him sigh. He hoped they'd rather decide he was more likely to die and just let him go...since he just might. Why there was someone crazy enough to go tracking without a horse, even he had no idea.

The black horse finally caught sight of what Bobby had been looking at and was eyeing the man, too. It held its nose out and sniffed, then tossed its head a bit and turned to intercept. "Really," Bobby said sarcastically, "you'll drag me out here, then turn for the first other man you see? What are you? A faithless woman?"

He frowned in worry, though. Was this horse that man's horse? Why would he be in front of them tracking then? His stomach got a little more worried, but again, it was hop off the horse in motion and die of heat and thirst, or hang on until he learned a bit more. He stuck with the horse.