Manuel Espinosa's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

By afternoon Manuel had put the smoke well behind him, but he stopped in the road and looked back the way he had come. A patch of soft dirt at the shoulder held a clean print of his boot, and a second one a step past it. He crouched and touched the edge. The dirt was still damp under the crust. Anyone reading the ground would see the mark and the direction. He straightened and scanned the horizon behind him. Half a mile back, a thin dust smear hung above the scrub where no wind should have raised it. He cut off the road at once. The land east of him ran flat for miles, waist-high weeds and dry brush broken only by bone-white sticks and small skulls picked clean by the sun. No trees. No rise. A man walking upright through that field would show for a long time. Manuel bent low and moved fast, angling south now instead of east, breaking the line his tracks had drawn. He knew the trick would only buy him minutes. Someone patient enough to follow him this far would circle until they cut his sign again. He made himself think. His boots pressed deep because his pack rode heavy with water. The waterskin was what made him worth the walk. He could not drop it. But he could stop leaving a straight line. He worked back to a stretch of hardpan he had crossed twenty minutes earlier, stepped onto the stone, and followed it south until it played out at a shallow wash. He climbed down into the wash and lay flat against the bank, knife drawn, and waited. He did not wait long. A man came along the ridge above the wash, moving quick and low, reading the ground. Dark hair tied back, leather vest, a tattoo running down one arm. A rope leash in his left hand. At the end of the leash walked the shepherd from the camp, nose down, ears forward. The dog stopped where Manuel's prints ended on the hardpan. It circled once, twice, and sat. The man swore under his breath and crouched to study the stone. He was thirty feet away and had not looked into the wash. Manuel pressed lower. He counted the man's breaths and his own. The dog lifted its head and looked straight at the bank where Manuel lay. It did not bark. It stared. The man followed the dog's eyes and stood up slow. "Come out," he said. "Hands first." Manuel did not move. The man drew a pistol from his belt and held it loose at his side. "I said come out. I'm Vex. You've got water we need. Nobody has to bleed for it." Manuel looked at the pistol, at the dog, at the flat scrub behind them that offered no cover in any direction. He set the knife on the dirt and raised his hands above the lip of the wash.