It was a hard sun.
Flat like a rock table, bright like a banker’s smile, cold like a glacier.
Charity had never seen a glacier, but she could sure use one right now. Only a complete moron would travel under this burning torch of a sky, and lordy, lordy, lordy she had run the last six miles in a dead heat. If it weren’t for her hat the light from above and the blaze underneath would have liquefied her skull. As it was, her brain had merely boiled inside of it, like a softboiled egg.
But time wasn’t on her side, so she had no choice.
This? This shit was what happened when you got involved with young people. They got up too early, they had too many big plans, and then just when you thought you knew what they were thinking they did something damned foolhardy, like shooting you in the side in the town square and leaving you with an angry mob closing in fast.
But hey! Charity’d had a good feeling about her! She had no style because she knew style was superfluous! She had no manners because honesty was a blunt club that could smash through those, so why not wield it! She had no compunctions about shooting first and not bothering with stupid questions! She reminded her of herself at that age!
And if that hadn’t been the big warning sign, Charity didn’t know what would be.
Lordy, lordy, lordy, this sun, this bastard of a sun.
She was almost there, she reckoned. Not like she’d gotten a particularly great look at the map, but Charity had a photographic memory for money and a decent sense of the landscape and most importantly a keen understanding of how someone’s mind worked when it was drunk on cash.
If SHE were a crazy-ass rapscallion of an officer who didn’t mind burying some surplus mint-fine-metal somewhere, then shooting his co-commander in the spine for it, then sneaking out to make a withdrawal every few months for boozing money, where would she have gone?
Somewhere easily accessible, because she wanted to get her booze on sooner rather than later. So, through the valley, not through the hills.
Somewhere easily visible, because when the thirst’s on who has the time to count out paces and remember unmarked stones. So, at the big ol’ cactus patch.
Somewhere not QUITE at the easily visible landmark, to make her feel like she was cunning and clever and not terribly, awfully predictable. So in the big hollow behind it.
“Hey,” said June.
***
She still looked tall even at the bottom of the hollow, and there was barely any sweat on her. Pretty good trick for someone who’d just finished prying a trunk of ingots out of the dirt. One boot tapped thoughtfully on its lid, the other remained firmly rooted and carefully planted, which meant the gun pointed directly at Charity’s bad eye was rock-steady.
She really wished she hadn’t told her about her bad eye.
“Hey,” said Charity, because if you’re going to die and there’s only one person around to hear your last words they don’t matter all that much.
“Should’ve figured you’d make it. Metal plate under the shirt?”
“Yep.”
“Classic.”
The gun was still pointed at her bad eye, but it hadn’t killed her yet. This seemed odd.
“So. Got a solution to this situation?”
What situation?
Oh. Charity’s gun was out and pointed at June. When the hell had she done that? Forget her own head next.
“Well, way I see it, there’s three ways this works out.”
“Go on. I got time.”
Damned young people. “One: we both try and shoot each other. Probably both die, maybe one of us makes it out.”
“Seems likely.”
“Two: we agree to split it fair and square, we go our separate ways. Half the cash, but that was the plan before you got all persnickety on me.”
“Seems unlikely.”
“Three: we agree to split it fair and square and only one of us tries to shoot the other. They get everything and a good story.”
“Hmm.”
“Hmm.”
The sun really was awful.
“June?”
“Yeah.”
“I can’t help but notice you’ve kept your gun and gaze aimed pretty square at my bad eye the whole time we’ve been stuck like this.”
“I know about it. And it doesn’t have a metal plate on it.”
“Fair. But it means you aren’t watching my good eye.”
June’s eyes weren’t good or bad. June’s eyes weren’t anything. Little chips of something much older than her or Charity or anything that had warm blood and a heart that beat more than twice per minute.
But they narrowed just a little at that.
“Speak up.”
“My good eye. If you’ve got a bad eye, you’ve got a good eye. It’s just how it is, right? Everyone knows that.”
“You never mentioned it before.”
“I shouldn’t have mentioned my bad eye either.”
“Yep.” The smile was big. Was she getting happier? Young people were crazy. It was a million degrees outside and she was a finger-twitch and a sneeze from death or murder or both.
“Well, my good eye is on you, and it’s noticing something it likes that you won’t.”
“I like ‘em younger, sorry.”
“Smartass. But not smart enough.” Charity’s own smile was a lot smaller, but there was no strain in it. Her whole face relaxed. “I’m sorry, y’know.”
June’s little chips opened wide in the blazing sunlight, her muscles shifted, and she settled her foot just a little on the trunk, which sent it crashing right through the lid.
It had been twenty years since Charity had aimed with her good eye, but she put out all six at once and trusted in volume.
She knew what was in the trunk. But she looked anyways. Both eyes.
Nothing but dust and June’s trapped boot.
“Twenty years,” she said aloud. Twenty years with a terrible thirst, a powerful paranoia, and a cloud of guilt all wrestling over the man’s soul. The trunk had probably been empty for more than half a decade.
Ah well. Plenty more time to strike it big. She wasn’t young; she was in no rush.
The walk back was still godawful though.