Where the Dry River Keeps Its Name

The mare was still running when Mara Venn pulled the rifle from its scabbard and fired backward under her own arm.

She did not expect to hit anybody. Expectations were costly things in open country. She meant to make the three riders lower their heads, and two of them did.

The third fired.

The shot took Mara along the ribs like the scrape of a hot chisel. She folded, caught herself on the saddle horn, and told the mare, “You keep your feet, Juniper. I’ll see about mine.”

Juniper had opinions on gunfire, all unfavorable. She stretched her neck and ran harder.

Ahead, the Bellweather road dropped through red shelves of stone toward a white basin. The town lay at the basin’s center in a scatter of flat roofs, false fronts, corrals, and cottonwoods too dusty to admit they were dying. Beyond it ran a wide band of pale sand that maps called the Grayling River.

Mara had seen livelier rivers painted on hotel wallpaper.

A bullet struck rock beside Juniper and sang away.

“Too close,” Mara said.

Juniper needed no review.

The road narrowed between two walls of stone. Mara turned in the saddle, sighted on the lead rider’s hat, and fired. The hat sailed off. Its owner pulled up sharply, more insulted than injured. His companions crowded him, and for a few useful seconds the canyon became a committee meeting.

Mara rode through Bellweather’s north end at a pace that made every porch sitter look up. A yellow dog chased Juniper for half a block, then reconsidered the profession. Mara passed a blacksmith, a church with no bell, and a brick building labeled Rusk Mercantile in letters tall enough to be read from heaven.