Some say a stranger came, dealing death before the end...Pt.5

"Stranger, I like what you had to say just fine. I'm just not in the mood to listen to it."

Rose Althea's head barely moved as she spoke, her torso plastered across the stranger Lido's back. They swayed bareback on the exhausted nag as it clapped its dusty hooves at a trot across the hardscrabble track that passed for a highway out here. They'd been riding so long without a break, about the only thing that kept them on that horse was the fact that they were plastered together by sweat. Rose Althea had synchronized her ragged breathing to his.

"Rose Althea, I believe after all we've been through," said the stranger Lido in a graveled purr, "you can call me the stranger Lido."

Rose Althea gave a bemused snort.

The stranger Lido kept swaying to the horse's rhythmic gait, subtly varying his breathing to see if Rose Althea would match it.

There was silence for a while. As much silence as you can get on a wheezing, clomping nag with the slow-beating drum of two fugitives' hearts in low concert under a brutal sun. At least the wind had picked up. Drove away the flies.

"That wind feels like a cool bath," Rose Althea said.

"This damn horse," Rose Althea said, some time later.

"Where the hell are we going." Rose Althea said. The sun kept climbing higher.

"'The Hell Away,'" replied the stranger.

"You ain't kidding," she said. It was almost a whisper.

She was thinking of Tin Rink, Wyoming. She hadn't been born there or anything, but it was home. It had been home. The men folk there were bastards, it was true.

"They had been bastards," she rasped, barely audible.

"What's that?" asked the stranger Lido, matter-of-fact. Innocently.

"I still don't know how you shot us out of that scrape, back there. I ain't never seen anyone handle himself like you back there." She pronounced "anyone" like it was three words. "Not just the shooting, even. You skewered Tom Hoke with that knife throw from twenty yards. Injuns teach you that?"

The stranger Lido was silent for a minute. "I taught Injuns that."

Rose Althea didn't really hear. Her mind was miles and miles behind. "You know, I'm counting as many people as I used to know, and I don't think you left a single man in town in any condition to chase after us."

The stranger Lido pulled the horse up short and straightened up. Rose Althea pulled away as best she could. They peeled off of each other and a cool wind came between them. The stranger Lido twisted around, and his eye gleamed in the shade of his hat's black brim. Rose Althea's shining black eyes were wide open and awake for the first time in more than twelve hours. They'd ridden all night through a bad dream, one that sunup had only made worse.

The stranger Lido held her two eyes with one of his. The stranger kept breathing. Rose Althea held hers.

"Well," said the stranger thoughtfully. "I guess we can take a rest stop over by them trees yonder, then."