By G.W.
I took a deep draft from the joint I held in nerveless fingers, and watched as Junior fashioned a tourniquet around the red ruin that had been my left leg. He was doing a good job, working methodically, coolly, even while my arterial life-blood leaked out into the dirt.
"That should hold," Junior said, sitting back on his haunches, "until his men get here."
"I don't plan on letting them get their hands on me, you remember what they did to Arlen."
"You can't ride, and it's a long way yet to safety."
"I know."
For a long time neither of us said anything. Above the nearby peaks gray clouds, threatening winter's first snow, were piling up, dark and foreboding, over the forested slopes.
"I remember when I pulled you out from that burning building," I said, at last. "I didn't think you would last a week with us. You were pretty much useless: impatient, always complaining."
Junior said nothing, looking down at the bloody ground.
"That time in the south hills, you remember that," I asked.
Junior grinned, "You ran into that ambush, and I threw that homemade bomb of yours right in front of you."
"I still can't hear in my right ear," I said, laughing. Another pause.
Then Junior stood, lean and rawboned, the years in the wilderness had stripped him of his awkwardness and baby-fat; he was no longer the clumsy kid that I pulled from the flames all those years ago. He pulled out his gun, and cocked it.
"That's my boy," I said