run of the arrow. chapter 5 the arrow and the boy

They were cutting through a narrow pass flanked by gnarled mesquite trees when the air snapped with a sudden, violent noise.
A high-pitched, chilling war cry echoed off the canyon walls. Before Quinn could even draw his heavy Colt Peacemaker, the attack was upon them. Three riders, Apaches, broke from the shadows, their ponies swift and silent.
"Git low, Tommy!" Quinn roared, shoving the boy off Rokzane and onto the sandy ground. He drew his pistol, firing a warning shot that kicked up dust near the lead rider.
Another rider, however, had already drawn his bow. Quinn twisted, but he was too slow. A thwack ripped the air, and a flint-tipped arrow struck him just below his left shoulder blade.
A searing, blinding pain exploded through Quinn's body, knocking the wind from him. He slumped forward on Rokzane’s neck, the Colt falling from his numb fingers. The Apaches, seeing their enemy down, let out a triumphant yell and galloped away, disappearing as quickly as they had appeared, content with their hit-and-run tactic.
Silence returned, thicker and more terrifying than the noise of the attack.
Tommy scrambled to his feet, his face pale and streaked with dust. Quinn was barely conscious, leaning heavily against Rokzane, his breathing ragged. Blood was already blooming darkly around the fletching of the arrow, which jutted out sickeningly from his back.
"Quinn! Oh, Quinn!" Tommy ran to him, tears instantly welling up.
"It ain't... fatal, boy," Quinn gasped, struggling to keep his voice steady. "But that damn flint... it's deep. We gotta get to my cabin."
It took every ounce of Quinn's will to stay on his horse, guided by the small, determined boy. Tommy, ignoring his terror, led Rokzane. The eight-year-old was no longer a child; he was a lifeline.
An hour later, under the rising moon, they reached the single-room log cabin. Quinn fell onto a dusty cot, groaning.
"I need... the bottle," he choked out, pointing to his saddlebag. "And the knife. And... the leather strap."
Tommy retrieved the items: a bottle of raw whiskey, a sturdy, well-oiled Bowie knife, and a thick leather belt.
Quinn lay on his stomach, his breath coming in shallow pants. "You gotta do it, Tommy," he whispered, his eyes glazed with pain. "The arrow... it's got to come out. If the head breaks off... I'm a goner."
Tommy looked at the wicked shaft in his guardian's back. The thought of touching it made his stomach clench. He was shaking.
"I... I can't, Quinn," he stammered.
"Yes, you can," Quinn insisted, his voice suddenly hard. "Courage ain't the absence of fear, boy. It's doing what has to be done in spite of it. Now, grab that belt. Put your teeth on it and hold on."
Quinn took a long, burning swallow of the whiskey, coughing. He pressed the damp saddle blanket against his face, his knuckles white against the cot.
Tommy nodded once, his lower lip trembling. He poured some whiskey over the Bowie knife to sterilise it—that Quinn had told him to do.
"Alright, Quinn. I'm gonna cut the shaft first, so I can get a grip on the head," Tommy said, his voice surprisingly firm. He sliced the wooden shaft close to the wound, trying not to disturb the flint head buried beneath the skin.
He then took a deep breath, his small hands wrapping around the remaining piece of the shaft.
"Hold on, Quinn!" he yelled.
With a sudden, sharp tug that wrenched a guttural scream from Quinn's throat, Tommy pulled. The arrowhead, slick with blood, emerged, followed by the rest of the shaft.
Tommy stumbled back, dropping the arrowhead onto the floor. It was a perfect, deadly piece of black flint.
Quinn lay still, breathing heavily, sweat soaking the dust on his face.
"You... you did good, Tommy," he wheezed.
Tommy didn't say anything. He was already working, using the last of the whiskey to flush the wound, then tightly bandaging it with strips of torn shirt. When he was done, he sat beside the cot, his small frame leaning against his wounded guardian's, listening to the labored but steady beat of his heart.
Outside, the moon cast its pale silver light over the prairie. The boy had saved the man.
 
The legend of Quinn, the tough old rider, would always include the courage of the eight-year-old boy named Tommy. Quinn had been slowed by the infection now setting in, a burning fever that glazed his eyes and made his teeth chatter despite the heat. He’d accepted his fate: a quiet, ignoble end beneath the unforgiving western sky, but Tommy wasn’t having any of that.
Tommy gathered medicinal herbs that Quinn told him to fetch. He crushed purple flowers and mixed them with pine sap to create a pungent poultice. He cleaned the wound, changed the dressing with strips of clean cloth he’d salvaged from Quinn’s spare clean shirt, and forced Quinn to drink bitter, brackish water to combat the fever.
For a week, Tommy was Quinn’s silent, unblinking sentinel. He hunted small game with a snare and shared the meagre rations. The fever broke on the ninth day, leaving Quinn weak but clear-headed. He watched Tommy carefully cleaning the wound, his brow furrowed in concentration.
“You saved my life, kid,” Quinn croaked.
Tommy shrugged, dipping his finger into the poultice. “You saved yourself. I just fetched the things.”
Quinn felt a strange, unfamiliar ache in his chest—a place where only scar tissue and ruthlessness had resided before.
When Quinn was finally strong enough to stand, he strapped on his gun belt and looked down at the boy who was playing with his wooden soldier on the floor.
“Where are we headed, Quinn?” Tommy asked.
“South,” Quinn replied, his eyes sharp and focused. “To the Rio Grande.” He adjusted the newly clean bandage. The wound was still healing, but the infection was gone. “We’ll make a new start there, that’s if you want to be my partner?”
Then… then I’ll see where the wind blows us next, kid.
Tommy shot to his feet, the wooden toy clattering onto the floor, instantly forgotten. He sprinted to Quinn and threw his small arms around his legs, clutching him tight.
“Please, Quinn, please don’t leave me,” he wept, the plea muffled against Quinn’s trousers. “Please,” he begged.
Quinn slowly looked down at the distraught boy. His voice was firm. “I’m not going anywhere, kid. And from now on, you’re my partner. That means no one—I promise you, no one—will ever harm you again.”
Quinn mounted his horse, offering a hand down to Tommy, who scrambled up behind the saddle. As they rode away, the vast, unforgiving desert no longer looked like a graveyard to Quinn. It looked like a frontier—a place where even the most hardened men could be brought low by a simple arrow, and where an eight-year-old with a steady hand could teach them what it meant to truly heal.
 
The air in Silver-Dollar was thick with the smell of dust, cheap whiskey, and old ambitions. It was a sun-bleached haven clinging to the edge of the badlands, the kind of place a man only rode into when he had nowhere else left to go, or when he had a job to do.
Quinn pulled Roxanne to a stop outside the general store. The big man was a silhouette against the blinding afternoon sun—lean, hard-eyed, and carrying the quiet weight of a thousand miles. Slung behind him on the saddle was Tommy, with hair the color of straw and eyes that tracked every movement in the unfamiliar street.
“We’ll get you that pony, kiddo,” Quinn said, his voice a low, gravelly promise.
He lifted the boy down, resting a heavy, calloused hand on the small shoulder. “You wait right here by the water trough. Don’t talk to nobody. Don’t wander off.”
Tommy nodded, clutching a battered, wooden soldier toy to his chest. His gaze was fixed on the general store’s window—a shimmering promise of food, new gear, and the horse Quinn had promised him for weeks.
Quinn entered the store. It was cluttered and smelled of leather and stale tobacco. He slapped a pouch of silver onto the counter, rattling the glass jar of licorice sticks.
“Need a sturdy packhorse, minimum. But I’d pay extra for a good pony for the boy. Small, gentle, broken well,” Quinn stated to the store owner, a rail-thin man with a perpetually suspicious squint. “Also, flour, coffee, a bolt of oilskin, fifty rounds for a repeater, and dried jerky for a week.”
The owner, a man named Silas, began compiling the order, but his attention kept drifting toward Tommy, who was obediently sitting by the trough, playing with his toy soldier in the dust with a stick.
“That your boy, mister?” Silas asked, his voice oily and slow.
Quinn leaned an elbow on the counter, his eyes sharp. “He’s with me. And he ain’t a subject for discussion.”
“Just asking,” Silas drawled, ringing up the powder and shot. “But a child that age… you got a mother for him, or did you, uh, ‘find’ him out on the trail?”
Quinn’s jaw tightened. He disliked being questioned, especially about Tommy. The story of how he rescued the boy—terrified, and starving a hundred miles back—was his business, and his alone.
“Mind your stock, Silas,” Quinn warned, his hand moving subconsciously closer to the worn butt of his pistol. “The horse. Where’s the best place to find one?”
Silas pointed a crooked finger toward a rough-hewn livery stable at the far end of the street. “Old Man Potter runs it. Got a dappled mare that’d be good for a youngster. Pricey, though. A little boy ain’t cheap.”
Quinn paid for the supplies and walked out. Just as he reached Tommy, a trio of local toughs swaggered out of the saloon across the street, laughing loudly. Their leader was a brute of a man with a handlebar mustache and a vest stained with grease and beer, named Harkin.
Harkin stopped dead, fixing his bloodshot eyes on the small figure of Tommy.
“Well, lookee here, boys,” Harkin slurred, spitting tobacco juice close to the boy’s feet. “What we got? A little orphan fresh off the trail. You ain’t never seen the like of him, have ya, Jud?”
Tommy, startled by the sudden close presence of the large, smelly men, recoiled, pressing himself against the horse trough. He looked desperately at Quinn.
Quinn planted himself squarely between the men and the boy. His voice was dangerously calm. “Walk on, fellas. This ain’t your concern.”
Harkin sneered, crossing his arms. “Hold on there, high-and-mighty. The boy looks neglected. Skinny. You ain’t no lawman. For all we know, you’re dragging the little fella into the desert to bury him for his inheritance.” He winked crudely at his companions. “Maybe the boy belongs to the town. Protection, you understand.”
The implication hung heavy in the air: they wanted to take the boy.
Quinn knew this was the moment. He wasn’t going to draw his gun, not in front of Tommy, not over a mouth-breathing bully. He was going to settle this the old way.
“You want him?” Quinn’s voice was a low growl. “You got to go through me.”
Harkin chuckled, but there was a flicker of genuine malice in his eyes. “Fine by me, trail trash. Let’s see what you’re worth.”
The fight was fast, brutal, and silent on Quinn's part.
Harkin lunged first, a wild swing aimed at Quinn's temple.
Quinn ducked, the air whistling past his ear, and countered with a blindingly quick left hook that snapped Harkin's head back.
The other two toughs, seeing their leader staggered, rushed in. One aimed a kick; the other came with a haymaker.
Quinn was a blur of controlled aggression. He sidestepped the kick, catching the kicker’s wrist on the follow-through and twisting sharply. The man roared and went down hard, clutching his arm.
The last man hesitated for a crucial second. Quinn used that second to drive his elbow into the man’s ribs, then pivoted, catching the still-recovering Harkin with a powerful, clean punch to the jaw.
The sound was sickening. Harkin dropped like a sack of rocks, his mustache askew in the dust.
It was over in less than a minute. Quinn stood over the three groaning men, his chest heaving slightly, the knuckles on his right hand already swelling. He didn't look at the defeated men. His eyes went immediately to the small figure still huddled against the trough.
Tommy was wide-eyed, but he wasn’t crying. He was staring at Quinn, not with fear, but with a fierce, quiet understanding. The small, wooden toy was still clutched tightly in his hand.
Quinn walked over, wiping a thin trickle of blood from his lip. He knelt, bringing himself level with the boy.
“They wanted to take you, kiddo,” Quinn said, his voice softer now. “But you’re my partner. And nobody touches my partner. You understand?”
Tommy nodded quickly, his pale face solemn. “I understand, Quinn.”
Quinn helped the boy to his feet. He glanced back at the retreating figure of Silas, the store owner, who was now hastily tying up the supplies and looking everywhere but at the scene of the fight.
The message had been delivered, clear as a gunshot: leave the boy alone.
“Let’s go buy that horse, then,” Quinn said, taking Tommy’s hand. “A small, gentle mare. You and me, we got a long way to ride, and we’re riding out of Dollar tonight, partner.”