The Fountain of Roses

Posted on Sat Dec 20th, 2025 @ 4:47pm by Catalina Escareno

1,523 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: Assembling the Troubleshooters
Location: Chihuahuan Desert
Timeline: Date 1877-08-17 at 1730

The heat beat down on the desert like a hammer. It beat the air out of the canyon and hammered the last color from the pale sky. A caramel-skinned woman lay prone behind a stack of scorched boulders, her supple skin covered in a layer of sweat, her shapely body still except for the moving of her ample chest as her breath came in shallow, ragged rasps. Two days. Two days since the federal payroll heist, two days since the frantic escape from the law, and two days since she had betrayed the only man who had ever managed to get close to her.

Her muscles were screaming against the unforgiving rock. Below, three bounty hunters were drawing too close. It was the Marshall who had sent them after she had turned on him; Julian Castillo, a strong man, a beautiful man, and a good man if such a thing could be. His wounds were deep from her, but that was what one should expect from La Gata. The wild cat.

She still had her weapons on her: two Colt Peacemakers at either hip, two concealed .41 Derringers, two bowie knives, one on her hip and one concealed. She was tired, though. And thirsty. So incredibly thirsty. She had fled them through the days and through the nights across the expanse of desert that separated sparsely-populated town from sparsely-populated town. She had run, she had fought, and this was her attempt at hiding. The three money-hungry men that were after her had driven her up onto the mountain like a cat in a tree. There was no escape but in capture. After all, Julian Castillo wanted her alive.

“If you move, the fools kill you. If you lie still, the sun kills El Diablo,” she said in Spanish through barely parted, cracked lips. Her black stallion, tied to a stunted mesquite, was panting desperately, his coat filmed with red dust. Without him, her freedom–the only thing she valued anymore–was forfeit. She reached for the custom grip of her weapon, the carved cat’s head cool and familiar beneath her palm. It was time to choose her fate.

Then, her choice was stolen from her.

El Diablo broke. The stallion didn’t just rear; he let out a shriek of pure, tormented fear. He fought the tether, his eyes rolling white, fixed not on the men below, but on the ridge high above.

“Silencio, Diablo. Silencio!” she hissed, pulling herself up into a seated position. The men would hear him for sure. She pulled herself to her feet, her Peacemaker in her hand. She would have to fight, and the element of surprise was shattered.
Just as she was starting to adjust to the shifting of her own weight, a scent hit Cat, foreign and sickeningly sweet: jasmine and crushed rose petals. It was a blast of cool luxury that violated the canyon’s choking heat. Her keen senses, honed by years of conning and shooting, told her this was real, but it was also utterly wrong.

She looked up, and as her big brown eyes trailed from the gaze of the horse to the dulling heavens, she saw a figure bathed in the last vestiges of daylight. Standing silhouetted against the tent of dim blue on the jagged ridge was a woman. Not menacing, but defined by an impossible serenity which almost made Cat stop breathing. She was enveloped in a soft, pearlescent glow that seemed to bend the harsh sunlight and heat away from her. Her dress was the deep, luminous sapphire blue of a night sky, flowing like water where there was no wind. Her face was mesmerizing in its perfect symmetry and filled with a terrifying, unreadable expression Cat almost identified as compassion. La Gata, the Flower in the Wind, the Devil’s Rider…she was incredibly beautiful, especially when hydrated and after a bath, but this woman…her beauty was of an indescribable and heavenly kind that seemed to put all human attractiveness to shame. Those eyes, dark and deep, looked not at Catalina, but into her, past the expensive leather, the hot skin and cold fury, straight to the wounded girl beneath.

Catalina Escareno’s mind, usually quick as a coiled viper, seized up. This was not a gunfight. This was a con of the highest order.
“The woman is too clean. Too calm,” she said to herself quietly, “She doesn’t want my gold or my gun, so she must want my soul.”
She took a step forward despite the pangs of fear that rose within her. She licked at her dry lips futilely, having no moisture to offer them.

“Too bad, Señiorita. It is already spoken for.”

The figure lifted her hand in an unhurried gesture of blessing or curse. Cat couldn’t tell which. She only knew that this was a god or a demon. Which one it was didn’t matter; they both wanted the same thing: total devotion. La Gata must be free.
A voice, clear and soft as a stream running over quartz, seemed to fill the air around Catalina's head: "Your endless flight is also a cage, child. Rest your soul."

Rest. The word was the ultimate temptation and the ultimate terror. It was the price the woman demanded. The price of submission. Catalina struggled to raise her Colt, the carved cat resting against her sweaty palm, but her hand locked up, refusing to aim at the source of the beautiful light. Cat decided long ago that no true beauty could survive in this world. She had seen evil men as well as mystical things in the shadows of the desert, and her heart was as black as the darkest night. She would not submit to a rose in the wild. She would kill to remain free, even if it meant her death. Despite her obvious murderous intent, the woman seemed to take no offense, but simply held her gaze. And then the miracle came.

The dry, cracked rock face right beside Cat churned impossibly, and a thick column of crystal-clear water erupted. It sprayed as if from a hose all over her, dousing her with shockingly cool water, soaking her clothing, washing her sweat away, and flowing down toward the straining stallion tied to the tree. El Diablo forgot his fear and lunged forward into the stream, drinking greedily, as Cat found her own cracked lips opening wide as well. It was pristine and cold, the purest waters she had ever seen in the West. She drank it in great mouthfuls, the power of her thirst overwhelming her hunger for independence and self-reliance. She surfeited herself on it, swallowing hard and taking off her hat to wash her long beautiful brown hair as well.

The bounty hunters below shouted, spooked by the flowing water and the eerie sound of ominous rushing wind. They bolted away on their horses, exchanging terrified shouts about “witchcraft” and “cursed ground.” Their greed for the lawman’s gold was quickly overridden by superstition and the desire to survive.

Cat watched the mysterious woman on the ridge until the echoes of the horses’ retreat faded into the distance completely. Her serene gaze, heavy with a silent, unexplained sorrow, remained fixed on Catalina. Then slowly, gracefully, she melted back into the twilight, leaving behind only the painful scent of roses and the pool life-saving water.

Cat lowered her hands, only just realizing she had been holding them up to the heavens. Her chest was heaving, her mind racing. She had been saved–not by a plan of her own making, but by a powerful entity that operated without asking for a price. A favor done to put her into the woman’s debt. Her beautiful, clean face turned to a scowl, and her boot smacked the puddle of now dirty water in an act of defiance. She spit, since she was now well hydrated, in anger.

“You give me water to save my skin,” she called out loudly in Spanish, her voice rough with cold defiance, “so you think I owe you something now, hmm? I don’t know what you are or where you come from, but you are a master con artist! And I will not sign your contract!”

She waited there, having shouted her fury. She waited for something, anything, to happen. When the darkness began to truly take the valley, however, she knew she would get nothing in return. She spat again and went back to her horse.
“She does not know,” she whispered gently to her huge black horse, patting his wet side, “That I ride El Diablo every night. I have no master. Not anymore. Not ever again.”

She pulled herself onto her mount and he omitted a low, dominant churdle. Then she dug her spurs in deep and they rode hard and fast away front the place of her salvation, away from the sickening scent of roses and peace, and toward the nearest pocket of chaos she could find–some place where the rules were simple and the price of survival was always paid in gold and blood.

 

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