Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name (11 page)

The
Rider accepted it, and the other man settled down in the seat beside him,
setting his bowler on his knee and smoothing his ash blonde hair.

He
considered the joke. The thin man was still smiling at him, and raised his
eyebrows in a playful way when the Rider regarded him again.

The
Rider sighed. He knew this was intended as a catalyst towards conversation, and
he realized he must oblige, though he had hoped to be left alone.

“You…read
Greek?” the Rider asked tentatively.

“Not
so’s you’d notice,” the man shrugged. “Latin came up more in my studies. Hippocrates
and ‘masasthai’ just about encompass the totality of my prowess in the Greek
tongue.”

“Hippocrates,”
the Rider said carefully. “You’re a doctor, then?”

“You
don’t like doctors?”

The
Rider stiffened. Was this another of Adon’s followers? Could they have found
him so soon?

“I
had a bad experience with one recently,” he said, shifting in his seat so that
his gun was at hand.

The
man’s eyes flashed to the Rider’s belt and he sat back. The threat was evident,
but the man did not falter. His eyes were cool and unaffected, reinforcing the
Rider’s wariness. The creaking car was nearly full of passengers. Would the man
try something here?

“He
must’ve had a helluva bedside manner,” the man drawled. Then he burst into a
fit of coughing that lasted an unusually long time.

The
Rider watched him stifling the deep, wet sounds in his comically ballooning
cheeks as he fumbled for a pocket handkerchief. When at last he produced it
from his coat pocket, the Rider saw that it was spotted with old brown dots of
blood. He put it to his face and let loose a barrage of shuddering, hacking
coughs, enough to draw the attention of several nearby passengers, who craned
their necks and stared at him first with concern and then open disgust from the
depths of bonnets and beneath hat brims.

He
watched the young man—too young really, to be so ill affected, and felt foolish
for his prior standoffishness. His skin was very pale, and there were dark
rings hanging under his eyes. His neatly combed hair shook loose in undignified
strands over his forehead.

“Are
you alright?” the Rider asked, when the fit had subsided somewhat.

The
man held up a hand and dabbed at his mouth, then returned the freshly bloodied
handkerchief to his pocket.

“Excuse
me. I think we started off on the wrong foot, friend,” he said hoarsely. He
cleared his throat with a rumble, smiled and ran his hand again through his
hair, returning it to its former austerity. “John Holliday. My friends call me
Doc.”

“Rider,”
the Rider said. He offered his hand, but Doc shook his head.

“You’ll
pardon me if I don’t. I’m a card carrying member of the esteemed Las Vegas
Lungers and Hackers Club,” he smiled thinly. “Unless you’re applying for
membership, you’d best hold off on the pleasantries until I’ve been to a
washbasin.”

“Lungers
and…?”

“I’m
a consumptive, Mr. Rider. It’s what brings me to this arid clime.”

“I
see,” the Rider said. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh
I’m still spry enough,” said Doc. “My condition put a damper on my dental
practice to be sure, but I’m a saloonist now, so no harm done.”

“You
were a dentist.”

“Till
a few months ago,” he said. “And what’s your line, Mr. Rider?”

“I’m
a bookseller,” the Rider answered.

Doc’s
eyes took in the Rider’s scarred face and hands.

“Pardon
my asking, but where does a bookseller get scars like those?”

The
Rider shifted uncomfortably under Doc’s gaze, and put his hands in his pockets.

“Paper
cuts,” he said without smiling.

Doc
chuckled.

“Well,
unless you’ve some Spanish volumes in your baggage, I don’t know how much of a
readership you’re going to find in Las Vegas. The indigent literati are almost
without exception Spaniards. There are a few Greeks in New Town, but the
Galinas
is
something of an illiteracy demarcation
line. Everyone to the east of it is far more concerned with numbers than they
are with letters. Are you a sportsman, Mr. Rider?”

“I’m
afraid not,” the Rider answered, somewhat bemused by the consumptive’s open
manner. They’d not said word one to each other since the Rider had got on the
train at Tombstone, but the man was talking a blue streak now, a lonesome soul
brimming over to a captive ear.

“Don’t
be afraid, Mr. Rider. They can smell it,” Doc said, gesturing to the other
passengers, who had returned to their business, mainly staring vacantly out the
yellowed windows. “I took you for a sporting man by the…forgive me, splendor of
your ornamentation.” He nodded to the gilded handle of the Rider’s pistol.
“Tell me, what’s your book about?”

“Oh,
poetry,” he said. “Ever heard of Pindar?”

“No,”
Doc admitted. “You ever hear this one?

Little
Bo Peep

Could
not sleep

But
coughed the whole night through

She
scattered her bugs

All
over the rugs

Now
her sheep have TB too.”

Doc
chuckled and looked at him.

“What
did you think of that, Mr. Rider?”

“Very
good,” the Rider said, smiling indulgently.

Doc
smirked.

“Well,
Mr. Rider, if you liked that, then I don’t think I would care for your Pindar
much at all.”

The
Rider stared a moment, then laughed, a genuine, appreciative laugh. He couldn’t
remember the last time he’d done so.

“You’re
alright, Mr. Rider,” Doc observed, leaning his head back against the seat for a
moment and closing his eyes. “You’re alright.”

The
train gave a particularly severe lurch that caused several of the passengers to
exclaim, and one or two who had been dozing to fall bodily from their seats.
The brakes hissed, and metal squealed, and the oil swished in the bellies of
the lamps.

“We’ve
stopped,” the Rider observed, craning his neck to look out the window.

“That
we have,” Doc sighed, not opening his eyes.

There
were loud voices outside, punctuated by snaps of gunfire that set the women
screaming. The conductor trotted the length of the car and disappeared out the
front door.

The
Rider tensed, but Doc’s hand touched the crook of his elbow and he turned to
him.

“Remain
calm, sir, and in your seat,” he whispered.

The
car door burst open and the conductor who had previously departed through it,
re-entered on his back, his nose gushing bright blood. More screaming, and a
few of the men rose in alarm as a barrel-chested figure straining against the
buttons of a long duster and wearing a flour sack mask over his face and a
battered wide hat on top entered. He stepped over the writhing train man, a .45
in one gloved hand, and two drooping burlap bags in the other.

“Siddown!”
he hollered through the sack, waving his pistol.

Those
who had risen plopped quickly back down.

“Y’all
stand and deliver!” he commanded in a deep voice. “I’m goin’ to pass this bag
down the rows. All you good church goin’ folks ought to know what I expect. All
you non-believers look on and
learn,
or I’ll settle
your doubts right quick!”

The
man threw the bag into the face of a well-dressed Mexican man seated to his
right, and tossed the other at the feet of an old woman to his left, so that
she had to scramble for it. He guffawed, the bag puffing in and out over his
mouth.

“I
want every doodad and dollar! I’m goin’ to walk to the end of the car and wait
till the count of thirty. If them bags ain’t come to me full up by then I’m
just goin’ to start drillin’ the backs of your damned skulls!”

There
were shrieks at this, and the masked man stalked down the aisle. The spurs on
his dusty boots rang as he tread, and the broad cuffs of his dirt-caked
chapaderos flapped.

Beside
the Rider, Doc slid his hat onto his head and tugged the brim low, settling
down into the seat.

He
heard similar shouting from the other cars, and once, another muffled bang of
gunfire.

There
was movement outside the window, and another masked man on a speckled grey
horse went galloping for the back of the wheezing train.

“You’re
holdin’ onto that case pretty tight, mister. Whatcha got in there?”

The
Rider looked, and saw that the bandit had paused over a smallish, silver haired
man in a pinstripe suit.

“Please.
Just…just papers,” the passenger said in a Spanish accent.

In
a minute, the bigger man had snatched a black leather valise from the man’s lap
and popped it open. He peered into its depths and gave a long whistle.

“Papers,
huh? I’d say.”

He
jammed the valise up under his arm and walked away, a noticeable spring in his
step.

The
silver haired man looked over his shoulder, and the Rider saw a drawn, dark
face, round spectacles magnifying a pair of terrified eyes over the bridge of a
long, thin nose.

The
bandit sauntered past, bathing the Rider in a wave of spicy, unwashed odor,
then stopped and doubled back, looking down at them from the holes in his mask.
The Rider glanced up and noticed that the ‘O’ in the word ‘flour’ stamped
haphazardly on the sack perfectly encircled the man’s left eye, and the upside
down ‘U’ spanned his nose like the bridgework on a pair of spectacles.

“What
in the hell are you supposed to be?” the man demanded.

The
Rider looked straight ahead.

“I’m
talkin’ to you, buster,” he said, poking the Rider in the shoulder with the
barrel of his .45.

The
Rider looked up at him.

“You’re
about the silliest lookin’ sonofabitch I ever seen,” said the robber. “Between
that beard and them pigtails, looks like you can’t decide whether to piss
standin’ up or sittin’ down.”

The
woman in the seat in front of the Rider turned and held the swollen, tinkling
bag over her shoulder with one trembling hand.

The
Rider stared into the holes of the sack, at the two bright eyes glaring out at
him.

“Well?”
the bandit asked, not blinking. “
You goin’
to take
that bag, Pigtails?”

The
Rider said nothing. He could do nothing, though he had a great desire to shoot
this man, if not kill him. He was abominably tired. Lilith’s invisible ruahim
still kept him up most nights, and his frayed nerves left him with little
patience for men of this sort.

He
reached out and took the bag, fully prepared to part with the meager cash left
in his billfold.

The
robber’s free hand came down and clamped on his wrist. The touch of the man
boiled his blood.

The
man turned his hand, and the silver ward ring on his finger glinted in the lamp
light.

“What’s
that there?”

“Let
me go,” the Rider hissed.

“Sure,
I’ll let you go, Pigtails,” the man said, releasing his wrist and leaving
streaks of white and red across his skin. “You just be sure and drop your
wedding band in that sack.”

“No,”
the Rider said.

The
robber thumbed back the hammer on his pistol. The woman in front of the Rider
pressed her lace-gloved hands to her ears and hunkered down in her seat.

“I
didn’t hear you.”

The
Rider’s eyes went from the mask to the dark hole of the man’s gun barrel. He
could almost imagine the blunt nose of the bullet waiting to spring at the end
of it. His eyes went out of focus for a second, and he considered dying. He had
no fear of it, having already seen much of the country that lay beyond. He was
a man with the assurance of continued existence and long experience with out of
body travel. No need for the faith most men had to falter through their days
with, the Rider knew what to expect.

His
regularly interrupted sleep had left him with a ragged edge, as well. He was
constantly tired, and could see no end to his condition in sight. Indeed, it
seemed to worsen. His food and drink had begun to taste bad, and he did not
like to think what the ruahim must be doing to it.

Why
not just die and be done with it, then? Let his brains get splattered over the
sickly dentist. Let him fly from this world of rot, assume his garb of glory
and take his place in the halls of the Yeshiva shel Malah in the precincts of
the learned in shel Elyon, studying Torah under the wise angel Zagazagel with
all the great sages and his departed friends and teachers of The Sons of The
Essenes. Each day would be a full life with a morning of joyful childhood, a
blazing afternoon at the summit of youth, and an evening of peaceful, measured
adulthood. No more slow, dragging years of creeping age, no more restless
nights of dwelling on the long, drawn out expiration, the dilapidation and
failure of body and mind that waited at the precipice of a hard mortal life. It
was a sure temptation, one that his teachers had warned him of early on.