Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name (5 page)

Trib
shook, alternately blathering curses and sobbing prayers in Spanish and
English.

By
the time the Rider thrust his bloody finger into the third hole in the man’s
arm, Trib had passed out. Gersh relaxed his grip and the Rider was able to dab
salt in the remaining two wounds with relative ease.

He
called for a skin and poured water in it, then poked a hole in it with a pin
and squeezing it, flushed the wounds clean. Then he sat back and let the woman
re-bandage the wound. The bleeding had slowed noticeably when he began. By the
time he was finished, it had stopped altogether.

“He
may still lose the arm,” the Rider said, cleaning his hands with the water that
was left. “But he won’t die.”

“He
did stop bleeding,” Purdee observed.

“What
did that?” the Colonel asked, the accusing tone diminished now. “And why did
those men in the bar burn up like that?”

“Think
of a slug, when you pour salt on it, it shrivels,” the Rider said. “These men
are made of the same kind of stuff.”

“I
never heard tell of no such thing,” the Colonel said.

“Yeah
but that don’t mean it ain’t so, Colonel,” Purdee observed.

They
gave the Rider a respectful berth as he rose and stepped out into the night.
They receded into the dark but stayed milling about as he stood in the light
from the doorway and wiped his hands dry. Gersh came out behind him.

“They’re
coming,” the Rider said quietly. “Men just like the ones who did this. I don’t
know how many, but they’ll be here soon. They’re coming for me, but they’ll
kill anyone they find here.”

“What
if we were to just give you to ‘em?” the red head ventured.

“You
might try to do that,” the Rider nodded. “But I’d fight you, and I’d kill two
or three of you in the process. You’d probably have to kill me. Then you’d have
to trust that these men coming are men of their word. They’re not.”

“Well
I’m for pullin’ out then,” said one man. “I don’t want to fight nobody.”

“You
won’t get very far,” the Rider said.

“I’ll
take my chances,” he answered, and walked off into the night.

A
few others began to back away muttering and turned to follow.

“There’s
somethin’ else to think about,” the Colonel said loudly.
“Cashion’s
widow Marina and her boy.
I ain’t for leavin’ no woman and no baby boy
to the mercy of a bunch of killers.”

Some
of the shadow men slowed and rubbed the backs of their necks, though a few kept
walking. Through the open doorway, the woman could be seen leaning over
Triburcio, her boy dozing in her skirted lap.

“Mexican
or no,” the Colonel reiterated in a louder voice that quelled the remaining
excuses.

“I’m
staying,” Gersh announced in his deep voice. He stood beside the Rider.

Out
of the dark stepped Hashknife, rubbing his chin.

“Well
hell. You’re my bread and butter, Gersh. Guess I got no choice.”

A
spark of fire struck in the dark among the men, the light glancing for a moment
off a pair of square spectacle lenses. It was a slight, balding little man with
wiry reddish hair and a toothbrush mustache lighting a ridiculous calabash
pipe. He had the look of a professor, but his cream colored greatcoat, matching
topper and pants cheapened his mystique, making him seem more like a carnival
huckster.

“I’ll
stay,” he said in a high, tiny voice. “I’m not much with a gun, but I imagine
it’s safer here, and I can lend a hand however I can.”

“This
is the doctor,” the Colonel said. “He came in this morning from Elmira, goin’
to hang his shingle in Tucson. Sheldon was it?”

“Sheardown,”
said the doctor, extending his hand to the Rider.
“Amos Sheardown.”

“Rider,”
said the Rider, taking the doctor’s light, soft hand. It was useless he knew,
to keep withholding his true name. The only ones the practice protected him
from already knew it. Old habits died hard, though.

“I’ve
got to say,” said Sheardown, “You’ve some unorthodox notions about medicine,
but I can’t deny the results. Where’d you learn that anyhow?”

“Just
something from one of my teachers,” he smiled.

“Ah!
You’re an educated man? That’s a rare thing in this country. What’s your field?”

“Theology,”
said the Rider.

“Ah,”
said Sheardown, visibly souring.

“Hell,
I guess I’ll stay,” the red head in the duck pants said reluctantly. “Bill
Owen. I run freight. I can’t shoot worth a damn either, though.”

The
man in the sack coat turned from the light, but the red head grabbed his arm.

“You
ain’t leavin,’ are you,
Jiminy
?”

The
man paused, took off his hat, and put it back on. As if the sound of his own
name being spoken had obligated him, he turned back.

“Nah,
I guess not.”

“He’s
Jiminy Baines,” said Bill. “He once killed an Apache with a scattergun.”

“I
don’t know if I killed him,” Baines added hastily.

“Well,
how many’s that make?” the Colonel asked.

“Not
countin’ Trib and that man Wilkes what busted his arm gettin’ throwed against
the bar by the Chinaman, they’s eight of us now, Colonel,” said Purdee.

“Well,
there ain’t a really defensible structure here,” the Colonel said, looking over
the stone huts and tumbledown picket shacks with disdain.

“There’s
a cuesta about a half a mile out to the northeast,” said Bill.
“Lotsa boulders and suchlike.”

“Yeah, but no water,” the Colonel said, turning in place and
sucking on his teeth.
“Bullets’ll fly through that saloon like bees
through an open window. Still, we’ll be able to see anybody comin’ for a long
way off with all that empty land, and the structures’ll force them to get
close. We could arrange the wagons, make some cover…I’d say put ‘em right there
around the tanks, so we got water. We could hold off for a long time if we have
to.”

“We
can help with that,” said Gersh, though Hash cringed visibly.

“You
two are freighters,” said the Rider to Bill and Baines. “What are you hauling?”

“Nothin’
useful,” said Bill doubtfully. “I’m carryin’ clothes mostly, hats, pants, coats,
bolts of fabric, that kinda thing.”

“Halite,”
said Baines.
“Six barrels full.”

“That
might be useful,” said the Rider.

“How?”
said Dr. Sheardown.

“Do
any of you men have shotguns?”

Bill,
Wilkes, Baines, and Purdee all did.

“I
believe Cashion kept one behind the bar too,” Baines offered.

“Doctor,
take a man and gather up all the shotgun shells you can find. Open them up,
empty half the buckshot, and replace it with rock salt. You can reseal the
shells with candle wax.”

Purdee
slid a bandolier of shells off of his shoulder and passed it to Sheardown, and
Bill took a sack of ammo from his coat pocket and handed it over.

“I
can show you how to do that, Doc,” Baines said. He went off toward the saloon
to fetch Cashion’s weapon. Dr. Sheardown followed.

“They’re
gonna be shootin’ real bullets,” said the Colonel, “and you wanna give ‘em a
rash?”

“You
saw what salt did to the poison they exuded,” the Rider said. “That stuff runs
through their veins instead of blood. Salt’s what killed the two in the
saloon.”

“Salt?”

“Just
plain salt in a hollow core bullet,” he said. “The only other way I know of to
kill them is silver.
Salt’s more affordable.”

“It
is at that,” said the Colonel, shaking his head. “Where do you think we should
put the lady and her boy?”

The
Rider looked around. A high wind looked like it would blow down most of the
structures.

“I
would say put them in one of the stone huts. Put the wounded in there with her.
That man Wilkes can still hold a shotgun with a broken arm.”

“That’s
what I was thinking. You were in the war?”

The
Rider stiffened. Sometimes hard feelings bubbled up when men talked of the war.
It wasn’t like a foreign war where you never had to see the enemy again. These
days you shared a coach with him, roomed with him.

“Yes….,”
he ventured.

“I
could tell by your bearing. I was with the Fifth Minnesota since the Sioux
Uprising at Redwood Ferry.”

“Second
Colorado,” the Rider admitted. He still didn’t care to talk about the war.

“Cavalry?”

“That’s
right.”

“Well!
Here’s your mule!” the Colonel laughed, and struck him on the arm soundly.
Thankfully it was the unhurt arm, but it was still hard enough to cause him to
suck in his breath.

The
Rider found himself grinning.

“Let’s
get to work,” he said, rubbing feeling back in his arm.

They
labored through the rest of the night, hitching the freighters’ wagons, drawing
them in a rude semicircle around the tanks, unhitching them. They emptied the
crates and barrels and built breastworks, Gersh working at a phenomenal pace,
hoisting hundred pound barrels two at a time and springing back for more. In
the midst of this Baines and Sheardown returned with their reconstituted
shotgun ammunition, and Wilkes was given back his weapon and told to watch over
the delirious Trib and the woman Marina and her child.

Purdee
came back from that task.

“How’s
Trib?” the Colonel asked.

“Still
out his head,” Purdee replied, hunkering down beside the wheel of the wagon and
tearing a piece of tasajo apart with his teeth.

They heard thunder boom then.

“It
figures,” Baines remarked. “Sound like we won’t need the water after all,
Colonel.”

The
sky was lightening in the east, and all was blue. The Rider saw no clouds.

Nevertheless,
soon rain burst down on them, pattering on the wagons and on the ground all
around. It was a strange precipitation, though. It was over in a few seconds.
Just a sparse desert shower, apparently.

“What
the hell?” said
Hash.
“Look at the Doc’s coat.”

They
did. In the predawn light Sheardown’s apparel seemed phosphorous, like a patch
of snow. It was spotted and stained now, as if he’d slid down a muddy hill.

Sheardown
peered at it, and flicked something off his shoulder. It landed at Hash’s feet,
and he stooped and picked it up, holding it against the sky.

It
was a half torn human ear.

Hash
flung it down.

There
were odd scraps and muddy bits of meat littering the ground all around them.
Baines lit a match and held it near Sheardown’s greatcoat, dispelling the
neutral blue and flooding the stains with color.
The color
red.

The
men were too stunned to sort their thoughts. There was another boom of thunder,
and again the grisly precipitation.

Gersh
took off his hat and shook blood and viscera from where it had pooled in the
gutter of his brim. His face was drawn and his eyes wide and terrified. He
gripped the Rider, and his thick voice was scared.

“What
is it?”

The
Rider wiped blood from the back of his hand and looked to the Colonel, who was
standing and surveying the horizon. Bill was mumbling excitedly, brushing at
his clothes. Baines told him to hush up.

The
Colonel produced a pair of field glasses from his coat and held them up,
passing them over the horizon.

There
was another sounding of thunder, and the Colonel’s head snapped to the right.
He leaned in, looking.

Dr.
Sheardown unclasped his great coat and drew it up over his head as the rain of
blood and meat came once more, spattering them further with gore.

Bill’s
muttering turned to whimpering, and he crawled under the wagon and put his
hands over his head.

“Great
God,” said the Colonel. “That ain’t thunder.”

The
Rider waited for the pelting to diminish, and then rose, dripping black blood,
and stood beside the Colonel.

“What
is it?” Gersh demanded again.

“They’ve
got artillery,” the Colonel murmured, and passed the field glasses to the
Rider.
“On the hogback.
Look.”

The
Rider put the wet lenses to his eyes and peered through the blue at the jagged
ridge to the northeast. Sky lit in the blue gloaming, he saw the outline of a
group of riders. Two on
horseback,
and two dismounted.
The two on the ground were struggling with something, and as the Rider focused,
there was a muted flash, another boom, and a puff of smoke from the ridge. Then
he saw the muzzle of what looked like a twelve pound field gun. Something
slumped off the cannon, and then it was time to duck again as bloody material
rained down on them.