Wraiths of the Broken Land (20 page)

“He did.”

The woman pointed a blue finger at the pale palfrey. “You brung out Elizabeth.”

“Think you can ride her?”

“I can, but Yvette can’t sit hers.”

“I know it.”

Brent heard someone directly behind him, glanced over his shoulder and saw his father bear Yvette, who was enshrouded, into the azure world.

“Any adversaries?” inquired John Lawrence Plugford.

“None standing, approaching or throwing bullets,” replied Patch Up.

Brent brought Dolores to her horse, and she returned the nickel-plated revolver to his holster. He set her posterior upon the embroidered sidesaddle, and she righted herself.

“Gimme back the gun.”

The cowboy gave the gun to his sister. “You want a holster?”

“I’ll hold it.”

“Tie somethin’ to the handle, so if you drop it, it ain’t lost.”

“I may be a cancan girl with one foot, but I still got brains.”

Brent kissed Dolores’s hand and approached his brindled mustang.

John Lawrence Plugford carried his covered daughter toward the white stallion.

“J.L.” Patch Up patted the wagon bench. “Put Yvette up here with me.”

“I’ll hold her.”

“Laid out on the bench is better—she shouldn’t get tussled.”

“I’ll hold her so she don’t get tussled.” The patriarch would not relinquish his girl.

The dandy emerged from Catacumbas, gripping his stomach and wearing a beard of blue-black ichor.

“Can you ride your horse?” asked Brent.

The dandy glared at the cowboy and walked like a weary crone toward his deep blue mare. Four hundred and fifty dollars seemed like incredibly poor wages for whatever tortures he had endured, and Brent did not in any way begrudge the gentleman’s anger. Nobody had expected this rescue to become so dangerous or so complicated.

Stevie emerged from Catacumbas, cradling the fifty-pound mongrel in his arms. “I got the dog.”

“Put it in the wagon,” Brent said, “and get on your horse.”

Patch Up received the dog from Stevie and set it within the canopy, where it barked thrice. Brent mounted his brindled mustang. John Lawrence Plugford, holding Yvette to his chest, climbed onto his sturdy white stallion. Stevie mounted his spotted colt.

An explosion thundered within Catacumbas. The ground shook, and Brent felt tremors deep inside his chest.

“What’s happenin’?” asked Dolores.

“Long Clay’s sealin’ up the stairs, so we can get us a good lead.”

A second explosion shook the ziggurat ruins. The doorway exhaled a column of azure smoke, and Long Clay materialized, walking.

“Bust up their wagons,” John Lawrence Plugford boomed, “and slaughter their horses.”

Long Clay reached underneath his tabard, withdrew an oblong grenade, attached a rear taper and hurled the device into the air, toward the horses and stagecoaches that were situated on the east side of the edifice. A mare’s neck depressed the plunger, and the device exploded. The horse, nine of its neighbors and four stagecoaches were consumed by the white burst. Against the azure sky, blue limbs spun, blue gore rained and blue entrails twisted.

The remaining animals jerked upon their tethers, but were unable to break loose.

Brent pointed his pistol at the right foreleg of a colt and squeezed the trigger. The beast shrieked and collapsed to the plain. He aimed his gun at the limb of another creature and fired. The animal pitched forward and broke its neck. “Hell.”

Stevie fired his shotgun. Buckshot peppered the chests of several horses. They shrieked and bucked, but did not fall.

“Them pellets won’t put any down from this distance,” chastened Brent. “Use a rifle or a revolver.” The cowboy aimed at an animal leg and fired. A dark blue horse collapsed, rolled onto its back and kicked three hooves at the sky.

Stevie sheathed his shotgun, drew his revolver, aimed and shot a horse through the foreleg. It screeched and tumbled to the plain.

Dolores turned her horse away from the massacre.

Long Clay hurled a grenade into the air.

Brent cracked his gun in half, dumped spent rounds to the plain, filled the empty chambers with new bullets and shut his revolver, which clicked.

The plunger struck the roof of a stagecoach, and the grenade detonated. A bright explosion wiped the heads off of seven nearby horses and tore open the sides of five others. Eviscerated and decapitated animals staggered, and a mare with a dangling head trampled the neck of a fallen palfrey that shrieked like a human child.

Dolores pressed her palms to her ears.

Beneath her blanket, Yvette wept.

The dandy stared at the ground.

Brent surveyed the fog of blue dust that obscured the dead and dying animals. Beside an upended black stagecoach were two terrified horses, straining against and nibbling their lines. “Over there.” He pointed his revolver.

“I see ‘em,” said Stevie.

The brothers fired their guns, and the animals collapsed to the plain. Brent heard (or imagined) human shrieks amidst the bestial cacophony, and he wondered if nightmares of this gruesome scene would haunt his sleeping mind for the remainder of his life.

Long Clay mounted his black mare.

John Lawrence Plugford pointed north. “Go!”

Patch Up cracked his whip at the braced quartet, and wagon wheels turned. Brent, Stevie, Dolores and the dandy urged their steeds into a quick canter. John Lawrence Plugford, cradling Yvette and trailing her spotted palfrey, coaxed his mustang into action. Long Clay shadowed.

The Plugford crew departed Catacumbas.

As they did so, the hard stone that had been stuck in Brent’s guts for eight months shrank. Although his sisters were not yet safe, they were free and alive, breathing the open air of the great landscape.

Hooves rumbled, and the ruins shrank.

The crew rode north across the blue plain.

Dolores and the dandy rode in-between the flanking brothers, directly behind Patch Up’s rumbling wagon. John Lawrence Plugford and Long Clay followed from a distance of forty yards.

“Can we take off these goddamn masks?’ Stevie asked from the saddle of his spotted colt. “Mine’s drippin’ with sweat.”

“Not just yet,” replied Brent. (Long Clay had told them to wear their masks until they were well beyond the mountain range.)

“They must’ve figured out who we are anyway.”

“That ain’t the same as knowin’ what we look like.”

“I s’pose.”

All of Brent’s limbs burned, and his throat was raw from yelling. He sat up straight and felt a tight pain in his lower back—a strained or torn muscle. “Hell.” Wondering at the greater agonies that his twin sister endured, the cowboy looked east.

Dolores rode the pale palfrey, staring forward and clutching the nickel-plated revolver. Her right leg was nestled in the fixed horn of the sidesaddle, but her shorn leg, although pressed to the leaping horn, did not reach the stirrup and bounced freely against the horse’s side.

“Dolores.”

The woman glanced at her brother.

“You feel steady?”

“Enough to hold on. Where we goin’ to?”

Brent pointed at the distant mountains. “Deep Lakes descried a pass in the north part of the range.”

“Let’s get there.”

“We will.”

In front of the Plugfords, blue mountains of one hundred shades expanded.

Yvette’s dog clambered to the back of the wagon and barked. A mildewed shirt that was an ersatz patch came loose from the canopy and flew into the air. The specter flitted in-between the twins and twisted weirdly in the wind.

Brent heard something whistle past him. Upon the back of the wagon, a panel cracked and turned into splinters. The dog howled.

“Somebody’s shootin’ at—” Brent’s head jerked forward on his neck. His right goggle eye turned red. Warm fluid ran down the right side of his face and soaked his ear.

The cowboy gripped the neck of his rubber mask, tore it from his head and flung it to the ground. He pressed the heel of his right hand to the side of his head and felt sharp splinters that he knew were bits of his skull.

“Get low in the saddle!” yelled Brent.

Dolores looked at her brother and screamed.

“Get down low!” repeated the cowboy. “Right now!” He hunched forward.

Dolores leaned forward so that she was hidden behind her large saddlebag. “Brent,” she yelled, “your head!”

Stevie looked over and was stunned.

“Low in the saddle!” yelled the cowboy.

Stevie and the dandy pressed themselves flush against the backs of their horses. A bullet clanged upon the youngest Plugford’s angled tabard and whistled into the sky.

The cowboy clutched his grazed head and felt blood, skull bits, hair and loose skin. “Hell.” A bullet whistled past his shoulder and lanced the wagon canopy.

Brent swiveled in his saddle. Forty yards behind him, John Lawrence Plugford, astride his galloping white mustang, huddled protectively over his daughter. Twenty yards south of the patriarch, Long Clay withdrew a telescopic rifle from the vertical wooden case that was fastened to his black mare’s haunches.

A distant gunshot cracked. The bullet clanged upon John Lawrence Plugford’s tabard and caromed across the plain.

“Goddamn, goddamn!” exclaimed Stevie.

Brent glanced forward and saw that Patch Up had joined Yvette’s dog at the rear of the wagon, which was now driverless.

Huddled behind a crate of gear, the negro looked through his brass and ivory spyglass. “There’s an automobile!” he yelled. “They’ve got an automobile!”

Brent glanced past his horse’s flashing tail at the southern horizon, but could not discern the vehicle.

“Shoot it to hell, Long Clay!” Stevie advised from his spotted colt. “Bust it to pieces!”

A distant gunshot cracked. The dandy’s tan mare shrieked, leaped (as if hurdling a hedge) and impacted the plain. Jarred, the blonde man spewed darkness.

Long Clay prostrated himself across his black mare’s spine and aimed his telescopic rifle over the beast’s tail. He fired. The gunshot resounded within the vast bowl of mountains and became a tattoo of asynchronous echoes.

“You got someone!” Patch Up shouted from the rear of the driverless wagon.

Long Clay discharged the spent shell. Upon the southern horizon, a tiny black rectangle trailed dust and vibrated.

“Brent,” Dolores shouted, “you gotta do something ‘bout your head right now!”

The bleeding cowboy recalled his friend Isaac Isaacs, who had been swatted by a bear in South Carolina and afterwards staunched the severest lacerations with breadcrumbs. “Hell.” Brent plunged his left hand into his saddlebag, searched for the victuals sack, located it, opened its drawstrings, reached inside, made a fist and withdrew dry oats. Gritting his teeth, he uncovered the wound on his head and filled it with grain.

The world turned black.

Dolores screamed.

Brent regained consciousness and found that he was hugging the neck of his horse. A bullet clanged upon his tabard and caromed into the air.

“You okay?” asked Dolores.

“Yeah.” The cowboy turned his head and saw Long Clay, who was backwards and prone upon his horse, aiming his telescopic rifle at the distant pursuer. Presently, he fired.

“You got the driver in the shoulder!” shouted Patch Up. The dog barked jubilantly.

Suddenly, the vibrating black rectangle slid to the west and disappeared inside its own blue wake.

“We killed your dumb automob’le!” jeered Stevie. “Time to roast it up and put it in your uncle’s burrito!”

Through the telescopic sight, Long Clay monitored the veil of blue dust that obscured the vehicle, Catacumbas and the southern mountains.

“Keep apace!” ordered John Lawrence Plugford.

The blue plain scrolled underneath blurry blue hooves.

“Brent!” shouted Stevie.

“Yeah?”

“You got oats on your head!”

“I know.”

“You gonna be okay?”

“I’ll find out when we stop.” The cowboy’s extremities felt cold.

“They’re still coming,” warned Patch Up. “Unhappily!”

Brent looked south. Once again, the vibrating black rectangle sat at the vanguard of a large blue wake.

“Go for the tires,” said John Lawrence Plugford.

Long Clay fired.

“Got their fender!” shouted Patch Up.

A distant gunshot cracked. John Lawrence Plugford’s white stallion reared up and shrieked. The patriarch grabbed his saddle horn and hunched over his daughter. Upon its hind legs, the beast twisted and bucked.

Brent saw that the pursuers had a clear shot at his father. “Pa! Watch it they—”

A distant gunshot cracked. John Lawrence Plugford’s goggles turned red.

“No!” shouted Brent.

“Daddy!” cried Dolores.

“J.L.!” yelled Patch Up.

The agitated white horse returned its forelegs to the plain. John Lawrence Plugford collapsed onto his daughter, but remained in the saddle, gripping the horn.

Stevie shouted, “Goddamn, goddamn, goddamn!”

Brent felt empty.

“Keep riding north!” shouted Long Clay. “I’ll get them.” He turned himself forward.

Stevie pulled tack and said, “I’ll help—”

“Keep ridin’!” Brent yelled at his brother. “You can’t get shot too!” The cowboy felt as if he were witnessing the awful scene from a great distance, over the shoulder of an uninterested God. “We gotta make all this worth somethin’.”

Stevie yanked off his mask and threw it down. “Goddamn!” The colt’s left foreleg flung the empty rubber head into the air. “I’m goin’ to kill all them fellas that did this! All of them!”

“I hate this!” shouted Dolores. “I hate this!” She clasped the mane of her galloping palfrey and yelled, “Goddamn this mis’rable world! I hate all of it—every bit!”

“Keep low in the saddle!” the cowboy yelled at his siblings.

Dolores and Stevie lowered themselves, and Brent looked back.

Long Clay reached the white stallion and dismounted.

A distant gunshot cracked, and the bullet whistled overhead.

“Rotten bastards!” yelled Stevie. “Dumb Mex’cans!”

With his sharp black boots planted on solid ground, the gunfighter aimed his telescopic rifle at the vibrating black rectangle, squeezed the trigger, slid the bolt and fired a second shot.

“Got the driver in the neck!” shouted Patch Up.

The small black rectangle swerved and disappeared into a blue plume.

Long Clay slung his telescopic rifle onto his left shoulder and took Yvette from beneath the huddled body of John Lawrence Plugford. Skeletal fingers emerged from the blanket, clasped the patriarch’s huge right hand and let go.

The gunfighter set Yvette upon the ground, laid John Lawrence Plugford across the saddle, secured the body, took a line from the animal’s bridal, scooped up the woman, mounted his black steed and hastened forward.