“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 tw
o 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.
Bill was hysterical beneath his wagon, and he seemed to paw at the earth and shove his face into the hole he dug.
“What the hell are they shooting us with?” Hash yelled over the wet slapping sounds, turning his collar up and hunching his head down.
He looked through the glasses again, and saw the shadowy figures swabbing the cannon. A solitary figure walked along the ridge, booting at something. Then he saw three broken corpses go tumbling like straw dummies down the front of the hogback. They fell in pieces, the boulders finishing the job of dismemberment that the cannon had begun.
“It’s the men who didn’t stay. They’re strapping them over the mouth of the gun,” the Rider said, fighting a quiver in his voice. He had not seen anything like this, not even in the war. How many had left? He hadn’t counted the ones who walked away.
The gun boomed yet again, but this time there was no accompanying hail of gore. This time there came a shrill whistling overhead, and an earth shuddering impact. There was a flash of light from behind the saloon, followed by the terrible noise of animals screaming. The Rider’s heart sank. They had lobbed a shell into the midst of the animal pen. Smoke was rising from its location. Probably his onager was dead. He prayed it had been quick.
Gersh rose to his feet, but the Rider grabbed his sleeve.
“Stay down!” he hissed. “There’s nothing you can do.”
“Why would they do that? Kill the horses?” Baines stammered.
“They don’t want us going anywhere,” the Colonel said.
The wounded horses continued to scream for another twenty minutes. The noise was unearthly.
“They sound like people,” Gersh said.
The field gun exploded again, making them all jump. The whistle in the air, like a keen screaming they felt in their bones, made their joints lock up with anticipation. Then there was another massive thump and the horses cried out no more.
They heard a terrible moaning sound though, deep and resounding. It was joined by a heavy, shuffling rhythm.
Something came around the corner of the saloon, huge and ungainly, its hide shimmering. It was Cashion’s bull, and it was lowing again and again in a deep agony. As it stumbled closer, falling against the rickety saloon, making the whole structure sway, they saw its side was ripped open. Its ribs were exposed, white and shining, and its quivering organs were trembling in the spaces between. Its long ropy intestines had spilled out, and the bull was dragging them behind as they uncoiled, tripping on them as they wound around its foreleg like a dog with an unmanageable leash. Its face was badly burned, and it seemed to be blind. The smell of it was like barbeque and shit.
It came so close it brushed against the salt wagon, and then it began to bump its head against the boards again and again, as it if had latched onto something it understood even in this new, strange state, and was intent on solidifying its connection to it, as if that would bring an end to the pain, a return to its previous ideal condition.
Hash took out his colt and laid it across the wagon and shot it between the smoking, burned eyes. It slumped to its knees and fell over.
“Okay, all bets are off,” Baines said, some of Bill’s panic evident in his trembling. “We’ve got to go out there. Before it’s light and they can see us. We’ve got to get to that cannon and stop it. They got the only horses now. We can’t even leave here!”
“Calm down,” Purdee warned.
“They can see us,” the Rider said. He wasn’t sure, but it was probable that they could see clearly despite the dark. “How else could they have aimed for the horses?
“They’re right,” Hash said. “You’d never get to it before the sun came up anyhow.”
“What do we do then?” Baines nearly shouted. “Just sit here? They ain’t even tried to parley! They’re gonna see us here from the ridge once the sun’s up…”
“We got water. We can wait them out,” said the Colonel.
It was almost as if they had heard him. The cannon thundered again, and again there came the whistling. It was louder than before, and the Colonel and the Rider both craned their necks for an instant before breaking into action.
“Run!” they both screamed. “Scatter! Cover!”
The Colonel grabbed Purdee and the two men went tumbling over the lip of the tanks, and rolling away.
The Rider grabbed Baines, who had stooped under the wagon and was screaming for Bill to come on. Out of the corner of his eye the Rider saw Gersh and Hash running.
The screaming was so loud it seemed like raving in their ears. Then everything leapt in unison into the air—men, the wagons, the barrels, the very dust and all the human remains littering the ground.
The Rider and Baines went head over heels and crashed together near the doorway of one of the picket hovels in a heap. The Rider’s ears rang, and his whole body shook. The smell of powder was heavy in his nose, but he was unhurt. Baines was blinking at his side, hatless. The Rider followed his look as the intense alarm in his head gradually subsided and the stillness of the morning returned.
Bill’s wagon had been blown to pieces, and Bill was crushed beneath its wreckage. The salt wagon was flipped over and lying a full ten feet from where they’d parked it. Their makeshift breastworks were strewn about the settlement. A flying salt barrel had smashed one of the picket hovels flat. Another had burst and covered the ground in white.
The Rider heard the little boy crying from somewhere, and he could hear something else, a great gurgling, as of a bath draining.
He rose unsteadily and staggered back toward the tanks.
It was the point of impact. They had laid a shell right in the center of the pool, smashing the sandstone bowl beneath. The water was seeping back into the earth.
The Rider looked frantically about for some kind of container.
Hash was already at his side, two canteens dangling from his arms, ripping the stopper off one. The breed rushed down into the retreating pool and sank the canteen. The Colonel and Purdee appeared. Half of the Colonel’s face was bristling with splinters. So was Gersh’s entire back, which was exposed and blackened, his coat having been mostly shredded.
Another boom.
“Get back!” Purdee shouted, running again for cover as the high whistle started up again overhead.
The Colonel and the rest scattered, but Hash was stooping in the pool, still trying to gather the precious water.
“Hash!” Gersh bellowed.
The Rider restrained him as best he could. It took all his weight to drive him back from the broken pit.
The scream of the falling shell overwhelmed them as before, and there was a flash and an explosion that broke the earth.
Hash was simply gone.
They crawled into the picket hovel, and found Baines there with his shotgun. The big man curled up in a corner and sobbed like a boy.
The Rider cast one arm over his burned and bleeding shoulder and looked to Baines.
“Bill?” Baines asked hopefully.
The Rider shook his head.
There were six of them now, and they were separated. Sheardown was in the saloon. Purdee and the Colonel had taken refuge in one of the stone huts across from the decimated tanks.
“He was like my father,” Gersh said once, miserably.
He had sat up and was snuffling by the time the sunlight sifted through the pickets, making crosshatches of day and shadow on the sand floor.
Sheardown ducked in. He was blackened and covered in crusted gore, but unhurt.
“Anybody hurt here?”
“Look to the boy,” the Rider said.
Sheardown had his bag, and he knelt beside the young giant and began to dab at his seared skin.
“You’re alright,” he said, amazement in his voice. “I saw you when the first shell hit. It landed almost beside you. I figured you for the grinder, but you look like you leaned against a hot stove, is all.”
Gersh said nothing.
“They killed Bill,” Baines said after having been quiet for some time. “And not only that, they killed everybody that’s ever gonna come to Varruga Tanks. Every cattle outfit, every buckboard, every poor thirsty bastard who ever comes across the desert.”
“Maybe they can put up some signs along the trail,” Sheardown suggested.
“Who’s gonna do that?” Baines smirked. “We ain’t gonna get outta here.”
“Well, I guess we have to,” said the Rider.
“Bullshit. You said yourself they come to kill you, and they’ll kill all of us anyway. With that gun they can just blast this place to pieces one shack at a time. All we can do is sit here and die.”
“Rider!” came a voice, echoing across the stillness. It was Mazzamauriello. He was calling from afar.
“If you’re alive, come out!”
The Rider rose slowly, thoughtfully.
“They’ll blow you to bits!” Gersh warned, sitting up.
“If I don’t show myself they’ll just assume I’m dead and kill everyone else.”
“Let him go,” Sheardown said quietly. “It won’t make a difference.”
The Rider went out of the picket shack and out into the sun. It was getting hot, and he could smell the scraps of flesh on the ground. Flies were buzzing.
He clambered up onto the overturned salt wagon and turned toward the ridge, extending his arms. Maybe they would obliterate him with an artillery round, but he suspected they wouldn’t.
“I’m here!” he called.
“You did the right thing to stay and wait for us, Rider! Many more would have died had you led us on a chase!”
“I’m the only one left!” the Rider called. “Come and take me!”
“No no no,” called Mazzamauriello, amused. “You’re not alone yet! But you’re going to be the last one to die, Rider! I promise you!”
The Rider lowered his arms.
“Do you know Ketev Meriri, Rider?”
Ketev Meriri. The name meant ‘bitter destruction.’ It was a reference to Deuteronomy 32—“The wasting of hunger and the devouring of the fiery bolt, and bitter destruction; and the teeth of beasts will I send upon them, with the venom of crawling things of the dust.”
Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name Page 4