Inside she was amazed at the complexity and size of the Harmony facility. There were teaching facilities, barracks, an armory, a kitchen, and a large common area the boys there called ‘The Plaza’. During the day, when the children were not in school or in training, they were permitted to explore around the caliche pit while militia and training guards watched out for any individuals or groups that might be approaching. A simple signal from a guard would send everyone, with military precision, scrambling back into the facility. The students and the instructors had been very carefully and expertly trained in the defense of the complex.
At any given time, Timothy informed her, there were up to 100 students at Harmony, which was the largest of the militia training facilities. Regular supplies and materials, usually donated by participating Vallenses, or purchased, bartered, or traded with other traveling traders, were brought in militia caravans to the complex.
All of the students at Harmony, both militia and those who were assigned for adoption, received an education while they were there. She knew now why all of the militia men seemed to be so well-spoken and intelligent. Timothy told her that they were expected to read and write well and to be familiar with the basics of different areas of philosophy and economics. They were also well versed in many of the classics of literature, which is why so many of the militia men were able to quote from those classics, and why they argued and debated esoteric points of Shakespeare and Tolstoy, often even while they were actively training.
Ruth was assigned to a room, and Peloncio was led off by an eager eleven year old boy who promised to feed, water, and comb the horse out for her.
There were no beds in the rooms at Harmony. Everyone slept on the floor. She was told that her room was actually extraordinary, in that it included a blanket and a homemade pillow. This room was only for guests and children slated for adoption, she was told. Militia trainees were expected to sleep on the ground, with only their coats and clothing for any added comfort. Most often they slept outside, and sometimes they trained by sleeping on the sides of the cliffs, or even on horses. She was glad to have a blanket and a pillow, and upon lying down, she was deeply asleep in minutes.
When she awoke, she wandered around the complex until she found Timothy and the rest of the posse in the kitchen, gathered around a long wooden table and drinking some kind of herbal tea. She didn’t ask what it was when it was offered to her, but upon tasting it she decided that it was quite nice. She figured she’d probably rather not know what was in it.
“Glad to see you got some rest,” Timothy said, greeting her with a smile.
“Look,” Piggy said, good-naturedly, “it’s the old ball and chain.”
Ruth saw Tim scowl at Piggy and then punch him very hard in his upper arm.
“Ouch!” Piggy yelled, feigning great pain and emotional distress. “I will not be mauled and abused by the likes of you!”
“Quit being a jerk, then,” Tim replied, shaking his head.
“That’s it! I’m going to see if we can find a cook to scare us up some vittles… unless,” he looked at Ruth with sudden mock seriousness, “unless you are planning on non-violently dragging in a panther or a T-Rex or something?”
“I could see to it that there is Piggy on the menu, if you’d like to keep it up?”
“Oh, no ma’am! I’ll be good. Oink! Oink!” He pirouetted, before turning back to her and laughing, “Two legs good, four legs bad!”
The rest of the posse got up with Piggy, laughing at his antics. They all waved at Tim as they started out of the kitchen to see if they could locate the cook. As they were walking out, Ruth shouted to Marbus Claim to remain. He looked around, not understanding why, but obediently came back to the table.
“Marbus,” she said, “the Vallensian ordnung—these are the unwritten but inviolable rules we live by—does not allow for a woman… or a girl… and man to be alone with someone of the opposite sex who is not their spouse. I’d appreciate it if you would stay here and join us.”
“Sure,” Marbus answered. “I don’t get most of their jokes anyway. So I just maintain my right to remain silent.”
“Probably a good policy,” Timothy nodded, before turning to Ruth. “We’ve decided that it is most probable that your father has been taken to El Paso and not to New Rome. I’m sad to tell you that it is not likely that we’ll catch the men who took him before they make it to the city. We could ride hard and fast and try to catch them, but from here on in we are going to be increasingly out in the open in the badlands, and it wouldn’t be wise for us to try it. We might harm the horses, or ride into an ambush.
“So,” he said, sighing, “we’ve decided to keep on moving methodically towards El Paso, and when we get there we’ll try to figure out what to do.”
“I see,” she said.
“The militia has at least one spy in the castle at El Paso. We’re hoping that when we get there, we’ll be able to locate him and plan a rescue.”
“Ok,” she said resignedly. “I know that you men know more about this than I do. I’m in it for the long haul, and I know that you all want my father back safely as well. So, count me in. Just… please make sure to keep me informed on what is going on. If something changes, or… if you receive bad news… I do want to know about it.”
“It’s a deal.”
Later that afternoon, after a delicious meal of heavy acorn bread, lentil soup, and boiled potatoes, the posse gathered together in front of the entrance as their horses were led out to them by the boys of Harmony. As they prepared and checked their saddles and equipment, they heard the distinctive call of a militiaman approaching. They were all a bit shocked to see The Mountain ride up and dismount.
Rollo nodded at the group as he gave instructions to the boys to swap out horses for him. After he had arranged for a fresh horse, he approached the group.
“Phillip sent me to join up with you,” he said, with a sideways look at Ruth. “I have an urgent message to deliver to her father when we find him.”
Chapter 21 - Jonathan
Traveling across the badlands in the summer on horseback is a rough and difficult journey even if you are practiced, prepared, and intelligent. Trying to do so while stupid is a recipe for disaster. Jonathan was trying not to be uncharitable—even in his thoughts—but after his captors had killed their second horse, he was forced to conclude that stupidity may not be a sin per se, but it sure can be costly.
After covering almost 100 miles on the first full day after his capture, with temperatures nearing the century mark, his kidnappers had tried to duplicate the feat on the second day but had been forced to slow way down after the sudden death of the second horse. His captors had to be thinking that the militia would be hot on their trail, and they needed to get to El Paso as soon as possible in order to avoid being captured.
What they did not know, and probably could not even fathom, was that the militia posse—which was undoubtedly following them—wouldn’t be willing to kill their own horses and strand themselves in the Chihuahuan Desert just to make haste. Instead, they would be tracking their quarry slowly and steadily—waiting for the Aztlanis to make a mistake. His trio of captors had made nothing but mistakes, and it was inevitable that there would be more errors in their future. His job would be to exacerbate those errors.
The initial operation of kidnapping him had been fairly well thought out, and it had gone off without a hitch. The three Aztlani spies, dressed as straggling Vallensian refugees recently arrived from the south, had called to him from the side of the road. When he approached them, one of the men grabbed his horse by the reins. The militia guards—Morell, and the young man they called Raymond—obviously believing that the three men speaking to Jonathan were Vallenses who knew him, rode over to see what was going on. That was when the Aztlani soldier named Leo suddenly ran Morell through with a sword that he had hidden under his cloak. Raymond had barely enough time to register what was happening, and to begin to react, when Leo spun around and caught him acr
oss the hip and thigh with a massive swing of the heavy sword. Raymond had escaped, but Jonathan knew that the boy was hurt badly. He hoped that God had spared the young man’s life, but the wound looked very, very bad to him.
The kidnappers, he had learned, were Aztlani soldiers dressed in Vallensian garb that they had stolen during raids against Vallensian farms on the frontier. Leo, the leader of the group, was a rough and rude young man who evidently lacked both religion and normal human affections—including any respect for human life.
Leo had informed him that they had many spies among the Vallenses who were heading north, and if he didn’t come with them peaceably, the spies were instructed to kill Vallensian refugees each day until he did so. Jonathan was certain that the spies would kill the Vallenses if they had the opportunity to do so anyway, but he had agreed to go peaceably for two reasons: first, because he had no alternative, and he had no intention of using force to try to free himself; second, because by keeping at least these three men busy guarding him, he hoped that at least a few of his people might be spared.
His main objectives over the last two days since the kidnapping were a bit contradictory, as he had been trying to slow the party down, while simultaneously encouraging them in whatever bad ideas their leader would concoct. Eventually he had decided that the second object—encouraging stupid decisions—would accomplish the first; and that had been exactly what had transpired. Leo’s drive to escape capture and get to El Paso in some kind of record time had resulted in the death of two of the horses. Now, with the other two mounts nearly lame and suffering dehydration, with hundreds of miles still to go, their escape had slowed to a crawl. In the last 24 hours, it had become questionable whether they were even going to make it to El Paso at all.
Somewhere around his son David’s age of 25 years, Leo was an uneducated and ill-bred know-it-all, whose ignorance was in direct proportion to his ego. He was quite tall, sallow skinned, with the look of a viper in his thin features and sharp cheekbones. His demeanor and carriage were offensive, even when he said nothing, and he treated his cohorts as something significantly less than subordinates. Any suggestion they made was immediately rejected regardless of merit, unless he later decided to introduce the same idea as his own in order to adopt it.
Troy was the silent one of the bunch, a young man in his late teens, tall, broad, and muscular. He obviously did not like Leo, and seemed to take umbrage at the constant barrage of insults coming forth from the mouth of the leader. The young man had offered some solid counsel to Leo at the outset—that they didn’t need to rush, and that they would make better time overall if they spared the horses and took a more circuitous route. For some reason this wise advice had offended Leo to no end, and from that point on he had not spared Troy a tongue lashing if the boy dared speak above a whisper. Jonathan had curried favor with the young man, primarily by offering looks of understanding and commiseration whenever Leo would unleash an un-prompted attack against him. When they stopped for lunch on the second day, Leo had denied Troy any food in order to better feed his captive. Back on the trail, Jonathan had secretly given half of his bread to the young man, who seemed very thankful.
Atticus was the other Aztlani soldier, and he seemed to be the kind of guy who avoided conflict as much as possible by sucking up to Leo whenever he could, while simultaneously trying to be friends with Troy. He even pretended to be friendly to Jonathan when Leo wasn’t watching. The only one of the three who seemed to be intelligent and thoughtful was Troy, so Jonathan had decided to focus his attentions and efforts on the youngest man of the bunch.
He had his hands full with a long ‘to-do’ list as they traveled. His first coup had been to side with Leo when the leader had commanded that they take the straightest route possible, rather than the longer route down south to what used to be I-10, or the northern route that passed through Midland and Odessa, where the trail met up with the old I-20 corridor. The area between the two old Interstate corridors was known as ‘the badlands’, and was purely militia territory. Jonathan figured his odds of being rescued were better if he tried to keep the group in the badlands.
The straight route through the badlands was extremely rugged and difficult, and Jonathan knew the area very well. It was also a trail almost solely used by the militia, and because of that, Aztlani traders and scouts would have never even considered going that way. The hot summer sun, the lack of water, and rough riding had made things much harder on the group, and especially on the horses.
By the middle of the second day, they were all on foot in order to save the remaining horses, so Jonathan diligently applied himself to leaving ‘signs’ in order to make tracking the group easier on the posse. He would absent-mindedly kick over rocks and stumble into yucca plants, breaking the thin spines over onto the ground. As they passed low-hanging limbs—when there were trees around, which wasn’t often—he would break off twigs with green leaves on them and leave them on the trail behind them. Leo was too stupid to notice, and if Atticus ever noticed he didn’t register it. Once, after flipping over a partially rotted branch with his foot, exposing the darker and bug eaten underside, Jonathan thought he saw the faintest of smiles touch the corner of Troy’s mouth, but he couldn’t be sure.
In addition to trying to leave behind easily noticeable markers, he also tried to keep firing a constant litany of questions, comments, and advice to Leo in order to keep him talking, arguing, and ranting, instead of thinking and planning. Leo seemed to like the attention, and he took every question or comment as an opportunity to speak about himself and his abilities.
As the shadows grew long towards the end of the second day, they were somewhere near where the town of Big Lake, Texas used to be. Jonathan had convinced Leo that there would be water in the ‘Big Lake’, and had used an old Big Lake, Texas road sign to assure Leo that it had to be so. What Leo did not know, is what Big Lake had always been famous for. The name ‘Big Lake’ was a joke, because the lake there was famous for being dry most of the time, especially in the summer. Since this had not been a very wet year, and there had also not been any recent heavy rains, there was nearly a zero probability that there would be water there. Leo didn’t find that out until they came upon the lake and found wild cattle grazing on buffalo grass in the middle of the dry ‘lake’.
Leo had gone on a tear after that one, and Jonathan was convinced for a few moments that he might take a beating for it, but Leo just vented his anger at him verbally, also cursing at the sky and any handy rocks that were around, before turning his wrath on his compatriots for not knowing a better route. Jonathan was both shocked and amused at the things that came out of the Aztlani’s mouth, most of which he would never be able to repeat.
“I assure you,” Jonathan said with a calming voice, “the last time I was here there was water in this lake.” That, of course, was not a lie. Jonathan had grown up in West Texas, and knew that the lake rarely held water, except during the rainy season, and only then if the year had been particularly wet. The last time he had seen the lake there were about four inches of water in it, and the grass could still be seen above the water line.
After that, frustrated and angry, Leo had suggested that they make camp in some crumbling structures near the old town, and Jonathan had encouraged that idea too, hoping to have some down-time to rest and think and plan. It seemed to be Leo’s plan to travel while it was hottest, and rest when it was cool, the opposite of what the militia posse would be doing. Jonathan just had to shake his head at that kind of reasoning.
They found a dilapidated old roadside motel just outside of town, probably built in the 1940s, and Leo chose it as their campsite. There was scarcely any roof left on most of the buildings, and no doors or windows, but many of the walls at the Travel-On Motel were constructed with cinderblocks, and were still standing.
After unloading their gear, and unsaddling the horses, Leo announced that he was going to hike around and look for water. He assured the two other men confidently that if there w
as water around, he would find it.
Jonathan knew several locations in the area where there was a very high likelihood that water could be found, but, even though he was thirsty and starting to suffer headaches himself, he didn’t say a word. After an hour, Leo returned, smiling arrogantly and holding the crumbling remains of an old, orange Home Depot bucket, in which were a couple of inches of stagnant and rusty rainwater, along with what had once been about 20 or 30 nails and screws. Leo bragged about his find, but didn’t dare drink any of the putrid water himself. Instead, he poured it into an old aluminum pan found in one of the buildings, and let the horses drink what they could.
As Leo went on to regale his partners with the story of his heroism in diligently searching out and finding water—as well as saving the horses—Jonathan announced that he needed to relieve himself, and stepped backwards out of the abandoned shell of a building. Looking around, he almost laughed out loud when he saw what used to be the motel swimming pool. There were several hundred gallons of nasty water in the pool—but it was wet, and even stagnant water can be purified with fire and/or filtration, if one had the know-how and intelligence to do it.
His captors didn’t seem to care to watch him, since there was really no place to run or hide, so he was not surprised that none of the three amigos followed him as he stepped behind a wall that ran along and beside the old swimming pool.
As he walked he examined the area, mentally noting the abundance of survival materials and supplies that could be used in an emergency situation. There were numerous edible plants in the area, some growing up through cracks in the old concrete walks. He paused to pick and eat some succulent purslane leaves—which would provide him with both water and nutrients.
The Last Pilgrims Page 23