As the darkness thickened, the lights from the hotel lanterns spilled out through the doorways and windows bathing the porch. As the whores and their flesh crawlers sailed about the porch, the light spilled over the revelers, creating a kaleidoscope effect. The angles of light traced the shadows of their figures into elongated grotesque outlines, the shades of each indistinguishable from the other.
On and on they danced in a minuet around the porch, moving to each, ebbing, flowing, spinning, their shadows clattering in waves upon the tides of light. The night chill caught the boys as the wind changed, bringing the Crossing’s air down upon the city, and chased the boys to the warmth of the stable, but the revelers did not heed it and danced on. They crawled to the hayloft and slipped under their blankets with their heads resting on their saddle rolls.
They could hear the Hansons and Caleb and Wesley enter the barn and Jed say, “Let ’em sleep, Joe. I got this one. Abner’s next. It won’t be long and we’ll be moving.”
Seth and Toby pretended to sleep as the others grabbed space in the loft for their bedrolls. They would sleep for six hours before they were on the move again.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN:
THE ADMINISTRATOR
* * *
As the company bedded down, the colonel and Gabriel walked the slat bridges that floated above the muck of Tin City’s streets and reached the new government house still under construction. Three Cordoba mastiffs were chained near the entrance, their necks straining at the links and emitting low guttural growls at every living thing that passed. Gabriel kicked dirt at one close to the walk. The animal pulled not in pulses of effort but in one steady course, wrenching the leather of its tether. The dogs had no prominent canine teeth but jaws of endless, razor-sharp pyramids. The row of teeth neither shortened nor lengthened but like a shark’s measured back the same size to form snapping mouths the entire length of the snout.
Gabriel recalled twenty years ago watching a great brown bear take down a mule deer, breaking its spine with a single great swipe on the banks of a swift river in the northlands. The great bear dragged the massive bulk of the mule deer like a rag doll across a meadow toward its lair in the mountains when seven wolves came out of the tree line. The pack tramped along with their tails high and tongues dangling out the sides of their mouths. Gabriel had looked through his telescope and could see their yellow eyes laughing as they spun about the bear. The bear snapped and dashed at the wolves in great bursts of powerful speed, but the wolves danced around him in a merry-go-round of yapping. The alpha snapped at the snout and then spun away from the great bear’s swipes as the second of the pack snapped the ass. The bear emitted groans and slashed at the air with its mighty paw only to get nipped in the ear for its trouble from a third wolf. The players baited the bear for ten minutes as he hurled at them with mad abandon. The wolves rotated about with tails high and tongues dangling out the sides of their mouths. The soft pink of their tongues accentuated the white of the great canine tooth, which sat a king in their snouts. The bear tired of the game and lumbered off disappearing among the birch trees, the feast of mule deer left in the grass. The wild dogs howled and nuzzled each other as they smelled the blood of the kill and anticipated its warm taste.
Gabriel looked to the three mastiffs, who snapped viciously at each other when the chains kept them from reaching Gabriel and the colonel. Gabriel knew that these beasts would have hurled themselves at the bear. The satisfaction gained not from the feast of the mule deer but the simple impulse of sinking their razor teeth into the bear’s hide. With a swipe of the paw the bear would have snapped each of their spines in turn. He could see in his mind’s eye the three beasts dragging their useless rear legs after the bear, hoping to snap one last time as the bear paraded off with his kill, leaving them to die from hunger and thirst in the meadow; such was the peculiar nature of these black-faced beasts propagated by Spaniards to hunt down runaway slaves.
The new courthouse was being built by laborers from the east, and in the lamplight you could see their shadows moving huge blocks of stone to the base of immense scaffolds. The Asians were dressed in dark costumes and in the lamplight you could see them gauging Gabriel’s and Walker’s actions as they passed. The laborers draped the large trellis ropes across the stones and prepared them for the morning lifts that would raise the blocks skyward to the vast unfinished dome. Gabriel and Walker climbed the steps and entered the rotunda.
An officious-looking man approached and said curtly, “The match is out back, gentlemen.”
The colonel ignored his comment. “I’m Colonel Walker and this is Gabriel McCallum from North County. We need to see the administrator.”
The clerk sized them up and said, “If you could, wait here while I check to see if the administrator is available.” He spun and climbed steps only to return in a few moments, saying “Colonel, please follow me.”
The clerk led them to a great marble room containing little furniture. At the far end beneath a large stained-glass window etched with Moses holding the tablets sat a dimly lit face with a great shock of white hair, his mustache and short pointed beard adorned with the same whiteness. He was seated at a small desk scratching at paper with an old-style quill. As the colonel and Gabriel entered, the officious man said, “Mr. Lutus, the colonel, sir,” and departed with brisk steps between two of the marble pillars that held the roof on the east side of the room where he vanished, the door of his exit invisible in the shadows that swallowed him. Out the great window, they could see the lights of torches in the rear courtyard and the heated sounds of a sporting event beyond.
Gabriel and the colonel strode the length of the great marble room and reached the desk.
The colonel said, “I was on good terms with Jake Braxton—” He froze mid-sentence when he recognized Pierce Briggins’s features in the administrator’s bearded face. The colonel swallowed to regain his composure. “I apologize, Mr. Lutus, but you look like someone I knew a long time ago.”
“The ancients believed that each of us had a twin in this world,” Lutus said. “What brings the ranchers that supply us with such good horse stock to the city?”
The colonel was still mesmerized and stunned by the resemblance, so Gabriel broke in, “We need a passage through the Stone Tribe lands; we’re willing to pay what’s necessary.”
“The Stone Tribe land, why on earth would anyone go there, or beyond it?” Lutus asked.
“A renegade chief, calls himself the White Lion, raided North County. He’s running the head he stole through the valleys and we need safe passage to stop his war party before he reaches the lakes; we’ll pay whatever it costs,” Gabriel hastened to add.
“Tin City has thousands of renegades to the south that steal a third of business every year. The Stone Tribes are the only thing between me and them. The renegades fear the Stone Tribes or they used to. It’s mostly a spiritual fear now, the tribe is nearly gone. Tin City’s had an arrangement with the Stone Tribe that’s held for ten years. I don’t allow trespassers to cross the Ash, and they have license to kill anyone who ventures there without a commission from the city,” Lutus said.
Gabriel looked straight at Lutus and said, “I got kin taken by that raiding party. That chief put a cannon shot to my front door and killed everyone except two of my nieces. I need to get to that raiding party before he gets to the lake country, or I’ll never see those nieces again.”
“A cannon? The White Lion has a cannon? The contract was that the Germans would not give them field pieces.”
“Germans?” the colonel responded.
“To the south, there is a cadre of Germans that fought with the San Patricio, now outcasts from both lands. They are master craftsmen of weapons, including field pieces. I had an agreement with them that I would leave their gun-running alone as long as they didn’t forge field pieces for the tribes. It looks as if they’ve broken that agreement. How many men do you expect the Stone Tribe will allow to ride through? They won’t allow an army no matter wh
at I ask of them.” Lutus said it calmly, analytically.
The colonel said, “We’re ten; the footprint will be small.”
The administrator rose from his desk and moved to a table that rolled on wheels to his right and held his cordials. He poured himself a whiskey and put down two glasses in front of Walker and Gabriel and poured freely. Gabriel didn’t refuse but continued to stare at the administrator.
“Ten men? I understand your kin being taken, Mr. McCallum. I have also lost kin to the heathen, but so few men. The White Lion has risen from the ashes it seems. There were rumors he was dead, but I guess he was only waiting patiently, plotting this raid. He is the most powerful warlord to come out of the lake country, very cunning. I met him once under a parlay arranged by the missionary priest. The Lion speaks Latin, I think. He and the priest talked in a language I had never heard spoken. If he went north, then he must have ridden with a small army. How do you plan to stop him with ten men?”
Gabriel’s frustration flowed, and he spit out, “Mr. Lutus, we ain’t got time to build an army, and if ten can’t do it, then so be it. We’re burning hours, and we need your help. Are you going to give it?”
The administrator smiled. “Gabriel McCallum, your reputation is well known in the city; the rustlers in the saloons often complain about the challenges they face doing business in North County. I have no reason to place you on my enemies list, but I don’t want a grudge with the White Lion, either. But ten men against his killing horde, he can’t begrudge me that. I’ll secure your crossing in the morning; go to the papist mission, you can’t miss it, it’s ten miles south of the ferry landing. I’ll send a guide with you. I’ll give you a letter with the seal of the city you can give to the priest. If any man can obtain a safe passage through the Stone Tribe, it’s that crackpot.”
“Crackpot?” Gabriel asked.
“Excuse me. The priest holds himself out as some sort of mystic. There are rumors of dark arts, the occult, ritual sacrifices, that sort of thing is bandied about, perhaps nonsense.”
As the administrator scratched away with his quill, he said, “This is going to be the courtroom when it’s finished. It is time for this land to receive justice. The judge will sit here—where I sit. Take your drinks gentlemen; let’s watch the end of the match.”
The administrator rolled the paper into a scroll and dripped hot wax from a candle onto the roll. He sank his ring into the wax and, pressing it on the fold, sealed it. He handed the scroll to Gabriel, took up his whiskey, and asked the colonel and Gabriel to follow. They emerged into the torch-lit rear stone terrace that lay opposite the great room’s window adorned with Moses.
They walked the stone colonnade until they reached a vantage point that looked directly down on the large gathering around the empty pool of a half-finished fountain. The walls of stone were in place, but the floor was not yet finished, and it was awash with a black, soupy mud. Rows of rowdy men stood around its edges, some in the work clothes of laborers; some garbed as bounty hunters; most in the garish vested suits of the merchant class. All circled the pool looking down upon the two combatants thrashing in the mud. Barks of wager were flung among the crowd, the bookmakers crying out the combinations of odds on the first to die.
The two men were stripped to the waist and barefoot. The two covered in the dark mud circled each other like wary animals. The smaller man was bleeding from both nostrils. The mucous and blood mixed and ran down to his chin and dripped onto his chest. The smaller man’s torso was smeared with handprints, similar to those found adorning the walls and ceilings of the caves of lost peoples. The two men lunged at each other grappling like Greco-Roman wrestlers uttering no words but allowing grunts to communicate their intentions.
The administrator said, “The two are, eh, friends. A pair of outlaws, petty thieves really. They broke into the manor house of a merchant; contrary to most of his kind, he was well-liked. The merchant had a pistol, but the two wrestled it from him, and it fired, spreading the merchant’s heart out a hole in his back. The winner gets to join the Chinese chain gang and slave until the stone for this courthouse is finished, if he lives that long. The loser dies tonight in that mud. The railroad is coming. We have been an outpost out past civilization long enough. Justice is coming, gentlemen; this courthouse is the future. The rule of law is coming; you really can’t do business without it, but until the world reaches out with rail, this works. Take the ferry across at first light. I will tell the ferryman, he will guide you to the priest.”
In the pit, the large thief clutched his friend about the waist and raised him as if a child and the two toppled over in a great spatter that sprayed the black mud upon the crowd to the hoots and hollers of all surrounded, as if sharing the filth had bonded them to the blood contest in the arena. The crowd’s anticipation rose up in one great laughing cheer as the large man gained the advantage and drove his little friend’s face deep into the mud. His meaty hands clenched the small man’s neck until the color of his fingertips purpled with the blood of effort. The little man’s arms and legs flayed out in four directions, like a newborn babe when it’s placed on its stomach for the first time.
The large man cried out, “I’m sorry, Petey, oh, Petey, I’m so sorry,” which raised a ruckus of elation by the mud-splattered mob ringing the fountain.
The administrator said, “The priest may not help you. He is converting the southern tribes with some success and is partial to them. He detests the city, he detests me, but he still needs me. He’s building the Garden of Eden down there or the Tower of Babel, take your pick, but for now he still needs money, tools, and livestock, which I provide him and he keeps his renegade converts from disrupting commerce. Don’t trust him; he’s a liar. I want forty horses if you ever lay eyes on North County again, and I want the Germans to stop selling guns to the renegades. Do we have a deal?”
“Yes,” Gabriel said.
The colonel said, “Goodnight.”
The administrator said softly, “Goodbye, Johnny.”
Gabriel and the colonel crossed the mud flat bridges back to the stable.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN:
ACROSS THE ASH RUN RIVER
* * *
As the sun simmered above the rim of the horizon, the North County riders filed out of the stable and began shedding their stiffness as they moved to the river. It was the first time Seth and Toby beheld a city rising to the day. The city was a warren of the wood-framed housing that lined crooked and twisted streets. The morning drove the laborers out from the maze laid by necessity and not design. The wood could not contain the multitudes of miners and they came forth from canvas lean-to tents that stretched from the walls of the shacks over the mud alleyways.
Toby watched as the canvas covering a single cart in the street was yanked clear to lay bare a dozen men asleep like kinked spoons in a drawer. Strange tongues meshed in a guttural dissonance. The harshest were the thick brogues that excoriated toilers to “Get a move on!” from the saloon’s front porch. The house breakfast special was two boiled eggs and a stein of beer. It slaked the dust that still lay in the catch of their throats earned the day before in the mines. The steel carafes topped with foam were emptying and the piss trench in the street filling.
The whores lined the second-floor porch still clad in their evening costumes of gaudy dress, mascara hiding the eyes of the bone-tired laborers of the night. The madam prodded them to wave, smile, and yell the names of regulars trying to sow the seed of lust in the minds of what she considered a herd of imbecile cattle. The seed would germinate in the darkness of the mine all day and bloom as a flower when the wretched passed from the depths into the night to waste the wages earned through hours of toil with the pick on a moment’s time with flesh. The workers coagulated onto the broad avenue that stretched below the skeleton of the rising town hall’s new dome. The miasma flowed toward the holes in the mountains that brought forth the silver that fed the city.
Peddlers bobbed on the shores of the street hawking s
teaming meat pies and great shakers of coffee. The hawkers brayed the fabulousness of their ingredients and tried to captivate the mob by donning garish outfits.
Jed’s mouthful grunt roused Toby from his gawking and he saw in Jed’s extended hand two great doughy rolls smothered in greasy fat; a second grunt conveyed the need to pass one to Seth. Jed passed back again thick strips of meat from a horned cow slain less than an hour ago. The flesh was hot and tough, bubbling warm with the same grease that had flavored the rolls.
The laborers choked the roadway but the broad chest of the colonel’s horse separated the workers like a scythe. To any man that looked afoul upon the rudeness, the sight of the ten adorned with pistols and sundry killing tools stifled the old-world urge to raise vile oaths and generated only insolent stares instead. Hitched to Raif’s pommel, hung a score of scalps woven into a cord that showcased the life of each prior owner, not all the hair dark; remnants of a decade of slaughter. The laborers were violent men but acknowledged the fragility of life when it came into conflict with such a company.
Toby knew Gabriel would drop any who slowed the passage with a shot to the forehead, his horse not even breaking stride. He could feel the new intention as soon as they woke in the stable that morning. He saw it in the hard looks of the men he had known his life whole. Men who had bounced him on knees and taught him to shoot were leading him to the wastelands for a reckoning. Toby watched the great migration of laborers as they climbed up the cutbacks to the dark circles that marked the entrances to the burrows carved by man into the side of the mountain to pull out the soft white metal that shined like no other. The line, like a colony of zigzagging ants returning to the nest in service to the queen, dissipated into the darkness.
Seth asked Jed, “How long they stay in them holes?”
Angels of North County Page 21