“Tal vez nada,” the boy said, starting to turn away. Then he saw the little door of the psychomanteum. “Tal vez algo…”
The Rider and Kabede looked at each other. There was no other place Piishi could be.
As soon as the boy stooped and put his hand on the door handle, The Rider’s hand moved slowly toward the butt of his pistol, and Kabede touched the curved dagger on his belt.
From the doorway they both heard a deadly click, and saw that another of Mendez’s rurales was in the doorway, a Remington revolver cocked and aimed at them. This wasn’t one of the drunken Mexicans Faustus had dispersed with miracle water, wooden dolls, and scapulars. This one was sober as a parson and carried a hint of eagerness in his dark eyes. He wanted them to do something. He looked a little disappointed, that the sound of his pistol had warned them of his presence.
There was nothing they could do. The Rider’s only hope was that the ensuing confusion Piishi’s surprise attack caused would give them an eighth of a second to draw and kill the one in the door. They weren’t expecting a Chiricahua Apache in a medicine wagon. That was the only advantage they could claim.
The door swung open, and the boy paused, staring inside. Then he closed it again. He straightened, his entire composure slackened. He looked bored.
“No es una mierda aquí, jefe,” the boy announced.
The Mexican in the doorway nodded and stuffed his pistol back in his buscadero holster. He turned and left without a word. In a minute the boy was outside too, the whole vardo rising, springs squeaking as they departed.
The Rider and Kabede looked at each other again.
Where the hell was Piishi?
They went outside.
“Just a necessary precaution, señor,” Mendez was saying to Faustus as they stepped off the front porch.
Mendez’s eyes lit on them, stayed on Kabede, but he didn’t address them.
“My assistants,” Faustus explained. “Mister Rider, my brewer, and Mister Kabede.”
“Here I thought you said that stuff you gave my men was brewed in Tibet,” Mendez remarked. He looked at the Rider. “You don’t look like no Tibetan. I hope for your sake there’s no rattlesnake heads or strychnine in those bottles.”
“Just liquor and caramel,” the Rider said.
Mendez nodded and turned his attention to Kabede.
“What does he do?”
“He takes care of the camels,” Faustus said.
“Doesn’t he speak English?”
“Only Arabee.”
Kabede blinked as if he were only vaguely aware he was being discussed.
Mendez folded his arms, his expression dulling. He was tired of them now, and wanted to get back to whatever he had been about prior to their arrival.
“Well then. Just where are you all going?”
“We’re on a grand tour of your country, Corporal Mendez,” Faustus said, gripping his own lapels and drawing himself up impressively. “We intend to distribute our miraculous wares all the way down to Mexico City.”
“You might want to wait here a few days,” he said, dismissing his men with a wave of his hand. “The goddamned Apaches are in the mountains.”
“Apaches?” Faustus repeated. “Are we in danger?”
“You were in danger on the road,” he said, yawning and flicking the butt of his cigarette off into the night. “You’ll be safe enough here. You can camp in the plaza or find an inn, whichever.”
He turned and went off into the dark, big silver chihuahua spurs clinking on his boot heels.
“Till the rurales decide to get their money back,” Belden muttered. “We shouldn’t stay here.”
“We have no choice, Mister Belden,” Faustus said. “But we shall keep watch from now on.”
“Where’s Piishi?” the Rider hissed, gripping Faustus’ sleeve.
“What do you mean?” Belden asked.
Faustus shushed them and gestured for them to follow him into the vardo.
Once inside, he closed the door, got down on his knees, and rolled away the Turkish rug on the floor.
There was a trapdoor underneath, and he pulled it open, revealing the dirt beneath.
“Piishi is already on his way to Pa-Gotzin-Kay. He left us on the road.”
“What? On foot?” Belden exclaimed.
“He can cover more ground on foot than you can on horseback.”
“What if he just lit out? What if he got caught on the road?”
“No chance,” said Faustus, straightening and going to a trunk. He threw it open, knelt for a moment, and came up with a shoulder holster rig and a nickel plated Navy pistol. He took off his coat and slipped the rig on.
“I thought you weren’t supposed to interfere?” Kabede observed.
“Yeah, I expect there’s no greater way to interfere in a man’s life then killing him,” Belden said.
“I’m not killing anyone if I don’t have to,” Faustus said, putting his coat back on and kicking shut the lid of the trunk. “Just want to be sure no one interferes with us.”
The Rider broke out into an immediate sweat, for he knew what was coming.
Faustus must have seen him blanch, for he nodded.
“Yes, Rider. The time’s come. Are you ready?”
“How will I find him?” the Rider stammered.
Faustus went to one of the wall hutches and frowned at the empty drawer. He stepped nimbly over the fallen contents below, peered at them, and finally produced a small rawhide necklace bearing a bead of dark glass on the end. He held it out to the Rider.
“Wear this. Piishi bears a matching one. It will guide you directly to him. He’s expecting you.”
The Rider took the necklace and slowly slid it over his head as Faustus went to the back of the wagon and opened the psychomanteum door.
The Rider watched the opening as Faustus turned and began sifting through the mess for something else. The opening seemed like the mouth of a tomb to him. A tiny grave waiting to swallow him whole. He put the necklace on and leaned against the wall.
Belden touched his arm.
“You alright?”
“You don’t have to do this,” Kabede said.
“Yes he does!” snapped Faustus, producing a candle and a box of matches. “There’s no other way. We can’t get out of town with out drawing a tail of rurales and the Apaches would never let us into the mountains.”
The Rider nodded, swallowing, though his mouth and throat were completely dry.
“He’s right.”
The Rider went to stand before the psychomanteum, and Faustus pressed the candle and matchbox into his hands.
“Be strong,” Faustus urged. “We’ll keep watch over your body.”
That was fine, but the Rider was worried he wouldn’t even be able to summon the will to leave his body in that confined space.
He hunkered down on his heels and stared for an inordinately long time into the little space.
“Rider,” Faustus prompted after a bit.
The Rider nodded, took off his hat, and crawled inside. His head brushed the ceiling, shoulders too, and his Volcanic clunked as he shifted, turned and sat cross legged facing the door.
He had to use both hands to set the candle in the silver holder, and when he drew out the match, it shook violently in his hand.
He was pouring sweat. Why was he afraid? This was ridiculous. The little room wouldn’t run out of air, and his friends were outside if something should happen.
He looked out through the silvery dark frame of the aperture at the faces of Faustus, Kabede, and Belden.
“Concentrate,” Faustus said. “The charm will take you to Piishi.”
The Rider nodded.
Without ceremony, Faustus swung the door shut. It clanked loudly in the closeness as it closed, and the Rider’s fingers were nearly caught in it as he uncontrollably lunged out to try and stop it. He heard the click as Faustus turned the handle, shutting him in the box.
It was a box. That was what he ke
pt thinking. His breathing came in spastic huffs, and he pressed his palms against the walls on either side of him. They were cool. How could they be cool when it was so hot in here?
He squinted at the shadows moving in the darkness. He knew they were his reflection, but they sent a terror in him. He remembered suddenly the sensation of Lilith’s little clawing children swarming over him, biting, scratching. The fluttering of wings in his face, the little bodies weighing him down with their collective weight, smothering him.
So that was where this fear had come from! Realizing that didn’t lessen its effect any. His breath burned in his chest. Even his own body seemed too constricting on his lungs, retreating from the dark cool walls that brushed his elbows and knees, squeezing his pounding heart. Had the walls of the box touched his joints before? Was the room getting smaller? Was this some hideous magical trap he had unwittingly crawled into?
It was so dark and close; like a pocket.
He put one hand to the ceiling and one to the floor and pushed. They were coming together to crush him-he knew it! Then he felt the match he’d dropped under his hand. He drew it into his fingers. He needed light. He had to have light.
He ran the matchpoint along the heel of his boot. Nothing. Nothing because there wasn’t enough air left to feed even a match flame.
No! He tried again. This time the little match flared to life.
And the room opened into eternity. The walls, the ceiling, the floor, they all retreated from him as though from the light. From harrowing claustrophobia, he was flung suddenly into a dizzying vertigo. He felt as if he would tumble forever, his panicked flailing multiplied an infinite number of times by the reflections all around, and by the innumerable reflections of reflections.
Then he slumped back against the wall, and realized it was just an illusion.
But his fear was gone. That had been an illusion too.
He set the wavering light against the wick of the candle before him and the flickering warm light flooded the psychomanteum.
He stared at himself as he never had before, observed himself from angles he had never been able to. He saw the crown of his own head, which he had seen many times before when emerging from his body, but he also saw beneath his own bearded chin, up into his nostrils, and behind his ears, with a clarity he had never experienced before. It was surreal.
His breathing, his heartbeat slowed. He was ready.
He murmured his prayers, focused on the light of the millions of candles, and slipped out of his body, sinking through the mercurial floor.
Finding himself outside and beneath the vardo, he crawled out from under it, into the night.
The bead on the necklace which Faustus had given him, or rather, its etheric counterpart, leapt from his chest like a magnet and stood straight out, anchored to him only by the string. He felt an insistent pull.
He took out the shamanic horse fetish-the one Misquamacus himself had given him so long ago. Strange that the gift would find its way back to the giver. In moments the fiery horse was between his knees, and he was streaking off into the dark mountains.
The Mexicans had surprised Piishi.
It was not something he was proud to admit. One Dine warrior of the Chi’hine band should have been invisible to the Mexicans, but they had an Indian tracker among them, one of the Running Indians, the ones the Mexicans called the Tarahumara. The Tarahumara were not really warriors, but were indefatigable runners. They hunted by chasing down game until the animal simply dropped dead of exhaustion.
The Mexicans were just drovers. Piishi cared nothing for their horses since he was heading up into the mountains, but he had stupidly forgotten to get ammunition from Rider Who Walks for the fine rifle he had given him, and so he had stolen some from the Mexican vaqueros’ saddle bags as they slept.
He did not know why the Mexicans had come after him. He had assumed they would not even notice the theft before they were long gone. He had gone up into the mountains and made camp to await the Rider’s spirit and maybe sleep some before going on to Pa-Gotzin-Kay. He supposed the Running Indian had found his tracks, and he had been amazed to hear the Mexicans crashing through the brush below where he had laid down to rest.
He got up quickly and grabbed his rifle, only to find one sandaled foot of the Running Indian standing squarely on it, the weapon immovable under that lean, powerfully muscled leg. He looked up in time to see the Running Indian’s weapon come down. It was a club crudely carved to look like a Winchester rifle. It struck him hard in the temple.
When he had his sense of things back, there was a sharp pain in his limbs, and he couldn’t feel his hands and feet. The Mexican vaqueros were standing around him in a circle, the Running Indian admiring the Yellow Star Rifle Rider had given him. He wore a loose red shirt and a dirty white skirt, a long white headband around his bushy head. He crouched on his bare legs, the rifle across his knees. His half-lidded eyes were red and bleary. The Running Indians loved their corn beer.
“We should take him down to the rurales in Nacozari,” said one of the vaqueros. “Maybe they will reward us.”
“I don’t want nothing to do with those goddamned rurales. I don’t know which is worse, having rurales in town or these goddamned Apaches sneaking around.”
The vaqueros had tied ropes around both of his wrist and ankles and lashed him to the silver capped horns of their gaudy saddles. A man sat twisted atop each horse looking down on him over their shoulders. They had walked their mounts in four directions far enough to leave his limbs stretched taut and painful, the joints singing, his body suspended a foot above the ground.
He made no outcry. He would die before he’d give that satisfaction to a bunch of Mexicans.
Their leader was a man in his late twenties, long, wavy black hair and a trim mustache, golden teeth sparkling between his lips. He had the carved iron knife Rider had lent him, and he was sinking its point again and again in the ground between his feet where he hunkered. A beaded and fringed Indian riding quirt, with an engraved silver knob shaped like a grinning dog, dangled from his wrist.
“I don’t like this none,” said one of the men on horseback in Spanish, looking nervously about. “You don’t see Apaches off by themselves. He’s probably got friends up in these mountains.”
“No doubt, Carlos,” the leader agreed. “No doubt. Maybe if we cut him up a little, he’ll tell us where.”
“What the hell you want to go and do that for, Mauricio?” said the nervous man on horseback. “I don’t know why we even chased this bastard up here for a box of bullets. You ought to kill him and let’s get out of here.”
“Maybe we should pack him down to Nacozari,” said one of them. “See if that Corporal Mendez will give us a reward for him.”
“The rurales pay for dead Apaches, not live ones,” said Carlos. “I don’t want to pack no live Apache all the way down to Nacozari anyhow.”
“We could send Pies ahead,” said the other, motioning to the Running Indian. “Let them know we’re bringing in a prisoner.”
“He could get loose and kill us before we ever get there,” said the other. “I don’t want to pack no live Apache neither. That’s like carrying around a wild wolf.”
“Esteban’s right,” said Carlos. “Let’s just pull him to pieces and get the hell out of here.”
Mauricio put his face close to Piishi’s, and held the knife in the firelight, looking at the magic marks carved upon the blade.
“I wonder who he is,” he murmured. “Some kinda medicine man maybe.”
“Who cares? Let’s kill him and go,” said Esteban.
Mauricio rose to his full height and tucked the knife between belt and belly.
Piishi glared at the Mexican. He was sorry death would come to him before Rider could complete his task. Perhaps it was good that the Mexicans kill him quick, before Rider’s spirit came and entered into him. If he came now, he might get trapped in Piishi’s dead body when the Mexicans killed him.
He gathered up
his spit and launched it with all his effort up at the Mexican. He was satisfied when the gob struck him in his carefully trimmed mustache.
The Mexican recoiled in disgust and angrily swiped at his face with his sleeve.
“Son of a bitch!”
He took the silver knobbed quirt and brought it down with a sharp whack on Piishi’s stomach. It was an agony, but Piishi forced a smile and said, in fluent Spanish, “Mexicans talk while Apache kill.”
The Mexican stepped back and drew a cap and ball pistol from his holster and pointed it at the night sky.
“Alright. Take a ride, boys.”
The Mexican never got a chance to cock the pistol let alone fire.
An arrow hissed out of the dark and buried itself up to the feathers under his chin, with such force he somersaulted backwards and flopped into the campfire, kicking up a slow moving geyser of embers which spurted into the sky and winked out.
Four figures leapt out of the night into the light of the camp. They seemed to come from the sky itself, though Piishi had seen no overhanging trees.
They were bare-chested and wore blackened buckskin hoods over their faces. Tall, elaborate plank or metal headdresses sprouted like the twisting angles of weathervanes a full two feet from their heads, strung with beads and feathers. Each was a blast of brilliant color, with long woven skirts, and strips of colored flannel flapping from their arms and calves. Painted symbols adorned their chests and backs. One was painted entirely white, and his buckskin mask had no headdress. Each bore two iron short swords, the handles hide or leather wrapped, and one a bow and buckskin quiver.
The Running Indian, Pies, did not hesitate, but sprang to his feet and went crashing wild eyed into the brush, racing down the mountainside.
The vaqueros uttered no oaths, nor discharged their weapons. There was no time. The four silent figures landed on the rumps of their horses, and simultaneously swept off the heads of the Mexican riders with their swords. In a few moments, the white painted figure neatly parted the each of the ropes affixed to Piishi’s limbs, and he crashed to the ground on his back, blood rushing back into his numb extremities.
When he opened his eyes, and it could not have been more than a few seconds later, he was alone. The horses were screaming and galloping off into the shadows, their headless riders still bobbing in their saddles.
Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel Page 17