Merkabah Rider: High Planes Drifter

by Edward M. Erdelac

  Hector Scarchilli bit into a hard biscuit and spat the stale mess onto the dirt floor.

  Miguel turned to look at him, glanced at the wet shreds of bread and smiled.

  “How much longer till we can leave this goddamned town?” Scarchilli muttered.

  “I guess that depends on how rich you want us all to be, jefe,” Miguel shrugged.

  Scarchilli nodded. He had promised his men they would all be rich enough to never have to work again. Banditry was work. Killing was work, and to hell with any son of a bitch who claimed otherwise. There was a stupid notion among the campesinos and the holy padres and the viejas that banditos were shiftless and lazy. Goddamn! Had they ever spent weeks in the deep desert with rurales and bounty killers on their trail? Had they ever truly thirsted? So badly one felt as if their soul itself were drying up and their brain was cracking beneath the hot skull like baked clay?

  How many of these soft bellied bastards would suffer such a thirst or hunger and then be strong enough to resist riding into a town that housed a cool, clear well or whose air hung with the smell of warm tortillas and yet hid fifty murderous pistolas in the shade?

  How many of them were man enough to leave behind a life of certainty for the crazy life, where not even the trustworthiness of one’s own comrades or the coming of a new day was guaranteed without paying the price of lead and powder?

  The life of a bandit was hard; the life of a chief of bandits, even more so. One had to inspire love and fear in the wolves beneath, or be torn apart at the first opportunity.

  He promised his men an end to this life. A return to sweethearts and mothers, and homes long left behind in a trail of blood and dust. All for a deal with that black devil out of Hell. It hadn’t seemed a bad deal. All the gold from the new mine at Polvo Arido in exchange for an equal share and two women Kelly would select himself from among the town. He had taken the mayor’s daughter and a straw haired girl who worked in the eatery. The only other demand he’d made was to live alone in the big house.

  Now, Scarchilli was not as sure as he had been. He weighed that soft bellied life against the dread that grew daily in his soul. He was a man who had been, for many years, neighborly with death, and had done deeds worthy of a place of honor in the lowest country of Hell. Always he had reasoned that men were animals anyway, not capable of right or wrong, only deserving of survival if they earned it through strength or action. A wolf killed sheep to sustain itself.

  The magic of the black man made him look over his shoulder. He had never feared death, or what came after, before he had seen Kelly’s powers, and what it had done to the people of this town.

  “How much gold does a man need, Miguel, when you weigh it against his soul?” Scarchilli mused, patting the gilded pistol he had taken from the bearded gringo. The stones on the handle of this trinket alone could keep him alive for years in his hometown, and probably buy him the alcalde’s office as well.

  Miguel listened to the monotonous ringing of tools for a moment longer. The room where the men gathered was quiet but for the snoring of the drunk and the slowing melody of sleepy Diego strumming a ballad idly on his guitar as he too began to doze in the corner. Each echo of metal on rock was a beat of time whose rhythm challenged the idleness of the dying music.

  “You want to break our deal with El Crepusculo?” Miguel murmured.

  The evil storm had broken at some point before nightfall. They had come up from looking over the people in the mines and noticed the stillness. It was strange after living with the wind for so long. But they had heard Kelly’s drums pounding from town, and none of them wanted to go near the big house when the drums were beating.

  “I don’t think that black bastard cares for gold,” Scarchilli said, coming to stand beside him.

  “What then?”

  “I don’t know, paisano.” He listened to the unending clinking in the tunnel. “I don’t know what he wants. He’s like a hungry dog for it, whatever it is. Pero, whatever it is, I don’t want him to take it from me. Maybe he is the Devil. Maybe it’s all of our souls he wants to take.” He nodded out to the dark tunnel. “Like he took theirs’.”

  “Some of the men think the way you do,” Miguel said. He did not say if he was one of those men. “Others see only the sacks filled with gold, fatter every day. You promised them each a fortune to bear home.”

  “Fiero and Sucio are dead,” Scarchilli said, stepping over one of his sleeping men and plucking a half empty bottle of tequila from the crook of the man’s arm. “That’s two less fortunes to make.”

  Miguel was quiet as Scarchilli tipped back. He saw the scar down his face flare pink, as if it indicated the potency of the drink that drained from the spotty bottle. Miguel had been with him in Monterrey when a gringo’s Bowie knife had lashed across a cantina table and done that to him. They had shot their way through Tejanos and Apaches and rurales together. Many years choking on blood and dust and powder smoke. Many women and friends were gone or buried or dried up bones in some nameless land that had drunk their blood. Yet never had Miguel blamed him for any trouble they’d seen.

  But he blamed him now. It was Scarchilli that had made the deal with that black devil. Truth be told, if Scarchilli had not suggested it, Miguel would eventually have put his blade in the brujo himself and cut him into little pieces, if his evil blood didn’t melt his steel. He feared they would all die dealing with this Kelly.

  “We kill him and go, then?” Miguel ventured.

  Scarchilli shook his head. “We just go, amigo. Pack up what we can carry and go. Before he gets the storm up again and we’re stuck in here with him.”

  “If we leave him alive, he’ll find us.”

  “Maybe so. Pero, he’s one man. What can one man do on foot?”

  A man’s scream echoed down the tunnel mouth. A few of the men stirred from their palettes on the floor, blinking sleepily and reaching for their guns.

  Scarchilli unlimbered his pistol and Miguel snatched up his carbine and rushed out into the tunnel.

  * * * *

  The Rider mouthed a curse as the stone he’d hurled struck the lantern in the guard’s hands while he lifted it to the hook. The man had paused a moment longer than he’d expected to lean forward and light a cigarette between his lips on the lantern wick. The lantern exploded in a flash of fire and glass, dousing his face and shoulders in flaming oil. The guard screamed and flailed backwards, twisting and lurching like a blazing tornado in the dark. His partner cursed and shielded his eyes.

  A corporal in Ford’s Company, Dick Belden from Tennessee, had taught The Rider to pitch stones in camp sometime before the fight at Glorieta Pass, though he had never gotten as adept. Belden had an arm like a catapult and could knock a running rabbit spinning. He’d been from a poor mountain family, and without a rifle, that was how they’d got their supper. The Rider had gotten good enough to peg squirrels out of trees under the corporal’s tutelage, but hadn’t tried out his throwing arm in some time. Case in point, he’d been aiming for the man’s temple, not the lantern. He hadn’t intended the noise, or he would’ve used the rifle outright. Still, no one had fired a shot yet. Maybe they would think it was an accident.

  The other guard overcame his surprise and shoved his partner to the dirt, pulling his own serape over his head to beat the burning man out. As the serape cleared his head, The Rider’s second rock pegged him in the forehead like a bullet from David’s sling and put him down.

  The burning man rolled frantically in the dust, still screaming, as The Rider slipped down through the rocks toward the mine’s mouth.

  Two figures emerged from the tunnel as The Rider reached a stand of boulders to the right of the entrance.

  “Ay mi Dios!” exclaimed the first, who bent to extinguish the first guard. The Rider caught the glint of gold teeth as he spoke, and recognized his gait as that of Miguel, the man who’d strapped him to the windmill.

  The Rider called out;

  “Miguel!”

  Miguel’s h
ead snapped up in dumbfounded surprise at the sound of his own name coming at him out of the dark.

  The Rider was already charging, and Miguel registered shock as the stock of The Rider’s Henry rifle bashed him across the jaw, sending three of his gold teeth spinning out into the night.

  The second man out of the tunnel was Scarchilli. His big pistol exploded, flinging a huge bullet past The Rider’s shoulder, so close he could feel the heat and smell its passing. Scarchilli backed away, cocking the pistol with both hands. In the glow of the lantern light, his face registered confusion. He didn’t even know who his attacker was.

  The Rider spun the rifle and levered two fast shots blindly at the bandit chief as he kept running. His wrist sang with the effort. No use in refraining from gunplay now. The ones inside would know now they were under attack. One bullet whanged the side of the mine entrance, kicking up dust and bits of stone. He didn’t see the second one hit, but Scarchilli fell backwards and landed in a heap.

  The Rider plunged into the dark mine mouth, feeling the cool air, feeling his heart thundering. Glorieta Pass and Cabin Creek had taught him; when the time came, hit fast and hard and keep moving. Don’t give the enemy a chance to organize his thoughts enough to mount a defense. He only prayed none of the townspeople were this close to the entrance when the real shooting started.

  As the light of the lantern receded behind him, he rushed down the dark passage towards a new glow, that of a rectangle of light. An open doorway cut into the left side of the passage. He heard Spanish, jumbled and running together from a dozen different throats.

  He slid to one knee and shot the first four men who stumbled clumsily out into the main tunnel. They were easy targets in the light. They fell gasping, three in the dark tunnel and one flailing back into the lighted room.

  The Rider was up and running toward the light before the last one’s gun fell clattering to the stone.

  The voices in the side chamber went from exclamatory yells to hushed interrogatives and commands of “Cállate!”

  The Rider paused only to grab a rifle from the trembling grip of one of the three men gasping in the tunnel. He charged right into the room, before he had the time to think or hesitate.

  Two of the bandits inside were crouched over the one who’d been hit. They looked up in surprise in the first instant, and were lying shot the next. A third man who’d been leaning against the side of the wall next to the doorway almost killed The Rider, but his shot went wild. He was unused to the sound of gunfire in close quarters. The Rider knocked him senseless with the barrel of the rifle and dove to the floor, landing behind the first shot man (the one whose comrades had been inspecting him) as the bullets began to fly.

  The Rider put his ear to the dirt floor and pressed himself behind the fallen bandit, using him as a breastwork while the first rapid volley exploded overhead. A few bullets meant for him struck the bleeding bandit, and the man jerked and groaned as his compañeros finished The Rider’s work.

  The Rider marked the direction of the shots as best he could, then took up the fresh rifle and rolled out of cover firing. Two shots went wild, but the third and fourth took off a pair of bandits at the shins and they fell howling.

  To his surprise and relief, The Rider found that a good portion of the bandits had apparently retired for the evening quite drunk. Some of the men were just now rising from their bedrolls, some still fumbling for their guns. One bleary-eyed bandit took a swing at The Rider with the only thing he had on hand, a guitar. The Rider raised the rifle and the instrument splintered against the barrel. The Rider bashed the guitar player with the rifle and killed the man behind him as he rose from his bedding triumphantly brandishing a misplaced pistol.

  Lead sought him, but in the confusion, found fellows. Bandits shot bandits. Men swore drunkenly and screamed as the smoke roiled thick and heavy in the close rock room like the steam from a barreling locomotive filling a tunnel. The bandits had to discern their fellows and hesitated to shoot at an obscure form. The Rider had no such compunctions and let loose on everything that moved. Shadows rose before him in the acrid white fog only to fall again. The Rider took pistols out of dying hands and used them till they were spent.

  When it was done, The Rider crouched behind a riddled, overturned table, drenched in liquor and flecked with strange blood, his ears ringing and his arms trembling, his nose filled with the smell of gunpowder. ‘Devil’s Tobacco,’ Major Ford had once called that smell. No other man stirred. He had no idea how many he had killed and how many had died at the hands of their friends. He knew only that his God had surely spared him a glance.

  A few men groaned in the relative quiet, but none moved.

  He stood up slowly, and threw up his gun at the figure that appeared in the doorway. The hammer fell on an empty chamber with a click like the closing of a coffin lid.

  Scarchilli stood, a trickle of blood from under his scalp bisecting his face, dripping from his beard. He regarded the devastation the gringo had wrought on his band. He knew all these men. Knew them by name. He had ridden with most of them for years. None so long as Miguel, but he knew their laughter, and their ways, better than he knew that of his own bastard children.

  Diego’s guitar was in pieces, the strings coiling up the broken neck like frayed hairs on an old woman’s head. Pablo’s ridiculous yellow sombrero had been torn to scraps by bullets. The strident voice of fat, laughing Manolo would never be heard again. There was blood everywhere, pooled on the floor and splashed on the walls. The blood of his men. His.

  “You killed them all pretty goddamned good, you skinny son of a bitch,” Scarchilli growled. He had lost his Dragoon in the dark. His hand went to his sash and pulled the gringo’s own golden pistol.

  He pointed it dead at The Rider’s chest, cocked the hammer, and pulled the trigger.

  The Rider stepped around the table. The pistol was warded against being fired by anyone who didn’t bear the lapis lazuli sigil he wore on the middle finger of his right hand. Unfortunately, he’d been stripped of that ring along with all his other mystical bodyguards. The pistol wouldn’t do either of them any good.

  Scarchilli let the pistol fall, and with a flourish and a rasp, drew out his broad cavalry saber. The cutting edge shone in the meager light.

  “I’m going to slash you from your eyes to your huevos, cabron.”

  The Rider spied a mattock leaning in a nearby corner and snatched it up.

  Scarchilli and The Rider circled each other, picking their way over the bodies and drawing closer, as if carried on the inexorable current of a whirlpool.

  They met, Scarchilli chopping savagely with his sword and The Rider beating back the ringing blows with the iron head of the mattock. His wrist was on fire. His left pe’ah parted and the end of hair fell away as the keen edge whistled past, nearly cleaving him from shoulder to waist.

  The Rider ducked under a broad swing and swept the mattock up, nearly knocking the saber from Scarchilli’s hand. The bandit was nimbler than he looked. He danced backwards and lunged forward, the point jabbing The Rider in the shoulder before he retreated.

  Blood leaked from the wound immediately, spreading across The Rider’s shirt. The bandit’s blade arced overhead as he pressed forward. The Rider blocked it with the upheld cross of the mattock and he spun and caught Scarchilli on the shoulder with the back end.

  Scarchilli grunted and landed a biting slash across The Rider’s knee, tearing his pant leg and the skin beneath.

  The Rider gave ground, limping back and lashing defensively.

  Scarchilli laughed and gave the sword a flick that sent The Rider’s blood spattering on the rock wall. He described a figure eight and touched the flat of the sword lightly to his forehead, plainly intending to draw the last measure of blood with the next cut.

  “Got a prayer ready, gringo?”

  The Rider held the mattock in both hands, shoulder level like a woodsman’s axe.

  “Just for you,” he quipped in a haggard voice.
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  Scarchilli chuckled and moved in, feinting a backhanded cut, then twisting it into a lunge at The Rider’s heart.

  The Rider in turn made as if to intercept the false attack and brought the mattock in hard to batter aside the next.

  Surprised, Scarchilli slipped forward to regain his sword, but caught the toe of his boot on in the crook of a dead man’s arm. He staggered, and The Rider brought the mattock down on the top of his head with a shuddering impact that drove his skull down between his shoulders.

  The Rider released the tool and the bandit fell with it, blood gushing from his nose.

  He went to the center of the room and retrieved his gilded Volcanic pistol, pushing it into the lip of his pants. After a minute’s searching, he left the room with a lit lantern and a loaded revolver.

  He stepped out into the black tunnel and turned the light toward the back.

  “Hello!” he called out, his voice resounding. “Don’t be afraid! Come out!”

  He waited, and his voice was met only with a monotonous ringing of metal on stone.

  He frowned, and headed down the tunnel. Was it possible that the main body of the townspeople was so far back in the mine that they hadn’t heard him? Maybe on some lower level?

  He broke into a trot, racing the advancing glow of the lantern light as it ate away the blackness. Surely they didn’t make these people work in total darkness. How would they be able to see what they were doing? He looked for a pinprick of light in the distance. There was nothing. Maybe around some bend in the passage.

  Another thought occurred to him. Who was overseeing their toil? The tall clerk had told him there were about twenty bandits in all, the boy had said fifteen. He had killed two in the cantina, incapacitated two guards at the mine entrance and knocked Miguel senseless. Four had died in the tunnel, and he’d left ten lying dead or wounded in the room along with Scarchilli. There had to be more. Or else, who was guarding the townspeople?

  “Eladio!” he called, thinking of the name the boy had given him. His father, the cantina’s proprietor.