Far Bright Star (4 page)

7

H
E STARED INTENTLY
through the heat haze. There’d been a movement on the horizon, a vague outline of horses and riders. It went away and then he saw it again. How far? In this country you could see a campfire twenty-five miles away.

A nerve was twitching in his cheek. He lifted the field glasses from his chest to see if they revealed anything his eyes could not. His nostrils flared as if to learn what rode the dead heated air. He adjusted the wheel and swept the barren sun-struck rim, but there was only dazzling light and empty infinite white sky. Black ashlike floaters within the round of his eyeball crossed his sight line. They drifted and then they settled.

Extra Billy was standing at his elbow, the smell of sweated liquor a heat on his skin.

“Speak your mind,” Napoleon said, the field glasses still trained on the far-off rim of the canyon wall.

“There’s riders out there,” Extra Billy said, his voice a whisper so as not to be heard by the others. “But I trust you already know that.”

“I do.”

The black floaters multiplied. They crossed his retina again and settled from his line of sight to the bottom of his eye. The future appeared to him in a brief burst. It left behind no particular event or detail of event, but for an instant it was there in his mind and it was terrible and he felt weakened.

“You think they’re friendly?” Extra Billy said.

“If we don’t know them, they ain’t friendly,” he said, letting his hand to flex open and the gesture restored him, but he still remembered his fear.

“What do you think their business is?”

“I don’t know what their business is. What do you think?”

“Playing guess-the-number. Trying to figure how many of us there is.”

“Maybe.”

“Where are those fucking wagons?”

“Not here.”

“What are we going to do?”

For the last hour the watchful Rattler horse had been nervous and now he knew why, or rather his mind understood what it already knew. They were not the only riders in the sun-whited country this day. There were others. They had remained below the horizon line the whole time, but the Rattler horse knew they were there.

“What is it?” Bandy had joined them and wanted to know. His mouth was full of crackers and a scumble of biscuit crumbs were clotted in the Vaseline that rounded his swollen lips.

Napoleon told Bandy to pay attention to the horses. He told the boy that horses are prey animals. The way their eyes are set in their heads affords them a very broad vision. They will spot and they will run away. Though he was not as committed to the intelligence of horses as his brother, he easily conceded the superiority of a horse’s mind to that of a human being’s.

“Right now,” he told Bandy, “we might likewise be prey animals.”

“I never thought of it that way.”

“Just what do you think a horse sees when it looks at you?” he asked. He let down the field glasses and turned on the boy.

“I don’t know,” the boy said.

“Another god damn horse,” Extra Billy said, and spit in the dust at his feet.

Napoleon raised the field glasses again and saw them a second time. Two riders broke into sight and disappeared just as quickly. They wore wide-brimmed hats and carried rifles slung across their backs. They were not the same riders as he’d seen before. There was the woman again. She rode stiffly and carried a parasol. Her equipment flashed brilliantly with sunlight. Silver, he thought, and how many of her was there? That made as many as six riders. He knew if there was six, there could just as easily be sixty. He did not know who they were but knew they were the answer to the riddle of this day.

“I got no patience for a fight today,” Napoleon said, as if bored by the prospect of an encounter. There was no reason to convey the alarm that dogged his mind.

“This land ain’t worth the devil coming to fetch it away,” Extra Billy said. “Much less fight for it.”

“Do we make a stand here?” Bandy asked.

“No, you fool. We get the fuck out of here,” Extra Billy said.

“Do you think we’ll have a fight?”

“I hope to God we don’t,” Napoleon said. The last thing he wanted to do was go into battle with the men he’d drawn that morning. Extra Billy would serve him well. Of this he was confident, but the rest were too green and untested.

“Why not?” Bandy wanted to know.

“Because we will be kilt,” Extra Billy said, and laughed as if the idea of it made him a little bit insane.

They smoothed their blankets and lifted their saddles. They hauled tight on the cinches, mounted up and they left the little box canyon. They rode slowly at first as they negotiated the thin trail and then they rode hard from the place where they had harbored.

There was still no sign of the wagons.

They descended the thin stony trail and broke out onto the valley floor, but the beeves they shot and bled an hour ago had vanished. There was no trace of them to be found, no blood, no hoof, no worthless guts and this eventually convinced Preston, Stableforth, and Turner that there was danger. At first they thought they’d been robbed and they were outraged that such could happen. The beeves were their own and they wanted justice, but when there was only silence from the others, they quieted, their minds unnerved.

He lifted the field glasses and scanned the vast emptiness of the broken country. But he didn’t need to. The Rattler horse was vibrating with the news of their surroundings and who occupied them. Then he saw them. The distant riders had multiplied and placed themselves between him and the direction he intended. He caught sight of them as if miniature points on the compass of their world. They knotted the landscape in twos and threes. They were to the north and the east and the west and to the south a speck of a man holding a rifle stood over the thin trail they’d just descended and then a second man stepped from the rocks and stood beside him. They appeared and disappeared in the shimmering glaze of heat, as if ink drawn and washed away and drawn again.

“Who could they be?” Turner said.

Napoleon let the field glasses to his chest and spoke harshly to the Rattler horse that it ought to be ashamed for its demonstration and should compose itself in a more befitting way. He explained to the men their situation as he understood it and his intention that they should extricate themselves as best as was possible.

“We should attack,” Preston declared. “Only the offensive is decisive.”

Extra Billy said that he should shut his g.d. mouth for once, wanting no intrusion on the thoughts of Napoleon.

Napoleon waved off Extra Billy and pointed at Preston as if to fix him in place. “Having the advantage,” he said to him, “is better than impulse, and right now they have the advantage.”

He told them they would travel in a violent hurry. He touched with his heels and pressed with his legs and the Rattler horse was spurred into effortless motion. He left them behind to catch up and one by one they did, leaving the stony plain of saltbush and creosote and they rode from the valley floor, their numbers strung out to let the horses breathe, no matter how inclined the animals were to herd with the leader.

Napoleon’s mind incandesced. Where did he go wrong and how would he make amends? He worked his mind over again and again. Were the beeves the bait and while they rested in the little box canyon the trap sprung? He’d passed this way before when he first saw the beeves and he’d rested in the same little box canyon that same day at the height of the sun. One repetition. Two repetitions. That would have been enough. Where he’d made his mistake was right here and he’d made it days ago. The only question left to be answered was, who would pay for that mistake?

He touched at the Rattler horse to widen the distance between it and Preston’s gray. The horse opened up and stretched for length and behind him the other horses fell back and then they recovered and ran on the Rattler horse, having no other mind than to be with it and afraid of being lost without it.

He guided for what seemed a flank, a notched pass in the mountain’s saddle, but the distant riders had their own intentions and one of them was not to give up a flank. They broke for the notch and were cleared and began their descent, but at each turn there were men lying in wait. They stood and aimed their rifles and he veered off, but for some reason they did not take the shots they were afforded.

When he held up to collect and turn the Rattler horse, it tossed its head and nickered and he chastised it this time for making such wanton sound. The horse pranced about and shook its face. The Rattler was game and fearless, but he knew this cat-and-mouse could not last forever, and he also knew that when you are the mouse you don’t have much to say about it to the cat.

Preston rode in first, his gray already blown and exhausted. Again he suggested their proper course was to attack.

Napoleon called down his nerves and blood. He gave to Preston a scornful look: what do you know about such business? This is their hunting ground and right now we are the hunted. He thought to say these words but kept them to himself. He did not know if this was a day that would be marked by death, but he knew they were in for more than he’d anticipated and he knew the odds were swiftly changing in death’s favor. He told Preston they could stand anytime, but for now they would run. He allowed him that much of his thinking.

The others rode in one by one, Bandy, Stableforth, and Turner, and stood nervous and jostling. In their eyes was confusion, exhilaration, and panic. The Rattler horse glared wildly and started backwards. It wanted to keep running.

He looked at the green men he rode with. Maybe on this day, a day full of ill omen, maybe at last something was happening in their lives. He knew they were trying to think about ways to think and he knew they were thinking about fear. If not, it only meant that fear was still too deep in the recesses of their unadmitted minds. He knew they were afraid of the bullet and the blade, but more than those they were afraid of being afraid. If he had his way, he’d have them never admit to it. Neither admittance nor confession could lessen the feeling of its hold.

But Napoleon’s mood was not their mood and it could never be because he rarely saw them as men anymore. He did not know when it first happened, but to him they were merely the beings that inhabited the human shapes they occupied. When they were killed, or their time was up, or they ran away, the shape similarly went away until it was filled again by another. Until that time it was vacant and remained so until it was filled by another being who stepped inside.

Then Extra Billy rode in. He wore a wide smile on his face, as if instead of a hard ride he’d been lollygagging about, as if all the time in the world was his own. Extra Billy had ridden with him when they crossed the international line in March and together they’d climbed the Barbicora Plateau in a cold gale and almost froze to death, the snow so deep the horses sank in the drifts and had to be dug out. They rode with blankets over their shoulders and they slept in the saddle holding the reins. They lived on Armour canned rations and had to cut away the leather stirrup hoods to resole their boots. When the horses lamed there was nothing they could do except remove the shoes and let them go. Icicles formed in their beards, water froze in canteens, and each morning they awoke covered with snow. When they ran out of food they shot a whitetail and ate like wolves, sucking its blood from handfuls of snow. The horses were so hungry they chewed their halter shanks. Extra Billy was a hard-boiled guy. He didn’t care. He’d piss in the wind.

Extra Billy’s knife scar was crimsoned and it was as if another smile was decorating his grizzled face. He knew there was no need to rush. He knew they’d entered into the design of another.

He shook his head at the sight of the man and he began to smile too. His smile grew wide and he could not stop shaking his head—how fortunate he’d been to at least have drawn this one.

“You enjoying yourself, Trooper?” Napoleon asked, as he rolled a cigarette.

“Just peachy, sir.”

“See anything out there you like?”

“Nothing much to speak of.”

“Then what do you like?” He scraped a match off his thigh and struck fire. He held up the match and pulled deep on his cigarette.

“I was thinking about when we got back I’d like to drink my face off.”

“It’s been a while,” he said as he watched the smoke that curled from his cigarette. “How long has it been?”

“It’s been a long long while.”

“Some days you just can’t drink enough,” he said.

They both knew the question of how much longer they could run would be answered that day and they would not be the ones doing the answering.

“Do you think it’s time to order the coffins?” Napoleon said.

“Nossir, not yet.”

Napoleon looked to the earth, the sky and the sun. He gazed into the nullity beyond.

8

B
Y LATE DAY
the horses’ backs were feverish under the saddles and the hard ride was swelling them. It would not be long before they would start breaking down and then they’d be afoot. But the horses had to last until they couldn’t be spurred any further and then they’d make their stand. He began to search the landscape with that in mind, as escape now seemed remote and soon this pursuit would be forced to a conclusion.

He knew their pursuers had by now changed mounts at least once if not twice and rode fresh horses. The land was heated worse than he could remember and the sky was starting to twitch.

The same way wolves relay a deer, they were being cut off and worn down and shepherded further and further from their sanctuary. They should be steering north by northeast, but every time he made the move they were turned again.

Right now they could neither be taken nor could they escape the deadly game. He did not know how much longer they could last. Success in an attempt to pursue or retreat depended on the experience of the horses and their powers and the riders riding them, and that he knew was impossible. He did not want to fight with these men.

Cut off again, they retreated southward and when they came to the railroad tracks he faced about. He pulled up the Rattler horse and waited. Something had been decided. The distant riders understood the fatigue he and his horses were experiencing and were closing their stalking distance. Still, their horses seemed to gather heart and were ready to work. The Rattler jigged and bounced, scraping ties and kicking ballast and its shoes set sparks flying from the rails. Its neck rose up like a cock bird’s and it pealed off a long series of high withering neighs. A sign from the Rattler horse, he thought, to halt their flight and engage, but not here, not yet. He knew you had to leave something inside a horse so it could help you when you needed it and the time of need was swiftly approaching. He would use up the horses, drawing their last full measure, and only then he would fight.

“He would challenge them,” Stableforth said, admiring the Rattler horse.

“More like he’d fuck ’em,” he said.

Stableforth repeated this as if a line heard at the theater. He thought it very funny and said so several times. The fool still did not understand the game that was afoot and however much he wanted him to understand, he knew the only lesson that would teach him and the price of that knowledge.

“Where are those wagons?” Bandy asked him as he rode in, but he did not reply because in Bandy’s voice was the little boy and desperation. He needed Bandy to be a man. In all ways he needed every one of them to be better than they were and he needed to be better than himself.

“Keep your chin up,” he told the boy. “Be steady.”

A wind flared up and a dust devil scuttled across the land. Then another. Behind them scattered rifle fire broke out. It was long range and ineffective, but the first time these green men had ever been fired on.

“Let’s get moving,” he said, his orders given to the horse, and there they would leave behind another fragment of their lives.

They crossed the railroad tracks, the horses’ shoes clattering on the steel rails and shifting as much weight as possible onto his hindquarters, the Rattler horse plunged over the edge with fore hoofs in the air. It slid and broke a way down the steep, ballast-laden bank. They descended the other side in a small avalanche of stone and scree to the rocky soil below. The other horses sat to arrest their slides and at the bottom paused and found their strength in the crupper. Then they lifted up and scrambled onto their legs and were on the run again.

In the sky there was developing a violent light. If these men were horses, he thought. If only we were horses. There was a cloud bank to the east and a rolling squall line was coming out of the north and it was in this direction he turned and stretched out the Rattler.

To the west, brief clouds of dust were beginning to congregate and rise and still the high hot sun was beating on them, tolling them down. The distant riders continued to close and their envelopments continued to cut them off. They were fired upon, but the shots were mere sound and seemed without purpose except to usher them along. In all his soldiering he’d never seen such, or been so fooled. The trap was more elaborate than at first he realized and however he looked at it, he was now convinced he’d been leading them to this encounter: since a day ago, since two days ago, even three, as he bore them in the direction of the coming storm.

The sky to the west swirled with its rising dust and now seemed strangely luminous. He pulled up and scanning the countryside with the field glasses he searched the likely draws for bushwhackers, for cover, for escape. Clear to see, an enormous weather formation surrounded by copper light was shaping up the valley and there was no way to tell which direction it would blow. Dust motes were catching the distant light and making watery shafts. The light was dense and yellowing and seemed impenetrable. He could feel the Rattler’s sides ticking like a clock under his hand. Whatever was coming was coming fast and whatever it was, it was going to be bad and if it was bad enough it could give them a slim kind of chance and maybe even save them.

He reined up the Rattler and stood in the stirrups, the nickering horse dancing beneath him and he waved them on.

Hurry, his mind kept whispering as the blood beat in his temples. The horse was champing at the bit, scattering flecks of foam, wanting the rein. A scribble of lightning etched the sky, milliseconds of stroke, quarter seconds of flash. It was the lightning that went before the storm and each added second of time was filled with consequence. Death was on the flank not a mile away and he was in the quest of lightning.

“What are you going to do?” Bandy said as he rode in. He spoke as if the situation had little to do with him. But how could he know, being so young and yet to experience an enemy that sincerely wanted to kill him.

“Something will come to mind,” he reassured the boy.

“I guess this means we’re going to miss the motion picture tonight,” Bandy said.

“Yes, son. It looks that way.” He smiled. He could not help himself for how boyish the observation and he thought perhaps something was inside the boy that would serve the troop and in turn deliver him.

When the others were near he put spurs to his horse, but the Rattler, so mettlesome and aroused, had already taken the rein it wanted.

By now the horses were rolling their bloodshot eyes and their sides were sunk in and they were gasping for breath, but still they were answering the call, still they were stretching their necks for power and distance, so afraid the Rattler would leave them behind.

He could hear a peculiar, long-drawn sighing that grew louder. A brief troughing wind sprang up and skifts of sand lifted and blew and died away. At first the sky was yellow with sunlight refracting in the particle dense air and yet it was remarkably windless after the first wind, as if the storm had collected all the wind in the land.

There was a deep hollow silence he remembered and an eerie green glow in the sky and then explosive thunders boomed and then they boomed again and did not stop, as if armies were fighting in the clouds, and then it burst upon them with thunderclaps of artillery, a nameless storm with inconceivable power.

At first it was rainless and began slowly to build a thundery dust cloud that seemed to extend for several miles and through this they were caught in the billowing and were soon choking on the gritted and sculling wind. The wind increased and the sand lifted higher and blew cursive serifs that wrapped their bodies and cut their faces. While at first the wind blew against them, now the wind blew through them. They wore their goggles to keep the stinging from their eyes and pulled neckerchiefs to keep their throats clear.

Inside the storm the world was shoreless and full of nothing. The air was rolling over at the same time it was plunging to earth and rooting up and lifting the loose debris. It was as if the darkness was rising from the depths of the earth and swallowing the mountains and the sky.

In the storm it seemed as if nothing was real or would ever be real again. There was no time except time immediate. There was no place. They were not where they were and there was no worse danger than they were experiencing. There was no earth and there was no sky. There was no direction; the compass needle, if he could have seen it, would have swirled in his hand. The storm was everything.

He kept them close together as best he could. It was fundamental. He could not allow them to become separated. The Rattler jerked its head and pricked its ears on high alert. The big stallion reared up to the vertical and settled as if floated to the ground on wings, its ears bent back and its mane hackled. The Rattler was telling him it wanted to run, it needed to run and to let the others follow if they could. He knew if they ran in the storm the Rattler could outrun the others and the horse would save him. In the storm he could disappear. He knew if he only had himself to save this he could do. He knew Extra Billy would make it too. But the rest would become lost and picked off one by one like so many flowers in a bloody garden.

He let the Rattler horse have its head.

They rode hard. He touched his spurs to the Rattler horse and the horse lengthened stride and stretched it out and found even more speed. He knew he could outrun their pursuers before they could circle and close again. Time and again he’d known this. At the same time he knew his responsibility lay with his men.

Don’t think that way, he thought. Service and duty, he thought.

He made the horse to slacken its speed.

Their pursuers became the filled-in outlines of men on horses and far off or close he could not tell in the airborne fields of lifted and sheeting earth whose side they were on. The dense veil of sand cut like a razor when it lashed against him. It was an ill wind lifting, dusting and setting grit to fly at ever increasing velocity. It lifted the Rattler’s tail and mane and flattened them like blown over grass. There was a burning smell the wind carried and it filled his nostrils.

He pulled up and waited for the men to ride in. Their hats were torn from their heads and their buttons undone by the wind. Then Extra Billy rode in, ransacked and steadfast, bringing up the rear, ushering in the failing riders. One of his eyes was closed and other was weeping for the dust blown into it.

Napoleon was shamed to have run to save himself. He was shamed by this man’s ignorant loyalty and the responsibility it conferred. He stepped the Rattler horse to his side as if to talk, but he simply wanted to be close to the man if only for a moment. As he came alongside Extra Billy’s horse, its tail suddenly flickered and snapped and it happened again with a crackle and then the horse’s mane began to light and dance in the air. A jagged spear of light connected them and they were stung and shocked by its viciousness.

He reached for the Springfield and when he touched the steel he was jolted again by another charge of static electricity. Their dull and lusterless metals began to glow with a bluish white light as if hot cadmium adorned them and in the exchange of current they were flush with radiance.

Blue sparks began coming off all their metals and stinging them in their hands and arms and causing their teeth to grind. The energy of static electricity made by the scraping motes of sand, unable to ground out, was crackling and hissing and discharging all about them into the dry air and they glowed, and as the others gathered around them, their fields connected and they were all for a time lit this way, blue and white and awed inside the storm.