Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel (28 page)

“I died in the jungles, and when I
returned, I spent a hundred years wandering. I was with Sassacus for a time
against the English—”

“What do you mean, you died?” the
Rider interrupted.

“My death prefigures my rebirth,
Rider,” was all he said. “I went among the Wampanoag and the Narragansett. I
taught secrets to an Englishman named Billington. I thought I could corrupt the
whites, bring their worldly power under my hand, but Billington was a fool, and
was consumed by the Old Ones.”

“The Old Ones.”

“Yes, Rider,” said Misquamacus, his
old eyes flashing. “You know of the Great Old Ones now, don’t you? We Indians
have always known of them. The Maroons of Jamaica knew them too. After we
burned Providence, I was captured and sold there as a slave, but I escaped into
the hills. I fought the white man there with my black brothers, and we shared
our secrets. That was a long, hard fight. But wherever there are white men,
they must be fought. Even unto death.” He trailed off, staring through a space
in the dark wickiup somewhere over the Rider’s head. “Even unto death.

“I returned to Billington’s Wood
after that, and used the descendants of Billington to take me to England. I
moved among the magicians of the whites there. By then I understood their
greed, you see. Billington had taught me that once given a taste of the Great
Old Ones, the white man will pursue them to their own destruction. I became the
Old Ones’ preacher, and I told of them wherever I went. Then I came back here,
to the lands where I once lived. I was Lakota and Kwahadi, Nuwuvi and Dineh. I
traded knowledge for knowledge. I gathered followers. Some of them are here
today.”

“Then you’re a servant of the Great
Old Ones,” the Rider said. “But when I knew you, you weren’t.”

“Love can turn a man’s heart,” said
Misquamacus slowly. “Even mine. But violence, hatred and madness may turn it
back. It turns back so easily, Rider.”

“After you avenged your wife you
said the fire of your anger had burned out.”

“Yes. Paveve’keso was a good woman.
I loved her very deeply. She turned me from the Great Old Ones for a time. My
heart was hardened again at the Washita River. After we parted ways, Rider, I returned
to my wife’s band to visit my relatives. I lived with them two years. The Dog
Soldiers made war on the whites, but I remembered your words to me. I made no
war. I sought peace with the white man. I played the fool. I even went to
Medicine Lodge with Black Kettle and signed another damned treaty. Then one
morning Long Hair Custer attacked our winter camp on the Washita. He killed the
women and children. Most of them were shot in the back. It was Sand Creek all
over again. My Cheyenne relatives were all killed. I knew then the white man
must be rubbed out for all time. I joined the Lakota at Greasy Grass and we
killed that bastard Custer and all his soldiers in the time it took a hungry
man to eat. But it was not enough. Since that time, I have brought the message
of the Old Ones to my own people. I have gathered an army. After tonight, the
white men and Mexicans squatting in their square houses in Apacheria will be
cut down. We will move outward from here, scouring them from the Earth.”

“He
has suffered
,” said Piishi. “
It is
right that he should want revenge.”

“But what’s the cost?” the Rider
responded, as much to Piishi as to Misquamacus. “What will the Old Ones ask in
return for your revenge? If you know them so well you know what they want of
this world. Do you think they’ll stop at the destruction of the whites and the
Mexicans? Do you think they’ll allow your people to live?”

“No,” said Misquamacus, leaning
forward. “And it doesn’t matter. I have been to the future and returned, Rider.
The Dark Man has shown me the fate of the Indian. If the whites are allowed to
continue, we will wind up poisoning ourselves and crouching in the dust and
dead grass of lands that are not our own. We will seek the glories of the old
days in the dregs of the white man’s bottles. We will be broken. I would rather
die. I would rather all of us die.”

“He
cannot say this! The decision is not his. He is not truly human
!” Piishi
raged within.

“You think those words will convince
the Apache you’re right?” the Rider asked. “Do you think they’ll sell their
souls and the souls of their children for revenge?”

“I have more than just words, Rider,”
said Misquamacus, replacing the pipe in his hide bag. “I have much more than
just words.”

“I knew a man,” the Rider said, as
Misquamacus rose to his feet. “A good man, who burned with righteous anger, but
was good enough to know when to step back from the edge of Hell.”

“That man is gone,” Misquamacus said
simply. “He drowned in blood at the Washita River. Your words cannot be heard anymore.
Not above the gunshots and the screams of our babies.”

“But
they are not your babies,”
Piishi protested.

Misquamacus lifted the blanket door
of the wickiup. Outside the sun was high, startling to the eyes. It was past
noon.

“I go to bring the rest of the
Apache. You are free to come and listen, but if you try to interfere…” he let
the sentence trail off, his meaning clear.

“You haven’t asked me why I’m here,”
the Rider said. “Or how.”

“I know why. I don’t care how,” he
said, and went outside, letting the blanket fall behind him.

“Do you still think he deserves his
revenge?” the Rider asked Piishi.

“Not
at the cost the Old Ones would ask,”
Piishi answered.

“There’s only one way to stop him.”

“Yes.
He must die.”

The Rider rose up and followed. He
paused in the doorway. On the back of Piishi’s neck, the hair stood erect. He
turned, and nearly leapt out of the wickiup.

In the shadows behind him, on the
far end of the dark shelter, a mass of shadows swirled, moving, independent of
the others, like ink in water. As his eyes tried to focus on it, the cloudy
tendrils that seemed to be spreading across the floor and ceiling, reaching out
to him, snapped back, coaelesing instantly into a solid shape; that of a man.

He was nondescript of build, and his
clothes could not be discerned. He could have been naked. But his flesh was as
black as the shadow, and textured, rough and scarred as cold volcanic rock. The
figure had no hair of any kind. No teeth, no eyes glittered in the shadows.

The Rider did move, backwards out of
the wickiup, stumbling. He caught himself, and thrust aside the blanket curtain
that had fallen again across the entrance in his wake.

There was nothing inside. No one.

He whirled, and Misquamacus was
standing a few feet away, smiling knowingly as he set a black, feathered
medicine hat square on his head and dipped his arm to the elbow in his hide
bag.

What was the vision he had seen?

Piishi had the answer.

The
Dark Man. The god of Misquamacus.

Mendez’s expedition had met the
headless corpses of the
vaqueros
sagging in the saddles of their horses early on the way up. Don Elfego had
identified the men by their dress. His son had not been among them. They had
wrapped the bodies in muslin and strapped them securely to the saddles of the
horses, and led them back up.

It was noon by the time they had
reached the place of the Apache ambush and the bodies were reunited with their
heads.

Mauricio’s corpse was discovered
smoldering in the ash of the campfire, cooked so long as to be unrecognizable.
His was the only corpse unaccounted for, and so Don Elfego knew that the the
black husk at his feet was the body of his son. Something within him changed at
the sight of it. He had meant to bring the body back down to his wife and leave
the
rurales
behind. But how could he
give Mauricio over to his mother in this state? How could he subject his own
wife to this horror?

To his men, he turned.

“Take the bodies back down to the
hacienda and bury them. I will bury Mauricio here. Tell his mother we couldn’t
find him.”

“
Si
,
jefe
,” said Silvanito, his top hand. “You
are not coming with us?”

“No,” said Don Elfego. “No, Pies and
I will stay with the
rurales
. We will
find these Apache bastards and we will burn them for what they have done.”

He trembled as he said the last, and
had to turn away.

Pies studied the brush. Don Elfego
had never known the Indian to be a coward, but the look on his face was
unmistakable.

“Pies,” he said, in the Rarámuri
language, which he had come to know in their time together. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t want to go any further,
jefe
,” Pies answered. “Please don’t make
me.”

“They killed my son.”

“The Apache did not kill your son.
The spirits killed him. The mountain spirits. They live in this place, and they
watch over the Apache. If you go on, they will kill you all.”

Don Elfego put his knuckles on his
gun belt and went to the edge of the camp, staring up the mountain and
fingering the cartridges in their loops.

“You do not believe me,” said Pies.

“I will not make you go, old friend,”
Don Elfego said.

Pies came to stand beside him, and
after a moment’s thought, he drew the Yellow Star rifle he had taken from the
Apache out of its scabbard and held them both out.

“Goodbye, Don Elfego. We will not
see each other again.”

Don Elfego took the proffered Henry
rifle and the unadorned scabbard and stared at the strange markings etched all
along its finish.

When he looked up, Pies was walking
away.

Mendez came over, still atop his
horse.

“Where’s he going?”

“Home,” he said, putting the rifle
in its boot and hanging it from his saddle.

“Home?”

Kabede and Faustus watched the
discussion between Don Elfego and his tracker. In a few moments the Indian had
turned and walked away, and Don Elfego had mounted again and was fielding frantic
questions from an animate Mendez.

“There goes our tracker,” said
Kabede.

“Yes,” said Faustus, looking around
warily at the trees. “Something has changed.
Perhaps this is an opportunity. Come on.”

He urged his horse towards the two
men, and Kabede fell in behind.

“How the goddamned hell do you
expect us to find them if you let your Indian go home?” Mendez was saying.

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” Faustus said
as he approached. “But if your Indian has lost his nerve, might I offer the
services of Kabede here?”

“Is he a tracker?” Mendez said,
looking Kabede over.

“He has tracked man-eating lions to
their dens in Africa, armed with nothing more than a spear,” Faustus said,
without a trace of a smile. “With his rifle, no mere Apache will give him pause
once he catches the scent.”

Mendez appeared to be impressed.
Kabede looked like what the corporal thought an African hunter was supposed to
look like, apparently.

“Fine,” said Mendez. “Let him try.”
Without warning, he drew his pistol, took aim across the camp, and but a bullet
in the middle of the Indian’s back. It caught him just as he reached the edge
of the trees. He arched backwards, his arms bending awkwardly behind him, hands
groping wildly at the seeping wound in-between his shoulder blades as if trying
to keep his life from escaping. He staggered and fell, kicked, and was dead.

Don Elfego’s eyes were wild in his
dark face.

“What did you do that for?”

Mendez put his pistol up, the smoke
still wafting from the barrel across his eyes.

“I came here to kill Indians, Don
Elfego. I would have been disappointed if I didn’t end up killing at least one.”

Don Elfego made as if to take out
his own pistol, but Mendez laid his gun across his saddle, the barrel angled
meaningfully in the old
caballero’s
direction. The rancher’s hand moved away from his holster.

Mendez smiled, then looked at Kabede
and Faustus.

“Well? Get to it.”

Kabede and Faustus rode to the tree
line opposite the Indian tracker’s corpse and pretended to look about for sign.

“Best to pick a direction, and
quickly,” Faustus whispered.

“Yes,” said Kabede, “but what if I
pick the right direction on accident?”

Faustus looked about. Piishi had
been trained from an early age not to leave much evidence of his passing. There
was no telling where he’d gone.

“Let’s head east,” he suggested.

“Any particular reason?”

“No,” he admitted. “But if you don’t
find a path in the next thirty seconds Corporal Mendez is going to try and give
you the same as he gave that Indian.”

Kabede leaned forward in his saddle,
squinted at nothing at all, then straightened, looked over his shoulder, and
pointed east.