Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel (52 page)

“Now what?” Auspitz said excitedly.

“There’s a pistol in the desk
drawer,” the Rider said. “Get it.”

“I didn’t know it would be like
this,” Auspitz stammered, putting up his hands. “I don’t want to hurt anybody.”

“You won’t. It’s not loaded. Hurry
up.”

Auspitz went behind the desk and
began rummaging through the drawers. In a moment he had the revolver.

“Get up,” the Rider said to Laird.

Laird got up.

The Rider spun him around and put
the barrel of the rifle against the base of his skull.

“Get behind me,” the Rider yelled to
Auspitz as the first guard burst into the room and stopped dead.

He could feel Auspitz pressed close
behind him, keeping low. Good.

Another guard ran in behind the
first and nearly bowled him over.

“Guns down,” the Rider hollered at
them.

The guards unbuckled their belts and
let their rigs drop to the floor.

“Kick ‘em over here!”

They did.

“Shut that door.”

The second guard booted the door
closed behind him.

He glanced back at Auspitz.

“Take one of the rigs and buckle it
on.”

“I don’t want to…”

“Do it!”

He felt Auspitz crouch down, heard
the rasp of one of the gunbelts being scooped up, the clink of the buckle.

He moved out from behind the
bleeding Laird and glanced about the office. There was a storeroom adjoining.
He walked over to it, still covering the guards, and peeked inside.

There were boxes of soap among other
things, and a rack dangling with restraints. He took three sets of wrist
shackles and draped them over his arm.

“Take it easy, 1748,” warned the
first guard.

“Yeah,” said the second. “There ain’t
no way outta here.”

“Take off your coats, your hats, and
your pants,” the Rider said, popping open his dirty, bloodied prison shirt.

He looked at Auspitz, still covering
Laird with a shaky hand.

“You do the same.”

“We’re not going to hurt anybody?”
Auspitz asked.

“Not if we can avoid it,” the Rider
promised.

When they had switched clothes and
shackled the guards, the Rider looked back at the desk and moved behind it. He
pulled all the drawers open, coming at last to the bottom-most on the left hand
side.

There, all in a jumble, were his
belt, eyeglass case, and talismans.

He pulled out the drawer and dumped
the contents on the desk. He threw the gunbelt with the Volcanic pistol and
knife over his shoulder. He scooped the talismans into a handkerchief he found
in the guard’s coat, tied a knot in it, and shoved it too in his pocket.

“Let’s go,” he said.

In a matter of moments the group was
crossing the yard, headed for the Sallyport and the stable outside. It looked
like Acting Superintendant Laird was accompanying a pair of guards escorting
two prisoners.

The two guards in question were the
doorkeepers of the main cell block, but in the dimness no one could see much of
their features beyond their uniforms. It was strange to the Sallyport guard
that Laird was not with his right hand man O’Doyle, who, uniform or no, could
be picked out of a crowd by his sheer size. But the fact that two prisoners
were being led out in the middle of the night wasn’t too out of the ordinary.
It was known that the Acting Superintendant had all kinds of double-dealings
going which Superintendant Meder would never stand for. Sometimes he loaned the
convicts out under guard for labor in Yuma, or met with rafts or riverboats
down by the river, unloading secret packages or selling off what he deemed
surplus goods.

The Sallyport guard turned away as
they passed. He had always told himself that if he didn’t know everything that
was going on then he couldn’t be blamed for it later.

The two middle shift sharpshooters
in the wooden guard tower that night were a bit more on edge, having not only
heard and observed the ruckus of all the prisoners awaking at the same time
over the wall, but also having experienced it personally, since they had long
ago agreed to take turns sleeping (and had craftily dozed on their watches as
well).

However, they were too caught up in
incredulity at having shared a dream of tremendous drums and the heated philosophical
discussion that resulted to notice the acting superintendant, two guards, and
two shackled prisoners rig up a buckboard and go rumbling down Prison Hill.

The only one who did notice was
LaChappa, the
kwoxot
of the Quechan
trackers. He had just returned from calming his own subordinates, who had
apparently all dreamed of a woman with a drum. He was not prone to
superstitions, but the strangeness of the happening was undeniable. He was
settling down to a bottle of mescal to contemplate the portent of this weird
event when he observed Laird and two guards he didn’t recognize go off in a
buckboard, with two prisoners he did. The shackled convicts were Blaylock and
Ames, and they were not convicts at all, but guards.

LaChappa realized what was happening
right away, but he did not rouse his rattled fellows or give any alarm. The
white guards would only slow him down and he didn’t feel like listening to the
womanly talk of ill omens that would likely issue from the other Quechans if he
gathered them for a hunt.

He took one sip of his mescal and
went and got his horse.

Auspitz drove, apparently glad not
to be the one to have to point a pistol at two law officers and the Acting
Superintendant of the prison.

The Rider sat in back with their
hostages, covering them. He knew they would be extremely lucky if no one came
after them before daybreak, but he had counted on Laird’s reputation for under
the table dealings and unapproved convict labor to keep them safe through the
Sallyport. No doubt Ragshiel’s doings in the dreaming world had also been
sufficient cover for their escape.

But they were far from safe. Headed
east along the Devil’s Highway in the pitch black desert, the Rider had no idea
where they were going. There were settlements along the way, sure, but what
would they find when they stopped at one? Plus, the horse pulling the buckboard
wouldn’t last till morning, and he had to let his hostages go eventually of
course.

There was a small town called Coffin
coming up, which he had passed through on the way here from Mexico. It was
possible he could stop there, switch out the horses, and head off into the
desert, but where? Back to Mexico? The Quechans would be on his trail in the
morning, and if their reputation held even an iota of truth, then he had to
find a way to make a great deal of ground, and quickly.

The train was his best bet. Somehow
hopping on the train and riding it to Phoenix.

He had no idea when the next one was
due.

He had kept the tracks in sight on
his left as best he could, but they were veering away from the road now and he
had to make a decision. Risk stopping in Coffin, or follow the tracks and
chance being caught by the Quechans before a train showed up.

He prayed for guidance silently.

Then of course, there was Auspitz,
and what to do with him.

That decision at least, had to be
made. And now.

He readied himself, then patted the
driver on the shoulder and called to him.

“Stop the wagon.”

“What? Here?” Auspitz asked in
confusion.

“Here.”

The rattling buckboard drew to a halt
in the dark, and the only sound was the horses panting.

Laird and the two guards looked at
each other and then at the Rider, fearful. They thought their time was at hand.

The Rider drew the revolver from his
pants and stood up.

“Everybody out.”

“Nuh…liffen, miftuh…iffayou…” Laird
began.

The Rider cocked the pistol.

“Get down.”

Laird and the guards slowly
clambered out of the buckboard, chains jingling.

Then the Rider turned and pointed
the pistol at Auspitz.

“You too.”

Auspitz looked back in surprise.

“What’s this?” he spluttered.

“Down,” the Rider repeated.

Auspitz jumped down into the road
alongside the others. When he turned, there was a revolver in his hand. He
aimed it up at the Rider and pulled the trigger.

The hammer snapped on an empty
chamber.

“You don’t have much regard for my
intelligence, Adon,” said the Rider.

It was not the guard’s pistol that
had been in the holster. While Adon had driven the wagon, The Rider had slipped
that out and replaced it with the one from Laird’s desk, which he knew the
acting superintendant had kept unloaded, even when possessed.

Adon dropped the useless revolver in
the road and raised his hands, saying nothing.

“I’ve experienced a lot more
coincidences than I believed in before recently,” said the Rider. “But running
into you on the way to kill the acting superintendant wasn’t one of them. I
wasn’t sure till after we left the prison, but you’re a bad actor. You don’t
sound a thing like Auspitz.”

“But kill me, and you kill an
innocent man, Rider,” said Adon, “in front of witnesses.”

“To kill you, I would do it,” the
Rider said, looking down the pistol at him. Besides, he had already murdered a
woman in front of a marshal.

“Will it work?” Adon said, smiling
confidently. “Do you think I’ve survived thousands of years from body to body
without learning how to avoid the sinkhole of death?”

This was what had given the Rider
pause since he’d realized Auspitz was Adon once again. Jacobi had demonstrated
the ability to possess a body, commit suicide, and survive. There was no doubt
now that it was Adon who had taught him that reckless skill. It was very likely
that killing Adon in the body of Auspitz wouldn’t do a thing. Why didn’t Adon
come out and say that? Why did he leave it ambiguous?

Because he wanted the Rider to kill
Auspitz. He wanted more innocent blood on his hands. He wanted to drive the
Rider to his side of the conflict.

The Rider hesitated, staring down at
the man in the road. The man who was his greatest enemy, and yet was also just
a bewildered tailor who had done some innocuous forgery in his time.

He wanted dearly to pull the trigger
and end it. But nagging in his mind was the notion that it wouldn’t be the end,
coupled with a terrifying thought that there could be no end, except the return
of the Great Old Ones. The only way for Adon to die was for him to get what he
wanted, for him to burn the entire universe down.

What could he do then? He couldn’t
even keep Adon with him in Auspitz’s body, because Adon could just vacate it
and escape whenever he wanted.

Adon had only come with this far
hoping the Rider’s friends would be out here waiting for him, that he would
lead Adon to his precious scroll so that he could repossess it, or call his
minions to retrieve it.

The Rider eased the hammer down on
the pistol.

“What do you intend to do with us?”
one of the guards asked nervously.

The Rider sat down in the driver’s
seat, the pistol still trained on them. He was about to order them to start
walking back when Adon/Auspitz reeled suddenly away from them, stumbling a few
steps off the road.

“Let’s kill ‘em! Let’s kill ‘em
all!!” he screamed.

He put his hands to his head,
groaning.

Then he seemed to shudder. He turned
to face the wagon. Just like that, he was Auspitz again. The Rider could see
it, even in the moonlight. It was in his gait, in his confused expression.

Laird moved swiftly behind him,
grabbing at him.

And then there was a boom and
Auspitz’s face blew to pieces.

The bullet continued on into Laird,
driving fragments of bullet and bone into the acting superintendant’s head,
just above the eyebrow. He fell with Auspitz, and blood spattered the two
guards. They froze in the road for a second before scattering into the dark,
chains clinking like the traces of the buckboard horse.

The horse reared and bucked. The
Rider tumbled backwards from the driver’s seat and rolled into the back of the
buckboard. The impact on his broken rib nearly made him pass out.

Two more shots rang out again, and
the rifle bullets zipped overhead.

Someone from the prison had followed
them.

But no one gave a command for him to
halt or give up. No shrill police whistle, no thunder of posse hooves.

A lone rifleman.

Somehow, the Rider knew it must be
one of the Quechans.

Adon had sensed his presence somehow.
Maybe he had seen him skulking in the dark. He had given an uncharacteristic
yell, a yell he knew would instigate the Indian into shooting, and so he had
killed Jethro Auspitz.