Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel (55 page)

After a brief discussion between
Faustus and the yardmaster, who was reluctant to accept the camels, they found
themselves back on Fremont.

Behan and China Mary had moved their
argument indoors.

“Will your wagon be safe here?”
Kabede wondered, looking over his shoulder, with a little anxiety.

The Rider was impressed. In a show
of trust, he had left the Rod of Aaron behind in the wagon, but the scroll was
still in its case on his shoulder.

“No force on earth can break into
her if I don’t want them to,” Faustus assured them.

“If that’s so, why’d you make Dick
stay behind in Nacozari to watch it?” the Rider asked.

“Because he would’ve got in the way,”
Faustus said, dusting the trail from his coat with a brush from his pocket. “Speaking
of Mister Belden, where is he?”

“Just up the street here,” Kabede
said.

He led them across Third Street to a
lodging house which doubled as Fly’s Photography Gallery (C.S. Fly Prop) in the
back.

Someone was apparently moving out,
and they had to step aside for a pair of Chinese laborers bearing a trunk,
before ducking in out of the heat themselves.

Kabede stopped outside.

“He’s in the last room on the left.”

The Rider paused to tell him to come,
then thought better of it, remembering where they were, and went inside with
Faustus.

He bumped directly into Josephine
Marcus. Her hair was done up much neater than the first time they’d met, as if
in the two year interim she had learned a great deal more about maintaining her
appearance. Her dress was finer too, though made for traveling. She had a
carpetbag in her fist.

He was struck by the sight of her,
just as the first time. She was still a lovely young woman. Where Nehema’s
charms had been obvious and maybe a bit overt, Josephine’s were reserved and
all the more winsome. She had been a whore, yes. But she was a whore no longer.

“Excuse me,” she said, not looking
at him, when he didn’t immediately move aside.

“Sadie,” he said. “It’s me.”

She looked up, but her dark eyes
were angry and narrow, her cheeks flushed.

“I’m sure you have me mistaken for
somebody else, sir,” she said firmly between her teeth.

Of course. She didn’t go by Sadie
anymore.

“I’m sorry,” he said, taking off his
hat like a proper Gentile gentleman. “I never thought Sadie was much of a name
for a girl from South of The Slot anyway.”

Her neat, trimmed eyebrows met for a
moment and her eyes looked on him anew. Her pinched lips drew into an
unbelieving smile, bright and heartbreaking.

“Rider?”

“No,” he grinned back, shaking his
head. “Manasseh, remember?”

She laughed and drew him in for a
familiar embrace that made his ears color as he stooped down to receive it. By
law he was tainted now, and would need immersion in a
mikvah
, but somehow he didn’t care.

It barely lasted at all before she
parted from him, still smiling, oblivious to his conflicted reaction, to the
tingling in him in every place where they had met.

“You look so different,” she
exclaimed.

“Don’t remind me,” he said, rubbing
his chin.

“No, you look…quite handsome,” she
said, touching his arm. “I mean it. But I didn’t recognize you at all without
your
payot
and beard. What happened
to you?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Which I’ll leave you to,” Faustus
said, clearing his throat. “Please excuse me, ma’am,” he said, touching the
brim of his topper and shrugging down the back hall towards Belden’s room.

There was a moment of silent
awkwardness at the old man’s departure where the two of them simply stared at
each other.

“I…received a letter for you from a
gentleman staying at the Grand,” she said. “And some friends of yours called on
me. I gave it to them. I hope that was alright.”

“It was,” said the Rider. “Please
say I didn’t impose.”

“No trouble at all.” She paused again,
unsure of what to say.

The Rider cringed inwardly. Whatever
feeling had been there when they had last parted was gone, at least in her. He
hoped it wasn’t Behan again. He knew he should go, but he suddenly needed to
hear her for awhile, to see her a bit before she was gone for good.

The movers returned and went past
them, darting into an open doorway.

“How’s Hetta and her son?”

“Oh fine,” she said. “Fine. She set
herself up as a cleaning lady for a family in Tucson, and she writes that her
son is enrolled in school there. They’re both doing fine.”

The movers emerged from the room,
two with crates and one with a desk lamp.

“Please be careful with that,” she
exhorted as they passed. “It’s for Doctor Goodfellow’s wife.”

The mover nodded and went on.

“You’re moving out,” the Rider
observed lamely.

“Yes. I’m leaving Tombstone.”

“You are?” he was happy and sad at
the same time. If Behan was sheriff, he wasn’t going anywhere, at least.

“Back to California.”

“Alone?”

She took his meaning.

“No,” she said.

“You believe in angels again,” he
said, smiling thinly.

“Thanks to you, yes.”

“Not just me.”

“No.”

“He’s a good man?”

“I believe he is, yes,” she said. “A
just man. A step up for me, after just men.” She smirked a little at her small
joke.

“Then you’ll be happy.”

“And you?”

He kept smiling, but he moved to the
side of the hall, to let her walk by.

“It was good to see you again.”

“Goodbye, Manasseh.” She reached out
and touched his hand. It was not an unkind gesture, but its formality cut him
nonetheless. “Thank you.”

“Goodbye, Josie,” he said, replacing
his hat.

She walked off down the hall.

This time he did not watch her go.

There was a pain in his chest he
hadn’t expected. A foolish pain. He felt like a fool just for feeling it. Had
he thought the gold he had given her to start anew had been some kind of
investment? Had he thought somehow when all of this was over she would be at
the end of it, waiting for him? She didn’t owe him a thing. She was off to lead
a normal life. But he couldn’t help feeling she embodied for him what he might
never have himself.

He wasn’t here to see her. He was
here to learn secrets written down by enemies in a dead language.

Alright, so time to be about it.

Faustus came up the hall with
Belden, who clapped his hands on the Rider’s shoulders when they saw each
other.

“Good to see you, Joe,” Belden said,
grinning. Much of his beard and hair was back now, and he had gotten rid of the
remains of his uniform, traded it in for a clean white shirt and vest, a new
hat, and some jeans. He had been drinking, though it was not yet noon.

“You look like shit,” he said,
slapping the Rider’s cheek affectionately. “Should’ve kept your beard.” They
stared at each other for a second. “Hell, the curls too.”

“Good to see you too, Dick.”

They passed city hall where a couple
representatives of the temperance union were vying for attention with some
members of the Anti-Chinese League for the attention of the shaded windows of
the brick edifice.

“Just where are we going?” Faustus
asked.

Kabede and the Rider looked at each
other.

“We have an appointment to keep
while we’re in town,” was all the Rider said.

A stout man in a paper collar shoved
a pamphlet at Belden as he passed. He scanned it for a few steps, chuckled,
balled it up, and tossed it over his shoulder.

“Jesus pities a drunkard,” the man
called after him.

“If the Lord hated drinkin’ he
wouldn’t have turned water to wine,” Belden retorted over his shoulder.

“Dick,” said the Rider, “where’ve
you been getting the money for board?” He wanted to say drink, but the room in
front of the photography studio came to mind and spared him the more delicate
interrogative.

“I’ve been doing odd jobs for a
fella named Lepsy, runs a freight company doing a job down on Toughnut. Back
breaking work, I’ll tell you, but once the little cash me and Kabede had
between us ran out, I figured any port in a storm.”

“I intended to work with him,” said
Kabede, “but then the dream came. I asked him to keep an eye on the men in the
hotel and I left to find you.”

“What do you do?” the Rider asked.

“Nothing a mule couldn’t. Just loading
barrels they take out of a shaft they just sank behind Russ House. Think it’s
silver. I get three fifty every eight hours, and there’s a big turnaround.
Shifts day and night.”

“How much have you made so far?”
Faustus asked.

“Well, there’s the serpent in
paradise,” Belden admitted sheepishly. “I get promissory notes till Lepsy makes
his return, but they’re good as cash with most of the places around here. You
know, they just had an opening for a city marshal. I was thinkin’ about
applyin.’”

“Why don’t you?” the Rider asked.

“You ain’t gettin’ rid of me that
easy, Joe,” Belden said, putting his hand on his shoulder.

They hung a right down Fourth Street
until the Grand Hotel loomed on their right. It lived up to its name, a two
story affair with banks of large suites, all with their own windows.

“Wait till you see the inside of
this place,” Belden said.

But again, as they went to the door,
Kabede stopped outside.

“Kabede?” the Rider asked
expectantly.

“We had some trouble here last time,”
Belden said.

“You mean Kabede had some trouble.”

“It’s alright, Rider,” said Kabede. “I’ll
wait here. Here, Rider,” he said as an afterthought, taking the scroll case
from his shoulder and passing it to the Rider. “In case you need it.”

The Rider didn’t like it, but Kabede
nodded encouragingly. The Rider bristled, but went inside. He remembered again
why he tended to stay away from larger towns. If he hadn’t been shaved, shorn,
and wearing a borrowed shirt and coat from Faustus’ vardo, they might not have
allowed him inside either.

A wide, opulent red carpeted
staircase with a polished banister of black walnut dominated the lobby,
matching the wood of the silk cushioned furniture and the handsome front desk,
behind which was manned by an affable looking older gentleman in spectacles and
a fine vest and coat.

The clerk eyed the Rider and his
companions with congenial impassivity as they made their way over.

“Welcome to the Grand Hotel,
gentlemen. How may I help you this morning?”

“We’re here to speak to Mister Rice
and Mister Spates up in room twelve,” Belden said.

The clerk slapped a bell on the desk
and a diminutive man in what might have passed for an admiral’s uniform in some
foreign navy appeared from the back room.

“Who shall I say is come calling?”

“Tell Professor Spates the Rider is
here.”

“The Rider?”

“The Rider.”

“Very well.”

The clerk relayed the request to the
bellhop, who nodded and made an expeditious ascent of the carpeted stair.

The clerk smiled and waved them over
to the sofa in the waiting area.

“We’ll wait over there,” said the
Rider, and went to the foot of the stairs.

They weren’t standing there long
before Professor Spates appeared on the landing, looking as harried and
distracted as the last time the Rider had seen him outside of Las Vegas.

He was wearing brown pinstripes, and
as he came down the steps scanning the lobby, his eyes fell on their little
party and his expression turned from excitement to disappointment with a twinge
of anger.

“Listen here, sir,” he said,
stopping midway down the stair and addressing Belden. “I’ve already told you, I
will not meet with anyone other than Mister Rider himself.”

“Arthur, it’s me,” the Rider called.

Spates stopped and stared at the
Rider, even going so far as to take off his glasses.

“
Is
it?”

“It is.”

“Well,” he exclaimed, instantly
brightening. “I hardly recognize you, Rider. Please come up, come up.”

The Rider went up the stair and
Spates took his hand in two of his and shook it nearly loose, grinning the whole
time.

“Well. Well. How good it is to
finally meet again. We’d nearly given up on you.”

“Who’s we, Arthur? I did ask for
your discretion in this matter.”