The Grey Pilgrim (20 page)

“No,” J.D. told him. “Thanks, but no. I trust the old man. The fewer outsiders get mixed in, the less apt we are to come to any shooting. I really think we stand a better chance without you.”

Burns sucked on the cigarette he’d just lit off the butt of its predecessor as he fought his disappointment. He might not like it, but he understood.

“And I need you to keep the heat off with the press and officials who come in later. Make a big deal out of the members of the village who are here to register. Play down the fact that there’s a problem. Don’t even hint Mary’s a captive. Tell them Jujul is having trouble convincing a few diehards and we’ve gone back to his village to help negotiate.”

“We’ll do it,” Burns said, happier now that he had something to do.

“I’m coming with you,” Larry said.

“Jesus, Larry!” J.D. exploded. “Don’t be an ass. You’ll just slow us down, and if there’s a problem out there I’ll have you to worry about as well as Mary.”

“God damn it, J.D.,” he said. “I’ve got to come. She’s my wife. I can’t stand around here pretending nothing’s wrong and making happy faces for a bunch of reporters and bureaucrats, and I sure as hell can’t go back to Tucson and calmly wait by the phone. Either you take me along, or I head back to town and spread the word and get a real rescue effort mounted.”

J.D. should have talked him out of it. He should have found something that seemed useful for Larry to do that also kept him out of the way and off the front pages. But he couldn’t think of anything under the pressure of the moment, especially after the threat to go public. The only alternative was to punch Larry’s lights out, bind and gag him and have Bill and Edith keep him out of sight until they got back. It was a good idea, except for involving the Burnses in a felony.

“All right,” he agreed. “Bill, find him a gun too, maybe a shotgun and some double-ought so he’s got a chance of hitting what he aims at.”

Larry tried to thank him, but J.D. was already on his way back up the slope toward Jesus and Jujul. He’d just noticed the gentle rain that was beginning to sweep across the ranch yard. If it kept up, they could lose the trail.

Out of Our Jurisdictions

They put Larry up on a big skittish brown colt where he tried to look right at home, not like someone who hadn’t been on a horse since his mid-teens and then only the old mare that refused to hurry even for her feed bag. There was a roll of blankets and supplies tied up behind him and a twelve-gauge automatic shotgun in a saddle holster within easy reach of his right hand in case he proved brave enough to let go of the reins. A bandolier of shells hung over his shoulder. It was obvious he thought he cut a dashing figure and J.D. almost changed his mind and left him behind when Larry wished out loud for someone with a camera to record the scene.

They rode hard, with Larry riding harder than the rest. Everyone else was a natural extension of their animal. Larry held on for dear life, bouncing and swaying and wearing blisters in unnatural places.

They stopped after a couple of hours. J.D. was cold and sore, the steady drizzle had soaked him. He was ready for a rest but it was too soon. He was glad when Larry, not he, started to climb down from the saddle only to be stopped by Jesus.

“We’ve cut their trail,” Gonzales said. “Stay where you are. The Papagos are studying it. This rain’s going to make them damned hard to follow. We need to memorize any peculiarities now, while they’re relatively fresh. We’ll move on again in a minute.”

Larry started to protest, but he noticed J.D.’s cold scrutiny and shut up. He might be in pain, but he still had his pride.

The Papagos leaned far out of their saddles studying the damp earth. J.D. couldn’t see what they were looking at and couldn’t see what they were following when they started out again.

They kept it up all day. So did the rain—slow, steady, soaking, and cold as death. When they stopped, Jesus had to tell J.D. several time before he reined his animal in. He’d ceased functioning in the normal fashion. Everything was on automatic pilot while the real J.D. curled up somewhere inside and hid until it was over.

“Too dark to follow a trail anymore,” Jesus said. “Might as well climb down and eat something. Try to get some sleep. We’ll start again at first light.”

Larry unhooked his foot from the stirrup, swung back over the saddle, and ended up flat on the ground, confused about how he got there. He tried to get up and couldn’t.

J.D. fumbled through his wet saddle bags and dug out a flashlight Burns had sent along.

“Look at the blood,” Jesus said.

“Shit. Stupid kid’s ridden himself raw.”

“No way he’ll sit a horse tomorrow. He’s through.”

“We can’t just leave him out here and we can’t stop.” J.D. finally had someone to focus his anger on. It helped him forget his own pain. “If there really is a submarine and they get weapons and explosives and slip back into the States, we’re going to have a real mess on our hands. Not just what they might cause, but the reaction of vigilante groups. Some of our locals, given an excuse, would be delighted to make the slaughter at Camp Grant seventy years ago look like a fucking picnic.”

“Maybe we could leave one of the Papagos with him.”

“We’re too few already.”

The argument went on and Larry lay there and listened. Something about it struck him as humorous and he giggled.

“He’s delirious,” J.D. said.

Hands fumbled with Larry’s belt. He thought it was the redhead and protested that this was neither the time nor place. When he tried to stop her, more hands held his arms. They turned him over and pulled down his pants and shorts and it felt like they took along part of his rump with them, but the cold air and rain were soothing. He lay there, bare ass pointed at the sky. Something symbolic there, J.D. thought.

Jujul began rubbing something on the raw spots and Larry came unglued. J.D. looked away and decided not to mention his own blisters. They finished and covered Larry up again and turned him back over. Another Papago spooned some food in him and wrapped him in blankets.

J.D. shared some of the cold gruel the Papago were handing out, then crawled in his own bedroll and tried to find a way to get comfortable. He knew he wasn’t going to sleep and that thought was still fresh in his mind when Jesus shook him by the shoulder and told him, “Time to get up.”

He didn’t answer. When he sat up he didn’t hurt as bad as he should have. It was the middle of the night, or so he first thought. Then he realized he could see people moving, packing the horses. He could see a little desert too, and make out the edges of bits of the surrounding geography. It had stopped raining. Low, broken clouds made a misty pilgrimage toward where he thought Tucson might be. Between the clouds were patches of paling stars and dusky sky. One of the Indians handed him a plate of cold food and he ate it, neither recognizing nor caring what it was. Another Papago roused Larry, fed him, saddled his horse and packed up his blankets. When he finished eating Larry climbed to his feet. He could still walk. Well, more like waddle, actually. He hobbled a few steps into the desert and relieved himself. When he came back they were all waiting for him.

“Can you ride?” J.D. asked.

“Only one way to find out,” Larry replied grimly, launching himself toward his tall brown instrument of torture. One of the Papagos had been wearing a fleece-lined jacket the day before. During the night it had been cut up and made into a pad for the top of his saddle. It sat there, fleece side up, and made Larry want to cry at the breadth of human kindness. The man had sliced a blanket and was wearing it serape style.

“Thanks,” Larry muttered, damp-eyed.

He climbed aboard and forced himself to accept the agony.

“I shouldn’t have let you come,” J.D. told him, riding alongside and watching the grimaces come and go.

Larry agreed, but didn’t say so. He was afraid it might come out a whimper. J.D. spurred ahead and Larry made himself do the same.

J.D. had slept better than he had any right to, probably because he’d missed too much sleep lately. He still didn’t feel up to fighting his way out of a paper bag, much less taking on the wild bunch they were trailing, and maybe a Japanese submarine as well. The Papagos, not one of whom could have been under fifty, looked fresh, but then a day’s ride in the rain and a night in a cold camp probably wasn’t that unusual for them. Jesus looked better than J.D. felt. Larry looked like death had changed mounts, giving up a pale horse for a tall brown one.

“You think this is the Jap the FBI was looking for?” J.D. asked the deputy.

“Occurred to me,” Jesus replied. “We happen across an agent, I’ll ask.” Strain and fatigue were shortening everyone’s tempers.

“Where the hell are we?” J.D. wondered. The landscape had taken on a nightmarish quality, rugged, rocky, barren. In comparison, the desert around Tucson was lush and garden-like.

“We’re both a little out of our jurisdictions, if that’s what you mean.”

“When?” The conversation kept J.D. from thinking about what they were going to do if they actually managed to catch anybody.

“This morning sometime. I saw the marker maybe a quarter mile off on a hillside.”

“How can you follow a trail through this?” J.D. asked, gesturing at nature’s exercise in surrealism, the entrance to which should have born a Dantesque, “abandon hope,” warning.

“What, you kidding? Trail? I lost it before we crossed the border. Since then I haven’t seen so much as a hint that anybody else has ever been here before.”

“These guys must be really good then,” J.D. said. “Compliment them for me will you.”

“Sure,” Jesus agreed, and put together a string of sounds that made about as much sense to J.D. as his life had so far. The old men looked at each other and smiled. Jujul rode back alongside them. He and Jesus exchanged a few pleasantries, then Jesus turned to the marshal.

“They’ve lost it too,” he said. “Makes me feel better about my tracking. I thought these guys must be real wonders myself.”

“Lost the trail,” J.D. shouted, losing something of his own. “Then what the fuck are we doing out here?”

“Take it easy, J.D.,” Jesus advised. “These guys know what they’re doing. I noticed it too. They were headed pretty straight. No attempts to mask where they’re going. Probably thought nobody would follow them, especially before yesterdays’s rain washed it out. Anyway, we’ve just been heading in the same direction. Jujul figures to let Larry rest at the base of those hills up ahead while he and the others fan out and look for fresh signs. We should have passed where they camped last night. If they haven’t headed off at a right angle, we’ll pick them up easy enough. Wait to get excited till they get a chance to be proved wrong.”

“OK, OK,” J.D. agreed. “Only tell them to start now. We’ll look after Larry and wait at the base of those hills. We can’t waste any time in case they really are meeting a sub.”

They compromised. J.D. took Larry to where a lonely organ pipe cactus stood guard at the base of the hills, and Jesus chose better company and rode out with the Papagos.

J.D. was frantic about Mary. He had worried about her all that time when she’d been fine and his concerns were groundless. And then, just when she was going to walk out, safe and sound, she was suddenly engulfed in real danger. Who was this supposed Jap? Was he a real agent or was he just some psycho? And which was better? Which one kept Mary an unharmed prisoner and not a corpse along side the trail?

And what about Parker? Was he a co-conspirator or another hostage?

Then there was Larry. He was a doubly unneeded complication. If J.D. managed to get Mary out of this, how was Larry’s presence going to affect what happened next? Larry, especially in the condition in which he would arrive, was clear evidence that what happened to Mary still mattered to him. It could be a stunning indictment to their indiscretion. J.D. was willing to fight for her, but if he used his most effective weapon, the redhead, he’d be making himself into someone he wasn’t sure he could live with anymore. And if he didn’t like himself, how could Mary?

At the cactus, J.D. helped Larry off his horse and lay him, face down, on a smooth surface. Larry went right to sleep. He didn’t get much of a nap though. Jesus and the
O’odham
rode up within half an hour. They’d found the trail. Clear enough even J.D. could follow it, they claimed. Jujul gave Larry’s posterior another treatment and they got him back on his horse and moving. Glassy-eyed and wobbly, Larry somehow managed to stay aboard.

A Race of Warriors

J.D. is coming. Mary kept telling herself that over and over.

She remembered his long, lean body. She remembered the scars. He’d been a hero in Spain, right? If anybody could get her out of this it would be J.D. He’d be looking for her by now. He would have begun when they didn’t show up at Burns’ ranch on time. But where would he look? He hadn’t been able to find Jujul’s village. Even with all the things she’d told him about its location, he might still take a lot of time getting there. She needed J.D. now. She didn’t want to die. No matter how she tried to deny it, she expected Sasaki to kill them.

She and Jujul had separated before going back to the village. The old man had seen his riders out where he hadn’t expected them. Something unusual was going on. He decided it was best for them to maintain the fiction, and she went back to the women’s hut.

She had just changed and hidden her gear when two of the young men came for her. She was surprised. It wasn’t proper, but she didn’t have any reason not to accompany them, not then.

She didn’t know who Sasaki was when she first saw him. He was just a skinny stranger ranting in English, but he’d already worked some kind of miracle. The man was a zealot, a true believer. She recognized the type. She’d seen fundamentalist preachers accomplish the same thing, or the occasional Fascist dictator on a larger scale. Get that fire in their eyes and that ring in their voice and suddenly people would do anything they asked. It didn’t matter whether they understood or not, just so they could be part of the general hysteria, swept along on the monumental tides of the leader’s evangelical ego.

That’s how it was with this one, and Jujul’s villagers were too simple, too naive to realize what was happening. Sasaki laid into them with a fervor Herr Hitler would have admired. “We, the Mongoloid Race, the sons and grandsons of Asia, are the rightful inheritors of the Earth. The Whites are usurpers. They must be stopped, driven from the lands that belong by sacred right to our peoples so that we, the people who know and understand the land, might make it ours again.”

He told them how noble and just their cause was. They liked that, even if most of them hadn’t realized they had one till then. He told them how the Whites were evil and had no right to impose their will on the Papago. They liked that too, though they were remote enough that few of them realized anyone else had the final say until the draft registration law brought it home to them.

There were two strangers. The second turned out to be the Papago Attorney, John Parker. J.D. had told her about him. Parker must have argued with Sasaki before she arrived. He seemed thoroughly cowed and a little rivulet of blood streaked one side of his chin.

Someone had told Sasaki she was there. When her guards brought her back he ignored her until he felt confident enough of his hold on the village. She had been too shocked to say a word. That was what he finally warned her about.

“You’ll speak only with my permission,” he told her, “and only in English. If you disobey, I’ll tear out your tongue and eat it for my supper.”

Nobody complained when he threatened her. Some of the young men laughed.

Then Jujul came back. Mary had wondered where he was. Probably Sasaki had too.

Jujul rode up on his big roan and demanded to know what was going on, who the strangers were. Somebody told him and he lost his temper and the argument began. An hour earlier and it might have made a difference, but Sasaki had told them what they wanted to hear and suddenly, unexpectedly, Jujul was telling them the opposite. He had started this little rebellion, and now he was saying they had to quit, go give themselves up to a federal marshal, because he, Jujul, had arranged it, given his word. It wasn’t a popular course to advocate. Most of them had expected him to welcome the persuasive stranger who’d come to help them make war on the Anglos. Instead, out of the blue, he wanted to surrender.

The village didn’t take it well. A matter of such importance should be decided by the council, a mandate of the elders.

“There was no time,” Jujul told them. “There still is not. I am
Siwani Mahkai
. I have decided. I have given my word and I will keep it. I will take my people in. You may follow me or replace me, those are your options.”

Rat Skin angrily suggested Jujul’s sudden conversion must be the doing of the White Woman. “We should never have let the Anglo witch into our village.”

When it was translated for Sasaki he ordered that she be bound. Someone started to obey but the old man stopped him. Sasaki countered with insults—Jujul was too old, he had become a woman and was unfit to lead a race of warriors. He baited the old man, laying down a verbal challenge that couldn’t be ignored. Jujul had to pick it up, make it physical or step aside and acknowledge that a new bull was dominant male in this herd.

Jujul seemed to realize exactly what Sasaki was doing. Surprisingly, he seemed pleased it was coming to this. He went at the stranger like a man goes after vermin, businesslike, determined only that it should not escape him. It didn’t. Mary had heard of the oriental art of unarmed combat, but she’d never seen it before. The villagers hadn’t even heard of it. What happened must have seemed nearly miraculous to them. The old man never had a chance. Sasaki took him easily, tormenting and humiliating him before his people. And then, before shame might be transformed to pity, Sasaki finished it.

With Jujul lying, bleeding and unconscious, Sasaki let the women treat him. Sasaki was smart enough to know he couldn’t just walk in and kill the old man. He could push things only so far. It was a delicate balance.

They tied Mary’s hands behind her and someone held onto the end of the rope. Sasaki went back to his sermon. His audience was less certain now, especially as he became more specific. They believed in him, agreed with him, but there were old loyalties, habits, and a degree of natural timidity. Mary was impressed when Sasaki finally managed to persuade thirteen to accompany him. Twenty with their women. It was an amazing accomplishment, but she could sense Sasaki’s disappointment.

She felt like Alice on the trail of a white rabbit. The insanity of the outside world had somehow reached into the heart of the People’s land to replace their gentleness with savagery. She was a prisoner of war, hostage to a man who claimed to be a Japanese officer. She was going with an Indian war party to meet a submarine. None of it could be real.

Sasaki got them organized. The warriors and their women gathered mounts, provisions, and prisoners in response to his orders. Parker probably wondered what the hell a woman anthropologist was doing in Jujul’s village, but he was too busy spitting blood to ask. Sasaki was obviously surprised to find her there as well, but he evidently wasn’t the curious sort. He had a job to do and she was just another problem to solve.

The villagers who weren’t going stood around and watched, quiet, like mourners at a funeral. My funeral, and maybe Parker’s, she thought. They didn’t do anything to help the ones who were leaving, but they didn’t do anything to stop them either.

They rode southwest. They rode well into the night, though they didn’t ride hard or make any particular effort to mask their trail. Mary guessed Sasaki wasn’t concerned about being followed. He thought Jujul was the only one who might come after him and the old man hadn’t looked like he would be capable of that sort of thing for weeks. And he would think, if Jujul went to the authorities, no one would believe his wild tale. It sounded absurd to Mary, and she was there.

They stopped late that first night. The Papagos built a fire and Sasaki preached his war to them over supper. Mary doubted if he knew it, but the war chief was expected to sing songs predicting victory in such a situation. Unintentionally, he was doing what the Papagos expected. It was effective.

Sasaki kept Mary and Parker apart from the others. Each prisoner’s feet were tied, as were their hands, and they were staked out so they couldn’t move very far in any direction or talk to each other without being loud enough to catch his attention. When the coals died, Sasaki bedded them down, one on each side of him, roped so any movement would wake him.

She was frightened but exhausted. Even the strain and danger couldn’t keep her from dozing.

She woke in the middle of the night. She didn’t know why. Sasaki was breathing regularly but she could see that Parker’s eyes were open. She could also see that he was moving, edging closer to the Japanese so he wouldn’t pull on the ropes. It was hard to move in the blankets and with his hands and feet tied, but he finally found a rock. Not sharp, but heavy, big enough to crush a skull.

Parker twisted and contorted, and finally sat upright beside his target, the stone in his lap. He grasped it in both hands and twisted to raise it over the pale face beside him. Mary realized with sudden horror that Sasaki’s eyes were open, watching, his lips faintly smiling. Parker slammed the rock down but Sasaki wasn’t there anymore. It thumped heavily in the dirt where he’d been.

Sasaki was up, standing over them, a ghostly figure in the dim starlight. He was grinning now. The Papagos slept soundly, except for a rat-faced youth with a knife who mysteriously turned away and slipped from sight. She didn’t recognize him, but she didn’t have time to think about it. Sasaki uncoiled like a striking snake, his boot slammed into Parker’s face producing an explosion of blood and broken teeth.

She woke Parker in the morning. When she tried to feed him, he couldn’t eat. He could hardly move his mouth at all. His nose was broken, clogged with dried blood. His tongue was so swollen he had trouble getting air.

Sasaki told his followers what had happened. No one seemed surprised. No one seemed concerned at the result, except Mary. And the lesson wasn’t lost on her. She asked him, politely, in English, if she might tend Parker’s wounds. He allowed it. He owned them.

“Very foolish, Mr. Parker,” he said, speaking not just to Parker, but for Mary and the Papagos as well. “I suppose you were afraid I would kill you. I can understand that. But neither you nor this woman are our enemies. We won’t kill noncombatants. You’re safe with us. When we meet the submarine, I’ll turn you over to its commander. I’m afraid you’ll have to remain prisoners for a time. I can’t have you talking about me to the authorities until war comes or our own fight is won, but you’ll be well treated. And, when this is over, you can both come home.”

Mary thought Sasaki was overestimating the band’s sensibilities. He seemed to think they might abandon him if he killed his prisoners. Back when the Papago made war on the Apache, they regularly killed women and children. There’d been no noncombatants. She didn’t know how these people felt about her, certainly not strongly enough to insist she be freed, and none of them seemed to know Parker at all or have any reason to care what Sasaki did with him. They were under the Oriental’s spell, and leaving his prisoners’ corpses to rot probably wouldn’t turn any of them away.

They rode again. The day blurred, all that remained was her terror. Sasaki watched her. Lots of men had watched her, their lust clear, but his lust was different. If he wanted her, she thought it was just for the pleasure of taking her life. When he looked at her, he wasn’t undressing her with his eyes, he was reveling in the power he held over her, and imagining how to exercise it. They camped again and she cried a little, quietly so he couldn’t see.

On Monday morning the sky clouded and wept for her and the attorney. They rode on, methodically, monotonously, southwest.

Once, when she and Parker were more or less alone, she whispered to him. “Do you think he’ll really send us on the submarine?” She tried to sound hopeful, but she didn’t get the answer she wanted.

His tongue worked a little by then. He was hard to understand, but, unfortunately, not impossible. “We’re dead,” he told her. She tried telling herself J.D. was coming, but she no longer believed it.

They camped again. She slept again. By morning it had stopped raining. Broken clouds ran after the fleeing storm. Parker finally managed to eat a little, but it started his mouth bleeding and he had to quit. They rode on. By midday she could smell the sea.