The Last Pilgrims (31 page)

The kidnappers, he had learned, were Aztlani
soldiers dressed in Vallensian garb that they had stolen during
raids against Vallensian farms on the frontier. Leo, the leader of
the group, was a rough and rude young man who evidently lacked both
religion and normal human affections—including any respect for
human life.

Leo had informed him that they had many
spies among the Vallenses who were heading north, and if he didn’t
come with them peaceably, the spies were instructed to kill
Vallensian refugees each day until he did so. Jonathan was certain
that the spies would kill the Vallenses if they had the opportunity
to do so anyway, but he had agreed to go peaceably for two reasons:
first, because he had no alternative, and he had no intention of
using force to try to free himself; second, because by keeping at
least these three men busy guarding him, he hoped that at least a
few of his people might be spared.

His main objectives over the last two days
since the kidnapping were a bit contradictory, as he had been
trying to slow the party down, while simultaneously encouraging
them in whatever bad ideas their leader would concoct. Eventually
he had decided that the second object—encouraging stupid
decisions—would accomplish the first; and that had been exactly
what had transpired. Leo’s drive to escape capture and get to El
Paso in some kind of record time had resulted in the death of two
of the horses. Now, with the other two mounts nearly lame and
suffering dehydration, with hundreds of miles still to go, their
escape had slowed to a crawl. In the last 24 hours, it had become
questionable whether they were even going to make it to El Paso at
all.

Somewhere around his son David’s age of 25
years, Leo was an uneducated and ill-bred know-it-all, whose
ignorance was in direct proportion to his ego. He was quite tall,
sallow skinned, with the look of a viper in his thin features and
sharp cheekbones. His demeanor and carriage were offensive, even
when he said nothing, and he treated his cohorts as something
significantly less than subordinates. Any suggestion they made was
immediately rejected regardless of merit, unless he later decided
to introduce the same idea as his own in order to adopt it.

Troy was the silent one of the bunch, a
young man in his late teens, tall, broad, and muscular. He
obviously did not like Leo, and seemed to take umbrage at the
constant barrage of insults coming forth from the mouth of the
leader. The young man had offered some solid counsel to Leo at the
outset—that they didn’t need to rush, and that they would make
better time overall if they spared the horses and took a more
circuitous route. For some reason this wise advice had offended Leo
to no end, and from that point on he had not spared Troy a tongue
lashing if the boy dared speak above a whisper. Jonathan had
curried favor with the young man, primarily by offering looks of
understanding and commiseration whenever Leo would unleash an
un-prompted attack against him. When they stopped for lunch on the
second day, Leo had denied Troy any food in order to better feed
his captive. Back on the trail, Jonathan had secretly given half of
his bread to the young man, who seemed very thankful.

Atticus was the other Aztlani soldier, and
he seemed to be the kind of guy who avoided conflict as much as
possible by sucking up to Leo whenever he could, while
simultaneously trying to be friends with Troy. He even pretended to
be friendly to Jonathan when Leo wasn’t watching. The only one of
the three who seemed to be intelligent and thoughtful was Troy, so
Jonathan had decided to focus his attentions and efforts on the
youngest man of the bunch.

He had his hands full with a long ‘to-do’
list as they traveled. His first coup had been to side with Leo
when the leader had commanded that they take the straightest route
possible, rather than the longer route down south to what used to
be I-10, or the northern route that passed through Midland and
Odessa, where the trail met up with the old I-20 corridor. The area
between the two old Interstate corridors was known as ‘the
badlands’, and was purely militia territory. Jonathan figured his
odds of being rescued were better if he tried to keep the group in
the badlands.

The straight route through the badlands was
extremely rugged and difficult, and Jonathan knew the area very
well. It was also a trail almost solely used by the militia, and
because of that, Aztlani traders and scouts would have never even
considered going that way. The hot summer sun, the lack of water,
and rough riding had made things much harder on the group, and
especially on the horses.

By the middle of the second day, they were
all on foot in order to save the remaining horses, so Jonathan
diligently applied himself to leaving ‘signs’ in order to make
tracking the group easier on the posse. He would absent-mindedly
kick over rocks and stumble into yucca plants, breaking the thin
spines over onto the ground. As they passed low-hanging limbs—when
there were trees around, which wasn’t often—he would break off
twigs with green leaves on them and leave them on the trail behind
them. Leo was too stupid to notice, and if Atticus ever noticed he
didn’t register it. Once, after flipping over a partially rotted
branch with his foot, exposing the darker and bug eaten underside,
Jonathan thought he saw the faintest of smiles touch the corner of
Troy’s mouth, but he couldn’t be sure.

In addition to trying to leave behind easily
noticeable markers, he also tried to keep firing a constant litany
of questions, comments, and advice to Leo in order to keep him
talking, arguing, and ranting, instead of thinking and planning.
Leo seemed to like the attention, and he took every question or
comment as an opportunity to speak about himself and his
abilities.

As the shadows grew long towards the end of
the second day, they were somewhere near where the town of Big
Lake, Texas used to be. Jonathan had convinced Leo that there would
be water in the ‘Big Lake’, and had used an old
Big Lake,
Texas
road sign to assure Leo that it had to be so. What Leo
did not know, is what Big Lake had always been famous for. The name
‘Big Lake’ was a joke, because the lake there was famous for being
dry most of the time, especially in the summer. Since this had not
been a very wet year, and there had also not been any recent heavy
rains, there was nearly a zero probability that there would be
water there. Leo didn’t find that out until they came upon the lake
and found wild cattle grazing on buffalo grass in the middle of the
dry ‘lake’.

Leo had gone on a tear after that one, and
Jonathan was convinced for a few moments that he might take a
beating for it, but Leo just vented his anger at him verbally, also
cursing at the sky and any handy rocks that were around, before
turning his wrath on his compatriots for not knowing a better
route. Jonathan was both shocked and amused at the things that came
out of the Aztlani’s mouth, most of which he would never be able to
repeat.

“I assure you,” Jonathan said with a calming
voice, “the last time I was here there
was
water in this
lake.” That, of course, was not a lie. Jonathan had grown up in
West Texas, and knew that the lake rarely held water, except during
the rainy season, and only then if the year had been particularly
wet. The last time he had seen the lake there were about four
inches of water in it, and the grass could still be seen above the
water line.

After that, frustrated and angry, Leo had
suggested that they make camp in some crumbling structures near the
old town, and Jonathan had encouraged that idea too, hoping to have
some down-time to rest and think and plan. It seemed to be Leo’s
plan to travel while it was hottest, and rest when it was cool, the
opposite of what the militia posse would be doing. Jonathan just
had to shake his head at that kind of reasoning.

They found a dilapidated old roadside motel
just outside of town, probably built in the 1940s, and Leo chose it
as their campsite. There was scarcely any roof left on most of the
buildings, and no doors or windows, but many of the walls at the
Travel-On Motel were constructed with cinderblocks, and were still
standing.

After unloading their gear, and unsaddling
the horses, Leo announced that he was going to hike around and look
for water. He assured the two other men confidently that
if
there was water around, he would find it.

Jonathan knew several locations in the area
where there was a very high likelihood that water could be found,
but, even though he was thirsty and starting to suffer headaches
himself, he didn’t say a word. After an hour, Leo returned, smiling
arrogantly and holding the crumbling remains of an old, orange Home
Depot bucket, in which were a couple of inches of stagnant and
rusty rainwater, along with what had once been about 20 or 30 nails
and screws. Leo bragged about his find, but didn’t dare drink any
of the putrid water himself. Instead, he poured it into an old
aluminum pan found in one of the buildings, and let the horses
drink what they could.

As Leo went on to regale his partners with
the story of his heroism in diligently searching out and finding
water—as well as saving the horses—Jonathan announced that he
needed to relieve himself, and stepped backwards out of the
abandoned shell of a building. Looking around, he almost laughed
out loud when he saw what used to be the motel swimming pool. There
were several hundred gallons of nasty water in the pool—but it was
wet, and even stagnant water can be purified with fire and/or
filtration,
if
one had the know-how and intelligence to do
it.

His captors didn’t seem to care to watch
him, since there was really no place to run or hide, so he was not
surprised that none of the three amigos followed him as he stepped
behind a wall that ran along and beside the old swimming pool.

As he walked he examined the area, mentally
noting the abundance of survival materials and supplies that could
be used in an emergency situation. There were numerous edible
plants in the area, some growing up through cracks in the old
concrete walks. He paused to pick and eat some succulent purslane
leaves—which would provide him with both water and nutrients.

He was always amazed at how much “stuff” was
really usable, but instead was quite invisible to people who didn’t
know
how
to think.

As he approached the rear of the building
that once housed the motel office, he stepped onto a thin paving
stone—about two feet square—that was almost completely covered over
with weeds and debris. The stone made an interesting hollow sound,
so he reached down carefully and flipped it over, nearly laughing
aloud again as he found himself peering down into an underground
cistern that was nearly 2/3 full of good water. He looked towards
the office, which was one of the few buildings that still had a
roof, and saw where steel roof gutters—still intact—ran into the
ground, and obviously terminated into this cistern. He smiled to
himself inwardly in his amusement.

They were in the borderlands of the
Chihuahuan Desert at this time, and the people who originally built
these structures were quite industrious, and would have taken
advantage of even the sparse amount of rainfall received in the
area. He figured that, conservatively, there were probably 40 to 50
similar cisterns in the immediate vicinity of the town.

He stepped out behind the office to urinate,
and, when he had finished, he walked back by the cistern, stopping
to replace the paving stone over the hole. Once he had the stone
back in place, he kicked the dirt and debris back over it, and,
satisfied that he had obscured the cistern, he looked back up to
find Troy leaning against the cinderblock wall about 30 feet away,
watching him with a “now we’ve got a secret” smile on his face.
After a few seconds of eye-contact, and without a word, Troy turned
around, walked along the poolside without giving it a second look,
and strolled back into the building they had chosen as their home
for the night.

The third day of his captivity dawned cold
and fair, and despite the emptiness of his belly, and the burning
thirst in his throat and mouth, he felt strong and alive. It had
gotten quite cold overnight in the desert, and, although he knew it
was going to be very hot throughout the day, he was glad when the
first rays of warm sunlight arrived to take the chill off of the
morning.

Troy’s suggestion that they leave early in
order to take advantage of the cool of the morning was gruffly
vetoed by Leo, and Jonathan was not at all surprised when it was
already after 9 a.m. and growing hot when they finally got
underway.

The horses had not recovered much, and
before long the heat of the morning began bearing down on man and
beast, amplifying the effects of dehydration and hunger.

By noon they had reached the ghost town of
Texon, Texas, an old oil-boom town that had already been
abandoned—other than by a handful of souls—even before the
collapse. Remarkably, though Texon was a ghost town, many of the
buildings in the old town were still standing and in moderately
good repair.
It’s as if someone has been maintaining the
place
, Jonathan thought.

His suspicions were realized when they saw
an old man, walking with the help of an ironwood cane, come out of
the old service station to meet them.

He noticed that the old man was particularly
lively despite his age and the fact that he was obviously quite
blind. Jonathan felt his heart go out in immediate concern for the
man, especially when Leo approached him with a smile on his
face.

“Well, howdy, Old-Timer!” Leo shouted, as he
dismounted.

“Howdy to y’all,” the old man replied. “You
don’t sound like militia… and if ya be traders, I’ve nothing to
trade for right now, so ya might just be on your way.”