Wraiths of the Broken Land (14 page)

Nathaniel complimented the nine-sided tiles and removed his black loafers.

Ubaldo and Pia exchanged a communicative glance.

“I have been informed that you favor the company of gringa women.” Radiating warmth and the scent of star anise, the madam advanced. “You do not appreciate the beautiful and passionate mujeres de Mexico?” She slid her hand along the gringo’s thigh.

Nathaniel told Pia that his wife was a beautiful woman from Mexico. (Kathleen’s family was entirely Irish, excepting a Jewish grandmother who had been an opera singer in Austria.)

“That is why your Spanish is so true,” commented the madam.

“And why I would like to spend time with a gringa.”

Pia laughed, a rich cachinnation that emanated from her belly, and said that she understood the value of variety.

“Señor Weston,” Ubaldo said, “make a seat and I will go speak with the gringas.”

“Gracias,” responded Nathaniel. “I would like to view them both before I make any decisions.”

“One has blonde hairs and the other has red hairs. They are both muy bonita, but…” The man with the wooden nose hesitated. “One has lost her right foot.”

The gringo acted as if he were pleased by what he had just heard. “That sounds interesting.”

Ubaldo looked directly into Nathaniel’s eyes. “You will like these womens.” Air whistled through his artificial nostrils.

“Perhaps I will spend time with both of them.”

The flat line that was Ubaldo’s mouth curved, and his wooden nose tilted. “You are a good hombre.” A small dark joy crept into his eyes. “I will return.” The pale man strode off, toward one of the eight passageways that radiated from the temple out into the catacombs.

Clay nonagonal tiles pressed into Nathaniel’s socks as he walked to the area where divans, fainting couches, bagatelle tables and stools rested upon a luxurious rose rug. He seated himself and was immediately given moccasins by a woman in a golden kimono.

“Gracias Señorita.”

Nathaniel donned the soft shoes and surveyed the assemblage. The clients were well-dressed Hispanic men, excepting a group of Orientals who played a game of mahjong in a far corner. The robed women who orbited the area like silken monks were a far more variegated group—Mexicans, South Americans, mulattos, negresses and Orientals offered themselves and kind words to the clientele. Not one of the female employees seemed to be distressed or compelled to perform her role, and Nathaniel doubted that it was because they were all terrific play-actors. It appeared as if many or most of the women who worked at Catacumbas did so by choice.

A striking man of fifty with a thin nose, full lips, ivory white hair and one eye stared down from a glistening oil painting that hung upon the wall. Below the left heel of the seated subject laid a swollen corpse that had a sliced open stomach from which poured a deluge of black oil and scorpions. Nathaniel pivoted so that he no longer faced the cruel tableau.

A rust-colored mongrel with a crooked snout trotted out of the hallway that Ubaldo had entered. Across the tiles, the canine gaily padded, tongue dangling.

“Henry!”

The dog stopped.

Ubaldo emerged from the portal and told the animal to behave like a gentleman.

Henry reared up on its hind legs and walked forward, upright, across the clay tiles.

The Oriental men applauded the nascent biped, and several Mexicans cackled.

Ubaldo patted the vertical dog’s head and approached Nathaniel. “Henry was a circus animal. He knows special tricks.”

Nathaniel asked after the gringas.

“The womens have friends right now,” Ubaldo replied, “but you will see them later.”

The canine staggered upon its hind legs in ever-narrowing circles, as if it were insane.

Nathaniel Stromler silently empathized.

Chapter VIII
Swallow Your Spit

A tiny azure star rose from the base of the southwest mountain range, paused, brightened, dropped, trailed blue sparks and disappeared whence it had arisen.

“That’s the beacon,” Brent Plugford said to the men who waited in the shadow of a huge igneous rock.

“I marked it.” Patch Up lowered his spyglass and pointed a mostly invisible finger at the dark mountains. “There’s a defile in that area.”

“Okay.” Brent faced northeast and scanned the grayish black plain that laid in-between his crew and the distant fungal effulgence that was Nueva Vida, but he saw no rider. “Long Clay should be with us.”

“He’s comin’.” John Lawrence Plugford’s words were confident, and his brusque tone precluded any further questions.

The cowboy was almost certain that the gunfighter’s ancillary mission involved Ojos. When Brent thought of the helpful Mexican being threatened or injured (or worse) he was disturbed, but as he had learned during the robbery, he was not responsible for the actions of Long Clay, nor would he be able to alter them in any way. The ruthless tactician had come on this ride as a favor to his old partner and would not answer to some cowboy foreman or anybody else in existence.

Brent snapped tack at his pointless contemplations. “Let’s get on.” Underneath him, the brindled mustang surged forward, and summarily the remainder of the crew coaxed their beasts into action. John Lawrence Plugford trailed the palfreys that bore the sidesaddles for the girls, Stevie led the dandy’s tan mare (which had been retrieved an hour earlier from Nueva Vida) and Patch Up whipped the rumps of his ragged brace. The group paralleled the edge of the range so that it would be difficult to see them from any vantage points within the mountains.

“You think anybody else noticed that signal he sent up?” asked Stevie. “I wouldn’t want to tip our hand with no Fourth of July practice.”

“Either he released the arrow where no guards could descry it,” Patch Up said, “or he’s taken care of the guards.”

“Deep Lakes is skilled,” added Brent.

“If he’s so skilled,” Stevie inquired, “then why’d they throw him in the fire?”

“He was a little infant when they done that,” Brent said to his brother, “and you shouldn’t be talkin’ ‘bout it neither. Ain’t your business.” The cowboy looked at his father and saw that the huge man was frowning.

“I was just wonderin’,” Stevie continued, “if that Indian’s such a marvelous talent, why his kin treat him like a log.” The way the young man slurred his words and carried on betrayed the fact that he had been drinking.

“Gimme that goddamn flask you dumb fool,” said Brent.

“No. And I only had a little.”

John Lawrence Plugford cut his horse and was directly beside Stevie’s careering colt. The huge man raised his hand and slapped his son across the face.

“Goddamn!” Stevie wobbled and righted himself. “I barely drunk a—”

The huge palm struck his face a second time.

Unbalanced, the young man grabbed his horn so that he did not fall out of his saddle. His right cheek was halfway between red and purple.

“Give it,” ordered John Lawrence Plugford.

Stevie reached into his saddlebag, withdrew the flask and proffered it to his father. The huge man took the metal vessel and put it inside the front pocket of his gray overalls. Beneath the men, horse hooves rumbled.

“I barely drunk—”

The huge hand slapped Stevie’s mouth shut. Lines of white moonlight that were spilled tears tracked down the young man’s discolored skin. The horses cantered apace, but to Brent the tableau seemed devoid of motion.

“Stop makin’ excuses,” the cowboy advised his brother.

Stevie remained silent.

John Lawrence Plugford looked at Patch Up. “Grab out a big handful of coffee beans.”

“I will.”

The patriarch looked at his drunken son. “Chew ‘em until I say you can spit ‘em out.”

“Yessir.”

With a baleful glare, John Lawrence Plugford added, “Your sisters need us clear.”

Remorse filled Stevie’s face. “I’m sorry.”

“Take a sip of liquor before we get home, and I’ll hold your arm to the fire.”

“I won’t drink nothin’. I swear.”

The huge man hastened his stallion away from the colt that carried his youngest child.

“Stevie,” said Patch Up. “Ride over.”

The chastened young man wiped his face with his shirt and guided his horse toward the front of the wagon.

Patch Up extended a tin cup, the contents of which rattled. “Take it.” A wagon wheel struck a stone, and two coffee beans leapt into the air like roused horseflies.

Stevie took the tin cup, poured its dark contents into his mouth and chewed. His head rumbled like a quarry. Brent recalled chewing coffee beans when he was a kid, after his father had caught him and Dolores drinking from a purloined bottle of wine.

Without warning, John Lawrence Plugford spun around in his saddle and pointed his sawed-off shotgun northeast. Brent withdrew his pistol and over his barrel scanned the area at which his father aimed.

A tiny light flashed thrice and disappeared.

Brent recognized the signal. John Lawrence Plugford holstered his sawed-off shotgun and faced forward.

From the darkness emerged Long Clay, atop his galloping black mare.

“Did you see the arrow?” the cowboy asked the gunfighter.

“What color was it?”

Brent knew that Long Clay had clear eyes, but for some reason did not see colors at this point in his life. This optical degradation was the gunfighter’s lone physical deficiency and John Lawrence Plugford had warned his sons not to ever comment upon it.

“It was blue.”

Long Clay nodded.

Brent had recently learned about the burning arrows, which were signals that his father and the gunfighter had devised back when they were shaking trains and doing other operations. A lone blue shaft was lodestone, a beacon to be followed.

Stevie crunched beans and spat black ichor into the wind.

“Swallow your spit,” ordered John Lawrence Plugford.

“Yessir.” The young man gulped down his retched saliva. A few drops of dark drool stained his beige shirt.

A burning arrow flared within the southwestern mountains, disappeared, reappeared at a higher altitude, vanished momentarily, climbed to its apex and paused. For two heartbeats, the eyes of the riders and their horses were a luminous crimson.

The beacon plummeted through the same two open areas and disappeared into the range. Darkness spread across the plain and filled Brent Plugford. The crimson arrow was the signal that the cowboy had hoped he would not witness.

Patch Up stated, “He’s killing.”

Chapter IX
Entertainments for Entrepreneurs

Nathaniel Stromler watched the circus dog sit, roll over, ‘get drunk,’ ‘talk,’ ‘play cards’ (it raised and observed its paws), ‘be a wife’ (it whimpered irritating frequencies), ‘dip his biscuit in tea’ (it performed an inexplicable gesture) and ‘walk like an American’ (it slid across the rug on its belly like a serpent). Shortly after the canine’s weird display ended, Juan Bonito disappeared into a passage holding the hand of a voluptuous Mexican woman who dwarfed him so substantially that the pair looked like mother and son. Four different Mexican women, a mestizo, a mulatto and an Oriental sat beside the gringo and tried to lure him back to their rooms in the catacombs, but he politely denied all of them. Instead, he drank a small amount of scotch and ruminated upon his predicament.

A stunning woman who looked like a confluence of Oriental, Caucasian and native lineages approached Nathaniel. Her eyes were onyx enigmas framed in luxurious lashes, and the sharp tips of her breasts prodded the purpureal silk of her robe each time her forward foot contacted the ground. The gringo looked away from her mesmerizing beauty and toward the wall upon which sat the gruesome oil painting of the one-eyed man.

“What are your opinions of this portrait?” inquired an unaccented male voice.

To his immediate left, Nathaniel saw the subject of the painting rendered in three-dimensional flesh that was clothed in a white linen suit, a rose shirt, matching gloves and Italian loafers. The lid over the man’s missing eye was closed, and his white hair was slicked back from his oddly handsome face.

“The subject has been richly rendered,” Nathaniel replied, “but the walls of the room and the scorpions look unfinished.”

“Your evaluation is correct—the artist has not yet completed the piece.” The man with white hair and one eye proffered a rose glove. “My name is Gris.”

A tingling chill descended from Nathaniel’s nape to his tailbone. “I am Thomas Weston. Buenas noches.” The gringo shook the man’s covered hand and summarily complimented all that he had seen of Catacumbas and its employees.

“Are you inclined toward conversation while you wait?” asked the proprietor.

Nathaniel knew that he had no choice but to invite Gris to join him, and thus motioned to the rose-colored fainting couch opposite his divan. “Please allow me to buy you a drink.”

Gris sat at a comfortable angle upon the satin cushions. “The drinks that we share are my gift to you.”

“I insist.”

“I would rather not owe a debt of kindness to a man whom I do not yet know.”

“Then I shall refuse your gift for the exact same reason,” replied Nathaniel.

“That is understandable.” Gris fingered a silver eyebrow and fixed his gaze upon Nathaniel. “You are a friend of Juan Bonito.” This was stated, rather than asked.

“A recent acquaintance.”

“His word has value.”

A red kimono that was an adroit barmaid flashed in-between the gentlemen and a tiny glass of port wine, which looked like an inverted dinner bell made out of crystal, materialized in Gris’s left hand.

“With which type of American business are you involved?”

“I am a hotelier.” Nathaniel hoped that the shrewd man would not inquire after too many details.

“You are successful in this enterprise?”

“I am.”

Gris sipped his carmine beverage. “Un sabor delicado.” His Spanish accent was that of a European Spaniard, not a Central or South American. “Where was your Mexican wife born?”

The question was asked casually, but Nathaniel felt as if he were suddenly inside of a courtroom. “Mexico City.”

“I am pleased to know that a distinguished American entrepreneur appreciates Hispanic women.” Gris saluted the gringo with his tiny glass of port wine and took a quiet sip.

Nathaniel wanted to guide the conversation away from potentially difficult terrain. “How long has this establishment been extant?”

“In which year did the USS Maine explode as a result of its incompetent crew?” Gris’s face was inscrutable.

The gringo’s unease was grown by the Spaniard’s blunt and colored reference to the event that was the catalyst for the war between Spain and America. “Eighteen ninety-seven.”

“My establishment opened that same year.” The proprietor’s eye did not blink.

The gringo tried to think of a way to guide the conversation away from the inflammatory topic.

“Do not be concerned,” Gris said, “I do not hold you personally responsible for diminishing the Spanish empire.”

Nathaniel relaxed. “I appreciate your exoneration. I was managing my mother’s candy store at that time and wholly uninvolved with warfare.”