Salomon 3

by David Xavier

  “It’s me. God almighty. Don’t shoot me.”

  Marquez lowered the rifle. “What’s out there? What’s going on?”

  “Riders. Ten or twelve.”

  Arturo grabbed his rifle and gunbelt. He checked his loads and looked around at the boulder walls and aspen cover. Marquez walked forward on his heels.

  “They won’t find us here, will they?”

  “Keep your voice down. They’re on top of us already and don’t even know it.”

  They held still. A stooped rider came through the narrow entrance. He had been talking quietly to himself, but his conversation stopped as he came into the hideout. He stood his horse there at the passage, looking around at what he wandered into, his eyes traveled across the canopy of leaves and fell on the bandits. His eyes widened and he had his rifle leveled when Arturo shot him spread-armed from the saddle and sent the horse sidestepping a few paces. The rifle report cracked among the rocks as if the earth might split beneath them.

  They were both saddling their horses when Salomon came back at a run.

  “They’re circling now,” he said.

  “How many do you think?”

  “We’ll soon find out. Go out in opposite ways. They’ll not know which of us to go after.”

  A second rider came through the passage with his pistol up. He fired one quick shot into the thick of them and Arturo fell from his horse. Marquez fired as the rider turned, and the rider pitched forward with a hole in the back of his head. He hit the ground flat without his arms to break the fall. Marquez shoved his pistola in his holster and dismounted, but Arturo was up already and had one foot in his stirrup again. He slapped at Marquez’s attempts to help him mount and almost fell over the other side.

  “Let go of me, I’m fine.”

  Salomon led the way through the aspen groves on the opposite side, his rifle held vertical away from his body, keeping it free of entanglement. Arturo followed out while Marquez knelt to reload his pistola. Tsunipu was still sitting by the firepit. Marquez looked up.

  “What are you going to turn into a raven or something?”

  The clop of horseshoes against stone clattered through the narrow entranceway. Tsunipu gave a short whistle and his horse came at a run from behind them, a black streak from the makeshift corral. The indian seemed to slip aboard the horse in midstride by a simple raising of an arm to pull himself over. He rode wielding a blade the length of a forearm, pulled from somewhere unseen. Marquez still knelt there as the indian rode the entrance corner, and a scream echoed in the passage and a riderless horse appeared trotting and blooddropped. Marquez cursed and tucked his pistola away. He mounted and kicked his horse’s ribs and bolted in a jerk the opposite way into the aspen groves with a few backward glances given.

  They were already firing in the open beyond the aspens. Figures chased across rolling greens and through white smokebursts, pistolshots clapping the hillsides amid the pound of hoofs. Just as one set of riders went one way, another pair came back the other way in chase. Marquez reined his horse left and right, then kicked into the fray with another curse.

  He rode with elbows and shouts high. The first rider he saw in a hat with the funneled brim of a cowboy he pulled his pistola and fired. The rider dropped and rolled but came back up unscathed. The man had already discharged his rounds but continued to run without stopping to reload, knowing the demon indian was about, fleeting back and forth and from behind hillfolds with a knife already bloodied and swinging, appearing silently and huge in front of riders with black eyes cut to slits and a jaw clenched in devil’s teeth.

  The rider ran clawing for his horse as the hills sounded gunshots on all sides, the field now hazed from sight. He grasped the reins and mounted on the run. Marquez rode up beside him and swung his pistola, catching the rider across the face and dropping him once again. His horse circled about beneath him on springy legs and he kicked after the man in stride and leapt from his saddle with his knife in hand. The man slumped at once and fell deadweight before Marquez hit the ground. He rolled and came up holding the knife as an icepick as another rider came over the mound at him. It was Salomon, and he called out and sidled his horse away with his hands outheld.

  “I thought maybe you were down.”

  “No,” Marquez said. “I could take them all on. I jumped ten yards in the air on top of this one.”

  “Get back on your horse.”

  A bullet buried itself between them. Salomon looked about. The rider was standing a distance off in a spreading billow of smoke, already fumbling with a new load in his pistol.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “Get back on your horse,” Salomon said again and pointed to Marquez, and he slapped his own horse on the rump and it went in a squat and leapt forward toward the rider. The rider’s face went back and forth between his pistol and the bandit. He was coming at him kicking and shouting, the brim of his sombrero pressed upward. The rider jammed a paper load in the pistol and rammed it down with the barrelrod. He looked up. The bandit was close enough he could see the whites of his eyes. He set the flintlock and powder and cocked the hammer back. When he lifted to fire, the bandit was in the air. Both riders went to the ground in a roll and the pistol fired at blue sky.

  Salomon scrambled on hands and knees as a pair of riders went whooping past. He stepped to stand but staggered and went sideways in the weeds to a sit. He made a pass under his hatbrim and his hand came away wet. He looked up and the rider was coming at him afoot. Salomon stretched a leg straight and pulled his knife. He held it back until the man was steps away, then arched his knife forward by the blade. The man pitched over the top with the knifehandle sticking from his adam’s apple. With both hands he scratched at his neck as if it were the teeth of some animal closed around his throat. He began to bubble and heave with his belly high. One hand went limp and then the other.

  The Comanche pony came trotting with its head low. Salomon grabbed the mane and swung over. The pony ran of its own accord with Salomon clinging, a rider already following him. The rider fired once and the bullet went droning over. Salomon kicked forward into a draw. He looked back and slowed, and motioned to the rider. Another rider joined the chase and Salomon kicked again into a run. He cut along a small hillside and rode through a dry raincreek in a tail of kicked up sand. He was gaining distance when the creekbed began to scatter with driftwood and broken rock and slowed the pace. The ravine walls cliffed aside him to where he had no way to escape but to where the creekbed snaked.

  A figure came sprinting at them afoot down the center of the creekbed. He was as tall and fast as a horse and he wore a blood sash across his chest, smeared by a large hand, and he wore a red handprint the same upon his face with his eye in the center of the palm. He carried a long knife in one hand and his arms pumped as he leaped over driftwood and rock like some crazed animal. Salomon went to one side and turned on horseback as the runner went past. The riders had no time to react. The indian split between them and cut them down one and the other as he streaked by. They both fell to the middle with arms grasping at pain. One of them dangled from the saddle, one foot caught in the straps. Tsunipu came back. He stood blowing along with the horses, his chest expanding in great heaves.

  “Where is your horse?” Salomon said.

  “On the run. You are bleeding.”

  Salomon touched his forehead. “Just a scratch. You nearly killed me just by fright, running like that. I didn’t know what you were.”

  Tsunipu grabbed the dead man’s ankle and cut him free and tossed his leg over. The man fell in a heap.

  “How many more are there?” Salomon said.

  The indian looked at Salomon and grinned. “Four.”

  He mounted the deadman’s horse and it bent its knees at the weight and paced. Tsunipu rubbed the horse’s neck and spoke to it. The horse jumped forward as if it had been kicked, although Salomon did not see the indian kick. It jumped forward again and cut at the ravine walls at an angle and was over the top and gone
. Salomon swore and shook his head. He leaned and grabbed the reins of the other man’s horse and rode at a gallop back the way they came.

  At the mouth of the creekbed he swatted the horse’s rump and sent it running. Four riders were now joined and on the run on the far side of the hills. A fifth rider appeared behind them in chase, the red sash brightly glistening across his chest and the sound of the chase pounding through the hills. He was mounted again upon his own large horse and gaining ground. Marquez came trotting with Arturo behind him, tucking one arm as bird does a broken wing.

  “Are you hit bad?” Salomon said.

  He waved his free hand. “I will be all right.”

  “You keep pressure on it.” Salomon nodded to the riderless horses standing about the hillsides. “We’ll search these saddlebags for something we can put on it.”

  “It is just a graze.”

  “I’ll take a look anyway.” Salomon nodded further to the vanishing chase. “You think he will catch them?”

  “I don’t want to be around when he does.”

  “I don’t either.”

  They stood their blowing horses and reloaded their pistolas and watched the chase go over the last hill but the pounding did not cease. They looked at each other and the pounding grew louder. They turned on their horsebacks.

  “Jesus.”

  A group of twenty vigilantes came over a hill together, riding fast and gaining features. Two white cloudbursts appeared one after the other and a bullet hummed and embedded in the ground at the bandits’ feet. Salomon wheeled his pony.

  “You take Arturo. I’ll draw them. We’ll meet back at Los Olivos. Go now.”

  Marquez nodded, his horse pacing. “Salomon.”

  Salomon turned back.

  “Stay alive, my friend.”

  He nodded. “I hope I do.”

  Marquez went running into a draw with Arturo slumped in his saddle but not far behind. Salomon took an angle across the vigilantes’ path, cutting in such a way that drew their attention to a closer quarry. The leader waved a hand in stride and the vigilantes split, two riders going down the draw after Marquez and Arturo. They followed the two bandits but were cut from their saddles a day later by Tsunipu who tracked them on their way to Los Olivos.

  The rest of the vigilantes chased Salomon and his Comanche pony. He vanished among the piñon and aspen trunks of the Santa Maria Hills. He drew them winding through trees and boulders to where they could not guess his next move. At night Salomon stood at forest’s edge and looked upon the gentle lanternlights of Santa Maria below, looking like embers of a dying fire. The church tower stood blue against the night and the windowlight from the hovels glowed upon the streets. Shadows strode the empty pathways and crossed the lights. He stood in the darkness until every light went out, then he turned his back and went on, keeping his trail to the forests.

  He rode the high forest passes and dismounted and crouched upon a boulder overlooking his passage. They continued to chase. The pony could outrun anything a full week at a time, and when the vigilantes lost themselves they crossed along the curving ruts of the Los Padres Hills and flanked Salomon to their own surprise and cut off any escape. They dragged him over rock and brush and tossed the rope over a low branch and hung him kicking from an oak on the hillside above their shouts and howls. The lead rider, a man named Perry Harper, hacked his knife into the hangman’s polished leather to cut the rope from the saddle pommel. Salomon fell with his hands gripping the rope at his throat and Harper stood over him and circled one way and then the other to address the vigilantes on all sides.

  “There is a bounty on this man alive that I would like to collect,” he shouted. “And this man will hang in San Francisco, not left to rot from some tree in the hills without justice of the law.”

  A red cloud rose from ground to sky and grained the sun. They gagged and tied him over the pony’s back with his hands behind his back and feet crossed. They rode unhurried with heads down against the wind like a caravan of drifters, and they offered water to their captive but pulled the canteens away with a laugh, and they held his head to the blowing sand by a grip of his hair and struck him repeatedly in the face, yet he gave no sound. When they camped they put his face in the ground and slung the end of rope through to pull his ankles to his wrists behind him the way crazies are kept from harming others or themselves, and they kicked against his ribs like criminals themselves and spat at him as he jerked for air in the dark. Perry Harper smoked a cigarillo and looked at the goings-on with a flamelit face beneath his hatbrim for a time before he pulled his pistol and ordered a stop to it.

  He stood and tucked his pistol away and the cigarillo ash shone upon his face as he approached the captive. Faces parted and scattered. Harper knelt, the fire far behind him. A glint of steel winked between them and Salomon’s legs were released, the rope cut.

  “Men who treat their fellow like animals can only expect the same in another life. In the afterlife.”

  Salomon’s cheek lay against the ground as he caught his breath. Harper held the cool end of his cigarillo to Salomon’s lips and the ash brightened for a moment and smoke lifted.

  “What sort of Creator would allow such behavior in his kingdom? His creatures walk the earth in daylight leaving a trail so evil even the serpent must go around. They walk in sin and yet they pray upon their beds at night, and cross themselves in front of the altar on Sundays. Men like that hide their sin. Hide it with each breath. Even the final heave in their chest on this earth smells sweet to his family.”

  He smoked and draped his arm over his crouching knee, the cigarillo dangling. He exhaled and the ash circled in his shadow as he spoke.

  “They are punished or rewarded. Nobody among the living hears of it. We don’t know one way or the other if a man screams in fire and gropes the red parapets of hell, or sleeps in quiet white clouds. Man cannot know another man’s heart. We all smile one last time in our beds and assure ourselves that those we knew were pure of heart and have ascended. And what of you, Salomon Pico? Can a man receive his penalties while there is still air in his lungs, blood in his veins? If he does, can it wipe away the stain of his life? These are the questions man can only answer in death. And what good is that?”

  He stood. Salomon could see the fire flickering in the distance between the man’s legs. “Evil is punished and good is rewarded. Every man knows this. Even a man who does not know a higher power can figure this out. And yet, mankind cannot change. The earth slowly rots and its inhabitants begin to crawl on all fours again. If the living could converse with the pained souls of the underworld, would creation change its course? I think not.”

  They rode north. They rode day and night and slept what little they needed. They gave Salomon a saddle and sat him upright with his hands tied to the pommel, and they squashed his sombrero upon his head. He looked to the hills and to the shadows at forest’s edge, and to the vast quake of purple sage and blooming cacti and rollingweeds that tumbled and scratched like miniature carnivals.

  Thunderheads rose muscular aside them, and they rode with watchful eyes as faulty wirings flashed inside bulbous clouds. Wraithfingers stabbed blue several times unchanged overhead, sudden cracks in the black boil. The day turned black as night and rain swept over them sideways and they rode with tilted heads and hunkered shoulders beneath slickers. Water poured from their hats from the same side, glistening with each lightning flash. Salomon shivered in his mount with his head down and watched the rain flood past his pony’s feet.

  At the Mission San Antonio de Padua the next day the indian neophytes stood about the damp earth at the gates huddled beneath blankets and watched the mounted party walk in one after the other. The children held out their hands to receive gifts but the riders looked down on them and moved past with nothing to give. When Salomon moved by the indian children pulled their hands in and looked with large eyes unblinking upon this tied captive.

  Inside the mission walls a woman kneading bread looked past her work at
the riders. A man filing down a buckboard seat slowed his movements as he watched. A priest stood in the courtyard with his hands clasped as the riders trailed in. Harper dismounted and removed his hat and spoke with him. They took their conversation indoors, Harper looking back once and motioned to dismount for the night.

  Two men carried Salomon by the arms to a post in the yard where they tied him on his knees. As night fell indian women came with plates and fed him by hand while the vigilantes ate and laughed round a courtyard fire. The women tipped water pitchers to his lips and they loosened his shirt and bathed his neck. They touched the bruises under his eyes and spoke to him in a dying language then gathered their things and hurried away as one of the men approached in staggered shouts and thrown utensils. During the night children squatted silently in front of him with their arms crossed about their knees. They tossed pebbles underhand at the bandit’s feet and squatwalked closer but set another spell without words. One of them spoke.

  “Are you a bad man?”

  Salomon rolled his head up. “I have done bad things, yes.”

  “Is that why you are tied here?”

  “It is.”

  “I will not do bad things,” the child said. “I do not like to be tied.”

  During the dark hours one of the indians crept to the corral with the priest. They spoke in whispers. The indian saddled and led his horse afoot beyond the mission walls, a dark messenger creeping upon the pale earth. Far out among the sage and ragweed where no ears could be disturbed, he mounted and rode south gripping his charging horse.

  In the gray light of dawn one figure stepped about the sleeping bodies and roused three helpers. They stirred belligerent but settled when they saw their waker. They crossed the courtyard as the sun appeared and an indian in a swaying serape began to swing at a bell with a round stone set nearby for the job. The sleepers stirred to cursing and the bellringer dropped the stone and ran inside to peer out from a windowcorner.