“They must’ve figured out who we are anyway.”
“That ain’t the same as knowin’ what we look like.”
“I s’pose.”
All of Brent’s limbs burned, and his throat was raw from yelling. He sat up straight and felt a tight pain in his lower back—a strained or torn muscle. “Hell.” Wondering at the greater agonies that his twin sister endured, the cowboy looked east.
Dolores rode the pale palfrey, staring forward and clutching the nickel-plated revolver. Her right leg was nestled in the fixed horn of the sidesaddle, but her shorn leg, although pressed to the leaping horn, did not reach the stirrup and bounced freely against the horse’s side.
“Dolores.”
The woman glanced at her brother.
“You feel steady?”
“Enough to hold on. Where we goin’ to?”
Brent pointed at the distant mountains. “Deep Lakes descried a pass in the north part of the range.”
“Let’s get there.”
“We will.”
In front of the Plugfords, blue mountains of one hundred shades expanded.
Yvette’s dog clambered to the back of the wagon and barked. A mildewed shirt that was an ersatz patch came loose from the canopy and flew into the air. The specter flitted in-between the twins and twisted weirdly in the wind.
Brent heard something whistle past him. Upon the back of the wagon, a panel cracked and turned into splinters. The dog howled.
“Somebody’s shootin’ at—” Brent’s head jerked forward on his neck. His right goggle eye turned red. Warm fluid ran down the right side of his face and soaked his ear.
The cowboy gripped the neck of his rubber mask, tore it from his head and flung it to the ground. He pressed the heel of his right hand to the side of his head and felt sharp splinters that he knew were bits of his skull.
“Get low in the saddle!” yelled Brent.
Dolores looked at her brother and screamed.
“Get down low!” repeated the cowboy. “Right now!” He hunched forward.
Dolores leaned forward so that she was hidden behind her large saddlebag. “Brent,” she yelled, “your head!”
Stevie looked over and was stunned.
“Low in the saddle!” yelled the cowboy.
Stevie and the dandy pressed themselves flush against the backs of their horses. A bullet clanged upon the youngest Plugford’s angled tabard and whistled into the sky.
The cowboy clutched his grazed head and felt blood, skull bits, hair and loose skin. “Hell.” A bullet whistled past his shoulder and lanced the wagon canopy.
Brent swiveled in his saddle. Forty yards behind him, John Lawrence Plugford, astride his galloping white mustang, huddled protectively over his daughter. Twenty yards south of the patriarch, Long Clay withdrew a telescopic rifle from the vertical wooden case that was fastened to his black mare’s haunches.
A distant gunshot cracked. The bullet clanged upon John Lawrence Plugford’s tabard and caromed across the plain.
“Goddamn, goddamn!” exclaimed Stevie.
Brent glanced forward and saw that Patch Up had joined Yvette’s dog at the rear of the wagon, which was now driverless.
Huddled behind a crate of gear, the negro looked through his brass and ivory spyglass. “There’s an automobile!” he yelled. “They’ve got an automobile!”
Brent glanced past his horse’s flashing tail at the southern horizon, but could not discern the vehicle.
“Shoot it to hell, Long Clay!” Stevie advised from his spotted colt. “Bust it to pieces!”
A distant gunshot cracked. The dandy’s tan mare shrieked, leaped (as if hurdling a hedge) and impacted the plain. Jarred, the blonde man spewed darkness.
Long Clay prostrated himself across his black mare’s spine and aimed his telescopic rifle over the beast’s tail. He fired. The gunshot resounded within the vast bowl of mountains and became a tattoo of asynchronous echoes.
“You got someone!” Patch Up shouted from the rear of the driverless wagon.
Long Clay discharged the spent shell. Upon the southern horizon, a tiny black rectangle trailed dust and vibrated.
“Brent,” Dolores shouted, “you gotta do something ‘bout your head right now!”
The bleeding cowboy recalled his friend Isaac Isaacs, who had been swatted by a bear in South Carolina and afterwards staunched the severest lacerations with breadcrumbs. “Hell.” Brent plunged his left hand into his saddlebag, searched for the victuals sack, located it, opened its drawstrings, reached inside, made a fist and withdrew dry oats. Gritting his teeth, he uncovered the wound on his head and filled it with grain.
The world turned black.
Dolores screamed.
Brent regained consciousness and found that he was hugging the neck of his horse. A bullet clanged upon his tabard and caromed into the air.
“You okay?” asked Dolores.
“Yeah.” The cowboy turned his head and saw Long Clay, who was backwards and prone upon his horse, aiming his telescopic rifle at the distant pursuer. Presently, he fired.
“You got the driver in the shoulder!” shouted Patch Up. The dog barked jubilantly.
Suddenly, the vibrating black rectangle slid to the west and disappeared inside its own blue wake.
“We killed your dumb automob’le!” jeered Stevie. “Time to roast it up and put it in your uncle’s burrito!”
Through the telescopic sight, Long Clay monitored the veil of blue dust that obscured the vehicle, Catacumbas and the southern mountains.
“Keep apace!” ordered John Lawrence Plugford.
The blue plain scrolled underneath blurry blue hooves.
“Brent!” shouted Stevie.
“Yeah?”
“You got oats on your head!”
“I know.”
“You gonna be okay?”
“I’ll find out when we stop.” The cowboy’s extremities felt cold.
“They’re still coming,” warned Patch Up. “Unhappily!”
Brent looked south. Once again, the vibrating black rectangle sat at the vanguard of a large blue wake.
“Go for the tires,” said John Lawrence Plugford.
Long Clay fired.
“Got their fender!” shouted Patch Up.
A distant gunshot cracked. John Lawrence Plugford’s white stallion reared up and shrieked. The patriarch grabbed his saddle horn and hunched over his daughter. Upon its hind legs, the beast twisted and bucked.
Brent saw that the pursuers had a clear shot at his father. “Pa! Watch it they—”
A distant gunshot cracked. John Lawrence Plugford’s goggles turned red.
“No!” shouted Brent.
“Daddy!” cried Dolores.
“J.L.!” yelled Patch Up.
The agitated white horse returned its forelegs to the plain. John Lawrence Plugford collapsed onto his daughter, but remained in the saddle, gripping the horn.
Stevie shouted, “Goddamn, goddamn, goddamn!”
Brent felt empty.
“Keep riding north!” shouted Long Clay. “I’ll get them.” He turned himself forward.
Stevie pulled tack and said, “I’ll help—”
“Keep ridin’!” Brent yelled at his brother. “You can’t get shot too!” The cowboy felt as if he were witnessing the awful scene from a great distance, over the shoulder of an uninterested God. “We gotta make all this worth somethin’.”
Stevie yanked off his mask and threw it down. “Goddamn!” The colt’s left foreleg flung the empty rubber head into the air. “I’m goin’ to kill all them fellas that did this! All of them!”
“I hate this!” shouted Dolores. “I hate this!” She clasped the mane of her galloping pa
lfrey and yelled, “Goddamn this mis’rable world! I hate all of it—every bit!”
“Keep low in the saddle!” the cowboy yelled at his siblings.
Dolores and Stevie lowered themselves, and Brent looked back.
Long Clay reached the white stallion and dismounted.
A distant gunshot cracked, and the bullet whistled overhead.
“Rotten bastards!” yelled Stevie. “Dumb Mex’cans!”
With his sharp black boots planted on solid ground, the gunfighter aimed his telescopic rifle at the vibrating black rectangle, squeezed the trigger, slid the bolt and fired a second shot.
“Got the driver in the neck!” shouted Patch Up.
The small black rectangle swerved and disappeared into a blue plume.
Long Clay slung his telescopic rifle onto his left shoulder and took Yvette from beneath the huddled body of John Lawrence Plugford. Skeletal fingers emerged from the blanket, clasped the patriarch’s huge right hand and let go.
The gunfighter set Yvette upon the ground, laid John Lawrence Plugford across the saddle, secured the body, took a line from the animal’s bridal, scooped up the woman, mounted his black steed and hastened forward.
Brent looked north. Sitting upon a crate at the rear of the rumbling wagon was Patch Up. The cowboy could not look at the negro’s face.
In front of the fleeing Plugford crew expanded the north range of Gran Manos. The eastern faces of the mountains were ablaze with sunlight and sharply contrasted the major part of the blue vista, as if the whole tableau were an enormous stencil, backlighted by a white fire that would sear the eyes of any man stupid enough to look up.
Brent Plugford felt small, inconsequential and weak.
Part III
The Blood Hierarchy
Chapter I
Elixirs Denied and Given
Yvette Upfield looked at the tall narrow man who held her bundled body. A rubber mask concealed most of his face, excepting his blue eyes, which were visible through his blood-spattered goggles. An uneasy feeling burgeoned within the choirmaster’s heart, and she turned away from the dark man.
A luminous white stallion appeared.
Tied across the saddle of the animal was a huge arch of flesh that was John Lawrence Plugford. The man’s hands and feet reached toward the ground, swaying like the frills at the bottom of a dress. Tethered to the funereal animal and wearing a sidesaddle was a brown palfrey that Yvette had not ridden since her wedding day.
“My father’s dead, isn’t he?”
“He is.”
Yvette felt cold. “They shot him.”
“They did.”
With a hard skeletal hand, Yvette wiped tears from her eyes. “I’ll say a prayer for him.” Although John Lawrence Plugford was a good and loving father, he was an unbeliever who had committed many terrible sins, and the choirmaster doubted the efficacy of any prayer that she might say on his behalf.
“Do that,” said the tall narrow man.
Yvette closed her eyes and attempted to recall the words Minister Johnstone had uttered at Roger Field’s funeral service, but her dependent body cried out like a starving mendicant. The world wrought by God—the sphere of clouds, mountains, trees, churches, families, horses, dogs, bugs, diseases, rape and murder—shrank until it became one sharp scintillating point from which dripped the elixir of salvation.
The woman who had forgotten her name opened her eyes and looked up at the stranger. “I need medicine.”
“How long since your last shot?”
“All I had in the last four days was a tiny bit last night. It wasn’t—”
“You went through withdrawal?”
“I did, but—”
“You’re through the worst of it.”
“I need some now.”
“I don’t argue.”
“But you have to find something.” Yvette began to tremble. “I can feel my insides.” A paroxysm seized her body and she kicked her left leg.
Coolly, the tall narrow man looked away.
The woman who had forgotten her name rested her heavy head, shut her eyes and tried to send forth her soul.
A hoof shattered a rock and awakened Yvette. Ahead of her, mounted insects, which were her siblings and the tall blonde gentleman who had refused to look at her naked body, ascended the steep terrain, preceded by the family wagon. Sand and stones dripped from the hooves of the straining beasts and rattled down the incline.
Yvette adjusted her cold and wet blanket. “Did it rain?”
“You have a fever,” stated the tall narrow stranger.
“I need my medicine is why. I’m gonna die—you don’t understand.” The woman convulsed twice, and felt as if she were about to vomit. “I need it!” Clear fluid dripped from her nose.
The mounted insects that were her siblings looked back.
“Is Yvette okay?” asked Brent.
“She’s fine,” answered the tall narrow man.
To her brother, Yvette yelled, “I’m gonna die!”
The stranger looked down at her and said, “You must rest.”
“You’re the devil! I know it!” Yvette’s skin was burning and she smelled sulfur. “You’re the devil in the flesh!”
The tall narrow man stroked her forehead.
“Where’s my Samuel? Do you know what happened to him? Why he ain’t—why he isn’t here?”
“You must rest.”
“I’m gonna die!”
The black horse crested a ridge. Yvette watched her father, borne by the white stallion, rise from the dirt. The emaciated woman trembled, shut her eyes, curled herself into a ball within the devil’s arms and heard something hiss.
The darkness expanded.
Twenty-two years old and wearing a modest tan dress, Yvette Plugford marched through the swinging doors of Bess Hack’s Saloon of San Francisco. Heads emerged from slumped shoulders, turned toward the new arrival and flashed watery eyes that were simultaneously defeated and stimulated. The blonde woman surveyed the champions who intended to conquer their sobriety two hours before noon on a Wednesday. Atop a wooden barstool and melting like a candle was Gunther Linderson, the sixty-two-year-old organ player.
Yvette approached the negligent musician. “Mr. Linderson.”
The Swedish organist lifted his flat face from his hands and swiveled. “Miss Plugford.” His eyes were red and his overalls smelled like August.
“I’m not goin’ to lecture you.”
“This is how the lectures begin.”
“We don’t got—we don’t have any time. You were supposed to be at the church thirty minutes ago. Lots of folks depend on you.”
“I’m independent.”
“You’re drunk is what you are. Let’s go.” The choirmaster grabbed the Swedish man’s right elbow and tugged.
Mr. Linderson did not rise from his seat.
Yvette looked at the stout and dour barmaid, Bess Hack, who was her eternal adversary. “I asked you to mind what he drank on Wednesdays.”
“I heard your request.”
The choirmaster knew that she did not have time to scold the woman properly, and thus focused her energies upon the organist’s arm. “Don’t make this difficult.”
A diminutive and dapper blonde man, wearing an olive three-piece suit and matching bowler cap, strode toward the bar. To Yvette, he said, “Allow me to offer my assistance.”
“Get his legs.”
The pretty gentleman grinned and said, “I have a bottle that will help restore him—a healthful elixir that provides energy and combats the affects of alcohol.”
Mr. Linderson was aghast. “Why do you have such a terrible thing?”
“I only wish to help you fulfill your obligations.”
“We ain’t�
�we aren’t buying any cure-alls,” said Yvette.
“What I proffer is not a cure-all, but rather a highly effective restorative.” The dapper salesman pointed a scintillating index fingernail at the organist. “I shall administer to this dilapidated fellow—”
“What are you calling me?”
“I shall administer to this dilapidated fellow one free dosage of my elixir and, in so doing, prove its highly potent efficacy.” The dapper salesman revealed the whitest teeth that Yvette had ever seen.
“Okay.” The choirmaster looked at her frowning adversary behind the bar. “Please give Mr. Linderson a cup.”
“We don’t have ‘cups’ in this saloon.” Bess Hack slammed a small glass upon the table. “We have tumblers.”
Yvette held her tongue.
The dapper salesman reached inside his olive jacket and withdrew a dark flat bottle that bore a caricature of himself, smiling and winking, and the words, Upfield’s Restorative Elixir. His finely-manicured fingers rotated the bottle one hundred and eighty degrees so that Yvette and the barmaid could see the declaration, ‘It certainly works!’
“The size of the dosage,” the dapper salesman informed the women, “is mathematically proportional to the patient’s body mass.” He appraised the organist, nodded, removed the cork and poured out a thick, tarry concoction.
“I know what death looks like,” remarked Mr. Linderson.
“Drink it down,” said Yvette.
The drunken organist raised the tumbler to his lips, shut his eyes, opened his mouth, tossed the ichor inside and swallowed.
Expectantly, the salesman folded his hands.
Yvette and Bess Hack waited.
Mr. Linderson opened his eyes. “This tastes like coffee.”
“That is one of the elixir’s numerous ingredients.”
The organist savored the flavor a moment longer. “Bad coffee with some prune juice and black pepper.” He smacked his lips. “Maybe cinnamon.”
“Do you feel restored?” asked Yvette.
Wraiths of the Broken Land Page 18
