Angels of North County

by T. Owen O'Connor

  “I reckon, but I didn’t reckon on you making friends along the way.”

  “North County hospitality, I guess.”

  “We got a new commission from the administrator. He’s done his part of the deal and got us through the Stone Tribe, so now we got to find the Germans.”

  “They built a settlement in the passing canyon, where the Stick run, the one with the high peak to the west that looks like an Injun on horseback.”

  “I know it,” the colonel said, and squinted ahead as if he were trying to see beyond the wall of ridges to the very spot.

  “Last I was there, they had tamed that land like their people do, farms and a forge built right into rock, crafty sons-a-bitches.”

  “How many?”

  “I reckon twenty, I suspect by this time there’s women and kids, they tend to breed.”

  “Children?”

  “There were none a few year ago, but once they got it go’n, they were bent on send’n for wives,” Raif said.

  “What’s the move here?”

  “I reckon we need to look like we’re chasing something, I expect if they think it’s the White Lion we’re chasing, they might get ornery with us. Every day they siesta around noon, eat and drink some, play that awful polka, oompah—the play is to tell ’em we’re hunting cattle thieves that raided North County. They’ll act like they’re surprised and won’t tell us it’s the Lion—we spend a shitload of gold, that always gets them a happy drunk on, and after we tilt a few cups with ’em we turn and commence blast’n—I reckon they won’t suspect its com’n, they being friends of mine and all.”

  The company reined up and dismounted along a creek running the length of the second valley. The riders kneeled on the riverbank and filled their canteens and waterskins with the clear water. Wesley plunged his head in the water and raised it, spraying the water from his mouth. The rest eyed the ridges to the west looking for any movements as they sipped from their canteens. The colonel, Gabriel, and Raif talked openly of the strategy, Raif remarking on the cunning of the Germans. It had been years since Raif had wandered the wastelands, and he doubted the layout of the camp was the same, knowing the foreigners and their capacity for building on the land. Raif’s last comment was that their greed for gold could not be sated; it was all they ever talked. It was a heavily armed camp, so the plan was to draw the Germans together and not storm the compound; the company would go to them bearing gold, seeking to buy the magnificent forged field pieces.

  Gabriel and the colonel spilled the remaining gold from their saddlebags and the coins tinkled as they bounced on the horse blanket. The administrator and the priest had cost but there was still enough gold left to feed the Germans’ lust for it. Gabriel would open first and the order passed among them: if it moved in the camp, it was to die. They went to the second canyon and broke brush until they found a clearing much shaded from the sun; there they penned the horses with sage brush, hobbling the mounts. They planned to sleep for two hours to be fresh for it.

  Seth and Toby were sent to the west watch, and they lay flat in the low brush watching the trail the company had ridden out upon from the mission. Seth nudged Toby, and they watched as two young boys dressed in the clothes of the mission were running hard on the trail in their bare feet, the colored sashes flapping and trailing from their waists.

  Seth ran back to the company and shook Gabriel awake only to be cussed at and told, “What you shak’n me for—kill ’em; don’t let ’em get past; priest warn’n the heathen.”

  Seth reached Toby, and they reined up and chased the boys, who didn’t expect riders from behind them and looked surprised when Toby and Seth rode them down and whipped them with ropes until the boys raised their hands and begged for quarter.

  A hundred yards back a third boy, Miguel, lay flat among the gnarled and jagged trees that ran south of the trail. The pygmy trees were blackened by a brush fire that had been triggered by a lightning strike. The sap still oozed from the wounded bark and mixed with the ash creating a cinnamon-red blush along the base of each tree, the rusty crimson broken with flashes of white from the bony thorns that pierced from the crooked branches. Miguel was silent, his breath barely twisting the dust that lay an inch from his lips.

  The two captured boys were bound back-to-back with rope and their wrists intertwined. The company rode up and Joe parlayed with the boys, but the two refused to talk, staring at Joe with dark eyes.

  Gabriel dismounted and asked Seth, “Why ain’t they dead?”

  “We reckon’d you’d want to question ’em to see what they up to.”

  “What for? Priest hedges his bets; sending boys too that sumbitch. I’m gonna burn that shithole of his to the ground; now finish ’em with knives, cut ’em like pigs across the throat, gag’em first so they don’t holler.”

  Before Seth and Toby moved, Abner walked up and stove in the top of the boys’ heads with a knotted stick topped with a perfectly round ball of iron. The skulls cracked with a single pop at that crown where the sinewy bone of a baby’s skull stays soft the longest. As he turned and walked away, Abner said, “First kill shouldn’t be a child. You never forget your first; rest of ’em all run together.”

  Gabriel glared at Seth. “That’s how it’s done. Learn from it or you ain’t gonna see your sisters again and jest might get your balls burned off. Two of you split up and find their trail, and damn well certify that it’s two of ’em and there ain’t no other out there the priest sent, I suspect he prefers three.”

  Seth and Toby rode off, and they saw the main trail split in parts, smaller paths leading off into the thicket of the blackened thorn trees.

  Seth said, “I’ll ride this small one for a bit and see if there’s any sign of another runner.”

  “All right, I’ll ride back a ways on the trail we come up and see if I can find where them two’s tracks let off; if’n I find a third I’ll ride and fetch you.”

  Toby galloped down the path but reined up as he neared the spot beneath the sandstone ridge where the sentinel had watched their passage. He spun his horse back and across the main trail scanning the ground for footprints. He found the game paths for javelinas and the coyotes that tracked the skunk pigs but no other prints. He rode back west slowly and found two sets of tracks a yard off the trail and figured them to be the markings of the dead two. He reined in Ulysses and tracked the prints east along the side of the main trail. He rode beneath the sentinel’s perch again and looked, but the aged warrior was not there. He followed for half a mile and was about to gallop off when on a hunch he checked the far side of the trail and found a set of tracks running west, small toes had turned the dusty soil, and he knew they were the tracks of a boy running.

  He started Ulysses down the course until the tracks bent hard to the south and disappeared into the thickets of the thorn tree forest. He hobbled Ulysses and pushed his way into the brush. It was thick the way wild forest grows back after a fire, tangled, stumped, and low to the ground. The thorns tore at his face and ripped at his gloves but Toby pressed on know’n that the boy must know of a path or nobody’d try to cut his way through this thicket. He cut east and pushed on until he spilled out onto a small dirt path running north-south through the thickets. He headed south on the trail and felt the soft earth open for the heels of his boots. He stalked slowly until he was almost creeping. The blood was throbbing in his ears, his senses telling him he was closing in on his prey, the hair on his arms tingling.

  He removed his boots and crept along the trail bent slightly under the canopy with his pistol drawn. He picked up the track again and followed the path of small feet until they reached a creek that ran hidden under the gnarled vines and overhanging branches. The river twisted lazily under the canopy of trees running to the south. He felt the cool water run over his bare feet as he waded into the stream, searching the rocks for the marks where the lichen had been turned. Rocks glimmered smooth, and he knew the boy had taken the stream south. He followed about a hundred yards until he sa
w the splash of water upon a flat rock by the side of the crick. He knelt upon the rock and peered through the bushes until his eyes adjusted to the shadows.

  As the light diffused, the boy’s cotton shirt rose out of the blackness and contrasted with the dark shock of hair that lay thick and long on the back of the boy’s head. He was hiding behind a tree, lying still as a snake, searching south for any movement of the white riders. Toby gazed at the boy and appreciated his silence, his stillness, the discipline as he lay in his hide waiting for the riders to move on so he could break for the south. He looked bigger than the other two, and Toby reckoned he was older and had let the other two run ahead like the buck that sends the doe and her little ones out into the meadow, making it their fate to fall with a shot to the heart so he could live to hump another day.

  Toby crawled up and put the barrel of his pistol to the back of the boy’s head, and he felt the wrack of fear shudder through his barrel. Gabriel had told him never to put his gun to a man’s head because a man could whip a hand faster than the pull of a trigger, but he figured the boy was scared and wouldn’t try to fight him.

  The boy shuddered again and put his hands forward with his palms flat and faced down at the earth. He kept his head down and began to cry and whimpered, “No me digas el sacerdote, Dios me ayude.”

  Toby grabbed him by the hair and flipped him around telling him to shut his mouth, putting the barrel to the boy’s lips to signify his meaning. Toby figured the boy to be about ten years old. He had deep bluish-black eyes and wore about his neck a leather strip that had clasped to it a crude odd-shaped wooden cross. Toby felt the handle of his cutting blade slung on his belt. He figured not to fire his pistol so near the Stone Tribe, thinking the passage deal might have been a one-way train ticket, and he didn’t want a running fight with spearmen in this thicket. He gripped the hard leather handle of his knife and ran through his mind Raif’s teaching on how to finish it quick.

  The boy held his hands above his face in a shielding manner, the only sound a thin reedy whimper like a coon-dog puppy yelps the first time you have to snout it to get it to heel. Toby felt his chest and scrotum cinch tight and his breathing grow short. The world started spinning beneath his feet, and the throbbing sound in his ears deafened him to the boy’s whimpering. Toby tied the boy’s hands and said, “Andale.” He tied a rope lead to his waist and yanked him along behind him, put his boots back on, and headed north up the stream. He was leading him with no particular destination and for reasons he didn’t know and only headed toward Ulysses because he could think of no other purpose. He thought to take him back and have Abner stave in his head, but he knew the company would think him weak.

  He passed a thin tree near the riverbank and saw that its thick roots reached out from the earth like a spider’s legs. He figured the river flooded in winter and once over its banks it pulled the earth from about the roots of trees downstream. The exposed roots formed a chair of sorts with high elbow rests. Toby knew what needed getting done. Gabriel couldn’t have been clearer about that, but he knew he couldn’t kill the boy.

  He stopped in the water and looked at the roots. He dragged the boy and forced him to sit amidst the thorn tree’s roots and bound him thrice around the chest to the trunk and lashed his arms to his ankles like a roped steer. The boy sat like a king bound to his tree throne. Toby reckoned even if he started chewing on the rope it would take him a day to free himself, but he knew he had no real way of knowing. He figured it was just as likely the boy could die a worse death if a critter or ants found him and reasoned again with himself not to send his knife into his neck. He nearly wept but he knew he couldn’t kill the boy.

  He cursed his weakness and took to cursing the priest for sending a boy on such a charge, saying to himself that the bloodletting would be on the priest. No matter how hard he reasoned the pulsing in his chest would rise and wouldn’t let him kill the boy. He returned to Ulysses and headed back to the company.

  He caught up with Seth and said, “I only found two tracks, I reckon Abner done ended this one.”

  Seth looked at Toby and said, “Toby, don’t go tell’n anyone, but I reckon I jest couldn’t of done them two in like Abner did, they was jest kids.”

  Toby spit, trying his best to look hard. “We best get go’n ’fore they come look’n for us.”

  The dark-eyed boy struggled against the hemp cords but couldn’t reach the ropes with his teeth. He squirmed and struggled and felt the hemp give only grudgingly to his straining. He knew it would take hours to free himself, and he feared he would suffer the rite if he failed the priest. He looked to the heavens to pray, but as he raised his head he saw the sentinel staring at him. The aged man was squatting, his knees near his ears, his ancient stone-tipped spear held by one hand resting lengthwise across his toes. He was three feet away and the boy had not heard him approach. The sentinel squatted silently, chewing a mild hypnotic nut that grew wild in the thorn tree forest. He let the brown juice slip the corner of his mouth and run freely down his chin.

  The priest had forbidden the children of the mission to enter the Stone Tribe lands, and Miguel feared the ancient warrior. The old crones of his village told the children tales of the tribesmen, that they tore the limbs from naughty boys and ate them raw and enjoyed the music of their screams as they were consumed.

  The sentinel squatted, still gazing at the boy’s eyes as if time and action had no correspondence. He raised up the spear with one hand, and the boy followed the axis of the deep cherry brown wood as it spun, and he heard the slash as the sharpened stone spearhead ripped through the three cords of rope that bound his chest to the tree trunk. The sentinel rose and turned slowly, disappearing into the foliage by the river as soundlessly as he’d approached.

  The boy, freed from the tree, rolled onto his knees and brought his hands under his feet with that flexibility only the young know. He began dragging the wrist bindings against the dark, rough bark of the tree, and it began to fray. In minutes the bindings of his hands and ankles lay in bits and pieces in the crotch of the tree throne, and he was afoot again, headed south toward the great stone temple that stood like a sentinel before the lake country.

  As the company ranged into the third canyon Raif rode ahead, looking for the stone outcropping above the ridge that held the watch. Raif took off his hat and waved at the rocks, and in return, echoing down from the cliff, he heard, “Raif, hallo, mein freund.”

  Raif answered, “Is that you, Dieter?”

  “Ja, Raif, long time; and good to see.”

  “Ya, mein freund,” Raif responded in a weak mimicry of a German accent.

  The company kept to the trail, and as they neared the valley it opened to a wagon road with wheeled tracks crossing the dirt and crushed stone. As they crested the rise, the Germans’ compound and fields came into view. The fields extended like a lantern’s cone shape of light into darkness stretching from the narrow bottom of the valley out into the desert floor. The fields flowed with the vivid colors of verdant land. The conduits of the vast aqueduct system the Germans had engineered had drained the river and spread its gift out into the once-desert land. It was an oasis stretching over the primeval alluvial plain. The Germans had sowed the desert until it bloomed, moving tons of earth from the valley to cover the Ordovician limestone and calcareous shale that had formed an ocean bottom millennia ago. The fields were a patchwork of bounty. The stockade was crude but practical. The homes were raw timbered and lay in tiers rising up the ridgelines.

  Entering the main compound, which sat on the floor of the southern valley, you could hear the hammers pounding on the molten steel emerging from the forge. The largest structure was a whitewashed barn, and from its dark interior came a red glow and the hiss and rush of the forge’s fire. In neat rows outside the forge doors were three bronze-colored field pieces, the artillery the same type as the one they found spiked near the Old Mission, and which had killed the McCallums.

  The Germans welcomed Raif with slaps to t
he back and great hugs as if he were a long-lost member of their tribe returned home from an odyssey. After he had caught up to Lobo, it was here he had trekked back to with his bleeding wounds, and here the Germans had saved him, searing his wounds before he bled out. Lobo had eaten a few of their members and Raif was a hero to them. The Germans had found a vein of precious metal in the valley since Lobo’s time, and had begun mining, selling the precious silver in Tin City. They had bought bronze in exchange and continued to forge field pieces, selling cannon to a rogue Mexican general they had fought for in the Mexican war, who was now planning a coup to take control of the Mexican state that lay to the southwest.

  The wealth had paid for the passage of women from their homeland and the compound teemed with husky raw-boned women red from the sun hanging laundry and other chores. They had taken to cradling their infants in hide slings about their chests in the way of the southern tribes and the young ran about in the same white cotton frocks and sashes as the mission children.

  Raif and the colonel met with Klaus and the ruling council of elder Germans. The discussion ran to trade, gold, and the price of field pieces and ammunition. Raif explained they were hunting a renegade who’d ventured into North County and stolen a hundred head and left a dozen dead. They were sent by a commission and sanctioned by the army to find the renegade. They told the Germans they didn’t know what tribe he hailed from or where he was headed, but they were hoping Klaus could help. Klaus was the honcho, akin to a burgermeister, and Raif was cautious because he knew him to be wary and shrewd.

  Klaus said that the tribes no longer ventured past the Ash Run, and his people knew of no warlord who would chance passing the Crossing, claiming the days of such ventures was finished for the tribes.

  Raif nodded his understanding and asked them to keep an ear out from the locals and see if any were talking about a raid so they could get a fix on the band that done it.