On the morning of the sixth day they sighted a company of cavalry coming up the road, and were hailed.
Belden, understandably nervous as he was technically a deserter in a blue coat and riding a horse with the US brand, reined in close to the vardo and pulled his hat brim low.
The camels, true to Faustus’ word, caused a major ruckus with the cavalry troop’s mounts, and it looked as if the annoyed troopers were going to wave them on when the chief civilian scout riding out front, a German in his thirties with a prodigious black beard and an angular boy with a wispy mustache in tow, called out to Belden around a wad of tobacco.
“Hello there, Dick Belden.”
Belden set his hat back on his head and forced a grin.
“Hello, Seiber,” he said through his teeth.
The captain of the command, a stocky fellow with a neat, thick mustache eased his jittery horse forward and eyed Belden and then the vardo and its camel team. He turned and motioned for the rest of the troop to retreat a short distance to keep their ponies from bucking.
The Rider was sitting on the front porch with Faustus.
“Captain Chaffee,” Seiber said, pausing to spit a jet of brown juice on the ground, “this is Sergeant Major Dick Belden from Camp Eckfeldt.”
“Formerly,” Belden corrected him.
“Oh ja? I hadn’t heard you got out.”
“Where are you headed, Mister Belden?” Chaffee interrupted.
“Uh,” Belden began, looking back at his strange companions, “well sir, we’re headed down to Mexico to…”
Faustus doffed his hat.
“To peddle our wares among the sufferin’ peons south of the border, Captain. Faustus Montague, purveyor of charms, wards, and bodyguards. Dickie here’s my nephew.”
Chaffee frowned behind his mustache and looked from the old man back to Belden, who had cringed at the appellation ‘Dickie.’
“You say he’s from Eckfeldt, Seiber?”
The scout nodded.
“What outfit is that again?”
“Eleventh Cavalry,” Seiber replied. “Colonel Manx’s command.”
“Eleventh. I didn’t know we had an eleventh cavalry,” he said, smirking.
Seiber and the boy guffawed, and Belden slowly joined in, a little unsure.
“Who’re you?” the captain said, directing the question at the Rider.
“Rider, sir,” the Rider replied.
“My assistant,” Faustus explained.
Captain Caffee looked him up and down, frowning at his dress.
“What are you, Pennsylvania Dutch?”
“Jewish, sir.”
Chaffee raised his eyebrows, but shrugged and turned his attention back to Faustus.
“Just what is it exactly you intend to peddle down in Mexico, Mister Montague?” Chaffee said, stretching his booted legs and shrugging in the saddle. “Your wares, they wouldn’t be rifles, would they?”
“Certainly not!”
“You know it’s illegal to sell guns to the Apache,” Chaffee went on. “On either side of the border.”
“It’s the furthest thing from my mind, captain. I assure you.”
The Rider was suddenly very keenly aware of Piishi riding in the back of the wagon. Until a moment ago, Kabede or Piishi or both of them had been moving around back there, closing cabinets or simply walking across the floor to listen at the shuttered windows.
“We’re investigating reports of a lot of Indian movement down along the border.”
“Well,” said Belden. “We haven’t seen any Indians, sir.”
“Who’s in the back?” Chaffee asked directly.
“No one important, Captain,” Faustus said. “Just a Negro I employ in my medicine show.”
“Call him out here.”
Faustus nodded in dignified acquiescence.
“Mister Kabede!”
After a moment, the porch door swung open and Kabede, in his white and blue-trimmed burnoose, crouched there in the doorway.
Chaffee’s eyes lit on the man, and behind him, several of the mounted troopers craned their heads to look in wonder at his striking regalia.
“Alright,” Chaffee said after a minute, apparently satisfied that no man would keep such strange company who was not what he said he was. “However, my advice to you is to turn around and head for Tucson. If the Apache don’t kill you, the Mexicans will for that fancy carriage.”
“Thank you for your concern, captain, but we’re not afraid of Mexicans or Indians. I have my nephew to protect me,” Faustus said.
“Ah,” Seiber said, grinning a stained grin and ejecting another stream of tobacco juice that plopped wetly on the road. “The only Indians you ever beat you drank under the table, Dickie.”
“I only did it ‘cause I figured you were lonely down there, Al,” Belden shot back.
“Let’s go, Seiber,” Chaffee said. He touched his hat, his eyes lingering on the tall African in the strange dress. “Gentlemen.”
“Clear trails, captain,” Faustus said congenially.
Seiber let the troop pass by and nodded to the boy at his side to follow.
“Go on, Tom. I’ll be about directly.”
The youth spared them a hard glance and went on.
Seiber rode alongside Belden.
“Don’t know what you’re up to down here, Dick,” Seiber said conspiratorially. “But you ought to listen to the captain. We know for a fact Vittorio’s down here somewhere. Something big’s going on.”
“What?”
“Don’t know, but the ‘Paches at San Carlos are all in a lather about it, whatever it is. Some holy man’s been whippin’ ‘em up.”
“What holy man?”
“Nobody I ever heard of. Somethin’ like…Miskwummikus or somethin.’ He’s been callin’ for ‘em to leave the reservation. He wants blood. We been out lookin’ for ‘em, but ain’t seen hide nor hair.”
“Yeah well,” Belden said, “huntin’ Apaches with a column the way you’re doin’ is like huntin’ deer with a brass band.”
“I know it. I tried to bring Togo-de-Chuz and his boy from San Carlos, but the captain don’t trust Apache scouts. He only let me bring along that kid.”
“Hope he don’t learn the hard way,” Belden said.
“Something’s gonna happen,” Seiber said. “Big raid, probably. Don’t get caught in the middle of it.”
“Thanks, Al.”
“Vaya con Dios,” the German said, and gave his boot heels to his horse.
“Auf Wiedersehen,” said Belden. He watched them go, and looked at the Rider.
“Misquamacus,” the Rider echoed.
Faustus cracked the reins and the camels got moving again, groaning their displeasure.
They came into the mountainous Madres Occidental, and followed the winding road through Sonora, across the desert and up into the mountains. They passed through Fronteras and found the town littered with nervous looking rurales. Word of Vittorio possibly being in the region had spread. The camels drew a good deal of attention, but they did not tarry, and pressed on to Nacozari, joining a train of mule drivers headed for the town.
The drivers worked for the Moctezume Copper Company, hauling supplies and the payroll for the Nacozari miners. Through Belden, who was the only one among them (aside from Piishi) who was fluent in Spanish, they learned that Nacozari’s garrison had been doubled to protect the mining facilities and the local ranches from any Apache who might decide to swarm down from the mountains.
When at last they reached the town, late in the night, they saw the truth of it. The rurales they had seen at Fronteras looked like sheepherders compared to the wild looking bunch leaning in the doorways of the raucous cantinas of Nacozari. Their shoulders were draped with glittering ammunition, belts sagging with multiple pistols and machetes, and rifles on their shoulders besides. The tequila of which they reeked burned in their dark and wary eyes. Most were faceless as ghosts beneath the great shadows of their sombreros, only their lean necks and unshaven c
hins, their tight mouths, some of them closed around the glowing ends of cheap cigars, visible.
The town itself was mostly a tumbledown scattering of adobe buildings erected with apparent randomness, so that they were practically piled on top of one another, connected by rickety wooden stairs and impromptu bridges, split by steep, twisting dirt and stone streets. The houses and businesses emanated from a central red brick plaza dominated by a respectable municipal building and a church in the old Spanish mission style.
Empty bottles burst beneath the vardo’s steel tyres, and the giggling of women came to their ears through frayed, glowing curtains, but no drunken singing. A strumming guitar occasionally, or loud, angry voices, but no singing. The rurales were expecting, likely anticipating a fight, and the drink was to fuel their cruelty, not mellow their moods.
Only the tired, filthy mineros stumbling to their shacks were on the streets, and the thin cur dogs shouldering and nipping at each other for the right to lap at puddles of vomit. The rurales ruled the town.
“Lots of black hats,” Belden commented.
“What do you mean?” the Rider asked.
The uniforms of the rurales were varied. They wore piecemeal outfits ranging from white cotton peon’s clothes to silver-laced jackets and pants of green, red, and brown. Those hats not made of frayed straw were either tan or black, he noticed. And Belden was right, the black hats did outnumber the tans.
“The rurales recruit from the local bandits,” Belden explained. “The fat ones are the most successful. Black hats mean convicted murderers.”
The big wagon and the groaning camels once again drew the attention of the bleary-eyed bystanders, and soon they had a sizable train of followers clinking along behind them, tipping bottles back, elbowing each other. A few golden toothed smiles lit the night in their wake, and lots of excited talk.
Their train surprised a fat gunman on a nervous gray coming around the corner. The horse shook and screamed at the sight of the camels and went galloping in the other direction, bucking it’s cursing rider into a water trough three blocks down.
They came to the plaza and Faustus drew the wagon to a halt.
“With all the attention this rig is attracting, Piishi ain’t gonna have a wax cat in hell’s chance of sneakin’ outta here,” Belden said.
“I have endless faith in the Apache’s ability to get out of here unmolested,” Faustus said lowly.
“What about us?” the Rider said dryly as the rurales surrounded the wagon, running their fingers along the gilded sides, commenting on the gold painted workmanship. One even jumped on the back porch, his weight causing the vardo to sag on its springs.
“Mister Belden,” Faustus began, cracking the front door of the wagon and leaning in to rummage through a pile of crates just inside, “will you be so kind as to translate for me?”
Belden nodded and remained on his horse as the Mexicans crowded the wagon, craning their necks to peer in the open doorway. Piishi was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he had ducked behind a curtain. But the Rider and Kabede stared out into the dark and held their guns behind their legs.
The fat gunman who had lost control of his horse came stalking over, dripping wet and with murder in his eyes. He elicited a growl from one of the camels at his approach, and his comrades burst into laughter as he jumped back in fear and surprise. The Mexican dropped his black hat, revealing a head of greasy, curly hair. He quickly retrieved it, glared at his fellows, then turned his ire on the camel and drew his pistol.
“Bestia maldito!” he growled.
“Ah-ah-ah,” Belden warned, touching his own pistol.
The Mexican wheeled on him, and it seemed like they would go to guns, but at that moment Faustus turned from the doorway of the vardo and rose to his full, impressive height, a glass bottle of some brownish substance in each knobby fist.
“Amigos!” he bellowed, in his deep, undeniable baritone.
The rurales one and all turned from the gringo and their angry companero and gazed up at the proffered bottles, the moonlight shining through the caramel liquid sloshing within, their interest in the conflict quickly forgotten.
“Muestras gratis!” Faustus yelled, and tossed the two bottles end over end into the crowd.
Dozens of ruddy hands shot skyward and a cheer went up. The bottles disappeared into the crowd and there was a commotion among them.
“Mister Belden, that’s about the limit of my Spanish,” Faustus said, “so if you will.” Then, to the crowd, “Amigos! Men of honor! How the oppressive air of impending war does hang upon you! Well do I know it, being a veteran myself. Publilius the Syrian wrote that the fear of death is more to be dreaded than death itself! How true, how true. And how fear does wear away the body. It is scientifically proven friends, that mental anguish is nine tenths the cause of all the bodily maladies which may strike a man low, granting him a death more slow and agonizing than any bullet or arrow. That’s why it’s important that we gird our loins prior to the fight, gentlemen, so that the mental stresses of anticipation and indeed of war itself do not carry with us all the days of our lives. Those potions the two lucky gentlemen in the crowd are currently imbibing were brewed and distilled in the mountain oasis of Shambhala, Tibet, by yogis whom you would guess were thirty years old but are in fact over two hundred. What’s the secret of their longevity? A total absence of fear! Now…”
The Rider listened to Faustus extol the virtues of the bottles he had cast into the crowd as though dousing a wildfire, and his mind wandered to the blowhard soliloquy of Hashknife, the half breed huckster who had traveled with the Nazirite Gershom Turiel selling the boy off as a strongman. He smiled faintly at Dick Belden’s fumbling translation and doubted the Spanish words were coming off quite as eloquently as the old man intended.
When it was over, Faustus had not only sold two cases of the bottled stuff, but a cigar box of Catholic scapulars and a few carved little wooden religious figures he called santos besides.
“That stuff in the bottles,” Belden whispered nervously to Faustus. “There ain’t nothin’ in there’s gonna make these boys sick is there?”
“On the contrary,” Faustus said smiling. “It’s entirely what I said it was. It’ll do them good. They’ll feel quite invincible for a day or so till they piss it out.”
In about an hour the rurales dispersed for the most part, except for a half dozen men who had joined the audience late.
“Quite a hustle you run, old man,” said one of the men, as Faustus counted his money and Belden finally dismounted. “But you could maybe use a new interpreter, I think.”
Belden looked sharply at this, a little wounded.
“I don’t suppose you want the job, son?” Faustus smiled over his pesos.
“I have a job already,” the man said. He was one of the more well-dressed rurales, with silver lace up and down his well-fitted black clothes and a bright rainbow Saltillo poncho thrown over his shoulder. He had a neatly trimmed beard and mustache, and good looks, but an air about him, as if he would smile just as prettily if he were lifting a señorita’s mantilla to kiss her or wringing your guts between his fingers. “First Corporal Mendez,” he said, tapping the elaborate silver swirls on the sleeve of his jacket, as if they meant something to the uninitiated. “I’m in command here.”
“Corporal,” Faustus said, tucking his money in his coat and touching the brim of his hat. When his hand came away there was a silver cigarette case, and he popped it open. “Cigarette?”
“Gracias,” said Mendez, and took one and a light.
“Faustus Montague.” “I read the side of your wagon. Who else do you have with you, Mister Montague?”
“Just myself, Mister Belden here, and two assistants.” He leaned back and made as if to knock on the porch door, but Mendez held up his hand.
“Wait. You don’t object to my men searching your wagon, of course.”
“Of course not,” Faustus said, lowering his arm.
Belden’s eyes flashed, but
Faustus caught his look and winked.
“Step down, please, señor,” said Mendez.
Faustus nodded and got down.
“Pimpollo,” Mendez said, dragging on the cigarette.
A lean, smooth faced kid of about fourteen or fifteen with eyes like a thirty year old man stepped out of the darkness, his black sombrero hanging from a thin barbiquejo strap that accentuated his boyish lack of an Adam’s apple. The crossed bandoliers looked too heavy to be supported by his thin frame, and the skinny arms protruding from his broad woolen sleeves ended in girlish hands that looked odd resting on the reversed butts of the heavy pistols hanging from his thick belt. He stepped onto the porch and wrenched open the door without preamble and ducked inside, a long barreled Smith and Wesson cocked and in his hand.
Mendez blew smoke and watched Belden and Faustus, but said nothing. Behind him, his shadowed subordinates shifted, angling the barrels of their rifles in their direction.
Inside the vardo, Kabede and the Rider rose abruptly at the appearance of the armed boy.
“It’s alright, boys,” Faustus called. “The authorities just want to have a look around.”
The Rider held his palms up and Kabede laid his rifle aside as the glaring boy began to run his hard eyes along the cluttered shelves. He kicked over boxes of papers, medallions, and santos.
“Cuántos hombres?” Mendez called from outside.
“Dos hombres,” the boy in the wagon answered in high voice, and continued to search. “Un moreno, y un gringo.” He pulled out drawers and turned them upside down, swept his hand along shelves, sending bottles and philters crashing to the throw rug. He glanced at the wall of scrolls with disinterest.
“No veo nada, Corporal,” said the boy. His eyes fell on the curtain along the back. “Espara un minuto.”
“¿Qué ves? Mendez asked.
The Rider tensed as the boy put his hand on the curtain. If he unveiled Piishi, the Apache would be forced to kill him. In the middle of all these rurales, none of them would make it out alive.
Pimpollo seemed to sense the Rider’s apprehension, and he pointed his pistol at him as he drew back the curtain.
There was no one there.
“Pimpollo!” Mendez called. “¿Qué ves?”
Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel Page 16
