Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel

by Edward M. Erdelac

  “But they are not your babies,” Piishi protested.

  Misquamacus lifted the blanket door of the wickiup. Outside the sun was high, startling to the eyes. It was past noon.

  “I go to bring the rest of the Apache. You are free to come and listen, but if you try to interfere…” he let the sentence trail off, his meaning clear.

  “You haven’t asked me why I’m here,” the Rider said. “Or how.”

  “I know why. I don’t care how,” he said, and went outside, letting the blanket fall behind him.

  “Do you still think he deserves his revenge?” the Rider asked Piishi.

  “Not at the cost the Old Ones would ask,” Piishi answered.

  “There’s only one way to stop him.”

  “Yes. He must die.”

  The Rider rose up and followed. He paused in the doorway. On the back of Piishi’s neck, the hair stood erect. He turned, and nearly leapt out of the wickiup.

  In the shadows behind him, on the far end of the dark shelter, a mass of shadows swirled, moving, independent of the others, like ink in water. As his eyes tried to focus on it, the cloudy tendrils that seemed to be spreading across the floor and ceiling, reaching out to him, snapped back, coaelesing instantly into a solid shape; that of a man.

  He was nondescript of build, and his clothes could not be discerned. He could have been naked. But his flesh was as black as the shadow, and textured, rough and scarred as cold volcanic rock. The figure had no hair of any kind. No teeth, no eyes glittered in the shadows.

  The Rider did move, backwards out of the wickiup, stumbling. He caught himself, and thrust aside the blanket curtain that had fallen again across the entrance in his wake.

  There was nothing inside. No one.

  He whirled, and Misquamacus was standing a few feet away, smiling knowingly as he set a black, feathered medicine hat square on his head and dipped his arm to the elbow in his hide bag.

  What was the vision he had seen?

  Piishi had the answer.

  The Dark Man. The god of Misquamacus.

  Mendez’s expedition had met the headless corpses of the vaqueros sagging in the saddles of their horses early on the way up. Don Elfego had identified the men by their dress. His son had not been among them. They had wrapped the bodies in muslin and strapped them securely to the saddles of the horses, and led them back up.

  It was noon by the time they had reached the place of the Apache ambush and the bodies were reunited with their heads.

  Mauricio’s corpse was discovered smoldering in the ash of the campfire, cooked so long as to be unrecognizable. His was the only corpse unaccounted for, and so Don Elfego knew that the the black husk at his feet was the body of his son. Something within him changed at the sight of it. He had meant to bring the body back down to his wife and leave the rurales behind. But how could he give Mauricio over to his mother in this state? How could he subject his own wife to this horror?

  To his men, he turned.

  “Take the bodies back down to the hacienda and bury them. I will bury Mauricio here. Tell his mother we couldn’t find him.”

  “Si, jefe,” said Silvanito, his top hand. “You are not coming with us?”

  “No,” said Don Elfego. “No, Pies and I will stay with the rurales. We will find these Apache bastards and we will burn them for what they have done.”

  He trembled as he said the last, and had to turn away.

  Pies studied the brush. Don Elfego had never known the Indian to be a coward, but the look on his face was unmistakable.

  “Pies,” he said, in the Rarámuri language, which he had come to know in their time together. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t want to go any further, jefe,” Pies answered. “Please don’t make me.”

  “They killed my son.”

  “The Apache did not kill your son. The spirits killed him. The mountain spirits. They live in this place, and they watch over the Apache. If you go on, they will kill you all.”

  Don Elfego put his knuckles on his gun belt and went to the edge of the camp, staring up the mountain and fingering the cartridges in their loops.

  “You do not believe me,” said Pies.

  “I will not make you go, old friend,” Don Elfego said.

  Pies came to stand beside him, and after a moment’s thought, he drew the Yellow Star rifle he had taken from the Apache out of its scabbard and held them both out.

  “Goodbye, Don Elfego. We will not see each other again.”

  Don Elfego took the proffered Henry rifle and the unadorned scabbard and stared at the strange markings etched all along its finish.

  When he looked up, Pies was walking away.

  Mendez came over, still atop his horse.

  “Where’s he going?”

  “Home,” he said, putting the rifle in its boot and hanging it from his saddle.

  “Home?”

  Kabede and Faustus watched the discussion between Don Elfego and his tracker. In a few moments the Indian had turned and walked away, and Don Elfego had mounted again and was fielding frantic questions from an animate Mendez.

  “There goes our tracker,” said Kabede.

  “Yes,” said Faustus, looking around warily at the trees. “Something has changed. Perhaps this is an opportunity. Come on.”

  He urged his horse towards the two men, and Kabede fell in behind.

  “How the goddamned hell do you expect us to find them if you let your Indian go home?” Mendez was saying.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen,” Faustus said as he approached. “But if your Indian has lost his nerve, might I offer the services of Kabede here?”

  “Is he a tracker?” Mendez said, looking Kabede over.

  “He has tracked man-eating lions to their dens in Africa, armed with nothing more than a spear,” Faustus said, without a trace of a smile. “With his rifle, no mere Apache will give him pause once he catches the scent.”

  Mendez appeared to be impressed. Kabede looked like what the corporal thought an African hunter was supposed to look like, apparently.

  “Fine,” said Mendez. “Let him try.” Without warning, he drew his pistol, took aim across the camp, and but a bullet in the middle of the Indian’s back. It caught him just as he reached the edge of the trees. He arched backwards, his arms bending awkwardly behind him, hands groping wildly at the seeping wound in-between his shoulder blades as if trying to keep his life from escaping. He staggered and fell, kicked, and was dead.

  Don Elfego’s eyes were wild in his dark face.

  “What did you do that for?”

  Mendez put his pistol up, the smoke still wafting from the barrel across his eyes.

  “I came here to kill Indians, Don Elfego. I would have been disappointed if I didn’t end up killing at least one.”

  Don Elfego made as if to take out his own pistol, but Mendez laid his gun across his saddle, the barrel angled meaningfully in the old caballero’s direction. The rancher’s hand moved away from his holster.

  Mendez smiled, then looked at Kabede and Faustus.

  “Well? Get to it.”

  Kabede and Faustus rode to the tree line opposite the Indian tracker’s corpse and pretended to look about for sign.

  “Best to pick a direction, and quickly,” Faustus whispered.

  “Yes,” said Kabede, “but what if I pick the right direction on accident?”

  Faustus looked about. Piishi had been trained from an early age not to leave much evidence of his passing. There was no telling where he’d gone.

  “Let’s head east,” he suggested.

  “Any particular reason?”

  “No,” he admitted. “But if you don’t find a path in the next thirty seconds Corporal Mendez is going to try and give you the same as he gave that Indian.”

  Kabede leaned forward in his saddle, squinted at nothing at all, then straightened, looked over his shoulder, and pointed east.

  Mendez called out to the rurales, and he and Don Elfego rode up to them.

/>   The Rider/Piishi stood a ways off from the others, among the Indians in wolf skins, who kept their rifles trained on him. Flanking these were Inya and his Apache followers, the Pawnee, and the small group of blanketed Indians with the bowl haircuts.

  Lozen and Vittorio and the other Apache were gathered, twenty in all, and they eyed the others with mistrust.

  Misquamacus had climbed atop a prominent stone before the pool of water, and chanted in a language the Apache at least, did not understand, though he did recognize some words here and there. It was possible, the Rider thought, that he was speaking the languages of all the tribes, as he thought he detected snatches of Cheyenne as well, though he couldn’t be sure.

  Midway through his chant, he drew what Piishi knew as a tzi-ditindi, or sounding wood, an oblong wooden rhombus from his bag and began to swing it back and forth. The twisted chord was very long, perhaps ten or fifteen feet, and when he had built up enough momentum, he swung it around his head, the wooden end eliciting the distinctive bullroarer sound, which echoed up the golden rock walls.

  The Rider felt Piishi’s arm hairs raise, and saw some of the smaller pebbles scattered on the ground around Misquamacus’ stone tremble and rise a few inches into the air. The air was charged with mystic energy. Had he possessed his mystically embossed spectacles, he might’ve seen it.

  Then, the water in the pool began to react, bubbling as if boiling. Several of Vittorio’s band stepped back from the edge of the water. Vittorio saw that Misquamacus’ army did not, and so he did not either.

  Then the trickling waterfall began to gush, becoming a wide, great torrent spilling from the rock, overfilling the pool, causing the churning water within to lap at the banks and run over.

  Out of the waterfall shapes began to emerge—leaping, falling figures. They were made entirely of water, but they seemed to ice up and solidify as they fell. They splashed into the water in a continuous torrent, and a line of men began to emerge from the pool, walking.

  Indians. Apache. They walked onto dry land, expressions of wonder on their faces, their hair and clothes totally dry. Many made fearful exclamations and whirled about, terrified, but among them was one who calmed the rest with strong commands to ‘remember themselves.’ He looked to be Vittorio’s age, fifty or so, with a striking, perennially scowling bronze face and shoulder-length hair. He wore no warband or talismans, beyond a simple shell bracelet which poked out of the cuff of his long paisley shirt. He wore a faded red necktie and a long breechclout, his strong bare legs ending in leggings.

  Two other men, one a broad shouldered six and a half foot giant the same age, the other a wiry, short haired man the Rider’s age ushered the other Apache out of the pool and directed them to stand near Vittorio, whom they recognized and seem to take some comfort in seeing.

  Vittorio, for his part, greeted the three men, by their bearing the apparent leaders of their respective bands, with a simple nod.

  When the last of the people had passed through the mystic portal, Misquamacus ceased twirling the rhombus, and put it away.

  The gathered Apache, now totaling perhaps a hundred and fifty, waited patiently as the old medicine man put away his bullroarer, but watched him one and all with wary eyes.

  When he straightened, he drew himself up to his full height and spread his arms wide as if to embrace them all.

  “Before I speak to you all, we will enact the Yahola ceremony, sacred to my brothers among the Ishaks.”

  He gestured as he spoke to the bowl-cut Indians, and these parted. An elderly one of their number with a ghostly, white painted face came forth bearing a large sinistral conch, brimming with some kind of thick, blackish liquid.

  The Ishak presented the conch to Misquamacus. He took it and held it up.

  “The black drink. We drink from the greatest among us to the least. May it purge ignorance and open the mind to wisdom.”

  He put the conch to his lips and drank, then passed it to the Ishak, who drank also.

  In moments they both doubled over and vomited the black drink back up.

  The Rider/Piishi saw several of the Apache wrinkle their noses at this, but the Ishak passed the conch next to one of the Navajo shamans. He followed suit, vomited also, and passed it to the leader of the Pawnee, who imbibed and then offered it to Vittorio.

  Vittorio paused, then took the conch, drank, wrinkled his face, and spewed it back up into the earth. The conch was passed among all the Apache leaders, coming at last to the one who had urged the others to courage. He held it for a long time, staring at the stuff.

  “Will Goyaalé not drink?” Inya asked, a hint of a challenge in his tone.

  “Before you anyway,” Goyaalé muttered, putting his lips to the shell.

  After a bit, he too retched and heaved, and being the last of the leaders present, gave it to one of his subordinates.

  The shell made its way among the whole gathering, all except Piishi. Then the Ishak leader took it again, and went back to his people.

  “My brothers and sisters,” Misquamacus called. “All here know me and have heard me, and have seen my power. All who have come will decide this day the fate of all who have stayed. The white man and the Mexican crawl across our lands like locusts. They drive us before them with their iron and their steel. They drink our blood and eat our children. They leave us nothing. Here, tonight, at Pa-Gotzin-Kay, we will stand or fall forever. Those who choose to join with me will see the end of the whites, the end of the Mexicans. More, they will bring it about.”

  There were numerous nods and utterances of assent among the gathering, most coming from Misquamacus’ followers, though a few were among the Apache, both Inya’s band and the rest.

  “Before I tell you how we will do this,” Misquamacus went on, “I will dissuade your fears. Let your leaders ask of me what they will.”

  He sat down abruptly on the stone.

  There was a moment of quiet uncertainty, then Vittorio spoke, “You say we have a choice. But what of the San Carlos bands? The whites do not like them leaving the reservation. They will notice so many gone at the same time. They will put the soldiers on them. Isn’t their choice made already?”

  “The whites will not notice them,” said Misquamacus. “My hand is over San Carlos, and time cannot pass between my fingers. The sun hangs in the sky there. This day and night is ours alone. For those on San Carlos, no time will pass.” He directed the rest to the newcomers. “You are free to return without fear of punishment if that is what you choose.”

  The Rider noted the phrasing of the last sentence. There was a note of contempt, like a boy urging a friend to some ill-advised mischief, who was worried about rousing his parents’ anger.

  One of the leaders who had come through the pool, the youngest, stepped forward.

  “We have all heard your promises, Mis-kwa-macus, and we have seen your power. But who are these?” he said, pointing to the Indians standing around Piishi/the Rider. “I see our cousins the Navajo, but I see also the Pawnee and the Tonkawa. I know they are the white man’s Indians. I do not know these others at all.”

  At the young leader’s words several of the Pawnee stood, war clubs and rifles at the ready, but Misquamacus held up his hands for peace and they obeyed, settling back down.

  “My plan is for all Indians, not just the Apache. But Naiche of the Chokonen Apache is justified in wanting to know who stands already with me.”

  He pointed first to the Pawnee, and the leader of the band rose again. He was tall and pockmarked, with thick forearms and deep set, expressionless eyes, the top half of his face and shaven head painted black, a single eagle feather rising from his splayed hair.

  “Big Anger, chief of the Tskirirara of the Charhiks-i-charhikf.

  Naiche,” he said to the young Apache, “you call the Pawnee the white man’s Indians, for many of them have fought as scouts against you. But you know of the reservation at Fort Sill. Big Anger would rather fight you than die in a white man’s lodge. The whites stopped Big
Anger and his band from performing the Morning Star ritual. They cannot worship as they please.”

  He pointed to the blanket swaddled Indians in their loincloths and bowl hair cuts, and their leader stood.

  “Moon Cloud of the Rugarou Ishaks. They were driven into the swamps of their homeland by the whites and by the Chitimachas hundreds of years ago. The last of their people, and starving, they prayed for help. Their god did not answer them. Mine did.”

  Next he gestured to the dozen or so wolf-garbed Indians, and an elderly man with a black wolf head cowl and cape stood and folded his arms, which were strung with armlets of teeth.

  “Bloody Jaw of the Tickanwatic. The Tonkawas. Yes, they, too, were enemies of the Apache. Now they are willing to unite against the whites who have made them sick and taken their pride.”

  Finally, he came to the few Navajo, and the eldest of these, a thin, tall, hollow-eyed man in a wooly black sheepskin vest, covered in nearly as many ritual trinkets as the Rider himself wore, rose.

  “Lastly, Slim Ghost and his yee naldooshi, whose hogans were burned by Kit Carson.”

  Misquamacus turned again to Naiche and his people when Slim Ghost sat back down.

  “Naiche of the Chohoknen is here, and Juh of the Nedni,” he went on, pointing out the tall, broad shouldered Apache, “and Vittorio of the Chihine, and Goyaalé of the Bedonkohe.” This was the man who had arrived last, and calmed his people. “Many bands,” said Misquamacus, “but all Chiricahua. All Apache. My army is of many different tribes, but we are all Indian. All with reason to hate the white man and what he is doing.”

  There were nods among some of the Apache, and the big leader of the Nedni band, Juh, stood up. Goyaałé stood up too, and went to his side.

  Juh spoke in low, halting words, and Goyaałé said,

  “Juh wants to know why the Pawnee could understand Naiche just now.”

  This was true. The Rider hadn’t even thought of that. The Pawnee language was not the language of the Apache, so far as he knew, and he doubted the Ishaks or the Tonkawas spoke it either. But the Pawnees had reacted to Naiche’s comment about them being white man’s Indians, and each leader had risen as Misquamacus addressed them.