“Sorry,” he told the animal. “I’ll find you some shade in a bit.”
He stepped up on the porch, but saw a wooden sign hanging on the door which read ‘Out To Lunch.’
He peered through the dark glass, confirming the place’s emptiness, and looked up and down the street, wondering if he could find the local eatery, and if he’d find the Sentinel’s editor lunching with the ferryman.
A white bearded Anglo man in a frayed straw hat and the same faded colors most of the locals seemed to wear came up the boardwalk from around the corner of the building, his hands in his pants pockets. He spoke as he came nearer.
“Best keep an eye to your mule, mister,” he suggested.
The Rider looked back at the man and then at the animal, ‘he’s not a mule he’s an onager’ dying somewhere behind his teeth when he saw that the onager was gnawing at his tether.
“Hey,” he called. “Stop that!”
The beast kept right on chewing and the Rider went over and unhitched him, inspecting the damage to the leather.
The man laughed or wheezed.
“If’n you’re plannin’ to stay any length of time, you best take him down to the livery, or hobble ‘im.”
“I don’t know what’s the matter with him,” the Rider said. “He’s not usually this persnickety.”
“Crazy lookin’ critter,” the man remarked, “but if he gets you where you’re goin,’ he’s good enough I guess. You lookin’ to buy an ad in the newspaper?”
The Rider shook his head.
“Not really. Just looking for somebody that speaks English to give me directions.”
“I am known to speak it, though some would disagree,” the man said. He took his hat off and began to fan himself. There was an ugly scar on top of his head, a bald patch of cicatrices among his oily gray hair. “What you lookin’ for?”
“Ogden’s Landing,” the Rider said.
“You come past it,” the man said, nodding to the east and replacing his hat. “It’s about ten miles up the Gila River. But what in the world do you want with Ogden’s Landing? Nothin’ much left but an old dock and some empty buildings.”
The Rider sighed.
“An Indian told me I’d find somebody there.”
“That Indian up on the bridge?”
“Yes.”
The old man grinned.
“He try to sell you Joe Glanton’s scalp?”
“I think so, yes.”
The old man spat in the dust.
“Murderin’ savage. Who you lookin’ for, mister?”
“Lady Pleasant.”
The old man shrugged.
“Well, he weren’t lyin.’ Lady Pleasant is up near Ogden Landing, what’s left of her. But she ain’t no person, she’s a barge. Sternwheeler. She hit a rock in the rapids below the Landing and sank. Her stacks still poke up out of the river there. Rusted up some, but they’re there.”
“A barge?”
Lucifer had told him he would find Nehema if he went to Yuma and looked for Lady Pleasant. Had he lied? But there had been a Lady Pleasant. Had she been held there? Was he too late? Or were they keeping her in the wreckage maybe? He imagined some kind of slow drowning torture.
“Yep, Captain Haddox lost his leg tryin’ to save her. His was one of the last sternwheelers still a’runnin’ when the railroad came. Lost his wife in that wreck too. ‘Course, he ain’t mournin’ no more,” he said, and leered at that.
“What do you mean?”
“Got hisself one of them foreign brides outta the mail. Real good lookin’ one too. Fine features, dark like a Mexican gal, but not. I heard tell she’s from Arabee. I tell you, I’d drink her piss just to see where it come from.”
The Rider nodded, stepping off the boardwalk and into the dusty street. It sounded like Nehema. Haddox then. The Kwtsan had mentioned the name too, he now realized, but he had taken it to be an Indian word.
“Where can I find Captain Haddox?”
“South of town, ‘bout a mile. He’s a woodhawk now. Runs the big yard down on the banks, the damn fool. It’s below the old shipyard building. If’n you’re blind enough to miss that you’ll bump into his timber piles a’lookin.’”
The Rider was already dragging the onager down the street before the man had finished, and he’d had to shout the last of the directions at his back.
“Thanks,” he called back.
“Hey! Don’t you wanna know where the livery is?”
“I won’t be staying that long.”
The Rider pulled the onager south as the bearded man had directed him, past the long, empty building bordering the river, the staging dock planks mostly torn up except for one upkept area. Much of the timber had been hauled away, the whole affair falling to neglect, windows broken out. A tilting sign read Yuma Shipyards in case he was disinclined to believe it. Soon he saw the tall stacks of wood, some of which looked like they had been salvaged from its neighbor.
The woodyard was a real maze of castoff lumber and salvaged wood surrounding a modest house. The house had a porch and cracking paint, but was kept relatively clean and in good shape. Briefly, the Rider got the impression he was in the frontier version of a fairy tale, with a distressed damsel being held at an evil castle in the middle of a dark forest. Did that make him a shining knight then? Stupid.
It was a good place for an ambush, far enough from town that gunfire might not be heard, and the ricks of wood were tall enough to hide any goings on. The Rider loosened his Volcanic in his holster. What was Haddox doing to Nehema here? Was he a shed himself?
A sign on a post read: ‘Haddox Yard,’ and a little girl of about six or seven years with straight orange hair sat on a stack of uneven railroad ties swinging her skinny legs and reading a beat up copy of Rainbow’s Journey by Jacob Abbott.
She looked up from her book at the sight of the Rider digging in his heels against the pull of the onager, and regarded him curiously before she said,
“He don’t seem to like you, mister.”
The Rider peered at the girl through his Solomonic seals. She was just a little girl, nothing more.
“He always did before,” the Rider said cautiously.
“Well what’d you do to him to make him change his mind?”
“Uh…do you live here?”
“Not in the woodpile,” she giggled, showing two prominent adult teeth in a mouth of stubby milk teeth. “I ain’t a raccoon! I live in that house back there,” she said, closing her book on her finger. “You lookin’ for my daddy?”
“Is your daddy Captain Haddox?”
“Nobody much calls him captain anymore since he lost his boat,” she said. “My mommy died.”
The Rider nodded. “I know. A man in town told me. I’m sorry. I understand your daddy…has a new wife?”
The little girl wrinkled her nose.
“Nemmy. Yeah. I don’t like her much, but Robert does. Sorta.”
“Who is Robert?”
“He’s my brother. He’s back by the house, choppin’ wood. You wanna meet him?” she said, jumping down from the pile. Without waiting for an answer she began to run toward the house, calling, “Come on,” over her shoulder.
The Rider pulled the onager along, wending through the tall stacks. Besides the planks obviously taken from the derelict shipyard, there were also stacks of brush and logs, as well as shipping pallets and pieces that could be identified as having once belonged to riverboats; a sternwheel broken up into chipped, red-painted fragments here, a bit of a texas deck rail, and a broken pilot’s wheel. The woodyard was labyrinthine in its makeup, with a few narrow paths winding through it which the little girl scampered down as sure as B’rer Rabbit through the tangled Briar Patch.
What was going on here though? Who was this child and what did she have to do with Nehema’s imprisonment? Surely ‘Nemmy’ was Nehema. The girl professed a dislike of her. The Rider’s mind conjured up multiple heinous scenarios in which this Captain Haddox somehow enlisted his children
in Nehema’s torture. But she seemed like such a sweet, normal child…what was her part in all this? For that matter what was Haddox’s? The man in town had said they were recently married. The Rider had immediately assumed this was some ploy to keep the inquisitive away so Haddox could do with her as he pleased. Removed from town as he was, conveniently secluded as his house was by this failing woodyard (it didn’t seem to be doing any business after all, otherwise, why such an overabundance of wood? And why wood at all really, when most steamboats ran on coal these days?), and with the excuse of being a newlywed, nobody would think of asking what he was up to. Nehema must be here some place.
He emerged from the woodyard and saw the little girl talking to a slim boy of about sixteen, bare-chested, his skin blindingly white, the same orange hair as his sibling.
He came over with the axe balanced on his narrow, sunburned, freckled shoulder, the little girl tagging behind.
“What d’you want?” the boy challenged, more than asked.
The Rider opened his mouth, but he wasn’t quite sure what he wanted here. That is, he knew he was here for Nehema, but…what did these children know about it all? Did they know what she was? Were they even aware of their father’s role as Nehema’s warden and punisher?
“If you’re here about buyin’ the place,” the boy said, when the Rider took too long to answer, “my pa won’t sell.”
The boy had taken him for a speculator of some sort. Should he run with that?
“When will he be back?” the Rider asked, noncommittally.
“Him and Nemmy went into town for groceries,” the little girl offered. “They ought to be back any minute.”
The boy hushed her, and she clung to his long leg.
“Well, you heard,” he said then.
“Mind if I wait around for them?” the Rider asked.
“If you don’t expect company, you can do what you want,” the boy said, turning around and going back to the stump on which he’d been splitting logs when the little girl had run up.
His sister hugged his leg the whole way, both feet planted on his, forcing him to hobble. She looked over her shoulder at the Rider and allowed a smile, which he returned, a little doubtfully.
What was the nature of these children, he wondered, as he wiped the dust from his spectacles. They weren’t shedim, and they didn’t appear abnormal in any other way. The red lamps Lilith had employed to counteract his Solomonic lenses weren’t anywhere to be seen or felt. What if they were something he hadn’t encountered yet? Some servants of the Old Ones in a pleasing guise he was unable to penetrate, ready to erupt into some unguessed, inhuman horror as soon as he let his guard down?
He did not, for his part. He kept them in sight, kept his pistol loose in its scabbard. He led the onager down to the water and let it drink. For all its recent intractability, it still took food and water from him anyway. The animal had taken a disliking to him though, ever since he’d left Kabede and Belden in Mexico. It was as if it too disagreed with his current undertaking.
“What would you have me do then?” he asked the animal in a low voice. “I can’t just leave her to be tortured, knowing she helped me.”
The animal only shook its mane and brayed, looking over its shoulder.
A buckboard was rumbling out of the woodyard, a redheaded, bearded man at the reins, a dark haired woman at his side.
The Rider took off his spectacles, folded them, and put them in their case. He left the onager tied and walked back up to the house.
The little girl ran out to meet them, bouncing along like a puppy as the buckboard drew to a stop in front of the house.
The redhaired man struggled out of the driver’s seat, the woman handing him down a crutch to supplement his balance on what was probably a wooden leg.
The man stooped down and embraced the little girl, who pointed excitedly to the Rider as he came.
The man straightened, frowning, then turned to help his passenger down.
She had already leapt from the buckboard at first sight of the Rider, and come running to him, her skirts gathered up in her brown fists.
The Rider caught his breath at the sight of her close. She was as alluring as he remembered. He knew that in her true form she was far from beautiful, and he’d made a conscious decision not to see her as she really was, forgoing his mystic lenses. Because coming to her rescue was only part of the reason for coming at all. He had come because he wanted to see her again. He knew her form as it was just an illusion culled from his own memories, but beyond reason, he didn’t care.
He wanted to see her. He wanted her. Long nights he had thought of her, and she had moved naked and sumptuous in his secret dreams.
As she came across the distance to him, her smooth face fissured into a bright smile. He had never seen her smile like that. It was not the seductive mocking smile she had last given him. This was genuine. Without her whore’s paints and costume, she seemed more real than before. Her brown ankles flashed beneath the hiked hem of her skirt, and her generous chest heaved beneath the cotton.
When she was within a foot of him, she stopped, her smile faltering, then returning, her dusky, half lidded eyes seeming to devour him, and to plead that he devour her in turn.
“Rider,” she said, out of breath, one curling lock of black lustrous hair across her face.
Why hadn’t she embraced him as it seemed she was going to? But of course, he remembered, she was a demon. The talismans beneath his coat kept her at bay. She was lovely, and he could feel her breath stirring his beard, igniting his body. He wanted to grip her shoulders and draw her to him. As before, there was an animal heat that radiated from her skin. He could feel it stirring him, blowing across him like a sumptuous summer wind.
Robert the boy came over, the axe on his shoulder again. He was scowling, but he said nothing.
“Hi Daddy,” squealed the little girl, running up to hug her father.
“Say ‘hello’ to your mother too, Emory,” Haddox said.
“Hello Nemmy,” the little girl mumbled dutifully over her shoulder.
Nehema said nothing, only looked at the Rider with unspoken hopefulness.
What was going on here?
Haddox came over, limping hard on his left leg. Here was the boy Robert grown into a man, with a weather-beaten face and bushy brow, white hairs curling among the rusty beard. Freckles faded on his lined cheeks, and his small eyes shined like dimes in his face.
“He come lookin’ to buy the yard, pa,” Robert announced.
“That isn’t so,” the Rider said.
“No, I’d say it ain’t,” said Haddox, coming to stand beside Nehema. “You two know each other?”
“I’m the Rider,” said the Rider, tearing his eyes from Nehema long enough to see the mistrust in Haddox’s expression.
“He’s my brother,” said Nehema quickly. “My step-brother. Come from San Francisco to visit. I wrote him awhile ago.”
Haddox’s look lightened, but only a little. Robert’s got angrier, as if he resented the relation.
“Well. Didn’t know I had no brother-in-law. Didn’t know you ever went to the post office, come to think of it.”
“You’re married,” the Rider said, to Nehema as much as to Haddox.
“You didn’t know? How’d you come to find her here otherwise?” Haddox said.
“I knew, that is, I didn’t know you were Haddox,” the Rider said quickly. “She wrote me about Yuma, and about you and the kids, of course. But she didn’t describe you to me.”
“I’m hurt,” Haddox said to Nehema, breaking into a half-grin and slipping an arm over her shoulder.
Nehema seemed to go rigid at his touch, but she forced a smile. What was he doing to her? the Rider thought, incensed.
“You didn’t say nothing to me about bein’ her half-brother,” Robert snapped at the Rider.
“Don’t talk to your uncle like that, Robert,” said Haddox.
“He ain’t no uncle of mine,” Robert shot back.
“Robert,” said Nehema sharply.
Robert lowered his eyes, but said nothing. So she held some authority with him, if not the daughter. Had she seduced him?
“You didn’t give me much of a chance, Robert,” the Rider said, thinking as he spoke. “Besides, if I told you or Emory who I was, you wouldn’t have believed me anyway.”
“Still don’t,” Robert sulked.
“Go wash up for dinner, son,” Haddox commanded. “Now. Emory, will you help your ma with the groceries and get supper going?”
“Yes, daddy,” Emory said, and went to the load of sacks in the wagon.
Nehema was staring at the Rider again, her deep brown eyes projecting a strong desire, but for what? Physical contact, or rescue, or both?
“Hey,” Haddox said, jostling her with his arm.
She looked at him, as if she’d forgotten he was there for a moment.
“Supper?”
She bowed her head.
“Of course.”
He leaned in and pecked her lips, and the Rider was momentarily overcome with jealousy, but derived a certain satisfaction in that she did not return the gesture. She turned and went to help the little girl with the paper wrapped packages.
Haddox put his hands on his hips and looked the Rider over.
“You don’t look anything alike. You really her brother?”
The Rider opened his mouth to answer, but Haddox held up a hand.
“Before you answer, I’m well aware of my wife’s former profession, just like I guess most of those assholes in town are. My little girl ain’t though, and I’d spare her that knowledge. If you’re one of her friends from the old days, I got no quarrel nor hard feelings towards you as of right now. But you open up my daughter to any undue ugliness and I’ll float you down the river to Menturn Slough in pieces.”
“I’m not her brother,” the Rider admitted. “But I’m not what you think I am either.”
“No,” said Haddox. “No, you don’t strike me as that type. You look like a foreigner, but you talk like an American. There’s a hardness about you. Not necessarily meanness, but hardness. You two have a history?”
Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel Page 25
