by John Horst
The clown man spoke up, “plus ninety-thousand.”
“One hundred and twenty-thousand American dollars?”
Gold Hat refused to look at the girl. He harrumphed and looked at the canvas ceiling of the tent. “It was just paper, and no more than an empty promise for the rest.”
“You stupid son of a bitch.” She looked on him with contempt. “Paper money, how many times must I say it, is just the same as gold. Especially American dollars.” She pointed with her head toward Rebecca’s room. “That girl is not worth so much, and now you have nothing, but extra assholes. You are muy estupido. And for what? So you can breed her? You don’t even know if you will be alive so long, she will not be ready for four or five years.”
She was growing tired of lambasting the two old men. They stared stupidly, vacantly as she berated them, as if she were the parent and they the two spoilt children. She began to walk out, then remembered her date with Rebecca. She threw the flap back and called for the young girl. “You come with me.” She looked over her shoulder at Gold Hat. “The problem is not with the women, you know. The problem is with you.”
Marta marched, she never walked, and Rebecca had trouble keeping up with her despite the fact that she was not much bigger. Rebecca jogged up a little to get beside her. “What are we doing?”
“Going to see the big red haired woman.” She stopped by the cook’s camp and picked up some food and water gourds, handing several items to Rebecca.
“Who is she?”
“One of the captives. The animals are especially bad to her.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see.” They moved on to the corral where the captives were kept. Rebecca immediately felt ill. She felt guilty when she’d seen the way the poor people were kept and mistreated while she lived in relative opulence. Many of them were so sunburned that they looked as if they’d been in a fire, faces red, lips cracked and bleeding at the corners of the mouth. They were gaunt and dehydrated and starving to death. She saw the big woman Marta was talking about.
Marta handed the woman water and she drank a little. She picked at the food they’d brought her. Marta reached out and touched the woman’s hair. She was a pretty woman and Rebecca could see that she was a special treat for Marta who’d seen few women with such features and hair.
“What of the rest?” Marta looked up from the red hair and around at the rest, as if she had not noticed them before.
“Oh.” She shrugged and looked back at the woman.
“Marta, the rest need help too.”
She ignored Rebecca and turned away. She said nothing as they walked through the camp. Rebecca could not understand the girl. She looked so mean, like the rest, she seemed to care for some and then not at all for others. She was such a queer little child. Now she was walking about the camp as if she owned it. Rebecca considered her predicament. Now that she understood the true condition of the captives, she felt compelled to do something to help them.
“Marta, we need to help the others.”
Striking a match, she lit the end of her cigarette, inhaled deeply and pulled it out of her mouth. Staring into the glowing tip, she spoke at it. “Okay, but later. We can’t let too many see or there’ll be trouble.” She looked on at Rebecca like she was looking through a special mirror reflecting back her own conscientious self. It wasn’t that Marta didn’t care for the others, she actually did, deep-down, but niceness and decency were qualities that were neither taught to her nor encouraged. Rebecca was a sort of paradigm of goodness and Marta did not resent that quality in her at all.
She pointed in the direction of the tent. “Go back to your room. I’ll get you later.”
Rebecca complied and waited. She rested on her cot and felt guilty again. A pleasant breeze blew through the tent and made it good for napping. She thought about the poor souls in the corral. Her daddy and Uncle Bob would not let even the livestock stay in such conditions. They always made certain they had shade and plenty of food and water. The people in the corral didn’t even have a place to do their business and they had to stand among their urine and excrement. It was a thousand times worse than the life of a mule.
Good to her word, Marta came in at just around dusk. They quietly picked their way through the camp as the men had eaten and were settling in to their preferential groups to lay on a good drunk. They were distracted and the fading light served as a veil to hide the girls’ activities.
Marta loaded Rebecca down with foodstuffs from the cook’s camp. They had many water gourds and beans and chicken and dried beef. No one seemed to detect anything until they were picking their way through the barrier of the human corral.
“Alto!” The word seared through Rebecca’s brain like a lightning bolt. She froze and looked on to Marta for her next queue.
Marta turned and looked at the dark Jesus. She hated them all, but dark Jesus really angered her. He was officious and smart and had designs on taking over one day. He did more to run the gang than the maestro. He seemed always to be awake, never drunk, always watching, particularly Marta. She knew he hated her just as much. He hated how smart and precocious and fearless the child was. Despite being more than twenty years her senior, he considered her a serious threat to his accession to the throne of evil.
“What do you want, Jesus?”
“I want to know why you are taking food to them.”
“Because I was told to.”
“Who told you?”
Marta looked on him, hate in her eyes. “What is this? What gives you the idea that you should ask me anything, Jesus? Go away and bother some others.”
“You will tell me, now!”
“Maestro.”
“Well then, you two come with me, and we’ll ask him again, because he has told me to keep them weak. This is not the same thing as what he told me to do.”
“No need. I have a note.”
Jesus laughed. This was preposterous. The Maestro was illiterate and never wrote anything down to anyone. “Hah! I would like to see such a note.” He was closing in on them and Marta waited.
“Then I will show you.” She reached down and began fiddling with her belt. The man was towering over her now, just inches from them. He stood, resolutely, arms crossed. He scared Rebecca so. He was big and lean and very dark, with black eyes. Not brown, black and deadly and hate-filled, the eyes of a giant shark, like the one she’d seen on the pier, brought in by fishermen in San Francisco with her Mammy and Abuelita.
He began tapping his foot, impatient with the girl. He looked over at Rebecca laden with all the food and drink. He didn’t watch Marta and did not see the miniature six shooter in her hand, did not have time to unfold his sinewy arms and pull his own piece or wrestle the one from the girl. A tiny hole, as if by magic appeared between his mean black eyes and he stood for a moment as the lead plug worked its magic on his gray cells. His body reacted and shut down, Jesus fell forward, stone dead.
Marta looked down at him, pleased with the work she’d done. The little lead ball exited the back of dark Jesus’ skull and left a large crater. She remembered her task and looked at Rebecca who’d gone totally white. “Come on.” She moved through the thorn bush barricade and began handing the food to the people.
“You must eat and drink quickly.” She spoke to them with authority and looked at Rebecca. “Get the gourds back and make certain they hide any remnants of the food. I’ll be back.”
The red haired lady was not hungry. She drank some and helped Rebecca distribute the food. She made certain the children ate and drank. She had more energy from the meal she’d been given earlier in the day. She looked on at Rebecca and gave a weak smile. She managed a weak thank you and patted the girl on the cheek. Rebecca blushed and momentarily forgot about Jesus.
Marta worked quickly. She pulled Jesus’ corpse into a shallow depression, not far from where he lay. He was so heavy and she just managed to roll him out of view. She looked on at his stupid, now expressionless face and gave it a quick squee
ze. She whispered into his ear, “See you in hell, Jesus.”
The mother superior rode behind Chica. The cigar smoke reminded the old nun of her father. He used to smoke a cigar every night before bed. She hadn’t remembered that for fifty years. Every now and again the pretty Mexican woman would dismount and wander into some brush, carrying one of the sacks she’d gotten from Uncle Alejandro. She’d return with the bag closed securely with a string. The nun did not know what the young woman was up to or what she had in mind. They finally stopped when they were a good ten miles from the bandit camp. She realized that Chica had planned to stay here through the night. She made a small fire and prepared the meal while Chica foraged with her little sacks. She returned with firewood, a rabbit and a prairie chicken. They ate in silence for a while.
“What shall we do next, my child?”
Chica lit another cigar. “No questions, Madre.” She looked on at the old woman. She was very tough and Chica was pleased to have her. She decided to give a little insight into her plan. “This bastard Sombrero del Oro, he is evil, you know.”
“Yes.”
“He is also very afraid of God and Jesus and all the saints. I know this, I have heard many times that he is very, how do you say…believe in magic things.”
“Superstitious.”
“Sí, supersticioso.” Chica poked a stick into their little fire. “And his men are the same. They have been with the old bastard too long. Their evil ways have made them scared of God and going to hell.”
“I see.” The old woman was beginning to understand.
“It is a new century.” Chica continued. “And there are many things going around, about the end of the world, I have read in the papers. And this is going to be very much on the Gold Hat’s mind. And, the how do you say, the sun going dark today…”
“Eclipse.”
“Sí, eclipse. This will scare all hell out of the old man.” Chica thought hard about the eclipse. “Do you think, Madre, that God is helping us?”
“I don’t know, my child.”
“It is very strange, no, that we need to scare hell out of Gold Hat, and on the same day, we have this eclipse?” She smoked hard and shrugged her shoulders, as if to answer her own question. “No matter. Tomorrow, we will meet up with them, and we must say many thing to scare him. I need your help, Madre. You need to make a profit…”
Prophecy?”
“Sí, sí. Every time something happen, you must say to the Gold Hat, see, that is a prophesy, there is the end of the world near, and all the bad people will go to hell.” She was pleased with herself and the old nun was pleased to see the pretty woman smile a little.
Chica built up the fire to afford some good light. She stripped the horses and sent them on their way. She told them to go home. They wandered off, into the night. She hid her rifle and her cowboy outfit and feed sacks in a crevice in a rock wall and donned her nun’s costume. She checked the cut down shotgun to make certain it would fit properly under her habit. She also had her big knife and a six shooter. She got the old nun to apply the makeup around her eyes. When this was complete, she checked the rack on the burro, now heavily laden with benign traps, the traps of a couple of nuns on a pilgrimage. She was ready.
Sombrero del Oro got as drunk as he could, but the pain was still unbearable. He was completely miserable, and the eclipse of the sun that day had put him into a state of extreme anxiety. It was big news in the rest of the world, all the scientists were excited about it, it was in the newspapers and was going to be a big event throughout this part of the world, but Sombrero del Oro did not care to know of such things. He was so caught up in his little evil world that he knew nothing of the impending eclipse and it was especially foreboding to him. He was a stupid and superstitious man.
He did not like this year of nineteen-hundred. It was a bad year, a new century, a new millennium, and he did not like it one bit. There had been talk of the coming of Christ, or the end of the world and it made him very afraid. His nightmares were worse than ever and he was perpetually exhausted. His head pounded all the time. Now he was wounded and in pain, and many of the men were jumpy. Half of his captives were dead and his prize was losing her luster very quickly. His mind wandered. He wondered why he was here. Why did he go to the US and rob the train? Everything was fine at his fort. He could have stayed there, comfortably, for the rest of his days.
He could not understand why so many of his offspring were sick, or why the women were not bearing the children so well. He was fornicating nearly every day, yet no good offspring. Something was amiss, and he was sure that he needed more breeding stock. It was the way with horses and cattle, and it must be the way with humans. The clown man was not helping matters, either. He looked over at his assistant who was now occupied with freshening up the colors around his eyes. The bandit boss suddenly wanted to shoot the man through the head, but the pain in his leg kept him in check. He pressed himself against his cot and drifted into a light slumber.
The clown man finished and looked over at his boss, doubtfully. He didn’t want the old man to die, not because he loved or cared for him, but because he would likely not live the day out once the maestro was gone. He was pleased that the maestro had been shot though. He saw that the girl had fallen out of favor, and he wanted her for himself so badly that the other children meant nothing to him. Every chance he got, he’d ask Gold Hat for the girl. “Just a little taste, a little slice,” he would not hurt her badly, she would still be good for breeding in a few years. Finally the Gold Hat stopped saying no, and this made the clown man very happy. He did not say yes, but at least he stopped saying no. He knew that was the first step. He’d only now have to come up with something, some item to negotiate, and she would be his. So excited was he at the prospect that he had to look in on the girl, now sleeping soundly in the room next to his, only a thin curtain of canvas between them. She was marvelous. She had not yet been spoilt by any vestiges of womanhood, she had no breasts, he imagined she had not gotten her feathers. It was almost too much to bear. He lay back in his cot and thought the thing through. He set the stage in his mind, what would he wear, what would she wear? How would he present himself to her?
They were always afraid at first, but then they learned to love him, learned to enjoy his offerings. They always did this. Even when they cried and tried to get away, he knew that secretly they loved it, they loved him and he was glad to know this. Finally, his racing mind stopped, and he drifted off to sleep.
Next day, Del Oro got a late start. He felt like hell. Now his head hurt with a hangover as much as did his buttocks. The bleeding had stopped at least, but he could only lie on his right side. The entire left side of his body was dark purple and the pain ran all the way down to his toes. A cot had been fashioned on a wagon so that he could be transported without riding a horse, which was quite out of the question now.
By midday, they stumbled upon an odd sight. Two nuns and a burrow were heading south. He did not like this one bit. Nuns in the desert, another bad omen. How many more could there be?
“Whore of Jesus, what are you doing out here?”
The old nun looked up at him, her younger companion, face shrouded, kept her eyes to the ground. She could only be considered younger by her posture. She did not dare look at the bandits.
“We are going on to San Cristobal, to pay homage there.”
“Homage to what, whore?”
“The miracle. The statue of the virgin cried tears of blood there, on the first day of the new millennium.” The young nun grinned behind her veil, the Madre’s explanation was completely unexpected. “And the eclipse of the sun. We are going there to make an offering and to prepare.”
“Prepare?” The old man looked on at his men. “Prepare for what?”
The old nun shrugged. “No one knows. The end of time, the coming of Christ, the coming of Satan. The four riders of the apocalypse? We do not know.”
The young one whispered something into the old nun’s ear and the
old one nodded.
“What, what did the bitch say?”
The old nun crossed herself and spoke at the ground, “The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.”
The hair stood on the old man’s neck and he shivered, then recovered. “You will pay homage to us, old whore. You and that scrawny thing you are with. Why is her face covered?”
“She was disfigured.”
Several of the bandits surrounded them. They rifled through the burrow’s pack to look for anything of value. They grabbed the women by the hands to look for jewelry. The nuns wore pewter rings, and as these had no value they were allowed to keep them. One of the bandits took the burrow and trotted away. They motioned for the nuns to climb on the maestro’s wagon and began to move. One looked at the young nun and ran his hands across her breasts. He stopped abruptly when he saw the scars around her eyes and called out to his boss. “Es una leprosa.”
A gasp went up in unison and she was suddenly ejected from the cart. The old nun held up a hand. “She is no longer a carrier. She’s been cured. Maimed for life and hideous, but cured. You will not catch anything from her. The old man thought for a moment, considered shooting the young one. He became distracted and after some conversation they could not hear, let her back on. They rode like this all afternoon.
At a momentary stop the old nun offered to look at the maestro’s wounds and he let her. She applied a poultice from her pack which relieved the bandit’s pain. They were going to be useful, these two.
As the nuns rode they listened to the clown man speak incessantly about the captive girl. He would plead, then bargain, then negotiate, then whine. Finally the maestro had had enough. The clown man had worn him down and he finally relented. The fat bandit boss looked on at the clown man in disdain. He held up a chubby index finger and looked the man in the eye. “Just once, and there better be no permanent harm.”
