Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel (35 page)

“And?”

Belden grinned and patted his
shoulder once more.

“Don’t go gettin’ your head knocked
off over a piece of tail.”

Then the Rider walked off into the
night, dragging the protesting onager behind him.

Now here he was, the trusty old
animal still contending against him, even after doubling, tripling the time it
took to get here, to the junction of the sea green Gila River and the silvery
Colorado. To the west lay California, only a few hours away, and beyond that,
San Francisco and the sea. Home wasn’t close, per se, but he fancied it was. He
fought the urge to just keep going until he reached the ocean and felt its cold
salt water lap at his ankles while his toes sank in the wet sand of his
boyhood. Just to see the ocean again, to smell it, and hear a seagull scream…

But of course, he wasn’t going home.

On the north end of the river there
stood a treeless hill that looked to have been partially built by untold
generations of red ants, for they were so thick on the ground in places they
could be seen from horseback. The road winding uphill emptied in the crumbling
adobe ruins of an old Spanish mission, which had been commandeered by the Army
and now flew an American flag bleached pink, white and purple in the sun. Men
moved slowly on the hill, sweating in their blue wool sack coats.

The bottom land above which Fort
Yuma rose like a rural baron’s tumbledown castle was carpeted with arrow-weeds
and mesquite. Sparrows flitted from the river, carrying precious water back to
their little nests in a few dry boned willows standing here and there between
the stagnant sloughs and lagoons. The Rider spied a long-eared jackrabbit partaking
from one of the shallow puddles, warily rising to his muscled haunches now and
then to keep a black bead eye out for weasels or coyotes.

Two long-legged cranes waded amid
the reeds on the right bank of the river, darting their scissor bills beneath
the surface now and then.

On the other side of the river, a
second hill overlooked the confluence, and sitting atop it was a jumble of
stone buildings and a high plank wall, which was slowly being replaced by thick
adobe. There was a lot of construction going on there, and the workers, he saw,
wore the stripy overalls of convicts. That was the new Territorial Prison then,
which he had once read about.

There was a ferry, but the big flat
raft was tied off, the owners absent, a sign on the adobe cabin reading: ‘Be
Back Later.’

A pivoting railroad bridge was the
only other way across, and the Rider saw that there was no sign of an engine,
so he began the slow toil of dragging the onager across, stumbling now and then
over the ties.

It was dry here, and the sun was
hot, filling the river with bright fire.

Midway across the bridge he saw a
ghostly figure sitting under a sheet of clinging off-white muslin. A pair of
skinny brown legs protruded from under the sheet, gnarled feet dangling over
the side of the bridge. A fishing pole stuck out too, and a line trailed in the
water below.

As the Rider approached, the
phantasm turned its head to watch him struggle across. In the time it took the
Rider to reach him, the figure laid aside its pole, stood, and pulled off the
sheet, revealing a bone thin Kwtsan Indian in a patched Army jacket and no
pants to speak of. His face was caked with dried, cracked mud. He looked like a
terra cotta statue come to life.

How the Rider knew the Indian was a
Kwtsan, he wasn’t exactly sure, though he suspected. Ever since he had
possessed the body of Piishi, his late Apache friend (Dine, he thought,
correcting himself, as Apache was not the term Piishi’s people used to describe
themselves. More correctly, Piishi had been one of the Chi’hine band of the
Chircahua Dine), he had found a good deal of foreign knowledge peppered among
his own. He had knowledge of Indian traditions and tribes he hadn’t before. He
knew certain survival tricks, like keeping a pebble in the jaw to stimulate the
salivary glands when water was scarce, or how to obscure one’s trail, or, what
a Kwtsan was, in this instance. He attributed it to having possessed Piishi for
such an inordinate amount of time, or perhaps from having only vacated his
physical form at the moment of death. They had shared knowledge during their
time together, certainly. Piishi had used the Rider’s knowledge to destroy
himself and drive back one of the Great Old Ones, in fact. Apparently some of
Piishi’s knowledge had remained.

“
Buenas
dias
,” the Rider said when he finally reached him.

“
Hola
,”
said the Indian.

“
Pescado…
”
the Rider said, motioning to the river, but he couldn’t think of the word for ‘biting,’
so he just said, “biting?” Inexplicably, Spanish either hadn’t been among
Piishi’s assets, or it just hadn’t stuck.

The Kwtsan shook his head.

“
No
pescado. Tortuga o serpientes
.”

The Rider nodded as if he
understood.

“I wonder,” the Rider began, “could
you tell me…ah,
donde esta
‘Lady
Pleasant?’”

“La Lady Pleasant?” the Indian repeated,
looking slightly confused. “
Si…La Lady
Pleasant fue el nombre del barco del Capitán Haddox. Ella destruido por Ogeden’s
Landing.
” He pointed upriver, and made a waving gesture, as if it was
somewhere out of sight down there.

“Ogden’s Landing?” the Rider
repeated, that being the only thing he’d gotten from the Indian’s reply. He
looked off downriver.

“
Sí,
hace cuatro años
.”

“
Cuatro
años
?”

“
Si.
”

“How far away is that? Ogden’s
Landing?
Donde esta
?”

The Indian chewed his chapped lower
lip for a minute, then pointed upriver again.

“
Tal
vez diez millas hasta el Gila
,” he said.

The Rider stared past the Indian’s
hand and smiled patiently.

“Alright.
Gracias
.”

“
De
nada
,” the Indian said. Then, as if he had forgotten something important,
he quickly patted down his tunic, reached inside, and produced something and
held it out. It looked like a knot of greasy black and gray hair sprouting from
a dollar-sized scrap of dry parchment.

“
¡Señor,
Este es el cuero cabelludo del famoso asesino, Glanton. Mi padre lo tomó a sí
mismo en este mismo lugar. ¿Quieres comprarlo
?”

It seemed the Indian was trying to
sell it to him. The Rider shook his head.

“No, no.
Gracias
.”

The Indian shrugged and replaced the
thing in his coat. Then he lowered the muslin sheet to the river down below,
pulled it up sopping, put it back over his head, and sat back down to fish for
whatever.

The Rider kept going across the
bridge. He had no idea where Ogden’s Landing was, or on what bank of the river
it lay. It was a boat landing, sure, but how far upriver was it? He had to find
an English speaker, and he didn’t fancy dragging the unusually hesitant animal
up the hill to the fort.

Yuma was the largest town he’d
visited in some time. The houses and shops were entirely adobe and they cast the
only meager shade there was. It was so dry it seemed his joints creaked when he
walked. His hope of finding an English speaker began to dwindle as it seemed
the town was entirely populated by Mexicans, but the name of the newspaper, The
Arizona Sentinel, gave him hope. He pulled the onager to the hitching post out
front of it.

“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?